How to wow your readers
an entire talk show episode
I don’t usually struggle to introduce authors, but Sandy Butchers is one of those whose skills and talents extend into so many art forms that it is hard to ascribe a set of labels to her. Labels work well for clickbait youtube titles or politically morivated twitter bios, but not so much for polymath artist-writer-webdesigner types who also do a lot of other stuff.
Actually, that will do.
Sandy is a polymath hybrid of author, artist, digital artist, web designer, and some other things which I won’t spoil in this introduction. She is never not working, and everything she touches, from her short stories to other people’s manuscripts, winds up turning into something you could spend hours exploring.
And many do. Her website is an experience in itself, a story told through HTML code and puzzles that interconnect with her writing. As someone who writes weird things which connect to other weird things (my long time readers may have noticed threads appearing between stories) I am happy to admit that I find Sandy’s world both inspiring and intimidating.
And I mean that. I am currently trying to find a way to destroy her, as I consider her competition. This gushing newsletter is perhaps the worst idea. Maybe I should have written a diss track instead.
So anyway, I got to interview Sandy for my talk show STRANGE STORIES WITH PHILLIP CARTER and it was brilliant. I learned a lot about the processes behind creating something so weird and wonderful, and how this author keeps her worlds deep and entertaining at the same time.
Most importantly, we also had a great laugh.
Please do subscribe to the Youtube if you want to see more. I have about 18 authors lined up for future interviews and would love for them to have a bigger audience. We need to tickle the algorithm just right for it to show these videos to people, as I am not in the business of making viral Youtube shorts about how I pretend to feel about She-Hulk (not seen it, busy building a pirate ship in Minecraft and finding more talk show guests).
So yeah, big talk show episode. Very informative. Very funny.
This episode was edited by Sejul Nerve, a friend and fellow Science Fiction author
If anyone has scrolled down here, here’s a bonus fact. I like Sandy’s general approach to the multimedia author thing so much because it reminds me of Bionicle. Does anyone remember those? They were launched by Lego in 2001 and came with the company’s largest multimedia campaign ever. I think it’s still their biggest, if we consider how few weeks it all arrived in. Games, mini-movies, TV ads, books, toys, comics. I had it all. It was my universe.
That is similar to what Sandy is doing, and it is brilliant.
Here’s a Bionicle. His name is Tahu and he regularly violates health and safety protocol by surfing on lava.