The focal point of this podcast episode is the insightful discussion surrounding Brad W. Cox's literary work, "Children of the Program," which intricately interweaves themes of spirituality, dystopia, and personal narrative. I, Rich Bennett, engage with Brad, who elucidates the unique aspects of his book, emphasizing the blend of fiction and autobiographical elements that provide readers with a profound exploration of the human condition. Throughout our dialogue, we delve into the significance of writing as a medium for understanding and expressing complex ideas, particularly in a world increasingly dominated by technology. Brad articulates his aspiration for readers to rekindle their innate curiosity and seek answers within themselves, thus underscoring the transformative power of literature. As the episode unfolds, we also examine the book's accessibility and its implications for a diverse audience, inviting listeners to contemplate the intersections of narrative and reality. A profound exploration of the human condition unfurls within the narrative of *Children of the Program*, authored by the esteemed Brad W. Cox. The book introduces twelve individuals who are plucked from a purgatorial existence, bestowed with the monumental task of enlightening humanity and engendering a new race. This narrative intricately oscillates between dystopian realism and science fiction, culminating in a tapestry that intertwines themes of spirituality, mythology, and the struggle for personal identity. Through the protagonist’s journey, the reader is invited to traverse the labyrinth of human experience, where each character represents a facet of the collective consciousness. The author, drawing from his background in journalism and music, infuses the narrative with a lyrical quality that resonates deeply and provokes introspection about the complexities of existence. As the story unfolds, the reader is compelled to ponder the implications of free will, the quest for enlightenment, and the existential dilemmas that define our humanity.

Takeaways:

• The podcast episode is sponsored by Bel Air Window and Door, emphasizing their commitment to quality service.
• The author, Brad Cox, presents his book, 'Children of the Program', which explores profound themes of spirituality.
• The narrative follows twelve individuals who are sent to enlighten humanity, blending dystopian and science fiction elements.
• Cox's writing draws from his personal experiences, intertwining autobiographical elements with fictional storytelling.
• Listeners are encouraged to explore their inner curiosity and seek enlightenment from within themselves.
• The podcast highlights the importance of writing as a means of expression and communication in our lives.

Links referenced in this episode:

• belairwindowanddoor.com
• bradwilliamcox.com

Before we begin today's pitch, I want to thank Bel Air Window and Door for sponsoring this episode. Every great story starts with a strong foundation and same is true for your home.

Bel Air Window and Door is a local window depot dealer that offers high quality, energy efficient windows and doors with honest service and professional installation. They are part of our community and take pride in helping homeowners create spaces they love.

Visit bel airwindowanddoor.com to see how they can help you. What if discovering your next great read only took a few minutes?

Welcome to the Author Pitch, the short form podcast where writers from around the world deliver a powerful pitch for their book and read a standout excerpt in their own voice. I'm Rich Bennett. This is the Author Pitch and your next great read starts here. Foreign.

Welcome to the Author Pitch where writers from around the world deliver a powerful pitch for their book and read a short excerpt in their own voice. I'm your host, Rich Bennett and today's guest is somebody I've known for a while, the MOG Father Brad Cox, author of Children of the Program.

Rich Bennett, it is a pleasure to be here this morning.

Oh, dude, let me tell you, man. Yeah, I. You were one of the ones.

This always puts me in a good mood.

I, you were one of the ones I thought of first when I wanted to do this. You and Debbie Jennings.

Okay.

Because yeah, local authors and everything. I tell everybody about your books, especially your last one with the songs.

Yes.

I was like, man. Which we're going to be doing that on another episode. But I said, you all got to read. Just. Yeah, it'll blow you away. So anyways.

All right, let's start with your pitch. Give listeners a tight, high impact overview. What the book is, who it's for, why it matters, and what makes it unique.

Okay. So Children of the program is about 12 individuals who are sent from a purgatory state to enlighten humanity to start a new race of people.

It starts off dystopian. It's very bohemian, very organic.

But as it progresses, by the time you get to the last couple chapters of the third book now, suddenly it's a science fiction story. So it's, it kind of rides the line between actually current events. Right.

But there's a lot of like, mythos and a lot of the things I was raised with Christianity, a lot of themes intertwined in the book. So if you're a genuine, genuinely curious or spiritual person in general, I think this will kind of tickle the itch a little bit.

But it's for anybody. I mean, as long as you can handle a little bit of language. There are some adult themes in there, for sure.

I mean, it's not a kindergarten book.

No, I mean, I would say at least 13 to 16 and older. This book is at least PG 13. There are definitely scenes that are.

Right.

You know, but that's just my own brain having fun, I guess.

So why does it matter?

Why does it matter? For me, it matters because I was a journalism major at Towson University and writing is so important.

I mean, think about everything we know about everything. It starts with. With writing. Yeah. And I do think in the.

The world we live in, where technology and everything is just the physical world, we need to be reminded that. That the spiritual side of us exists and to consider what might be happening after we leave this world.

You know, even if you're just curious, it at least gets you to go look.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And what makes it unique besides the fact that you wrote it and I got it. I gotta.

I'm.

I gotta correct myself here, too, for those of you listening, because if you look for the book Brad Cox, it's gonna be hard to find. It's Brad W. Cox.

It's also got a weird name in the sense that children's programs, books are everywhere.

Oh, I never thought about that.

Yeah, I didn't either. So you have to look up children of the program, Brad, and then you. I'll pop up.

All right. So besides that, what makes it unique?

What makes it unique is that it doesn't just. It's not just a fictional story. There's also this autobiographical element that is weaving through it, which is my story.

I tell my story through the character of Nico Bao, and they say write what you know. So I basically started with my real life, the way I was raised, the things I went through.

So for a lot of the chapters, you're just following my life until it dovetails into this completely fictional world. But it's really cool. So you'll probably learn way more about me than you ever wanted to know.

But it's unique in that sense because I am the main character.

But I'm also, in a sense, you know, like in video games, where there's always that stage where, like, Mario's fighting Mario or Mega Man's fighting Mega Man.

I don't know if Mario or whatever.

Yeah, there's the. The character DEZ in the book. He's kind of like my, I guess, alter ego in a sense.

Okay.

So it's just a. It's just a very unique book. It's. It's very psychological.

Nice.

Yeah. Yeah.

All right, so I. I'll give you time to. To find out what you're reading there. So let's hear the excerpt that you brought for us today. And go ahead and do. Take your time. Settle in.

Read at your natural.

You know, I. I've always thought about doing, like, a book. Like an audio version of the book, but then I was like, well, what would that sound like? Who would read it? I've never actually read this out loud.

This morning I picked it up and I was like, okay, here we go. And I was like, what. What is my voice going to be? And, you know, I'm just gonna read it to you.

I was gonna say, I mean, you got a great voice.

Well, thank you, but I'm not gonna do it in the Mog Father voice. The forgotten yet familiar smell of ash and sulphur buoyed away the cleanest of air. I'm not doing that, so I'm just gonna read it and.

God.

All right, so this is chapter one, Hallway of Sorrows. I just figured we'd start at the beginning, Right.

The entire book is, like 80 to 90,000 words that are almost all metaphor, poetry and that kind of thing. So it's very lyrical because it was a songwriter.

Yeah.

So when you. As I'm reading this.

Hold up. You just said you were a songwriter.

No, I mean, I am a songwriter. You still are, but, I mean, at the time when I wrote the book.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah, so here we go. Hallway of Sorrows. The forgotten yet familiar smell of ash and sulfur bullied away the cleanest of air. Time was of no consequence.

Everything had an eternal value.

Just as every grain of sand is a moment, every moment a memory, and every memory a map of a person trapped between the past and the future, we were trapped in the now. That sentence there, that was really what kicked almost the entire thing off. I was waiting for Lisa in front of her office one day, and this.

This line here. Just as every grain of sand is a moment, every moment a memory, and every memory a map of a person trapped between the past and the future. That.

That was, like, kind of swirling in my head. I had. I started texting, like, bits and pieces of that to myself. Like, you got to remember that this is really good.

And then I went home, and then I started kind of framing it around that.

Interesting.

So, anyway, should I continue on?

Of course.

So is this hell? I wondered. Our souls were cold, dank, and littered with countless aggravated souls, all wrenching for peace.

Rust stains and blood antagonistically dripped and shrouded our naked bodies. We were thirsty for our confiscated dignity. Our flesh was tattooed by the human fluids of anonymous hosts.

The aggravation and pain was unlike anything we had experienced on Earth. The damned awaited trial. We were begrudgingly shackled to walls of granite, some elevated above others.

We were spared the inferno's unquenchable palate, but could still smell death's warning and hear the screams of less fortunate souls. These beings were mercilessly tortured and rejuvenated for amusement.

So basically, it's really just depicting this hellscape, this purgatory state that these 12 souls are plucked from. It's like a lottery of souls kind of thing, and the 12 lucky ones get to go back and farm enlightenment.

And before this, you were doing journalism?

Yeah, well, I was a journalism major at Towson. All that really meant is, I like to write. Okay.

So I got my degree in journalism, and then I got my first job at the Baltimore sun, and they put me in the sales department while I was still finishing college. College. And I found out that sales paid, like, 10 times more than writing.

So I ended up just sticking with sales because I was making a lot of money doing it. But then later, the journalism came into play with the podcast, the Mouthful Graffiti. So. And of course, I was. I was writing blogs.

I've written 25 albums, so it's like there's a lot swirling around.

Yeah. And I guess that really helped a lot with.

Yeah.

Writing the books.

It did.

But what actually sparked this one for you? Because this is the first. First book you've written, right?

Yeah. What sparked the book or the idea.

Of you wanting to write this particular book?

You know what it was? There's a couple elements to this, but I.

When I went to patch.com after the Baltimore Sun, I was still in that sales lane, and they basically had the room divided as writers and salespeople. And even though I was good at sales, I felt like my people were the right people. And so we worked in tandem with the local writers.

So there was basically an editor for each Patch town, and then there was a salesperson. And I just felt like I connected with the writers more. And something about that made me really want to prove to people that I was a writer, too.

I wasn't just the sales guy, you know, kind of thing.

So I also had a lot to say, and I wanted to take all the album themes that I had, and I wanted to condense them into, like, something palpable, like a book. So like, my first album's called Join the Cult.

Well, one of the characters, he starts a cult, and so there's a lot of those themes get kind of intertwined. A lot of the chapter names are song titles. A lot of the lyrics from the songs are dialogue with the characters. I mean, how many apples did you.

Have out already before the book came out?

So, yeah, it was like 16, 17 albums at that point. It was just a lot of content.

Right.

And so. And then there was a sidebar project called Nicky Thunders, and Nicky Thunders is represented in the book as Nico Bal.

Okay, so Bal is the Egyptian God of thunder. Niko being some kind of a derivative of Nikki, so.

All right. When's the memoir coming out, man? Have you thought about writing?

I did, actually. Back when I was taking classes at Towson, I wrote a book called Fire in the Hands of an angel, and I.

It's still on a floppy disk, and it's never going to be. Well, maybe Never say Never. Yeah. It may be rewritten, but I trashed it. I just wasn't. I didn't think my life was that interesting at the time.

Your story is interesting.

It's gotten very interesting.

I mean, all the times I've talked to you, it's like I keep learning more and more.

Yeah.

I mean, just to trademark stuff alone.

Right.

That was very interesting, but.

Oh, my God. I just.

Yeah, you're talking about California and all that. There's a lot of interest. Yeah, there's a lot of interesting stuff.

I am still. It's so funny. Like, that trip. That trip is part of this book. Right. You'll get there. But it's.

It's one of those things where I still think I'm processing it. I was just so young when it happened, so I know Lisa's tired of hearing about it.

Other people are tired of hearing about it, you know, but for me, it's like. Yeah, but it was wild.

Yeah. Yeah. People don't understand that. All right, so what do you hope that readers actually feel after finishing reading this?

I feel like I really want them to be curious. I want people to get back into that state of innocent curiosity where they're not just running to the Internet or other people for answers.

They're running within themselves to find answers.

Now, the big question that came out.

Way better than I thought it was going to.

The big question here. What is next for the author? No, let me rephrase that.

Okay.

What is next for Brad Cox? As an author, Not a musician, not a podcaster, but as an author, I.

Have two kind of like, bucket listings. I have a haunted. A book of haunted stories that I want to get. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I couldn't find the word.

We need to get Derek Pence in here with the spirit box. But it's going to be called the Bones of Jessica. It was a place I lived, Jessica's land. We talked about that. So I do want to do that. But I also.

I wrote these books very, very innocently in the sense that, like, I wrote it, I edited it, I formatted it, and I know there's errors because of that. You know what I mean?

So I would really love one day to go back, reread the first book, rewrite, reclean it up and represent it like a second edition kind of thing. And that's for the first two.

The third book, by the time I got to the third book, I actually hired somebody to help me with the gram, grammatical errors, that kind of thing. But.

And then I'd like to, like, re release the series as a second edition or combine all three books into one solitary book called Children of the Program.

You know, keep the same name.

Yeah. So those are kind of my bucket list items. And we'll see what time allows.

So where can people actually purchase the book and follow you?

They can go to bradwilliamcox.com if my SSL script is cooperating, they can go to Amazon, which the river we never speak of. And some of the local bookstores, Capricose Books, has it. There's actually other bookstores. It's been just so long. Like, Ukazoo had them.

There was a bookstore down in Parkville that had them. Oh, God. You can always go to Amazon or Capricorn.

Google it. Yeah, yeah, Google it.

Actually, there's a new bookstore, Odd Bird, in Bel Air, Maryland, which I'm gonna try.

That's in Bel Air?

Yeah, yeah. And I'm gonna try to get them in there because I think that'd be really cool.

Where in Bel Air?

The Armory Marketplace.

Oh, really? So where Capico's used to be?

Yeah.

Really? I did not know that.

Yeah. So, well, it's. It's basically right next door to where Capricos was.

Well, yeah, Bella Armory Market.

So basically the way that works is it's like an incubation area. Yeah, yeah.

We need more of them in the county.

Right.

All these.

We don't need data centers.

No, but all these stores you see sitting empty, which are owned by. Most of them are owned by.

They're getting priced out.

Yeah, it's like do the incubator stores and help local businesses grow and keep it local. We don't need all the chains and all that stores.

Yeah, yeah.

But anyways, that's. That's a whole nother subject.

I would say that this interview is going swimmingly, considering I didn't read the questions.

Well, you know how I do on the other one.

You know that.

You know, sometimes you. But you're always ready. Oh, man. Brad, I want to thank you so much. I can't wait to have you on again, brother.

Okay, let's do it.

And actually, we still got to do the other one for the other. God, we got so much stuff we got to do.

We do.

Holy cow, man.

Yeah.

Thanks for listening to the author pitch. I'm Rich Bennett. Until next time, keep turning pages and discovering new voices. Yes.