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This is a podcast called Gumbans.

If you've ever lived around Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, you may know our title.

It's a regionalism, somewhat wacky word that most folks in western Pennsylvania know.

A Gumbands is simply a rubber band, and we all know that word too.

But we also often have a bit of pride in our exclusive Pittsburgh vocabulary.

And this is going to be a podcast loosely about Pittsburgh, its people, its history, its food, its goofy way of talking, its unusual charms and unexpected connections.

And we think the whole thing can best be held together by Gumby.

My name is Rick Seebach.

I'll be your host, but it's certainly not a one man show.

It's kind of a co-production with my colleague Rich Capaldi, who came up with the idea for this series.

We hope we'll have other contributors too.

We work at WQED, the public TV and multimedia production house on Fifth Avenue in what we usually call the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh.

Although if you look at the official city neighborhood maps, you will find that we are actually in what is called squirrel Hill North.

And some may say we are technically on the campus of Carnegie Mellon University.

We Pittsburghers love our neighborhoods and are fiercely loyal, even when we don't pay strict attention to official government maps.

So this is a Pittsburgh centric podcast called Gumbands.

And today we're going to talk about two books that I loved.

One called The Ghost Warriors, and a sequel titled The Battle for the Emperor's Skull.

And our guest today is the author of those books, an old Friend, Mr.

Bill Tippins.

I've known Bill, I think, since 2001.

Right.

It's been a pretty long time.

And I think you contacted me about your being a, amateur archeologist.

Right.

And, I was sort of fascinated by this whole world that he sort of exposed me to.

And, I was doing a program called Pittsburgh A to Z at the time.

And, there were many possibilities for a but it ended up being amateur archeologists and arrowheads, two kind of old arrowheads.

And I loved it because it takes us back to the beginning of civilization in our era.

Yeah.

True.

And actually, we watched the story the other day, and we'll have it available on our website and all of that.

The original story from Pittsburgh A to Z. Okay.

And we love the fact that the farmer made that connection to think that, oh, I'm touching things that people created 15,000 years ago.

Right.

It's mind blowing.

It is mind blowing.

And it also makes me think about Meadowcroft.

Is that the era we're talking about?

Yeah.

Stone age western Pennsylvania?

Yeah, absolutely.

Off the books.

You mean the books are a little later than.

Well, actually, not the Meadowcroft.

Meadowcroft?

I'll give a plug for them.

It's one of the oldest, if not the oldest archeological site in North America.

Hard to believe.

Right?

Here we are in western Pennsylvania, and it's the oldest site in North America.

But it's a rock overhang where people were camping for thousands of years.

And they it was excavated by Pitt and Dr.

Adovasio back in the 70s.

And they kept going deeper and deeper and deeper.

And with each layer, you're going back in time, which is really cool.

So they were going from the present and they ended up 15,000 years ago, which was about 2 or 3000 years earlier than at that time.

They thought people were in North America.

Now that's been validated at other sites across the continent.

But, it is mind blowing that people have been here that long.

Right.

And do you have any idea why you got so attached to it, or what it is about you that makes you want to know more about that?

Yeah.

I have a story that involves, old friend Dick George, archeologist at the Carnegie Museum.

And the story goes, I was building a camp, kind of a fishing camp up in Armstrong County.

And I had, a bulldozer come in and cut a roadway in.

And after hard rain, I started finding these arrowheads.

These were clearly human made.

I mean, it looked like something that had just been dropped there, but I knew no one had been back there but me.

And so I picked these things up, and I called the Carnegie Museum because there was an old Indian village of Kittanning on the Allegheny River that goes back to the French and Indian War, which I have an interesting contact connection to on that.

But I called the Carnegie Museum and Dick towards answered, and I said I found some arrowheads.

I'm curious, can you tell me more?

I said, bring them on in.

So I went into Oakland.

He looked at these.

He picked up one of them.

He said, oh, that's about 4000 years old.

And then he looked at the other one.

He said, that's about 8000 years old.

And I was just blown away.

I was hooked right then, because how could something 8000 years old look like it's just been manufactured?

Well, they were using what we call Flint or the technical term would be cherrot.

And that stone doesn't erode.

It's hard and brittle, which is why they used it because of the sharp edges.

And so that's how I got started.

And then I went on to become a member of the society for Pennsylvania Archeology.

And I could talk hours about that, but I want it right now.

Well, and somehow, I'll continue our personal history.

I hadn't heard from you in several years, I don't think.

And then last October, you called me and said, hey, I want to talk to you about something.

And we met for lunch at the Mola, right.

The sushi place in East Liberty.

Right.

And you revealed to me that you'd written a book.

And I have to say, I was pretty surprised.

Okay.

And, you know, you said, you know, if you wouldn't mind, give it a read and, you know, put a review up on Amazon and that kind of thing, and.

Right.

I know I put the book aside.

I think I was doing something else.

And and then eventually when I did pick it up, I, I was sort of, amazed at how much I loved it.

Oh.

Thank you.

I mean, it's it's really exciting.

And it was fun, and it reminded me of Lord of the Rings.

And, you know, it was nonstop action.

And I just thought, wow.

You know, I think Bill was meaning this for, like, you know, young readers, right?

I'm not a young reader.

I'm an old reader.

But I was totally charmed.

I'm an old writer.

Maybe that's the clue, but how old?

I'm 59.

No, no, no.

How long have you been writing?

That's my debut novel.

Interesting thing.

I studied engineering in college, and I took no English classes past high school.

So I tell people I have a high school education when it comes to writing, which is true.

But.

And, you know, that's one of the reasons I think I was attracted to, I'll call it young adult books.

They call it middle grade or young adults.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You see, I had my.

Yeah.

I guess I'm, a little, insecure about my vocabulary.

I'm no Ernest Hemingway, but when you're writing for a 12 year old, you speak in simple sentences, and it turns out adults kind of like that, too.

And that's your ideal reader, do you think a 12 year old.

Yeah, I have, the the reason I wrote the book was, I think our area, but not just Western PA, the entire world has a very interesting prehistory.

Now prehistory before written history.

So that's the Stone age.

And I, I obviously I, you know, that I know a lot about the prehistory of western Pennsylvania, which is where the book is kind of set, although I make it vague.

But I had an epiphany.

I was reading an archeological report from a German site, and I found out 6000 years ago, people in Germany were living pretty much identical lifestyles as people here a thousand years ago, and they were living in fortified circular villages.

They were using bows and arrows.

They were attacking each other.

Unfortunately, there's a lot of evidence, both in North America, Europe, Asia, of, conflict between people and unfortunately continues today.

Right?

Right, right.

It's scary.

Yeah.

And, I had so many, you know, I think the books.

I don't want to talk about plot just because I think that's what keeps me reading.

Right.

And you are on to the second book right now, I'm I'm about 120 pages into the second book.

I didn't finish it.

And then I was really worried about that.

But then I thought, it doesn't matter.

Because I'm again, I'm totally enchanted.

You know, I care about the characters and, I mean, and you say you didn't have any English or creative writing classes or anything like that, so, you know, how did you how did you start this?

You just sat down one day.

Do you have a, you know, like, what's your procedure?

Well, I've always enjoyed writing, but more, technical writing.

You know, I've, I've done my share of archeology.

I've written that up.

I was editor of the statewide archeology journal Pennsylvania Archeologist.

That's just because they couldn't find anybody else that would do the job.

That's true.

But I ended up editing, PhD archeologist papers.

They would submit them to me for publication.

And, so I became pretty confident in writing, and I just have a passion for this time period.

And I feel there's a story that's not being told.

And you mentioned Meadowcroft Rock shelter.

I mean, a lot of people still don't know about it.

They don't know that people have been here that that long.

If I can go back to when we first met, the reason I reached out to you, because I was trying to get somebody's attention about the pre-history of our area, because at the Heinz History Center, back then, history started in 1750, and we have a wonderful French and Indian War history in this area.

It was pretty brutal.

I wouldn't say wonderful is the right word, but there's a whole story of thousands of years before that it wasn't being told.

And so I try to get your attention and say, hey, why don't you talk about this?

And you did we went out of arrowhead hunting, right.

And in one of those shoots, although I think somebody says they're not all arrowheads, they're points.

Yeah, they're actually most of them are spear points.

The arrow are the arrow.

Bow and arrow didn't come into this area until about a thousand years ago.

And but that's what people, farmers that find them and I'm a city boy.

I'm third generation Pittsburgh.

Or I didn't find my first, projectile point.

That's the technical term until I had that cabin road building.

But if you talk to any farmer just about anywhere, you ask them.

Do you ever find arrowheads here?

Oh, yeah.

My dad or my grandpa?

A shoe box full of them.

And that's just because people have been here so long.

So back to the book.

I. I like to write, and I just thought young people, I wanted to get young people involved in the story and, I mean, you could write a technical report and most 12 year olds probably aren't going to be interested.

But I thought a novel and just some simple characters.

And I said it originally in Western PA, which if you look at the maps in the book, you recognize the Allegheny River, the Monongahela River, and at the point it set.

And then I kind of expanded it because I wanted it to appeal to readers outside of just of western Pennsylvania.

And, we all have Stone age ancestors.

I don't care what your cultural heritage is.

You have ancestors you have to have, whether they're in Europe or North America or Asia or Africa.

People all went through the stage of development, and people are people.

I don't think they behave.

From what I've seen on the archeology reports, the behavior is very similar in every continent.

And so I just decided to try to write a story, and that was I had to pick a title and the story line, I don't honestly remember how it exactly the plot, came about, but I ended up with our hero and his sidekick, which is Tioga and Copi.

Tioga, by the way, is a county in Pennsylvania.

I don't know if you know that there's quite.

Well, actually, one of my questions was to to tell me how you pronounce all these names, because I thought it could be Tioga or Tioga.

I got it wrong.

I thought it was.

I thought it was, Tioga.

But I went to an archeology seminar just this weekend before last, and Ligonier and an archeologist was from that Tioga County a where he said, there's north, it's in northern Pennsylvania, in north central Pennsylvania, and there's the Tioga River.

And I said, okay, it's Tioga.

And no, that's good.

I'm glad to hear that, because, you know, I think I probably read the first book, just not even worrying about it, because when you're reading, you just see the word but then you can pronounce it in your mind however you want.

But I was, you know, because the bridge collapsed, in my neighborhood.

Yes, I know I've been trying different routes and everything, and I was driving through Homewood one day, and there's a Tioga Street.

Oh, I didn't know that.

Yes, right here in Homewood.

So, you know, I'm like, oh, Tioga Street, named after that character in the book I'm reading.

You should ask the mailman, how do you pronounce the street?

But, so no fiction before you started to write this?

Never.

How did you start?

How did you do it on a computer?

Do you do it on hand?

I have to admit, I was pretty insecure, so I bought some books on how to write a book.

And, you know, I just read books, and it turns out there's only so many plots out there.

You would know this from film school.

I'll bet you they taught you the same thing.

I mean, actually, I think I probably knew it from an English class, which I loved, which was Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces.

Do you know this book now?

Of course, because I don't know literature.

I mean, it's really more about literature, but it's it's the thing that I, the Star Wars was based on that, you know, so many movies.

Are we in books?

Right?

Joseph Campbell, the hero with a thousand faces.

When I read it, I absolutely adored it because he explained that all stories are the same story.

Sometimes they're just one part of it, you know, it is.

But essentially.

And I mean, so many of your characters, I say, oh, I know what this character is doing, you know, like the longest, which is how you say it.

Yeah.

That's gangs.

Yeah.

So since people don't know what we're talking about, I'll tell a little of this plot.

Okay.

Excuse me.

Tioga is a 13 year old boy.

He's living on the Allegheny River, which is actually the Native American name for a. And that was an approximation of Allegheny River.

Say it again.

Have a guy right.

And and so he was living in his village and, he's playing with his best friend Copi.

And that name I just picked out of the air.

I don't know why.

And the two of them, the book starts, they're exploring a cave, and, they at the end of the first chapter, they hear a scream, and it turns out a girl is being kidnaped from their village by somebody.

And so Tiger and Copi go try to figure out what's going on, and they encounter the Monongahela devil, and that is the villain.

And he's an evil warlord.

And so it's basically the tale of Two Cities, except we're talking two villages.

One village is on the Allegheny and one's on the Monongahela.

Now, I, I made that a little more vague for readers that aren't from Western PA, but if you are from Western PA, I think you relate to it.

And, so there's a kidnaping and the chief's daughter, who Tioga, who happens to have a crush on, the 14 year old daughter of the chief, she gets kidnaped and, kidnaping.

It's not the most original plot.

I mean, there's probably.

What's the movie taken?

Is that the one with, the indecent, the.

And these and, I mean, that plot's been around for a long time.

I will mention there, is in our family a story of a kidnaping in the French and Indian War.

And I knew of it.

And so that did influence me.

If I, I don't want to I want to let you get questions in, but it's a pretty cool story.

No go in here.

So if you know Western PA, history of the French and Indian War in 1755, Braddock, General Braddock was defeated near Kennywood Park over Braddock, PA.

George Washington was with him, and General Braddock was mortally wounded.

He died three days later.

So basically, the French and the Indians that were at Fort Duquesne decimated the English army at that point, they retreated.

The English retreated to the east coast, and the French and the Indians, figured they've got these guys on the run.

And so they're going to try to push the European settlers that had been pouring in from the East Coast.

And so my I think it was my sixth I'm into ancestry.

My sixth great grandfather was living, near Harrisburg and a log cabin with his family.

And 1755, in the fall, the French and the Indians were emboldened to go on raids and try to wipe out the settlers all the way to Harrisburg, although the French were settlers themselves.

Yeah, but they were allied with the Indians.

Of course, later in the war, they switched sides.

The Native Americans would go who, you know, they thought was going to win the war or help them the most.

But, there was a character named Shingiss.

The Terrible who was a real life, he could call him a chief.

I think George Washington met him and called him King.

Shingiss.

There's a Shingiss street down in McKees rocks.

I don't know if you knew that.

And so, I didn't really know this, but remember I mentioned I found those arrowheads up near Katanning?

Well, that's where Shingiss' base was.

It was also he moved around.

And a few years earlier, he was living at McKees rocks, on the hilltop in a fortified village.

Not close together, I mean, not particularly.

It's amazing to hike from and McKees Rocks to Kittanning.

And remember, there were, in those days, horses were probably not that common for the Native Americans.

So they were moving on foot most of the time.

But this, so shingles will call him a chief.

And he was called Shingiss the Terrible because he raided the settlements and was brutal.

And him and his war party killed my six great grandfather on my mother's side near Harrisburg.

And they kidnaped the children, and they brought them to Katanning.

That's a long walk from Harrisburg, near Katanning.

But in the year 1755, this happened over and over again.

And, there were lots of children that were kidnaped.

Her, my, the, the, I think fifth great grandmother of mine, the daughter of the man that was killed.

Her name was, Rebecca Regina Walter.

And she was captive for seven years.

Remember the movie dances with Wolves?

And, so that kind of stuff happened around here a lot, especially at this point in time of the French and Indian War.

So, that was, I think, at the back of the my head, she would, by the way, was exchanged.

She lived, there was a raid by Colonel Armstrong on Katanning, and he killed a number of the, natives.

But Shingiss escaped and moved to Ohio, and my fifth great grandmother went with him and lived in Muskingum County, Ohio.

So I think that's something that you often hear that those children who sometimes were kidnaped into native, tribes ended up liking it and were became loyal to them.

Or two of her brothers were also kidnaped.

One other brother was killed on the journey to Katanning because the little US couldn't keep up.

I mean, these were brutal times back then and, but, that happened to her brother.

So seven years later, there was a prisoner exchange and she was exchanged, as were her brothers that were surviving.

One of her brothers didn't like going back to the, you know, English life.

They were actually German, settlers.

But he went back and lived with the Native Americans.

So they probably they learned a new language.

They learned from seven years.

So if you're a kid, I mean, I think she came back at 17.

She was about ten.

So that was in the back of my mind.

I said, that's a plot.

I mean, an evil warlord and a character Shingiss and that's a real life character.

Now, I said at an earlier time, this story is kind of set in the South.

It's not kind of it's set in the Stone age, which around here might be 800 years ago instead of in 1755.

But, that kind of was in the back of my mind.

So I wanted, hero, you know, these formulas.

You have a hero sidekick, a villain and a love interest.

And those are kind of the four basic characters, which, by the way, if you most movies have similar characters, if you think of it.

All right.

But the book itself, I think, has a publication date of, 2021, which is last year.

Did you started in 2020 or did you.

Oh, I actually it it percolated, for quite a while, I mean, over a decade because what happened?

I submitted a manuscript to a publisher locally.

I won't name the company.

I don't even know if they're still in business.

And most authors experienced rejection.

And so I was rejected.

And so I showed it because I just wasn't into that fight to go.

I mean, this is a hobby for me.

And so then something came along called Amazon and the internet in the meantime, and I don't I know some people aren't into Amazon.

To me it was refreshing because anybody can put anything up without censorship on Amazon.

If you want to write a book, you can write a book.

It might not sell.

It's very hard to get traction to get noticed because they there's a joke.

There's more authors on Amazon than there are buyers, but, it's been pretty successful.

And so I came up back to the title of the book.

I won't Give away too much of the plot, but Tioga and Copi end up in a near-death experience trying to escape this warlord, and, Shingiss thinks they've died.

And so they decide to try to save their village, which is going to be attacked and destroyed.

And they decide to play the part of Ghost Warriors, because he thinks they're dead.

And, and so do all his men and all his men.

So they play tricks and kind of scare them, because back in those days, and this is true of humans, all across the globe, as you know, science has kind of changed the way we think.

But back 200 years ago or 500 years ago, or a thousand years ago, superstition and belief and spirits played a big part in your daily life.

Somebody gave you the evil eye.

I mean, he my better go talk to your local priest or witch doctor or whatever and get that curse removed.

And so I played into that.

So they use ghost warfare to try to try to stop the attack on their village.

And, I won't tell you whether they're successful, but, so for ten years of bubbling, did you rewrite it before?

Yeah, I so there one other interesting twist.

This I had known, but I thought this would be a cool character.

So in I think it was 1994, in the Italian Alps, some hikers found a body, that was melting out of the glacier, and they thought it was a climber for maybe 50 or 100 years before that, it had died in a climbing accident.

It turned out, it was not.

It was about a 5000 year old corpse eroding out of the ice, melting out of the ice.

And, this became big news in Europe and all over the world.

Because it's the oldest, mummy, they call him because they found skeletal remains.

But this, this body started skin on it.

It's still had its clothing, and it turns out it was murder.

He was murdered.

He was shot in the back by a bow and arrow up on the glacier, which is what they call it the oldest murder mystery in Europe.

They still don't know to this day exactly how he died, but they named him.

Oh, see, the Ice man.

Say it again.

Ötzi.

I call him Ötzi.

Ötzi.

But if you as an.

Oh, as an, lot, a lot.

And so my brother speaks German, said, oh, I think it's Ötzi is the correct Ötzi.

And so I decided to make him a character.

And so, so the idea of that was because he's kind of a cool, intriguing figure, real life historical figure that scientists he's had us he's been featured in National Geographic from the same era a thousand years ago.

It's about 5000 years ago.

And what they call the late Neolithic in Europe, which was very similar lifestyle metal was first coming into use, but he still had his bow and arrows and his flint arrow tips.

So I rolled him in because I thought, well, I'm of European descent and I want to read.

Or whether you're of Native American descent or, African descent or Asian descent or European ancestors, to realize your ancestors lived this way.

So in the story, it's the topography looks like Western PA, but the lifestyles kind of universal Stone age.

And so, he is a big character in the book, too.

And, I won't say what happens, but there's a second book called The Battle for the Emperor's Skull.

So I use the Ghost War Warrior series, and, the Emperor Skull is actually based on McKees rocks, and we could talk about that if you're interested.

I'm interested just because I know McKees rocks also has this.

I mean, McKees rocks had a mound, and we know that there were ancient people there.

There really?

People before the people we would call Native Americans.

No, I would call them Native Americans.

First peoples.

That's the people that came from Beringia, across the either the land bridge or by sea, from from Asia, from Asia.

And, they, you know, they and somehow they got to western Pennsylvania very quickly or very slowly, starting either 20,000 years ago or 15,000 years ago.

But they were here definitely by 12,000 years ago.

That I thought that was a cool landmark.

George Washington, when he did a survey into the history, said, there's a perfect place for Fort.

And he that was the the hill.

If you drive across the McKees Rocks Bridge towards McKees rocks, there's a hill.

It's got oil storage tanks up on it now.

And that was the hill, the promontory.

And at the front was a giant rock formation that protruded into the Ohio River.

And that was McKees rocks.

That's what they named McKees rocks after.

It's since been blown away by mining.

People wanted the stone to build their houses, but above the stone cliff, which I took the liberty to make into a carved skull the emperors.

Emperors skull.

So there's there's some fun creativity in there.

Fiction.

This is fiction.

But, there was a fortified village there.

It was about 600 years ago for maybe 400 years ago.

And George Washington actually met shingles at the village of McKees rocks.

And he was negotiating with the various chief chiefs of the area.

So, I was gonna say, because I think he also met Queen Aliquippa.

He did at McKeesport or somewhere near there.

I don't know where he met her, but, she was around two, and she was a power player of the day.

And, you know, the British were trying to convince the Native Americans to come on their side, and the French were trying to say, no, you're going to get a better deal with us.

And, but I just thought that was a fascinating thing to make that a focal point.

So there is a lot of western Pennsylvania in the series.

You know what?

I, I know that I could keep talking to you about this history because, I'm fascinated by all of that.

And, you know, but I'm also interested in actually the process by which you wrote the books.

Did you do it on a computer?

Yeah, I wrote it all myself.

Did the book covers myself and the maps and the maps.

I mean, they're beautiful.

Oh.

Thank you, I mean, I you know, I feel like I'm talking to J.R.R.

Tolkien or something.

I think he did his maps, but I'm not sure.

Well, I love token.

I mean, didn't we all?

I mean, yeah, in those maps in there.

And I hand drew the maps to begin with, but they looked a little cheesy.

And so then I found this, software program called Inkarnate.

And it's a little mapmaking program for people that want to create fantasy worlds.

Maybe, I don't know, there's so many fantasy games, like spin offs of Dungeons and Dragons, and they make their worlds.

And I said, oh, I could make my maps with this.

So I bought a, subscription.

I forget what it cost.

It wasn't expensive, and I play around with it.

I make the maps and I, I'm an inner 12 year old.

I'm still a 12 year old at heart.

At 59, I can still remember what I like to do at that age.

And I loved if I saw a book with maps.

I love Treasure Island when I was growing up.

I mean, X marks the spot.

So, I mean, I, I've written this down as a question.

Are you Tioga?

It's.

Yeah, in a way.

In a way I'm not.

I'm also copi I'm also I, I know that I am totally copi.

I didn't know either called copi or copi, but I know, I know him.

Now everybody's, you know, they say when you have a dream and you wake up with this vivid dream the next day.

And maybe it was very traumatic.

I've heard psychologists say, well, you, you know, you invented the dream in your head.

You're all the characters in the dream.

Like, you may have part villain that's chasing another part of you that's trying to do something.

So I don't see how you could write a song and not have it come out.

And when you do your documentaries, it's Rick see back.

I can feel it.

I mean, and so.

Well, I mean, I have also doubly impressed by the fact that you have a website for all of this.

tiogaandcopi.com.

Yeah, I did that myself just because I thought I wanted to.

I wanted to play this game a little.

I'm not a I'm, I had no experience being an author.

And, but Amazon allows you to cut out the agent and the publisher, and so like, you have to make a, you had to pay for a certain run at first or I mean, like, how do they print them, right?

No, that's print on demand.

Print on demand.

So you order one, they print one book, which means I make about a dollar a book.

I mean, it might sell for $10.

Amazon does very well, but when you make the submission, you give them the cover and the maps.

They have a cover creator.

I used Photoshop and I took pictures of my, of my nephews and then photoshopped them, added some weight on one, and changed some things on the other.

They're not too happy with the changes because it doesn't look like them anymore.

But and then I clip things and put it together.

So then I use their cover creator and it came out pretty cool.

I think, you know, if it may not be Barnes and Noble, but I think it it's held up.

People seem to like the covers I do.

I like the covers.

And, you know, there's been no, follow up.

No, no publisher has come to you and said, hey, we really like these books.

And now I've got.

But they are certainly cinematic as well, if you think about that.

Yeah.

I mean, I my guess my mind works that way.

I picture a scene and of course, you know, because you come up with ideas creatively, you're, you're picturing what you want to get on camera and you have to convey that to your producers and things to make it come through.

In my case, I have to write it in such a way that I get close to what I'm seeing in my mind to come out.

So, it's a creative process.

It's really fun to write them.

I hate to edit them.

You mean like to rewrite?

Oh, my God, the amount of my grammar and my spelling is horrendous.

Yeah, but those can be overcome.

Well, I, I have hired editors, copy editors, and, proofreaders.

I learned that on the second book, you should see a lot less typos.

The first book, it took me like, oh, I don't know that I've noticed any typos, and I'm usually sensitive to that, but I, no, I'm I'm always amazed at the speed, you know, of how fast they move, which I love.

I mean, and I think I like that in a movie or, you know, I would say that they're they're melodramatic, they're simple.

There's a bad guy and a good guy.

And but it moves with such speed.

And I wonder, I mean, do you plan that?

Do you know that?

This.

Do you know the plot?

Is it an outline or is it something that you write as you go and you're surprised as you go along?

Well, the first book I outlined wrote everything out.

Tried to have a three act structure.

You would know these terms and, turning points and things like this.

And it worked out.

But the second book, I was like, when I wrote the first book, I never knew I was going to write a second book.

I said, I'll never do that again.

That was way too much work.

And so, but then I got the first one up and I said, hey, take a shot at the second one.

The funny thing on the second one I did no planning of the plot.

You haven't finished it, so you have to see what works.

But, so far, so good.

I think it does.

And it gets better.

You know, it builds, but I woke up, Rick.

It was the coolest thing.

I did not plan it out.

Every day I woke up, a new chapter was downloaded into my head, and I just go type it out and.

And I keep doing it mostly in the morning when I know, whenever I feel like it and I'm not on set schedule.

So, and I think it works out.

And one of the things I try to do is I'm trying to entertain, right?

As you do when you do your your documentaries.

You better do that.

No, I think that's yeah.

I mean and it's, it's a I'm, I'm, I'm so happy to hear you say that because I think that is something that sometimes overlooked entertainment is part of all this.

Right.

If you don't entertain your reader or your viewer, you're going to lose them pretty quick.

And then if if I can keep their interest, I'm going to try to educate them on how people lived around here, where their ancestors lived in Europe or wherever.

And, you know, so.

And I want them to have fun.

Yeah.

So I one of the things that surprised me, but I figure you must have based this on some sort of historical evidence is the amount of, folk medicine and, you know, the use of herbs and things for curative purposes.

And, you know, I find that fascinating and that, you know, that's where Hope takes a little interest in that.

Yeah.

He's the son of a a doctor or a healer.

It would probably be in called.

And you mentioned a character I call her the Ganga Switch.

And she appears briefly in book one, or at least speaking of her.

Right.

She's prominently featured in book two, and she's basically a witch doctor, to use a colloquial term.

It's funny you said, where do you get these names?

And I had originally named it the, the river in India, the Ganges, Ganges, and an Indian friend of mine.

Actually, he didn't take exception to it, but somebody else said, you know, that might be offensive because that's a holy river.

And so I changed it from Ganges to Ganga's.

And then I was looking at a map just the other day, and I see of India, Ganges.

And then in parentheses.

Ganga, meaning that's their other word for it.

Holy holy river.

So you're still so?

It's still used without intending to.

But but but she has, she I by the way, I, I try to base the storyline in real reality, like real things that have happened.

It's not all happen to the same people, but a lot of it's based on real life events.

And I try to have the characters when they go through trials, they have to get out of them using the laws of physics.

They don't get a magic wand.

You know nothing against Harry Potter.

I love the Harry Potter books, but when she wrote them, she could do things I can't do because I'm operating within the real world.

And, I, I kind of look at, Tioga as kind of a MacGyver character where he comes up with creative ways to get them out of fixes.

And Copi is his best buddy and sidekick.

And, Copi is more spiritual and he kind of his intuitive gifts.

And so he relates in the second book to Ganga because she's the witch doctor and she's starting to pass on knowledge to him.

So, you know, they're a nice yin and yang.

One's super logical.

And the other kind of emotional and spiritual, and they have to get out of these tight spots.

And we haven't mentioned Hanna.

I picked a female character.

I thought, well, what name should I use?

And and I thought, well, Native Americans had the Susquehannock River, and there's the Loyalhanna Creek here in western Pennsylvania.

So I'm just going to take Hannah off the end because, it's kind of a cool name that's still popular, but yeah, it has historical origins.

Oh, it's funny, when I and I've gotten into the second book, I wondered if anything had happened as a result of comments from the first book.

No, because I haven't had a lot of them.

The second, the second book, has more of a female presence, not only the Ganga switch, but Hanna is a bigger character in the second half and she she emerges and she's part of the trio in the second book.

And, you know, remember the TV series Big Bang Theory?

It started with this, guys.

And then, I forget the character name across the aisle.

But as that storyline went on, more, they all started to get girlfriends and they all the cast kind of branched out to be more balanced.

It's kind of my intent to try to interest, young girls or young women, in the books as well as boys.

I mean, it's equal opportunity.

So Hannah emerges and she becomes a ghost warrior in the second book.

So, I know that we could talk on and on, and I haven't even looked at my questions that I wanted to ask you.

I have I had to edit this all down.

No, no, no, what I want.

So if we've enticed someone enough to get the books, they just.

How do they do this?

How how do you find.

Only they're only available on Amazon.

And that's because they're to get into school libraries.

It's complicated bureaucracy to get into bookstores, different channel, different companies.

You have to use.

So I just went with Amazon, which has about half of the book market right now.

And, they're doing reasonably well.

They're sometimes the number one sellers in their categories.

Amazon has a lot of categories, and they reevaluate who's number one every hour.

So you might be a number one for an hour.

Take a screenshot if you are.

And you know, I try not to put that out too much, you know, I mean, well, you gave me the first one when we had we met for lunch last October.

But, the second one, I thought, I'm going to order just to find out what this is like.

And literally, I put it in, I think I was there two days later.

It was on my front porch.

It's amazing.

Yes.

Yeah.

And, so I know some people don't like Amazon, but it's just for a debut author, a beginning out.

It's by far the easiest way, you know, you have connections, perhaps to go to a traditional publisher if you wanted to write the Rexy back story.

But, you know, for somebody starting out, I recommend Amazon.

It's worked great.

Well, I, you know, I, I can't say how much I, you know, respect and, you know, honor that I have for you because I think these books are really good.

Thank you.

You know, I just think they're, you know, I would recommend them to anybody.

Not just kids.

I would recommend them to anyone, you know, and and the fact that they are set here in this territory that I know a little bit about, I love that, but I understand that it could be anywhere.

Right.

And, but I've also always loved the fact that, I mean, I think George Washington never calls the point.

The point?

He calls it the Forks.

And you call it the Forks.

I call it the forks.

I, I've worked in the point a little bit later in the second book because I call it the point.

All right.

But I've always loved that term, the forks and, you know, so it's, there's so much to like about these books.

I recommend them to anyone.

And I thank you for being our guest today.

Sure.

Thanks for having me.

And I you know, it's it's April of 2022, when we're talking here.

But we did meet first about these books at MoMA last October.

Right.

And, you know, I say that, you know, is there going to be a third?

Is this a trilogy?

Is this an ongoing series?

Is it the Hardy Boys or I, I, I can said after the first one, I never do this again.

And then I read the second one and it was way easier to write the third one.

It's about half written and, but that's still a long way to getting it out because of my grammar and spelling mistakes, which need to be cleaned up.

I have to do almost everything myself.

Rick.

I mean, I've hired some people, to help with the copyediting, but, it it's, I think at least three.

We'll see how it goes.

I mean, I'll tell you one funny story about my nephews that are on the cover.

So after I got the first book done, I was kind of excited.

It came in in the mail from Amazon.

I got my books in print, and I went to my nephews and said, hey boys, here's a copy of my book, which they knew I was writing.

And I said thanks.

I didn't hear anything for a couple weeks, and I ran into them.

About a month later, I said, you know, Matthew, Max, what do you think of the books?

Matthew hadn't touched it.

Max read the little and said, and it's not for me.

And so I learned that was a valuable lesson.

It's not.

And you know this from production.

Not everything.

Not everything you do is kind of gonna resonate with everybody.

But I do think there's kids out there and, you know, video games is what I'm competing against in a way.

And but there's nothing better than a good book when you can just relax and read a good book.

And I want to see kids know about our history.

I want to see kids outside more, I want to I played in the woods a lot.

And, there's still something about getting off the computer and go out, make a fort in the woods, or go for a hike or go fishing.

And so that's part of my hope that that'll kind of awaken that part.

I think it's awakened a lot of kids already, but, try to get outside and enjoy nature.

And so hopefully that'll help to read a book when you get to read a book when you get home or bring the book with you.

So there you have it, some wise advice from Mr.

Bill Tippins and a reminder for me to check out his two books, both available on Amazon.com.

The Ghost Warriors and the Ghost Warriors.

Colon The Battle for the Emperor's Skull, written for the 13 year old and everybody, but effective and exciting even for older readers like me.

We say big thanks to our guest, Mr.

Bill Tippins.

We invite you to leave a comment or review on this podcast, and tune in again for another episode of Gum Bands, wherever you get your podcasts.

Gum bands is made possible by the Buell Foundation and by listeners like you.

Thanks.

This Gumbands podcast is made possible by the Buell Foundation, serving southwestern Pennsylvania since 1927 and by listeners like you.

Thank you.