As the conversation carries on, we talk about H.P. Lovecraft and what drew Jason into his world. Jason was a late bloomer, discovering Lovecraft after years of playing The Call Of Cthulhu RPG by Chaosium. Lamenting how few modern horror writers seem to understand what Lovecraft did, we spend some time nerding out about the movie The Ritual, one of the few modern horror flicks to capture that Lovecraftian feel. After a quick chat about stories in general, Jason digs into the circumstances that led him to begin writing his own. Over several years and a missed start or two, Jason honed his craft and began submitting to publishers. Unfortunately, Jason came up in the Sad Puppies drama and quickly recognized a need to look outside the mainstream system to find his market. Check out the full episode here: https://nickpecone.com/jason-mcCuiston-iron-age-marketing-018 ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6dYisFh4kY

Talking about the YA Fantasy genre in general, Speculates that she believes more of her readers are young women. I tend to like more killing in a book than my wife does for instance so this checks out as far as my own anecdotal research. I remember YA fiction feeling juvenile even when I was of the appropriate. Tiara just thinks it's to do with the type of story itself. Women are just more drawn to fantasy for whatever reason. Since Tales of Alexandria Stecklar is an ongoing series, I have to ask Tiara if she thinks buyers will be gun-shy about starting a book series since the GOT debacle. Tiara has been watching the ongoing Nerdrotic coverage of the long-anticipated (but not really expected) end of the GOT book series herself and thinks we might be holding onto false hope. In one last gasp, we talk about book trailers. Tiara received so many mixed messages about them that she didn't bother. I wonder if a testimonial-type trailer might not work better than the movie trailer model. I know Storm Young got some traction with mysterious reels of her character ideas. Only time and experimentation will tell. Find full podcast episode @ https://ironagemarketing.com ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQ7V7x4u6kI