You know how conversation is. It's the most wonderful thing. It's unscripted, it's spontaneous, it's stream of consciousness. So I've spent a lot of my life in conversation just chasing rabbits down trails. And there's always laughter at some point. I mean, I won't say that's the purpose of a good conversation, but it sure is an ingredient of a good conversation, right?
Welcome to the Habit podcast conversations with writers about writing. I'm Jonathan Rogers, your host. This episode is brought to you by the Habit Writer development cohorts. I've taught a lot of writers over the last three decades, and here's a recurring theme if you're a writer, it can be hard to believe that readers need what you can bring. But your voice, your point of view, your combination of interests and insights well, those are exactly what the world
needs from you. I put together the Habit Writer Development Cohorts, a six week writing intensive to help writers like you recover your voice, build sustainable habits and produce work that sounds exactly like you. From May 19th through June 27th, you'll write alongside a small group of fellow writers with structure, coaching, and support every step of the way. Find out more and apply for a spot at the habitat. Speaking of voice, my guest for this episode has one of the most
distinctive voices of any writer I know. Alan Levi is a songwriter, a memoirist, a fiction writer, and whatever genre or medium he works in, he always sounds like the person you're about to hear in the following conversation. Alan Levi always sounds like Alan Levi. His most recent book, a novel called Theo of Golden, is enjoying tremendous success. Alan remains humble, but his friends are mighty proud of him.
Alan Levi, it's always a pleasure to talk to you, and I'm so glad to have you on The Habit podcast.
Thank you. It's always a pleasure for me. Good to see you again, Jonathan.
It's been so fun to see Theo of Golden taking off all over the place. Um, I keep hearing from people, uh, from various walks of life, uh, mentioning it, not having any idea. I know who you are or have any connection to you, and they just say, hey, you know this book Theo of Golden? And I said, I sure do, and it's really funny.
Well, I love that. Yeah, it's been a great it's been a pleasant surprise. Shock might be a better word. As you and I discussed when the book first came out. It was it was just an experiment on my part initially to see if I could sit still long enough to write a long piece of fiction, and I'd had no intentions of publishing it. Um, so the fact that it ever saw the light of day is something of a surprise. But the response has been extremely encouraging. Gracious, shocking. Yeah, well.
The reason I called you to ask to to talk is, I mean, we can certainly talk about Theory of Gold. We've done that in another episode. But I've been thinking a lot about voice lately. Uh, you know, I'm about to start a new cohort for writers and and helping writers see their what their voice is to to trust their their voice, to lean into it, to realize that learning to ventriloquize somebody else's voice is never going to
get them where they need to be, right? Um, you you come to mind when I think of somebody who has a distinct voice your nonfiction, your fiction, your music, your conversation, just as a person. It all sounds like the same person. And I wanted to hear if you had anything to say about that.
Well thank you. I'll take that as a great compliment, because.
It's a compliment.
Well, I know you do. Thank you. Uh, and the reason that I say thank you is I know of my own tendency to want to be other people. As a musician, I struggled with that a lot. There were musicians, singer songwriters who I really loved. I listened to the music a lot. It's interesting, over the 20 plus years that I did music full time, I got to the
point that I rarely listened to any other music. I just because the tendency, uh, given my own broken places, uh, was to think, okay, I need to be like David Wilcox. I like that tuning. I like the way he does this. I'm going to. And you can hear a lot of his influence in my music. Sure. Uh, I want to be Andrew Peterson. I want to be Bebo Norman. I want to be James Taylor, that kind of thing. And so the the thought, uh, your observation that I might have a voice that is distinctly my own tells me
maybe I've made a little progress against that temptation. I read a lot, and I'm not a good reader. I don't remember much of what I read. I don't read analytically. I don't read so that I can quote passages from other people. I read books to be changed. And I feel like that happens even when I don't, uh, don't don't pick up much that I can share with other people. Um, but Wendell Berry would be a good example of someone who I read and I think, gosh, I wish I
could write like that. And his voice sounds a bit familiar to me. Yeah, he's a rural man. Yeah, he he grew up, as he said, around good talkers. I have had that same good fortune. Yeah. And, and when I read him, I think, gosh, I'm going to try to imitate Mr. Wendell Berry. Well, that is a fool's errand.
And I think in, in the course of, you know, just writing blogs over the years, writing songs, I just realized that the pretense, if nobody else notices, it is very obvious to me I'm trying to be someone else. And as as I've written really just two books at this point, uh, a memoir called The Last Sweet Mile, about the last year that I lived with my brother before he passed away. And then, uh, Theo of Golden. I just realized it's too hard to try to imitate somebody,
and it's too self-defeating. It's no fun. And so I, you know, I, I don't know that I write in my own voice intentionally. It's just the only voice I've got. Yeah. And so, so and.
Yeah.
And it's.
Well. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt you.
No, no. Go ahead, go ahead.
I would just say, when you say it's the only voice you got, I, I yes, I, I understand that that's not. But the problem is you've got to get to a point where you're willing to say that that one voice I've got, that's what I have to give to the world.
Yeah.
And, you know, you don't you don't have Wendell Berry to give to the world. Wendell Berry has what Wendell Berry can give, and you've got what you can give.
That's all.
And that's all the world needs from you, by the way, is what you can give.
Yeah.
And nobody's mad at you. That you. that you can't be, you know. Lucy Shaw or Stephen King, they they do what they do, and you do what you do.
Yeah. Or Jonathan Rogers, you know, I think I've had the, what would I say, the ambiguous good fortune of of having no one to work with me. Mhm. Uh, there are lots and lots and lots of times you and I have talked about this before, that I have wished that I could float something that I'm writing by someone who writes. Yeah. Up in Nashville, y'all are. Y'all are just swimming in a pool of talent. Uh, in Hamilton, Georgia. It's real hard to come by. There are talented people here,
believe me. And those good talkers have a talent of their own. That is. That is enviable. But I think the fact that I've had to work by myself has, uh, it may have shielded me from being too much influenced by outside voices, you know, because, believe me, if somebody were to read what I'm writing and say you need to do ABC, I would probably say, okay, you know, I don't. I'll do ABC and I don't know that that wouldn't corrupt the voice that I'm trying to write in,
which is my own. Uh, there have been times when people have read things and and they will, um, you know, they will offer a suggestion. And I realize that's probably correct, but that's not the way I. I see that sentence, that thought, that phrase give you a real simple example. Um, when I was writing The Last Sweet Mile about my brother, uh, there was a section of the book about my brother's laughter. People ask me what I miss about him. Most of all.
That's it. His humor, his laughter, the way that he could pull laughter out of me. But I was telling a story in it, and it was about snakes. And how we love to talk about snakes down here. If you're ever in a, you know, a meat and three down here and the conversation starts to wither. All you have to do is mention a snake and it lights
up real quick. Well, I was telling a story about a snake, and at some point in that I was talking about how I work in the woods by myself, which I do very, very regularly, and especially in summertime. Every stick looks like a snake. And so it's nerve wracking to be in the woods by myself, knowing that these serpents are out there and in. In the story, I made the statement that it's amazing how many days have been I don't know how I said it, uh,
interrupted by a plain old piece of tree wood. Okay. You know that because you got country in you. Yeah. But someone read that and say, well, why do you say tree? Why do you say tree? Wood. Why don't you just say wood? I mean, if it's from. If it's wood, it's from a tree. And I said, well, that's how we say it. Yeah. Tree wood is how we say it. And that's now in a moment of weakness, I might have said, well, yeah, that's kind of stupid.
It's redundant. Let me take that out. Yeah, but that's very authentic to this area, and that's very authentic to a lunch conversation that I would have with anybody down here. Yeah. So so maybe I've been blessed by living in a desert. You know, where I don't have people who interrupt too much the flow of what I'm doing. Having said that, I need somebody like that. And I'm working on a book now. A sequel to Theo. And I've been talking with my niece, and I said, we have got to
have somebody who really knows what they're doing. Look at this before I put it out, if I put it out at all. Um, but but I think up to this point, I have been well served by the fact that the only voice in my head when I'm writing is my voice. Yeah. And you know what I've seen?
Yeah. I tell you what, you know, I, I grew up among good talkers, too.
Sure.
And I, um, went, you know, went to Vanderbilt, got a PhD in, uh, British literature. And that was a good experience and I learned a lot. But to become the writer I wanted to be, I had to unlearn a lot of that and settle back in and realize that I learned a lot of what I need to know to be a storyteller, you know, not at Vanderbilt,
but at the at the table with the people. I you know, I had some just some raconteurs, you know, in my, in my world that really made it, uh, to lean into what I had grown up doing all the time.
Right.
Was really transformative for me. Tell me about your good talkers in your in your world.
Yeah. Yes. I mean, uh, I mean, from the start, I mean, from the cradle. My dad is a forester. Uh huh. Uh, and so he owned a sawmill, a couple of sawmills. He owned, uh, logging trucks and all of that sort of thing. So it was a very blue collar world. You know, grease on the shirt, dirt under the fingernails kind of thing. I worked at his sawmill one summer. I worked with the Pope Wooding crew one summer. I think he made me take those jobs so I would study hard when I went to school.
And it worked pretty good. But, you know, all during the day when you shut everything down to either sharpen the saws or have lunch or fix something that's broken, you just start talking and. And it's country talk. The grammar is not right. Uh, the syntax is a word that would never cross the minds of most of the
guys that I grew up with. Uh, and then my friends down in Columbus, Georgia, which is a real to me, a real city, uh, even they, uh, had enough country still in them because they, their dads had similar sorts of jobs. A lot of them. Yeah. Um, you know, you know how conversation is. It's the most wonderful thing.
It's unscripted, it's spontaneous, it's stream of consciousness. So I've spent a lot of my life in conversation, just chasing rabbits down trails, and there's always laughter at some point. I mean, I won't say that's the purpose of a good conversation, but it sure is an ingredient of a good conversation, right?
I is it possible that it's the purpose?
I think I think.
I mean, I mean, the one of the ways that, you know, that a thing is important is that it it's not a means towards something else. Right? If it's if it's an end in itself, like if you say laughter is the best medicine, you suddenly turned laughter into something less than what it really is.
Amen. Good, good.
Because. Because that same laughter. Yeah. That that it's a means toward good health or whatever.
Right, right, right.
Uh, I mean, it's it's an okay thing to say. I it didn't really hurt my feelings. People say laughter is the best medicine, but I think it's it's a that joy. That's a clue. It's a it's the beginnings of what we're made for in the first place and what we're headed toward.
Yeah, I love that. That's a great thought. Yeah. The idea that, you know, we we and I would say laughter almost in quotation marks, laughter as representative of a life, of flourishing, of joy. I was reading this morning in Proverbs eight, kind of the the Proverbs version of the creation story, where wisdom says, I was there from the very start. I was there before anything was made. But a little farther down in the passage, uh, wisdom says, I rejoiced at everything that was. I delighted in it.
And to me that that includes laughter. I mean, I can almost see wisdom personified as this voice that laughs when God made the cockatoo, or the bird, or the dogwood tree or anything like that. And conversation, I think, is like that. C.S. Lewis writes, as you know, about happiness as an end. He says that if we aim for happiness, we probably won't get there. If we make that our goal, we just live our lives in such
a way that happiness is the fruit of it. And I think that conversation maybe works that way, that we we converse with people who we're comfortable with, who speak in their own voices and invariably, laughter in that broad sense, uh, is the result of it. It may be maybe not an out loud burst of laughter, but there's joy, there's delight, there's pleasure in it, and there's connection. I mean, you know, these these people that I've worked with who are the
good talkers over the years? Um, you know, it really it creates a bond between people that we can have a conversation, be honest, laugh at the same things, disagree about things. I had lunch yesterday with, uh, with two good friends of mine. One is, uh, he's a justice with the Georgia Court of Appeals, and the other is a former law partner. And so they're pretty bright guys. But even there, they we started lunch, and I hadn't seen these fellows in a while. And one of them
started sharing a story. And, uh, about five minutes later, when he finished the story, I said, you know, this has brought to mind how much I miss lawyers because they're such good storytellers. Yeah, and the ones that really do it well, I mean, they are the most wonderful conversationalists. And they're working with cases, human conflict, you know. But so good talkers doesn't necessarily mean that they're blue collar
or that they're, you know, ordinary common folk. There's some very, very educated people who still got a lot of that in themselves. The good lawyers do.
Yeah. Yeah. So, Alan, all this is making me think about a time I was in graduate school at Vanderbilt. And you know how graduate school goes. Very theoretical. Um, came home to Warner Robins, Georgia, for Easter and was at a was at a Easter egg hunt. And there were kids swirling around doing their Easter egg thing, and there was a knot of men standing around telling stories about dogs they had known and tractors and things like that.
Mhm.
And I stood outside the group and I had, you know, some thought like, ah, well, this is how, um, you know, narrative is how people make meaning, you know, some sort of theoretical thought. And then I then I immediately thought, well, this is, this is silly for me to stand outside the group and think, I understand what these men are doing more than they understand themselves. Yeah. What they're doing.
Yeah.
And, uh, I think I mentioned this earlier, so much of of my learning how to do the work of a writer, uh, has been avoiding the temptation to to get critical distance and and learning how to to lean back in.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, it's an interesting point, isn't it, that we can become so academic or so absorbed in methodology and things of that sort, that sort that we forget the spirit of the work that we're doing and maybe the conversation that we're invited to be a part of, uh, You know, you and I began this conversation without really defining what a writer's voice is. Um.
And I think it did. We.
Yeah. And and I'm not even sure, honestly, uh, that I could attach a definition to it other than to liken it to the the spoken voice. I mean, we all sound different. Yeah. But but I do think that voice is more than just our manner of delivery. Uh, the way that we construct sentences, that sort of thing. I do think that there is a spirit with which we communicate that that contributes or maybe largely defines what the speaker's voice is. I'll tell you a criticism that
I've gotten over the years as a songwriter. And and now even as a novice writer of fiction. Uh, I will I will hearken back to a conversation that I had years ago with a friend who was very knowledgeable about the the music industry and whatnot. Uh, was not a believer. Uh, and he was very clear about that. But he said, man, you've got a lot of talent as a songwriter. Uh, and you could probably really make something of yourself, but you're just so unrealistic in your songwriting.
And what he was saying was, you have got too much hope in your songs. And so I kind of took the criticism as a positive. Yeah. Because I think that the spirit with which I hope I write, and I think that this might be true for all of us as followers of Christ, uh, we are bound by some bookends, uh, one being the great command that we love God and love our neighbors as ourselves, and the other that we are trying to declare something to the world.
And for me, hope is a component of that. So one of our favorite writers, you and me both Flannery O'Connor, uh, observed one time that that to make us aware, us being the reading public, aware of just how broken we are. Uh, she said, I have to write these drastic storylines with grotesque characters and these really atrocious, uh, atrocious narratives. You know, I think that the at the opposite end of the spectrum, sometimes we have to write almost drastically, in a positive sense,
to affirm the potential that we're capable of. And so I've had, uh, not many, but I've had a couple of folks who've said your story about the old man from Portugal, Theo is way too positive. It's not realistic. It could never happen in the world. And I would push back against that. I don't think that it's incredible. And I know people who who are pretty much like the old man from Portugal, my brother now deceased, being
one of them. Um, but, uh, but I think that there is to be a spirit in the writer's voice. If the writer is a follower of Christ, uh, that ought to be distinct. It should be honest. It can be severe, it can be critical. It can be everything that, uh, that any other writer's voice has. Um, but it has that plus what the gospel brings to us, which is hope and a belief that, uh, that there is goodness in the world. And there is a good story that we get to be a part of.
Yeah, yeah. When I said earlier that that you're everything that I know of, of your work, whatever genre still feels like Alan Levi. That's really what I'm talking about. Even more than, you know, diction or. Yeah. Sentence structure or whatever. It's it's it it always sounds like, uh, it always sounds like you.
Thank you. I will take that as a compliment. I you know, I think I think the danger is that, uh, at some point, if the voice becomes entirely predictable or if it becomes too monochromatic or too narrow. Uh, I would hate to be a writer that is so intent on on propping up the goodness of life that I'm dishonest about the broken parts. And I've been pleasantly surprised with the Theo book that one of the chapters and it was it was added literally 2 or 3 days
before I finished the last manuscript. It's a short chapter about sadness and, um, a lot of people who have read the book have commented that that I felt like I had permission, after reading that chapter to be sad and to acknowledge that there is this part deep down inside me. As much as I want to be hopeful and positive about the world and life as we know it, that just feels like it. I can't go there. But but this old man saying sadness is a part of
life that we all have to wrestle to the mat. Um, it it opened a door for them. And so I would hope that, you know. And I know you you would feel the same way. Uh, any good writer, I think, would. We want to be honest. We want to be credible if we're writing realistic fiction and and we we want to say, yeah, the world is broken, but. Yeah. And then on the other side of the. But, you know, we, we, we try to, to put life as we know it in focus.
Well, I think, uh, it's, I find it helpful to think in terms of there's things that are true about the world, and there are things that are truer.
Yeah. Well said.
You know, and so all and I think maybe that's maybe that's the, the the difference. I don't I hesitate to speak in too broad generalities. But you know, I, I read writers from all sorts of, you know, faith positions.
Right?
Um, and from all over the place, people say things that are true about the world.
Yeah.
Right. And helpful and useful. And I also think that many times when I read those, I think, yeah, but there's something truer than that.
Yeah.
And I would like, as a writer, I would like to live in the, the parts that I believe are truer.
Yeah.
But that doesn't discount, um, I mean, that's, that's the nature of the gospel is is there are.
Amen.
There's some there's some, uh, news that's not so great.
Yeah.
That's right. Within the good news.
It's interesting. When I had that conversation with the musician friend years and years ago. I don't remember if I actually told him this, but I sure thought it. Um, yes. Maybe the perspective that I bring to the songwriting that I do is unrealistically positive, but I believe in the God of the prophets, and you would really not want me to write the truth and the, the the strong language of the of the prophets. You would see how wide my perspective or a believer's perspective is of life,
that we're in a in a real dilemma. And, and I've written some, you know, some things that were darker. Uh, but I don't, I don't I hope I will never, um, fall into the temptation of writing something dark for the sake of being thought serious.
Hmm.
I read this interesting book. I may have mentioned this to you before. It's by David Halverson called the 50s. Okay. And it's a it's about the decade of the 50s, and it's a fascinating read. And you, you kind of get the, the, uh, the sense that everything that we're dealing with today in the culture at large had its roots back in the 50s after the Second World War.
Just so much happened during that decade. But one of the things that was mentioned is that Elvis Presley was one of the, uh, he was one of the signature characters of that decade. Uh, and just the way that music changed, race relations changed in some ways. Uh, but one of the things about Elvis Presley that he learned early on in his career was, if you want to be taken seriously, do not smile. And so and and really, I mean, you know, he had kind of a snarky
sort of smile. And every now and then he would let loose with it. But but he realized, okay, James Dean, uh, Marlon Brando, these tough guys, they're the ones that are getting the attention. And I think sometimes that maybe as creatives, whether we're writing or painting or whatever, uh, we, we're tempted to create that persona about ourselves, whether it's whether
it's true or not. And, um, and I hope that I hope I never fall into that myself, because it would be to abandon a hope about which I am hopelessly hopeful. I just believe. I believe in it desperately. And I think the world wants to have hope. Uh, and write accordingly.
Yeah, I love it. Hey. Real quick. I don't usually, uh, ask about sort of, uh, publishing business things, but can you tell me last time we talked about it, really? Probably less than a year ago, we had an episode about Theo of Gold, and then it was just making its way into the world. And in the meantime, it is just. I hear about it all over the place.
Yeah.
People are reading this book and this book. The self-published book.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So how did it how did that happen?
About what happened?
Yeah. Um, it has been a a very pleasant surprise, to put it mildly. Um, so, as you know, I finished the manuscript. Had no intentions of publishing it. Some friends, Uh, it got their hands on it. I was glad to let them read it. There are people who I trust, and I knew they would give me an honest assessment of it. They said, we want you to do something with this. We think you should. And so I said, okay, I'll,
I'll give it a go. You know, nothing ventured, nothing gained. Um, but I knew I did not and never have, like the marketing part of any of the creative work I've ever done. Uh, I was a dismal failure at that as a musician. Um, but this time around, uh, I happen to be talking with a niece of mine who I adore. Uh, she was out in the marketplace. She's married, has three little children. She wanted a job that would allow her to stay at home. She had internet skills.
She understands social media. She believes in me a lot more than I believe in myself. And she believed in the book. And so we worked out an arrangement that she would work for me and we and still we are the entire enterprise. But let me just let me just I may have mentioned this already. Did I talk about my friend Cubby Kobe Culbertson, who, uh, suggested.
While we were recording.
Okay, so, um, I hired Aaron. She oversaw the, uh, the graphic design. We we just did a crowdsourcing, um, you know, pitch, uh, and we found, I think the artist is from Romania. Uh, we had basically designed the cover and the layout ourselves. But anyway, Aaron took care of all of that. We got, uh, we finally got
the final product. And, uh, in the dedication to the book, uh, references made to a friend of mine, Cubby Culbertson, who was this really wonderful entrepreneur up in Columbia, South Carolina. And it said something along the lines that I dedicate this book to cubby, uh, out of respect for our long friendship. And just as a small reminder that you promised if I dedicated it to you, you would buy 100 copies. Okay. It was meant as a joke. Yeah, well,
cubby said, hey, I'm I'm I'm all in. I do want to have 100 copies of the book, but I don't want the the books myself. He said, Aaron, my niece, uh, I would like you to find 100 book clubs and send a copy to 100 book clubs and see if you could get them interested in reading the book. Well, Aaron discovered there are lots of book clubs. It's hard to figure out who the leader of the pack is for most of them, but she sent these 100 books
out and book clubs started. Uh, they started to take a shine to the book, and and you know how that works. I mean, somebody in Birmingham, Alabama, has a friend in Austin, Texas, has a friend in San Francisco, has a friend in Saint Paul, has a friend in Portland kind of thing. And the book just it started going to lots of places via book clubs. Uh, we also had a small database, uh, harkening back to my musician days. And those people have always been so gracious, uh,
to the work that I've done. And it's, it's a microscopic group of people, but they are so, so valiant, uh, for the work that that I've been blessed to do. And so, you know that, and then just nothing but the goodness of God and and providence. Uh, the book has kind of taken off and and, Jonathan, it has been a shock, uh, to us. And I will say this because I know that a lot of people who listen to this are probably aspiring writers or aspiring artists
of one way or another. Um, and we don't like to talk about the marketing or the business end of what we do, but rarely do I go to a conference where we talk about the esoterics of creativity or theology of creativity. And I know in that room there are a lot of people who are asking the question to themselves, yeah, I get all of this, but how do I make a living doing this? And so, yes, uh, traditional publishers are still around. It's hard to get to them,
especially if you don't have an agent. I've never had an agent. Uh, but Amazon, for all the ugly things that can be said about it, uh, has somewhat democratized the marketplace. Um, and so Aaron and I said, okay, we will let Amazon basically handle the distribution of the book and its print on demand, which means we don't have to keep any inventory. We do keep a handful of books at my website and sell a few there, but Amazon, as you know, sells 85 to 90% of 90%
of the books in America. And so that's the big store. And it has proven, uh, you know, really workable for, uh, for myself. Now, tomorrow, the book, of course, could fall off the cliff and we will have had our, our glorious moment. But it's it has really been fun.
You'll be down there with the rest of us if it falls.
There you go. There you go. With a more wholesome company.
You know, at some point.
We all, we all.
Take that dive off the cliff. But but so far, it's it's, uh, it's been really good. And and one of the things that has really blessed and encouraged us is that, um, people buy by the box. We we get as many orders for boxes as we do for individual copies of the book. And then those people, these goodwill ambassadors, some of whom we know and most of whom we don't, uh, they spread the book out and it's just like a, a feather pillow that had been
broken open? We don't know where the feathers are landing.
Yeah, well, the the, um, the people who I hear about the book from the people. So I mentioned earlier before we started recording that I have people who don't have any idea that I know you. Yeah. Just mention, hey, there's this book my we love and it's and it's every time it's it's book clubs. Yeah. Right. My book club is doing this.
Yeah. I had no idea there were so many. Uh, and I've never, I've, I've never belonged to one myself. Um, and most of them tend to be female. Um, I think I've done one. One guys book club. I've done some mixed clubs. And what we really enjoy doing. Uh, not that I've done many of them just because I want to focus on writing, but rather than doing one book club, unless it's a zoom event, if I go somewhere to speak, we try to get like 10 or 20 book clubs together, and then you've got a room
full of people and you know it. Just if I'm going to leave home, I want to have a, you know. Yeah, I want to make the best use of my time possible. But we're getting a lot of invitations. I wish I could do every one of them. Uh, if for no other reason than I just love to thank people for the kindness that they've shown to us. Uh, and now that I'm in a little bit of a break from first or, or the most recent draft to where I'll. I'll pick up in probably a few weeks, but we're
going to try to do some during this spell. And, um, but if I do not happen to get to your book club, whoever you are out there and you've read it, God bless you. And I cannot thank you enough for, um, affirming the work that we've done. And keep up the good work.
Well, I hope you'll keep up the good work. Thanks so much for being here. I just love what you do. And, uh, I've been so thrilled to see this book taken off.
Thank you. Jonathan, I appreciate what you do. I know that you take the time to wrestle big ideas to the mat for the rest of us. Uh, I love your newsletter. Uh, I buy a lot of books on the strength of your recommendation. So there are authors who are indebted to you. You keep up the good work. Thanks.
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Jonathan Rogers. More importantly, the habit is a hub of community where like minded writers gather to discuss their work and give each other a little more courage. Find out more at the Habit Co.