Author Matt Betts sits down with talented creators to discuss the background and inspirations behind the content that we all love.
Episode #5: Ted, Tedder, Teddist
Interview #1
Timestamp: 1 Minute Mark
Guest: Laura Bickle
Guest Website: https://www.authorlaurabickle.com
Guest Bio: Laura Bickle grew up in rural Ohio, reading entirely too many comic books out loud to her favorite Wonder Woman doll. She now dreams up stories about the monsters under the stairs and sometimes reads them to her cats. Her books have earned starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and Kirkus. Laura’s work has also been included in the ALA’s Amelia Bloomer Project 2013 reading list and the State Library of Ohio’s Choose to Read Ohio reading list for 2015-2016. She also writes contemporary fantasy under the name Alayna Williams.
Interview Description: We sit down with Laura Bickle to chat about hybrid writers that publish with big publishers, indie publisher and self publish. Also, we may discuss her collection of Wonder Woman memorabilia.
Interview #2
Timestamp: 37 Minute Mark
Guest: Liz Barrett Foster
Guest Website: https://www.eatlikeawriter.com
Guest Bio: Liz Barrett Foster, is the editor at Eat Like a Writer.
For 11 years, she was an editor with the nation's No. 1 pizza magazine (PMQ), where she became an expert in all things pizza.
Past and present publications include, but are not limited to, National Culinary Review, Restaurant Startup & Growth, Mashed.com, Stacker.com, FSR, QSR, Restaurant Hospitality, PMQ Pizza Magazine, Sapore, Costco Connection and EatingWell.
When creating Eat Like a Writer, I combined three of the things she's most interested in--writing, food, and researching what others do for a living.
Interview Description: Eat like a writer with Liz Barrett Foster.
Interview #3
Timestamp: 56 Minute Mark
Guest: Mac Gagne
Guest Website: https://adventuresandalgorithms.com
Guest Bio: Madeleine Gagné is a graduated senior at Duke University and a rising Operations Research PhD student at North Carolina State University. As of this year, she's been named a 2021 Brooke Owens Fellow, and will be working as a Space Systems and Operations Research intern at Northrop Grumman during the summer. She's also an aspiring pulp and science fiction author.
Description: We'll talk with Mac Gagne about her TEDx talk, mathematics, and how how stories, pulp and math all intersect.
Host Overview
Host website: http://www.mattbetts.com
Host Bio:
Matt went to college to study communications, specializing in broadcasting. He signed on with the campus radio station as a news anchor and reporter not long after he arrived at college – before he took his first communications class, in fact. After graduation, he worked for a number of radio stations as a DJ, a reporter and anchor. More than any other format, Matt worked at Oldies stations, which fed his love of Elvis, the Beatles and other great early rock icons.
Matt Betts was born and raised in Lima, Ohio and went to college in Toledo. He currently lives in Columbus with his wife Mackenzie, and their two wonderful boys. Growing up, Matt consumed vast amounts of pop culture. He read comics, watched cartoons, listened to various popular music, regularly viewed the old monster movies on weekend television and read everything he could find.
Further feeding his love affair with pop culture, Matt also worked as a waiter in a Toledo comedy club while attending college. This allowed him to see how famous comics built and fine-tuned their acts. For comedians, like authors, the ending of a story is just as important as the beginning and vice versa. If a
comic couldn’t sell the setup, the audience most likely wouldn’t stay with them for punch line. Over the course of a week, it was possible to see a comedian transform a decent joke into a better one through slightly different wording or different delivery.
Matt met and interviewed comedian and actor Larry Miller one night at the club. Larry gave some advice that stuck with Matt long after. Larry was a classically trained musician who still played regularly and when asked if it was all too much, Larry suggested that creativity is creativity. You don’t have to do just one thing. Whether you’re writing a poem or a script, that creativity feeds the other things you do. It helps you be a better actor, musician, etc. It is advice Matt has applied to his writing career from the beginning, allowing his love of pop culture to infuse and inform all of his work, including poetry, short fiction and his longer works.
Matt’s short and flash fiction has focused a lot on humor and horror. His work appears in Arkham Tales, Ethereal Tales, the Triangulation: Taking Flight anthology, Bizarro Fiction! The Journal of Experimental Fiction 37, A Thousand Faces and Cinema Spec: Tales of Hollywood and Fantasy.
Matt’s poetry has been published in numerous venues, and his poem “Godzilla’s Better Half” was nominated for a Rhysling Award, the Science Fiction Poetry Association’s highest honor. His poetry has appeared in Star*Line, Escape Clause, The Book of Tentacles, Illumen, the 2010 Rhysling Anthology, Kaleidotrope and others. One of his pieces was also mentioned in a New York Times article on zombie poetry.
Ship It Studios
Website: https://www.shipitstudios.com
Description: We are Jedis. We are Wizards. We are Avengers. We are Time Lords. We are Tributes. We are the Knights Watch. We are Ship It Studios.
Ship It Studios is a content company dedicated to providing the world’s biggest fans with the content they deserve. We revisit your favorite fandoms through reviews, interviews, debates, power rankings, and fantasy drafts.
Now for the episode...
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