Episode 22- Talking about Wild River with Ronald Kimmons

Today, we discuss the journey of Ronald Kimmons! Thank you for joining our journey through the arts. Like we always say "Pursuing your Passions is a Bitch... But it's worth it!"

Please Check out our friend, Ronald Kimmons-
His Website- https://www.ronaldmkimmons.com/free-novella

Also Check us out and our future projects at The Rogue Scientist Productions
Website- https://theroguescientistproductions.com/
Facebook- https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100087537946337
Instagram- https://www.instagram.com/roguescientistproductions/

Check out "The World Beyond" by Charles Dockham on Kindle Vella- https://www.amazon.com/kindle-vella/story/B0BMZPTP6G

Check out "The Beautiful Beast" by Carolyn Clark on Kindle Vella-https://www.amazon.com/kindle-vella/story/B0BVMNPBKZ

Check out Watsynthebox- Guest host William Thornhill- https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100094728966282&mibextid=b06tZ0

Transcript

The Rogue Scientist Productions (00:02.061)
Thank you and welcome to Pursuing Your Passions as a Bitch. I'm your host Charles Dockham, the owner of the Road Scientist Productions and the author of The World Beyond, an ongoing Kindle Velo story. With me I have my guest host Ronald Kimmins, the author of Wild River. Ronald?

Ronald M Kimmons (00:17.994)
Hi, thanks for having me on.

The Rogue Scientist Productions (00:19.981)
Hi. Thank you for joining us today. Okay, Ronald, I wanted to kind of start our conversations by talking about your novella that came out initially. So can you tell me a little bit more about it?

Ronald M Kimmons (00:38.382)
Okay, so I actually wrote the novella when I was almost done with the novel. I had gotten through the initial, through a couple of drafts of the novel actually, and I was finishing it up, adding in some more things, and as I was reading through it again, I realized, you know what? I have a really good idea for a prequel.

Ronald M Kimmons (01:08.014)
But I don't think it's going to be a very long story, but I like the idea of having something shorter that I could offer people for free to give them kind of a taste of my writing. And so after I had a couple – I was a couple drafts into the novel, but before I published the novel, I went back and wrote the novella, which is, of course, it's called Den of the Wolfman.

Ronald M Kimmons (01:36.734)
What happened there was, see I have this character, the main character in Wild River, his name is Bondus Riverman. And he is a private investigator. And this is a setting based, it's in a fantasy world based on 1860s America, like right after the Civil War. And this guy, he's a private investigator and...

Ronald M Kimmons (02:03.706)
and he is in the city that's kind of loosely based on kind of a mixture of New Orleans and New York. And he, in my novel, they actually talk about, they mention how he caught, he tracked down and caught a serial killer that they called the Wolfman. And as I was reading through my novel again, you know, that was just kind of a point of his backstory that I'd put in the novel, but as reading through the novel again, I said, you know what, I think I want to tell that story. I want to tell how he caught the Wolfman.

Ronald M Kimmons (02:35.294)
So I went back and wrote the novella about that, where he's a little less known as an investigator. And he finally lands his first big case, where he's actually going after a dangerous criminal. And he goes and he tracks down the wolfman and finds a serial killer. And that actually lays some groundwork for the novel, the trilogy that comes after that.

Ronald M Kimmons (03:01.654)
a little bit more background. You don't need to read Den of the Wolfman to understand the novel, but it kind of fleshes out the story's foundation a little bit more.

The Rogue Scientist Productions (03:12.637)
Okay, and so looking for Den of the Wolf Man, I did see that on your website. It looks like you also wrote the story, the struggles of the middle ages, or struggles of all ages, Joseph Smith's prophecy of the American Civil War.

Ronald M Kimmons (03:22.145)
Right.

Ronald M Kimmons (03:31.114)
Yeah, that's a book that I wrote, but it's not a novel. It's a non-fiction book. And that's actually what prompted me to write Wild River in a way. Because with Wild River, I had done an outline for this fantasy world that I wanted to write in. And I knew I wanted to write stories in different historical periods throughout this fantasy world that I had constructed. But initially, my...

Ronald M Kimmons (04:00.902)
my plan had been to write my first novel kind of in a medieval period. But the first book that I wrote was that, was The Struggle of All Ages. And in writing that book, I had to do a lot of research on 1860s, 1850s America and the Civil War. And so I had all that on my mind. And I'd just finished that book and I finally decided I was going to go ahead and write my first fantasy novel and…

Ronald M Kimmons (04:29.238)
Since I had all that on my mind, I'd done all that research, I was very familiar with that historical period at that point. I said, well, why not just do my first novel in that historical, in a comparable historical period? And so I did. And that's why I ended up doing Wild River. And one of the major themes in Wild River is society's transition away from slavery, which of course was the single biggest issue of the day in the 1850s and 1860s.

The Rogue Scientist Productions (04:55.349)
Yeah, no, of course. And honestly, it's pretty amazing that you're already kind of on your third story and looking at it. So what was it like to really kind of go through the process of really having to do the research about the historical period and making sure you're kind of crossing your T's and dotting your I's when it comes to making sure you're just kind of doing justice to the period. What was it like to kind of do that research?

Ronald M Kimmons (05:23.67)
Well, that's a lot of fun because I'm just a very curious person to begin with. You know, and my interests are kind of anywhere, anything and everything, right? But I think one of the most important things I did in doing that research was addressing issues of controversy. I would go and read, you know, people who disagreed with each other. You know, imagine that, you know.

Ronald M Kimmons (05:53.114)
Like there's one of the first things that I, historical issues that I tackle in the book is the argument about whether or not the Civil War was, the American Civil War was about slavery. Because more and more these days, we've had this resurgence of people saying, oh no, it wasn't really about slavery, it was about states' rights, it was about constitutionalism and stuff like that. And I went and I read the...

Ronald M Kimmons (06:21.334)
the things written by people making that argument. Specifically, there's a writer by the name of Mitchum, who I read and I quote a lot in the book. And of course, I ended up destroying his arguments, I feel. But I have a good idea of what those arguments were. And I run through basically all of his main points and some points made by others who are making that argument.

The Rogue Scientist Productions (06:36.429)
Hehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehe

Ronald M Kimmons (06:49.57)
saying that the Civil War wasn't really about slavery. And I show how like, well, in any statement of truth,

Ronald M Kimmons (07:00.842)
What happens a lot of the time is is that like it goes from? Simplicity to complexity but then back to simplicity again like like like when you're when you're in elementary school Someone give you this simple explanation or something and Then as you start to learn more you start to realize hey, you know what the explanation really wasn't that simple Like there's all these other things these are all these other factors that they never told me about all these things They didn't account for

Ronald M Kimmons (07:27.554)
But then if you press through all that, if you keep learning, you keep learning, you keep growing, you keep putting things together, then at the far side of that you realize, hey, wait a minute, what they told me in the beginning actually was true. It just, it wasn't like as simple as I assumed, but it was true. And that's kind of, I think, the realization that anyone who studies the American Civil War with regards to slavery will see is that like...

Ronald M Kimmons (07:56.118)
Yeah, we have this picture in our minds from the simplistic way it's taught in school, where we think like, oh yeah, there was slavery in the South, there was not slavery in the North. People in the North wanted to end slavery, so Lincoln sent troops to the South to end slavery, right? And that was good because they were ending slavery. Well, that's not really what happened. And that's what people like Mitchum talk about a lot.

Ronald M Kimmons (08:20.798)
Lincoln was not trying to end slavery initially. He was just trying to stop secession, and he was willing to allow slavery to continue. But at the same time, the reason that the South seceded was because they wanted slavery to spread to other territories, right? And the Republicans in the North were not willing to allow that. And so yeah, and that's why they seceded. And then of course, the war started because they seceded.

Ronald M Kimmons (08:49.21)
So it's not as simple maybe as we thought it was in elementary school, but in the end, the war was about slavery. And being able to flesh that out and show exactly why that was the case, that was one of the things that I really liked about that whole process of writing the struggle of all ages.

The Rogue Scientist Productions (09:10.245)
Yeah, and actually, I do like that period of the Civil War. And I did a little bit of research when it kind of came to different pieces in regards to just that historical time frame. And you're right, the initial thought that we were taught was that the war was about slavery. But you're right, it was Lincoln wanted to prevent secession. And it wasn't until I think that they were getting drops in numbers when it came to recruiting that they just immediately tried to

The Rogue Scientist Productions (09:39.745)
changed the war, changed the message of the war, which was about slavery. And primarily it was, I think the huge piece was because they were trying to keep England out of the war because England wanted to basically fight the North because the North had basically thrown a middle finger to them for the past couple of wars that we've had with them. So they're just like, okay, well, we want to kind of back the South because we just don't want to, we don't want to cause any issue. So.

Ronald M Kimmons (09:51.5)
Right.

The Rogue Scientist Productions (10:06.741)
The only way to kind of keep England out and try to make sure that to keep them out was to say, no, this is to prevent slavery. And at that point, it became the political message of, well, England can't now back the South because now they're promoting slavery. And that's a huge piece that was not a part of it at all. So, I mean, it is a huge political mess. And we kind of look at it now and go, oh, wow.

Ronald M Kimmons (10:24.3)
Right.

The Rogue Scientist Productions (10:32.449)
A lot of stuff happened. It's very similar to our politics now in terms of just kind of the everything that goes into building and making anything happen. It's just they're less informed across the board because they don't have the nightly news. They don't have YouTube. They don't have all these different things. They're reading everything through papers and the information is just...

The Rogue Scientist Productions (11:00.977)
I think that was around the, just before the time or around the time of yellow news, which is the huge push for fake news and just having to kind of make sure that all that information has to stay true.

Ronald M Kimmons (11:12.428)
Yeah.

Ronald M Kimmons (11:16.574)
And that's something I talk about in the struggle of all ages as well. That's one of the ways in which the American Civil War was basically the first modern war. War historians, they say that a lot. They say that it was the first modern war. And there are many ways in which that's true. One of them is just that. It's the use of...

Ronald M Kimmons (11:42.306)
propaganda in a way and on a scale never seen before. Like both the North and the South sent operatives into Europe to try to sway the opinions not just of the leaders of Europe, but of the public, of the people. They would go and pay journalists to write articles supporting their perspective in the war. And this was done a lot.

The Rogue Scientist Productions (11:59.629)
Mm-hmm.

Ronald M Kimmons (12:11.934)
lot and there is there is a lot of misinformation. This was the first war in which public opinion itself was weaponized and that's something that's happened in every major war since then.

The Rogue Scientist Productions (12:26.281)
Yeah, and no, that's a very interesting point as well. And like you said, when it came to being one of the most modern wars, or the first modern war, it was also one of the wars that we focused on building up the transportation network. I mean, the North had a series of railroads, but the South wasn't as built up as it was. So it was really hard.

Ronald M Kimmons (12:49.77)
Yeah, we had.

The Rogue Scientist Productions (12:53.798)
Yeah, no, go ahead.

Ronald M Kimmons (12:54.114)
There's more railroad in the US at that time, there's more railroad in the US at that time before the Civil War than in the entire rest of the world combined. And the South had significantly less than the North, but the South still had more railroad than pretty much every other country. And so both sides of the war, they used...

Ronald M Kimmons (13:16.63)
Like, railroads have been used before that to transport troops, but not very effectively. Like, it was done in the Korean War, but not, it wasn't done very effectively. But this was the first time where both sides used it extensively in a tactical way, where they would have troops going on and off of trains just all over the place. It was part of their normal way of moving troops. This is the first time that was ever done.

Ronald M Kimmons (13:43.598)
And that's one of the things I talk about in the book is that, is how it was the first modern war, and it was kind of the bellwether of what we could expect after that and all other modern wars. It was the first modern war in terms of weaponry, in terms of the politics involved, also in terms of the ideology. The ideology, something that I talk about in the book, is that since the Civil War, since the American Civil War…

Ronald M Kimmons (14:12.598)
Basically every major conflict and most minor conflicts have been at their heart an ideological conflict between liberalism and statism. There's kind of this meta narrative that has evolved. See before that it was more wars tend to be more a matter of like we have something that they have something that we want or we're trying to defend ourselves from them trying to take something that we want.

Ronald M Kimmons (14:43.15)
We don't like their king, we need to depose him so that we can become more powerful. That sort of thing. It was more a matter of either self-interest or sense of national identity or religious affiliation. It was not a matter of ideology. The reason that hundreds of thousands of Europeans joined the war

Ronald M Kimmons (15:10.494)
on the side of the North was because they had been fighting for democracy in Europe for decades already and they had largely lost at that point. Democracy, these leftists, these democratic movements in Europe had been largely ineffective and they felt that they had lost but these ideas were still there and they saw and here America was struggling and they saw clearly which side

Ronald M Kimmons (15:39.406)
represented those ideals better and they saw that as the American Civil War as kind of the focal point of a broader war going on throughout the world. And that's kind of continued to this day, this conflict of liberalism versus statism. And even when people have only been giving lip service to those values, a lot of time people who supposedly advocate liberal values really don't.

Ronald M Kimmons (16:06.218)
You know, a lot of times those are your petty dictators who call their countries democracies when they're not, but still in every major conflict that ideology, that ideological core has been there since the Civil War. Because that kind of, it was an inflection point in human history. But of course, that's something I talk about in the book. The struggle of all ages, that is.

The Rogue Scientist Productions (16:20.51)
Mm-hmm.

The Rogue Scientist Productions (16:28.765)
No, of course. It actually sounds like a very passionate topic for you and a fun topic to kind of talk about. But kind of tell me about a little bit more about the newest book.

Ronald M Kimmons (16:36.907)
Yeah.

Ronald M Kimmons (16:41.932)
Yeah.

Ronald M Kimmons (16:46.882)
Wild River, so yeah, like I said, here I'd been writing about that era, and I've always been someone who likes fantasy and I wanted to write fantasy, and I had this general history of a fantasy world mapped out, and so I decided to go ahead and write in that era. And yeah, the book starts with, it's like in this city called Wild River, there's a former slave.

Ronald M Kimmons (17:17.254)
And he's kind of a mix between Sherlock Holmes and Frederick Douglass. He's a former slave and he's a private investigator. And of course, at the beginning of Wild River, he's already called the Wolf Man, so he has a little bit of notoriety there. And three different people come to him individually and ask him to find the same missing person.

Ronald M Kimmons (17:44.414)
And of course that becomes very curious since two of them are from influential wealthy families that are at odds with each other, that are rivals. And so he has to go and investigate this and try to find out who abducted her, what happened to her, and in doing so he starts to uncover some of these long hidden secrets among the more wealthy families in the area and you see this broader conflict.

Ronald M Kimmons (18:14.306)
that is kind of seething just under the surface with different parties vying for supremacy. And there's this ancient power that is kind of waiting to arise again. And different people are trying to get control of that. And you start to get a glimpse of that in this book as he goes to find this woman, her name is Solana.

The Rogue Scientist Productions (18:30.829)
Mm-hmm.

Ronald M Kimmons (18:43.354)
And as he does so, he uncovers all these secrets about special powers that certain groups of people have, certain affiliations that people have that maybe wasn't realized before, so on and so forth.

The Rogue Scientist Productions (18:53.46)
Mm-hmm.

The Rogue Scientist Productions (18:59.857)
No, that's actually, that sounds like a great book, and especially in terms of, I can tell that you've kind of done your research and it kind of sounds very, what's the writer's name who did a lot of those Cthulhu novels and stuff like that, kind of sounds similar to that. But no, it sounds like it's great. Did you go through the traditional? Yeah, Lovecraft.

Ronald M Kimmons (19:26.094)
She's talking about Lovecraft.

The Rogue Scientist Productions (19:29.549)
Um, but, uh, did you go through the traditional writing, uh, or traditional publishing or did you self polish?

Ronald M Kimmons (19:31.052)
Yeah.

Ronald M Kimmons (19:37.686)
No, I have no desire to deal with traditional publishers. I've been looking at this for years and just from everything that I've seen, I think if a publisher had just come to me and just offered me this really lucrative contract from the get-go, I would have taken it. But no one was going to do that. I knew that. So coming from where I was, I just...

Ronald M Kimmons (20:06.794)
People will say, well, but most self-published books are not successful. They don't get any sales. Well, most books published through traditional publishers are not successful and don't get any sales. The difference is largely a matter of whether or not the author is able to really do effective marketing. And so that's something I'm going to have to be doing on, you know, largely on my own with or without a publisher. So why involve a publisher in it and why go and write hundreds of, of, of query

Ronald M Kimmons (20:37.038)
to publishers and to agents and everything when I could take that energy and just devote it to my marketing from the beginning.

The Rogue Scientist Productions (20:45.017)
Exactly. And I mean, that's that is a huge piece to kind of really bring up is that whether or not you go through the traditional publishing method or self publishing, it is marketing. And, and as much as everybody kind of thinks, well, the traditional publishing teams have marketing teams that help market their book. They're only so large and they don't have a gigantic team just for you. They have to market everybody's book. So

The Rogue Scientist Productions (21:11.013)
It's, it's your primarily doing the marketing yourself. You're, you're pushing the marketing yourself and, and you're right. You, you kind of have to take those, those reins and do it.

Ronald M Kimmons (21:23.902)
And the truth of the matter is that most, a lot of the time, even if writers get published, they get that contract and everything, that there's no guarantee that the publisher is going to allocate significant resources toward marketing their book. They don't really know what's going to happen there. And so yeah, I would rather just do that myself, especially since I do have a background in marketing. My wife and I, we have a marketing agency.

Ronald M Kimmons (21:53.854)
And the kind of marketing that we have done is different from this. It's, it's, uh, we, what we do is we help coaches and course creators to, to sell their programs online. And it's, it's a, it's a different kind of marketing. So I'm, I'm having to learn a lot, but, um, it's just since I have that background, uh, I, uh, that gave me a lot of confidence to, to, to go ahead and jump into this and, and, and, and do this. Um, but, but yeah, like there's, the publishers, they,

Ronald M Kimmons (22:24.386)
they're not necessarily going to allocate resources to you to market your book. And also there there's a high likelihood that, I mean, even though they provide things like, like, like editing and stuff, they also there's a high likelihood that they will try to, um, uh, micromanage the creative aspect of what you do and, and try to tell you to write a completely different book from what you want to write. And I just say, you know, why, why, why deal with that? You know, as,

Ronald M Kimmons (22:52.894)
as a creative person, you know, I'm in this because I want to do this. I want to create what I want to create. Why involve another party in this if I don't need to, if they're not even really bringing a lot of value to the table. And so that that's, yeah, I, I just, I just don't really have much desire to work through traditional publishers. Maybe once, once, you know, I have gotten a significant number of sales with my book and traditional publishers can see that and I am coming from a position of strength. Um,

Ronald M Kimmons (23:23.798)
then maybe I would be interested in working with a traditional publisher, but otherwise I would rather just go it on my own.

The Rogue Scientist Productions (23:32.829)
Yeah, that's a good point is that you're working on your own image, you're working on your own, creating your own name in the industry. And that's a huge point, especially where you're building your value in terms of what you're bringing to your stories. And when it comes to working with a traditional publisher at that point, you're...

The Rogue Scientist Productions (23:57.961)
Yes, you have the Penguin name, but you're but they're wanting to work with you because you have this name in the industry that they're looking for. And that's a big piece and kind of gives you a little bit more leeway, especially when it comes to like you said, they sometimes want to just have you write a story. But if you have a bigger name, then they kind of give you a little bit more leeway on that side. So self-publishing is kind of a great route to kind of go through, especially if it's you want to write the story you want to write. And.

The Rogue Scientist Productions (24:28.081)
Sometimes when you're going through the process of, oh, well, my book has a trilogy in mind and you think that your book is gonna have more stories afterwards, sometimes the traditional publisher connects the additional books that you were thinking of and you can only have one. So it, but at that point you've signed the contract and you're stuck with that one book. So it's just making sure to do your best to really kind of stoke that creative heart that you have.

Ronald M Kimmons (24:59.198)
Yeah, and also, I think one of the things that caused me to make this decision years ago, like a decade ago, I was thinking of doing this and reading about it, about publishing industry. I read an article by a novelist. I actually forgot her name, but the article was, he beats me, but he's my publisher. And she, of course,

Ronald M Kimmons (25:27.018)
referencing the many abused wives who would say like, oh, he beats me, but he's my husband. He loves me. So they stay with him even though he abuses them. And saying how more and more the publishing industry has become predatory toward authors and not just the publishers, but also the agents that has become more common. Like to have contracts that are just not really in the author's interest at all.

The Rogue Scientist Productions (25:48.361)
Mm-hmm.

Ronald M Kimmons (25:58.042)
And one reason is that that's happening is because they're afraid because of self-publishing. So they're trying to kind of get their hooks into authors and keep them. But yeah, I don't want to deal with an industry that's intrinsically becoming more and more predatory. And I think the fact that the big houses continue to merge only contributes to that.

The Rogue Scientist Productions (26:25.717)
Mm-hmm. And it's kind of a huge piece because I've actually seen two different... Well, actually in the process of the timeframe that I've been doing this podcast, I've been able to speak to different authors and different people on different ends of the spectrum in terms of self-publishing, going through a traditional publishing. And so I've kind of learned quite a bit in terms of the...

The Rogue Scientist Productions (26:56.125)
I guess the end result of going through certain processes, and I've talked to somebody who created their own publishing company, and they've been very happy with going that route. And I've talked to somebody who self-publishes, and they've been very happy with going that route. And honestly, at the end of the day, it's just doing something that you feel makes yourself happy. And like you said,

The Rogue Scientist Productions (27:23.029)
There are people who are very predatory out there trying to take advantage of first-time authors trying to take advantage of of people getting into the industry and I have had stories in terms of people Saying if you pay me six hundred dollars, i'll edit your stuff and giving backs giving back some Um, like a 20 page thing of here's an editorial you need to rewrite your entire book. It sucks And it had nothing to do with somebody's book Um, like it wasn't even their book

The Rogue Scientist Productions (27:51.933)
Like they're on page six, it's like, oh yeah, this character is doing something wrong. And it's just like that character is not even in my book. What are they talking about? So it's really trying to find a good person in the industry to kind of do that or just kind of taking it on yourself. Like you said, you have a history in marketing. You're going to you're going to use those chops and kind of make your way in the field. And that's.

Ronald M Kimmons (27:52.447)
Mm-hmm

Ronald M Kimmons (27:54.902)
Hahaha

Ronald M Kimmons (28:01.678)
Yeah.

The Rogue Scientist Productions (28:15.381)
That's the best you can hope for. I mean, I have a history in sales. I thought that this would be a great way for me to try to get started in the industry too. So even though they're two different avenues, they kind of are very important in kind of getting started. And so, no, I'm glad that we kind of have this chance to kind of talk about it, that you're right. There are people just trying to take advantage of you out there.

Ronald M Kimmons (28:41.642)
Yeah, and as far as self-publishing goes, like I would advise pretty much anyone listening to this and thinking about this, like, yeah, just don't, don't give any money to anyone claiming to be a publisher, especially when we're just getting started. There's just a lot of people out there who just wanna take your money and they really aren't gonna do very much for you. It's fine to...

Ronald M Kimmons (29:10.658)
from a writer's perspective, like to pay people to help you design a good book cover, to pay people to maybe to edit and proofread for you. But you know, like go on Fiverr or whatever to do that. Don't like, don't go to someone who says, you know, they're going to publish your book and put it into so many, all these different bookstores and everything. You just have to pay them like, you know, so many hundreds of dollars. Like, I think they're...

Ronald M Kimmons (29:39.906)
There are some companies out there that will do that and they can actually make a good run of it. It can work. But I think just as a general thing, just be very leery of that. In fact, I personally know someone who has a business like that and I think that he does a very good job. But

Ronald M Kimmons (30:09.042)
I know that the vast majority of that kind of thing is not something that you should trust. It's kind of a money grab. So don't go that route. Just build your following. You'll get people interested in your work and do the groundwork yourself. Write the book yourself.

Ronald M Kimmons (30:37.918)
One thing I want to say though about Amazon is that I don't plan on staying with Amazon. Like Wild River is available on Amazon right now. But for numerous reasons, I think that for an independent writer like me, the best thing is actually just to sell directly to your readership. And that's something that I am looking to do. I'm not quite to that point.

Ronald M Kimmons (31:06.874)
And I do see how there can be value in Amazon going and as far as providing a platform. But like so far, I've gotten a number of sales in my book. Pretty much everyone has come from my own efforts. Amazon has not brought me really anyone. It's just me driving people to Amazon

Ronald M Kimmons (31:36.746)
having them buy and seeing that, I'm realizing that probably what I need to do is just go at my own as far as the actual printing and distribution as well and not even go through Amazon. But I'm not quite to that point, but I think I'll probably be there soon.

The Rogue Scientist Productions (31:58.569)
Yeah, and honestly, that's that is a really good point because Amazon itself, while being a great platform for you to distribute content on and distribute different things, one, you get lost in the weeds because it is a gigantic virtual marketplace. You are you're kind of having to really kind of shout in the corner to make sure people can get a chance to kind of see you and to sometimes Amazon does have certain

The Rogue Scientist Productions (32:28.393)
introductory authors best interest in terms of sales. So it's kind of one of those things where it's a double edged sword, but it's the right way to kind of get started in terms of just having a platform to sell your things from, especially if you don't have a website yet or anything along those ends in terms of any deals with either a printing shop or anything like that that can print your book for you. So...

Ronald M Kimmons (32:29.548)
Right.

The Rogue Scientist Productions (32:55.521)
But I think that that is a great way to end our episode today. So I would like to thank you for joining us for our episode. And are there any projects? Yeah, are there any projects coming up? Social media accounts, websites that you would like, any of my followers to reach out to you on or follow you on?

Ronald M Kimmons (33:08.494)
Thanks for having me on.

Ronald M Kimmons (33:21.066)
So yeah, I would say like if anyone's interested in my work at all, I think they should go to my website Ronaldmkimmons.com And just there's a banner at the top where it says you can you can get the free novella Den of the Wolf Man You know and you can you can get that it's not too long. It's a novella Read that have a look at that if you like Den of the Wolf Man Then then I think that that'll that's a pretty good sign that you're going to like the rest of my work and

Ronald M Kimmons (33:50.614)
And like I said, it's a prequel to Wild River and it carries over into Wild River. I'm on YouTube, I'm on TikTok, I'm called Indie Novelist on YouTube. My channel is actually called Power of Story. Sorry, Power Through Story. But yeah, I welcome people to connect with me there. And yeah, let's...

Ronald M Kimmons (34:18.058)
Stick with me. Let's go through this process together. I'm still learning, I'm still growing. If there are any other writers out there who are interested, then go and follow me and interact with me. Tell me what you think and we can learn and grow together.

The Rogue Scientist Productions (34:39.905)
Thank you so much. And as for me, you'll be able to find us on our website, theroadscientistproductions.com, where we have our merchandise and links to my story on Kindle Vella, The World Beyond. You also have all of our Rhodes Scientist social media platforms, Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter. The best way to support us is to like our podcast on your favorite podcast platform of choice and let others know how much you've enjoyed our show. We want to thank you for being on our show today and thank our guests for listening.

The Rogue Scientist Productions (35:09.905)
as well. This has been our podcast to all of those out there looking to start a new career in the arts such as acting, writing, music, comedy and more. Always remember, pursuing your passions is a bitch, but it's worth it.