I had the privilege of sitting down with Joe Solari, and getting down to the heart of Author Nation. Read the full transcript below, or click on the thumbnail to watch the video.
Miloa: Good day, friends. I am super excited to be here today with Joe Solari from Author Nation, and he's going to be telling us all about the upcoming conference. I’ve been looking forward to this interview for quite some time now. Welcome, Joe.
Joe: Thanks for having me on the show. I appreciate it. So this is the first time we're doing something on Discord. You’re getting me out of my comfort zone. This is awesome.
Miloa: That's great. Well, as you know, so many more people are starting to use Discord these days, and I'm seeing an influx of authors as well. I am really excited to have you here.
I've prepared a series of questions for you, so I'm hoping that we're going to have some fun today. By the way, my first question is: What is Author Nation, and why should a reader care about it?
Joe: Well, that's a great question. Author Nation is a conference of authors where they get together and work on their businesses.
They learn craft, learn how to market, and talk about what it's like to be in this solitary business, supporting each other and networking. Readers should care because if we don't have things like this, there won't be anybody to write books for them. This is a really big part of authors' professional development.
Authors are finding their tribe, getting support, and coming to a place where they can stay up to speed with things like Discord, new ways of advertising, how to market, and all the cool stuff an author needs to do to connect with their readers.
Miloa: Cool. Now, tell me about your journey to becoming the Managing Director of Author Nation.
Joe: Well, how much time do we have? I'll keep it real short. My wife is an author. She started writing nonfiction books in 2014, and I got involved with indie publishing solely out of trying to help her figure things out. Her books were the antithesis of publishing at that time. They were photo-heavy, more often than not sold in print, and she was having issues with getting books uploaded and formatted.
If anybody is listening or watching who remembers back then, this is when you used things like CreateSpace, and you formatted things in Word. It was just crazy. It's so much easier now. So, I got pulled in just to be the helper. I saw her career building, and I was shocked that she was selling these books as e-books and making this kind of money.
So, I figured I just had to get involved. I was involved in two ways: One, I had to keep up to speed to help her—I’m kind of her tech department. Two, it was about understanding what was going on and what was interesting.
You know, the advent of this part of the industry was because that was kind of the golden age. And in that, I decided I was going to write a book. I wrote a book on business practices for creatives because I've always owned and operated businesses. I'm a small business owner, and I've always worked for myself. I took all my ideas and thought, "Oh, this would be good for creatives to know."
What ended up happening with that book is there was a group of authors that kind of picked up those strategies and followed them. From that, I was asked to start working with more authors. Here’s where I'll cut the story short: my real big inception into the author community was the very first 20 Books in 2017 at Sandstone.
I was asked to speak there, and that's when I thought, "Wow, this is going to be something really big." I really committed to helping authors as much as I could to understand the business practices of being an author because the reality is, it's a small business, right? You're selling your books. That made me somebody who was around the community a lot.
I really saw the value of shows like 20 Books and some of the other shows out there. So, when I heard that it was going to come to an end, I talked to the person who was running it. Craig Martelle said, "Let’s figure out how we can keep this thing going."
That's how I ended up in this position. As that show closed down, I was starting this completely new show, but it was based on the contracts associated with that show and the financial obligations that Craig had personally. Then, I took that whole idea to what I think is its natural progression—becoming a more diverse, open show that highlights different ways people can earn money from their creativity.
Miloa: Nice. Now, beyond the conference, what is your vision for the future of Author Nation, and where do you see it headed in the next five years?
Joe: It’s always going to be centered around a live event. I think that, while writing is a solitary enterprise, a lot of folks aren’t necessarily thinking about wanting to be at a big conference with thousands of other authors.
What we do know is that if you have a peer group—and this is something we talked about in our opening sessions—we did a pre-show survey of 600 authors, and the results showed that there are definitive differences in authors with certain characteristics. These differences determine who becomes profitable faster and makes more profit.
Those characteristics, interestingly enough, are ones we can control. It's not things like advertising or craft. It’s: Do you have a peer group? Do you have an accountability system? Do you have a mentor? If you have all three of those, the data showed that you’d be profitable 18 months sooner and make four times the profit over time.
It’s really powerful information to know. Like, okay, can we build that into our system? I'm sure at some point we're going to talk a little bit about Discord in the Author Nation community. Discord is a peer group. Participating, even a little bit, but really embracing it means that you can change the trajectory of your career. Having somebody as your accountability partner, again, changes your career.
Those are the kinds of things that I think are different in Author Nation and how we think about things compared to other places. Maybe it’s because, you know, a lot of other shows tend to be started by an author who does really well and wants to give back. I’m in this unique position where my focus has always been behind the scenes, helping authors with their business.
I’m always going to focus on how I can build the system to work for you. As for what happens in five years, one thing I know we’re going to continue to focus on is building out our sister organization called Reader Nation. This will be a reader- and listener-focused community that connects to Author Nation because we want to have overlapping communities.
We want to have a community of authors supporting authors and a community of readers enjoying narratives. Where they meet isn’t just about selling books—it’s about celebrating pop culture, having fun with your imagination, going into story worlds, and meeting characters.
The more we can build places for people to do that, the more we’ll become an important part of storytelling and creativity in five years.
Miloa: So, like a Comic-Con but for novels?
Joe: Yeah. You really summed it up in one sentence. That’s it. And I think that, while we’re not trying to be Comic-Con or Dragon Con, I think those serve a really great purpose. And then there's also, if you're just kind of mapping things out, a lot of very genre-focused reader communities that center around romance or thrillers. But what if we had a multi-genre reader event focused on reading, listening, and all the things that we like to do.
Yeah, for sure. And I think, while you can connect with your audience at something like Dragon Con, if you're an adult fantasy writer, people are also there because they're showing off all the work they did on their cosplay or they're trying to go see, you know, their Star Trek: The Next Generation guy. There are a lot of other distractions.
Whereas, one thing I've observed that I wouldn’t have called a few years ago is that younger people are coming into reading, and they're not coming in via an e-book. They're coming with a print book, and they want to come and hang out with other readers. And that's crazy, but it's a real thing.
And so we want to support that.
Miloa: So how does Author Nation help authors achieve their goals? And can you give some examples of specific success stories?
Joe: Sure, sure. So, you know, I touched on this a little bit earlier—this idea that we're really looking at data and trying to figure out what makes a difference, right?
My observation is that a lot of authors want to be inspired and motivated. They'll come and say, "Oh, I want to see successful authors tell me how they did it." And the reality is that a very small percentage of people ever get that kind of success. We hurt the entire community when all we celebrate are people who make a lot of money.
The reality is that we're in a space where there are people who can have the life they want. For example, we were talking before we got on the show about people who are caregivers and trying to figure out how to do this while being a caregiver for another person. That’s, in my view, a really viable, interesting thing to focus on—defining what success around that looks like.
And that's different. We have to be respectful of what that looks like. We also need to understand that some people have really awesome professions that they love, and this is a money-making hobby that tends to get discounted. All of these things need to be acknowledged, and we need to say, "Hey, whatever it is that you're trying to have in your life, let us figure out how to do that."
Now, the reality is we're in a world today where, if you want to publish books, there's nothing stopping you. You and I could write a book, put it up on Amazon—the world’s biggest bookstore—tomorrow. But there’s another part to this: we want other people to read our work and appreciate it.
Right. And where do you want to do that? Do you want to do it on a platform like Royal Road, where you're doing serialized stories? Or do you want to do it as an audiobook? There are all these different ways now for those voices in your head that become a story to be brought into the world and enjoyed by someone else.
We want Author Nation to be that place where you figure out, "Okay, here are my options. Here are the people who see things the same way. We’re going to go down that road together." We’re going to sell our books, get started, and maybe do serialized fiction—whatever that might be.
We’re really focused on giving authors a place to do two things. See all those different options and the subset of options that align with why they decide to do. Work on craft, marketing, and business knowledge with a supportive community. Here’s people to be in your community. And if we go back to what we talked about earlier, if I can get youPR, great. If I can get you some accountability, great.
The third one is mentorship. Guess what? You have all these amazing experts sharing their knowledge. They don’t necessarily need to be a mentor in the traditional sense—someone you sit at their feet and learn from. Mentorship can be someone helping you see how to get up that learning curve faster.
Miloa: Yeah, you respect the person who’s one or two steps ahead of you. It doesn’t have to be someone ten years ahead of you.
Joe: Here’s the thing, and this is for more experienced authors: if you feel like you already know everything you need to know, and you don’t need to come to a show like Author Nation because you think you won’t learn anything new—maybe the reason you’re supposed to be there isn’t even to be on stage mentoring, but to be available to new authors. Talk to them, like maybe somebody did for you when you got started.
Because you don’t know who the next big deal is going to be in your genre. And if you help them early in their career, they might help you later when you’re not doing so well.
So, I know that’s very transactional, but it’s funny how quickly people forget others on the ladder when they start having success. Yeah, and maybe a few rungs down, they could invent a new ladder you might want to climb someday.
Miloa: So, as someone who hasn’t been to Author Nation, what is it like? What can I expect when I show up?
Joe: Okay. Have you ever been to Las Vegas?
Miloa: I have been to Las Vegas. Yes.
Joe: Okay. So, you know, we're at the Horseshoe Casino. It's right down on the strip, so you're getting all that kind of vibrancy of Las Vegas—the restaurants, the shows, all that stuff is around you. If you're into that.
Why do we do that in Las Vegas? Because this is the largest author conference in the world. There are two places where we can be in one building and have enough hotel rooms for us. So that's part of it. At the event, we have multiple days with different things happening. On the first day, you come in, register, and go into a big room.
That's an expo center that has all of the various vendors supporting the industry. So the BookFunnel folks, Lulu, Written Word Media, Amazon, IngramSpark, and all the bigger companies you typically think you’d need for publishing. But then you’d also see smaller folks who may not be doing anything big, but they’re an editor or an audiobook narrator.
We have about 100 companies there for you to meet with. You just walk around, meet with them, check out their swag on the tables, and figure out what new technology might be there. There are usually two or three companies where people say, "Wow, I didn’t even know these guys existed."
So that's day one.
Day two, the expo is put away, and we move some walls around to create rooms for sessions. We also have a big room that can hold about 3,000 people. Last year, we had 1,110 attendees at the show. We’re expecting about 1,400 this year.
Of that, we had professional speakers. We had a guy named Drew Davis come to speak. He talked about a concept called the "Curiosity Gap," which is an amazing, entertaining, educational, and motivational kind of thing.
So, we have a few keynote speeches, and then we go into sessions. We have eight tracks with five sessions a day and different-sized rooms. Depending on what you're looking for and where you are in your career—if you're new and just trying to figure out how to publish—there are sessions you can attend for that.
If you're at a higher level and trying to figure out something like advanced Amazon ads or how to do direct selling on a Shopify store, we have sessions for that as well.
In the evening, we have entertainment. This year, we had some theater folks do a variety show, and then we had something called Story Wars. It’s a way for folks to compete to win a trip to the show.
Then we have the Story Wars final at the event, and we’ll be uploading some videos about that. It’s a spectacular thing, and, as I said, it’s a way you could win a trip to the show.
So, that’s Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.
Friday, as we talked about earlier, we go to this reader event and kind of change things up. It goes back to an expo feel. Basically, it’s just a room full of authors at their tables selling books to readers.
Miloa: So, I've been part of the Facebook group now for about a year, and as I mentioned, I’ve enjoyed talking to all the authors in the Discord group. And you're very right—they do offer so much good advice.
I definitely see them as my peers, and I've been so fortunate to be able to connect with them. So, my question is: What plans does Author Nation have to foster those relationships on the Discord platform?
Joe: Well, we’ve got our own full-blown Discord—Author Nation Discord. That came out of the community we built.
We have an off-platform community that's private and open to anyone you can find at community.authornation.live—and you can go there. That’s also where we store the videos. If you've bought a ticket, you’ve got access to the videos.
I bring up the videos because this is all interconnected. It’s all part of the system.
If you were to go to the show and all you did was attend sessions, the best you could achieve is about 23% session attendance. It’s impossible to see everything because we have too many concurrent sessions. That means you really need time after the show to digest the content. You go to the ones you really want to see live, but you’re going to miss a bunch of stuff.
Like most shows, there are videos afterward. But what happens is people get the videos and say, "Let me watch one or two," and then get distracted.
We have this thing called the After Party, where you watch those videos and then join a separate Zoom call with the speaker. All they do is answer questions.
The idea is that you get some of the people you’re on Discord with, watch those videos, then go to those Q&A sessions, and ask the speaker questions specific to your business. You start thinking through how to use the content. Part of that decision-making process is realizing, "Oh, that was interesting, but it’s not relevant to me right now."
You pick one or two things.
Have you signed up for CrossWrite?
Miloa: No. Can you tell me a little bit about that? I’ve seen chatter about it.
Joe: This comes out of the Western Empire and the stuff they’ve done. One of the things we’ve said is, "Hey, we have scholarship funds for people to get tickets to the show." It’s part of the old show’s tradition, and we’re going to continue that. But I don’t want to just give money based on a random drawing.
What I want to do is figure out how I can incentivize these regions. So, we’re measuring the regions and their capacity to help authors complete their goals.
If you haven’t published and you’re working with one of these regional groups—like the Western Empire or the East Coast Mafia—they all have different names. If you say, "Hey, I want you guys to help me get this book published," and they do, that’s a win for them on the scoreboard.
The scoreboard is this thing we call CrossWrite. It’s based on the CrossFit system of having a leaderboard, calling out the goals, and then tracking progress toward achieving them.
That gets to the accountability piece we talked about earlier, right? We’re building it right into the system.
So, you come into Discord, join the Author Nation Discord, connect with your local region—even though you may never see these people—and join CrossWrite. Post your goals, and they’ll help you achieve those things.
That then will tells us where we should be putting more of our scholarship money because they'll get more and more people to come to the show. So, I know I've been all over the place—did that answer your question?
Miloa: Yes, it did. Okay, so to sum it up, I think Discord is a great ecosystem. It’s part of the bigger ecosystem, right?
Joe: Yeah. This reminds me—so, as you know, because you were just spoon-feeding instruction to Discord so we could do this—it’s not my most comfortable place. I want the communities to build where they build best. We made a conscious decision last year to not do stuff on Facebook. We do have a Facebook group now for those who want to be there, but we would like people to participate in our private community because that's something we have 100% control over.
And that’s one of those videos that will be... the community spoke, like there’s a really robust Discord community built out. Jessyca Barney is managing it overall for the organization. Then there are the different regions that have kind of stepped in. Of course, one or two of them, that’s like where they live and love to be.
I know you guys are over there doing writing sprints, playing games, and a bunch of other stuff. It’s like, God bless, go do that. That’s what we want you to do. You’re finding your community.
Miloa: One follow-up question that I have is: Can one still purchase tickets to the 2024 videos for Author Nation?
Joe: Yes, you can. If you go into the community at community.authornation.live, the community is free. You just go in there. There's a thing that says "2024 Video." If you click on that, it’ll put you through a pay window to buy it if you don’t already have access. If you attended the 2024 live show, you get those videos and the after-party included.
If you already bought that as a separate digital ticket and you’re having trouble accessing it, let us know, and we’ll look you up. What happens a lot of times is you buy it under one email address and register under another, and our system doesn’t work. But we’ll get that all fixed.
We have this thing called—you’ll love this—the "Regret Remedy Package."
The Regret Remedy Package is on sale right now, and it is a combo of the 2024 video, the after-party, and the 2025 live ticket. You can buy that right now. It basically gets you an even cheaper price for the videos, the current early-bird price, and the live ticket. It’s a great way to access this thing.
We have payment plans if cash flow is an issue. And then, if you go with the ticket insurance—if you’re kind of like, "I’m not sure if I’ll be able to make it to the live event. I really want to go, but who knows what might happen?"—ticket insurance will refund the live ticket portion.
You know, the videos you already have—you can’t refund those. But the whole idea of this thing is to look at it as a giant feedback loop.
I know you're an engineer, and it’s like the idea that you come in and hang out in this virtual community, work through these videos, work in your Discord. And by August or September, you’re like, "Hey, I’m so excited that I’m going to get to celebrate these wins. I’m going to Las Vegas with these two or three people I’ve been hanging out with on Discord, and we’re going to be there, see each other in real life, and have some fun."
Miloa: How do you measure success for Author Nation beyond monetary and conference attendance?
Joe: Well, you just set me up for all the softballs here. We opened the first session with this idea we call the "Triple Crown." The Triple Crown is: You publish, you become profitable, and you figure out your purpose.
Now, we could argue that maybe the purpose thing needs to come first. I’ll let that be your decision. But we really need to see people achieve those three things. That’s what we’re measuring all the regions on. We’re tracking this stuff as data—like how many people have come into the community, how many have we helped get published, and how many have we helped get to the point where they’re profitable.
That’s a big one. A lot of authors get published but never reach the point where the business pays for itself. Once they’re there, figuring out why they’re really doing this becomes the next step.
That’s really elusive. We get sucked into things like, "Oh, I want to be a six-figure author." Just because you spent $99,999 to make $100,000 doesn’t mean you’ve achieved that goal—you’re still broke.
So, that’s how we’re measuring ourselves. Are we seeing the community build? Are we seeing real-life metrics moving in the way we want them to?
And we’re measuring this stuff. My background is in business systems and designing systems to work this way. One of the things that was very different from all other author shows is we had a system for collecting reviews and ratings of sessions. We have 1,866 reviews of all of these sessions.
Then we collected that information and gave it back to the presenters.
Miloa: Presenters got a report card.
Joe: And they did amazing. Right. But, how do I help you get better at what you’re doing? I give you feedback.
Some people are like, "Oh, I don’t know about that." It's like, well, maybe you should listen. This is what the audience said, right? That you speak too fast or, you know, you try to pack too much stuff into the session—whatever it might be. Sometimes it was us. It was like, oh, we didn't position this session properly in our description, and too many people attended who shouldn't have been in that session.
So their expectations were wrong. That's our fault. We'll fix it. Just do your same presentation. We're just not going to have all these newbies show up because they're not ready for it. They're not ready for it, right? And more often than not, it's like we have to think, oh, wait—you and I, how many books have been published?
Miloa: At least five.
Joe: Okay, so five books. There are some things that you just assume everybody knows. And you're like, well, you never published a book—you don't know what KDP means. So we had some of those moments. It's like the speaker was throwing around all these acronyms, and we're like, oh, okay. Well, that's something we may have to solve.
Not at the show, right? There are certain things that we want you to be ready for—financially and education-wise—you probably should get to a certain level before you attend an advanced session.
Yeah. So that's part of this whole thing too—helping people understand when is the right time to do a show.
Those are all things we're measuring ourselves on outside of the finance system. I'm a huge believer in this: if I get all those things right, the money will pour in. I've never been wrong that way. If I get the customer experience right and I build the system so it can scale and deliver that customer experience, the money is not the issue.
Miloa: What impact do you hope Author Nation will have on the publishing industry as a whole in the next decade?
Joe: No small plans here. My desire is to turn the tables on the publishing platforms and make it so that creators are the ones determining where the industry goes.
I think we're in a position now where, between social media companies and large e-commerce companies, we're kind of beholden to them regarding who we sell to, how we sell to them, and when we can sell to them.
When I came into this, what got me so interested wasn’t the money being made, but that I saw normal people were going to have the opportunity to create iconic, generation-building, wealth-building pop culture.
That was going to be something people went silly over for generations. I know that's going to happen, but what I want to do is use my strengths to build a system where we as creators get to decide how this is going to be done. We eliminate all the friction we possibly can so that you're as close as possible to your audience. Because the reality is, you could write the greatest book in the world, but if nobody reads it, nobody wins.
You need to get those two things to overlap. You need an audience, and you need the intellectual property.
Miloa: Personally, the thing I find most frustrating when dealing with these big corporations is the lack of transparency with my data, you know?
Yeah, I'm on YouTube. YouTube gives me every single data point down to the second for my videos and everything I'm creating and producing. I go to Amazon, and it’s a three-month lag. You don't have that same urgency of real-time data that will help you make better decisions as you move forward.
That lack of transparency is something I’m very passionate about because I’m very data-driven in what I do. Without that data, it’s so hard. You're almost at a disadvantage.
Joe: You're not almost—you are at a disadvantage. Amazon's at a disadvantage because not giving you that information means you can't market effectively.
Right. I'll give you an example of something from the show. There's a guy who spoke there, JD Barker, a New York Times horror and thriller writer.
One of the things he talked about is a different kind of model he uses for selling books. He's indie but has also gotten traditional deals. He's been on both sides of the fence. The way his business is set up right now, he markets his electronic products, but he has a print imprint that's part of Simon & Schuster.
How this developed was they recognized his marketing abilities. They let him do all the marketing and leaned into their strengths, which are distribution and dealing with markets you can't get into without that. But his capacity to drive the overall marketing engine helps them sell more books.
Those are the kinds of things I want to celebrate, and I want people to talk about. Maybe that's not a model for everyone, but it inspires them to think there isn’t just one way. It's not only about going to one specific platform or one specific subscription service.
Miloa: Yeah. Very true. ****Well, that's very interesting. Okay, what do you think is the next big opportunity for indie authors?
Joe: It's really quite simple, and it’s not some new hot platform—it’s authenticity.
It’s about you not trying to be what everybody else is, but being yourself and finding your audience that connects with that.
We’re going into a space where the output on social media will increase exponentially because you and I will be able to train AI to do all kinds of tasks for us. It can go into your database and create ten new blog posts or make two million Instagram posts. But people are just going to scroll past all that, not connecting.
What they're going to look for is real-life connections with human beings. It may be remote, like what we’re doing now, but they’ll be looking for that connection.
That's why I think these live events are going to be so important. They’ll be places for you to find your audience or your support network. Being in those places and being authentic—if that means being a little vulnerable and not outgoing but still showing up—that’s still being authentic. Even in introversion, being present in a space of discomfort leads to growth.
You learn when you're in that place of discomfort. Right? When you’re there, eventually, you’ll figure it out. Then it won’t be hard—it’ll be easy, and you’ll be proficient. You’ll be ahead.
If you’re feeling unsure about attending a live event and selling your books, start small. Go to a live event, just walk around, and buy some books. Attend a smaller live event near you, maybe at a local venue, and sell some books. Then figure out if it’s for you and if it’s something you enjoy.
There are people who will say, "Listen, I’ve tried every way you can think of on Amazon to sell a book. I can’t even give it away for free." But they go to live events—10 to 12 a year—and now they have a full-time job because of it. They love it because they know all of their fans personally.
And those are the kinds of people who buy books at live events. We’ve seen it—they’ll come in, spend hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars on books, and they won’t go home and buy more books on Amazon. They only buy physical books or eBooks at live events where they can meet the author, talk face-to-face, look at the cover, and ask questions.
Then they become fans for life, and they’ll come back next year and spend another hundred or two hundred dollars on books. That’s what I focus on.
Miloa: I can see that because even these days, when I hop onto Facebook and scroll, all I see are images and memes. But I always stop for posts where someone took the time to write, "This is my experience; this is how it’s really been for me as an author."
I’ll read all of their thousand words because it gets to the point you’re making about authenticity. They’re sharing their authentic experience of being an author, and I appreciate those much more than just another meme.
Totally get that.
If you could give one piece of advice to a brand-new author showing up to Author Nation, what would it be?
Joe: Say hello to the first person you meet. Introduce yourself and connect with people. Everybody there wants to connect.
There’s a pretty good chance that 80% of the people there think everybody is looking at them. So, by that math, it’s not true. We’re all self-conscious, and it can get overwhelming. But what I’ve learned is that there’s serendipity and kismet behind this whole thing.
Getting connected is what gets you the results you want.
We know this from anecdotal stories and from the data I’ve talked about in our surveys. If you connect with peers, you’re going to do better.
The cool thing is we’re trying to ease people into that by having things like the Discord server and other communities where you can hang out and start applying these ideas from the comfort of your own home.
The reality is that if financially you can’t afford the ticket to Vegas and the costs for the show and room, and it will hurt your personal well-being or ability to publish your first book, don’t go. Please don’t go. Do the digital thing. Hang out in the community, scale up, and set a goal: “In two years, I want my books to make enough money to at least pay for my trip to the show.”
The show is going to be there. We’re investing in it no matter what. Like I said earlier, we know that if we deliver the experience, it will give us the financial return we’re looking for.
But, back to your original question: What should you do if it’s your first time? Connect with people. You’re going to get so much out of just hanging out, asking questions, and talking to authors who think like you.
We’re doing a lot at the show to make that easier for you. There are actual networking events.
Miloa: That’s great. ****I’ll be sure to link to the Discord community in the description below because it was fascinating. I was so jealous when they’d message from Discord like, "Hey, we’re meeting at the ice cream shop in ten minutes—meet us there." Everybody from the Western Empire would show up, and then, boom, that channel would go quiet.
Joe: That’s the amazing thing, right? You start connecting with people in real life, and when you come back, the online community gets stronger and stronger because you’ve spent time together. You’ve seen them spill ice cream on themselves, and that connection builds.
That’s the fun part.
You mentioned the Story Wars thing. Each of the regions is connected to a Story Wars team. So, we have this friendly competition. I think Carla from the Southeast won last year.
It’s not just about being one big happy family. A little bit of rivalry is fine. Like, Thanksgiving football games—cousins against cousins—it’s fun.
Miloa: All right, I’ve got one final question that I’m going to ask.
And this is: If you could have lunch with any superhero, who would it be and why?
Joe: What came to mind immediately was Tony Stark. ****
And, as you said, superhero, right? So, yes. I think it’s the whole idea that he’s just so smart, right? There’s so much I think I could learn from just hearing him talk.
And I’m sure he would talk the whole time. He’d never shut up.
Probably. Anyway, we had Kevin Smith, the director, at Author Nation last year. We had to kick him off the stage—he talked for two hours straight. It was awesome. I mean, it was the best thing.
I think it would be similar to that. Once you ask a question, it’d be like drinking from a fire hose.
Miloa: For Author Nation, be sure to click on the link below and go to AuthorNation.live.
I’ll also include a link to the Author Nation Discord group below, so please feel free to jump in and say hi! Connect with your zone and come participate in everything Joe has been describing today. This live and vibrant community they are creating at Author Nation is amazing.
Also, you can take a sneak peek at my upcoming book, Wings of Steel, on my page below miloascape.com
Sign up to receive the first few chapters and be the first to know when the book goes live.
Other than that, folks, thanks for watching—and as always, happy hunting!
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