just want to go into a little detail about patrick's background because i think it's very interesting so i asked and there is a disconnect between the idea of becoming a writer and the reality of the talent the sheer commitment and determination it actually takes to become a writer and underway patrick has worked in many occupations while simultaneously writing his novels and  i think that's so rewarding to see that he is now able to be a full time arthur and on and out he has not only just finished a book tour for knight city burning but so but i am definitely very pleased to be to be mentioned in that kind of that kind of company what i thought i'd do is just talk a little bit about the book introduce it and then maybe read a  short excerpt last about ten minutes and then answer some questions and we'll take it from there so as i believe has been mentioned once or twice then city building is my first novel it's been out for roughly two months  it's a science fiction fantasy blend set five hundred years after invasion of earth by a mysterious alien force now as aliens do when they invade earth these ones came wielding a unusual level of technology but this was not the sort of the sort of technology that might evolve from things like the wheel in fire and gone through internal combustion engine superconductors it looked in acted a lot like magic and for that reason it was more than we could handle more than we were able to defend against until it turned out that we could hijack this power and use it for ourselves so when the story begins this war's been going on for five hundred years the entire planet is putting all of its resources into fighting back into a kind of mysterious distant war far away from earth society is divided into three parts there are the cities which are responsible for maintaining the war for defending the planet there are settlements which provide most of the supplies in terms of food and  material and soldiers mostly and then there's everyone else these are the people who either refused to take part in the war or just never knew about it ended up as sort of you know post apocalyptic  alien power so i'll get right into that now and then we can we can talk about the rest chapter one we're only a few minutes into our quiz when the sirens start and the first thing i feel is relief even though i know that's totally wrong totally not how i should feel i can still remember the panic the terror that used to come over me when i heard the atmospheric incursion siren the city know that our city is under attack and i know that's how all the kids around me must be feeling this very second but it's different for me now once the first shock of the wailing siren passes it's true i'm afraid too but in the same kind of fear i used to feel it's more like fear of letting everyone down and even that's not so bad yet i know it's going to get worse but for a moment just a moment there was that relief because i'm totally not prepared for this quiz which it was crazy because what kind of person is like oh great i won't have to take a quiz because everybody is going to die not a bad student really even in biology which is the subject of this quiz which is about photosynthesis which is our plans turn sunlight into energy the trouble is whenever i sit down to study i end up picking up the academy handbook it is a long book but each time i flipped back to the beginning like maybe if i read it one more time i'll find the answer i need like maybe i just missed it the other hundred million times but even though the handbook has all the rules for life at the academy it doesn't tell me the one thing i really need to know oh and there's nothing about photosynthesis either pencils down cadets that stinney or rather every one in six class section a has or for biology physics international mechanics she's been pacing down the rows of desks looking over our shoulders one by one but at the sound of the siren she walked into the front of the room in line by the door please she says her voice calm almost cheerful like this is just another lesson all around there's the sound the girl who takes the girl by the hand in these are to the front of a lot of cats forming by the door using an artifice pencil during any kind of test is totally against the rules as anyone who even picked up the academy handbook would know on a normal day this girl would be in for some pretty big time trouble but not today or her day in use usually pretty tough gives a girl's head a reassuring squeeze before assuring her into line they're still alive tomorrow they can talk about punishment then i'm good at six twelve meaning six class section isi twelve so i take my place twelve from the door as i walk down the line i can feel the other cadets watching me not staring because you're supposed to be face forward when you're information from the corners of their eyes my uniform is the same grays a the other cadets know my color i have the same six black pips as everyone in six class but there isn't a person in this city who would mistake me for a normal kid the symbol i wear my neck a golden circle with a second circle inside is just a reminder during school hours everyone is expected to pretend like i'm just another student at the academy but that's all they can really do pretend over the past few months i've gotten used to everyone's looking at me differently gotten used to sending off whispers everywhere i go  my people are mean to me if anything they're extra extra nice actual officers will stop and salute me or congratulate me or ask me to shake their hand i've made a lot of friends since starting at the school of rhetoric and my friends from before still my friends the kids in seem proud to have me usually but not today today things are different today everyone is nervous they know that a little while their lives can depend on me of all the eleven twelve year olds who came back from sequester i'm the only one who turned out to be are giving me now they're wondering if they can trust me with their lives this kid with his long news and curly dark brown hair some of skinny and a little pudgy at the same time was in the bottom of his class and chin ups and push ups and don't even ask about the five kilometer run he's never been really really good at anything they're seeing the same jack's they've known for twelve years only now i'm supposed to protect them from complete destruction even writer dan you seems tense i don't blame them i wish they didn't have to depend on me either when all the best time classroom shelter in three minutes and forty two seconds it's also so familiar i must forget this is the real thing but only almost the hall of east wing is filled with sections just like ours kids walking calmly two by two with  writer at the front runner stand by their black legionnaires uniforms and because they're older most around twenty years old like ten year some of the writers for the upper classes are even older than that but not for the dodos which is the general academy term for six classes the rumor is that writers aren't allowed to teach younger kids anymore once they've been on their first tour no one speaks or looks anywhere but straight ahead the only sound is the rhythmic clucking over academy dress shoes and the wail of the attack siren siren is an arti designed so that's nearly impossible to ignore a sound that seems to come right out of the air like water gathering on the side of a glass i wonder sometimes whether it could be an actual whale like someone really screaming that's how artifices are no matter how precisely they're designed you can never really be sure what they'll do we follow the flow of cadets down the wide stone stairway of east wing as far as the ground floor where everyone else continues on to the lower levels then he leads us to the main floor where she brings us to a halt in front of a on the school's entrance evaluations momar scored higher than anyone in our class intersection in leadership ninety seven percent he would say about ten times a day just in case anyone forgot boomer decided his high score meant anything he wanted to do was automatically good leadership as she does a dark ship appears in the white surface the outline of a man like a shadow someone standing on the other side it holds up one arm waving at us to stop and a voice comes out of the wall and atmosphere a concurrent alert is in effect says deep in booming and sort of echoing in the same way as the sirens still wailing through the air because to be one city is closed until further notice all personnel are to report to their designated shelters this is not a drill pass all at once the while white finishes like clearing best and we're looking out into a courtyard of stone paths and going arms empty and bright beneath a cloudy sky the door be reappears behind us as soon as we're outside i don't hear it happen but when i look back it's there danny is taken a small metal disk from our pocket it's a store it's a storage device i know made to hold artifices and given to her for the sole purpose of bringing me to the forum during an attack and given me to for the sole purpose of bringing me to the forum during an attack i would get there just as fast by myself but the academy can be very strict and sometimes kind of unreasonable when it comes to what cadets are and aren't allowed to do on their own i actually kind of like it better this way cadet then he asks i think she might actually be nervous but i can't tell for sure ready ma'am i say denny passes two fingers over the surface of the disc and suddenly everything is a blur the ground rushing many of us like wind walkways and stairways and always whirling around us with the speed of a cycle when the world settles back again then you know you're standing in front of another stone archway easily twice as tall as the last one opening onto a wide stone plaza i feel danny's hand settle on to my shoulder you pass me the arch and she steps back and salutes this is as far as the ghosts are she says this whole procedure is in my hand book part of a special appendix added just for me it always feels weird when adults address me as served but now that we're off academy grounds i would run into anybody quite a bit yes ma'am i say returning the salute i'll take it from here but instead of leaving then you neil and hugs me hard good luck sir she whispers we're all rooting for you now takes me completely by surprise no where in the handbook not even in the special appendix does it mention her again let alone having a superior officer as far as i know he is completely non regulation a mumble something that sounds like thanks and then he lets me go smiling sadly she salutes once more and then she's gone and a gust wind and a chapter one there are sixty five more where that came from so i know some people here read the book but if you know if anybody has questions about and the question was why did i choose to do that and one of the reasons was to keep myself entertained it's a long book with a lot of plot and it was sort of it was a it was a challenge to be able to try to come up with a different unique voice for each of the different characters at the same time i thought it was the right choice for the story in that there are so many different sides to the action and everybody all the different characters have their own perspectives their own points of view their own prejudices that really color what's going on and being able to see each of them from the perspective of the others i think really adds a lot of complexity to the story oh yes you know so there were probably three drafts that went into this in total and as i mentioned there are a number of different different perspectives in different characters and i would generally wri each one of them as sort of their own short story and by the time i was done with that they were probably about eighteen japers something like that and i realized that they were much much too long for anyone to sit down or write so i sat down and divided them up but the answer to both questions is yes so i originally wrote the story you know as more or less completely private lives writing is my hobby and i know a lot of family and friends know that i do it but you know it's not something that i would forced upon them to read so really the first people who saw this in a complete form were the the agents that i queried to try to get representation to actually sell this to publishers  and so when i signed with an agent we did a round of editorial work and very on the amount of editorial work they like to do but the one i had was was very good in that regard so you know we did we did a good amount of work on this before it went out to publishers and then once i found in an editor of an actual publishing house we went through it again so from beginning to end it was probably about two years taken and i was only story departs from our own is five centuries before the story begins so the world has had time to change quite a bit it's you know i suppose it's sort of a spoiler alert that i've already told you that it's earth but you know you don't really figure that out until a couple chapters into the novel unless you know you're very very perceptive which is will i usually the answer is yes but in different ways because i think i tried to give each of the characters sort of a piece of something that i that i could latch on to that you know i would personally identify with but yes there are some that are some that i identify more or less with in the story and some that i find easier and more natural to wri influence sort of on the the conception of this book and the style with which i did it the difference i guess is that this is these stories are written in the first person rather than the third person and the chapters tend to be a little  to not live for a very long period of time for that reason most people tend to be relatively young but there are you know there's a variety of characters there's one who is i guess technically you know five hundred fifty years old but is probably more in his mid forty's in terms of appearance and experience so you know it goes all over the place but like i said i we have had so i think at least in the case of this book and so i can only really speak from the perspective of this one it's the war in the story is up until the beginning of the book a war of attrition you know it's really nothing is happening and so the reason i chose to set the book when i did it is that this is the point where things are happening so it's even though it's there's a long scale of things going on there sort of a tipping point where things are i think it's one that has you know it's influenced more than one generation of science fiction readers and you know people who have discovered these types of books when they were when they were younger are definitely at least i would hope would become you know be willing to come back to something that recalls that you know that moment in their their reading experience so i think a lot of readers today don't fall as as neatly into categories in that you know we've all i  started as you know middle grade reader and i'm now technically an adult and i still happily read things from all of those genres so you know for i think for especially for people who are willing to kind of reach back and find a  younger self this is i think this would be a pleasurable read the perspective of somebody who's who's encountered it as a reader because the the summary did not exist when i wrote the book i just sort of set out to write a story and i i had this idea i wanted to do kind of a science fiction fantasy mash up and the way i had been thinking of writing it in there would be used you know a little bit of uncertainty a little bit of mystery to kind of what the the background story is and you don't really get that you're probably not there yet right so and i you know i thought that would be sort of a cool cool experience for the reader that there would be an interesting reveal to sort of what the background of of the world is and then we sold the book and we had to and you know the publisher said you know we wanted to be we want to give it a real saif i feel if you see the cover there are little spaceships on it and you know i thought that was a silly kind of get of you the way they would go with it but you know they had a they had a strong vision for how they conflict you know i have always been impressed with the you know the literary tradition of belmont i read tom protos books before i knew that he lived there and then i don't know if anybody has read little children and like that pool over there is featured in it yeah it's so it's you know and that was you know one of the things that you know helped me have kind of motivate me to you know keep at it because that you know there's  it's cool to be around that kind of local scene it's really exciting and so now i actually still hang out in belmont from time to time i also in addition to writing work as a real estate developer and so  i'm doing something out and have a new you probably drive by it pretty pretty frequently if you commute commute on if you have to commute so if you're around there stop by say hi you can actually when we're finished with the road you can stop by and say  paper which got me an article there and i think led to me being here so there is a small success story right there i would i would say learn how to use social media i am still not great at it but i'm trying and i think probably the the biggest piece of advice i would have is just to be willing to get out and do a lot of legwork meet people have some cards made up but be below willing to go to conferences and literary events because there are always a lot of people there who love to talk about writing and i think that's that's kind of the one thing that you know if you're if you're a writer or if you're a reader you're going to have in common  could agent is yes that is that is definitely an important part of it that took me a long time but you know it's the sort of thing where if you're if you're out there and meeting people you really increase your chances i was not one of the lucky ones who got my engine in some sort of you know interesting miraculous way like meeting them in a restaurant or something like that i kind of did it the old fashioned way well using the internet so not quite the old fashioned way but you know i had a book that i wrote before this that i was looking for representation on that i met a lot of agents that liked it but didn't think they could sell it so when i came back with another book i started with the agents that already had said they liked my work  and so this time around it things went a lot more quickly but i think the best way to seek out agents is to look in the back of books that you like and usually you know writer will mention their age and i know i did and you know you can then go to their website and send them a letter and keep your fingers crossed there's a lot of finger crossing that goes on when you're  actually reading from because they are females and i didn't think i could really pull off a female from the first person in my own voice so but the audio book readers are fantastic i've listened to the audio a normal literary agent who you know is trying to find people to turn into something unless he's being very cagey with me there hasn't been any deals on that so far but you know you never know it's a lot of it had to do with my publisher which is the publisher is a spokes which is a a division of penguin random house and they have a lot of authors with my various other names already they have a james duffy they have a patrick or james patrick and you know they there's also a slightly more famous patrick duffy that some people might have heard having their stay there and they had a they had a library filled with books signed by authors who had stayed at this hotel and so when i got there there was a letter for me that's a no mr duffy you were so pleased to have you sing in our if you would please sign this copy of men from atlantis by patrick duffy we would be very pleased to have it in our library and so i wasn't sure if i was being pumped or what exactly was going on but i venture lee figured out that patrick duffy the actor had written a novel called the man from atlantis the exact same year and not only that had been to the bookstore that i was about an underwater man and he had been to the bookstore ahead of me and signed his book so i bought a copy of it there and gave it to the hotel so they would have there but so that's that's another reason he gets much many more google hits than i do i was also recommended to choose a name that had b as its first letter because that gets you in a nice place on the science fiction  shelves ray bradbury arthur c clarke as a it's just a nice area to be and so so i guess a lot of a lot of thought went into it there were there was a lot of actually belmont was one of the alternative last names that i was thinking about using but my publisher told me not to because it would be obviously fake because because i would go to events like this and people would say oh that's an interesting coincidence to two people i can be on line it's yeah it allows me to sort of keep things distinct and it's easier for me to figure out what's going on if i get spam email you know i i know who it's for yeah i tried i tried doing a story workshop when i was i think sophomore or junior in college and i you know i wrote a story that people liked and i was like wow this is great i let's see about doing this for a living in then you know thirteen years later here i am but yeah i think you know it's the sort of thing that i was wanted to try but didn't really get into until i've you know was was a little bit older  the visual parts tend to be sort of the more dramatic and pyrotechnic scenes but i think most of it develops out of the words being used and i think you know that's that's at least been true for this book in particular because so much of it is about the voice of the characters but a lot of a lot of what i'm writing i don't really figure out until i actually sit down to write it which of course means that i have to go back and rewrite it because by the time i get to the are it really began a sort of different pieces of different stories that i didn't really think were related to each other either for a character or for a concept or for you know some some kind of magical note to add to the world right and they you know these would have developed a different times and it wasn't until i had the idea for actually that the character who i just read and one other one who turned out to be kind of the lynchpin characters that could tie all of these other pieces together that it really turned into a story so before that it could have been you know many many short stories or or concepts or sketches but it's when you know i had the idea for these specific characters and then it turned into a real actually one of the earlier stories that ended up coming together to help make this novel is actually sort of from the alien world and so in a lot of ways this is the prequel to that  of part of it is just the the feel of it right you you know you've gone through sort of and looking for an agent can be a very long process you know they you know you write a query letter and then they'll ask for part of the man i'll ask for the whole manuscript and then they'll not say anything for a while then they'll think about it and so you go through that a couple of times you get really close you're like ok you know you've experienced some disappointments and you think well maybe i'll just sort of set this aside for a time and try something and you know i you know my my previous books are ones that i may very well return to one day in a different form but it's for me at least starting something fresh is always a lot of a lot of fun and i kind of make a point of trying to start a new story every april fool's day just as a because i think it's a fitting way of getting into a piece of writing and so this this was one of those and so it you know and when it went for it it worked out and you know i still think about those other books every now and then different ways i might be able to resurrect them and send them out back into the world as i want and so i had an idea for a you know three book story arc it's you know a good way of telling the story got to beginning a middle and an end and that was you know when when i first pitched it to my agent i didn't say oh i have three books planned i just sent them this book and then you know he called me up and said i'm talking to a publisher and how many books can you write in to this and i said i got a lot if you want me to  ten great reviews you know really can be sort of overshadowed by one bad one and you know it's right writing a book that everybody likes is there that anybody likes is difficult and writing one that nobody hates is pretty much impossible as far as i can tell but i do you know every once in a while i pay attention to i have paid attention to you know sort of the more professional outlets just because i kind of have to they end up quoted on your website in your book but for the most part a lot of the reviews that i end up listening to are the people who just e mail me until they tell me they liked it that's you know more consistent  audience are the ones who you have to reach a much higher level of success i think before people start writing you angry letters but the readiness letters right away right yeah and so there are a lot of characters and it's a war so that's you know that is an excellent question have an editor who is going on maternity leave in about a month so she needs the second book by then because the baby is not going to wait for me to finish what i'm writing now so i'm going to get it to her by then but and you know and then i will go for lots of long walks in the snow and have more really and it is i hope buying this book bought it because she liked it got her publisher to buy it because she liked it i don't exactly know how they decide so at that point you know it was it was already kind of cut to her specifications  she mentioned before we did the deal a couple of things that she thought you know she would like to see changed and so most of them were not a problem for me at all but also they were they wanted to publish a book by me so really i probably would have done almost anything that they asked but the the requests that they made were were not very very harsh and so we'll see what she thinks of the second one but you know every  editor editors are you know it's like it's like going to a doctor and they're very professional and so and you know very wise in the way is the publishing world so usually i i listen to it my mother says because she's smart knows a lot sure write well ok yeah so if you're if you're excited to get the signing we can just talk after but i'm happy to speak with you know two i was so yes but and that that i think that helped me out by the age and i ended up signing with told me afterwards that he thought that was funny so you know at the very least it didn't turn him off from the very beginning but i think i think especially for new writers publishers find that very helpful to be able to compare you to somebody because otherwise you know you're just kind of this empty space that readers have to kind of take a flying  mean post apocalyptic fiction especially is has been you know it really kind of got a lot of attention in the mid to late thousands are oughts i'm not even sure we're calling them at this point and as you know it's  really it's powered through until now and you know in a lot of cases we're just kind of seeing the movies based on the books that were written back then i think there's still a lot of room for stuff to be done in this especially in the sort of very kind of smaller less epic way is that because that type of specular fiction i think really allows you to kind of peel off a little piece of society and examine it in sort of an extreme and you know very interesting form so  i have a feeling that we're going to be seeing a lot more of those going forward that i left that i would say so i mean i'm not in charge of buying books for a publisher but if i was i would probably buy some