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The Writers Block
The Writers Block is a weekly podcast of conversation and improv story-telling. Join writers Clarence Carter and Shaun Nigro in this one-of-a-kind 8Sparks Media production.
The Writers Block
Chap62: Body in the Bayou, Part 2 [crime/suspense]
Clarence discusses a fundraiser for a fellow writer on Tiktok. Shaun goes into detail about his newest rap review podcast, co-hosted by James Shannon of Blare Radio. And the writers discuss the pitfalls of being a creator in the age of social media, and the constant war with algorithms.
At around 42:40, the latest Detective Jade tale continues in Part 2 of "Bodies in the Bayou." The plot thickens in this week's fully improvised tale as Jade and Detective Bailey uncover some more sinister, and perhaps satanic, elements of the murders around downtown New Orleans.
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AndAnd Mark Nigro Services @
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Support the show on our Patreon @
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Brought to you by NerdCore at the Auburn Mall
https://www.nerdcoremaine.com/
And R Card Place, also at the Auburn Mall
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100094014247014
AndAnd Mark Nigro Services @
mnigroservices@gmail.com
Stay up to date with Clarence Carter @
https://www.clarencecarterauthor.com/
And Shaun J. Nigro @
http://www.shaunjnigro.com
Follow The Writers Block on Meta @
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This episode is brought to you by Nerdcore, a store in the Auburn Mall located in Auburn Maine, the place for all your nerdy needs. You can find Clarence and I's books there, as well as a plethora of other local writers, artists, 3D printed, d in details, taxidermy, you name it. They even have board games and tarot card readings, in addition to regularly hosting local creators. And as if that weren't enough, I like to dig through their used vinyl collection, which are organized into multiple genres I usually go for classical or jazz and are all reasonably priced and tested beforehand. So yeah, check out the Nerdcore store today at the Auburn Maine Mall. And now for our feature presentation.
Speaker 3:Bang, bump, clank, clank, clank, ring, ring, ring. All the noises out, all the popping, all the unnecessary shit.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, just had to get my coffee because I'm having one of those days which we all have, I just, I think, anyway, so what's new? I feel like we just drove to Dunkin Donuts and then we had basically what probably could have been a conversation on the podcast.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but we cut a lot of it short though. Yeah, we didn't really go into depth, it was mostly just like updates.
Speaker 1:That's the problem with being a podcast or friends. You got to like silence yourself.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we don't always do that. You're not on a mic. Okay Well, you have another project coming up so we can start there.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, actually, in a couple of hours I will be recording with James Shannon from I think it was like season two. Well, he wasn't on this podcast, but he had me on his podcast, blair Radio, interviewing me as critic the rapper, and it was one of my favorite interviews ever because we were basically just shooting the shit, like you and I do, but talking about like rap music and stuff. So last week I was thinking it might be fun to. I have actually always wanted to do a music review type podcast where I have an excuse just to listen to music and talk about it with other people, and I know that he's passionate about rap music as well. So I asked him and he said yeah, so now we've got a. He's working on the logo. I think right now we're going with critique the rapper as a name is a play on critic the rapper.
Speaker 1:And yeah, basically, just, we're going to start with we've got four, two picks each of our favorite albums and we're going to I think it'll be good just to like figure our conversational style out and then we're going to start doing more like newer albums that are more relevant to the kids these days, to the kids. So, yeah, that should be fun.
Speaker 3:Perfect. What else is going on? There's a whole bunch going on. Next month we have two events. We have the collectible show in the Auburn Mall.
Speaker 1:That's that's early, I don't remember what day always on the third. It's always the first Saturday of every other month, right? So we'll have one in June as well.
Speaker 3:And then late in April we have the bingo, the almost a bingo main comic in Toy Con in Portland. It's at the cross insurance arena, yeah, yeah, and we'll both be there. We'll both be selling our books. You'll be selling your two kids books and your collection. I'll be selling all my bullshit, yep.
Speaker 1:And I was planning on having the seed to ready, but I just don't think it's going to happen. But Keith, he's got I think he said last I talked to him like 20 or 21 pages already mapped out, not done, but of the comic book based on the all dolled up story. So because we had talked about this at the last event, because the the our cards events that they do at the Auburn Mall are, we're surrounded by people reselling comic books and trading cards and stuff like that, so we kind of stick out and we were thinking both of us have never had or like a full comic based on a story. So next up I would love to do when to go and eventually pair that with all dolled up.
Speaker 1:Speaking of what is expensive, it's basically like releasing vinyl records with music. It's expensive to make comics.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it is. I learned that by doing a kid's book. It's really fucking expensive.
Speaker 1:Speaking of, while we're in this topic, tell them about Karen and about oh yeah, speaking of all dolled up, last or two episodes ago now, I had mentioned that I think it's their sixth issue that all dolled up would be in and that's out now, mystic magazine, yeah, mystic Minds magazine.
Speaker 1:Mystic Minds, karen comics that's out now. I don't know if you can get it on Amazon I assume you could, but I'm a Patreon member and with that you get, depending on the tier, access to their previous published publications in e format. And then there's a tier that allows you to have one of the limited prints that they do. But anyway, I think it's actually at the end of this month, march, that my story will be coming out in issue number seven. I believe it is. I think it is seven, yeah.
Speaker 3:Did they show you like the cover art yet?
Speaker 1:I haven't seen the cover art and I don't know if we talked about this last time, but I had. I think we did. But I had pitched Keith an idea to come up with one image quicker than the rest of the comics that could possibly coincide with that release. So maybe we still have time. That'd be cool if Keith was on the cover and then the story was on the inside.
Speaker 3:But do you know any of the other authors in it? I don't.
Speaker 1:Not yet, not yet, but I am. I kind of want to do what you did with what you're doing with Psychotoxin and Hellscape. You've befriended and become a part of that community. I kind of want to get into their community. And, speaking of community, I'm going to talk about what you did yesterday.
Speaker 3:Yeah actually that's a really good segue. So what was it? I think it was the last episode we talked about my friend, Tanya Celtic Blue to you. She has been going through chemotherapy and she had to be put under sedated to something. I don't really know the exact details of it, but she's awake, she's back out of it, she's back up and running, although not fully recovered, but still a long road to go. But we're doing good. So yesterday we did it was called the Angel Fund. So on Booktalk, TikTok's book community, we did a fundraiser for her medical bills and stuff and it was run by Kyla Orinick and Jeremy Morang, who, by the way, is a main based author, Jeremy, Jeremy Morang, the guy that was running the thing. Yesterday In one of our conversations we discovered that he lives here. He actually lives like 40 minutes from here. He lives in the same town as my brother.
Speaker 1:Sounds like a potential future interview.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so, anyway. So they got up at like something crazy, I don't know, like three or four o'clock in the morning and they started this thing. They started early and they ran it until late into the night. I think I was on until I didn't mean to do that 10, I think.
Speaker 3:Anyway, so how it worked it's kind of hard to explain, but you would come on to this live and you would pitch your books and then people would auction. You know they would bid in the comment section and the starting bids were varying depending on and it wasn't just books either, which was kind of cool. So one of the things that came up was obviously like bookmarks, stuff like that, not as popular. But there were also like editing packages that came up and voiceovers time. So like one of the guy his name is Carlo he said he would do 10 minutes worth of ads for anybody's product and people bid on it and actually I bid on it. So I didn't get it, but anyway, it's not the point. And like people would come and go off the live and they would pitch their stuff and people would bid on it and all of the money was transferred to her account and we raised $5,000 to help her.
Speaker 1:I thought you said $4,000.
Speaker 3:It was $4,000 when I had made that post, but they stayed for an extra hour and it ended up breaking $5,000. Nice, yeah, and I think I even put in the comment section this morning I was like we did end up breaking $5,000, but it was wild, it was a long day and like I spent most of the day in and out of that, I would sit in there for long chunks. I went on for I don't know. I was probably on for like an hour, maybe 45 minutes or so, and I was on with a person who's we're familiar with on our other podcast on eight spark stories Connor Lewis. Yeah, connor is the voiceover, if you guys don't know. He did the story doomscroll.
Speaker 1:He did the voice on doomscroll he did a fantastic job On eight spark stories and last night he sent me the sequel to the red giant story, ghost and the Numbers. Yes, and I was on the reading for Right. So, and he I always say this, but they, he, our narrators, are just so good, so good, but he's, he's awesome. I'm glad that we found him.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so he and I were, were on this with, like I said, kyla and Jeremy and we were. I sold three books. I sold Dameroni, I sold the rejected ones and I sold the black top Kings and, like some of the, I did the Dameroni first and it did not do as well as we'd hoped, like, which is weird, because Tanya, the one that we threw this thing for, loves Dameroni and she brags about it all the time but yet people just don't flock to it, for whatever reason.
Speaker 1:I don't know, isn't that predominantly like a horror group?
Speaker 3:No, this was open to the entire book community.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but like the, the people who are actually showing up like that, you know that put this on like a big, a big portion of the people that we're following are probably somehow affiliated with the hellscape community, right?
Speaker 3:Not a big portion of them. No, there were some, for sure. Maybe like 15% of them were from hellscape. But no, like, a lot of these were like smut authors, like like sexy books, yeah.
Speaker 1:That's. You should have put it like a mustache on and reappeared as Wolfgang Tom. I could have.
Speaker 3:So so, Connor and I are just so what you're saying is sex, saves lives.
Speaker 3:Sex definitely saves lives and it also sells books to a huge portion of the book community. For those of you that don't know, is either romance or erotica like 70% or something crazy of the book. Talk, no of just book sales in general. It's like disproportionate to everything else. It's so disproportionate to everything else, like the next time you go into a bookstore start looking at how big the romance is, how big the erotica is, how it's crazy, anyway. So Connor and I are busting each other's balls a little bit. We're having fun. We're, we're loose. He's a great guy. Funny. He starts Doing this like because he's got an accent. What is it? A British accent?
Speaker 3:Yeah sounds British, yeah, I think so, and the women are going nuts for this British accent. So in order to help me sell my books, he was calling the audience members like good girl, naughty girl, and I swear to God. So the Amarini did not sell as well as I'd hoped, but the rejected ones. This is when the Fucking phone school and nuts over here. This is when he started doing that right. So we're on the rejected ones and he starts doing this British per and this sort of sexy, flirtatious thing and the fucking bits start going nuts. So we started at I don't know like 25 or 30 or something and we ended on 69. And we did not end on 69, coincidentally, either, that's funny.
Speaker 3:So when somebody whoever it was, I don't remember hit 69, nobody else bit, everybody just stopped and they're like we're not bidding after that, we're gonna leave it. So a copy of the rejected ones sold for 69 dollars and it went to the, to the angel fund, yeah, anyway. And then I sold a copy of the black top Kings to to a friend of mine. She was also on there and she also Donated a copy of her both of her books. Her name is Evie black. She's in my critique group. She donated Unbalanced and Leona. Those are great books. If you guys want to check those out.
Speaker 1:I was just thinking of the, the British accent. I watched them. You know John Oliver yeah, I watched him on hot ones and the guy asked him if his, if his accent, if he found in his experience that his accent had helped to make him come off as more, more trustworthy or Serious when delivering his news to people. And John Oliver said that yeah, that absolutely was the case. Yeah something about that accent.
Speaker 3:Yeah, there's probably something about that. Yeah, so that was so much fun. It was so interesting to just watch. Like it was also interesting to see what sold and what. Like everything sold, but like some things were much bigger hits than others. Yeah, and like the bookmarks didn't do very well, which is I kind of understand, like the, the opening bid, because Paypal is weird you can't really bid for anything lower than a dollar and like a dollar is kind of a lot for a bookmark.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but it was for a good cause, so those didn't really hit off that well, but, like, the editing packages were a big deal. So the editing packages were worth Like a thousand dollars and the bidding started at like 150 and I think they closed it. Maybe 600, maybe, if I remember correctly.
Speaker 1:Speaking of editing, I reached out to one of our writer friends. She's struggling right now, I'm financially, and I offered to edit anything he throws my way, so that could be an interesting Flower to blossom at some point, although I've told you that I would edit your stuff in the past. Yeah, that should be fun. Yeah, I should really get to editing my own stories, though.
Speaker 3:You're, you're in the process, just You're usually I don't know the first or second person who reads a story and then it goes through my critique group and, oh, in your process. Yeah in my process. Also, there's more oh the hell scape stuff. So yeah, as we've talked about on here before, I Well, you're in the group, you just haven't pitched anything, or.
Speaker 1:Well, I found Connor, yeah, and I, you know, I keep up with the messages. I think I'm one episode behind on the podcast, yeah, which is great. What's it called again? Oh Well the podcast that they've been putting out with.
Speaker 3:Oh, the Valentine's. One till death.
Speaker 1:Do us part till death but you can find it on hellscape on help. Just type in yes, just tell yeah, yeah, awesome narrators, different writers. Eventually you'll be on there. I guess that's a segue, yes.
Speaker 3:So I've been writing a, so I wrote a story. This is where this gets interesting. I wrote a story God knows how many years ago it was, because I'm old as fuck. It was called imposter and you really liked it and I didn't hate it, but I didn't like it as much as you did and I don't know what happened to it. I don't know if I was spring cleaning someone with the archives and it got chucked. I don't know if I changed the name and it got lost, but I could not find it. I searched pretty much everywhere I could think, and the story's just gone anyway.
Speaker 3:So I rewrote it as a script for hellscape and I even did kind of like a teaser. I put up the first like three pages or something, and it got everybody hyped about it in in the hellscape group. So, on the discord, there are a bunch of people that read it and made comments and stuff and they're excited. And now it's to the point where people are talking that they want to do auditions for it, like and it wasn't finished. They're like I'm ready to jump on it, like even Connor was like I want to do the voice of the Android, and there's another guy named Michael who wants to?
Speaker 1:oh, I had envisioned him as the talk show host, but you, whatever comes about right, so I have.
Speaker 3:I don't think I have any control over the auditions. I maybe I do, maybe I don't and I don't really care like. But there are a handful of women narrators that were on the the live and I was like Poking them. I'm like you got a fucking, you got audition. Because there's a couple of female characters. Unfortunately they don't have a lot of lines.
Speaker 1:Why are they like assistants? I Know that sounds worse that I meant it, but, like in the context of your story, I only remember those two characters, the Android and the talk show host. So, but you've rewritten it, so yeah so it doesn't.
Speaker 3:It doesn't have the exact same format as the story, because I don't remember it, but it's close, it's Relative. But there's another comedian, so David Blake goes on stage and he kind of gets booed and whatever. I thought he was a talk show host. He is, but he's also a stand-up comedian.
Speaker 1:Oh, so he does like the the Conan O'Brien? Yeah, I guess they all kind of do.
Speaker 3:A lot of them did, yeah, like like Fallon did it early on and they were stand-ups before they were talk talk show host. Anyway, he's balancing both. He goes to do a show and there's a female comedian there who has a handful of lines and there's also another male comedian there and there's also a makeup artist who does the makeup for the talk show and she only has like two lines. But I was on this live and I was having fun and there were some of the women from Hellscape were on there and I was like you guys got a fucking, you guys got a audition for it. I really want you guys to you know. So I'm really hopeful that that they do it. And Connor was there too and I we've gone back and forth about it and he had read the original three pages and he was excited and he wanted to. Like I said, do they do the Android voice?
Speaker 1:So now, so this is an audio drama. Yes, so now we both have an audio drama. You could include the script in your next collection, the way I do. Oh, I suppose I could remember I put sleepwalker at the end of the Seed. Yeah, which is the only audio drama I've ever written I did work on. Do you remember the name of? Do you remember that sci-fi Audio drama that I was doing the editing on?
Speaker 3:No, really, I do remember you doing the editing for one, but I don't remember what it was called.
Speaker 1:There was two, but the other one would ended up being just too much. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I turned that away, as we sometimes we're learning, we sometimes have to just suck it up and say we, you know I can't do this wait. We say no to projects when well, we'll say yes and then we'll realize it's a lot. So it's okay to say no and admit that you might be in too deep over your head because you don't want to burn out. That's the worst thing you can do. Yeah, I can't remember the name of that episode, though Keep talking, I'll get on my phone.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I don't remember what it was called either, but I'm super excited about the future of Hellscape, like it's. It's such a big community and there's so much going on, but I think, with a little bit and you, it's even like super organized for as big as it is there's like the discord channel and then there's like varying different chat rooms, kind of of what you Would want to be organized so like where you submit your, your pitch, your Auditions, your, etc. Etc. And then there's just a general chat room. And that general chat room is so funny sometimes and those guys are hilarious. They'll just post ridiculous memes and rib each other and stuff. It's a lot of fun. I have a similar discord too, but there's a lot less people in it, and that's for my critique group, which is called nights of the absurd, if you guys are ever looking. I.
Speaker 1:Don't remember what it's called. No, I will share it when I find it for the next episode. Now, speaking of updates, I think that we covered everything. Last time we had a conversation, we mentioned Lou burger, my editor. Your one one-time editor Is going to have his story. We called it meld, because there's a lot of melding going on in the story. That's what they call it, but the story is actually called immersion and Todd waits at a wonderful job narrating it. So I have that as well as goes to the numbers. And now we're also waiting on Um. Daniel mucing is reading the window, which should be good. Yeah, so you've got three stories coming out.
Speaker 3:What's the dates on those? Do we know? Nope.
Speaker 1:No, I want to make sure that they're finished or near finished, and that was the other thing I wanted to talk about. I've been listening to a lot of classic audiobooks on business and marketing strategies Mm-hmm, because I don't think we really know what we're doing at the time when it comes to that, and I think that I'm really happy with the quality of our content and now, at this point, the quantity, especially with you. But now I just need to really focus on, you know, tried and true things. I know it's harder in the digital age, but To get our stuff out into the world.
Speaker 3:Yeah, marketing has always been my, my downfall. I've been so much more concerned about the Quantity, not the quantity, the quality of my work. So I spend more time trying to get really good, yeah, at writing and even when it comes to like scripts and stuff. I'm still new to scripts and I'm still but I am Working it a lot lately and I'm trying to make sure that my quality is great. And I've always thought that, well, we should never stop doing that right. I've always thought that when the quality was good, that the readership and stuff would follow. So I'm waiting for the follow apart. I'm I don't know that's what I've discovered.
Speaker 1:It's especially within the music. I think that I've gotten to a point where, lyrically, I'm better than not better. I am as good or better than a lot of what's out there now Mm-hmm, because I've been working on it for a long time and I'm passionate about it. But I've come to find that, no matter how good I think a song is or story is, I don't think it just doesn't matter. You still have to make that connection somehow. Yeah, and that's the hard part, yeah, it's been especially in a sea of.
Speaker 1:Everybody is a creator and every medium is what it seems like.
Speaker 3:Yeah, every medium is flooded, Unfortunately which is great.
Speaker 1:Everyone's getting their creative, their creativity out, and this is probably. I really don't think everybody is an artist, but I don't believe in that?
Speaker 3:no, mantra, but this is probably a renaissance of some sorts, though this is probably like a huge period of art, like historically, you know, it goes in ebbs and flows.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:After, after certain giant events, there are like blossoms of art. I think this is one of them. I think post pandemic, I think during the pandemic, into post. Yeah, I Guess we would call it post pandemic because a lot of it started in that time frame, but yeah, yeah, actually, and a lot of like the older Again with rap rappers that I liked.
Speaker 1:I've noticed that since I've been catching up on them for this podcast, they're back, like they're releasing sometimes two albums a year that I'm not even hearing about and they're mostly Really good. Like Naz is one that I'll be reviewing his album magic, which at this point he now has three in that series magic one, two and three, and those were side albums to his King's disease albums and there's three of those. And this is all within the last like four or five years.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so yeah, you might be right so it really does feel like music is alive again. Standup is on fire, like there is some fantastic standup right now.
Speaker 1:Speaking of music I have. I've seen a ton of Older bands are performing near, even nearby, here, like a lot. Yeah, I'm going to see Katie Tunstall next week.
Speaker 3:Nice.
Speaker 1:Yeah, black horse in the cherry tree.
Speaker 3:Yeah, all kinds of like good books are coming out right now. Like it, it feels Like art in general is just on fire right now and there are some some great talents that are making their way to the top, like there are certain Indian author, some of them I even know that are killing it, just killing it, and, you know, maybe soon they'll be able to lose their day jobs and write full time and stuff like that. Like one of the guys that I know he has a. What is it called when you have a? The words escaped me right now but a segment in the newspaper, a Column, yeah, column In one of the major I think it's like the New York Times or one of them. He, a friend of mine, writes for a Column and I think it's I think it's book related, if I remember correctly.
Speaker 1:So here's, here's the problem, and this reminds me of Jeff. When we had Jeff Ballaston on Mm-hmm. He was talking about how. I think we were talking about how creativity comes about from when you're struggling hard times and so you're saying every there's this boom in creativity. Maybe that has something to do with you know, technically the country is doing good right now, like economically, they say, and all that, but I, I it feels like a lot of people are really struggling financially. So if people are releasing content and being successful and having followers I'm hoping that you said making a living off of it I'm hoping that they are even able to do that because, like, if you're a musician releasing songs on Spotify, you could still be struggling. Yeah, because they don't pay shit.
Speaker 3:There's. There's not a lot of money in art.
Speaker 1:So maybe with the boom there will come some more pressure to, you know, compensating artists in every medium the way they should be, and obviously AI throws a wrench in that. I Was, and this is kind of a segue too. I was thinking we should probably talk a little bit about Brandon Sanderson, the Fenton mega fantasy author. Mm-hmm, did you read that?
Speaker 1:He just I think Last year he was talking about he would not. He started a successful Kickstarter, like the most successful, I think, for an author, and then he said he wouldn't put his audiobooks on audible because of their royalties. Yeah, and it last I read, I think they budged to, they changed, they updated their terms.
Speaker 3:I don't know anything about that. I haven't been following that it's.
Speaker 1:I think basically Author should be getting compensated more. Yeah. For purchases on audible again and of course there's probably like little things in there despite all the big changes that Negate, oh, probably the other stuff. But yeah, so good on him for doing that what I do know is that Leveraging his power.
Speaker 3:Yeah, spot spotify is now doing audiobooks too, and they're supposed they're supposed to unravel a whole bunch of them within the next yeah, I don't, I don't know year, so I think there are some already on there, but they're intending on doing more and you have their model right now is you only have a couple of hours, mm-hmm, and then you have to pay.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I, I'm a little worried about that with the way that it is with music in them like it just feels like they're just going to cheapen.
Speaker 3:Probably the content. There's definitely always some sort of financial aspect to every company owning your, your product and it sucks, and some of them are better than others. But we are not doing great with Amazon. We're probably not gonna do great with Spotify, but until we figure out how to do it without them, I don't. I don't really see a way around it, not unless all of us go on strike.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, yeah, that's the problem, though, with musicians they're not unionized, right, so there's less incentive. And you know what I also feel like? A lot of yeah, I might come cut. Some of this is a lot. We're talking a lot today. We're talking about a lot of stuff today. I think a lot of musicians suffer from Various degrees of mental illness, mm-hmm. So in a way, I feel this way about tiktok too the way that these companies lure potential artists in and then milk them for all of their creativity. We're putting all of our energy into these platforms and they're not Compensating us the way we should be compensated and we're just burning out. I see so many people burning out just to get attention, putting as much content out as they can, getting really good, because that's what social media is, and I think Spotify is technically a social media platform.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I could see that sure, maybe it's just the connection to Facebook, but um, these companies are making money off of us.
Speaker 3:And we're not making much off of them because they're selling ads to us.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, exactly. We're just burning out With this hustle mentality. Mm-hmm. And it's sad to see it is absolutely so.
Speaker 3:The alternative is that we figure out a way to do it on our own and Somebody who's more of a technical wizard than I oh, you mean like create a new platform.
Speaker 3:I Didn't mean that specifically. Actually, what I was thinking is like if we were to put on our websites right a, a Way to put our audiobooks on a website behind a paywall, then we wouldn't need audible, we wouldn't need Amazon. And then if we were able to do the same idea with with, like your music, with Whatever, yeah, but so many people do not leave these social media sites.
Speaker 1:I've seen people complain about if I'll post, like, a Spotify link in Facebook. They'll complain that it mostly it's the old-timers that they have to click, go join another thing and they just want to Stay on the social media site and I this needs to be illegal. That Like Facebook will shrink your reach if you put a link in the like. Yeah, that's Competitive issue. Yeah, they're making it near impossible for anyone to Share their stuff outside of the platform right.
Speaker 3:But here's the other fucked up part about that is you'll get 900 ads on on your newsfeed on Facebook about shit that doesn't fucking matter. It's stuff that you don't care about at all, yeah, but the stuff that you want to see, like your friends being creative, your friends putting out, is all buried. I will.
Speaker 1:I will say for tiktok, now that I figured it out a little bit, there is an option to click on your friends feed and all you'll see is your friends updates. Yeah, that's, I wish that Facebook had something like that. Yeah, that's great.
Speaker 3:You still get ads, but yeah, also, tiktok is fucking getting so bad with ads. It's like every third video now. It's awful. Anyway, facebook specifically like I don't know what the fuck is going on over there, but every day for the last three days my news feed is not refreshing at all and it's literally the same, like eight posts over and over and over, and I've seen them all 25 times each.
Speaker 1:Maybe they're doing another manipulative study to see how people react.
Speaker 3:It's fucking annoying, Like I want to see something else, anything else at this point.
Speaker 1:Well, some of it might be due to the fact that you don't use Facebook that much and you have to use these platforms a lot for it to make any sense, because, like I recently, just last night I shared a video from a band that I just discovered called Wilt, and they're like a 90s sounding band and I really like them and I found them through an ad on Facebook. So it's working for me and I think it's because I'm on Facebook more and I'm trying to do that on TikTok, like force the algorithms to know what I like. So that might just be.
Speaker 3:Okay, so here's my example. Yes, maybe. Yes maybe no no. So every day, like I said for the last like three days, I've opened it. Let's say, I've opened Facebook specifically 15 times. Right, it is the same top eight posts and the first post is always the same thing. How is that mathematically possible, right? So I have 200 and whatever followers, not a lot, I'm not fucking balling out of control. But out of those 200 followers, you mean to tell me that nobody has updated any fucking thing?
Speaker 1:You mean following people that you're following.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, anybody. I'm following Nobody. None of those 200 people have posted anything in the last three days. How is that possible? How is that mathematically possible? Because it's the same exact thing every time I open it. There's a guy that I know who's going to Knoxville, and it has come up the last 20 times I've opened Facebook. Did he ever make it? That's a good question. Maybe this is all just an ad for me to go find him.
Speaker 1:Hey guys, if you're listening. We need an update. Did you make it to Oxford? Please tell us.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Oxford Clarence is dying over here to know Knoxville, you're fucking with our algorithms and it's all. It's like the last. I swear it's like the same. I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say it's like the same. Eight in a row. All of them needs that exact same order. So when you scroll down, it's the same and I'm like okay, if there were a glitch, that would make perfect sense, whatever.
Speaker 1:Well, there was last week. Yeah, got shut down. It's a big outage.
Speaker 3:But if I get past those eight right, and they're not even super active either it's not like, oh, it's on the top because there's 800 comments on it, no, there's like three comments on all of them. So if you scroll past those eight, then there's a bunch of new shit. So it makes no fucking sense to me. I don't know why I'm rambling about Facebook.
Speaker 1:I don't know, I see you, I see your updates. Yeah. I see all of the people that I'm involved with somehow. So I'm I don't know how much James uses Facebook, but I'm wondering if, the more that I talk to him through this podcast, now that we've been talking again, if I'm going to start to see his posts on Facebook.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm kind of rambling at this point. But the other part that's deeply upsetting is like when we do a new episode, you'll post it on all the social media and I will repost it and try to get as much Keith repost to. I think Todd does too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and we do have a little circle, but it Heidi as well.
Speaker 3:Just just mathematically right. Yeah, I think Monique does too. I've seen her post. Just mathematically right. Let's say that there's eight of us that repost it. Why are we not getting a huge fucking Just?
Speaker 1:for a sizable a good.
Speaker 3:It's just simple mathematics. Even if it were just this socks, even if there were comments like why do you guys do this?
Speaker 1:You're fucking dumb whatever it's, because it's a link to another site and we haven't paid for the ads, right.
Speaker 3:So that that that really pisses me off. So let's say we have eight people that are that are sharing it right, and we have 200 followers each. It should be, and I understand we're not going to reach all of them and there's certainly crossover because you know, our groups are small. We have a lot of but theoretically that's what 1600 people. Then let's say that 200 of them never see it at all. That's fine, their accounts are inactive or whatever. We're still looking at 1400 people that we should be reaching but we're not. And out of those, admittedly, you're not going to get a all 1400 of those to interact with your content. That's not going to happen. You're going to get a portion of that. So, realistically, we should be getting, we should be reaching something like I don't know 300 of them, 400 of them, and we're not. I bet we're reaching like 1% of that, 1% of that hypothetical 1600 people. Yeah.
Speaker 3:It makes no sense.
Speaker 1:Well, and then on TikTok, you do reach more people. The only it's still suspicious to me with all of these companies, whether those people are even real or they're just it's there to make it look like it's reached more than it has, which is also needs to be illegal, but there's just no way to monitor these companies. Right. So Fucking frustrating.
Speaker 3:Yeah, We've said from the very beginning if you have a link to anything, it doesn't really even matter and you're not paying for ads, it gets buried. So every time we repost and we should still keep doing it, obviously, but we're just not reaching and it goes for the podcast. The podcast isn't getting natural flow because nobody's finding it on social media.
Speaker 1:Which is why I started looking into marketing to see if we can't maybe change that, move the needle a little bit.
Speaker 3:I wish there were a way that we could do channel more traffic to like our websites and have people going from there. But we can't reach people. Aside from handing out cards, which we do on the events, we can't really get people to go to our websites. Yeah.
Speaker 3:It sucks, it's kind of defeating, it's. You know, we've worked 10 years on your craft and you're really trying to do your best and you're just not being seen and, like, the people that you know in person are super supportive, but you're not getting new people and you're not getting new readerships. And the only time that we do get new readerships the people we work with yeah, the people we work with the time that we do get new readers is when we do events, and even that, how many is that? Fuck it, 10 a day for every day that we do it.
Speaker 1:I don't know that. I've seen an influx of readers from the events yet. Yeah. I know that you do. You had that lady come up and I'm still kind of bothered by that. So I was like I write too. I was like I love supporting local authors, and she was like she glanced over at my book. She's like, oh yeah, so you do, I'll be back.
Speaker 3:And she just fucked right off. She even said she read the book too. She's like oh yeah, I read your book.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's awesome.
Speaker 3:And I'm like awesome, yeah, if you like that one, you should come and read this one. And fucked right off. That's okay. Thanks for reading. I hope you come back. Anyway, baby, come back.
Speaker 1:Let's uh, we should probably finish, Detective Jade. Okay, Did you know that by day I'm a plumber? That's right, and we at the Writers Block are proud to announce that one of our sponsors is Mark Nigro Services. Based out of Westbrook, Maine, and servicing most of Southern Maine, Mark Nigro Services is available for all your plumbing, heating, gas and even sprinkler needs. It could just be my employee bias, but I can confirm that the work done by these guys is clean, efficient and affordable, and all done within a reasonable time period. You won't ever have a leak or go cold with Mark Nigro Services, and if you're already experiencing one or both of those two things, you won't have to worry much longer. Reach out to Mark Nigro Services at mnigroservices at gmailcom that's the letter M-N-I-G-R-O services at gmailcom. Links are also available in the show notes.
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Speaker 1:At the Auburn Maine Mall today, Dorothy sat back into the leather recliner. She breathed out a big cloud of marijuana smoke. The room was beginning to get hazy, partly with the smoke and partly with all that she had just put into her body. She had ingested a lot of drugs, which wasn't an uncommon thing for her, but on this particular night there were a lot more mixtures of pills and weed and alcohol than normal. Because she was sad. The TV in the background was playing the latest episode of some talk show with some guy named David Blake, and her phone was vibrating. She looked around the room and then she would think oh, my phone's vibrating. So she tried to get up off the seat but realized that her body was just not wanting to move. The weed was really kicking in.
Speaker 1:Now she could see the phone vibrating and something else kicked in. She thought she saw the vibrating waves coming off of the phone. She was starting to see tracers and stuff. She reached out to the phone but grasped nothing. And then she heard the door creak. She looked to the left. To her left was a. You leave the living room and you go into the kitchen and on the other side of the kitchen is the door to her apartment. She's separating the living room from the kitchen is a bar, a breakfast bar. So she looks left and she can't see the door from here. But she sees the shadow. The shadow of what looks like a lady, but her hair. The way the shadow looks, it looks a little weird, unkempt and whatnot, but the shadow just stands. The shadow just remains where it is. The phone is still vibrating and her senses are becoming overloaded. The phone vibrates. The shadow just sitting there. Take it.
Speaker 3:She's becoming paranoid. The shadow moves, approaches, sort of casts itself on the wall as it gets closer and closer. Dorothy stares down at the phone and then looks at the wall and then at the phone and she thinks holy shit, this phone's been vibrating for a long time and as she's about to scream at the shadow it dissipates. But with it comes a voice, a voice of someone familiar, and she's staring out into the kitchen and somebody is out there and they're moving closer. What the fuck is that? She says who is in my apartment? Who is that? And as she rubs her eyes and the dragon on her lap disappears I'm just kidding Detective Bailey steps in.
Speaker 3:Oh shit, not Detective Bailey. They'd had a complicated relationship, dorothy and Detective Bailey. Detective Bailey had been looking in on her ever since she was a little girl. She had a rough childhood, hence the drugs. Probably Are you okay? Detective Bailey says, staring intently, and Dorothy's response bubbles up but never quite comes out. It just kind of dies in her throat and they're just staring at each other because Dorothy believes that she's already answered, but she hasn't.
Speaker 3:Detective Bailey again says Dorothy, and her body is sort of shifting and moving and the colors are changing. And Dorothy, dorothy, Dorothy. And then, as the hallucination begins to fade, a set of wings, giant angelic wings blast from behind Detective Bailey in one giant swoop and a puff of air, and then all the hallucinations are gone and just like that, everything is calm and normal and Dorothy is staring at Detective Bailey, her jaw hanging open. She's both massively impressed and yet terrified. What the fuck Detective Bailey says, are you alright, dorothy? Sort of nods with big panic, dies. Yeah, yeah, I think so. I'd like to introduce you to somebody. This is Detective Jade. Detective Jade is a well former. Detective Jade is a friend of mine and we have a couple of questions for you. Hmm.
Speaker 1:Hey, how's it going? Jade said he wasn't wearing any official police uniform or anything, but he had a friendly smile and his eyes a little bit sunken in. She could tell that there was hurt in him. Some passed and with that she sort of let her emotional guard down. She empathized with this man. She understood. Basically she could see that he also was an addict. He sat down on the couch across the coffee table on the other side of the coffee table and Jade leaned against the wall. I mean, detective Bailey leaned against the wall looking seriously at Dorothy. What would he be asking her?
Speaker 3:We've. We found a couple of things in the bayou that may or may not belong to you. Oh, is that so? She says yeah, and he pulls out a, an ID card and it looks battered and beaten and chewed on and stuff this is one of them, a library card as well and we found some contraceptive pills and a few other things that may have belonged my purse. She says, right, it got stolen about three days ago. Yeah, is that so? Bailey says, giving her a suspicious eye.
Speaker 1:Yeah, one of I was on the street a couple blocks down and some lady just comes up and takes my purse Not an uncommon thing in this neighborhood, you know. She looked up at Detective Bailey with pity. No, but Detective Bailey looked back at her with pity. She could tell that she was lying. Where have you been getting money for your drugs lately, dorothy? Dorothy cleared her throat and looked back at Jade who was just looking at the ground. I, I got it. I've been working a couple hours at the. She couldn't say anything. She was still a little bit high.
Speaker 1:Detective Bailey came closer and sat down, got down on her knees and grabbed Dorothy's hands. Honey, you don't have to lie to me. Are you working the street again? Yes, but I've rent's gone up and I can't afford food at all. I mean, I'm drinking milk and honey buns and well, these drugs probably cost a lot of money too. Right? She insinuates to the coffee table, where there's just drugs everywhere, all the drugs you can think of. I know, I know, I thought you were, I thought you were over this shit, I thought you were doing better, I was.
Speaker 1:And then so again, what happened to your purse? One of the other ladies that I work with sometimes. She was coming down off of something meth or something and she snatched it and she turned her head, show some scratch marks, like from her cheek down to her neck, and we got in a little bit of a scuffle. Did the lady look like this? Jade, for whatever reason, has the pictures of the suspect and she pulls out. He pulls out the picture. It's a picture of the blonde woman, the dead woman, from the bayou, her eyes widened. Holy shit, is that Cynthia? Is that who stole your purse?
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's her Sure as shit and she leans forward getting a better look at this and she says, oh, that's just too bad. Cynthia was well when she wasn't on meth. Actually, you know, I choose kind of a bitch and they both kind of look at each other, then look back at and they're like when was the last time you saw her? I don't know. I told you three days ago, when she stole my purse. What do you mean? Well, we're trying to figure out who might have the incentive, the motive to kill her.
Speaker 3:Right, dorothy leans back into the couch, crosses her hands on her lap and thinks well, you know, the night that she stole my purse there was some trouble. She had gone away with a John. They'd gone. I don't know, we're probably down by the park, that's usually her spot. But when they came back they were fighting. I don't know. She wasn't satisfied. She was too high to perform.
Speaker 3:I'm not really sure I didn't hear all of it, but what I did hear was that she was trying to get, she was trying to score a place to sleep and she wanted to use his car and he would not have it. He was afraid, I don't know, maybe his wife would find her or something I don't know, and their fight was sort of personal, like it seemed so much more than just you know Jane and John situation. You know, it seemed like they knew each other. Bailey says, okay, interesting, do you know this guy's name? Is he a regular? And she scoffs and she's like it doesn't really work like that, honey. They don't just give us their names and most of them are not regular per se. None of them are normal.
Speaker 3:Bailey says, okay, well, what kind of car? And she says, hmm, you know, I think it was a blue Honda. Yeah, yeah, yeah, blue Honda, and it stood out for a reason, but I can't for the life of me remember why. Hold on, let me think. And then she sort of starts to lean into the couch and the drugs are kind of hitting her and she's almost falling asleep. Her eyelids are kind of closing, closing, and she's like oh, I know, first of all, it had a broken tail light and it had a baby on board sign in the back window. Bailey knows that this is good, this is good stuff, this is a good lead. She looks at Detective Jade with a promising look in her eye and she says don't leave town, dorothy, we'll be back.
Speaker 1:But one more question. Jade said they were leaving there in the he's halfway through in the kitchen. Now when do you do your sporting? Dorothy left sport, sorry. I read a lot of Westerns. Where do you do your tricks, or whatever they call them these days? Like I said, two blocks down. I wasn't lying about that part. Her words were starting to slur now. You could see that she was probably going to pass out.
Speaker 1:As soon as they left, the phone started vibrating on the table again and you looked at it, but she didn't make any effort to pick it up. So, two blocks down. Do you know where that is, detective Bailey? Yeah, it's on Anderson Avenue. So we look for a blue Honda on Anderson Avenue. Hey, you're going to pick that up. Huh, dorothy looks at the phone again, which is still vibrating. Nah, so they leave and sure enough, she falls asleep. The phone stops eventually. So they're driving.
Speaker 1:They're actually pretty much on Anderson Avenue right now and they've decided to stake out for the night. So they're there. This is the following night and they get a call. Detective Bailey answers Hello, yeah, I'll be right there. She looks at Detective Jade. I don't know why we're calling him detective. He's not really a detective. At this point she looks at Jade with like horror in her eyes. The address is Dorothy's apartment, so they leave the stake out and they go back to the apartment and by the time they get there, there's police and medics and they're carting a body out. She runs up to the stretcher and she pulls the blanket back. Sure enough, it's Dorothy. The fuck happened. She pushes back past some guys that she's familiar with and goes up the stairs into the kitchen and Soon, as she walks in, there's just just accurate smell and the the apartment's still smoky. It looks like that they had just put out a cigarette or a joint or something, and there's blood everywhere and on the wall it says I'm coming for you.
Speaker 3:Bailey Takes the phone out of her pocket and snaps a picture of this message, this ominous message, and she says well, it's certainly no coincidence that Somebody came to visit her after we talked to her. I think somebody's been watching us. And Jade nods and understanding. So we know that Cynthia was the first victim, but we don't really know how or why. And now we know that Dorothy is the next victim and I think he might be Targeting prostitutes specifically. But I can't figure out. Is he just killing them for the sake of killing them, or is he trying to cover something up? Jade Smiles, nods and he says well, it's one way to find out.
Speaker 3:So they get back into the car and they go two blocks away and they start scoping around, they start asking questions. They come into a girl, come into a couple of girls and they start asking Questions do you know this car? Are you familiar? Oh, yeah, I know that car. I know that blue Honda. I'd know it anywhere. All right, do you know who don't? Who owns it?
Speaker 3:Anderson, that's, I think that's his name. Or Andy, or Starts with an, a Artemis maybe. Oh, big help. Jade says, kind of groaning yeah, you guys notoriously rough on women, like I don't really. I don't really trick with him anymore. He's kind of mean. I mean he pays extra and tips and whatever, but he's mean. All right, okay, thank you, here's our card. Give us a call if you see him around. Don't, don't tip him off to us. We want to catch him by surprise, all right. Well, you need to get out of here. Having cops around is bad for business, all right, all right.
Speaker 3:So Bailey and Jade get in the car and they park Two or three buildings down and they watch. And they continue to watch as the girl sort of pace flaunt around, show some leg flirt with what guys driving by and walking by. And as this happens, they notice that there's not only Some prostitution going on but there's also a little drug dealing going on, which is not that strange in that circle. And then, right when they think they're gonna give up, they've been Sitting in the car for two and a half hours, three hours. They're ready to call it a night. The coffee's either gone, cold or empty. All the fast foods eating. They're ready to give up the steak when they see the blue Honda Pulling up with the baby on board and the broken tail light. There he is. That's our guy. So Bailey hits the lights Because she has one of those dashboard lights and she pulls up behind him and she's well keeping your distance right.
Speaker 3:Yeah. She gets out of the car and she starts approaching and she starts talking to him License and registration. All that she starts looking at his stuff turns out his name is Anderson. Anderson was the right answer. And she starts asking questions and it turns out that he has a record. Anderson is notorious for domestic abuse Spattered around his wife, ex-girlfriends, etc. Etc. And Prostitutes. He's just an angry guy and even in this routine stop or what he thinks is a routine stop he's sort of aggressive. He's sort of mouthing off to Bailey and Jade ends up getting out of the car and standing beside Bailey and hopes to calm him down.
Speaker 1:And while this is going on and Jade can't help but notice that hanging from the guy's rearview mirror is a Pentagon, a Pentagon dreamcatcher, and A pair of women's underwear, Okay a pair of women's underwear and a Pentagon dreamcatcher.
Speaker 1:Just another day they finally get him calm. Detective Bailey handcuffs him and they put him in the back of the cruiser. They drive back to the precinct in silence and Jade says I'm gonna take off for the night because I don't actually work here. I don't still don't know what I'm doing here. So he leaves and they put the man in in a cell overnight and he just starts walking down the street with his hands in his pockets.
Speaker 1:It's nighttime, he's, he's about two blocks away from his house. He lives pretty close to the precinct and he's there downtown, near Bourbon Street, and he passes a bunch of souvenir shops, a couple bars, some that he's frequented, and he's just thinking about the, the pentagram. Did I say Pentagon? Oops, he's thinking about the pentagram dreamcatcher and he's thinking about witchcraft and all the corny stuff that you would probably associate with with New Orleans, and he thinks back to the vision that he had with the first girl, and then he remembers his daughter and he starts to Make a connection in his mind. Is there something witchy going on here? Basically? And that's when he notices Across the street is a tarot card place.
Speaker 1:He's passed it a billion times before. But he notices that on the sign next to the reading Julia's tarot reading is the pentagram, which is an unusual in itself, but it looks almost exactly like the pentagram that was hanging from the John's rearview mirror. It's not open, but curious. He goes across the street, waits for a couple cars to pass and he walks up and he peers into the window and he can see that it's a small shop. There's like crystals hanging around and it's dark because it's closed. But there's a circular table in the center of the room With a purple cloth over it and one of those stereotypical Aerotypical globes in the middle and he thinks, um, maybe I'll come back tomorrow. And it just starts to walk away. He swears. He sees something Like a shadow or something moving in the back of the shop. He pulls out his badge From his olden days and he thinks, well, puts it on his shirt and knocks on the door Take it the Shuffling stops for a second, then it happens again.
Speaker 3:Then he hears what he can only imagine Is the sound of the back door opening. Ah, trying to evade me, huh. So he cuts through the alley and he gets up behind them and it is a woman, an older woman with graying hair, and he catches her by surprise and she jumps oh Jesus, you scared me. Sorry, ma'am. And he's suspicious that she might have been trying to evade him. But then he thinks maybe she just didn't hear me knock. I'm not sure. Ma'am, I have some questions for you involving a case.
Speaker 3:Are you familiar with a man named Anderson? She sort of strokes her chin a little bit. Anderson, anderson, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know Anderson. Sure, he comes in from time to time, been known to be a bit rowdy. I had to keep kicking him out of the shop a few weeks ago. Hasn't come back in a little while.
Speaker 3:Oh, can you tell me why? Yeah, sure, yeah, I think there might have been some drugs or something. He came in and he was ranting and raving about some mythical evolution, something, something I don't know. So some sort of sorcery or something. I'm not sure, but I think there was definitely some drugs involved. He's His eyes were weird, interesting. Is there anything else that you might be able to tell me about Anderson, anything useful at all? She grips her chin. Yeah, yeah, yeah he. He always walks around with women, which is weird to me, because Now he's not that good looking, but he doesn't seem to have a problem with the ladies, if you know what I mean. Huh, interesting. Jade says All right, well, here's my card. If he comes by again, give me a call. Huh, all right, no problem.
Speaker 1:Part three.
Speaker 3:Might have to go that way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, to be continued. Right, it's block. Cool kids, remember to subscribe Until the next week For the next episode of the writer's block, the cool spot cast.