Aug 11, 2026 · 1 hr 15 min · 11 segments
The great John Jay Stancliff joined me to talk about his latest novel, PIERCE, out August 11 from…
John Jay StancliffGuestBrad KellyHostUm, Yeah, so I wanted to think about, I guess, if we could talk about what is, this is a question, so a lot of writers listen to this podcast and readers too, obviously, but I like to spend a little bit of time in finding some stuff in here that could be valuable to a writer who might be listening.
And one question I like to ask, It seems a little trite, but I actually have found it to be really enlightening in many cases.
What was the first sort of germ of an idea that launched this book? Like first image or moment or whatever it was.
What was the first thing that you were that maybe you didn't even know it was going to make it into the book, but that ended up being in this book?
In your response to your question about what books inspired you, when I had read, I don't remember what year The Passenger by Cormac McCarthy came out.
And I read through that, and the parts that I liked the most in it were the parts where he's doing the underwater salvage diving, and it's very technical.
And I just remember reading it, and I didn't know exactly what he was talking about.
There's a lot of technical – he used a lot of technical jargon to express what – what exactly the character is doing underwater.
But I just remember being so entertained the entire time and kind of enthralled by the, the use of technical language and the sort of poetic way and in a way that conveyed the romance and sort of story of, of manual labor.
And granted, it's not like a huge part of the story, but it was inspirational to me.
Uh, I made a couple of forays into sort of technical, like trade oriented writing.
It must've been 2023, uh, called, I think just called the carpenter, which is about a cabinet maker who, um, he basically really screws up a cabinet.
Uh, and, and I thought it had some promise, like a couple of, a couple of people read it and said some really nice things to me about it.
And I, I sort of decided that if I was, you know, for my next book, whatever, I would start writing it.
Um, Yeah, so I wanted to think about, I guess, if we could talk about what is, this is a question, so a lot of writers listen to this podcast and readers too, obviously, but I like to spend a little bit of time in finding some stuff in here that could be valuable to a writer who might be listening.
And one question I like to ask, It seems a little trite, but I actually have found it to be really enlightening in many cases.
What was the first sort of germ of an idea that launched this book? Like first image or moment or whatever it was.
What was the first thing that you were that maybe you didn't even know it was going to make it into the book, but that ended up being in this book?
In your response to your question about what books inspired you, when I had read, I don't remember what year The Passenger by Cormac McCarthy came out.
And I read through that, and the parts that I liked the most in it were the parts where he's doing the underwater salvage diving, and it's very technical.
And I just remember reading it, and I didn't know exactly what he was talking about.
There's a lot of technical – he used a lot of technical jargon to express what – what exactly the character is doing underwater.
But I just remember being so entertained the entire time and kind of enthralled by the, the use of technical language and the sort of poetic way and in a way that conveyed the romance and sort of story of, of manual labor.
And granted, it's not like a huge part of the story, but it was inspirational to me.
Uh, I made a couple of forays into sort of technical, like trade oriented writing.
It must've been 2023, uh, called, I think just called the carpenter, which is about a cabinet maker who, um, he basically really screws up a cabinet.
Uh, and, and I thought it had some promise, like a couple of, a couple of people read it and said some really nice things to me about it.
And I, I sort of decided that if I was, you know, for my next book, whatever, I would start writing it.
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