How You Can Find Hope After Rock Bottom (Aaron Ryan)

[Dana] (00:00)
Welcome, friends, whether you’re out on a walk, running errands, or relaxing at home, it’s wonderful to connect with you. Joining us today is Aaron Ryan. Aaron is an award-winning and best-selling author, speaker, panelist, workshop presenter, and voice actor. He lives in Washington with his wife and two sons, along with Macy the dog, Winston the cat, and the finches Inky, Pinky, Blinky, and Clyde. Aaron, welcome to Phoenix and Flame.

[Aaron] (00:39)
Thank you for having me, it’s good to see you. I actually have a very sad, somber update, in that the bird count and names have changed, so we can’t do the Pac-Man naming convention anymore, because the quantity has unfortunately gone down. But our kids, after purchasing a Happy Meal from McDonald’s, have essentially named them Burger, Nugget, and Fry. So those are the new birds.

[Dana] (01:01)
Okay, Burger, Nugget — I love this, I love the kids getting that creative space. All right, so I have so many questions, but before we dig in, I want to toss out a little more information for the listeners and viewers. You are the prolific author of the bestselling Dissonance, a six-book alien invasion saga —

[Aaron] (01:06)
There won’t be a quiz.

[Dana] (01:29)
— one of which has been adapted for the screen and is actively being pitched to stream on the streaming networks. How’s that going?

[Aaron] (01:38)
It’s good, actually, I’m really excited. We’re going a few different routes. Dissonance was adapted by a Hollywood fellow — he’s still not sure what exactly that means, but he’s someone who’s in the Hollywood system, knows the producers, gets around, actually talks with them, pitches, writes good screenplays, he’s won awards. He’s pitching it to major studios, meetings with producers. I can’t say his name, can’t say who we’ve talked to, it’s very hush-hush. Every time I do mention his name, people go, hey, pick me, pick me for my book, and he’s like, not every book needs to be made into a movie. The other ones are going through the FilmFreeway film festival route, and they’re winning awards, which is really flattering and exciting. So it’s a good deal.

[Dana] (02:27)
That is fun. So, gosh, I could begin so many different places, but what comes to mind first is, for those listeners out there thinking about becoming an author, thinking about writing a book, what are your words of wisdom, what are your words of caution? Feel free to share your journey, and why in the world did you go down this path — there’s a lot of paths you could have gone down, Aaron. What words of wisdom, words of caution do you have?

[Aaron] (03:04)
Yeah, that’s a lot of questions in a — let’s see if I remember everything. Gosh, I was digging through an old photo album my mom made for my wife, prior to her becoming my wife, and I found an old article she’d included, I’d completely forgotten about it — I was in a young author’s club at ten years old, and there was a newspaper article on it from kids down in the Snoqualmie Valley, and it was like, oh my gosh, I’d completely forgotten about that.

[Aaron] (03:40)
So I was supposed to be an author, you could call it fate, from the very beginning. It’s taken a lot of different creative pursuits and iterations throughout my life — the creativity in storytelling hasn’t always been in print, story form, it’s been in poetry, voiceovers, music, and lyrics is a form of storytelling too. But I think I was always fated to be one, and I think the purest, truest, rawest form of storytelling is writing a story. So I love doing it. For those who want to get started, there’s a lot I could say. One: always be true to yourself. You don’t need to be the next Tolkien, Grisham, Clancy, Collins, Lewis — be yourself, you’ve got a unique voice, and the world doesn’t need more of those people, they’re already there. I think Oscar Wilde said, “Be yourself, everyone else is already taken.”

[Dana] (04:38)
I love it.

[Aaron] (04:39)
And someone else said, “Be the you that only you can be,” or something like that, it was such a great quote. So be authentic, be true to you. Secondly, I’d say, man, if you can steer clear of AI, please do — don’t outsource your work to a chip. We need an original voice, editors can’t bring out your voice if it’s not already there — using it for assistive purposes I don’t have a problem with, but generative AI, big problem with that. It’s disrupting both the voiceover and the authoring industry, both of which I’m a big part of. And third, I’d tell people, you must develop thick skin from the start. You’re going to face a lot of rejection. You may think your book is the greatest thing since sliced bread, and it may absolutely fall on its face after you publish it. I’ve got a lot of books behind me, for those joining us visually, and not every one of those has been a bestseller, not every one has cracked the top 100 on Amazon. You have to run promotions, constantly market, constantly share. There’s a lot to do, but wrap it all up, put a nice bow on it, it’s a very worthy pursuit.

[Dana] (05:49)
I love this. I’m going to make one other comment, and I really wanted to get more into your personal journey. I remember talking to someone once and I said, sometimes I feel like a cup of water in an ocean. So for someone in authorship, I think most people, from what you were saying —

[Aaron] (06:09)
Mm-hmm.

[Dana] (06:15)
— people want to feel like they’re making a difference, being the most they can be, that kind of thing. What would you say — because I know I’m not the only one with that same mentality of, how do I launch out, how do I keep the energy, because writing it, that’s just the beginning, then you’ve got the editing, the publishing, the marketing, all the things, Aaron. There’s a lot of energy that needs to go behind that. If someone’s feeling, what’s the point — let’s say there’s someone super talented —

[Aaron] (06:30)
Yes. Yeah, yeah.

[Dana] (06:54)
— and they have a lot to share, but they look around and see how many authors, how many books are out there, and they’re thinking, why bother, especially when they need energy to keep going. What would you say to those listeners or viewers on that path?

[Aaron] (07:03)
Right, right, that sounds very much like imposter syndrome — who am I, what do I matter, in light of, when stacked up against a Tolkien or a Tom Clancy or Michael Crichton, who am I? And I absolutely get that. I was wearing a shirt yesterday, I make these custom shirts so I can wear them out to the grocery store, people will go, oh, are you an author, and I go, well, yes, I am, and then it’s a great way to — it’s a conversation starter, I love it.

[Dana] (07:33)
That’s awesome.

[Aaron] (07:38)
I’ve got vinyl lettering on the back window of my van too, so people can see it while hopefully driving safely, and will look me up later. The imposter syndrome thing is huge — I don’t know that I’ve necessarily ever struggled with it, because I’ve always wanted to do it. Here’s what I’d say to those people who are, you know, who am I in light of: there are 7,500 books published every single day on Amazon. Why should mine stick out? I write for many reasons, one of which I would love it to be my livelihood — I’m a voice actor who also does authoring at this point, I’d love that script to flip someday and be an author who also does voice acting. Right now it’s this, and that’s okay, but you don’t get there in a heartbeat, it takes a while. The imposter syndrome thing — one of the main reasons I write is I love seeing it go from here, without dropping everything, to here. I designed the cover, this is three books in one, for those joining us visually, a hardcover, eight by ten-ish, of my Talisman series, all three books in one. I love this, but I love more than anything else holding this in my hand and going, I did this, I accomplished this. As a little boy, in second grade, we were all given an assignment by Mrs. Walker — hi, Mrs. Walker, she’s probably deceased — and I made this story called The Electric Boy. It was a huge, blatant copyright ripoff of Alan Dean Foster’s novelization of E.T. — I didn’t know about copyright infringement at the time. But I wrote a story called The Electric Boy with construction paper and three-hole-punch college-lined paper and crude stick-figure drawings, and it was just a silly little novella, but I remember holding it in my hand at seven and going, I did this.

[Dana] (09:55)
Oh, I love it.

[Aaron] (09:57)
Oh my gosh, you know, and I’ve just repeated that process over and over again with music and CDs and books galore. If for no other reason, do it to say, I did it. You could take pride in that, even if nobody ever buys it. You want them to buy it, but you can take great pride.

[Dana] (10:17)
Wow. So another question that just popped into my mind, in response to what you just said — I’m really curious what you’d say to parents out there who have children similar to the little boy you were, because there are different parenting styles, different personalities in parents, and for the parents who might be listening or watching right now who have a child who’s —

[Aaron] (10:38)
Thank you. Mm-hmm.

[Dana] (10:47)
— behaving a lot like you described how you behaved, what would your recommendations be for them?

[Aaron] (10:53)
Foster it, by all means, foster it to the ends of yourself, with every extent that you can, foster that gift. My son, who’s now ten, is an incredibly crafty kid — he goes through tape and paper like a budget, so I’m taking donations, I’ll give you the Venmo. He is incredibly crafty, every single day he blows my wife and I away with what he’s created, three-dimensional stuff. There’s nothing wrong with a painting or a one-dimensional art form, but these are three-dimensional, with scale and colors, really close to the original shape he’s seen in a movie or a book somewhere. And it’s just amazing, and my wife and I joke, he’s going to make a lot of money someday, and I want some of it. You, as parents —

[Dana] (11:43)
Yeah.

[Aaron] (11:47)
— can inadvertently benefit from that type of thing. Not that he should be the breadwinner, don’t put that onus on him, but foster it by all means. It gives us such great delight to see him go far. We joke he should probably already be employed by a movie FX studio, he just has those inclinations, that drive. He assimilates five minutes of a movie we watch, and then he retreats to his craft desk and comes back with whatever he’s seen — he misses the whole movie, but he’s created something that’s a perfect physical manifestation of what we’ve all seen in those first five, ten, fifteen minutes. Nurture that by all means. If there’s anything you can do to explore ways for that child to have an outlet for harvesting that gift, strengthening that gift, do it, you can bond over that. And never, ever say, “I’ll look at it in a minute” — stop what you’re doing, because it’s so cool.

[Dana] (12:57)
That is awesome. Now I want you to tell us a little about the genre you’re in now — what gave you the desire for that particular genre you’re mostly writing in, and why, and what are the pros and cons and the feedback you’ve gotten?

[Aaron] (13:20)
Yeah, it’s a hard question to answer, because I’m very multi-genre. If you can see behind me, there’s sci-fi, business guides, a prayer guide, literary criticism, historical fiction, children’s picture books, and I get a wild hair, and I have to go down that breadcrumb trail and see it through to its end. I wouldn’t have written children’s books if I didn’t have kids — the three kids’ books are a direct offshoot of having a ten- and a six-year-old. I’m currently writing my first horror novel, although my alien invasion saga is horrific too — probably the wrong word, it’s phenomenal, but the aliens have Stephen King elements of horror in there. The current work in progress is called Blood Echoes, an outright horror novel. But I belong mostly in my wheelhouse, sci-fi, post-apocalyptic, and dystopian — I love being in an environment where hope is the very last thing, and the only thing that you have. Everything else has been stripped away, threadbare hope. I love the quote from President Snow in Suzanne Collins’s Hunger Games: “Hope, it is the only thing stronger than fear.” I resonate so much with that quote, because it’s that little flickering candle about to go out in the darkness, and that’s what you zero in on. So I really belong in a sci-fi environment where the odds are greatly stacked against the protagonist.

[Dana] (15:04)
And how much do we experience that in real life? I’m an avid reader, that’s my escape of choice — people use different things to escape the stress of real life, they just want to go somewhere else for a while and not think about the problems they have to solve, they just need an escape. And reading —

[Aaron] (15:09)
Yeah.

[Dana] (15:30)
— is mine, because I can just fall into someone else’s life for a while and enjoy that. It’s when you can relate to the characters — I hear you describing characters where hope is everything’s been stripped away, and I’m wondering too, as you’ve been on your path, whether through voice acting or writing, you mentioned criticism and pushing through — I’m wondering about the hope, and what you’ve experienced along the way. Maybe one example of a criticism you received, a discouragement, a doubt, wondering, is this going to happen, is this worth doing? I think anyone, especially entrepreneurial people — I’d call myself a serial entrepreneur too — it’s not a path for the faint of heart.

[Aaron] (16:31)
Thank you. Yeah.

[Dana] (16:45)
So I love that your theme is hope. I’m wondering if you could bring together your own experiences that might have driven this sense of wanting to write about hope when that’s all you have.

[Aaron] (16:57)
That’s a great question. Speaking from experience, and it was fairly traumatic too — I’m a voice actor, was very entrenched in the voiceover system from probably 2016 on, I was gaining some notoriety, winning some accolades. My branding is sci-fi enthusiast at heart, I’m very enthusiastic, I have a lot of heart in what I do, brought the same thing to voiceovers. But I found, to my chagrin, that there was a bit of an Illuminati at the top — those people who control all the strings, decide who gets to speak, who gets the acclaim, who they’ll direct people to, who’s welcomed into their high school clique. I decided after a while — I always felt like an outsider looking in, like I was beating my head against a glass wall, I could see what I wanted but I wasn’t going to be welcomed in. I found that out very painfully through some very honest and cutting assessments of my blog — I wrote 300 blogs meant to be very satirical and encouraging, that’s all I wanted to do, encourage and affirm. A higher-up said, your blogs basically are nothing, they’re not encouraging, you just want people to buy your books. It really hurt — that was not the impetus for me writing blogs, I took great pride in encouragement, and no one wanted to see my heart from the upper tiers. It was really frustrating. I spoke truth to power, was a little unkind in my word choices because I was livid at how I was being treated, so I basically shot myself in the foot and cut myself off intentionally from the voiceover community, which had grown very toxic online. I was very alone, and right at that same time is when AI was making its foray into the market with ChatGPT and OpenAI. A lot of things kind of came to a head that forced me out. I was still doing voiceovers, still working for clients, but on my own now — no longer doing business coaching, no longer blogging, because what’s the point? It sapped a lot of creative fire right out of me, it was a very sad time. But I have to create, that’s the driving impetus, I must create or I’m gonna blow up, I’ll explode. So I thought it was music —

[Dana] (19:57)
Red Mist. Yes!

[Aaron] (20:15)
I ventured away from the voiceover community and back into music, and decided after a few months, this is way too expensive, not getting the gigs, what can I do? And I was like, duh, I’m a storyteller — as a voice actor, I’m telling other people’s stories, what’s more natural than — all my careers echo that, I can walk you through them, all of them have been about telling stories. I resorted back to my first love, storytelling, again, the Young Authors Club at age ten, and the book I wrote at age seven. I have no regrets from short-circuiting that voiceover tedium and backing out and following my heart to where I really belonged.

[Dana] (21:10)
Oh no, I like all of that. On Phoenix and Flame we tell real stories, and the listeners and watchers are walking this, and that’s why I always try to be very respectful of who’s listening and watching and where they might be on their journey, because one of the things I like to talk about on my podcast is you’re not alone. So through the conversations we have, letting other people know this — I love the organic —

[Aaron] (21:18)
Yeah. Yeah.

[Dana] (21:41)
— conversation you’re having, and the transparency about the journey. One of the things I’m wondering, through all of that, being exposed to what you call the Illuminati, and the criticism and the path you were going, it turned out well — not today. A lot of times when people are going through that, they have a hard time —

[Dana] (22:11)
— holding onto hope, because they can’t see what’s coming, and they have a hard time keeping on going when everything they thought was going to happen is just in a pile of ash at their feet. So can you look back and think of maybe one thing that helped keep you dry? I know you talked about being creative, that was something you did, so I heard that — is there anything else that comes to mind you’d share with someone right in the middle of exactly what you’re describing?

[Aaron] (22:46)
Well, yeah, absolutely. I’m an entrepreneur and a freelancer, I always have been, it’s really hard for me to work for someone else’s dream. This must have been back in 2007-ish, when I first ventured out of full-time employment into self-employment. I was having all kinds of computer problems — funnily enough, I’m right there again, because my brand new PC I ordered had to be sent back, thankfully they’re giving me a full refund, and I’m finally going all the way to Mac. But back then I was PC entirely, and I just kept having problem after problem with this PC. I wanted self-employment so badly, I could feel it in my teeth, I couldn’t sleep, I had everything in place to become —

[Dana] (23:33)
Oh!

[Aaron] (23:42)
— an entrepreneur, to pursue multi-production, is what I was trying to do. But this darn PC kept getting in the way. I’d already replaced the memory, replaced the drives, defragged, if you remember what that is, done over and over all these different things. It was like, well, why don’t you just buy a new computer — this was the top-of-the-line computer at the time. My buddy said, just go buy more memory, I said, I’ve already swapped out the memory, he said, just go buy more, I said, oh, fine.

[Dana] (23:53)
I do.

[Aaron] (24:12)
I went and bought new memory, and before that though, and it solved everything, but before that I was so ready to give up. I was sitting — this is going to sound wrong, don’t take it the way it sounds — I was sitting on the toilet at two in the morning, clothed, and I was bawling into a pillow. I was bawling into a pillow at two in the morning on the toilet in my bathroom, because I wanted this so bad.

[Dana] (24:23)
Okay.

[Aaron] (24:42)
And I remember talking to a client of mine at the time, graphic design, my computer crashed plenty while doing work for him, and he shared a quote, I think from Confucius, or a Swedish proverb, that said: “The temptation to quit is always greatest just before your greatest success.” That quote stuck with me — I have a lot of mantras in my back pocket that have stuck with me, but I remembered that one because I was so ready to throw in the towel, even though I could feel it right here. I bought that memory, installed it in the computer, and I’ve been self-employed ever since. That’s been since 2007, so we’re going on almost twenty years now.

[Dana] (25:30)
You’re mouthing out loud.

[Aaron] (25:34)
It’s almost twenty years of self-employment because of two memory sticks. It’s paid our mortgage, bought us several cars outright, funded my authoring dream, enabled us to give freely to others, enabled me to pursue wonderful hobbies, like having a custom Lord of the Rings book, a keepsake, red leather bound, silver foil stamped, with pictures from the movies where appropriate to the running narrative. I had this whole thing made, it cost a fortune, because I had three. Self-employment paid for that. So I’m incredibly grateful for that Phoenix moment, and the Phoenix moment of leaving the voiceover industry — there were flames, but you have to endure those, I guess.

[Dana] (26:31)
What you’re describing reminds me of a conference I attended recently, where the speaker was talking about going from breakdown to breakthrough, and then wash, rinse, repeat, breakdown to breakthrough, then breakdown to breakthrough. It’s not a one-and-done, it’s a cycle.

[Aaron] (26:41)
No, that’s good. Wow.

[Dana] (26:55)
I thought, wow, and for anyone who’s lived long enough on this planet, especially entrepreneurs, they know exactly what that feels like. Going through that is just kind of — the woman who said that is Dr. Brittany Iselle, E-Z-E-L-L. She was a former coach for an ETSU women’s basketball team, I want to make sure I give her credit —

[Aaron] (27:05)
Right.

[Dana] (27:23)
— for saying that. She was giving a talk on being resilient and being a leader, looking at it from an athletic standpoint, how it’s similar to being a leader and being an athlete, and she was the one who said that. Thank you, Dr. Iselle. Breakdown into breakthrough, and then breakdown into breakthrough, that’s what I hear you saying.

[Aaron] (27:24)
Yeah. I love it. Yeah, I just typed it, so if you saw me doing this, I have to save that, that’s a wonderful quote. Wow.

[Dana] (27:58)
Yeah, that’s Dr. Brittany Iselle, and I’ll try to remember to tag her when this podcast comes out. She’s fabulous, and I want to talk to her more. In the last few minutes we have, I’m kind of wondering, this is going to be a really hard question, and I’m going to ask it anyway: do you have a favorite book that you’ve written, do you have a favorite child in your book groups? What’s your favorite one, do you have one?

[Aaron] (28:05)
Yeah.

[Aaron] (28:31)
Yeah, I do. I’m working on book number 45 right now, so there’s a lot to choose from. But it used to be a tie — I really love my The End series, it’s a Christian dystopian saga, and the finale is called The End Omega, and it is powerful, loaded with so much redemption and heart, you’re going to cry, I don’t care who you are, you’re going to cry. There are powerful moments of reunification and triumph in there, with a capital T. It is so rich with heart, that book. However, as much as I love The End Omega, I wrote a historical fiction novel called Forecast — it’s a 9/11 historical fiction novel. I still, to this day, remain deeply moved by the heroism of the fallen heroes and victims of 9/11, the 343 firefighters, the passengers on Flight 93. Not a lot of people want to deal with that subject still two decades later, or almost 25 years later, it’s sad. I looked at that project as a catharsis for me, I really wanted to write something that would undo 9/11 and save all those lives vicariously in a fictional setting. So that’s what happens — 9/11 is utterly prevented, that’s the spoiler, but you know it’s coming. In that book, it’s written first person, but it migrates to third person, because he has to split personalities at the end, and then it joins back to first person. It was such a challenge to write, but it turned out so good, it’s so compelling, and wouldn’t we all love to live in a world where 9/11 was prevented. So that’s probably still at the top. I also really love The Phoenix Experiment, it’s the first book where I really incorporated a lot of prose, the first book where I wrote first person present tense. So yeah, each one is new and exciting and different, but those are the top ones.

[Dana] (30:47)
That’s fabulous. I have to ask a question, because I reached out to — I have a cousin, Jill, shout out — she’s an avid reader, works at a library, has her degree in library science, and she had a question about the Christian dystopian genre —

[Aaron] (31:00)
I don’t.

[Dana] (31:17)
— she was recalling and referencing the Left Behind series, and saying that the feedback she’d received was that quite a few people were traumatized by that, by the concept of being left behind, if you were younger, like, what the fuck, right? So I told her I’d ask, so I’m out there asking you: what are your thoughts on that kind of feedback on the Left Behind series, and how did you overlay that with the books you wrote?

[Aaron] (31:52)
Yeah, it’s a perfectly valid question. I was very inspired by the Left Behind series, I didn’t actually complete it, I think I read through book nine or so back in the ’90s and got distracted, thought I’d get back to that someday. There are a few profound differences between that series and mine. The Left Behind series is really all about Revelation, and the seven-year period called the tribulation, according to the Bible, before Jesus returns and the Antichrist rises, and the false prophet, and the mark of the beast. I was inspired by it, but that doesn’t mean The End is a carbon copy of Left Behind. The End is more a dystopian setting — the antagonist is a man who literally believes he is the Antichrist of Revelation. He’s not, this isn’t the tribulation period, it’s not the period right before Jesus returns, it’s very dystopic in that he’s a madman. How many times in history have we seen people with power who are just absolutely bonkers, and they’re dangerous — I’m not making a political statement here, I promise, but that’s such a danger when you have someone at the top with that megalomaniac complex, a totalitarian despot. I love this story because it’s entirely feasible, I’m not going to say probable, but it’s feasible. This man, in my series, because of who he believes he is, is hell-bent on a second — gosh, I’m phasing out on the word — Holocaust —

[Dana] (33:49)
Holocaust.

[Aaron] (33:50)
He’s focused on a second Holocaust, the extermination of Christians in the year 2113. Under the guise of a census, he has them all secretly branded by laser scan, has an army of mechanoid robots called guardians — they’re really only guarding him, but they’re trained to hunt for one thing, and they’re going to hunt down Christians. It’s impossible to extinguish this mark. So it’s about clinging to hope, that threadbare hope, running and existing entirely in the shadows, taking down someone who — whether or not you agree with the Christian side or the exterminating side isn’t the issue, it’s the issue of what is humane, what is morally right, and who is morally bankrupt. You can’t just go around killing everyone you don’t like. The stakes are super high in that series, it’s an exponential curve all the way to the end of The End Omega. So tell your cousin, absolutely get it, if she liked Left Behind, get this one. It’s not quite the same, in that it’s not Revelation, it’s not the tribulation, and he’s not the big-A Antichrist, he’s a little-a antichrist. But lowercase A, it’s good, I’m so proud of it.

[Dana] (35:00)
Oh my god, it sounds fabulous, Aaron. I know my listeners and viewers are thinking, how do I get access, how do I learn more about Aaron Ryan? So the website I have, let me verify with you to make sure it’s accurate, is authoraaronryangroup.com.

[Aaron] (35:29)
Well, authoraaronryan.com is the main domain, and that goes to my site with all the things and all the social links. But authoraaronryangroup.com is only a forwarding URL that takes you to a private and exclusive Facebook group, where you can find out about the status of the screenplays, get discount codes and giveaways, upcoming appearances, and news.

[Dana] (35:32)
Okay.

[Aaron] (35:55)
But the main site, with links to the other sites and all the socials, is authoraaronryan.com.

[Dana] (36:00)
Fabulous. Aaron, I really appreciate you spending your valuable time, your energy, your wisdom, and your experiences with me and all of us on Phoenix and Flame. Thank you so much.

[Aaron] (36:15)
Thank you so much for having me, I really appreciate it.

[Dana] (36:17)
All right, listeners, viewers, I know you have heard multiple things today that have you thinking, I have a best friend, I have a family member, I have a coworker who needs to hear what Aaron Ryan said. Take this podcast episode, copy and paste it, send it in text, send it in email, post it on your favorite social media sites so we can grow our Phoenix and Flame community and let people know: you are not alone. I hope your day is going great, I hope the rest of your day is fantastic. I’m Dana, on Phoenix and Flame.