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Behind the Scenes of Hidden Legends: A Conversation with Megan Linski and Alicia Rades
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Jan 1, 2025
#crazyfitnessguy #weeklymotivationwithcrazyfitnessguy #crazyfitnessguyhealthylivingpodcast #jimmyclare #PodcastInterview, #HiddenLegends, #WritingTips, #FantasyAuthors, #CreativeProcess, #StorytellingMagic, #AuthorCollaboration Join us for an exciting episode of the CrazyFitnessGuy Healthy Living Podcast, where we dive into the magical world of writing with two esteemed guests! USA Today bestselling authors Megan Linski and Alicia Rades grace us with their presence to discuss their enchanting series, Hidden Legends: Academy of Magical Creatures. Where To Watch?📺 Watch our show live on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitch or on our website at https://www.crazyfitnessguy.com/ About The Guest Megan Linski lives in Michigan. She is the author of more than sixty fantasy and paranormal novels which feature themes of friendship, community, and healthy romantic relationships. Alicia Rades is a USA Today bestselling author of young adult and new adult paranormal fiction. When she's not dreaming up magical stories, she's either binge-watching Netflix, meditating, or spending time with her family. Follow Guest: https://www.aliciaradesauthor.com/
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0:04
[Music] that has been listened to all over the [Music]
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world Listen to our podcast on all the major [Music]
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platforms tune in to listen and watch every
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week we cover everything that is healthy
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living we promote Healthy Living Through autistic
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eyes hosted by Jimmy CLA who was a motivational speaker and autism
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Advocate Jimmy has been featured in many Publications around the
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world this is the weekly motivation with crazy Fitness [Music]
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guy welcome to another episode C finy healthy podcast that's Rec motivation with czy fin guy uh today's two guests
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are two USA today's bestselling authors Megan Linsky and Alicia raids and I'm
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looking forward to talking to them because I've been reading their Academy of magical creatures book and I am so
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addicted to this the series uh let's just say I it's been a long time since
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I've read a series that has kept me up until like super late at night
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and yeah uh no wonder why I haven't been getting sleep because I keep on wondering I want
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to know what happens to the characters and it's it's literally torture when I go to
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bed it's like I need to know what happens and it's just not fair and then they leave on so many
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Cliffhangers but so let's welcome today's guest out and I've been like
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literally just counting down the days to get to meet these two and uh I I swear they're like at my top
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favorite authors of all time so here's Megan and
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Alicia hi so uh my first question for both of
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you uh uh well my first question for you is
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how with these books um why do you keep uh I'll just say why do you keep messing
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with the main group for a group of characters it's just so
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mean because it's fun there's no there's no story if the main character doesn't
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go through trials and tribulations and the best stories are where you watch the main character succeed at all costs so
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that's why we put our characters through what we put them through because we want people to know that you can be a hero no
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matter what you're going through what's your answer to that Alicia H I would just Echo what you said I mean there is
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no story if they're not going through something and learn something at the end because of
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it well so my next question for you guys are how did how did you come up with
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this amazing story and did you know it was always gonna be uh six books to the series or we did
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not um so when me and Alicia first got together and started to co-write we
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agreed to write a Trilogy of three short books and by the time we were about
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halfway through the fire prophecy which is the first book of The Academy of magical creature series we realized that
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these were not going to be short because the first half was the length of the
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book that we wanted to write originally so we decided that we needed to expand it to five books and then
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after that we decided that's not good enough either we need to go to five and or six sorry I have culia and I cannot
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like I don't do numbers so Alicia does the numbers for me but anyway we just kept on writing and it
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kept on getting more and more ideas and we just could not put it down and that's where we ended
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up well it's it's really impressive especially because I I can relate it's
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I I found for myself every time when I read another chapter in the book I can
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relate to literally all the characters at once and it's like I have my smart
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moments and then I have let's just say I have my Liam moments where I went
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through like last three weeks I was in a total Funk and I was like how I was like
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I really feel very close to Liam right now it's like I really just want to uh I was at the point of just like just
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everything away but then I was like what's the point of
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that yeah we all have our Liam moments I think everybody has that time where they get really depressed and down on
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themselves and they don't know how to continue forward or what to do but that's part of why we write what we do
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because we want to inspire people to keep going even when they're in their darkest moments and I think Alicia can testify to that yes 100% you're just
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taking all the words di out of my mouth I'm stealing everything I mean we are
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co-writers so we kind of work on the same wavelength anyway so yes and we're
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pretty much the same person and we have each other's thoughts all the time and that kind of thing so it's easy for us
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to coate together because we bounce off of each other all the time so my next question for you is how
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did you guys come up with the uh was one of the main one of the characters
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uh uh man doya because she's a she's just a pain in the butt and she reminds
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me of my 12th grade English teacher what book are you on I'm curious I'm on the
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fifth one oh what part of the fifth book are you at to play very well there uh I'm I say
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I'm in like 200 pages in at the moment okay you got big real yet uh
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oh but M doya I don't know think you need to take this question Alicia because I think that you came up with a
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lot of her character and backstory I don't really know how to answer that because I think she just came through
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naturally like there's not really anything I can pinpoint but I do remember there's a scene in the first
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book where she's really mean to Sophia and she's um in this story they have
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elemental power so Sophia is the main character with Firepower and she comes into this world not knowing anything
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about it and Madame doya is her teacher that's a CLE in front of her on the desk and is like light it she's like I don't
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know how to do this so she's really mean to her that was Megan's idea and I think from there I'm like okay I understand
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what this character is supposed to be because she is supposed to challenge Sophia and kind of be almost like this
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Duality for her where she's pushing her but also like Sophia does have the
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capabilities and everything so sounds exactly like my English
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teacher in 12th grade she's she she pushed me but I don't know why she
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pushed me so so much because I was getting straight A so Madame doya
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doesn't have to be as mean as she is and there are reasons behind that that you will learn in the later in this book
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that you're reading uh no one wants to spoil me
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anything more spoilers we don't do spoilers oh my
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goodness uh so my next question for you
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um why do you why are the why do you think the
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books have done so well and why is the characters are so
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relatable I think that's like a two-part question um I think our characters are relatable just because we try to make
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them as real as possible when I was writing Liam I really didn't want to put like any
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tropes or like personality traits on him that are typically in our genre which is
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fantasy I wanted him to be his own person and I wanted him to be really real about how he was feeling 100% of
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the time and I feel like we're like that with all of our characters with Jonah imagin and everybody who comes on scene
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and who is a part of our cast we want to make sure that they are real authentic people so our readers can relate to them
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because it's no fun relating to a superhero who can do all the this stuff and never has any problems and it's
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infallible it's just really it's kind of a boring story to be honest we want to tell stories about real people going
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through real problems even if they're in a magical setting so that's kind of our goal what do you think about that Alicia
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to add to that I think that a lot of our characters are kind of like pieces of us
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there are things that are unique to them and things that you know we sometimes do
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have to write outside of our experience because like I'm not a man I but we do
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write from a male point of view because the characters go back and forth in their perspective but there's a lot of
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Liam that comes from Megan because she is um a disabled author writing a
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disabled character and his disease is fictional but it is based on Megan's
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disease so in that way it's like some of our personal experience gets put into those characters even though if they're
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not directly um like us I don't know how to
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say that I think like to add on to that like I've shared this joke with Alicia all
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the time I'm like all of our characters are neurode Divergent because we're neur neurode Divergent they just like make
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neurode Divergent choices and it's really funny to see them interact in like a world that's against them but
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then they go out and they build a world that's suited for them and my personal
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like illness is common variable immune deficiency disorder which is abbreviated to cvid and it is a condition basically
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where you are born without an immune system so you have to get treated in order to generate the antibodies you
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need to survive so I put that experience into my books and I think it's really
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helpful for people to see the spectrum of disability because people think oh disability is just being in a wheelchair
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well no it's not there are all kinds of different disabilities out there and your experiences of them are going to
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vary based on who you are and what your world is like and to answer the second part of your
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question which is why these books have done so well I just think people really like our characters and they can relate
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to our characters because there's people out there who haven't experienced their
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story in a book and we get people all the time who are saying oh like I'm disabled or I have autism or I have this
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condition or I have this experience and nobody ever talks about it and nobody ever writes about it but you guys do so
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that's why I think people really like our stuff would agree Alicia I do agree and also I think we just really put our
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heart and soul into this series because we initially we kind of like we don't
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care how it sells let's just write what we want to write and so we didn't you
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know worry about what kind of tropes we were putting in we were picking the ones that we loved and the ones that spoke to
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us and then things that aren't necessarily tropey as well and I think that really shows through in our writing
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how much we really loved this series and writing these characters well I I
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definitely some there's I definitely can relate to Liam a lot especially not just
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uh but with his uh disability or because this time I got bullied a lot
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in U Middle School and elementary school and high school for eight years and uh I
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remember some people telling me that uh I'm a freak basically and I was like and
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I remember that part in the book where Liam overheard everybody saying that he
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they might as well just well just end it right then and there H because he's a freak and it's like these guys a bunch
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of cold harded tools it's like I just I was like it was like if I was him I was like I would just just walked in the
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room and say screw all of you I'm really sorry that you had to go
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through that that wasn't fair to you thank you um but you know to be
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honest because like I I like Liam it's like I wouldn't really have a story if
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it wasn't for those bullies and I wouldn't be where I am today without them so even though it stinks but I
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don't think any motivational speaker and and uh have a has a good story without
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some kind of extra challenges like the characters in the book I definitely think you're right go ahead Lea just
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gonna say I love that positive outlook on it and um Megan and I are really into
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like personal development and stuff like that so we always try to include that in our stories and try to find the good
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even in bad things well I also think that like
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successful people can sometimes be those people who are you know victims of bullying I was bullied all throughout
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elementary school middle school and you know high school I had my lunchbox and
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my stolen food eaten out of it you know I was you know called names and picked on you know after I got diagnosed I was
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told well your mother should have just aborted you if you were going to turn out like this I don't think it's unusual
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experience especially for people with disabilities or who have neurod Divergence to be told they shouldn't be here and they shouldn't exist
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because they don't have the right to exist but that's completely not true and that's a lie and in my opinion the
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people who have these kinds of challenges especially early on can sometimes grow up to be the most
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powerful people who make the most change because they've been through so much early on and they've learned how to struggle and how to pursue through
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it I definitely agree with that 100% there's uh there just some people who
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let just say they don't know how to treat others like
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they want to be treated as well and uh like I kind of see it time and time
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again in the book with like the like the elders and whatnot I was like everything
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that they done is like it's like Karma's gonna come around and bite them in the butt at some point or another I like why
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is this just starting to sound so familiar in this day and age it's like hm
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I think people who are like that who are the bullies of society either they haven't been through enough themselves
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to understand a perspective of somebody's struggle or they have been
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through it but they chose to go the opposite way and become bitter instead of better because when you go through
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things you only have two choices you can either Excel or you can basically wither and the people who wither become the
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bullies so my next question for you is how did you guys come up with all the
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twist and turns because it seems like every single chapter there's like uh like my uh my my e-reader like
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tells me like how much like is left in the chapter like how many minutes left in a chapter and it's like it seems like
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after let's say for instance like one chapter I think it said an hour left in
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the chapter it's probably based on my have fast I read or have uh or how many
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pages I read that day I don't know but anyway uh it seems like after that dur
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after the last bit of the chapter it's like you think you're going to know what happens and then you all of a sudden you
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just drop in it's like and this happens and I'm like how many twists and turns
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do you put in one book I'm gonna leave that question to Megan because it's usually her fault it
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is usually my fault because I'm evil I just I it it sounds bad but I really get entertained by putting characters
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through the worst circumstances and seeing how they're going to come out of them you know like I said I think some
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readers really like cozy stories where not much happens and it's really comfortable but I'm not that kind of reader and I'm not that kind of author I
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want to see my characters go through the worst of the worst and come out on top because it's like a victory for them and
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then it becomes like a victory for the reader too so I really like putting in all this crazy stuff that happens
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because it just amps the stakes up and makes things more interesting
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you know funny thing you say about that because like uh to be honest like I was in the midst
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of between uh a few different series and I was like looking for another book to
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read and then when I and then like I I don't always use the my Nook uh
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reading app on my uh tablet and everything and I uh I I stumbled across
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the fire prophecy and I was like this looks very interesting and I was and at
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the first few pages I got hooked because I was like only looking for like maybe a
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Booker like a book just to get me through it until another author of mine comes along to and it's like I'm only
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going to get the first book see what see if I like it or not and I'm
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the fifth book I'm like this wasn't supposed to happen that's kind of what happened when
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we wrote it too we were just gonna write three short
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books and the first book ended up being as long as the trilogy we wanted to write so it definitely it's like the
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story just took a hold of us and maybe that's why it takes a hold of readers too because it was meant to be
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told so my my next question for you um
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how which characters do you most relate to and
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why I relate to Liam the most I would say I write Liam and Alicia writes
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Sophia and Liam is my character I was going through a lot in my life at the time that I was writing Liam so a lot of
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my feelings and like internal you know monologue was processed through Liam because even though I wasn't going
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through his exact same circumstances I was still reflecting myself onto him because I needed to
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figure out what I believed about the world and I don't relate to Liam as much anymore because I think I've grown and
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turned into a different person since that time in my life but I still think that that piece of me is personified in
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him and the person that he's become by the end of book six because he goes through his whole Arc and his struggles
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with depression and his struggles with his disease and his struggles to figure out okay well is am I worthy enough to
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keep living or not and he ultimately finds out yes I am and I can provide value to myself and the people around me
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and I think that that is such a powerful message that I was able to learn and process through
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him what about you Alicia I think mine would probably be Sophia but in the same
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way I do think I've grown a lot since we wrote her because we did finish this series like three years ago I think um
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when five or six years ago but at the time like Sophia was
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almost um I don't want to say she was me because there's a lot about her that is like her own person but there are parts
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of her that are like she would react the same way that I would react in the way that she's kind of like More Meek at the
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beginning um more of kind of like a people pleaser um doesn't really know
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how to step into her power and things like that Megan would actually have to like push me for for Sophia to even to
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like stand up to her bullying the book because that's not something I would have done like as a person at that time
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and um so yeah she's kind of like almost like a part of me has been like
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immortalized in her uh at that time but at the same time like I have grown out
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of a lot of that as well I think for me I kind of feel like
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I have it's not I kind of relate to all four
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like I can relate to Jonah as being like relaxed and laidback like I don't give a
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gosh Dar crud and trying to keep it PG I
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thought of another word but I'm not gonna say that and then uh and then uh
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Liam there's kind of like different personalities of Liam that I can relate
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to do where I was in a depressed mood at one point or another during the bullying
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and I just hated every aspect of everything and I just had like this huge big dark CRA Cloud over me and then but
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then there's other times where like Lam seems like really cool and laidback and
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and it's like oh why I like why can't I be cool and
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then and then so I can relate to a lot where sometimes
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where I just sometimes I can't always handle the word
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no uh depending on like certain things like know from a company for certain
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things I'm not gonna give a specific example because I'll just go on the rant on that and or
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or yeah so so sometimes it's that and then uh
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and imagin I would say I we relate to her because I do have some of my genius
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moments and then some times I do not have my smart whatsoever and it's like how can this
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possibly be I can relate to all four characters at the same
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time I think it's because they're all pieces of each other I mean they're all different people but they're all really
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close friends and they still reflect that love and a genuine friendship for
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each other at all times so even though they can be total opposites they're also identical kind of in a
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way and I decided to before I ask you the next next next
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question I have to say that Haley character uh she's really just playing
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evil she's not very nice does anything ever hen does
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something happened to her that like does karma come around to bite her in the butt somewhere and Karma will always
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come around to our characters but it's always be com around
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for the good guys not the not the ones who just keep beating them up though we have a saying in Hidden
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Legends world that there will always be a happy ending by the end of book six but there's going to be hell to pay for
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the main characters to get to the end of book six so they always have a happy ending but there will be a price to pay
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to get to that happy ending you guys ever seen having a book
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Seven not in that series because Sophie and Liam's story is D but they do
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um okay A little bit of a spoiler alert they do come back in another Series so
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the prison for Supernatural offender series you will see them after their journey in the Academy of magical
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creature Series so it follows some other characters in this world um but they
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make some cameos so in total how many books have
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you guys written so far together or apart
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together together we Universe like because everything kind of connects anyway even if we only do it so together
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we have six in the Academy of magical creatures series and five in the prison for Supernatural offender series they're
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set in the same world some of the same characters cross over and then then Megan has six in the University of
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sorcery Series so she wrote that on her own but it still is in the same world and then I have five right now in the
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College of Witchcraft series which is also set in that same world geez don't you I hope you guys get
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tired of writing we get tired but not tired of writing we'll keep writing till we die I
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think yeah I I co-author a book with like 300
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65 other authors in the book and it was just like a kind of like a daily quote
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book and I'm I'm contemplating of writing my
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own book uh just about myself and my what I went through
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and somebody said to me it's like you're not that interesting of a person it's
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like interesting well I was like I would say I'm Tony Robins interesting but
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I was like I sure SE uh I I would find it interesting if I
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was my own reader interesting enough well I think everybody has the story to tell and if
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you want to write a book then write a book it doesn't matter if somebody tells you if you can do it or you can't do it people told me I couldn't write books
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and like look where I am now I'm writing books so I was literally gonna say the
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same thing us being on the same wavelength every I was gonna say everyone has a story to tell and I am
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sure that yours is amazing well I I mean I I one thing I
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really appreciate about uh the books is that it doesn't
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reach at the reader because I've read some I've read a lot of books in my life
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and I just say there's some books that doesn't just take you on a journey they
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like preach at you they hey this is this uh you're doing this wrong uh
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everybody's wrong at this and I like books that take you on a journey help
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you kind of escape from uh I G say Escape I mean entertaining because I
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just feel like in this day and age it's just so many things are just like kind
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of like a better reference black and white so to speak it's funny that you say that like
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we're not preaching because we'll get reviews that are like they're preaching their woke agenda and I'm like okay if
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having disabled characters makes us woke I guess we're woke I I'll take that with
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pride honestly like honestly I don't really see that
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because like uh in it just from my point of view just because like I I
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can cuz it's like so for someone being disabled and
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whatnot and some for me being autistic I like no I can relate to a lot of this
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and I appreciate that these characters have their own challenges and uh there's
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people on the reviews I think there's I think a lot of people are just trolls these days especially on the internet
28:52
well I can relate to what you say about a lot of issues being black and white because I do think our world is very polarized today I think it's very hard
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for a lot of people to see from other people's points of view and we do put lessons into our novels but the thing
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about our lessons is that the characters will learn something about themselves and then it's like the next chapter that
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what they learned is turned on their head and they have to learn all over again and I don't think it's polarizing
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or offensive or woke to put a disabled person into your book or any kind of person really
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because these people exist The World Isn't split up into this kind of people and that kind
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of people and this kind of people is the only kind of people that are allowed to be in Stories the world is diverse and
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wide and if that person exists somewhere in the world they can be in a fantasy novel and it's not weird and it's not
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offensive I think I get I get offensive when people say that it's like these
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it's like these people are not normal what's the word like what is
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normal in any sense of anything anymore it's like such thing as normal yeah the only
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thing I think is normal is the normal setting on my washing machine and that's
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it and even that I don't even know what normal does on the washing
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machine still RS my clothes anyway so what the
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heck don't touch that button it will self-destruct or something I don't
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know so my next question for you is
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uh you what makes you keep writing the some
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what what it makes you keep writing books even though you sometimes you get mixed reviews on
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them we don't listen to the reviews so that like every now and then we'll see a
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review um just you know not on purpose or whatever like we we have our audio
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books up on YouTube so every now and then we do have to go check those comments make sure that people aren't asking questions so that we can respond
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to them think so we do see some of the not so nice reviews there but uh we've
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done a lot of work to not let it get to us and just be like you know what if they don't like this book it's not for
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them and that's okay because there are people like you who really appreciate our work and we're writing for you and
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not for them yeah I don't I don't care what anybody thinks I'm going to write what I'm gonna write and if you don't
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like it that's too tough for you but I'm gonna continue to do what I was born to
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do and what I was put on this planet to do and that's right books and a lot of these silly reviews I do think they're
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trolls and I do think they're people who don't know what they're talking about I got a review on my University of sorcery
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series one time where my main character has the same exact disability that I have and she treats herselves using the
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subcutaneous injections that she has to get every week and she has to use like syringes in order to do it well I got a
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very big long review this person complaining that people with my disease can't use syringes and I obviously
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didn't do my research and I didn't know what I was talking about and I had to reply to this person being like I have
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this disease this is something that I go through on a daily basis and yes I do take these and this person of course
32:13
deleted their review because it made them look like they were not knowledgeable instead of me and a lot of
32:19
the one Stars sometimes you'll go through them and you'll be like well this is wrong this is wrong and this is
32:24
wrong you didn't read the book you just wanted to complain about it so I just I really don't care if people have a bad
32:30
opinion of my book or a bad opinion of anything that I write about because this is my story and this is Alicia's story
32:37
and we write for the people who need our stuff we don't write for every Tom Dick and Harry that's out
32:44
there I I like that you said that because you know for my podcast I know who my
32:52
audience is I have a specific t uh I
32:58
don't like the word target audience but my specific Niche audience I'm going to rephrase that and
33:06
they but I do cater to as many people as possible but not to every single person
33:14
because like maybe some of likes politics I hate politics uh some might
33:20
like uh all about religion I don't go over
33:25
religion but my point being is that I felt bad for this podcaster I came
33:31
across in one of the podcast groups I'm a part of he he he only he only started his
33:37
very first episode the other day and he had so many one star reviews on and it
33:43
was because he was approaching on like on this competitive uh M and I was like
33:51
oh there must feel threatened by you if you only have one episode it's was like what the heck I like a bunch of trolls
33:57
it's like I said to them it's like I would technically I would report them to Apple and Spotify like I'm I would't be
34:04
shocked if that they have like something in their policy about fake reviews and being trolls it's like go report them
34:10
it's like maybe they'll take them off for you so
34:16
strict I think too that you it doesn't matter how much you try to please
34:21
everyone you're not going to because someone's going to be upset you know someone's going to be like oh she's trying too hard or she's not authentic
34:28
enough or whatever it is like trying to please everyone is never going to work so might as well like be yourself and be
34:35
the best at being you I mean like literally if if I make
34:41
try to make every single podcast perfect I don't think I could ever maintain it because uh or keep doing it because I
34:49
just L get every rid of every single arm or to get rid every single pause or
34:56
every single connectivity hiccup like I could I couldn't do it that'd be literally impossible I was
35:05
like I can only control for my internet I can't control for everyone else's no and they're like we are really
35:11
perfectionistic and we really try to not leave errors in our books but there are some errors because it doesn't matter if
35:17
we had a team of 100 people we're never going to be able to catch every single thing that's there there's always going
35:22
to be something that slips through and that's okay because art is meant to be abandoned not perfected so as long as
35:27
you're creating it that's the important thing and that you don't quit you don't stop what what I was really shocked
35:35
about in the the series is when they where it said uh that one side
35:42
doesn't uh believe art has any Merit to schools
35:50
and whatnot I'm like how can that possibly be it's like if I didn't have art I like who knows where I'd be today
35:59
my art was my escaped in from The Bullying actually during in this school
36:06
days and I was like boy if I didn't have art class holy I was like I don't know if I would still be
36:12
here yeah uh so my next question for you is
36:24
uh whose idea was to uh uh Haley and the way she
36:31
is I think we both kind of had a hand in Haley to be honest I think Haley is kind
36:38
of one of those tropes that you're always gonna kind of throw in because um she's the bully of the series and you
36:46
you need someone like characters there to challenge the main characters so we can be like hey Haley's being mean let's
36:54
let's do something about this and then it challenges the character to come up with unique Solutions and um kind of
37:03
even sometimes question things about themselves and make improvements for
37:10
themselves I think one of the hard Parts about reading the series is when uh
37:17
stuff always happens to the the good guys especially with the uh just
37:25
the uh just the magical creatures getting hurt
37:30
or uh not to give a spoiler or anything but
37:37
something happens to imagin that you just like let's just say almost got rid of
37:44
her I think that's reflective of real life because look what's happening to the good guys now the good guys always
37:51
have some sort of opposition and in fact they usually have the most opposition because they are doing the right thing
37:57
when everybody else wants to do the easy thing or the thing that everyone else is doing or the thing that's popular
38:03
instead of standing up and being like no this is what's right because I think when you're a good guy and you speak up
38:10
on what you believe in you're going to get opposition from people not even people who disagree with you there's going to be people who come in who are
38:16
like don't rock the boat and those Don't Rock the Boat people can be a bigger obstacle than the people who are
38:21
actually against you because they want to maintain the status quo but that's not what a hero does a hero fights for
38:27
change I definitely agree with that 100% uh I'm more of a person who likes
38:35
their AR the butt on many different things I mean I kid you not there was
38:43
I've been saying on this show for many years that there needs to be more uh
38:50
fitness programs for people with extra challenges and the other day I found out
38:56
my workout platform that he is at home uh started having a trainer uh who's in
39:02
a wheelchair and I was like that's pretty cool it's like this is like ground level stuff because I
39:09
haven't seen anybody else done it and and I admited on social medias like I
39:15
could be wrong that there some maybe someone else has done it before but I haven't seen many of
39:20
them I know there's a guy on Instagram who does uh workouts for people with cystic fibrosis but that's the only
39:26
thing that I heard of because people I think they automatically assume oh you're you know you're disabled so you
39:32
don't work out which is not true because I grew up as an athlete I go to the gym all the
39:38
time I'm literally in the gy I'm literally working out like six days a week uh it was the time in my life I did
39:46
nine but I was like why why am I torturing
39:52
myself I don't know I thought maybe it was cool at times and my lucky number is
39:58
nine actually it took me nine times to start a business and uh my birthday is on October
40:03
9th and I had nine year surgery
40:09
so so uh my next question for you is uh do you ever see yourselves uh
40:20
having like bringing the four characters back from the book into like another
40:25
series uh some point went down the road uh maybe like an aftermath of
40:31
everything or yeah we definitely do that in prison for Supernatural offenders they're
40:38
actually in most of the books in that series like Liam Sophia Jonah and imagin
40:45
are constantly coming back there and there's a reason for that but we can't tell you because it's a spoiler
40:51
so and they also make some cameos um in
40:56
I know so sopia makes a cameo in mine College of Witchcraft I don't remember if she shows up in University but you do
41:04
other characters oh yes Jonah Jon comes back in University of sorcery so
41:09
interesting yeah I'm definitely gonna read them all because uh uh I I I like
41:16
the characters uh I'm always for me if I don't have a good
41:23
book it's hard for me to keep reading and I I've made myself a list of authors
41:29
who I literally follow see when they come out with new
41:34
books and whatnot and I was like okay when this author has a book I'm gonna go get that book and then if that author
41:42
doesn't have a book I'm gonna go f uh to this other author like James Patterson
41:48
even though I really really like James
41:54
P I I wouldn't say I'm tired of his books but sometimes I get tired of
42:00
everything like wrapped up with a little perfect bow on it like Alex ready Alex Cross has com uh
42:08
has uh has completed another case I'm like oh come on do you think really
42:13
that's how uh detectives can wrap up their case that quick it's like don't
42:21
think so and there's never Cliffhangers and it's like I like books with Cliffhangers apparently
42:27
we love Cliffhangers they're in all our bar
42:33
books one of one of them um one of the authors on uh who used who follow me my
42:40
very first followers on Twitter his name is Luke Murphy he's written um he's
42:47
written a Charlene Taylor he's also
42:53
written couple other books uh I I read pretty much all his books except for one
42:59
so far but I thought he had a lot of twists and turns until I read your until
43:06
I read your series because like it it literally keeps me on my toes
43:13
is like did I read that right they off in this person and like this is hard to
43:19
keep track of one second one page this person's alive and this other one's dead holy C
43:30
we like to do that we like to keep our readers on their toes we don't like our readers to guess what's happening next we always want to surprise them honestly
43:38
the only thing that I gotten right so far in the in the book was the I think
43:44
it was the third book that it happened or was it the fourth I think it was the
43:49
third or where the I don't want to say let's just say Liam Sophia's case
43:59
I think it was the third one I believe or was the third one yeah and I only
44:06
predicted that because it was only the next logical thing that could happen and
44:12
it but but then the after math of it I
44:17
was like I was not expecting this either we like writing court cases too I
44:23
feel like there's a court case in every hidden Legend series they're just fun
44:28
and sometimes Megan is like you know what readers are going to know the outcome whether they win or lose their
44:34
case they're going to know that they win obviously because they're the good guys or whatever but it's the experience of
44:40
going through it that's part I think what's one thing that like
44:49
uh I I think one thing that keeps me like what keeps me hooked on the books
44:57
is that like to just to keep reading and everything
45:03
is that their let's just say
45:08
that you never know what's going to happen and then what I really find interesting is that when you think that
45:15
those characters are gone then they just somehow magically back in the picture
45:21
it's like huh that's not fair
45:28
almost rude when they come back up yeah it's like we grieved for you now you're
45:33
back what the heck exactly how I how Ence feels in the book five I was like
45:41
okay now I know how she's feeling it's like this this character's gone and now
45:47
I'm now they're just back I'm like just the
45:52
audacity how dare you you know I
45:58
literally after the the fourth book uh I knew I had to reach out the to the two
46:04
of you because I was like I need them on my show because these books are just too
46:10
good to pass up and if people don't read them that's
46:16
their own problem and uh I'm I'm just
46:22
amazed that that you guys write this to have a character you get to be off
46:30
and then come back on and then you find out why it happened and it's like this
46:36
is like a great TV show that that was Alicia's idea I will say
46:42
that was not mine so she says I come up with all the evil stuff but she's guilty
46:48
of some stuff too it's not all me I'll still blame you for it yeah you
46:55
will you go have like a board of like okay let's go kill this character off and kill this character off and then
47:01
come back around n they're not really dead anymore we have outlines which are kind of the same thing and the last
47:07
outline we did for a book was over 20 pages long and the next one's probably GNA be just as long because we talk
47:14
about like what we're going to do in a series before we even start writing so we know the ending of book six before we
47:19
even start writing book one that's something we do every single time and I think it really helps us because we
47:25
always know where the story is going we're never sitting here wondering okay well what do we do next because we always know what we're going to do
47:31
next that sounds tiring sometimes there are surprises and
47:37
those are fun because it's like sometimes it's just it comes out of nowhere and it's like this is a really
47:42
fun thing uh for readers to experience but then sometimes it's like hold on we
47:48
had this thing in book two we don't we didn't have like any connection anymore now we get to connect that in book five
47:54
and we didn't know about that when we initi wrote it so that's really fun too because if we're surprised you guys are
48:00
going to be surprised so my next question for you is
48:06
if somebody have you ever guys uh thought of making into a movie or a TV show and
48:15
if so who would you cast as the care for
48:20
the each of the characters we're definitely interested in film we can't really say that there's
48:27
anything happening right now but we' talked about it and I would love to put
48:35
our stuff in film I don't know who we would cast because we've talked about doing animation and live action so we're
48:43
not sure what route we want to go with that there are so many different opportunities that we could go and I
48:48
think by the time that we were ready to put something into film the actors that we would choose now are not going to be
48:54
the actors that we would pick for the I was going to say when we initially wrote this series um five six years ago
49:02
we did have our Dreamcast in mind and now they're too
49:08
old I would kind of say uh if you don't mind me sharing uh I I would I would
49:17
like to see it as like kind of anime a little bit and the reason why I say that
49:22
is because maybe you've heard of the show stranger things on Netflix yeah where
49:30
you can see where a lot of time lapse and their characters who supposed to be
49:35
young now is very older like and it's not I wouldn't say it's a problem with
49:41
sun Series where uh where that can happen but something something around
49:48
like let's just say there's this series called Alex
49:53
Ryder um made uh written by Anthony hor and it's like by 14-year-old kid spy but
50:01
they made a TV show off uh on uh used to be
50:07
indb Bess freie and they it's only like three seasons and basically for like 14
50:16
plus books condensed into three seasons and because the actor is now too
50:23
old to play the 14-year-old spy I was like should have went with anime because
50:30
at least if the person's voice even if they got deeper it's like okay well some
50:36
anybody's voice can change so uh it's was like could have kept with it like
50:43
for instance this other show called The Dragon Prince on Netflix I've watched the dragon Prince and there's this uh
50:52
one of the main actors who was who who voiced Saka and avatar The Last
50:59
Airbender uh he h like I think
51:05
he's late 30s or 40s or something yeah he's pretty old but he plays a young kid
51:11
like yeah but like his voice doesn't change or if it does like he he's one of
51:17
those lucky ones who can but because it's anime who really cares if somebody's
51:23
playing AR or old but again that's just my opinion uh I get away with a little
51:31
bit more because they're college kids so they look older anyway but I think when the time comes we really have to sit
51:37
down and consider what we wanted to do yeah I just
51:42
want I know my opinion doesn't give give a hoop but uh well it does because you're a fan and we take our fans
51:48
considerations into perspective when we do anything you know we're always in our fan group asking our fans what they want
51:54
and what they want to see so but I would just like I just wanted to share because
51:59
like my uh because I was just kind of pretty bummed at the Alex Rus series like over on three seasons it's like so
52:06
you condense 14 books and didn't even get to the the real enemy of the whole
52:12
book I was like okay well that was series and I was like uh I'm gonna
52:19
finish it up but I was like okay they really should have went anime on this thing I was like because I could it it
52:27
was a great show but I don't know it I don't 14y old spy
52:36
to after got old should have just went anime I don't know that's just my
52:42
opinion uh so my last few questions for you are uh who's your favorite podcaster in
52:50
why and feel free not to say me favorite podcaster do you have an
52:55
answer for that Alicia um I love Katherine Zina of
53:01
manifestation babe podcast I've listened to pretty much all of hers so um it's a
53:06
bit woo but I'm into that I write paranormal books it's not a surprise um
53:11
and then I've really been into James wedmore of mind your business
53:17
podcast um so he talks about like business stuff mindset and um yeah I
53:23
love both of them I have to look at the name of my
53:28
favorite podcaster because I don't I don't remember the name but I listen to
53:34
so many episodes what's the name of the podcast well that's thing I don't know the name
53:40
of the podcast press oh no I think we lost
53:48
Alicia we might have I think her thing might have went out oh I'm back oh yay
53:55
you're back I thought you were gone technology is
54:00
evil okay I I can't find the name of the podcast but I will tell you I really
54:06
like like any girl like kind of in my age group I like listening to like murder mystery
54:12
podcast and I also really like listening to podcasts about cults and like things
54:17
like that I'm like a crime junkie so that's my thing that's probably also why
54:23
some of my ideas are so Twisted just because like I am really into that kind of crime
54:30
aspect of stuff so that's where I'm at with podcasting so and my mom watches a lot of NCIS and
54:39
all the murder mysteries uh TV shows and like we really need to have a therapist
54:46
talk to you about this I had to back off on it because I think if you do listen to it too much it kind of affects your
54:52
mental state so I don't let myself listen to too much of it but every now and then I will you know allow myself to
54:58
listen to an episode or two I love murder mysteries as well and I always
55:03
kind of try to put some in my books uh but yeah I tried to watch Criminal Minds
55:08
and it's a great show but I started having really weird
55:15
dreams I like was having dreams about serial I'm like I don't know if I can keep watching the
55:21
show yeah I I used to watch Criminal Minds and I I got to a point where I
55:30
couldn't like sleep at night anymore and I was like because I no from
55:37
my brain being autistic it's like a replay and your mind that goes over and
55:43
over and over again it's like oh crap it's like it's like it's a good thing
55:49
that I can remember a lines with TV shows and movies and whatnot I find that's cool but I was like at the same
55:55
time making also depending on how gruesome the scenes are or in the book it's like H
56:04
nothing I did find the name of that podcast by the way it's called leaving Eden and the host are uh stie and Gabby
56:11
and I just I really like their content it's like focuses on Cults and things like that and it's very interesting to
56:17
me so I haven't listened to an episode in a while just because I've been so busy because we're producing a lot of
56:22
audio books right now like I think I've released 30 audio B this year at least
56:27
but when I finally have time I'm looking to get back into it you make it sound so
56:34
easy I it is and it isn't because I I just feel like this is what I was born
56:39
to do and this is what I do naturally and this is what I do best it's not I don't think it's difficult to do what
56:46
you love I think what's difficult is continuing to do it despite the obstacles that are in your
56:53
way and my my last question for you is where can people follow you find you
56:58
where can they find your books are they all over the place so you can find me at Megan Linsky
57:05
dcom and I am on Facebook as well and you can find Alicia and me together at
57:12
Hidden Legends books.com and our Facebook group is arenda Academy of magical creatures that's where all our
57:18
fans hang out and that's where everybody likes to like discuss fan fairies and chill and you know be who they are and
57:26
Alicia do you want to give your website on top of that yes I am Alicia rattis author.com as far as where you can find
57:34
our books where pretty much anywhere ebooks are sold anywhere audiobooks are
57:39
sold and then um online you can order our print books and most bookstores can order them to the store as well awesome
57:48
and uh I'll leave all the stuff in the show notes uh and
57:53
uh uh I uh definitely look forward to reading more of your books uh I I
58:00
literally got myself into trouble with a few so few of my uh colleagues and it's
58:05
like you didn't read my books yet and it's like I'm stuck on reading on this series at the
58:12
moment blaming on Megan and and Alicia it's not my fault you need to tell them
58:18
hey you need to read this and you'll understand why like I'm so addicted yeah since like I I I have like
58:25
a big pile up on my uh on my uh on the
58:30
my reading app that I keep track of all my books and it's like oh some people are gonna get annoyed at me it's like
58:37
why haven't you read my book yet because I'm reading this read this
58:42
it's not my fault you need to read it too because it's crazy thank you for that appreciate that
58:51
and we really appreciate you and um asking us to be on this podcast with you and sharing this wonderful hour together
58:59
definitely and uh I hope we can stay in touch and uh I look forward to reading more of your books and I hope you enjoy
59:06
the rest of your day awesome thank you for having us on real quick do you mind if I take a
59:12
picture with you or yes you can
59:18
second I hate technology sometimes that doesn't like me
59:27
got it I don't know what kind of face I was making Sil face it was
59:33
weird uh just our curiosity real quick and I can cut this after uh is that okay
59:40
stay is there a way I can stay in touch with you guys or yeah we're on Facebook and I think you sent me a friend request
59:46
anyway so like you can do that and you can join our Facebook group I
59:51
think anyway what I think he's there he commented on something today I think you
59:57
commented on my RO release didn't you yeah if you like hiden Legends you'll really like that
1:00:03
series and I think if you related to Liam struggles you're really gonna like roie a lot so I'll check it out email
1:00:11
too if you ever have questions or anything like that awesome and uh I'll
1:00:17
definitely keep anything personal off I can cut it so no worries
1:00:24
there so I look forward to staying in touch with you guys and I hope you enjoy
1:00:29
your rest of your day thank you I know thank you see
1:00:37
you so that's all the Tim here for today if you enjoyed this episode please leave a review subscribe let me know how
1:00:44
you're doing in the meantime go read the books and let me know what you think in
1:00:50
the meantime stay healthy stay safe and stay motivated and I'll be back for another brand new episode F guy H
1:00:57
podcast slre motivation with crazy fness guy in the meantime peace
1:01:04
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