Author
Why Quitting Is an Option and Why That Changes Everything
Author Brian Spielbauer shares his journey of writing, publishing, and balancing a career in college athletics with his passion for fantasy and horror novels, with insights on perseverance, self-publishing, and the importance of storytelling.
Episode notes
Brian Spielbauer is a college athletic director at William Woods University in Fulton, Missouri, and, by his own guess, probably the only one who has ever written fantasy books. His seventh book, Dracula's Battle: The Cross and the Crescent Moon, spent about eight years being read, revised, and improved before release. It imagines the classic horror monsters fighting evil together, and it ends in the real 1462 Battle of the Blood Drinkers in Wallachia.
His path started with The Demon's Chamber, the first book in his Tales of Lemuria series, inspired by falling in love with The Lord of the Rings in sixth grade. After a stack of rejections, a fraternity brother told him he had a great story and terrible grammar, then started a publishing company with Brian as its first author. Brian now publishes under his own imprint, Three Charms Publishing.
The heart of the episode is his view of perseverance. After years of telling athletes never to quit, he now tells people that quitting is an option, because a choice feels different from a trap. If something isn't working, stop and find the thing you would never quit. He and Willow also talk about small victories, including the books about his family that led him to his great-great-grandfather's log cabin and Civil War rifle, plus why younger people deserve more time to find their path.
You can't edit the unwritten sentence.
Brian Spielbauer
In this episode
- Writing before work, from 5:15 to 6:00 each morning
- Going from rejection to self-publishing
- Vlad the Impaler and the history behind Dracula's Battle
- Why every character's letters get their own font
- Choosing a path without feeling trapped
Books mentioned
- Dracula's Battle: The Cross and the Crescent Moon
- The Demon's Chamber
Listen to this episode
Find it on the show's page in your favorite app.
Keep browsing
Newer: The Host Takes the Guest Chair
Older: A Priest, a Possessed Girl, and Spontaneous Combustions