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He's a teacher, nature photographer, and French horn player.

He also likes studying foreign languages, and he's written four sci-fi books for young adults.

Coming up next on Tennessee Writes, we're sitt.. with author Ryan Matthews.

We'll find out how this former graphic designer, this teacher, comes up with ideas for a dystopian future.

Get your coffee pot brewing and get comfortable.

Tennessee Writes starts right now.

-Books about Tennessee.

-Books that come from Tennessee authors.

-Books and stories with a Tennessee twist.

-West Tennessee PBS presents Tennessee Writes.

-Hello, my name is Peter Noll, and you found the show about books with a Tennessee connection.

You'll meet the people who went from thinking, "I should write a book," to actually doing it.

Some of our authors are from Tennessee, others have moved here, and others have a book with a Tennessee twist.

Today, Tennessee Writes welcomes author Ryan Matthews.

He's a Tennessee teacher by day, and writes sci-fi books at night, or whenever he can find time.

He's been a graphic designer, plays the French horn, and enjoys taking pictures in nature.

Please welcome Ryan Matthews.

-Thank you so much for having me.

-Ryan, welcome to Tennessee Writes.

How does a teacher, and you teach English to people that don't speak native English, correct?

-That's correct, yes.

-It's E-S-O-L?

-In some states they call it E-S-L, in some states they call it E-S-O-L, but it's basically, yes, English to speakers of other languages.

-Okay.

When did you think, "I'm going to become a sci-fi writer"?

-I'd always wanted to write a book, but every time I had an idea for a book, I'd start to write, and then it would be too similar to something else.

When COVID happened, we were all furloughed.

I had about four months at home and was just twiddling my thumbs.

I was like, well, now's a great time to write a book.

I had the idea for Release Day, or what became Release Day.

It actually started out a little weirder, but I started typing, and before I knew it, I had a solid beginning to the book, and I just kept writing and writing.

Then, eventually, I finished the book, and I was like, "I guess I wrote a book."

-Ryan, we have heard from more authors that their books either started or got completed during COVID, during the lockdown.

How did that happen?

You had thought about writing books, and then what happened?

-I would spend time at home.

I would start writing.

For me, writing, it's like watching a movie in my head.

There's two different types of writers, really.

There's the type of people who plan, they have a detailed outline, and then they write according to their outline.

Then there's the other type of people.

It's, what we do is we just write literally by the seat of our pants.

We call it pantsing.

As I write, that's how I write.

Go ahead.

-Tell me what your wife and family thought, because they're all locked up, too, in the house during COVID, and they maybe have a list of stuff that dad could be doing during this period, but you're busy writing.

-It's definitely a balance.

I had to balance the time that we'd spend with family and the time that I'd spent writing, because it's very easy to hole up in the bedroom and spend all day writing.

Generally, I found out that I write better in the mornings, and I would start writing in the morning, and I'd try to finish sometimes around noon because any thing that I wrote after noon, the quality would start to drop.

The quality throughout, not only this book, but throughout the series, was very important to me.

I wanted to make sure that my writing is as good as I can make it.

-Now, you're a teacher, and you've taught in Jackson, Madison County Public Schools?

-Correct.

-Now you're currently teaching in Trenton.

-Trenton Special School District, yes.

-How does that work with kids that are maybe like, "Ooh, he's written the Release Day series."

Do you have that come up?

-We do.

Not only my kids, but the general ed kids also want to read it.

We've limited it at the library to seventh grade and up, because it is young adult fiction, so the appropriate level is about 13.

I tell parents when they ask it's PG-13.

I have plenty of adults who thoroughly enjoy it, too.

As long as they're in seventh grade, I'm happy to let kids read it.

-Do you have like a fan club of students at school that want your signature and hang out outside your classroom?

-Not really, but you got to understand middle schoolers.

Middle schoolers are like, "It was good."

That's how they answer everything.

Having a middle schooler excited about my book, that's what really sets me off.

It's because I'm like, "Hey, they're showing emotion."

-Talk to me about stuff when you're not being a husband, a dad, and teaching that you like to do.

-Right now, I've been spending a lot of time playing the French horn.

I've joined the community band here in Jackson, and I've had a lot of fun.

I'm not that particularly great.

A lot of the people in the community band, they're former educators, like music educators, and a lot of them are people who did band in high school.

I didn't do either one of those.

I'm self-taught.

I just decided that the French horn is a beautiful instrument, and I want to play it.

I've just been making some funny noises ever since.

-Ryan, you're from Jackson, right?

Where'd you go to high school?

-I graduated from Jackson Central-Merry in 2002.

-Then you went on to college, and where did you go to college?

-I went to Union, both graduate and undergraduate.

-Okay.

When you were young, a boy growing up here in Jackson, what type of books were you reading?

-Star Wars.

-Star Wars.

-A lot of Star Wars.

You can tell, if you read the series and you're a Star Wars nerd, you'll pick up on quite a few little nods to Star Wars throughout.

-Do you have like Easter eggs that people can look for?

-I do.

-Are those plotted out or do those just come to you?

-They come naturally.

Nothing was planned.

I'm not like, "Oh, I need to put this joke in this scene."

It's not like that.

It's I'm writing and I think, "Oh, this response.. Oh, it just happens to coincide with Star Wars.

That's cool."

-Does your wife and your fellow teachers i.. do they read your books?

-Some of them.

I mostly work at the elementary school.

I work at the middle school and the elementary both, but most of my time is spent with the elementary.

At the elementary school, it's mostly female teachers who prefer romance.

Several of the teachers have read my book because it's my book, but they've branched out into sci-fi.

It's not something they would normally read, but they have liked it.

That makes me feel good.

-Do you think you will branch out into rom.. -I don't know about romance.

I just don't feel qualified to write a romance, but my next book is a mystery, so I am branching out a little bit.

Sci-fi, particularly post-apocalyptic sci-fi, is my comfort zone.

I really enjoy writing it, so I will probably return to that, but the mystery is really important to me.

My mom was a huge fan of mysteries, and she never got to see me write.

It was important to me to at least write one mystery as a project for her.

Then if it's not any good, I just won't write anymore.

If people love it, I don't know, maybe I'll be the author who writes sci-fi.

I've got to say this right.

I will either be the author who wrote a mystery or the mystery aut.. who wrote a sci-fi.

[music] -Ryan, let's delve into Release Day.

This is the first of a four-part series, dystopian future for young adults.

Did you say age 13 and up is usually?

-Yes, 13 and up.

-I don't like to give away anything, spoilers, so I'll let you give a little synopsis of your book and the series.

-Okay.

Generally, what I say when people ask, this is the most common question I get at events, what's your book about?

Every time it's like, okay, here it goes.

Essentially what happens is about 400 years in the future, this race of giant alien insects, they've swarmed the surface of the earth, and they've wiped out most of humanity.

What's left is burrowed underground.

Then over the course of time, they've built these underground bunker cities.

Because of what just naturally happens with entropy, the cities are falling apart, the governments are corrupt, the people living in the cities are just apathetic to the cause, they've given up the fight.

This is our humanity's lot.

During this whole course, there's a group of teenagers, they're trained to fight.

All teenagers, all the children in these cities are trained.

They're raised to fight these bugs, to fight in this war.

This group of teenagers, they're scheduled to go out at the beginning of this first book.

Then right before they go out, they discover a secret that's totally going to change their lives.

-What would you say is the biggest thing that would surprise readers after they get into reading Release Day?

-Probably the behavior of the bugs.

What I think is most interesting about this race of insect species is it's based on the behavior of actual bugs.

I'm not really creating these new behaviors.

If you think about it, bugs are actually terrifying.

I just made them bigger.

-When I was reading, and I listened to it as well, I do the sync back and forth, I thought somebody who is an anthropologist or studies bugs wrote the book.

How much research did you have to do on the bugs and bee--?

it was quite specific.

-During the whole course of the book, I had several tabs open, like Thesaurus.com, Wikipedia, which was usually open to a page about a specific bug, and then Google Earth, because the whole entire journey, I scrolled through Google Earth at a pretty high magnification.

They're actually walking through areas.

Now, obviously, I wasn't looking at each curve in the trail, but there was a whole lot of research, and I found some pretty interesting things on Google Earth.

-Like what?

-I remember, one, there was a picture of a guy riding a cow in the back of a truck, and I was like, all right.

It's just one of those things that, there's a lot .. that nobody thinks about unless you're looking at the minuscule details in Google Earth.

-When you set off with Release Day, did you know it was going to be four books?

-I knew it was going to be more than one.

I think it was when I finished the second one.

I was thinking, "There's no way this is going to be three, and I don't want to write five."

I was like, "Four it is," and I settled on that.

I was like, "It will be finished in four," and I feel like I hit the target.

-Dystopian, especially teenage dystopian stories, have been really popular lately.

The whole Hunger Games took it off, the whole Divergent series of movies, and they're all based on books.

Do you think there's an appetite for more and more and more of these type of teenage dystopian future stories where the future is horrible, but teenagers come and save the day?

-I think there absolutely is.

It's one of those storylines that people will never get tired of.

Also it serves as almost a warning, like this is what could happen if we don't change some things.

I love that about sci-fi is you get to put your social commentary in the work and hopefully improve society as a result.

-What should a reader know before going into the Release Day series?

-Have a cup of coffee ready.

Maybe cancel your priorities so you can just focus and enjoy the series.

-Is it a series where you can pick up the third book and read that and it stands alone, or does it really benefit the reader to start out with Release Day?

-I personally would prefer people start out with the first.

It is possible to pick up the second one and figure out what's going on, or the third one.

To get the most benefit, you really should read one, two, three, and four, in that order.

-For people that are thinking, "I've always had this idea to write a sci-fi book," what advice would you give them?

-Sit down and write.

That's the second most common questions I get when I'm at events is, "I'm writing a book.

What do I need to do?"

I'm always like, "Sit.. is going to happen until you just write.

The cool thing about writing, especially now on a computer as opposed to a typewriter or by hand, is you can write something and it's not great and you can just backspace and fix it.

Just getting it on the page is the most important part.

-When you meet a stranger on the street or at a cocktail party and they say, "Hey, Ryan, so what do you do?"

What do you tell them?

Do you say, "I'm a teacher," or "I'm a writer"?

-It's funny how we ask that, and it's funny how we identify ourselves by our jobs.

I generally say teacher.

I will also tell them that I'm an author if I think about it.

It's one of those things that's so ingrained for me to automatically jump to the full-time job because right now, this is not fully supporting me.

That'd be nice.

-Would you love it to eventually go that way.. and hello to full-time writing?

-I've thought about that a lot.

It's a weird question.

I got into teaching because I wanted to help people, specifically immigrants.

I feel like if I quit to become a full-time author, I would no longer be doing that.

If I just, I don't know, made millions off the book, then what I would probably do is find some way to either stay involved with the school system or stay involved with immigrants so that I was still doing something to benefit the community more directly.

I would probably spend a lot more time writing.

[music] -We've come to the part in Tennessee Writes we like to call the Lightning round.

It's where we ask our authors a set of questions about books and writing and see how many they can answer in two minutes.

Do you want to play?

-I do.

-Okay.

We'll put two minutes on the clock, and it'll start counting down after the first question is read.

What is your favorite book of all time?

-Probably Lord of the Rings.

My wife kept pushing me to read it, and I finally read it, and I was like, "Okay, this is really good."

-Name a book you're reading right now.

-Leviathan Wakes for the second time.

-Last book you finished reading.

-That would be King of Trees.

It's a Chinese book my brother-in-law sent me.

-What author, living or dead, would you most like to have over to your house for dinner?

-Pass.

That's a tough one.

-Paper books or e-books?

-Paper books all the way.

-Who would you want to play you if your life became a book and movie?

-DJ Qualls.

I know that's really random.

-Favorite place to read books?

-Bed.

-Least favorite place to read books?

-Airports.

-First book you can remember reading?

-King Mitch Had an Itch.

-On average, how many books do you read in one year?

-It's usually around 30 if it's a good year, but I spend a lot of time writing.

-What book has most influenced your life?

-[?]

-Name an author you most admire.

-That's another tough one.

I don't know.

-How many books are on your nightstand right now?

-4, but my TBR list is about 400.

-Do you own more paperback books or hardcover books?

-Paperbacks.

-What's your favorite movie based on a book?

-I don't [?]

many adaptations.

I think the books [?]

-What book have you read that [?]

-None.

I'll read romance, I'll read fantasy, I'll read everything.

It doesn't matter.

-What's the last audio book you .. -Actually, my own.

-Whose autobiography is your all-time favorite?

-Biography of Peter the Great.

[music] -It's always fun to hear the author read out loud the words they put on paper.

Ryan, would you read a little bit from your book?

-I would, but I will tell you there's a reason I hired a narrator.

Prologue.

Pack.

I was running, running like my life depended o..

In actuality, all of our lives depended on it.

I'd spent years training for this day, the day we permanently shut the gates to the city, sealing ourselves in indefinitely from the looming threat above.

I pushed myself hard as I could go, my injured leg doing everything it could to hold me back.

"Pack," shouted Keani, my friend and fellow access engineer.

"For all," he shouted, placing his fist over his chest.

Without slowing down, I shouted back over my shoulder, "For all."

It was hard-pressed to calm the twist of emotions inundating my mind.

I charged down the main access corridor leading to the ramp with the open, armored double doors of the bridge sweeping back the hair that kept falling in my face.

After years of subterranean living, the usual metallic sounds now felt more like home than the agoraphobia-inducing surface did.

The clinking pipes, narrow corridors, and mesmerizing flashing lights were now more comforting to me than the tall evergreen trees in the verdant mountains.

I'd been underground most of my life, spending probably less than a month surface-side since I joined.

Still more than most.

After surviving my attack, I wasn't in any hurry to return.

My parents formed part of the Bandung team of first builders when the extensive project began worldwide.

The pod's construction was part of the most ambitious project ever undertaken by humanity, and certainly the most ambitious in the Asian territory.

A security guard stepped in front of me as I ran through the control room hatch, ducking to avoid the sharp lip inconveniently placed at forehead level.

"Arak," I said, catching my breath.

"Citizen ID and code," he replied as he placed his hand on his auto rifle.

Every day we went through this.

He lived on the same floor of the pod I did.

Our wives were pregnant together, and he frequently shopped with each other in our level's market district.

Hell, I think his wife still owed my wife a few ration points.

Hurry or not, we observed strict security, and Arak wasn't one to slack on his duty.

I took a slow cycle of breath, pulled out my identification, and thrust it into the reader, allowing the time for the pins to match with the holes while reciting my authorization code.

The affirmative beep echoed from the device.

Arak relaxed, and I ran onto the bridge.

The room reeked of stale smoke and burnt coffee, reminding me how much I missed nicotine, and that I hadn't taken the time to savor my coffee this morning.

After a sleepless night, I frantically jumped out of bed, scaring my wife Susie in the process.

She was excited for me, too, just maybe not before she was completely awake.

The rest of the bridge staff greeted me as I came in and quickly rattled off the night's briefing.

Nothing of note, just routine maintenance and supply checks.

However, we had gained a few last-minute residents during the night.

I sat at the access commander's chair, feeling the cheap foam c.. the weight of my body, and readied myself for the sealing of Pod Bandung.

The United Territories of Earth had begun construction of the pods in 2052.

From the arthropod landing on October 23rd, 10 years prior, it had taken humanity about a decade to realize it was a lost cause, at least for the moment.

Damn inverts.

They came to our planet and decided it was theirs.

Initially, they landed in the Australian territory.

God knows why, but we were powerless to stop them.

We were lucky to get 10 of the 11 pods completed with the rate they spread.

Since the ensuing loss of radio frequencies, communication had become sporadic, arriving only hand-delivered by ground or sea-based transports.

Save for pod Wagga, which we believed destroyed, the pods of the world would be sealing their gates today until a solution could be found.

I ran through my routine morning checks, calling out the familiar list that now carried the weight of realism.

"Ramps?

Check," said an engineer from the station.

"Hydraulics?

Check.

Power?

Check.

Guards?

Check."

I continued to read down the list as I did every .. but today felt different.

It was melancholic.

Today was the day I completed the pinnacle moment of my career, and the day we simultaneously sentenced the billions left on the surface to an egregious death.

According to the latest estimates, the arthropods had reached all the corners of the globe, killing over half its population.

The pods were built underground as enormous bunker cities to save humanity and give us time to formulate an offense.

Now that we had completed them, it was time to close the doors against the invaders.

Anyone who hadn't made it today to one of the pods wasn't going to survive.

By the time my mind jerked back to the present, everyone in the room was staring at me, even the tube monitors were buzzing with anticipation.

Then the realization hit me that they were waiting for me to acknowledge the moment.

It had never occurred to me to write a speech.

I'm by no means an orator.

"Hmm," I muttered out loud, improvising as I spoke.

"Today is a historic day.

Today we close the gates to survive.

We face an uncertain future, but not a future we are relinquishing easily.

The day of reckoning is coming, and we will return to the surface with a vengeance."

The engineers in the control room clapped nervously as a flashbulb went off in my face, momentarily blinding me.

I took a deep breath to calm myself.

As I was exhaling, the hardline rang.

"Bandung Bridge.

Access Commander Desai speaking."

I don't know why I said Bandung.

Nerves, I suppose.

The hardline only communicated within pod Bandung.

"Commander Desai, this is Prime Minister Belosan.

Close the gates.

For all."

I heard the line click before I could respond with the obligatory response.

Belosan is a man of brevity and not very sociable, as demonstrated by his decision to remain in his personal office during the closure.

My hands trembled as I replaced the receiver, the plastic sounding like chattering teeth as I set it in the cradle.

"Bridge access control," I said, the shakiness of my voice apparent, despite having uttered the phrase many times.

"Close the gates."

Suddenly, a high-pitched grinding and a low vibration rang through the entire city as the gates slid into place.

While the main entrance was barely visible from the bridge's viewports, you could feel the thud the moment the gate completely closed.

It was a feeling I imagined would linger in the memories of all the residents.

I shivered, the room suddenly feeling colder.

"For all," I said, placing my fist over my heart.

"For all," responded the bridge crew.

After almost seven decades after the Arthropod landing, we had willingly isolated ourselves from humanity's historic, superficial habitat.

Even guarded, we couldn't have kept the gates open much longer.

The attacks were becoming more frequent and increasing in intensity.

As I scanned across the monochrome monitors that observed the exterior perimeter of the city, I noticed movement.

It was a group of families, maybe 20, 30 people running out of the jung.. "Sir," an engineer said, also catching the movement on the tube.

I shook my head.

It's easier not to feel the responsibility of the death caused by the gate's closure when you don't have the faces to accompany them.

Unfortunately, I no longer have that luxury.

Forever, I will see those mothers, babes clutched in their hands, screaming, pleading with us to let them in.

The only reprieve I have from that moment was that the feeds were visual only.

With great difficulty, I turned away.

With the task complete, I reduced the bridge staff to a minimal crew, giving everyone the afternoon to spend with their families on the inaugural holiday.

I headed back to my district, but not before stopping to get a drink to relax my nerves.

I went down a handful of levels to a seedy pub I frequented and got some potent local hooch.

Everything was a blur.

Here we were in an underground metropolis, crossing our fingers that we'd figure out a way to beat the Arthropods before we went extinct.

Even though we could farm and recycle, I wondered, is this what humanity has come to?

With the gates open and the constant training, I had always been optimistic.

With the gates shut, something had changed.

I suddenly doubted if they'd ever open again.

[music] -What's next for Ryan Matthews?

You said you're working on a mystery book?

-That's correct.

-Would you know when it may come out?

-It will probably come out within the year, but because teaching has gotten really busy and I've taken on some extra responsibilities at school, it's taking me a little bit longer.

Also, a mystery takes a little bit more time because you've got a more complicated plot, and it's also my first mystery.

I'm taking a little more time with it because I want it to be as good as I can possibly make it.

-Is it a young adult mystery or a mystery f.. -It will probably be a young adult mystery as well.

-Any type of sample of what the plot may be like?

-Let's see.

I'm trying to decide how much to tell you, but essentially it's a woman who has a very specific supernatural ability that lets her pick up details from certain pieces, from certain objects, and she uses that to uncover a mystery.

-Okay.

Are all the books available for audio?

-Just the first one at the moment.

It's important to me, like I said, to produce a quality piece, and so I hired a voice actor out of Boston, and he did a fantastic job.

Because I want to produce something of quality, you obviously have to pay for that.

Right now it's only the first one, but as people continue to buy the first one, they will fund the second, third, and fourth audiobook as well.

-Where can people get your books?

Where do you send them?

-They're all available on Amazon.

They're available as e-book, hardback, and paperback.

Then, like I said, the audiobook on the first one is available from Audible.

Also they can follow me at my website, and I go to events.

If you catch me at an event, you can also buy it from me in person.

-What is your website?

-It's ryanmatthewsauthor.com.

-We have run out of time, sadly.

Ryan, we want to thank you for coming on, sharing about yourself, and sharing about Release Day and what's to come.

Thank you for coming on the show.

-Thank you for having me.

-Before you leave, would you mind signing your book?

-Not at all.

-Thank you.

[music] -To the guys at PBS, hope you survive the massacre.

-This program you've been watching was made possible through the generous financial support of West Tennessee PBS viewers like you.

Please visit westtnpbs.org and make a donation today so that we can continue to make local programs like this possible.

Thank you.