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It beats listening to nothing. My goodness, it's Frank being Frank, where the only way to be is Frank. Hello everyone, and welcome to being Frank. We're the only way to be is well Frank. I'm your host, Frank Lebon, and I'd like to thank you for joining us on what we like to call the Intelligent Conversation Podcast, where no conversations out of bounds, in all points of view are welcome. Listeners are familiar with our routine. We record live to tape and I give you the date so you have
some context and relevance. We're approaching Saint Patrick's Day. It's the eleventh of March. And with that in mind, I've always been amazed how much influence a small country the size of Ireland could have on history and culture here in America and around the world. This is especially true in literature. The amount of great Irish writers like John Swifts, Samuel Beckett, W. B. Yates, and James Joyce, to name
just a few, is vast and impressive. Plays, novels, and poems written by both irishmen and women have become immortal. Continuing in this tradition, in very much his own way and joining us for some intelligent conversation. Is a man whose own life is as interesting as the books he
now writes. Here are just some of his highlights. Born in nineteen fifty six in Oman, Northern Ireland, where he intended both Protestant and Catholic schools, he wanted to be Jacques Cousteau, but wound up working in financial services until his retirement in twenty twenty one. At that time he began writing his first book, Dance Hall Days. It took him four years to write and publish that one. His second book, The Cruelest Month, was published in the autumn
of twenty twenty five. He uses his family and his life experiences in Oma as the basis for his novels. His wife May was diagnosed with MS multiple sclerosis in twenty nineteen, and he donates all proceeds from the book to MS research. He is in the process of writing his third book in the series and says he has a whole new lease on life at seventy. Please welcome live from Carrick Fergus, Northern Ireland. Mister Sam, you know Sam. Thank you so much for joining us from so far away.
No problem, Frank, thank you very much for helping me, for inviting me alone. Are you sure that was me you were talking about there in the introduction.
I took it right from your I took it right from your bios, so it's got to be true, right to me.
The other person I'd like to thank right now is my cousin, Quenton, who lives in New York, for introducing us. So, Quentin, this is all your fault.
Yes, I know, Quin. I'll blame him later as well. We'll make sure he gets the link to watch the program. And I've really been looking forward to this. We've done some preliminary meetings and I'm sure there's going to be informative and fun. So let's let's start with the basics. Tell us about Sam. How did you get where you are? We gave kind of the nuts and balls. You were financial planning, But how did you get to where you are as an author?
Well, I suppose the books are set on Omas as you as you rightly say, where I was born and raised or just over seventy years ago. As you mentioned, I was the third of four siblings. My parents were both civil servants. That was a very uneventful sort of childhood until I turned sixteen. And over here in the UK we at sixteen you do exams called O levels ordinary levels, so that's that's fifth form in secondary school.
And so I had just completed my O level and I was always very good at exams, but it was I was a very boisterous child, shall we say I was.
I get that, I say that.
And well, just after our exams, a couple of friends of mine and I went to a pub to have a few beers to celebrate. We weren't drunk, gronding. We were only sixteen. We had maybe a couple of painting in us. But on the way home we decided to let off steam outside the school that we went to, the academy, the Protestant school, which was about fifty meters from where I lived in the middle of Homa, and we had one of us had cans of spray paint with him and he was actually bought them to spray
his bicycle. But we ended up writing graffiti all over the walls of the school. Well, so, and we got caught and I got expelled. And my mother worked in the Department of Education.
Wow, big deal, that's a big deal. My mother worked in the high school office couldn't get away with anything.
Yeah, So it was it was a major thing, and my father was absolutely vivid, quite rightly. He actually hit me very hard when he came home from work that afternoon as the only time it ever happened. So that was the first big event, and it was the first evidence that I had of my mother's strength in that in the summer because the Christian Brothers Catholic School was about fifty yards from my house in the other direction, so in the summer at that age, we played a
lot of soccer football, as we would call it. And I knew a lot of people who went to the Christian Brothers school and was friendly with quite a few of them. So my options when I got expelled Protestant school wise was to travel for an hour and a half in one direction, but the other was to go to where Oscar Wild School pertorer in a skilling and board, all of which would have been very expensive and impossible financially really, and I suggested I go to the Christian Brothers.
And this was mcgranny old fashioned Unionist father, unionist mother, Unionist. This was unbelievably out there, but my mother saw the sense in it, and she accompanied me for an interview at the Christian Brothers with the head master, Brother O'shay, and it went extremely well and I ended up that September going to the Christian Brothers to do my A levels for two years before going to university. And I think if I hadn't gone to the Christian Brothers, I
wouldn't have passed me A levels. It settled me down and I got to university and I was the only Protestant in the school. And this was nineteen seventy two, so it was the height of the troubles. Bloody Sunday had been that January in nineteen seventy two, the massacre in Londonderry, so that was a huge thing. But I was treated very respectfully that the Christian Brothers have treated very well and the teachers were absolutely brilliant. I said I wouldn't have passed me exams if it stayed at
the academy. It was too wild. So that was that was the first big event, the big influence on me of my mother's strength as a person.
Yes, Sa, I mean, I think it's important, and again I don't want to make this it's not about the troubles and it's a huge political issue, but we have to frame things in your experience, in your background, relative to what you are today and how you write and
what you write. So what did that all mean? And I think that as we spoke in prep, the important lesson that you got from your mother by doing that, it was there were many messages there obviously to continue your education, but in a way, and you told me something interesting and I'm just paraphrasing that your mother wanted you in a sense also to learn it that Catholics didn't have three heads. Uh So if you frame, if you frame that, I think people will understand how important
that was. And as you mentioned, how rare it was at that time because the animosity between the two groups was literally killing one another. So I think it's important to understand that and you will have.
Yeah, well, absolutely, well, I think it was more I explained to my parents and their mother sort of lessoned that. I told her that Catholics didn't have three heads, and they didn't they didn't eat their children. They were the same as basically they they wanted a job, they wanted an education, they wanted to bring up their kids. And my mother listened and and I think the thing at
the Christian real hard. People got through all that time because there were a lot of bombs going off and nom before the really big one in nineteen ninety eight, the famous one where there was a lot of bomb ordinary bombs if you want to call them, going off everywhere. But the way people got through it and the way it was dealt without the Christian Brothers school is just it was never discussed ever. We went in, we did lessons, we went home. I never played any sport at the
Christian Brothers. I was a very keen rugby player. At the Academy, they didn't play rugby at the Brothers. They played Gaelic football, which I wasn't say it wasn't allowed to play, but I was too old at that stage even just started learning Gaelic football. So we didn't play any sport at all. So there's no after school stuff. It was just home, which wasn't very far away, which
was the big thing. So yeah, it was the fact that I was the only Protestant in the place was mind blowing at the time, and my friends at the academy really almost couldn't believe it. But I started a trend the other way, because I started to meet parents of friends at the Christian Brothers and their children were going through what I had gone through at the Academy, and quite a few of them went the other way and migrated to the academy. So I was. I like
to think I was a pioneer of integrated education. And I'm a big fan of integrated education because I don't believe you can hit your teammate in the football team or the person that you're doing who's doing your homework for you if you want. So you know, the hatred is embedded and continues because both sides have a vested interest in keeping it embedded. Well that's my personal view, but I think a lot of people might agree. So, yeah,
it was. It was. It was incredibly unique, But it was the best thing ever happened to me because I've got really good friends now from both schools that I've kept in touch with all this time, and they're still friends and will be forever.
Women have played a big role in your life in your novels. Talk about that a little bit, your mother, your wife, your sisters. I know I'll play big roles. Explain why in hell?
Well, yeah, all the drama I mean the book. The idea for the books started when my mother was, as I describe it, fading away in the nursing home. I knew that she had had major events in her life, major trauma and things that you had to deal with, but I didn't know the details again because they were never really discussed. So as she was fading away, I started visiting, driving down from Carrac Fergus to home every day,
not every day, once a week, and we started. I started chatting and asking her questions and probing a bit, and she's told me more and more, and the more she told me, the more amazed I was by how she had dealt with these things, and how her mother before that had dealt with bringing up four children in a two up, two down that flooded every autumn and there was no help. There was no insurance, so there
was nothing. They just went upstairs and lived for two three days, brought everything up, They hung the furniture up on hooks on the ceiling and went upstairs and stayed until the floods went down, and they went back down and cleaned the place up and carried on. My granny was cleaner. She had three jobs, work cleaning for three
businessmen in Noma. My granddad died before the war, so she was a single parent who brought four of them up on nothing, and they all had to start work at fourteen because they couldn't afford to continue with education and they couldn't afford not to start work. So my mother's first job was as a secretary and a solicitor's office, and she became incredibly good at shorthand and typing and
was very enthusiastic. Her two older sisters escaped, one to Canada and one to England, and her younger brother joined the Navy after he'd had trials for Manchester un edited. He was a very good footballer, but he didn't make it as a footballer. So those stories led me to think, well, everybody escaped from Oma except my mother, who stayed because
of circumstances and ended up looking after her mother. And it was the strength of my granny and then my mother dealing with the things they dealt with, which involves initially my the eldest of my two sisters, who I knew her father wasn't the same as my father, but that's about as much as I knew, and she didn't live with us. She lived with my granny, but so she was different, but she was my sister and that's what we thought of her as. But so that there's
a huge story there how that happened. So I know the facts, and I thought this, this, this has to be written down. And then other tragedies happened, and they say the more she told me, frankly more, I thought, I have to write this down. I'm going to make this. I've never written any of my life before. But the two sisters, who you know, both previous, they both passed away.
I got my younger brother and we left now. But the stories of the strength of these people and the tragedies my mother and mc granny, what they dealt with, I just thought, I'm going to write this down when I retired. This is gonna be my project in retirement, because I've never written anything before ever. And my mother would have been horrified at the thought of it, because she thought she was just an ordinary little woman who worked and brought up her family, married, married with my
father and had an ordinary little life. But I thought she wasn't ordinary, she was extraordinary. And then May came in on the scene, and we've been married just over thirty five years. May, Yeah, thirty six years this year we've been married. And she saved me in a way as well, because I was I was still enjoying a beer or two when I met Mey, just living the life of a single one or two, a single of a single man. So we met May and that settled
me down incredibly because she was a traveler. She'd been traveling a lot before on her own before we met, and the first as soon as a matter that summer that first year, she she booked a holiday to Turkey to bodroom and and so I knew there was a hotel room in boardroom books. So I just got on a flight to boardroom and joined up with May. In Turkey. We're on the beach for about one day and we're board to tears. So we went on the local bus
to Stanbull overnight. We will only touristive white people on it. And got off the bus saw Hilton Hotel, asked them, I've had the room for a couple of nights. Where's the blue mosque? And that was us. We never stopped after that, went long haul. We've traveled the whole entire world. So May's influence was very calming, almost life saving, that's not too dramatic. So the both of the women, two sisters, all their granny wife, all very very important parts in
my life. And the basis for the book and the link of obviously with the book was May was diagnosed with MS two days after my mother died, and the dots got joined immediately in my head that this is what I was going to do with even if we so old one book, I'm going to give every penny to MS research and and and that's what happened. And luckily we've sown quite a lot more than than in one book. It's been, it's been very it's been it's been a great project and a great privilege to have
been able to do it. And my favorite pund of all time is it's a novel way of fundraising.
And we're going to talk about that in the novelty of it and all that in time. But another name that you that you mentioned that's very important in your life and you're reading is your hometown Oma. Why you keep saying it's it's different, Explain then, why it's it's very in the forefront seemingly of your thinking. I guess as most of our hometowns are, but it seems like a very special place to you.
Well, yeah, well it is. It's I mean, I left Oma after I left the Christian Brothers and went to university. I never really went back and lived in Oma after that. University was up on the north coast near Port Brush, which is the same as for the Giants causeways, and then it was easier. I met May and she was she was from Fermana as well. She was a country guirer,
but she was living and working in Belfast. She worked in the hematology labs in the hospital in Belfast, so she was kept very busy during the troubles of obviously working in the the blood bank and the blood labs, and she had a special pass to get through the barricades and the barriers and stuff. You know, they get into an essential worker. So we met additionally, seeming sense to staying up around Belfast because that's where the work was.
But Oma is always home. It's always referred to as home. We live in carract Fergus have done for a long time, but it will never really be home. Oma is home and that's where all my you know, if if I wanted or was going to end up in a nursing home somewhere. I would like it to be Oma, because that's where all my real friends are, my lifelong friends. It has changed a lot, obviously over time, but a lot of the pubs that I used to go to are still there, a lot of the buildings that I
used to go to are still there. And it's just it's a it's a it's a human thing rather than the geography or the buildings of Oma. It's where all my real mates are. That from both schools. Whenever I was doing the launch of the first book and Oma Library that turned that, I was overwhelmed by the turnout
of people from both schools. People I hadn't seen for fifty years, people who worked with me mother were there, and they said it was overwhelming and that could never happen anywhere else, only only Oma, simply because that's where it all happened. That's where the protagonists all lived. I
think the books could have been set really anywhere. The universal sort of love story type thing that could have be set anywhere, but it couldn't be set in a different time because attitudes to things now would be completely different. So the time is unique. The situation that the place is simply because that was the place.
Now. And you've mentioned you were not trained as a writer. You have no real formal training, if you will, yourself taught, and it took you four years to write and publish your first work. What were some of the real challenges that you faced? Obviously create of writing being one, But but it's more than that. Talk a little bit about the challenges of writing a book, especially for someone who doesn't come from that world.
But I think my ignorance of what was involved, I would probably might not have started if I'd known I was involved.
That's a good advice for you. Don't think, don't don't think too.
Much, just just start. Just yeah, that's what I did about about an a four pad and a box of pens, and I just started writing. I was lucky in a way, amost because I knew the story. I didn't have to make up a story. But I quickly learned the only the only book I read about how to write and how not to write was by Stephen King, you know, his book on writing, And I learned things like, you know, cut out all the adverbs and make the sentences shorter,
and don't put it's short chapters. Keep it as tight. But that's easier said than done. So I mean, I was just writing The Ring Longhand, and I very quickly learned that fiction is fantastic because you can make things up. You know, if you don't know anything, just make it up. And the other thing was the research, because because of when it was set, you couldn't you know, I had to know what her cars were available. I made a few mistakes and then you look it up and say
what it was? There wasn't it an austin A three in nineteen fifty six? They didn't come out until nineteen fifty seven. So and movies, what was what were on? What was on in the cinema, and how much things wear? So I loved all.
These things you don't think of, and so you really sit down and let yourself in that.
Period, I really really looked into it and what the what the fashions were, what sort of dress should have worn to the star ballroom where she went dancing again? And and it was I was muddling away and writing, and I've written a lot of stuff. And then there's a lady I got to know in the local bookshop in Carrick Fergus the Secret Bookshelf Joe, the lady there who's written a few, quite a few science fiction novels. And I was chatting to her about saying, I've just well,
I've just started writing the book myself. You know, any advice, and she said, get an editor immediately. First best thing. Get somebody who knows what they're doing. And she introduced me to a lady called al Avril Buchanan. And that was when things really started to take shape because Avril's first question. But in the meantime, May had decided I needed to start typing this up on a laptop. So the laptop we're doing this on now is the laptop I bought to my two finger typing to catch up
with all the scribbles. And that was the first editor, I suppose, because when you're when you're moving it across from the scribbles to the laptop, you changed things. You know. I wouldn't say that, and that's not how that would anyway. So the Averil's first question was how many words before winning? For how many words have you written so far? And I was that stupid before I didn't even know how to. I said, how do you tell and she said, bottom left corner of your screen, there'll be a number of
a number. So I said, that's you really started from scrip was a real a real dummy. Yeah, it says ninety eight thousand and forty. And she said, well you need to stop now. Do you know what that looks like in an A five paperback? And I said no, and said that's about four hundred pages. So you've written a book already.
Wow.
And I said, well, I've only got to nineteen fifty, you know, I've got a long way to ago.
You're editing.
That's that's how it ended up being becoming a trilogy really, but yeah, so that was it was a steep learning curve. I knew nothing. I knew nothing about publication. I just thought I sent my manuscript off to you know, Penguin and a few big names, and they fight over it and sent me lots of money, and the next thing is it's in the book shops and I get rich.
But that's not how it works, you know. Avrol explained that you need an agent who might read your book and might not, and it can take years, and you're you're an unknown, you know, and so it's not going to happen. It's not certainly not going to happen quickly, and time wasn't a mys say, because I was retired and all of it done. So that's where we went self publishing through Amazon because it was quick and Avrol knew how to do it.
So I just let her do it for me, you know. And self publishing is kind of a misnomer in a sense because you had a lot of help, and I know that's important to you that you had a strong support system. Yeah, that helped you. You mentioned a few of the names, but who mentioned some of the people and some of the support that you got along the way to make this happen. Well.
Averrol was the main one, obviously because she knew everything about grammar and typesetting and punctuation and blah blah blah. But there's a lady in the local MS support group here called Wendy who became my social media manager. So everything you see on Facebook and all that stuff Wendy does. I still don't know how to do it, she does it. So she's been amazing. She loves all that she does. Facebook work for for a lot of people, including her
through her work. So that was that was brilliant and amaze encouragement, you know, keeping when I was too tired.
It's too nice a day, and need you know, there was no come on, come on and creating deadlines for me and and and the other people who who deserve and mentioned because I think the artwork on the covers of these two books is really really good, partly because I thought of it myself, but also because the people called More Visual over in the Leicester, who I found online, turned my ideas into the pictures you see on the covers, the picture of the Star Ballroom and dance whole days.
There are no pictures of the Star Ballroom, which was a real ballroom, you know. Much was where my mother went dancing, and it was in Sidana Avenue opposite where she lived, so it was real. But we couldn't find any photographs of it. So I told More Visual basic
art deco ballroom. And I'd seen a picture of a on a pub gay book of a pub with the yellow lights and a couple in silhouette outside it, and I thought I sent them that, and I said I wanted to look like this, but an art deco ballroom, and then him lighting her cigarette outside, and they got
it virtually right first time and the second one. The crewel this Month, I wanted to look thought was it starts off on the left, everything's honky dory, all sweetness and light, but then gradually the cake falls apartners from that song like MacArthur Park, someone left the cake out in the rain and all the sweet there's the green icing or whatever. It's falling down and that's all The symbols on the front of the Crew this Month become very meaningful once you've read the book. The number twenty
three is very significant. The tree and the stork with the baby's obviously, so I'm trying to describe that online to somebody that was like move that up a bit, move the train over a bit, do this, do that so but they were brilliant. So those are those are the main support people was Averal Wendy on the on the social media side, May and the just general support bringing cups of tea and turning your say, turn your phone off, get on of that type of stuff, and
more visual with the artwork on the covers. So I learned all of that, and I didn't know how to do any of it three or four years ago. So Steep learning Curve, but got their second book only took took a year a bit compared with four years for the first one.
You're learning. That's a good that's a good thing, you know. One of the things that I found particularly interesting in odd Well that is your fascination with guitarists and particularly blues artists from Muddy Waters, some of the great American blues artists showing up in these novels in Northern Ireland. What's that about? Tell well that that was.
Initially had started off. I was looking for names for characters. So I've quite a big vinyl collection and I started just looking on the on the on the names of the bad people band members and the on the records. And I love the blues like I grew up listening to led Zeppelin and Rordy Gallaher and Rody Galler was the only person who played in Belfast during the troubles.
He did a concert of Christmas every year in the Ulster Hall in Belfa and even though we were only fourteen fifteen sixteen, we went up to see every every year went up to see Rory Galler. So I grew up. Led Zeppelin was the first intro really and that led me towards the Blues. So it was really starting off just looking for names for characters, and so it was then thought, I'll play a week game here with people and just you know, see if anybody ever picks up
on it. And the only person who so far has as a cousin of mine who's a musician. And the thing that sparked him was when there was a character in the first book called Derek Clapton, so he said, Sam, Sam's at his work here He's so he started looking back, but he missed a few. He didn't get them all.
You give us. If you can't give us, give us a few of them.
Sea if you have well, the character called Walter is Walter Green, and his father's called Peter, my favorite guitarist, maybe Peter Green. There's other there's other people in it, like Alvin Lee from ten years ten years after, another big band of the sixties sort of thing. I managed. I've managed to get blad Boy Fuller in there because his real name was Alan Fulton, and Lightning Hopkins in there because his real name was Sam Hopkins. So he turned out to be a footballer playing for Spurs in
London who was very fast and known as Lightning. So with some of the names like Muddy Waters you couldn't put in or Otus Rush, you wouldn't have had anybody in him in the fifties called Otus or Muddy or blad Lemon. So I had to be careful who use and who I couldn't because Otus Rush probably my favorite track of all time. It's John Mayle's version of All Your Love with Eric Clapton on guitar from the Beano album. That's maybe one of my favorite tracks of all time.
But I couldn't put Otus Rush in the books really, although I have managed to get Joe Bonamassa into Book three.
Okay, great modern guitarist plays quite a bit, Yeah, because your.
Your home Country in Italy features a bit in Book three, so of du Bonamassa and as a as an Italian Schoofer's clever.
You know you say many writers have a process. Uh. You know, I was just phill be a Plath. For example, we get up at four a m. Because she had children, so she could have two or three hours of quiet time before they got up.
Uh.
Many writers do you go? Some goes through a cabin, They isolate themselves for weeks or whatever. Is there any particular process that you followed to write.
Absolutely not. When I make plans, uh and then May would say we have to go to we have to go to Tesco's today this morning, or things have real life happens. I mean everything else has to be done as well. So I try and work in the mornings rather than I'm at I'm a morning person. I'd rather get up early and work rather than the afternoons. And evening's definitely not so. It's it's a few hours here, a few hours there. A good day would be would
be six hours three in the morning. And I've got better working in the afternoons simply because the deadlines keep looming and your mind gets concentrated. But I have no real plan, I have no real system. It's just as and when I can, I do, and yeah, it seems it seems to work. Okay. I'm quite self motivated that I don't need to be pushed that much because I want to do it and I love doing it. I'll fall in love with writing fiction because just making stuff up is fantastic.
If I want your thoughts on one of my favorite quotes from one of my favorite authors Dorothy Parker, who said, I hate to write, I love having written. What are you? What are your thoughts on that? I I can relate to that. It's hard. You got to sit down, you got to put time, and it's effort. It's no good. And then when you see it and it's on the page and you read it, you say, well, maybe it's not so bad.
Yeah, I think actually she's absolutely hit the nail on the head. Sometimes it's a slog and you read it, and especially that's a scribbling stage, and you read it back and you think, what a load of crap, What a load of rubbish, And then and then and then you move it across to the laptop and it tightens up a bit. And then you read that back and you think, that's not too bad. And I've had in a bit more here, and you know, adding some music there and somewhere, you know, but of humor here. Yeah,
I think she's absolutely right. It can be very a great slog sometimes. And then there's other times I found myself completely in the zone where May would make me a cup of tea and it would still be sitting there an earlier becau can't stop. It's just it's just it's common and like.
You're just it's like you're consuming.
Yes, you're right, you're right in there in that room with whatever is happening in that time. You're in Yeah, wherever you wherever, wherever that but the book is at the time, that's where you are. That's when it's great.
Do you feel there's a common theme or thread that runs through your books, and if so, what would it be.
Yeah, I've been asked. I've been asked us a few times obviously, and I think if I have to sum it up in a couple of words, it would be it's about tenacious love. It's the tenacity that my mother showed not two take the easy path, uh, and the tenacity she showed for other people in her life. It's given too much away with what happens in the books. It's just the strength of her love for her mother,
for her children, for her husband. And they say she wouldn't she didn't see that as being anything special, but I thought it was amazing. So it's it's it's really a lot. It's really a love story, and I think take from it. Never give up. As a phrase here in Northern Ironder Island generally is keep her let just keep going and just do what you have to do. And that's what she did. Got up every day, did what you have to do, went to bed, got up
the next day and did it all again. And I think it's that it's keep going, but it's it's her tenacity, the tenacity of her love for for everybody that that she could touch.
Wonderful, great theme, Sam, we can take a little bit of a break. We come back and we got to talk a little bit about your philanthropy, your your connection to and we touched on it, but how you donate all your money, how you sell your books not only on Amazon, but actively and proactively at book fairs and markets, et cetera. And talk about your new work. You're continuing the trilogy. So then we talk a little bit about
that when we come back from the break. My very special guest is author Sam Young with two books, Dance All Days and The Cruelest Month. What a wonderful conversation we have having. It's truly I like to call it an intelligent conversation. And this certainly is this is being Frank. I'm your host, FRANKL Borna. I don't go anywhere yet and we'll be back right after these brief commercial messages.
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Hudson River Radio dot com. Welcome back to Being Frank, the Intelligent Conversation podcast. Thanks for sticking with us. I'm your hosts, Frank Bubono and as always our engineer as the mailman, mister Neil Richter. We bring our audience a fresh topic every week and we stream from Hudson River Radio, located and beautiful and historic Stony Point, New York. But remember, you can catch Being Frank anywhere you get your favorite
podcasts like Apple, Spotify, iHeartRadio and all the others. And because every Being Frank is archived, you can listen to any of our programs anytime you like. You can find a link to Being Frank on the Hudson River Radio Facebook page or at our website Hudsonriverradio dot Com. Just click and you're there. We're back with the author of Dance Whole Days in the Cruelest Month. And keep in mind, all proceeds from the all of those novels go to
MS Research. So welcome back. Say I'm young We've had a wonderful first half of our conversation, interesting and fun, so let's continue again. You're committed to all proceeds going to MS research.
Explain that, Well, maybe we mentioned earlier, Frank, my mother died on a Monday in September twenty nineteen, and the following Wednesday, two days later, my wife May was diagnosed with MS, and it was the only meeting with her consultants and trying to find out what was causing her the symptoms that you had. It was the only meeting I missed because I was writing my mother's eulogy at the time for the funeral on the Friday. So that
was a really bad week. But I knew I was going to write the books anyway, and when May was diagnosed, it just it was just a late ball moment that whatever money I make from this, if it's one book and we make one pound, I'm going to give it to MS Research because I have no interest in doing sponsored walks or jumping out of aeroplanes or a sailing down the Eiffel Tower or doing anything like that. So I was going to do this, and I was hoping
we could sell a few and make some money. And that that just happened instantly before I'd written a word, because I didn't start writing until I retired, didn't start writing until twenty twenty, So that was a that was a that was a done deal. That's my favorite pun is a novel way of fundraising. It's it's hopefully a bit different and I've put the effort in and it's yeah, the rewards are there and it's it's been it's been great.
So yeah, it's just May's diagnosis at the same time as my mother day.
It just seemed obvious, no same, And we're going to give the information that the books are available via Amazon. But you also have a unique way, a personal way of selling books, uh that I'm sure is effective, But I think you also like it beyond the idea of just selling the books because I think you like to meet people as well in exchange stores. I kind of just get that feeling. So you sell them at book fairs and marketplaces and malls and explain that a.
Little bit well again that that sort of was May's influence in that we have a local shop it's a spa, and you have spars shops in America or eurospars or whatever. But it's a grocery store, decent size of a place you can get everything type of shop. And we've we've been going there for quite a long time, so we've got to know the staff and the manager and stuff.
And it was when Dance All Days came out and May asked Stevie the manager, husband's written a book, is given all the money to MS, could we sell some in the shop here, and he said, yeah, whenever you like, come down some Saturday morning, I'll set up a table for you. And that's that was the very first time
we did that. We bought boxes of books off Amazon, which we can get at cost price, so it's the most profitable way of doing it because we still sell them at ten pounds even though we're buying them at think four or something. So there's a lot more there than royalties from Amazon for online seals, but they're a lot less work. So yeah, it was the first time we did it. We just set some pile of books up on the table and people come in and I started, you know, doing what we're doing in an hour here.
I tried to get that into thirty seconds. You've got eye contact, you're trying, you know, you elect to buy a good, good book. What can I tell you about the book? And then I started telling them and amazingly people started giving me ten points and taking a book. And that was a great feeling. Was it was up there with the first time I got a proof copy in my hands with my book with my name on it. Because seeing people walking around the shop with my book in their basket.
And what does it feel like? What does this feel like?
It was amazing because like I was going round and in the queue, when we were at the end, we said, look, that's my book. That's my book in her shopping bass, beside the tomatoes and the bacon and the stuff. That's she has my book in there. So it was it was an incredible feeling and blossom from there. We we we ended up last year we even got a stall. There's a very very famous market in Belfast call Saint
George's Market. It's a permanent craft and food and stuff market, arts and everything, and it's where a lot of tourists where it's on the tourist trail because it's a it's a big thing. The cruise ships come in and one of the stops us in Georgia's Market, so we even got a stall in there one Saturday, and people a bit are really really keen because once I explained to the manager of the market what it was all about and what we were doing, it gave us a stall for nothing for the whole day.
And the only.
Difficulty was in Georgie's market was really hard to get to, you know, to hold the books to the market.
Was even all the books to clear carrying the books in the books.
Yeah, so yeah, then we we started asking garden centers of their shops and although we we go und all the other MS support groups in Northern Ireland, we go to their meetings or their Christmas lunches, their whatever and sell books there. And as you said, I just I just loved the banter. I love the crack of chatting to people. You've got literally ten or fifteen, twenty thirty
seconds maybe to explain everything to them. And uh, you know, all the all the all the you can make on Black Freddy with a special deal, like they're ten pounds each or two for twenty and you can see them, you can see their mains going two for twenty. That's a good day.
Oh, I don't know, that's you know, we've got to let people know they don't necessarily have to fly to Belfast to get your not well.
It is available on aage to well. So we're going to give that information in just a minute. But I know you're also working. Then this is part of the first two books will be part of a trilogy, right, you're working. They're all related, as I understand. So the third book tell us about that that's in the works, correct.
Yeah, I was working on that today when when you contacted me, I.
Rually interrupted you because the time was off because you guys are on a whole different schedule over there in UK we are here.
But then I wasn't sleeping. I was actually I was actually trying to write stuff. But yeah, so book three are there are a trilogy. They're all the same story. They're all my mother's story. It's like I said, dance whole days. I only got to nineteen fifty so and
it started in nineteen forty six. So the second one, the Cruelest Month, goes from there right up to nineteen seventy seven, which was was another hugely traumatic event in the mother's life, and it ends there and then the last part is from nineteen seventy seven up until her death in twenty nineteen. So I mean, I know how it ends, and I know what happens in between.
I haven't working title for against Sam for the third.
Working title is going to be something like it because it's going to be a bit more upbeat maybe than the first, because you know, her life was tough, so it's going to be a bit more happy. And so it's going to be golden years or glory years because it was dancehold Days and then cruelest months. So it's going to be something years but glory or golden or something upbeat and optimistic because the end of her life was incredible.
Finished on a high note. Yes, very much. So again, let's tell people without flying to a market in Belfast or without doing that and would you.
Have Australia Italy believe it or not. But most of them are here in little Old Rockland County, New York, so they don't have to fly there. How can they get the book for Amazon or or order or order elsewhere?
Well?
Well, Amazon, yeah, is they is the source. I think if you just search on Amazon for Dancehole Days and Danceholds All one word by Sam Young or the cruis month, Sam Young, I have the numbers, but do you want to read out the numbers? That is there any point not?
You can certainly if people will prepare them, guys, if you have a penhandy, and we can also give that information also afterwards when we shared online via Facebook, et cetera.
But go ahead, well, yeah, Dancehall days is one O six. It's six four three one o two okay, Amazon correct publishing. Yeah, and Churls month is one O six at six four I see him three one one zero.
Great? And when when do you anticipate the publishing the third in the trilogy?
Hopefully towards the end of the summer, early early autumn or the fall, sorry, early fall.
And we'll look forward, Sam Young, author, Thank you so much. This is really truly intelligent conversation being frank in every sense of the word. Appreciate it, Sam, all the way from Eric Fergus, Ireland. I think I said it right. I got closed.
Thank you, Frank, thank you.
It's my pleasure. Don't go anywhere yet, because keeping with your your renaissance ideal of doing many things, you're now a rap artist and you've got your work on a rap so I'm gonna let you introduce that as a fund raiser at the end of the program, so don't go anywhere yet. But of course we want to give us special thanks to our listeners who take time to give us a voice in their lives. Remember we offer
fresh topic every week. Catch us wherever and whenever you get your favorite podcast that includes Apple, Spotify, all the others. Check us out on the Hudson River Radio Facebook page. Yes we have a Facebook page. Leave us a comment and like us, consider being a follower for the program. It helps us out a lot. Of course, you know I always leave you with a little extra. At the end, Sam is going to introduce his MS rap I call it.
But before that, yeah, an Irish proverb that I think kind of suits our conversation, at least part of it. And if you if you read between the lines, and you'll understand what it means. And it says many a good tree grew on shallow ground, and that means it doesn't matter where you're from, as long as you're a good person. That's what counts. At least that's what I take from it.
Are you calling me shallow? No?
After that conversation, No way, all right, explain a little bit. Now, now you're into rapping and you've got this rap song to raise more money for MS, tell us a little bit about it and then we'll hear it.
Well, yeah, I was. I was dueling one day and started writing down words that rimed with slurtosis and I ended up there was There was actually quite a few. So I just thought that sounds like like a rap song. I'm not into rap music at all, but so yeah, I came up with us this.
Anybody that can rhyme anything with sclerosis.
Yes, there's a lot of words, right you can make well, even if the words doesn't rhyme with slerosis, I ended them in USUS.
So I'm not I think people are going to get a kick out of it, and I'm sure they'll understand where it's coming from. And again what it's not complete. This is a market model, if you will. By the way, Sam's looking for engineers, if anybody who wants to tackle this as a project.
Rap artists, strop artist ring Frank.
There you go, contact me. We'll put you in touch with Sam and man, that could be something really special. Well, I really want to thank you again, Sam, Really is this has been a pleasure, a really enjoyable and informative program.
Thank you, Thank you Frank.
Of course for our engineer mister Neil Richter, he is always the mailman. I'm your host, Frank wi Bone. We hope to have you join us on the next being. Frank, We're the only way to be is Frank. Thanks everyone.
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