A Comic Conversation Ep 27 Raymond Benson Silver Age Comic Con 23

[00:00:00] Good morning, good afternoon and good evening! This is Comic Con Radio! Comic Con! Coverage of pop culture events from around the globe. Amazing interviews with celebrities. Daily recaps and reviews of popular television, movie reviews. Everything fandom from around the globe.

[00:00:18] Comic Con Radio! Get ready to enter our universe! Let's go! Nerd. Bon nerds. Boy do we have a special treat for you. Shakin', not stirred of course. Here on... A Comic Conversation!

[00:00:48] This episode's guest is Raymond Benson, best known as the first American author of James Bond continuation novels and so much more. So get your Vesper martinis, charm your way out of danger and get your double O status because it's time for... A Comic Conversation!

[00:01:06] Alright guys we're hoping you're enjoying your panels. Shakin' and not stirred. Our next guest is the author of the 40 plus books. 40? Yeah, 40 plus. He is most well known as the first American author of James Bond's continuation novels between 1996 and 2002.

[00:01:26] Six original novels, three movie novelizations and three short stories. As well as the 1990s classic reference book The James Bond Bedside Companion. His best-selling critically acclaimed five book series The Black Stiletto is in development as a possible feature film or television series.

[00:01:47] Ladies and gentlemen please welcome to the stage Raymond Benson! Thank you, thank you, thank you. This is super cool. I have never interviewed an author let alone a James Bond author. This is super exciting but before we get into James Bond we're the Distance Learning podcast.

[00:02:04] We have a segment on our show called Growing Up Geeky so we want to know what did you geek out on as a kid? James Bond. There hey! See I'm old enough that I saw the original Sean Connery movies on the big screen when they came out. Nice.

[00:02:20] So you know my dad took me to my first Bond movie when I was nine and that warped me forever. How cool is that? Yeah. That it made a lasting impression and then fast forward. And here I am. You're part of the franchise.

[00:02:32] And then I'm part of the legacy. Yeah I know it's kind of hard to believe. Where did you grow up? I grew up in West Texas. Uh, yes. Sounds like the Texans are in the building here. All my exes are in West Texas.

[00:02:45] Yeah it was a town called Odessa. I call it Odessa-Lation. Okay I know Odessa. But then I went to college in Austin and then I moved to New York City so I lived in New York for a long time and then now I reside in the Chicago area.

[00:03:01] Hey you're all over. Yeah I'm all over. Yeah. How did you get into it? Have you always wanted to... No I started off in theater. I was a drama major at UT and I set out to be a stage director as well as a music composer.

[00:03:15] I am a pianist. I've been playing, I have a YouTube channel. Look me up of me playing- Give it a plug, give it a plug. Yeah go ahead and plug it in YouTube channel. At Raymond Benson on YouTube. All right.

[00:03:26] Yeah so you can hear me play James Bond music on the piano as well as other stuff. But I did direct plays and musicals in New York for many years and then finally decided okay I'm gonna start writing. And that's kind of what happened in the 1980s.

[00:03:45] My first book, The James Bond Bedside Companion came out in 1984 and that kind of set me on a different path. However there was a left turn that I didn't expect. I got hired to write some computer games, the stories behind computer games, some role-playing adventure games.

[00:04:03] And these were in the mid 80s so I was sort of on the ground floor of computer games. And I suddenly found myself a computer game designer and I did that for 10 years. I did some classic titles in the early 90s like Ultima 7, The Black Gate

[00:04:18] and Are You Afraid of the Dark based on the Nickelodeon TV series. These were massive sellers. Yeah right. But then in the mid 90s I got asked by Ian Fleming's estate to write James Bond.

[00:04:31] And so I started doing that and I didn't look back and I've been a novelist ever since. So Ian Fleming's estate approached you to write James Bond? That's correct. That's amazing. Yeah well that's the only way it can happen. Right.

[00:04:42] Nobody can write a James Bond novel unless you're asked. And that's kind of like that's one of the questions that I had is, you know how did you get into writing James Bond because it's a very exclusive club? It is an exclusive club.

[00:04:52] There's see when Ian Fleming died in 1964 he only saw the first two movies. Right. Um his estate decided periodically they would hire a new author to write new novels. And the first one was Kingsley Amos. He wrote one book in the late 1960s.

[00:05:09] Then John Gardner was hired and he wrote all during the 80s and early 90s. And I was the third one they asked and First American. So I did it for seven years. I did six original books and three movie novelizations. So crazy. Yeah.

[00:05:25] Now how did how did they end up approaching you? Like how do they find you like this is our guy? Okay well as I mentioned my first book was the James Bond Bedside Companion. Mm-hmm. This was a coffee table encyclopedic nonfiction history of James Bond.

[00:05:38] And it also contained analyses and critiques of all the Bond novels and all the Bond movies up to that point. And when I was researching the book I went to England. I met members of Ian Fleming's family and his friends and colleagues.

[00:05:50] As well as the man who runs his literary estate who was Ian Fleming's literary agent at the time. A guy named Peter Janssen Smith. And he liked the bedside companion. The Fleming's liked it. We stayed in touch all through the 80s.

[00:06:05] This was while John Gardner was the writer. And then when Mr. Gardner decided he didn't want to do it anymore they thought of me. They thought this guy could do it. Wow. I know it was kind of handed on to me on a silver platter.

[00:06:17] It was kind of extraordinary. Okay so the bedside companion how did you get to that? Did they commission you to do it? No no that was since it was a nonfiction book I didn't have to have permission to do that. Oh so it was like a passion project.

[00:06:31] Yeah that was a labor of love. What happened you know I was doing theater in New York. I was doing musicals and one day some friends of mine and I were sitting around a table

[00:06:41] and the question came up if you had to write a book what would you write? We all went around and I thought about it and I said well I think I would write this sort of

[00:06:48] coffee table book about the history of James Bond because there weren't any books like that. Now there had been a couple of books on the movies by themselves. There had been a couple of biographies of being Fleming.

[00:06:58] They were all out of print and there were a couple of books about the novels and they were all long out of print. I wanted something that had everything you know a biography of Fleming,

[00:07:06] a history of the Bond phenomenon, analyses of all the books and all the movies. All in one big book because I wanted to own it. So I had to write it. Yeah so uh I mean you write what you want to read right? Yeah exactly yeah exactly.

[00:07:21] So you know I had a friend who had published a book and he introduced me to his editor and I pitched the project to her and she said well you got to write a proposal you know and she showed me what I needed to write a proposal.

[00:07:34] I wrote the proposal gave it in and I got a contract to write the book overnight. Wow. Wow. But it took me three years to do the book. That's so cool. Yeah so what's it like just kind of like writing the character in general like just kind of?

[00:07:46] Well you know I knew Bond inside and out. I grew up with Bond, I'd seen all the movies, I'd read all the books up to that point so I felt like I knew the character even though I'm American.

[00:07:56] You know before you answer that question I kind of want to ask like what do you see as the core of James Bond's character because I really like you kind of like deconstruct it. You have to separate the literary character from the film character. Right.

[00:08:11] Because they did change him. The literary character is very cold and ruthless and does not have a sense of humor. And that's actually what I liked about the newer iterations of James Bond because I felt that that was a lot closer to the original.

[00:08:27] Yes Daniel Craig was working with that. Daniel Craig and Timothy Dalton portrayed Bond as the literary character very serious, very too you know no goofy stuff. Right. Not very many one-liners you know things like that.

[00:08:42] The movies when they started in 1962 the filmmakers in the studio they decided you know we got to give this guy a sense of humor we got to make him more likeable because he was a cold you know anti-hero he was a killer he's a killer.

[00:08:56] And that's again that's what the opening to Daniel Craig's first movie is him having to do an assassination in order to get his double O status. Exactly. And that's why like that's what hooked me immediately. Right. This is James Bond.

[00:09:08] Yeah now I think Sean Connery had a lot of the cold you know ruthless but they gave him a sense of humor and so he kind of plays it like you know okay I can toss off a one-liner after I kill somebody.

[00:09:22] Roger Moore took the comedy to an extreme. Right. You know his movies in the 70s I call action comedies rather than action thrillers. Right. Then they kind of pulled it back down to Fleming with Timothy Dalton.

[00:09:34] The Brosnan films I think kind of encompassed everything that had gone before. Right. In fact I call the Brosnan films the video game bonds because they feel like video games. Yeah.

[00:09:45] I felt like he was too he like Suave and Devonair is not what I'm trying to look for but like he felt too kind of like proper. Polished. Polished right maybe embarrassing to like. He has his fans you know you know.

[00:09:56] A lot of people like you know argue that he's the best bond but it's like. Right. But then they the reason they went to Daniel Craig was you know there was that first novel Casino Royale.

[00:10:05] The rights to that had been somewhere else and they finally got the rights to that novel in 1999. So they just and it is an origin story. Right. And so they wanted they wanted to make that and they said well we can't do it with

[00:10:20] Pierce we have to you know start over. Right. And so that's what they did with Daniel Craig. And then that spawned into four of the movies. Five. Five. Five of the movies. And the Daniel Craig movies are kind of their own bubble. Right.

[00:10:33] They really kind of exist separately from the rest of the series because if you saw the last movie you know what happens at the end of that. Right right which I mean you know no spoilers but I mean they definitely have

[00:10:43] to do a new bond at this point. Yeah so what they're going to do next don't ask me I'm not even sure they know. Well they might ask you. No they won't ask me.

[00:10:51] They you know see I work for the literary side there's two companies that own James Bond the literary people the Ian Fleming estate they control all the books the literary stuff and then there's Ian productions the broccoli family

[00:11:04] which runs the films and all the merchandising in the video games. I mean which is not to say that they wouldn't adapt one of your books though. They could if they wanted to. Right. They have the rights to. Right. So as well as any of the continuation authors.

[00:11:17] Yeah. So does that mean the the Ian Fleming estate do they have any say in what happens in the films. No. Wow interesting. They do not. They can completely MGM could completely ruin that character and they could the Fleming

[00:11:31] estate could not you know in the hands of the broccoli family they've been they've been in it since the beginning. So they they know the character and they they're not going to deviate too badly.

[00:11:42] I don't think what you got I mean you know they've experimented a lot you know and they each each actor sort of has you know they they reflect the decade. Right. Which they were in you know the Connery films are very much 1960s.

[00:11:56] With the same kind of sensibility. Not so politically correct and that's cool. The 70s the same way but you know they're just a lot more outlandish. Right. And the Craig movies I think you know really reflected you know post 9 11 the dangers and you know.

[00:12:14] And so yeah what's it like finding the voice of the character and adapting it for like because really you know there's the 60s the 70s 80s 90s like moving forward how do you

[00:12:24] kind of give us the James Bond we know but give him a new voice for like the new decade or moving forward you know what I mean. I just I wrote him the way I always saw him the way I pictured him from the books.

[00:12:36] When I was doing it in the 1990s we had a discussion before I started you know should we set it in the 90s should we go back into the 60s should we go to the 50s.

[00:12:49] And they decided because GoldenEye was such a hit that we would stay in sync with the films with the Brosnan films. So and the only directive I had was to you know make them more like kind of like the

[00:13:02] movies you know with a lot more action a lot more humor but you know stay faithful to the character and also make him the character in a woman the way GoldenEye did you know Judy

[00:13:13] Dinch right so that was my only directive otherwise I was free to go and so I created new stories that take place in the 90s. I find that fascinating like how do you how do you develop a James Bond story like

[00:13:26] how much does what's happening in the world technology you know gadgets and weaponry how does that all play into well I would I would have to come up with a plot I would look at a global map and look at what hotspots Britain would be concerned about

[00:13:43] because Bond is British. Okay okay it's always going to be MI6. Right so for example the first book was called Zero Minus Ten I knew it would be published in the year 1997 and one major event that Britain was involved

[00:13:56] in in 1997 was the handover of Hong Kong back to China right and I thought well that might be an interesting milieu for a story but then I was I didn't know much about the history of that why why did Britain own Hong Kong and why were they

[00:14:10] giving it back to China so I did research you know I learned that a hundred years ago there was a war between China and Britain over opium and Britain won the war and so they got the land mass known as Hong Kong in the but some fool in

[00:14:23] England when they were writing the treaty put in there we'll give it back to you in a hundred years and so I could imagine here's six million people in Hong Kong that lived under a democracy of British rule and now suddenly they're being

[00:14:35] handed back to China which is a communist country uh I figured that a lot of people would not be happy especially British businessman and so a British businessman became my villain so that's that's basically how I approached each book How about the technology because that's always a big

[00:14:53] kicker I mean it's more in the films right thank goodness when I was writing you know cell phones were not a big thing yet but uh I mean a lot of his gadgets in like the newer stuff

[00:15:03] we did have stuff they'd come from a cell phone we came we came from you know we wanted to give him a new car and in 1997-98 we were looking at the new Aston Martin of course right but also the Jaguar

[00:15:17] XK8 was getting a lot of heat uh and so you probably needed to test drive it yourself right? Jaguar actually gave me the car for a week so I could drive it around and so I put him in the Jaguar XK8

[00:15:30] and the the icing on the cake was that a designer from Jaguar and I worked together to come up with the kinds of gadgets that are one step in the future but are possible possible right so for example I had the car

[00:15:44] equipped with what I called at the time a flying scout which is today known as a drone right and it would come out from the car and go out and scope ahead you know with a camera and see what's up

[00:15:56] ahead and stuff like that and drop shit you know bombs or what I know bombs um but you know we didn't know the word drone then but that's what it was yeah so things like that awesome I think that's so

[00:16:08] cool that's like really cool they like you predicted a technology before it actually came out in the spot right like you know that's that's pretty cool especially like military tech like that yeah

[00:16:16] and you know and if there's stuff I didn't know I'd have to you know I have experts that you go to you know I have I have a military guy I go to for military stuff I have a weapons guy I go to for guns and other

[00:16:28] stuff um that advises me on that stuff but I traveled to all the locations that I wrote about I went to Hong Kong I went to China you know I call write-offs why not yeah I walked in Bond's footsteps you know

[00:16:39] I would stay at his hotels and eat his meals where's tuxedos yeah I would not jump out of an airplane without a parachute and you know and you know I had to stay away from the women

[00:16:50] but uh I was airborne so I gotta ask you this most of your work is in espionage and thrillers but you've also done some video game novelizations as well as written some video games themselves you mentioned that before what's your

[00:17:05] favorite genre or medium to work in uh writing books um in the mystery and thriller genre because you're your own boss really you know I don't have to answer it anybody um once I've written the book yeah

[00:17:15] then it goes to an editor you work with the publisher and the editor but you know when you're when I was doing uh computer games you know you're working with a huge team it's like making a movie you know you've got

[00:17:26] programmers you've got designers you've got sound people you've got producers you've got you know everything so it's a lot more like working with a big team you know collaboration yeah collaboration yeah and you know when I was doing theater I was the

[00:17:39] director of course but you're working with actors you're working with designers you're working with the theater people the house you know the building yeah right um so as a writer you're all alone in your little cave and and you just get to be solely creative yeah

[00:17:53] yeah that's all it is but in a weird way it kind of helps because you're used to dealing with different um entities in an organization or a project and so you get to wear all those hats right yeah right now since

[00:18:04] you know since writing James Bond which ended for me in 2002 I've been writing my own stuff my own thrillers my own mysteries but I've also worked for Tom Clancy I wrote a couple of the Splinter Cell books

[00:18:15] I wrote a couple of the Metal Gear Solid books uh is that reading our minds right now I wrote a book based on the Hitman video game yeah I wrote a Dying Light the the the the zombie

[00:18:27] games so I've written novels on that of that stuff but my own original stuff my my latest book is called The Mad Mad Murders of Marigold Way and it's it's a murder mystery set during the first few months of the pandemic

[00:18:39] but it's a comedy whoa all right it is okay that sounds interesting as hell it's kind of like a Coen Brothers movie so it's got a crime but it's got this dark humor going I love it it's very black humor if it's Coen Brothers

[00:18:51] unfortunately I've sold out of all of my copies of Mad Mad Murders I do have an audiobook of it though back at my table I still have some of my Bond books I still have a handful they're going like crazy

[00:19:02] hopefully I'll still you know if you want one get over there now so wait say say the sound again Mad Mad the Mad Mad Murders of Marigold Way and can you get it on like say you can get it on

[00:19:15] Amazon my website you know it sounds like it looks like I'm checking out audible after this yeah yeah it sounds like that's a like a dark comedy series waiting to happen yeah it's right on my alley um the Black Stiletto we haven't talked about

[00:19:29] that no yeah Black Stiletto I wrote between 2011 and 2014 it's five books uh it is a serial it's about a female vigilante a woman in the late 1950s who puts on a mask calls herself the Black Stiletto

[00:19:44] and fights for social justice kind of like a Batman character in New York City she's active for five years then mysteriously disappears we cut to the present day there's a grown man in the Chicago suburbs

[00:19:55] he's taking care of his mother who has Alzheimer's she's in a nursing home he discovers that she was the Black Stiletto oh wow and so it's a story that goes back and forth in time over five books so it's non-linear basically what

[00:20:08] it's a non-linear story like you're trying to right it's non-linear but uh it does tell a complete story over five books so the you know the past tells her story in the past and the present day

[00:20:18] tells their story in the present as you know threats from the past come back you know there's something that's another good series well it's something that completely enthralls me about non-linear storytelling because it's

[00:20:30] like you get part of this story and then hey let's go back here and talk about this right it's like it gives context to the next portion it's been in development for about 10 years uh but actually it was almost an

[00:20:41] ABC TV series Mila Kunis was gonna produce it no way she was executive producer we got a guy from that won an AMI uh for the pilot of lost uh to write the pilot uh and they were designing it they were developing they

[00:20:56] were about to cast it and then ABC went through an upheaval the president was out a new president came in and of course they changed the slate man so we got the rights back and we're still working on

[00:21:06] trying to get it done uh this sounds like an Amazon series waiting to happen I know we're trying to get it done could be a good thing like the way ABC's going like I don't think they have any scripted shows I mean there's a

[00:21:17] right I'd like to stay off network TV yeah exactly so it's maybe it's a good thing in the long yeah I like that a lot oh that totally sounds like something that would be good on a

[00:21:26] streamer just because you could get a bigger budget oh yeah something that's what I want yeah you know like it's just just from what you were saying it sounds very watch menace right and it's like you know I love

[00:21:36] watchmen as a series I love the comic book too but yeah uh like HBO would probably do it justice Netflix could probably do a good job but Amazon right now is throwing budgets yeah and I think that that would be a

[00:21:47] good Amazon show to your from your words to their to their ears right to Bezos's ears I feel like famously Jeff but Jeff Bezos listens to our show so well I you know I love all everything I wrote but I think the black stiletto is my magnum opus

[00:22:01] oh man I love it that's cool that's another book I need to put in my audible list yep oh you can get all five books in one ebook you know yes you can buy them separately or you can get all five in one ebook

[00:22:15] that's awesome yeah so I think at this point I'm just gonna look up Raymond Benson and download yeah yeah yeah but I do have some black stiletto books at my table too that's awesome uh tell us about because you mentioned it James Bond was

[00:22:26] it Tom Clancy Splinter Cell Metal Gear Solid tell us about expanding a universe you know it's not mine yeah you know it's right we call this tie-in writing yeah in fact there's a different medium there's an organization called the

[00:22:41] International Association of Media Tie-In Writers and these are guys like me people and women too who write you know Star Wars novels or Star Trek novels or you know all kinds of fantasy tie-ins and movie novelizations or tv novelizations

[00:22:59] that's what this falls under video game novelizations so if you're if you're lucky enough to be on a publisher's shortlist of writers who do this you know the big franchises go to the publisher

[00:23:11] and they say hey we want to do a book on you know um uh you know a new Star Wars book or a new you know Metal Gear Solid book yes uh do you have any writers and they go well we have

[00:23:23] this guy who's done this or we have this woman who's done that we have that and the publisher goes oh let's talk to those that's how it happens so like just like along that line with like doing adaptations and things like that do you actually like for the

[00:23:35] video game ones do you actually play the video games or do you go through the scripts yeah i mean like when i did Splinter Cell in Metal Gear Solid sure i i loaded up the game and tried to play

[00:23:44] it i mean you know i was a computer game designer in the late 80s early 90s and so i was playing games all the time right you see how sophisticated they got very sophisticated right if i could stay

[00:23:57] alive you know over five minutes you know maybe i could play it especially like trying to play like Phantom Lim or something like that the new the latest Metal Gear Solid like what no what yeah how do

[00:24:07] you find me but you know i would get a sense of the game but they would give me the script of their game okay you know which was like a phone book you know big giant old-fashioned phone book a lot

[00:24:16] of times like they're giving you the whole bible right yeah yeah so i would read the script and that's a you know i could get into enough of the universe that way to write the book okay that's

[00:24:24] that's amazing like i mean and again just kind of some of the properties when we were looking up like the properties that you've worked in and things like that it's like you know a lot of them

[00:24:32] falling in line with James Bond because like you know Splinter Cell espionage yeah yeah Metal Gear Solid espionage a little more sci-fi futuristic but it's like you know espionage stuff and it's like interestingly though my my personal original novels that are mysteries or thrillers they're

[00:24:46] more like Hitchcock they're more they're not really espionage they're more like an everyday person getting involved in something extraordinary you know um something on your in the suburbs you know something on your block was is that like uh some of your influences or like Alfred Hitchcock

[00:25:01] or any particular writers or kind of like storytellers in general that that inspire you to very much so um well you know Ian Fleming of course right there was a british writer named Ruth Rindle i

[00:25:13] really liked um i love Michael Connelly he's the guy that does the bosh books and the Lincoln Lawyer books but you know i'm a movie person too i taught film history at a college for over a decade

[00:25:25] so movies definitely influenced me i'm a huge Stanley Kubrick fan um he's my favorite filmmaker but i also love Hitchcock uh David Lynch i like weird stuff uh i'm into Inkmar Bergman i'm into Fellini i'm into Martin Scorsese you know i'm classic yeah you know interesting yeah

[00:25:45] by the way i forgot to mention this earlier if you have questions uh let us know raise your hand we have a microphone up here so if you have questions about James Bond or Splinter Cell or

[00:25:53] anything else for just writing in general like if you're if you're a aspiring writer you want to ask about writing just come on up guys uh actually if you guys can line up in the in the aisle

[00:26:02] right here and that way we can get some questions ready for uh for Raymond here and speaking of movies uh i don't know if you've heard of the magazine called Cinema Retro that comes out of

[00:26:10] England i have several copies at my table and i'm selling them for only two bucks each they normally go for $13 whoa yes so do you have articles in them i do i have a i have an ongoing

[00:26:21] comic column in in Cinema Retro yeah that's cool that's awesome i have yeah i have two dollar items at my table so come by bargains that's probably the cheapest thing in this entire con

[00:26:34] right he said two dollars is there a um like dream franchise or dream character that you're like yes i want to get my hands on that i dream franchise i'd love to write which i probably would never

[00:26:48] get to do is Twin Peaks oh wow i'd love to do Twin Peaks look at that with my favorite TV show of all time interesting yeah that's awesome yeah but Lynch has put the kibosh on doing anything

[00:27:00] but does he have the rights because yeah he does okay he and mark frost because every streamer every studio is looking for new content i know and the easiest thing is to uh to uh redo content

[00:27:12] you know that has an internal fan base so i mean there's there's never no there's a slight kind of like uptake in uh in Twin Peaks in general right now because like well there was the reboot

[00:27:23] right about five years ago right on showtime and uh so that really brought back the interest again right right because there is like some fan interest i mean there's always been fan interest but

[00:27:32] yeah more interest in seeing more from that right that whole thing again well you know david lynch has his own big fan base right you know and and i have a couple of books that are lynch Ian i'll put it

[00:27:42] that way lynch it i love it lynch Ian that's good so what's what's your take i mean this may be a loaded question what's your take on say marvel and dc kind of well taking over like the

[00:27:55] taking over hollywood yeah uh well i was a marvel kid uh growing up in fact i owned at one time spider man number one whoa oh um uh was amazing amazing spider man number one right right with

[00:28:07] the the chameleon and you know yeah um i sold it in 1993 oh yeah i had pretty much the first almost all the first run about up to about issue number 80 and then i guess i stopped buying comics

[00:28:21] by the time i was in you know high school um so i owned a lot of those and i i read marvel like crazy i you know they say there's you're either a marvel person or a dc person i guess that was true because

[00:28:31] i was only marvel i didn't read really dc comics i'm very much both yeah i know i know there's people that are both and it's fine i i enjoy storytelling in general like i like i like looking at the

[00:28:43] story and things like that hence why i'm so interested in your work because i i like you know looking at stories and saying okay well how does the story build and how how well is it going

[00:28:52] and things like that like storytelling is what enthralls me with all this is why i love movies why i read books and things like i'm a big comic nerd right right well in the writing profession

[00:29:01] we call ourselves either plotters or pancers you're either you're a type of writer like me who plots out your story first with an outline but then there are other writers who write by

[00:29:11] the seat of their pants their pancers steven king is a pancer he'll just sit down and whip it out um lee child who does the reacher books uh he's a pancer and i really admire the pancers i don't

[00:29:24] know how they do it because i have to really know where i'm going i have to figure out the plot and all the twists and turns and the obstacles and i want to know how it's gonna end before i even start

[00:29:33] the book right that's the way i work i think uh jr or tokens is like that he uh i'm sorry not jr or tokens are uh george r or martin martin is like that because before he even wrote the book he gave

[00:29:44] the ending to the writers for the show right and was like this is where it's gonna go right do what you got to do to get there which you know we all know how that failed spectacularly but is there a

[00:29:55] comic book character or comic book storyline that that you would like to get your hands on whether it's marvel or dc or anything like that like you know i'm in the middle of watching

[00:30:06] secret invasion right now with nick fury yeah you know and there's a lot of espionage and stuff is that something you'd be like i could take a crack at this um wow you know if neil gayman was not so

[00:30:17] protective of the sand man i'd love the right for the sand man yeah i love the sand man series yeah no and i love that neil gayman is still even revising that stuff yeah to the point where

[00:30:28] season two is going to be okay i still have some stories that are left over but i'm going to tell new stories in this in the series i can't wait for that yeah that is really cool yeah if you watch um

[00:30:37] let's see other one good omens you know i've not seen it i know of it but i've not i haven't watched it okay how do you feel about american gods what how do you feel about american gods i read the novel

[00:30:46] i have not seen the show the show is actually pretty good yeah i also have the novel but i forgot to check in do you guys have any questions no good back to me okay good um so what are you

[00:30:56] nerding out on these days and then you know phil philip likes to say like what are you passionate about what what um is your hobby you know when you're spending downtime and you're not

[00:31:07] working well i you know i still nerd out on james bond okay um i still love movies and i'm i'm always watching movies i review for cinema retro and their website new releases of blu rays

[00:31:21] and dvds for those of us who still buy physical media and uh you know i'm watching different shows uh i think the star wars live action tv shows on disney plus are great yeah i agree they're

[00:31:37] amazing i recently really got into severance i thought that was a great show uh i liked um i'm watching silo now i just started that's really good i just started watching that um but you

[00:31:50] know throw on an old afrid hitchcock movie and i'm there so very cool very cool yeah so you mentioned star wars and i always like asking people are you know star wars is at this weird um it's

[00:32:00] it's it's for the masses but not every piece of star wars is for every piece of the masses so are you more a say andor type person where it's like deeper storytelling um a little bit more

[00:32:13] dialogue or are you more give me the mandalorian and you know baby yoda and i love that i liked them both yeah i thought andor was fantastic um but i really thought mandalorian was pretty great

[00:32:24] too i was not a big fan of the of the the the last trilogy the trilogy the trilogy i was very disappointed although i like rogue one and i like solo um but not oh man did you read catalyst what did

[00:32:38] you read catalyst the the rogue one prequels book no it's really good you gotta read that yeah so but but the tv shows like mandalorian and obi wan kanobi and um andor those are much better than

[00:32:50] the trilogy that came out that seems like right up your alley because that's all about universe expanding and that's like what you do on a daily basis yeah so that's cool i think we keep gravitating

[00:33:00] towards and or because it is kind of like that the beginnings of a revolution kind of thing like how revolution starts you know and that's kind of like up the alley of the type of it's also uh i

[00:33:10] think really illustrating the holocaust yeah yeah it's a it's a metaphor for the holocaust yeah it is i didn't think about that that's interesting yeah oh we just got deep for a second yeah all right uh

[00:33:20] so let's let's get into some uh some some more fun rap questions here uh so we gotta ask you this toughest question we ask everybody that that we talked to what is your favorite kind of taco

[00:33:31] taco yep oh boy uh ground beef with lettuce and cheese okay yeah solid it's like a standard taco bell taco yep bell taco well we have a place in the chicago area called el famous burrito

[00:33:43] and they make really good authentic mexican tacos so i love it that sounds good all right but i'm you know being from texas i'm also a texamax fan so you know there's a chain down there called chewy's

[00:33:54] and i'm a huge chewy's fan oh nice in fact i there's a scene in one of my bond novels that takes place at the chewy's in austin see i love that stuff that's philix philix lighter is a texan

[00:34:06] and he's in austin at the time and bond is in austin texas and philix says come on we're gonna go eat texamax and bond goes we're gonna eat what and lighter takes him to chewy's on barton

[00:34:17] springs road and bond likes it he even has a frozen margarita i can imagine how fish out of water bond is going to a chewy's in texas he is but but in all the books even the fleming books his buddy

[00:34:33] in whatever country he's in takes him to the local place right and bond likes it even though he's never had it before and so this was my nod to that as well as to my own roots which is funny

[00:34:45] because that sounds like a 100% like a philix lighter thing that's like philix lighter sounds like he would go to to any kind of mexican restaurant yes bond seems like he's not going

[00:34:55] to fit in walking into a mexican restaurant at all right but uh it works and that's an my that was in my second bond novel the facts of death okay yeah that is awesome so what is

[00:35:05] some advice that you may have for anybody trying to get into the writing industry or just trying to write in general this is actually good advice from my wife uh i would say read a lot okay read the

[00:35:14] genre that you want to write uh because the more you read the kind of gets to you by osmosis um you learn a lot that way uh trial and error just write a lot and keep going and find maybe a

[00:35:29] writer's group at a library or school or something to that where you can you know trade bounce ideas off and critique each other that kind of thing that's actually really really good advice yeah like that

[00:35:41] this is all stuff that i'm like mentally taking in because my wife is trying to be a writer so it's like this is all stuff i'm going to bring her yeah and and there's a lot of writers conferences too

[00:35:50] especially in in the specific genres uh there's a couple several mystery and thriller conferences and if you go to those there's always panels and you you hear from the experts you hear from

[00:36:00] the big names uh there's there's pitch fests where you can actually pitch your novel to an agent things like that there's one in there's one in new york every year called thriller fest and i

[00:36:10] i think that's the best writers conference there is yeah all right so what's next for you do you have any projects that you're allowed to talk about well i i can just mention this i do a lot

[00:36:22] of ghost writing too because it's lucrative i saw that too yeah so i'm working on a ghost writing project right now that's very lucrative and so that's what i'm doing but i can't say what it is

[00:36:32] okay yeah um i will you know my mad mad murders book just came out last fall so when i finish this ghost writing project i'll probably start a reyman benzen original nice i don't know what it is yet

[00:36:43] i was gonna ask you how many stories do you have just sitting your head you're like this is just waiting just marinating and i'll get to it in six months right well he's just marinating is a

[00:36:52] good word for it yeah you gotta then you come up with your what the ingredients are right and you start coming up with new ideas like oh that'll work good in this story all right yeah and then you

[00:37:01] forget it like 10 minutes later um all right again another difficult question here all right and i fairly certain i know what the answer to the question is going to be who wins in a fight

[00:37:11] james bond versus solid snake i'm gonna say bond i knew you would take on yeah you gotta see i gotta say bond gotta say all right where can everybody follow you find you website well i have

[00:37:24] a website reyman benzen dot com you can find me there uh facebook i'm on facebook i have a personal page which actually gets more action than my author page um but i have two pages there

[00:37:36] uh i just joined threads we'll see what happens with that uh i am on twitter i don't know what's gonna happen with that uh so that's where you can find me that's awesome awesome well thanks

[00:37:48] thanks a lot ramon everybody give it up for ramon benzen please thank you thanks very much all right thanks everybody we hope you enjoyed this week's comic conversation this was the production of the distance-serving podcast and time for tacos media for more

[00:38:29] content follow us on facebook instagram twitter twitch youtube and tiktok all at distance nerdy if you enjoy our content please leave us a review on apple podcast spotify or wherever you get your podcast thanks and keep nerding together good morning good afternoon and good evening signing out

[00:38:45] from another amazing episode of comic con radio tuned in for your daily shows of comic con radio comicon radio dot com reach us on social media instagram comicon radio comicon radio taking the world one listener at a time