# Aaron Ryan on Writing 43 Books, Fatherhood, and the Fight to Keep Storytelling Human

An episode of [Behind The Story Show](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1896272055), 9 Apr 2026, 38 min.

Audio: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2615825/episodes/19130775-aaron-ryan-on-writing-43-books-fatherhood-and-the-fight-to-keep-storytelling-human.mp3

On this episode of Behind the Story, Jelani sits down with bestselling and award-winning author Aaron Ryan for a deeply personal conversation about the life behind the books. Aaron opens up about the childhood spark that made him a storyteller, the emotional therapy of writing, how fatherhood reshaped both his life and his work, and why hope remains the through-line in the worlds he creates. He also shares what it means to self-publish, see his work adapted for screen, and navigate a creative career during a time when AI is rapidly disrupting both publishing and voice acting. This is a conversation about identity, legacy, creativity, and what it means to keep creating when the world keeps changing. In this episode: • The childhood moment that made Aaron realize he was meant to write • Why writing is both catharsis and calling • Fatherhood, vulnerability, and his book on being a dad • The emotional toll of loving fictional characters • AI’s impact on authors, voice artists, and human creativity • Self-publishing vs traditional publishing • The legacy Aaron hopes to leave behind #BehindTheStory #AaronRyan #AuthorInterview #WritingLife #SelfPublishing #VoiceActing #AIAndCreativity #Fatherhood #SciFiAuthor #FantasyAuthor #HumanAuthored Send us Fan Mail Connect with Jelani Youtube Channel Instagram Tik Tok 5thavenuemedia.com

## Transcript

speaker-0: There are strains of hope in the books. I love the quote by President Snow in The Hunger Games. He said, hope, it is the only thing stronger than fear. And I love when you have everything stripped away from you in that sense. That's the premise of the book, but you cannot kill hope. It's that flickering candle in the dark void around you. So I hope that they will take away hope.
speaker-1: store
speaker-0: you
speaker-1: Aaron, welcome to Behind the Story. Thanks for being with me.
speaker-0: Yeah, my pleasure. Thanks for having me.
speaker-1: So Aaron, you're obviously an accomplished author. You've written so many books. I could not even get through the entire list of the different titles of everything you've written. it spans different, you know, types of stories and whatnot. But before that, let's go back. Who were you as a kid growing up? How did you go from whoever you were into being an accomplished writer?
speaker-0: Well, the lightning strike changed everything. You know, when I was a child, when I was struck by lightning and imbued with all those supernatural powers, I think it bringing it back down to history. I'm actually perfectly normal and human. I remember reading the Lord of the Rings when I was probably 10 or 11. And it blew my mind. just, my mind was open. I was blown away at the robust world building and how, you know, the, diversity of the characters and the narrative, everything. just fall in love with the story. And when I was... A little bit earlier than that, I was given a storytelling assignment in second grade that just was like, we were all given it. But I remember, I'll never forget when I finished with this story, holding it in my hands and going, I made this. You know, like, look, I made this. And it was just, it was such a legacy, a very cool storytelling origin story that I can look back on now and go, ⁓ of course I'm supposed to be a writer. Of course I was supposed to end up as an author. So. But I've always done different creative pursuits because I have to create.
speaker-1: What sort of child were you? Because for example, I was a very inquisitive kid. Like I just, and I was a why, I call myself a why child. Why? Why? Why? What sort of child were you?
speaker-0: I think, well, I, I would contrast myself with my older brother. was much more of a sports kid. I felt always like he was my dad's son. You know, I was more like my mom's son, but my dad was very sports oriented. My older brother was very sports oriented. I was introverted. was not shy. There's a difference. I was introverted, but I was very in my head, very cerebral and very creative always, you know, like feet not quite on the ground and head definitely in the clouds. I loved to create, to do poetry and drawings and art. And my 10 year old, I don't know if you can see him behind me over here on the wall, the older one, he is exactly like that. He just crafts all the time. And so there is definitely a right brain DNA cell or stream of cells that gets carried forward. Cause that kid is just like me. I was very creative as a kid.
speaker-1: I understand exactly what you mean when you say that you're an introvert, but you're not shy, because I'm an introvert as well. So it's great to meet a fellow introvert. When did you, do you recall a particular moment when you went from enjoying stories to the feeling of you now have to create the stories?
speaker-0: Yeah. Well, that would be the second grade assignment writing the electric boy. I was a blatant ripoff of Alan Dean Foster's novelization of ET, which I was reading at the time. So total copyright infringement at seven years old. I should be in prison. But it was very inspired by that. But again, when I was reading the Lord of the Rings, I just wanted to do the same thing. I was so inspired from the get-go, not so much by the Hobbit and definitely not by the Silmarillion, way over my head. But very inspired by the Lord of the Rings. And I just, knew that if I was going to do something creative, it was probably going to be storytelling. Looking back, every career, major career that I've had has been all about storytelling. So it's definitely an origin story.
speaker-1: When you, when you're thinking about writing, what part of it is therapeutic and what part of it is just creating a story?
speaker-0: I think they're, ⁓ you know, hand in hand as I go through. Every story is cathartic to a certain degree. Every story is therapeutic because it draws out this, whatever it's swirling, you know, nebulously swirling around in my mind or my heart. It takes current events and things that I've been ruminating about in the real world and putting them down in print, but they take new iterations, whether that's a new character, a new narrative, whatever. But it's very, very therapeutic. It's very structured. I'm not a planner writer, by the way. There's two different kinds. Panters fly by the seat of their pants. They're very organic. And then a planner is very index cards and flow charts and bullet points and everything is so organized. I like to just go with the flow and see where my characters take me. But that process is always an adventure because I never, I never ever. know where I will end up in the story. that's a huge therapy because of the adventurous nature of it.
speaker-1: Are there anything from your early years that still show up today in your writing?
speaker-0: Well, it's, it's really funny because the electric boy was a second grade assignment that I was given by Mrs. Walker. When I was writing, it's a boy who, if I remember right, he sticks his finger in a power socket, ⁓ or he gets struck by lightning and he's imbued with powers, but he starts to fade. He starts to become transparent. And so eventually he's invisible, ⁓ you know, but he still has powers and he's restored and this and that. But in 2024, I was writing a story called Forecast. And this is a weatherman living in 2001 in Jersey city across the Hudson from Manhattan. He is struck by lightning imbued with powers. Any of this sounding familiar? And he doesn't know what to do with these powers, but he's eventually able to completely prevent 9-11 from ever happening. I was writing a segment in that story and I just remember sitting back from my desk and going, Oh my gosh, I'm writing the electric boy. 45 years later, I'm rewriting the electric boy in this new format called Forecast. So life really does come full circle. Absolutely.
speaker-1: So obviously, because you just stated it, you take things from current affairs and what's going on in society and put it into your writing. Is that a random spontaneous thing or is that planned out?
speaker-0: No, I once came across the word verisimilitude. It's a word that I first heard Richard Donner or somebody, you know, mentioned in a Richard Donner documentary about the creation of the 1978 movie Superman. I'd never heard the word before, but he, he wanted to make you utterly believe that a man could fly. So they put a lot of verisimilitude. I love to ground my stories in reality in verisimilitude so that they are attainable. You do that with things that are relatable, such as. mentions of the Russia-Ukraine war, mentions of COVID, mentions of, you know, current and past, recent past presidents. And all of those things grounded in a reality that make it so much more, ⁓ okay, I know where they, I know where the writer is, and I know where I am in this story. So I like to incorporate that degree of attainability. That's not to say though that I haven't taken huge deviations and spun off yarns that have been absolutely diametrically opposed to verisimilitude. The Phoenix experiment is a recent release and that's one. It's very different.
speaker-1: Speaking about recent releases, let's talk about the non-fiction book a bit. I think you wrote a book on parenting and being a dad. Yeah. Tell me, let's start at the beginning. How did the idea come about? Take me through the mechanics of how you brought that one to life.
speaker-0: Well, the books, they'll largely come to me as an idea and I'll usually get a cover idea first. And so I worked my way backwards from a very cool cover. you know, tend to envision this six by nine cover. And then what I, and I know I'm an anomaly in that regard because most people will think of the story first and they'll write the story. And then now I need a cover to match. I worked the other way and I picture the end design first and then work my way, you know, to it. So I was in the middle of a series called Talisman or The Talisman and it was. really kick in my butt. was very hard to find my way through that I hadn't quite latched onto the story. And so you could call it writer's block. ⁓ I, when that happens, I tend to shift gears and work on something personal that is, and you might call it an easier, right. But I have a billion things to say about being a daddy of young boys. And they are my whole earth. So the book is called, you are my whole earth, the daddy's love for his sons. And it was such a great off ramp from this difficult fiction process I was in with writer's block. You shipped to nonfiction and everything just flows and it kind of retrained your fingers and your mind to work and record everything down. And then when you're done with that, then you can return to the fiction and you feel more fresh, you know, to attack it better. But I loved writing You Are My Whole Earth because it's a very vulnerable, transparent look inside our home and my relationship with my beloved boys. ⁓
speaker-1: Is it just biographical? what's the story about? Or is it more like a diary?
speaker-0: It's a little bit of both, but it's more life lessons as a dad and the ultimate message being that boys don't need fathers per se. They need fathers, of course, but what they really need is a dad. They need someone who will love them and get down on their level and play with them and show them that they are a priority. And dad is a more intimate term than the formality of the father son relationship. So yes, I'm their biological father and yes, they need that, but they really need a daddy or a dad. And so it just talking about intimacy has been.
speaker-1: And that changed your writing as far as the types of stories you tell? How has it impacted your writing?
speaker-0: Yeah, it's well, I'm very careful about, don't like to incorporate profanity in my books. I have, but it's very scarce and it's never an F-bomb. It's never taking the Lord's name in vain. I'll never do that. Being careful about the content that I write, but also their names make it into every single book that I write. In some iteration, there is a Brennan and in some iteration there is an Asher. And I love that, that they get to be part of those stories. In fact, Dissonance Volume Zero Revelation, which is the first prequel. to my alien invasion saga. I based a lot of our family, injected a lot of our own family's traits into the family in question that are the protagonists of that story. you know, Melissa is my wife, Janine, Andrew Shipley is me, Brennan is young Cameron Shipley, and Asher is Wyatt Ruddy Shipley. And it's just very cool to do that.
speaker-1: What do you hope that they take away from the book about them?
speaker-0: Well, I hope that they take away that they were constantly on my mind. Uh, and they are as much formative in my life as I am in theirs. Jelani, I've been keeping a journal for both of my sons since, uh, Brennan was two months old, May of 2016. Almost every single day I've recorded something in that journal for my sons since then. So we're talking, you know, 10 years now, and I can't wait to give that to them when they're 18 or 21. It's a... You know, barring a few days that I've skipped on accident or on purpose, it's a complete record of their lives, our lives with them, how front of mind they've been in my mind. So I can't wait to give them that quite frankly.
speaker-1: That's brilliant. It's good to meet somebody else that does. I've been journaling since I was in my 20s. And I always say that that's going to be my gift to my son. So he could know me in a way that he doesn't and that nobody else does. It's in my will for him to get all my journals from the time I was in my 20s. love it. Hopefully he won't be bored. But I think that might be an introvert thing because introverts, in my opinion, are so in their heads. And you may, this is probably why you're a writer. There's things in your head that sometimes you've just got to get it out, but you do not necessarily want to tell somebody. have to get it out. And I get out by writing in my diary and my journal.
speaker-0: Yeah My journal for my boys, people say, well, you should publish that. And no, there's, there's a lot of, you know, vulnerable, private family things in there that the world doesn't need to know. So it's, it's not a memoir. I'm not writing it as a memoir. It's, it's a testament to my love for my, boys and my wife and our family. So it's private. It's a private keepsake.
speaker-1: Yeah, I understand it completely because it'll put into context conversations you've had with them. Because that's what I know too. My son will see, so this is what dad was thinking when he told me, da da da da da da da. Yeah, this is what that was thinking. So yeah, I agree with you. It's not for public consumption. It's for private. What's something about being a dad? Because you talked about boys needing a specific type of father figure. What was something about being a dad that actually surprised you?
speaker-0: I I understood the heart of God better. I eventually finally understood the heart of God. I'm a Christian, but I have a very Catholic understanding or Catholic perception of God. Sometimes if I screw up somehow, God is displeased and I can't approach him. And that's, that's very Catholic. I need to do 50 Hail Marys and blah, blah, blah. But my son's, when my son Asher was fun, I believe that's when it finally clicked. He was approaching me and he couldn't speak, you know, full sentences yet. But he was coming up and hands out, stretch. he said, up, up, up. And he just wanted me to pick him up. And all he wanted was me to pick him up. And there was nothing in me that said anything contrary to, of course I will, will pick you up. That was my overriding function. Of course I'm going to pick him up because I love him with an undying love. And it was just like, ⁓ my gosh. That's how God sees me. It was just, it was a light bulb epiphany moment where I just finally, I think, realized that it's not his performance. It's not his looks. It's not his demeanor or his classiness or lack thereof. It's simply the fact that I love him. And so he's always welcome on my lap or in my arms or whatever. So it's really revealed the father heart of God to me in a new way.
speaker-1: Beautiful. Let's switch topics for a bit and talk about AI, especially from you being a writer. And I know you've had an extensive voiceover career as well. And you talked about how AI affected that and disrupted that. What happened? Walk me through that.
speaker-0: Well, voiceovers used to be a very lucrative career. would literally wake up laughing. think getting, finding a job that I was, um, either going to audition for and like, man, you look at the price, the price tag on that, what it's going to pay. Um, or I got awarded a job and I'm looking at the price tag of what I am going to be paid. And so it would always blow me away. It was very lucrative until, um, the first part of 2023. Now in everybody's defense. I started becoming a little bit more distracted at the time with returning to some creative pursuits. Voiceovers is a storytelling affair, but it's someone else's story. I'm not creating anything. I'm bringing it to life and creating it with my voice, but it's different. But man, the advent, not the advent, but the open entrance of AI, it's, it's foray into the wild with chat GPT and open AI in the spring of 2023 really saw the beginning. like the genesis of the demise of the voiceover industry, because then up sprouted all these services like re-speecher and speechalo and speechocean and 11 labs. You're instead of paying a voice actor $3,000 for a national TV commercial for one year, they're going to buy re-speecher for a single lifetime license of $49. Type in what they want, have it spit out the voice and then, Hey, that's good. And it's just, it's really eroded. the, ⁓ the voiceover pay scale and it's severed relationships and, and annihilated really longstanding relationships that I've had with beloved producers that I've worked with forever. And they with me, that's voiceovers in authoring it's diluted the offerings in the marketplace because you never know if this was written by AI or not. There are, there are charlatans out there that are stealing work by other people.
speaker-1: All
speaker-0: running it through like Quillbot and paraphrasing it and then branding it as their own and getting a free cover through Grok or Mid Journey or whatever it is they're going to use. And it's really watered down the quality of the offerings and made everything suspect. It's pitted authors against authors because your work's AI. No, it's not. I swear it isn't. Yes, it is. I can tell. And I want to use it. Well, I don't use it. Well, I'm not going to, but I do. it's, you know, it's just, there's a, it's a wicked alchemy that's happening. right now between a community that should be coming together solidly right now.
speaker-1: So how do you approach that as an author? I know I've seen in your writings where you're adamant that you don't use AI at all in your writing. Do you see a place for AI in writing as an author, in a synergy, or is this? No, if you're going to be a legitimate author. Where do you come off?
speaker-0: No, it's, I'm not, I'm not blackballing it per se, but I mean, cause I have used Grok, I tried Grok. think it was for Talisman, um, Subterfuge, the very first novel. I tried Grok for idea generation. That to me, I don't, I don't have any problem with, because sometimes it's like, what do I want to write about? I don't have any idea. But once you latch onto an idea that you either think of or read and print, you go, ah, that sounds great. I'll go with that. And so sometimes the idea generation is the hardest. part of the process. So you get the ball rolling with an AI tool that is not generative. It's basically idea generation for your, for your story. But if you're going to use generative AI to write the entire story for you, you're going to give Grok or Claude or whatever, there's a million of them now, Claude or, ⁓ or any of those things, a few prompts and have it spit out an entire story. I think that's wrong. I think you're completely forfeiting. the God given gift of creation that you've been entrusted and giving it to a little computer chip. And you're going to take credit for that too. I think it's really lame. So I don't use it and I won't use it, but I have dabbled with it for idea generation and I don't have a problem with that.
speaker-1: somebody who's not a writer, is it not the same as using a ghostwriter, for example?
speaker-0: Because if, go ahead. Yeah. Well, mean, a ghostwriter will take feedback based on what you've ideas that you've given them. And they're going to run it past you. They're going to run it past you and you are the sole creator of that work. So they're going to write something that they're going to go to you and you'll have feedback and consent or non-consent and you'll get to sculpt that and refine it and keep it true. Where AI fails and where it infringes upon the copyrights and the rights and the trademarks. of so many creatives, it is trained on the backs of creatives without consent, without remuneration, without accreditation. And all three of those are massive problems. We've seen that with C-dance, the new technology C-dance creating. I don't know what it was, but there's a rooftop fight between Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt. And it looks absolutely real in every respect. There are Avengers, whatever the new movie coming out at the end of the year. Yeah, Tuesday, new trailers for that.
speaker-1: Yeah, that are not real. have to I've had to tell people these are not real.
speaker-0: They're not real and they're getting the pants suit off of them because of that. Cause they're using their likeness without consent. It's a big wild west unregulated affair right now.
speaker-1: Let me paint a scenario for you. This is a real scenario and get your opinion on it. I've authored a small business book five, six years ago. I can't sit at a computer and type my thoughts. And I've come to realize the reason I can't do it is because my brain works faster than my fingers. I can't type as fast as I'm thinking. So sometimes I forget where I am, where I'm going with it. But what I can do is my topics, I can sit there and give you a speech about it. I can talk about it for hours because I know my topic. And what I was doing was I was consulting with small business people and what I came to realize was they were all asking the same questions in different ways. And I didn't have a lot of time. So I decided, you know what I can do? I can just answer these questions in book form. And that way, when someone asked me these questions, I can say, here you go. It's in there. So what I did was, I created the chapters as, and in my head, they were speeches I was going to give. And I literally sat down and recorded my audio of me giving the speech on the topics, which was the chapters. And then I shipped that to, yeah, and then I sent that to a ghostwriter, to somebody that then took my audio and formulated it for me and edited it for me. Is that okay? Is that the same as doing AI or what are your thoughts on that?
speaker-0: No, I don't think that it is at all. think it's, it's, it's diametrically opposed from that because you've got something that is entirely from you. It's not trained on the backs of anything else. It is your thoughts, your words, your imagination, your feelings, everything that is as only you would capture it. The ghost rider may expound or elaborate, but ultimately you have veto power in everything that they're giving you. And, and if they say something that is completely Uh, out of bounds or something you wouldn't say, you still have editing power to do that. And it's an, and 100 % of it is with your consent. So the problem with generative AI is it's trained on the backs of creatives with zero cons.
speaker-1: And that's exactly what would happen. I would send it off to them. They would send me back the chapter for me to review and I would review and I would say, wait a minute, I didn't say that. you know, and then I would send it back and then they would go back with the updated version and they would edit it and then I would say, okay, yeah, that's what it was. So yeah, it's not me. But I guess the question I'm trying to ask is this. An AI now can actually do that. Like I can literally put the same audio into the AI and ask it to create the chapter based on that and edit it the same way. So I guess what I'm asking is, is using the AI that way as opposed to using the editor and the Ghost Rider.
speaker-0: So I think that everyone, we're at a crossroads right now where we don't really know what to do. And I think the easiest solution that people need to go with, yourself included, myself included is does this feel right? Does it feel wrong? If it feels wrong, then you have to ask yourself some other questions of like, how can I make it right? Or am I okay with it being wrong? Morally. But ultimately, right. But ultimately it's a pl- there's no plumb line right now because we don't have any kind of standard of what's- really allowed and what isn't, it's not, it's unregulated. It's a wild West where I, where I like to air is on the side of safety. ⁓ I have seen AI enabled prosthetic limbs that have been created for people like their legs blown off in desert storm or something like that. That's how old I am. And now they're, now they have an, ⁓ an AI, I don't know how it's an AI equipped prosthetic leg. I'm all for that. That's a medical purpose that allows that person to walk again. But if it's created without someone's consent, if it's created without accreditation to all these people that came before it and trained it, it's this huge pool of ingredients where no one knows what came from who. It's confusing and it's misleading, especially when someone is then going to take credit for that when it's not theirs to take credit for.
speaker-1: You've won awards, you've gotten a few of your works adapted to the screen. What in all of that feels the most fulfilling?
speaker-0: ⁓ my gosh. So there's nothing that beats a, an email landing in your inbox from someone who has read your book and they're genuinely grateful for having been able to partake of that story. Now we're besieged by scammers. get about 30 emails a day from scammers, spammers that they, they laden, you know, the emails laden with flowery language and, and keep on praise and they haven't read a. a word of my book. It's an AI summary and they're just, they want me to buy their marketing services and it's a scam. What I would give for an email, just one, just one a week from someone who loved my book. It's that much of an epidemic right now. So the emails really matter when someone says they loved your book. Next to that though, the process of having dissonance volume on reality adapted for the screen, seeing it pitched to streaming networks. Having no one say no yet, they're all genuinely considering it. That is such an exciting process. It's every author's dream to see their book on screen. And I'm no exception. I would love to see that. And I guess also just getting out there in vendor markets and sharing my books with readers and meeting them face to face. It's wonderful.
speaker-1: What's the emotional feeling like going, like when you think back to the first book that you wrote and was published and now is it the 41st?
speaker-0: ⁓ I'm this week in, ⁓ three days I'm publishing 40 to 43.
speaker-1: Okay, what's the difference with the feelings? Remembering how that first one felt and now?
speaker-0: Well, the first one I don't even remember. And I think I eventually pulled it too, but it's, mean, each one is, each one is so celebratory and so heartbreaking. because it is so wonderful to finish a book and put it out there. My love language is giving. And so when I'm finished with the book, I can't wait to, to, you know, go, I made this and here you go. I hope you love it. You know, and put it out there and hope people really truly do love this whole big saga with all these, you know, beloved people in it. I want them to, and then to see it spike and to take, you know, perhaps a bestseller mantle for a while, which many of them have done. I'm so grateful for that. But then to see them slowly drift down into obscurity, you know, without running promotions to, to buoy them for a while and bring them back up. It's, hard because you want it to be a Hunger Games that takes off. You want it to be a James S.A. Corey, you know, novel that takes off. You want it to be a John Grisham novel that just takes off. And they're not going to be that and it's a slower process of just hustle and grind and keeping at it.
speaker-1: Right? Is there, is there like, for example, anything that any epiphanies you've had from writing about you that you just, it was just such an awakening about something about yourself.
speaker-0: I've tended to write fiction more, but I think I could say this. I never knew I would care about my characters so much. Yeah. I have several characters from the dissonance novels. have these fictional characters birthdays in my real life outlook calendar. ⁓ Because they're that real, they're that attainable and tangible to me. And when I, when I wrote a death scene in, ⁓ in volume one reality, I never knew it would just completely disassemble me. It disassembled me, I'm bawling in the writing. I'm then bawling in the editing and I record the audio books back there in my studio. And that's me bawling in, in, on audible, ⁓ when I'm recording and bringing it to life. You just, I never knew that I would fall in love with this story so much in the line between reality and fiction really gets blurred. You want them to exist somewhere.
speaker-1: got some character questions for you. Who was the most distr- of all your works, who's the most disturbing character you've ever written?
speaker-0: Well, it's going to be a spoiler, but I mean, there is a character in a volume one reality and I had him named after a friend of mine from my old church. And because the friend of mine from my old church is, completely opposite from this other guy. So you wouldn't suspect him, but his name is Amos. He's a janitor and he's just doing some things to survive that you wouldn't look kindly upon. He's doing some despicable things just to survive, but you find that out. ⁓ You find that out, you know, later in a twist. It's a horror twist. He was such a kind, sweet character though, in the introduction of him, only to find out later on, ⁓ my gosh, he's doing that to survive. It's, it's a big twist.
speaker-1: Do you have a favorite character?
speaker-0: Yeah, I've had her jump between several novels now, Pastor Rosie, Rosalita Campion. She is reared her head at the very end of volume one reality. She's now in virtually every book in the series. She's made it into the end, into forecast, in the Phoenix experiment, in the slide, in, ⁓ I think I said the end, but she makes her way into these other stories because she's a very translatable, relatable character.
speaker-1: thought about writing stories based on like someone coming to you and saying Aaron I've got this idea here's this story you need to write a book about this is that ever something you would consider or have you ever done that?
speaker-0: No, it's people have come to me. Yes. I do vendor markets a lot. So I'm out there in a 10 by 10 booth and I'm selling my books and people come up and they go, yeah, I've got a great idea for a story and tell me what you think. And I'm a captive audience. I'm trying to sell my books and they're trying to sell me theirs. And I'm like, okay, but I've got readers coming by and like they could buy my books. you. Yeah. So I just tell people, you know, email me that if you'd like to share that idea. ⁓ and I've never pursued it because it's, it didn't come from my own cerebrum or my own heart. I think it's, I'm so flattered that they would want to entrust that story to me, but it's theirs. You know, it didn't germinate in here or here. So it's not going to have the same potency to me as it would to them. So it is kind of a ghost writing type of pursuit and I don't do that. I write my own.
speaker-1: What's the psychological toll? Well, let me say it a different way. How does that feel, the psychological toll of writing on you? How do you process that and deal with that? And the reason I'm asking is my dad passed away when I was younger and there was a period of time where he was dying. And I tried to write that story of the period of time when I found out he was dying. to when he actually passed away. And it was so emotionally and psychologically and physically draining that I could barely get through it because as you're writing it, you're physically feeling it again. Like, how do you deal with that when you're creating, like, for example, you just mentioned earlier in the character that you were bawling as you were writing it and editing it and how do you handle the effects? that sort of impact on you as a person, a writer.
speaker-0: Well, it's definitely a case by case basis. mean, ⁓ I keep wanting to say the name of the character, the first one that I killed. ⁓ I hate playing God. Number one, it's the worst part of being a writer is your need to strip away all these dependencies from your protagonist because you need to, you need them to go into the situation alone. And so they're distracted or they are, you know, they need a sense of justice really ingrained into them in a violent, hard, difficult way. So being that they feel like real people, feel like you're killing real people. And it's, it's, it's very, very hard to do that. But I think there's a, like we talked about earlier, there's a therapy in it. There's a catharsis in it where you just, you're writing these stories that ultimately are going to end well. And if you write it the way you write it, and then you do what I did and you go back and you write a prequel, then the people who died are alive again. And so you get to revisit them again and you just, you fall in love with them all over again. So it's a crazy mind, mind bend. You have to kind of think outside the box and, ⁓ and find some creative ways through it all. But I love every minute of it, Jelani. I really do.
speaker-1: can tell. ⁓ In the business of writing, well, in the business of publishing, what has been better for you, like self-publishing independent or working with one of the big publishing houses? How does it differ?
speaker-0: Well, big publishing houses are so hard to get on board with. So you can go through a site called querytracker.com. And basically that's a site where you're pitching to literary agents or publishers. me. And so I've done that. I've tried that and I've, you know, I think I got close with two or three of them, but ultimately it's not for me. Traditionally publishing, you have to give up a lot. You have to basically forfeit a lot of control, a lot of creative control, a lot of rights, a lot of timelines and everything. in order for the, what's called the trad pub to take that to the market. And as an entrepreneur and a freelancer that, that rubs me the wrong way. like to be able to, I like to be able, I prefer quicker time to market. want to command higher royalties. I want to choose my own editing team. I like to design my own covers. Sometimes I like to retain all rights to my books. I like to choose my own marketing and branding and, and my editing team and all that. And you give up all of that with a traditional publisher. So it's not the road that I've chosen. Some people love it. And I think it'd be awesome if someone said, like Harper Collins came up to me and said, Hey, we know you're, we know you're indie pubbed for dissonance. We found it. We read it. We loved it. We'd like to take this now, even though it's self-pubbed, we'd love to take it and now traditionally publish it. I would say, sure, yeah, go ahead. It's already been out there and I can reach a wider market. Go ahead. But not, not when I first create them.
speaker-1: And before we wrap up, I've got a few more questions. If someone reads, someday in the future, somebody reads all of your work, what would you hope that they would take away or understand about you, the writer, the creator?
speaker-0: Well, you had the word right in your question and there is always hope. There are strains of hope in the books. I love the quote by President Snow in the Hunger Games. He said, hope, it is the only thing stronger than fear. And I love when you have everything stripped away from you in that sense. That's the premise of the book, but you cannot kill hope. It's that flickering candle, you know, in the dark void around you. So I hope that they will take away hope, but also I hope that they'll notice. Two things. One is that every chapter begins and ends with virtually the same sentence. I've just done that. It's my signature. Every single chapter in all of my books starts and ends with an iteration of the same sentence. So they'll notice that it's kind of an Easter egg. And I also hope that they'll notice characters like Pastor Rosie and references to in this book to that book, completely unrelated. It's part of an Aaron verse where it all exists in here and it's, they're all tied together. So it's a much greater story. I just hope that they recognize that.
speaker-1: What do you want your legacy to be?
speaker-0: I want my legacy to be not so much, well, not so much, not at all voiceover artists who happen to write books. I want my legacy to be an author who happened to also do voiceovers. That's the career legacy. The other legacy is a man who loved God and loved his family and loved his boys. And that translates into the books, you know, that he writes. Yeah. It's kind of a multi-pronged question.
speaker-1: So let me ask it a different way in a specific way. And if it's, want it to be morbid, but you mentioned in your creative process that you start with the cover, which is like what a lot of people start with the end. They start that they leave that for the end where you start with that as your beginning, the cover, which is sort of the end after the story's already been written. So let's say it's your time to transition out of this world and those beautiful boys are given a speech about dad. What do you want them to say?
speaker-0: Oh boy, man. Um, that I knew that I was loved by him. I think is the very first thing I would want them to say. I knew that I was, I knew that he loved me again, being a dad. There's a great quote from a movie, parenthood, where Keanu Reeves, his character has said they'll let anybody. And he uses some profanity element that he says they'll let anybody be father. But you're like, not anybody can be a dad, something like that. Or no, you need a license to drive. You need a license to hunt. You need a license, blah, blah. But they'll let any jerk be a dad. That was the phrase. So I want my boys to know that they were utterly loved by me, regardless of their performance.
speaker-1: We'll leave it there. Aaron, thank you so much for coming on behind the story and sharing your insights about your work and your family.
speaker-0: My pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.
speaker-1: All right, take care.
speaker-0: to. ⁓
speaker-1: the store
speaker-0: you
speaker-1: I'm a story

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