The Publishing Performance Show

Dan Ramm - Spotlight on Storytelling: From Scripts to Self-Publishing

• Teddy Smith • Episode 13

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Dan Ramm is a TV writer and producer who has transitioned into novel writing with his debut book "The Long Branch." With over 20 years of experience in Hollywood, including writing for shows like Criminal Minds and creating his own TV series, Dan brings unique insights into the entertainment industry and the craft of storytelling. His unexpected journey from construction work to screenwriting, and now to novel writing, offers a fresh perspective on the evolving world of authorship.

In this episode:

  • Dan's journey from construction worker to Hollywood scriptwriter
  • The transition from TV writing to novel writing
  • Insights into the challenges faced by aging actors in Hollywood
  • The impact of COVID-19 on the entertainment industry and how it inspired parts of the novel
  • Dan's approach to self-publishing and marketing his debut novel
  • The importance of networking and using industry connections
  • Advice for aspiring writers on developing their craft and staying motivated


Resources mentioned:

  • Online Book Club (for book reviews)
  • Impact Book Awards (book contest)
  • Indie Book Awards (book contest)


Book recommendations:


Connect with Dan Ramm:


Connect with Teddy Smith:


Join our Facebook Community - https://www.facebook.com/groups/publishingperformance/

[00:00:00] Teddy: Hi everyone and welcome to the publishing performance show. Now today I've got Danny Rahm in this show and he is a TV producer, he's a screenwriter, he's got lots of famous friends so we've got quite an interesting conversation talking about all of those things. Now his book The Long Branch has just come out recently and it's doing really well and I think it's fascinating to hear his process about how he wrote the book, about how he produces writing for TV, about how he manages that process of Flipping between being a TV writer and a book writer.

[00:00:34] Teddy: So there's loads of interesting tidbits. And if you are interested in writing for TV, or you've thought about maybe my book one day could go to TV and you're going to get loads of it out of this episode. So I think you're going to find it very interesting. So yeah, check out his book in the show notes and I hope you enjoy the episode.

[00:00:51] Teddy: Hi everybody. And welcome to the publishing format show. I'm Teddy, and I'm really happy to be here with Dan Rahm, who's a writer, a producer, and now an author of his first book, the long branch. Dan, welcome to the show. Thanks, Teddy. Good to be here. Yeah, you too. Thank you very much for taking time to join us.

[00:01:07] Teddy: So it's great to chat to you in our talk before we talked a lot about your career in like television and producing. That's really exciting. I don't get to speak to many TV producers very often. 

[00:01:20] Dan: Yeah, 

[00:01:21] Teddy: tell me a bit about that. 

[00:01:22] Dan: Well, it it's funny because I never, you know, I didn't start out that way, you know, like I didn't go to school for it.

[00:01:27] Dan: I never went to college. It's, I saw, I sort of, kind of fell into it because for most of my life I'm from, in the United States, I'm from the middle of the country, Missouri. Right. And moved to California when I was about 19. And I had been doing, you know, laborist work, like construction, most of my teen years, summers and things like that.

[00:01:49] Dan: When I moved out here, I did the same thing, and I just kept doing that, and I did that all the way up until about 2000, 2001. I had met the actor Joe Mantegna by going to his house to do some work on his house. And, you know, you probably know him from Criminal Minds most recently. And we just kind of Struck up a friendship.

[00:02:09] Dan: I know it's hard to explain how or why. I mean, I think sometimes things are just kind of meant to be, but we sort of struck up this friendship. And after about two years of knowing him, he decided that he wanted to start get away from doing film. And and theater Broadway and wanted to do a television series because his kids were getting older and it was harder to travel to a location with them for extended periods of time.

[00:02:37] Dan: So he decided that he wanted to do a TV series and he asked me to come work for him. So I was like. Well, sure, you know, sounds a 

[00:02:44] Teddy: bit like a once upon a time in Hollywood. Yeah, I 

[00:02:47] Dan: think what I always think is, and I've talked to him about this. I think he and I both were looking for a change around the same time.

[00:02:56] Dan: So he was looking to change. What he was doing in terms of doing television for the first time a series for the first time rather than film or broadway and I was looking to move out of what I had been doing most of my life and To something that I thought would be more fun and more creative and at least more exciting, you know And I certainly wouldn't sweat as much So that's how that happened, you know Yeah, but that's how I made that leap that transition and then over that The other little bit to that is before I knew Joe I had written a script Just to see if I could do it on the life of Sammy Davis jr.

[00:03:35] Dan: Yeah, just for fun I've read the autobiography of Sammy Davis jr Okay, and I was so moved by the book that I thought wow, this should be a movie So I thought well, I'll make it into a movie myself, you know, yeah So I bought a book on screenwriting and I bought some software and I went to it and I wrote this script that later he read and said, this isn't bad.

[00:03:54] Dan: You know, is this something you want to do writing? I didn't know because no one had ever asked me that question. I had never asked myself. I sort of said, Yeah, I think so. I enjoyed it, you know, so that's where our relationship kind of changed. He became, he started to become more of a mentor to me after that.

[00:04:11] Dan: Uh, 

[00:04:11] I 

[00:04:12] Dan: started reading a lot of scripts that were submitted to him and I started writing things on spec, you know, just to see if I could, you know, can you write an episode of friends? Can you write an episode of NYPD blue or whatever was on TV at the time? So I started doing a lot of that and I learned a lot by reading a lot of scripts.

[00:04:30] Dan: And, and practicing the writing. And of course, what shows notes and guidance as well. And then, you know, now you skip to 2024 and, you know, I've created and written TV shows. I've written for Criminal Minds I've had two, two or three pilots sold. You know, it's been a great ride, an unexpected ride for sure.

[00:04:51] Teddy: Yeah. That's amazing. That's such a good story. I'd it's the sort of thing you sort of think only happens to other people. You know, it's like, uh, just met this guy and he decided to sponsor me. 

[00:05:00] Dan: Yeah. Well, only in Hollywood. I always joke that, you know, you meet one guy, he's got a beautiful house and a big swimming pool and you say, my God, what do you do for a living?

[00:05:09] Dan: He says, well, you know, I went to Harvard and I became this incredible lawyer and dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. And I built this empire from my law practice. And right next door. Same size house with a big pool. He said, what do you do? And he says, well, I used to be Arnold Schwarzenegger's handyman. And yeah, and I came up with, you know, I mean, that's Hollywood.

[00:05:27] Dan: Like anybody 

[00:05:28] Teddy: can be anything 

[00:05:29] Dan: in 

[00:05:29] Teddy: Hollywood. It's wonderful. Amazing. And so the stuff you learned from like all that experience, the TV writing and the producing, did any of that stuff help you to write your book or did it, any of it affects the way you approached writing your book? 

[00:05:44] Dan: Yes, to both questions.

[00:05:45] Dan: So initially, the reason that the book even came up was I had been approached by a network that I've done some work for in the past, and they said, you know, we're thinking about doing a scripted drama. Do you have any ideas? So I presented them three different ideas. Completely different ideas and they picked one, which was a good idea, but I thought this other one was best, was a better idea.

[00:06:11] Dan: So the one that they picked, you know, I did some more development with them on that and then nothing ever happened with it, which is very often the case in writing. But this other idea that, that ended up becoming this book, I couldn't shake the idea. And so this is like, Sort of towards the end of COVID.

[00:06:27] Dan: This is like around middle of 2022. So I, there wasn't a lot of TV production going on, so I had time. And I would just work on it a little bit every day, thinking like, maybe this is a book. Maybe I could just turn this into a novel. And I just kept going and I didn't really tell anyone except my wife because, you know, you don't want to brag to all your friends like I'm writing a novel, you know, and then you get to page 100 and you're like I give up.

[00:06:54] Dan: I quit. Yeah, you shouldn't tell people it's 

[00:06:56] Teddy: done. Should you? 

[00:06:57] Dan: Yeah, I'm not doing a novel now. I've changed my mind, you know? Yeah. So I just didn't tell anyone. And also I'm a firm believer in, you know, not everybody, you know, Is really on your side. Do you know what I'm saying? Like, not everyone's rooting for you, even though they might say they are, they're not really rooting for you.

[00:07:17] Dan: And I think any kind of art, whether it's writing or painting or singing or anything, it's a very vulnerable thing. In that process, when you're sort of trying to, you know, do your thing, you know, the last thing you need is somebody coming along who probably has never accomplished anything telling you're wrong or you're no good, you know?

[00:07:39] Yeah. 

[00:07:40] Dan: So I just didn't tell anybody once it was done. Yeah. Once it was done, I shared it with a few friends and everyone responded so positively, including Joe. That I thought, well, you know, because then after, of course, COVID was over, there was a writer's strike in the U. S., and so there was six months of no work again, you know, so all of that gave me the time to, to write the book And so that's kind of how it was born.

[00:08:05] Dan: You know, I failed TV pilot. 

[00:08:09] Teddy: But did your experience as a TV writer? Did any of the techniques or the ways you write? Did that have any help towards your book writing or even the other way around as well? You know, did has any of the vice in the book helps you with the TV work? 

[00:08:21] Dan: I would say the what you said first, because You know, I found writing a novel very liberating because when you write for television, first of all you know, television is a visual medium.

[00:08:34] Dan: So you don't go into a lot of detail on things. You might say, you know, he lives in a rundown hotel room. That's all I have to say, because the art department and the set decorators and the location scout, they're all going to put their art Into that description, right? But if you're just reading it and it's not visual, then I have to describe it's a rundown hotel room with cockroaches on the walls and, you know, dirty sheets and whatever it is, you know, you have to explain it more.

[00:09:05] Dan: So that's one thing that you know, but what's liberating about it is there's all these filters that you have to run a script through for television. Is it too rude? Is the language? Is it? Is it a period piece? Is it too violent? Is it, you know, all these things that networks kind of look at and decide, like, is this a right fit for their network or not?

[00:09:28] Dan: When you write a book, there's no limitations. You can say, Well, they went to the moon and on the moon, they, you know, nobody's going to question it. But so a very famous writer, I can't think of his name off the top of my head. He said, if you find yourself starting a screenplay with on the way to Mars, you're done.

[00:09:46] Dan: It's 

[00:09:48] Teddy: never going to 

[00:09:48] Dan: happen. 

[00:09:49] Teddy: Yeah, no one's going to put a budget forward for that. 

[00:09:53] Dan: But, but to answer your question, you know, one thing I did try to do. In the book, and I've, and I think it worked 'cause of the feedback I've gotten, you know, when you write a screenplay or you write a teleplay there's act breaks.

[00:10:07] Dan: Like for television, it's commercial breaks. Every so often you gotta break for a commercial. So the trick in writing television is that when you get to that commercial break, you gotta do something so that the audience goes, oh my gosh, what's gonna happen next? I have to watch, I have to wait these for these commercials to be over so I can see what happens next.

[00:10:28] Dan: So I sort of tried to employ that technique in each chapter so that when you get to the end of a chapter, you're oh man, I wonder what happens next. You know? Yes. And people have said that to me. I said, you know, I get to the end of chapter, I can't put it down. And, you know, I've had more than a few people say to me, like, I stayed up super late to try to finish it.

[00:10:45] Dan: 'cause I just had to know what was going on. , you know. 

[00:10:48] Teddy: So yeah, nearly each chapter has like little cliffhangers that kind of want you to keep reading on. I've, I really enjoyed that about the book is it kind of keeps that pace really quick. Like I like that. It's, uh, yeah, I think you've got to, 

[00:11:00] Dan: you've got to keep, we all have such short attention spans these days.

[00:11:03] Dan: You know, I think you've got to drop a little breadcrumb for somebody to go, well, yeah, one 

[00:11:09] Teddy: more 

[00:11:09] Dan: chapter, you know? 

[00:11:11] Teddy: Yeah. It's interesting. The reason I was asking about that was because in a cup of, A couple of recordings ago spoke to a lady and she was, she's written a book in order for it to get picked up for, as a screenplay.

[00:11:23] Teddy: And she's actually structured the book as a, almost like a screenplay. So she's done like 10, each, the book has 10 chapters and she's expecting each chapter to be an episode. And that's how she's kind of struck. That's kind of how she struck so novel. So she can just give it to people. And I thought, well, that's kind of starting at the end point, isn't it?

[00:11:40] Teddy: It was good. 

[00:11:40] Dan: Well, you know, it's funny because I sort of like the entirety of this book was the first season of the show that I was pitching, you know, so it's all there. That whole first season would have been this first book. And then and then of course it would have been subsequent.

[00:11:56] Dan: Seasons in book. I intend on writing another one. I can I intend to at least write one more and see how that one goes Because I want to see if it's possible One of my one of my favorite writers is Robert Parker and he wrote Spencer novels, which was a detective series And I that just I like these characters.

[00:12:17] Dan: I'm in love with this place They live and I just think it was I don't want to give up on it just yet. I want to see what happens to everyone next. 

[00:12:26] Teddy: Yeah, yeah. I'm reading the J. K. Rowling Strike books at the moment. They're amazing. They're really good at creating that sort of world and characters.

[00:12:33] Teddy: They're really good. In your book, the main character, Mason, he's kind of like, Washed up actor in a way. Um, is he, um, is he based on anyone, you know, 

[00:12:45] Dan: he's a combination of a few people. I know you know, Hollywood is such a cruel business in a way because you can be so typecast so easily, or you get just a little too old and you could be, you know, I mean, I've had a friend, I won't say his real name, but let's say his name is John Smith.

[00:13:03] Dan: I mean, he got a. He got a call from his agent and said, just like in the book, you know, they're looking for a john smith type. You got to get over there. And he's like, they're looking for john smith type. I am john smith. I'm perfect, you know, and he got over there and they said, Oh, you're too old, you know, like, okay, you know, it's a, it's an industry that somewhat despises age and despises, you know, you know, Certain attributes that people are applauded for when they're younger, but then when they get older not so much so He's finds himself in that position He's had a very successful run on a TV show for 12 years where he plays a sheriff in an old West Town 

[00:13:47] Teddy: Yes, 

[00:13:48] Dan: and he's so identified with that character was so popular It's just tough for him to parlay that into a new show or you know a new anything you So he's kind of stuck in that and sort of makes a living, not makes a living but supplements his income cause he made pretty good money.

[00:14:05] Dan: Doing the show by doing autograph shows and I know a number of actor friends that do those and make a lot of money Doing what's what's 

[00:14:13] Teddy: what's not squash? Oh, 

[00:14:14] Dan: well, they go to these conventions where they'll have in the especially in the u. s I know they do them in Europe comic con 

[00:14:19] Teddy: and 

[00:14:19] Dan: Stuff like that where you go and you sit and then people come along and they pay 20 and you sign a photo for them or whatever and some people make you know Tens of thousands of dollars in a weekend just do that, 

[00:14:31] Teddy: you know, I can imagine.

[00:14:32] Teddy: Yeah You 

[00:14:33] Dan: but in the book, as you read, you know, COVID puts an end to that pretty quickly. And then when COVID's over and that all comes back, it comes back very slowly and people are just not in, they just don't have the same priorities as they did before COVID. Everything's different. You know, people are still nervous about being in large crowds and being around people and shaking hands and all that kind of stuff.

[00:14:57] Dan: So that impacts his income. And then, I won't give it away, but he Finds out something else has happened that puts him in very dire financial, uh, trouble. And that's why he ends up going back to his hometown of Long Branch, Georgia. 

[00:15:13] Teddy: I'm smiling because that's kind of the part I'm at now. So definitely don't give it away.

[00:15:17] Teddy: I won't. Yeah. Yeah, no, I'm really enjoying the book. I think it's I think it's really exciting. I like the chat to keep like skipping on and like, it's really good. Um, 

[00:15:24] Dan: well, you know, somehow, and I don't know how it's happened. I've been, you know, I've been tracking sales and 5 percent of my sales are in the UK.

[00:15:32] Dan: I don't know how that's really happened, but that's awesome. You know, and then another 5 percent in Germany and then another 3 or 4 percent somewhere else, maybe Australia, uh, cause I think, is your book translated 

[00:15:43] Teddy: in German? No, it's all, you should definitely do that. It's quite cheap to do and it's yeah, I've had a few recommendations now.

[00:15:52] Teddy: So I spoke to James Blatch last week. He's a, he's a thriller author, mostly around air force kind of books. They're really good. He's a British guy and he translates his book into German. It now is something like 25 percent of his sales was, he picked up. So definitely do that. There's lots of ways of translating the book now.

[00:16:08] Teddy: Uh, but yeah, no, I see that exact same thing. So I generally. With my books, I generally see about the percentage of my sales is roughly about the percentage of the population of the English speaking world. So it actually does work out quite representative for me. I'm like 3 percent Australian, 8 percent UK, then like 80 percent US sort of thing.

[00:16:28] Teddy: Yeah. Yeah. I've thought 

[00:16:29] Dan: about, I've thought about having it translated into Spanish. My wife is from Mexico. Her whole family's asking me, when is it going to be in Spanish? I don't 

[00:16:37] Teddy: know. One thing he's, if you are going to get conversed into German, he said, get an Austrian translator, because if the German person does it, then they own the copyright.

[00:16:47] Teddy: So interesting. There's your tip for the day. 

[00:16:50] Dan: Very good to know. 

[00:16:53] Teddy: So talking about the marketing of the book. So have you, this is It's interesting that you're making them the sales in the UK. Have you done anything for that? Or is that just literally organic sales have just been coming that way? 

[00:17:01] Dan: It's just organic sales.

[00:17:02] Dan: I don't know if it's word of mouth. I don't know. I mean, I've done a number of podcasts so far. I think this is my first UK podcast as I, that I think that I know of. If I remember I might've done one for Australia now that I think about it. But, um, yeah, I don't know. I guess people are catching on onto it, you know?

[00:17:22] Yeah. I mean, 

[00:17:22] Dan: I was just looking. At the Amazon reviews yesterday, and every single review is five stars. I'm just thrilled at the response that people and they're all excited about it, which is wonderful, because you have a good feeling. You know, I didn't write this book to make a fortune because I know that doesn't how it works but I just wanted to get it out of me, you know, like, I, I sort of when you know, and I do the same thing with screenwriting, if I have an idea that I can't shake, then I write it, I have to write it because if I don't write it, it'll haunt me, you know, so I just want to get it out.

[00:17:56] Dan: And also that's curious. Can I, could I do it? Like, yeah, but I read a book, you know, 

[00:18:02] Teddy: how many words is the book overall? I think it's about 83, 000. If I'm not mistaken, and to take you a long time, how long does it take you to write the whole thing? Okay. 

[00:18:11] Dan: Less than two years. As you know, you go through so many revisions, you go over and over and over, you know, my wife bought me a long time ago.

[00:18:19] Dan: She bought me a little thing I keep in my office. It's a little plaque. It says, write without fear and edit without mercy. 

[00:18:25] Teddy: Yes. 

[00:18:25] Dan: So that's kind of my mantra. Like I'll just write and I don't care if it doesn't quite make sense to me the first time I go back through it, it makes more sense. 

[00:18:36] Teddy: Awesome. So let's have a look at that.

[00:18:38] Teddy: Let's have a think about the marketing for the book. So the. You mentioned before you're talking about the, well, you've all got five star ratings. That's amazing. Did you do anything to get those reviews in the first place? Did you do any do you have like a advanced reviewer team or do you, did you literally just put it out there and say, 

[00:18:55] Dan: No, I just started selling the book and you know, you always start with your, cause it's, I self published.

[00:18:59] Dan: I had a choice when I completed the book, I sent it, a friend of mine who's a published author. I asked him for an editor because. I was mostly concerned about formatting because I know formatting a novel is very different from a screenplay. So I I got a recommendation for this editor, a woman named Kara Highsmith, and she went through the whole thing and she, you know, made all those adjustments that they do and found my typos and all that good stuff.

[00:19:27] Teddy: Make sure the timelines match up. 

[00:19:29] Dan: Yeah. And she got back to me and she said, you know, this is a really good book. I think I, I could. You could sell this. You know, I'd like to recommend you to an agent, a publishing agent. So she did, and I sent it to this man in Florida who read it, had the same response. He said, I really like this book.

[00:19:47] Dan: I really think you got something here. And he said, but let me give you the negative side of it. The negative side of it is first time fiction publisher, first time fiction author, you're going to struggle with publishers because even if they buy it, And decide to publish it. It could be two years before they actually release it.

[00:20:07] Dan: And then they may not put enough behind it to make anything happen with it, and they're going to take almost all the royalties. So, he goes, I would suggest for your first time, just put it out yourself and see what happens, you know. I mean, I'm lucky that I have had some success in the world of entertainment already that I can use that, those connections, you know, to help promote the book and talk about the book and get it out there.

[00:20:34] Dan: And so far it's worked and that's kind of all I've done. I mean, I've run a few social media ads and things like that and then just about a month ago, Joe Nia recorded the audio version of the book. 

[00:20:46] Oh, nice. That'll 

[00:20:46] Dan: be out probably in September and then I'll probably do a broader, a marketing campaign.

[00:20:51] Dan: Once I have that, 'cause then I'll have it. Audio paperback and also e format. 

[00:20:57] Teddy: Yeah. Great. You've got to use your unfair advantages, you know, if you are, if you've already got these connections in Hollywood, you might as well use them, but that doesn't, you know, some of the other facts that she talks about, there's nothing that anyone else couldn't do so with the Facebook, you said you do social media marketing, so how did you track, how did the how did they perform?

[00:21:12] Teddy: Did you track the results at all? 

[00:21:15] Dan: You know, it's all, I mean, all that stuff is a little. Above my pay grade. So all I do, you know, like I post something on Facebook and then Facebook would say to me like, Oh, would you like to boost this post? Okay. You know, and then you allocate a certain amount of money over a certain period of time that you are willing to spend to boost that post.

[00:21:37] Dan: And they give you, you know, they give you statistics. They'll say, well, you had a thousand clicks today or 2000 clicks or whatever it is. What I would do is I would. Look at book sales, and I could always tell like oh, I sold a few books. You know this afternoon or whatever so I Knew that it was working a bit, and I think for anybody else who doesn't have you know The connections, maybe that I have.

[00:22:01] Dan: It's just about being tenacious. I mean, you have to, you, you know, you have to press people. Sometimes, you know, you got to call your friends and family and say, like, look, I wrote a book. You guys, you know, you got to buy it. It's only 17 bucks. Come on, you know, and then you got to get them to read it.

[00:22:18] Dan: And then you got to get them to leave the review to, you know, I've still got family members. I have one family member. She bought it. I think she bought 12 books to give to all her friends and she loved the book so much and I still haven't gotten her to write a review. I'm like, she's my aunt and I'm like, will you please just write the review?

[00:22:35] Dan: Oh, I just love your book. I will. I promise. I promise. Like, okay. All right, 

[00:22:40] Teddy: auntie. You know, I'm exactly the same. And also it's a bit awkward asking, isn't it? Because you're kind of asking for like a You know, people were like, Oh, I'm giving you a five star review for something I don't really know. It's like, well, just read it.

[00:22:50] Teddy: And if you like it, then give it a five star review. I don't, it makes you feel better. I just need my reviews so that other people can buy it. 

[00:22:56] Dan: Yeah, exactly. No, I don't want anybody to get a review that hasn't read it. I mean, but she's read it and she just was raving about it. And she bought 12 copies for her friends, but I can't get her to leave a review.

[00:23:07] Dan: She's almost 90. So I give her a pass. 

[00:23:10] Teddy: And so I think some things that could work really nicely for your sort of style of books is There's like quite a few newsletter type businesses where they have they have basically have an audience of people who love a particular genre of books. So yours could probably be in like the crime sort of genre.

[00:23:26] Teddy: So people that love those books, they really want to get hold of those copies when they're either on a discounted price or like free when you're launching. And the best thing about that is you often get quite a lot of reviews and you get really good feedback about the book too. So for your sort of book, I think it works really well.

[00:23:42] Teddy: I've done it. I do it myself with non, most of the nonfiction books, but they it's great to get these, all these people to leave your reviews at first, especially if you haven't got the contacts that you have. 

[00:23:51] Dan: Yeah. And I also just got a great review from, I think it's called online book club.

[00:23:58] Dan: org. They gave me a beautiful five star review, but I just got the other day and I've entered. I don't know, half a dozen fiction contests, none of, none have ended yet. So I don't know what's going to happen with those, but I just thought, why not, you know? 

[00:24:13] Teddy: Okay. That's interesting. How does that, how do they work?

[00:24:15] Teddy: I haven't actually done one of those before. 

[00:24:17] Dan: So I've just sort of Googling and searching and, or, and then sometimes, you know, the way our phones listen to us. Now that I talk about it, I'll probably get pop up messages now on, on something. But there, there's a number of like book publishing contests for, especially for self published authors.

[00:24:36] Dan: There's indie book awards. There's boy, I'd have to look now. There's a, there was about a half a dozen that I entered in the global or impact book awards. That's another one that I entered. You know, you pay 50, 60, whatever it is, and you submit your manuscript in the cover and you pick your category and then you wait for them to review it and decide if you are the winner of that year or that 

[00:24:59] Teddy: you'd have to bribe it.

[00:25:00] Teddy: It does. It's I'm sorry. You don't have to bribe anyone or anything like that. It's a genuine award. 

[00:25:07] Dan: Yeah, it seems to be. Yeah, I mean, I have a few friends that have written books and these are sort of the ones that they recommended. So that's why I did them. 

[00:25:16] Teddy: Great. Okay, well, I'll put the name of those awards things in the show notes so people can have a look at those two maybe vote for you too.

[00:25:23] Dan: Yeah, that'd be great. 

[00:25:25] Teddy: So when you, let's, I'd like to talk a bit more about the actual book itself. In the book, you've got, you know, some different themes, like, yeah, as you mentioned for COVID and also, you know, the fact that there's like people getting too old for their jobs and there's lots of those themes going throughout the book.

[00:25:41] Teddy: How did you decide on those themes beforehand or was it something that you wanted to pull out when you're writing or is it just something that came as you're writing the book out? 

[00:25:48] Dan: I think mostly it came as I was writing, but you know, when you when I've been in this sort of business for over 20 years now and I've seen a lot of, This happened and so they always say write what you know, right?

[00:26:01] Dan: So 

[00:26:01] yeah, 

[00:26:02] Dan: I've seen plenty of times really wonderful actors who don't work and I just don't understand it And you know, you talk to agencies and well, he's not a big enough name I have an actor friend of mine who is just a wonderful actor and had a really great and Broadway and all kinds of movies and stuff.

[00:26:22] Dan: And then it just sort of paused for some reason. And I don't, and I don't really know why. But he went on an audition. He went, he's going out on an audition for a commercial. And it was like a national commercial. It was like a big national beer commercial or something. And it would have paid very well.

[00:26:39] Dan: The first question they asked him. Was how big is your social media following? 

[00:26:43] And 

[00:26:45] Dan: he was like, well, he goes, if they said, if you don't have at least, you know, a hundred thousand followers, then don't even bother coming in. 

[00:26:52] And that's 

[00:26:53] Dan: very sad to me that now that we're, now we're basing everything on that, like, I don't know.

[00:27:00] Dan: That sort of ignores talent completely. 

[00:27:03] Teddy: Yes, I agree. It's difficult, isn't it? You kind of have to do it, but you don't want to. Yeah, 

[00:27:08] Dan: I mean, I vote we all go back to flip phones. That's my position. There's 

[00:27:15] Teddy: a big movement at the moment to try and get people back onto dumb phones. Yeah. 

[00:27:21] Dan: I mean, we've so many people have developed such a short attention span to things that and you know, I think in schools, these kids all of a sudden, I mean, I grew up in the seventies and eighties and I mean, I don't remember any kids that had ADHD or anything like that.

[00:27:36] Dan: You know, they just, You were just kids and you did your schoolwork and you went and you played and you did your thing. And now all these kids have this condition. And I have to believe that cell phones have a lot to do with that and pads and the rapidness of information that, you know, you, I've seen kids, you know, they're watching a video and if 3 seconds, they're not entertained, man, they're on to the next video.

[00:27:59] Dan: Like, 

[00:27:59] Teddy: yeah. I, yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about. It's something I struggle with focus and stuff. Yeah, it was checking a phone and don't want to be it's rubbish. Yeah. In the book as well, Long Branch the town is set in Long Branch and that is, it's quite a small like I guess corrupt town.

[00:28:18] Teddy: Maybe there's lots of tension like in the town. Was that a? Was Longbrook, was that on purpose to put it in somewhere small like that, so kind of everyone knows each other, or is it just somewhere you knew? 

[00:28:27] Dan: It's based on a real town. And I wouldn't call it a corrupt town. I would say there is corrupt people in the town.

[00:28:34] Dan: The town for the most part is not corrupt. 

[00:28:36] Yeah. 

[00:28:37] Dan: But it's based on a town. So I was working in a, in Georgia. A few years ago on a TV show and it was in, it was south of Atlanta, which is a huge city in Georgia, and it was a small town called Hamilton, Georgia. And it's basically just like I described in Long Branch.

[00:28:54] Dan: There's about 1500 people that live there. It's very rural. You know, people have pecan farms and cattle and, you know, it's just, it's like very country, you know, as we would say here. So I was down there doing a show for a year. With this family of hunters. They hunted turkey and deer and Rabbit, you know, whatever the game, you know Yeah, and they had already had a TV show about hunting but this show was about them as a family So it was more of a reality Style.

[00:29:28] Yeah 

[00:29:29] Dan: show I went down there maybe four times over the course of a year and I always took my wife with me because we haven't been married that long and I, we just wanted to stick together, you know, and we both just fell in love with this town, like, and I, and we had decided if that show that I was working on, it only lasted one season, but if it would have continued, we would have bought a place there at least to live there part time because we just thought it was such a beautiful, you know, Such a stark contrast to Los Angeles.

[00:29:57] Dan: Put it that way. Not crowded. Lots of green. Lots of trees. Lots of water. None of those things exist here. So it was just a beautiful place. And the people were fantastic. They were so friendly and they were so fun and nice and You know, it was just magical. 

[00:30:17] Teddy: Yeah. And, but, and do you feel like in terms of the story, it wasn't you didn't shoot on purpose for the size or anything like that.

[00:30:24] Teddy: It was just cause you like that place. It was good memories of it. 

[00:30:28] Dan: I think that it was I liked the idea that Mason was from a small town like that that he had sort of changed a little bit of me as in Mason. I got to say, because I'm from Kansas city, Missouri. Not that small of a town, but certainly much smaller than Los Angeles.

[00:30:44] Dan: And so when I came to California, even though I was working in construction, I mean, I was very naive and it was a bit of culture shock coming from a town, from a city of like maybe a million people to a city of like 15 million people. It was like, Oh my God, you have to stand in line for everything here.

[00:31:02] Dan: I never stood in line in Kansas city. I like the idea that here's this guy who is kind of a country boy, goes to Hollywood to follow his dream. Becomes very successful. And then when he hits hard times, the first thing that really comes to his mind as a way to save himself is to go back to where he came from and try to reboot his life from there.

[00:31:27] Dan: I thought that was kind of an interesting and I like those fish out of water kind of things. And so here's a guy he's he's lived away from that little town for so long. He goes back and he's got to readjust now to that life. Everything's a little slower. People like to chat with you at the grocery store instead of just be like chink chink, here's your change, get out, you know, just a different life.

[00:31:50] Teddy: I found that exact same thing when I moved from London to Yorkshire. Now everyone just wants to talk to me even when I go to the supermarket. 

[00:31:56] Dan: Yes exactly. My wife, who is from Mexico, you know, when we go to Kansas City, first time we went to Kansas City to visit my family, we did, we went to a grocery store.

[00:32:06] Dan: And the cashier started talking, how are you? What are you doing? You know, you from out of town and we left and she goes, what was that all about? Why did she talk to us like that? That's folksiness there, you know, people want to chat here, you know, you got to let them have something to talk about.

[00:32:23] Teddy: Yeah. I quite, I liked it. I just loved it in the small town because you kind of feel that sort of enclosed sort of feeling. And I think sitcoms use that quite a lot where they've got this small place where everyone's kind of stuck and they can't move out. And so it's like, it creates those tensions. I really like it.

[00:32:37] Yeah. Yeah. 

[00:32:39] Teddy: So just coming towards the end of the book. So what's the end of the show, sorry what what plans have you got next for it? Books have you got more in the same series? Are you pricing? Yeah, I'd like to 

[00:32:49] Dan: write a follow up to the first book. I mean, I think there's more story to tell. And when you get to the end of the book, that'll make sense to you.

[00:32:58] Dan: And I probably, you know, there was a time when I thought I should just keep going with this 1st book and make it a larger book, but. I think it would've been far too large. And you know, I think around three to three, 300 to 350 pages is plenty for a book, you know? 

[00:33:14] Yeah. 

[00:33:14] Dan: And people have told me it's a very easy read.

[00:33:16] Dan: It's like a summer read. Like you don't have to be a brain surgeon to get through it. It's, it keeps you engaged and interested, which is great. I love to hear that. But I think there's more story to tell with the main characters, and I think that, there's there's some fun to be had there with those people, and I liked it.

[00:33:32] Dan: I like that world. I like that place. And I like those people. And, you know, it may sound weird to someone, but when you create a little world and you create these characters, they're like real people to you. 

[00:33:43] Yeah, 

[00:33:44] Dan: to me, they're real people. And I, you know, I feel like I got to help them tell the next chapter of their story.

[00:33:51] Teddy: Brilliant. Yeah. I look forward to reading those. I'm enjoying it so far. So just last week, have you got any experience you'd have to sorry, any advice you'd give to, or to aspiring writers or just maybe just starting out? Is there anything that you thought, you know, now that you kind of wish you did, that would really help people out?

[00:34:06] Dan: I would say, yeah, I would say, like, I kind of alluded to before, you know, you write what you know, you know, like I, I kind of based Mason Powell a bit on myself. Partially because I thought to myself, what better way to know what this guy would do next? All I have to do is ask myself, what would I do next?

[00:34:26] And 

[00:34:26] Dan: there's my answer, you know? So I think that's always helpful. Number one to write about things or that you're familiar with or that you know. And secondly, just you can't be afraid. You just gotta go for it and don't, Think about don't second guess yourself. Don't try to edit while you write because that's the worst thing you can do just tell the story and let it unfold and you can go back later and edit and then I would say lastly one thing that I've always done in writing from television to the novel is Whatever I'm working on that day, when I'm ready to finish for the day of writing, I don't finish until I know what I'm going to write next.

[00:35:10] Dan: Because if I know, okay, this is what I'm going to do next, then I'll get back to the typewriter, I'll get back to the computer faster. Then if I don't, like, if I don't, if I get to a point where I'm like, gee, I don't know what happens next. Let me think about it. I'm, I'll get back to it, but it's gonna be a few days probably.

[00:35:28] Teddy: Yeah. 

[00:35:29] Dan: But if I know John about that. 

[00:35:32] Teddy: Yeah, that's what I was gonna say. John Cle wrote about that in his book, creativity. I've got it up here somewhere. It's a really good book. It's like that long. It's great. And he basically was talking about when he was writing Monty Python, he was with Graham Chapman.

[00:35:42] Teddy: Yeah. How he'd always like right before he went to bed, 'cause he felt like somehow his subconscious was like working on it in the background when he wasn't there. And he'd wake up like. Just ready to go with it and he knew exactly what he's going to start on. So yeah, that is great advice. He just gave 

[00:35:56] Dan: Yeah, I've done that, too.

[00:35:57] Dan: I've woken up in the middle of the night and thought about like, oh, what if that happens, you know, yeah, make a little note, go back to sleep or try to go back to sleep. But yeah, I think it's good to know what you're going to do next. And that gets you excited about writing again. Yeah, that's important.

[00:36:12] Teddy: Brilliant. That's great advice. Well, thank you so much for coming on. It's been a I've really enjoyed chatting to you. You're welcome. Really enjoy reading the book. Just before we go, last question was, so is there any books that's where do you think everyone should be reading? Maybe they're not reading at the moment.

[00:36:28] Dan: The last book I finished was a book called Happiness Falls. I'm gonna say her name is Angie Kim. Okay. I think it's a fairly, it's a fairly new book. It's a good mystery book with a with an interesting sort of Twist to it. And then I've and then I'm now I'm in the middle of the no more letter book.

[00:36:46] Dan: Fire in the hole, which is basically a series of short stories. 1 of them. The TV show at the United States justified was a very big television show here. And 1 of the short stories in that book is the basis of that show. So I got, I love the show. So I got interested in the book and thought I would read that.

[00:37:07] Teddy: Great. There's some great recommendations there. Thank you very much. Yeah. Thanks for joining me on the call. It's been it's been lovely speaking to you and hopefully we'll go and we'll speak again soon. 

[00:37:15] Dan: Thanks Teddy. Thanks for having me on.