Blackout From Author J Luke Bennecke It Takes A Real Engineer To Create This Darkness

0:00I don't know if you've been there or not, but it's arrow dot net. That's the place where people are hanging right now. ARROE dot net. If you love your sports, your movies, your books, your music, whatever there is, when it comes to content in the world, it's 20 different podcasts that puts focus on your path and where you want to grow as a listener. Arrow dot net, ARROE dot net. Enjoy your exploration. Hello and good morning, everybody. Everybody, it's just me. I'm all by myself. Oh, there's arrow. Yeah, as an author, there's a lot of people up there in that head. Come on, I've seen the movie, a beautiful mind with Russell Crock. Come on now. That's true. There's a lot of us in here. You're absolutely. Everybody's fine. Thank you. How are you? Absolutely fantastic and excited to share a conversation with you because not only do you have this unbelievable way of making me feel like that. I've stepped into a world that exists, but you, you really do feed my imagination because I have always feared any blackout. And I, and I, and I don't know if it's because I grew up in the state of Montana

1:00with the minimum in missiles. And I just, that was just our way of life. But to, to read about this, you are making something feel like this could happen again and again. And, and I just, I just love the way that you step into this. Oh, thank you so much, Arrow. I appreciate it. I think the scariest part about blackout isn't really what's fictional. It's what's possible. Yes. All the technologies in blackout are either real or coming online. So I just connected the dots. That's all I did. Yeah, but that's the fun part about being a writer versus an author because a writer is the one that goes in and researches. Does the gut work and stuff and then says goes to the other side of your personality says, are you put the story together? It's like we already did the homework. You, you go ahead and put it together now. Exactly. I've been an engineer for 35 years and as an engineer, I'm kind of trained. We're all trained to look for failure points as a novelist, though. I get to kind of imagine what would happen when these things fail. That's kind of the fun part for me. Well, my wife says that you have redefined the word dangerous. And I laughed at her because I thought, oh my God, that you just hit this man

2:02right on the heart because that's exactly what he's doing because he's given us something that is authentic. And it makes you feel like, oh my God, that is so dangerous. I, I, I, well, thank you. That's nice of your wife to say it. Thriller's kind of let us experience danger from my perspective. The little experience danger like from a safe distance. They allow us all to kind of ask what would I do without actually having to live it. So that's kind of again, the fun part from me. How did you locate the balance of blackout and the reason why is because there really is a carefully and maybe that's the engineer in you because I know how engineers are. You have to answer the question why every time you take a breath. Right. Exactly. Well, technology from my perspective, it's not, it's not really good or bad. It's just a tool, right? And so it's how we look at things. So to me, the issue is it really like being dependent on certain things. It's understanding those risks that kind of come with the dependence, whether you're talking AI or the power grid or self-driving cars or water.

3:05What have you? It's, it's how much what kind of risks do we have that come with us being dependent on these new technologies? Yeah. And part of the reason why I think you just scare the crap at me inside this book, blackout is because I, I'm, we have a big storm that's coming to the Carolinas and I know is going to create blackouts. And if you don't think I'm not going to be thinking about your book, it may not be warfare or some sort of terrorism, but the fact of the matter is it's a blackout. And that, that to me is no different than Michael and Jason and even Freddie Krueger. The blackout is the superstar here. Exactly. It is. It's, uh, it can be scary. Our entire existence right now in this modern world, we call the United States of America is dependent on, on, on power and electricity more so now than it was just a few decades ago. And so if you take that away, imagine a world without cell phones without gasoline because the pumps aren't working without the internet. Hospital generators are going down. That's right. Um, you're not able to drive anywhere.

4:06You're not able to communicate an extended distances over your cell phone. No texting, no, this phone call that you and I are having right now gone. Uh, the entire I heart network down, um, everything. It's a completely different world than it. It goes back to the 19th century. How we, how we live back then and none of us, none of us, I think are kind of ready for that. And so this is somewhat of a cautionary tale to kind of get us to kind of wake up a little bit through a fun way. I envisioned you playing a game of chess while you were putting this book together. We were sitting there and you were saying, okay, this player is here. This player is there. What can I do to get this player to move in this direction? Because I mean, there really is such a system of thought in this to where you carry us forward. You're not forcing us to do anything as readers. We're sitting there as bystanders and witnesses of this. Exactly. Well, thank you. So that's another compliment. I appreciate that. Yeah. It's, it's kind of like chess. How is this all going to be put together? And when I write a book, I, I put it together kind of methodically and I have

5:10eight different sub-acts and I have all my characters and I do a deep dive on each character and I have a backstory for each one. And yeah, I just kind of let the characters tell the story. You're an author. So you can appreciate this. It's, you kind of let, let the universe kind of guide you through it there. And it's, this goes over here and then this goes over here. And oh, what if this happened over here and more conflict and more drama and more tension and before you know, you have this multi layer, layered, high, fast-paced, high tension story. They kind of, you know, ideally, yes, here's the crap out of people and hope some wake up. See, this is the very reason why I use an old fashioned writing instrument and I am a dipper. I'll use an ink well. But the reason why is because I believe in stream thinking and like you're saying, when a story comes to you, you don't need your fingers to get in the way of, oh, I got to edit this. Oh, I got to put this comma there. Buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, there's too many things that get in the way of the writing mind. Exactly. And in this book here is, is it just, it's at its basic essence. It's a techno thriller about what happens.

6:10A big picture of emerging technologies that are kind of weaponized against us. And it's written by me, you know, someone with 35 years of experience as an engineer helping to build those infrastructure technologies that are actually threatened. So I can kind of take my engineering experience and knowledge and everything and put it into a kind of a tightly woven story and let those characters kind of come to life and see what happens. I think this is one of the best books I've written and it's, I'm listening to it right now. We're doing the, we have Brad Will's. Yeah. He's doing the audio book and so I'm listening to quality control and I'm like, this is like, I'm like in my own story. I'm patting myself. I'm like, this sounds like a real story. It's good. I'm excited about it. No, I'm glad that you're doing that because I mean, a lot of people don't understand that that is not going back there as an active conceit. We in radio, we have air check sessions all the time where they are going back and they're listening and making sure that we've got the right delivery and that we're at pitch, volume and tone and connection and you're doing exactly that.

7:11You are in that moment. You're experiencing what you wrote and to me, it's that outside thing. If you don't listen to it, then you're missing out on a major part of the journey of even bringing this book forward. Exactly. And a lot of people, that's, that's how they read. They read through audio books. Yes. Yes. Exactly. And they're listening to podcasts. So a lot of people are driving around these days and they've got an hour, two hour long commute because of the economy or whatever. And they listen to your podcast and thanks for everything that you're doing. And if they want to listen to a book, this is a great opportunity to kind of get lost in another story about what might happen up to some technologies you're weaponized against us. Please do not move. There's more with Jay Luke Binnocky coming up next. The name of his book, ooh, and a scary one at that. Back out. We are back with Jay Luke Binnocky. Well I have to kind of laugh at this when you talk about that. We're all listening to stories because the radio industry, God love it. I do love it. I've gotten 46 years out of it.

8:11But the fact of the matter is the industry is saying that it's the storytelling and the podcasting that's taking away their people. And it's like, what do you want to do about it? How about sharing some stories on that big old tower of their people? Come on now. You need someone here that can tell a story like blackout on your channel. Exactly. Listen to blackouts. It's a great story. Man, you got to tell me about Jake because inside your creative imagination, who is this guy and where did he come from in your real life? Were you at a Starbucks or a grocery store? You said, holy crap. That's him right there. That's pretty much exactly what I saw. Are you kidding me? Oh my God. You nailed it. You nailed it, dude. That's funny. Yeah. He's, this is the third book in the Jake Bindle series. Yes. The Red Lock Second Book Waterborne Third One is blackout. Coming out October 6th, available for pre-order. And he's, as my first book that I wrote 10 years ago, Red Lock and they said, you know, right what you know. And I didn't have a lot of creative juices back then.

9:14I was just starting out. So I'm like, well, I'll kind of base the guy on me, but like a bad-ass version of these smarter, braver, more courageous, et cetera, et cetera. And so that's kind of where that came from. But see, that's what's fascinating. And that's why I even created a view from the writing instrument on I Heart Radio. There are so many writers that are sitting here listening in their cars or at home, or even in their office, and they're going, I've got all of this work that I've dedicated to, but I don't want to get it out there because I'm afraid. And that's what I love about you. It doesn't feel like that you're afraid to get your stories out here because you know they're going to be effective in our lives. I'm trying, whether it's water or self-driving cars or not, the power grid that we have vulnerabilities here in our infrastructure. I've been doing this for 35 years. I found some vulnerabilities. And I put my bad guy out on it to say, hey, if I was a bad guy, I wanted to cause terror. These are some things I would probably do. And so hopefully it's a little bit of a wake up call in the real world, even though it's

10:17a work of fiction, this is for entertainment. What are we going to do to kind of prevent this from happening? This would suck if we had a nation wide block out. Yeah. And the thing about it is that you inspire me because my neighbor Fred, he's an engineer too. Everything that you're doing is what he did as well. And so whatever Fred is doing around his house with the power generators and stuff like that, the rest of us do is I guess that what Fred's doing, oh, we got to do it then. And so I mean, and I cannot wait to get Fred's reaction with this book because he's going to agree with you 5,000% and say, so what do you want to do about it? Let's do something right now. It's almost like that's what you're doing to you going, what are we going to do about it? I've just given you the facts. I know it's in storybook form, but I just given you the facts. Here are facts. And again, all the technologies are real. I've got six facts at the beginning of the book about how old the power grid is, all that stuff there. And so kind of in a Dan Brown fashion, it kind of sets this, it's a fictional story, but it's grounded in reality. The best lies are based in some sort of truth as you know.

11:19So I think that's kind of adds a little bit of a new on to the story makes it a little bit better. What did you learn from this project because life gave you that engineering position and then all of a sudden you're with these books, you're the author. So so all the way through this transition, is it finally that your voice is being heard? Yeah, they say your voice, your voice as an author doesn't really kind of come online until you're in your third or fourth novel. There you go. Maybe four or five hundred thousand. Yeah, and this is my fifth book. So I'm thinking, I'm starting to find my voice and there's an engineering voice and they're kind of visa, the Tom Clancy. Yes. Some of my, my fans are calling me the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the Tom Clancy or it's a Tom Clancy type story where you have some engineering and some, some logic in there, but it's also fast case and high tension, all that stuff. But it doesn't have a lot of the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the greedy details about three pages about describing a bolt or something on a submarine.

12:21It's a little bit, a little bit easier to read than an older, old, old Tom Clancy novel. So yeah, that's, and I think that's part of what makes it a little bit different and more fun than, like a typical thriller novel. All right. So you're into this five books deep now. I know for a fact about Tom Clancy as well as Clive Owens and how I've been with them both. And I've talked to all the authors that followed under the same umbrella. Are you starting to put together a team so that when you are already that passed the baton, then the character of Jake will live on. I am. I have a fourth book that's already kind of, uh, uh, cool lesson in my head. I've got a little bit of an outline put together. I won't, won't reveal the details there, but, uh, Jake might not make it through the end of that book. And so he's going to be passing the torch on to a younger, uh, like I meant, uh, like I meant someone he's mentor person, probably a strong female protagonist, a civil engineer, and you know, keep keep the party rolling there. And that gives us a spin off series and we can keep keep going for another however many

13:22books that she can, she can document. Yeah. I love what you're doing. See, this is what makes writing fun. So so many people think, I don't want to be editing. I don't want people to judge me. No, go for the adventure, man. There's an adventure in this. There's an adventure. Like everybody gets one star reviews. Don't forget, you know, even Stephen King, this was a horrible book. You're like, what? That was the best book. It's a, it's a, it's a creative process. It's subjective. Um, so don't worry about it. If you get it, if you're an author, I say finish your book, edit it, spend a lot of time editing it and get it out there. And, uh, yeah, you might have a few people that kind of poo poo it a little bit, but more often than not, they'll be like, wow, I'm really glad you wrote that. Thank you. This has got to be a Blumhouse or a Jordan Peel movie when you make it into a movie because they've got the courage and the guts to take blackout and make it so freaking real on that big screen that you're going to walk out of the going holy hell. What just hit me? Exactly. That would be wonderful. Jordan Peel, give me a call. Yeah. I listen to you. Where can, where can people go to find a more about you?

14:24Uh, my website has all the information. It's jade Luke, then it key dot com. It's available for pre order. And it comes out October six in hard book copy, hard book format, audiobook and ebook. All right. We need to get together with Heather because when it comes out in October, we got to talk again because you're going to be going through some experiences this summer. I'm going to be watching the world of through different eyes because of this book. So therefore, we, we, we've got to get together again and, and really jump into the process. Thank you, Arrow. That would be an amazing experience. I appreciate you all for it. Will you be brilliant today? Okay. You too. Have a wonderful day, Arrow. Thank you for your time.