And it was just what is happeni. And it was ever since then, every time we look at like the rankings in Amazon
or something else, it's just it's a whole new worl. It's amazing. I've enjoyed writing a whole life. But as far as being
a serious author, I started taking it seriously wI started homeschooling my kids aI started studying the
crafter writing. I wanted to get better
at it. And then. By the time they graduated
high school, I had some some works that I could work with and get put out. As far as published books, is this your first? Your third?s is my debut novel. Yeah,
it was funny. I was writing another book when Lee got into my brain and she would not leave me alone. So I had to stop writing that b, write this book. And then I went on to
complete that first, that other book. But this is my debut book, my first published book. How does that feel to put a book out in public for the first time and go through the process lookg for a publisher and, you know, going and putting yourself out e at book signings, What is that ? It's a whole mix of things. It's frightening because you're putting something out that's very personal to you. It's frustrating because it's just hard to break in. There's so many people
trying to
do that, but perseverance and, you know, just believing in yourself and somebody else will believe
in you if you. Just hold. Do it. The person who ended up believing in you unexpected. You talking about red
at the grocery store? Yeah, it was. Well, the way that happened is I was signing books and there was a lull in my sale, and so I'm sitting there alone, kind of bored. Nobody's talking to me for a wh. And then he came over because he saw me sitting there alone. And he asked if he could
make a TikTok video. And I said sure. And the next thing I know, the Internet, it blew up. I am not an author, obvious, but I've done different things r different companies,
like career fairs. And I know for me, like sitting out there by myself waiting for people to
come, it's boring. I get a little antsy in that wa. When you were just waiting kind of by yourself in the Kroger, what was that like? It was boring, mostly. You know, I think Reddit
said it dejected. I'm not sure I agree with that , but it was boring. It even comes and goes. But I also use that time
a lot of writing. Time is imagination time. So I plot out, you know, scenes and scenarios. And what if this conversation
takes place and what if they meet
a person like that? And would this be interesting for other people to read? So, I mean, it's time well spent, but after, I think by the time Red came around and taught me, I'd already been there for quite a few hours. When Red told you I'm gonna
post this TikTok. Did you think anything of it? I didn't think anything of it at . I I didn't even have a TikTok account myself on, you know, Saturday and Monday I
got a TikTok account to respond to all these
great people, you know, reaching out to me. Did you know anything about Tik? What it was, how it worked? Oh, I knew what it was, how it work. I still don't know how it worke. I mean, I'm an engineer. And how 9 year olds are doing this, I do not know. Tell me how you found out that it had blown up. We were watching TV and my wifes getting notifications
that people were requesting signed copies
and my phone was buzzing that people
were signing up, subscribing to my website. And the more that happened is the night went on, we got looking into it and it ws just what is happening
and it was ever since then every time we look a. Like the rankings in Amazon or something else, It's just it's a whole new worl. This is amazing. Number one. What is it? I get choked up. Easy. What's checking you up now? Oh, it's just the the lovef outpouring of generosity
and support. You told me that this makes you think of kindness. Oh, absolutely. This is like textbook
how kindness works. Red took 510 minutes out of his, out of his day just to be nice o some guys sitting alone selling books and the generosity of the port out of that is just amazin. You have kids that are at least a child that's out of college. So I know you've seen a lot of . Are you a veteran? Is that righ? I'm a veteran. I was in the 82nd Airborne Division in the infantry. I'm very proud to say my son is going to serve. So you're veteran, your
husband,
you got kids, so you've lived a lot of . What did what did you
learn from this? Did this teach you anything
or surprise you at all or reinforce anythint reinforced some things that I that I really believe that people are generally good, that generosity is just waiting for an excuse to happen. Red was that excuse. What else about it makes
you emotional? Because I can't imagine
you do this book. You're sitting nut Kroger by yourself and all of a sudden. Thousands, 10s of millions of pe have watched this and cheered to long. It's just boggles the min. It's just insane. And I did. It wasn't expected and I never expected anything like this. I'm, you know, I'm selling these books at Krog. Thinking a day of 18 to 20 bucks is an incredible sale. And next thing you know, I'm number one sales on Amazon is it's just incredible. But I think that's part of the struggle of of being a new auth. Especially if you go with the independent publisher or yourse, publish is getting that word ou. I mean I'm sure there
are other really great books out there that arent being seen just because they do. How do you get that word out? It's just so hard to get noticed when you how long between
when you met, what day was it that
you were at Kroger? I was at Kroger on Saturday,
January 1st. And what day was it that you std to notice things were picking u? It was a Sunday, Sunday evening. So just a day later, just a day later, just a day in. Now as this is all happening anu know like about to shake your e, what race is through your
mind about this? Like how do you even process it? What what goes on in your mind? Well, I I, to be honest with yo, I just accept it as the way things are going right now. This is what God's doing with me right now and I just go with it. You're a religious man. Yes, I am. So how do you see this through that? Well, I just see it, you know, is the faith of a mustard
seed in the tsunami of blessings that
can come from it? It's really about all you can s. It's, you know, I had, I had believed in the book and I think perseverance, hard
work, you know, what is it that can kill the Lo, helps those who help themselves. So you got to put in the effort. And I think eventually
those blessings will come if you persevere
and stick
with it. Is this something you prayed for all the time? All the time? Yeah, it's. And, you know, it's usually an openended thing. It's like, you know, you know, you know our situation, help and whatever God
wants to do after, that's up to him. Far be it for me to tell
God what
to do. Listen, I want to make him laug. I think I make that laugh a lot. You said your situation. How How will this? Influx of attention and
funds and all that. How will this help you
and your family? What does it mean to you guys? Well, it means a lot to me the the comments that I'm seeing on Amazon about people who noticede the TikTok sent them to Amazon. But the comments that they really like the book and they enjoyed the content and and. Especially the meaningful ones to me it's like I, you know I got off reading but s is reignited my desire to read y children are going to
read this together. Those are the meaningful ones to know that you're going
to this book is going to touch so many
families that way. Yeah absolutely. To have an impact that's
going to change somebody and and hopefully
other people are going to get a bump
out of this too. I mean it's I believe in sharine wealth you know and
if other authors. See a bump in their sales? Cuz you know what this
Indy author
did this Maybe other Indy authors
will come up. Or if my publisher
is it that they're a small publisher out of Housto. If they see a bump out of that, cuz they've been great, more power to them. The more people who can, you kn, benefit from this is
it's just great. Do you know, I mean I know we talked about this on funding. Any idea how many books you've ? A rough estimate. I think my publishers said something like 5000 books, which is a huge number
of books really. I mean, it's not like you. I would love to be able to say, oh, millions of books, but you know, 5000 of book sales is an awful lot of books. I think the, if I remember
correctly, debut authors can expect maybe 1000 books to be sold. So I'm well above that mark and very grateful. We only get about a minute or to to tell a story like this on TV. So I always ask my interview
subjects, what do you think that the message is in this story? What do you hope our viewers take away from your story? Well, I hope they take
away the message. Like I said earlier, 5 minutes f kindness from one person
has made such a huge impact and I think you k, you can do that anywhere. Just, you know, tell the bad dad joke to the grocery clerk or. Anything like that, just a few minutes of kindness can really make a huge impact in somebody else's life. Tell me a little bit about the book, the synopsis. I heard it in the video to read, but give it to me too. Sure. So it's the story of a teenage l who teams up with a ghost with multiple personalities to help e the mystery of her parents murd. She goes to live with very wealy family members she never
knew she had. And has amazing adventures after that and trying to figure out who killed her parents and why. From the moment you got the idef the book to the time
you published it. How long did that take? Wow, I that one probably took about 8 months, 8 to 12 months. It was really it was really a g. A good flow. It it's. I don't want to say that it wroe itself because there were momens of struggle and was like, oh, I got myself painted myself in a corner here how do I get out? But this one went together fairy quickly, I think. And are you. I know you said this is your first novel, that you worked as an engineer. Are you retired? No. I quit working as an engineer ad started homeschooling my kids at the same time my wife graduated. And we moved to a new city and e had a conversation about that. I was in the Cleveland area of o and we had a conversation
about that. And we decided that homeschoolig would be the best thing for our family and for our kids. And it turned out to
be great because, you know, I could talk
about my kids forever. They're just wonderful. And it led you to this passion of writing. Well, that is always I was. I was that kid at school who lod forward to the writing assignme. So that that's always been ther, but it just wasn't. Sharp. And it wasn't polished. It was, it was one of those this I like to do this, and I've started lots of little stories and they were
all really bad, but eventually they got better. I think what's great too, is that even though you
always loved writing, you know, it wasn't until you retired from your job and startd homeschool teaching that you kn, you learn that this is something you wanted to do. And to me, part of the lesson too
is it's never too late in life to start
to do something else or learn what you love. No, no, The adventure is never over. The adventure is never over. Anything else? And just
tell me a little bit about your service
again, please, Sir. So I was in the I was in the ar, the infantry of the
A Second airborne division, first battalion
of the Five O 5th Airborne Infantry,
to be specific. Did you, Were you been reader bk then or writer even then? I've always been a big reader, but it's a struggle for me. I have a touch of dyslexia, so it's a real struggle
for me to read. And numbers are even worse. So I have to read very slowly, or the faster I read, the more jumbled it
gets on the page. So I have to read slowly. You get even more impressive. I mean, even even having
to deal with that becoming a published autho, I feel like that probably makes it a little harder. But you were still able to do i. Yeah, I think anybody can overc, you know, you just have to embr. Who you are and what your strugs are because we all have them. So you just have to embrace them and work around them and have te courage to say I will overcome. I know that you said in an in an openended way it's sort of a prr answer what is your prayer now after all this has come your way they ever since this happened my prayers my prayers
are pretty simple. I'm not pretty simple guy. The reason is just thank you, you know and whatever's
next with you. I pray that if anything comes ot of this somebody can get inspird or or feel what they need to fel or some help comes to them in some way through what I've done and that's that's great you kno. But basically lately my prayers just been you know thanks big thanks there's a
message you
want to say to to read well I
mean what would
it be well. Obviously, it's how grateful and thankful m that he took time to
be so kind
to me. Like I said, I was just
sitting there, bored, nobody to talk to, and he just came over and out of the goodness of his heart. So, you know, there's this guy sitting there bored, you know, go talk to him, lighten up his day a little bit. And that small, you know, little seed of kindness, it's h. And you don't know him at all. He's a total stranger. He, I didn't know who he was whn he came in and he bought the bo. You know, he just said he wanteo support the author,
asked if I could, if he can make a TikTok video. I'm sure if I could help you ou. By all means, you know, whatever I can do to help
out somebody else. The book came out November
22nd, right? Right before Thanksgiving. And I've been having book signi, it's like half Price books and Kroger's has this great authors in the grocery store program, which is how this all came about about. Do you have any idea how book sales were going from November to now? Before all thi? I was averaging about
20 books
a sales event and I hadn't held that ma. On Amazon, it wasn't that greats because I said it wasn't getting noticed because it's
hard to stand out. It's such a thick field. Oh, and you said that you're geg messages from folks all
over the world.
I am. It's it's a I mean, that's one f the things that's really bizarr, you know, Saturday, I don't think 12 people
knew my name. Now I'm getting love from
Bulgaria and people from Australia asking
me to, you know. Talk to them on their talk showd how do you wrap your
brain around that? I'm still struggling with it. Your mentality and like
you're as you're sitting from November
or December
and those book signings until the
most recent one. Like you talked about, like your writing process
you've sat there whenever there was
moments important. But like, there's also like, you got to maintain positive. Like we're going to get sales. Say we're going to, even if it's not a lot. Like, what did you tell yoursel? About that whole process, those feelings that you had the, and then to now being having th, this great success too. I just persevered, you know, kept doing what I was doing, you know, You know, I might. My day is pretty simple. I get up in the morning and I pray that I'm a better human being than I was yesterday. I go to bed at night apologizinr failing at that. And in between, I try to write stories that somy might like to read
and enjoy reading. So it was just perseverance. I've worked on other stories. I'm working on a screenplay now that I would love DC to pick up. And I don't know how to get it , you know, and just keep writing, just keep persevering, keep doing what you're doing. Eventually something will give. Well, I promise I'm not trying to force you to cry on TV, but I just want to say
before we
wrap up, I see you getting choked up throughout the interview. Is there anything else about th? He's making you emotional or that's touching your heart that you think The thing that makes me emotional is the e of the people they they saw this thing of this guy not getting a, you know, struggling
to sell his book and it's doing what he has to d, is working hard and is
out there
and they gave me a chance and that's
just beautiful. And I think part of it for me at least, is. Like I said, I don't like to sit out there a. I get lonely and stressed and bored and nervous, and a lot of people would choose, all right, not a lot of people are coming . I'm going to leave. You didn't do that. No. Like I said, I I have a lotf patience and a lot of perseverae and I'm a pretty chill guy, so I don't mind sitting there. I'm comfortable with
my own thoughts. And like I said, a lot
of times
I plot out scenes for books or movies . You know, that's a large part of writing is, you know, the fantasy land in our brains. There's probably medication fort message to other authors. And then, like, now that he's got TikTok will be like, oh, yeah, Are you gonna what are you doing with your TikTok? I'm just out now. So what's what's the feature of the TikTok? Oh, I'm just keeping people up to date on what's happening, making sure I'm thanking everyb. Putting out some things like myI talked to my publisher this morg and audio book is in the works . Hardcover version is
in the works now. So just keep people updated as long as they're interested. I think they deserve to know the the latest news. And our last question
for you any message to either other struggling
authors or anyone who's really
struggling
to get their passion project
off the ground? You know just work hard and. Is? That's a hard question
to answer really. The the big thing is,
at least
for me, the biggest things about
and I can I'll, I can only talk about writing. But the big thing is invest the time to learn the craft. Know what you're doing. I mean, you know Picasso was a great immigrationist and did all these wonderful things, but he knew how to draw the basc fruits and vegetables first, you know and so learn the basicd build and build and
build from there.
