Josh Winning on The Escapism of Fantasy Fiction

[Music] hello welcome to this episode one of good Journeys with second Mountain inspiring stories and inspiring people I'm hace benville founder of second Mountain meaningful comms for a Brave New World joining me for my very first episode I'm delighted to say is Mr Joshua winning Nostalgia nut and fantasy fiction author um Josh is one of my oldest dearest friends of about 30 years now and um one of the one of the nicest most kind-hearted people I know um but professionally Savage Josh is the au

thor of multiple books including the Sentinel Trilogy vicious rumor and most recently the Fantastic Shadow glass a contemporary and very self-aware tribute to the classic Escapist movies that we all grew up loving such as Labyrinth dog Crystal and The NeverEnding Story Josh is also a senior film writer at the radio times he's been writing for total film magazine for over a decade now and is for co-host of the torn Stubbs movie podcast Josh has met pretty much every a-lister imaginable being on s

et with Kermit the Frogger Miss Piggy devoured breakfast with zombies on The Walking Dead and has even sat in the Game of Thrones Iron Throne plus he once met Dwayne The Rock Johnson for which I am forever insanely jealous Josh welcome to the good Journeys podcast hi hello I'm very well and I'm absolutely honored and it's a privilege to be part of your first ever episode so thank you very much thank you for joining us so I'm going to jump straight into questions on this episode one so Josh you'v

e released the Shady glass which is a Nostalgia laced fantasy novel that plays homage to the brilliant decade that was the 1980s earlier this year um how did the book come about and why has it been such a personal story for you looks okay it's a very long story came yeah okay we have time the book basically came out of my love for those films that you mentioned at the top of the episode um and just this feeling this sort of like feeling of an absence of the fact that that those films aren't real

ly being made anymore you know these these great Standalone um philosophically interesting but also sort of like adventurous exciting um fantasy films they just aren't really being made anymore they've kind of been that you know they've just fallen out of style I guess they've been replaced with big enormous CGI summer Blockbusters like Transformers Marvel films superhero films now rule the cinema and I think that um the initial idea was as simple as I want to write a book about 1980s movie pupp

ets and I didn't have you know any story to hang that on I didn't have any kind of emotional hook to hang it on all I knew was that I missed 80s puppet films like like Labyrinth and Neverending Story and just wanted more of them and and um you know I I know how difficult it is to make a movie so I thought well I I can kind of write books-ish so I'm gonna try to write a book about puppets instead uh and yeah it was just driven by that that pure love for those films basically and wanting more of t

hem and also thinking if I love these films that means other people love these films and might be feeling the same way I am which which is kind of like give us more where are these films they've just disappeared so that was what I attempted to do with the shadow glass was to kind of fill that void in our souls that's been left behind by Jim Henson uh and it didn't and it didn't really become a thing until I've discovered the character of Jack who is the hero in the book he starts out as kind of

a bit of an anti-hero he's I've got in his 30s he's completely um to put it unkindly lost the plot you know he his father was a film director in the 80s uh his father Bob who made the film called The Shadow glass and that film flopped and it was released nobody really understood what this thing was wasn't the kids was it for grown-ups was it scary was it not scary it flopped and that kind of the effect of that it ruined the relationship between Jack and his father and so the Story begins when th

e the Father the director has died and Jack is now sort of having to clear out the his father's home he he rediscovers all this paraphernalia movie paraphernalia from his childhood from this movie that has come to represent everything he hates about his father and everything he hates about life and essentially he uh he has to go on a quest with the puppets from his father's film who miraculously spring for life and he kind of goes on a journey of self-discovery through this adventure that he has

with his puppets um is the gist and yeah it was it became you know a very personal thing you know I'm my father at the time of me coming up with this idea he was um his second wife was um had terminal cancer she was pretty much passing away um and so I was spending lots of time with my dad and just sort of like thinking about our relationship and probably um coming to terms with the fact that one day he's gonna die as well and you know my mum passed away when I was 21. it was this catastrophic

event within our family and as I've got older and as my father has got older I think I've just become more and more aware of the fact that one day he's going to be gone as well which seems impossible because very up and down that we've all had in our lives he's always been there he's always been the same you know you know him he's um energetic go get him you know such a you know just full of so much life and energy and so I think this book partly was kind of coming to terms with the idea that he

wouldn't always be around um so yeah massively personal which you wouldn't necessarily think when I talk about it as a 1980s puppet Love Letter book but yeah and how how's how's that been for your relationship between you and your dad it's been really good actually he he's one of the first readers of the book I sent him a very early draft and he used to be a teacher so he sent me back a long letter about what was wrong with it um which was fine and some of it was good and it was useful um but h

e was very much of an early champion of the book he he um he's been with me there every step of this journey which you know it's the book that got me an agent it's the book that got me a dealer with Titan books who were the publisher that I love and were actually the dream publisher for this book so it's been great you know my dad came to a convention that I did in July as well there's the young adult literary convention in London and I told Dad that I was doing this in his first his response wa

s well I'll come and so he did and came along and he sat in the panel watched me doing a panel discussion about fantasy books I went to the pub afterwards he met my agent he met my publicist he met another editor at Titan um and it was just this ridiculously um sort of bizarre day but but really great and I was so happy to have him there I saw the photos you put out on facial and yeah it just made me smile for bigger smile I loved it he was a press agent wasn't he on the day they'd run out of th

ey'd run out of passes that said guest and so his pass said publicist which was just hilarious because actually he is sort of like my invisible publicist publicist he goes around my hometown where I grew up where he still lives he goes into the shops all the time checking the books in stock you know if he sees anybody picking it up he taking his leans over their shoulder and says oh you should read that it's really good um so yeah he is my publicist quite right too I mean what I love about the j

ourney you've been on I mean we've known each other since we were maybe eight or nine and this has been your dream for as long as I've known you I remember when you were maybe early teens you were working on early drafts of what would ultimately become the shadow glass the the you know the beautiful cover oh yeah um really you know really sings to me from that the kind of style and the things that you were into you know going about 20 years and how did you personally approach writing the Chevy c

lass and you know this isn't your first book now what's the starting point for you on the writing Journey before you begin to put pen to paper um this one was like quite an involved uh sort of process which I haven't really done since and I don't know if I'll do again I think it depends on the book I think every book demands something different I always roll out this quote which was um Jane Goldman talking to um talking to Neil Gaiman at a dinner and he said to her I finally discovered how to wr

ite a book doing American Gods and she said no no no you've just discovered how to write this book which I think is it just sticks that sticks with me because it is like every book is different every book is a different challenge um so sometimes your question it's the process of this one was essentially um I had this idea of Puppets I then had this sort of like idea about Jack and his emotional journey and it was basically a sort of the process here was like coming up with what is the story of t

he book what is the story of the movie in the book and what is the world in the movie in the book and what is the world of the book itself so many so many sort of like um logical things I had to figure out the aren't necessarily in the book in other any any more than they are sort of just like a feeling or like a general understanding of of sort of the setup you know it it was a very in-depth sort of process of like I had a notebook it was a notebook that my mum gave me um when I was a teenager

before she passed away and it's a notebook that I haven't touched in since that time you know it's been 20 20 something years since a man passed away I've had this notebook through how many house moves and I've never used it because I didn't feel like there was anything good enough to use it for until the shadow glass and I got home from going food shopping and I just suddenly thought right I'm going to start planning out Shadow glass in this notebook it just felt right and so I started brainsto

rming characters brainstorming um sort of like situations so like the situation of Jack's relationship with his father the situation of his father's um attempts to make this film and then the film flopping and then going into breaking down the actual plot of the movie that was made and flopped in the 80s uh figuring out who those characters were which characters from that film were actually gonna come to life within the story of the book which ones weren't uh and just sort of asking myself quest

ions as well so there's a there's a page quite far into my my planning where I just wrote to myself what does the shadow glass actually do because the shadow glass is this sort of mystical object within the world of this film but I couldn't I hadn't figured out quite what it actually did and why anyone cared about it and it you know asking myself those questions helped me to figure out what that thing was but also what it meant in relation to Jack I think everything had to come back to Jack esse

ntially um because this is his story so that's why the mirror Shadow glass mirror in the um in the story of The Shadow glass it shows it kind of challenges you it challenges challenges you to be the best person you could possibly be and if you if you don't meet that challenge you're basically sort of like sucked into it never to be seen ever again um which obviously has an emotional resonance within Jack who is sort of throwing intents and purposes like failing at life you know he's seen his fat

her failing therefore Jack says I'm not going to commit to anything because if I don't commit to anything I'm never going to fail at it uh and with this story forces him to to commit to something and actually believe in something at his own Peril you know that's a very long-winded answer but yeah it's very powerful and also one of the things that I really loved about the book but I think gives it its real pace and contemporary Spin and just makes it so incredibly readable is how you've intersper

sed chapters with um contemporary film reviews with historic blogs with critiques from um you know film authors um there's obviously a lot of overlap between your time as a fiction writer and your time as a journalist how did you find bringing those two worlds together okay it just felt like a right the right fit for this book I I kind of I always always been that way like even in the early stages of writing this book I always knew that I was going to have these found documents and that I hadn't

even heard the term mixed media books but apparently this is a mixed media book because it has these articles and transcripts and all this kind of stuff um so it was very much part of the early building blocks of the book and I think it you're right it's because I'm a journalist I've spent uh 14 15 years working as a journalist pretty much coming out of University and journalism has had a huge impact on my development as a writer you know when I started out um I wanted to write books and when I

sort of couldn't quite figure out how to do that um that's when I moved into journalism because I went to my um a lecturer at my University and she said just go into journalism and I was a bit like man I'm not sure about that um but actually I've loved being a journalist and being a journal I couldn't I wouldn't be the writer I am today for all the faults etc etc if I hadn't been a journalist first I don't think I think they're so complementary in so many ways and so when I was writing this boo

k because it's about a film and it's set in the world of fandom you know people who love this film in the book it just felt right to have these these documents and I think like a nice sort of um side effect of that is that when you're reading the book hopefully you start to feel like this is a real film and also you hopefully start to almost feel like a bit of a fan of this film as well because you're reading all these documents that have probably been collected by fans um you know I've got thes

e books maybe you've even seen them but I've got these um scrapbooks that I had as a teenager where I would print off pages on the internet um like film reviews and movie Stills and interviews I'd cut them out of magazines and I would paste them all into these books which I think I call them dark Visions I've got three of them and they are full of movie stuff like this like the movie memorabilia that is in the shadow glass um I was doing as a teenager so it's definitely sort of yeah it's just th

e book is so completely a kind of a distillation of all the stuff that I've done professionally and non-professionally for a long long time well I think you know I think it I think it really shows and one of the things I've really admired about you following your writing Journey APS Josh has been you know you have really you've really had conviction in yourself and you know I know I know that at times self-belief can waver throughout this and it can be a very lonely thing being a writer but you'

ve really grinded and you've continued and you've continued and what I'd what I'd be really interested to for our audience to hear a bit more about is your writing Journey so um going back to the Sentinel Trilogy the self-publishing how you managed to kind of essentially get to the point you are now of being signed with um Titan books yeah it's a long long journey um some people get lucky and they you know they're they're fished out of the and you know enormous ocean of writers desperately tryin

g to get picked up um you know sometimes that happens immediately oftentimes it doesn't you know the whole overnight success thing it very very rarely happens um and I think I think the thing that's really kept me going is is sort of like just trying to it's like self-betterment you know trying to get as good as I possibly can at this thing trying to improve with every book every draft you know every paragraph you know trying to to be a better writer and I don't know I don't really know where th

at comes from I guess it's a passion it's um it's just something that I've always loved doing you know from a very very young age when I was writing stories that were inspired by the books that I loved at that time you know like rewriting books that I loved to change the ending or to cut out the stuff that I didn't like in the book you know sometimes I would think books were too long frankly when I was a kid so I would just cut out the stuff I didn't like and just write my own version and it's j

ust something that is I find endlessly fascinating is the craft of writing so yeah I think that it's that it's it's trying to become the best I possibly can become and I think the self-doubt thing it never goes away no matter how quote unquote successful you are you know from the outside you can look like the most successful person in the world but that doesn't mean that's how you feel on the inside so when when I look at the shadow glass objectively I'm like yeah okay like that looks like a pre

tty cool book actually and I could make all kinds of assumptions about the person who wrote it and then how successful they are and um you know what their life might look like how much money they're making you know the people they're meeting you could come up with all this kind of stuff and invariably none of it is going to be what you think it is and actually probably most writers are very similar in that they just sit and write in a room all day and very occasionally something exciting happens

um so yeah success and like self-doubt it's funny how they don't they don't you know they're not mutually exclusive you know they they go hand in hand and I don't think I'll ever think I'll ever go away I don't think I'll ever not doubt myself I think I can tell a story and I think I can write reasonably capably but there's always going to be somebody out there who'll tell me that I can't you know there's always going to be bad reviews but I think that's why so for a start I try not to read tha

t many reviews um I think there's like a kind of a it's kind of a rule on social media for people who write reviews which is basically if you don't like a book please don't tag the author in that review because nobody wants to read negative things about themselves and you have no idea what kind of impact that's going to have on that human being who sees that so positive I like being tagged in positive reviews because on the one hand it does kind of create this little bubble this utopian bubble w

here you're like everyone loves it it's amazing uh but also it just means that you are reminded that people do love your stuff um I think previously I've gone looking for reviews and you do just find bad reviews um so you know when I when the first Sentinel book first came out I was obsessed with getting reviews reading reviews and it in some ways the reviews are helpful yeah there it is uh some sometimes they're helpful because you can get good feedback especially as like a first-time author or

you're still learning and you don't have maybe a professional who's there helping you out like I do now um but also like sometimes they're just not very nice you know and they put they put words and and sentences in your brain that you just wish you could get rid of and they stick harder than the positives um it's all the positive things I've read I couldn't quote them I could easily quote about five of the bad reviews that I've read and these are reviews that I read years ago um so yeah what w

as the question a bit of a tangent I mean that that's fine I mean that's what it's all about I mean well I think it's really interesting is you know you say that and I and I know the impact that has from conversations we've had before about social media but you're very active on social you've still got a you know a very strong presence on on Twitter and Instagram especially I mean where do you land on social media I mean as a as a as a writer who's kind of built up this Groundswell of fans large

ly because you've been quite an open personality I'm so sure do you think you would have got to the level of success you've reached now without social media girl social media I found really useful for connecting with people who are having a similar experience to you you know it's great for it's great for normalizing your own sort of um not issues but for normalizing your your experience or you know your frustrations um Twitter's been great for meeting people who love the same stuff that I love a

nd for meeting people who want who are writers who want to be writers and sharing experiences you know there's nothing better than um reaching out to somebody via direct message and just sort of being like I'm having like a bit of a crap experience with this particular thing about what's your experience been with that and then them kind of going oh my God don't get me started you know there's something about that that is just so lovely because you suddenly don't feel alone I think social media c

an be a powerful tool to stop you feeling like you're just sort of like you know a drift in the sea of despair I think you have to draw a line and I think the line is a very personal choice I know that I have found that my ability to like self-regulate how often I go on social media has has sort of my grip on that is slackened a lot to the point where you would maybe use the word like addicted which I know um is a very loaded term but I think that it's overuse maybe you know overusing something

um it's never particularly good I don't think so I try to regulate my use of social media it's difficult on the laptop that's the most difficult place to regulate it because on my phone I just did it yesterday I deleted my the Twitter app and the Instagram app and my email app I deleted them all off my phone I do it regularly when I can feel that I'm just sort of not in control of this anymore um I don't like I don't like the sort of compulsion to go on to something for no other reason other tha

n I've thought to do it you know you know it's it's filling it's filling time that feels like dead time but actually that dead time is is so invaluable for so many reasons not not least for creatives who need that sort of Daydream time and I think social media kills daydreaming dead so I do I do I become aware quite quickly if I'm over using social media and I'll delete I'll take measures to try to limit it but I do find that with a laptop is where it's most difficult because um short of blockin

g the website you can just kind of go on and unlock it often at the touch of a fingertip if you use the fingertip ID for passwords um so yeah there's obviously pros and cons and yeah it can go it can get out of control but I think that if you're aware of how you're using those things then it's possible to to have a healthy relationship with them it's interesting meaning you never I've written about social media addiction you and I have had similar conversations around kind of I guess I guess wha

t you describe as unintentional use as in you're not really going online specifically to look for something you're there to kill time and I agree with you if my creative standpoint it's uh it's a very dangerous saying because you're losing sight of that the boredom quite frankly even Borden that comes where great ideas can sometimes arise and just connection with your surroundings and I wonder when you go and write so when you know you're on a deadline or you know you've got to try and deliver X

amounts of thousands of words in a day to meet to meet your next chapters do you do you take yourself out of out of your your office do you go to cafes do you how do you kind of try and get that discipline to avoid looking on time wasted social media sorry to just get on with what you need to do I I kind of mix it up I kind of just see how I'm feeling on that day I think if I'm feeling if I've got a time constraint like you said so if I've got like okay I have this one week to finish this draft

no matter how rubbish it is just get it finished which I did a couple of weeks ago I um I I turned off the internet on my laptop and I was really strict and I just said to I kind of said to myself look you can go on maybe at midday and you can go on at the end of the day and that's it um and I was really strict with it and it did slide towards the end of the week but for the first couple of days I found it really useful to just switch off the internet completely um to just focus on writing and

sometimes it's you know if I've if I've had quite a busy time out of the house it can feel great to write in the house but if I've done nothing but be in the house for a couple of days it's great to go somewhere else to ride but I do find that that more and more I find it difficult to find somewhere outside the house that is conducive to to writing um there's just so many distractions it can be noisy you know go to cafes and stuff sometimes they can be really noisy it's also just really expensiv

e to go into cafes like I went to a cafe this morning I spent 10 pounds on a coffee and like a breakfast which is just nuts especially if you're a writer um so yeah it's it's a balance I think between getting out and staying and depends how you feel on that day did you find um kind of writing throughout the pandemic especially when we're in the you know to really enforced lockdowns um how did you find that when you when you didn't have the opportunity to mix it up and you just had to stay in you

r office every day and work that was a great challenge for the imagination because it was sort of like let's imagine a world where I could go outside right now and go into a shop and have a dramatic encounter with somebody who isn't wearing a mask you know um yeah I found because I had been um freelance a freelance journalist for 12 13 years before the lockdown happened I kind of didn't really find it that sort of difficult to begin with because I was quite used to working from home anyway and f

inding ways to to cope with that it was the longer the the pandemic and the isolation isolating went on that's when it really started to become a struggle like I was actually really quite productive in the first lockdown first couple of lockdowns I was really productive um I was uh I was writing just like a silly sort of rom-commy thing that isn't normally what I would write but it was just like a fun thing to do good distraction um and luckily the the Titan deal happened sort of like slap bang

in the middle of the pandemic so I had something really positive to focus on but yeah it was it's kind of um now actually weirdly is more difficult because this is now my lockdown house this is my lockdown work environment so now it feels like I've been in this flat for a long long long time even though I've only lived here for two and a bit years two and a half years and this is now the lockdown isolation Zone and so it's actually more difficult now to write here I think because if you think ab

out it how off how long do you really spend somewhere that you live especially outside of sort of a pandemic or whatever you actually would in you know previous world you would probably spend most of your time out of the house so to have that flipped and actually spend pretty much all of your time in in your house it's it's weird and especially when you throw work into the mix as well so it was it was quite it's trying now yeah it's an uncomfortable balance I think I think you you know you hear

that phrase you know you're how you Mr castle and I think it should be the place you return home to having been on your adventures and for many of us now we have to try and challenge that now we have to as you say go out and try and have experiences and come home refreshed to our homes but with so many of us still working from our homes um that kind of delineation becomes becomes very difficult but I guess we're just all we're still learning what this kind of Brave New World looks like aren't we

um well it's like what it's like sort of like can can work should work you know you're you're like well I physically could work right now but it's like no I it's seven o'clock on a Sunday evening you know you could write sure your laptop is right there but do you think that would be good for you to write at the moment or do you think actually you should sit down and read a book or watch something or play a game you know do something different so I think it's yeah it's finding that like self-dis

cipline I guess and self self forgiveness maybe of just going yeah I could write at the moment but I don't think I should bring us Beyond to a question I really wanted to ask which was I mean you are now a a successful author you just have to own that title and accept it how how would you um you know what what tips would you give to an aspiring writer someone who feels like we all we all apparently have a book in us but what tips would you give to someone who's who really desperately wants to st

art out but just doesn't know where to begin okay I think I think yeah I think you have to write something that you can't not write essentially I think that you know you have to you have to really want to sit down at that computer or that notebook however you do it um sit down and just write what you want to read which is what I did with all of my books I think these are stories that I just like I want these stories to be out in the world don't really understand why but I just know that that's w

hat I can't find them anywhere else was a big reason um so I think that's a big one uh I think that well this is really this is a really tough question because the thing is there's no nobody knows anything this is what me and my friends talk about all the time is that you know people who seem to know what they're talking about probably don't people who are giving your advice on writing well that's their way that doesn't mean it's going to be your way uh you know it's really tricky I think you kn

ow the basics are read as much as you can read widely read read lots of different types of books I think that crime Thrillers actually really influence the pace of the Shadow glass because crime Thrill is just move and I wanted Shadow glass to move um so it's funny where you draw inspiration from everywhere um I think maybe I think perfectionism is a big thing to get over and that's something I battle with constantly is that feeling of it's rubbish and there's nothing I can do because it's never

going to be perfect and I think that it's important to just be like yeah it's probably never gonna be perfect nothing is nothing in the world is ever perfect so do you want to write anyway you know it's kind of just push through that essentially and I think the hardest one but the biggest one is finished draft just finish it and it sounds really simple and it sounds a bit Cavalier and sort of dismissive but it's the biggest most important thing you can do is finish finish your story it could be

too short it could have gaps in it it could be too long you know it could be too waffly but there's nothing worse than having a blank page and and this kind of like I can work with with words I can work with those but I can't work with a blank page so I think it's very important to finish that draft it's probably going to be awful mine always are my first class always terrible and I've heard other authors say this which is very heartening because I'm like you're my hero your first drafts are ba

d okay good I mean they're not as bad as my first trials at least yours are bad so I think finishing is huge because then you've got something to work with like my friend um she just finished her first draft and we both call our first drafts and bomb it drafts because they are basically just stick on a page just rubbish but she said um I've got a lump of clay which I think is a lovely way to look at it you've got that lump and now you can start to mold it into something that you want it to be I

think it's an incredible skill to be a a fictional for especially you know in your world of of fantasy fiction because you've got this ability just through the words and blank page to take people on these incredibly immersive Journeys and just especially during you know the pandemic how much we all relied on the escapism of of books um during that time um one thing that I um you know think would be really interesting to talk about is kind of what it's been like to to essentially make it now so w

ith with the shadow class um so they are very uncomfortable at that time but you know the book has been has been really successful you know you were named book of a month by the times um everywhere I've seen you know but they're very critically acclaimed it's really resonated with people and it seems to have really struck a chord globally at a time where Nostalgia is king um how does it feel to I guess have the book out there and to have made a connection with so many people oh it's amazing that

's that was the reason I wrote it you know I wrote it for the people who loved the stuff that I did and just wanted more of it and my fear I had two big fears and they were one we're not going to find those people and two we're going to find them and they're going to hate it you know that they're the two things I was really worried about but actually Titan have found those people you know various bloggers and reviewers are helping us find those people they're finding each other um and as far as

I've seen uh people are enjoying it which is amazing you know just it's fantastic they're they're my people and I'm I would I would be a liar if I said that I would be okay with them not enjoying the stuff that I love um you know I don't necessarily believe it um I don't you know there's always that little voice that says oh they're just being nice but then you think well they are strangers they don't need to be nice to you so yeah it's great it feels it feels lovely and the uh the knock-on effe

ct of that is that I'm like well No One's Gonna like the next book I write but like okay they might have liked this one but then oh my God the next one no they're all gonna hate that so you know there's always you never feel like you've made it there is no making it it really isn't what I always love about following anyone that kind of follows you on social or see this but you you're you're very self-deprecating about the writing Journey so you'll often share a blank page and like you know oh I'

ve got to start I've got to write to this and where do I begin um it's almost like no matter how many of these books you've written you still seem quite daunted by the process to begin with I mean when you get into it once you've got over that initial I guess kind of Hump of beginning does it does it feel like work or do you find yourself fully drifting I I asked because I I tended to talk once with Nick Hornby one of one of my favorite authors and you know it really resonated with me where how

he spoke quite candidly about how he had a specific office that he went to and he would write from Monday to Friday nine to five and when nine to five when five o'clock came he stopped writing and he read it very originally as a Monday to Friday job for him it that was that was how he was able to be so creative and to turn out for books that he has was just by very much clearly delineating it from his life but there's clearly much more overlap regime but the things you're writing about are also

very very personal to you and your personal passion points and interests so um you know what does it does it feel like work um it doesn't it doesn't it feels like I want to get something down it feels like I want to sort of have a thing to pitch to give to my agent for her to pitch out to Publishers you know there's there's that feeling but there also is that lovely creative feeling of I just want to play I just want to explore um I'm writing something at the moment which I've got the title I've

got the concept I've got a one-page synopsis which covers maybe two-thirds of the story but I haven't outlined it I haven't broken it down into a chapter breakdown or anything yet I'm not sure I will I've just started writing it and I'm really enjoying um the sense of Discovery with it and I think that's something I've enjoyed with all of my books is a feeling of discovery I'm just trying to figure out so you've got this idea of who your character is when you start writing but that quickly actu

ally sort of reveals itself as inadequate because you can have a very quick quick simple idea who a person is but when you've actually got to live in their head for 80 90 000 words you've got to quickly you've got to figure out well what actually makes them tick and how do they feel about that and people always talk creatives always talk about what does your character want I think that's that's a big thing um that is sort of like one of those cornerstones of stories or character maybe is they ki

nd of will have to want something and if they don't want anything that in itself is sort of an interesting facet of the character um so yeah I think it really does just feel like a nice mix of of work and play and it can be really frustrating um I've I always so whenever I've got a draft that either I've kind of finished or it's kind of getting there getting there but not quite I load it onto my Kindle and I sort of just start to read it as a book essentially and I'm Only Happy I can only relax

when there's there are no like claxons going off and a Claxton for me is like it can be as big as well this chapter is an absolute car wreck I need to get rid of it or it can be as small as that word isn't quite right or that word doesn't need to be there and those klaxons they get smaller and smaller the more times I read over the book and I'm looking to kind of like breathe the book in and I'm not happy until I can breathe it in you know it chokes you for a long time it can choke you for month

s but eventually I'm basically I've got my eye on that point in the future when I'm going to be able to breathe it in and it just feels like this was easy to write even if it wasn't easy to write do you read your books back afterwards once I published um I'd love to say no because I think it sounds a bit like masturbatory in the same that you read your own books um I've I have done it in the past where uh so the Sentinel books years after they came out I was at my aunt's house and she had book t

hree and I hadn't read it in a while and I picked it up and I just had a little read of it and it's sort of like these characters do become your friends it sounds really cheesy um because obviously they are they are facets of you as a person but but you've spent so much time with these characters and you've like been through the walls with them whether that is like editorially or narratively and so it's quite nice to pick up the book sometimes like I pick up Shadow glass a little bit and just fl

ick through it because I just think that Titan did such a beautiful job in terms of the design but I don't read I'm not ready yet to sort of just read it I probably will in a couple of years time but I think it should be pretty good it's right isn't it three stars yeah it's fine so what's next then you've met you've mentioned that you're starting to work on something are we going to get a sequel to The Shadow glass uh I haven't planned a sequel I have people I've been really surprised by people'

s reactions to wanting a sequel and kind of so many people have said to me you know so there's going to be a sequel right and I'm like I don't know I think I think people often think they want a sequel when actually they want to experience the first one again for the first time maybe if that doesn't sound too horn tooting um you know you watch the sequel because you want to recapture the feeling that you got from the first film so and very few storytellers are able to do that so I'm not sure if

I would I doubt my ability to write a good sequel is number one and number two is finding the right story because the reason I wrote this other class was because I love puppets and I wanted to tell the story about Jack whereas to write a sequel I can't have the reason just be I want to write a sequel or people want a sequel it has to be an organic sort of um creative reason I guess and I could see a world where there's like return to Charlotte glass or something like that but um maybe in like 10

years time I don't know I feel like maybe I would have to be older because Jack Jack was my age when I were you know Jack's 35 in the book and I was 35 when I started writing the shadow class so maybe I needed him to be in his 40s or his 50s before he becomes a viable uh sequel character you know so we'll see I mean in the meantime in the meantime I've got other I've got um a book called burn the negative coming out um in the summer of 2023 which is still sort of like in you know it it's diffus

ed with like movie love but this time it's horror movies 90s horror films um so that's coming out and then I've got another horror book that was part of that deal so I've got to write that and yeah I've got various projects sort of like bubbling away so fingers crossed they'll all get out there you never stop d never stop obsessed I get really um I get stressed and I get I get more anxious than my usual my usual level of anxiety if I'm not writing I get annoyed I get catchy um I think writing fo

r me is sort of therapy in a weird way it's like self-expression through a story or through a character and I find that if I if I'm like under an enforced you don't you're not going to write for a while because you've just finished something else so you know don't tie yourself out and while there is that it is it is important to take breaks it's um not necessarily Good For Me Maybe to to not have that outlet I think if you love doing something you love it no matter what it doesn't matter if you'

ve just finished a book you can and should write another one absolutely and what a perfect note to finish on so lastly Josh um where can our audience find out more about you and stay updated with what you're working on plug away find me on Twitter at Josh winning uh I'm on Instagram at Joshua winning my website is joshuawinning.com you can sign up to my newsletter through there if you'd like I don't really send out many newsletters as anything that's sort of a little bit of news um and if you wa

nt to listen to my podcast that's torn stubs which is available on all uh you know podcast platforms brilliant well thank you Josh thank you so much for being the first guest this has been an absolute treat to do and I'm so glad that we've been able to do this together um so this has been episode one of the good Journeys with second Mountain comms um you can subscribe to us on YouTube at second Mountain comms you can find us on Twitter at second that's 2nd Mountain UK and you can join in the con

versation using good Journeys pod until next time let's keep climbing on together [Music]