Hey there, welcome back to Shockwave's the stellar Shock
after show breakdown podcast. I'm Jess and I'm here as always
with the man, the myth, the muddy boots himself, Arthur,
Art, how we feeling. Not as sore as Sir Serafin, so I
guess I'm doing all right. I haven't had to clear a ditch
or chase a runaway raft in a while, so I'll take it.
You also have both working eyes, which if chapter 4 taught us
anything, is almost a luxury out into Atoma.
Honestly, every time I think things can't get rougher for
Sarah, you decide he needs one more bruise.
Do you hate the guy? Probably about as much as his
uncle does, which, if you read between the lines, means I
don't. But I think brutal honesty is
important if you're out in wet fields with busted boots and bad
luck and your role model drinks before noon.
The world's never letting up. The stories about survival, not
grace. Which comes through So Sycotrice
Part 1, longer chapter, quiet action, Literally just life,
grinding the boys down through mud chores, and the kind of
friends who think you're black Eye means you tried climbing
through Vera's window instead of getting belted by Ward.
Why open with field work? Not a more dramatic follow up.
Because most mornings don't start dramatic.
That's real. People imagine fantasy stories
like every day is a monster or a plot twist.
But in places like Tui Toma, the only monsters, the dirt that
pain behind your eye or your uncle's hangover, more stories
need to honor just getting out of bed and scooping up the same
fields. And you mentioned monsters, this
chapter just started to nudge the old village horror stories,
keepers and ghosts out in the grass shadows at the edge of
camp. Was that you letting readers in
on bigger genre stuff coming or? A little, but honestly most of
the monsters in this book are rumors, bad seasons blamed on
keepers, magic that might just be fevers.
I want readers to feel the edge but never trust it.
Like is Sir marked? Maybe?
Maybe that's just Ward being cruel in his cups.
There's no confirmation yet. The real horrors always got
someone's name on it. How much of this chapter is
about masculinity or boyhood as punishment?
I mean, sirs learned through pain not to cry, not to cuss,
not to admit Ward broke him last night, but his friends are just
as quick to call his beating an accident or blame the victim
with a joke. It feels coded to me.
No argument for me. A lot of manhood in tuatomas
earned by surviving cruelty. It's handed down, justified
with. That's just the way it is.
You see the cycle with Ward with Sir, and how the boys pressure
each other into telling jokes instead of truth.
Nobody really gets to admit how bad it hurts.
They bury it under work, food, or don't worry, I'll bring bread
next time. That's how the cycle keeps
rolling. I liked how you let the group
joke around, but also that those jokes are mean or empty or
fragile. V taste too sharp.
Balu's bravado cracks at the edges.
Roland's apologizing for telling anyone the truth.
None of them knows how to talk about what happened to say.
That's real to me. Part of being young, especially
poor and rural, is that you can't fix the world, so you fix
the story about it. Call it your own fault you got
beat up or blame a fence post. Change the subject when things
get raw. You carry that sense of
unfixable wrong all through the village life scenes.
The adults drinking, the uncle's tension, the broken fences, the
way good work never gets noticed, but one mistake sets
off a whole string of lectures or punishments.
Exactly. I wanted the environment to be
another character. The rain, the dirt, the river,
the animal stink. None of it cares about childhood
or hope. A place like Tuatoma shapes who
you become because every day is tough and there's nowhere to
hide. But it's also all there is,
which can be both a lesson and a prison.
Let's go back to Sir and Ward's dinner.
That's probably the softest moment I've seen Ward.
You even wrote him almost fond for for a line or two right
before he goes back to being hard.
What was the thinking there? Everyone's got two sides, even
guys like Ward. When you scrape out years on a
patch of land loose, people watch your choices peel down to
drink or hurt or work or starve. You end up all scar and bark,
but underneath there's regret. He can remember integrity, not
for himself anymore, but in Sir's father.
He tries to pass something on, then folds it up and grunts
about cleaning plates. That's as close to I love you as
Sir will get. What's with the Obsidian sword
and and meditating? Is there?
Is there magic there, or is there just trying to remember
his mother? It's both.
That sword's a relic, could be magical, could be just memory.
That's how magic works in this world.
You don't get lightning on demand.
You get maybe a feeling, maybe some warmth or cold or nothing
at all except your own pain pressing back.
The point is that Sir wants something more to answer him,
but he only gets quiet or sometimes an even darker
loneliness. And the fire at night with the
boys. That part's so tactile.
Bread, jerky, cheap liquor, bruised apples, kids carrying
junk. Weapons like a spoon filed to a
point and one knife that's just a nail.
Did you grow up rough? We didn't have much.
If you wanted a knife and didn't have the money, you sharpened a
stick or stole a can lid and hoped your mom didn't see the
bandages. It makes you respectful of stuff
that city kids don't think twice about.
Fire, blankets, food. I wanted the boys tenting by the
river to feel like outlaw kings for a night, even if all they're
doing is keeping away frostbite. That scene where they talk about
leaving, about minstrels and other places, is that hope or
just a cruel joke because Roland wants to believe he'll find
magic and go somewhere? Sarah's answer is basically you
can survive, but you won't change anything.
Hope, even if it's thin as spit. I think that's the best most
kids have in places like Tuta Tama.
You throw your dreams out in the dark, but the world holds them
under with a boot on their throat.
Still, you think about it, you plan.
You tell each other I'll build a raft, I'll leave.
Reality always finds a way to walk through that campfire smoke
and remind you you're still stuck here.
But you have to at least try to hope or you end up hard as Ward.
Let's talk about the keepers. Every time the kids bring them
up, somebody gets uncomfortable. The idea of being marked.
Is that actual fantasy or are you playing with the town
weirdo? Both.
There are real old powers in this world, but most of what
people fear are stories passed down.
To be marked can mean a lot. Wrong name, wrong face, just
enough strangeness that you get picked on or shunned.
Sometimes it's just the easier answer.
When something bad happens, blame the cursed kid, not the
luck or the lazy priest or the rotten crops.
But you let the reader suspect that maybe, just maybe, Sir
actually is special or cursed, or that there's something coming
for him. That's the line I want to walk.
If you grow up here in your marked, you believe it even when
you shouldn't. If you get just enough weird
luck, everyone else believes it too.
Whether it turns out real or just folklore that fits the
bruises is something the story will prove or not.
The important part is that the world doesn't care if you
believe you get eaten anyway. OK, switching tracks for a hot
minute because real world stuff's just as bleak as to
Atoma this week. Did you see the price of eggs at
the store wouldn't last a day with Sir and his crowd.
They'd just start hucking rocks at the hens.
It's like we're all ward at breakfast now, scowling at the
pot, cutting off the bread crusts and blaming foreign trade
for why dinner doesn't stretch supply chains.
Man, reality bites. So true.
On that note listeners, if you can get eggs and want to make
bread for your fence mending friends, send pics.
Best Loaf gets absolutely 0 gold but will earn the respect of a
hungry podcaster and an author who thinks onion and bread is a
King's lunch. For real though, is there
significance to all the eating scenes?
Sir's whole life feels run by breakfast, lunch and dinner.
That's by design. For poor people, food marks
time. Hunger's constant.
You don't celebrate birthdays, you celebrate catching a trout
or someone gifting you half a steak.
When there's meat, it's a phenomenon.
When there's hot porridge, it's satisfaction.
It's how guys like Ward and Sir Mark the good from the bad.
And it's also a way to survive long silences.
If you're eating, you don't have to talk about why everything
sucked or why your uncle's got blood in his voice again.
The morning after scene when the boys barter chores against
fishing and trade meals for silence.
It's authentic. Here's a question though.
You never give these kids catharsis.
Just more field work, more bruises, more rusty nails in the
fence post. Is there an end to that cycle?
Or is the pain just part of the world?
A bit of both. I don't believe in serendipitous
breakthroughs. You heal slowly or not at all.
Sometimes the world breaks you. Sometimes you end up breaking
free a piece at a time for serve.
For these boys, it's about grinding forward, finding small
moments of relief. A laugh, a loaf, a warm bed.
If they get more, it isn't because cosmic justice
intervened, it's because they survived long enough to catch a
break. The chapter ends in Media Rest
for that reason. There's no clean closure in
mutter pain, just what comes next.
When you do end with hope, maybe the kids talking about building
a raft, Roland's inventions, Sarah's willingness to look at
the river instead of just his bruises, Is that intentional?
It is. You have to leave a crack for
hope, even if it's mostly a joke.
You have to believe you might one day finish that raft, or
your uncle might wake up happy. Or magic's real.
Or at least your next injury will happen for a better 'cause
if you don't give your characters that crack,
eventually they're just walking corpses.
Speaking of corpses, did the fox that dragged something limp
between the hedges survive? That fox is the luckiest thing
in Tuatoma. Eats better than Sir most days.
It'll come back in later chapters.
Fatter and meaner, chasing chickens and maybe nipping some
toes when everyone's asleep. Excellent.
We stand a survivor. Bucks has got more sense than
anyone in that town. Let's break down some reader
questions before we go further. We've got one from Martin in San
Diego. Why does Roland get so much
focus? He's younger, smaller, but his
scenes with SER are some of the most raw.
Roland matters because he's not ruined yet.
He's the only one who hasn't been crushed flat by Tuitoma.
His hope, his awkward apologies, his weird inventions.
They're what Sir could have been in a different world, and what
Sir might still protect. If there's ever a reason for Sir
to leave or fight or kill, it's probably Roland.
Angela from London asks why the focus on weather and physical
discomfort. All the detail about mud, wet
boots, bruised skin, it's almost overwhelming.
Angela's not wrong. I do that because most fantasy
glosses over the suffering it takes to survive.
You can't have adventure without discomfort.
Weather, hunger, pain. They shape your mind.
If the readers feel itchy, wet, tired, that's good.
That's living inside Sir's boots.
And why, for the love of God, do none of these kids have real
knives? Someone's going to lose a finger
with this filed spoon nonsense. Because Ward won't trust Sir
with anything sharper after what happened years back.
And because real knives mean real status, boys scrape by on
junk and whatever they can steal or barter, and that keeps them
from doing real harm, but also keeps them powerless in a richer
place. Every Boyd have a dagger.
Here you get a nail and a story. Let's pivot.
What's up with the communal parent gossip?
The way the village reacts to the stranger was a great touch.
Crowd turns on you in 5 seconds then drifts off when the Smith
says enough. Was there a real world
inspiration or is that just rural life?
Bit of both. Small towns breeds suspicion.
Strangers are scapegoats. Doesn't matter if they just want
shelter. People need someone to blame for
the shit they refuse to fix. It's protection but also
projection. You see it everywhere, but
especially when the resources run thin.
Storm comes, Pico's missing, someone gets blamed for upending
the order, then you go home and check your own door twice.
OK, let's get spicy. Do you see any hope for Ward?
Will he ever say the words Sarah needs to hear, or is that
wishful thinking? Ward is who he is.
I wouldn't expect him to give a Hallmark speech.
Maybe someday he'll hand Sir a clean cup and nod.
It's the most he'll allow. The tensions always between what
they need and what's possible. All right, time for the fun
ending question. If you were dropped into the
world of stellar shock, which job's yours?
Honestly. Farmer, tinker, outcast village
gossip or the fat happy fox? I'd probably last a week as a
tinker, break every tool, then end up running the muddiest
sheep into Atama. Gossip if I'm lucky.
Fox if the gods smile. I'd have the Fox's back or I'd
be the loudmouth at market who never gets invited to the
campfire, but I'd probably die on that raft.
We all would. That's the That's the lesson
here. Nobody outruns the river, but
for a few muddy minutes you can still float.
On that note, we're wrapping part one of our breakdown after
the break. More bruises, more ghosts, maybe
a little magic. Until then, keep your boots dry
and your bread safe from foxes. Don't wait for morning to see
how wet your boots are. Fix the fence.
And if you're marked, hey, at least you've got a story to
tell. And if your face gets banged up,
remember it might just be a fence post, but tell them it was
something better. That's the Spirit.
Catch you next time on shock waves.
See you in the mud. Welcome back to Shock Waves, the
official after show for Stellar Shock.
I'm Jess, and with me, as ever, is art Author, world builder,
villain of my Tuesday nights. If I'm a villain, you're still
the one asking the sharpest questions.
It's my job and the people demand it.
All right, everyone, we're talking about Sick of Trees Part
2, which is a monster of a chapter.
If you're just tuning in, listen to the episode first.
You'll need it. Then come back for the deep
dive. Maybe a little mud on your
boots. You did read it twice, right?
Listeners? Don't shortchange yourselves.
This one's all about that feeling when nothing changes and
everything does anyway. I.
Want to start with SER? We get a lot of his day-to-day
here, the way the chapter opens, with him alone in the square,
the stranger gone, cat butting at trash.
It's grim and quiet and very much back to work.
Why kick off that way? That's life for SER Things
break, people come and go. Nobody waits around to make your
morning easier. That cat, the scarf, even the
mud. It's all evidence of how little
things last. But still you look for traces.
When something's gone, he can't say what he's feeling.
He has to see it. He'll print scarf.
Empty St. He walks home, wards there.
Their routine is so compact, it's like a dance where nobody
wants to look at their partner. It's clear this isn't nuclear
family warmth, but it isn't war either.
How did you find their rhythm? Ward raised Sir more out of
necessity than love. It's foot by foot.
Ward's voice never goes up unless it has to, the way Ward
slides a bowl over the pipe, the hole.
Let's not wake the old anger. That's survival.
The rhythm works because it keeps things together.
Nothing is easy. Nothing gets anyone killed.
That's good enough. There's a line.
The day had held no new disasters.
Not yet. That's such a low bar, it feels
weirdly comforting. For them it is good days are
disasters that didn't happen. Heaps of readers miss that
piece. For these people, isn't laughter
at a big table, it's no one flipping it over.
Yeah, you have word ask you want something more than this?
That whole talks devastating. Nobody in Teutoma is allowed to
say they want out loud, not without some blowback.
That question is a test and a warning.
You can want more, but don't expect to get it.
And don't mistake the world outside for being easier.
Ward knows, and Sir suspects the grass on the other side is just
mud too. They patch the roof the next
day, clear the gutter. Ward's knee acts up.
Sir's hands find their rhythm. This chunk of the book reminded
me your prose never sit still. You show every chew, every swing
of the hammer, every time sweat stings his face.
That's not just King Ersk. It's almost documentary.
People forget how much of life is physical.
You write work, you show work. If you skim, you cheat.
Readers who grew up sweating for a living.
I want every swing, every ache. That's the cost of a real world.
Roland appears with wire scavenged for once.
He's the spark in all the drudge.
It's nice Sir's not alone. I love how Roland always has
some plan, wants to build something, fix or invent, never
just patch. Were you that friend growing up
or did you have a Roland? I've known a few Rolands, never
been one. I was always in the corner with
a book or tool, fixing things after someone else broke them.
Roland's the hope Serre doesn't have.
He brings outside energy, even if all his inventions flop.
He's how Serre remembers there's more to living than fence posts.
That section by the river, them talking about leaving gets my
heart every time. Both boys want out, but they're
honest. It'll be the same, just
somewhere else or worse. Escapes a fantasy unless you got
cash or guarantees. These kids never did.
They know it. That doesn't stop them hoping.
There's something about the fish, too.
They catch a few quiet pride, but also the knowledge that it
won't fill bellies for long. Fish as currency, as pride, as
luck. In a place like Twytoma, your
success, your meal, is always temporary.
There's so much about routines, patching roofs, listing what's
gone right, fixing fences. I feel like I know the
topography of this house, how the boards creak, where the wind
leaks, which corner smells like pipe smoke.
How do you keep those details razor sharp but never poetic?
Just pay attention. If you start calling something
warm or golden or friendly, you're lying.
Dirt's not friendly. Smoke's not sweet.
The board creaks, the floor scuffs, the stews Gray.
You get details by leaving out the wishful stuff.
Just say what's there. It's the same for conflict.
When the stranger returns, wet, scarred, not asking for more
than Stew and shelter, nobody yells.
There's no melodrama. Ward lays out rules.
If you've done wrong, keep moving.
If not, sleep and leave in the morning.
That's survival for them. You don't threaten or beg, you
just say what is. Ward treats him like a man, not
a cause. The land will sort true from
false soon enough. Sears pistol grip reaction to
any strange sound, that iron poker, the way his hand moves,
not his heart. Is that realism or are you
avoiding hearts pounding, stomachs twisting?
Both. No one raised right gets caught
by panic. You hear a tap in the dark.
You reach for iron. You don't explain it to
yourself. Physical first, reasons later.
If you only write, he felt fear, you might as well mail your
hands in and quit. I want to talk about gifts and
secrets. The blank book Roland sneaks
over pages, waiting for Sir's words.
It's the most hope you allow. Something blank, unruined.
A place for plans. Hope is real, it just gets
handed over in scraps at wrist. Roland risking the cold to hand
off a book, Sarah hiding it. Those are choices with wait.
The next day, the stranger's gone.
Village talks just rumors again. What's broken is mended.
What's not mended gets written down.
I liked how Sir divides bread, how Ward watches not speaking.
It's a living language of chores.
Pile log through action. You cut bread, you pass it.
You see who does what. That's trust.
Thank you. Gets spoken in muscle and doing.
As a break, can we talk about current events?
Because some of these themes, scarcity, strangers, what's
owed, what's worsened by rumor, feel very much like, well, are
now. You looking at the same
headlines I am? You can walk outside anywhere
right now. See someone patching a fence
that broke under last week's storm, blaming it on the
neighbor, the city, a stranger who walked through the details.
Change the bones. Don't.
I swear the mud gets deeper every year, real world or not.
Prices up work never enough. Villages or neighborhoods
shrinking into whatever safety remains.
Right, and news gets lumped in, but life's basic Did the roof
leak? Did the fence fall?
Did you eat? If so, you survived.
That's true intuitan, and that's true this week anywhere the grid
fizzles. Right, Bits.
I really want to ask about One Ward's stories.
He brings up how back then, nobody locked their doors.
God's as thick as midges. Now a stranger arrives and
everyone's wound tight. You could have gone nostalgic.
You don't. Why not?
Nostalgia's poison. There are no golden ages, just
different shapes of misery and luck.
Ward remembers old stories because they're warnings, not
promises. He never says it used to be
better. He says it used to be different,
and different wasn't always better, even before people
drowned in the river or fought over fences, just with other
clothes. I noticed the grind, Chores,
work, patching, getting just enough to last.
That's the real world, right? You read, you watch shows.
It's always about escape or some big victory.
Here, just holding on is the win.
That's reality for most people, always was.
Most lives don't get the escape, they just have moments where you
patch the fence better or make it through a storm.
Heroism comes down to doing your part.
Shielding one kid from a rotten board.
Teaching someone to hammer straight.
Yeah, but you sneak in joy like the festival night, the
minstrels, the games, breadthrone, dice games, music,
even if no one knows the words. That fills up the space between
the grind and the grief. You can't grind every second.
Even Ward lets himself laugh once the table's set and the
chores are done. I like the festival because
everyone drops their guard half an inch.
Kids get sweets, grown men limp through a dance, fights start
and stop before anything breaks. That celebration in the hard
world. The aftermath of the festival is
brutal. Everyone's hungover, worn down,
bruised from both joy and the work after.
I like how the magic of the night just makes the next day
colder, starker. That's the cost.
Every warm moment comes attached to a new hole in the fence, a
pig loose or a busted lip. If you don't pay the price,
you're not living in Tuatoma, You're in some other story.
OK, back to the book's entries. Sir keeps his notebook recording
every small thing. Why is this so important for his
character? Do you see it as resistance
documentation or just a way to make sense?
All those It's a record. It's defiance, it's a survival
tactic in a place where history gets washed away every time the
river floods. Writing something down means you
exist, and maybe someone else will believe it someday.
It's not hope, not quite. But it's not surrender either.
You've got kids wrestling, fixing fences, fighting over
nothing, building traps that hardly work.
It reminds me these characters, flaws and all, never dramatize
themselves. Even their arguments have
weight, but not fireworks. Is that deliberate?
Fireworks don't last. Nobody screams all the time
unless they're exhausted or fake.
Here, troubles measured. Will this argument wreck supper
or just fill the air for an hour?
Most fights end with an insult, a grunt, or someone walking
away. People save their strength.
I laughed when Sarah's voice rings out.
I'll turn you all into scarecrows.
Every village has someone like her, right?
You need someone chasing boys out of her yard.
It reassures the adults the world's still working.
Otherwise kids take over, ruin everything.
Eat her last beans. OK, question from the listeners.
How much of Ward is based on anyone you know?
These pieces of three men, my grandfather, a neighbor I had
when I first moved out, and a coach who never said more than
10 words at a time. Tougher than old leather, never
gave a compliment unless you bled for it.
But he stuck around. Ward only ever leaves because
he's forced to. Another why so precise with
tools. Patching gutters, swinging axes,
nailing planks. Always specific, never just.
They worked all day. Raised on it.
If I tried writing they worked. My dad would look at the page
and ask doing what? The difference between splitting
wood and mocking a pen is night and day on a page, and you owe
readers that same effort. Let's veer nerd for a SEC.
Ever get tired of describing MUD?
Not yet. Mud's versatile, changes color,
texture. Sometimes it's a comfort,
sometimes it eats your boots. Plus, the day I get tired of
mud, I can start describing dust or ice.
You write the ground as it is. OK, stepping back the pace, you
move slow, scene by scene, meal by meal.
Some listeners are used to stories jumping ahead, skipping
all the boring bits. Why not here?
You can feel a story or you can skim it.
If I skip to the action, you miss what makes action hurt.
Who hurts their hand swinging the axe?
Who skips lunch, whose knee gives in?
All that boring stuff is where loyalty grows, where distrust
sets, where you realize someone didn't sleep.
It's how you remember real life. So it's how I write.
There's a lot about luck. Bad.
Mostly good in flashes, but no fate, no destiny.
Destiny's for someone who's never farmed.
Luck's what you make after the storm's passed and you've still
got 1 dry blanket. These people expect nothing but
work for everything. When luck bends toward them, it
matters. When it doesn't, they patch over
the loss and move. And yet, even saying that you
let Sir and Roland and Ward choose sometimes, is that just
to give them dignity? Dignity.
Sure. And because fatalism is a
luxury, You can't raise pigs or patch fences if you always
believe it's set in stone. You own your work or you don't
eat. Oh, Tangental.
But someone in the chat asks Art, Would you say Sir is
neurodivergent or just cautious? I get that question a lot.
Sir isn't based on a diagnosis. He's shaped by vigilance, by
never being able to let go all the way.
You see it in kids from rough places.
Their caution reads strange to outsiders.
He doesn't overthink, he just never stops watching the door.
Speaking of doors, let's talk about the visitor.
The strangers last night by the stove, sleeping off, rain not
causing trouble, quietly gone by dawn.
Did you want readers to trust him or always doubt?
Both. Nobody gets a clean slate, but I
wanted the truth to never really matter, just the facts.
Stew Eaton, no crime done, moved on.
His story's as mute as the rest. You trust to the next day.
OK, before we run long, do you want to tease what's next or can
I beg you for a spoiler? Next chapter drags the weather
back in hard, and choices about the marsh work won't go quietly.
There's a twist, but no easy victory.
If you know this world, you know what's coming.
More rain, more work, Maybe a fight that counts.
Can't wait for that last question.
Maybe the most important What do you want readers to feel
carrying Sir's story on from this chapter?
I don't want them to feel, I want them to know.
Know what it costs to keep your roof patch, to count wins by
what didn't break, to treat every day as the record of your
bones and sweat. If they miss the mud under their
nails by the end, go back and re read.
Let's circle back to Roland. Listeners love him.
He's already a fan favorite on the Discord.
Why do you think he cuts through the heaviness?
Is it just that he's an optimist or something else?
Roland's persistent optimism's too soft a word.
It gets up every morning with some new plan, even knowing none
of it will make life easy. He's stubborn.
That's more valuable than hope. Some folks get broken by
routine, by hunger, by seeing fences fall again and again.
Roland doesn't. He looks for the next thing he
can twist, fix, or set ringing just to feel alive.
The bell over the Seraphin gate. That's a rolling classic
patchwork invention. Noisy, draws attention.
Have to warn, have to have something new in a routine that
never changes. You ever build anything like
that when you were a kid? Rope, wire, buckets to catch
rain. Traps for mice, mainly
contraptions no one else wanted. Kids build to keep their heads
busy, mostly. Sometimes to prove they aren't
just another pair of hands for chores.
Roland and Sir have that moment in the yard, leaning into the
sun warmed wall, talking about what they do.
Given the chance, they both hedge, maybe leave, maybe stay.
Nobody admits what they want in straight words.
Is that fear, or is it just how young men talk?
Both. You can't say I want out
without, well, without gambling. The only things holding you in
place, friendships, familiarity. You put it on the table, it can
get broken or used as a weapon. Best to say maybe one day and
let the real desire ride under the surface.
It's that need to keep your face straight, hide the bruises, hide
the hunger. I've seen it in towns half this
size and in families bigger than this village.
You communicating that intentionally or does it just
bleed through? It bleeds through from my own
life, the silence after meals because there wasn't much to
eat, the ritually cheerful maybe next year when someone asked
about a new bike or a trip. In the book, showing beats
telling. Roland's smile is an act of
resistance. All right, realism.
Check. When you write something like
Sarah and Roland sitting on the boulder, staring at the river,
that's not you pulling from your head, right?
You're remembering cramped afternoons, backs sore,
someone's hope pressed into your shoulder.
Yeah, I was there in spirit if not in place.
I remember counting time in shores and river levels,
measuring afternoons by how long it took for your best friend to
voice the first real regret or the first honest wish.
That lands, and you're careful not to push sentiment on them.
You let the wind, the river, the chicken scratching silence say
what they can't. Readers are smart.
If you do the weather right, if you prick a finger on enough
wire, they'll fill in the feelings.
You lull them. So when Sir finally does say
something with weight about leaving or what the world's
really like, they believe it because you didn't waste your
currency earlier. Switching gears, you get a lot
of questions about words, age, who he loves, what he lost.
You never spelled it all out. He's just tired and stubborn.
Keeps a loose grip on Sir, but doesn't punish harder than
needed. What's your approach to father
figures? The good ones don't heroic up,
they just don't leave. Ward stays.
He teaches by doing, not by speech when he has something to
say. It's never a fable or grand
lesson usually. Just don't let the fire die,
help with the gutter or patch what you break.
That's love in his code. I get that there's a warmth in
them, eating parallel, not looking, sharing bread, crossing
the kitchen so quietly. It's not emotional, it's
survival. But there's a care there hidden.
Most care is hidden unless you want to get it knocked out of
you. The podcast fans are pretty
obsessed with the recurring bit about the stove never warming
Sir's toes. They want to know, is that a
metaphor or just a really bad stove?
It's just a bad stove, sorry. No symbolism, huh?
If you want symbolism, look at where the heat pools and where
it doesn't. But I'm not driving at meaning,
just saying most doors leak, most stoves underperform, and a
lot of us have cold feet in every sense.
I want to hear about the bell again.
Roland's inventions keep coming back.
Fans are building diagrams. Good, they should try building
one that Bell's not magic. Twisted wire, a bent spoon,
experimental and loud enough to matter.
The sum of all their inventions is hope with sound attached.
Even if it falls off, you'll hear it before you find it
crashed in the dirt. You do get somewhere mythic, but
always undercut when Ward talks about when men cross the fairy
in the dark, trusting luck and gods in the fields.
You never let it go Sepia. Why resist turning history into
myth? Myth is what you get when you
lose the details. I give details so you don't have
to mythologize. You can remember your own
grandfather's lies, or the one time a stranger slept by the
stove and stole nothing. Let someone else tell the epic.
Someday I want the facts. On the topic of facts, Sir gets
this stub of a pencil and a battered book and suddenly he's
got a way to write, maybe even invent his truth.
Readers are flooding the DMS about it.
How much is Sir's mind changing by putting pen to paper?
It's small, but it matters. Writing something down claims
ownership. Every day, all over the world,
someone starts a list or a record, and that's their
rebellion. Sarasai might never get out of
Tuatoma, but the names and weather?
Those are his, at least as long as the pencil lasts.
So Ward doesn't read the book as restraint, considering how much
he watches everything else. Ward respects closed things,
locked boxes, unsaid feelings. He's old enough to remember when
privacy meant survival. Roland keeps risking things for
Sir Inventions, books, Company After Dark.
A little reckless, but never showy.
That's friendship more than words.
If you value someone, you bring them what they need, even when
it's a pain. Relan sees SER can't speak his
hope, so he fills the gaps, runs the risks so SER doesn't have
to. You drop us into repairs storm
after storm. I love the bit where every fix
is temporary. Every patch might hold till dawn
or collapse in the next wind. Was that your experience growing
up or is it a choice for drama? Both.
Fixing is always already failing.
If your house isn't crumbling, you don't fix, you live in it
and forget about it. I wanted work to matter the
randomness of what holds and what falls.
You get even grimmer when you talk about work for pay.
Chihal hires Ward and Sir. More work, less coin pays.
Gone to debt. That feels contemporary, doesn't
it? Exploitation's old, not new, and
debt eats everything. No heroics, just one more reason
to keep working when you're already tired.
I've worked those jobs. Most listeners have to, even if
today's version is at a screen. You let little victories count.
Balu's joke, The boys splashing in the river, the patch of
sunlight mid fog. Listeners ask, does Art believe
in happy endings or just in enough for now?
Enough for now is a happy ending where I come from.
You eat, you laugh, you sleep through the night without a
leak. That's winning.
Let's get to the questions you probably hate.
Did anything magical happen in this chapter or was it just the
real stuff? No magic in this one.
The only magic is survival. Right meals, right nails, right
faces at dusk. Readers wanted you to explain
why you don't sum up a scene. Why do you always cut where
things are still raw? Life doesn't tie up with a bow
at bedtime. You lay down sore, wake up
tired, and pick up right where you left off.
If a moment ends with figuring things out, you you didn't live
it right. That lands closing out.
If you could give readers one thing to hold from this chapter,
the grind, the friendship, the hope in a broken thing, what
would it be? Hold on to what you can because
it's all weather and work and maybe if you're lucky, the same
faces at the table tomorrow. Word.
Final shout listeners, we hit almost 9 hours discussing MUD.
We made it. Leave your questions on the
discord, and next week we're diving into chapter 5.
Whatever gets patched and whatever breaks.
If there's more mud, Jess gets to describe it.
Thanks, Art. Thanks, listeners.
Stay stubborn. Survive the night, write it
down. OK, so let's dig into the wind
down on this chapter. After the festival, after the
repairs, after the late night writing.
There's always tomorrow. There's always work left
unpatched. It hits like habit, not hope.
When you wrote that, Sir. Lying awake waiting for the
bell, no promises, no dread. What was your purpose?
Just to show it as it is. Endings don't square off.
Nobody gets a speech telling them what mattered.
They just find themselves tired at the end of a day knowing
another comes. Most lives go that way.
Sleep is an interruption, not a finish line.
That's uncomfortable for people used to closure and fiction.
You get DMS, people wanting Sir to be OK, Ward to say something
wise, Roland to pull off a rescue.
Nobody's getting that. Not unless it's earned.
Even then, not all the way. Sometimes Ward mutters something
close to wisdom. Sometimes Roland shows up with
another scrap of wire. Those are the moments that
count. Not the speeches or the big
finish. Just the small gesture, the food
past, a nod. Anything more would be a lie.
Let's read some listener questions first.
What would Sarah do if he actually had enough?
If there was ever a day with no new disaster.
That's simple. He'd wait for the next one.
Folks get trained to expect trouble.
No disaster just means your guards up in a different way.
Maybe you get a longer night's sleep, maybe you waste time
imagining, but the part of you that looks for the next break
never gets put away. Next one why do so many of your
characters stick around in the village when it's clearly so
rough? Where you go, if you leave out
of mud, into marsh. When you don't have money, you
don't leave. The cost of traveling is higher
than most realize, and even misery is familiar.
You grow roots even if you don't like the dirt.
People will stay, complain, and work.
Anything else takes more risk than most can afford.
What's the worst, most real piece of advice Ward ever gave,
Sir? You're not owed a smooth life.
You show up, you leave more standing than you found.
That's Ward and a few old men I knew preach the same gospel.
You don't get what you want usually, but you don't break
what's handed to you. Is there anything
autobiographical in the way Sir records the days?
Someone in the discord said this feels too true to have been
made-up. You keeping your own Ledger?
Always did you forget otherwise. And sometimes you you write so
you can let go if you remember it.
You don't have to carry it the same way.
Sayer needs that his only way to know he existed.
Someone saw what he what he saw, even if it's just himself.
I want to pick up on the last push into autumn.
The crows, the frost, the sense that what gets mended must break
again. You catch that turn of season in
maybe 2 lines. Why not give us 3 pages of
weather? If you say what the cold feels
like, the listeners will fill in the rest.
Nobody forgets being cold just enough to place you on the road
give you the ache, then get right back to the story.
Let's rotate to something lighter.
How did you settle on pipe smoke and onions as recurring sensory
bits? You remember what you grow up
with. Most kitchens stink like
something rotting, stewing or burning.
Ward's pipe is always on. Onions last longest in a root
cellar. Write what stays in your nose
after you leave the house. Will Sir's notebook ever get
read by someone else, or is it just to keep him upright?
Time will tell. I don't plan ahead.
Not with things like that. Most journals stay private, but
sometimes they wind up in someone else's hands when you're
not looking. Either way, every entry counts,
even if it never gets read. All right.
Favorite festival moment? Mine was the boys dancing badly
and the bread roll flying. The kind of clumsy joy you
watch, not plan. That's the one.
Bread doesn't get thrown unless folks trust it's OK.
You risk looking stupid. Let down your guard.
No music sounds sweeter than when they laugh at you, not with
you. That's the pulse I live for.
Writing. I like that nobody is redeemed
at the festival either. It's a break, not a cure.
Right. Good time doesn't fix a thing
sometimes it buys you another day of patience with people
you're stuck with. Couple lightning rounds.
Favorite tool mentioned in this chapter.
The dull bladed hatchet. You use it for everything.
If it works, you keep it forever, knuckles bloodied or
not. If you could eat one thing with
the serpents. Stewing bread cold.
If it's not too stale to chew, do.
You have a Roland. Do you miss him?
Add 3 or 4 grown up, 1 still close, other two moved off.
Probably rigging up messes in someone else's yard you always
miss your role in, even if you don't admit it.
Passed from the listeners for now.
Why do the animals always seem smarter, or at least more honest
than people? Because they are.
Cat doesn't pretend to love you. Pig never lies.
It runs roots, eats, gets out when the fence drops.
People ought to take notes. Wouldn't agree more.
All right, take away time. Chapter 4 drops us right back
into the river, the cycle, the mud, and that stubborn breath on
a mere hope that tomorrow, maybe something gets built and doesn't
break. You have anything for people
walking around with that weight who maybe feel stuck in their
own Teutoma? Go out, fix a thing, doesn't
matter how small. If you don't fix, mark it down.
You'll remember, and that's proof you were here.
They'll stick with me and I hope with all of you as well.
All right, folks, that's another episode of Shockwaves.
Thanks for letting us in. To your ears, your kitchens,
your patchwork lives. You know I'll drag you back next
week. I'll be here, Boots muddy,
pencil ready. Listeners, keep those questions
coming. Keep your notebooks dry, and
watch the fences. They're always one storm from
falling, good night from shockwaves.
See you in the morning if the bell don't ring first.
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