Welcome back to Shockwaves, the after show, where we dig deep
into stellar shock chapter by chapter.
I am Jess, your host, and with me, like always, is Arthur.
Or Art, if you know him, the voice behind Tui Toma's bruises.
Art, you ready? As I'll ever be.
Always a strange hearing you sum up this kind of episode as
digging deep. All we do is wallow in that mud.
Same as. That's what people want, right?
Mud, bruises, actual pain, none of the sugar.
So this week we hit Chapter 3 Part 1, focusing on Sir
Seraphin, the festival and everything that comes after a
lot of, let's be honest, suffering, but also some small
celebration. Where exactly does this chapter
sit with you as the author? This one's right at the midpoint
of the start. You've got that sense of the
village in full color. Banners hung, everyone dancing,
kids running wild. It's the best Tuidema ever gets,
which means it's just waiting for things to go wrong.
You can't write a festival and keep it warm all the way
through. That's not how this world works.
The whole festival scene, it felt like the community was
hungry for a reason not to think about the actual slow grind of
their lives. You drop in those details, torn
flags, broken benches, lights hanging by threads, but
underneath it's already rotted. You leaning in on that on
purpose or that just how rural fantasy works for you?
I think when people celebrate in places like this, in worlds like
this, they do it with the awareness that next day is going
to be worse for it. I've lived in enough small towns
to know you take a festival and it's always relief first.
Then somebody breaks a window, someone gets hit, the hangover
comes back twice as hard. I wanted it ugly in the details.
Heavy air, heat, flies, sweat. No beauty unless you squint or
you're already tipsy. And the minstrels, I got to say,
the festival and that show Cancion puts on it gave me
goosebumps. Not in a dreamy way, but like,
they're the spark. They rile up those kids, and by
the time it's over, everyone looks even more tired, stretched
thin. The minstrels are outsiders.
You bring outsiders into a place like Tuitoma.
You get suspicion, you get hope, you get promises.
The kids get to see a world beyond the mud fields.
And then the show ends. Those people move on.
Tuitoma's got less than it started with maybe a story,
maybe a song in the old woman's head, but the rest?
It's gone. It's like you let the minstrels
bridge this fantasy, this idea. There's something more without
ever giving it to them. Really.
Even, Sir, when he's pushed up to sing, there's so much fear in
that moment. Can you talk about writing that
scene? Was it always going to be him,
or did you toy with letting Vera or someone else have the last
song? It was always Sir.
That fear is baked in. He doesn't want it.
It's that push and pull. You got a village full of
pressure, an uncle who's never satisfied, and a a crowd that
wants a scapegoat and a champion sirs both depending on the
night. The song isn't a reward, it's a
last job of the night. Everyone's waiting for someone
to break that time. It's him.
I love how that scene lands. I mean even the singing isn't
cathartic. No hero's arc, just pain through
gritted teeth. The way you describe his voice,
the panic, the sweat. Was it hard to resist making it
wholesome? Or do you just not have that in
you? I don't have much soft in me for
these characters. You let them off easy once and
the rest of the story gets flat. If Sir sang and came away
glowing, he wouldn't be Sir Real pain is what sticks.
I can't glamorize that I have to write just the bone and skin,
sometimes bruised, sometimes cut, but always staying raw.
So we got to talk about what happens afterward.
You really let the festival's noise fade into nothing except
that encounter with Ward, that scene where Sarah gets hit.
It hurt to listen to. How do you know when you've done
enough to make that the violence, the after it, feel
real rather than just edgelord material?
If it feels uncomfortable, it's because it is.
I grew up around men who drink too much and use their fists too
quick. I know the sounds you get, the
slurred blame, the old anger, those quick hands.
When I write it, I want the audience to feel trapped, same
as SER. If it reads a spectacle, it
misses the point. If you feel like stepping away,
then I've hit it right. Real pain's got weight.
It doesn't just flash and disappear.
One thing that got me after the fight, you drag time out, Sir.
Sits, works his jaw, feeds bread to himself, let's a moth die in
his hand. It's such dead weight, like he's
more tired than angry. That's different from how a lot
of fantasy would play it out, especially with a young hero.
Why do you like to lean into that exhaustion instead of the
fire? Because most people don't do
anything after a beating, They survive it.
Maybe they're just tired, ashamed, hungry, and in too much
pain to throw punches back that fire.
Maybe it comes at some point, but it's built on slow, everyday
endurance. You don't get up ready for the
next round, You just patch the cut, chew stale bread, watch the
bugs, and hope the next hit lands softer.
That's kind of brutal, but it fits.
Now about Vera, I love how she's close but not in that romantic
fixie everything way. She's got her own scars in the
background but edged in rough. How do you figure out their
friendship balance? Everyone in T Thomas carrying
something, Sarah and Vera. A lot of old pain in both
houses. They know what to expect from
each other. There's comfort, but no rescue.
Vera's not the savior. She can bring a meal, bandage a
cut, throw a joke, but she won't change the weather.
Their bond is trust built on shared grind, not soft words.
The details Mud, sweat, old fences, bruised jaw.
There's no break for SER. Every time he stands, someone's
there to drag him back down or offer crust.
You ever worry readers or listeners will say enough?
Like, where's their hope? That might, but for me, hope in
these stories isn't a rescue. It's stubbornness.
You see it when Sir stands in the field, breaks clods, shares
bread, keeps working, living through another day.
That's hope. Small gestures, Vera bringing
soup, rolling, rolling rope over his shoulder.
That's the real win in places like Tuatama.
If you want heroes with swords and shining armor, this isn't
your story. Do.
You get feedback from people who want those sword and shield
moments, who say when's Sarah going to get strong and fight
back. Sometimes I I get letters.
Half say I was waiting for him to run or lash out or turn the
tables. The other half, usually people
who've seen the inside of a bad house, say, yeah, that's it.
That's how quiet survival feels. The struggle makes the story for
me, not the escape. Let's dip into some listener
questions. First one's from Haley.
Is Ward meant to be purely A villain?
He's hard to listen to, but some parts sound almost there's a
shadow of sadness. So is there any chance for him?
Or is he just the brick wall? Ward's not a villain, not in the
story sense. He's just what happens when
someone loses all the fights and blames everyone else.
He drinks, lashes out, regrets it, then cycles back.
Sometimes he shows regret because regret is easy when
nothing's on the line. The sadness is real.
He's lost most of what kept him human.
He's dangerous, but he's not a cartoon.
I don't write him to be redeemed or to be hated, just to be
understood. That sounds like you've drawn on
people you knew, right? So let's talk about how
community works in this story. The lines between mine and
yours. Fences loose, kids running wild,
people barging into kitchens. Nobody's ever alone.
How do you see that shaping, Sir?
Tears got no privacy because nobody in the village does.
You're shaped by chores and neighbors before you get a
chance to build your own shell. For him, survival comes from
being half in and half out of everyone's business.
He gets respite from friends, but he's never safe from the
others. His uncle, the old men at
council. It's all a grind of faces,
needs, hands grabbing, mouths blaming.
You can't hero your way out. You just have to absorb and stay
moving. And Speaking of counsel, that
scene where all the old men just sit around, argue over fences,
pie and minstrels, They're not making decisions, just keeping
the pot stirred. Is that your path sneaking in
again? It's every small town I've lived
in, present companies sometimes included.
You put a group of tired men and women in a room, they'll spend 3
hours arguing about who broke the bucket.
Never fixed the leak. Real power moves behind closed
doors or not at all, counsels the ritual.
It gives the community something to do besides blame themselves.
And after all that, you bring Sarah to the well, let him share
a meal in another home, laugh, get beat up in games with the
other kids. Is that your reward system or
just how things reset to 0? There's no reward system here.
You get food, you laugh at the little things, you take what
comfort you can because otherwise the next day chews you
up worse. The only scorecard is the one
you write in mud and it washes away every time it rains.
Let's go into voice for a SEC. You write in a style that's real
blunt, bare bones, but so precise you can almost taste the
dirt. I notice you avoid adjectives
and just grind everything into action objects smells.
Why do you do that? Habit.
Partially habit, partly belief. I I think if you use too many
bells and whistles you lose the reality.
I'd rather write sweat running down his back, the sharp sting
of a slap, or bread tastes like dust than dress it up.
Keeps everything close to the bone.
Besides, nobody intuits. Almost got the patience for
pretty words. I noticed you never let SER cry
or collapse, not fully. There's a whimper once maybe,
but mostly he resets, goes about chores, eyes on the ground.
Is that intentional or just who he is when you write him?
That's who he is. You cry, but not for long.
There's no drama. Things ache.
You mumble, push bread in your mouth.
You fix the fence or patch your boot, then go back to living in
these places. Open pain is weakness, you keep
it shielded to save yourself and everyone you care about.
The world isn't totally closed, though.
You have the minstrels dropping in riddles for the kids, rumors
of wars beyond the jungle. Is that your way of keeping hope
faint but present? Hope here is just a different
story. The outside world can come in.
Sometimes it does. Sometimes it ruins things.
Sometimes it just passes through.
These people don't live expecting rescue.
If hope exists, it's as simple as rain breaking after a hard
morning, or a joke in the mud. The minstrels offer a window,
but it's narrow and it swings shut fast.
How do you keep from making those small moments sentimental?
By making them cost something. If Vera sneaks a crust to SER,
it costs her. If SER lays in the field a few
seconds longer, someone else will say he's slacking.
No moment is free, so every bit of comfort is a trade or a risk.
We had a question from Donnie. Is Vera ever going to save SER
outright, or does he have to earn every inch himself?
What do you say? Nobody's saving anybody in this
place. They help, sure, push each other
forward, but there's no rescue. Survival is group work, slow,
repetitive, cheap and hard. Vera will carry him a step, same
as he'll carry her, but there's no ride out on white horses.
I'm into that. Switching gears, a lot of people
picked up on the animal details. The oxen, pigs, the dog chasing
scraps, crows waiting for seeds. You think about that much?
Constantly, animals remind readers what's really at risk.
If the pigs miss a meal, people will soon.
If the ox slumps under the yoke, someone's walking to market.
Every animal shapes how work gets done, how hunger settles
in, how luck changes. If war comes one day, the
animals will know it first. You never give us the weather.
A simple setting always is a force that does damage.
Mud and boots, rain flattening everything, sun burning, the
last hope out of the clouds. Why make it another antagonist?
Because out here it is. Weather's a character.
It breaks plans, rots, harvests, ruins, fences.
It's not a painting outside your window.
It's what makes your day harder or easier.
People don't think about it unless it hurts.
So that's how I write it. If you had to spend one day into
a Tama, which character would you hang with?
Vero, she'd never let things slide.
She'd get you fed. Keep the jokes coming Deck.
Anyone who stepped up wrong or Balu kid tries can't dance, but
he'd scam you out of your last piece of cake with a smile.
I'd take Vaidi, chaos and all. You'd end up covered in mud,
maybe chased by goats, but you wouldn't be bored.
You think this world works because nobody gets what they
want? Or because nobody stops trying.
Both, Sometimes not getting what you want keeps you fighting.
If everything went well, Teatomo would flatten.
What runs the engine isn't hope, but stubborn work.
What's next for Sir in the coming chapters?
Any spoilers? Not big, just a hint.
Life in tuatomas. Not letting up.
Counsel gets rougher. The rains keep coming.
Old wounds flare up, new trouble on the edge.
Maybe from outside, maybe just churning under the surface.
Certain Vera they'll carry on. Maybe they'll get kicked harder.
Maybe they'll have one more night with music and bread.
Art, as always, you leave the world heavier than you found it.
Any closing thoughts for listeners who are in the
trenches in their own worlds? If the work gets you up
tomorrow, you're already stronger than you know, bread
and bruises, sometimes both on the same day.
That's still surviving. Couldn't have said it better.
That's it for this round of shock waves.
You got mud, music, bruises, and scraps of hope.
Stellar shock Chapter 3 Part 1. Right after the break, we'll
drag Art back for Chapter 3, Part 2.
Until then, keep your feet dry if you can.
Good luck with that. Welcome back to Shock Waves.
This is the podcast where we break down every muddy beat of
stellar shock. I'm just your host coming in
fresh from a week of bailing water out of my own kitchen.
And with me, as always, is Arthur.
He's the mind behind everything that just happened in Chapter 3,
Part 2. Hi, Art.
Hey Jess, thanks for having me on again.
It's only fitting, given the week that we're talking about a
chapter that's got more mud and rain than my own backyard.
You've got a knack for timing. Let's just jump in.
Part 2 feels like the aftermath of the festival.
The big loud moments are done now.
Everybody's stuck with their hangover.
How'd you decide that this was the direction for the next day
in Tuatoma? There's barely a beat that isn't
about weather, chores, and everyone sort of slogging
through it. I wanted readers to feel what
it's like when festival magic fades.
There's always the next day. Maybe you wake up hungover.
Maybe you wake up bruised. For Sarah and everyone in
Teatoma, daily life comes back heavy.
No one's waiting around foreclosure.
They only know work. They only know what hurts.
That's what comes after, a small glimmer of relief, the return to
normal, which always feels harder.
That opening, Sir. Waking up, jaw aching, the mud
already dragging at his boots, cold ash and piss in the house.
You hit us with the mood right away.
It's all about making you feel the world on your skin.
And for Sir, waking up means checking what's still broken.
His Uncle Ward's gone. There's nothing but the usual
field work ahead. That's the regular beat.
Pain work, more pain and no room to look for comfort.
You avoid either sentimentality or melodrama even around those
little moments. Vera Hanser A crust of dark
bread. Neither of them is going to be
poetic about it, but it's a little lifeline.
What tells you when to cut off the emotion and when to let it
show in a scene? Real people don't talk about
what matters half the time. That's the truth, especially in
small towns with too much history.
If Vera hands her bread, it's practical.
She does it 'cause it keeps them moving, not because she wants to
make a gesture. If anyone gets too touchy feely,
it doesn't fit. That's not their life.
So you show the action. Bread past.
A nod. No words, but you see what's
there. If you linger on the emotion or
say it out loud, the moment dies.
I love that Vera's dialogue is just you going to live.
That's it. It it forces the reader to do
the work. They're all too tired for more
words. If Sir answered in flowery
language, Vera would roll her eyes and move on.
So let's walk through the chapter.
The first half is all about returning to regular chores, Sur
and Vera and the boys trudging to the field, mud sucking down
boots, sun coming out just long enough to make the sweat worse.
There's not a lot of plot, but there's so much world.
Why lean in to endless work? That's life for most.
You drag yourself up, grab a hoe, keep your head down.
Nothing stops 'cause you're bruised, humiliated, bored.
Especially for people with nothing.
These aren't side details, They're the only story.
It's war of attrition. You versus the dirt every day.
There are moments, though. Small drama.
Village gossip spreads like a fungus.
The theft gets blamed on outsiders, or maybe not
outsiders. You get women at the well
spreading rumors, kids tearing through the muddy lanes,
stealing fruit, eggs, whatever. How much of that's pulled from
real memory and how much came from you just dreaming up to
Toma? Most of it's growing up in a
small town. I remember how every time a shoe
went missing, it was a crisis. The thief was always someone
new, sometimes a kid, Sometimes if you asked someone's grandma a
ghost. I wanted all these rumors to
spread faster than any truth. It's just how people work,
especially when things go wrong. When there's not enough, you
start pointing fingers. That comes through later.
There's the fire, and it's not some huge plot changing event,
but it still changes the day. Everyone pulls together, panic
first, then disappointment. No one catches a hero moment, no
one's elevated by it. You watch whole crowds just get
more tired, more suspicious, more wrung out.
The fire needed to feel like exposure.
There's chaos, but no one rises above Kegels.
Ruined, but it's not fixed with a speech or a miracle.
The work falls back on the same people, and if there's any
restoration, it's not clean. People help because they have
to, not because they're Saints. The cost gets divided whether
anyone agrees or not. And you want us to hate Ward in
this sequence? He comes late, tosses curses,
doesn't help, and then sort of slinks away.
Ward isn't meant to be hated. He's tired and bitter, probably
drunk, definitely broken. He doesn't know how to help, not
really. He used to.
Now the best he can contribute is a complaint everyone into a
Tomas. Angry at Ward sometimes, but no
one's shocked when he shows up and hurts rather than heals.
I wasn't going to give him a redemption where he grabs a
bucket and makes everything better.
There's a real sense that we're stuck in this cycle.
Pain, mud, chores, dealing with Ward, getting maybe 1 cup of
cold soup left. Was there ever a version where
things let up on him? Or is the whole point to never
let go of that tension? If I let up, it gets cheap.
Sarah's story isn't about escape, it's about learning how
to stay upright when you're never given an out.
He has memories. He has some old songs from his
parents, but they're just that, memories.
The present is pain, repetition, and the small chance for comfort
that comes from stubborn friends or rare moments when things
don't get worse. That's what I want you to feel.
I'm. Going to talk about the way you
handle time in this section. There are huge chunks where you
lean into the looping nature of work.
Chop, break, dump, repeat. Even your sentence rhythms shift
to match. Was that stylistic or is it just
your default? It's on purpose.
The work itself becomes the internal rhythm.
If Sir's hours are all ho, haul, sharpen, eat, sleep, then the
prose reflects that. Repetitions mark his life and
you can't write it with clever simile or cutaway reflection.
It has to be direct. So I did my best to shave it all
down to the muscle. Then you'll throw in a physical
beat. Sir's jaw throbs, his ribs catch
with sweat. He can't sleep because words
snoring like a dying engine. Why those details instead of
more traditional character study?
Inner thoughts. If you're spent, hungry and
sore, you don't get to dwell in philosophical flake.
Your body tells you the truth. That's all.
Sir has left. Body memory.
He can't think about regret or hope.
He has to notice the ache every time he bends to tie his boots.
It's honest and it locks the reader in.
If you feel Sir's bruises in every action, you're in his
world, not floating above it. There's the village, this piece
of the world built up by tiny actions.
Kids chasing pigs, mothers ignoring children's hunger until
the bread dough finishes rising, repairs done in silence or with
spat curses. How much of that is you growing
up rural and how much is just trying to make things tactile?
I was raised rural and I watched people do the same thing
everywhere. Nothing gets fixed by itself,
everything breaks twice before it's right, and most problems
get talked around rather than dealt with.
When I write the village, it's grounding the setting in bodies
and chores. The world doesn't wait for you
to have a narrative arc. You get up, the rain comes, you
curse the rain, your knee acts up, the roof leaks and the cats
fight under the porch as your plot.
So I want to talk about Vera. She's hard as nails, a phrase
she'd probably hate. There's this moment where she's
helping Sir work quietly puts herself shoulder to shoulder
with him in the mess after the fire and wraps her own rag
around her bleeding hand because she doesn't want to stop.
It feels deliberate that you never let her breakdown or open
up in big TV drama ways. Vera can't afford sentiment.
She's lived under the same weight as Sarah, if not harder,
being the only girl with a half dozen brothers and a mother who
doesn't hand out soft words. When she gets cut, she wraps it
up and gets back at it. The support comes as small
gestures. She'll steal bread from her own
meal to give him, push him to keep moving, scold him with a
joke when she's worried. Any bigger show and she thinks
she was wasting breath. That's more honest than spelling
out her pain. It makes the chapter small
victories, patching a fence, saving a bucket's worth of soup,
seeing the new roof hold through a shower.
Feel earned, not handed out. That's what life looks like when
you're down. A day that doesn't leave you
worse is almost a win. So let's hit some specifics.
You've got an entire crowd scene for the fire, but you never
focus on the main characters at the expense of the world.
Instead, everyone's moving, arguing, complaining.
We see each character from the outside first.
Cagle pounding embers, Viti yelling about bellows, Tavlin
barking orders. Why write it that way?
Why not narrow in to Sir or Vera's eyes?
You need to feel to Atomo as one tangled knot.
If we only stay on SER suffering, or Vyard's concern or
Ward's spite, it shrinks everything.
They're all suffering differently, all chipping in,
all failing at once. If you want a story about just
one person, you lose what makes a village real.
Everyone else's noise, everyone's pain blending
together. The narrative lens should bounce
from face to face, moment to moment, not lock in so tight you
forget the rest of the world is hurting too.
Do you ever get feedback that readers want just more plot?
Oh sure, there's always someone who wants to know when does the
magic show up or where the secrets, But I tell them secrets
don't hide in fantasy forests or plots about crowns.
The secrets are in the missing bread, the bent fence post, the
rumor about who set the fire. Life's all small mysteries,
unless you're already looking for something to believe in.
Speaking of mysteries, this chapter has the missing cloth,
wild rumors about the minstrels maybe being to blame, and every
kid with an alibi. Do you write a solution for
those details, or do some threads just drift away because
no one in the village has time to chase the answer?
Both, but mostly the latter. What matters gets lost if you're
busy surviving in real small towns.
Stolen cloth or a broken window is only news until another
disaster appears. Then everyone forgets unless
they're still mad. Not every thread needs to be
tied. Some rumors eat themselves, some
die, and only one or two will ever matter again.
Life goes on. Now, the tension with Word and
Sir, it's never explosive. It's just always there, like a
splinter. Word's presence is a dark cloud
across every meal. You have these small violent
acts, Sir, flinching at a sound, bracing for another strike.
How do you handle that kind of violence day in and day out
without pushing the reader away or overplaying the agony?
You make it routine. If violence is an eruption every
time, you desensitize the reader, the shoves, the words,
the looks. Most of its routine, Sir
anticipates pain before it lands, and when it does, and the
tension stays anyway, it's not melodramatic, not a Hollywood
punch. It's someone, in this case ward,
spreading rot instead of healing.
You need the regular pain to be part of the world, not the
centerpiece. And there's restraint in the way
you write their silences. You avoid monologues always.
Why so minimal on dialogue in those moments?
Because nothing helpful comes from it.
Neither of them has language for what's really wrong.
It'd be false for Sir to blurt out why do you hate me or for
Ward to explain himself. They don't talk, they eat in
silence or mumble or spit a curse.
That's their history more than words would break the spell.
Let's talk about the village political scene.
There's always a council, always an argument, always someone
trying to blame the last disaster on a convenient
outsider. Where's that from?
That's every community, even family.
If you squint. Blame and power run in circles.
Someone wants a scapegoat. Someone else wants to fix a gate
1/3 just once left alone. I stole lines from every town
meeting I've suffered through. No one wants to be blamed.
Everyone wants something for free and nobody wants to stay up
all night on watch. But everyone wants someone else
to. Have to point out the kids.
If the adults are tired, the kids are part cursed, part
feral. They chase each other through
mud, throw rocks, steal scraps, get in trouble, then run from
it. You let them be wild.
Wildness is survival for kids in places like Tuatoma.
You steal when you're hungry, lie when you're caught, and run
because it's fun. They build their toughness out
of whatever's nearby. Curses, jokes, bruises.
I wanted them to act up, get in fights, throw bread at windows,
because that's life. Nobody protects innocence.
You get sharp quick. Loved the bit where one of the
brothers gets bloodied and immediately Roland spits on it,
patches it with a shirt, then off they go.
No tragedy, just action to action.
That's how you learn to live with pain.
Patch it and move on. There aren't resources to
coddle. If you treat blood or bruises as
disasters, nothing gets done. Is that rougher than your own
boyhood? No, but there's no room for
nostalgia in the book. My own past was softer, but I've
seen what happens when kids don't get a break and I didn't
want to pretty it up. We've talked a lot about
suffering. There are also little glimmers
of humor. Workmen like dry as dust.
Is that just habit or is it conscious?
It's both. Humor is wedge and release.
These characters don't get punch lines or stand up routines.
It's VD says he's never let the truth stop him.
That's a joke, but no one cracks a smile.
It keeps you sane, but only barely.
A lot of listeners have asked about the town itself.
Tuatoma feels alive. If you had to walk through,
where would you go first? Who would you stop to talk to?
I'd find Cagle at the Forge. Any small town runs on its Smith
tools. Rumors temper it all.
Then maybe Tavlin's porch, though she'd curse me out.
Her eyes are the sharpest in the village.
But I'd avoid the council. They can't fix their own
windows, let alone the town. It's been a little off topic.
I noticed some people picking up on your king leaning style.
You strip everything bare, no flourishes, not a lot of
metaphor or fancy description, no pulling out to talk about the
grand theme of suffering. Just mud, boots, bruises.
Is that a tribute or is that just your voice coming through?
Bit of both. I read King Young, learn to cut
quick, but the the main thing is if you stop for decoration, you
lose the reader in the fog. There's no artifice in Tuatoma.
The prose isn't about style, it's about function.
You show everything through doing.
There aren't longing gazes or tender musings.
There are chores that need doing before the next rain.
You have the old battered objects, the bent knife, the
father's spoon, the ruined belt, the rag wrapped hands.
Is possession a big piece of how you draw character?
Yeah, people hold on to what they can.
Not for nostalgia, really, but because it's useful.
Or all that's left. Objects are memory you can
touch. Sarah's parents, long gone, left
him a knife and a spoon, and neither makes life easier, but
both remind him where he came from.
That tells you who he is without a a speech or a flashback.
So by the end of this section, SER's world hasn't changed.
Not really. The fire's out, but the mud
stays. The bruises fade, but someone
else gets hurt. Work stacks up.
Even moments of rest or humor slip away fast.
That's survival. Chapters don't give out closure.
Same as life. Maybe someone sings, maybe a
fence gets patched, but tomorrow brings more rain.
You keep going or you don't. How do you want readers to walk
away from this section? Not what's the big message, more
what feeling should stick after everything.
I want them to feel the weight. There's dignity in surviving,
not conquering. No one gets a parade.
No one wins. But if you're still alive,
that's its own answer. Dirt, rain, bruises.
If the world hasn't beat you down for good, you're still in
it. OK, lightning round, favorite
moment in this part of the chapter.
Eagle hammering at the ash, not saying anything, just doing the
work. That's the heart of the chapter.
Loss, anger and nothing fancy. Just pick up the tools.
Least favorite scene to write? The soup at Vera's.
Harder than you'd think to get the feeling right.
Not too cold, not too comforting.
Any cutscenes? Something that was too harsh or
too soft for Teutama. I cut some early banter between
Sir and Roland. It felt forced, in pain.
You don't have time to joke about Hope.
Not unless you mean it. And the animals, the goat is
always destroying things. There's pigs rooting under
everything, chickens escaping, dogs fighting.
Writing animals feels almost like writing chaos.
Any secrets there The? Animals are part of the world.
They don't get lines, but they get action.
They exist to remind the people that not everything bends to
their will. They break things, root in the
wrong spot, keep you humble. If you could drop anyone modern
thing into Atoma, say a chainsaw or a bag of fast food, would you
do it? Oh, would it ruin everything?
They. 'D break the chainsaw in a week,
eat the food in a minute and the field would still need hoeing.
Nothing helps for long. Wrapping up, where is Sir going?
He's got an old knife, a pack he won't open, bruises he won't
explain. He's not leaving, not yet.
But does it get any better? For Sir, better just means not
losing more. Maybe the next day he keeps his
soup, or the fence holds, or Vera shares a laugh.
That's better, even if it won't last.
I want to hit you with this. The way you close Pearl doesn't
follow that neat little arc a lot of listeners expect.
No tidy wrap up, no catharsis. Even the little stuff Ward
muttering in another room or Vera's window flicking shut
lands like unfinished business. That intentional.
Always a neat ending would be a lie.
Tasutama's days don't get tied off with a bow.
You go to bed with bruises and you wake up stiff, Ward's not
going to have a heart to heart. The window will close because
someone needs sleep, not because there's closure.
But you layer hope in there, just a little.
SER holds the blue cloth patch Vera gives him, turns it in his
hand, doesn't let go. Those aren't gestures for the
sake of optimism, right? It's just what people do.
You grab any scrap of kindness or comfort, not because you
expect miracles, but because it's one more thing that keeps
you facing the next day. Hope is work.
It's not a mood or a feeling, it's a habit.
You take the rag, you carry the knife, you keep going.
Nothing grand. After the fire, everyone's hands
are cut. The mud's always creeping in,
soup stretched thin. When you write those recovery
scenes, the endless repairs, the the slow work, how do you keep
them from dragging for the reader?
I use plain action. Show each job.
Someone packing earth into the post hole until their nails
split. Kids arguing over bent nails,
bread getting sliced rough. Don't dwell, just track the job
being done. Move to the next.
Make each moment specific. The drag comes when you
summarize. I don't summarize it.
And you show how everyone recovers in their own way.
The men keep hauling, the women eye the new roof and already
find fault. Kids turn repairs into races or
games. Does that match your real life
experience? Pretty much you'd see someone
stop mid tag just to point at another crooked board or kids
who help by getting in the way. If you're lucky, the world keeps
working through the mess. About Sarah's dreams.
There's that bit where he wakes rough, feels like he couldn't
move his legs, the field always too long.
He's got this sense of the work never ending, but you leave even
despair kind of matter of fact. Because for Sarah, there's no
point naming it. You feel spent, you feel
hobbled. You get up or you don't.
He doesn't have time or language for despair in the poetic sense.
He lives it. It's not news to him.
I'm picking up on the way memory works in the book.
The song from his mother, the spoon, the battered buckle he
digs up. None of it is nostalgia.
It's more like wear and tear. You get the sense that old
happiness just weighs the present down.
Memories. Brick and mortar.
You live with it. It shapes you, it doesn't lift
you. Sometimes it hurts more than it
helps, but it's all you've got. Those objects are the real
inheritance, not any speech or secret.
Listeners ask about Sir and Vera, are they ever going to
have a talk, a real talk about escape or what they want?
Or is that as much as we'll get? Shoulder to shoulder at the
fence, patching holes, trading bread?
That's it, really. If they ever did talk, they'd
mess it up. People like them do their hoping
by way of chores. They look sideways, not straight
on. The most honest things anyone
says are short, she says. Don't leave me alone to it, he
says. Probably you dragging half the
village. That's the real core, showing up
even when you don't know what to ask for.
And the way you build pain in the smaller stuff.
Scabs, split fingers, cold Stew, someone's razor voice cutting
through the morning. Those are the emotional moments
as much as any confession. They're more honest than any big
outpouring. You nurse a bruise or chew on
crust. That's what tells you about a
body or a soul. After everything else has said,
it's peace. The daily cut is sharper than
the big showy wound. There's a lot of trust in the
audience to pick up on those details.
Not over explain, not tie everything up.
Trust the wrong word. Necessity is more like it.
Life doesn't bother explaining itself to you, why should the
story? If I did, I'd be lying about how
things work. Let's talk about humor again.
The running jokes are blunt, almost cutting, like when Balu
blame someone else every time he falls in the ditch or Vt claims
he found lucky stones. Are those signs that this world
has warmth, or are they just defense mechanisms?
Both, probably. If you don't laugh, the work
will wear you flat. But no one here survives by
wishful thinking that humor is war hardened, sharpened.
Same as a good knife. Keeps people moving, keeps the
group together. If a joke lands, it's usually at
someone's expense. Your own, someone else's,
doesn't matter. Would you say you value that
jokes as Shields rather than weapons?
Shields, sure, but a good shield cracks if you hit it enough.
The jokes crack too. Laughter never lasts long.
I want to run through some listener questions.
Here's one art. Why do you write the kids in
Teutoma so rough? Some people wanted at least one
soft spot, one innocent. They're rough because they have
to be. You want innocence?
You don't grow up starving in a patched house with nothing to do
but chase animals and dodge work.
Maybe somewhere else, but not here.
A soft kid doesn't last. Here's another Is word
redeemable or is he always going to be trouble?
Redemption's not a Gulf reward. day-to-day.
He might soften, he might breakdown, but no one gets a
come to Jesus moment in this world.
He's too tired for grace, too raw for forgiveness.
At least not outright. Last one for today.
Would Sir ever leave or is he bound to the village forever?
Siri's choices shrink by the day.
He stays as long as there's something to be done.
Vera, a bruise to endure, a field to hoe.
If he leaves, he won't do it because he found hope.
He'll do it because there's nothing left to patch.
For now, he chooses to stay, and that's enough.
On the subject of leaving, there's that scene where the
merchant cart rolls through again, barely making a dent.
Nothing changes. Village buys what it can.
The elders grumble about prices, the kids angle for a treat, but
nobody's fortunes change. Why keep bringing outsiders in
if nothing shifts? Outsiders remind you the world
keeps moving. The merchant does nothing but
move goods around. People still want what he sells,
but it never fills the gap. It's one more churn in the mud.
Nobody's world expands. They just get a new patch of
cloth or a tin of beans and keep on.
Sometimes I bring outsiders so the village can have a reason to
pull tighter. Change comes from within, if it
comes at all. What's the hardest part of
writing these endless cycles of breakdown, repair, repeat?
I mean, how do you keep yourself from getting bored?
Or do you lean into that feeling because you want the reader to
sit in it too? If I get bored I make someone
drop a bucket or lose a fight, but mostly I just keep it
moving. Boredom's a tool to show what
grind does. Nothing new, just thicker mud,
more tired bones. It's worked for me too.
It's a quite a different question floating around the
chat about the way you describe pain.
You don't do the his heart race, you go for his hand found the
knife or jaw clenched, that kind of thing.
If you want to show pain as something that has a job, a
punch to the jaw changes how you chew, not how you cry.
You bend differently on a bad ankle.
If pain doesn't change what a person can do, it's just drama.
I only care how pain works, not how it looks.
I wrote down a line for myself. You had something like no one in
Tuatoma made easy work of mornings.
It's short, plain, and it says more than a monologue would.
That's the goal. If you need a paragraph to say
it, you've missed the mark. Oh, I'll put you on the spot.
Is there a character we haven't really met, but who matters a
lot more down the line? Probably Roland's mother.
She does more to hold things together than anyone thinks.
Keeps the boys in line, doesn't blink at trouble, listens harder
than anyone knows. But she works behind the scenes
like the best people do. I hope we get more of her.
Can we talk about the festival aftermath for a minute?
Those scraps left behind, the feathers, the wax puddles, the
cast off masks, feels like an echo of better times.
Did you plant those details with intent?
Always it's memory you can see out in the dirt.
No one has energy to clean up, right?
The mess reminds everyone of what was a festival, a song,
some laughter, but it gets trampled by boots and rain.
The ghosts of joy hang on even when no one wants them.
The story spends a lot of time with food, or the lack of it.
Crusts, thin Stew, salt, bread, even the debate over whose goose
tracks mean dinner. Why do you linger on food the
way you do? Food's what matters.
When you've got little, it's comfort, survival, something to
fight over, something to share or withhold.
Food is the currency of the village, but it's also the
rhythm of the day. Every meal marks time.
People talk about what hurts, but it's the empty pot that
keeps them up. You also thread in the animal
chaos and you never make it cute.
The goat butts a child, the pigs escape, chickens picket wounds.
Do you sit down and plan out each animal moment or do you let
it bloom in as you go? I keep a list of the animals at
the edge of my notes, just to make sure the world never sits
still. If the village feels empty of
animals, it's not real. They don't care about your
bruises. They care about finding a gap in
the fence or a crust left out. Sometimes they're comedy,
sometimes trouble, sometimes neither.
Quick aside, do you have a favorite character or is it like
picking a favorite finger after a hammer slips?
Vera's up there. She's works hard, never lets
herself off the hook, but to Vlen makes me laugh when I write
her, She curses. She's sharp.
She got old the hardest way possible.
I enjoy every minute with her, even if she's only in the corner
of the page. I want to talk about the
weather. You use rain the way some
writers use a soundtrack. It's everywhere in dialogue,
background, chores, arguments, and always just one more thing
to push against. Was that always the case in your
drafts? Weather's the oldest enemy.
You can't kill it, can't talk it down or bribe it.
You learn to live around it, curse it, push back against it
every day. I wrote the Rain in from the
start. It sets the world, marks the
mood, and wears people down when nothing else can.
Rain turns carelessness into danger, fixes nothing, breaks
plenty. There's this rhythm in the prose
that feels almost physical. Short sentences, direct actions,
not much in the way of spectating from above.
Is that something you revise for, or does it come out that
way on the first run? That's first run.
For the most part, I go back to cut anything that feels like I'm
narrating from above. If you can't see, touch, or hear
it while standing in the field, it gets cut.
We see a lot of the village as a body in your writing, people
working in packs, patching fences, lighting fires, helping
or griping. But nobody trusts everybody
else. There's a sense they all blend
and all stand apart at the same time.
Is that deliberate? Everybody in a small place
matters and nobody can be trusted with all your secrets.
That's just true. You build walls even when you
live close. Sometimes it saves you,
sometimes it's just habit. Let's do one last run of
listener favorites. Tag the moments that jumped out
to people first up. Know what's coming?
The scene where Vera's brother tries to rope the goat and ends
up flat in the mud. That's every small town I've
ever known. Comments.
That goat earns its place. You can't steal a scene, but the
goat tries. Another listener says scene with
the twins fighting over slingshot then being yelled at
by their mother. Reminds me of my cousins.
Does family just breed fighting everywhere?
In fiction and life, if you're not fighting, you're probably
sick. Love the old women at the well,
trading gossip over hard cheese and ragged bread.
Kind of your Greek chorus. Exactly.
No story goes past them without a note or a word to add.
And finally, a listener points out repair scenes.
Nothing more true than two people squatting in mud,
patching nails, not talking, just fixing what's broken.
Do you get that same satisfaction writing those as
you do reading them? More, if anything, work fixes
the world better than words. And that's it for a listener.
Notes keep them coming. We read every single one before
we ease off. Any advice for writers trying to
build this kind of lived in weather beaten world?
Go outside, get yourself tired, muddy, cold, sore.
Carry a fence rail, curse at a chicken patch, something that
refuses to hold. Then write it plain without
trying to sound clever. That's how you get there.
So Next up on Stellar Shock, we're going to get out of the
mud maybe, or are you going to put us right back in the thick
of it, art? Unless someone's got magic, for
me it's more mud and more trouble.
No magic, only bruises. That sounds about right.
All right, Art, thanks again for coming and not showering us with
hope or Silver Linings. That's the real gift.
Appreciate it Jess, glad to be in it with people who get it.
Listeners keep working, keep patching, keep sending us the
ways the world breaks and fixes itself.
We'll be right back next week if we dry out.
Goodnight and watch out for goats.
Goodnight. Thank you for listening to
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