Oct 28-Harrison Hickman, Charlie Daniels, Tony Orlando & Dawn, Julia Roberts, Brad Paisley, Joaquin Phoenix

0:19 Hello and welcome to history and factoids about today. I am Jeff. All right folks today is October the 28th So I not talk to somebody from the birthplace of Halloween. No, it's not in the United States I'm talking from somebody in Scotland and we're all the way down in Tasmania. Yeah, he's on a nice vacation out in there So he's a really really good author of psychological thrillers and dark fiction Harrison, why don't you let everybody know a little bit about yourself? Okay, well, it's great to be on. Thanks for inviting me along and greetings from the other side of the planet. So, yeah, so I've done quite a lot of different works over the years. I started out doing young adult fiction, but I've gradually moved through to literary stuff. So I did some dark genre fiction, the Lost Brotherhood series, which I'm currently revamping. And then really I moved into literary fiction.

1:12 So my novels, The Cyclops and Vigilation, Set in Stone, and recently A Life Called Scarlet and The Unconvinced. And my most recent short story, Collecting Nutmeg. So I do quite a wide variety of stuff. And I like to try and write something for everybody. So my books are aimed at the general reader. And I think people will find something to connect with them. So switching from young adult over to the Last Brotherhood series, was that just from you growing up or did your creativeness change? I think it was a bit of both. Because when I first started out in my teens and before that when I was very, very young in my 10 or 11 like that, I always imagined fantasy fiction as something that is beautiful, that's magical. But then I wanted to write something that was gritty and real. Obviously, I was growing up at the time. I was turning 16, 17, leaving the world of childhood firmly behind and wanting to move into more darker territory. Then there's just this idea for the Lost Brotherhood series came to me. But unlike anything else I'd done, which was fantastical and magical, I wanted to have this very strong real-world setting. So there's real streets, real towns, real locations set in a very dark, futuristic,

2:47 militaristic world that's teetering on the brink. So being able to switch from young adults to that was– a difficult step in some places because I was, I, you know, I remember the summer of 2009 when I was writing The Lost Brotherhood, the first novel in the series, you're writing something that was darker than, than I, I had ever imagined. That I, I almost felt like I was rebelling against myself, against everything I'd ever been taught by teachers who, you know, taught me to always focus on the light side of stuff when you do fiction. And I felt a bit of a rebel doing that. And, and it's funny, you know, I still get those feelings. I finished the book number four during the pandemic, which I've still not released yet, but that's on the list of things to release. When I was writing book number four, with that sense of being completely isolated and cut off from the world, not able to go anywhere, five miles or however long from far from my house. I had that sense of isolation as well. So it was almost like, you know, after everything I've been doing in fiction, writing book number four in that series, it was like going back to my roots a little bit.

4:03 Well, that's really cool. And then, like we said, you're down there hiking around in Tasmania and all that kind of thing, right? When you write about something, have you pretty much already been there? Or just research it? Um, so I mean, it's, I've, uh, I mean, you know, when I was funny yesterday, I was down in a little place called Kingston and there's a, there's a nice little beach there. And it's like a little bit, a little slither of paradise, um, right on the right, right just outside Hobart. And I was there for about three hours and grabbed some lunch and just took a walk along the beach. And there was just that sense of that sense of peace. And, and at the back of my mind, I was thinking, wow, I wish I had a writing room down here. Um, But also there was a point, you know, that being able to physically separate myself from my characters and thinking, you know, I mean, I was thinking, you know, if some of my characters are here, how would they react? Lost Brotherhood series, Ben Nettlefold, if he was on that beach, what would he see?

5:06 How would he react to it? Would he be able to just sit down and have a bite to eat? If Scarlet from A Life Called Scarlet was there, she'd be strumming a guitar. She wouldn't care about the beautiful scenery. if Clifford Lake from the unconvinced was there, he'd be, he'd be working out who his next victim was, but, you know, and it's great to, it's great to be able to sort of wander outside things for a little bit and sense and, you know, and, and, you know, get some, get some ideas going. Yeah. And then you have to say, well, they're not here. So I'm just Harrison. I'm just going to enjoy it. Yeah, absolutely. All right. Here in the United States, every day we have a, A national day that we celebrate, not like a holiday, but they call it a national day. You'll have like national pizza day, national burrito day, national football day. Well, you're in for kind of a fun one.

6:00 All the things that I love, there's nothing near as nice as C-H-O-C-O-L-A-T-E. I think it's great. I like to thank the person who invented it. C-H-O-C-O-L-A-T-E, I just can't wait to get my hungry mouth around that lovely chocolate. Today is National Chocolate Day. I know, it seems odd being this close to Halloween. But hey, what the heck. You know, some of the high-end candy stores, they are actually having deals today. You know, the candy that's too expensive to hand out for Halloween. Now, the Aztecs, they discovered chocolate 2,500 years ago. Now, chocolate, the kind that we eat, it was kind of first started in 1868 by Cadbury. 25 years after, though, that's when Hershey came up with milk chocolate. But yes, dark chocolate is good for you. So I guess not all Halloween candy is chocolate.

6:51 So yeah, go ahead and enjoy some chocolate today. Kind of a funny story. In 1579, the first shipment of chocolate arrived over in England. It came from West Africa. Well, the Brits, when they got on the ship, they thought it was all sheep poop. They just pushed it all over the side. So you are able to turn it off, though, and actually are you constantly coming up with different stories? So, you know, I mean, how do I switch off, you know, from, well, I don't think I can switch off. And because, and I think it's, you know, if I just stuck as a genre writer, you know, writing my Lost Brotherhood series and writing thrillers and crime fiction, potentially, yes, I would have been able to have that ability to switch off. But because I'm moving into the more literary side of things, when you work as a literary novelist, I find that you tend to have to view things more from a bird's eye narrative. And that tends to filter into your private life as well. So if I'm in the bar having a drink and I end up chatting to somebody or whatever, I'm always thinking, I'm always viewing things from above. How do these reactions play into a story? So it can be quite difficult to switch off.

8:07 Well, when you're in the bar having a pub or just walking down the street or something like that, and you see people, did that, when you start writing, did those people that you saw, are they kind of, do they become characters? Well, sometimes, but what I find tends to really sort of fill through the fiction is the conversations that I have with people. You know, hearing other people's stories. I mean, I was in... Thailand just over, just over a year ago. And one of the backpackers hostels I was staying in, there was a, there was a chap there. We got talking and I've been on the, I've been traveling for about two weeks. And I said to him, so how long have you been traveling for? And I expected to answer, oh, four months, maybe six months. He said, two years. And I just, what? And, you know, it's, and he told me his stories. He'd given up everything and just got, and just, got on the first plane. And that really, that really impacted me. And I, um, and it has sort of, uh, uh, inspired a bit of a short story, which I've had an idea for, for some time, because, uh, think about doing a short story collection on, uh, on backpacking and traveling. And, uh, it's things like that, that will, uh, that will, uh, that will filter in. So, yeah, I mean, it, it is the, the conversations that I have with people, you know, all been traveling for two years, uh, wow, that's just incredible. In fact, the hostel that I actually

9:38 met him at, that was essentially his home because that was his base of operations. And you just fly out to different places from there. It's where he got his mail sent. And that really impacted me. And you exchange words with people, you have a chat with people, and certainly you find out something completely different. Someone who's got a completely different lifestyle to yours. Someone who's you know, who's traveled to a country, you know, in the mid-80s and done something completely different. And, you know, I think things like that filter in quite strongly into my fiction. Well, cool. Now, today we're going to talk about the entertainment where you A decade earlier than you. I know you kind of like your 80s and 90s music, but we're going back to October 28th back in 1974. Number one album in the United States was Can't Get Enough by Barry White. Dionne Warwick and the Spinners had their number one song with Then Came You.

10:35 I got that urge to feel you. Just touching you and loving you makes everything right. Tell me how you feel baby. I never knew love before. Then came you. Then came you. The number one book was Centennial by James Michener. The top movie was Airport 1975.

11:25 A 747 and a small plane, they collide in midair. Well, the plane doesn't, the little jet, yeah, it didn't make it. but it left the seven 47 without a pilot. So now they have to get a pilot on board that jet in order to land it. Start Charlton Heston, George Kennedy, Karen black. Do you listen to much American music? Um, yeah, I mean, I do listen to, uh, I mean, I'm a strange one. I actually listened to quite a lot of modern American music, a lot of modern American singers. Um, I mean, I'm a massive, you know, Billy Joel fan. Um, and I always like to listen to a New York state of mind. Cause that, uh, although it's a song about new york you know if i listen to it always reminds me of what you know my home city of oxford and uh you know when i you know sometimes when i go back to oxford just it i just like it i like to reset so that that song always reminds me of resetting but no i do love a lot of 2010s music and um um and i find that uh I think it's because if I listen to 90s stuff, I'm always filtering it into a life called Scarlet or one of my other books, one of the other companion books in that novel. So I do like to– I find that listening to very modern American music tends to help me to switch off and decompress.

12:45 Well, this is kind of modern. Back in 1994, I think you know who Mariah Carey is. Absolutely, yeah. And she has that really famous Christmas song out there, you know, All I Want for Christmas is You. Oh, yeah. I was played at my school dance just about every single year. Well, she released it in 1994. That song did not go number one until 2019. It took 25 years to go number one. So that's kind of hard to believe. Now it's such an iconic classic show. So you had a lot of success as a novelist, but you're really into short stories, too. Yeah. I mean, it's, uh, I mean, my first book that I released, uh, was a short story collection. I remember, which, uh, you know, so I think it was about five or six stories, some of my very early work. It's not, not the best, I will admit, but, uh, you know, it, it was, uh, you know, it was great to actually, you know, have all these little different stories out there.

13:40 But my most recent collection, Collecting Nutmegs, features a, you know, wide variety of characters, including a, a backpacker who, you know, a very senior backpacker who goes back to the scene of his very first adventure. And it's about the, how he finds that the travelling world and the backpacking world has changed. And there's another story involving a busker as well. So, There's about five stories in that collection, a very, very small book. But it's one I'm very proud of it because it was in the pipeline for years. And, you know, I think that it's, I've really sort of, I've tapped into, I've really tapped in, I've tapped into a lot of emotion with this short story collection.

14:27 So do you kind of have a different mindset? Because I mean, a novel is quite the undertaking and then the short story, it seems like you just kind of have a little more fun. Yeah, I mean, the thing is with a short story, because with Collecting Nutmegs, when I wrote the collection, I didn't write it. I didn't just collect five short stories and put them together. I wrote Collecting Nutmegs as a single book, one story after the next, and to assemble the collection. So in a way, it was almost like doing a novel just with five separate stories in it. And in fact, two of the short stories are actually subtly linked with this particular reference to a character in there. One of my other short story collections are Life Cycle, which again, I did that as a, you know, started part one and moved all the way to the final story.

15:16 So I did that as a single book. So I think, you know, if you write a short story, I mean, obviously I've done, I've written individual short stories and they're great because you know what's going to happen and it obviously takes a lot less time to do it, but if you write a short story collection and you approach it as a single project, then that in a, in a way it's actually much harder than writing a novel because you've got, because you've got it. It's almost like writing a novel with very, very different unconnected chapters to it. Right. Okay. All right. Let's see what's happening in history on October the 28th, 1538 on the Island of Hispaniola.

15:58 It's where the Dominican Republic and Haiti are today. You ever spend any time in that area? No, never been there. The Spanish, they opened up the first university in the Americas. It was called Universidad Santo Tomas de Aquino. It was in Santo Domingo. Now, it stayed open from 1538 to 1801. That's when they closed it. If you're wondering, the oldest university in the world that's still open today, it'd be the University of Bologna in Italy. It opened up in 1088. All across the United States, we have these department stores called Macy's. 1858, Macy and Company opened the first department store. It was on 6th Avenue in New York City. First day sales were $ 11. So you know about the Statue of Liberty over here in the United States?

16:43 Oh, yeah. Absolutely. I do love it. Okay. No. No. See, Grover Cleveland, he was the governor of New York. Now, he vetoed the bill that said that New York would pay for the pedestal that they were going to put the Statue of Liberty on. Since he vetoed it, they had to have a whole bunch of fundraisers and get a bunch of big nodations and all that kind of stuff to get that pedestal built. Well, obviously they did it. Well, by 1886, Grover, he was now president of the United States. And the Statue of Liberty, it was getting ready to open. So Grover, as the president, he got to be the one who actually dedicated and opened it up. Put on this huge spectacle, kind of made an ass of himself, talking about how great he was and all kinds of stuff. He actually acted like he did something about it. In 1906, a Belgian and British mining company, they created what is today the Democratic Republic of Congo in Africa. Yeah, that's how much land they had. So yesterday in 1919, President Woodrow Wilson, he vetoed the Volstead Act. So that meant that there would not be prohibition of alcohol in the United States. Today in 1919, Congress, they overrode his veto.

17:50 So there would be prohibition of alcohol in the United States. Do you watch American football? Uh, no, I've, I understand. So basically I've never watched a single American football game in my, in my life. Um, uh, I've, I've been told I should get into it. Well, um, are you into what you guys call, we call it soccer, but you, you're regular football. Yeah, I mean, I keep getting the definitions mixed up because I don't know whether– I never– I keep getting mixed up between American football, soccer, football. It just– it's– I get confused and I've sort of– I've given up trying to tell them all apart. But it's a good game though, I'm sure.

18:36 Yeah, well, now you're in the Australia area, so now they've got Australian rules football, so that'll really confuse you. Oh, I'm getting more confused even now. Well, in NFL football, back in 1934, these were actual NFL teams. They were called the Brooklyn Dodgers and the Pittsburgh Pirates. They played the first penalty-free game in NFL history. See, if you watch American football, there's flags that stop all the time. Anyway, the Dodgers won it 21-3. Now, there have been four penalty-free games in the NFL history. That one, the one in 1936, one in 1938, and 1940. Then it stopped. They're saying, well, what happened? Well, Las Vegas started putting odds on the football games, and once they put on spreads, there was no more penalty-free games. Now, I don't know if the Jewish people really cared about this or not, but in 1965, Pope Paul VI, he proclaimed that the Jews were not collectively guilty for crucifying Jesus. Now, as politically correct and woke as our college students are today, I kind of wish that President Trump might do this.

19:36 Because in 1993, it was in Colombia, the country down in South Africa, or South America, See, the president there, he was speaking to the Columbia National University. It's the largest school down in Columbia. The students, they kept interrupting him. Yeah, as he was speaking. he couldn't get any words out the students were doing finally he just stopped speaking turn around and mooned them all i take that back i don't think we want to see trump's butt now in the book you wrote it's called behind the window you go all the way from bangkok to texas have you been to texas Never. Been to Texas. Never been to Texas. So I had to imagine a lot of things for that. But I did my research into it. In a life called Scarlet, in a 90s band, was that based on a collaborative or did you kind of base it on one group?

20:22 Well, I mean, I was very careful when I approached A Life Called Scarlet that I tried to avoid reading too much of any single band in case anything filtered through. And I wanted the characters to be purely, completely fictional, not based on any real person. So what I decided to do for A Life Called Scarlet was keep the band anonymous. In the novel, you never find out the name of the band. You never find out the name of any of their albums. or any of their songs. And so I made sure, so I, by keeping that very strong sense of anonymity, not only did, you know, I, I, you know, obviously keep the, you know, keep any accusations of, you know, did you base on this particular singer, but also I allowed the story to move away from the music and onto the characters.

21:15 Do you get upset if people compare you to like this Stephen King or Dean Kuntz, or do you like that? Well, I mean, I've never really been compared to any other writer. I mean, there's a few people said, oh, yeah, no, your writing is quite similar. There's some ideas you've got a little bit similar to this and that. But I've never really been compared to any other writer. And I think that's a good thing. I think that there's a lot of, again, you know, writers comparing to each other. And I think it's important to make your own mark. And I really hope that I have made my own mark here. I think you have. And I have to, I have to ask you this. I don't want to give away any of your trade secrets or anything. And I didn't come up with this. I was reading somebody else actually came up with it, but I thought they pretty much hit you dead on. They said that you are an expert in weaving interesting, intricate timelines together with ease. So I got to know, do you use a whiteboard?

22:09 Well, the thing is, I mean, with, with a life called Scarlet, there's, you know, it's set over 10 years, all, all, all the, all the 1990s with an epilogue in 2005. So there's a lot of networks, there's a lot of timelines, there's a lot of narratives, and there's a lot of flashbacks as well. And I had to make sure that they worked together, that they didn't contradict one another, particularly with the companion novels to them as well. I've had to do a lot of intricate plotting. So with the third novel in the series, After the Unconvinced, that spans well over 100 years. in terms of the timeline. So I've got to make sure that there's, I mean, I've got a whole page full of notes. With some of the other novels I've done, I found that with, I've just written a novel, Priory's Divide, which I'm going to be prepping for release in the not too distant future.

23:03 And that has got a lot of timelines going all over the place, but because it's all told from the perspective of one main character, I found it a lot easier to weave the narrative. So it can be hard sometimes, But I think that what I do is I use an Excel spreadsheet. I use a notebook and I have very, very clear notes. And the control find functional word is very, very useful. So if I can say, okay, what was this character doing in January of 1991? Then I can do a control find. Okay, this character was in this city at that point. I've got to make sure that nothing I do contradicts it. But I think, you know, that there's, there is a question of, I don't want to go too far with weaving lots of different narratives together, because I think if you do that, it just goes all over the place and you end up making a tiny mistake and it completely unravels. Right.

23:57 But yeah, you do a great job at that. I'll definitely tell you. So we see who was born on October the 28th. All right. Who was born on the 20th? I think this one probably. Made it across the pond over to you back in the 80s and 90s. The boy said, my name's Johnny, and it might be a sin, but I'll take your bet, and you're going to regret, because I'm the best there's ever been. Johnny, you're rousing up your bow and playing fiddle hard, because hell's broke loose in Georgia, and the devil deals the cards.

24:41 And if you win, you'll get this shiny. Fiddle made of gold, but if you lose, the devil gets your soul. Did the devil go, went down to Georgia, and that come across to Scotland? No, I've not really come across it in Scotland yet. Okay. Well, that was country singer Charlie Daniels. He was born in Wilmington, North Carolina in 1936. Now, that song was not just a big country song. That was also a big pop song too. Now, Charlie wasn't a solo artist. No, he was actually in a band called the Charlie Daniels Band. So he was just a member. They formed it in 1970. Now, before then, Charlie, he was a professional fiddle player. He did that in the 1950s until the 1970s. Some of their big hits are In America, Drinking My Baby Goodbye, Boogie Woogie Fiddle Country Blues. Now, Charlie married in 1964.

25:28 They had one son. He died from a stroke in 2020 at 83 years old. So do you know the difference between a fiddle and a violin? I know. I think, if I'm not mistaken, a fiddle is a little bit smaller than a violin, but I don't know too much about string instruments. Yeah, you don't have to because it's kind of a trick question. Everybody thinks because country, they play that fiddle, and then the classicals play the violin, you know, and the big orchestras. Absolutely no difference. The only difference is the kind of music they play on it. Actor Dennis Franz. He retired in 2005. That's why we haven't seen him in a long time. He's 82. He was born in Maywood, Illinois. Got famous on the TV show NYPD Blue. He was on Hill Street Blues before that, but a smaller part.

26:11 Biggest movie was Die Hard 2. Dennis, he married in 1995. That was Tony Orlando and Don. Now, Don, it was actually two women. Yeah, it wasn't just Don. It was two women. It was Joyce Wilson and Thelma Hopkins. Thelma, she's 78 today. She's born in Louisville, Kentucky. Now, in the 1970s, Tony Orlando and Don were huge. They even had their own TV variety show. Some of their number one songs are Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Old Oak Tree, Knock Three Times, He Don't Love You Like I Love You. 1977, they decided to go do their own thing. They just wanted to all do things. Tell me she went into acting. She started on the TV shows Give Me a Break and Family Matters. But from that time in the 70s, every two years, they would all get together. Tell me Tony enjoys and they'd get back and go on a tour. They did that, and they finally did the last show on March 22nd, 2024.

27:21 Back in the 70s, Thomas, she was married for seven years, and she had one son from it. So when you get some free time, like on a plane, I'm sure, what was that flight down there? Probably 15 hours? Well, I mean, I didn't come straight to Australia. I broke the journey off in Malaysia first. So I had a few days in Malaysia and a few days in Singapore. So I've done a, I mean, mind you, it was a long flight to Malaysia. But it was about 11 hours, I think. Because what I like to do on planes now, I tend not to watch the in-flight movies because you never can watch or hear them too well. But if there's a music selection on there, I like to listen to the music selection. Well, that's cool. You kind of surprised me. I was going to go the other way. What do you like to read?

28:06 Well, I mean, I read as well, but I find that, you know, if you read too much on the plane, you start falling asleep and it goes off when you read. So I like to just put some music on and shut my eyes for a bit. That's cool. So have you seen the movie Ghostbusters? Yeah, long time. Haven't seen it in a few years. Just don't cross the streams. Act as Annie Potts. She was born in Nashville. She's 74 today. Her first big movie was Ghostbusters. She was that one kind of meek receptionist lady at the front desk. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. After that, she was in Pretty in Pink. She was Bo Peep in the Toy Story movies. On TV, she starred on Designing Women and then Young Sheldon. She had a son from her third husband. She married her fourth husband in 1990, and they have two sons. Are you a big, not on a plane, but do you like watching movies?

28:59 Yeah, I absolutely love, I do love, you know, I do love movies and I like to, you know, I like to make sure that if I'm watching a film that the phone is in another room. I think that is so important because it's so tempting now to just pick up the phone and check your emails or whatever. So I love watching a good movie on the screen. Perfect way to, and I like to make sure that I invest myself properly in a film. Do you like all the superhero movies or do you like suspense, horror? Well, I'm not really a massive connoisseur of superhero films with the exception of the Dark Knight trilogy. because I like that because of the powerful storytelling element in there.

29:45 That wasn't about superheroes. It was more about human beings more than anything. So that's why I love that film series. Um, so, I mean, I like to, I'm very, fairly open-minded. I like to watch anything. And, uh, you know, I love, I've, I like to watch lots of different films because I think that's, it's really important, you know, uh, particularly when you're, you know, you shoot, if you're shooting a movie or something like that, how, what, what kind of angles they take, what kind of, uh, you know, what kind of shots do they take? And I'm, I'm very interested in the technical side of things, right. Um, with, with film. So do you kind of, I don't know if all writers do it, but I've heard this last time when you write a book and all that, do you kind of picture, um, an actor that would play this part and that kind of part?

30:32 Well, I mean, I used to, but I try, I try not to, I try not to do that. So sometimes, sometimes it does, it does happen. The reason being is I want to make sure that the characters are the characters as I see them, not as, uh, uh, you know, as, as, as, as an actor plays them. And sometimes I think, you know, if, if I was, um, if I was, if a life called Scarlet was ever adapted for a, for a film or a TV series, would I actually go to see it? And I'm sort of torn between the two, because if I went to see a film adaptation or TV adaptation, I think I would probably lose the character as they were in my head. You know, and from what I found though, um, when books were turned into movies, no one's ever satisfied. Whoever they, no matter who they get, they're never who the people had them pictured as. I mean, yeah. Yeah.

31:17 It's, uh, I think that part of the problem is, is that, you know, if you're adapting something into a movie, say that you're, if you're, say you're adapting 400 page novel into a one hour, 45 minute movie, excluding the credits, both end and, and, and at the beginning, you, you've got to cut so much out, right. You have to cut so much out. And I think that's why, you know, television's much better because you can add more stuff in, you know, you, you know, if a 10 episode adaptation of A Life Called Scarlet would do, that would do, would absolutely do wonders to it because, you know, you could tell lots of different parts of the story. Could you adapt it into an hour and a half movie?

31:58 Probably no, not really because I'm, you know, if I try to adapt it into a movie, I, at least a third of the novel, I'd have to chop off. Yeah, and that, that kind of, and if you, if you read the book, you're okay. If you haven't read the book, you're like, well, that makes no sense, you know. And, and, Well, I mean, it's not just in film. It's also in theatre as well. I mean, I went to the great, great novel, A Little Life by Hanyu Yanagihara. I went to see the play in London. And I knew there'd be cuts in it because it's like a 500 plus page novel. It's a really, really long book. And I went to see the play adaptation and I was surprised by how much they cut out. They cut out a lot of the characters in there, a lot of the secondary characters in just because, you know, and this play was three and a half hours long, but they had to cut so much out. Not because they did a bad job of it or anything like that, just because there was so much storytelling. If you wanted to adapt it into a play, it would have to be six hours long, just with the amount of stuff.

33:04 And you obviously can't expect an audience to sit still for six hours without a lunch break or something like that. So they had to They had to do a lot of surgery on it and adapt it and cut, slim it down quite a lot. But I thought they did quite a good job of the play. So if they did a 10-hour installment, would you be all for that on yours? Oh, yeah, absolutely. Because I think 10 hours is what you would need to tell the story. Okay. We'll try and plug that too. Hey, okay. Actress Daphne Zeninga. She's 64. She's born in San Francisco. Started out doing slasher films, the dorm, the drip blood and the intuition, but then she hit mainstream. She was in the shirt thing, space balls, gross anatomy. She films baseballs too.

33:58 I don't know if you even know what that movie is, but. Oh yeah. I know that. I know the films. Well, okay. I got space balls too coming out next year. I'm looking forward to that. Um, On TV, she played Joe on Melrose Place. Daphne, she settled down and finally got married in 2019. Actress Lauren Hawley. She was born in Bristol, Pennsylvania. She's 63. She was on the soap opera All My Children. Then she hit big primetime on Picket Fences, NCIS. She's been on Canadian TV, a show called Family Law, since 2021. Some of her movies are Dragon, The Bruce Lee Story, Dumb and Dumber, Down Periscope, Any Given Sunday. Her second husband was Jim Carrey for a year. And she married a third husband for 13 years, and they had three kids.

34:40 Then they divorced. But since they were married, he was a Canadian guy. And so she got Canadian citizenship out of it. That's why she's on Canadian TV. Here's an actress I know you like. I don't know if you like her, but I know you've heard her. Julia Roberts? Yeah, Julia Roberts, yeah. She's 59. She was born in Atlanta, Georgia. She was nominated for Oscars for Steel Magnolia's Pretty Woman, August Osage County. She won one for Erin Brockowitz. She married country singer Lyle Lovett for a couple of years. She married her second husband in 2002. And they have one daughter and two sons. I'd like to see you out in the moonlight.

35:20 I'd like to kiss you way back in the sticks. I'd like to walk you through a field of wildflowers. I'd like to check you for ticks. It's country singer Brad Paisley. He's born in Glendale, West Virginia. He's 54 today. Started out playing the guitar and singing in public when he was eight years old. But he put it all on hold. He actually went to college, graduated and everything, then came back to music, put out his first album in 1998. He's got 21 number one songs so far. A couple of them are The Fishing Song, I'm Gonna Miss Her, Mud on the Tires, Letter to Me, Start a Band. That was with Keith Urban. He married actress Kimberly Williams in 2003, and they have two sons.

36:03 You do a lot of hiking. Do you put headphones in or do you like actually experiencing the outdoors? If I'm going walking, I never put headphones in because I do like to experience the sounds. And I think making sure that if you've got headphones in and someone says hello, you're not going to end up talking. So I think it's important to keep the headphones out and engage it and have a good chat. Do you do day hikes or do you like doing overnight backpacking? Um, no, only day hikes. Uh, I've never really done a night walking, uh, overnights on, on mountains or anything like that. So it's, uh, you know, I much prefer, I much prefer, you know, you know, making sure I go out, have a really good walk, but coming back to home comforts.

36:49 I agree. I've done that back packet and it's not, no, it's not that fun. It gets cold and your back hurts. Don't have a bathroom. Well, you already talked about your Batman series. Actor, I don't know how to say his first name. Joaquin Phoenix? Do you know who that actor is? I think it's Joaquin. Joaquin. Okay. He's 52. I think I've got it right. I think you're right. You're closer than I am. He's 52. He was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Now his family, of course, his older brother was River Phoenix. His sisters are Liberty Rain and Summer Phoenix. First got known as a kid. He was in the movie Space Camp. And then he's been nominated for an Oscar for Gladiator, Walk the Line. He won an Oscar for The Joker. He married, he's married to actress Runa Mari and they have a son and a daughter. So what we've heard us talk quite a bit about books and everything like on the today's show notes, you're going to see links to them.

37:47 So it'd be easy for you to click over and actually go check them out. And you're going to find a lot of good books there that he's, that he's mentioned. And I think you have actually 15 novels over, don't you? Uh, I've lost, I've lost count now. Um, I've lost count and I probably should keep a tally of how many I've produced, but because, you know, it's, there's, you know, I'm always, I'm rewriting a few of them now, giving them new front covers. Now, when I heard a lot of young, well, not a lot of young writers, but a lot of writers, they say one of the hardest thing. And when you're writing a book is to know when just to say it's done, you know, it's like, you can just keep going.

38:29 Picking and rewriting and all that kind of stuff. At some point you just have to say it's done. Do you run into that problem? Well, I mean, I've been very lucky that I've always had with my book sort of an idea of when the book's going to come to an end. You know, when the story's going to reach a conclusion. So I've been very, very lucky about that. I know some writers really struggle, oh, how do I end this book properly? And I mean, you know, with Priory's Divide, the book I've just finished, you know, I knew how that novel was going to end. It's got quite an ambiguous ending. But it was a question of how do I tie the knot? How do I sew up the bag and say, that's it? So you've just got to, I think writers know when the book's going to come to an end.

39:14 And it's something that you've got to say to yourself, you know, this is where the story is meant to go. This is where the story is meant to end up. And this is how it's going to finish. And I think that it is something. That takes a lot of practice. When you write your first novel, you may experience, oh, how do I bring this to end? Well, it's something that you you're just going to have a very strong belief in your characters, very strong belief in your, in your story and you, and it will, and you will know how to end it. Okay. That sounds good. So we've got anything else that we left out that I left out that we want to plug?

39:57 I mean, it's, I think that that's, that's pretty much it. I mean, the main thing is my most recent novel I've done prior is divide first drafts finished. I'm going to be editing that when I get back in January and, Um, and I'm looking forward to getting out in the world. It's a book that I've had in my mind, in my head for a number of years. And it's a book that's, uh, that's very, very important to me. And it's a book that's, uh, sort of alternate history, uh, sci-fi, but has got very, very strong human connections to it. Well, awesome deal. Okay. Like I said, make sure you check out these, um, links on the bottom of the page and that one's not going to be obvious. We're going to have to, I'll have to come back and remind you guys when it comes out.

40:39 Yeah. All right. Our quote of the day. It comes from the second first lady of the United States. Her name was Abigail Adams. Yep, she was John Adams' wife. She died today in 1818 at 73 years old. She said, great actions call for great virtues. Well, thank you very much, Harrison, for joining us today. It's been cool, man. No, thank you. Thank you for having me. All right. Our country underground radio artist of the day. It comes from Troy out there in Craig, Colorado. He wants to hear Brinley Addington's song, Goodbye, Darling. So if you're in Craig, Colorado, I guess you might look up Troy. It looks like he's looking for a girl. You guys have an awesome day, and we'll talk tomorrow.

41:20 She hit me with one of them It ain't you, it's me kind of things I might have been born tonight But it wasn't last night I know what that means She made a couple trips to the trunk of her car Then she handed me back my rain Yeah, she made it pretty clear she was out of here And I can only say one thing Goodbye, darlin' Goodbye, darlin' Well, it was what it was. What it was. Now it is what. It is. Goodbye, darling. Goodbye, darling.