Join author Beth Barany as she discusses writing science fiction murder mysteries, space exploration, and her Janey McCallister series set in a space casino. Learn how she blends detective noir with futuristic sci-fi elements in this engaging Writers Not Writing interview by Benjamin Gorman
Today’s secret word is: Space Casino
On this episode, Benjamin Gorman gabs with Beth Barany, author of Into the Black, Book 1 of the Janey McCallister sci-fi mystery series, about space exploration, censorship, Daniel Spellbound, Star Wars Bad Batch, black holes, energy vacuums, Bubbles in Space, and the power of storytelling.
So, you know, writer stuff.
You can read Into The Black, Book 1 in the Janey McCallister sci-fi mystery series now and see if you like science fiction murder mysteries.
You can get it for free on Beth Barany’s site: https://author.bethbarany.com/free-books/
The BookLife Prize says: This fun, often riveting novel offers an intriguing blend of mystery, sci-fi, and romance elements. It finaled in the Page Turner Award contest and won an audiobook contract.
Find Beth at https://author.bethbarany.com/
Referenced on the show:
Kate Johnson’s Max Seventeen : https://books2read.com/u/bp26ag
Marie Lu’s The Young Elites: https://books2read.com/u/bwXQaG
S.C. Jensen’s Tropical Punch (Bubbles in Space, Book 1): https://books2read.com/u/3GOowQ
Beth Barany’s How to Write the Future podcast and YouTube show: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFt3x70-_d9Kywxz7uK1dvLmyKjJDi99C
About the show host: Benjamin Gorman
Author, poet, abolitionist teacher, publisher at Not a Pipe Publishing, dad, host of Writers Not Writing YouTube show/podcast, intersectional feminist, anti-racist (he/him).
LinkTree: linktr.ee/benjamingorman
https://www.youtube.com/@wrightword
Book and cultural references mentioned in this article
TV Shows & Movies:
- Daniel Spellbound
- Star Wars: The Bad Batch
- Star Trek
- Farscape
- Firefly
Books:
- Into the Black by Beth Barany
- Janey McCallister sci-fi mystery series by Beth Barany
- Max Seventeen by Kate Johnson
- The Young Elites by Marie Lu
- Tropical Punch (Bubbles in Space, Book 1) by S.C. Jensen
Other Media:
- How to Write the Future podcast and YouTube show by Beth Barany
- Writers Not Writing YouTube show/podcast by Benjamin Gorman
Transcript: Writers Not Writing, Episode 16 with Beth Barany
Writers Not Writing, Episode 16 with Beth Barany
[00:00:00] Introduction to Writers Not Writing
Benjamin Gorman: This is writers not writing the show where you can get to know your favorite writers and soon to be favorite writers by listening to them confess to the ways they procrastinate. Thanks for procrastinating with us. I’m Benjamin Gorman and the quiet guy. Behind the Glass there is Doug, the producer. I write novels and collections of poetry and stuff.
Doug tries his best to make me sound better, and each week we have a secret word to listen for. If you catch it. You earn the right to take an extra break at the time of your choosing from whatever is stressing you out from not API publishing. Welcome to Writers Not Writing.
Beth Barany: Today’s secret word is Space Casino.
Benjamin Gorman: Welcome everyone.
[00:00:52] Meet Beth Barany: Award-Winning Author
Benjamin Gorman: Today’s guest is Beth Ani. award-winning author Beth Barany writes in several genres, including young adult, adventure, fantasy, paranormal romance, and science fiction mysteries inspired by living abroad in France and Quebec. She loves creating magical tales of romance, mystery, and adventure that empower women and girls to be heroes of their own lives.
For fun, Beth enjoys walking her neighborhood, gardening on her patio, and watching movies and traveling with her husband, author Ezra Bani. They live in Oakland, California with a piano over a thousand books and usually demanding sweet cats. When Beth is in writing, she runs a business coaching and teaching science fiction and fiction writers and also teaches tailored story writing curricula for future facing bold organizations who want members to think outside the box and take action.
Creativity is the answer. Welcome, Beth. Thank you for being with us today.
Beth Barany: thanks so much for having me, Benjamin. So happy to be here.
[00:01:47] Cosplay and Childhood Inspirations
Benjamin Gorman: So, folks who regularly watch the show know that we completely dress up in cosplay as you have done today. But for the sake of the podcast listeners, we have to explain what it is we’re wearing.
So, tell everybody about your costume. That’s fantastic.
Beth Barany: Yes. black leather coat pants, motorcycle, chaps, boots. The helmet is here, raring to go.
Benjamin Gorman: So, the whole flight suit. That’s right. That’s excellent. I wanted to, I wanted to get in the same kind of, vein there, but, I have nostalgia for the 1980s astronaut craze.
that’s, early eighties growing up by aspired to be an astronaut. And so, I rented, I could not afford, but I rented this old fashioned eighties spacesuit, which is very cumbersome. But there’s a lot of nostalgia in here with me. I am channeling, I, when I was a kid, Sally Ride was my hero.
I even had a, a picture. My, my mother reached out to Sally Ride, and I had an autographed picture of Sally Ride.
I’m not quite
Benjamin Gorman: sure, what the connection was there. I think my mother knew her, the parents of her wife or something, Uhhuh, and so there was some kind of connection there. But, yeah, it was really cool.
I
got to,
Benjamin Gorman: you know,she was amazing.
Yeah.
Benjamin Gorman: oh, that’s wonderful. that’s great.
[00:03:01] Procrastination and Pop Culture
Benjamin Gorman: So, this is a show about procrastination, what we do when we’re not writing. So, what’s a bit of pop culture that’s been, grabbing your attention this week when you’re not writing?
Beth Barany: Oh, geez. I know I had to brainstorm all this ahead of time, but I can’t even remember what I wrote, but I’ll just remember what pops in my mind is.
[00:03:17] Science Fascinations and Storytelling
Beth Barany: I’m always curious what the latest discoveries are in science, so I’m always watching, YouTube videos about it. And I think we, and my husband’s a high school physics teacher, so we’ll watch stuff together and I’ll have him like, explain it to me if I don’t understand something. So, there was something in the news that we were watching.
Oh, it came out like some report last week or the week before, and we were watching explainer videos about it. I’m super fascinated by the expansion of the universe that’s supposed to be accelerating. And we’re all like, wow, what could that be? And then are dark holes, are black holes, dark energy?
is that for real? There’s these, two science reports that came out and different science explainers going on about them and all of them basically saying, correlation is not causation. there seems to be some correlation, but until, and it’s very hard to do experiments ’cause we can’t go to a black hole.
Benjamin Gorman: yes. Yeah, I saw something about this about,it was somebody who was manipulating, potentially manipulating dark energy. the theory. Anyway, this kind of works on the computer. This works in modeling, of essentially teleporting something, teleporting energy. and it was really interesting the per the person managed to create what I.
Understanding to be, and I could be misunderstanding this, an energy vacuum of some kind. And then nature abhorring, a vacuum shunted energy from one place to another into this space. And so, the, the practical applications are really wild. Could we, and it was moved microns, like this was not, moved over great distances yet.
Yeah. But the idea is that in theory anyway, you could create a space and move energy into it, which I thought was really fascinating. we’ll see how that plays out.
Beth Barany: Yeah. Yeah. That whole idea of energy from the vacuum and the csme effect, it’s fascinating. And I do not pretend to understand it, but I have used it.
But in my storytelling,
Benjamin Gorman: yeah. Oh, you have good, you’ve Already been playing with that. Yeah. That’s,I enjoy that kind of hard sci-fi twist within, I tend to read stuff that’s about,I, it’s technically soft sci-fi, but I think a lot of people don’t understand that just means the soft sciences, right?
So, it’s economics, it’s psychology, those kinds of, science fiction, put people in a spaceship, but you’re really looking at how they interact with one another. it’s a soft sci-fi novel, but I love when there’s some hard sci-fi in there and it’s exploring, how does this ship work?
it’s moving energy from place to place. So that’s fascinating to me.
Beth Barany: Yeah. Yeah. That’s really interesting. And it’s hard for me to say that I’m not writing, ’cause all the times that I’m not writing, I’m researching.passions, things that interest me from psychology to, philosophy to, different personality typing systems to science, history, archeology.
So, it’s like whatever grabs my fancy and I read a ton of headlines, and then I pick a, just follow my nose and dive, read a whole article on something. it’s so random and it’s super fun,
Benjamin Gorman: but it really is part of the process like that. Absolutely. Consumption of ideas is part of the writing process.
Beth Barany: totally. And I love listening to weekly reports about the space industry. So, I, there’s several people who will do the reports, what launched, what failed to launch. And I love watching them. I love listening to them. I actually listen to YouTube videos more than I watch them. Oh, yeah. ’cause I’m very auditory focused,and I’m just also absorbing, I’m absorbing language.
I’m absorbing how people talk about things and Yeah. after listening to so many launches, I incorporate that into my language of my characters, and it’s really fun.
Benjamin Gorman: I love watching those videos of the successful launches, watching the people in the, in the, in the control room.
Yeah. And their
Benjamin Gorman: celebrations, and that these are people who are so brilliant and the stuff that they are working with is stuff that, I would not even fully comprehend. And yet that feeling I can totally embrace, Yeah. Whatever it was, it worked.
Beth Barany: Yeah. Especially difficult things like the Mars Landing or the asteroid blowing up the asteroid, to, or.
To move it or, the Artemis mission.
Benjamin Gorman: Yes. I remember running down the hall to a colleague and saying, we, we need to understand how amazing this was that we, hit a bullet with a tinier bullet in space. this is amazing. Yeah. And, potentially earth saving, in terms of what we learned.
that’s so cool. and one colleague was like, you’re a nerd. And another was like, no, you’re right. That’s so cool. Uhhuh Yeah. At some point,this could save us all and the science is so advanced. So that was a really cool success.
Beth Barany: Yeah. So amazing. And I also listened to interviews with different experts in the field.
I recently listened to an interview about, the future of. They didn’t say it like, I think they called them the space ways. So, the whole low earth orbit, medium high earth orbit, the space between the earth and the moon, because that’s where I’m playing in as a storyteller. And they had such an interesting perspective and brought in some cross-cultural ideas that made me wanna study.
not just, what are the different decisions that different countries are making about the space industry, but how they make those decisions. ’cause their big point was the US doesn’t understand how these other countries make their decisions. They don’t understand their strategy, decision making behavior.
And I’m like, oh, okay. what is it? how do, how can we summarize how these different countries in especially China and also UUAE, and Luxembourg and the US and Russia, those are the big players. Oh, and India. And India now, yeah. what drives their decisionmaking process? So that got me really curious and I’m like, ah, aha.
A new topic to, to dive into.
Benjamin Gorman: Yeah. And what are their time horizons, what are their goals,
we tend to be, very much this has to happen now, and we need to plant a flag and we need to claim it. And I think a lot of other countries are saying. our goals are also nationalistic.
I know India under Modi is still, it’s a very much, we wanna plan a flag, but the timeframe might be very different. So, I know China absolutely is much, more patient. Yes. they’re willing to,to, they wanna be there, but they’re not saying we need to be first.
They’re saying we need to catch up and be best and we can take our time to do that.
Beth Barany: yeah. Yeah. They make five-year plans and, yeah. That doesn’t happen in the United States.
Benjamin Gorman: Yeah. Yeah. So that,and part of it is if you know you’re going to be the dictator for a long period of time, you don’t have to think in terms of four year and two-year cycles.
So that, that, you can do some long term the advantages of dictatorship. Yeah.I have been really concerned. one of the things that’s been jumping out at me is, that these, I’ve been seeing reports from teachers in Florida who have had to essentially eliminate their classroom libraries because of the censorship there.
and any reference to, it’s so broad that any reference to racism is considered potentially a problem. and the teachers in abundance of caution just say, oh, okay, when in doubt I’m gonna put this away, or any really any reference to, queer relationships, oh, this book, it might, get me charged with a felony.
I would rather not take that risk. And so, I think we as writers need to really watch the way.the administrative state can be chilling without actually enforcing anything. Just creating the danger that work might be pro, create a fight can really impinge on, the writer’s ability to get their work to certain readers, especially kids.
So that’s something I’ve been, doing a lot of,screaming and yelling about and trying to get people’s attention to the fact that even without prosecuting anyone, they’re preventing a lot of books from getting into a lot of kids’ hands. So, I’ll tell everybody Yeah. That’s something to watch out for.
Yeah.
Beth Barany: I do all that I can to raise the signal around the issues of book banning. And actually, one of my writers just, it was relayed to me today, her goal is to write a young, a middle grade fantasy that gets banned. Yeah. that’s her goal.
Benjamin Gorman: Yes. Yeah. there is the flip side one,
One of my first novels, has Muhammad as a character and, I was, concerned that somebody was gonna freak out and say, this is, you’re depicting the prophet. not in a way that is insulting by any stretch but is fictionalized. And that would, offend certain people.
And then there was a part of me saying, and also for sales purposes, that might not be all bad.
Beth Barany: That’s right. That’s right. some writers I know, I live with one who likes to put controversy into his work. For the purpose of.getting attention, but not just as a gimmick, but out of sincerity as well.
Benjamin Gorman: and that’s, that is the tension, is this. Is this just here to, poke people and bake them, or is this something you really wanna wrestle with? And at the same time, knowing the controversy isn’t all bad for getting attention, so
Beth Barany: yeah, I don’t do it consciously, but I recognize, I’m writing about adult themes.
I’m writing murder mysteries. they’re not all sweet and pretty and, I have diverse characters and. Of all stripes, And
Benjamin Gorman: it is, wild that things that I would not have considered controversial even a decade ago. I teach about anti-racism in the exact same way I have for the last 20 years.
And only now are people saying this is CRT. And I’m like, CRT is a third-year law school class. I am not qualified to teach the actual CRT, but I do teach that racism is, that institutional racism exists and is, something we can address. And that alone is enough that some folks go, oh,you’re, proselytizing to students about, or just teaching American history accurately, has become controversial in a way that it was not in my classroom 20 years ago.
So that’s been wild to watch, but yeah.
[00:12:56] Diversity and Representation in Writing
Benjamin Gorman: And you’ve got, so when you’re writing mysteries and you’re, thinking about those characters, are you thinking about diversity in an active way or are you just saying these are the people who were there?
Beth Barany: Because my stories take place on space stations.
There’s people from all over the planet, and I’m just following my instincts around what it is I wanna be addressing. I do something similar that a lot of mystery shows do, which is often the people who die, not always, but often, they aren’t necessarily nice people. And their crimes come to life as we investigate their murders.
we still want justice for them. My heroin still wants justice, but we also discover that their behavior wasn’t always, the best. and so, it’s like shades of gray. I am like they’re human. Their people, they’re not always great. So, there’s that struggle, what is right, what is wrong?
I’m not, I think a lot about diversity with my past, of characters. Even my main character who looks white, I have her with a diverse background growing up, speaking Spanish, having, a mixed-race background just like me. where people look at you and they’re like, wait, where are you from?
And you’re like,here and here. Oh. And here,it isn’t one thing, I grew up knowing that I was of multiple backgrounds and yeah, most of its Jewish, but then there’s the Irish and then the Native American, and, oh, a tiny bit of Asian. okay, cool.
We’re American.
Benjamin Gorman: Great. We were just talking about this in my class. I also am Jewish Irish. Mostly Jewish, Irish,Scottish, and then eastern, Eastern European and a bunch of Portuguese,on my dad’s side. and yet I acknowledge that I am white presenting and that j my Judaism is something that.
I have certainly seen an uptick in antisemitic sentiment, but that is something I can choose to share or not share. And that is something that, because I’m white presenting and whiteness has, this abstract, human construct concept of race, whiteness has been afforded to me in a way that it was not to my grandmother and to my great-grandfather.
certainly. and so that is a, and on my, maternal grandfather’s side, his Irishness, he was not white.
And,
Benjamin Gorman: whiteness has now been afforded to me, so that is an interesting thing to consider for our characters too. If they are white presenting, what does that afford them?
And how do they wrestle with the tension of, knowing if they were not white presenting, would they be experiencing this interaction with another character differently? so that’s something that I, do play with. I’ve got a cha, my protagonist in the series I’m writing right now is, Afro Latina.
She’s A black and. Argentina, Argentinian, her parents. And, she has to explain to her white girlfriend, I recognize that in the United States, I’m just black. that is the way that I present. And so, my treatment is that I am black. My Argentinian heritage is something I am choosing to hold onto.
So that, that’s, I think that is an interesting thing for us to think about with our characters and, create that diversity. But you’re right, it has it, it can’t feel forced, right? these are just the people who are there.
Beth Barany: That’s right. And I’m playing more with the rich port divide and the wrong side of the tracks and the right side of the tracks and who gets access to what.
And also, what power struggles, power structures, things like that. and also, my heroin has a basically a bionic eye and has to deal with the, And it’s hidden. but if people know, like she’s supposed to keep it on the down low ’cause it is part of her work. And, she had to sign all these papers saying she wouldn’t use it as a weapon and all these things.
so, there’s stigma. Yeah. Or not, depending on where she is, where she lives, how she’s working. There’s stigma about having different, being differently abled. I have characters with different, with prosthetics and things like that. I myself, don’t have all my fingers. I grew up that way.
I was born that way. So, I know what it’s like to experience this weird shock that people treat you like, oh, you’re, ooh, other, and so I play with that, I play with like, where’s the line? How does she handle it? The, that level of discrimination, people’s behavior. Yeah. All kinds of things.
[00:17:08] Exploring Sci-Fi and Fantasy Worlds
Benjamin Gorman: the book that I’m gonna recommend for our, to read pile. I actually cheated and started reading this week, so I’m getting a little ahead of it, butIt’s, Marie L’s, the young Elites and the protagonist has one eye. Andit’s the kind of thing where, and I’m sure you experienced this in the writing of it, it surprises me as a reader when the character then makes reference to, she’s having an emotional moment.
And she’ll say, I closed my eye. I, I blinked the tears out of my eye. Or, or the limits to her peripheral vision end up affecting her in these interesting circumstances. But the rest of the time, I, as a reader, forget.
And I
Benjamin Gorman: feel like that’s the kind of, it’s almost a hidden disability.
It’s like folks who have, disabilities that are,that are, that don’t present in that it’s. the person is, fully functional, they don’t seem to be struggling in any way. And then you realize, oh, the writer didn’t lose track this. of this very real important part of this character’s,personality.
And, you’re just constantly being reminded, oh yeah, that’s right. yeah. has, does that come out in your story where you know her? Yeah. Her eye then becomes a plot point in ways that kind of surprise the reader.
Beth Barany: I honestly don’t know if they surprise the reader.
No one’s told me. But yeah, I, in the first four books, I have her eye glitching for various reasons. And she doesn’t know why, and she can tinker with it ’cause she’s an engineer. butit’s a little bit jarring for her. It disrupts her life. And, and then also it’s a strength. It allows her to do her job in a way that others can’t.
and it also has heightened some of her abilities to observe people. In addition to being trained and observing people’s, then she can actually see all those micro movements that people make without even being aware that might indicate they’re covering something,
Benjamin Gorman: doesn’t know what I’ll bet the reader has a similar experience to, to, I, I’ve got a close friend who has a glass eye, and I don’t think I, I forget, like I don’t think about that at all.
And then something will happen, and I’ll be reminded. And I’ll bet the reader has that same experience reading your work where it’s, oh yeah, I forgot this, but this, that’s not, because at any point it ceased to be an intrinsic part of this character, it’s because She’s become a friend of mine and that’s not something I notice until it becomes relevant, And so that would be interesting to play with.
Beth Barany: Yeah. And that’s what my friends tell me. And my father was born blind in one eye, and he would have a glass eye for a while and you’re just like, oh, there’s dead. people are people, and that’s partly what I’m writing about as well, and the humanity of us all good and bad, and.
In the middle, Yes. and I wanna mention my TBR, my book and my tbre reading pile, which is actually, I also started it ’cause I had to read book two. It was at the end of book one, and I think I put it in the list. It’s Bubbles in Space. It’s book two.yes. It’s, she’s Who that by, SC Jensen, a Canadian writer.
Really fun. She took, she’s deeply inspired by Dashell Hammett and those writers. And she put it into a cyber punk noir future, where it’s really fun. And she’s great. Does a great job with the vocabulary. And it’s really, it feels like you’re reading a cross between,What’s that movie with, Harrison Ford and the Oh, blade
Benjamin Gorman: Runner.
Beth Barany: Blade Runner, yeah. Yeah. You feel like you’re in a Blade runner world but just like with a punk soundtrack overlaid and the Dashel Hammett energy of the, of the Maltese Falcon and those kind of things. And, so yeah, just started a book two, she’s got a cybernetic, she’s got a prosthetic arm, she’s got some other, and then prosthetic pieces.
And then it’s like the norm for people to have built in,the ability to have like internal screens and Yeah. this high-tech world we see in, in a lot of those movies. And it’s fun, it’s fast paced. Andher, she’s r she’s got a sense of humor, sardonic, and she does the right thing.
And, even though it’s hard, even though it’s. She battered and bruised half the time.
Benjamin Gorman: Yeah.
Beth Barany: I
Benjamin Gorman: love that, that, the sci-fi noir is a, a rich,sub-genre. I, the book I recommended last week was in that same genre, the Thing Man, which I’ve not started yet. but I’m excited to start and it’s, it looks like, just even the cover art and the back cover copy, I’m like, this is going to be a cool place to hang out,Yeah.
Beth Barany: Yeah. And there’s five books, I think now in the series, and she’s doing a remarkable, beautiful marketing job. I’m just so impressed. and yeah, I, and I recently, I also wanna give a shout out to, Kate Johnson’s Max 17 series. I don’t know if I’ve listed that, but that’s like reading Firefly.
It’s fabulous. It’s just so much fun. Very much. Violent and sexy and dangerous. And the main character who’s, her name is Max, just fabulous.
Benjamin Gorman: I will add that to the show notes. Kate Johnson, what’s the name of the series?
Beth Barany: max 17.
Benjamin Gorman: Okay. That’ll be in the show notes for folks. I wanna check that out. ’cause that does sound very cool.
Beth Barany: Yeah, if you’re a Firefly fan, there’s some other comps that she references. So that’s the big one for me. It just really, I think you’ll really enjoy it.
[00:22:07] Animated Shows and Storytelling
Benjamin Gorman: So, in addition,when we’re not on the page, I, know you have been watching Bad Batch. Have you been, have you caught up to, the, the most recent episode?
Beth Barany: no. I’m still just a few episodes in. Yeah. Bad batch. really interesting. I’ve also been watching some other Star Wars animated, I think it was called Young Rebels.
Benjamin Gorman: Oh yeah.
Beth Barany: Yeah. Or just
Benjamin Gorman: rebels? The Rebels. Oh, rebels. Rebels, yes.
Beth Barany: Yeah. Just started that. I’m just super drawn right now to these, teen animated shows.
I, I did watch the two seasons ofspellbound Daniel Spellbound. Really good writing. I’ll check those
Benjamin Gorman: out. Yeah. Really good writing. The writing is, oh yeah. Compared to when we were kids and the cartoons were like, if you go back now as an adult and you look at the cartoons we watched as kids, they treated us with such disdain.
They were just like, you’re idiots. The writing doesn’t have to be decent. the story barely has to make sense. The transformers are looking forner on cubes. We’re never gonna explain why or what those are. They’re just things we don’t sell them. because we can’t make profit from it, Too bad kids.
And like now the writing is really tight. Yeah. and,
Beth Barany: really good. I loved the man, my brain is just spitting on me. Um.the series about the kids who had the different, energy powers, earth, water, air kind of Oh, avatar. Last Airbender. Yes. Yes. I loved Avatar, but I didn’t start with Avatar.
It started with the other one about the girl.
Benjamin Gorman: Oh, Cora, the legend. Cora, the sequel.
Beth Barany: I watched that twice.
Benjamin Gorman: Yeah.
Beth Barany: First I watched it, then I went back and watched Avatar, then I watched Cora again. I’m like, oh, now I really understand the relationships.
Benjamin Gorman: So good. And then they made a live action film, which was terrible.
It was like the worst film. Because they didn’t get the fact that the protagonist is funny and fun. They made it so serious. Oh, okay. And yeah, it’s, it is those cartoons. And I love the way that they, I don’t wanna spoil it for anybody who’s not seen them, but that’s a while back. I don’t feel like I’m spoiling too much.
But the ending, I think there were four seasons of Avatar, is that right?
Beth Barany: Yeah. Yeah.
Benjamin Gorman: And the ending was a triumph. Yeah. And you often see these shows just trail off, they’re not sure if they’re gonna get re-upped or whatever. And that one really came together in this very intentional and brilliant way that actually fit the characters.
It didn’t have to be, this person kills that person. The end like, Yeah. totally worth, if folks have not seen Avatar, the last Airbender. highly recommended time.
Beth Barany: Yeah. And I know they’re reviving it. I went looking, I’m like, oh, this was so great. Is there any anymore? And then I saw, oh, they’re gonna revive it or extend it Oh, really? Yeah.
Benjamin Gorman: Oh, I’m excited to check that out. Yeah. Yeah. Because yeah, those were really thoughtfully done. They created a beautiful, rich world. Yeah. these fantastic characters who changed and grew over time and
so yeah, I really liked that. and I don’t want to spoil anything about bad batch for you, but it starts off.
The first episode I was going, these characters are so rote, they’re the superhero team, here’s the strong one, here’s the smart one, you, it’s teenage men, ninja Turtles. And then they have really developed and Oh, that’s great. Much better. So yeah, it’s, and it’s also surprisingly adult. And when I say adult, I don’t mean in like it’s, it’s not, there’s no sexuality, there’s, but the violence, these are, soldiers, the The quantity of violence, but also some really grim, slow paced. agony that these characters go through that really isn’t for kids. Like these are shows that are for adults, in many ways. And, and I’ve appreciated the, again, the level of respect for the audience.
you
Benjamin Gorman: gotta value the people you’re creating work for or don’t create it.
You have to talk about people.
Beth Barany: Yeah. one of the things that we’ve done over here is we’ve read the book. so, you wanna write a bigger No. You wanna write a bigger story? Is that what it’s called? Ask my husband. You wanna write a bigger story? You’re gonna ride a bigger
Benjamin Gorman: we’re, yeah, we’re gonna need a bigger story.
We’re gonna need a
Beth Barany: bigger story.
Benjamin Gorman: we’re gonna need a bigger boat. Nice. I like it. Yes.
Beth Barany: Yeah.
[00:25:52] World-Building and Writing Process
Beth Barany: And it’s all about how do you build story worlds that are just bigger than just the story. and they’ve always referenced Star Wars because they’ve done just a phenomenal job expanding that world and diving deep into these secondary characters and, where you care about them.
I also watched the shorts where their little standalone Stories. And I was so touched by how well they did and how nuanced they would get into someone’s story. And if you are watching, if you’re part of, if you’re a fan, then you understand how it all fits together, and you cheer for them.
And I’m just so impressed. And it’s something that, when I’m world building for my own work, I go down these little rabbit holes, I write all these little side stories. Yes. So that I understand when a character walks into the room, who they are, what they want, what’s. What they just came from, what they’re struggling with.
and if I haven’t done that work by the time I’m finished with a book, my readers will know. So, I need to know, and I, yeah. I
Benjamin Gorman: tell my students, you should have so much more writing than what ends up on the page for your reader, because you need to know this stuff. Yeah. And the reader will be able to feel that you are aware of more than you are revealing.
That’s right. so
Benjamin Gorman: yeah, we do all so much background, Yeah. And even more so in sci-fi fantasy, in genre fiction where we’ve gotta create a world. Yeah. That’s a lot. One of the authors I work with, she, it took her 10 years to create the first Epic high fantasy book in, in her series.
Now, the second one took. What, two or three like it, because she’d built this world, but she’d done an incredible amount of work on the lore and the background So that this thing feels like you really are in this new place that she’s created. So yeah, I recommend Miko Ozu, the staff of Fire and Bone.
You will read it and go, it is 10, 10 years of work went into Wow. it’s amazing.
Beth Barany: Yeah. Oh, that’s great. I can totally relate to that. I have a young adult adventure series, Henrietta The Dragon Slayer, and it took me a long time to be feel ready to get Book one out. And by then I had started book two and at that much quicker.
And I had already started book three, which is twice the size of book one, and. And by then I had really, I really knew my world. I had a lot more confidence. I could also tell the story from multiple perspectives. and, it was so much fun to, to build that. And now I’m actually working on stories with Henrietta, the Dragon Slayer and her friends in a completely new environment.
I wanted to challenge myself. I wanted to get them into a place nobody knew that none of the characters knew and have them face these monsters and super fun. And then I have to weave it all together. I’m waiting for my subconscious to how could all these disparate creatures exist in one landscape?
I haven’t figured it out yet.
Benjamin Gorman: Yeah. and some of that figuring it out is stepping away. So yeah.
[00:28:36] Hobbies and Inspirations
Benjamin Gorman: When you are not writing, what has been a hobby that’s been helping you step out of that world? recently.
Beth Barany: working on multiple projects is one thing, right? I’m working on the sci-fi fantasy, the sci-fi mysteries actively and doing all the science research.
And then every once in a while I’ll bump into things that inspire me for the fantasy. I would say just like this, I have this hunger to travel, this hunger to travel in my mind and my body. I’m hopefully gonna travel again this summer. I’m looking forward to that. getting out of the norm.
Yes. And just
Beth Barany: going to different, even different locations in my town here in my city. and I I listen to a lot of podcasts or watch videos. It’s almost like I don’t know what I’m going to discover, so let’s go see what’s out there.
[00:29:19] Exploring Oakland’s Cultural Richness
Benjamin Gorman: And you live in Oakland, right?
Beth Barany: Yep. Yeah.
Benjamin Gorman: I’ve got family down there, so I’m down there all the time.
And Oakland is such a rich city, culturally. Yeah. You can go to another neighborhood, and you have entered into a different city, like Absolutely. It’s really great.
Beth Barany: Yeah. It’s so great. Just. Recently I remember going somewhere feeling oh, it’s just, oh, I’m, I feel like I’m in Thailand and it’s actually just a cafe down the street.
Yeah.
Beth Barany: But it, it’s a Thai family. They, everything, the food on the menu is things I’ve never seen. Oh, they’re, they have Thai coffee. They have their specialties, the way they make it. And I feel like, oh, this is great. I didn’t have to go very far and I’m already somewhere else.
[00:29:51] Family and Food: A Journey Through Cuisine
Beth Barany: My, yeah,
Benjamin Gorman: my dad grew up in the Bay Area, and he, that was how his folks who couldn’t afford to travel the world introduced my dad and his brothers to the world was through food.
let’s keep trying these other kinds of restaurants in these other neighborhoods, which were not long commutes. we go half an hour in this direction. We are getting, try a food that, you know, and so my dad, that was cuisine was the way that he learned about the world and different cultures.
oh. Yeah. We’re lucky to be in a city that is that culturally rich.
Beth Barany: Yeah. It’s so wonderful.
[00:30:22] Memories and Connections: A Father’s Influence
Beth Barany: I grew up, in, Sonoma, but my father worked in San Francisco and as a teen I was able to go with him a few times to his job and he was a salesman and, but he would pop in and out of these delis and this florist on his way to the client.
And so, he learned how to say please and thank you in 10, 15 different languages. And I would walk with him, and he would teach me and ha and he would always, he was very personable. He would shake their hand and talk to them and have a chat. And it felt like in the span of an afternoon I got to go to all these different places with him and I got to learn a few different words and languages and and my dad was very big hearted and I.
It’s like wherever he went, he made friends and yeah. It’s wonderful. Which,
Benjamin Gorman: lends itself to a sales job too. The people Oh, perfect. Who, Yeah. That’s, and yeah, my, my dad is the same way. It’s amazing. my, no matter where we go in the world, he will meet people he has met before. We’ll be in an airport, and he’ll go, oh yeah, there’s this person.
And he can remember not only the individual, but he’ll say oh, that’s this person. Their daughter just got into brown. She’s studying chemistry. It’s, she’s really sharp. And we’re like, wow. How do you possibly remember all, my mom and I are looking at each other going, I have no idea who this person is or how he remembers that, but that’s this great skill that, Has allowed him to connect with so many people over time. Is he? He remembers them. It’s amazing. That’s
Beth Barany: so cool. That’s a wonderful skill to have. That would be a good character to have in a story.
Benjamin Gorman: Yeah. Somebody who can remember, Yeah. Just those folks who have that ability, it’s I envy it.
I do not have that. I tell my students very openly, you’re going to graduate and I’m gonna meet you in 10 years and I will not remember your name.
I will still care
Benjamin Gorman: about you. I will be excited to hear about your, your new spouse and your beautiful children.
And names are going to vanish from my mind.
Please don’t test me on them in 10 years. I’ll feel, it’ll, you’re just going to create an awkward situation. I, yeah. I’ve taught thousands of students now. I do not remember their names.
Beth Barany: Yeah. I can relate, but I can remember someone if they start to tell me about their story. Because I’m a writing teacher. If they start to tell me their story, I’m like, oh yeah, I’ll remember you. I
Benjamin Gorman: find that I’m much better with faces.
[00:32:26] Challenges of Remote Teaching
Benjamin Gorman: And the really tough thing was, covid during the lockdowns. We allowed our students to keep their cameras off. And there was a lot of debate about that. can you keep students engaged if their cameras are off?
But on the other hand, are you, if their camera’s off, if their cameras, if we’re forcing ’em to have them on, are we invading their homes?
and so there, there some schools I know chose to keep cameras on. We chose to allow students to decide, which means a lot of students chose to have them off.
And what I found is I had a really hard time connecting with a lot of those students. now we’re back in school years later and they swing by my room and say, I took your class. And I’m like, and I don’t know who you are. Oh yeah, I did read your essay, but I don’t remember you because I don’t know your face.
Beth Barany: Yeah. Yeah. My husband had the same problem. Yep. Yeah. He’s a high school teacher and Yeah. I think everybody had their camera off. Yeah. Which also had its benefit, meaning like there’s a certain freedom he had, and we had here ’cause at the house.
Benjamin Gorman: Yeah. Yeah. it was a very strange time.
Beth Barany: Yeah. Very strange. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:33:25] Ad Break
Benjamin Gorman: let’s take an ad break here. Okay. We’ll get Doug to fire up the ad break music and thank you, Doug, and we will get going on that and then when we come back we’ll talk about what you’ve been daydreaming about recently. Thanks, Doug. Hey, everybody. Today’s ad is for ads.
If you’re an indie author, you know how hard it is to get the word out about your books. you could advertise on this show for less than 20 bucks. Just go to knot a pipe publishing.com, click on the link for the show and sign up. You can also sign up to be a guest that’s always free and we can try to time your ad or episode to match a book launch or a cover reveal, or your birthday or a marriage proposal, or the anniversary of a famous Babel or the predicted return of a dead celebrity or profit, or the live show announcement.
We’ll be at Nor Westcon in Seattle, April 6th to ninth. The guests are to me announced we’d love to have you in the live audience. Bring some fun questions to ask a panel of procrastinating authors. Okay, Doug, teleport us back to the show.
Thank you very much, Doug.
[00:34:35] Daydreams and Storytelling
Benjamin Gorman: So, Beth, what have you been daydreaming about recently?
Beth Barany: I, I’ve been daydreaming about, meeting new people and, finding new solutions to new problems or, new solutions to old problems, and how to bring storytelling into new environments, into new, situations. I’m passionate about thinking about the earth as a globe. I spent a lot of my time watching launches and looking at beautiful astrophotography and I.
James Webb Photography and Hubble and, earth from space. I love that. I have a ton of screensavers on my computer. Yeah. Where I get to see that all the time. And I’m, I think about, how do I convey that and how do I share that, fascination that I have, that awe that I have, through, through story.
So, it all comes back to story. I don’t really have, daydreams that aren’t connected somehow to story in some way. yeah.
Benjamin Gorman: No, I am in the same boat.
[00:35:37] The Power of Narrative
Benjamin Gorman: I find that I am almost religious about the power of narrative, if that makes sense. Like I believe that. Our brains are hardwired for story, regardless of whether the story is true.
regardless of whether there is causality, we will create it because we want story.
and
Benjamin Gorman: sometimes that trips us up. But I think there is something that is unifying in recognizing that, part of what makes us human is our need to understand the story of the world around us, and our own life experience and the stories of others and how those are interconnected.
yeah, I love thinking about how our, we are characters, and we are creating a plot structure.
Beth Barany: Absolutely. And because I’m working in a lot of different stories, so not just my own, but my clients and also I edit my husband’s work. It’s like I feel like I’m going from room to room, visiting different stories and different structures and different.
there’s different things that and underpin different stories. So, I guess another part thing that I daydream about is like, what is the operating principle for those different stories and those different people inside those stories and real people, what are, what’s driving them? What’s their operating principles and how do I, and what are mine?
And so, it’s like this excavation that happens and, makes me just, it’s relativistic in a way. Like everything’s related to everything else. And also, if things have all these different points and different perspectives that aren’t, connected or aren’t seemingly connected. So, I’m just, it’s almost like I catalog things and observe them.
And I don’t always have an answer. I don’t always know what it is yet. So, there’s a lot of suspension of I don’t have the answer, I just have some information. Yeah. I just have, and it’s. It’s a kind of a playful space too. ’cause I’m also like juggling lots of different ideas and waiting for things to settle and
Benjamin Gorman: yeah, it’s, no, I’m in the same boat.
[00:37:27] Creating Cozy Tension in Writing
Benjamin Gorman: I’ve been thinking a lot about how do I, this impulse that I have as I’m crafting stories to increase the tension is natural, right? We want our stories to be more exciting as they go, but I’ve been pushing against my own impulse to say tension is violence. And so how can I create stories that are cozier, that are, and that’s been, a real tension for me because the, the stakes don’t have to be, and this will lead to bloodshed, right?
and, and so how do I not put. Project, more violence into the reader’s world, and still keep the reader engaged. and that’s, that, that’s hard I think for, I don’t know about for you, but for me, a lot of my stories end up there, ends up being some kind of physical violence and it’s, I’ve been stepping back and reflecting on that and saying, my, my life is not full of physical violence.
So, what am I projecting into the world in an effort to create tension? That might actually be unhealthy. So that’s something I’ve been thinking about.
Beth Barany: That’s really interesting. Yeah. I watch a lot of cozy, cozy mysteries. usually someone does die though, or, they usually there’s a death.
Benjamin Gorman: But then yeah, a lot of it, the tension isn’t, then there’s more bloodshed No. Within the story.
Beth Barany: No, it’s about who done it, why done it, and, what’s really going on. And, and also. Secrets, right? Secrets hold tension, and should a secret be revealed. I have one of my characters right now in the work I know in the work in progress, he’s, he doesn’t, he wants to ask her an important question to move the relationship forward, but he hasn’t gotten the courage yet.
And
yes,
Beth Barany: I reveal his angst about it and his questioning himself. Like, why can’t I do this? I’m so brave in all these other areas of my life. Why here? And why am I not brave here? Yeah. So, the way people hold back, the way people also say inappropriate things too, and then the consequences of that, or, Because I work with over long distances in my stories. it’s like the distance that you have from the loved ones also is a tension.
Benjamin Gorman: Yes. I
Beth Barany: guess I, I do play with that a lot.
Benjamin Gorman: Yeah. And I want that more in my writing. the, the tension of the thing not said is can be just as suspenseful as, there’s somebody waiting around the corner with a machete.
Exactly. is this character going to be able to find the courage to say this thing that’s hard and that has emotional weight. And so, I’m trying to work on infusing my writing with more of that kind of tension. And less of the, this is. I was talking to my brother about, today he’s going to see Ant Man, the newest Ant Man, and we were talking about how much we liked the first one because unlike so many of the other Marvel movies where the stakes are, if this goes badly, the entire world ends.
The stakes were can he get, can he reconnect with his daughter?
And it was
Benjamin Gorman: just as we were just as emotionally invested
When the stakes
Benjamin Gorman: were intimate as we were when they were, global. Yeah. And, and so that I think, is there, there needs to be some healthy, combination.
And I haven’t found it yet. My, my books do tend to, if this doesn’t go well, the world ends. Like, how can I uhhuh find that? No, if this doesn’t go well, this character doesn’t get to have the relationship that they want to have with this sibling or significant other, or whatever. How can I find that kind of tension?
Yeah, that’s, there’s a lot to play with there.
Beth Barany: That’s fascinating. Yeah. That’s about identity. And if we don’t get, like an ant man, if he doesn’t get to be the father that he so yearns to be, then who is he?
And then what kind of man is he? And that goes right to self.
Sense of self identity, which is core. So, if we don’t have a sense of identity, then we’re like, ah, we’re lost. And it really
Benjamin Gorman: is existential instead of the world has ended. My world has ended. ’cause I don’t know who I am in the world. Yeah. And so, recognizing that the stakes really are just as high.
It just, it comes, about in a different way. Yeah. And so, I think that’s helpful for, but we’re getting too close to process. Oh, are we? But also,
Beth Barany: we’re touching on one of my favorite things to think about, which is how humans are wired. Yeah. Like you touched on, we’re wired for story.
We’re also wired for so many, for survival, for I identity stability, and so I spend time actually listening to videos and thinking about this and talking with friends around these inner workings and how humans are connected to each other and to themselves. And it’s so fascinating because we aren’t born with that level of self-awareness and it’s only through, we get to cultivate it.
So, I guess you would say that self-awareness and. Self-discovery and human evolution is one of my hobbies as well.
Benjamin Gorman: Yeah. And same here. And thinking about the ways that our predispositions toward survival, toward preserving an identity can betray us. is an interesting thing to play with in our writing.
And it’s also interesting to think about when you’re looking at the world around us. Yeah. to what extent are people saying this new change is scary to me, simply because it doesn’t fit into the schema that I understand. And so, I I know a lot of folks who are struggling to adapt to a world where, we are accepting of trans people.
And it’s not because they’re saying, I recognize, I see myself as hateful. Yeah. They’re saying, because this is new to me. And I just don’t like this thing that’s new.
Beth Barany: Yeah.
Benjamin Gorman: Yeah. And how do I give somebody grace to say, I understand this is new and scary to you. And also, not say, I’m gonna give you so much grace that I’m gonna allow you to be hateful to this person who is trying to live their life.
That is, it’s a very real tension. That’s interesting. I find that trans people actually are more gracious to
Benjamin Gorman: the fact that people are struggling than Somebody like me watching it from the outside saying, why can’t you just tolerate this person the, And accept them, love this person as they are.
Yeah. because they’re working on a timeline and they, this might be new and hard for them.
[00:43:14] Cross-Cultural Connections and Storytelling
Beth Barany: Yeah, it’s, and maybe I lived abroad when I was 16 and I got to meet people from all over the world, which had been a dream of mine since I was like 13. And there’s something about being with people from all different cultures and starting to feel like, there’s so many different ways of being in the world.
There’s not just one way. It’s very easy when we’re just in our hometown and these are the people we know, and this is our family and this is our school. We think that is the world. But actually, yeah, everybody’s got that, those things. And they, the way they proceed with them is different. and like I yearn, one of my other hobbies is Paris and France and French and being in Europe and,
just being in a different environment where the history is different and the food is different, and how people get from here to there is different and then you realize, we’re all the same, but we’re also all different. And I just love that tension and that dichotomy. It makes me feel alive, actually.
It helps me feel like. Oh, it’s my, one way is not the way. And thank God,
Benjamin Gorman: Yeah. Because
Beth Barany: I’m boring. I’m not
Benjamin Gorman: Same here. Yes. Small town English teacher. My life is not that interesting. I take students to, I’ve taken students to Europe a handful of times and the, one of the wonderful things about that experience is I share with them.
You’re gonna notice kind of superficial differences first. And then eventually as we are there, you’ll start to notice some of those deeper cultural differences, in the way people communicate, the way people interact, the expectations. This is just, and the people you’ll be meeting have that same attitude of, but this is just the way everyone is.
And so that creates this, interesting dynamic between my students who are going. Oh, the world could be different.
and really
Benjamin Gorman: I’ve gotten to watch these students minds just be blown. Not by the superficial stuff, not by, oh, an outlet can have a different number of prongs, but that’s where it starts, And then it gets significantly deeper where they start to realize, oh, the kind of verbal patterns, even when this person is a fluent English speaker, are different because of an underlying cultural difference.
Beth Barany: Yeah. And then how do you, okay, I have to take it back to storytelling because my passion is like, how do I build cultures, that are different, that make that change my main character and.
Through the course of what she’s doing. there’s a cross-cultural exchange. And I realized I’m passionate and I’ve been passionate about it since I was 16 of this cross-cultural connections and exchange and how we influence each other and what I was talking about earlier about like how do different countries make strategic decisions about their space programs?
that’s a cross-cultural communication, right? How do we translate the way China operates versus the way the US operates? How do we change the culture in the US actually? And it, I’ve seen, I’m starting to see the things that I was hoping for is starting to shift inside our own space industry and and how can I be a force of cultural change, right?
Because that’s what I feel like fiction, our stories are doing. yeah, I love watching British cozy mysteries because I feel like I get to go into another culture dealing with some core human things that we all deal with. And at the same time, the way they go about it is different. And the way we reveal our mysteries here and our storytelling processes.
So, it’s, I just love that stuff.
Benjamin Gorman: Yeah. and our culture is so young and so diverse that, getting to spend time in something like a British cozy mystery where the culture is, older and more clearly understood by, all the various participants, this is the way we are. There’s a clearer sense, I think in England and France of this is the way people ought to be and yet it’s also limiting.
Yeah. They ought to be like us and Yeah. And yeah. Yeah. And we don’t have quite that, yeah. we certainly have our entrenched sense of this is the way we ought to live our lives, but we are more diverse, and we are younger just as a culture. And so yeah, as writers, we get to present people with an opportunity to get off the porch and see something different, and I think that’s really healthy.
I love it. I love it.
[00:47:14] Upcoming Books and Writing as Protest
Benjamin Gorman: So, your, next book probably won’t come out for a while. What’s one thing you want listeners to know about right now in terms of how to connect with you?
Beth Barany: Oh, sure. So, the first book in the series is called Into the Black and it is available, it’s a great entry point into the series, into the Janey McCallister Mystery series.
She is a lead investigator on a hotel casino space station leading her first team, and of course, problems ensue. So, I highly recommend that if you, wanna get on my list, you can go and get the book for free. Go to my website, author Beth bani.com and find free books and then navigate to, into the black.
Very cool.
Benjamin Gorman: And I will put all that in the show notes so folks who are watching or listening will be able to Yeah, it’s one click away. two clicks. ’cause first go to the website and get yourself a free copy and get into the series. that’s right. That’s right. that’s very generous of you.
That’s really cool.
Beth Barany: it’s there because, it’s a great entry point. And if they like that book, then you’ll get the rest. And Book five is coming hopefully by the end of 2023.
Benjamin Gorman: Oh, that’s exciting.
Beth Barany: Yeah. hope so.
Benjamin Gorman: Yeah. Do you have a title or is that still No
Beth Barany: title, no, no title yet.
Yes, no title. It’s gonna be no title probably until I’m in the revision process right now. It’s just Janey book five.
Benjamin Gorman: Yeah. Yep. Oh, that’s very cool. That’s, it’s nice for folks to be looking forward to Janey book five too.
Beth Barany: yeah. And I’m very proud of the first four books. Book one Won, was a finalist, and the Page Turner Awards and.
Benjamin Gorman: Congratulations. That is cool. I love that idea of a setting. The, the space casino there. Curtis Chen has one of his, kangaroo, his kangaroo series, the second in the series takes place on a space casino and it’s really fun. because I love that so much, I’ll have to go check out the whole series ’cause Yeah.
I wanna spend the five books in that space.
Beth Barany: Yeah. I should let you know the book five is a departure book. Five is Not, is on a different space station. Ah, yeah. yeah. But once you get people sucked in,
Benjamin Gorman: then I’m just gonna want to go wherever Janey is,
Beth Barany: yeah, that’s right. And she’s gonna go to space stations ’cause she’s the Space Station investigator, so we’ll see where she will go.
I’m excited to share with everyone, yeah, this new adventure.
[00:49:22] Weekly Poll and Sci-Fi Universes
Benjamin Gorman: one of the things we do on the show is we have a weekly poll. And, so for example, last week we, had, Francis Lupa Ippolito suggested this one that was really interesting. It was, if you could pick between two powers, not for yourself, but a superpower to give your arch enemy knowing you would be in conflict with this person in the future, which would you give?
And the options were, the ability to change the density of an object, to make something as, as dense as lead, or as light as a feather. Or the ability to talk to animals, which would you give to that other person? and the results were interesting. I made an argument, probably prematurely and skewed things a little bit.
I think I put an elbow on the scale and said, just because have to con, talk to the animals doesn’t mean they’re necessarily gonna obey. So, I would much rather my arch nemesis have to be conversing with animals about how to harm me. If on the other hand, the power were, they had to convince inanimate objects to harm me, that would even things out.
talk to Animals did win handily in that one, 77 to 22%. So, people were, that’s the one people wanted to give to their arch nemesis. So, what is a poll we should ask for, from our listeners this next week?
Beth Barany: okay, so I revealed, I’m not so great at this kind of thing, but I just picked the first thing ’cause I’m such a fan girl. Between. Star Wars, Star Trek, Firefly, and Farscape.
Benjamin Gorman: I think that’s a great question. And the, I would like your input on how to word it, because I think one of the things that makes a big difference here is are we saying which one would you like to watch, or which one would you want to live in?
Beth Barany: Ooh, let’s do that one. Which one would you like to live in?
Benjamin Gorman: Yeah, I think that’s a more interesting one because that is more interesting, there, there are, these are all fun to watch from a safe distance, but there are some that I would certainly not wanna live, but far scape could be hilarious and also incredibly dangerous.
Beth Barany: Oh yeah, I do, I need to weigh in on this. I don’t wanna like skew folks. Feel free. Yeah. Where would you,
Benjamin Gorman: if you were thinking about which to actually live in, which would you prefer Star Trek? Me too, because it’s, you don’t have to, you could live in France on a vineyard and
Beth Barany: yeah, exactly.
There’s so many different worlds inside of Star Trek, and many of them are safe and interesting and adventurous, and yeah, there’s risk being on a Starship, but you’re trained for it, and you sign up for that life. I think Firefly would probably firefighter and far escape would be dangerous. especially I feel like living on the crew of Firefly would be really precarious and
Benjamin Gorman: fraught.
Beth Barany: Yeah. There, there’s, they’re like hanging by a thread all the time. And Farscape has got so many weird, political Mac machinations that it’s almost like you don’t really know where you stand. It could, yeah. Things could switch. Also, the disasters, the level of disasters, there’s so bizarre. and then. I think Star Wars would be dangerous too, right?
You’ve got, it seems like in every single world and story they’ve presented, there’s always the evil empire of some, one form or another. And a whole, it’s like they could swoop in outta nowhere and say, this is our planet now.
Benjamin Gorman: Or destroy your whole planet, You can just be living your life and then your planet’s incinerated, so Yeah.
That, that’s scary.
Beth Barany: Yeah. Yeah. And it seems like Star Trek’s the most sanitized. it has its issues and problems and depending on where you live, and, but for the most part, at least, we’re presented with a world where it’s about fulfilling your potential.I have
Benjamin Gorman: heard a theory that what Roddenberry was really exploring with Star Trek was an economic utopia.
What happens when we no longer have need in terms of material need? If you could just have the food and clothing that you need. Yes. what would people still do? And so that’s, then it becomes about exploration because that’s how you achieve fulfillment.
Because if
Benjamin Gorman: it’s just about acquiring stuff, the stuff could just be made by a replicator.
That’s right. That’s right. And so I think that is certainly living in a world without, physical scarcity and instead having to achieve via exploration and bravery and that kind of thing. Or to be satisfied and learn to be content. on some world where you are just creating art, Yeah. I think that sounds wonderful.
Beth Barany: sounds great. the Orville also, which is an homage to Star Trek. they actually touch on that. on being able to, once the Earth had the replicator, then, everything changed. Everything changed, if we didn’t have to go to work, what would you do?
Yeah.
Beth Barany: how would you choose to spend your day? And, I think about that a lot actually. And I think about putting it in story, but also think about, what am I doing, what I would be doing if I didn’t have to be doing it? And my answer is yes, actually, because I’ve been at this long enough that I’m like, I’m doing this no matter what.
I’ve done it during, after nine 11, after 2016 elections, after the breakdown, the economic, whatever it was in 20 2008, like as an adult, I’ve always come back to writing. Yeah. And I’ve been challenged by it many times, by many things. and both emotionally, economically, and I’m like.
I don’t care. I’m doing this. It’s my form of protest. Yeah. What was I doing in 2016? In the fall? I was starting the series. Actually, I was, that was my form of protest. I’m like, politics over there. If I am not writing, then I’m not do putting my voice into the world and how could I, that’s my way, it’s my way of being active.
Benjamin Gorman: Me too. we actually put out an anthology that was short fiction of people kind of processing their, the rise of fascism. And so giving people an opportunity to lift up their voices, I felt was the best thing I could do.
Beth Barany: Yeah.
Benjamin Gorman: We’re, we’ve got an anthology coming out this summer that’s exclusively by lgbtqia plus authors.
I am not on the editorial team. ’cause as a straight guy, that would be inappropriate. But, but, Being the facilitator. That was how I spent all my day yesterday, was creating the interior file for this fantastic anthology that’s gonna be Oh, be, coming out this summer. That’s great.
But, giving people an opportunity to raise their voices and to Feel that they’re, to, recognize that their voices are valued, I think is so importantly.
Beth Barany: yeah. Yeah. as a writing teacher, I feel every time I walk into a room to teach virtually or online like your, I, that’s what I tell the students, your story matters.
Your voice matters. Your unique take on the world matters. And with this diversity of voices comes a new kind of way of being in the world. And we need that. We’re hungry for it. We’re all so hungry for it. Yeah. And so that drives me both as a teacher and as a writer. ’cause who knows what’s gonna come outta my mouth next, I don’t.
Benjamin Gorman: Yeah. Where, and, beyond our physical experience, who knows what worlds will create in our heads that we can then Share with the rest of the, the world, the world outside of our heads and welcome people into,that’s exciting to me that, our, it’s that our stories matter because we are through our imaginations, able to exponentially magnify our experience.
Beth Barany: Mm-hmm.that’s well said. Yeah. And that’s why you’re a publisher, I
Benjamin Gorman: imagine. Yes. yeah. And also I don’t, there are more stories that I want in the world than I could possibly write. So how can I facilitate other writers to, And support them to provide me with the wonderful literature that I enjoy.
Beth Barany: Oh, that’s so great. What a great mission.
Benjamin Gorman: where can listeners find you when they’re looking for you and your work?
Beth Barany: Yeah, so Beth Bani on all the vendors, author dot Beth bani.com or if you forget that and you just go to Beth bani.com that’s awesome. Just click on books. I hang out on Twitter at Beth Bani and LinkedIn at Beth Bani.
I have presence in the other zones, but don’t interact that much there. yeah. I
Benjamin Gorman: will make sure all those are in the, the show page as well, so that folks can find your work.
[00:57:26] Final Thoughts and Thank Yous
Benjamin Gorman: so as we wrap up, there’s a whole bunch of folks I have to thank. I want to thank the artist Max Oakland, who reached out and provided one of his songs for our intro, the song I Prefer, the Dusk.
Let Max know You Like It by Following him on Twitter at max Oakland. Thanks to Halsa CCO for their song, kids for the Ad Break. If you’re in a band and would like your song used on the show, I would love to highlight a listener’s work like Max’s song. So email that to me. Thanks as always to Doug, the producer for making this show sound good and taking the blame when it doesn’t.
I appreciate that Doug and I cannot forget to mention Writers Not Writing is a production of not a pipe publishing. So please go to nada pipe publishing.com and check out the amazing books written by writers who didn’t procrastinate too much. If you like this show rate and review it wherever you found it.
And please check out Beth’s books into the black and other books in the Janey McCallister sci-fi mystery series rate and review. Those two, even a very short review and a single click on that fifth star makes a huge difference to Beth, to authors really, make her day. Take three minutes. that would be a wonderful gift.
I’m too old to say smash that like button without sounding ridiculous. But if you could gently tap on the like button for this show, I would greatly appreciate that.and so that brings us to our sendoff. There are five things that Beth and I would like you to remember this week. Beth, you wanna share your first three?
Beth Barany: Love your life, play a game, kiss your loved ones.
Benjamin Gorman: And fourth, in life as in writing, it’s the spaces between the words that make it all meaningful. So don’t ignore the spaces. And fifth, no matter how much you procrastinate, we’re still proud of you.
Beth Barany: Yes, we are. If I take my time, I make of my mind.
