Hi, and welcome back to the peril Markoi Show on iHeartRadio. The dating monologues continue to be popular in both my mentions and my messages. A listener wrote out a list of suggestions for people hoping to meet someone. I particularly like these two points. First, identify the kind of mate you want. Then transform yourself into the kind of person who would make a good mate for him her. Maybe that fails too because your concept of the best mate
wasn't fully developed. That's part of the learning and maturing process. Then you readjust your perception of what is optimal, remake yourself again, try again until you get it right. You become a better person in the process, and second, become the most happy, content sociable, fulfilled, et cetera person you can be without a partner, and even the best of marriages, you don't cease to be an individual, nor does your partner.
Both pretty good on your own than your expectations and needs from each other are lower, therefore increasing the success. So a lot of this stuff is not rocket science. As I've said before, and even on TikTok you can hear that working on yourself is a good thing to do, but it's important to say out loud, and I particularly liked how he says your idea of the perfect mate isn't fully developed.
You don't really.
Know what you want sometimes a lot of the time, and that hinders people from finding what they actually need. That's one of the many problems with the swiping culture. For some reason, a lot of this advice is aimed at women, but men need to get that advice too. What you're attracted to in a picture won't necessarily be what attracts you in real life.
A lot of the time, the.
People I hear from want to help someone else, often their grown child, but sometimes a friend or a family member find someone. Now, obviously that's a tough thing to do. Helping others with this kind of thing is even harder than helping yourself. If you're trying to help someone else, advise them to go easier on themselves. It's so easy to get into that spiral of you know, no one
will ever want me, et cetera. A lot of life is luck, and a lot of the rest of it is putting yourself in the right situation to get lucky. This isn't a dating podcast, so I'll wrap up the dating segments here, but it is a show about living a better life, and I pretty firmly believe that finding someone to spend your life with makes it better. If you've got thoughts, drop me an email. Carol Markowitz Show at gmail dot com. It's Ka R O L M A. R kow I c As and Charlie Zias and Zebra's
Show at gmail dot com. Coming up next and interview with Blake Nelson. Welcome back to the Carol Markowitz Show on iHeartRadio. Blake Nelson is the author of many adult and young adult novels. His many titles include which was serialized by Sassy Magazine, My Favorite When I Was a Teen to Great Acclaim, Paranoid Park, which was made into a film by Gus Vincent, and Recovery Road, which was adapted into a TV show for ABC Disney.
In twenty sixteen. He currently writes travel and memoir pieces on his Fantastic subsetac page Travels to Distant Cities. Hi, Blake, so nice to have you on.
Oh great to be on. Nice to see it, Carol.
Really good to see you too. Can I tell the story of how we met?
Is that sare okay?
Do you know what you know? So it was funny.
I met a woman on Twitter, right, Julia Malucci, and.
We hit it off.
I don't know, I don't even remember how we scott to talking, but I looked up that she had written a book I loved and lost and made spaghetti and I read the book and.
She and I were going out for a drink and.
I said, you know, I think one of the guys in your book it was a book about like.
Love affairs she had had.
I said, I think I know one of the guys in your book is Is it Blake Nelson? And she said we were out for a drink and she said, yes, it is.
And he's meeting us here in ten minutes.
And I was like, Blake Nelson my favorite writer, and so I you know, sometimes I hold up a book I'm about to like.
I have many Blake Nelson books. I am obviously huge, huge fan.
I have The City Once You Alone on my nightstand that it's in the cue for me to read. So that's why it's not that stat extra showed. But you are a long time, very much one of my favorite writers.
I read everything. You're right, and I'm so happy to have you on the show.
No thank you so much.
And you know, when I was talking to Julia, it was just funny that I was able to figure out who you were based on her description of Portland music writer guy. And so tell us a little bit about how you got to, you know, having seventeen thousand books on my shelf.
Well, I just I was a musician when I was a teenager and in my beIN in college and uh and I but I love to write. I always love to write, and so writing and music were my two favorite things. And when I got sort of kind of deep into the music world, I kind of felt like I had to make a choice if I wanted to be a writer or a musician. And I'd seen I'd played.
A terrible decision.
I know, how did you choose that?
I would definitely music?
And I just chose it based on the fact that I thought I'd be doing it for my whole life. And I thought the music thing is super fun when you're twenty one, and but but doing it forever would just be kind of a slog I thought. And I'd seen the life, you know, I'd played clubs, I'd played with bigger bands that I could see what it was like to be successful in that world, and I just thought being a writer would be more interesting, and I
thought it would last longer. I felt like, you know, people take writer seriously when they're in their forties and fifties, and nobody.
Take it like, you know, Mick Jagger is still jumping around the stage and he's like eighty, so I'm in my forties. I saw Mick Jagger the Rolling Stones play when I was in college collegames a long time ago, and I was like, ooh, these guys are too old and they're still playing today right now.
Yeah, so you could have.
Had a long, illustrious musical career if you had done it slightly.
You know, maybe most musical careers are not do not go like the Rolling Stones. Most musical careers. And I saw myself as a musician. You have a kind of breakout and have like maybe a big record or something, and then you kind of just try to hang around as long as you can. And I see bands that were my contemporaries and they're playing in small clubs now. You know, these great bands like the Psychedelic Firs just played in a club in Portland, and I'm really glad
I became a writer. I don't want to be writer the right.
Decision making yes, no other pants for you at the stage.
And also as a writer you're kind of always doing new things, whereas in music, if you kind of have hits, then you just really got to do the hits. Yeah, And I just thought it would be more interesting. I thought it would just I didn't know. And at the time I was doing music, like every every kind of cool person did music, and I thought, don't we need some cool people?
Yes, we did, We did need that.
And so and that really turned out to be right because when I read wrote Girl, the book you were that you were saying talking about nobody really wrote a good book about that world. No, So I felt like, you know, in one sense that just on the basis of that one book, my sort of gampit to try to, you know, to try to do something interesting in the literary world. You know, it was worth it, because really
there wasn't. If there wasn't that book, you know, that's kind of the best potent if you want to know about that scene the nineties Northwest, that was a significant cultural moment. Yeah, and it really isn't that, you know, there's not really a good novel about it except for why right there really was Eddy, There isn't any novels about it, and so that's right.
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of force to keep intruders out. Visit saberradio dot com or call eight four four eight two four safe to protect your family today. That's Sabre Radio dot com. So it's funny with this show, I sort of have started to describe it as I ask political people non political questions.
But you're not a political person. You're just somebody I think is interesting and.
I wanted to have on the show where you did have a bit of a political controversy with a book a few books ago.
Now right, two books ago.
Your book was called The Red Pill and it was about the dating kind of guys, the what are they.
Called the manosphere?
The manosphere, I think on the pickups, the pickup pickup artists.
Yeah, can you you know.
And you got some pushback and you had some protests at bookstores, but I didn't feel that you.
Were glamorizing them at all.
I didn't think that, Like I didn't read that book and think, oh, I hope my son grows up to be one of these guys either. So what what was that like for you to have that kind of controversy not a political person, Yeah.
You know, I'm not really in the book. I named the book the Red Pill because the book was so he was so non political. It was about his family
that was they kind of went through. This is just a story of a family during the time of the year before Trump got elected, in the year after Trump got elected, so it was kind of which was a very storm me weird time, and families were kind of families that, you know, normal families will often have conservatives liberals, right at that moment for the first time that was really causing problems with families, and so that's what the
book was about. The book was about a family of fairly normal, up er, middle class, liberal, arts educated people. But one of the guys in the family was kind of a manisphere guy, and one of the other people in the family was trying to get married and was having a terrible time. So the manisphere guy tries to help the guy wants to get married, and it was very funny, yeah, hilarity exactly, but it was also a pretty serious look at that time. And I thought it
was great. I know, I thought it was going to be a big hit or something like, I thought it was my house. Yeah, So, but I bet it did get a lot of pushback. People didn't want to hear anything about Trump. And I handled the Trump thing completely objective. It was a lot about Trump, it was not about any of that stuff. But but it just didn't ay red Pill. I've got people really upset and and it was again that was that really affected me. I had
to sort to deal with that. It was it kind of that kind of pushed me into the substack world where I, you know, which is the only real place. I felt like I could pursue something else, and you know, and eventually I started writing the Travel Staff and then and then that's turned out really well. So yeah, I.
Loved your I love your travel writings and hearing about the different places. Actually your recent one of your recent ones was about Julia's memoir where.
She mentioned you.
So I was like, oh, this is how we we first met.
Yeah. Yeah. A question I.
Asked all of my guests is what do you worry about?
Well, I just worry about the world in general. Uh you know, I as as things crank up and get more uh interesting, shall we say, Uh, Like two years ago, I was more worried. And now that everybody else is worried, if everybody else is free, dad that I can relax. Right. It's so in a weird way, I'm not that concerned about this Coverlent election, and everybody else is very worried about it. In Portland, they're you know, gearing up the police force and putting unsensires for the stuff and.
For the Trump supporters who are going to riot, right, well, I think that they did well.
Yes, not a lot of Trump supporters in Portland, right right. But yeah, the anti foot right there, their concerns that.
They're very active here. We see them, you know, they they come out when uh, they might make an appearance. But you know what, usually, as I noticed in the years when the we'd have these riots, that one summer we had riots every night. The more the media tells you there's going to be a riot, there's less chances. Interesting, Yeah, when everybody gets all geared up, right, nothing happens.
I think that you.
Don't worry when everybody else is worried, but you worry when nobody else is worried.
Or is that WEIRDO?
I don't think you would write ya stuff, you know, young adult novels, so you are speaking to teenagers a lot of the time anyway, But what advice would you give a sixteen year old Blake Nelson?
How would you do things differently? Or what should he know?
Wow? You know, I don't know. You know, one thing in my particular case, the thing about the music and the writing. You know, music is a lot less political so if I wanted to have a nice, long career in the arts, maybe music would have been the better choice. Because now, you know, in a climate where politics is really important, then they're being a writer, it becomes much more dicey and so I but this has only happened recently. So for most of my writing career, I was I
was faring. So but yeah, I would say tell my young self, just do you know, just follow your instincts, which is what I did, and just enjoy it. You know, I'm a warrior and I you know, and it was obviously being a writer is very difficult that you know, you have to get rejected a ton and you have to you know, my career had wild ups and downs.
We'll have more coming up with Blake Nelson. But first October seventh was the one year mark of the worst massacre of the Jewish people since the Holocaust. Twelve hundred Israelis were murdered and more than two hundred and fifty taken hostage. The war in Israel rages on today. Israel and the Jewish people are facing attacks from enemies on all sides seeking Israel's destruction. The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews is on the ground providing food, shelter, and
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You like to write.
About like what's your You know, I know that you like like music and sort of talking to the teens, But do you have like what you consider your passion Like.
Yeah, I don't know. Well, I really loved writing the young adult books. I kind of got forced into writing the young adult books because I was having trouble getting my adult stuff published. After those first couple of books, I kind of hit a wall with that. So then I started writing YA books. And at first I was kind of annoyed, like I don't want to write WYA books. I want to be a famous writer, Like, oh, that's
you know, coming away. But I found that I really liked writing about teenagers and the stuff that you go through at that age. And I felt like teenagers are kind of more themselves than adults are, you know, because they're kind of they're becoming themselves, and they're way more idealistic, and they're more uh, they're more like focused as personalities.
They don't have to call they haven't they haven't compromised away all themselves yet and uh and you know, in the in the draw and the romantic dramas they go through are kind of pure in a way because it's the first time they're going through it. And I just I just loved it. I just really love doing it. And uh, and I'm one of those people that I
kind of I didn't ever really mature. I never so it's always was very close to my heart and it was just fine I really and it turned out I loved it doing it, and uh, and then and then it turned out, you know, I got it movies and you know, it just was a good place for me.
And then, what do you like about being on sub sect?
I'm not like I'm on it, and I do send out an occasional thing, but I can't say that I've I understand it yet.
I feel a little old for it.
All my young friends are like, you should be on substack, and I'm like, I don't get it.
So you see, you do get it. Tell me about it.
Well, you know the thing I did on it is I just I just developed. I'm a columnist on Substack. Every Saturday at three pm, I put out one of my travel pieces. Travel pieces, don't yes, because I do that on a regular basis. I can't always write about travel, so I have to write about other things also, And I've kind of just led myself adjust to the schedule of it. And I kind of always when I was a kid, I always wanted to be I love columnists.
I loved it's the same person and you could tell when they were bored, you could tell what they did really want to write the column.
As a columnist. I find that bar.
Being yeah, yeah, and yeah, so you should know that pattern. But uh yeah, I feel like that, and I feel like I I feel like in the Rolling Stones and the Beatles in those early days in the sixties, those bands would put out singles like all the time, like very quickly. You're not not once a week obviously, but I love that idea. I love like, oh, this week's Colin didn't really hit Oh, but that Colin really did.
You know, maybe I can. It's just this way or that way you have just and that's what and that's what substack is fun for because you get this instant feedback. You you know, if you're lucky, you start to develop a following. Like I now have enough fans or subscribers that I really get a broad you know, I can kind of tell like what the older people like, I can the kids sort of like this stuff. And it's really fun and it's really interactive. I really enjoy it.
When I had to kind of retire from the book business, I really did. I can't really imagine myself published at Simon and Schuster, Random House or something like that, which is how I made my living for you know, all my adult life, but says, I can't do that. I really didn't know if there would be anything I could do that would be fun or rewarding, or should I just stop writing completely and learn how to make chairs or something, you know, Like, I really didn't know what
to what to do. And I stumbled into substack and I just started writing up. And I I loved writing travel stuff. Early in my career. I'd written some travel articles for Details magazine. Yeah that was really fun, and they would pay you lots of money in those days.
And imagine getting paid lots of money to write that's.
Crazy, no way, Oh my god, it's amazing. But so I just thought, and you know what, there's I love reading travel stuff, but there's almost no good travel stuff. Really. I don't like most travel writing in magazines or you know, like in New York Times, and it's not very good. It's just boring. People writers put on this tone when they're writing a travel piece, like oh, the sun set
over Egypt. You know, it's just this really boring. And I and I was really the true you know yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah exactly, oh yeah, that's the classic what was Axui driver?
And I really was determined I'm gonna, like, if nothing else, I'm going to get a different kind of voice to do travel stuff where it's going to be it's as if you're standing you're sitting next to me, and I'm just talking ship and just saying whatever and uh and you know, making fun of things and uh it's I've really and that's kind of worked and uh so the substack has its Uh, I've kind of established a tone of voice, which is what you're always trying to do
as a right You're always trying to get a recognizable and it isn't like exactly what I think always, but it's but it's a voice and it works, and it's uh, I really enjoy it. I love sitting down. I love it when I send in the you know what I pit sind Oh yeah. And then I started working on the next one, and you're you know what am I going to do? Sometimes I don't have a good win, you know, so I have to throw something together. And I'm sure you bet you all this, but I really
like it. And because you're on a schedule, you can't be a perfectionist. You can't like worry about stuff too much.
Yeah, and that's it.
Yeah, Yeah, and I've been a big fan of your work and I love I love the New York Post. The New York Post is are you trying to get UFE full together? Exactly?
Yeah, Well, I've loved this conversation. He's Blake Nelson. His subsect page is called Travels to Distant Cities. You have to check it out. But if you're looking to read some of his books, start with Girl. It's really among my favorites. And here Blake with your best tip for my listeners on how they can improve their lives.
Well, you know, I go for walks. I just go for a walk, heavy night, forty five minutes fortes. Yeah, yeah, I'm a long one.
Constitutional Yeah.
And you know, find cool places in your neighborhood. Explore your neighborhood. You know, I live in Portland where I grew up. Sometimes I drive places to go for a walk in the place I used to live or something. So walking that's product.
All right, we'll take you up on that. Thank you so much, Blake Nelson. Check them out.
Thank you, Thanks, thanks so much for joining us on the Carol Mark which show. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.