August 11, 2026 · Episode 79
1 Hr, 11 Min

Summary

Dom and Shannon, the duo behind the wonderfully misnamed books-and-literature podcast An Appropriate Amount of Soup, join us for a wide-ranging conversation that somehow still lands on its feet. Topics include Dom’s D&D fine dining business (bookings pending), the passive aggressive co-writing method that actually produced a finished novel, and why the algorithm keeps telling all of us to do things we don’t want to do.

There’s also a deep dive into indie author publishing strategy, a safety house rabbit hole that takes an inevitable turn, and a shared late discovery of Fleetwood Mac. If you’ve ever wondered whether staying true to your creative vision and building an audience are mutually exclusive, this episode is for you.

Shannon has written a couple of great books.

Humbuckle/Ramshackle – Read a sample here
The Town In The North – Buy it here
Check out Shannon and Dom’s podcast – An Appropriate Amount of Soup
Instagram @soup_pod

Love this conversation? Get exclusive podcast episodes on our Patreon and support the show!

Transcript

Lyndon: Is this a D&D thing? When you s-

Dom: We’re just making stuff up.

Lyndon: Oh, okay. That’s all right. No, that’s cool.

Dom: Actually, Dungeons and Dragons, fifth edition only goes to level 20, Lyndon, which you’d know if you were cool.

Lyndon: Do you reckon, everything that you know about me, that I would enjoy Dungeons and Dragons? Do you think I would be a D&D guy?

Dom: No, I don’t. I don’t think there is enough alcohol in the world to get you into a state where you would relax enough to actually enjoy it.

Lyndon: Yeah, I agree. Yeah.

Dom: And I wouldn’t – But let’s try. That’s great. Xanax and gin, and Dungeons and Dragons, maybe with gin, yeah. Line up the ambulance.

Breallyn: Do you think I would enjoy D&D?

Dom: I do. I do. ‘Cause you’re super creative. Or in, in te – Oh. Yeah, that came out wrong. Because you’re story imagination creative. Lyndon’s very – let’s just admit that music is just math.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Dom: And so you’re that creative. True, yeah.

Lyndon: What?

Dom: Whereas Brea is, your arts degree kind of creative. Which I have an arts degree, and didn’t that work out well for me?

Breallyn: You did. When I was a kid, my brother played it a little bit. He’s like seven years older than me, so I was in that next age bracket down. It wasn’t like I was nearly, you know, old enough or whatever. And I said, “Can I play? I wanna play the game.” And he and my mum, I suppose they were just trying to keep me away from his setup or whatever.

Dom: Oh, okay.

Breallyn: Were like, “Oh, no, it’s not for, like it’s not for…” I don’t know that they said it’s not for girls, but definitely it’s not for little girls like you. Like this is a mature thing. And so I’ve never felt like I’m big enough that I’m actually allowed to play Dungeons and Dragons.

Dom: Play Dungeons and Dragons with me.

Breallyn: Could you teach me how to play?

Dom: I’d love to. Yeah, totally. I, it’s actually, I have, of many of my entrepreneurial interests right now, I have a company that exists to facilitate the teaching and playing of Dungeons and Dragons.

Breallyn: Wow. I’d- Hang on, probably like to play. I’m sure I would.

Lyndon: We’ve gotta stop here. This sounds like an ad. We have to stop.

Dom: Yeah.

Breallyn: Not at all.

Dom: What’s it called? 20-Sided Dining, that’s the name of my business.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Dom: And the idea is, ’cause it combines the D&D and the cheffing.

Breallyn: Ah.

Dom: So you come and you eat a four-course meal and play Dungeons and Dragons.

Breallyn: I’d love to do that.

Dom: I know. That’s awesome. The problem is, like I charge like multiple thousands of dollars for it, and no one wants to pay it.

Satanic Panic and Evangelicals

Shannon: Are you not concerned about the Satanic nature of Dungeons and Dragons?

Dom: Fascinatingly like- Oh,

Shannon: That’s a tirade.

Dom: Oh, sorry. No, in Australia, like I played D&D in the ’80s with my mates.

Shannon: Yeah.

Dom: And the Satanic panic, unbeknownst to us, was happening in the States. And it was a huge thing, and yeah, like churches all across the world, or all across the States were saying, “You can’t play D&D. It leads to the devil.” And we just missed it here. And so I get to the States, and there’s still a thread of that today.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Dom: Of people going, “Oh, you play Dungeons and Dragons.” “You go to church? You’re a Christian, you play Dungeons and Dragons.”

Breallyn: Harry Potter though. Like hopefully that’s what they’ll have you know.

Dom: Yeah, Harry Potter’s, no, Harry Potter’s okay now because JK- JK Rowling hates the trans, is anti-trans. Yeah. Oh. And so conservative Christians like her for that

Breallyn: Yeah.

Dom: And have invested in her book.

Breallyn: Weirdly she is- That’s odd.

Lyndon: Too much of a witch in one sense, and not enough in another. Not enough in another. Yeah.

Dom: Yeah.

Lyndon: Are these the same people that still say AC/DC’s Antichrist, Devil Children, Devil’s Children. Yeah. And Kiss is Knights in Satan’s Service.

Shannon: Ooh, I didn’t know that one. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I don’t think Kiss are creative enough to come up with something like that, honestly.

Lyndon: Yeah, that’s right. No, they didn’t come up with it. I think it was, yeah, I think it was the church people, let’s say.

Dom: That-

Lyndon: I’m not gonna say Christians. I’m gonna say church people.

Dom: That aspect of American evangelical Christianity, which to us, in Australia, seeing it from a distance, you assume it’s pretty fringe.

Lyndon: Yeah.

Dom: It’s really not. Like that is mainstream evangelical Christianity in the States. And this is how I get my house firebombed. So if you’re an American listener, don’t tell your evangelical friends. They’re so conservative. Yeah. Like they’re, yeah, definitely that stuff. Lot of end times prophecy.

A lot of like, Trump is ushering in the end times in a good way. A lot of the American evangelical support of Israel comes out of Revelation. Yeah. Comes out of this belief that Revelation is a, not literary, literal thing.

Breallyn: Literal, yeah.

Dom: Yeah. And we have to help Israel to bring about the end times. It’s crazy. It’s crazy town. It is.

Shannon: Yeah, there’s no better way to share the love of Jesus Christ than by bombing Palestinian children.

Dom: Yeah. I haven’t worked out a better way.

Shannon: No. No. Thinking about it.

Lyndon: Don’t look at me.

Dom: Actual results may vary.

D&D Fine Dining Pitch

Lyndon: Can we go back to your Dungeons and Dragons meal?

Dom: I would talk about this forever.

Lyndon: I know, because all I can imagine is those, like, massive drumsticks.

Dom: Yeah, like a whole leg of lamb.

Lyndon: Yeah.

Dom: Yeah.

Lyndon: Is that what’s that thing? What with like mead and things. All the bowls are wooden. Yeah, there’s mead. What’s that other thing that you have, that other drink?

Dom: Mulled wine.

Lyndon: Mulled wine.

Dom: Bit of wassail.

Lyndon: Yeah. Whatever that is. I’ll take it.

Dom: Yeah, I don’t know, but I always thought it was wassail. It’s, I think it’s like herbed, heated apple cider. Or hard cider, as they call it these days. Hard cider, I think, is wassail, so part of it, ’cause it’s this combination of a thematic dinner, but also fine dining.

Shannon: Yeah.

Dom: So it’s trying to be, we try to be evocative of the leg of lamb, the… I don’t know it off the top of my head, but the whole menu is designed as you’re eating goblin steaks or whatever. Ah, yeah. Don’t eat goblin. It’s not very nice. No. But,

Breallyn: That would be horrible, but yes.

Dom: Yeah, but you get the gist.

Breallyn: So the, yeah, you’ve brought the theme of the game through to the menu and yeah. Yeah.

Dom: Yeah. That’s cool.

Breallyn: Oh, that sounds great. Yeah.

Dom: It’s great in theory.

Breallyn: Yeah. Do you hold these at a certain venue, or do you travel with the whole thing?

Dom: I have not actually had anyone book one yet.

Breallyn: Okay. Yep.

Dom: So in theory it was, most of my business with the cheffing is at Airbnbs. Yeah. So people, ’cause where I live is really touristy, people come in and they book a place for a week, and the idea would be doing that and playing D&D as well. Oh, yeah. But no one’s wanted to do it yet.

Breallyn: Wow.

Dom: How do people book, Dom?

Shannon: That’s really probably why I’ve had no bookings. I think, do you need a website really? They can’t. Yeah,

Lyndon: This is when we realize it’s all just in your head. There’s nothing actually tangible in the world.

Dom: I think the website is d20-dining.com. Or something like that.

Lyndon: Yeah, just guess.

Dom: Look at, Google grainculinary.com. That’s the website for my cheffing stuff. And there’s one of the tabs is the D&D stuff as well.

Lyndon: Fantastic.

Soup Podcast Origins

Lyndon: Welcome to Pain In The Arts, where the pursuit of meaningful art meets the unpredictable demands of real life. I am Lyndon.

Breallyn: I’m Breallyn, and we’re joined today by guests. We have here…

Shannon: Dom.

Breallyn: And?

Shannon: Shannon.

Breallyn: Yay. From? Thank you so much for joining us from, where are these guys from?

Lyndon: These guys are from- An inordinate amount of soup.

Shannon: An appropriate amount of soup.

Lyndon: Oh, sorry. My mistake.

Shannon: We have to keep the soup levels

Lyndon: Yeah,

Shannon: at a reasonable, appropriate level.

Lyndon: I always hope that you’d bring a thermos of soup.

Shannon: We don’t like to overwhelm people with soup.

Lyndon: I think you’ve missed a marketing opportunity, although that is preaching to the converted, isn’t it?

Dom: So how do you feel about soup, Lyndon?

Lyndon: It depends. If it’s followed by a meal, I’m pretty happy. But if it is the meal, I’m pretty disappointed.

Dom: What if it’s an appropriate amount? How much for you is an appropriate amount?

Lyndon: I reckon an appropriate amount is, it depends on two things: the vestibule that it is served in, and the type of soup.

So I think you want to have, I think there’s, the, you wanna have an amount of soup where you feel like you could have a second bowl, and then it’s up… Do you want a second bowl? Maybe, but you don’t have to. Do you know what I mean? That would be an appropriate amount.

Breallyn: Wow.

Lyndon: But if someone gives you a ramekin of soup, do you know what I mean?

Dom: Yeah. Totally.

Lyndon: That is not an appropriate amount of soup, pretty much ever.

Dom: Or if you’re at a fancy pants degustation menu, and they give you a literal shot glass of consommé. You go, “What is the bloody point of this, mate?”

Lyndon: Yeah, what do I pour this over?

Dom: Yeah. I’m from regional Victoria, so it’s all a shoey of soup where I’m from.

Lyndon: A sh-

Shannon: Which is good.

Dom: Yeah. Oh, okay. I do hate it when you’ve had minestrone in your shoe and then you put your shoe back on, and there’s just a little bit of pasta in the toe, and you’ve missed it. Yeah,

Lyndon: No, you gotta use someone else’s shoe, Dom.

Dom: I’m doing it wrong.

Lyndon: Yeah. You gotta use your own shoe.

Breallyn: So how is your cooking podcast going? Yeah.

Dom: Yeah, that’s an appropriate amount of shoe.

Breallyn: Yeah,

Dom: And it just discusses what food you can eat out of a shoe.

Shannon: Yeah.

Dom: Which turns out to be most.

Shannon: Our podcast is the worst named podcast. The algorithms hate the name of our podcast. We cannot find the right audience because it is about books.

Breallyn: Yes, it’s about books but

Shannon: Nothing to do with soup.

Breallyn: Yeah. Yes.

Shannon: And it came from, was it the, it was the pilot, wasn’t it?

Dom: Yeah, we were discussing Charles Dickens and how he was paid by the word, and so he just put in ridiculous descriptions of stuff to get paid more.

Shannon: Is that true?

Dom: It is true. And, Shannon, I think you came up with it. You were like, “Yeah, he wrote about soup all the time.”

Shannon: But an appropriate amount of soup.

Dom: An appropriate amount.

Shannon: And then we just said on the episode, “All right, that’s gonna be the title of our show. It’s gonna make no sense 10 episodes in.” Yeah. And here we are.

Lyndon: Yeah. Okay. I like that it’s actually rooted in literature.

Breallyn: Yeah. The obscure reference to yeah.

Lyndon: Can I? Is it not? I thought that was the explanation then.

Dom: You’re a generous host.

Lyndon: Yeah. Yeah. It’s all right, there’s time.

Dom: Rooted in idiocy, which would actually be a great name for our podcast.

Lyndon: Yeah. Still, the algorithm would hate it, but at least, yeah, and your tagline could be, “We’re rooted.”

Dom: Yeah. Or Shannon rooted the youth pastor. I’ve

Shannon: I love that we won’t have context for that now.

Lyndon: I like that, that, yeah, no, there might be. There could be. There might be. It depends, at what time of the night I’m doing the editing.

Shannon: Yeah, I’m nervous, ’cause I normally edit our podcast

Lyndon: Yeah.

Shannon: And I don’t have that power now. Oh. So you can make us, you can make us say whatever.

Lyndon: Oh, what? How? Yeah. You gotta tell me about this.

Shannon: What? Why?

Lyndon: You don’t edit the podcast.

Shannon: So someone else edits it? No, so I edit ours.

Lyndon: Yes.

Shannon: And I’m saying you’re going to edit this one, yours. Oh,

Lyndon: Yes.

Shannon: And I feel nervous about that. Oh. Because I like to have the control. I make Dom look stupid on ours. Yes. ‘Cause it doesn’t take much work.

Lyndon: Do you, once you’ve… ‘Cause Dom has to literally phone it in, doesn’t he? Is that, is Dom phoning it in?

Shannon: On every level imaginable.

Lyndon: Yeah, that’s what I mean.

Shannon, you’re looking at me like, “What? Who’s Dom?” No, so

Shannon: We record,

Lyndon: This guy sitting next to you.

Shannon: Yeah, that guy. Who’s Dom? Yes. We record separately.

Lyndon: Yeah.

Shannon: So we’re on a Teams call, ’cause I’m in Australia and Dom’s off in America.

Lyndon: Yeah.

Shannon: And so we’ll hop on a Teams call, but we’ve both got audio recording separately on the computers. Yeah. Dom then sends over his audio, I put it all together and, yeah, and have to deal with the fact that Dom does not know anything about audio.

Lyndon: Yeah.

Shannon: And so he,

Lyndon: He, so it sounds like he’s on the phone.

Shannon: Yeah.

Lyndon: Is that, that’s your fault, Dom, if that’s happening.

Dom: In my defence,

Lyndon: Yeah.

Dom: Shannon, and as a shout-out to Shannon’s hard work he puts in, he’s never told me how much work he puts into the editing. Yeah,

Lyndon: I think Shannon and I are gonna have to hang out together later, and just have a bit of a cry.

Breallyn: And we’ll go and frolic somewhere else. Yeah, we’ll enjoy our time away from you two.

Dom: I listened back to the audio I’d recorded to check something. Yeah. And was like, “This is hot garbage.” Yeah. “This is terrible.” Yeah,

Lyndon: Yeah.

Dom: The purity of it, I don’t know what the term you’d use. The fidelity? Like, it’s so bad. Yeah. So thank you, Shannon, for all your hard work.

Shannon: Yeah. Yeah. And he’s gone out and got himself a nice new microphone, which is fantastic, because he was just using, what, a little phone earpiece type microphone previously?

Lyndon: It’s a what was it? A Fisher and Paykel or something? Yeah,

Shannon: Yeah.

Lyndon: On the Mattel. Yeah.

Shannon: And then, it was black and gold brand.

Dom: We’ve had two episodes with the new microphone, which has been really good, but then the second episode you didn’t check your levels so that was clipping the whole time.

Dom: Oh.

Shannon: But I fixed it.

Dom: I did check my levels.

Lyndon: I will say that, I just checked them wrong. I noticed the difference, yeah, from the first few episodes to the most, I think it’s might be the most recent one. ‘Cause I distinctly just thought, “Oh, Dom sounds good.”

Dom: I’d like to say that was a skill issue on my behalf and I’ve just got better.

Lyndon: But it was the new mic, I’ve just been, yeah, totally. I just, ’cause I was confused. You just throw money at the problem and sometimes it works.

Shannon: Like all problems.

Lyndon: Yeah. I had a lot of empathy for Shannon right from day one ’cause I knew you. And I’d experienced all your mic techniques.

Dom: And you experienced them in a couple of days when you had to edit this thing. Yeah,

How the Podcast Collaboration Came Together

Breallyn: So you two have been doing your podcast for several months now. Tell us the story, like why are you doing a podcast? It’s a very unusual format. You can tell us all about it in a moment, but what sort of led to you coming together and going, “Let’s do an actual podcast where we’ve gotta get together quite often. Shannon’s gonna have to do a whole lot of work.” What was the impetus behind all of that?

Shannon: Your podcast is our podcast’s parent. So I heard Dom on your podcast a while ago.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Shannon: Yeah. And so Dom and I have written a book together. Yep. It hasn’t been published yet, but we’re going out that pathway. And one of the things, and Brea, as a writer, one of the hardest things to do is to try and maintain an audience as a writer because you only release a book every few years or so.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Shannon: And you gotta try and keep people engaged in interim. They’ve forgotten all about you.

Breallyn: So I thought,

Shannon: Yeah, one of the ways to do that would be to do a podcast, and I’d had that in the back of my mind. And then when I heard Dom on your show, I thought, “Oh, he, yeah actually, he can talk good and that.” He scrubs up all right.

Lyndon: Yeah.

Shannon: Yeah. Reached out and he said,

Dom: “Sure, whatever.”

Shannon: Yeah. He was so enthusiastic.

Dom: No, I love it. I really enjoy recording it. I really, I find it as a really fun creative outlet, and it’s, Shannon and I have maintained a friendship, of which I’d say the vast majority we haven’t even lived in the same country.

Lyndon: Really?

Dom: So I really enjoy it. The thing that is hard for me is realizing recently how much work he does and what an absolute pain in the ass I must be to work with.

Breallyn: Can you confirm?

Dom: Do you show up on time is all I ask.

Shannon: Yeah.

Dom: I do show up on time, and then my computer, which is an old piece of crap, takes literally 20 minutes

Lyndon: I feel

Dom: to load things.

Lyndon: I feel a GoFundMe coming on.

Dom: Yeah. Join our Patreon.

Lyndon: It’s funny ’cause had you contacted me beforehand and said, “Hey, Dom sounded really good,” I would say, “Yeah, come over and have a look at the session files. Have a look at the three hours of audio that I edited down to that glorious one, one and a half hours or whatever it was.”

Lyndon: Fortunately for, no, it wasn’t that bad.

Shannon: Fortunately for us, our podcast isn’t as serious and as intelligent as yours. No, I don’t know about that. The ramblings go into ours. I don’t edit those out. That’s the joy.

Lyndon: Yeah, that’s right.

Breallyn: It’s built on ra- how much, how widely can you ramble, in the storytelling. So yeah, that’s like a strength of your podcast, I think. Yeah.

Dom: I think we’ve proven you can ramble quite a bit.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: In the words of Led Zeppelin, “Ramble On.”

Dom: We’ve gotta stop. It’s a problem.

Building an Indie Author Community

Breallyn: So tell us just for audiences of Pain In The Arts,

Lyndon: Audiences?

Breallyn: The multiple audiences. Listeners?

Lyndon: Yeah.

Breallyn: The listener-ers. Our listeners, yeah.

Lyndon: Our listeners, yeah.

Breallyn: Tell us the structure of your podcast. What do you do, and how does it work?

Dom: It was Shannon’s idea. And I thought it was a brilliant idea because it appeals to my obscure sense of humor.

So what we do is we begin by just talking about writing, and usually we have a question, talk about editing or all sorts of stuff. What’s the favorite scene you’ve written? Any Robin Hobb we talk about a lot.

And then we get submissions from indie authors. And we just read the first chapter of their book.

Breallyn: Yep.

Dom: And then we basically ad lib the rest of the story without knowing nothing about it. And then at the end, we come back and read the blurb and, I’d say

Lyndon: Oh,

Dom: Okay, 100% of the time we’ve been completely wrong. We’ve never got anything wrong. No. Yeah. And then we rate, we give it a soup rating and, that’s sort of what we brought back in.

Lyndon: Yeah.

Dom: To say, what do we like about it, should you read it? Will we read it? Why is it good?

Shannon: Yeah. And part of the format, I was trying to think of something where we could engage with a broader audience to try and build an organic listenership.

So by reaching out to those indie authors, the hope is that they will listen to the episode featuring their book. They will bring some of their audience along, but at the same time, our audience will hear a description of their book.

So it’s a bit of give and take there that hopefully they’re getting a bit of free marketing out of it. We’re getting some content and some listenership out of it.

Dom: And it seems to be working.

Shannon: We’re seeing steady growth of the podcast and the listenership is

Lyndon: Yeah.

Breallyn: Yeah. That’s

Lyndon: Good. It’s good. You’ve put more thought into it than we put into ours. Yeah.

Breallyn: How’s your marketing plan going, Lyndon?

Lyndon: Oh, gosh. Don’t just,

Dom: Do you still do a mail out?

Lyndon: Yeah. Yeah, I still do a mail out. Yeah. That’s funny. No. I don’t wanna talk about our marketing plan because I’ve been so inside it for the last three weeks. It’s all I’ve done, is just been working on marketing and whatnot. And it, after doing, like we’ve done, been doing it for a year and a half. And so basically we had some data in the back end that I could look at, and I was like, “Oh, okay, now I can actually put together some sort of plan because we’ve got a whole bunch of stuff that I can reference.”

This is all fantastic stuff for our listeners. But I like what you’re saying about, or just how you’re, how you’ve thought about, like going after the indie authors and then their audience, and that’s smart. So hopefully, yeah, the growth just keeps happening.

Breallyn: That’s great. And I love the idea of building community through that.

Yeah, like interlocking different authors with one another as well because now they’ve got a common ground, and audiences who might have heard of one book but not another can discover it. Like I really love that, and the playfulness of being able to talk about a book, not just the way that it’s written, but all of the possibilities of what might come out of this first chapter.

So yeah, I think that you’ve got some really great, like ingredients there to have a fun book-loving community, yeah, that includes authors and readers and listeners to your podcast.

Lyndon: And

Breallyn: That’s my summary.

Lyndon: And no response required.

Dom: And thanks for the time, guys. We’re out of here.

Lyndon: I had a thought this morning, and I was just like, “There’s like so many books in the world,” I imagine.

Dom: There’s a couple.

Lyndon: There’s a couple. At least three. Yeah. More than that. Definitely. Definitely. Yeah, definitely. And do you ever think, “How are we gonna get through them all?” Yeah.

Yeah, I thought

Breallyn: About that.

Lyndon: Like all the ones that already exist, let alone all these, like new independent writers. Yeah.

Shannon: I don’t think we’re aiming to do every book.

Lyndon: Oh, okay.

Shannon: Yeah.

Lyndon: My mistake.

Breallyn: So that’s when your podcast is allowed to end, when you’ve done all of the books.

Lyndon: Yeah. Yeah. That’s right.

Breallyn: When you’ve finished books.

Dom: We’ll have to send out a letter, ask everyone to stop writing new books, ’cause we have to get through. Yeah.

Lyndon: Yeah. Yeah, okay.

Dom: Yeah. We get to the Pearly Gates and St. Peter’s “There’s eight billion books to get through.” “Go back.”

Lyndon: Shit.

Breallyn: Yeah. Reincarnation is a thing now. Yeah.

Dom: It’s just your stupid podcast for eternity.

Lyndon: Oh, man.

Dom: Are you saying we’re going to hell? Is that what that meant?

Lyndon: Yeah, that’s what I meant. So if reincarnation, if that happened, and weirdly, what, who was it? St. Paul?

Breallyn: St. Peter.

Lyndon: St. Peter, yeah, Pete, sent you back through reincarnation. What if you came back as like a dog? How would you turn the pages?

Shannon: How would you do a podcast? It’d be rough. Hey. Huh? There we go.

Lyndon: Woof, woof. That’s

Shannon: What you can expect on our podcast.

Lyndon: Wasn’t it Lord Flashheart in Blackadder? He’d go, “Woof, woof.” Do you know Blackadder?

Shannon: I do know Blackadder. Yeah. Flash by name.

Lyndon: Flash by name. Yeah. That’s it. He’d go, “Woof, woof.” Good. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So that’s not a problem then?

Breallyn: In your own

Lyndon: Okay.

Dom: We can stop when we want.

Lyndon: Okay.

Dom: Okay, yeah. Can we?

Breallyn: I think we can.

Dom: You stop when Shannon says you can stop, Tom. Yeah. You do as you’re told. Shannon just signed a co-branding thing for our podcast with a toothpaste company, and we have to keep producing this

Breallyn: That’s it.

Dom: Until we die.

Shannon: Yeah. We did get actually,

Dom: Yeah. Of all things, yeah.

Shannon: I think it was a scam. It might’ve been a scam. We don’t have enough listeners for people to be reaching out for advertising.

Lyndon: Your teeth are looking really shiny, I must say. So what happened with that?

Shannon: I’m pretty sure, we said no. One, it has nothing to do with our podcast. Two, I’m pretty sure it was a scam. I don’t, do you get random emails asking you to do advertising stuff for your podcast?

Lyndon: No. I got, I did get an email, a couple of weeks ago, and it was to back some independent movie. And I thought, “Ah, I’ll look at it.” And I looked at it a few days later, and it was terrible.

Shannon: No, we’ll edit that part out. Give him a plug. Come on.

Lyndon: It was, I can’t remember what it was called, but I, no, I deleted that. I sent that to the spam or deleted it as quickly as I could. I actually threw my computer in the bin. I just pulled the laptop out. Yeah, I thought, “This can’t happen again.” Straight into the bin. Not even the recycling bin, just the normal weekly bin. Gone. Yeah, no, that was… No, we’ve not had any approaches for advertising or, what did you call it? Co-sponsorship?

Shannon: Oh, the, and it’s one you see a little. There are influencers and the like that legitimately do it. It’s one where you make an ad and send it into them, and so that they have organic media they can put upon their socials. So it’s not advertising on your channel, it’s create advertising for them to put on their channel.

Lyndon: Yeah.

Shannon: And then I, yeah, I, it didn’t, it felt suspicious.

Lyndon: Yeah.

Dom: ‘Cause our socials are primo.

Lyndon: Yeah, yeah. I haven’t gone looking for ’em, but I’m assuming.

Dom: They’re not the worst, actually. Okay. And again, it’s Shannon,

Lyndon: Oh, so they do exist. Okay, this is good, I think. Yeah, good.

Shannon: Yeah. But we’re not hip with the young people.

Lyndon: No.

Shannon: Because I say things like, “Hip with the young people.” Yeah.

Lyndon: And

Shannon: We’re bussin’. We’re bussin’. Don’t talk cap. Our podcast is fire.

Lyndon: I understood that one.

Shannon: But so that means we’re on Facebook and Instagram, and not on the TikTok and the fancy pants young people ones.

Lyndon: Yeah. Yeah. No, you’re preaching to our audience I imagine. That’s definitely our target market.

Breallyn: Definitely our target market.

Shannon: And we do mail outs.

Lyndon: Yeah. I would imagine. Our newsletter. Yeah. So you should.

Shannon: Yeah. So if you wanna sign, if you want us to fax you our newsletter.

Lyndon: No, it’s not. I’m liking this because I think our podcast, as time goes on, we’re gonna be like the keepers of the OG podcasts. Do you know what I mean? ‘Cause you see, let’s just call it, modern fandangled podcasts that are more like TV shows. And we’re like, it’s all video, old school, and we’re keeping that flame alive.

Breallyn: Because mainly we just don’t wanna put a camera in here and catch us in our

Lyndon: No, no,

Breallyn: Slippers and stuff.

Lyndon: Don’t you think there’s something, so do

Dom: You normally record in your underwear like this? Is that what you normally do?

Breallyn: This is special for today.

Lyndon: I do try and encourage her, but she keeps saying no. There’s a lot of pushback.

Dom: I appreciate it, but free,

Shannon: It was weird that you set your studio up in a sauna.

Lyndon: No,

Dom: It’s fine. It helps with the acoustics.

Lyndon: I know. It, yeah, I, that’s what I tell people, but it’s not as practical as you would think because the mirrors on the ceiling keep getting fogged up. I’ll tell you this though, Half a Cup of Soup or whatever you’re called. Cup of Soup. If there’s ever a time you do a video podcast, you’re dropped, all right? And we will no longer claim you as our

Breallyn: As our offspring.

Lyndon: Offspring. Offspring. Or legitimate, whatever it was. No, but seriously?

Breallyn: Are you worried that every other podcast but us is gonna get into video podcasting? I don’t wanna

Lyndon: Be left behind and be the only ones,

Breallyn: Stuck in Gen X land.

Lyndon: Still, with yeah, with two Milo tins and a piece of string.

I don’t, that’s how I imagine it’ll be us, and every other podcast is doing holograms or something. Can you please just stick with us and be… Can you, no,

Breallyn: Be our friends? They’re already way ahead of us. They’ve got social media, and they’re not afraid of it.

Dom: We’ll die quite often. We are on YouTube.

Lyndon: Are you?

Dom: But it’s a static picture. Yeah.

Shannon: I put a grain effect on that static image. It’s a static picture with grainy bits.

Lyndon: Oh, my gosh. Yeah. I saw a, sorry, I just saw a post yesterday from a musician saying, this was on Instagram I think, and just saying that the majority of their day is resizing JPEGs.

Breallyn: Oh.

Lyndon: And I thought, “Preach it.” That is what it feels like sometimes, isn’t it? You’re just, you’re doing all these other things. I replied to it and said, “Yeah, this week I’ve memorized all the aspect ratios of the different size photographs, whether it’s gonna go on Facebook, and is it gonna be a reel? Oh, it’s gotta be 16:9.”

And if it’s gotta be in the feed, it’s gotta be a ratio of four to five, which is 1080 by 1350. All this ridiculous stuff. It’s, why do I have all this information in my head? Excuse me, I need a break. Brea, have you got a… Is it a Xanax or something? Is that anything?

Dom: It’s something. I don’t know that

Shannon: It’ll be helpful. Try it. See what happens.

Breallyn: Valium? I’ve got some of them.

Lyndon: Valium. Yeah. Yeah.

Podcast Marketing and Staying True to Yourself

Shannon: Yeah, we’ve, I don’t know. I say with, I’ve thought about video and purely because the algorithm likes it. Nice. If you put that on, freaking algorithm.

Lyndon: Freaking algorithm.

Shannon: And I’d like to get, and so trying to find that balance between I want us to stay true to what we’re doing, yeah, and what we want.

Lyndon: Yeah.

Shannon: Thus, we have a name that does not help the algorithm, and I don’t care. It’s staying. Yeah. But also I’d like it to go out to some people from time to time.

Lyndon: Yeah, yeah. That’s right.

Shannon: I’d like someone to see and listen.

Breallyn: Yeah. I mean, you want people to discover it, but not do everything just about discoverability and pleasing the algorithm kind of thing.

Dom: Yeah. Like it’s fun to be your own edgy imagination. But no one hears about it. And I’m sure there’s many people who would enjoy listening to our podcast who will never find it because we’re so bad at marketing.

Shannon: Absolutely.

Dom: But yeah, and it’s finding that balance. Like I would love to have a bigger audience. Audienceship? Audience ship?

Breallyn: A ship full of an audience.

Dom: A short, I want a whole cruise ship of people.

And what is the balance between staying true to ourselves and appealing to that? And I think maybe a name change could be in order. I just found out today how bad our name is.

Breallyn: Oh,

Dom: Yeah. In terms of discovering it or like, in terms of marketability. It’s never, yeah,

Breallyn: It’s not coming up. Yeah.

Dom: But when you think about it, like when I think about as a teenager, imagining, “Oh, I’m gonna have a band,” and I, like it was never about marketability.

Lyndon: Yeah.

Dom: The name of the band will be something really obscure that makes me laugh.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Dom: Or the name of, I’ll publish a book, and the name of the book… you get into these endeavors and go, “Oh, marketing matters?” One of the things, I have a few businesses, and I keep catching up with marketing people and going, “How, what’s wrong? Like, why is my marketing so bad?” And I’m gonna keep catching up with them until one of them doesn’t say social media.

‘Cause that’s it. They’re like, “What’s your social media presence?” They look at my social media presence and go like, “What do you think’s gonna happen?” Yeah.

Shannon: Yeah.

Dom: No one’s gonna see it.

Shannon: You took an ad out in the Trading Post. Wasn’t that enough for you?

Dom: Yeah, I bought a time machine back to the ’90s.

Lyndon: Those were the days.

Dom: So yeah, and for me, like I just started this podcast with Shannon for shits and giggles. And now that we’re doing it, and we’ve been in it for a while, and I find I love it, and I can go, “Huh, I can see this actually being beneficial for the two of us beyond getting to spend a couple of hours talking crap.”

How do we make it into that? And should we make it into that? Or should we just stay so niche and true to ourselves that we have a listenership of 50 people? And you’ve gotta make decisions about things like that.

I would like 52 people. Yeah. I’m gonna be, we’re working on it, aren’t we?

Lyndon: One a week, that sounds a bit fair.

Breallyn: Yeah. It sounds, it sounds like the same thing that we come up with again and again is yes, we wanna be discoverable beyond the regular listeners or whatever. But just finding that balance between doing the things that you love and like trying to invest in those things, spend more time in that.

But it feels like we’re constantly getting pushed towards having to be more social media conscious and feeding the algorithm and figuring out, okay, what are the rule changes Instagram wants you to do this, Meta wants you to do that. Just, yeah, it’s endless, and it feels like it’s funneling all of us into spending all of our precious time pleasing it. And that’s almost

Lyndon: Like that’s the goal of social media.

Breallyn: That’s exactly it.

Lyndon: It’s almost like

Dom: that, is it?

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: I think the one of the keys is that you can utilize the algorithms and whatnot, but you’ve gotta have this faith in what you do, and you’ve gotta sorta hold fast to that, I think.

So I would agree with you that, keep the title because I think that, not that it’s necessarily up for debate, Dom, but,

Breallyn: Stop thinking of new titles, Dom.

Lyndon: It’s the people that get it, and once they find you, it’s like that’s your people then.

It’s just what you use the algorithm to find your people. You don’t use the algorithm to shape your show or to shape what you do. ‘Cause like if you change something based on these external factors that are changing and moving all the time, you’re actually diluting the DNA of your show.

And I think that’s what I’ve been discovering. And the other thing, Brea, on your point about the big bad algorithm, and it’s always changing. It’s trying to funnel everyone into having our attention on that all the time.

It also makes you feel rushed and that you’re always falling behind, and where some things take time. And I think finding a niche audience takes time. So if it’s gonna take two years, it’s gonna take two years. If it’s gonna take five years, it’s gonna take five years. But it’s more important, I think, to find your people, and we’re slowly finding our people, I think.

Yeah. And it’s just going a lot slower than I would’ve thought, and that might also be because I asked an LLM, “Hey, what do you think about this idea for a podcast?” And they said, “That’s an awesome idea. No one else is doing it. You’ll have a million followers by next week.” And I was like, “Brilliant, let’s go.”

Shannon: Like I said, at the end of the day, growth’s exponential and I think the people that are the most successful are the people that are still there.

It’s people that push on for a year or two and then go, “Oh, I’m not seeing the growth that I want,” and they give up.

It’s the people that are there for five, 10 years plugging away that see that sort of growth.

Lyndon: And you were telling me before how your hero in that space is Joe Rogan. Is that right?

Shannon: Yeah. Well,

Lyndon: Like for his stickability and opinions and

Shannon: Yeah. I, I love, his, I don’t, his, I don’t, Newsradio was all right. Was he on Newsradio?

Lyndon: I have no idea. Just

Shannon: What was he? He was on a sitcom.

Lyndon: I just like the idea that we’re your, we’re your mother and he’s your father podcast. Yeah.

Shannon: Yeah. Wow.

Dom: But I look at,

Lyndon: You know, in the podcast world, not in the actual, I don’t, I was just having a moment, ’cause I wanna bring this to We’re Not Your Mother.

Dom: Oh, okay. Where,

Lyndon: Like where

Dom: I don’t really listen to Joe Rogan.

Lyndon: No?

Dom: No. I’ve listened to him twice.

Lyndon: Is he good?

Dom: He’s quite a good interviewer. But something like Joe Rogan or the Jason Bateman one, Smartless.

Lyndon: Oh yeah. I listen to that.

Dom: Yeah. Which, yeah, I quite like Smartless, but they started at, it was Jason Bateman and Will Arnett and the other guys. Sean Hayes.

Shannon: Sean Hayes.

Dom: Who are really well-known entertainers. Like they brought a bazillion people with them. And there’s that’s the other method. One method is you just plug away, people will eventually hear from you. Yeah. There’s a couple of podcasts I listen to that yeah, you’d never, I never would’ve heard of the people if they didn’t have a podcast.

And they’ve got significant followings, and they’re doing it now. But they’ve been around years providing regular, good, entertaining content that people like.

Because, yeah, the only other method is to be famous already. Yeah. Which is annoying. I’m like, “Settle down, Bateman.”

Lyndon: Yeah.

Breallyn: Yeah. “You’re doing all right.”

Dom: How many platforms do you need, honestly? Yeah, go home. Leave it for us. Yeah.

Lyndon: Yeah. And then you watch Black Rabbit and you go, “He’s all right.”

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: Have you seen Black Rabbit?

Breallyn: Some, some good stuff, yeah.

Shannon: No, but I’ll pretend that I have for the sake of this conversation.

Lyndon: Okay, let me see. Okay, another one. Ozark. Have you watched it?

Here is Part 2, continuing directly from where Part 1 left off:

Shannon: I haven’t watched it.

Lyndon: Don’t worry, you guys are book people, don’t worry about it.

Shannon: I did read the book, though, before it was famous.

Dom: Oh.

Lyndon: No.

Shannon: I have young children, so I’ve seen movies that came out 10 years ago and earlier. Yeah, yeah.

Lyndon: Yeah, yeah. No, I hear you. I hear you, for sure. Yeah, no, it’s, I know exactly what you mean, though.

It’s always been the case. If you’ve got a profile, you can just about do anything.

Dom: Yeah. Or tons of money.

Lyndon: You go,

Dom: Like, that’s the other thing.

Lyndon: Yeah,

Dom: That’s right. Paid marketing. Yeah, if I had the money, I wouldn’t work, but if I had the money to pay a social media manager, then, yeah, then that’s the dream. I’m gonna be honest. The dream is to go, “Just do something.” ‘Cause it’s gotta be better than nothing I do.

Lyndon: I, yeah, I like, do I like this? That’s probably not the right way to preface it, but you get to the end of listening to a podcast, and often when I’m listening to it, I’m like thinking about all my editing decisions and things like that and then it gets to the end and they’ll reel off about 12 names of the people that have been involved in producing it and doing the bookings and then doing all kinds of different things. And I’m like, “Man, how do I get a team?” And then, but so on one hand I’m like, “What, what’s going on?”

And on the other hand I’m like, “Oh, I guess I shouldn’t be too stressed out about the fact that it’s taking me so many hours of my week.”

Shannon: Although that presents its own problem. As I said earlier, the start of the podcast was around creating something to have an audience for a book.

I spent so much time on a podcast, you don’t spend so much time writing. And then all of a sudden I’m a podcast guy, not a writer guy. Yes.

Dom: Yeah.

Breallyn: Yeah. That’s exactly how I feel too.

Shannon: That’s

Dom: Yeah. My recommendation is find a Shannon. Aha. And ’cause I still, I found one. Here it is. Yeah, I did. And I still have plenty of time for writing, oh good, ’cause I’m not dickin’ around making the podcast.

Lyndon: Oh, great. So you’re saying I’ll get Shannon to edit Pain In The Arts episodes.

Dom: Exactly.

Lyndon: Oh, that’s a good idea.

Dom: And he’ll do your social media for you too. Great. All right.

Lyndon: Excellent. Well, sorted.

Breallyn: New career, Shannon. Yeah. Forget the education business. You’ve got something else.

Shannon: Yeah. Hold, yeah, that’s actually the second part of that though, is will I get paid for this or

Lyndon: Oh. Just, eventually.

Shannon: We’re building

Breallyn: Our team. We don’t

Shannon: Pay much yet. You’re doing it for exposure.

Lyndon: You can be my, like my managers in the early 2000s. I’ll give you 20% of whatever I earn. Oh,

Shannon: Great.

Lyndon: Yeah. Okay? Yeah. It might be a while.

Co-Writing Chaos Method

Breallyn: I wanted to ask, coming back to the, your impetus for starting your podcast was growing that audience, but also looking at publishing your book. Now, you guys had a really interesting approach to writing your book, which we spoke about last time when Dom was on. But remind us, how you did it, and then tell us about how you’re going along that journey of looking towards publication.

Lyndon: And who does the most work? Because we know.

Breallyn: I think we know the

Dom: Answer to that. I think we know the answer to that one. No, this one, with the book, I think I felt like by the end of it, I probably wrote more words.

Lyndon: Is that why your name’s bigger on the cover? Is that, yeah, I, you know, you told me you’re pushing for that.

Dom: Yeah, I really did. Shannon’s presented a few, oh, I’ve got

Shannon: Some copies in the car, by the way.

Dom: Yeah. You can have one. Excellent. A few copies of the book. “What about this cover?” And I’m like, “Make my name bigger.” “What about this one?” “Make my name bigger.” “What about this one?” “Make my name bigger.” And he’s “It has a naked camel on it.” I’m like, “Didn’t notice. Make my name bigger.”

Lyndon: And you can put doctor in front of your name too, can’t you, if you want. That’s

Dom: Yeah, I think you’re allowed to. Yeah, yeah. Dr. Phil does it. Yeah.

Lyndon: That’s right.

Dom: The way we wrote the book, ’cause Shannon had already published a couple of books, of which I had read one, and thought, “Oh, Shannon actually writes pretty good.”

I said, “We sh-” So I sent him a sentence.

Shannon: Writes pretty well, I think you’ll find.

Dom: No, so it said, write good or die.

Shannon: We’re authors, we have to get these things right.

Dom: Yeah. So I wrote a sentence that I thought was an amusing literary sentence, ’cause it was actually, I think the first sentence was, what is the flotsam and what is the jetsam?

Because it was just the thought I had of oh, flotsam and jetsam, like that’s how my brain works. That’s it. They always connect. So I sent it to Shannon and with the, and it said, “This is the first line of your new novel.”

And he turned it into a chapter and sent it back to me and said, “You write the next chapter.”

And that went on for quite a while. Years. Years. And then eventually, like it didn’t take long before we just got into bloody-minded cruelty.

Lyndon: Oh,

Dom: Yeah. And go, “Oh, you think the book’s going this way, do you? Actually…” And yeah. We, it was, passive aggressive writing is what we did.

Lyndon: I was passive.

Dom: Yeah. You were passive aggressive. Didn’t do anything. Towards each other or towards the characters? The pen is mightier than the sword. No, towards each other. Yeah, okay. “Oh, you wanna write a novel about this? No, I’m killing him.” And,

Lyndon: You’ve got bum, I’ve got bum.

Dom: Yeah. And the character a little bit.

Shannon: He doesn’t have a great time.

Dom: No, he doesn’t. Yeah. It was really good therapy for me. But then,

Lyndon: I can’t believe you got to the end of it and were like, “This has actually made a novel.” What happened? ‘Cause you’d rarely think that after, ’cause of the time, like you said, took years, that you’d get to the end of it and you’d go, “Oh.”

Shannon: There’s this little thing called editing, my friend. It was a hard edit on this book.

Dom: Yeah. And also towards the end, Shannon said, “One of us has to land it. And it’s you.” And so that’s, I wrote probably the last four or five chapters, ’cause we just kept introducing new threads to screw with each other.

And it reached a point where it’s like, we have to bring this all back together.

Shannon: So you say this, I was doing it to make the story a strong story and, but if you were doing it to screw with me, that’s fine. I was trying to help. To get out of spite. Yeah. Yeah, actually. And it’s funny because, I don’t know if you recall this, but the reason that I started it the way that I started it was because when you read one of my books, you said to me, “Hey, I’d like to write a book.”

And I basically went, “Okay, then you will. This is happening.” Yeah. There is no out of this. And then you sent something to me. I went, “Great, let’s go.” Here we go.

Lyndon: Awesome. Were you intending it then that Dom would write the book? It wasn’t meant to necessarily come back and forward. You were like, “I’m not writing a book for you.”

Shannon: No, I was always happy to write it with him because, yeah, I know how difficult it is to actually sit down and write a book.

Lyndon: Yeah.

Shannon: But I thought, “No, if Dom wants to write a book, then let’s do it.” Okay. All right. And I’ll give a bit of a nudge to make it happen. Yeah. Same as why the ending, I’m like, “This is Dom’s, so I’m gonna give it back to Dom and he can have the ending and finish it up how he wants.”

The bigger name. And he gets the bigger name. Yeah. Yeah, I did. When I say I did, ChatGPT did the cover art, which is just a stand-in. We will get a proper, yeah, I’m hoping it goes to a publishing company, and then they have their own artists and editors and the like.

Lyndon: Yeah.

Shannon: Yeah. If we wind up down the self-publish route later, it will be going through a proper artist.

But when I put it up on Kindle to download a copy so that, a proof, so I could check out and read it, it requires a cover art. Yeah.

Lyndon: So

Shannon: That’s how, that’s, put one on.

Lyndon: Yep.

Breallyn: You need to spell his name wrong then on the front. I should’ve thought of that. So you do that.

Shannon: Next time.

Lyndon: What about Dom Shithouse? Is that,

Breallyn: That’s probably not gonna fly. Not good, not

Dom: Good for the algorithm.

Lyndon: The look you gave me then was,

Dom: Wow, I’ve never heard that before. What

Shannon: Else do you get? Dom Outhouse, is that one?

Dom: Oh. Do you want me to get started? Would you? Condomdick Shitass Housewarming Party Pooper, love that, was the best one I ever heard.

Lyndon: I’ve got, now I’ve got to remember to put the toggle to yes, explicit. Explicit.

Dom: The funny, I do, I teach in schools, in primary school. Not

Lyndon: Anymore.

Dom: I do. And I’d always say to kids, “If you can come up with something I’ve never heard,

Lyndon: Oh, yeah.

Dom: You can have a prize. If I’ve heard it before,”

Lyndon: Offer your name.

Dom: Yeah, for making fun of my name. Yeah. ‘Cause it’s Australia. Shithouse.

Lyndon: Yeah.

Dom: It’s there. It’s begging for it.

Lyndon: Yeah. Highbrow.

Dom: And I swear this kid was maybe 11, go, “Whorehouse.” And I spat coffee out. I go, “Yeah, all right. You

Shannon: Can go out to recess.”

Lyndon: That’s great. That’s a good one. That’s really good. Wow.

Shannon: Even better when the principal sees them outside early and, “Oh, so why are you out early?” “I told the substitute it was a whorehouse.” “Yeah, fair enough. Good call. Good call. High five.”

Lyndon: Oh, that’s terrific one. I like that kid. Yeah. You gotta follow that one.

Not home, but just, progress over the years.

Shannon: I did follow him home and I kicked the crap out of him. They don’t let you do that no more. All these laws and regulations, it’s getting out of hand. Yeah. It’s a nanny state, I tell you.

Safety Houses Rabbit Hole

Lyndon: Do they have, Dom, do they have safety houses in the US?

Shannon: I don’t think, no, they have guns.

Lyndon: Oh, okay. So everyone’s

Shannon: Safe.

Lyndon: Everyone’s safe, okay. Do they still have safety houses here?

Breallyn: They’ve not been that popular since, I,

Lyndon: I was, were you guys like me? Just very skeptical on who would put their hand up to have a safety house.

Dom: I am now. At the time I wasn’t aware that such things were a problem. But now I’d be very suspicious. “Oh yeah, come in here, kid.”

Lyndon: I think I walked past one, and it would’ve been maybe in the Glen Iris area, and it had like the high hedges around it, and it has the, so what, the safety house would have a little plaque, wouldn’t it? And it would say, “This is a safety home.”

And the idea was that if, this is how it was sold to me as a child, was if you’re walking home and you see anyone that might be suspicious and you think you’re gonna be pulled into a car and then driven off and never seen again, or if you’re being chased or whatever, all these things that actually never seemed to really happen,

Dom: Satanic panic.

Lyndon: Yeah, Satanic panic.

You can run, if you know where there’s a safety house, you can run into that and they will keep you safe. But it’s like, have you seen this house? It’s got, you can’t see the windows. Yeah. And it’s got a gingerbread, and it’s got ivy, it’s got ivy growing all over it. I’m not running in there.

Breallyn: Because one of the owners is chasing you in with a car, totally, and the other one’s opening the door welcoming you in.

Dom: I don’t think it would’ve been very hard to forge one of those plaques.

Breallyn: You didn’t even have to. You could just ask for one and stick it on your letterbox. Ask for one. Like anyone could register. Oh, really? Like there wasn’t even a registry.

Lyndon: It was, hey, can we just start, maybe between the four of us, an investigative journalism podcast just on safety houses?

Yeah. On safety houses. How did they, yeah. How did it start? Whose idea was it? What happened? Let’s, can we have a look at the register of all the people? That would be fascinating.

Shannon: I think Neighbourhood Watch was keeping an eye out on them.

Lyndon: Oh.

Shannon: That’s how, is it the

Lyndon: Same thing? That’s how it was

Shannon: Regulated. They’d look, they watched each other.

Lyndon: Is it the same, is that not, is that a different thing?

Shannon: It’s a different thing. Maybe. Neighbourhood Watch was to

Dom: Stop you getting robbed.

Lyndon: Oh, did they have plaques on houses?

Dom: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that was the green

Shannon: One with the

Dom: Yeah, totally.

Lyndon: Is there no safety houses? Did I make that

Dom: Up? No, safety houses existed. No, safety houses existed. Oh, did they? I grew up in the, no, they were from the, affluent inner east and we had both a safety house and a Neighbourhood Watch house on our street.

Lyndon: Oh, ’cause you’re in eastern suburbs, so you were safe.

Dom: Yeah. Oh, totally. Yeah.

Lyndon: Oh.

Breallyn: I was safe out there, too. Yeah, yeah.

Dom: Where are you, Mooroolbark?

Breallyn: I was Chirnside Park.

Dom: Oh.

Breallyn: Yeah. Yeah.

Lyndon: Frankston had a similar thing, but it was, yeah, the plaques. That was Dazza.

Shannon: That was just a guy. Frankston had a similar thing, but it was meth.

Lyndon: Yeah.

Shannon: He was up all day and all night just watching, making sure everyone was safe.

Lyndon: All I know is he had a long blonde mullet and he drove a Sandman.

Shannon: Nothing cries safe more than that. Yeah.

Lyndon: And my cousin Natalie did not hop in the car with him.

Shannon: You know he’s safe the way he’s always talking to Jesus out loud on the train.

Lyndon: Yes. Yeah, that’s right, in the first person.

I miss him. Yeah. Oh, good on him.

Publishing Push and New Projects

Dom: But as for our publishing journey.

Breallyn: Yeah, talk about your publishing journey. I’d love to hear that.

Lyndon: Oh,

Dom: You’re looking

Breallyn: At me.

Dom: How’s it going? I have no idea what we’re doing.

Breallyn: So Dom, you haven’t, like,

Dom: Oh,

Breallyn: Given another job over to Shannon, have you by

Dom: I, look, I think you’re looking at it the wrong way. Okay.

Lyndon: The body language is not promising, Breallyn.

Dom: The way it was, the way it was presented was that Shannon does all the jobs, and I have taken a couple off you.

Breallyn: And you get your name big because of that. Is that

Dom: Yes.

Breallyn: Yep.

Lyndon: That’s it. You’re making it sound like Shannon went after you because you were the hot product. It’s like he’s had to go, “Look, I’ll do it all if I could just get Dom on board.” And then, you know, to have you, this is how you saw it. This is my entire life. That’s how it’s always happened. I wanna hear it from

Dom: Dom’s

Lyndon: Point of view.

Dom: You’re a trophy author.

Lyndon: I wanna hear it from Shannon’s point of view.

Dom: I’m the dumb good-looking one. Yeah,

Lyndon: Yeah.

Dom: And Shannon’s the one who

Shannon: Gets stuff done.

Lyndon: Yeah.

Shannon: It’s most of my dating life. All right. Okay. Are we dating? I set a pattern. Okay. All right. See what happens. Yeah, so I’ve written up a letter to go and approach agents and publishing houses.

And I’ve sent that over to Dom to look at. That was several months ago, Dom.

Dom: I said it was fine.

Shannon: Oh, I wanna see your edits on it. It’s gotta have your fingerprints there too, so when that’s done, we’ll move forward.

Lyndon: Yeah. Fair enough. Wow. Dom. One step at a time. So I’m the problem. Yeah. And now I discover this.

Yes. Yeah. No,

Shannon: I’ve told you this. Yeah. We’ve had this conversation. I’ve been aware for a while. Yeah, this is, and the podcast is ending too. It’s, I’ve had nothing. It is. This is our final episode. It’s not even our show.

Lyndon: Yeah, way to announce it.

Shannon: Yeah, so tune into our final episode. It’s the big finale, Pain In The Arts. Yeah, that’s funny. So hang on, so you guys then, so you’ve, the book’s finished, you got the podcast.

Lyndon: It’s actually all coming together then really, isn’t it? It’s a lot of work to get to this point. Don’t stop now, Dom. Yeah.

Shannon: The finish line is always so hard.

Lyndon: Yeah.

Shannon: And I actually believe that, and I was making a joke, but I think the truth of it, I find when you’ve worked so hard on a project

Lyndon: Yeah.

Shannon: And you’re right at the, now I have to actually network and talk to people part, it’s like, “I don’t wanna do

Lyndon: That bit.”

Shannon: Yeah. I did the, it’s done.

Lyndon: The, yeah, that’s right. The actual, the work that came from that seed or that initial spark of inspiration, and then you finally get it done, and then you find out the work’s not done now.

There’s a whole other work which I don’t really enjoy, and then I have to embark on. Yeah, it’s the same with, when people do an album. And actually creating an album can sometimes be quite arduous as well. You might have the songwriter who enjoys the whole songwriting process, and then they, maybe they do enjoy the whole recording process.

But then at the end of it, it’s like, okay, now you actually need to fork out money, potentially more money than you just invested in the record. And you’ve gotta go, like you say, talk to people, basically open yourself up to a lot of rejection now, and that you don’t wanna hear because you’ve just put your heart and soul into this work.

Yeah. It’s, yeah. It’s,

Breallyn: Demoralizing and expensive of your time and your money, and yeah.

Lyndon: Yeah. Yeah.

Breallyn: Yeah. Yeah. So happy days. That’s right. Good luck, and

Lyndon: We’ll see you next time.

Breallyn: No, it is a hard process. In the meantime, are you working on something new as well? Are you planning on ever working with Dom again or

Dom: Every, I’d say every three or four months, Shannon just sends me a screenshot that says, “The end.” He goes, “Yeah, I just finished another one. How you doing?” Nice.

Breallyn: I don’t, you’re prolific.

Dom: Am I?

Shannon: So I’ve got, so I’m working on a trilogy of books by myself.

Dom: Smart.

Shannon: Yeah. I’ll come back to Dom later.

Dom: Also working on a trilogy of books by myself.

Lyndon: This couch couldn’t get enough, could it really? I really like, we need a bigger couch so you could be like further on opposite ends.

Shannon: Don’t wanna ruffle the cushions. So I’ve finished one. I’ve got about 10,000 words left or so of the second one.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Shannon: And I wanna finish all three of them and then edit them together because they’re going,

Breallyn: Yeah.

Shannon: The idea in selling these is that you can take them individually or if you read all three of them, you get a bigger picture of what’s going on. They’re set in the same world. Yeah. Characters interact. Okay. But the idea with that is that if I take it to a publisher and they go, “We like this one, but we don’t like the other two,” I can still try and get a contract.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Shannon: Where often if you go to a publishing house and you’ve got, “Hey, I’ve got a five-book series, and I’m a new author.” They’re gonna go, “We don’t want a five-book series from you ’cause we don’t know if we can sell it.”

Breallyn: Yeah.

Shannon: Yeah. So if I can go and say, “Hey, I’ve got a couple different books. I’d like you to like all of them. If one of them takes off, you’ve got two more right there.” Pick your favourite and let’s see what happens.

Breallyn: That’s really smart. I know, like statistically, I think with series, three or five book series, whatever, the first book in the series will sell, out of all of the sales of the series, the first one will have about 80% of the sales figures. So just meaning that a lot of people will buy the first book, or the first book gets into libraries or classroom reads or whatever, and the others don’t tend to, so people don’t have the whole series.

But if you can interchange those ones, you could, yeah, potentially get more of that spread or just, yeah, like each one could be like an individual sales chart in itself.

Shannon: Yeah. The problem with it though is that before I release any new content, I have to finish three books. Yeah. So this has been going on for, I think I’m about seven or eight years into this project.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: That’s amazing.

Breallyn: They’re not quick, are they, books?

Lyndon: Can I ask a silly question? ‘Cause it’s,

Shannon: No silly questions, only silly people.

Lyndon: Yeah. All right. The trilogy, do you have to read it in order? Could you read the third book and then the first, and, or would that not make sense?

Shannon: So you don’t have to,

Dom: I was wrong there asking the question.

Shannon: Yeah. And you’ve asked one.

Lyndon: I know. I throw the ball up, you can hit it. Yeah,

Shannon: But it’s your show, so ask what you want.

Lyndon: Exactly. Thank

Shannon: You generally, thank you, Shannon. Yeah, Dom. We’re gonna start our own podcast.

Breallyn: We can’t start our own one, Dom, ’cause no one’s gonna push the buttons in time.

Shannon: We’ve gotta pay these guys to run our podcast.

Lyndon: Don’t worry, Dom can push buttons.

Breallyn: Not the right ones.

Shannon: I’ll take a drink of water before I answer. Yeah. In this context,

Lyndon: It was a big question.

Shannon: They’re designed to be able to be read in any order.

Lyndon: In any order, yeah.

Shannon: In any order. Which is

Lyndon: Fascinating.

Shannon: There’s, if it goes well, there is in the back of my mind a fourth book that will, you’ll need to read the three to read the fourth, oh yeah, which will wrap everything up in a big, wow, whiz-bang finale.

Dom: Wow.

Shannon: But it’s comedy fantasy. Oh, okay. So the best thing with writing comedy is that you can just wuss out of your endings. I think one of them, oh okay, I won’t, how do I say this without spoiling the ending of my unreleased book?

They go up and fight the big bad and everything happens, and then they just decide, “You know what? We’re done.” That’s it. And just leave.

Lyndon: Yeah, that’s it.

Shannon: Oh. And just give an unfulfilling ending because it’s funny that way.

Lyndon: Mission accomplished kind of thing. Yeah.

Shannon: Which leaves the big bad, yeah, still within the realm, so you can have a second and a third story.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Shannon: And then, yeah, if I have a fourth, wrap it all up, and actually I’m thinking to have it from the big bad’s perspective.

Lyndon: Yeah.

Shannon: And have him not be so big and bad and actually be a nice fellow, and everyone’s,

Breallyn: Okay. All he wanted was a hug in the end, and

Shannon: Yeah.

Breallyn: Never got it. Yeah.

Shannon: Never mind the slaughter of innocent people. That was, accidental, yeah, justified. Yeah, that was, it’s just a response to childhood trauma. Exactly. It’s all small. No. Yeah.

Lyndon: Nice.

One of my favourite books is Guardians of the Galaxy one and two. Is,

Breallyn: Didn’t know it was released in book form.

Lyndon: Would that be comedy fantasy?

Shannon: Comedy sci-fi, but

Lyndon: Comedy sci-fi, is that what you said your books are? Comedy,

Shannon: Comedy fantasy. Fantasy.

Lyndon: Oh.

Shannon: So more, I’ve got, less lasers, more dragons.

Lyndon: Yeah.

Lyndon: Oh, okay. Oh, yeah, no, I could probably get on board with that.

Shannon: But to answer your question about Dom and I working together, I’ve pitched the idea of doing a Substack or similar. Oh. Ooh. So yes. And to write a chapter at a time, similar to what we do on the podcast, and keep it light and funny and not too arduous so that we can actually do it. But we’ve got so many balls in the air at the moment that the odds are, yeah, pretty slim. But if

Dom: You, and I am constantly convicted by Shannon’s trust in me, that I should be a better friend and better co-author and do more work.

Lyndon: Yeah. You’ve been on the planet long enough now to know that it’s probably not gonna happen. So just cut yourself some slack. Yeah, like, I wanna hang out with Shannon ’cause we’ve got serious work stuff to talk about and lament over and whatnot, and learn from and what have you. You could, but I’d like to hang out with you too.

Dom: And complain about your podcast host.

Lyndon: No.

No, we can, we can just basically bolster each other up and encourage one another in our failings, in our shortcomings, let’s say.

Breallyn: That’s a misery loves company,

Lyndon: Or, and our challenges, kind of

Breallyn: Way.

Dom: Yeah.

Lyndon: Yeah.

Dom: You know,

Lyndon: We’ll,

Dom: Struggles.

Lyndon: We’ll, no.

Dom: No?

Lyndon: No, that’s a bit, okay. I’m trying, that wouldn’t apply. Yeah.

Dom: Struggling, yeah, yeah. No, I’m fine with it. No, our uniqueness, our spicy whatever.

But I gotta say for me, having Shannon kick me in the pants initially was real. I’ve written, I used to always say, I have a folder full of chapter ones.

I’ve probably written, yeah.

Breallyn: Yeah. Some of them.

Dom: In my lifetime, yeah, 100 first chapters of books. I have the idea. And,

Lyndon: Wow.

Dom: I knew intellectually that the problem with being an author wasn’t coming up with ideas, it was actually writing the words.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Dom: But it wasn’t until doing this with Shannon and having someone go, “Write the bloody words,” that, I don’t know, it cracked the back of it and suddenly I’m like, “Oh, this is totally overwhelming.”

Dom: Yeah. And so since writing this book with Shannon, I’ve actually, I’m editing, I’m also writing a trilogy.

After what you said, I’m starting to regret it ’cause I’m like, “You can’t read it separately.” But it’s been really fun and it’s just sit in front of the computer. That’s it. That’s all I tell myself. Take your laptop, go sit in a cafe, order a coffee, open up your laptop, and don’t think past that.

And then I will actually sit there and write. Okay. But the other thing that’s been really interesting in this process for me is I’ve always thought about books as clever ideas extended. When I read a novel I’m often going, “What was their original idea?”

Did they have some wacky idea and just build on it?

And so I’m always thinking in terms of these super complex ideas and how to turn it into a novel. And I’ve started, I just added a huge swathe of romance into these books I’m writing, which is something that I would have mocked myself for.

Before I’d ever written anything I would have gone, if you’re gonna

Shannon: Be a writer,

Dom: Don’t

Shannon: Be a

Dom: Romance writer, you idiot.”

And I’m actually, I don’t feel like it’s highbrow. I don’t think it’s clever. It’s really fun to write.

It’s actually motivating. So these sort of super gritty noir fantasy book, trilogy I wanted to write has actually kind of turned into this love romance story between a man and an elf, and they’re falling in love in the background of a city, and it’s been really fun. Yeah.

Shannon: You say romance. Yeah. Romance or smut?

Dom: No, just romance. Oh.

Lyndon: So is this, like there’s a romance in it or now it is a romance novel?

Dom: It’s skirting the edges. Like it is a fantasy novel

Lyndon: Yeah,

Dom: About the country boy going to the big city and making his fortune in the fantasy world. But there’s a huge thread of romance going through the whole thing. That

Lyndon: You could also argue, couldn’t you, that a country boy and romance, that is fantasy, isn’t it?

Dom: Yeah. It’s basically, what is it? Farmer Wants a Wife? It’s fantastical. Farmer Wants a Wife season minus 780.

Shannon: Yeah, yeah. He’s just a small town boy. Yeah. Yeah.

Fleetwood Mac, Discovery and Finding Your Audience

Dom: I teach at culinary school, right?

Shannon: Oh, yeah.

Dom: And we assign leadership positions, and one of, if you get assigned a sous chef, one of the things I let the students do is pick the music that we’re gonna listen to.

Lyndon: Oh, cool.

Dom: And we get a few mature-aged students in. Yeah. And this guy, John, who’s an Englishman, and what did he put on? Gosh, I can’t believe I can’t remember.

Shannon: I’ve not heard of that song. Is it good?

Dom: It’s not Journey. Fleetwood Mac.

Shannon: Oh, yeah.

Dom: I’ve, I knew Fleetwood Mac existed. Yeah. I didn’t think, I don’t think I’d ever listened to a Fleetwood Mac song.

Yeah. Oh my gosh, they’re good. Like, they’re so good. I discovered Fleetwood Mac, yeah, in literally 2024. Same here. I did too. And go,

Breallyn: I went for a walk and went, “I’m gonna become a drummer,” ’cause they are so amazing. Like, they are so good.

Dom: Yeah. They’re

Breallyn: Just inspiring.

Dom: And then reading the whole history, I love how that stuff happens, yeah, like you’re reading the story of Fleetwood Mac, yeah, is just like, yeah, the most epic tragedy you’ve ever read.

Lyndon: Yeah.

Dom: It’s so good.

Breallyn: Yep.

Lyndon: Yeah. Crazy.

Breallyn: Yes, they’re great.

Shannon: I was introduced to them by The Mighty Boosh. They reference them, oh really, multiple times throughout the show. Yeah. Yeah.

Dom: Okay.

Shannon: That’s a weird way to get into your, yeah, what, ’80s music?

Lyndon: Yeah.

Shannon: ’70s?

Lyndon: Yeah. ’70s, yeah, probably more ’70s, weren’t they? Yeah. ’70s into the ’80s.

Yeah, we talked before about like the niche nature of your podcast, and I guess ours to a degree, and about finding your audience and whatnot.

When you’re talking about Mighty Boosh, it’s because you’re into The Mighty Boosh and then they’re referencing Fleetwood Mac, and then that’s your way in, like it actually makes sense that then you would perhaps pay attention now to Fleetwood Mac because of how you got into it.

Maybe, it’s

Breallyn: Like an ad.

Lyndon: Do you like Fleetwood Mac as a result, or you have, you don’t have an indifference to them anymore, or do you know what I mean? What is, yeah.

Shannon: I like songs. They’re not a band that I’ve gone into the whole discography and, but if Tusk comes on, okay, I’m in for a groove.

Lyndon: Yeah.

Shannon: Yeah.

Lyndon: I just like that whole idea of how you can get into, whether it’s music or whatever, like just through the different avenues and that, I find that fascinating. And hopefully that is something that, how our audiences will find us as well, you know?

Someone types in, they’re looking for a recipe for minestrone soup and they end up listening to your podcast and wondering what universe are they in.

Dom: It’s like

Lyndon: That’s how it’s gonna happen.

Dom: A tacit endorsement. Piece of cake. Yeah. Eh? Where there’s like, oh, the Mighty Boosh, I like The Mighty Boosh.

The Mighty Boosh likes Fleetwood Mac, so you go into it with your heart open. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Whereas if it’s like Kevin from accounting likes Fleetwood Mac, and you can’t stand Kevin, like yeah. You need to give

Shannon: Kevin a chance.

Dom: I can’t stand Kevin.

Lyndon: I just love how you’ve brought the accountants into our show again as

Dom: Oh, really?

Lyndon: Yeah, Brea likes to rag on accountants all the time and,

Breallyn: I haven’t,

Lyndon: Me? You are the one

Breallyn: That kind of

Lyndon: Can’t understand

Dom: That they exist.

Lyndon: I just, I just know that no accountant will ever listen to us, so it doesn’t matter.

Dom: You rag on accounts, and I rag on guys called Kevin.

Lyndon: Yeah.

Dom: And we’ve brought it all together.

Breallyn: I wanted to ask, as we are gonna wrap up in a moment, yeah we are. So how do people discover more? Your podcast is called An Appropriate Amount of Soup. They can search it up directly.

Shannon, tell us about you. Can people get your books?

Shannon: No, they cannot. No, they can. Actually, I do. I don’t want them to. No. Ever? They’ll have to write a letter, Breallyn, and I’ll post it to them. I, come to my house, fax it to him. He’ll send you the whole book via fax. Yes.

Lyndon: Don’t worry, we’ll all be needing faxes in about 10 years, I reckon.

Shannon: After the war. Yeah. Getting there. So I have some of my older works available on Amazon. They were self-published, so they’re through the Amazon library.

Breallyn: Yep. What’s your full name, Shannon?

Shannon: No, the author name. The author name, author name, yep, is S. John Davis.

Breallyn: Yep.

Shannon: Which funnily enough happened because I put in a short story in a journal, and it was accepted and until I then spoke with them, and then it’s, “Actually, we were wanting a female author.”

And ’cause it was just Shannon Davis at the time. Oh. And went, “Ah, it’s reject-” So just to avoid that confusion, it’s S. John Davis. Yeah.

Lyndon: But, hang on. What about Shannen Doherty? Is that a person?

Shannon: That’s a lady. Yeah.

Lyndon: Yeah, she’s a woman.

Shannon: Yeah, that’s what I’m saying. But have they heard your voice? They thought I was

Lyndon: Oh.

Shannon: A woman. ‘Cause

Breallyn: Shannon’s one of those names it can

Shannon: Be, and they wanted a female voice for the work that I submitted to, not a male voice. Oh. So they rejected me after. So they accepted me and then rejected me later.

Lyndon: Female voice. Okay.

Shannon: Written voice. Written

Lyndon: Voice.

Shannon: That’s not really a voice.

Lyndon: So you couldn’t, yeah, that’s what I mean, but you couldn’t pretend that you were

Breallyn: Just

Lyndon: A Shannon, yeah, a lady.

Shannon: If I, yeah, put my voice up a little bit, pitch it upwards.

Lyndon: Yeah, I didn’t want to, ruin quality. Yeah,

Breallyn: You just didn’t wanna fall into that again.

Lyndon: Who’s that artist? Is it, they get rejecting you, is it Emma George, the Australian, oh, anyway, there’s an Australian artist. I loved her stuff, and then she brought out an album but she pitched her voice down, and she sounds like a guy, so you wouldn’t know.

Just couldn’t distinguish from listening to it,

Breallyn: But, and she was able to do that in singing? That’s quite amazing.

Lyndon: Oh, no. You just do it in the computer.

Breallyn: Oh, gotcha. Oh, so she didn’t, so she didn’t actually lower her

Lyndon: No, no. Vocal register type thing. No, she’s done it in the software. Oh,

Breallyn: Gotcha.

Lyndon: Which is super easy to do.

Breallyn: Yeah,

Lyndon: But the whole album is that. That’s interesting. And, on a slight different tangent. No, Brea, you said we’ll

Breallyn: Wrap it up. You just already went on a tangent, Emma. Did I? Yeah. Why? That was a tangent because

Shannon: Yeah, I was plugging a book. So S. John Davis. You’re plugging a book. Town In The North is my first book. Humbuckle Ramshackle is my second book.

Lyndon: How did I get onto Emma George?

Shannon: Let’s go back to Emma George now that you’ve, yeah, plugged in. Let’s go back to Emma George.

Lyndon: I don’t even know if that’s her name.

Shannon: I used to think that, I used to think that Tracy Chapman, when I was young, yes, I always thought that was a male singer, and found out later that she’s not.

Breallyn: Oh.

Lyndon: No.

Shannon: Just,

Breallyn: S. John Davis.

Shannon: Because of the lower register.

Breallyn: I love the name Humbuckle Ramshackle. Is that what it is? That’s a great name, isn’t it? Oh, it’s such a sweet name. I love that too. Love it. Yeah.

Shannon: Yeah. Wow. Okay. And although it’s not an easy start to my books, the first book, Town In The North, is a hero’s journey type.

It’s set in a post-apocalyptic world where there is no sunlight, and so everyone is scattered into small communities because food and resources are scarce. And then there’s word that there is a town in the south, or a city in the south, that is like a, it’s your Atlantis type.

Dom: That’s a very deceptive title if the town is actually in the south.

Shannon: But the setting is the town in the north. That’s where they are.

Dom: No, I’m standing by what I said. That, do you know what? Fine. I’ll retitle it.

Breallyn: The North

Dom: South Town. If that’ll make you happy, Dom.

Shannon: Don’t

Dom: Get that book. Town In The North, in brackets, Is Where We Start.

Shannon: Yeah. Don’t get the book.

Dom: It’s

Shannon: Misleading.

It’s rubbish. No, but that’s more, and it’s one of those novels where it’s kind of young adult adjacent. Like you could give it to a young adult reader and it works, but there are themes that an adult reader would also appreciate.

Dom: Yep.

Shannon: And then the second book, Humbuckle Ramshackle, it’s a misleading narrator, first person perspective, and he’s overwhelmed throughout the whole thing with noise, video, things flicking on and off, which is where the title comes from.

Oh. And there are people that are chasing him, and it’s more of an art piece than a straight narrative.

So if you want to be challenged, that’s the one to go. And it’s a short read, and it’s a more challenging read. Or if you just wanna sit down and plop on the couch and read a book,

Lyndon: Sounds like go the first one.

Breallyn: An interesting. Yeah.

Lyndon: Would it, is it triggering for someone like me or?

Shannon: You would have a migraine and lie down.

Lyndon: Yeah.

Shannon: It sounds like, I think I’ve got it in the car too. I’ll give you a, yeah. It’s,

Lyndon: Sounds like it’ll be great.

Shannon: It was inspired by Radiohead’s Paranoid Android.

Lyndon: Okay.

Shannon: And the story behind the production of that album.

Lyndon: Cool. Excellent. That sounds really fascinating. What’s it called again?

Shannon: Humbuckle Ramshackle.

Lyndon: Humbuckle Ramshackle. So is that a made up

Shannon: Well,

Lyndon: Humbuckle,

Shannon: So humbuckle coming from humbuckers from a guitar.

Lyndon: Yeah.

Shannon: And then Ramshackle thing, oh, this is getting better and better. Ramshackle.

Lyndon: Fantastic.

Shannon: Yeah. It’s the shackle of a ram, I believe is ramshackle.

Lyndon: Yeah.

Shannon: If not, I made that up.

Lyndon: Yeah. No, I’ll go with that. It makes sense to me.

Shannon: What have you done with your life, Dom?

Lyndon: Yeah.

Dom: Dom? I cook food for people.

Breallyn: So

Lyndon: We’ll hang out later.

Dom: So if you’re in Central Oregon

Breallyn: Yeah.

Dom: And you want delicious food, the most beautiful part of the world, look at grainculinary.com. That is where I live, and I do private cheffing.

Breallyn: Private cheffing,

Dom: Yeah.

Lyndon: Yeah.

Dom: For those in the area. If you live somewhere else and wanna pay for my airfares, I’m happy to come and cook for anyone, anywhere.

Lyndon: Yeah.

Dom: Yeah.

Breallyn: And

Dom: It’s a beautiful time to live where I’m able to take a hobby that I’ve had for literally 40 years and actually make money. I don’t make much money out of Dungeons and Dragons, but you know, I do make some. And it’s so much fun for me. I really enjoy it.

Breallyn: Yeah,

Lyndon: It’s great. Wow. Yeah, that’s a whole world, interesting. I had, I know nothing about. I didn’t even know you were into Dungeons and Dragons. You must have kept that on the down low.

Dom: It’s ’cause you were my small group church leader, and I didn’t want you to excommunicate me.

Lyndon: I don’t think, was I ever a leader in anything? That sounds wrong.

Dom: Yeah, you, you

Lyndon: That sounds

Dom: Oh, it was wrong. Yeah. But nonetheless, you were. That sounds

Lyndon: Misplaced. Wow. Yeah.

Dom: My favourite memory is we were coming to your place for dinner and small group.

And we were running late.

Lyndon: Please make me look good.

Dom: I’m not going to. I’m curious. And we stopped, we went, “We should stop and get chips or something to say sorry for being late.”

And we stopped at the supermarket, and you were standing in the supermarket, and you had ground beef in one hand and ground chicken in the other, and you’re going, “I don’t know. What am I gonna make for dinner tonight?” And you see us, and you’re like, “Oh, I’m so glad you’re here. What should I make for dinner tonight?”

Lyndon: All the pieces fit. It’s so true.

Dom: Checks out.

Lyndon: Oh, man. And you, Shannon doesn’t know me from a bar of soap, but you saw me making coffee this morning. I did. And it all, it’s, yeah.

Shannon: Look, I listen, I listen to your podcast. I’m aware that you’re, oh, okay, a particular man.

Lyndon: I forgot. I did forget about that.

Shannon: Yeah, you do post this to everyone.

Lyndon: I know. I know. And it sounds ridiculous, but I forget, like the, yeah. Yeah, that’s a great story, Dom. Yeah. Thanks a lot.

Breallyn: I’m surprised you ever came back again to our house. And we’ve literally, I love you guys, just made another dinner plan with you, so you gotta go, hey. Yeah, but you know,

Dom: You know that day we’re going out.

Lyndon: Yeah. Someone else will cook for us. Did you, yeah. It’s, and it’s funny ’cause Brea and I were discussing like, “Should we have him over for dinner or we’ll have to just see whether Ka- Kerry’s up to going out,” and because it’d be nice to go out and all this, not realizing that you’re already thinking, we better go out because if it’s up to Lyndon to cook-

Dom: It’s a 45-minute drive to bump into Lyndon at

Lyndon: At the local IGA.

Dom: At the local IGA as he’s discussing lamb or pork.

Lyndon: Yeah. He’s at the IGA in the northern suburbs asking whether they have any pork, and just being met with a confused face behind the counter.

Breallyn: I think we can wrap it up there. Thank you so much for joining us, Dom and Shannon. And yeah, everybody listen out for An Appropriate Amount of Soup. It’s a great podcast to listen to, especially if you love a little bit of a literary journey and discussion, and lots of funny jokes. Highly recommend.

Dom: And tune in next week for the first ever Appropriate Amount of Soup collab. Did we say collab? Collab. Collab.

Lyndon: Collab.

Dom: With Pain In The Arts. We’re rambling. We’re trying to wrap

Breallyn: Up, Dom. Yeah, that’s right. You can, oh, no.

Lyndon: That’s

Breallyn: Fine. You can hear us, yeah, next week. We’ll be on there. Amazing.

Lyndon: We’ll put all the links in the show notes to all of your socials or whatever it is you’ve got going on. Yeah, my amazing socials. I’ll consult with Shannon for those. Please do.

And for your books and all the links for that, but,

Dom: I’ll get my people to call your people.

Lyndon: Yeah. You don’t have to. He’s right here. Yeah, I’m right

Breallyn: Here. Shannon’s here. We’ll just talk to him from now on.

Shannon: Done.

Dom: Call Lyndon. Okay, done.

Lyndon: All right. Thanks so much, guys. Oh, thanks for joining us. Thank you, Lyndon. A lot of fun.

Breallyn: Thank you. Yeah, it’s been great.

Lyndon: Talk to you all next week.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: Ciao.

Breallyn: Bye.

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