Coming up next on Curate.

I didn't know that I wanted to be a writer.

I just knew I enjoyed making up story.

So this idea that me, a regular person could write my own book, mind blowing experience, I was a little kid.

I used to get in trouble for drawing on myself and I spotted a little tattoo peeking out on my dad's shirt and he told me that it doesn't wash off.

It's always there and something just kind of clicked in my brain.

Hello again from the WHRO Studios, I'm Heather Mazzoni.

And I'm Jason Kypros.

On this episode of Curate, we meet a Chesapeake born storyteller who builds entire galaxies with words.

Arthur Lamar Giles' imagination has taken him from gripping contemporary novelists all the way to the Star Wars universe.

Yeah, because apparently writing about everyday teens wasn't enough.

He said, let me casually add Jedi to my resume With Stephen King as one of his biggest inspirations.

Lamar learned early how to mix heart fear and unforgettable characters And now he's doing the same just sometimes with lightsabers.

I didn't know that I wanted to be a writer.

I just knew I loved to read and I enjoyed making up stories and I ended up winning the short story contest when I was in fourth grade, our teacher said, everyone in the grade's gonna participate in young authors where you get to write and illustrate your own book.

That was mind blowing to me because up till then I didn't realize the names on the spines of books were real people.

The real people I knew worked at factories.

They were teachers, they were firefighters or they were soldiers.

So this idea that me, a regular person from Hope Well could write my own book, mind Blowing experience, I really went all in and I wrote a book called Giant Dinosaur Inside and it's about a boy who pulls a Godzilla creature out of a cereal box and that creature goes on a rampage through the city.

I won the contest and from there I was like, wow, I'm the best writer in my grade.

Before that, I wasn't the best at anything.

I was probably in my early twenties before I realized you could really make money.

I got my master's in fine arts at Old Dominion.

I also did my undergrad at Old Dominion.

I was a mass communications major with an English minor and I finished undergrad in 2001.

Went back, started my master's in 2014 and finished that In 2017 I decided to start trying to sell my short stories sold the first one I ever went out with and didn't really have much success after that for many years, but I kept at it because it was better than my day job.

Every morning for like 10 years I would get up at five 30 and write from seven before I went into the office and did my day job, kept making stories, started writing books.

They didn't really go anywhere, but I felt myself getting better and eventually I got good enough to sell more stories and eventually sell a novel and I haven't looked back since.

The first novel I sold was Fake Id.

We sold it actually in 2011.

It published in 2014 and that was a young adult mystery about a boy in the Witness Protection Program.

His family moves to their fourth town in four years and the only friend he makes gets murdered, so he wants to use his street smarts to figure out who did it the same time I sold it.

I got laid off for my day job for the second time, so I never sought another job in corporate America after that.

I came to Hampton Roads in 1997.

When I came to ODU for undergrad after I graduated in 2001, I moved to Chesapeake.

The library I went to was the Greenbrier branch of the Chesapeake Public Library, the Chesapeake Public Library particularly that branch made all the difference in the world of me selling my first book because they had a writer's group that would meet there called Sisters in Crime.

Sisters in Crime is a nationwide organization with local branches.

These are people who are passionate about writing usually crime, writing mysteries, things of that nature, and they would meet once a month.

I was able to work through early chapters of fake ID with that group and eventually get it to the point where I could get a literary agent and that literary agent was able to sell it to the major publisher that started in Chesapeake.

People often ask what my favorite novel is and it always feels a little difficult because it's sort of like saying, what's your favorite kid if you have a bunch of kids?

I'm gonna name three.

I would say The Getaway, which is my dystopian horror novel from 2022, not So Pure and Simple, which is my coming of age comedy from 2019 and then the last last day of summer, which is my middle grade fantasy, the first of a four book series from 2019.

I say those three because I'm proud of them, but I also think they show the range of what I can do.

The getaway comes up a lot because there was a lot of buzz around it when it came out.

Don Cheadle's production company won the rights to possibly make a TV show out of it.

There was a situation with fake ID where the rights were bought by a producer named Seth Gordon.

He made the Goldbergs The rights for the last last day of summer were with Lee Daniels before Kobe Bryant passed.

What I pieced together is his daughters must have been reading a book or two of mine.

He followed me on Twitter and then dmd me saying he liked the book Spin My Mystery novel from 2019.

He made a really nice post about spin.

His people talked to my agent.

Unfortunately nothing came together before the tragic helicopter crash.

I got one of his books on my bookshelf behind me that he sent me and inside so I, that's something I'll cherish forever.

I was able to write a book for Star Wars called Sanctuary, a bad batch novel, which is based on the bad batch television show that ran for three seasons on Disney plus working with Star Wars.

That's a franchise that's been in my life as long as I can remember.

So to get the call to work in that universe and write something that's considered canon, meaning it's a permanent part of the big story, it makes you feel like you've made all the right steps.

Star Wars is pretty much an established country at this point if you were to put it in real world terms 'cause they've got their own military history, own religious history and so forth.

And so writing in the universe, I went into it thinking I would have more restrictions, but they're actually pretty open about you having ideas and they'll tell you like, Hey, you can't do this because it would contradict something else.

In Canon it's interesting because you start to learn a bunch of things about something you thought you already knew a lot about.

But outside of those little nuances, the story team was really open to my ideas and I would say like 95% of what I pitched for the story, they were totally fine with it.

Thank you for coming and picking the book.

I hope you enjoy like I'm, I'm a bad, obviously I'm a bad batch fan, too obvious.

So I tried to do right, so this year I am the inaugural writer in residence at William and Mary and so that position pretty much makes me an ambassador for the library, for the Arts for Literacy, the special collections that they have at William and Mary.

I do events where I bring in some of my friends who are writers, editors, agents and we do webinars where we sort of get behind the scenes of publishing for the people in the William and Mary community and the public who have some interest in writing or publishing or the other aspects of the publishing industry.

And also shed a light on some of our Virginia writers, particularly some of the women writers that you may not be aware of are connected to the university.

I did a webinar with Lee Boudreaux, she edited Percival Everett James, which won pretty much all the major awards last year.

Being able to reach out to people like that who are connected with the university, it's amazing.

I don't take this for granted, I know this.

This is not a career that a lot of people get to have, even though a lot of people want it.

And so I'm appreciative of everyone over the many years who've read the books.

I love meeting the young readers and older readers and I, I enjoy the fact that I'm able to do this and provide for my family.

So thankful to everyone out there who's paid attention and wants to see more.

I've been doing the math calculating the the pros in the cons.

The checks on the list darling, I don't know where you fit.

I know I, I second guess in my steps isn't moving too fast.

Is it all in my, is your color along?

I did come where?

I'm I I'm just lost in the dark.

I'm just holding your head.

Is it a house that's built on set?

I did You mean what to say?

Could you say, could you cross your heart over and over because have been here before?

It was Did you?

Woohoo.

Woohoo.

I fall again and I fall again.

Did I get right?

Is he gonna be right?

Did you come hold me?

I know, I know I did.

You come to Created by ODU students.

This film explores how a local professional wrestler turns the ring into a stage for identity resistance and self-expression.

In doing so, Billy Dixon challenges tradition and reshapes what professional wrestling can be.

My ring name is Billy Dixon.

It's named after my grandfather that I started watching wrestling with back in the South Bronx.

We used to watch it all the time 'cause I lived with my grandparents.

It was a really cool bounding opportunity for us.

Professional wrestling is like the best form of entertainment and it's the last form of theater in a round experience, 360 degrees and you get to control people's emotions.

You get one take to get it done, to make people feel happy or sad or angry and the rush that you get from performing is electric and there's really nothing like it.

Wrestling's an art form because it is fake, it's not real.

The winners are predetermined.

We do have a story to tell.

A show does tell you a cohesive story from start to finish.

A lot of what we do, how you throw a punch, how you do a body slam, when you do the body slam, that's all art and that's all choices that you make as characters coming up with your own character and persona and the outfit and the music.

Those are all artistic choices.

The fact that what we do is theater and the fact that what we tell is a morality play, which is about the plight of good versus evil is art in and of itself.

'cause most promoters that you'll work for are definitely gonna be on the more conservative side and definitely not gonna have a worldly view where they understand things like people are not a monolith and that expression comes in different shapes and sizes and forms and all kinds of things.

My job in wrestling is to change the way we see queer representation in this sport.

No way you can catch this flow on another level up if you know makes time and some shine and bride Paris is Bumping is the brain child of something I came up with during the pandemic when I was a teenager I would go to the ballroom balls and extravaganzas in New York City.

So enamored by this world and how competitive it was, but more importantly how physical it was, the athleticism, the the charisma that these performers had.

And it reminded me so much of wrestling and that seed was planted there.

We created a show that took place in a literal bar in the middle of nowhere and we had wrestling matches and instead of championships they fought for trophies like you would in ballroom really to prove the point that people who are cis head or people who are trans or gay or whatever, we're all just people and we're all the same.

And these two things that appear to be complete and total opposites are more similar than you think.

One of the things that is similar with ballroom and wrestling is that there are teams and in ballroom it's called a house and a house has a hierarchy like a family would.

And in wrestling we have stables where there is a hierarchy there and both teams are trying to win prizes and wrestling championship titles in ballroom trophies and grand prizes 'cause you can win cash at balls in Paris is Bumping.

What we did was we tried to incorporate that similarity with pairing wrestlers and people who are drag queens or volgers and everything you compete for in the show you can get a trophy for.

So that same kind of competitive drive to win the championships, win the goal, win the big tournaments still go into the concept and this is the part where everybody makes this trend.

Number one, Yes It's Gonna be a fat black queen who's gonna come out here looking like he's never looked before, that is gonna spit in the face of everything, everything you try to emulate and you failed that I was terrified of what the public reception was gonna be because there hasn't been anything like what we did in 2020 where we have performers doing strip teases that are not cishet women.

When you see that it was one of the most highest watch shows on our platform, IWTV, that's a huge feather in the cap.

And the fact that I know for certain there were viewings of it at the WWE performance Center, that gear with Hall of Famers watching it and just being like, check this out, it's cool.

You know when people tell me that these shows are the reason why they got into wrestling or when trans women tell me the reason why they felt comfortable getting into wrestling was because there were spaces like Paris is Bumping that really means more than like the WWE championship ever could.

'cause that's more impossible than winning the WWE championship.

I feel like when it's time for me to have my last wrestling match hang up the overalls for good, I left wrestling a little bit cleaner than I found it.

I am a art school dropout.

All I wanted to do was make art that kind of rages against the machine.

And I do feel like for one night we got to turn the wrestling world upside down that all eyes were on us.

Tattoos are works of art and those who get, a lot of them do so because they love the art and the artist Fascinated with tattooing.

Since childhood, Ethan Clemmer would draw on himself or doodle in class whenever he could.

So in adulthood he naturally took up the craft inspired by surreal horror and the unusual textures of living things.

Ethan has established a unique style and client base in Hampton Roads Not one to be still.

Clemmer has recently taken up painting delving heavily into themes of life and death.

The magic of tattooing and art and everything is figuring out a way to put your fingerprint on something that kind of makes it stand out, that looks like you did it even though it's just a rose.

I was a little kid, I used to get in trouble for drawing on myself and I spotted a little tattoo peeking out on my dad's shirt and asked him why he drew on his self and he told me that it doesn't wash off, it's always there.

And something just kind of clicked in my brain when he said that.

I think usually when people start playing around with the idea of getting tattooed, they try to attach some sort of meaning to it as almost a way of justifying the act of getting the tattoo.

But if they end up being more regular and frequent to getting tattooed, they kind of start to lose that attachment and it becomes more about the art at that point.

When I design, I do start out either working up sketches or kind of meshing photos together digitally.

It depends on what the person really wants.

It started with him wanting something a little bit more on the realism side of it and as he got a little bit more comfortable with me and saw a little bit more of my art and person and he kind of started to gravitate towards something more like that.

So it went from working from photos and manipulating those to achieve what he actually wants to just drawn on them.

With Sharpies.

What I like about tattooing is the temporary permanence of it.

It is indelible and it is there, but it's only there for the lifespan of the person wearing it.

Eventually it will be gone.

I have definitely became a better tattoo artist because of painting.

The horror thing kind of stems down from movies, music, pop culture, HP Lovecraft stuff.

HR Geiger is a huge influence.

I didn't really seriously start painting until probably about three years ago when I paint, I just kind of get that half fun and push paint around on a canvas.

So yeah, it's just a little bit freer.

There's no real pressure involved.

My favorite painter is Kinski and his stuff was a, it was very organic but it wasn't Mechanical skulls are interesting to me because of the textural patterns and stuff that exist in 'em.

If you really look hard enough you'll see that they exist everywhere.

Organic stuff like mycelium patterns and the way that things just exist naturally.

I like to kind of replicate that and stuff that it shouldn't exist in.

I experienced that at a pretty young age.

My mom died, it was homecoming night my freshman year of high school actually.

And then before that I'd already lost my grandparents and all that stuff so I was exposed to it early on.

So like it definitely doesn't affect me very hard later in life.

It's normal, it's natural.

Just as natural as the textures and patterns and stuff that we were talking about everywhere else.

Everything has a lifespan.

The more creative freedom someone gives you, the better job I feel like you're gonna produce anyway because you're more in your own element.

When people try to micromanage the way that you do things is what takes a lot of the fun out of it.

I kind of enjoy the idea of taking someone's simple idea and making something really cool that far outs shines, whatever they had in mind.

It's rewarding too when they, the way that they do.

But you won't get that if you try to tell somebody how to do their job.

Welcome back to Curate Presents.

I am Kayda Plus and I'm here with Nate Brown.

How's it going?

I'm doing good brother.

How about you?

I'm doing very well.

I wanna talk with you about your music videos, but first I wanna make sure I got your name right.

I see you go by a few different names.

A majority of people they call me Ka and that was just like a a old nickname that I got since high school 'cause I used to wear a lot of hats, but I'm showing gray's now and I'm showing a lot of wisdom.

So I want to be, I called by my name, you know Nate.

Got it, got it.

I'll call you Nate.

So Nate, how did you first get into making music videos?

I started back like in high school doing music myself.

So we had came up with a hair raising idea by just taking our music, put it on the CDs, put it in the trunk.

This is back in the day now.

Right, right.

And take it across country and whatnot.

And when we did that, I told him just get a camera.

And from that point on I just started doing videos after just capturing what we had on the road.

So from there to doing a music video with Roberta Lee, what's it called?

Too much of a woman.

The video was recorded here, but we got the honor to be shown in on Times Square.

And who wouldn't be excited to see all our work on this stage like that?

Okay, so you have a tutorial series, right?

Yes.

I'm directly talking to the creators out there that have a little bit much to nothing, but they still want to make something impactful.

So I took upon myself to say, well I can use this light and maybe that light, put it together, show people that how to position it in these scenes to make something look interesting.

And I want everybody to realize that the purpose is much bigger than the person that's actually executing it, if you get what I'm saying.

I do.

So I went on and took it upon myself, went from the lighting tech tutorial deal and ended up transitioning to bringing out the daily dose, Bringing out what's the daily dose.

It's like something that somebody need to hear to know somebody sees them where they are and believe in them.

Now it's their job to actually take that sense of belief and get out there and become greater than what they was before.

'cause you already got one person in your corner.

And that's myself.

'cause I believe in you.

Tell me about pace, But I'm just letting people know in pace, life is at your pace.

You ain't in any other race but your own.

You take care of yourself first.

Everything around you will be taken care of.

Can I hire you as a motivational speaker?

Thank you so much for coming by.

And what we're gonna do right now is check out pace.

Appreciate you.

Bye.

Pace.

That word alone changed how I see life.

Most of us rushing into competition without even thinking, comparing, chasing, trying to outrun the next person's success.

I ain't gonna lie, I did it too.

And for a while it felt like fuel Truth is it wasn't building me, it was breaking me.

See, motivation is like a spark.

It lights you up for a moment.

But when the noise quiets down and when it's just you and your thoughts, you start asking these real questions like, is life really meant to be lived like this?

Or do I have to keep forcing myself into someone else's lane to prove I'm moving forward?

That's when Pace showed up for me.

Running taught me something simple but powerful.

This is my race and no one else's.

And when I stopped chasing their speed and started running at Mines, I tapped into a potential I didn't even know it was there.

Life isn't about sprinting through someone else's pal.

It's about staying consistent in your own step by step, scribe by stride, recognize that this is your race and the victory comes when you win at your own pace.

Keep going.

I don't know about you Jason, but I'm inspired to get out and run all of a sudden.

Yeah, it's easy to get caught up in the mindset.

The films have to be so complex to make a point, but a project like that proves when people speak from the heart, it can have a huge impact on its audience.

I couldn't have said it any better.

Well actually you could have, What do you mean?

Well, it's been written on the teleprompter.

We're just trading lines.

You could have read mine before I did.

Jason, you are too much.

We'll see you next time for the finale of Season 10 on Curate.