The Podcast welcomes author JV Hilliard, as he discusses his book series, The Warminster Series, specifically the first book, The Last Keeper.  Hilliard talks about his background and how he transitioned from being a defense lobbyist to a fantasy writer. He also shares his inspiration for the series and how his experiences playing Dungeons and Dragons influenced the characters and plot. If you’re a fan of the book, you’ll love the deep dives into many of the characters.  Hilliard talks about how the series is being adapted into a virtual reality video game and a graphic novel.   All this and much more in the podcast. 

Welcome to the show everybody. Today we're talking with author JV Hilliard. Am I saying, am I pronouncing that right?

You are.

All right. but we're, we're going to go by Joe today. He is the writer of the warm minister series. welcome to the show, Joe.

Thank you very much for having me. I appreciate the opportunity.

All right. So I was telling Joe right before we started, I just knocked out his book right before we came in here. and it's a great read. The last keeper. if you like fantasy, I highly recommend it. It's a good book and it's not just a one and done, but this is a series, sir. how many books are in your series in total so far?

It is a quadrilogy, so it'll end with the fourth, which comes out July 25th of this year. So first three are out, first two are Amazon bestsellers. I'm hoping that the third and fourth meet that as well.

you just answered one of my questions. That's going to come up later. Was it going to be, I knew the fourth one was, was coming. I was like, is it going to be the last week? We can check that one right there. all right, Joe. So before we get into your book, I like to start everybody off at the beginning. So where were you born and where did you grow up?

No, I didn't mean to.

I was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. You know, grew up here, went to school here, then spent a little bit of time in Michigan. When I was in college, I played hockey and then went to DC for my first real job. I spent some time doing defense work. I'm a defense lobbyist by trade. And so I worked with a lot of defense and technology companies and then got married, moved back to Pittsburgh and, you know, had a chance to

Ahhhh

over COVID write my first fantasy book. So my career has changed, you know, mid, midstream went from one extreme to another defense lobbying is a pretty serious business. And now I am writing fantasy.

There you go.

Right.

Nice. So are you still doing the, defense stuff or are you writing full time now?

Yeah, no, that pays the bills, right? So while I'm building my readership and with the slowly growing popularity of the War Mr. Saga, plus what follows, my hope is that I can eventually transition out of it entirely. But for now, that's the stuff that kind of gets you through every month. And then supplement that with my quote unquote side hustle, which is the fantasy novels.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Right.

That's right.

Yep. Yep. We've all, you are on my side hustle at the moment, sir. so, so, when did you discover that writing was a thing for you, that you were interested in writing a book?

There you go.

I've always been interested. In fact, I knew from a very young age I was going to write a book. I wasn't sure what book and in this case books with an S. But you know, I grew up in a pretty unique household. My uncle was a Marine who was paralyzed in Vietnam and he was like a second father to me and my mother just happened to be his nurse. And so most of my kindergarten through, you know, 12th grade, I either lived there or

Right.

in part was there three, four days a week. And he was very limited in what he could do because of his quadriplegic injuries. And one of the things he could do was write. And the other thing he could do was another form of escapism, which was Dungeons and Dragons, right? It was all for him. That was a way for him to escape his body and play a character out. And as a young kid, that was, you know, it was popular at the time. And I wanted to do that stuff. And I kind of fell in love with it.

Right, right.

Yeah.

He wrote differently, like he was a short fiction guy. He wrote primarily like pulp fiction for horror stories and things like that back when there were magazines on shelves and people still bought them at the Barnes and Noble or their local grocery store or subscribed to them. And I just fell in love with writing because he was, like I said, like a second father and you always want to be what your dad is, right? And so for me, it was, you know, it was, you know, I knew that I would write something and I was pretty good at it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yes, yep.

You know, I always wrote above my grade level. And then, you know, for my career, I wrote every day. Now it was nonfiction. It was boring stuff. Yeah, you're talking legislation, speeches, policy position papers, grants, you know, procurement documents, things like that. But changing to writing fiction was a bit of a change. And that really kind of came about because of COVID. You know, DC had shut down for...

Right. I was thinking you were writing a lot. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Yep.

nearly a year and a half and everybody was working remotely and I had all this spare time on my hands and I knew that I wanted to do it eventually. And this was a chance to really get after it when COVID had us all in lockdown. And so the silver lining in it for me was, I had a chance to write what I thought was gonna be the book and turned out to be a series and kind of launched the back half of my career.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Hehehehehe

Yeah. I mean, how many people like switched could not switch careers, but like switch focuses during COVID. They found time. And especially if you were one of the lucky ones that you were at home and you're still getting paid, but you're not really going to work. So you had this time and you had the resources because you're still getting a check. You could divert it to something you really like to do instead of what you've been doing all these other years, go into your job and you can switch.

You could have a whole show about people that switch gears during COVID.

Yeah, and there's a ton of COVID era authors out there where they were the first time, you know, where people had always said, well, if I could, if I had the time, I would write a book. And then there was a glut of them, me being one of them, who they came out of that era. And some of us stuck to it.

Yep.

Yeah.

Yep. Yep. Yep. Well, that's good. All right. So let's get into your book, the last keeper, the warm inster series, very good read. I didn't find this, you know, it's fantasy, but I didn't find it really extremely difficult. And I'm one of these people, I'm a public school teacher for 23 years and I can butcher somebody's name. And so when I get a book, a lot of the times I read the book and I call a character, what I think their name is. And then I see it.

On the big screen one day, or I see a YouTube video of the author talking about it. I'm like, that was what they're supposed to be called. But I didn't have too much of a trouble in here. really good story to get sucked into. I really liked it. I gotta tell you my two favorite characters. My first favorite character is Ritter and his Falcon. I think that was like, that's who I kept flipping the page and wanting to hear more.

about him and his men. What, what did you call them again? See the, the long marchers. Yes. I wanted to, I wanted more of that. I was like, I want to know more about the long marchers. Like what's your story and what do they do and what do they look like and all this sort of stuff. That was it. And then Raider has a little bit of a love story with Adeline, which I really liked that little complex of her royalty and his

The Long Marchers. Yeah.

Like, yeah, I'm not quite my full race of person, but a little bit. so I really liked all of that. Can you give, my listeners like a quick little overview of what the last keeper's about?

Sure, so the Last Keeper is, if you're familiar with the term hero's journey, it's something we've seen with Harry Potter or Luke Skywalker or Iliad and the Odyssey, right? It goes all the way back to Homer. And this is one of those hero's journeys for one of the three main characters, Damis Alaric, who is a keeper, which is someone who has a sentience that's ordained by their god. In this case, it's the god of knowledge.

Right.

and he imparts visions to him when he sleeps. And as part of that, these people that are God touched are sent away to a cathedral where they learn how to harness those powers for good and then are sent out into the world back to where they came from to counsel kings and queens and emperors and emperors to do the right thing, to use this stuff.

as part of that. And, and Deimos isn't necessarily a coming of age story. This is a guy who's in his late teens, early twenties, and, but he's, he's learning how to harness this power. And he sees the return of a fallen keeper, a man of his sect who had used this power of sight to his own benefit. We don't know what that is in the first book, but it was enough to land him a pretty wicked curse by his God. And as a result, he's coming back to take revenge on the cathedral.

Right.

And Damis is the only one that can see him coming. So you have all of these prophets and seers and none of them have the ability to see the return of the fallen keeper except for Damis, hence the name, the last keeper. And so it's a bit of a hero's journey for Damis as well as, you know, some of, you mentioned Ritter and Adolin by name a little earlier and they come together to form, you know, a band of adventurers that are out there to try to stop Great Taurus the Mad and those that are surrounding.

Right.

Him as part of this and that tumult, you know cascades through all four books and then you know, obviously You know comes to a crashing halt at the end of book four, which I won't no no spoiler alerts here But that's really what your book one is about Sir Ritter is a great character I'm glad you brought him up because he used to be a Dungeons & Dragons character of mine You know, and I played him very similarly to how I wrote him

Right.

And you're right, he's what I would call a troll -born. And if you're a Harry Potter fan, it's kind of like my version of a muggle, where it's not somebody that is, you know, that he's a low -born knight, half human, half elven. So both cultures look down on him. And of course he falls in love with the highest form of elf in the cast of Elves, the Vermillion. And, you know, what they find out over the course of the book is that

Muggle born. Yeah.

Yeah.

You know, yeah, there's all sorts of social mores and cultural restrictions on whether or not they should be falling in love, but they fall in love with each other, not just because of their feelings, but also because of the deeds. They're both valorous people. And, you know, it's whether or not Adeline's willing to give up the powers of where she is with Eldwall to be with Ritter, and it's whether Ritter's willing to look away from his duties to stay away from her because he loves her. And so I think that there's...

Right.

a lot of that forbidden love as a trope that gets drug through there and culminates in book three and onto book four. So I hope you keep reading.

Yeah, I plan on it too, man. You can't have a little bit of forbidden love in there. That has to draw everybody in. so in the acknowledgement, acknowledgement, see, I did read, I read the whole thing. I didn't leave any part out and the acknowledgement in the back, you thanked, all the folks that you play D and D with, for the book. So my question is, is the warmest or series, it was it a

Hahaha!

one of your D and D games earlier on that now you've put down the page.

It's yes and no, right? So a lot of the characters were lifted right out of 20 years of role playing, right? Obviously I don't write for Wizards of the Coast, so I can't use Dungeons and Dragons or the Realm. I can't use Middle Earth, I can't use Westeros, I can't use Shannara, right? So I created the Realm of Warminster and made requisite changes to it. So I made my own Pantheon of Gods, I made my own currency, I made my own...

Right. Yep.

spell system, I made a variety of governance as part of this, as you're supposed to do with an epic fantasy series. But many of the characters that you'll read about actually had played as part of this. So whether it was me playing them as a player character or as whether it was me dungeon mastering them, and they were my player characters that were going through a campaign or an adventure.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

A lot of the stories had been battle tested, right? And I could tell which one, which one of those stories were the better plot line, the better monster, the thing that was feared the most, the thing that was most rewarding for them. And what I did was, you know, I took a lot of that stuff that had been played out and wove it into what was this four book series as part of that. Now there's a lot of new stuff in there too, because not every campaign is something you can just take verbatim. You can only take chunks of it.

Yep.

Yeah.

So I took some of the villains, I took some of the really cool heroes, put them together and then build a new story around it. Some of which is familiar to my friends, others of which are just completely fabricated because I needed to write a better story about it. And maybe they didn't do something that I wanted them to do as a dungeon master and they went off at a 90 degree angle. But this is the real story and how it was supposed to go.

Yeah, yeah.

Yep. one of the unlikely heroes in the story is Fox. and the one thing I always do when I read it, when I'm reading, I always try to picture what the character looks like based on a description, the author's given, or just what my own head, tries to pull up. but I could not seem to wrap my head around what Fox looks like. okay. What, what does it, what does she look like to you? What does her case, if you're

that character is being drawn or put on screen. What do you think Fox is going to look like?

Yeah, so I refer to her often as the redheaded rogue, right? So I see her as someone that's a little skinny, a little malnourished because she's always on the run. She has crippling mental capacities because of the iron jack, which I won't get into. People can read about that. But it's a, you know, an unjustified sentence that was brought down to her. And, you know, she's been running for most of her adult life and much of her adolescent life.

as a result of that. And I, in my head, I kind of looked at her as a redheaded Sarah Connor from Terminator, you know, where she learns these things on the street and it's survivalist at her max. But when you learn her backstory, you find out that she was born a high noble from a very wealthy family. And, you know, she's great on a horse and, you know, all the kinds of things that play along with that. But as, you know, Damis gets to know her,

Yeah, right.

He doesn't see any of that. He doesn't know any of that's true until later in the story. And it's her, you're right. I mean, for her, it's kind of a, you know, can she find justice? Can she be redeemed? And what does she do? The lengths she does, and you find her, I won't give this away, but there are things that she does to endanger herself for the right noble cause.

Right, right, right.

Yep, yep, yep.

which is helping Deimos in this case. And so in Fox's case, I saw her as Sarah Connor with red hair.

Yeah, that would be a good, good thing. The mom turned warrior. Yep. I do like that Sarah Connor with red hair. I do love that one. That's right. Cause, in the book, it talks about her younger, but now it's later on, towards the end of the book. So that would, that would plot just about right. I like that call. and another guy that at first glance, when you, when you bring him in, I think you're meant to sort of like not

like him, like he's a showboat, but he turns out to be able to back up his showboat. And I hope I'm going to pronounce his name correctly, but, Admiral Labreck. Am I saying that his name right? Yeah. yeah.

Yep, Valerick Labreck. You got it, yep. Yeah, and Labreck is one of my favorite sidebar characters because he actually, his importance will grow as we get closer to book four. But yeah, but he's exactly that. He's this young swashbuckling admiral of royalty, women's swoon when they see him. He's never lost a sea battle.

Right. Cause he comes later on in the story.

Yeah.

He's the opposite. Yeah. Opposite of Jack Sparrow, right? If Jack Sparrow is the swashbuckler, but he's dirty and nobody likes him and he loses a lot of battles, but he still seems to look out every time. So this is his, the good looking twin brother that's got it all.

Yeah

Yeah

That's right, you know, and and Labreck is somebody who, to me, is the embodiment of, you know, that Renaissance era pirate, except he's the admiral, right? Like he has all the traits that you want in a pirate, you know, but he's he's on the good team. And in this case, you know, he, you know, he uses some of those those talents in book one and really gets to use them in book four.

Yeah.

Right, right, right.

And you find out a little bit more about him as the series goes along, but Lebreq, and what I wanted to do with him was, you know, one of the things that I don't want to say bothered me, but many fantasy novels are all Earth -based. Very, very rare of them are seaborne. And I wanted to have some sort of sea connectivity, you know, to what we were doing. And I think these big heroic battles on the seas not only lend itself to quality and a lot of fun.

That's true.

Yeah.

fantasy battles, especially when you start throwing in magic into that. I think that that's pretty cool. But I also think that since we haven't seen it, I wanted to make, I wanted to feature it in a way where, you know, it would make my book stand out amongst other fantasy novels. It may have gone in a, you know, in a different direction. And I think that, you know, that you'll see that play out this in book one, which you read, you know, there's, you know, there's a couple of really nice seaborne battles.

Yes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. I was going to say there's a whole battle on the sea when you get towards the end of the book. So battle at sea. And I think you're right. you know, I haven't read a ton of fantasy, but you're right. I don't know about how much of it on the sea that I've covered. And we've got like, naval wizards in here that are just for, you know, naval tactics, but with magic, I was like, I don't, that's kind of cool. I don't know if I've quite heard of that one before or not.

Yeah

Now, see, that's what I like about it is that there is a unique quality to it. I've read some. I'm not going to say it's not out there, but ultimately I think that for, without everybody having magic, how do you get around the realm quicker? You take boats, right? And this is a way for them to do that. But the magical battles on the sea are just a lot of fun to write, coupled with the fact that you can get away with a lot of stuff in fantasy.

Yeah, right.

with some inventive technology that I used and some other things that kind of play out that I think lends itself to Lebrecht's greater story as the series goes on.

Yep. and the last character that I liked on there, is it uncle Kester?

Uncle Kester, Kester Alaric, that's right.

Yep. A little bit of Quill from the Mandalorian I had in my mind. Maybe not as old as him, but a little bit of the older guy that saves the day at the end.

Yeah, you know, I wrote him, I got inspiration for his character on my uncle that I talked about a little bit earlier, right? So when I was younger, he was my mentor. And so Kester mentors Damis in the same way. And, you know, there's a lot of draws to the family, right? Where, you know, you know, Kester didn't have a son of his own, couldn't have a son of his own was sort of, you know, always out doing the wrong thing.

Right.

you know, and even though that wasn't necessarily my uncle, my uncle was obviously unmarried, was unable to have kids. I was the closest thing for, to a child that he would ever have. You know, and so for me, I drew that connection from our personal experience where I was able to take that, that love between uncle and nephew, in this case, almost a father son kind of relationship and bake it in. And, you know, and Kester ends up.

you know, sacrificing himself in the same way my uncle sacrificed himself in war in many respects. And so I try to draw some parallels there without it being too overdone. But, you know, ultimately I think Kester is a, he's a fun character. He was a fun character to write. And obviously, you know, I liked the relationship that he had with Damis and wanted to play that up, especially in book one.

Right, right, right.

Yep. Yep. Yep. That was a good one. so I highly recommend go check out the keeper. especially if you're looking for like a new series to start or something different, definitely check it out. It's a good read. it took NIST, the Anderthal. Let's see. I started this. let's see, when did I start? I think I started Friday cause I got, I meant to start earlier, but I got tied up and I started.

haha

Friday and read a little bit Saturday and then, man, I read a ton of this thing. on Sunday, I read quite a bit on Sunday and then my wife had a dentist appointment and I sat there for two hours. Let's read that. So that was good. It went by fast. So I definitely recommend check out the keeper. There's two more in the series and a fourth one. When is the fourth one come out?

July 25th, so almost a month tomorrow, a month today. Holy cow, we're within the 30 day range, yeah.

Yeah.

Yep. So help Mr. Hilliard out, buy his, go get all his books, especially his fourth one on the 25th. You can support my birthday on July 23rd by buying his book on the 25th. And I'll definitely be checking out. I don't know if I have the other two read by then, but I'll definitely give them a read through. I'll let you know, sir. I'll give you some.

Here's a little secret too. I also have audio books and so if it's better for you to listen than to read, download those because people, you know, that's...

was this on audio book? Well, I didn't yet. Well, I gotta say kudos to you. Cause you sent me the book to look at. So I didn't look online for him, but, yeah. Audio books for, for, for this 80 D guy. That's the way to go, man. I love audio books.

Yes.

It is, you can listen to them in the car while you're doing laundry, whenever you want, you know, and I think that helps some folks in different places of life.

Now, are, are you right? Are you reading the book or someone else reading the book?

No, I've got a professional voiceover actor. His name is Victor Bovine. Victor's really well known in the fantasy sci -fi community. Some people recognize his voice. Other people buy the audio book just because they like listening to him. He's a very good voiceover actor and he's done some high -end stuff. I got lucky to nab him when I did to get him to do this. And so, go ahead and give a listen to My Words, Victor's Voice.

Yeah.

Hahaha.

Right. Well, yeah, I love an audio book is you can tell behind me. I do like to put some Legos together. And one thing I like to do is put on an audio book. and while I'm Lego -ing away because one, it lets me keep track of how long something has taken to do. Cause I can just stop the book when I'm finished and start it back up. Yeah. So check out his series. you guys will, definitely love it. now your book is not just going to stay on

There is talk of your series being produced into a video game. Is that right?

That's correct. I licensed the intellectual property for the series over to a company that's doing an augmented reality and virtual reality game for it. Both versions are due out to the public in 2026, and they're going to do some beta testing on it this in 2025, this coming year. So if you want to be an early adopter to that, you can go to melderverse .com and sign up for that and you'll get some early adopter free play.

Nice.

as part of that. Yeah. And, you know, and, you know, I'm hoping that I'm going through the storyboarding process right now, which is a lot of fun. But I always feel like I'm on the sideline for it because you're never, you know, you write these books and it's very linear. Like it's, it's a story that gets you from point A to point B. But in a video game, you have license to do whatever you want. And that can mean being a bad guy if you wanted to, you know, and whatever, however you create your avatar.

sweet.

Yes.

Right.

and the skills that you get and things like that will be dependent on what you wanna do and how you wanna build your character. So you could play against Ritter and Adolin if you wanted to and for Grey Torus the Mad. So it's fun to see it take in a different form as we do that, but that should be out here in the next, well, almost year and a half.

Ha ha ha ha.

Right.

Wow. So, what's that process like? Do you have like any say over the, the renderings of your characters or changing of storyline? Any, do you get any, getting any, voice in that?

It's a bit of both, right? So part of it is what I described earlier as being part of the storyboarding process. My job is to set the guide rails for them to stay in between. And part of that is I have to give them their own creative license to do what they need to do. I am not a video game programmer. I'll never be a video game programmer. And they know their medium better than I do. So I don't want to get in their way. And some of that means they have to take that creative license and do things that

Right.

might not be in the novel, right? Or novels. And I understand that. And in the beginning, you know, once you get, once you are accustomed to that reality and you realize that it would be the same, you'd be telling them the same thing if they were coming to you and saying, Hey, I got this great video game. It's super popular. Can you make a book out of it? We want to make a series out of it. And I would say, great, tell me what you need me to have in the novels. I'll write it and bring it back to you. Right? So I try to put myself in that same vein.

Yep. Right, right, right.

And it's not easy to sit there and see things change, but by the same token, you become accustomed to it. And as long as they stay within sort of the confines I've drawn up for them, then we haven't had any problems since.

Yeah.

Right. Right. And it's also being moved into a graphic novel. Right.

That's correct. In fact, after I'm done with this call, I'm talking to my illustrator later on tonight. We've got about 20 cells done. Takes us what would be in the book that you just showed to the last keeper. We go through book three or chapter three rather. And you know, it's going to be an entire series there. That release date is also scheduled for middle of 2026. But the goal there is to take what is a very illustrative and graphic novel.

Yeah.

Series and turn it into a comic book, right? And I'm a comic book nerd and you know, the some of the stuff that I mean, I think my scenes Lend themselves well to adaptation in that format So even though they're squishing out a hundred and fifty thousand word novel down to you know Eight cells on two different pages with one sentence here and a half a sentence there and an action verb there It's a little different, you know, so it's not going to be very wordy

Right, right.

Right.

Yay.

But you know there I think the challenge there is how do you take what I've described and put it on into one? one square cell of action and and I'm you know I work through chapter three as I said and it's amazing how well they do that stuff it takes a gift that I don't have to do that and But these guys are top shelf and I'm pretty excited about what they've got going on so far

Right.

Yeah.

Well, it sounds like your series is on its way, sir. A lot of positive things happening for it. and now you're not just an artist yourself, but you give people the opportunity to get published. If there may be finding difficulty to get published, you've got, a website called the alt altered reality magazine, which you describe as a speculative fiction writers or gives speculative fiction writers a path for publication.

what exactly is a, I can't even say the word again, specular fiction writer.

Sure, so anybody that writes in nonfiction, but stuff like sci -fi, fantasy, horror, dystopian, gothic, monster stuff, you know, so it has to have some level of sci -fi or fantasy involved in it. So it won't be, you know, a crime story unless there's a werewolf in it, right? You know, like that's the kind of, you step over the line in this space. So we do, we publish speculative fiction and we publish speculative poetry. So if you want to write,

Right. Yeah. Gotcha.

poetry about something that's Star Trek -y or Star Wars -y or you've got your own realm and things like that. We even have horror poets. I didn't know that was a thing until I had a horror poet write to me and she wanted to do some stuff. And it's basically poetry for people that love the horror genre and the gothic and monsters and stuff like that. And so we started publishing that as part of the magazine. So the magazine is, if you go to alteredrealitymag .com,

Yeah, yeah.

You'll check it out. We get about 180 ,000 visitors a year. So it's well visited. And we have award winning authors from international award winners all the way down for, like you said, people that are seeking their first portal to publication. And through our submission guidelines, we will help folks that are looking to get published for the first time, as well as folks that we know are already published. And if we have to turn someone down, we typically tell them, hey,

I guess.

there's a certain level of editing that needs to come with this or formatting needs to come with this. And once you get it done, send it back and we'll reconsider it. So we never really turn anybody away. The site is supposed to be for the love of, right? And so it's paid for by some of our sponsors. None of us make any money and I don't pay anybody to do it, but it's out there. And for some, this gives them a chance to be exposed in a realm of readers.

Right.

Right, right, right.

that are gonna read their stuff and if they like their short story, they like their poem, they like their serial, they may go out and buy their books. And that's where we help them along those lines. So that's what I wanted to do with it and that's what we have been doing with it for the last couple of years. And it's been well received, I think, by many that have used it as a tool to advance themselves and frankly a community to get to know other people.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Right. Well, yeah. And definitely, cause there's, there's a lot of people that write, but they don't know how to publish or where to go or what can I do to get my stuff somewhere? So that's a good first step for people to do. All right. all right, Joe, I've got some sort of fun questions to run by you. so was the last keeper your first book that you wrote?

Alright.

It was.

Well, you knocked the park on your first one for sure. You did a good step up. You also mentioned being a fan of D &D. What was the longest campaign that you were a part of?

thanks.

So we went into level 36 or something ridiculous like that. And a lot of that was back in high school when you got a lot of free time to burn. You guys, when your friends don't mind being up until two o 'clock in the morning and playing four days in a row and over the weekend doing marathon sessions. And we just wanted to see how high our characters, we can get them. And they really becomes godlike. It's like ridiculous. But for us, I think that's the highest. Nowadays we

Yeah.

Yeah.

Right.

kind of peter out like 13, 15th level, 17th level, where we're more refined in our play now. And it's more about the characters and the stories that come from it, as well as things that we've never done before. Because we've done the dungeon crawls and the cape on the borderlands stuff where you're just hacking and slashing. This is more like, I'm going to create a character that no one's ever seen. And I'm going to play this character the best that I can.

Yeah, yeah.

Hehehehe

And I might not pick the most powerful spells. I might not pick or want the most powerful items. I want to play my character the way my character was meant to be played in the plot line. Even if it hurts me to some degree, while also having a fun time doing it. And it becomes more about the story and things like that. So that's the highest I've gone. And that's kind of where we are now. We're about half of that. When we get to that 15th level range, we're usually retiring them.

Right, right.

because the story's ending, the campaign's coming to a close.

Right. Right, right, right. What's a fantasy series that you love? What's one of your favorite fantasy series?

my goodness, where to start? I think the Dark Elf trilogy by R .A. Salvatore has got to be my favorite. He has like 40 Drift to Orden novels now, so it's not like, it's hard to pick out of that group. But because I started with a Dark Elf trilogy, I had to, I would have to say that, that kind of got me into it. I love Dragonlance, Sword of Sonara series, obviously Tolkien, Game of Thrones, kind of brought that dark fantasy stuff into the fore.

Yeah.

Yeah

Yeah.

for many folks where the good guys don't always win, which I enjoyed. I mean, there's so many out there. I even like the old school Dungeons and Dragons spin -offs like Ravenloft. I just got done rereading I, Strahd a few days ago, actually a few weeks ago now. And, you know, it's like mixing two of my favorite things. You got vampires in Dungeons and Dragons, you push them all together and you get a pretty cool vampire and it...

Yeah.

Yeah.

he he.

kind of follows along one of our favorite modules, one that we've played a couple of times, like 10 years off in between play and stuff like that, five years, and then come back after it. It's a popular series, but those are the ones I think are my all -time favorites.

Yeah.

Awesome. Yeah. A lot of big titles you mentioned there. So it's talking about your, the last keeper book. If it was cast into a film, who do you think would play Damis? One of the lead characters, what type of person?

So that's a tough one because I, you know what, part of it is my wife and her friends like to pick every hot guy out there and cast them for me. So I'm tainted because I have to hear about this character is this guy and this character is that guy. But in this case, you know, Damis is kind of, you know, he kind of reminds me of, and I forget the name of the character, the actor, but the kid that played in Stranger Things. You know, he's just sort of a, you know, a skinny.

right.

uncoordinated nerd who has all sorts of constitutional problems because he's, you know, in his own, in his own place. I would probably think Mike from Stranger Things, whoever that character is, whoever he is, he's probably, he's not outgrown it yet. He's at that right age where he could probably play that really well right now, because he is kind of nerdy and you know, he's a, you know, it just, I think it fits the character.

Right?

Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

until Demis matures a little bit.

Yeah. Well, I'd like to see Mike put a mace into the blood X clan.

Well played sir, well played.

Especially if you put that, yeah, put the, imagery from the, forget the, I'm terrible. Remember names, but the guy who did, the 300 movies and all those other stuff, all that imagery and the slow motion and yeah, that'd be great. That'd be great.

Yeah, yeah. Would be a good scene there, that battle of Hom Hill, man. That would be a great one.

that would be, yeah, that's definitely game of Thrones level of stuff happening right there. All this stuff coming in left and right. and trying, I kept trying to picture, the hounds that they wrote in on that those clans wrote in the, the kind of, yeah, horse hounds, you know, dog horse. I was like, God, that's gotta be just menacing to hop that ever came on to some sort of screen or something. I can't wait for your.

Poor sounds.

graphic novel or video game to get chased by, we got chased by horsehounds and virtual reality.

There's a lot of CGI for that one.

yeah, you'll be running out your door.

yeah, most definitely. All right. so my, well, there is a book four coming July 25th. That was my last question for you. We're going to have a book for, or when it's coming at, or if it's the end. So definitely check out a series, Joe, I'm going to wrap everything up today. I asked everybody the same, like six questions on the end. And it's funny to see, fun to see how people, answer.

So here we go. No, no, you don't have to give a lot of thought. Just first thing off top of your head. What's your favorite smell?

My mother's homemade spaghetti.

Ooh, that's a good one, homemade spaghetti. My mom would, yep. My mom would always make bread. That was a similar smell for me. What's your favorite kind of sandwich?

Meat sauce, it's so good, so good.

You know, so I'm in Pittsburgh and there is a restaurant here called Primani's and the Primani sandwich is world famous for having your choice of meat, fries, and then, you know, vinegary coleslaw slapped on it between two big slices of Mancini bread, which is also a local company. And if you watch enough sporting events, every time someone's here, they,

Yeah.

Yep.

You know, they visit one of the Permanis brothers to get a Permanis sandwich. And that's my favorite sandwich.

You know, I've heard that on ESPN before talking about going getting one of those sandwiches on there when they go to Pittsburgh. What's your favorite kind of drink?

In the summer, I love Moscow mules. I'm a vodka guy and the winter I like the double box. I like really thick hearty German beers dark beers and you know, but like summer ale Sam summer ale or You know like a nice IPA this time of year is is perfect You know for for for me. I think that that's that's what I would do. I'm a seasonal guy I'll you know, I'll blend into that Oktoberfest beer and then I'm you know, the winter double box that's got me until until March

Yep.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I love it. I'm a definitely seasonal as well. I like for some reason I'm a big fan of Mexican beer. those tend to be where I tend to get anything I can stick a lime in. I'm down to drink. If you can put a lime in it, I'm there for it. what does your dream vacation look like?

Ain't nothing wrong with that.

There you go.

I want to... So part of it is already... So this is a cheat. I've got two dream vacations. So when we went, my wife and I got married, we went on our dream vacation, which was we spent 10 days in Europe. We stayed in four different castles. We visited... I'm a castle buff, as you can imagine. So we stayed in castles in Scotland, England, and Germany while we were there. And for our 25th anniversary, we're going to go back and...

Nice.

Right, right, right.

do the same thing this time, maybe stay in some different castles except for one that I definitely know she wants to go back to. But, you know, my favorite, the one vacation that I want to take, I haven't been able to take yet, is I want to go visit Dracula's castle in Romania and get over there and do sort of like stay in Budapest and, you know, take the road up to, you know, the Solomon's Tower and just visit, you know, Castle Dracula and have a good time there. It's at that in October.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

I've got to talk my wife into that one or you know that that's gonna be a tough one I'm gonna we'll have to stop somewhere fun like like Italy on the way over or whatever Off the off the work her and she gets half I did half my half is a little bit more gothic than hers. I think

It doesn't sound very romantic, sir. Yeah. Right.

Alright. I was about to say how romantic is to go to Dracula's castle?

Hahaha!

We're going to sleep in coffins and everything, honey. Who is the most famous person you've ever met?

Yeah

I've met several presidents and I've met a number of congressional, senatorial people because of my job, obviously.

I was about to say your job probably leads to a little bit of that.

Yep. So I've met every president from Clinton on at some point or another. And then of course, all the leaders of the house and Senate over the last 20 years. And then on the sports side, I've met a lot of, I've done sports and entertainment work too, as part of my stuff. So, you know, the Mariela Mew for hockey or a lot of the former Steelers here in some other cities and things like that. So it just depends. It's hard to say.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yep.

Anybody that could be more famous than a president, so I'll say the presidents.

Yeah. Well, yeah, the presidents are pretty famous. That's my one famous person I've met was my wife and I met Obama years ago. She won a contest to go fly out and meet him. She, and so we got to meet him and that was pretty cool. so I've got a buddy who's a bit big Pittsburgh Steelers fan. I don't know if you're a Steelers fan or not.

That's cool.

you

I am. He's a gentleman and a scholar. I could tell you about your buddy already.

Yeah. You should check out that. I did a podcast with him and he, it was nothing but Pittsburgh Steelers. And so I tried to write as many, I tried to write as many like trivia questions to stump him as I could go in all through Steelers history from their conception to present. And man, he was, he was nailing off everything. He is an expert on the Steelers. So if you ever want to do a little Steelers fan, go check out that episode.

That one's really good. That was really good. I always, he, the Steelers have been suffering about as much as my Carolina Panthers have been a little bit, not as bad as my Panthers, but, but, but not quite as bad, but, our quarterback issues are getting legendary here. All right, man. So that's going to wrap us up for this episode. it's good to have you on the show, Joe.

I'll have to definitely do that.

Not as bad, not as bad.

Yup.

Check out his book, The Last Keeper. Remember, this is the first of what will be four on July, on January, July 25th. Let me get that come up right. The Warmest Her Series. Check it out. It's a great read. You guys will love it. Joe, I appreciate you coming on.

It has been my absolute pleasure and thanks. I'd be more than happy to come back anytime.

Hey, I, well, I might have to talk to you after, July 25th, man. We'll talk about your fourth one. All right. Remember folks find out what makes you happy and do it. There's a lot of life out there to live. So make it a good one. Be kind, be nice and everyone have a good week.

Sounds like a plan.