Mentally Oddcast Transcript: Kody Boye
An audio version of this content can be found here.
Find Kody Boye on his website and on YouTube.
00:00:01.26
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh. Well, alright.
00:00:05.31
Wednesday Lee Friday
You are listening to The Mentally Oddcast. My name is Wednesday Lee Friday, and we are brought to you by sometimes hilarious horror magazine. Find us on Ko-fi and support us. um Today's guest is Kody Boye, who is a young adult author. ah He also writes, um he writes horror, fantasy, science fiction, lots of stuff. And he currently resides in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas.
00:00:37.39
Wednesday Lee Friday
When he is not writing, he enjoys reading, playing video games, and pestering his many cats, so we'll certainly talk about that later. Hi Cody, thanks so much for being here.
00:00:47.62
Kody Boye
Hi, thank you.
00:00:49.13
Wednesday Lee Friday
It is great to have you. We've actually known each other for a long time, because for those of you who don't know, Cody actually does my layouts. He has layouts for my President Sun books, and I think also my collections.
00:01:03.05
Wednesday Lee Friday
um because he's great at it. So that's how I met Cody.
00:01:06.09
Kody Boye
Thank you.
00:01:07.94
Wednesday Lee Friday
um We generally ah begin the show by asking guests to talk about the first horror movie they remember seeing. So please.
00:01:16.44
Kody Boye
Oh gosh, um i from what I can remember, um based on how traumatized it made me, it was Jaws. ah my my My dad, when we were little, he was watching it on TV without my mother knowing.
00:01:30.97
Kody Boye
And and it gave me lifelong trauma for the ocean.
00:01:31.24
Wednesday Lee Friday
Right.
00:01:34.89
Kody Boye
so
00:01:35.83
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh, I'll tell you, man, I was, uh, I was a kid when Jaws came out. And so the trailers were on TV all the time and I was, you know, maybe like four or something. And I was just so intrigued because sharks, I thought were so cool and scary. Um, I was in no way able to handle the amount of, of shark and scary voices I was seeing. I had so many nightmares. So, uh, so yeah, I get that that's traumatizing and it's weird because.
00:02:06.12
Wednesday Lee Friday
There are a lot of people who don't consider Jaws a horror movie.
00:02:10.22
Kody Boye
Oh yeah, that's that's kind of weird though, isn't it?
00:02:13.05
Wednesday Lee Friday
It is. It's like, well, a child gets eaten alive right in front of you. How much more horror are you looking for?
00:02:18.09
Kody Boye
Yeah, no kidding, right?
00:02:20.97
Wednesday Lee Friday
So it it traumatized you, but it seems like maybe it also sets you on a path.
00:02:26.44
Kody Boye
Oh, yeah, definitely. I love horror stuff to this day. um I I'm still into the shark stuff, even though it traumatizes me every time I watch it.
00:02:37.21
Kody Boye
I love Deep Blue Sea, of course.
00:02:39.33
Wednesday Lee Friday
Nice, nice.
00:02:40.04
Kody Boye
Yeah. And um ah most of the Jaws movies are still good, even at the corny once, but.
00:02:46.92
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, if you like corny shark movies, my God, there's so many to choose from now.
00:02:51.56
Kody Boye
Yeah, i've I've noticed, yeah, I had a friend telling me something about ah Santa Jaws or something like that.
00:02:55.15
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh, we added Santa Jaws to our our yearly viewing. It's just so funny. but like Sharks of the Corn, ah Doll Shark, Raiders of the Lost Shark. And then there was this there was one season for Shark Week that Asylum, one of the companies that makes tons of those kinds of movies, made three different shark movies. It was like Swamp Shark and Trailer Park Shark.
00:03:19.69
Wednesday Lee Friday
And something else, I don't think the Shark and Saw Prison Break Massacre was related to that, but it was the same year. But all three of the movies, the survivors from them met up in another movie at a support group for people who survived shark incidents.
00:03:35.70
Kody Boye
oh gosh what a
00:03:36.65
Wednesday Lee Friday
And so there's this this third or fourth movie that has the survivors of three other movies and they're in therapy. And I think the therapist like gives them LSD or something.
00:03:47.96
Wednesday Lee Friday
So it's they like start like hallucinating shark attacks inside a house. I think it's called house shark.
00:03:54.86
Kody Boye
Oh gosh. Oh gosh.
00:03:55.72
Wednesday Lee Friday
Now I want to look it up, but it's wild. It's just wild.
00:03:57.78
Kody Boye
like It's almost as bad as them being in the pool or something like that or in the bathtub.
00:03:58.82
Wednesday Lee Friday
um
00:04:03.57
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, did you see the ghost shark movies? There's two of them.
00:04:06.83
Kody Boye
I haven't seen. I honestly.
00:04:08.37
Wednesday Lee Friday
And there's like, there's the shark in like a slip and slide. There's one in an office water cooler.
00:04:13.74
Kody Boye
Oh gosh, yeah. um No, my my thing with movies is that because it's kind of more of a ah passive entertainment for me, I find it really hard to just sit still.
00:04:23.96
Wednesday Lee Friday
Uh-huh.
00:04:24.74
Kody Boye
Like, you know, actively engaging with something. But yeah, yeah.
00:04:27.45
Wednesday Lee Friday
That's relatable.
00:04:31.04
Wednesday Lee Friday
and so what does so So you watched shark movies when you were younger. It sounds like you're kind of still watching them. um How did that lead to the writing of horror for you?
00:04:42.36
Kody Boye
Um, I mean, when I first started writing, when I was about, um, like, I think I was like six or seven. It was something we did for a, a class assignment at school. Um, it was just supposed to be writing like a very short thing, but like most of my peers wrote like maybe a few paragraphs. I was writing pages at this point.
00:05:03.11
Kody Boye
like even after the assignment was over. And so I was writing fantasy mainly. And then when I hit my teens, I discovered Stephen King, of course, like many people do.
00:05:14.93
Kody Boye
um And I think the first one I've read of his was Rose Matter. And that probably not the best introduction to Stephen King when you're like 13 or 14.
00:05:24.45
Wednesday Lee Friday
Agreed.
00:05:25.04
Kody Boye
But um yeah, so I started um dabbling in horror and that sort of thing. And Around the time I started getting really into writing as like a thing, I wrote a short story called A Prom Queen's Revenge, which was about a prom queen getting back at the next boyfriend who had done her wrong.
00:05:45.18
Kody Boye
And um it was published when I was about 15 and a half in a small web scene.
00:05:45.32
Wednesday Lee Friday
Nice.
00:05:50.87
Kody Boye
It's probably still yeah it's probably still there somewhere online.
00:05:51.29
Wednesday Lee Friday
Wow.
00:05:54.55
Kody Boye
but um yeah So that kind of got me started on my my small press slash indie publication path.
00:06:01.28
Wednesday Lee Friday
Now, were teachers encouraging to you?
00:06:02.33
Kody Boye
so
00:06:05.04
Kody Boye
No, not really. Not that they weren't weren't because they didn't know about it. Well, they didn't know about it, I should say. But because I was very shy as a child, I still kind of am. But that's kind of um deals with some more social anxiety aspects that I deal with. So, yeah, no, I didn't have any teachers really encourage me to write because I never really told anyone.
00:06:29.04
Wednesday Lee Friday
but you were still writing and publishing as a teenager.
00:06:31.42
Kody Boye
Yeah, yeah.
00:06:32.78
Wednesday Lee Friday
That's amazing.
00:06:34.65
Kody Boye
Yeah.
00:06:34.69
Wednesday Lee Friday
Now see, there was no internet when I was a teenager. So, I mean, there was, but it was, I think just the military is still using it then. and Yeah, i'm I'm old.
00:06:40.45
Kody Boye
Oh gosh, yeah.
00:06:42.49
Wednesday Lee Friday
My my alma mater, ah college alma mater got the internet the summer after I graduated.
00:06:49.33
Kody Boye
Uh, figures, right?
00:06:51.47
Wednesday Lee Friday
Right? That that i I joke with my ah my college journalism professors all the time. I'm like, dude, you didn't teach me shit about podcasts. What's that even about?
00:07:00.86
Kody Boye
Oh gosh, yeah.
00:07:02.92
Wednesday Lee Friday
Like, well, we can't teach you about what doesn't exist, ma'am.
00:07:05.29
Kody Boye
I know, right?
00:07:07.14
Wednesday Lee Friday
So, um, if I could get a little personal with you, I'm aware that you have an HIV diagnosis.
00:07:13.27
Kody Boye
Yes.
00:07:13.43
Wednesday Lee Friday
And I think, can we start by just covering like, where were you at in your writing career when you got that? Because I would have to think that would be derailing.
00:07:22.54
Kody Boye
Oh, yes, by far. I was about, let's see, I was 22 when I was diagnosed. um I was still kind of getting my foot in this, the independent publishing thing.
00:07:37.30
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay.
00:07:37.55
Kody Boye
And um when I found out it was just I went in random tasks, didn't think anything of it. And I traumatized the poor tester who was doing it his first time, one of his first times. He finger pricked me with a lancet and he, it came out false positive. And then after 10 minutes later, they're like, oh, well it could be, could not be. And then it turned out to be positive. So when that happened, um I was still working on some of my more fantasy-ish stuff, which was at the time,
00:08:12.55
Kody Boye
called my the Brotherhood Saga which got rebranded into the Banished Legend but at that time I was still kind of recovering from losing an agent due to my own mental health struggles and being diagnosed at that point was just a major major setback in many ways because I think a lot of people are under the um have the perception that it's just, oh, you're diagnosed, you get into treatment right away.
00:08:43.15
Kody Boye
But no, um, you, you're diagnosed, you get in contact with the health department who then give you an interview where you have to tell them every little dirty detail about your life, basically, and about your, and it's very, I wouldn't say it's like humiliating in a way, but it's made to feel that way, I think, just because of the stigma surrounding HIV and sex, but
00:08:55.02
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh my gosh.
00:09:08.26
Kody Boye
yeah so you do that and then you go in for more blood work and then you go in for more blood work and then you go in for more blood work so over this period of time which took was about six months until i got into treatment i i was a nervous wreck naturally my my mental health was spiraling already before that point and leading to risky behaviors anyhow so when this happened it was just like like an explosion of emotion and
00:09:18.22
Wednesday Lee Friday
Wow.
00:09:23.77
Wednesday Lee Friday
I would think so. Gosh.
00:09:38.13
Kody Boye
Uh, it really affected my writing because I couldn't write for like three months. And that was my outlet for a lot of things. And when I finally got into treatment, it, it really kind of brought home like how lucky I was to live in a period where there was medication that wouldn't, you know, kill me slowly, or that wouldn't give me debilitating side effects. And.
00:10:07.12
Kody Boye
Yeah, it brought that home and it just made me realize at that point that um I just needed to concentrate on what I enjoyed doing, which was writing. And that's what I committed myself to doing.
00:10:21.34
Wednesday Lee Friday
ah okay um wow that's i can't uh i'm trying to wrap my head around that and it's hard because it's so huge um because when you find out that you have some sort of illness all you can really think about is well we gotta work on this we gotta get this taken care of people don't find out they have cancer and then say yeah well maybe i'll get some blood work in a couple of months see how that goes um
00:10:45.71
Kody Boye
Yeah.
00:10:46.76
Wednesday Lee Friday
I mean, I guess now they do because I'm supposed to have a procedure for my heart and I'm waiting to hear back if I get the charity for it or not. And if I get into a charity program, then I get the procedure. And if I don't, then I mean, you know, I'll probably be dead by the end of the year. But it's just one of those, like, I i mean, I feel bad because I don't feel like I should be taking charity money.
00:11:11.52
Wednesday Lee Friday
Because I'm over 50 and I don't have any kids. It seems like that money should go to like a different person that has like a whole bunch more to live for. But I don't want to go off on a tangent about me because in addition to dealing with HIV, you also are ah bipolar, ah right? You're bipolar too?
00:11:32.00
Kody Boye
Yes, i ah my diagnosis was kind of back and forth on that because sometimes I'm really hyper manic, other times I'm very depressive. But when we did some more investigating and looking at my history, we found I was more depressive most of the time, which I believe is number two. And along with that, I also have generalized anxiety disorder. um I have post-traumatic stress from my childhood from being bullied so relentlessly.
00:12:01.23
Kody Boye
And I also have obsessive compulsive personality disorder, which is more focusing on like certain tasks and behaviors rather than as I say, like, you know,
00:12:14.58
Kody Boye
um I kind of compare it to that I fixate on a concept rather than ah a routine, I should say. So I'm not like obsessively cleaning all the time or anything like that.
00:12:26.21
Kody Boye
But I'm just like thinking about things and, you know, they kind of catastrophize size.
00:12:32.27
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah.
00:12:32.49
Kody Boye
and Yeah.
00:12:32.55
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh no, I totally get that.
00:12:34.84
Kody Boye
Yeah.
00:12:35.01
Wednesday Lee Friday
And it's that, that weird thing of like, well, I can't do anything else until I take care of this thing. Okay. Well, when are you going to take care of that thing?
00:12:40.36
Kody Boye
Yeah. yeah
00:12:41.88
Wednesday Lee Friday
Two weeks from now, maybe if I feel like, like if everything works out right, like it it can be like just the whole executive function thing gets, gets so impacted by all that.
00:12:46.74
Kody Boye
Yeah.
00:12:52.16
Kody Boye
Yeah.
00:12:54.70
Kody Boye
Yeah. And i even I deal with that even more to a to a degree, because I also just recently found out that I'm like most likely on the autism spectrum as well.
00:13:05.88
Kody Boye
um I didn't get an official, official diagnosis.
00:13:06.02
Wednesday Lee Friday
yeah
00:13:09.47
Kody Boye
I got like a pre-diagnosis.
00:13:10.91
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh, it's expensive.
00:13:12.33
Kody Boye
But yeah, yeah.
00:13:13.40
Wednesday Lee Friday
It's expensive to get diagnosed with autism.
00:13:16.04
Kody Boye
Yeah, so I was like, well, do I want to try and pursue that? Because my insurance was being you know kind of lenient about it, surprisingly.
00:13:23.94
Wednesday Lee Friday
Wow, nice.
00:13:24.20
Kody Boye
yeah but um But I think that's kind of a result of all my documented mental health problems anyway.
00:13:32.39
Wednesday Lee Friday
i just I just need to point out for a second that you use the word lenient to describe and ensure covering your medical thing.
00:13:39.05
Kody Boye
Yes.
00:13:39.92
Wednesday Lee Friday
And I told my first impulse was to be like, wow, how nice that they were lenient.
00:13:45.24
Kody Boye
Yeah.
00:13:45.58
Wednesday Lee Friday
The thing that we pay them to do, how wonderful for you.
00:13:45.76
Kody Boye
yeah yeah yeah no it's it's it's horrible what what most insurance companies do to people and especially with mental health oh gosh yeah for sure yeah it's just awful because you you want to seek the treatment and that's why i feel very blessed in the way with the um the hiv diagnosis because the thing that most people don't
00:13:48.87
Wednesday Lee Friday
um
00:13:53.90
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, you've seen me post pictures of my medical bills. You know what I'm going through. so
00:14:13.17
Kody Boye
kind of think about, I think, is what caused you to become diagnosed in the first place. and on in my scenario or circumstance it was the the mental health issues causing me to take risky health behavior or risky behaviors and so um in that sense when I got diagnosed I was on the county health program insurance and then I was on right the Ryan White program for about four or five years and they were treating me from my mental health stuff as well when I otherwise would not have been having mental health treatment
00:14:52.29
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, and it's interesting because I hear from a lot of manga people about all the problems that are caused by mental health. They think that gay people, trans people, people that, I mean, just, you know, people that like open fire on communities or whatever, that all of that stuff is like, oh, it's a mental health problem. It's a mental health problem. Well, great.
00:15:13.91
Wednesday Lee Friday
Let's get people care. Like, I don't agree that all of these are simply mental health problems, but if that's what's happening, let's not point and mock people that we think are mentally ill.
00:15:15.62
Kody Boye
yeah
00:15:24.49
Wednesday Lee Friday
Let's get them mental health treatment. And there doesn't seem to be, I mean, ah people are talking about it more than they used to, but given the incoming administration, I don't think anybody thinks that on a federal level, anybody's going to get better mental health care.
00:15:36.77
Kody Boye
Yeah. Yeah and that's
00:15:41.59
Wednesday Lee Friday
And it's a shame because the more oppressive the government becomes, the more people are gonna need that kind of mental health care.
00:15:50.23
Kody Boye
Oh yeah, definitely for sure.
00:15:53.68
Wednesday Lee Friday
So um with your bipolar disorder, like I'm bipolar one, so it's a little different than what you have going on. um But what I find is that when I am depressed, almost no work gets done, like at all.
00:16:09.47
Wednesday Lee Friday
And when I'm manic, I can begin a bunch of different projects, but I typically don't finish them because I'm manic and I'm not making like realistic choices in terms of what the rest of my life is. Do you, do you find that that the depression slows your work but output and the the mania may like improve it or, or no?
00:16:32.90
Kody Boye
I think the mania improves it to a degree ah because with I'm on like four different medications for my mental health, just my mental health stuff. But um I'm pretty stable most of the time.
00:16:45.90
Kody Boye
I'm the most stable I've been in since I was diagnosed with bipolar in 2010. And I went through at least 16 or 17 different mental health medication combos to get there.
00:16:56.49
Kody Boye
So it wasn't an easy process of for sure. for sure
00:16:59.25
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh, no, i'm I'm familiar with that ride.
00:17:02.03
Kody Boye
but with the mania when i do get manic i'm like a thousand thoughts a minute i'm you know hamster wheel in the brain kind of thing i can do basically anything i want to you know unless my wrist don't give me issues or anything like that but when i'm depressed it's like It stuff just grinds to a slower halt. um I've kind of learned to kind of trick my brain into still being productive due to the job I do as a ah content writer, a feature writer at my day job. So I have to write anyway, even if I don't want to. and But yeah, it does slow the creative juices down for sure.
00:17:42.59
Wednesday Lee Friday
Do you find that when you're writing like perfunctory stuff like that, like this is my job, I have to put in this many words by this time. Do you find that, like when I have to do that, there's no enjoyment in it and I don't think the work is good almost no matter what. Like I can't like the work that I produce in those circumstances. do Do you find that to be the case or do you feel fine about the stuff you're writing even when you don't want to write?
00:18:11.08
Kody Boye
um With my job in particular, it um it it tends to depend on the project I'm working on. I do a lot of feature pieces on particular people, and ah some some clients are more forthcoming with information than others, so some things are easier to write about than others.
00:18:30.30
Kody Boye
but I think when I'm in that sort of state of depressive depression, I tend to feel like I'm slogging through it. And when I feel like I'm slogging through something, it it doesn't feel enjoyable. And like you said, it doesn't feel like it's the best work I could be doing. But my job has been very lenient and not lenient. I'm very encouraging about you know, when stuff is good. And sometimes I'll be like, oh, I hate this. But they're like, oh, no, this was great. So just a little self defeatist attitude on my part when that happens.
00:19:07.67
Wednesday Lee Friday
Neat. Okay. so So let me ask you this. When you were first diagnosed with bipolar, did you agree with that diagnosis? Did that seem reasonable to you?
00:19:18.71
Kody Boye
I knew something was wrong. and I had friends who would be like, oh, yeah, you've you've got something going on here. But ah the the main thing I was trying to figure out was, what can I do to make these horrible anxiety spiraling thoughts, attacks stop. And so when they put me on medication, when they put me on medication, I was like, I was just gung ho for whatever would work, whatever could work. And
00:19:56.05
Kody Boye
So when I was first diagnosed at the end of 2010, I was put on one medication. I don't remember the name of it, but, um, it seemed to help, but it stopped working after a while.
00:20:07.96
Kody Boye
So I'm like, am I really bipolar? You know?
00:20:10.53
Wednesday Lee Friday
Right, right. Because when the medication doesn't work, it definitely can make you doubt the diagnosis.
00:20:11.44
Kody Boye
Yeah.
00:20:16.73
Wednesday Lee Friday
Maybe I don't even have that. and but But there's so much guesswork involved.
00:20:18.89
Kody Boye
Yeah.
00:20:21.97
Wednesday Lee Friday
And this is something we talk we've talked about a lot on the show, that like, you're a person and you're having mental health issues, it's affecting you emotionally, there are probably physical things going on.
00:20:34.03
Wednesday Lee Friday
And so you try out medications, And those medications have a profound impact on the way you feel, you think your thought process works. And you might like, like your experience, you might have to try a bunch of different ones. I know I did. And I mean, I've taken things where like I took a medication once where the second day I woke up.
00:20:54.80
Wednesday Lee Friday
I thought that I had a job that I had five years previously, and I was like getting ready to go to the wrong job.
00:20:57.20
Kody Boye
All right. Thank you. Oh gosh.
00:21:02.81
Wednesday Lee Friday
I'm like, why can't I find my Blockbuster shirt? Well, because you don't work for Blockbuster anymore.
00:21:10.08
Kody Boye
Oh gosh, yeah.
00:21:10.30
Wednesday Lee Friday
ah Oh, yeah, that's not helping my depression at all. so
00:21:16.26
Kody Boye
No, because you second guessed yourself at that point.
00:21:19.16
Wednesday Lee Friday
Right. And so much of mental illness is trying to pay attention to like how you feel and why you feel that way so you can guess whether or not it's reasonable. And that in and of itself is like, you know, it's, it's,
00:21:30.07
Kody Boye
Yeah.
00:21:34.75
Wednesday Lee Friday
And that's the thing is that if you're you're trying out all these different medications and you're trying to keep your life straight and you still have to like do your job and see your family and earn money so you don't be homeless. And you know I don't think a lot of people really appreciate how messed up that is. you know and And you try and explain it to like a sane person with no mental illness. It's like, okay, try and live your day, but imagine that everyone hates you.
00:22:04.38
Wednesday Lee Friday
just as a Just as a baseline of what it feels like to be mentally ill, just assume that everyone who speaks to you is annoyed with you.
00:22:04.65
Kody Boye
Yeah.
00:22:13.45
Wednesday Lee Friday
And if they seem nice, it's because they think you're crazy and they don't want to upset you.
00:22:18.91
Kody Boye
Yeah, or or it's like you you're you're trying to, you know, maneuver through life and you're like, Oh, did I just say something stupid or um what is this person going to think about me? Do they hate me? Like you said, do they are they just trying to be nice to me because they don't want to interact with me because they think I'm crazy or something like that?
00:22:39.08
Wednesday Lee Friday
Right. Right. And you second guess everything because you're just trying to figure things out and it can totally spiral. And meanwhile, you're surrounded by these people with no mental health problems that are like, yeah, I got up today and I felt great.
00:22:52.25
Wednesday Lee Friday
And then I did my job and now I'm going to go home and relax. Like, I don't understand any of the things you just said.
00:22:58.82
Kody Boye
Yeah, yeah, where's this? um Where's your your you the voice in your head saying, oh, you're doing this wrong like every single moment of your day? Yeah.
00:23:07.29
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yep.
00:23:07.36
Kody Boye
you know people Most people don't have that.
00:23:07.99
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yep.
00:23:09.73
Kody Boye
And that's what makes it so frustrating when you're talking to someone who's like, oh, just go outside and walk in nature. It's like, I don't want to walk in nature because I'm depressed. It doesn't make me feel good.
00:23:19.88
Kody Boye
It makes me feel horrible. And if I interact with other people while I'm walking through nature, I'm like, are they going to kill me or something like that?
00:23:27.67
Wednesday Lee Friday
Thank God, it's just a bear.
00:23:30.36
Kody Boye
Yeah, for sure. Yeah.
00:23:33.17
Wednesday Lee Friday
So when you when you were first going through this, did you feel like you had the kind of support that you needed?
00:23:40.40
Kody Boye
I am very fortunate in that when I got diagnosed with bipolar, um I was on some my parents health insurance at that time so I had some support and the thing was they weren't making me get the prescriptions primarily through my insurance they were giving me samples to see if it would work because they weren't entirely sure if it would work and yeah like yeah
00:24:04.29
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh my gosh, yeah, I remember that when you just go in and you get like all these big packages trying to show them in this little purse.
00:24:12.07
Kody Boye
Yeah, and the the the nurse bless her heart. She was amazing and she did it until she couldn't legally anymore because she didn't want to lose her job, but um Yeah, I mean when I was going through it initially I felt like I had a really good support system with some friends and the family I do talk to and um You know the system I was in because I was fortunate in that I had
00:24:19.43
Wednesday Lee Friday
Right. right
00:24:38.11
Kody Boye
My parents insurance and then when I went off their insurance I was on county assistance programs that were helping me out and That was fortunate on my part because if I didn't have that I wouldn't have been able to receive the treatment I did When I was diagnosed in 2010 I went to
00:24:53.77
Wednesday Lee Friday
What about in terms of like school and work and you know getting things done? were Were people supportive for those kinds of things?
00:25:07.93
Kody Boye
the clinic I was at. And when I got through that, I started trying to go to college in Austin when I lived in Austin, Texas. um I didn't really have any support system there because I didn't seek it out.
00:25:24.30
Kody Boye
through there and I wasn't working. I was just mainly making money off my writing because back in 2010 to 2015, you could put a book on Amazon and make money on it without advertising it because it was so new at that time. ah So I was able to you know pay for stuff just on that basis. But when that kind of went downhill, my mental health just got a lot worse.
00:25:49.44
Kody Boye
so I ended up going through the the disability process for about, I think it was about three or four years. And and the the process is just nightmarish in its own right.
00:26:09.53
Wednesday Lee Friday
I have a husband, so they just looked at me and said, no, you're not, you you don't get disability help. You have a husband.
00:26:14.66
Kody Boye
Yeah, yeah.
00:26:15.54
Wednesday Lee Friday
Like, uh, what, what does that mean?
00:26:15.66
Kody Boye
because they yeah because they they they use anything they can against you like eventually when they got to my case and i went before a judge the judge looked at my paperwork and she said oh because you were telling your doctors you were feeling okay at your appointments because you know we're trained to say when someone asks how you're doing most mental health patients are probably going to be like oh i feel fine because they don't want to be seen as troublesome or argumentative. So the judge was like, oh, because you said you were doing fine at your mental health appointments, we don't think you're actually mentally unwell enough to need disability.
00:26:56.03
Wednesday Lee Friday
Really? Cause I was lying.
00:26:58.30
Kody Boye
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:26:59.99
Wednesday Lee Friday
I mean, you know what though, here's the thing. Nobody wants a society where you say, Hey man, how's it going? And someone tells you the complete truth of how it's going. Nobody wants that.
00:27:09.43
Kody Boye
No, no, because most people with mental health are just dealing with it every day. And when they're like, this is when someone asks you, how are you doing your automatic responses just to say, Oh, I'm fine. Because like you said, no one wants to hear the full story.
00:27:23.42
Wednesday Lee Friday
Right. Cause even if you tell like a ah real, like a ah brevity truth, like, well, I did not kill myself this morning.
00:27:31.78
Kody Boye
Yeah, they just look at you like, Oh, yeah.
00:27:32.25
Wednesday Lee Friday
You know, like if you say that to a mentally ill person, they'll be like, they'll hug you and be like, I'm glad, man.
00:27:39.07
Kody Boye
like oh yeah because and yeah because the the stigma surrounding it is just you know oh if you say something you know wrong it's like oh you're being branded as crazy you're unhinged
00:27:40.18
Wednesday Lee Friday
I'm glad you're still here. But when you tell it to somebody that is unfamiliar with mental illness, they're like, my God, I'm so uncomfortable. I don't know what to say. I think, well, don't ask.
00:28:00.28
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, well, and as somebody with low-key autism, it took me a really long time to understand the like the relationship between truth and honesty you know and like decorum.
00:28:16.15
Wednesday Lee Friday
that many times during the day you are absolutely, not just but it's not just that people prefer you lie, but like they it's expected.
00:28:16.25
Kody Boye
Yeah.
00:28:25.49
Wednesday Lee Friday
you know like When I work in customer service, 80% of the job is lying.
00:28:25.75
Kody Boye
Yeah.
00:28:29.73
Wednesday Lee Friday
And then they're like, oh, honesty and and integrity is so important. like Really? Because I just told 75 assholes that I hope they have a good day and I don't.
00:28:39.87
Kody Boye
Yeah. Yeah. And that, that's what I, a lot of what I dealt with after I lost my disability hearing was when I worked at a major pet store, like you said, I was like dealing with customers where I had to tell them, Oh, have a nice day. How are you doing? You know, I'm doing fine. How are you? to-ta- tota But it's a lot of lying. And that in itself is very draining on a person with mental illness because you're trying to force yourself to be quote unquote normal.
00:29:08.92
Kody Boye
And you're really not because of all the ah problems you have.
00:29:15.75
Wednesday Lee Friday
Exactly, exactly. And that it's interesting because we had, um I don't know if you're familiar with the neurodivergent rebel online.
00:29:23.94
Kody Boye
I'm not, no.
00:29:24.97
Wednesday Lee Friday
um they're They're pretty awesome, actually. And they're they're an activist for neurodiversity in the workplace. They actually wrote a book about it. And that's part of it is just a sense of like, be aware that people have these kinds of issues. And in like what employers are asked to do is just to create an environment where you're not mocked or put down for asking for some sort of accommodation. you know Even if the accommodation is, don't talk to me until I've been here for 20 minutes and had a cup of coffee.
00:29:57.65
Kody Boye
Yeah.
00:29:57.74
Wednesday Lee Friday
you know
00:29:59.22
Kody Boye
Yeah. and And it's with a lot of jobs, they're like, Oh, well, we can't accommodate you for this reason or another, which is why I felt so lucky when I worked at this pet store, because they were like, Oh, yeah, you can only work for this amount of time.
00:30:11.79
Kody Boye
You know, we'll let you work for four hours a day, which, you know, after working for eight hours a day, for like two or three months, I just couldn't physically do it anymore.
00:30:19.54
Wednesday Lee Friday
Right. Yeah.
00:30:20.45
Kody Boye
And They're like, oh yeah, we're not going to fire you. We'll just let you go four hours a day, work 20 hours a week or something like that.
00:30:27.24
Wednesday Lee Friday
Mm hmm.
00:30:28.10
Kody Boye
And that was all I could physically and mentally do with the time. you know cause Because the physical health and then you know dealing with mental health problems on top of it, it just and makes everything worse.
00:30:32.76
Wednesday Lee Friday
Sure.
00:30:41.42
Wednesday Lee Friday
Wow. Yeah. So so these days, though, you're mostly working from home, right? You're writing and then you you take in work, right?
00:30:49.26
Kody Boye
Yes, yeah, I just, i I'm like on my computer most of the time anyway. So I just, I take in a certain amount of assignments a day, I get paid for per assignment, and then I'm done for the day. I don't have to drive to a physical location. I don't have to talk to people on the phone, which, you know, terrifies me to no end. Especially, which is why when I decided not to try for um, telecommunication jobs. I was very thankful, especially, you know, when you see videos of people screaming at these poor employees for no reason.
00:31:24.38
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh, totes, man. I used to work at my last day job was in a call center. We sold violins and I was going to get, I was going to work for the cable company because they wanted people to work from their home. But first of all, they require drug testing.
00:31:37.52
Wednesday Lee Friday
And even if you're in a legal marijuana state, they won't let you smoke weed and talk about cable TV, apparently.
00:31:41.87
Kody Boye
Yeah.
00:31:45.06
Kody Boye
gosh yeah yeah yeah
00:31:46.67
Wednesday Lee Friday
But, but the thing about being like, I'm, I'm what they call an extroverted extroverted introvert, you know, like an outgoing introvert, something like that. We're like, if I feel comfortable in a situation, I can be real chatty and peopley, but then I need to get the hell away from everyone and take a nap. Like I can't, you know, I'm like that, that key and peel video where they're like, keep partying and partying. And it's like, no, get me the hell out of this party. This is hell.
00:32:15.62
Wednesday Lee Friday
ah
00:32:16.48
Kody Boye
Yeah, no, I feel the same way. Like if I'm comfortable with people, I can be like blah blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But but if I'm not, I'm just like in the corner, like why am I here?
00:32:25.77
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh, totally. When I actually moved out and went to college, I didn't eat for several days because as a fat girl, I was like humiliated at the idea of just sitting by myself in the cafeteria and eating.
00:32:38.34
Wednesday Lee Friday
So I just didn't eat. And yeah, it was pretty terrible.
00:32:40.33
Kody Boye
Oh, gosh, yeah.
00:32:43.10
Wednesday Lee Friday
um And finally, like some, I think it was like an RA and a peer counselor was like, um, have you so eaten? Come sit with us.
00:32:52.54
Kody Boye
Oh gosh, yeah.
00:32:53.78
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well if there's a lesson that to take away from that it's definitely that come sit with us can be lifesaving if you see someone alone.
00:32:53.89
Kody Boye
No, but.
00:33:00.31
Kody Boye
Yeah.
00:33:01.58
Wednesday Lee Friday
and
00:33:02.77
Kody Boye
Yeah, for sure. Yeah.
00:33:05.76
Wednesday Lee Friday
So okay so you are a gay man and you have HIV and you live in Texas like how is that going?
00:33:14.92
Kody Boye
Uh, so far it's been pretty okay. It's kind of a shock to say, but, um, I've normally lived in parts of Texas that were what you would describe as purple.
00:33:26.08
Kody Boye
Um, and I lived in Austin for five years and as you can probably imagine with the Keep Austin Weird slogan, uh, it was pretty open in Austin.
00:33:26.07
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay.
00:33:38.36
Kody Boye
Um, and then I moved up to the Fort Worth area, which is right outside Dallas and that was okay too.
00:33:42.71
Wednesday Lee Friday
who
00:33:44.87
Kody Boye
And then I moved down here to the Rio Grande Valley in 2018 and I've been here since and it's relatively purple here too. it's It's pretty okay for the most part. It's just people don't, in Texas specifically, they're like, they're friendly, but they don't want to know what they don't want to know.
00:34:06.83
Kody Boye
so like i Like, even if I do have blue hair, pink hair, or whatever, what when I'm dyeing my hair crazy colors, um I can still interact with people, but they don't want to hear about my life, like, you know?
00:34:22.21
Kody Boye
So, yeah.
00:34:22.91
Wednesday Lee Friday
but what's What's the phrase they use? They don't want you um shoving it in their face.
00:34:27.19
Kody Boye
Yeah, that's that's basically how I how I treat things with that sort of thing. I just I, I stayed neutral as possible with people. And it's worked so fine so far for me, which I'm thankful for because I've heard other people, you know, especially, you know, when I lived in Austin, I stopped going downtown to clubs by myself because people were pulling up alongside people leaving clubs and beating them to, beating them with baseball bats.
00:34:54.16
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh, for heaven's sake.
00:34:55.37
Kody Boye
Yeah. So I stopped going to clubs alone. So it's like, to a degree, it's okay in certain parts of the state, but you just, you just want to be careful with like, you know, how you interact with people so you don't draw attention to yourself in that way.
00:35:10.96
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, I mean, I live in a really liberal part of a purple state. You know, I'm in Ann Arbor, Michigan. So people by and large don't tolerate a lot of shenanigans here.
00:35:22.67
Wednesday Lee Friday
But, you know, you go down the street to Ypsilanti and like, I had a guy. I was at the IHOP having lunch with my husband and I went to use the restroom and there was some lady ahead of me.
00:35:35.88
Wednesday Lee Friday
And apparently I, this guy thought I was trans and I was trying to like sneak into the ladies room and he like threw me up against a wall and like made a fist.
00:35:43.19
Kody Boye
Oh no.
00:35:47.56
Wednesday Lee Friday
And I was like yelled like, what the fuck? Like really loud. And you know, people came over. And I mean, it was terrifying because, I mean, for all the reasons you would think, it's just like, okay, so this random person is so angry about something he made up in his mind that he is going to physically assault a complete stranger about it.
00:36:11.64
Wednesday Lee Friday
And the only reason that I did not press charges was because I really had to go to the bathroom. That was the whole point. So, you know, I finally went in and peed and came back out and the dude was gone. And I'm just like, OK, that was insane. And the thing is that it could have turned way, way worse because I was there with my husband. And, ah you know, my husband is a black guy over six feet, which is, ah you know, something else that people tend to react badly to. um So, yeah, I mean, it's it's crazy because anywhere, like, I hate to even phrase it this way, but like, anywhere there's an angry white man, there is danger.
00:36:57.83
Kody Boye
yeah no and it's it's sad to have to feel that way because you know you just you go on living your life and then someone random that you don't know that you don't have any problem with just comes in and is like oh I'm gonna assert my authority over you you know it's scary because you don't know what's gonna happen
00:37:14.23
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, and there are so many people on the internet and on TV that are encouraging that kind of behavior that are encouraging. I mean, people are so gleeful right now. Oh, there's not going to be any more trans people in the military.
00:37:29.45
Wednesday Lee Friday
well, why does that make you happy? That's a really stupid, like, that's just such a dumb thing to be excited about. Like, I don't, like, oh, people will be hurt. Hurrah.
00:37:40.41
Wednesday Lee Friday
Like, what, what even is that? Like, it's a whole political movement now.
00:37:43.98
Kody Boye
Yeah.
00:37:45.41
Wednesday Lee Friday
Like, we're hurting people we don't like for fun. Aren't you excited?
00:37:50.78
Kody Boye
Yeah, it's...
00:37:50.79
Wednesday Lee Friday
Like, yeah.
00:37:53.08
Kody Boye
Yeah, what happened to just leaving people alone?
00:37:56.58
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's the thing. if If there's people that I don't like online, I, well, with one glaring exception, I won't name, I i don't follow people that I don't like online.
00:38:07.21
Kody Boye
Yeah, no, that makes perfect sense because it's like, it was just like the other day i i I said something on Facebook and then I turned off the notifications about it because I had made my point because I've come to the point in my life and and especially in the present circumstances where I'm like,
00:38:24.62
Kody Boye
I don't have the emotional bandwidth to deal with certain kinds of people, and yeah know and which sucks because it's like you want to be supportive to other people and you want to be an advocate for yourself and for others, especially if you're marginalized.
00:38:28.70
Wednesday Lee Friday
Right.
00:38:42.28
Kody Boye
But there's an emotional aspect to it of and engaging with certain types of people that you know certain people can do all the time, but some people just don't have the bandwidth for it.
00:38:54.82
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, yeah that is that is so true. I mean, it's just exhausting to hear from so many people just repeating the same bad propaganda over and over. And now there's like robots doing it. So you don't even know if the person you're talking to is real. And it's like, okay, you're raising children. So if you're a real person that's raising real children, it is worth my time to explain this issue to you.
00:39:22.83
Kody Boye
Yeah.
00:39:23.28
Wednesday Lee Friday
But if you're AI, then this is just a waste of my day and Zuckerberg wants to make sure we can't even tell the difference.
00:39:31.55
Kody Boye
Yeah, like why am I talking to a robot about this?
00:39:36.58
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, it's a robot that like hates a lot of people, but yeah, so so moving on, um you actually do something that I have a very, very difficult time doing, which is writing complete book series.
00:39:40.35
Kody Boye
Yeah.
00:39:52.20
Kody Boye
Yes.
00:39:52.62
Wednesday Lee Friday
How exactly are you doing that?
00:39:54.97
Kody Boye
ah I like to think it's because I can't shut up when I'm writing. But um I mean, I have always loved reading a longer form fiction.
00:40:06.81
Kody Boye
um When I was very young, one of my very one of my biggest inspirations was Tamora Pierce. I'm very thankful that I've been able to communicate with her and talk with her and she's even at one point shared one of my posts about my book on her page or her feed.
00:40:22.43
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh, cool.
00:40:23.61
Kody Boye
Yeah, so I'm very thankful that I was able to interact with her because she was like a childhood hero of mine. And she wrote the song of the lioness and wild magic and protector of the small quartets which i devoured as a teenager and i just love you know seeing characters go through events and being shaped by them and She is in part why i I write young adult fiction now is because I like seeing people, oh especially people who are finding it themselves overcome adversity, whether it's within themselves or because, you know, there's aliens or vampires or zombies or something like that influencing their lives. So in that sense, I write longer form fiction because it just it just resonates more with me than short fiction or shorter fiction.
00:41:14.28
Kody Boye
but yeah i guess it depends on the story um like the one i'm working on right now is called boarsong and i had three titles for three books in my head so i've kind of just set myself to writing at least three of them so i tend to not plot because i'm bad at
00:41:16.44
Wednesday Lee Friday
But like do you when you start a story, do you write with a series in mind? like Are you plotting out multiple books at the same time?
00:41:44.42
Kody Boye
trying to think about stuff, you know, when I'm asked to think about it. um If I'm just like writing on the spot, I can just, you know, keep writing for an indefinite period of time. But if you ask me to think about it, I'm like, what am I doing?
00:42:02.92
Wednesday Lee Friday
So would you say like that events in your life are going to impact ah now a novel series like as you go?
00:42:11.02
Kody Boye
Oh, yeah. um Yeah, two of the the biggest ah events that have happened in and my life have been shaped half shaped some of them my fiction in part.
00:42:25.20
Kody Boye
Though the main one I can think of right now is my story called The Monsters Within, which is about a young gay man who moves to a small Texas town to pursue his writing career.
00:42:37.72
Wednesday Lee Friday
What?
00:42:38.78
Kody Boye
Yes, and I know, right?
00:42:39.34
Wednesday Lee Friday
How did you get into his mindset?
00:42:42.56
Kody Boye
but I wrote that story because I was inspired by the idea of body horror and about what happens when someone's generational curse is inflicted upon someone else through a sexual encounter. So it's like kind of like a body horror possession type story. And then the other one that um every recent has really shaped my...
00:43:15.09
Wednesday Lee Friday
Wait, is that is that you or me making in the microphone noise?
00:43:17.61
Kody Boye
I think it's you.
00:43:19.04
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay, I think it might be too. I have a new mic stand. Yeah, okay, god damn it, that's totally me.
00:43:24.91
Kody Boye
Oh, that's okay.
00:43:25.25
Wednesday Lee Friday
I'm so sorry, I have wires everywhere and apparently anything that touches the microphone makes a big loud noise even if it's not the absorbing part of the mic.
00:43:35.44
Wednesday Lee Friday
Sorry, I'm so sorry.
00:43:36.10
Kody Boye
ah No, no, that's fine. You're fine um But no the the other story that is in part been shaped by events in my life is one I'm trying to repitch to publishers right now is called angel hour. It's about someone who's whose family member Unfortunately ends their own life and about what happens after that fact so um Those are the two biggest ones that have shaped been shaped by a the events in my life. And those are just standalone books.
00:44:08.72
Kody Boye
or not serious standalone books But I try not to put too much of myself in my characters because I feel like if I do it's not as kindnna kind of weird to say but I don't feel it's as genuine to the character because it's like I want the characters to stand on their own and not be a reflection of me yeah no I i mean I like you know the
00:44:31.40
Wednesday Lee Friday
Wow, that's really interesting, because I don't hear that from a lot of writers. I mean, my my first book is a straight up Mary Sue, but all of my characters are a little bit me.
00:44:48.10
Kody Boye
the only other thing that I would say I do put into my characters that is me is you know like oh with I preferred something in my life go like this and then I write it like that but I try not to impose myself and my desires on the characters yeah so I think like with my war song series that I'm writing right now is like I feel like in some alternate universe another me got into
00:45:05.60
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay.
00:45:17.60
Kody Boye
pop music somehow like I could sing or something you know that's where that came from so yeah so like if that was an alternate universe thing that's the closest thing that I've done so far.
00:45:29.81
Wednesday Lee Friday
So um you you actually mentioned um suicide briefly. um i'm i'm That's ah a topic that I think a lot of people have really strong feelings about. What I'm i'm curious to know is um about, like a lot of people try to depict ah the aftermath of a suicide, like what it it does to the people that have to live with with what's happened. um i I don't know that I've seen a lot of well thought out competent portrayals of that, that I find i find them to be largely sappy, um like that 13 Reasons Why or whatever, that that just made me furious. This idea of like,
00:46:14.61
Wednesday Lee Friday
telling teenagers how much more power you'll have if you kill yourself and your friends have to go like seek out the mystery of why you did it. or you know It's just so performative and gross. Is there a depiction of that in in contemporary media that you find accurate?
00:46:32.61
Kody Boye
i I would say no at least not that I've seen because even with my own story that I wrote about which you know surrounds that I found that it's very hard to balance the whole am I glamorizing it by writing about it with, am I being honest with writing about it?
00:46:54.75
Kody Boye
Because as you said, I never watched 13 Reasons Why, because mainly because I heard it was very trigger happy with certain people.
00:47:02.53
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh totes, I watched two episodes and was like, no, I'm not doing this to myself.
00:47:03.76
Kody Boye
um
00:47:07.02
Kody Boye
Yeah, and after I lost a close personal family member a few years back, I was like, I went through, as you would expect, phases where you know, the the seven is the five or seven stages of grief thing model, you know, it it it comes and goes and waves. But with this story that I wrote, I had to learn to balance what was, you know, the actual event of and the happenings thereafter and what i did in this story was i didn't say how it happened and i know a lot of people and some circles would be like oh this is exactly how this happened you know for shock value i feel and i feel like that kind of um disingenuous or if that's the right word um to the person whose life was affected so badly by
00:47:49.46
Wednesday Lee Friday
Mm hmm. Mm hmm.
00:48:04.30
Kody Boye
an event or by an illness that they chose to end it because in that sense that does glamorize it I feel even though because ah it relates it it boils it down to a a single moment which is not the case because when someone chooses to end their own life it's a very complex sort of dynamic and I say that as someone who used to have suicidal ideation myself yeah
00:48:12.54
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, I think so too.
00:48:32.25
Wednesday Lee Friday
Right, right. Yeah, I totally that is so relatable. And I think part of the reason that it's so difficult to depict the emotions that go along with that is because those situations are so personal and so situational. And and it's just such a a one in a billion confluence of emotions and and and things that that happen and things that don't happen. you know like It's all so personal and that it seems almost like like satire to pretend that there's something that you can say about that that implies that that applies to everyone who's been through it.
00:49:16.27
Wednesday Lee Friday
You know, like whether it's, I mean, look at, you know, Aubrey Plaza, my God, she had to leave the internet because people couldn't just either be supportive or shut up after she went through something that I could not even imagine if my spouse even attempted suicide, let alone succeeded.
00:49:16.32
Kody Boye
Yeah.
00:49:36.24
Wednesday Lee Friday
And yet and people felt the need to say some of the most awful things that I mean, I, I can't, it's so hard to get your head around why anyone would be that cruel that a person, because I mean, you know, I'm, I'm also like, I'm not on disability, but I am a disabled person.
00:49:36.36
Kody Boye
yeah
00:49:50.11
Kody Boye
Yeah.
00:49:56.33
Wednesday Lee Friday
I can't just like jog out to the store if I want to.
00:50:00.03
Kody Boye
Yeah.
00:50:00.44
Wednesday Lee Friday
And so I do so much of my interacting with people on the internet. And if the internet turns on you, you know, like if you just suddenly don't have that, it's huge. And I actually, one time I took a 30 day Facebook ban because they didn't like a Five Guys Burgers meme.
00:50:19.03
Wednesday Lee Friday
said I was threatening my own brother with cannibalism. So I took the time to explain to them, hey man, when people can't leave their house and literally all of their friends and family and support come to them through social media and you yank that away from them,
00:50:37.03
Wednesday Lee Friday
you're going to get suicides. You're going to get people just like not functioning because you've created this project and taught people to rely on it. And then you're just like, oh, well, you said a dirty word or I think that's a nipple.
00:50:52.28
Wednesday Lee Friday
So off you go then. Go isolate for 30 days.
00:50:54.39
Kody Boye
yeah yeah no and going back to the whole Aubrey Plaza thing it the whole I couldn't engage with any of it because it was not
00:50:55.48
Wednesday Lee Friday
And if you live through it, we'll see you at the end.
00:51:08.89
Kody Boye
as triggering to me in the sense that I was reliving stuff that I was going through, but it was triggering for me in that I was seeing these people being so cruel and malicious and trying to, because I think the the one thing I noticed, the main theme that ran through what I saw briefly with the Opry Plaza thing was that people wanted a reason.
00:51:21.52
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah.
00:51:33.05
Kody Boye
And honestly, I feel like even people who choose to leave notes they or some kind of message or explain why they did it in the first place i don't think that is even completely the full story because yeah yeah yeah yeah and that's that's what i feel is really harmful about the certain
00:51:49.82
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh no, the notes are usually like, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, you know, and then whatever, whatever, but it's it's usually like, I'm sorry, I wasn't strong enough, is is the note.
00:52:07.76
Kody Boye
and reason to have a ah need or a reason for this these kind of happenings because there's they're so complex and multi-layered and there's so many different things that go into why this happened or what influenced it a person to do something like this, you know?
00:52:27.34
Kody Boye
And it it just it just infuriates me that people are like, oh, it happened for this reason because, you know, they don't have a reason so they have to make one up.
00:52:27.97
Wednesday Lee Friday
Totally.
00:52:37.71
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, well, in the whole like, hooray she's single again is just vomit inducing.
00:52:42.32
Kody Boye
ah Disgusting, disgusting.
00:52:43.19
Wednesday Lee Friday
I mean, I can't, I can't even. and Like, okay, I normally take the stance that everyone deserves love, but a few of y'all are outing yourselves as people who might not.
00:52:46.74
Kody Boye
Yeah.
00:52:56.00
Kody Boye
Yeah, no kidding, right?
00:52:59.16
Wednesday Lee Friday
Let's actually, I would like to get away from this subject if we can. um You write stories about lycanthropes, and I am a great fan of lycanthropes myself, so tell me why you got into that subgenre.
00:53:03.19
Kody Boye
Yes.
00:53:13.47
Kody Boye
Um, I i the werewolf thing or lycanthrope thing or even kind of animal shifter thing Was in part inspired by my love for ginger snaps the movie Yes Ginger snaps ginger snaps is my favorite werewolf movie.
00:53:25.39
Wednesday Lee Friday
Nice. Nice.
00:53:30.25
Kody Boye
Um, and that's mainly probably because it's it centers around two teenage girls and you know and they're coming of age thing but also because it it shows this gradual downward transformation between two people and I mean I've I've seen other werewolf movies like dog soldiers in particular and and you know they don't do that they're more like you know kind of like along the lines of alien and
00:54:03.28
Kody Boye
um Terminator in that they're just a monster, but with Ginger Snaps you see an actual person transforming behind the curtain.
00:54:14.94
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yep. Yep. I get that. I get that. Um, do you find for yourself that there's like, uh, what's the word I'm looking for? That it's, it's sort of a metaphor for something in your life.
00:54:29.14
Kody Boye
Uh, I would say so. Um, especially, you know, cause like in the sense, in the the sense of ginger snaps is kind of about, you know, female empowerment and female awakening and, um, you know, the body, you know, betraying you when you're going through puberty. Um, some of my own work is, you know, reflective in that because like with my, um, trying to think, um, my,
00:54:58.64
Kody Boye
With my Alien series, I wanted to have um some kind of werewolf-ish creature, and I just made them monsters in that sense, but in and reflect and reflecting on that, it's more of a metaphor about what we're afraid of, you know, when we're forced to confront react situations we can't control.
00:55:24.22
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay.
00:55:25.38
Kody Boye
Yeah. Because there's more than one variant of aliens in that in that universe, but those are the ones that come first. and that
00:55:34.87
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, certainly, like, Ginger Snaps is one of those movies where it's like, okay, there's some, like, anthropy here, but we're also learning about what being a werewolf does, like, what it says about you, like, how you respond to that.
00:55:35.24
Kody Boye
and that yeah
00:55:45.25
Kody Boye
Yeah.
00:55:50.90
Wednesday Lee Friday
And, you know,
00:55:51.28
Kody Boye
yeah
00:55:51.78
Wednesday Lee Friday
They say that's true of any adversity, that it's not about the adversity, but how you respond to it. So if you watch Ginger Snaps with that message,
00:56:01.58
Kody Boye
yes yeah I would say the majority of my fiction the central message would be that there is another so and the other side to a situation because growing up I dealt with a lot of bullying and
00:56:04.02
Wednesday Lee Friday
speaking of messages, now, would you say that your fiction has a central message? Is there something that you're always trying to say with the work?
00:56:28.94
Kody Boye
um I dealt with a lot of adversity as a result of being gay in a small town because I'm not originally from Texas. I'm from Idaho originally, which is, you know, kind of like the polar opposite of the United States.
00:56:40.72
Kody Boye
and But it was very much similar in the way that we I spoke about earlier about people want not wanting to know things that they don't want to know.
00:56:50.19
Wednesday Lee Friday
Right.
00:56:50.31
Kody Boye
um So I had to learn how to find community and find friends and that sort of thing. But in my fiction, I try to impress upon readers the idea that through tough situations, there's always an endpoint to them. And sometimes those endpoints are good endpoints.
00:57:11.54
Wednesday Lee Friday
and okay actually you know what i'm sorry i need to take i'm gonna pause us all right so we're we're back and i guess the next question is if someone is completely unfamiliar with your work where is the best place to start oh nice
00:57:31.59
Kody Boye
I would say my Alien series, the When They Came trilogy. There's three books. There was recently an omnibus that I put out that has um the five prequel stories slotted into it. And that was my first foray, real foray into young adult fiction.
00:57:53.37
Kody Boye
So I would say that's a good start because it's kind of on the more genre-y side. It's more, you know, action, adventure, that sort of thing.
00:58:02.56
Wednesday Lee Friday
Would you say it's representative of your work as a whole?
00:58:05.86
Kody Boye
I would say so, yeah. um Because of it it focuses on strong characters and what they go through in order to survive life altering or apocalyptic events.
00:58:18.35
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay, so that's the one they came to.
00:58:18.77
Kody Boye
And yeah.
00:58:20.67
Wednesday Lee Friday
We'll have links in the description so y'all know where to go shop. Um, you know, for, for people who don't know, what would you say is the the main difference between YA fiction and just straight fiction? Because I have talked to people who think that YA fiction cannot be scary. And, uh, as someone who reads John Mayberry, I know damn well that it can. So what, uh, what would you say is is the difference?
00:58:48.11
Kody Boye
I mean, I would say YA fiction because the thing i I learned when researching young adult fiction and how it's written and the way people respond to it is that a lot of the time, young adult fiction isn't really being read by as many young adults anymore. It's being read more by the 20 to 25 plus mark.
00:59:12.98
Kody Boye
so the the thing with YA fiction and the differences I say of course you know the characters are gonna be younger naturally but the themes are more like finding yourself and um and that sort of thing and I feel like a lot of people resonate with that because it seems like nowadays especially you know when we've gone through so many traumatic things over the past like eight years in terms of not just the political climate but
00:59:20.80
Wednesday Lee Friday
Mm hmm.
00:59:43.47
Kody Boye
the COVID pandemic and all that sort of thing um is that young adult fiction centers around finding yourself most of the time and general adult fiction I feel doesn't do that as much but yeah I'd say that would be like the main primary difference
01:00:05.69
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay. Yeah, I mean, I mostly think about like the technical things, like how you can't really have a Sherlock Holmes in a YA fiction because your main character doesn't get to be a drug addict who doesn't mind that they're a drug addict if it's for young adults.
01:00:22.64
Kody Boye
Well, there's some books that deal with that, surprisingly, but yeah.
01:00:26.19
Wednesday Lee Friday
I mean, it it does just seem like we expect, in a YA fiction, ah the people who do bad things are are the villains and not the people that you're supposed to be rooting for.
01:00:36.62
Wednesday Lee Friday
like that's that That's kind of what I notice.
01:00:36.79
Kody Boye
Oh, yeah.
01:00:39.00
Wednesday Lee Friday
like you know it's It's not like when you read Psycho, even though it is sort of about a young man who lives alone and is trying to find himself, you know he he kills too many people for us to want to be rooting for him.
01:00:52.36
Kody Boye
Oh, yeah, definitely. And and that in that regard, I could even say that, you know, um one of my favorite books that I read over the past few years was called The Grace Year by Kim Laguette. And it it challenges that that sort of idea that what do you do when you are forced to, um you know, be in an environment where you may have to hurt someone else? is that Does that still make you a good person?
01:01:18.59
Kody Boye
and The Grey Series is a brilliant book if anyone hasn't read it. It's about some some girls who are cast out into the wilderness every year to dispel their their lustful, baneful magic that is said to drive men crazy.
01:01:35.47
Kody Boye
And it's about how these teenage girls are meant to fend for themselves in the woods.
01:01:41.20
Wednesday Lee Friday
Wow.
01:01:41.42
Kody Boye
And yeah, and in terms of, you know, seeing, it's kind of like ah modern day Lord of the Flies where um you you put a bunch of children or teenagers in this case in one location and expect them to survive on their own.
01:01:59.93
Kody Boye
What are they supposed to do? Does that still make them children? Does that still make them good people? Does that make them bad people if they have to hurt other people in order to survive?
01:02:10.96
Wednesday Lee Friday
right you know i'm actually reminded of the book the grounding of group seven nine it's a number at the end i forget but it is it's about a bunch of teenagers that get sort of picked up and taken to a place and they're not sure why they're there
01:02:11.01
Kody Boye
And that's that's that's a good example of where that kind of toes the line between young adult and adult fiction.
01:02:36.03
Wednesday Lee Friday
And i it like turns out that they're all problem kids and their parents just wanted to be rid of them. So they were basically taken to a place and left to die there. And you know the the story is, do they figure out how to live? Do they get along with each other? and and So yeah, i'm I'm very intrigued by that.
01:02:55.26
Wednesday Lee Friday
And I think that, like, because because why fiction in general, I mean, books for kids have just progressed by leaps and bounds in terms of trusting kids to understand themes and to to work things out for themselves.
01:02:55.35
Kody Boye
Yeah.
01:03:07.59
Kody Boye
Yeah.
01:03:10.26
Wednesday Lee Friday
Because I always felt like kid literature very much talked down to me as a kid. You know, like even I think Judy Blume is like the only literature that I was given that was for people my age that didn't just straight up insult me.
01:03:15.78
Kody Boye
Yeah.
01:03:26.22
Kody Boye
Yeah and that's why I really um admired Tamora Pierce's fiction going back to her because she presented problems that teenagers went through in ways that you know addressed it fully like in the Song of the Lioness trilogy or quartet excuse me um the main character she gets her period and I feel like in some books they would just gloss right over that.
01:03:50.46
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh yeah.
01:03:51.29
Kody Boye
sense she is getting her period when she's supposed to be disguised as a young boy training to you know go through the the rounds to be in the military so she she really opened up my eyes to what I feel was appropriate for teenagers and and I feel like I feel like teenagers are gonna learn about stuff anyway depending on what kind of things they're looking up on the internet especially on the
01:03:59.38
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh wow.
01:04:18.75
Wednesday Lee Friday
Right, but are they going to learn correct information or are they going to learn chat GPT telling them that spicy spaghetti is better with gasoline?
01:04:21.56
Kody Boye
Yeah, yes.
01:04:26.30
Kody Boye
Oh gosh, yeah. Yeah, so that's that's the main difference, especially like when I was growing up, you know, you had to, I was there was still the internet, of course. But, you know, if you could find something that resonated with you and was factual, and that sort of thing, at least it was being honest with you, instead of, you know, talking down to you.
01:04:45.93
Wednesday Lee Friday
Right, yep, very much so. So let me ask you this. Now, I'm familiar with your layout work, um and I know that you are also an editor. um If somebody wanted to inquire about hiring you, what is the best way to go about that?
01:05:02.19
Kody Boye
I mean, honestly, the best way is probably Facebook. If you have me on Facebook, you can always email me through my website. I still need to work on my website a little bit about the the the publishing services thing because I need to put it as an end note or something somewhere.
01:05:19.43
Wednesday Lee Friday
Right.
01:05:20.22
Kody Boye
But um the other day I was messing with my website and it went down for like 12 hours because, oops, I don't know what I'm doing.
01:05:23.95
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh, yeah.
01:05:26.77
Wednesday Lee Friday
No, I feel that I don't even have a website right now because there was some kind of update and my website stopped working and everybody who tried to help me was not able to dumb down what to do to my level.
01:05:27.24
Kody Boye
Yeah.
01:05:34.45
Kody Boye
Oh no.
01:05:39.27
Wednesday Lee Friday
So so I don't have one now.
01:05:39.60
Kody Boye
Oh gosh, yeah. Oops, it happens.
01:05:43.99
Wednesday Lee Friday
And so you've ah you've also got a YouTube show coming up, right? It's for for an audio book.
01:05:49.44
Kody Boye
Yes, it's actually for those young adult audiobooks I was telling you about the when they came books, they the first one officially launched on the platform yesterday, they're going to be just they're going to be distributed through the major ebook outlet or audiobook outlets as well.
01:05:54.35
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh, okay. Oh nice!
01:06:05.16
Kody Boye
But I'm trying to grow that channel and expose people to my work in ways that I didn't think were as you know prevalent not maybe not prevalent but that weren't as obvious to me so I'm I'm always for trying new things and I figure if I throw the the audiobooks up on YouTube maybe I'll get some more eyes and ears and people will be gravitated toward my work like that but my YouTube channel primarily will center around the audio narrations of my books
01:06:13.51
Wednesday Lee Friday
Mm-hmm.
01:06:35.83
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, I would imagine with TikTok going away that YouTube is going to have a resurgence of of people doing audiobooks.
01:06:43.10
Kody Boye
I, yeah, I imagine so as well. Cause, you know, I, the last thing I posted on my TikTok was, you know, Hey, is this going to be happening still? And it appears it's not going to be.
01:06:54.61
Kody Boye
So yeah.
01:06:55.24
Wednesday Lee Friday
No, wait. So are you, are you doing your own narration for your audio books?
01:07:00.20
Kody Boye
I unfortunately can't narrate my own stuff because, um, for one, I have asthma. I don't know if you've been able to tell throughout my voice goes up and down.
01:07:07.83
Wednesday Lee Friday
No.
01:07:09.32
Kody Boye
Um, my voice goes up and down because I talk out of my diaphragm more than I do, you know, or not my diaphragm, my throat more than my diaphragm. It's something my doctors recently discovered.
01:07:20.41
Kody Boye
So I can talk for long periods of time and then I just can't talk anymore. It like physically is like not painful, but uncomfortable to do.
01:07:29.51
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh wow.
01:07:30.07
Kody Boye
So, so between the asthma and that issue, I don't. narrate very well. I like reading my stuff but I can't do it for long periods of time.
01:07:41.06
Wednesday Lee Friday
So honestly, I mean, it's hard. I used to do podcasts of my first two novels and I hired out mostly. But for the first one, I tried to do it all myself.
01:07:51.67
Wednesday Lee Friday
And it seems like it's going to be easy. Like I wrote the book, I'll just sit down and read it. And then the first time I had to do like a voice, I was like, OK, I am not Jim Dale.
01:08:01.22
Kody Boye
You're like,
01:08:02.83
Wednesday Lee Friday
I am not going to be able to come up with like you know a bunch of different voices to speak for all these people. And um'm you know all my books are really dialogue heavy. So i don't like I don't feel like I have enough talent that it would be worth the time to put that much work into it and have it only turn out mediocre. You know what I mean?
01:08:25.73
Kody Boye
Yeah, and that's why I really appreciated my narrator and my friend Chris Janay, who did the narration for the When They Came series. She's eventually going to do the prequel stories as well, but as of now we're just concentrating on, you know, working on getting the the first three books up, which they're all ready to go, but um I want to make sure I compensate her properly for her work, of course.
01:08:46.59
Wednesday Lee Friday
So is this like, does it go like chapter by chapters or a new chapter on a regular basis? Is that what's up?
01:08:54.91
Kody Boye
the The first three books are in full on the platform. So it's one video, yeah.
01:09:00.06
Wednesday Lee Friday
wow
01:09:02.33
Kody Boye
YouTube isnt was nice and let me upload videos in longer than 30 minutes because I verified my identity with them. but
01:09:09.02
Wednesday Lee Friday
so So you just have full-ass audiobooks for free that people can go get on YouTube instead of giving Audible 30 bucks for them. That's what you're saying.
01:09:17.31
Kody Boye
Yeah, because one of my primary goals when I wanted to shift away from selling exclusively through audible was to make them more accessible. And now that they're being re released to the other platforms, they will be like, I think 1299 US dollars.
01:09:35.74
Kody Boye
So I feel like that's much more reasonable than spending like 20 bucks on an audiobook or 30 bucks.
01:09:40.78
Wednesday Lee Friday
yeah yeah well and honestly given that not everybody can like focus on a book and read it it's kind of ableist to have audiobooks cost so much more
01:09:41.88
Kody Boye
Yeah.
01:09:51.97
Kody Boye
Yeah and I mean I know a lot goes into them because I was listening to some of Chris's outtakes for the When They Came series and she really works at the voices and the narration and she does some pre-production stuff before she sends it over to someone else to do the final production.
01:10:09.94
Kody Boye
So it's a lot of work but at the same time it's like if you can make it more accessible to people why not?
01:10:11.17
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh, yeah, definitely.
01:10:18.24
Wednesday Lee Friday
Definitely. Cool. All right. Oh, you know what? I also wanted to ask you about your book covers.
01:10:24.43
Kody Boye
Ah, yes.
01:10:24.76
Wednesday Lee Friday
Because your book covers are always so fun. And, um you know, what I kind of want to get into, though, is how, like, I've been hearing so many authors tell me why it's okay to use AI covers.
01:10:37.36
Wednesday Lee Friday
You would never use an AI cover, would you?
01:10:40.13
Kody Boye
Yeah, no. i I mean, some of the AI stuff looks pretty, but when you look at it closer and just you know the six fingers thing or ah the one I saw the other day was the woman ah setting her campfire in her tent yeah um for for the camping. But no, I i always work with artists. um I've loved working with artists since I started publishing. I used to have Phillip Rogers, a friend of mine,
01:11:08.39
Kody Boye
an artist do covers for my fantasy stuff. And he'd do like these beautiful, like, you know, high fantasy painting style things for my covers.
01:11:19.13
Kody Boye
And i I love that because I love collaborating with people in that regard because I can't draw to save my life.
01:11:24.69
Wednesday Lee Friday
Right. Same.
01:11:25.66
Kody Boye
But but in terms of who does my covers now, I work with two people. I work with get covers designs out of the yeah out of Ukraine.
01:11:36.51
Kody Boye
Um, they do some of my work when my cover artist friend Kimberly of KDS cover concepts can't work on stuff. And Kimberly, she does my, she she does my covers through a series of Photoshop and DAS 3D modeling. So she goes in and she manually like positions models and then dresses them and then alters lighting and then add special effects and stuff to them.
01:12:01.49
Kody Boye
so it's it's really cool to see like when she sent me something it's like oh hey how do you like this and I'm like oh that's cool but can you do that like change a hair color or something and she can do it like that you know
01:12:11.26
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yep, yep.
01:12:12.30
Kody Boye
yeah it's really it blows my mind what she can do especially with this this most recent omnibus cover she did I gave her like one idea I'm like just go with it and she did and she's got the main character with her rifle in front of um like a ah lake scene and there's like flying saucers flying around shooting laser beams into the city and stuff and I just I I go with what she goes with because I know she knows what is good visually and I've never been disappointed by her work.
01:12:44.95
Wednesday Lee Friday
Cool. Well, that's awesome. Because, yeah, I mean, my long form stuff is with Crossroads Press and they have like an in-house guy that does covers and he's great.
01:12:57.17
Wednesday Lee Friday
But all the stuff that I self-published, H does my covers.
01:13:01.72
Kody Boye
OK, yeah.
01:13:02.20
Wednesday Lee Friday
And and and he's he's wonderful. hes He's not an illustrator though. He is a graphic designer. So that's why, like I don't know if you saw my last collection, but it's actually my face on the cover.
01:13:14.04
Wednesday Lee Friday
And he did.
01:13:14.40
Kody Boye
Oh.
01:13:15.46
Wednesday Lee Friday
And it's so funny because ah people will be like, who is that lady? I'm like, that's that's me, kids. that' That's me, the wetness, right there on the cover.
01:13:23.08
Kody Boye
and That's me.
01:13:26.22
Wednesday Lee Friday
um And it's actually my favorite cover.
01:13:26.54
Kody Boye
yeah
01:13:29.28
Wednesday Lee Friday
I'm like making all kinds of merch with it, because I'm making like fancy jewelry boxes with my book cover on the cover, because I am just that vain. and
01:13:37.93
Kody Boye
Hey, why not, right?
01:13:39.32
Wednesday Lee Friday
So listen, um I understand that you have cats. I want to live vicariously through you because I cannot have cats at the present time.
01:13:42.67
Kody Boye
yes ma
01:13:45.91
Kody Boye
No. Yeah, I have three of them. My oldest Gigi, she's she's going to be. i Oh yeah, she's going to be six this year. um I got to watch her and her siblings be born under my roommate's mother's bed.
01:13:59.71
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh, wow.
01:14:00.90
Kody Boye
Yeah, so Gigi is my oldest and then she's like a ah she's a mix is what they call her of like a tortoiseshell and ah calico. So she's gray and she's got white and blonde on her.
01:14:14.69
Kody Boye
My other cat, his name's Jonesy, um I adopted him after I lost my first cat, Jezebel, to cancer, unfortunately.
01:14:20.59
Wednesday Lee Friday
Joanji's the one that's had some some health issues, right?
01:14:23.59
Kody Boye
Yes, he has the herpes, the feline herpes virus, so he has eye flare ups. The first time he had it, it almost lost, he almost lost his eye. It was that bad.
01:14:33.72
Kody Boye
I medicated him around the clock for like three weeks.
01:14:37.19
Wednesday Lee Friday
Right.
01:14:37.27
Kody Boye
It was awful, awful. um But he's my orange tabby cat, named after the Jonesy from Aliens, of course.
01:14:44.24
Wednesday Lee Friday
Of course.
01:14:45.40
Kody Boye
yeah and my third one Luna she's a little I think she's what you'd call a seal point Siamese she's got gray on her and she's not like a full but black she doesn't have the raccoon mask thing that most Siamese do but she she ran out to us in the middle of the street and was yelling for help, so I'm like, I'm a Siamese cat, yeah.
01:15:07.81
Wednesday Lee Friday
A Siamese did that. Wow.
01:15:11.44
Kody Boye
and She was like maybe like three weeks old at most. So i I had my roommate get a piece of fried chicken and I'm like, you're a kitty, kitty.
01:15:20.63
Wednesday Lee Friday
and
01:15:21.39
Kody Boye
And I snagged her and she's been mine since.
01:15:23.47
Wednesday Lee Friday
Wow.
01:15:23.90
Kody Boye
So, yep, I have three of them. Yeah, I'd have probably more if I could, but right now I'm not not in the position to do it because i do want my obsidian at one point and they're they're beautiful reddish colored cats and but i don't have
01:15:32.32
Wednesday Lee Friday
Right.
01:15:38.76
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, yeah, i'm I'm familiar with Abyssinians only because the the Bombay's are my favorite and those are usually like an Abyssinian and a black American house cat mix.
01:15:48.63
Kody Boye
Okay, yeah, yeah the thing with the Abyssinian when I quoted when I asked for a quote on one just out of curiosity They're like, oh, yeah, we take $300 up front and then you pay the other six to eight hundred after the fact Yeah, so yeah Yeah, yeah, but
01:16:04.43
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh, do I?
01:16:07.04
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, I'll get right on that. Yeah, that's the thing is those specialty cats, man, they'll set you back. Every time I look for a dog and I find one that I think might be appropriate for my living situation and it's like, wow, if that didn't cost $2,000, I would have one now.
01:16:21.09
Kody Boye
Yeah, so, but i'm I'm all for adopting or, you know, having the cat distribution system plant one in your lap.
01:16:28.42
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, yeah, I've never actually, I mean, all of my cats were either shelter cats or yeah, I found this in my neighborhood and I was going to take it to the pound. Do you want it?
01:16:37.34
Kody Boye
Yeah, I found it in my trash.
01:16:37.67
Wednesday Lee Friday
Like, yeah. So is there anything that we have not covered that you would like to talk about?
01:16:48.08
Kody Boye
Uh, I don't think so. I think we, we addressed pretty much everything.
01:16:51.91
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, we ran in the gamut. Gamut didn't we?
01:16:54.40
Kody Boye
Yes, we did.
01:16:56.32
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, is there anything that you would like to ask me? Because I do like to give guests a chance to ask me something if they want to.
01:17:02.52
Kody Boye
Yes. Um, what are you working on right now?
01:17:04.71
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh, oh gosh. Um, you know what, I'm actually still, still, still working on book three of my savior trilogy, which is my series of books about the president son.
01:17:16.63
Kody Boye
Okay, cool.
01:17:17.58
Wednesday Lee Friday
The third book is called the president son saves the world. I don't know if you're how familiar you are with this series. Um, right about 2015, I wanted to explain to people why I was so sure.
01:17:31.26
Wednesday Lee Friday
that Don Trump Jr. was a good person because he didn't used to be like that. And I'm like, okay, nobody understands why I feel this way. I feel strongly enough about this that I really will spend the time to write a whole ass book. And then about a year and a half later, I said, well, this is stupid. Nobody's going to care. Nobody's going to want to read this. Put it aside, went back to it. First book came out in 2020. I'm like, okay, now everybody understands why I think Don Jr. is a good guy.
01:18:01.53
Wednesday Lee Friday
Everybody gets it now, and I will be goddamned three weeks after that book didn't come out. He did not lead a seditious attack on the nation's capital.
01:18:10.67
Kody Boye
Oh gosh, you know.
01:18:11.65
Wednesday Lee Friday
And I had actually predicted sedition and arrest in the first book. um In the second book, I ah i predicted an assassination attempt. um
01:18:22.33
Kody Boye
kind
01:18:22.40
Wednesday Lee Friday
i pretty and Yeah, I mean, they they were pretty predictive, actually. But no, I'm working on the third one now. And the third one is called ah The President's Son Saves the World. This time it's fictional.
01:18:34.15
Kody Boye
Oh, fun stuff, right?
01:18:37.41
Wednesday Lee Friday
it It is. It is. And the thing is that when i I conceived of the third book, the plan was supposed to be that the president's son had a publishing house, which Don Jr. actually has a publishing imprint.
01:18:49.93
Wednesday Lee Friday
And they were going to make all AI books, and one of their AI books was accidentally going to bring peace to the Middle East. That was the original plan for the third book, and that was in like 2023, like early 2023. And by the time I had it drafted, it was no longer funny to make jokes about peace in the Middle East.
01:19:11.83
Kody Boye
Oh gosh, yeah.
01:19:12.59
Wednesday Lee Friday
because you know that whole thing flared up and I'm like, okay, fine, I'll do something else. And then I had another idea and I went with it and it was all about a staging and assassination attempt and then evoking the A-25.
01:19:26.65
Wednesday Lee Friday
And then it turned out that they staged an assassination attempt, i ah allegedly. They allegedly staged fucking traitors. So then that happened. And i I wasn't sure if I even wanted to finish it. And I went through a whole emotional ordeal about it. And then I came back with a story and I was like, okay.
01:19:48.71
Wednesday Lee Friday
So as long as aliens do not come here from space and as long as Trump does not tell them to shoot them out of the sky I will not have to change this book anymore and God damned if I didn't wake up three days later to him saying we don't know what those drones are shoot them out of the sky Like you you've got to be fucking kidding me
01:20:08.67
Kody Boye
You're like yeah and like the kid in the page master.
01:20:11.99
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, and I, I told Don Jr.
01:20:12.41
Kody Boye
that
01:20:13.43
Wednesday Lee Friday
on threads yesterday. I'm like, okay, dude, and I'm sorry, but this, this is starting to feel personal at this point. This, this is really starting to feel like you guys are fucking with me individually.
01:20:24.95
Wednesday Lee Friday
um
01:20:25.40
Kody Boye
You're like yeah like that kid from the page master movie from way back when where he just opened the book and everything that he was going through was happening.
01:20:32.91
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yup. Yup. Not to be confused with, uh, the, the Twilight Zone episode where he talks into the tape recorder and the things happen.
01:20:41.72
Kody Boye
oh gosh yeah yeah yeah
01:20:43.21
Wednesday Lee Friday
Right? Right? Okay, so that's what I'm working on now. And you know, we also still have the magazine coming out four times a year, and we're getting such great, great stories. I'm meeting people from all over the world, which is also super dope. So sometimes hilarious horror is still continuing uphaste. And I have not received ah a submission from you yet.
01:21:07.01
Wednesday Lee Friday
So when we're done recording the podcast, I will definitely be inquiring as to why that is. Cause honestly, I bet that you've got a standalone chapter of something that you could send me and it would just get some more eyes on your work.
01:21:13.38
Kody Boye
and
01:21:21.24
Kody Boye
yeah Yeah, I'll have to look and see what...
01:21:22.65
Wednesday Lee Friday
So, so yeah, we definitely should, um, should talk about that.
01:21:23.82
Kody Boye
um
01:21:26.85
Wednesday Lee Friday
But for now it is time for the Madlib and it looks like, okay, I need like a bunch of nouns from you, like one, two, three, four, five, six, six nouns, one of which should be nope, two of them should be plural. So throw some nouns at me.
01:21:43.93
Kody Boye
um oh gosh now you're asking me to do stuff um let's see um let's see uh let's see i'm trying to think um oh gosh now i'm drawing a complete blank um
01:21:47.02
Wednesday Lee Friday
yeah ah
01:21:58.58
Wednesday Lee Friday
And i I know that Mad Libs are harder for writers because writers feel pressure to pick interesting words. Whereas people that aren't writers just look around the room. They're like, okay, carpet, ceiling, door.
01:22:11.20
Kody Boye
yeah um let's see um let's do uh phone i think that's one that's a concrete noun isn't it um car uh let's do a colony that's four or is that three i i've lost track um we'll we'll sure
01:22:12.65
Wednesday Lee Friday
yeah
01:22:20.12
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yep. I don't know.
01:22:33.41
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, I need two more ah singular nouns and then two plural ones. Nope, three plural ones.
01:22:40.16
Kody Boye
Let's do child, let's do geese, and let's do... I think people? Or did you need a single singular?
01:22:50.42
Wednesday Lee Friday
I can use people and give me one more singular noun.
01:22:56.57
Kody Boye
ah Dog.
01:22:58.43
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay, I need one, two, three. for adjectives.
01:23:06.08
Kody Boye
Okay, let's see, adjectives, let's see.
01:23:12.55
Kody Boye
Four, you said, right?
01:23:14.02
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yep.
01:23:15.20
Kody Boye
Let's see, let's do clean, a little,
01:23:25.05
Kody Boye
mysterious, oh, that sounds like a good one, and brave.
01:23:33.27
Wednesday Lee Friday
All right, I need a number.
01:23:36.92
Kody Boye
ah Let's do seven. That's my favorite.
01:23:39.07
Wednesday Lee Friday
All right, I actually need another number.
01:23:42.34
Kody Boye
ah Three. Does that work or do you need a different one?
01:23:45.52
Wednesday Lee Friday
Nope, that's good. And I need a verb past tense.
01:23:50.58
Kody Boye
Let's see. I'm walked. I think that's a verb past tense.
01:23:54.11
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yep, and a regular verb, present tense.
01:23:57.50
Kody Boye
Present tense. Let's see. Talks.
01:24:03.54
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay, so oops, this is called hot fudge sundaes. Making a hot fudge phone is as simple as 127.
01:24:16.74
Wednesday Lee Friday
All you need are the following cars, a pint of little ice cream, a jar of clean fudge sauce, and a cup of mysterious nuts.
01:24:30.48
Wednesday Lee Friday
You will also need ah three maraschino people. Scoop the ice colony into a glass child. Pour on a generous portion of hot dog sauce. Oh, well, wow, that's weird. didn And a heaping mound of walked cream. Sprinkle with geese and top off with a brave cherry. Now talk and enjoy.
01:24:58.94
Kody Boye
That was a mouthful for sure.
01:25:00.40
Wednesday Lee Friday
Right. Right. Just like hot fudge Sunday.
01:25:04.51
Kody Boye
Yeah.
01:25:05.71
Wednesday Lee Friday
Cody, man, I am so glad you could be here. I am so glad that we could talk for so long and that it was so interesting.
01:25:13.38
Kody Boye
Well, thank you for having me. I really appreciate it.
01:25:15.21
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh, it's my pleasure. And I, you know, it's, it's so cool when people are, are willing to be so open about like what they've been through and, and how they still manage to, to have a creative career.
01:25:27.96
Wednesday Lee Friday
despite all of it. it's It's just really inspiring and great.
01:25:30.02
Kody Boye
Yeah.
01:25:31.64
Wednesday Lee Friday
And hopefully this is the kind of information that will let people know that these things don't have to hold you back, that there's struggle and it's it's tough, but it's it's also possible.
01:25:40.26
Kody Boye
Yes, for sure. Yes.
01:25:46.42
Wednesday Lee Friday
So thanks. I want to remind all of our listeners that we are, we're in season three now, so we're going to be back next week. and that if you want to support us you can find us on Ko-Fi where we are sometimes hilarious horror and it's sometimes hilarious horror that supports the Mentally Oddcast. So thanks so much everybody we'll see you next week.
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