Episode 83 features narrator and author Travis Baldree, whose debut novel Legend and Lattes we discuss along with his career trajectory and how his curiosity and his hobbies have also shaped that.
We talk about his many hats from his current gig as an audiobook narrator to his days doing almost everything you can think of in making video games, plus reading, nerding out, creative introverts outlining, editing, and much much more.
Throughout the conversation, we discuss:
- On being a first-time author
- Making video games
- Technology
- A man of many hats
- Reading to his kids
- Starting on a lark
- Narrator processes
- Audio nerd
- Not being scared of tech
- Creative introverts
- Publishing
- Phone calls
- The layers of texting
- Legends & Lattes
- NaNoWriMo
- Outlining
- Battling the Blank
- Narration is about anticipation
- Serial Bohhiest
- Dopamine spike with Creation
- And much more
Mentioned and Helpful Links from This Episode
Pour One Out for the Excellent Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree
Music created and provided by Henno Heitur of Monkey Tongue Productions.
–End Show Notes Transmission–
–Begin Transcription–
00:00:00:01 – 00:00:26:30
Agent Palmer
Previously on Agent Palmer dot com. Sailing into history Netflix tells the tale of the race of the century Lackawanna College alum to premiere Falcons football documentary. And if you haven’t thought about creating your own thing, perhaps it’s time. This is The Palmer Files episode 83 with narrator and author Travis Baldree, whose debut novel legends and Lattes we discuss, along with his career trajectory and how that has also been shaped by his curiosity and his hobbies.
00:00:26:35 – 00:01:13:29
Agent Palmer
We talk about his many hats along the way, from his current gig as an audiobook narrator to his days doing almost everything you can think of and making video games, plus reading, nerding out, creative introverts, outlining, editing, and much, much more. Are you ready? Let’s do the show!
00:01:13:34 – 00:01:35:32
Agent Palmer
Hello, and welcome to the Bulmer Files. I’m your host, Jason Stershic. Also known as Agent Palmer. And on this 83rd episode is Travis Baldree. Narrator. To many an audiobook. Former video game designer and a freshly published author of his debut novel, Legends and Lattes. I reached out to him after I fell in love with legends in lattes, the cozy fiction in high fantasy with low stakes.
00:01:35:34 – 00:01:59:19
Agent Palmer
And if you have even the slightest interest just from that, then you probably should go pick it up. If you need more. Just know that an adventuring orc named bib has a new dream, and that dream involves opening up a coffee shop. We of course discussed that book and how it came to be, but we also talk about career transitions and how Travis came to be an audiobook narrator, which is just one of the many reasons he ended up as a published author.
00:01:59:24 – 00:02:29:16
Agent Palmer
You’ll also hear us tell tale of creative introverts and self accountability, outlining and editing, not being scared of technology. And of course, think back on the way things were in the command prompt days. All of that and a whole lot more is coming your way shortly. But first, if you want to discuss this episode as you listen or afterwards, you can tweet me at Agent Palmer, my guest Travis Baldree at Travis Baldree, that’s Travis Baldree and this show at The Palmer Files.
00:02:29:16 – 00:02:56:05
Agent Palmer
You can find more information about Travis, his debut novel, Legends and Lattes, and his narrations at Travis Baldree.com. Don’t forget, you can see all of my writings and rantings, including a spoiler free review of Legends and Lattes on Agent palmer.com. And of course, email can be sent to the Palmer files at gmail.com. So without further ado, let’s get into it.
00:02:56:09 – 00:03:11:44
Agent Palmer
Travis, I picked up your book and read it. And I know you as an author. It is not your primary day job. Is it becoming more commonplace for people to now know you as an author only?
00:03:11:59 – 00:03:28:33
Travis Baldree
I don’t know if it’s commonplace or not. I feel like the streams get crossed every once in a while. I have a very strange work history, so I’m kind of used to it, but there are certainly a bunch of people who only know me as an author and are surprised that I did anything else.
00:03:28:37 – 00:03:58:01
Agent Palmer
I mean, I’m not, I’m not. I mean, maybe it’s the podcaster coming through like, and and these conversations. I’m not surprised you have other things. But first time authors. I’m always amazed at, like, what they do or do not pull from their, work history. Right? Because obviously, you know, there are creatives that go completely in a different direction and they’re creatives that beg, borrow and steal from, like, the jobs they’ve had.
00:03:58:03 – 00:04:06:49
Agent Palmer
Yeah. For legend, lattes. How much did you beg, borrow and steal from like, either previous experience or what?
00:04:06:58 – 00:04:36:55
Travis Baldree
I think all of those things are shot through it to some extent in various ways, both from just like anything from the setting to the way that it’s written to actually the the characters themselves to various degrees. So my, currently my day job is an audiobook and that’s what I. Narrator. That’s what I do every day. Before that, I made video games for 20 years, and so I have a weird mix of stuff.
00:04:37:00 – 00:05:03:31
Agent Palmer
I’m going to say, just hearing this, you. It feels like within the entertainment industry, you’ve had two of the more thankless jobs, in, in, in entertainment. Like, I feel like video game developers are. It’s like the worst. It feels like the worst job. And then narrators, it’s like, like I just immediately go to the what was the doc?
00:05:03:32 – 00:05:23:20
Agent Palmer
I know that voice. Which is not necessarily narration. It’s it’s more like the, the. Yeah, you know, the voice behind the thing, but it’s just it feels like, you can walk down a street without getting noticed online. As a video game developer, you will just get crap. You will never get very you will get very little praise.
00:05:23:20 – 00:05:28:37
Agent Palmer
It feels like. And as long as you don’t talk in public, people won’t be like I do. I know you.
00:05:28:46 – 00:05:51:34
Travis Baldree
Well. I mean, I appreciate not being recognized in public because I’m an introvert, but, I as far as the way the two industries play out, I mean, making video games is like being slowly immersed in acid. That is kind of the of the general idea. And well, as an industry, it was really good for me in a lot of ways it was terrible.
00:05:51:34 – 00:06:14:32
Travis Baldree
And others, and I’m glad to be done with it. Yeah. Audiobooks may not be as like flashy as other performance arts, but it’s actually a really welcoming kind of community, mostly because it’s like it’s like book people write the kind of people who listen to books. Yeah, are the kind of people who read books and books. People in general are just nicer people.
00:06:14:37 – 00:06:38:19
Travis Baldree
So the experience you have interacting with people who consume the art you make is really, really different. It’s really for me, it’s been very, very positive, which is it’s just okay, just the total opposite of making games. And I made successful games and I was good at it. But it doesn’t matter. You’re up there. You’re you’re up on the, you’re up there waiting for somebody to throw the ball and drop you into the bucket.
00:06:38:21 – 00:06:40:38
Travis Baldree
I mean, that’s just that’s just the way it is.
00:06:40:38 – 00:06:46:50
Agent Palmer
But it’s all creative space stuff. Did you always, I don’t know, have a creative bent if, I mean.
00:06:46:52 – 00:07:04:44
Travis Baldree
Yeah, I always wanted to do something, you know, creative. The nice thing about games and the reason I ended up doing it is because it’s a, it’s a synthesis of a lot of different art forms. You’ve got art, you’ve got writing that sound, you’ve got music, you get performance, you get everything in games, which is fairly unique. You can’t do that anywhere else.
00:07:04:53 – 00:07:15:40
Travis Baldree
You also combine that with, you know, kind of like more, you know, more, I don’t want to say scientific, but, you know, things that are more.
00:07:15:40 – 00:07:17:36
Agent Palmer
Like an aspect I would call scientific.
00:07:17:37 – 00:07:36:14
Travis Baldree
Or kind of art where in, in terms of engineering and I’ve done all of those things and they’re all great for their own reasons. The only problem with games is, you know, the the relationship with the audience that’s developed over time, which it didn’t used to be that way in kind of like the enthusiast era when everybody was just so amazed that anything showed up on their screen at all.
00:07:36:19 – 00:07:54:57
Travis Baldree
It was a very different sort of relationship. But you get you get on into like the the iPhone era where people take technology for granted and it’s just, you know, magic that everybody just assumes works. Then the effort that goes into it becomes, you know, a nobody. They don’t understand the effort that goes into it, so they don’t appreciate it.
00:07:55:10 – 00:08:03:14
Travis Baldree
Previously, just making your computer work and installing drivers was like a feat. So everybody had an innate appreciation that this was magic.
00:08:03:19 – 00:08:29:37
Agent Palmer
I think maybe, maybe it’s my age. Age and or like when you started with technology because I’m not going to say everybody my age started with techno. I started very young. Right. Like I was, 7 or 8 and I asked for a Nintendo and I got a PC. Right. So, so immediately I’m learning a very different set of.
00:08:29:42 – 00:08:39:25
Travis Baldree
Blocks, you know, and, editing your config sets and your auto exec bat to make sure that the mouse will actually function and you’ll get a Sound Blaster drivers online.
00:08:39:30 – 00:09:12:17
Agent Palmer
Well, that was that was one part of it. But it was also like I remember like playing in dos and I don’t know if it was like vanilla dos or like a program, but like, I remember just typing in random colors and being able to change the screen or make lines. For, for better or worse, some of that has come and gone over the years, but I think that having that start, and yeah, I’m still one that will take technology for granted on occasion, but when it breaks, I’m the first one to go.
00:09:12:19 – 00:09:13:58
Agent Palmer
Yeah, it’s probably something I did.
00:09:14:03 – 00:09:16:05
Travis Baldree
It’s just like a different relationship, right. Yeah.
00:09:16:07 – 00:09:21:49
Agent Palmer
Yeah I, I don’t, I don’t my, my immediate reaction is oh great I do I’m, I’m a bad user.
00:09:22:01 – 00:09:40:22
Travis Baldree
But did I do. And you know I miss that era. That was a pretty cool era. And it’s I mean it’s over and it’s not going to come back. And I mean, that’s the way it is, the things that get created on computers now, as far as game go, they’re just mind blowing. I mean, it’s unbelievable the things that people are playing or pulling off, knowing what has to go into it, it’s just staggering.
00:09:40:27 – 00:09:46:27
Travis Baldree
But, yeah, audiobooks are way easier. The technology doesn’t change that.
00:09:46:29 – 00:10:10:56
Agent Palmer
Well, so so here’s the question. Where’s the the shift. Right. Like I’m going to say, from where I sit, being a narrator and then being an author, I can see that that I that makes sense to me. But going from video game development to narration and audio books and it’s a bigger leap using your voice, a bigger leap.
00:10:10:59 – 00:10:27:07
Travis Baldree
Especially since I was not a voice actor. That was not what I did in video games. It was my job at all. I was an engineer and an artist and I and a designer. So I did not actually, and I did. I did some Vo toward the end of my career in video games, just because I just wanted to do it.
00:10:27:12 – 00:10:27:49
Travis Baldree
00:10:27:54 – 00:10:28:17
Agent Palmer
Okay.
00:10:28:17 – 00:10:48:40
Travis Baldree
I used to read to my kids a lot. I really love spoken work, audio, word audio. I, you know, I’m a big fan of audiobooks and obviously books. I just think it’s really cool. My where I really hooked in with audiobooks was listening to the narrator, Franck Muller, reading Stephen King stuff. Green mile is still like my number one, a number one audiobook.
00:10:48:45 – 00:11:05:36
Travis Baldree
I just thought it was amazing. And I read to my kids and I tried to kind of like I was I was influenced by that kind of delivery. I just thought it was so cool how you could conjure up a narrative using your voice in a way that was so much more than what you got by just sitting there and reading the book in your brain.
00:11:05:36 – 00:11:07:28
Agent Palmer
How was that done for you?
00:11:07:33 – 00:11:09:10
Travis Baldree
And I read to my kids or into my wife.
00:11:09:10 – 00:11:14:05
Agent Palmer
No, I mean, like, what did where did your parents read to you and did they usually.
00:11:14:12 – 00:11:25:02
Travis Baldree
I know my parents read to me some when I was little, but I don’t really have any memory of the reading voices. I was a voracious reader as a kid. I gave up pretty quick because I just wanted to read.
00:11:25:06 – 00:11:25:45
Agent Palmer
Okay.
00:11:25:50 – 00:11:41:20
Travis Baldree
But I’m also, when I read it myself, I’m like a really fast reader. You know, I zip through things, I can skim, and I just kind of get a better experience when it’s out loud because there’s no skimming. I just, like, I get all this, I get all the juice out of the fruit, which I think is really nice.
00:11:41:25 – 00:11:57:59
Travis Baldree
Anyway, I was I was getting equipment for doing video recording for games, and because I didn’t want to pay for studio space. So I was just getting the basic interface stuff and decent mic just so I could get some of the video done at reasonable quality. And so I had it, and my kids didn’t really need me to read to them anymore.
00:11:57:59 – 00:12:19:37
Travis Baldree
And I stumbled across a, which is the service that Audible and Amazon have for facilitating indie audiobook production, where authors can put their books up for audition, narrators can audition, and they’ll go through the process of producing it, and then it gets published just like any other audiobook, which is cool. And I just ended up doing it on a lark because I thought it would be fun and I had the equipment.
00:12:19:52 – 00:12:20:51
Agent Palmer
Yeah, okay.
00:12:20:51 – 00:12:39:08
Travis Baldree
And it turned out that I really liked it. And so I just kept doing it on the side, and I was pretty good at it, and I and I and I enjoyed it. And eventually there came a point where I was like, you know what? I could absolutely just keep doing this. People want me to narrate their audiobooks, and I don’t I don’t have to keep making games.
00:12:39:08 – 00:12:46:27
Travis Baldree
So I finished doing the last one I, I was shipping and I said, okay, I think I’m done, Santa, move on. I’m going to do something else.
00:12:46:32 – 00:12:59:15
Agent Palmer
How long I look. I know books are all different lengths, but like the average book, you know, how much time are you putting in to turning it around?
00:12:59:20 – 00:13:05:25
Travis Baldree
I’m pretty fast. I usually finish about three hours of finished audio a day.
00:13:05:33 – 00:13:06:10
Agent Palmer
Okay.
00:13:06:10 – 00:13:10:50
Travis Baldree
Which takes 5 to 6 hours depending on the complexity of the text.
00:13:11:03 – 00:13:12:21
Agent Palmer
Okay.
00:13:12:26 – 00:13:15:41
Travis Baldree
It’s about 10,000 words for an hour for me, roughly.
00:13:15:45 – 00:13:28:48
Agent Palmer
And so does your being a fast reader kind of tie in to your, no, proficiency in covering that many words.
00:13:28:53 – 00:13:46:18
Travis Baldree
I don’t think so. As far as pace, because you can only read as fast as the text demands. Everybody’s got a pace, and some people are like 9000 words an hour and some some are more accuracy matters. Like, how long can you read without messing up and having to do a pickup certainly matters to how much audio you can produce in a day.
00:13:46:18 – 00:14:08:34
Travis Baldree
Your endurance matters. Your ability to just make your buck go and sit in the box for consecutive hours on a schedule to get it done and not go have snacks or, you know, you’re working for yourself. Those things matter. But as far as like pace of reading, you know, technically there’s not that much to it. I have other technical advantage as far as overall production time.
00:14:08:34 – 00:14:11:44
Travis Baldree
Better because I’m a nerd, but they don’t have to do with the read itself.
00:14:11:59 – 00:14:39:22
Agent Palmer
I think there’s a lot of technological advances that nerds and or geeks, regardless of classification, like, we have over other people. Like I, I recently upgraded my mixer because I had to, but the old mixer was a hand-me-down, and the one before that was a hand-me-down. And I had the setup figured out in about 15 minutes.
00:14:39:31 – 00:14:54:48
Agent Palmer
And then I called a friend and I was like, hey, I think I just need I just need you to talk to me. And he he’s a probably a, an Uber audio nerd. And he’s like, well, how do you set it up? So I’m explaining it to him as I’m looking and making sure the levels are all good.
00:14:54:48 – 00:15:16:29
Agent Palmer
And he’s like, that shouldn’t work. And I was like, yeah, but it does. Yes, but it does. And you know, there’s no telling. It’s kind of just like it’s it was always trial and error or like, I don’t I didn’t I think I went to school for, for marketing right. Yeah. And communications not technology. This was all hobby.
00:15:16:39 – 00:15:18:52
Agent Palmer
I like I hobbyist, I know.
00:15:18:52 – 00:15:34:35
Travis Baldree
That they get into that technological background. You’re talking about where you can just on the command line type a few things I need to get colors on the screen. You know that you can do stuff. Yeah. You know, you can bang around and figure it out. And the machine isn’t it’s not opaque to you. The mechanisms are not fully opaque.
00:15:34:40 – 00:15:39:53
Agent Palmer
Yeah. Yeah. They’re definitely not scary. I guess it’s the other thing too, right. Because some people.
00:15:40:06 – 00:16:01:03
Travis Baldree
They’re just going to call support and they don’t want to touch anything. Yep. That’s it. So you asked how how how long it takes to turn around a book. Yeah. So if you figure that a book is, if that average book is just 100,000 words, that’s ten hours of audio for me. That’s a little over three days to read out loud.
00:16:01:08 – 00:16:24:44
Travis Baldree
And then there’s a proofing pass where somebody listens, make sure that what I’ve read matches the book and they’ll let me know. Timestamps and the things that I got wrong so that I can fix them. And then I’ll do pickups and then I finalize the audio. I have a very integrated process. So for me to do a book can sometimes be from start to done and shipped in a week, because my proofs are basically just proofs for me.
00:16:24:48 – 00:16:33:10
Travis Baldree
And because I’m a nerd, I have a very integrated editing and mastering process. That means I don’t outsource it, and it happens in like less than an hour.
00:16:33:12 – 00:16:33:41
Agent Palmer
Gotcha.
00:16:33:41 – 00:16:39:05
Travis Baldree
So I have some advantages in my overall production speed.
00:16:39:10 – 00:16:58:46
Agent Palmer
So the, I guess the question would be, you’re on a podcast right now and you’ve got and podcasts have exploded in the time you’ve been doing audio books and clearly you have all of the technology for it. Why haven’t you started the podcast?
00:16:58:51 – 00:17:00:30
Travis Baldree
Literally not enough hours in the day.
00:17:00:32 – 00:17:06:21
Agent Palmer
Okay. I mean, is there an interest though is like the interest there, but the times not or,
00:17:06:26 – 00:17:30:44
Travis Baldree
I think probably a combination of the time it requires and to kind of the sort of hustle and the, the production of content and getting guests and being that on. Yeah, that often after I’ve already spent a lot of time in a box talking into a microphone, it’s probably just never going to going to happen. For me, it’s probably it’s probably just not my personality.
00:17:30:44 – 00:17:39:21
Travis Baldree
I like talking to people. Yeah, but I’m not the person who goes to a party and seeks out conversations. I have to get drunk first, and then when somebody corners me, then I hold forth, this.
00:17:39:21 – 00:18:02:35
Agent Palmer
Is, this is this keeps coming up and it’s. And it’s only in the last few episodes. But like I keep talking to people that are creative introverts, which, by the way, I fall into that category, right. Like I, I don’t necessarily need to get drunk, but like I need to be pushed into the conversation and then I can, get stopped being a wallflower.
00:18:02:40 – 00:18:05:59
Agent Palmer
Like I can do it. I don’t want to, like, I want to be it.
00:18:06:06 – 00:18:18:17
Travis Baldree
It’s it’s got to. And it’s got an energy cost, right? Some people just it depletes energy to do that. And some people, you know, they get it. And I’m jealous of everybody who recharges from that sort of social interaction. I wish I did.
00:18:18:22 – 00:18:30:59
Agent Palmer
I don’t know, I feel like it’s it’s it’s twofold because I get energized by having this conversation, but I will also get equally as energized from editing this in post or.
00:18:31:01 – 00:18:31:20
Travis Baldree
Yeah.
00:18:31:22 – 00:19:00:05
Agent Palmer
Writing my next blog post or editing my next like I. So the recharge happens for us somewhere else along the way. Yeah, and maybe that’s just what makes us creatives, I guess I don’t I mean, it’s, but I’m just fascinated by the fact that we’re all introverts, but very few of us do creative, introverted things, right? Like we’re you put out a book and you put your voice out there and I’m putting out something into the world.
00:19:00:05 – 00:19:03:42
Agent Palmer
It’s just it feels like that’s the next. Like when when I was growing up.
00:19:03:42 – 00:19:04:58
Travis Baldree
Interaction we control.
00:19:05:05 – 00:19:15:35
Agent Palmer
Well, I mean, that’s true. But when I was growing up, it was the geeks will inherit the earth. And now I think it’s the introverts will, just because we’re we’re quiet.
00:19:15:40 – 00:19:29:15
Travis Baldree
Well, and weirdly, I feel like society overall is becoming a lot more introverted. I mean, who wants to talk on the phone? No, you want to text so you can get it at your leisure when you are feeling up to it. And I think this is almost like this is feels like this is an expanding thing, not a contracting thing.
00:19:29:15 – 00:19:49:27
Agent Palmer
Well, that’s true. And you’re talking to a guy who is the one person in my friend circles that calls people like, I’m, I’m I’m the guy that’s still like, no, I use the phone app on my phone for real.
00:19:49:32 – 00:19:53:30
Travis Baldree
I’m a I’m a you are a you’re a, you’re a dying breed, sir.
00:19:53:35 – 00:20:04:58
Agent Palmer
I yeah, but you know what? I, I, I don’t know what I’m trying to hold on to, but I enjoy it more. I will even call people. Yeah. Yep. I got your thing. We’re all good.
00:20:04:58 – 00:20:21:51
Travis Baldree
Which I don’t think that’s a bad thing. I’m not actually denigrating it. I think it’s actually kind of great. It’s just. It feels like as a society it’s easier not to. And everybody increasingly feels like it’s easier not to, and that they’re effectively choosing that, that sort of like deferred interaction.
00:20:21:56 – 00:20:32:01
Agent Palmer
In a roundabout way. It’s why I started this show, because this show is just long form conversation. And who has a long conversation anymore.
00:20:32:05 – 00:20:33:41
Travis Baldree
Not not that many people.
00:20:33:46 – 00:20:41:54
Agent Palmer
And I and I’m, I’m a I’m a talker. I may be an introvert, but you get me one on one and I will talk your ear off.
00:20:41:59 – 00:20:45:39
Travis Baldree
I have a lot of conversations, but they are all almost exclusively text.
00:20:45:44 – 00:21:08:01
Agent Palmer
Do you miss the, I mean, you’re okay. So if a lot of your conversations are text and you’re doing audio all day, do you miss maybe some of the inflection that you can listen like you can only infer so much from the written word. So like, you know, I can get excited and you can tell that even if we weren’t on video, you could tell you could hear that.
00:21:08:01 – 00:21:09:24
Agent Palmer
Like, do you miss that at all?
00:21:09:24 – 00:21:26:00
Travis Baldree
I’m not sure, because it’s everything is so rich with there’s so many more layers to text conversation than there used to be. When you factor in emojis and animated GIFs and all of the other window dressing that we’ve added, it’s amazing how much you can shade text. Okay, all of the other things that you can tag on now.
00:21:26:06 – 00:21:27:39
Travis Baldree
It’s like kind of impressive actually.
00:21:27:52 – 00:21:29:11
Agent Palmer
Yeah. That makes not that.
00:21:29:11 – 00:21:52:46
Travis Baldree
I, not that I don’t like human connection and don’t sometimes want personal conversations, but there’s a unique advantage in really long conversations and the fact that you can spread them out over an unrealistically long period of time. Like, I can have an ongoing conversation over an entire day that has long spurts where, you know, I can be doing something else, but we come right back in and pick it up and none of the context is lost.
00:21:52:46 – 00:21:56:48
Travis Baldree
It doesn’t have to be compressed into that same one on one experience.
00:21:56:52 – 00:22:12:37
Agent Palmer
That’s true. That’s true. Although it also gives you time. You get time to respond, right? Like somebody somebody gives you the, the, the I don’t know the conundrum. And you’re like, you know what? I’m I’m gonna go, I’ll figure this out.
00:22:12:42 – 00:22:19:25
Travis Baldree
And there’s definitely something to be said for immediacy. But I don’t know, they they feel like different kinds of communication that each have their own merits.
00:22:19:30 – 00:22:37:33
Agent Palmer
So we kind of talked at the top about legends and lattes. I loved it, and I I’ve seen nothing but praise for it in the little online circles I’ve got. Did you expect the reaction you got, whatever reaction it was.
00:22:37:38 – 00:23:04:11
Travis Baldree
Got no God, no. Good lord, no. I, I, I only released it to go through the process of releasing a book, because I work with people who release books all the time, and I was curious and I wanted to. I like knowing how things work. Okay. I’m a nerd. Yeah. So I wanted to go through the full publication process and do it and put it out the way that, you know, so you read people’s books like you’re always you’re always coming in at the end.
00:23:04:11 – 00:23:29:18
Travis Baldree
Right? And you make all kinds of observations about that book, those books I like this, I don’t like this or whatever. But, you know, I can’t really talk because I’ve never written a book. So it’s like doing it all is almost an excuse to be able to talk about it with some kind of knowledge, some sort of firsthand knowledge, so that you’re not just a bystander, which I like, because I like to be able to talk about these things in depth and have like the justification to do it.
00:23:29:18 – 00:23:49:29
Travis Baldree
So I don’t feel like some douche bag standing on the side of the road heckling or providing ridiculous non applicable advice. Yes or whatever. So that’s a lot of a lot of that figured into me deciding to publish that thing. And all I really wanted out of it was to pay for the cover art. I figured I could sucker some people into, into into doing that.
00:23:49:34 – 00:23:52:43
Travis Baldree
So it did not it did not go the way that I expected.
00:23:52:48 – 00:24:16:09
Agent Palmer
Was there. I mean, look, I’ll I’ll be the first to admit that’s that’s a long way to go just because. But writing a book by itself is a whole. Ignoring that you were curious about the publishing side, like the writing is not just easy, but by most people’s standards.
00:24:16:14 – 00:24:32:38
Travis Baldree
No, writing is hard. I did this for National Novel Writing Month, so this is a one month book. I did this last November and I was doing with a friend, my friend Avon, who is another narrator, and we both wrote our books during November and, you know, kept each other honest on her, on our word counts and our daily stuff.
00:24:32:43 – 00:25:00:27
Agent Palmer
That’s I feel like before you move on, that’s the most important thing because as at least speaking selfishly, if my best friend wasn’t a fellow creative, actually two of my best friends are fellow creatives that are probably the most authentic at calling me on my bullshit. Like. Like you. Like because. Because I can easily make excuses. I didn’t feel it today, so I didn’t write.
00:25:00:32 – 00:25:01:05
Travis Baldree
Yeah.
00:25:01:10 – 00:25:12:58
Agent Palmer
And they’ll be like, yeah, I didn’t either, but I did write or, you know, or I did do the creative thing even though I wasn’t up for it’s like, oh, well, then I don’t have an excuse like, you know, and she’s like, oh.
00:25:12:58 – 00:25:13:34
Travis Baldree
You just that.
00:25:13:34 – 00:25:14:06
Agent Palmer
Person.
00:25:14:06 – 00:25:14:59
Travis Baldree
Of accountability.
00:25:14:59 – 00:25:28:31
Agent Palmer
Yeah. And there are times and I’m sure you as a as someone who’s working by yourself, we can be accountable to ourselves some of the time. I don’t think we can be accountable to ourselves all of the time.
00:25:28:40 – 00:25:46:12
Travis Baldree
No. And and honestly, for my daily work, because I work with myself, I’ve structured it so that I don’t have to. For instance, when I work, I work live on discord. I have a discord server, people come in and can watch me work. I basically have office hours so they can’t make me work. But just acknowledge is that someone is there?
00:25:46:12 – 00:25:50:08
Travis Baldree
Yeah, and might think less of me if I wasn’t. There’s just enough.
00:25:50:13 – 00:25:50:31
Agent Palmer
Of a.
00:25:50:31 – 00:25:57:40
Travis Baldree
Push to get my butt in the chair. So I’ve just structured it so that I’ve built that accountability into my.
00:25:57:45 – 00:26:00:43
Agent Palmer
Does it help the audience?
00:26:00:48 – 00:26:16:43
Travis Baldree
I like having it because it makes it less lonely. You’re just not by yourself in a box all day. I can I have a little iPad down here, an iPad mini next to my bigger iPad for manuscript. And so I can see in text what people are saying and all of the ridiculous gifts that they dump in there.
00:26:16:48 – 00:26:27:11
Travis Baldree
And it’s just nice. And I can talk directly to them. They can hear me, and then they can text back to me nicely. And just having that kind of ongoing watercooler is really valuable for me personally.
00:26:27:16 – 00:26:41:11
Agent Palmer
All right. So your friends keeping you accountable, you’re you right through November is and I know a little bit about National Writing Month. Did you finish the first draft during the month of November?
00:26:41:16 – 00:26:51:11
Travis Baldree
I did okay, I did, so I wrote the first draft. I had outline beforehand, which so I’ve done I’ve tried National Novel Writing Month any number of times is the first time I actually finished.
00:26:51:16 – 00:26:59:51
Agent Palmer
Well, I want to say congratulations because a lot of people don’t keep trying. That’s a that’s a that’s a kudos to you because some people.
00:26:59:51 – 00:27:16:00
Travis Baldree
Thought I was a pantser. Right. You know, I think a lot of people are like, you know what? I’m just going to get in there. And then the words are going to flow from my fingers and magic is going to happen. And I desperately wanted that to be the case. And it just was not. So this was the first year I outlined and I just have to have that.
00:27:16:00 – 00:27:23:01
Travis Baldree
I guess I’m sad that I have to have it, but I need enough structure so that I can lunge for the next signpost in the blizzard.
00:27:23:06 – 00:28:02:36
Agent Palmer
I, my the blog is over a decade, and, I’ve established a process by which I schedule out probably it’s weekly, so I schedule out maybe 3 or 4 months in advance. I learned that through years of sitting that the blog posts on Thursdays. I think for the most part it’s always posts on Thursdays. But there were a few years where I would sit down on a Tuesday or Wednesday night and go, what do I write for tomorrow?
00:28:02:49 – 00:28:16:15
Agent Palmer
And it wasn’t until I started to schedule out, right, like, yeah, I’m at the end of the day, I can overrule myself, be like, I don’t want to write about that. But if I sit down on Wednesday night and I at least have a prompt.
00:28:16:20 – 00:28:17:22
Travis Baldree
They just gotta have that.
00:28:17:22 – 00:28:27:37
Agent Palmer
Yeah. Such a like, yeah, it sounds like such a small thing, but it’s such a huge that even if you go a different direction, you’re still moving.
00:28:27:50 – 00:28:45:04
Travis Baldree
And it’s easy to imagine that the thing you said a month or two ago, you had a really good reason for it. Even if you didn’t, you can trick yourself into believing it so it doesn’t matter. Yeah, at the moment you’re like, well, this has to be the best idea ever. But if you write it for future You, you’re like, oh, well, if it isn’t the best idea ever, they’ll figure it out.
00:28:45:18 – 00:28:51:35
Travis Baldree
And then Future You receives and it is like, this must have been the best idea ever. I don’t have to think about it at all. And,
00:28:51:40 – 00:29:05:48
Agent Palmer
Or at least it’s an idea, right? Because the I think the worst thing a creative in any field can battle is the, the blank page, the blank space, the blank screen, the blank canvas. That’s the worst.
00:29:05:48 – 00:29:06:39
Travis Baldree
It does. It’s not it’s.
00:29:06:39 – 00:29:23:26
Agent Palmer
Not like problem solving. Problem solving is fun. Like, how do I write myself out of this corner? That’s that’s exciting. That’s something new. But. Oh, that’s a blank page. What do I do now? Like, that’s that’s a that’s scary. Yep.
00:29:23:31 – 00:29:24:22
Travis Baldree
Yep.
00:29:24:27 – 00:29:32:24
Agent Palmer
Well, so, if I, if you don’t mind me asking how many attempts, had you had done before.
00:29:32:29 – 00:29:54:56
Travis Baldree
I want to say it was probably five, maybe 4 or 5. Okay. Sprinkled out through a number of years, you know, and I would either get, you know, I usually get a quarter of the way, maybe halfway in, you get in the bargain metal and, you know, I’d pop out, this book I got done because it had an outline, because the concept was relatively simple.
00:29:55:01 – 00:30:15:09
Travis Baldree
I could hold the whole book in my brain. Okay. And because it was something that I understood, you know, I, I knew why people would do the things that they did, and I knew what was important about it. I did expect it to be a joke than it was. It certainly changed from what I thought I was going to do to what actually showed up on the page.
00:30:15:09 – 00:30:36:16
Travis Baldree
But a lot of that is not the same outline would have applied to both books. Okay. It’s more about the tone of it and the way that it was expressed and how earnestly it was expressed. And then after that, the actual the subsequent parts are easier right after you write it. There’s editing. Yeah. But I like editing.
00:30:36:21 – 00:30:37:33
Agent Palmer
Well, that makes most of the.
00:30:37:33 – 00:30:42:17
Travis Baldree
Hard work has been done. You’re just, you’re, you’re refining.
00:30:42:22 – 00:31:02:58
Agent Palmer
You know. And look, I get that and I think you get that. And I’ve helped edit other people’s things, but I’ve also talked to people that are like, man, I hate editing. Like, I don’t I’m, I’m, I’m with you. I think that editing is the best thing because editing takes the circle and makes it, you know, a mug, right?
00:31:02:58 – 00:31:08:40
Agent Palmer
Instead of just or it solidifies it into something more concrete. Yeah.
00:31:08:45 – 00:31:29:33
Travis Baldree
One of the reasons I think I don’t mind editing is because I make an honest game attempt the first time through to do as much as I can, not to have to edit it. Okay? I’m I’m not one of those people who just, like, slaps it down and was like, oh, I got through it. I’m fairly meticulous and careful when I write, even knowing I’m going to edit it because I’m like, I want to find the problems ahead of time because I don’t want to rewrite the whole book.
00:31:29:45 – 00:31:48:15
Travis Baldree
Yeah, I want to be doing grace notes and important things. You know, I don’t want to be just cleaning up a mess. So I do, I do, and which is helpful with the outline too, right? I’m I’m making a game attempt to make something that is reasonably in the shape that it will be in the end. So editing feels a little bit more refined and less like, oh my God, it’s a mound of earth.
00:31:48:15 – 00:31:54:59
Travis Baldree
I have to move now. Which is probably why I don’t mind editing, because I’ve been consciously trying to do some of that work all along.
00:31:54:59 – 00:31:56:42
Agent Palmer
Yeah.
00:31:56:47 – 00:32:00:20
Travis Baldree
I just like to work that way because personally, I don’t like to redo things.
00:32:00:25 – 00:32:11:59
Agent Palmer
Okay, that’s. No that’s fair. I mean, I’m, I think we all create those processes at some point. But you have to go through it.
00:32:12:04 – 00:32:29:47
Travis Baldree
Yeah, you go through, you have to do what works for you and the way that you work. I know a lot of people who are just these white hot writers. They’re just going to put down 10,000 words a day and they don’t look back. And when they come in, they go through the edit. They have more work to do, but they have they have made it to the end in record time to begin with.
00:32:29:47 – 00:32:34:50
Travis Baldree
So they have that time to spend. And they, they prefer that, that way of writing.
00:32:34:54 – 00:32:45:26
Agent Palmer
So you get done with it. It if you don’t mind me asking, I don’t usually go this behind the scenes, but I’m curious, was it called Legends and Lattes the entire way?
00:32:45:31 – 00:33:10:02
Travis Baldree
Day one, day one okay, it was called Legends and Lattes. It was called Legends and Lattes. I wrote the blurb before I wrote the book. And the final book is almost identical to the first one. It was certainly edited. There were thousands of edits, but a lot of them were language. A couple of minor scenes were added to make sure some characters stayed present and, you know, redundant crap was removed from the final book.
00:33:10:02 – 00:33:12:11
Travis Baldree
And the first draft are remarkably similar.
00:33:12:22 – 00:33:14:25
Agent Palmer
Wow.
00:33:14:30 – 00:33:16:38
Travis Baldree
Because it’s not a very complicated story.
00:33:16:43 – 00:33:51:09
Agent Palmer
Well, but I, I appreciated that because I’ve been, I’ve been reading a lot lately. Yeah. And I’ve been reading authors more or less than anything else. So I’ve been reading through, like, Lynn Dayton’s bibliography and, Douglas Copeland’s bibliography. And I’m there’s a few other authors that I’m reading to, and so I’m taking what what’s next in publish order because I feel like I’m learning a little bit about these authors as I go through, like, yeah, okay.
00:33:51:11 – 00:34:16:29
Agent Palmer
So Lynn Dayton wrote a lot of spy fiction, and then he wrote some World War Two nonfiction. But having read it in the order he published, I can see where he stood on his own shoulders a little bit. Yeah. And I feel like that’s important from, a reading standpoint, because it’s kind of like watching the original Jurassic Park before, like any of the other subsequent ones, like.
00:34:16:29 – 00:34:18:40
Agent Palmer
Yeah, that one tells you something.
00:34:18:51 – 00:34:20:58
Travis Baldree
It’s also really interesting to watch an author evolve.
00:34:21:05 – 00:34:38:52
Agent Palmer
It is. But what my point is like some of these, because I, I’ve fallen in love with their writing. Some of them are a little do get a little complex. And first of all, I don’t know what marketing was done, but your book ended up on my Twitter feed somehow, and that’s how it ended up on my wish list.
00:34:38:52 – 00:34:40:15
Agent Palmer
And I bought it.
00:34:40:20 – 00:34:42:16
Travis Baldree
Yeah, there wasn’t any real marketing.
00:34:42:20 – 00:34:45:24
Agent Palmer
So I just happened to follow somebody that.
00:34:45:24 – 00:34:49:54
Travis Baldree
Shannon McGuire did a lot of did a lot as far as putting it in front of people.
00:34:50:01 – 00:35:13:34
Agent Palmer
And I should say that one of the things reading through, and reading through authors bibliographies that has, I don’t know, kind of become a thing I do is I avoid as much of the back cover as possible in the inside dusk. I am always appalled when I sit down to write these reviews, and I try and make them as spoiler free as possible, and they go, all right, I’ve read the book.
00:35:13:41 – 00:35:33:28
Agent Palmer
What do they say on the back cover? And that’s on the back cover. I’m glad I didn’t know that going, so I might. But anyway, the point is, a lot of these things get complex and I don’t know what I’m getting into, so I don’t know how on edge to be. And I, I think I read your book in a weekend because it was like, oh, this is just fun.
00:35:33:28 – 00:35:35:14
Agent Palmer
Like, this is this is amazing.
00:35:35:14 – 00:35:52:57
Travis Baldree
To the end. You just zip through. Yeah. I mean, it’s a comfort book. I wrote it as comfort for me. So it was written as a comfort book. So there’s things that as a book like it lacks, it’s relatively I mean, it’s straightforward. The prose is fairly workmanlike. It just wants to get in and get out and deliver what it wants to deliver.
00:35:52:57 – 00:36:14:45
Travis Baldree
And that’s the fantasy world is not a big, complicated fantasy world that requires a lot of, you know, backfilling of law. And that’s by design. It’s not like I couldn’t write a complicated fantasy story, but it would defeat the purpose of the book. Yeah. First base of the book is to have instant familiarity. It’s like comfort food. Yes, like when you go for comfort food, you don’t go have something new.
00:36:14:50 – 00:36:22:54
Travis Baldree
You go, you go have something. Yeah, that you recognize and that you hope will make you feel good.
00:36:22:59 – 00:36:23:51
Agent Palmer
That’s true.
00:36:23:56 – 00:36:27:00
Travis Baldree
So that’s what it is. I mean, it’s it’s comfort food. It’s chicken. It’s chicken.
00:36:27:00 – 00:36:31:59
Agent Palmer
Soup. So I would ask then, like, do you want to do it again?
00:36:32:04 – 00:36:37:06
Travis Baldree
I’ve, I have to actually I’ve got I’m five chapters away from the end of book two.
00:36:37:11 – 00:36:46:26
Agent Palmer
Okay. Now this is I and I’m, I’m parsing this together. Was book two something you thought about?
00:36:46:31 – 00:36:47:10
Travis Baldree
All right, so.
00:36:47:10 – 00:36:53:12
Agent Palmer
Like, we’re in the line because obviously when you start for National Writing Month, you’re not like, I’m going to write a trilogy.
00:36:53:12 – 00:37:12:16
Travis Baldree
You know? But when I finished, I was like, I enjoyed doing that. I have a sequel in mind. Okay. She’s not what I’m writing right now. So I had a book in mind. I knew what I was going to write. It was going to be a cozy mystery, which was going to be involve like an author, and it was going to be set in a magic college in the city.
00:37:12:20 – 00:37:24:53
Travis Baldree
And I had I plotted the whole thing out with massive deal. I knew exactly I was going to write. I didn’t write it because I wasn’t ready to write it. I didn’t like it. I got a long way into it and I was like, you know what? No.
00:37:24:57 – 00:37:26:08
Agent Palmer
Okay.
00:37:26:13 – 00:37:51:01
Travis Baldree
But I wasn’t obliged to write that initially, so I’ll. I’ll back up. Yeah. Publishing ledgers and lots. I go through the editing process. I commissioned art for the cover. I’ve commissioned tons of art. So that wasn’t a big stretch because I have a background in games and, I learned about vellum and e-book formatting and all about, you know, ICBMs and how to get things published in a brick and mortar store and on Amazon and all this stuff.
00:37:51:05 – 00:38:15:49
Travis Baldree
Yeah. And that was fun. It was fun to learn. And I had beta readers and send out Arcs, and I did the whole thing and posted the cover art, and the cover art kind of blew up because the cover art, I think, I think I can, you know, objectively say that it does a pretty good job of establishing the tone and the content of the book in a way that is understandable and appealing.
00:38:15:49 – 00:38:32:05
Travis Baldree
I think. So I think the cover was a success. And it kind of blew up. So I was like, oh shit, I’ll turn on the preorders because I was ready to go. So I did, and then I launched the book and nothing went as expected. It was all I didn’t I didn’t have marketing. I didn’t plan for marketing.
00:38:32:05 – 00:38:35:57
Travis Baldree
Again, it was not I was not really. I’m not trying to switch careers to becoming a writer.
00:38:36:05 – 00:38:38:00
Agent Palmer
Okay, that’s fair.
00:38:38:05 – 00:38:43:38
Travis Baldree
I just wanted to release it and have fun. But it became something else.
00:38:43:43 – 00:38:48:20
Agent Palmer
Has it still remained fun? I mean, obviously this is a lot more than you expected.
00:38:48:20 – 00:39:11:46
Travis Baldree
So yes, the experience of this book has remained fun because it’s been almost uniformly positive, and it’s basically a book about nice, competent people being nice. So anybody who responds to it at all, the response is usually nice, and the book is a great pain to let you know exactly what it is. So if that’s not what you wanted, the likelihood that you read the book is very low.
00:39:11:46 – 00:39:23:58
Travis Baldree
Okay, nobody’s going to look at that cover and that tagline and say, gosh, I really hope this is like Game of Thrones. They’re just not. So it’s fair. The audience is predisposed when they pick it up to probably want what it’s doing.
00:39:24:11 – 00:39:24:42
Agent Palmer
Yeah.
00:39:24:47 – 00:39:46:36
Travis Baldree
And if it’s even reasonably successful, I mean, it’s just I don’t know, it’s and maybe, maybe that wouldn’t be the case if it was any other kind of book. But for this book, it’s been really, really pleasant. And the interactions I’ve had with people have been unbelievably rewarding. I get so much fan art, it’s nuts. I get nice notes, you know, and I get to talk to people about stuff.
00:39:46:36 – 00:40:06:32
Travis Baldree
And every time anybody recognizes something in that book that I put in there that was important to me and they recognize it. It’s like magic. It’s this little moment of connection where you’re like, I’m not alone. And somebody else out there experienced and saw the same thing that I experienced and saw and cared enough to tell me. And that’s just super cool.
00:40:06:37 – 00:40:18:20
Travis Baldree
And it was not something I anticipated. So anyway, it was amazing. Okay, now I’m writing book to book. Two is hard, but for a variety of reasons.
00:40:18:20 – 00:40:24:53
Agent Palmer
Okay, but, but book two, I’m presuming you also outlined.
00:40:24:57 – 00:40:41:32
Travis Baldree
Answer several of those. So after the book was released about, several agents came up to me about taking it traditional, and I was like, what the hell? Okay, fine. What have I got to lose? Right? I got to launch it and do it my way. And it was fun. And it did really well. Yeah. Why not?
00:40:41:37 – 00:40:54:40
Travis Baldree
And so I said yes. And they went to tour and then tour, picked it up and so now it’s being republished as a tour paperback in November and they took over. And part of that, it was me writing a second book.
00:40:54:45 – 00:40:55:16
Agent Palmer
Okay.
00:40:55:21 – 00:41:14:21
Travis Baldree
And which, of course, at the time I’m like, oh, well, I know I’m going to write anyway. I got this massive outline. I know exactly what it is. This would be no big deal. And, so then I go to write it, and this is not easy at all. I get about 20,000 words and I’m like, I hate it, doesn’t feel honest.
00:41:14:21 – 00:41:29:56
Travis Baldree
I don’t connect with this. I feel like I’m writing this. I feel like this. Like like it’s the cart before the horse situation. Like, I’m not writing this book for the right reason. Like, okay, there’s not something fundamental in the book that I’m connecting with. It’s more it’s too much plot and too little people.
00:41:30:08 – 00:41:30:30
Agent Palmer
Okay.
00:41:30:44 – 00:41:50:08
Travis Baldree
Yeah. It just didn’t work for me. And so then I’m just terrified. I’m like, oh, I agreed I was going to write a second book, now what I’m going to write. So I, I went through two more restarts trying to find that. And both I scrapped. So I probably at that point I’ve got like 50 or 60,000 words behind me and I’m like, I don’t have anything.
00:41:50:13 – 00:42:08:12
Travis Baldree
And then I finally arrived at something. Okay. And it’s currently 10,000 words longer than the last book. And I’m getting close to done. We’ve got like five chapters. I’ll wrap it up and it’s it was it was just it was just much harder. Anyway, initially there’s this, as everybody always talks about like the second book being the hardest.
00:42:08:25 – 00:42:33:16
Travis Baldree
It’s totally true. But part of the reason it was hard for me was because I couldn’t untangle the feelings I had while I was writing, whether they were about the book or whether they were about pressure from the previous book. Okay, like the the weight of expectations, like the idea that you liked this. Now I need to write something that you will like as opposed to something for me.
00:42:33:21 – 00:42:54:41
Travis Baldree
And that feeling of like, kind of like nausea and an unhappiness when you’re looking at something is saying like, this doesn’t feel right. I couldn’t untangle that feeling from what I was getting from while I was reading what I’d written, or the the act of reading it. I just didn’t know what the difference was anymore. And so it took me a while to pull them apart to be able to say this feeling is about the book.
00:42:54:41 – 00:42:57:05
Travis Baldree
And when I’m writing and this feeling is totally different.
00:42:57:16 – 00:43:01:55
Agent Palmer
How did you pull them apart?
00:43:02:00 – 00:43:05:45
Travis Baldree
I stumbled upon something that didn’t feel wrong.
00:43:05:50 – 00:43:08:16
Agent Palmer
Okay, okay.
00:43:08:21 – 00:43:25:51
Travis Baldree
I had to just basically bang my head against the wall until I finally, finally found something that didn’t feel the same way that the previous drafts had felt, so that I could understand the distinction. Okay, which was. But I didn’t know that was going to happen. So I’m just sort of like in horror, blindly stumbling ahead, trying to figure that out.
00:43:25:51 – 00:43:30:27
Travis Baldree
And it was just such a relief to discover the difference between those two things.
00:43:30:32 – 00:43:56:32
Agent Palmer
I mean, that’s I think it’s important, as we creatives in general, when we go from thing to thing, because it’s really hard to leave the past, the past. Right? Like that’s just kind of the way it is. Like, I, I started the podcast with a successful blog behind me going, well, I know what regular content looks like.
00:43:56:36 – 00:44:22:43
Agent Palmer
I mean, I, I didn’t I mean, they’re very much like apples and oranges. It’s not just, oh, a different medium or a different context, like it’s very different. But you, you go in with the, the mindset of like, well, I did this, I can do this. Right. And that’s it’s a good mindset to start with, but you almost have to leave it once the gun goes off like that, that I did this.
00:44:22:43 – 00:44:42:13
Agent Palmer
I can do something else. Is great to get you to the starting line. When the gun goes off, leave it behind the line and move forward in something fresh, because that’s kind of the it’s a little bit of what you’re talking about, where you brought that first book along with you. So you no one told you to do that, by the way.
00:44:42:20 – 00:44:44:47
Agent Palmer
It just it’s just it’s what we do as well.
00:44:44:48 – 00:44:59:56
Travis Baldree
You if you care anything about pleasing. I’m a big people pleaser. So if you care anything about pleasing people, you want to continue to please them. Like, okay, they want to talk. Picked up this book because they like the first book. I want them to be happy with the second one. People liked the first book. I want them to be happy with the second one.
00:45:00:10 – 00:45:19:00
Travis Baldree
It’s got to be like in the same world. So they’re going to have some expectation. Does it have to have coffee in it? Does it have to have, you know, what does it have to have in it? Does it do they have to make a shop go from, you know, nothing to something? Does there have to be this, you know, fixer upper component, what has to be in there to keep them happy.
00:45:19:00 – 00:45:22:23
Travis Baldree
And you can’t you can’t stop thinking about that.
00:45:22:23 – 00:45:23:17
Agent Palmer
Okay.
00:45:23:22 – 00:45:41:35
Travis Baldree
Right. Because what am I right? I’m it’s another one in the same series. What was important about it. Right. Yeah. And it’s hard to decide what’s important about it. But there’s different things are important to different people. Yeah. So the next one does not. Yeah. There’s no coffee. There’s no you know, everybody’s favorite freakin character doesn’t show up.
00:45:41:35 – 00:46:03:00
Travis Baldree
You know, it’s it’s it’s not it’s about something else and it’s about something probably a little messier. But eventually I came to terms with the fact that I can write this, and it’s something that I can find relatable. They can put some of myself in here, and I’ll tell a story, and if it works, it works. And if it doesn’t, it doesn’t at the very least serve my audiobook job well.
00:46:03:05 – 00:46:16:17
Agent Palmer
Speaking of your audiobook job, let me ask you, did this because you wanted to go through the process of publishing. Because you do. You narrate other people’s books. You narrated your own book.
00:46:16:21 – 00:46:16:46
Travis Baldree
No. Yeah.
00:46:16:59 – 00:46:27:07
Agent Palmer
What was that? That’s a different like because now all of a sudden, like, let’s say I’m an author, you’re not giving me the dailies, so to speak. You’re you’re listening to them yourself.
00:46:27:19 – 00:46:42:58
Travis Baldree
Well, I mean, what’s the funny thing is there aren’t even in dailies. And this when you do an audiobook, you just read it, you don’t listen to any of it and you send it off. It’s just like bullets fired one that. But as an author reading their own stuff, I’m basically get to cheat because I this is an industry.
00:46:42:58 – 00:46:46:57
Travis Baldree
I know, I know how to do this. So it was the easiest narration job I’ve ever done.
00:46:47:08 – 00:46:48:01
Agent Palmer
Okay.
00:46:48:06 – 00:47:10:17
Travis Baldree
So, when you’re narrating, it’s like 50% anticipation. You’re reading a line and you’re making judgment calls based on this sort of like scan ahead that you’re doing with your eyes of where the author’s going to go. How’s the tone then? A shift, okay. Going to go up or down? Is this, you know, is this questioning? Is it, you know, sarcastic or whatever, all the tone you’re making, all these little judgment calls about tone.
00:47:10:22 – 00:47:28:48
Travis Baldree
And when you mess up, it’s usually because you misjudged. So the closer you are to being simpatico with the author, the kind of things that you would write, like the word order. Even so, there’s like certain authors where I will transpose words constantly. It means the same thing. But mentally they would always put those two words in a different order.
00:47:28:55 – 00:47:47:25
Travis Baldree
Okay, but I’m so I mess up more with him because I’m not simpatico. You cannot be more simpatico with anybody than yourself. I know the characters. I know every I know everything, but there’s never a second guess. I’m just going. And so it was like the. It was like dancing. It was just the easiest narration job ever. Was super pleasant.
00:47:47:30 – 00:47:53:03
Travis Baldree
If all of them could be that easy, I would just they would just come out of my booth with a smile every day.
00:47:53:08 – 00:48:17:36
Agent Palmer
Is there, anything else you want to try that like? Because, I mean, you’re you’ve done a lot of things, and you were like, I want to know more about publishing. So I’m going to write a book and publish it like, you know, you were in games, like you’re kind of all over the entertainment field. Is there anything you want to do that you haven’t?
00:48:17:40 – 00:48:43:58
Travis Baldree
I mean, I don’t know, I’m kind of a serial hobbyist normally, but now my hobbies have mostly taken over all of my my available time. Okay. I, I’m certainly interested in a lot of things. I don’t know if I’m going to do another big career shift or not. It feels like adding an author on has been is a pretty big shift and opens up all kinds of things I hadn’t considered before.
00:48:44:03 – 00:49:02:58
Travis Baldree
So I’m trying to for once, just enjoy that ride as much as I can, which will be easier after I finish this first draft. And after I untangle my life, like I’m suddenly doing two jobs at once and I didn’t plan for it. So as a narrator, my my life is heavily scheduled as in three years in advance.
00:49:03:03 – 00:49:21:34
Travis Baldree
So I’ve got hundreds of books on the schedule that have blocks of time and need to get done. So adding book tours and writing books and all those things was not on the plan. So it’s been a little bit of a fraught year. In that respect, that doesn’t that doesn’t really color my experience with the first book.
00:49:21:34 – 00:49:28:41
Travis Baldree
It was a uniformly positive, but it makes the rest of the year cramped in a way that it wouldn’t otherwise be.
00:49:28:46 – 00:49:35:49
Agent Palmer
So the next ones will be a little bit, at the very least, you’ll start adding that time into the schedule.
00:49:35:54 – 00:49:53:06
Travis Baldree
I mean, yeah, in 2026, the, I mean, my, my schedule gets less dense as it goes out, and I just put a hard stop on adding new audiobook bookings. Anyway, there’s too much on the schedule as it is, so I can. Yeah. There’s ongoing. There’s always things that get canceled or deferred or whatever, and I’m just going to let that happen.
00:49:53:06 – 00:50:00:41
Travis Baldree
I’m not filling those holes, so I’m just going to I’m just going to try and reclaim a little breathing room so that these two things can coexist.
00:50:00:43 – 00:50:12:06
Agent Palmer
Is this is this it is this Travis forever? Like, is there a retirement plan where like, I’ll I’m I’m going to hang up my microphone? Or is it like, hey, I might always do this.
00:50:12:17 – 00:50:19:50
Travis Baldree
I’m always going to do something, okay? I’m I’m not I don’t think I’m one of those people who can retire, because if I’m not making something, I get super depressed.
00:50:19:50 – 00:50:20:58
Agent Palmer
You and me.
00:50:20:58 – 00:50:24:45
Travis Baldree
I’m incapable of relaxation. And it’s just an idle thing.
00:50:24:45 – 00:50:47:54
Agent Palmer
I, I, I like telling this story to people like you who will understand it, I challenged myself, the blog’s been consistent for a very long time, but in the first few years I bought a house. And when you buy a house and I was moving from an apartment to a house and I had and, lease overlap. So you have time to move.
00:50:47:58 – 00:51:13:19
Agent Palmer
And the blog kind of fell away. And then I moved into my house and I unpacked and I went, I’m going to challenge myself and I’m going to do two posts a week for an entire rolling year. Because why wait? Let’s just start it now. So it started in, I think in November, and it went through October the following year.
00:51:13:23 – 00:51:35:45
Agent Palmer
And I got to the end. I had done well, I mean, overachiever, I guess I, I did not do 104 blog posts in 52 weeks. I did like 130. Right. I still I completely, but I went, all right, I’m done. I took a week off of my real job, and I was going to take a week off from everything else.
00:51:35:45 – 00:51:58:27
Agent Palmer
I had kind of worked a little bit extra to get ahead, and I sat down on Monday with nothing to do, and like Monday was fine. Tuesday I don’t, I don’t. I enjoy the books that I have in my house, but I can’t just keep reading like I need to do something else. And by Wednesday I was like, no, I’m going to write again.
00:51:58:31 – 00:52:10:15
Agent Palmer
I can’t not do something. Like if it was just I gave myself an entire week off from everything. I couldn’t last more than three days.
00:52:10:20 – 00:52:22:18
Travis Baldree
The dopamine hit of making something creatively is better than most things, so you can’t you just get withdrawal.
00:52:22:23 – 00:52:23:19
Agent Palmer
I guess. Yeah.
00:52:23:19 – 00:52:38:27
Travis Baldree
I mean, it’s like I mean, it’s a mess. Basically it’s addictive. And so when you have to cut that, whatever it is that you’re cutting it for has to like has to like do better than that for me. Right. You know, it’s got to be better than that. That doesn’t mean like being creative is like great all the time.
00:52:38:27 – 00:52:59:21
Travis Baldree
There’s lots of blah. There’s things that are hard to do and things that are shitty. But you always have the the inherent knowledge that making something could potentially make you feel better than any other way, that you feel, and just having that sure knowledge and sitting idle. It’s really hard for those two things to coexist for me.
00:52:59:25 – 00:53:12:08
Agent Palmer
Oh no, I mean, I’m you and me both.
00:53:12:13 – 00:53:35:49
Agent Palmer
Let’s go back to the very beginning of this conversation. I asked Travis how it felt to know that I know him as an author, while he’s only just published his first book and he’s worn many other titles and careers for longer. It’s an interesting concept because I think of what people could know me as right. For those of you who have been around for a while, there’s Producer Palmer, which is now more than just a podcast thing, but this isn’t the time and place to discuss that.
00:53:35:54 – 00:53:59:45
Agent Palmer
There’s blogger, editor, marketer, and a few other combinations and subgenres to those titles, as well as podcaster. And what we are known as isn’t really about what we project, it’s how people perceive, get to know, and interact with us. Eventually, people listening to this show or talking to me may get to learn the width and breadth of all the many hats and titles and roles I have accumulated, but their first is their first.
00:53:59:58 – 00:54:29:42
Agent Palmer
They saw the blog first, so I’m a blogger. They heard the podcast first. So I’m a podcaster. Or as in my case with Travis, I read his book first. So he’s an author. But let’s get personal. Two of my best friends have been on this podcast and will probably return again. Jason Zapata and Christopher J. Hughes. Zapata is first and foremost a friend and a brother, but I know him to be a writer and poet, a philosopher and a gamer, both in the sense of video and physical games, and a baker as well.
00:54:29:47 – 00:54:50:08
Agent Palmer
Chris is also first and foremost a friend and a brother, but I also know him to be an editor, writer, designer, comedian, journalist, video gamer, and most recently a filmmaker. Now, these two examples are skewed a bit because having met them in school, Zapata in high school, and Chris in college when we were all students. But at that time, you don’t think of each other that way.
00:54:50:08 – 00:55:11:54
Agent Palmer
You’re just people. You’re not students. This means I got to know them regardless of what they do and what they like. And I would like to think that I know them well enough to know what each title each of them would want, but I won’t guess that here. Just suffice to say, I’m sure that they could list off just as many titles for me and probably choose accurately the one for me as well.
00:55:11:59 – 00:55:39:14
Agent Palmer
And which one would I want them to use if introducing me to other people? Now we’re talking about circumstance and preference, right? If among other podcasters or bloggers I guess go with the crowd, unless it would be better to stand out then go against it. The point is, I think we’re all flexible when we have many potential titles, and we all really do have many potential titles, but if pressed, really pressed, what would you want your title to be?
00:55:39:19 – 00:56:01:07
Agent Palmer
Notice that of my friends, I didn’t include their professional careers, though there is some overlap and I didn’t really do the same for myself either. Remember, we are all in charge and at the helm of our own narrative. So as I ponder what my answer would be, which of the many hats that you wear, would you want to be the one people knew you by the most?
00:56:01:11 – 00:56:31:58
Agent Palmer
Let me know. Thanks for listening to The Polymer Files episode 83. As a reminder, all links are available in the show notes. And now for the official business. The Palmer Files releases every two weeks on Tuesdays. If you’re still listening, I encourage you to join the discussion. You can tweet me at Agent Palmer, my guest, Travis Baldree at Travis Baldree again, that’s Travis Baldree and this show at The Palmer Files, and you should follow him for information on that next book he’s currently working on.
00:56:31:58 – 00:56:52:34
Agent Palmer
Perhaps he’s already tweeted a title if you’re interested. Additionally, you can find more information about Travis Legends and Lattes, his narrations, and any future works at Travis Baldree.com. Email can be sent to this show at the Palmer Files at gmail.com. And remember, you’re home for all things Agent Palmer, including a review of Travis. His debut novel is Agent Palmer.
00:56:52:34 – 00:57:03:38
Agent Palmer
Dot com.
00:57:03:42 – 00:57:34:24
Agent Palmer
You.
00:57:34:29 – 00:57:40:15
Agent Palmer
See.
00:57:40:20 – 00:57:42:44
Agent Palmer
All right. Travis, do you have one final question for me?
00:57:42:55 – 00:57:57:49
Travis Baldree
All right, so it’s theoretical question. Okay. Semi-Serious. If there was one big technological advancement that’s happened in the last 20 years that you would remove, what would it be?
00:57:57:54 – 00:58:25:18
Agent Palmer
Broadband or Wi-Fi? One of the two. I want to bring the speeds back. I like I as much as I think that it’s a great thing that like, I can be lazy, sit on my couch and not have to get up and put a DVD in. I feel like that it it allows people to take for granted the speed and the accessibility that we have.
00:58:25:23 – 00:59:04:13
Agent Palmer
And having grown up in an era where, you know, 14 year old me could choose between dial up, maybe kind of playing, little lag infested game of quake with some friends, or going out and actually playing capture the flag like I’m, I’m glad that I had that, because 14 year old me went out and played capture the Flag with my friends, because if it was raining, we would play lag infested quake, or we’d have a LAN party where you can literally mess with your friends while you’re playing with them.
00:59:04:26 – 00:59:32:29
Agent Palmer
But I think that one of the big things that in my personal life that comes up a lot is community and how it’s gone. And a lot of things would be solved if community came back. Well, as long as people are comfortable creating their own community of people that they may or may not really know, that aren’t really around them to help them, let’s say move or have a meal with.
00:59:32:40 – 00:59:47:08
Agent Palmer
I feel like we’ve kind of destroyed our community in a sense. And I, I feel like if we got rid of Wi-Fi and we got rid of broadband and we made it slow like it was, people might go out more. Yeah, they might do the other thing.
00:59:47:08 – 00:59:53:04
Travis Baldree
Would you be okay with the cost of giving up the podcast? Because, I mean, it’s kind of like predicated on having that technology available, right?
00:59:53:19 – 00:59:58:03
Agent Palmer
I mean, the blog is the same way, you know, I mean, yeah, I could turn the blog. Yeah, you could get.
00:59:58:04 – 01:00:01:14
Travis Baldree
GIF sound real small. You can make the blog work.
01:00:01:19 – 01:00:10:50
Agent Palmer
I and look, I my entire professional career has been based off of digital marketing, right. Like my. So I need a new job, profession.
01:00:11:01 – 01:00:12:20
Travis Baldree
But it would be worth the cost to you.
01:00:12:20 – 01:00:35:02
Agent Palmer
I think it would. I think it would, because I would not be alone. Like I’m at the height of the pandemic. I have a friend, a very good friend, like best friend. I went to high school with him. He lives a few blocks away from me, which is unique because we didn’t always live in the same town. Once we graduated high school and during the pandemic, I made him come over for for dinner once a week.
01:00:35:05 – 01:01:02:42
Agent Palmer
I was like, you live alone in an apartment, and I’m not letting you stay alone in an apartment for long periods. At least once a week. You’re coming over here where me and my partner can host you. We can have dinner. We can take out. It doesn’t matter. We just socialize. Yeah. I don’t think there’s enough people not saying like me, but I don’t think there’s enough people making an effort for the social aspect because they think that the digital is enough.
01:01:02:47 – 01:01:29:42
Agent Palmer
And I as much of an introvert as I am, as much as I very much love my setup. I we still need social interaction, like real social interaction. I feel like there’s a part of me. While this is a hypothetical, I feel like if that never goes away, I don’t know if that social aspect ever really comes back.
01:01:29:47 – 01:01:51:29
Travis Baldree
Yeah, I feel like there’s I feel like there’s kind of two parts going on to it, too, because you’re right, this loss of like person to person, very present interaction. Yeah. But there’s this other side that I think we got out of this, which is people being able to find people out in the world and connect to people that they would never have been able to connect with at all otherwise.
01:01:51:29 – 01:02:20:11
Agent Palmer
I’m completely going to admit to you that Stephanie, who lives with me and moved in with me, I met on Twitter through a podcast that we were both listening to. So if I shut everything down, we never meet. Yeah, right. So I understand that. But. And it’s not like a sacrifice I’m willing to make because obviously I’m shutting the I’m in this.
01:02:20:16 – 01:02:39:57
Agent Palmer
I’m saying that I’m turning it off now, not turning it off before, but, you know, yeah, there are instances where that happens. And I’ve got friends very close friends I’ve never met. Right. Because I still talk to them, because I’m still like, I call you on the phone. It’s going to be we’re going to talk.
01:02:39:57 – 01:02:43:25
Travis Baldree
What we need is like the purge. But for broadband, just once a week while broadband is.
01:02:43:25 – 01:02:50:49
Agent Palmer
Off, that could be that could be. Yeah. I mean, I’m, I’m I’m amenable. I don’t need to hit the button and completely turn it off forever.
01:02:50:49 – 01:02:55:45
Travis Baldree
But hey.
01:02:55:50 – 01:03:17:10
Agent Palmer
Yeah, I just I want to, I want to I don’t want to be alone. Like, I don’t want to feel like, my efforts to be, like, I’m not doing it for everybody. Like, I want to state that right now, but I kind of know the names of most of my neighbors in my neighborhood. Feel like that makes me a rare person.
01:03:17:15 – 01:03:23:05
Agent Palmer
But I don’t know. I just we rely too much on it, and I think that’s a problem.
01:03:23:10 – 01:03:41:19
Travis Baldree
Yeah. It’s very easy to have as a crutch. And then everybody got even more entrenched with Covid because there was that solid day to day reason not to interact with anybody, and then you get comfortable with it. This happened with my kids, right? You do go to homeschooling. So they’re all at home. They’re on zoom all day.
01:03:41:19 – 01:04:08:28
Travis Baldree
They don’t see any other kids. But you become accustomed to being able to interact that way and to be able to check out when you want to in all ways, you know that the the pressure can be taken off at any moment, and it becomes very easy to be comfortable with that and hard to go back. So when kids had to go back to school, it’s like, oh my God, I could be on in front of all of these other people and they’re bumping into me and they’re invading my personal space, and I’m not in my pajamas.
01:04:08:30 – 01:04:27:31
Travis Baldree
And you know, I can’t look over at YouTube when the class is boring. You know, this was just like this big shock going back. They didn’t want to you. They didn’t like, you know, nobody liked being cooped up at home. But there were aspects that they got really accustomed to that was very difficult to give up.
01:04:27:36 – 01:04:50:19
Agent Palmer
And they’re there. Things that you and I never would have considered. Like, I remember being in a boring class and attempting to sneak a magazine in front of me. Yeah, right. Like, and God forbid you get caught, but like, yeah, that was the that was that was our YouTube window. Yep. And so it was there was.
01:04:50:19 – 01:05:12:20
Travis Baldree
Also other like little weird structural things. I don’t want to get too far off. But like if, when you when you were that decoupled from like in person, if you’re done with your work in a class, you get the work done in another class. And so they were always done with school. By the time school was over, there was never like homework because the amount of dead time, time traveling between classes or when you’re done and twiddling your thumbs for the bell, it all evaporated.
01:05:12:31 – 01:05:29:11
Travis Baldree
It all used for other things. Yeah. So there was this massive optimization of time. Maybe it still wasn’t the best use. Homeschool is not, you know, zoom school is never going to be a patch on the interaction of real school. But there were things that were like time benefits that they really acutely perceived.
01:05:29:11 – 01:05:39:05
Agent Palmer
I think that’s the other thing. I think it goes back to why I turn it all off, is not all optimization good? You know,
01:05:39:10 – 01:05:41:10
Travis Baldree
I yeah, being bored has value.
01:05:41:19 – 01:05:43:17
Agent Palmer
Yeah. Yeah.
01:05:43:21 – 01:05:52:46
Travis Baldree
It’s hard to it’s hard to acknowledge when. Yeah, you can and you can entertain yourself at literally any second, at any time in any way you want it. So it’s very hard to acknowledge.
01:05:52:46 – 01:05:53:53
Agent Palmer
But I because.
01:05:53:53 – 01:06:06:25
Travis Baldree
It’s so comfortable to be able to entertain yourself. I mean, just somebody being able to sit through a movie, if it’s got a slow beat, it’s like the second I’m gonna check the tweets. That was a boring scene. Oh, no. It’s back. Okay, cool.
01:06:06:30 – 01:06:22:19
Agent Palmer
I, I try to, My Fitbit died a couple months ago, and I haven’t replaced it because I like the idea that if I put my phone down, I’m. I’m actually disconnected. Yeah. Or if I leave it.
01:06:22:19 – 01:06:23:54
Travis Baldree
In right on your wrist.
01:06:23:59 – 01:06:36:32
Agent Palmer
Yeah. It’s not vibrating on my wrist. And if I actually leave it in another room and there’s a slow part in whatever we’re watching. Yeah, I’m stuck watching the slow part. Yeah. Like that’s just.
01:06:36:37 – 01:06:48:29
Travis Baldree
My phone is perpetually on Do Not Disturb. I’ve never turned it off. It’s always on Do Not Disturb. So it only says anything to me when I pick it up and look at it. At very least, the onus is on me.
–End Transcription–
This transcription was processed by PalmerTech 3.1 and may contain errors for HUMINT (human intelligence).