Women Like Me Stories & Business

FRANK TALABER: WRITE SO REAL THEY FORGET THE WORLD

• Julie Fairhurst • Episode 178

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What makes a reader forget the bath is running and the coffee went cold? We sit down with novelist Frank Talaber to map the exact blend of hooks, humor, and hard research that makes escape inevitable. Frank opens his playbook: how to seize attention on page one, how to layer smell, texture, sound, and light so a scene feels walked through, and why a well-timed joke inside a dark moment can keep momentum alive without breaking tension.

We dig into the craft choices that build trust—verifiable details from Victoria, Stanley Park, and Haida Gwaii—so the wild stuff can land: urban legends, paranormal threads, and moral stakes that lead to catharsis. Frank writes to be felt, not just understood, and he measures success in raw reader reactions: laughs out loud, closed-eye cinema, and honest confessions of missed alarms. He believes the good must win, not to tidy life, but to give the journey meaning and the payoff weight.

You’ll also hear how short stories become novels, why freewriting unlocks flow, and how walks and the edge of alpha state loosen the mind. Frank shares a new short story collection, awards, and a thriller premise with a chilling “what if” that reads like a film. We compare publishing routes, trim sizes, and cover design, and we tackle AI with a clear-eyed take: useful as a tool, risky as a voice. If you need a practical spark today, try this: write a scene you can smell, end it with a choice, and ask what has to be true for your hero to win.

Subscribe for more candid craft talks, share this with a writer who needs a push, and leave a review with your favorite opening line you’ve ever read. Your notes shape future episodes and help this community grow.

Join Frank's write group online:  https://www.facebook.com/groups/597136418615865

Email: twosoulmates@shaw.ca 

Webpage: https://franktalaberpublishedauthor.wordpress.com

Novels on Amazon. 
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Frank-Talaber/author/B00UC407R0
https://www.amazon.ca/Autumns-Summer-Felicity-Talisman/dp/1738658376 

My Novels on Audible
 https://www.audible.ca/author/Frank-Talaber/B00UC407R0
https://www.audible.ca/author/Felicity-Talisman/B0D322DCBR

My YouTube Channel. 
 https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCx5ki4gpdokN-9KAIZzu53w




Join the Movement - Women Like Me Community

Who Is Julie Fairhurst?

Speaker • Author • Business Strategist • Founder of Women Like Me

Julie Fairhurst is a force of nature disguised as a woman with a pen and a business brain built for impact. As the founder of the Women Like Me Book Program, she has opened the door for women around the world to share their truth, heal their past, and rise into their power. Since 2019, she has published more than 30 books and over 350 true-life stories — without charging a single writer a dime! Why? Because women’s stories deserve daylight, not gatekeeping.

With 34 years in sales, marketing, and successful business leadership, Julie knows how to turn storytelling into influence and influence into income.

Her mission is clear and unapologetic: break generational trauma one story at a time and help women elevate both emotionally and financially. She doesn’t just publish books, she builds brands, confidence, and possibility, giving women the tools to rewrite their futures, grow their businesses, and lift their families with them.


Julie's Website




SPEAKER_01:

Hi everyone, and welcome to another episode of Women Like Me Stories in Business. I'm your host, Julie Fairhurst. And today I'm here with a recurring guest, my friend Frank Talver. Now, Frank's an interesting fellow. I'm going to tell you a little bit about him before we dive into some questions for him. So he doesn't just write novels. He hijacks your nervous system and refuses to give it back until you've hit the last page. He writes fiction the way a rock star plays to crowds. Loud emotions, unforgettable scenes, and stories that grab you by the collar and say, you're coming with me. His readers don't skim. They miss sleep. They forget the water's gone cold. They swear at him lovingly and buy more books anyway. So if you've ever wanted to escape your world for a few hours and come back changed, you were in the right place. So Frank, thank you for being here again. I'm looking forward to chatting with you.

SPEAKER_00:

You're so welcome. So would I be the first guy for the second time?

SPEAKER_01:

You are the first guy for the second time. That's right. You you've got some honors there anytime. Anytime.

SPEAKER_02:

Love it.

SPEAKER_01:

Love it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

So let's get started here. So so I wanted to sort of maybe ask a few questions about uh before we get into what you're doing with your books these days. I know you've got some exciting things happening, but let's just uh dive into a little bit about the book writing and about the emotions and stuff. So hopefully any of our listeners or YouTube watchers that are interested in possibly writing, or they are writing, can maybe get a few tips for them. So when you sit down to write, what reaction are you secretly hoping for from the reader?

SPEAKER_00:

Uh well, obviously to engage them, um, particularly right off the bat, I usually try to engage the reader in a short story or in a novel within the first page. And I've had I've had reviews where people have said, you know, this one lady, she bought a book, came back with her friend, and I and I said, Why are you back? She goes, Well, she my friend opened your book. She read three pages, says, Stop, go back, I gotta buy this book. I hooked her that fast. So, and I usually try to weave in like all the senses for one thing. If you can make them taste, touch, smell, hear that scene, you pretty well got them. And then, and then on top of all that, um, even though some of the subjects of some of my books can be dark, I I tend to weave in a lot of humor. And I have, you know, like hilarious characters that that you wouldn't wouldn't think would be in this dark, deep situation that pull out the craziest stuff. And that's how I that's probably how I hook people. That's what I love to do.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. Well, it's like we think about some movies. There's some dark movies out there that have an edge of humor to them. Yeah.

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Like those uh the superhero ones with uh what's his name? The Canadian guy. I can't even think of his name.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh, yes, I know who you're talking about. Yeah, his dad and Sutherland, Keith.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, yeah. And and the other ones with uh the guy from Vancouver, uh, they just bought the Wrexham Football Club. I can't I can't think of his name. Oh the superheroes, um, superhero that's he has an off-the-wall bizarre sense of humor. Yeah, so you know, he's in the middle of of danger and maybe dying and and and taking out lives if he has to, but yet he does funny things, and that's what's hooking people a lot of the time.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, you know, yeah, and the hooks are so important.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh yeah, oh yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, if you can't get their attention, we call it a hook, but really it's an attention getter. And if you can't get their attention, then they're like you say, with that lady that walked away, her friend looked at the book. Obviously, there was an attention getter there for her, a hook which brought her back to purchase a book.

SPEAKER_00:

Yep, exactly.

SPEAKER_01:

And that's what we need. Yeah, absolutely correct. So, what do you consciously do on the page to make escape inevitable? Because certainly when we're reading books, we're that's we're escaping, just like if we're watching a movie or something, we're escaping into that. So, what do you consciously do to make people or help people escape into your stories?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, in many, many situations, I do a lot of research and I and I make sure that if I put you on a street corner in Victoria or Vancouver, that corner, that building, um, everything's there. So that's so, and I've had people that open one of my books and and and actually this guy sent me, he talked to me live and he said, I had the book was said in Haine Gwai, and he goes, So that that street corner, that pub, the second floor of that pub is exactly how you place it. How much time have you spent there? And I said, Well, actually, I haven't gone out there yet. I'm going up there in a couple of years to do the research. He goes, Holy cow, he says, I can visualize everything because I live there, I know exactly how it's laid out. So I I take great great detail. If I'm putting in a real situation, like if it's an artificial science fiction world, that's different. But if I'm putting you in a real situation, I make sure everything around you is there. Uh, the opening scene in one of my other novels, Delure, opens in Stanley Park. And many people have said to me, uh, because I also pull all the senses in there, they go, Wow, I've been on that, that where that place is, and I can see that whole scene unfolding all around me. And you know, or I've gone there just to see your after and go, wow, this is exactly how it I visualized it.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, wow, yeah, absolutely, yeah, absolutely. Wow, yeah, I can see that for sure. Okay, so why do you believe entertaining the reader is serious, uh, uh serious information, even even serious information is a form of service.

SPEAKER_00:

It is, it is. Sometimes I I know only not not want to entertain the reader, sometimes I want to uh you know enhance their knowledge of either spiritual matters in some cases, um the all the research I've done in ghosts and the paranormal, sometimes give more information about that. Um even reincarnation. I've done lots of research on reincarnation, and a lot of people don't believe in it, but when I was some of the things I've learned about reincarnation, you can't make this stuff up. You know, again, I'll give you a perfect example. This guy um in 1965, 65 or 62 in England, um, this kid was brilliant, but he wouldn't talk. And the teacher said, Well, he's running into problems because he's not he doesn't talk, you ask questions, he doesn't say anything. So they got him, told his parents, they got him to a uh hypnotherapist, and they found out that that he said he was an American Air Force pilot from the Second World War that crashed and was taken into concentration camps and died there. And he said to them, The only thing I'm allowed to tell you is name, rank, serial number, period. So at that time, yeah, and that's that was what they were instructed to do. So, and then so at that time they didn't have internet or anything like that. So they wrote a letter to the American government, you know, the military, and they said, We have this information about this. And they said, Yes, this guy died in the Second World War. Um, that's his name, rank, and serial number, and he died in the concentration council. As far as we know, we have no record of them.

SPEAKER_01:

Wow.

SPEAKER_00:

Now, you know, that's one of the craziest insist scene things of reincarnation that I've that I've read. I've read lots of other ones, but that was the wildest one.

SPEAKER_01:

That is wild. Yeah, yeah. I've read lots of stuff on reincarnation too. Yeah, but that's uh I haven't heard that one. That's that's incredible.

SPEAKER_00:

And I always I always think, you know, when it's like not to say that adults are are you know um elaborating on their stories, but when you hear it from a child, yes, lots of kids, lots of kids have have stories of reincarnations, or um, this one young girl, uh, she was from Scotland, I think, and she you know, the same thing they they put her under hypnosis and because she was she would start writing in ancient Scottish. And when they tracked him back, it went back about 400 years, this dialect, and and then and when they finally got her to talk about it a little bit, she says, This book is in this. If you can find this book, it's in this library, ancient library or the church, I can't remember. And they found the book that she was talking about. So, how would she know that?

SPEAKER_01:

This little young girl, yeah, right, yeah, yeah. Wow, yeah. Research is so important if we want to write good good stories and good books for people, and yeah, read that into iBooks, you bet.

SPEAKER_00:

There's even another case where this the English um Navy, they were trying to build these the wooden sailing ships, but they lost a lot of the knowledge. And this guy said he was he was in a previously in the previous life. So they hypnotized this guy and he started telling them about how to build and put all these ships together. And they said, Wow, we have no record of this knowledge anywhere. But this guy knew it and it came out of his head.

unknown:

Wow.

SPEAKER_00:

That's the kind of stuff that so there's a lot of good things to reincarnation. Um, you know, they say it's in it locked in the DNA of your genes. Um, if you believe that, then you know you can unlock it, maybe, you know. And in many cases, and and you know, as we know in this realm, this is the third third third dimension, they say there's as many as eight different dimensions out there. So they say this is just one one level of your learning to go on to the next one and the next one and the next one.

SPEAKER_01:

Wow. And what really amazing knowledge for you to gather so that you can then weave that into your stories.

SPEAKER_00:

Absolutely. I I love weaving um uh that and the other thing I've said many that and and lots of research, but the other thing I love weaving in is um I talked to many people and have said I can you can't write the the situations or the experiences some people have experienced. And um, and I get a lot of ideas from myself, talk to people at book events. So recently, and I moved this into one of my books. This lady, um, she was sitting beside me at this one event, she goes, Well, I don't have a ghost story, but I have a strange, strange story. So tell me. She says, So I find out on my wedding day, I'm adopted. I had no idea.

unknown:

Oh.

SPEAKER_00:

And she's so we were living in Ottawa at the time, and my uh my husband's mother had passed away. So we'd go to the on Mother's Day, we'd go down the graveyard, and he I'll let him, you know, talk to this his mom at the gravesite, and I'd wander off, leave him alone. He said, But I uh for years, and I there's this one gravestone that always attracted my attention. I would stand in front of it and think, wow, there's something compelling here. So after I found out I'm adopted, I looked that woman up. That's my mom. Oh my gosh, yeah, she looks okay. I know, and then she then then she says, I find I find out I have a brother and sister that look just like me. And they said, Yeah, she gave you up for adoption when she was very young because she couldn't afford to have you. And you know, she you know, so wow.

SPEAKER_01:

Never always your intuition, it's it's trying to tell you something, trying to tell you something. We just need to learn to tune in. Wow, yeah, those are that's pull that off all the time.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, my uh quick story. My my uh my wife hates me because she's oh yeah, she'll be sitting there and I'll go, Oh yeah, no, the answer is 18. She goes, What? How do you know I think of that? Or or something. We were looking just the other day for the special uh candle snuffer, and we looked everywhere, and and I just sat there and go, It it's in Valley Village. She goes, They don't have stuff like that in Valley Village. It's in there. She goes, okay, I trust you. Let's go. We walk in and there's a whole wrap of stuff hanging on the wall. About six down. I pick it up. I walk straight up to it, pick it up, go, here you go. She goes, Oh my god, you did it again.

SPEAKER_01:

I love that. And we all can and we all have that intuition. We just need to learn to tune in and trust it. Yes. And trust it. That's the big thing. That's the big thing, yeah. So you said this a little bit in the very beginning, but yeah, but a lot of people write to be understood. And that's what I have in the Women Like Me books is a lot of our writers, or pretty much all of our writers, are writing to be understood about their life story. Now, but you write to be felt.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, I I usually write through emotions. Um, my wife says to me, You're you're more female inside than male. Yeah. Um, and it's true. Um, well, most of my characters in my series are female characters, but um, if you can get them people emotionally involved, um, you know, and you can they can feel your scene or feel your person, feel the agony or or the joy, that that to me is a great pleasure in hearing that, you know, when I've when I've got somebody hooked in there. When people can sit down, and I just got another review from this other person that says, you know, I've been I've been reading this book for three bloody hours thinking I gotta get up and go to work and I can't put the damn book down. And that no, that's perfect. Um, you know, yeah, I want to immerse them, like make it lead their world, even though their world's a good world. Um, but some people are, you know, are just they have boring lives or they have, you know, they just have lives that aren't great. And yet if I can make them get lost in a book and totally engulf them and and give them pleasure that way, like I said, to me, that's like a rock star on the stage going, yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And you know, I I let uh I talk to my authors about this, is that um, you know, why do people pay hundreds and hundreds or even sometimes thousands of dollars to go and see performances? Because it's it's how they make them feel. So in our stories, in our writings, we need to, we need to convey those emotions and and help our readers and not always to feel, you know, we don't always want them to feel uh sad emotions because then that's not good, but some positive emotions, inspirational emotions. And that's what also builds fans.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, exactly.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

And in all my in all my books, uh everybody asks me, I always say the good person in the end must win somehow, because otherwise it's gonna become a very you know boring and dark world. And my whole idea of life is is to be positive and to make other people enjoy their lives and enhance their lives. That that's always been my my goal.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, yeah, for sure. So you've made uh readers laugh, cry, swear, miswork. Which reaction tells you you've nailed it exactly.

SPEAKER_00:

Usually they usually the miswork one, but so I just so this here's another review I just got. Just this is on the on my newest book. I haven't even released this book yet. And this lady said, um, she said to me, Um, I love your amazing. Oh, this is actually from a science fiction uh uh uh book I wrote. Love your amazing imagination. You take what I see in the history channel to the next impossibly unbelievable level and make me believe. Sometimes you make me laugh aloud, and other times when I'm reading, I close my eyes and visualize the scene unfolding before me. Your writing flows that effortlessly, and I thought that's exactly what I want to get to make.

SPEAKER_01:

What a beautiful uh immerse them and just let them go. Yeah, yeah. I love it when people you know are kind enough to share their thoughts and their feelings with us. It just helps us to know we're right on track still.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, even even when um there was another one where I don't I don't have the review in front of me. This lady wrote wrote the Louis, she says, your scenes um with with were so disturbing, like the it's about a sucker bus, um that that I had to put the down because I had nightmares. But she said the problem was I was so compelled, I I let said let it sit for a week. I had to pick it back up because I figured I gotta finish this book. And she goes, I'm so glad I did, because in the end, the hero wins. And she was she says, I was cheering when when he beat the bad guy. Oh and I said, That's that's that's it. That's that's it.

SPEAKER_01:

That's what you want, yeah. Well, let's switch a little bit and talk about what you're doing with your books. So you've got a new book that just came out.

SPEAKER_00:

Yep. Uh so this is this is my uh this is a collection of short stories. I just released this last month. Uh what I'd say to Angus of Christie if I met her at the knitting circle.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh, I love your cover.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, you might recognize the old dude.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh, yeah, exactly. That's great. I love that. That's a great cover.

SPEAKER_00:

I I put myself in the covers of all three of my short story collections. I have three novels with short stories. Like I said, I've published over 110 short stories so far, some seven or eight times. Yeah. Um, and people one of the things people always ask me is, Well, why Agatha Christie? And I go, Well, if you're to ask me that, and I was asking her a question. So, in her life, she was the most famous author at the time. Her husband at the time had an affair with another woman and he wanted to leave her. So she actually, and I think this is brilliant. Um, uh, she actually um disappeared for like two weeks. They found her car at at a site. No, no, no, she wasn't there, and she was living in England. So someone tracked her down to the a hotel that she was staying in. She was staying under the name of Teresa Neal, I think she was, uh, which is his lover's name.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh my goodness.

SPEAKER_00:

And she she pleaded that she had, you know, and and and and you know, like she lost her memory and blah blah blah. And to the day she died, even when he asked her as she's dying, she's she said nothing. She said nothing about what happened. She refused. And I think, well, first of all, I think as as a writer, that's amazingly brilliant. Yes, yes, yes, yes.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, yeah, for sure. So, what kind of stories are like how many stories would you have in the book?

SPEAKER_00:

So, all kinds, all kinds of genres. There's one one in here I've already got accepted second place in the spooky tales contest um since I put this out and New Canadian magazine. And I'm and in that magazine, I'm also the only writer that's been publishing every single issue so far.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh, that's interesting.

SPEAKER_00:

And then they've about eight issues out. So it's called We're Lovers of the Ethereal. So it's about a lady that's a veterinarian that is at a wild party, goes in the backyard, and this guy's got what he says, this wild dog he thinks is a wolf in his backyard chained up. Only when she gets there, she realizes that's no wolf, it's something else.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh.

SPEAKER_00:

And the rest I ain't saying because it got to be.

SPEAKER_01:

No, don't say how long you have me. I was like, oh, well, well, what is it?

SPEAKER_00:

Exactly. Yeah. And then and then some of the stories were from my earlier years, too, where I was um, I took a series called Context Associated, uh, the pursuit of excellence. So you learn about yourself, your personalities, how to improve your life, you know, why I attract to me that which occurs, all these things. So I wrote a couple profound stories about that. Um, what are the other ones? Um, oh, there's also one in here that's I have a short story about someone's got multiple personality disorder. So the government hires this guy as an astronaut to take him to Mars because this way, so multiple people have multiple personality disorders, instead of having 10 people aboard, you can have one.

SPEAKER_01:

Interesting.

SPEAKER_00:

So some of these people multi-yeah, patent multiple personality. So in some cases, where I read in the research, you can have one of your personalities can be a pianist, the other one can be a doctor that operates on people, but the doctor has no idea how to play the piano, and the pianist has no idea how to even hold a scalpel. That's how insane the brain is, how it how it can how it can operate when it's under distress sometimes. Yes. And you know, so yeah, so that that's one of them.

SPEAKER_01:

And so how long, how so do you have a what's your length for short stories? Like when do you feel like it's kind of gone into over or not enough?

SPEAKER_00:

Is there like a usually around 2,000 words? Most publications are looking for around a 2,000 word story. Um, there are a few I will get into bigger and longer, um, three or four thousand when I'm really into it. But I try to do that. And there are a lot of flash fiction now, too, which is like a thousand words or less. Um which which which I've done a few, but I really it's hard to kind of get something in there when you only got like three pages to write something. I can, but um I'd rather be get a little deeper. Yes. And then often I've taken a couple of my novels, I've taken my short stories, like I went and wrote a lot of them before I started getting into novels, and I would grab one or two and weave them together to make a whole novel. Because in essence, a short story really is only a chapter of a book. That that was my always definition I heard a long time ago. And I believe that. So yes, you know, you always take a short story and almost always expand it to make a whole book out of it.

SPEAKER_01:

Yes. Right? Yes. And that's what a lot of the writers I have do. You know, I say, get your story out, and then you can expand on it. And I've just actually got one uh lady um uh who did her own book and it ended up being a bestseller in six categories. Wow. Her name, I'll just say it. Her name is Sydney Mickey, and she's just um amazing story. It's amazing story. It's a short story, but it's it's and it's uh just amazing. But she's yeah, she's got she's got um she's from Prince Rupert, but she's living in Langway. And she's got uh mentions in the newspaper and Prince Rupert, and so she's uh done very, very well. So absolutely, we can take those short stories and build on them if if that's something we want to do.

SPEAKER_00:

Absolutely, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, yeah. And so tell me a little bit, because tell us a little bit about how many books you have, what's going on.

SPEAKER_00:

I've got uh 13 uh novels currently out. My 14th is just being put together right now. I'm getting the cover made, it's already done, written, and edited. Um the new so uh as I tell everybody I write in all the genres except for um Westerns, because I don't like to ride horses, but I can do a pretty good gangham style dance if you want.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

So my my newest one, it it does take a darker twist as well. Um, is a female character called Carol Ainsworth. She has this crazy person that hangs out with her called Agnes Van Lunt and her stage show, she calls herself Mystique, because she has a she has a crystal skull with her that she can use to read people's minds with that drives Carol absolutely bananas. Um but they the the the premise of this one is well, what if all the thousands of drug deaths a year aren't drug related?

SPEAKER_01:

Oh my goodness.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, so we have a serial killer going after women, uh, making it look like drug deaths. And at first, of course, even the coroners have as they're so busy these days. And I did, and I actually, one of my one of my people I know is a police officer. She and she off answers a lot of questions for me. If I if I have a situation, I said, So and in the police situation, would this actually happen? She goes, No, you can't do that. Okay, got it. So I try to make it also very realistic from the police aspects as well. And uh yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh, that just sounds like a movie to me, Frank.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, well, that's that's what I'm trying to get. I'm trying to get my the the whole uh that's book three in the series called Ainsworth Chronicles. I'm trying to get all three of them um reaching out to movie companies now and trying to do a script um to to get them in there. Yeah, so because they're very visual and they're all set in here. I was just talking to a guy at the event yesterday, uh uh Ian Ian, and he um and he worked in Hollywood for many years. He would he lived in LA, he just moved here in June, and he said, Yes, so I find you're right, most of the films are done up here because of the cost is a lot better and they're easy to deal with the public and and uh you know and and everything else. And he said, I'm just floored how many uh like even the studios, how many are up here? Um that's why he kind of moved up here. And he said, I love being in Canada. And he says, I get healthcare because that's a bonus.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, exactly, exactly. So, what's your favorite book? Do you have uh one that just like is your fave?

SPEAKER_00:

I actually do. It's called Allure, um, and that was that was from the the Stillwaters Runs Deep series. Um so it's um it actually wove a short story in out of two of them into that one. It's it's about so the coasting have a have a have a legend that there's been a witch transformed trapped in a rock at Stanley Park. So most of the books set in Stanley Park in Vancouver. Um so uh the book opens with Vancouver's mayor's dead, wife and child are missing. The female uh uh police detective Carol is on stakeout trying to figure out what happened because there's no clues yet. This crazy shaman shows up in the middle of the night and goes, Ah, you know, lady, the clues are all there, you gotta know what you're looking for. And he virtually vanishes in front of her. But he leaves clues, he knows exactly what he's talking about. So um she tries to find this guy, but how do you track down a shaman of all things? Like, you know, really. Um, but it's tied into another urban legend that people say you go out drinking at night, you get good and drunk, and you don't remember crap about the night before. So in a bar right next to Stanley Park, you begin drunk enough, spirits hang out. They take over your body and use it for whatever they want to use it for until you sober up. One's a Hell's Angels type guy that's come back for revenge against his mates, he's inadvertently released that witch. And she's she's like a sucker bus. So she's living off of other people's energies trying to come back fully. And uh, as Charlie Tells says to Carol, she's a real badass. That's why I'm here. I'm trying to do something with her. And I also wove, so I wove a short story to that. I also wove a true story that someone told me one time about his experience with Hell's Angels and that kind of stuff. Wow, and uh yeah. I can see why. That's why I said you can't you can't write the stuff that some people have lived and experience.

SPEAKER_01:

Yes, yes, yeah, yeah. We we always sometimes think, oh well, we should make you know think of something in our mind, but but no, you should go out into the world and as you do research and find those stories out that uh that uh make you go, wow, I would like to write about this.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, exactly. That's that's me. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, yeah. So what made you become a writer?

SPEAKER_00:

I think I said this last time, but it was mainly um, well, I I wrote a couple short. Actually, it was in grade three, I wrote uh like a we had to do some sort of short story. So I wrote a about your class. So I wrote this story, and everyone started laughing and enjoying it. And I thought, oh, I really like that. Then in grade 12, um, so I had did a couple of stories, not nothing much. There's a creative writing course. I thought, eh, this is easy credits. I love writing. Let's try this. So the opening day of the class, the teacher has, so we're teaching you subconscious writing. So the whole goal is to create subconsciously, just to let go and just write. No grammar, no punctuation, just get it out there. So here's here's your course material. And I always remember open opening it up and putting my hand up and go, excuse me, it this it's just line paper, there's nothing in here. He goes, Yeah, your job is to fill it. Like, what? So you have to spend 20 minutes each class writing. And like, and so then you know, at first it's like, oh, the walls are still blue. I haven't asked that cute blonde girl, I'm too shy. Dumb things, right? But then after a while, it kicked in. And sometimes in those 20 minutes, I'd crank out anywhere from two to seven pages, just start blasting stuff out. He says, That's what I wanted. That's what you got. He says, I've you've unleashed this thing. You're just pulling energy from the universe through you, through the thing. And as you see yourself right, um, it it just keeps going and your mind just keeps unloading. And he's right. So now I can do whole short stories out to autopop, you know.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I've got a book that we're working on. I've got um uh 12 ladies that are working on this book together. And uh, this one lady's been having a lot of trouble. Just like we started this in December, she still hasn't started yet. And so we've had a few zooms for me to encourage her. Yeah, and and it's exactly like you say, I got an email from her last night and it said, Oh my gosh, it just I went for a walk and it I just sat down and bang, it just hit me and I just started flowing. I can't believe it. Wait till you read what I've written. And I said, that's what we want.

SPEAKER_00:

Exactly. And I so I do a lot of so so for writers, what the most writers write well in the first hour of the morning when they get up or the last hour before they go to bed, because they're actually coming in and out of alpha state, I found. And the other thing is it's really good, like you just said, um, go for a walk. I do a lot of hiking. So sometimes I just go hiking and and your mind kind of relaxes. And if I'm thinking about a story idea, yeah, you know, just put it in in there and accept that it'll come out and it does. Well, you can kind of relax, like you go for a walk or a hike. All of a sudden, I need a pen. I need a pen now. Yeah, yeah. Or or if you do it, you know, uh, you can talk into your phone sometimes. People, I can't really do that. I usually still still write by hand.

SPEAKER_01:

Yes, and then I put it on the computer. Yes, yeah. So I want to ask you, what do you think about AI these days?

SPEAKER_00:

Uh don't like it. Um the the problem there is now there's a huge lawsuit coming up where where all these AI programs are stealing information, obviously, from books and articles and everything, and they're being sued for something like three billion dollars. Holy smokes. Actually, they're they're stealing my work, right? So or someone else's work. So so that's gonna be interesting. Um however, this is just a start. Um I think pretty soon you're gonna have, and there already are amazing AI programs. My one of the guys that works says, Oh, uh, let's let's see how good this thing is. And he said, Okay, tell them about ghost stories of Victoria. In about five minutes, they had a three-page article all written about a ghost story of Victoria. I'm like, see, that's what I mean. They are it's super highly intelligent, and it's only getting more. Um, and most contests and most uh publishing houses will always say, You must sign here that says you did not write this with AI help. Yeah, and you know, because they're they won't take it.

SPEAKER_01:

Yes, yeah, yeah. Oh, that's the same, um, of course, on Amazon. If you want to get your book on it, well, they just yeah, you just have to. I don't know what's gonna happen down the road, but you have to certainly acknowledge it. Uh, and we've had some covers done with AI programs, uh, mid-journey and stuff we've had done for our covers. Um, but um, but you know, I tell the ladies like this is not, these are all your true life stories. You can't have AI write your true life stories. Oh, no. So so do you use AI for anything? Like some people I know talk about using it for an outline. Um, I had another writer tell me that she uses it for editing. Is there any use at all that you find?

SPEAKER_00:

I I try to do AI for making book covers. Um I tried a couple of different programs. You know, it was frustrating. I thought, uh I I actually hire a company out of the Ukraine called MyBlart. They do all my covers because they're very visual and they'll work with you until you're happy. So that means they take a little bit for deposit, but they don't you don't you don't pay them until you're you're done. Some of my book covers have taken like 30 goes before I was satisfied. Yes, yes, and they just keep going and and they don't give up on you.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, yeah. That would be hard to do with AI because I think because I think the more you play with it, it starts to go off the wayside.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, because I keep telling them, like for the cover of this newest book, I wanted to have um roses, is which is very important to the story, and and dandelion fluff. But every time I've had roses on on like on a fresh grave, they had a gravestone. I said, No gravestone, I don't want a gravestone. That's not the idea because this person's been buried it to be hidden. And and I said, Yeah, give up.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00:

You can tell it, but it won't do it. That's that's what I found frustrating.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, right, exactly. Yeah, I think that um I think it's a tool, but I think it needs to be you need to be very careful with it because we don't want, I mean, I know there's companies out there, they're just like banging out these stupid books.

SPEAKER_00:

Lots, lots of them are using AI to make whole books out of them. Yeah, but then like I said, I I already read about the fact that their AI programs are being sued. And in schools, um, I have friends that are teachers, they're fellow authors, they can they can detect if the kids use AI. And I don't know how you can do that, but they can.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, you know, yeah, yeah. I think there's certain, yeah, there's certain I I don't know either how you can detect, but but uh they can for sure do that. So yeah, I just thought I'd get your your take on that because it's so big out there.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, and it's gonna get bigger and it's it's gonna become more popular. And the problem with AI and computer programs is they they get more and more intelligent. There was actually um, I think it was Facebook, the guy that runs Facebook. So he he he made two AI programs that started talking to each other to see how much they can learn from each other and how much they can improve themselves. They they pulled a plug when these two programs invented a new language that humans couldn't understand.

SPEAKER_02:

Wow.

SPEAKER_00:

So so basically started talking to each other with no human involvement, and he thought, no, uh, that's that's it. I need to pull this. Otherwise, you're gonna you're you know who knows what they're talking to each other about.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, it goes too far. Goes too far. Absolutely, yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you for that. So so um, so you've got your book coming out. So, where can people buy your books from? Where do they go?

SPEAKER_00:

All my books are available on Amazon. Um, there's another one I use Draft to Digital, which has whole piles of different companies, um uh Kohl's and a bunch of other ones um um from all the bookstores they can be ordered, mainly on Amazon, um, for the most part, you know, most of my sales.

SPEAKER_01:

Amazon is um it's just so convenient. Yeah, they can buy it and they're and like I just looked the other day to see where my sales were, and I'm like, oh my goodness, I've sold a book in India, I sold a few in the US and in Australia.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I've had lots of reviews from from people from India because because in India the middle class is the biggest middle class in the world, and people don't realize that. And and I've had many from reviews from from from people from India, and you're right, Australia all over the place. And and and if you're on Amazon Prime, then you I you get that book delivered to you free anyway.

SPEAKER_01:

So you know yes, yeah, yeah, brilliant. Yeah, it is brilliant, and it's and I know um the the uh we've done some research here about getting books printed locally, and it's just so expensive. It is you just can't beat Amazon's printing ability, yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

And the other company I use they print as well, they're slightly cheaper, but the uh the thing I like about Amazon is the back cover is big enough you can actually read it. Yeah, the other companies back cover the print is very, very tiny, and even if you have the print inside big enough to read, um, right? Yes, there they can do that too, but their back covers are very, very tiny, which is kind of hard to convince somebody.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Um, yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Do you use the same standard size book all the time?

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, usually uh six by nine.

SPEAKER_01:

Six by nine, yeah. That's what we do too.

SPEAKER_00:

And the other thing with the other company, Amazon will put color pictures in here if you want color pictures, whereas the other company doesn't, they're all in black and white, which is not very good.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, no, that's not very good. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Well, for someone who's longing in the world uh to uh to to write and to start storytelling, what would they need to hear from you, Frank?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, for me, first of all, just write. So most most people write best from their personal experiences. So something unusual happened to you, um, start writing about that because you can kind of get in the mood of it, the feel of it, you know, the energy. Um, and then uh as a writer, I always ask this question, what if? And so when you get into a story, uh either just write one about what something has happened to you, that's great. But then if you want to start getting to something a little more creative, ask yourself, what if? So uh give you a perfect example. I I stayed at the uh Empress Hotel in Victoria, and uh that that that place has got five verified ghosts in it, and so we are waiting for our car, and I said to the front door guys it's so kind of like I said, I love hearing stories, and this is a good one. So I said, So um any ghost stories, because you know there's five ghosts in here. He goes, Yeah, I got a strange one for you. There's a couple like you guys about five years ago, were waiting for the car and they didn't look very happy. I said, You guys okay? He goes, No, we we paid for a week, we stayed one night, we're gone. Last night we walked into our locked hotel room, my wife's luggage had been opened up, her clothes were taken out, and ghost clothes were put in, like Victorian clothing. Yeah, that's that's the reaction of most people like, what? Wow. So, as my in my head as a writer, I I know I love that story, and I thought, great. And my as a writer, I went, well, what if we have a ghost walking around in modern-day clothing? And I wove that into one of my novels.

SPEAKER_01:

Wow. So, really, so so what I'm getting from you then, Frank, is talk to people, listen to their stories, the ones you find interesting that sort of resonate or hit you, jot them down, don't forget them, because you can, when you're looking for your next book, your next story, you can go back to that information.

SPEAKER_00:

Absolutely correct, absolutely correct. Always write stuff down, even if you just have to quickly, you know, handwrite it just to get something in there to jog your memory for the next time. I do that all the time. Um, my wife hates me because sometimes I'm driving to work and I've got a pad beside me, like, oh I got it.

SPEAKER_01:

And and I'll and then I'll pull up the lights and I'm writing away and you know You're not on your iPhone, you're on your you're on your uh your your information pad.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, wow.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, Frank, I really appreciate you doing this again. You've given some uh I just you're just such a wealth of knowledge. And and for I have over 180 women writers now. Uh yeah, and um, and a few of them are uh are moving forward with their stories and and and you know, and a lot of them have just written the one story, but but um but that I love this because it's real life. You're you're in the trenches, you're doing it, you're self-published, you're selling them on your own, you're going out to all these events, you're you're um talking to people, you know, and as you're talking and you're telling me about talking to the doorman, I'm thinking, oh, I could just see me. I'd be like like this. Don't talk to me. I just can't talk. And now, now I gotta ask that doorman. So you got any good stories that you want to share?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Well, thanks again, Frank. And uh everybody, just to let you know in the show notes, I'll have um uh some links, how you can reach out to Frank or how you where you can go to purchase his book. So all of that information will be there. And um, and again, Frank, thank you so much for doing this. The information is so good.

SPEAKER_00:

Thank you. And if you if everybody has any questions or things on writing to ask, please email me. I'm I'm good with that. I love it. Because I always believe in giving back the karma to give back to people to help me become a better writer. So I always help, I actually lead a writer's group as well. So I love giving back to other people to make their them a better writer.

SPEAKER_01:

Wow. Can I ask about because I didn't know you you you uh have a writing group that you that you lead.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, so here in Chilliwack we meet on Sundays at Ricky's restaurant usually between five and seven. The next one is actually next weekend, January 18th. Um, if you want to come join us, come join us. Um on Facebook, if you look up the Lower Mainland Chilliwac Writers Group, that's the group as to join. Then you can see all the posts. Sometimes I put funny things in there, but usually I'll post when the next group is. And we'll often sit down and and read each other's work, like for most part, yeah, and help each other. Um and the other thing is I do is I'll make everybody read the story out loud. Two things. One is that if you read it out loud, you pick up a lot of mistakes you don't get by reading it in your head. And two, it gives you more confidence so that in the future, when you have to do an event and you have to talk in front of somebody or read something, you're Going to feel confident in doing because you're getting more comfortable doing it.

SPEAKER_01:

Beautiful. Maybe you could just shoot me that link so that I can share that. Because I have a lot of writers from Chilliwac.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay. Okay. Good. I'll shoot you. I'll show you that link on Facebook. Yeah. And then uh anyone wants to join and come see us, like I said, next weekend as we're meeting already at Ricky's on the Luck a Cut there at between five and seven. So come join us. And then if you just want to hang out, you don't have to bring anything you want to write. If you just want to hang out, watch what we do, go for it.

SPEAKER_01:

Perfect. Okay. Well, thank you so much. Yes, thank you. Okay, everybody. Well, that's it for now. And thank you for being here on this episode of Women Like Me Stories and Business. And we'll see you next time. Bye bye.

SPEAKER_00:

Bye bye. Take care.