The Grey NATO – 143 – DEPTH CHARGE
Published on Thu, 22 Apr 2021 06:00:41 -0400
Synopsis
This podcast episode covers a variety of topics, including Jason Heaton's new thriller novel Depth Charge, an excerpt from the book, details on how to purchase it, as well as some other book and product recommendations. Jason talks about the writing and self-publishing process for his novel, which is a modern take on classic thrillers with elements of travel, diving, and adventure. They also discuss photography, simple cameras, and products that can introduce people to hobbies in an accessible way.
Links
Transcript
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| James Stacey | Hello and welcome to another episode of The Grey Nado, a loose discussion of travel, diving, driving gear, and most certainly watches. This is episode 143. I'm James Stacy. I'm joined as ever by my illustrious co-host and future celebrated author, Jason Heaton. Thanks so much for listening. How you doing, Jason? |
| Jason Heaton | Oh, I'm doing great. Yeah. It's a, it's a busy, exciting week here in Minneapolis. |
| James Stacey | Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like, I feel like we've been, we've been crawling. I I've been watching you crawl towards this weekend or this, this, this week for a while. So, you know, the launch of the book. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah, it's been, it's been a long time coming. I think, you know, the writing of the book is one thing and then kind of becoming a publisher for the first time has been a very, uh, sort of baptism of fire sort of learning experience. But then now this, this launch is, it's exciting. It's fun. It's fun to see the response. I've been putting out stuff on Instagram and I, I've done a pre-order for signed copies to my Substack subscribers, and that's gone really well. But, you know, it's a lot of moving parts between shipping software and FedEx and running to FedEx for dropping things off and that sort of thing. But it's all good. It's all fun. |
| James Stacey | It's all part of it. Well, I'm glad to hear you're enjoying the process, even though the book is technically finished. Now, I guess it finally starts. It's a fun thing, though, and it's an exciting thing because we're going to have a kind of a bigger chat about the new book and where people can find it and what it's about. And we got some other little tidbits for later in the show. So I think we can, we can keep all that for there. And I'm excited to hear all about it. And I have a bunch of questions about what it is to write a book now that we get a chance to talk about it. But what have you been up to just in the last little while I saw on your Instagram, you had a nice little getaway. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah. So last week was my birthday. So Ghoshani and I, you know, we typically try to thank you. Uh, we try to get away for, for, for these sorts of things. And we had rented a cabin on, on vacation rentals by owner VRBO. And it's a, it was a 1970s, a frame cabin up on the North shore of Lake Superior that had been recently renovated and put out for rent. And what a spectacular place. I mean, it was right out of that, the book that people might be familiar with called cabin porn. It just had, Um, beautiful modern furnishings and perched on a, on a hilltop overlooking Lake Superior with 40 acres of pine woods around it. And, uh, just such a peaceful, wonderful spot. So, you know, we did a, did a bit of hiking. It was up near the split rock lighthouse and they've got some hiking trails around there. So we wandered over there and did some, some photos and hiked a bit. And, uh, and this, this was a trip where. you know, it's a good five, six hour drive to get there from here. And we typically would have taken our comfy cruise control equipped, heated seat equipped Volvo for a trip like this, but we decided, Oh, let's, let's have a bit of an adventure. So we, we loaded up the defender for this one. It was the longest trip we've done in that truck. And, and part of the reason was you know, we want to go further afield this summer in the defender and do some more camping around the great lakes and kind of wanted to see how it felt to do a five or six hour trip in it. And it did fine, you know, it's big cushy tires and coil suspension. It's, it's, it's noisy certainly, but it did fine on the road. And, um, I'm glad we took it because one of the things we did was go exploring and we found some kind of quote unquote, Jeep roads or fire roads to try out, um, uh, you know, a little bit of light off roading and then the actual road, to get up to the cabin where we stayed was this three quarter of a mile steep dirt road that required low range gearing and a four wheel drive, according to their, their VRBO description, which was enticing to say the least. |
| James Stacey | So that was, yeah, that's how, you know, that's how, you know, you picked well on Airbnb, they have to warn you what kind of car you must use, four wheel drive, what kind of car you're going to need. Yeah. You always know you chose well, I had a cabin, Well, the February before the pandemic kind of kicked off and they were very clear. Like you can't, and this was in February, right? So it's a lot of snow up here. And they're like, you should really consider like a high clearance four wheel drive vehicle with snow tires. And the Jeep just crawled up at like you would expect, but we saw, you know, it seems like most people were using pickup trucks when it's that kind of road. |
| Jason Heaton | Oh, sure. |
| James Stacey | Yeah. Well, that's great. And unsurprising that the defender can, can kind of Billy go along that kind of stuff. |
| Jason Heaton | It was fun. And we, we brought our drone and we, we shot some drone footage out over the lake and, and, and of the defender going up and down the driveway and kind of cruising around. And I, Gashani is going to get around to editing some of that video, but we, we looked at the raw footage and it's, uh, it's going to be cool. So you'll have to stay tuned for that. We'll throw that up on, on Instagram. Uh, at some point we, we did have a bit of, a bit of a Land Rover kind of unexpected adventure, um, coming home. Uh, yeah. We, you know, people always expect Land Rovers to leak oil. And the surprising thing about this Defender is that it hasn't leaked a drop since we got it. Well, we, we stopped at a gas station on our way home as we were passing through Duluth and, uh, I peeked underneath and there was just this growing, very concerning puddle of oil, um, which looked new. And, uh, so we, we quickly kind of drove down the road to a big empty parking lot and crawled underneath and you know, being the sport she is, she was, she was under there and with a rag and wiping everything clean. And then she, she was lying under the truck and she said, uh, you know, don't listen to this mom. Um, she said, uh, okay, start it up and rev the engine while she was under the truck. So I did that and she was trying to see where oil was kind of spurting out. And indeed she identified that it was coming from where the oil filter goes onto the block. And, uh, I thought the worst, you know, I just thought, Oh, geez, then some rear main seal or something's gone. So, um, I went over to a nearby auto parts place and got a new oil filter and a filter wrench and did a quick swap of the oil filter in this parking lot. And that didn't correct the problem. But as I started fishing around a bit, there are a couple of oil cooler lines that route from that same filter housing to the front of the front of the truck for cooling the oil. And one of those fittings was just finger loose. So fortunately I had a tool kit and I pulled out my, my big adjustable wrench and was able to crank it down and that solved the problem. And we were on our way. So it wasn't a, it certainly wasn't a catastrophic issue. It could have been, we would have pretty much emptied the engine of oil if it had popped loose completely. Um, but, uh, I wouldn't call this a specifically kind of land Rovery kind of quirk, you know, wouldn't disparage the brand based on this. I think it's a 30 year old truck that was running at highway speeds for, you know, six, seven, eight hours by that point, and probably just shimmied loose a nut that was on there for 30 years. So all's well that ends well. |
| James Stacey | That'll certainly happen. |
| Unknown | Yeah. Yeah. |
| James Stacey | Yeah. I've had some, I, uh, on, on my side, I didn't get any sort of getaway. Uh, you know, that sounds awfully nice. A cabin, kiss some time in a cabin sounds lovely, especially as, uh, I woke up today to snow in Toronto. Oh wow. And Jason gets an extra oh wow from that because we've recorded this episode twice. This is the second time we've done this. It's the first time where GarageBand, which is the app I use to edit the show, has ever let me down in nearly 150 episodes at this point, including some of the ones we never counted at the early days. But yeah, I got a good three hours into the original edit of this episode and it corrupted the file. And then the best I could get out of it was a piece of the file, essentially the amount I had already edited, but something had happened to my vocal track on the recording and it sounded kind of pitched up. And then without any background or any depth, it kind of sounded like it was playing at a different bit rate. If you know a little bit more about audio, much lower bit rate. And I couldn't, I could not figure out what the problem was. I couldn't replicate it with another file and I was just losing time. So unfortunately I had to I'd ask Jason to record it again. Uh, so that's the, uh, that's the oil leak on, on my side. Here's a more digital. I did get through, uh, on, on the last episode I spoke at how I was looking for some off-road driving lights. Uh, so I was able to buy some lights and a bar to Mount them on. That's all mounted. I put it up on my Instagram. I haven't driven it around or used it long enough to have any opinion. And I wouldn't want to steer someone wrong, even on just a few hundred dollars worth of worth of lights. Uh, so I think we'll, We'll probably get to that in a future episode, but so far it's some lights from Oxbeam and a bar from Rugged Ridge and the install was okay. And they seem to be working okay. I'm just not, I haven't had a chance to take them out to where they'll actually be used. Yeah. So hopefully we can get that in before the next episode. |
| Jason Heaton | I can't wait to see some photos. You'll have to take some good photos of the beam, you know, the beam pattern and that sort of thing. I'll be curious to see that. Yeah. |
| James Stacey | I know I took it just after I installed them, and it's bright enough to see it in daylight. Oh, wow. Hitting the road. Wow. So it's a different sort of light. Definitely not the kind of thing you want to use to signal somebody who's going too slowly in the left lane or whatever. Oh, man. But beyond that, beyond a small car project that seems to have gone OK, I got a chance to play around with the new Tudor Black Bay models, the sterling silver 925 and the solid gold 18K. The 18K hands-on will come out a few days after this episode, so I won't go too deep into that. But with the silver, my hands-on is on a Hodinkee. I'll put it in the show notes, of course, if you haven't had a chance to see it yet. I was kind of blown away because I didn't fully understand the watch or really understand why you'd bother. How much different could silver seem than steel? |
| Unknown | Yeah. |
| James Stacey | I was, I was, uh, I was wrong in that assumption. It's a, it feels really, uh, like a, like a, an oddly dressy kind of heirloom quality vintage effect. I've watched it. I've never worn a watch like it. And it's, you know, it feels a lot like a, like a black Bay of course. |
| Unknown | Yeah. |
| James Stacey | And, um, and, and, and I think, you know, like I said, in the writeup is, is, you know, you have a friend call you and they're like, Hey, I want to buy a great dive watch. I've been looking at the Tudor black Bay 58, which one do I get? I don't think you would tell that person. Ah, absolutely get the silver one. Right. I think this is the dive watch for the guy that has 10 or 20 dive watches in some ways. Yeah. Like a deep enthusiast. It's like a model progression thing where eventually the progression kind of becomes silly or weird and only makes sense for those who have followed the whole progression. Right. Right. Whether that's from a slower sports car to a faster sports car. I made a Porsche analogy that people really didn't like in my in my writeup, but I stand by it. It's not about Porsches or 911s. It's about model progressions. And I think that they're finding ways of progressing the 58, um, so that it's not just color permutations of the exact same watch, which they've been doing since 2013. Yeah. And so I think we seen at now eight years, this huge line is built and boom, we've got, we've got these weird ones and it's weird. I really like it. Um, you know, the silver, uh, is much more, um, It has more of its own color. It takes less of its color from the surrounding than steel does. I guess maybe it's a little bit less reflective. It's very white, but it's not colorless like white gold often can be or platinum. |
| Jason Heaton | I would have expected more reflective for some reason, but it's not a high polish, right? |
| James Stacey | I mean, that's the... Yeah, it's not a high polish. I think that's another thing that's nice is they kept the brushed finishing despite it being arguably a very dressy, as dressy as a dive watch can get kind of. Yeah. I find, I think that there's something even less sporty about a silver watch than a gold one. Yeah. Like the gold one. I have, I have like a framework to think about solid gold submariners and the rest. But with the silver, you just kind of like, I don't like, what is this? |
| Jason Heaton | Huh? Gosh, I can't wait to try it. I can't picture it. I can't, I can't imagine. I've, I've had very little experience with silver itself. I mean, other than some good silverware and a tea set, but yeah. |
| James Stacey | Yeah. And then as far as the, um, like the color of the dial and the bezel, it's, it's strange because it is that kind of charcoal gray. So if there's not a lot of light, it's very dark and purpley like taupe. Oh, okay. But if you, if you know, if I put two flashes in a room for a wrist shot, it's this kind of medium flat gray. And I think that that kind of Delta between the two colors is really, is really appealing. It's a great, it's a good looking thing. And it's kind of has that kind of, shapeshiftery appeal of gray, like black doesn't quite do the same thing. Blue can do this if it's kind of a medium-y navy blue, where it can look black sometimes and it can look quite bright other times. But gray does this the most, where there's this latitude to the way that it kind of shows up. That's nice. I enjoyed the watch. It's not a huge premium over a steel one. And I think, yeah, if you've had a bunch of Tudors or if you've had a bunch of dive watches and that's what's kept you from buying a Black Bay, I think that they made one here that is just, it's different and kind of distinct all on its own. while still following that kind of standard format. And I like, you know, it's still 200 meters waters. They didn't make a different watch in many ways. It still has all of the, the normal Bonneville, great bezel, amazing loom. |
| Unknown | Yeah. |
| James Stacey | You know, I, I, it's a weird way to use the term because it's exactly what it is from a watch marketing standpoint is a novelty, but it's like an actual novelty. It's this, it doesn't feel like core product. Like I said, I don't think it's the Black Bay that you would recommend to someone just getting into dive watches or you wanted an everyday dive watch to bead on and wear at the office and the rest. But if you're maybe more of a dress watch guy or you love desk diving and that's more of your speed in terms of approaching a dive watch, or in many ways, I think like if you're, you've just had a lot of dive watches and you want something that feels special, I think this does that. And I think that's what they've achieved with it. |
| Jason Heaton | Well, and I think that size too. I mean, it's the 39 millimeter size, which is the great move on this one. And, and, um, I think it will have that unisex appeal. I mean, you know, for sure. Gishani's gotten jaded with all the watches that passed through our house here and this one even, you know, made her eyebrows go up a little bit. So that's saying something. I think it's an intriguing choice and I can't wait to check it out at our local Tudor retailer here. I really want to get my hands on that. |
| James Stacey | Yeah, and then with the 18K, you know, I'm still kind of forming all my opinions on it. I can say that I didn't love the color. And I think it's mostly because that green on the gold tone feels very not special at this point, because so many brands have done the green on the bronze. Yeah. Like even Tudor, right? Yeah. Has done it. So it didn't feel as special to me as the silver one. Like it didn't feel as distinct. And in some ways it almost felt like I couldn't appreciate the fact that it was a solid gold watch because the overall vibe felt very bronze to me. Uh, and in my mind, I just think it would like, and maybe this is where they're going with it, or maybe this is a kind of a, an anomaly, a one-off thing, but with a black dial or, or the blue dial, like either the two ones that already existed in the 58 range, goodness sakes, it'd be, it'd be something extra special. |
| Jason Heaton | Or that gray. I mean, the gray from the silver one would look really cool. |
| James Stacey | Yeah. Yeah, no, I agree. I don't think the green looks bad in any way. It's just like it, that is such a hot color that it doesn't feel distinctive. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it was a thrill to get a chance to see that stuff. This isn't, especially being in Canada, I'm not seeing a lot of the new stuff. I'm not seeing almost any of it. So it was awfully nice that Tudor was able to arrange for that and send them over. And I had them for six hours, which is enough time to get the shots that we needed and then put the stuff together. So the 925, like I said, is on Hodinkee and the 18K will be out Early next week, I assume. If you're listening to this on the Thursday it comes out, I'd expect it to be on the site Monday or Tuesday, but these things change. So sometime next week, I'm sure. Jason, what do you say we get into some wrist check? |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah, let's do it. I mean, you had those watches for such a short time. What's your palate cleanser after trying those out? What are you wearing? |
| James Stacey | Well, yeah, for watches and wonders, I wore almost exclusively a Garmin so that I could get my notifications because there's just so many messages. It's so busy. And then the other plus that I found is that the smartwatch thing makes more sense to me. When you have to wear a mask, you go to the grocery store, your face unlock on your phone doesn't work. So you've got to use both hands if you want to see a message or reply to a message. And this way you can really like, I'm at the grocery store. You kind of pick weird hours so you don't have to stand in line or that I'd like everybody's scenario in their cities different, but some of the grocery stores in Toronto have lines and, you know, limits to how many people can be in them and that, and that kind of thing. And it's nice to be able to, you know, feel the, the watch buzz and glance down and go like, no, that doesn't actually require, that's a Slack message to 50 people, not just to me or, or an email that doesn't require a reply. And it's a little bit like easier way of processing the data that said watches and wonders is now, you know, fully ramped and we're, we're even out of the residual pace of that. And this is our depth charge episode. So I wanted to pick a kind of depth charge appropriate watch. So I went with my, uh, my, you know, relatively newly delivered Synchron Military. I got the PVD one on a nice gray NATO. |
| Jason Heaton | Oh, that's a good choice. |
| James Stacey | Oh, on gray. Yeah. I love it. Yeah. Yeah. |
| Jason Heaton | I love it a lot. Have you found that the lume on that one, it's a little confusing when you, you know, when you go from watch to watch, the lume patterns are always so different. And that one has that weird shaped hour hand that I almost can't get used to because it's just so square. It almost blends in with the other weird markings on that one I found. |
| James Stacey | Yeah, definitely. It can take a minute. The nice thing is, is, you know, being with that kind of Doxa inspiration, that minute hand is, you'll never lose that. Yeah. But I do agree that the hour hand isn't the same as an hour hand on almost any other watch. Even on a, on a Doxa, you have that thinner. It's essentially like a micro version of the minute hand with that handset. But this one's funky. I love the color. I'm really impressed by the, the PVD and the fit and finish for the price point. You know, the pre-order was under a thousand dollars and the bezel's really good and loomed and the crown is great. and the PVD is this nice kind of thick, you know, kind of semi-polished with a brushing in it. It's just not exactly what I expect from a PVD dive watch from a micro brand, but it feels good. It wears really well. I like that it feels a bit big. It's not the thin case Doxa case shape. It has this sort of thicker vibe to it. And at first I was kind of like, oh, I would have liked the thin case, and then I put it on for a day, and I actually really like it the way it is. It just sits nicely, and it still has that chunky 70s funkiness to it. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah, there's so much good about that watch. I think the dial, of course, is so funky and fun to look at, but then the bezel does it for me. For one thing, it's a countdown bezel, which you don't get much, but those loopy numerals, and then the loomed numerals when you turn off the lights, and it looks like an old Bakelite. you know, bezel from the Seamaster or something. I just think, uh, yeah, that's a, it's a wonderful watch. And it was kind of like one of those storms that blew up. Everybody kind of, there was a big hubbub about it. A bunch of people bought it. And then it's kind of like in the rear view mirror now it's like driving past a tornado or something. And like, it's the dust has kind of settled and now people are just enjoying the watch, which is really cool. |
| James Stacey | It's a funny thing. And you wrote a really great piece on, um, on your sub stack recently about how the context with which you're interfacing with watches is changing. And it actually means that you're enjoying watches more rather than maybe seeing them just as work. |
| Unknown | Yeah. |
| James Stacey | And, uh, and, and I liked that, that position. And I followed some of the drama when this watch came out, because for those who don't know that this military design is, is based essentially as a direct homage to a Doxer from the seventies, which was made while Synchron owned Doxers. So it's this weird triangle of of brands and designs. And the military was made in an exceedingly small quantity. I think it's the kind of idealized watch for an homage because it would only be interesting to people who really like the military. It's not like I'm not pulling the wool over somebody's eyes, them thinking I have a real military. It just doesn't work that way. So I dig the watch. I think it's nicely made. But yeah, I would say that as much as I like the passion that leads people to be this into watches, um we are we are talking about uh you know micro brand dive watches made in very short supply i mean the stakes are super low right you know and and yeah so that's that's good but uh i've been i've certainly been enjoying it i think it's going to make like a great uh summer watch along this really along the same speed as that um seiko from last year i plan to wear it all summer and see how it takes a a good uh a good bit of abuse and some you know jumps off the dock and the rest of it yeah how about you yeah i kind of went |
| Jason Heaton | Synchron Rick Murray angle this week too. I mean, it's, it's no, no stranger to my wrist. I'm wearing the Aqua star deep star, um, that I've had on my wrist six days out of seven for, you know, coming up on a year. Um, I, I just think to me, it's, it, I've almost become a one watch person. I wear it almost every day. It's just, it's very eye pleasing. I've got the gray dial. It's works well on almost any strap. And, uh, it's funky. I like the reverse Panda. I like the, The fact that it's a dive watch, but it doesn't necessarily look like one. And I moved it back to the, the, the gray tropic strap that it came on because I, you know, it's, it's been chilly this week, but we've had, we've already been in the seventies and eighties here. And I kind of thought, Oh, it's kind of coming around to kayaking and biking and hiking season. It'd be kind of good to get it back on rubber. And, and, uh, so that's where it's sitting. So, yeah, cool. |
| James Stacey | Yeah, great watch. I'm a huge, huge fan of mine. I love it on a NATO. It's really good on just a simple, like a really simple shell leather. I think I'll probably do some summer with that on a rubber NATO. I've got the 22 millimeter CD328, also super comfy. It's not a watch that needs any additional bulk on the back. So if you do the NATO, go single pass, because it is kind of a chunky thing to begin with, which is fine. I think that that's how it's meant to be worn. But, you know, they wear in many ways like a BB-41 chrono or something like that. Great choices. And I think both really fit today's theme. And if you like, we can kind of dive right in. Yeah, let's do it. So for anybody who's been listening to the show for almost any length of time, but certainly say the last, what, 20 episodes maybe, Jason has been working pretty tirelessly on a book called Death Charge. It's like a modern take on the classic thriller novel. And Jason, I'd love to get into it. Like I said, I have a lot of questions. my copies from the pre-order should arrive maybe while we're recording this. Oh, good. Um, which I'm, I'm really excited about that. That'll, that'll be what I, what I do this evening. Certainly. Yeah. Let's start with a really simple elevator pitch. What's the plot. How would you get somebody kind of dialed into it? |
| Jason Heaton | You know, the thriller genre is one that, that I've just grown to love over about the past 10 to 20 years. Uh, you know, when I was in college, I studied English literature and it was all kind of high minded Hemingway and Shakespeare and, reading for metaphors and that sort of thing. And I think, you know, once you dip into the world of Clive Cussler and Ian Fleming and Alistair McLean, you, you, you get into this, this rich vein of, of what's, what's good writing with a lot of detail and, and fast paced plots. But without, you know, a lot of the kind of the weight that comes from having to read things with, with a big author's name behind it, or, or, you know, high literature with a capital L and that's kind of what I was going for. You know, they usually say that fiction has some autobiographical elements to it. And in this case, I wouldn't say it's autobiographical, but it is drawn from my own travels and interests. And those will be recognizable to anybody that reads it. But in essence, the story is about an American maritime archaeologist or underwater archaeologist who finds himself working in Sri Lanka. So, you know, halfway around the world from his home. with an old college friend of his and there's a horrible tragedy. Um, and, uh, and his friend dies. And so he's kind of caught up in, you know, how did this happen? And he's in a, he's in a foreign land with, you know, a lot of unfamiliar elements to it. And, and there's a good amount of underwater action and exploration. Um, and of course you have to have a, you know, a psychopathic sort of villain. Um, in this case, there's, there's, there's kind of a double layer to that. There, there are two people, but also I incorporated, um, what I think is a very interesting element of, uh, world war II history here. So I kind of took a, took a page from Clive Kessler's, uh, you know, manual on how to write a thriller. And, and I had a couple of flashback chapters where we look at, um, and a certain obscure element of world war II British history, um, that ties in with the modern day plot. So it kind of goes back and forth a little bit. I thought it might be helpful for me to kind of just read the back cover blurb here. Yeah, let's do it. I can dive into that. Julian Tusker Tusk is an American archaeologist excavating a shipwreck half a world from home when a research boat catches fire and sinks, killing an old friend. The tragedy sets in motion a dangerous quest for truth that pulls Tusker into a sinister plot spanning 75 years from World War II Ceylon to modern-day Sri Lanka. Along the way, he matches wits with a psychopathic mercenary, discovers a long-lost ship with an explosive secret, and falls for a beautiful marine biologist who is at least as strong as he is. In the end, Tusker finds that the truth may lie at the bottom of the sea, with only one way back to the surface. So that's kind of the blurb you see, you know, when you click on Amazon and you see it there. There were a lot of kind of moving parts, a lot of elements here. You've got some history, you've got some culture, you've got obviously diving, um, that all comes together in this. And I think, uh, even if you're not into any one of those things, I hope the story itself is compelling enough. |
| James Stacey | Oh yeah, absolutely. No, it sounds, it sounds like there's a good mix there. You know, some travel, some diving, some driving, some gear. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Right. |
| James Stacey | It's basically, yeah, yeah, exactly. Right. I have several questions and some of them are just needless curiosity on my part, and some I think will be a little bit more direct to the book, but where to start? I guess that's where we can start. Where to start? You decide to write a book, and I think I've even tried to do this a couple of times, although maybe not a book as much as a screenplay, and did you just sit down one day and decide to open a Word document and start writing? Or did you start with a big plot outline or did you already have a character kind of in your mind and you built it from there? What's the first page like? |
| Jason Heaton | I probably should have done what you mentioned, which is create a big plot outline. That really would have helped me. But I didn't do that. I did basically sit down and open up, in this case, an Apple Pages document, which is basically the same thing as Word. And the funny thing is I had actually had this idea of writing a novel about 10 years ago and I sat down and just literally opened the document, started writing descriptive chapters, this and that. And I got about 40 pages in and I was like, where is this going? I don't even have a plot. I'm just writing. Um, so I just, I set it aside. It just sat out there on a Dropbox folder, kind of collecting dust. And, um, fortunately a bit of that book that that first chapter of that book ends up being one of the last chapters in this, uh, in this book in depth charge. But in this case, when I did start this one, I had a few ideas in mind and I think one thing that informed me was I read and heard some advice from thriller novelists, successful ones who said, you know, you, you can really draw some inspiration from, you know, the newspaper or the news, you know, look at the, the articles on the inside of the paper and look for obscure little stories about things that are happening around the world that might catch your interest that you want to dig a little deeper into and fictionalize. And so I did that and, You know, when I kicked this off, Ghoshani and I were down in Jamaica at Goldeneye, which was Ian Fleming's old estate, where he wrote all the Bond novels, and it seemed a fitting place to kick things off. And I just had this inspiration to set off on a novel. And so it was at that point, you know, sitting by the lagoon between snorkeling outings, that Ghoshani and I were chatting about possible plot ideas and kind of brainstorming characters and who would be in the book. the kernel of the plot came relatively quickly, but then boy, over 18 months, it just, it, it became somewhat difficult because I didn't have that plot outline to start tying my timeline together and the different elements of the character relationships and things like that. So at some point, you know, even after it went through edit with a very good editor who had some great recommendations, I literally like was throwing chapters away. killing off characters, you know, getting rid of them. Um, so very different from any other kind of writing I'd ever done. |
| James Stacey | Right. And if you look back on the process now, what were, what were some of the challenges that like you, you didn't expect? Was it trying to write in a manner that was just vastly different than writing what watches or travel or gear? Or was there a, a different sort of thing that came up and you thought that this had never occurred to me before? |
| Jason Heaton | I think, um, For one thing, the perseverance required to, to sustain a story for in this case, what, 60,000 words, 256 pages or so, and do that over 18 months of coming back and sitting down and picking up where I left off every day. And then going back and reading a chapter I wrote seven months earlier to edit it or change something that was challenging. I mean, you know, as you are probably familiar from the kind of writing we typically do, Um, whether it's a watch review, a car review or travel report or whatever you, at least for me, if it's a 2000 word article for Hodinkee or gear patrol or wherever, I, I would sit down, start at the beginning, plow through to the end, and then maybe go back and revise once or twice after that. That was always my method. Um, but this time it's like each chapter becomes two, 3000 words or more. and you're piling one upon the other and have to maintain this thread throughout. And it was just such unfamiliar territory for me to kind of have to have that discipline and that perseverance and that focus to kind of stay in the story. I got used to it, but it was, it was definitely an early challenge. |
| James Stacey | Yeah, for sure. I can imagine that, that, that being a thing. And then the other thing that I don't know if everyone would just understand is like, it's not like you got a book deal to write this book. This time came out of other writing times. uh you know time that would have been earning earning time rather than more of an investment in the book in your self-publishing um and and we'll get to you had some fantastic help along the way certainly uh with various aspects and i'm sure we can get to that but uh i do yeah i think it's it's important to add that if you take 18 months to write this that is 18 months of time that you're either taking away from normal writing that's paid you know by the word or by contract or whatever and or free time. Um, right. So it's definitely a big lift to try and put that out when it's, when you didn't come into it as it being your day to day. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah. Yeah. And I think, you know, you mentioned self publishing and I think there was a crossroads at one point when I thought everybody's dream is that they submit their manuscript and a publisher says, Oh, we'd love to publish this. We'll give you $30,000 to finish the book and then we'll sell it for you. And You know, the landscape has changed and I think looking at what a publisher does and having talked to a few publishers and actually sent an excerpt to a literary agent early on and got some great feedback from him. But what a publisher does, by and large, is that they seek out a printer, they hook you up with an editor, a proofreader, a graphic designer to handle the cover design, look into distribution and marketing. And when I looked at all of those elements, I had already kind of put enough of that in motion that I thought, well, I'm, I'm not only an author, but at this point I'm, I'm kind of being a publisher anyway, because I've already looked into printing locally and distribution through Amazon. And I have a graphic designer signed up to, to work on the cover design and the type setting. And I know a good editor and I've got a pretty good reach on social media and other avenues for, for marketing the book. So I just decided at that point, this is the path I'm going to take. You know, now that we're nearing the launch, well, as of today, um, officially that aspect of it has become as full-time a job, if not more arduous and, and time-consuming than the writing itself, which I'm not complaining about. I think it's been wonderful and a good learning experience, but I had no idea. Um, but you know, you can, you can always learn to do something new, whether it's wiring lights on a Jeep or writing a novel or whatever it is. |
| James Stacey | Yeah. And did you find that in the process of learning to do all of this, it's going to, it's, it's maybe changed the way that your approach, you, you might approach normal work writing. Uh, like does after doing a whole book, does having a short term assignment to turn out 2,500 words feel kind of, uh, uh, like a lighter lift than it might've previously. |
| Jason Heaton | I actually have found that as I was writing other stuff while working on the novel, it was such a different kind of part of the brain to write nonfiction. Um, it almost made it easier, not because it's less words, but, you know, inventing something out of thin air with a character who's make believe and creating dialogue, et cetera, is there's so much more kind of mental space that doesn't even require typing or, you know, hands on the keyboard as it does just like, you know, unlocking this puzzle in your brain. And I think nonfiction almost became this refreshing, like, okay, I can look at this watch on my wrist and like write about it. And it was like kind of this, wonderful relief, um, sort of a different type of different muscles being used, I guess. |
| James Stacey | Okay. And then, uh, you'd mentioned, you know, the, the fiction versus nonfiction thing in, in my very limited experience, um, all of it being terrible in terms of the output in attempting fiction. |
| Unknown | Yeah. |
| James Stacey | I always found the dialogue to be impressively difficult and it's not so much that it's, it's super hard to make a character sound cool or, or cliche or whatever you're trying to find. |
| Unknown | Mm. |
| James Stacey | But I do think it's really difficult to have an interesting character that occasionally has really fantastic dialogue that also happens to be a normal human being that has normal dialogue. |
| Unknown | Yeah. |
| James Stacey | You know, like we know the 10 famous lines from James Bond, but he only says those once a movie and there's a lot of dialogue in all of those. Right. And it's the same in a movie, in a book, right? Or a screenplay or whatever. You know, dialogue seems to me, especially when you don't write any dialogue when you're writing about watches or anything really other than than these sorts of scenarios. Um, how did, did you find that to be, uh, uh, an, an unprecedented, like a new challenge when it, when it came to, uh, putting the story together? |
| Jason Heaton | Very much. So I, it was writing dialogue was probably my biggest challenge, my biggest sort of, I wouldn't call it a weakness, but blind spot for me. I just, I'd never done it before. Um, other than my early feeble attempt at writing a novel. And, and I think it's so important. It's really what separates good fiction from, from just sort of average or from even from nonfiction is, you have to, you know, show it's that show versus tell you have to show your reader what's going on or, or show your reader, um, what this character is like through dialogue rather than just description. Description was always my fallback. It was always the, what I always considered my strength as good descriptive writing is to be able to describe what a shipwreck looks like or, you know, how a watch feels on the wrist or how it even makes me feel. Mm. in a very first person way, but to suddenly have two characters where it's like, okay, I remember my editor, Chris Wright, who did such a wonderful job on this books, you know, telling me in feedback saying, you know, okay, I'm not getting the sense of the relationship between these two characters. Like you need to insert more dialogue that shows me how they relate to each other and shows me the warmth and their history together and why they're good friends and why this would be so devastating if one of them dies through just early conversation. And he's like, it doesn't have to be, really overly special or profound. It just needs to be genuine. And even one of his tips was, how do you feel? What does it look like when, um, how would you feel if so-and-so died? Or what do you feel if, you know, your pressure gauge shows that you're almost out of air or whatever, you know, like describe that or, you know, speak that out. And that was, that was really helpful. So hopefully I, hopefully I nailed it. There's certainly room for improvement. And I think some characters in the book, lend themselves better to, to good dialogue than others. So we'll, we'll see. I can't wait for, for feedback and see what people think. |
| James Stacey | Yeah. And then I think that's fair. And, and I, it's definitely gotta be something that just you, you, you try and you take a pass at it and you refine it and you refine it. And someone tells you it sounds very unrealistic and you refine it again. Yeah. Um, you know, it, I think the temptation would be to have everybody all that, especially in a thriller, especially in, in, in something like this would just, the temptation would just be to have everyone speak like it's a, uh, the third act of a Tarantino film. you know, a lot of exposing, a lot of expounding, a lot of, you know, several syllable words, a lot of fun pronunciations, a lot of chew in the scenery. And I don't, you know, I think that would be why I probably shouldn't be assigned to write a book at any point. The other thing that comes to my mind is, you know, dealing with a thriller, your character, you know, will be in Cussler or Bond style, capers and scenarios, I assume. And in doing that, did you find that there were avenues of your experience that meant that you didn't really have the background to inform some of these things? If he's going and jumping into his Land Rover to drive across some off-road trail to then record a really fantastic podcast with a devilishly handsome co-host, Um, I feel like you could write that super well, but how did you approach things that maybe you didn't know? You know, there's, there's some commercial diving in here, which obviously you do a lot of diving, but you're not a commercial diver. |
| Unknown | Yeah. |
| James Stacey | And, and I'm assuming there's some gunplay, maybe, maybe some other stuff. How did you approach trying to make that feel appropriate and, um, and, and accurate? |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah. I mean, it was, it was a challenge, uh, on a couple of levels for one thing, even geography was, was an early challenge. You know, I had gotten, I had heard Listen to some advice from some well-known authors, um, through that masterclass program. There are a few thriller writers that have masterclass sessions where they teach you how to write a thriller. And I watched a few of those and some were better than others. But, um, one thing they all kind of say is go to the locations. If you can, that you're writing about and pace out, you know, how long it takes to run across that town square or in a drive from a to B so that it seems realistic in the book. Well, you know, this book is set in, to a certain degree in London, a little bit in Scotland. There's some even in Portugal and then, you know, Michigan and Sri Lanka and some places I've been, some places I hadn't and I couldn't travel. I mean, that was my big plan for last year was to go to, we were going to go to the UK for vacation and I was going to do some research and then go to Sri Lanka and couldn't do that because of the pandemic. And so I had to resort a lot to both, you know, Google maps and street view and that sort of thing in many cases, but also leaning on subject matter experts, people that, uh, lived in these places and had done some of these things that are in the book. Like you mentioned the, the saturation diving that I talk about and it's, uh, uh, that is a very daunting subject. It's a very technical, very specific type of work and type of diving that I'm not as familiar with other than writing about helium escape valves for Hodinke or for a watch review. Um, so I leaned on a couple of subject matter experts in that case, one of whom was, uh, Paul Scurfield, our buddy from one of our earlier episodes who owns Skirf, a watch company and as an active professional diver, uh, out of the UK. And Paul reviewed a few chapters early on in the writing of the book and gave me some tremendous feedback about what, what makes sense, what works, what sounds utterly absurd, what something might look like. Um, and then later on, after I actually completed the book and I had it with my editor, I sent a whole draft of it to another friend of mine, Jason Vander skiff, who used to own a company that provided diving equipment to the offshore industry and was a commercial diver himself back in the day. And he reviewed it and gave me some good feedback and some images to look at and tips and that sort of thing. And, um, there's a bit of a sort of geopolitical religious political conflict in the book that, that, you know, involved certain, uh, ethnic and religious groups in Sri Lanka that, you know, having been there, I know a little bit about, but I certainly wasn't an expert. So I, pinged another friend of mine, Milo Kumaratunga, and he looked at it as well and gave me some feedback. And so, you know, reaching out to some of these people was just tremendously helpful. And, you know, I shout them out in the acknowledgments of the book at the back, but, you know, I just can't thank them enough for the help. I think, you know, subject matter experts are just so valuable. That and a good editor is just something I would never skip. |
| James Stacey | Yeah. With this sort of a thing, right? With this, with the, with a book of this type, it really, it can take something of a village. Obviously you're the, you're the mayor here, but you had to bring all those people kind of into one place and make sure the timelines worked out on and getting the feedback and the stuff. And that's, that's always something that I, I mean, I find that can be like a challenge writing a 4,000 word reference points on a watch. |
| Unknown | Yeah. |
| James Stacey | It's just, just getting the people to fill in the blanks in the conventional wisdom. Right. You know, everybody knows when you, you know, when you, When you're underwater, you need an air supply. And if you're in commercial diving, then maybe it's a hard hat. And there's some entry level stuff that is pretty easy to cover. But as soon as you want to take it one layer further, or to the extent where those layers add a lot of interest, the detail adds specificity, which adds interest. I think it's impressive that you're able to pull those folks together and get that kind of going. I want to get to our reading. We have an excerpt of the book coming up, which is going to be super fun. But before we get to that, I think to kind of close out this little Q&A, I almost guarantee that if you consider the size of the audience, there's a few other people who either have a book on their hard drive, 80% done and needs the editor and the fact checker and the rest of it, or there's people who have the first page. My guess is there's dozens who started the page, named the book, named the first character, maybe even have a little bit of a plot. How do you, how do you tell people to get from that to some sort of a daily practice that will bring the book to a close at some point? |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah. I mean, I'd love to, I'd love to be able to tell people to, you know, a certain discipline to follow. I can't help as much with that because I've, I'm such a bad, I'm so bad at self discipline. Like, you know, I read about some of these authors that every morning at four o'clock I would get up before breakfast and I would write for three hours. Then I would go to work and I would do this. I, That's not me. But what I can say is, um, what helped me was to treat each chapter as a scene. So whether, you know, you're thinking about it in terms of a stage play or a movie or whatever, with a thriller, especially, I don't know about other types of fiction, but with a thriller, the object is to keep the pace fast and to keep the reader wanting to move from one chapter to the next. So they don't want to go to sleep at night. They don't want to turn off the light at two o'clock and set the book down and say, I'll come back to it tomorrow. You want them to want to turn the page and at least read the first sentence of the next chapter so they know what happens. Um, so in that way, each chapter becomes a scene and the curtain goes down at the end of that chapter and the person has done the dive, uh, you know, shot the villain, you know, maybe they're trapped in this cave or something and you want to see how that, how it ends. But that chapter has to be a scene. I also think the thing that I, didn't do until a little bit too late in this was to do that plot outline. I think it would be really helpful to do a rough timeline, like literally draw out a timeline on a big sheet of paper and put your markers of what happens when, so that then you can relate back to that as you're writing. And maybe then you can slot in those different scenes along that timeline and pretty soon it all kind of gels and comes together. I mentioned the masterclass. If I'm not pitching for masterclass, I think some of them are not great, The one that was really helpful was, was Dan Brown's masterclass on writing a thriller. And Dan Brown who wrote Da Vinci code is not a favorite author of mine. I've never read anything by him actually, but he, he was a teacher before he became a bestselling author. And so he's very good at it. And he, he had some really good practical advice that, that I found very helpful. And then the last thing I would say is, and this is not anything new that I'm coming up with here, but never skip the edit. I had Chris Wright, former Gear Patrol guy, edit this for me. It took him a month, and I paid him for it, and he did just a fantastic job. I owe so much of the quality of the book to Chris's work, and it just makes such a big difference. If you can, that's one thing not to skip, is editing. |
| James Stacey | All right. Yeah. So good resource there with the, with the masterclass and, uh, and to find a good editor and maybe Chris is available for your book. I'm sure he'd at least entertain. Uh, he's a very, very talented guy with a great background in this to, uh, to inform a book such as this. So that's cool. Yeah. Um, all right. I think it's time for that excerpt, which I'm pretty pumped about. And any setup needed for this? Yeah, a little bit. So this comes from a talk show host. Do you want to tell us about the clip coming up? |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah, I love it. I feel like a celebrity now. So this is an excerpt. It's not a full chapter, but it's from the chapter in the book called the Taprobane. And the Taprobane is the name of a research vessel that belongs to the Ministry of Culture, History and Archaeology, a fictional Sri Lankan agency for which one of my main characters named Upali Karuna works. And Upali is a friend of the protagonist of the story. And Upali is another underwater archaeologist. Um, and he is set off, setting out on the Tapper Bain on this research vessel with a small crew. And they're going out to find what they think is a new shipwreck off the East coast of Sri Lanka, based on, um, reports from a fisherman who had snagged his nets on something underwater. So they're going to go out and, and drop a sonar side scan sonar device, uh, over the side and see if they can find this shipwreck and, and what they find is, um, is not what they expect. I'll kind of leave it there. Shipwreck hunting has a romantic sound to it, largely thanks to tales of Caribbean treasure hunts and Clive Cussler novels. But in reality, it is stupefyingly boring. The first step is to identify anomalies on the ocean floor, those features that don't appear to be naturally occurring objects such as rocks, coral heads, or schools of fish. This is done by dragging a side-scan sonar device behind the boat in a systematic pattern, a process known as mowing the lawn, and is just about as exciting as walking up and down a suburban backyard. The sonar device, known as a towfish, is shaped like a torpedo with a cylindrical body and stabilizing fins at its back end. As it moves through the water, the towfish sends audio pulses into the depths, which bounce back off the seabed. This paints a sort of electronic picture of the terrain on a laptop screen on the boat. Man-made objects, usually shipwrecks or pieces of debris, are recognizable by their more geometric shapes on the screen. Right angles and straight lines rarely occur in nature. These anomalies are marked with GPS coordinates to be investigated more thoroughly later with the ROV. A day spent mowing the lawn under the tropical sun watching a computer monitor for anomalies is only tolerable with the promise of actually finding something, which rarely happens. A few weeks earlier, a fisherman had snagged his line on what he assumed was a rock ledge and pulled up a faded orange life ring with some indistinguishable writing on it. A shipwreck? That would explain the good fishing. Fish tended to congregate around wrecks for their relative shelter on barren seafloors. But there were no known wrecks in this area. Word got back through the fish market gossip on up to a local politician who alerted the naval base in Trincomalee. The Navy didn't have time to go on wreck hunts, so it passed the message on to the offices of MOCA, the Ministry of Culture, History, and Archaeology in Colombo. And that's how Pali Karuna found himself slowly motoring up the coast on the Tapper Bain on this cool morning. After an hour and a half of mowing the lawn, the MOCA team decided to investigate a promising anomaly from the sonar scans. a long shadow on the slope of a deep ocean trench that slashes in from the continental shelf towards Batticaloa. Here, the sea deepens from 150 feet to over 300 quickly, and then drops over a precipice into 2,000 feet of dark water. We're here, Ranjith said, cutting the engine. Drop anchor now. Deepa, the intern, threw the anchor off the bow and stepped aside as the chain and heavy rope unspooled into the water. On the transom, the sonar man, Suresh, squatted over the ROV, a small robot about the size of an office copy machine, tethered to the boat by a long, thick umbilical for power and controls, and could drop into the depths, illuminate the darkness with a quiver of powerful lights, and capture what it saw with a high-definition camera. Despite his rather nautical job at MOCA, Suresh was not much for boats, and had never learned to swim. But he was an expert in underwater electronics like the ROV, having interned at Woods Hole in America, and working on the RV when it had discovered several important World War II wrecks in the Pacific a few years earlier. �She�s ready to splash,� Suresh said, giving one last tug on the cable connection as if to prove his point. He and Upali lifted the robot by its bottom skids and shuffled to the edge of the transom. �Bon voyage, little friend,� Suresh said as it splashed into the water and disappeared below the surface. Upali and Suresh settled in at the computer monitor inside the forward cabin. The screen showed a direct feed from the camera on the front of the ROV as it descended through 300 feet of ocean. Darkness, with the occasional cloud of drifting particulate reflected in the craft's 10,000 lumen floodlights. Deepa hovered over their shoulders. This was her first field work as a MOCA intern, and she was excited at the prospect of actually finding something. Ranjith sat on the transom, smoking. We should have hit bottom by now, eh? Upali said The ROV's depth gauge showed 357 feet. Well, according to the charts, we're literally on the edge of the drop-off, so if we overshot by even a few feet, we'd be over the side in very deep water, Suresh said. Let me alter the heading a bit and bring her back up a ways. He pulled on the joystick delicately with his fingertips. The depth reading changed, despite the continuous blackness on screen. 342. 337. Whoa, what's that? Deepa's finger darted out, poking the monitor. They all leaned in. The video feed clearly showed a twisted procession of railing stanchions atop a coral-encrusted slab of steel. The ROV had come up almost beneath it. Suresh cursed and quickly maneuvered to avoid entangling the umbilical cable. Must be the bow, Upali thought. Follow that railing, Upali said. To the right, must be aft. Suresh didn't answer, but the view on the monitor with its wide-angle lens zoomed along the upper hull of the ship, encrusted with hard and soft corals and the occasional waving sea fan. Something unmistakable. A cannon. We've got ourselves a warship. Upali leaned back and smiled. I'd bet a round of beers that this is the vampire. We got very lucky, said Suresh, not taking his eyes from the screen. She's literally hanging over a cliff. A few more feet to the north and this wreck would be in 2,000 feet of water. A little beyond your diving depth, eh machan? Upali elbowed him in the ribs and laughed. For the next several hours they scoured the wreck with the ROV, methodically working from forward to aft, breaking for lunch and later, some tea. By late afternoon, they still hadn't found any evidence that positively identified this ship as the Vampire, but Upali was sure that it was. The old war records and British admiralty charts showed no other shipwrecks in this area, and judging from its size and armaments, it was clearly a destroyer. To know for sure, Upali would compare the footage from the ROV to the photos and engineering drawings he had of the Vampire back at the Deep Blue. He was ready to call it a day. They'd be back out tomorrow with more definitive surveying goals, Upali pulled out his phone and dashed off a cryptic message. Think we've found Dracula. He smiled. Tusker would be so jealous. Hey, come look at this, Suresh called from the monitor. Upali yawned and came back inside. There's a perfectly rectangular hole in the hull here. There's no sea life growing around it either. Almost looks… fresh. There, on the monitor, was a wide maw into the ship's hold, outlined in a black jagged rectangle. It couldn't be from a torpedo or explosion of any kind. Maybe a hatch that came free when she sank? Suresh mused. No, not there. That's below the waterline. I've never seen anything like that, Upali replied. Can you get inside there safely? Shouldn't be too hard, Suresh said, tweaking the joystick. The ROV responded. That hole is big enough for a car to drive through. Inside was a jumble of debris covered in seven decades of silt, unrecognizable. Upali gasped aloud. What a treasure trove for an archaeologist, a time capsule unseen since World War II. Suddenly, a bright object appeared on the monitor. So out of place, it caused the two men to jump. It was yellow, spherical, and reflected back the white light of the ROV lamps. As Suresh moved the craft in closer, and Pali leaned in and squinted, he could make out the writing. He mouthed the words, Kirby Morgan. It's a dive helmet, he shouted, recognizing the famous maker of commercial diving gear. This was a saturation diver's helmet, no question, and not the kind used for salvaging wrecks long ago. No, this was the kind of helmet seen on modern commercial divers, welding oil pipeline and laying cable in the North Sea, the Gulf of Mexico, or Batacaloa Harbor. Upali's skin went cold. The depth charge, that explained the fresh hole in the hull. The doused running lights, the nighttime anchorage. Were they cutting up the vampire for her higher carbon steel, which would fetch millions on the market? But that sort of clandestine poaching was typically done by ill-outfitted amateurs in shallower waters. Not a commercial diving company in over 300 feet of water. He'd have to report this to the police. No, the Sri Lankan Navy. All right, shut her down, he said. Let's get back. We may have gotten into something a little deeper than our old shipwreck. |
| James Stacey | All right, so there you have it. An excerpt from one of the chapters of Depth Charge. Also, a fun little Easter egg that has come out of the creation of this story, and we'll get into it in just a moment, is that the book has a score. Jason, how did you end up scoring a book? |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah, it seems a little bit like putting the cart before the horse to have a score. But, you know, I've got this great friend locally here. I met him through the Watch community many years ago, and he's a really talented composer and music producer. His name is Oren Chan. And Orin is, uh, he kind of helped put together a local band called Lady Lark here. And a few years ago, Ghoshani had shot some cover art for one of their EPs. And we kind of grew closer with Orin and he's been following my progress for a while now. And when he saw a bit of an excerpt from DepthCharge or a bit of an explanation and the synopsis and some of the cover art, he was inspired. And he said he got up one day and then in like an hour, he had crafted this like three or four minute long theme song for DepthCharge without even having read it. And it really nails it. It has that bit of a throwback, thriller sound to it. Could be from a Bond film or any sort of 60s, 70s, late Hitchcock, something along those lines. |
| James Stacey | I love it. I love it. |
| Jason Heaton | And it works really well. And so, you know, he sent me over this full length audio file and then a bunch of shorter clips to be used for this and that. And it just felt You know, it's funny, one thing I remember hearing was that one thing that can really inspire you, and this is another tip I guess for would-be authors, is if you can, and you can craft a bit of a crude cover for your book with your name and the title and maybe a bit of art, wrap it around a book and set it on your desk with your name on it and the title of the book, and it makes it feel real, you know, and having the score was kind of similar. It was something that I would listen to occasionally while I was, I was editing the book and it was kind of inspiring. He was like, okay, I can kind of get into this and you can, then your mind starts to bubble up into, you know, delusions of grandeur or hopes and dreams of, you know, Oh, there could be a movie or let's use this for the audio book or let's, you know, whatever. And that was the kind of the case with the score. Um, so it's fun and, and you know, we've played some here on the show and I think, you know, I've got, a link on the depthchargenovel.com website where you can listen to the whole score on its own page there. But, uh, yeah, that was fun. And then along those lines, you know, kind of having this cover with your name on it. Um, the guy who helped me design the cover of the book and did all the typesetting, Paul Andrews, he, he, he mocked up a cover of the book, uh, that actually two different covers of the book. One that said, uh, the New York times bestseller across the top. And then he did another version that said, um, soon to be a major motion picture. And I was like, you know, you print that out, you put it on your desk or you frame it, or you just, you look at it occasionally. And it's like, yeah, you know, you start to dream a little bit. It makes you feel a little more authorly, um, to, to see your name on that, even though you're self publishing a book at your dining room table, you know, well, soon, soon to be a blockbuster podcast. |
| James Stacey | Yes. Oh yeah. Yeah. 43. That's great though. And, and you also, you went beyond, it wasn't just the, the, I love how many people kind of came together to make this all kind of come together with the score and the art. And then of course all the background work and the editing and you're nearly two years into it. Did you make anything else to go alongside it? Because I saw some stuff in the, in the kind of interim that you were excited about and I'm not sure if it, if it's going to be something you're releasing or talking about. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah. So, um, you know, there, there's a fictional dive resort in the book called the deep blue and, uh, I've had this vision in my mind of, you know, what would, what would you buy? What would you get from that place? You know, a lot of these dive resorts all over the world, you know, you buy a cheap t-shirt there with their logo on it that you wear back home and remember the trip. Paul Andrews, who designed the cover did such a great job on that and did the typesetting for me. You know, we were talking and he mocked up a few logos, one of which was for the deep blue. And I made just a handful of t-shirts just for fun in a great kind of light blue colorway. It feels very tropical. And, uh, so I, I did a couple of t-shirts. I did some stickers with that logo. And, and then we also did the same thing for, um, the, the, the bad guys ship in the book, which is called the dive support vessel depth charge or the DSV depth charge. And so he, he created a logo for the depth charge, which I think is just awesome. It's kind of this two color logo with a sort of a stylized pitchfork or trident on it. And you could envision that on the back of the crew, you know, the bad guys, the henchman's t-shirt or something, or his shirt that he wears on deck. And so we did t-shirts and we did some stickers. I'm not sure that, you know, t-shirts will ultimately be for sale. I think I've heard people say, I'd love to get one, but I kind of that cart before the horse thing, I want to make sure the book gets out there and as well received before I start flooding the market with, with t-shirts. But, uh, you know, you talk about it, you talk about Easter eggs. And I think as people are getting those preordered signed copies, I am, including two stickers with each signed copy. So if you, if you order the signed copies, those won't be available with the, uh, with the non-signed copies that you get from Amazon and other places. But, uh, yeah. So if you, if you want the stickers, you got to buy the signed copy. That's, that's what I'm. |
| James Stacey | That's super fun. I also, you know, the, the, the cover design is fascinating because when I first saw it and really up until you told me what it actually is, as of yesterday, I saw it as a vertical relief of like a wall dive. |
| Unknown | Yeah. |
| James Stacey | Yeah. Right. Cause there's a diver there up in the corner and there's kind of a reticle, which I figured is maybe where they were diving for a reference to a map. Yeah. Yeah. Um, but then fill us in on what it actually is. Cause it's, it's cooler than that. Yeah. |
| Jason Heaton | Um, so the cover is, uh, it's actually the East coast of Sri Lanka. So it's the coastline. with all of its little bays and inlets and promontories and things like that, that are on the East coast of Sri Lanka. And then as, as the cover wraps around to the back, because Sri Lanka is an Island, um, the back cover is the West coast, um, where I've got the back cover blurb. And so the, the Island actually wraps around the book. Um, but like you said, it, it looks like a wall dive that kind of gets darker as it gets deeper with sort of an X marks the spot for a certain, certain element of the plot that, uh, is fairly key to the story. So. |
| James Stacey | It'd be great to see that kind of translated into a period correct movie thriller poster. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe if you hit a certain sales goal, right. You could initiate the creation of a, of a nice piece of wall art. And that'd be, that'd also be fun to have signed as well. I think. Oh, I think it'd be awesome. I'd love to do that. Yeah. Yeah. Super fun. Well, yeah, I think, I think that's, that kind of answers a lot of my questions except for kind of the glaring one. Um, if somebody wants the book, what are their options? Cause they have, as of what, today or tomorrow, they have several. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah. So, um, this episode has gone live on Thursday, the 22nd. And as of today, the full pre-order for signed copies is now open on depth charge, novel.com slash shop. So if you go to that link, you can order a signed copy, which I will be shipping from here in Minneapolis after I sign it with the two stickers. Um, to your home anywhere in the world via FedEx. I've gotten negotiated rates with FedEx, but I will warn you that the, uh, the, especially the international shipping, uh, is a bit expensive when it comes to, um, to sending off the books. But if, if you want a signed copy, that's how to get it. And, um, fortunately there are alternatives for people that don't want to spend that much. Um, and that would be to buy it via Amazon. And I noticed it's now up on barnesandnoble.com and I think Google books as well for pre-order. So the book, officially will be shipped and officially kind of available and published on the 29th, but it's open to be pre-ordered as of today on depth charge, novel.com slash shop, or you can find it on Amazon, Barnes and Noble or on Google books, all the links in the show notes, all the links will be in the show notes. And yeah, uh, if the Kindle version is not live as of next week, which it should be, um, there will be very soon. So there will be an ebook version of it as well. |
| James Stacey | And hopefully an audio book in the future. And what are we looking at? Maybe 150 bucks for a signed copy, a hundred bucks for the paperback. How much? |
| Jason Heaton | All right. So we're looking at $14.99 for signed copy or unsigned. So wherever you're buying it, it's going to be $14.99. If you get the signed copy, you get it from me and you've got to pay shipping. But if you get it from Amazon or Barnes and Noble, whatever they charge for getting it to you, but it won't be signed. So. And then the Kindle version is going to come in right at, I'm going to go $3.99 for that. Oh, killer. Good value if you got a Kindle. Yeah. Yeah. So for people who just want to read on your phone, consume books electronically, that's the way that's going to go. |
| James Stacey | So, yeah, when I was, when I used to spend more time on the New York subway, I really enjoyed having the app on my phone. I could read it because I think the Kindle is a fine device. It's one of those devices I forget to keep charged. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I do love the idea. And then, you know, there's no paper, there's no waiting for the shipping, et cetera. And if you want, especially if it's a book, like I kept a Shadow Divers, I kept a Eiger Dreams. Another one I love, especially for its detail, Black Hawk Down. I had a couple of these just on my phone that I could read a little bits of, you know, when you had 30 minutes where the phone wasn't even gonna be online, you know, trying to go into the water or something like that. That's awesome for four bucks too. Dang. I don't think you're charging quite enough. I liked my price structure. Seems really fair. 150. Okay. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. After it becomes a major motion picture. Yeah. |
| James Stacey | Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. The, the stickers, those little stickers, the, the New York times one, the bestseller, the Oprah's book club, which this will certainly get, that's a foregone conclusion. Oh, I'm sure. Um, yeah, I've been campaigning for years where Oprah and I are tight. Um, but yeah, so the, I think this is awesome. That's how you can get the book. Everything will be in the show notes and obviously, uh, Jason, if anything were to change, is the best news source your personal Instagram or the DepthCharge Instagram or either? |
| Jason Heaton | You could go to either. I mean, mine has a bigger following. I'm more active on it. So at Jason Heaton, but you can certainly go to at DepthCharge underscore novel on Instagram and find, find info and kind of fun photos throughout the launch there as well. But stay tuned to, to my Instagram. And then one more thing is a week from today, actually on the on the 29th, at 4 p.m. Central Time. I'm hosting a little Instagram Live, kind of a 30-minute little launch event to kind of chat more about the book, kind of similar to what we're doing here, but it's going to be with our friend Mike Pearson. He's going to help kind of moderate some questions and talk a little bit about the launch of the book. So please tune in for that. That'll be 4 p.m. next Thursday, the 29th on the official kind of publication date. |
| James Stacey | That's awesome. One of the all-time best hype men. Exactly. I mean, Mike's so great. |
| Jason Heaton | I'm so excited. |
| James Stacey | Mike's the best for sure. That's that'll be great. I'll, I'll definitely be in the audience and I hope everyone listening now. Yeah. Uh, that's what five ET. Yeah. |
| Jason Heaton | Five Eastern time central Mike and herbal central. So we're, we're going to bias towards the central time, but yeah, definitely. I think it's a, I'm not sure what that is. GMT, but Google will help you with that. |
| James Stacey | Yeah. I don't know if it's five, then it's 11 or maybe 10. I don't know. I should know. I don't know. How about some final notes? |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah, let's do it. I can jump in first. Mine is actually another book. Uh, here's a book to get you through until you buy depth charge and read it. Um, great nonfiction piece, uh, by a English author named Ed Caesar. Um, and I became aware of this through one of my favorite podcasts called the adventure podcast. And, um, Ed's a longtime writer for the New Yorker and some other publications. And this book is called the moth and the mountain. And it's about a, eccentric adventurer in the 1930s who had served in World War I and was a bit at loose ends, um, but was inspired by some of the 1920s Everest expeditions, um, that the British had put on and kind of come close, but failed. And, and he got it in his head that he wanted to be the first person to summit Mount Everest. And even though he had no, no mountaineering experience, um, and the other complication was he had to get to from England, he had to get to, Mount Everest to climb it. And his method of doing that, or his plan was to fly there. Now we're talking 1930s. So early days of flight. Uh, the other complication was in addition to not being a mountaineer, he was not a pilot. He had no idea how to fly. So he took flying lessons before he took flying lessons. He bought a plane, he bought a tiger moth, which is the moth in the title, which is a wooden fabric, uh, biplane. And he took flying lessons and within, two or three months of intensive lessons, uh, during which his, his flying instructor discouraged him adamantly not to undertake this crazy mission. He, he learned enough to, to fly and he flew all the way to Darjeeling India, which was the, then at that time, part of the British empire and was the jumping off point for Everest expeditions and set off to climb Everest. And, uh, you know, a bit of a tragic story. He obviously didn't make it as we know, cause, uh, he wasn't the first to climb it, but, You know, one of those interesting stories about, you know, I mean, it takes eccentric people, right. To do, do a lot of these things that, that we're so fascinated with. And I think he, if there's one lesson that's, you know, this guy's a person who had a dream and wouldn't let anything stand in his way to, to accomplish it. So, um, good read. |
| James Stacey | While it came with its costs as that normally, as it usually does at some level, you do have to kind of admire the guy's general level of how hard can it be attitude. I mean, come on, you know, All right. Mountain. It's real far away. All right. Well, I don't want to drive. That's going to take too long. Yeah. Let me get a plane. All right. Well, you're going to have to get a pilot's license first. I got time for that. Sure. |
| Jason Heaton | And for, for, for exercise or for, for training, I think he was walking around the airfield in his hobnail boots, carrying his backpack. And he actually learned how to fly wearing his hobnail boots because he had limited room in the plane to take all of his gear. So he wanted to wear as much of his climbing gear while he was flying. So he wouldn't have to, Pack extra stuff. And so he would, you know, work the, the rudder, you know, the pedals in the plane with his hobnail boots on. I mean, just interesting stuff. Great, great read. Really crazy. |
| James Stacey | Yeah. Well, great tip. Um, mine's a, mine's a different thing, but not, not that far outside of what we like to talk about. I, you know, I, I, Jason, I both have a really strong love of making photography more about the image than the gear as much as you possibly can. And this is a neat product. Unfortunately, it's entirely pre-ordered. I thought that I had an order in and I've only registered my interest. It must've been very popular. And I was behind the gun on this, but it is called the Paper Shoot Camera. Fascinating. It's about $120. And the idea is that it's similar level of quality to what you'd get from your average, maybe above average cell phone in terms of image quality, but it's not about image quality. It's kind of about simplicity and getting all of the gear out of the way and just taking photos. So it's this little kind of module that you then wrap in a case of some sort and then the case kind of threads in with hardware. So it kind of wraps around like a book cover. |
| Unknown | Yeah. |
| James Stacey | And it has a hole in it that the lens goes through. There's a few lens modifiers. There's like a wide angle and a telephoto. You can check those out on their site if you want. But at its base, it's a 13 megapixel digital camera with a single button operation and no screen. So the idea is that you kind of, there's a memory card that goes into the module. You use it, you take pictures as you would with a disposable camera or a film camera. And, um, and then when you get home, you download the images and kind of see what you got. And normally I'd kind of roll my eyes at this, but I've seen some of the images that it comes with and they're perfectly acceptable and kind of lovable in that low contrast, not quite like, um, Lomo, photography or pinhole photography. It's more accurate than that. It's more modern than that in terms of the outcome. But it is a fairly simple sensor. I'm impressed by it. I think it's a neat program. And at $120, you know, I've talked a lot about these things that allow us to get younger people into these sort of fascination-based hobbies. Yeah. And I think that could be a resin-cased watch that you can't replace the battery of as long as it sparks joy. And I think in some way it can also be one of these cameras where you're, you're able to introduce somebody to the idea of taking photos and being thoughtful about the photos that they take, but it's kind of, they're unburdened by both the cost. And then even if you compare it to film cameras, this is $120 for one of these is where they start. If you go to film, it's not going to take you long to spend $120 in stock and development. Yeah. So if your goal is really just to kind of get out there and experience cameras and maybe not always do it with your cell phone, I think this is a nice kind of pure, simple way of doing it. And I think for $120, I absolutely want one. They've got one that looks like a cassette deck. They've got another that's clear, like the Game Boy I always wanted when I was a kid. I like the cork one. |
| Jason Heaton | They're really cool. Pardon? I like the cork one. I want the cork one. |
| James Stacey | The cork one's really cool. Yeah. So they're basically these wrappers that are kind of like the wrapper you might put on a moleskin notebook. Right? If you imagine like that and they kind of slide over and then it's just one button. A button turns it on, you tap it again to take a picture and then you download them later. It says it's compatible with Wi-Fi SD cards. So if you wanted to, for whatever reason, make this more expensive than it needs to be, you could conceivably Wi-Fi these. Sure. Paper shoot camera photos to your phone. But otherwise, I think you're going to be, you know, connecting to some sort of a file system, a computer or similar using a USB cable. I think this is clever. I think it's the right price. Obviously, it's very popular. They're entirely sold out. You have to kind of get on a list at this point. And yeah, hopefully, I can get one and let my kids run around with it and use it. And the only thing that came to mind with these is what Jason brought up in the previous version of this recording, long gone, is whether or not they'll make a kind of heavy-duty or case, not necessarily one that would go underwater, but one with some IP67 so it could be dropped in a puddle or get rain on it or that sort of thing. It'll be interesting to see. where they kind of take it. But from the start, I think this is a good program. I think so too. |
| Jason Heaton | It's a, like you said, for a kid or just like as a little personal experiment to just not have a screen. Yeah. So you can just go out and just shoot. It's almost like shooting film, like, you know, where you don't know quite what you're getting, but then you get home and there's that element of surprise. Like, what did I take today? |
| James Stacey | You know, I was, I was thinking about it last night. Um, you don't have to be recorded. And then I was editing that stupid show. Um, And I thought the other thing, the other one where this might work is you, let's say, you know, obviously once we get through a proper round of vaccines and people start to travel again at some level, imagine you've got an 18 year old kid, they're finishing high school, they're doing a summer abroad. People are always worried about, you know, doing the hostile to hostile thing and getting stuff stolen. Right, right. And I think this would be dear enough that in many ways you could take two if you wanted to. You could charge this with a USB battery. Sorry, you don't have to charge it. You can just carry a handful of batteries. Yeah. It's clearly not going to use a ton of power. I think for that kind of use where what you want is a device that can take a decent picture of you and your friends and maybe some scenery. I think this could make an amazing travel camera for someone who doesn't want to carry a camera that might get stolen or that they have to then also carry another charger and other batteries and other accessories for. It gets all of that kind of out of the way and you could just kind of snap some picks. And I think where my mind goes is like, well, could you buy something as good as this for less than $120? Probably, but you'd be buying something a little more complicated, like a used older PowerShot or a Nikon or something like that. And then on the, on the other side, I don't, I don't know that you could get a more, a better solution in the film world for $120 and the 81 costs more than that. Yeah. An X 700 costs more than that. My X a cost about that. And they're, they're much more finicky and much more expensive things to deal with. This is very straightforward. So I'm hoping to get a chance to play with it. |
| Jason Heaton | You know, I mean, people will say, Oh, just take your phone, but this isn't about that. You know, this is, this is about kind of a, an interesting experiment. Um, something, you know, Introduce kids to photography. Um, something that probably slips in a pocket a little easier than anything else. And, um, I don't know, as I said, as I said in the long lost episode, uh, it's, uh, it's just fun to support people that are doing interesting projects like this. This is the, you know, this is the Morris Wilson moth in the mountain guy of, of cameras. You know, this is just somebody went out on a, on a bit of a whim here to, to kind of create something fun. So. |
| James Stacey | Yeah. Challenge is a little bit of the convention, but I think it'd be cool. I'll report back once I've got one and have had a chance to shoot it a bit. Um, but it looks pretty straightforward and, uh, and, and like a good time and who doesn't like another camera, especially when it's not one you have to worry about hitting your credit card. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Well, I think that's the show. Jason, congratulations on seeing depth charge come to reality. I think this is a kind of a fun moment, um, for certainly for you, but obviously for anyone who cares about you or has followed, uh, followed what you're up to. Um, I'm excited to see how it goes. I'm really excited to get my copy. I hope it's here so that when I'm done creating this episode and hopefully I don't ruin this one as well. I can, I can crack into the book, um, with a, with a nice whiskey or something this evening. Oh yeah. |
| Jason Heaton | I appreciate your, uh, you're taking the time to, to kind of devote an episode to this. I think, uh, it's been fun to talk about and, uh, and I certainly hope this record, this editing process goes better than the last time or we'll be, we'll be talking about it again this evening. |
| James Stacey | And we'll do the whole thing on clubhouse live. Oh man, there you go. No, thank you. As always, thank you so much for listening. You can hit the show notes by Hodinkee.com or the feed for more details. And, of course, you can follow us on Instagram at Jason Heaton, at J.E. Stacey, and at TheGreyNado. If you have any questions for us, please write TheGreyNado at gmail.com. And please keep sending in your voice memos. We've got a ton of them. It's going to be a great Q&A episode. So get them in if you want them in. We're going to do that pretty soon. Please subscribe and review wherever you find your podcast. And music throughout is partly Siesta by JazzArf via the Free Music Archive. |
| Jason Heaton | And the theme music, the Depth Charge theme by Orin Chan. Nice. And we leave you with this quote from John Barth, which also happens to be the quote at the beginning of Depth Charge. You don't reach serendib, and that's the former name for Sri Lanka from which we get the word serendipity, by plotting a course for it. You have to set out in good faith for elsewhere and lose your bearings. |