In the midst of a more-scandalous-than-usual news cycle, Ian Doescher joins us to talk about his new political satire, MacTrump. MacTrump gives an over-the-top (or over the top-er) version of the first two years of the Trump Administration, all in 5 act format, all in iambic pentameter. If you're needing a more long-form laugh than 240 characters, this might be the pick for you.

Ian's is an especially fortunate publishing journey. A lifetime love of Shakespeare and a recent rewatch of A New Hope sparked the idea for William Shakespeare's Star Wars, which reimagines the beloved sci-fi series through an approximation of the Bard's pen. Ian contacted the editor listed on Quirk Books' website, who published Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, with his pitch—and they were super down. And also happened to have collaborated with Lucasfilm in the past. Now, with eleven books already written and four in the works, Ian is ensuring that the spirit of Shakespeare is carried here hence forthwith (am I doing it right?).

You can find MacTrump wherever books are sold. Or you can enter to win it (week of Oct 2–9, 2019) here: https://hybridpubscout.com/giveaways/win-mactrump/

Please rate and review us on whatever podcast platform you happen to use. And follow us on:

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What shall we do? Pray tell for one cease all

communication through the tool mctweet, who is a vulture and

stool pigeon, both an albatross tied tightly round your necks

in following the latest hashtag trends.

Oh. Funny. You

Ian, welcome to the hybrid Cub Scout podcast with me.

Emily einerlander and me. Karim kolasky, hello.

We are mapping the frontier between traditional

and indie publishing, and today we have Ian descher on

Hello,

hello, hello, Ian,

thank you for coming here. We don't have any

new reviews, so you you don't get to listen to us make fools

of ourselves. Yeah, yet, that's true. Maybe later in the podcast

coming up. Not maybe

for sure, yeah, that's gonna happen.

Ian descher has loved Shakespeare since

eighth grade, and was born 45 days after Star Wars Episode

Four was released. He has a BA in music from Yale University, a

master of divinity from Yale Divinity School, and a PhD in

ethics from Union Theological Seminary. Ian lives in Portland,

Oregon with his wife and

two sons. All very true.

I do so does my dad? All right, he's also a cancer. All right.

Well, I know,

are you my daughter?

Were you 10? Yikes, I'm sorry. I also saw

something about you having like, music degree. Was that you?

Yeah, yep, I have a music degree, so that was my

undergraduate. And, yeah, and what I do with that today? I

sing, still, Oh, good. Where do you sing? I sing once a month

with a group that sings. We rehearse, and we're all sight

readers, so we learn hard stuff, and then we sing at a Catholic

church for their Sunday evening service, even though only one of

us is Catholic, if it's not me, but it's great fun.

Yeah? Cool. Yeah, I am. I was studying

classical singing for a while, and I was doing, like, German

art music, and then I was like, What am I doing?

You mean those jobs aren't just in abundance?

Well, honestly, the only place where

my friends were getting hired was at the Catholic mission,

Santa Barbara for the fancy Easter services. And then they

for the rest of the year. They were like, when's Christmas

coming? I need, I need a windfall.

Yeah, so that was about it, yeah. I like to sing a

karaoke you do, and you're really fun. I

have a

terrible voice, but I am very enthusiastic about

karaoke, so that helps. I feel

like that's the most important. Like, I

don't understand people who go to karaoke and you're like,

Thank you, and Steve, and I'm like, That's literally the

poor people who like, compete at karaoke, who like,

have actually good voices, and go there and are like, trying to

outdo each other, you know. And I understand that what this is

for, really? Yes, I think that's shitty.

I think if you know what you're getting into

and it's like, this is a competition, that's fine. But if

I get up there and everybody else is trying

to have fun, yeah, yeah, not so much. Do you do

karaoke?

No, which is weird, because I am singing literally all the time,

yeah, yeah. But not karaoke, yeah, what's your karaoke song?

Like, uh, don't you want me by the Human League, which I do as

a duet? Of course, we have, we don't say that at my that's a

good one. And it's like, it's a good one, because everybody

knows it. It's like, you know, whatever. So I thought it's a

good one.

We were supposed to do Hounds of love at

my birthday, but you had to leave early because I think you

moved. That's correct.

That's right next time, though, yeah, yeah,

yeah, so we got to do that again. We Yeah,

well, let's talk about you, yeah.

Well, I mean, you guys need to get out calendars and

plan

while we do this. Also, I wore my like

presidential shirt in honor of your upcoming book. Very nice.

Thank you. Real quick, before other people turn off this

podcast, can you plug your book real quick?

Sure. It is called MC Trump with a very long subtitle

that I don't remember,

but it is basically the you didn't write

the subtitle.

Well, I may have written it, but I don't remember

two different things. I. Yeah, it's basically the first two

years of the Trump administration rewritten as a

Shakespearean tragicomedy. So with very highly fictionalized

there's a lot of, I mean, a lot of elements you would recognize

as truth and history, and a lot that would be very not much.

You mean, our president doesn't speak in

iambic pentameter,

yeah? Well, that is true. He doesn't. I've been

working

way too hard to try to, like, figure that

out. Then, yeah,

you're like, that's, I'm sure it's there, but I just

can't get the

rhythm. I thought this was a play. Oh,

it's real life. Are you excited about the prospects of your of

your sales, based on what's happened in the last week, I

have to

say that the fact that the book is coming out when it's

coming out seems like perfect timing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'd have high hopes too. Yeah. I do have high

hopes because I'm rooting for you.

Do you remember where you were when you heard that

William Shakespeare Star Wars was on the New York Times

bestseller list, and exactly how loudly did you scream?

So the way it happened, it was actually a little bit weird. I

heard from my publisher that it was like, there was maybe a

chance, maybe a possibility, but there wasn't, like, a

confirmation. Then a day or two later, and I was in Virginia at

the time, visiting some friends, and this was part of an East

Coast family trip, and I got a call from a 212 number at this

friend's house in Virginia. And any, I mean, it's just standard

policy for me, when 212 calls, you pick it up? Sure. And so

that's New York. New York, for anybody who doesn't have the

area codes memorized, yes. And so I picked it up. And it was a

reporter for the New York Times. Oh, who writes a little column

that goes with the best seller list, saying that sort of talks

about some of the new books that are appearing on the list for

the first time, or something like that. And even he, and I'm

sure this is just part of his job, even he could not be like,

your book is definitely going to be on the list. But he was, he

was basically like, there's a chance that your book is going

to be on the list. And so I'd love to talk with you about it.

And so we talked for a few minutes and and it was a day or

two later that my editor called me, and I was, I'm very

specifically. I was at a playground with my family, my

boys were playing on the playground, and I got the call

from my editor, and he told me I was gonna be on the list. And,

yeah, it was surreal. Is the word, because it's just not

something I ever thought was gonna happen.

Sure, yeah, yeah. So I'm guessing you didn't

scream at the playground, maybe not.

I probably didn't scream on the inside, right,

right, right,

yeah, yeah, internal scream, yes, not

to be confused with constipation, which sounds

slightly different,

but only slightly happier. Yeah. All

right. All right, when did you know you wanted to

pursue professional writing?

Well, I would say that I first started thinking about writing a

book sometime in graduate school. And I originally, you

know, I went to, I did a master's program, then did a PhD

program, and I thought for many years that I would write

academic books, oh and, and during my PhD program, I

actually, one summer, wrote the manuscript of of a book that was

very, sort of steeped in what was going on in the world at the

time, with George W Bush as president and that sort of

thing. And, and that didn't really go anywhere but, but I, I

just sort of assumed that was going to be my path. And, you

know, but, but I had been wanting to, I didn't really

start reading like mad until after college, but at which

point I became a really obsessive and avid reader, and

still am and so and that, I think was what sort of turned me

on to this idea, like, Hey, I would also love to start

writing, you know. And so it was, it was some time around,

around then, yeah, in those years, it feels

a little decadent to be able to like,

read books you like after you've been in academia for a while,

right?

Yes, absolutely, yeah, oh, I get to choose this.

I'm enjoying

myself. Is this okay?

Stop every five minutes and like, hang my

head,

Yeah, nobody's gonna grade me on whether or not I

read this novel.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay.

So, why Shakespeare? Why? Why was that

what you decided to commit to, honestly, like, pretty much,

like, what? What you do? Yeah, so,

could you actually, like, explain a little

bit of the link between all of the books that you've done for

we have a lot. Like editor listeners and maybe people who

aren't as hooked into the Star Wars or nerdy culture?

Yeah, sure. So. So first of all, why Shakespeare

when I was it really started when I was in eighth grade. I My

brother was a senior in high school at the time, and he was

reading Hamlet in his English class, and I wanted to be like

my big brother, and so I bought a copy of Hamlet at a used

bookstore on the way to Lincoln city. And, you know, probably

underlined the whole To be or not to be speech. And that was

about all I did really that year. But then the next year, we

read Othello in my freshman English class, and I was a

theater kid, and, you know, loved that we were reading a

play in English class. And I was the one who, when we had to

recite or memorize a speech, you know, I would, instead of just

sort of reciting it, I would perform it, you know, in front

of the class. I mean, why do it otherwise, yeah, really, right.

And so, so I loved Shakespeare's characters and his storylines,

and I loved the language. Just before we jumped into Othello,

our teacher taught us about poetic meter and and different

types of poetic feat. And as a kid who had grown up on Dr

Seuss, you know, I just loved, I just loved it, and it made such

perfect sense to me, like, like, just like in my soul made good

sense about, you know, about meter and everything. So, so I

just loved all that about Shakespeare, and just really

took to it. And culturally, it was a great time to be a kid

getting into Shakespeare, because the summer after my

sophomore year of high school was when Kenneth Branagh has

much ado about nothing came out. Yeah, yeah. And which I

literally saw in the theater with my mom like 10 times. And

also, Portland, at the time had a in all shake, all Shakespeare

Theater Company, and so I went to see a lot of their shows. So

yeah, so I just sort of getting into as much Shakespeare as I

possibly could that same summer after my sophomore year, I spent

also the summer memorizing a bunch of soliloquies just

for fun. Oh, were you in a Shakespeare play

in high school? Nope, never. Wow, sadly,

sorry, I know. Oh, well,

have you ever been to the what is it the Shakespeare Festival

in Ashland, yes.

And I had not been yeah until 2010 was the first year I ever

went.

That seems hardcore. I've never been either, but I know that's

what they're known for,

that part of what led to

your Yeah. So so I was back there two years later, and

and I had just recently re watched the Star Wars trilogy

for the first time in probably a decade. And then I had read

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. And then just after that, went

to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival with my family, and we

we saw a few different things. But among other things, we saw

the Very Merry Wives of Windsor, Iowa, which was a, you know,

modern production of Merry Wives Windsor. That was just

hilarious. And, and, yeah, I think I was on a run at in

Ashland, and I was like, it would be great to take Star Wars

and rewrite it as though we're a play by Shakespeare. So anyway,

to answer your earlier question, so my books have been then I

wrote William Shakespeare Star Wars, which is an adaption,

adaptation of verily A New Hope?

No, that's the name of

an adaptation of A New Hope rewritten as though it's a

Shakespeare play. And then I've done since then, the original

trilogy of Star Wars movies, then the prequel trilogy, and

now I am midway through the sequel trilogy. So I've done

Force Awakens and last Jedi, and we'll be doing the rise of

Skywalker soon.

So, so you said that you had rewatched the

trilogy before you went to the festival. So had you watched the

prequels at all?

Yes, yeah, okay, I had seen the prequels, yeah, but I

had not seen the I had I hadn't seen the original movies in a

long

time. You didn't go for the remastered

versions.

That was probably the last time I saw them. I probably

saw the remastered versions because I had seen those. But

then, yeah, that

was in the 90s, yeah. I remember I was,

yeah. That was very exciting for me. My first, my first crush was

Harrison Ford.

Wasn't me all of our first crushes?

Was it my first crush? Christian Slater, I don't know, yes, from

Heather, really? Yeah, probably

Star Trek, very advanced, yeah, one of

the most like evil characters in, like, high

school cinema, Hey, so what's your favorite Star Wars movie?

Corinne, Oh, that's interesting. You bring the I

have never seen a Star Wars movie, all right, so, yeah, so I

don't, yeah, I don't even know a question to ask after that.

I'm just outing you because that. Want

people to know, yeah, and cool people like Corinne True Star

Wars, yeah, well, thank

you for calling me cool. I think you're cool. Oh,

thanks. Yeah, no. But, I mean, it's like one of those,

obviously, like cultural zeitgeist movies that I feel

like I've been meaning to watch for a long time. I'm just not

like a science fiction person, so I don't sure gravitate

towards it, but I know I should

watch it. So, I mean, there's no shit about this. Yeah, you're

right. You're right. That's true.

You feel kind of like you missed the boat. And

so it's like, why even bother? Yeah, maybe that's like, feel

about the new movie. Oh, those. There's like, four of them now,

yeah, that's true. That's true. Yeah, if it were

still, like a cultural like phenomenon, like now I would

probably see

it. Yeah, is it? I'll watch it with you.

Okay. JT, hasn't seen Return of the Jedi, oh, yeah, let's watch

Star Wars until we got together. Oh, like one of our friends

yelled at him,

so you left him hanging with Empire Strikes Back.

I know, I know, I don't know.

He was like, I assume everything works out in

the end.

You happen to be right?

No, I'll make him. I'll make both of you watch

it. Well, the party, we'll have another part. The last party we

had was,

Did I talk about this on the podcast? I don't think

so.

We had a back to back Wicker Man party, where

we watched the original 1974 Wicker Man with, with

Christopher Lee. And then we watched the Nicolas Cage Wicker

Man right after, wow, yeah. It was one of the best parties I've

ever had.

Her husband made a man shaped bread like that was,

like, the way, you know, the man in the cage or whatever, yeah,

that was cool. My friend

Bianca made, like a beehive cake.

Oh, that's great. Yeah.

I had a great time.

Yeah, yeah. Anyway, so horror movie nerds,

yeah, nerd, sure,

yeah, but I've been getting way more into horror the

last two or three years. Really, tell me more about this. Tell us

more. I mean, I've, well, there are all kinds of sort of horror

classics, not like Wicker Man, but things, I mean, just things

like Friday the 13th, you know, Nightmare on Elm Street that I

had never seen before, right? So there's a another podcaster I

love, named Matt Gourley, who does a few different things,

yeah, and so one of the things he did last year was a podcast

about the Friday the 13th series. And so I watched the

movies along with that. You watched all of them, and I knew

that they were going to converge at Freddy versus Jason. So I

also watched all of the Nightmare on Elm Street while I

caught up with them at the same time,

you curated that really well,

anyway, so, and then, since then, I mean, I've just

been catching up on all a lot of the classics, right? So just,

just two or three weeks ago, I watched Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Nice man. I was expecting, basically, a Friday the 13th. I

was expecting, like, schlock. Oh, I was so wrong. I was so

wrong in the last 1520 minutes. Is just bonkers. Oh my goodness,

yeah, I was totally unprepared

for it. Actually, like, viscerally

engaging, yeah.

I was like, Oh my goodness. What, like, what am I

watching?

Like, I'm not sitting here laughing at this,

right? Upsetting?

Yeah, totally, totally. And I finished watching, and I

was like, Whoa, that was really something

to go, like, hold my child. Yeah, yeah,

exactly, yeah. I've just heard so many like people when

referring to something scary that happened in another movie,

use that as like a corollary. It's pretty great. It is, you

see, midsummer,

no, no, it's streaming now on a service I will not

mention, because I hate them,

the service who must not be Yeah, but you'll

have to buy hold a stream.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. Voltas. Jeff, all right, so tell

us how your latest book. Well, it's forthcoming, but almost

here it'll be out October. No, Tuesday, right

Tuesday? Yeah, so this is coming out the day

after

right now. It is out right now. Go get it. Okay.

What? Well, tell us how the book came into being, and then what

was working with a co author like

so? Well, actually, those two, those two questions sort of

converge nicely, because I I had the idea to write a

Shakespearean drama about Donald Trump during the 2016 election.

Because basically I was thinking like, is there any small way in

which I could try to. Contribute, you know, and and

like, just try to help.

So you're thinking of this as activism a

little bit. Yeah,

exactly, all right, but I didn't do anything, so

clearly, that's probably why,

probably to blame.

So to blame, yeah, we're all complicit.

So, so anyway, so I set that aside. Last summer, I read

a book called licensed to Quill, which is a, basically, it's a

James Bond Shakespeare mashup. It's, it's a novel, but it's

basically, it's Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe are the two

main characters, and they are both spies, and so they're in

there a lot of James Bond references and things like that.

And this is written by a guy who writes under the pen name, and

I'm going to butcher it, but Jacopo della

Curzio, I saw that. And then is it

someone who works at Quirk? No, it's not

okay, because I was, I thought that was like a bastardization

of,

yeah, so anyway, so I wrote to him after, because this

is kind of thing I do. I wrote to him after I finished it, and

just said, Hey, I just want to let you know I'm the guy who

wrote this Heller Shakespeare stuff and, and want to let you

know I enjoyed your book. And he wrote back, and he knew my books

and, and we sort of, you know, an email conversation sprung up

and and pretty soon he was asking about, hey, could we

maybe collaborate on something? And so he threw a few different

ideas my way, and one of them was, could we do some sort of

play about Trump? And I wrote back, and I was like, well,

that's funny. You say that, because that's an idea that has

crossed my mind as well. And so I we spent some time basically

plotting out the five acts of what we originally were going to

originally we were going to have two endings, so there was going

to be sort of the Democrat ending and the Republican

ending. And so we plotted it all out, and I told him I would send

it off to quirk, my editor at Quirk and see what they thought

about it. Yeah. And to make a longer story short, I did that,

and they came back and said, Yeah, we want to do this. And so

we wrote the book in about five or six weeks. Oh, my God, just

he's crushing, punishing, yeah, yeah, breakneck, whatever. But,

and, and it has, I mean, the the actual writing of it went

probably about as smoothly as it as it could, and it really is a

good representation of both of us, because he, his real name is

Giacomo, and he is, he worked on the Obama campaign, and so he

has a lot more political knowledge than, I mean, I have,

you know, I listen to NPR politics, right? So, like,

that's my, that's my level of political knowledge, right? And

so he had a lot more, and I have way more experience writing in

verse than he does and stuff like that. And so basically we

would trade off writing scenes. And, you know, I'd write a scene

and send it to him, and he'd write a scene and send it to me.

His scenes, generally, he was writing out in dialog, and then

I was taking and putting it into iambic pentameter and trying to

put more Shakespearean touches on it and that kind of thing.

And with my scenes, he would be like, Oh, add in this political

thing. You hear it. And then. So basically, all of both of us

have been over the whole thing, you know, in one way or another,

multiple times. So yeah, so that was in February and March of

this year. Wow. And because, basically, Kirk was like, if

we're gonna do this, we gotta do it fast, yeah, for it to be

timely. And then they had, they were the ones who came back and

said, Let's just set the timeline that it is about the

first two years of his administration. And let's call

it part one, whether or not there actually ends up being a

part two or not, right? Let's call it part one and and that

way it's clear, like what this covers and what it doesn't

cover.

I mean, regardless, second half,

interesting, spectacular, yes, no doubt.

How excited are they right now?

God, yeah, this is all good timing. Yeah,

I would say, couldn't have engineered it better. Yeah,

yeah, yeah.

So is there like a shake spirit? Because

when I saw MCT, and obviously, from the email that you probably

got yesterday, it was like, I thought, Oh, it's just like the

Scottish Play. And, you know, reading through what you've

done, it's more based on, like the movies, but there's no movie

here, so it's based on the first two years. So is there any like

plot elements that have to do with the Shakespeare play? Or

did you just say Mick Trump because he's Scottish?

It was really just, I think, just. The idea it's sort

of an instantly, one of the things that my the quirk always

said about William Shakespeare Star Wars, is you hear that

title and you know instantly what it is, basically, right?

And MC Trump is a very similar kind of title, I think, right?

You immediately get, oh, it's Macbeth, but it's Trump. And so,

yes, it is not based on Macbeth. And I realized that, I mean, one

of my other books is much ado about Mean Girls. And I realized

I only after that book came out, did I realize that people were

sort of expecting like, so did you take elements of Much Ado

and put that in? Yeah, no. Right answer is, it is just a it's

just a fun title, right? Yeah, right. So, yeah, yeah. So that's

sort of the case with MC Trump as well. Now that's not to say

there aren't elements of Macbeth in there. There's a scene where

Lady mctrump is desperately trying to get the spot out of

her coat that says, I don't care, do you? You know? So,

right? So, I mean, there's that kind of thing, right? But there

are no witches, for

instance. Okay,

yeah. So I was like, I was talking to JT about

it, and he was like, I always thought that it would have more

of a King Lear vibe. And then the CD sentence, like, totally

made me think of King

Lear. Like, yeah, yeah, I don't know. And there actually

are, there's a line. There's some lines when, in fact, it

might. It's not in this scene, no, no, it's, it's a scene

where, where Mick Trump comes in, and he's there with his

three older children, and he asked them all to tell them how

much they love him. And they borrow lines from from Lear in

that moment, yeah,

yes, yeah. I think that's probably actually happened. I

mean, he probably does that, right,

yeah, yeah, yeah. That was, there were a lot of times when

my editor was reading through this and she was, she was like,

Wait, did this happen in real life, or did this not happen?

You know?

And, yeah, what is reality anymore. Nobody knows. Nobody

knows. All right, so what's been the biggest surprise for you,

good or bad about being an author and working within the

publishing industry?

I've been so fortunate. I have just, first of all, the way that

I got started. It is not the way that it works. Can you tell us

about Yeah, sure. So I mentioned earlier I had the idea for

William Shakespeare Star Wars. I looked up quirk books online

because they had published Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Their

editors email address was on their website. I sent him an

email on July 20, 2012 he wrote me back that day, wow. And said,

that's an interesting idea. And if you write something, let me

know, and I'll take a look at it. Now, if he had not written

back, I don't think I would have done anything. I think it would

have been one of those many ideas that just would have sort

of fallen by the wayside, but, but here was a real life editor

saying, Sure, I'll take a look at it if you write something. So

I spent the next three weeks writing the first act and sent

that off to him in August, and he called me that morning and

said, I really want to do this. And you didn't have an agent or

anything. I did not have an agent. Yeah? I mean, this is

what I'm saying, right? This is like dumb luck, right? And, and

he and he quirk had done a book with Lucasfilm a couple years

before that around Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Yeah, right,

yeah, no fair. Fair to laugh, yeah. But anyway, so he had a

Lucasfilm, yes,

that's not a real movie. I'm saying it wrong.

Never happened.

It just never happened.

Well, it's funny that even the title I'm like, is that even

what it was,

yes, it was Crystal Skull, something kingdom, if it exists,

yes, yes.

Fair. Anyway. So, so he took it to his contacted Lucasfilm and

and Lucasfilm wrote back. And, I mean, this was, you know, they

met about it, and got back to me, and basically their feedback

was, well, we like what he's done so far, but we want to see

if you can have more fun with it. You know, take it like,

basically, if you're going to do this concept, might as well go

all the way with it. Sure. Yeah. And so I revised the first

couple of scenes, and that's when I added our 2d two speaking

in English to the audience. I love that. And thank you. And

things like stormtroopers talking about getting drinks at

Moss Eisley with Darth Vader and stuff like that. So, and we sent

that back to them and and they said, Okay, we're happy to

license this. And so at that point, I mean, you know, in my

head, it's like Quirk and Lucasfilm get in a dark room to

get dark room together and, yeah, they work out the deal.

You know, they

already have that relationship. So, right,

that easy, yeah?

Like, no, wow. I mean, again, this is just dumb luck,

yeah, yeah.

So that MDiv coming in handy.

So the first book came out within a year of me emailing

him for the first time, right? Which is really fast, really

fast, yeah, and so I do not take for granted, and so I am now.

Mctrump is my 11th book in in seven years time. And next. Next

year, I will have four more books out, which is just

ridiculous. And so are you allowed to tell us when they

are? I can't except well, so one of them is Star Wars nine. But I

can tell you that because that's the obvious one that is

expected. I can tell you that one of them is not Shakespeare.

So there will be a Star Wars one. There will be some other

Shakespeare ones that are not Star Wars. I have done Mean

Girls, and I also did Back to the Future, and then there will

be a totally non Shakespeare one. So that'll be fun. Anyway.

So So I just, I just have been so lucky in this whole process,

and I do not take it for granted. I have a friend, a dear

friend, who wrote her memoir for 11 years, and like, you know,

finally got it published. And, like, literally in the like, she

and I were friends before I ever was doing book stuff. And like,

I had all these books come out before her first book ever came

out. And like, and I feel some guilt around that, honestly,

like so and I also recognize in talking with other authors, how

lucky I've been to be working with quirk because they are

great at what they do, and they promote their books really,

really well. I have talked with authors who, you know, basically

the publisher is like, yeah, we'll publish your book, but you

are handling all the promotion yourself. If you want to sell

books, you're selling them, right? And that has not at all

been the case for me.

Yeah, that's awesome, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's also kind of

rare, too, yeah, and these in this day and age, yeah, because

a lot is yeah, I'm a marketing person, and I don't even that

was a weird pause anyway, like, let's just take a beat

the side eye you gave yourself

and appreciate the marketing.

Little embarrassed by the profession,

but yeah, I mean, it's like, pretty standard nowadays for

authors to be the ones who promote themselves way more

heavily than the publishers do. So you understand that, or like,

able to recognize that it's unusual. Yeah, there are a lot

of authors who are still, like, have to do it themselves, and

don't realize it, right? Yeah. And it's, I don't know. I don't

think it should be that way. That recently, there was a

article about a first time date, DABU author who got a huge

advance. I read that article, yeah, yeah. Every

because everyone was talking about it, yeah.

And so, like, that's the that's not even the

norm, because she did better than Yeah.

Well, her first advances were gigantic,

crazy, yeah, so,

but it's that, that trailing thing, and so

yeah. I mean, obviously you're saying you don't take it for

granted, because you know what the alternative is, yeah, right,

right,

right, yeah. And I would hate to have to sell my

own books, like promote them on my own. Yeah? I would hate

to have to do

that. Most authors do. It's true.

I understand, yeah. I know,

yeah. But so Lucasfilm does a do they spend a

lot of time promoting the books? Do they kind of, like pair them

with movies, they put them there in at Disneyland.

I mean, they promote them. They're probably a Disney

I don't know for sure if they're Disneyland, they probably are.

But they, they promote them, you know, on their Star Wars website

and Star Wars social media channels and things like that.

And so, yeah, I mean, that's, I mean, the beauty of any Star

Wars book is that it comes with this built in audience. And if

Lucasfilm was licensing it, Lucasfilm is going to promote

it. And so that's, you know, so, so the Star Wars base is going

to know about it, know that it exists, yeah?

And they kind of dictated a little bit, well,

not dictated. That makes it sound too authoritarian, but you

had to run by them. A lot of the things that you wrote,

right? Oh, I mean, yeah, they, they approve all

the, all the drafts, all the scripts and everything which is,

which is actually a fun I mean, as a fan, there hasn't been

anything, well, no, I shouldn't say that. There have been things

that they have taken out that I've been like, oh, that's I

wish they hadn't taken that, but sure I will, yeah. I mean, so,

for instance, I wrote out the scene where Boba Fett goes to

Cloud City, and basically convinces Lando that he has to

betray Han Solo. I wrote that scene out, and they cut the

whole scene because, basically what they said was, it's too

close to Canon, because

they don't understand Shakespeare, because,

like in the movie, it's a great surprise,

but Shakespeare wouldn't do that. You would have

known, right? It's going,

yeah, totally but, and so again that, but there's never been a

time when they've cut something and I've been, like, really

upset about or anything like that. Like, because, as a fan, I

feel like, I feel like there's another part of me that's,

that's like, as a fan, I'm like, oh, that's kind of fascinating

to see what they you know, I wrote a speech for Darth Vader

in in barely A New Hope, where he was expressing some remorse

about, you know, basically questioning, should we really be

going and blowing up Alderaan with all these innocent people?

And Lucasfilm was like, no, no, no. As of episode four, he is

totally bad. He would not question it even a little bit.

And I was like, wow, fascinating that you know your characters so

well, right? So I took that to. Colloquium turned around 180

degrees and like is, like, Fuck these

drunk with power, yeah.

So it's just been sort of interesting, I think, to see

that. The other thing that was, I mean, our sort of fun story,

and that is, I with Jar Jar Binks. I like, I had to do

something. I had to figure out what I was gonna do with Jar Jar

Binks. And so I made him a character who, when he's talking

to other people, is dumb, like he is in the movies, but then he

turns to the audience and he's he's very smart, and his whole

goal is to unite the Gungans and the people of Naboo together and

use the,

I mean, by the end of the third movie, I kind

of got that impression, like, as a writer, I would have probably

agreed with you, yeah. I mean, there's no depth to his

character otherwise,

right, right? Exactly, yeah. And so there was a

comment, you know, in the Word document that they sent back to

me, right? There's a, like, this whole first speech of of Jar

jars is highlighted, and there's a comment from one of the

Lucasfilm staff members saying, Story Group is this okay? And

the story group at Lucasfilm are the ones who manage the

continuity of the entire Star Wars, everything. And so they

are the ones who get to make the decisions about every plot point

when it comes to movies or books or anything, and and there was

like, a reply to that comment from somebody in the story group

saying, we love it or something like that. So it was, like, so

interesting to, like, see that on the chopping block. And like,

insane, yeah.

How many people are commenting on your

drafts?

I mean, at Lucasfilm, probably just two or three

people, right, right colored, and

they're still working in Word.

Well, yeah, which is partially. I mean, that's

probably partially because I'm working in Word, but

yeah. I mean, we, yeah, that's what, that's

what we do too. But I've noticed, like more Self

Publishers are doing Google Docs, and that's,

oh, yeah, which, oh, which. I should say, That's what

back to make Trump. That is what my co author and I, we wrote it

in Google Docs, because that was just easier than passing, than

worrying about different versions.

Yeah. Were you ever writing at the same time?

Yeah, we

start chatting with each other, you know.

So what are you what are you doing? Right?

Right? Right, yeah. Or, like, one of us is like, making

comments on what the other one's written, and the other person's

like, chasing the comments down, you know? And yeah, like, why'd

you highlight that? Yeah, what's he gonna say? What's his comment

gonna be?

So we already talked a little bit about the genesis for the

first book, but how did you decide to make it a series, or

did the publisher decide for you when the first book was so

successful,

basically that? So the first book came out, and they knew

from the start that it was successful, and so they called

me sometime in that first week, and I remember this call too.

And at this point, I hadn't an agent. I had sort of gotten one

in the process running up to the publication of it. And so she

called me, and I was in Penn Station in New York. I don't

know why I remember that, but this is the things that stick in

your head. And she said they want to do empire in Return of

the Jedi. And I was like, Yeah, right. Okay. No brainer. Yes.

Let's do that. Yeah. So, yeah, so they decided to, and then the

prequels were, were never, well, they were not a slam Dunkin for

a long time, we talked about, and we were like, No, we're not

gonna do the prequels. People aren't gonna want the prequels.

Yeah. But then at my book events, people kept coming up

asking if I would, especially kids, because for them, the

prequels were, you know what they liked more. And so they

kept asking if I would do it. And so I passed that on to my

publisher. And I think my publisher was like, well, we've

got three books that were all really successful on our hands,

so maybe we should go ahead. So we so we did all three of them

in 2015,

okay, that's a lot. Wow, yeah, that's a lot. Can I also say

that Jar Jar Binks character is probably the Star Wars character

I know the best, just because I remember people complaining

about it constantly. And I was like, fuck is this guy? Like? So

I feel like, I like, looked up Jar Jar Binks a lot. Because I

was like, Oh, well, must be something noteworthy, if

everyone hates him so much, that was a fun discovery for me.

Anyway, go.

I'm glad to hear that you, like, gave him a

little bit more dignity after the that article that came out

by the actor who played poor guy. Oh my God,

was he, like, devastated everyone hated him.

He

almost killed himself. Oh, my God, really,

so upset about the character. Yeah, yeah, that's

awful. Like I said, The Star Wars fans are

rough.

Yes. I mean, this is, this is the hard thing, right?

And, and the, you know, I just think it's really disappointing,

right? Like so much of the reaction to the last Jedi, and

so much of the uproar about it, and people being so angry, and,

I mean, that's. Point at which I want to step back and be like,

guys, I love this too, but yeah, these are just movies.

These are movies. This is a real life, way of life, yeah, yeah,

right, right. Just have a good time together. You know, yeah.

Are you a little worried about, like,

political backlash on your new book?

Yeah, a little bit, yeah. I mean, it will be, what

it will be, but I've already gotten my first piece of crazy

email, you know, all right, you know, you've made it. Yeah? I

googled the guy's name, and he's he trolls all over the internet.

Appears, yeah, yeah, his job that he does from his parents

basement, yes. So, yeah, I'm sure there will be more, I think

the thing I, I mean, the thing I'm, I'm not really worried

about it, but if I'm, the thing I'm most worried about, which is

not that high, but is like, people showing up at book events

and like yelling at me, right? I don't think that's gonna happen.

Yeah, I don't think we're gonna anger people that much, you

know?

I mean, it won't be as bad as, like, the

nonfiction books. It like,

yeah, politics and prose, yeah, yeah, yeah, when a

bunch and that was great publicity. It was great

publicity for the book. So maybe you do want people right, right,

you know, you never know, yeah, yeah. So, but I think it's Yeah,

I think you'll be right. It's a fun book. I mean, it's not like,

it's yeah, like a serious work of nonfiction, you know, should

we Yes? Should we do it now? Oh, sure, let's do it. Yeah, yeah,

great.

So we went through and my algorithm for

YouTube is going to be destroyed by this. Watch some Ivanka

speeches. I know. I used to have a lot of good Beyonce videos,

but now it's gonna all be like, yeah,

what parts here? Well, no, I'm just

gonna, I'm from Southern California, so I'm

gonna be Ivanka. She's got that, like, great, a little terrible

drawl,

yes, draw Yeah,

that's true. We don't have an accent. That's

right, that's right. I forgot.

Yeah, I What did we decide you wanted to be done?

Yeah? Soft spot. My heart for Eric. Oh, good. Okay. He's so

unattractive, I cannot feel bad for him.

No, actually, because he is the dumbest character in this play.

I think he's accurate. Yeah. Can you tell us,

like, what's going on?

Oh, yeah. So, so we are, so we're gonna read a scene

from MC Trump here, which is the scene between desdevanka and her

two brothers, donison and Eric. And basically, I the all the

scenes with the two brothers. They are sort of these two

idiots who are young lovers who, well, they're desperate in this

version. I mean, this sort of gets into, no,

this gets into the part of, you know, this being fiction, right?

In this version, they're not married, they are just single

guys who are desperate for love, and they're just, you know,

totally but this is a scene where desdevanka, who is

desdevanka, actually is sort of more like Lady Macbeth in

character than lady MC Trump is and so she is coming in and sort

of berating them for not supporting their father enough.

And so they get the idea in their head that they will

venture south, south to help build his wall. Where, I don't

think this scene goes, but I will reveal is that the place

south that they go is actually Virginia, far south as they make

they start a new civil war. Is there anywhere

I should cut because there's some soliloquy.

Well, we could skip one or two, one of the two

desdevanka speeches, if you

want to. All right, I might do it on the fly

if I get bored. I mean, not bored by you, but like bored by

the sound of my own. If this were lady MC Trump Curran would

be reading it, by the way, because she does a much better

like, Oh, all

right, take it away. All right.

The best of plans cannot overcome mistakes,

and in the latest instant, they were made. My machination sly

shall never succeed when errors do surround me constantly.

Mcmuller stripping me of liberty, did have the gall to

spy upon me whilst I spake about the meeting with the Prussians

that once my brothers took in Tower mctrump, he presseth even

further on. We siblings investigating now the Moskva

tower. Moskva tower, okay, we hope to build before our father

was the leader of the New World. So. Out a punt. Mcmuller is a

thorn in HR sides that I would gladly pull out with my teeth a

lack. The man is well protected, ringed with powerful friends,

attentive to the public, and expert at his Inquisition game.

I may not do to him, as I might wish, but per adventure, I can

close the breach within our citadel. Art is too late. And

speaking of mistakes, here come my brothers. They'll have a

piece of desdevankas

Mine, enter Donnison and Erickson.

The word was

Laurel. Mage was truly Yanny.

My brother has come and talk with me a

while. Are

we in trouble? Eric sempor Sweet does devonka is our loving

sister. She's not our mother come to scold us. Ha, are we in

trouble? What a childish thought. Is not that funny

sister,

I shall take as many laughs therefrom as thou

mayest take upon a knife's point choke a dawitha, I choked a

what? Oh, you two, Jack and apes, you are too careless by a

Hector's breath, the messages you're sending through mctweet

are being intercepted by our foes. How do you think mcmuller

came to know about the meeting with the Prussians when we made

our stand against hilarious Hilaria, hilarious. Hillarya,

you man boys need to learn to use your heads. It is the lump

three feet above your arses. You shall bring father infamous

disgrace, dishonor on the family entire if you shall never think,

er, do you do act?

Oh Sister, have we wronged our father? So

apologies aplenty does devonka, apologies.

Bye. Your apologies are empty. Words come

forth from empty heads. Tis not words of repentance. I desire

you must begin to take bold action to redress the wrongs you

have of late committed thus to reside within our Father's

Grace. What shall we do? Pray tell for one cease all

communication through the tool mctweet, who is a vulture and

stool pigeon, both an albatross tied tightly round your necks

in following the latest hashtag trends.

It's funny. Thou soon see hashtag

fratricide. Begin to trends. If thou canst not do what I say, I

shall be sure you

do. I know how we may help? Our father is near purple

in the face each time he talketh of his border wall. Mayhap,

young Arison and Erickson and I can help. We'll travel south and

build the wall ourselves

aside an imbeciles i An imbeciles idea.

Yet if it shall get these astounding fools out of the way.

I swear it is inspired by heaven above two Donnison, a notion

excellent in the extreme. How soon wise Brother, can you two

depart the

sooner gone, the sooner done.

Forsooth Come Brother, let us southward, turn our faces where

we shall build our father's wall with pride.

Here come make Trumps,

go then and with you both a sister's fondest

hopes,

there we go.

Amazing. I mean, how often do you just look

for a place to use for soothe? Yeah? Really, yeah, yeah, or

five for that matter, oh yeah, yeah. I used to have a T shirt

when I was in high school. That was like, I think I got it the

Ashland Shakespeare fest, and it was Shakespearean insult, and

had every Shakespearean insult. Do we

have time for any more questions? Sure, okay, I feel

like I have one my my most Well, the question I most curious

about is, what's been your most memorable book signing

experience since? I assume you have, like, rabid Star Wars fans

coming to these so, you

know, it's not, I mean, there, I mean, certainly there have been

people who like approach and want to tell me their Star Wars

series, or want me to read their Star Wars fan fiction or or

things like that. The when I read that question, though, I

mean, what I feel like is more interesting in terms of

memorable experiences, is like the time at Star Wars

Celebration in Anaheim when they were interviewing Ian. Ian may

McDiarmid, who played the Emperor. And they asked him,

they asked him what his favorite Star Wars merchandise was. And

he said, Well, I know it's rather stereotypical, but I

rather like those Shakespeare Star Wars books. Oh, my God,

known that he was going to say this, because then they pulled

out. Okay. The Jedi death return. And they said they Yeah.

And they said, well, they said, Will you read this Emperor's

speech from the Emperor? So he gets up and he puts on his

Emperor Palpatine voice, and they like, change the sound in

the room to make an echo and reverberates like that. And

there he is, like, reading from my book, you know, in front of

1000s of screaming Star Wars fans, like, Yeah, that's better

than anything that's happened to the signing. Yeah. I mean, Yep,

yeah, yeah, yeah. So that was really pretty

awesome. Yeah, that's a great answer. Beat that,

yeah, really, oh no, yeah. I think you just die, yeah. Pretty

much, have I peaked?

I think the mistake was not dying right when

now you're just living for other people.

Yeah,

each day I wake up and say, today is not going to be as

good as the Ian McKee,

better just make it great for my kids.

That's right. I do have a question, because I was sitting

on max yesterday, and I was reading your book, and a person

sat down next to me, and they were kind of looking over my

shoulder, and they were like, That's really great artwork.

He's like, actually, I was an illustrator for Marvel and,

like, dark horse and all this stuff, and I'm curious about the

illustrator, and so I told him that I would ask you if you know

anything about the illustrator, if you guys ever met, like,

what's the deal?

So the illustrator for the Star Wars books is a man

named Nicholas delort. He is Canadian, but he lives in France

now, and I don't know how they found him. Quirk. Quirk found

him, and he's amazing. His cover artwork is sort of what just

sells the book when you see it on the on the shelf right. And

so he's created these stunning cover artworks. And then also he

does all the interior illustrations as well. And he's

been fabulous. And I did meet him once on a family trip to

Paris five years ago. So that was fun. And and then for the

newer books, Much Ado About Mean Girls and get the Back to the

Future. Those were done by different illustrators, but

Nicholas will be back to do episode nine for the Star Wars

book. So okay, yeah,

he's the show runner. Yeah, I found out

recently I was either, I guess it's the person who runs the

show, person who was part of it the whole time. Yeah. Anyway,

there you go, Matt.

Make sure you subscribe to our newsletter.

We're starting to do stuff on our newsletter,

where we, if you have a exciting publisher, yeah, if you switch

job, yeah, new job, right, starting a business, if you're

letting a book out, yep, anything, anything exciting,

yeah, not like I ate a sandwich today, right, right. This is an

Instagram, yeah, yeah, right. Put you in the newsletter, yeah,

because we're trying to build a community. Yes, authors and

publishing people and celebrate our victories. Celebrate our

victories. Yeah, appreciate one another. Yeah, what we're all

able to do, yeah,

that's great, yeah, yeah. Thank you. We think so

too.

Do you do you want to give more details on

where people can pick up Mick Trump, it

should be widely available, so at your local

bookstore, powells.com amazon.com and you can find me

on the internet, Iand esher.com How do you spell? Yeah, D, O, E,

S, C, H, E, R, there's that hidden o in there and that

hidden C on that in

German names, yes,

yeah, so I'm around, yep,

all right. Well, thank you so much for

coming and talking to us. That was really fun. It was super

fun. Thank you yes for letting us read from your from your

work, yeah,

first reading, I've

done a big trouble, right? Oh,

yeah, right. I mean, have you, have you had to

read your work aloud before in?

Sure, yeah. I mean, I mean, like book events, and

also, I've done at a comic con once, we did a the people who

did the audio books of of this one of the Star Wars books, we

read some scenes together, you know, in front of a crowd. And

so that was fun.

Do they do all the one the Star Wars books that

you do? Or they've

done four of the six that? No, sorry, four of the how

many have I done? Four of the eight. Yeah, four of the eight

that I've done so far have been turned into audio books. They

did not do any of the prequels, and they didn't do the last

Jedi, so I don't, and that's not, that's a decision that's

made beyond me. Yeah, sure, so, so we'll see. I don't know if

they'll do one for nine or not, yeah, but they get to go to this

amazing cast of people who, they're the people who narrate

all of the Star Wars audiobooks. And so they. Know, I do all the

voices and everything like that. Oh, that's so cool.

Yeah, that's fun. So they have to, like, Come

that's probably a step up for them. Well, you know what? Like

if you're an audio book reader, I imagine you were probably a

Shakespeare Theater nerd when you were a kid, right? Like one

would hope, please email us and let us know if you were also a

Shakespeare nerd, all right, so yeah, check out Mick Trump in

desher. It was out yesterday, so go to your bookstore today and

find it.

Yeah, it'll be there. It sure will. And then write,

yeah, I write in some reviews too, because those help a lot.

Right? Reviews on Amazon. Write them on Goodreads. Write them

wherever you want. But write reviews. They really help sell

them. Do it Yeah,

and give him a five star, yes, because too,

because, because.

Why not? Because, why not? Yeah, this book's amazing.

He's amazing.

Come on, like, if you like it at all, just give

it five star, yeah, you'll feel good about yourself. Yeah. And

then you can find us hybrid pub scout.com and then you can find

us on Twitter at hybrid pub Scout, on Instagram, at hybrid

pub Scout, pod, Facebook, hybrid pub Scout, yep. And if you want

to get in touch with us, you can email us at Corin, at hybrid

pubscout.com, or Emily at hybrid pub scout. All true. Do we have

any other places? No? Star, yeah, please. Or wherever you

listen to podcasts, and if you leave us a review, Corinne will

find an accent to read it in, because we have established that

the only accent I can do is the non accent being from

California, who everyone hates. Oh, but I don't give a shit.

That's right. I love my haters. All right. You got anything else

to say? Corinne, I sure don't you even nope, I'm good. All

right, thanks for giving a rip about books. You.