Poetry. Screenplays. Novels. Meet Roberta Roy

Hey, it's Benji Cole, son of Al Cole from CBS Radio and host of the syndicated talk

show, People of Distinction.

The talk gives you an in-depth view of some of the most dynamic, insolent, and successful

people on the planet, run to our website Al Cole Enterprises.com for more info.

Email me through Benji at Al Cole Enterprises.com if you'd like to get involved with what

we have going, and as always, please continue to like and follow our broadcasts.

People of Distinction is internationally syndicated, solely due to the love and support that

you all continue to give.

We're available across all major distributors, and as long as you keep following, we're

going to continue to put out the content.

Now sit back and strap in, because on the line with us today, we have the impressive

Roberta M. Roy, and we're going to be discussing her wonderful novel, The Morning After, The

Morning After.

It's Amazon, it's Barnes and Noble Men, it's a lot of other places, type it into a search

bar, sit back, and be greeted with it all.

And trust me when I tell you, Roberta has a lot.

This is a four-part series, okay?

So there are other books you're going to want to pick up.

There are poetry books you're going to want to look into.

There are screenplays you can find.

Roberta is an artist through and through, and there is a lot to get your hands on.

It starts with The Morning After, The Morning After.

And once we begin talking about it, you're going to understand why I say that.

And listen, it is an absolute pleasure to have Roberta here on the line.

Let's be honest.

Here for a second.

Okay?

2021 and 2022.

They felt less like history and more like a slow motion panic attack, didn't it?

And I don't even know if we can confine it to just those two years, because I think we

may still be in it.

A lot of us, right?

I mean, there was a pandemic that just wouldn't end climate grief, wars starting and ending

and starting again.

And I'm telling you, a lot of this is overlapping with where we currently are.

Trust me, I'm not talking about 2026, although it may feel like it.

Our guests today, she didn't just live through it.

She turned it into a novel.

A novel that doesn't look away.

It's called The Morning After in Spoiler Alert.

There's no single morning after.

There's just the next one and then the next one.

You guessed it, the next one after that.

This novel is going to be one you're not going to be able to put down because not only

is it remarkably entertaining, it's going to be so closely tied to each and every one

of us that pick it up because we've lived through it.

We may see kind of resembling what we're going through today.

Sit back, strap in, understand we're only going to scratch the surface and by the time

we've concluded, you're going to run and purchase your copies, all right?

Roberta, first and foremost, welcome to the network and thank you very much for being

with us.

How are you doing today?

Thank you, Benji.

I'm just so happy to be here and happy to have the opportunity to talk about The Morning

After.

Listen, we're happy to have you here.

Roberta, your book I think is remarkably entertaining but such a bridge that so many people

are going to be able to cross over because it's going to resonate and it's going to take

them back and it's going to maybe give them a new lens, a new perspective on certain things.

I feel like this is far greater than just entertainment, so thank you for writing the

book.

Thank you for being here with us.

Let's dive in, first and foremost, to your background.

Tell us more about yourself, Roberta.

Well, I'm a speech-language pathologist and I'm currently doing telotherapy with children

in Binghamton, New York and I've just written all my life.

I started out writing poetry and then I went into writing fiction and more recently I've

been writing film scripts.

Joel to Rural Noir, which is the first of the book in the series for which The Morning

After, The Morning After, is the fourth book.

Joel started, I was concerned after 9-11 about a nuclear power plant that was near of

me, which is no longer active.

And so I did some research, 100 hours with the military on how to survive mass events.

And from that, I wrote Joel to Rural Noir, which talks about how you survive a nuclear

radiation from a nuclear meltdown.

I don't know if you know it or not, but there are some 89 plants or so in the United States,

9 of which I've had meltdowns and about 30% of the population live within 50 miles of

a nuclear power plant.

So my impetus for writing Joel to Rural Noir was to help people understand how to survive

in the face of a meltdown, but I developed this family, called the Matters Family.

And so there's a mother, a father, and two teenage sons, and their stories go on through

these four books.

So that by the time we get to The Morning After, The Morning After, they're all reunited,

they're doing well.

Life is going on, it's still an adjustment period because they've been separated and what

happens.

Well, in January 6th, the invasion of Ukraine, the COVID pandemic, immigrants from Afghanistan,

for instance, the boys find that the students from Afghanistan all speak English, because

their fathers were interpreters for the Americans in Afghanistan.

And so they learned to speak English from the time they were children, and they were

also immigrants from South America.

And they're speaking Spanish, and they're escaping climate change and poverty, and then

of course, there's climate change.

So those are the things that are intertwined in the story of how the Matters Family

go through their lives in The Morning After, The Morning After.

The Morning After, The Morning After occurs in, you know, like 2021, 2021, 2022, but it

is historical fiction, it's historically accurate.

I got to go next to your title, all right, because man, there's something about it that

I think is so intriguing.

Talk to us about your line of thinking, and why you chose that to be the representation.

Well, you know, the Matters Family, about whom the book, they're fictional, has been

through a lot.

They have gone from meltdown, and father has right side brain injuries, and he's recuperating

from that.

The mother had radiation sickness, all right, they've all been dispersed, and now they've

all joined in together, and there's still fathers adjusting to a new profession, and the

boys are trying to settle into school.

It's just like, here's always something, and that's what life is kind of like.

It's not only the morning after, the morning after, it's the morning after, the morning

after.

I'm curious now, when you were writing the book, was there either a highlight for you that

came up, or even something else that was so dark, or so bleak that you had to stop

writing for a little bit.

I'm a funny person when I sit down, I write, I just write, and I write, and then I get

up and do other things, and when I sit down, I write, and so actually the book just kind

of wrote itself.

I had these characters who were very well developed.

I had the current events of the day, and I just intertwined them, so he had these fictional

characters in January 6th, occurs.

Mental characters is Hurricane Ida, so I tend to just write, and my thoughts just evolve

as I do.

Okay, well, then I guess leading off of that, but connected to a degree as well, given

the novels, historically accurate, politically volatile setting, and knowing what has happened

since 2022.

Do you consider this a hopeful book, or is the act of recording this era without cynicism

itself a form of hope?

I'm a hopeful person.

And, you know, for instance, they're very optimistic that 2023 will be better, you know?

And I suppose some things are better and some things are worse.

It's like tomorrow, I still think tomorrow is going to be better.

Can't squelch the optimism inside, Roberta, people I'll tell you, this is a book you need

to add to your shelf and remember, there's so much more.

It's Amazon, it's a Barnes and Noble.

Head on over there, purchase your copies of the morning after, the morning after, but

be sure to check out the other three books in the series as well, because they are wildly

entertaining and a great insight into something we all lived through.

Head on over there, purchase your copies today.

My final couple of questions here for you, as we start to close out, Roberta, who would

you say is your intended reader with the book?

I mean, who are you wanting this book to reach the desk of?

I'm hoping that the morning after, the morning after, will encourage people to read the

whole series that I've written all these film scripts.

And I'm looking for an agent, and I'm hoping that someone will pick up one of my film scripts

and will turn it into a film.

I mean, many of them have been award winning, but nothing has been produced yet.

So anyway, I hope they'll read my books.

Can you give a chip away?

Yeah.

Roberta, let's close out here.

We have discussed a lot of information.

Is there anything that we haven't get touched up on that you really want to make sure that

our listening audience is aware of before we let you go?

And Doron's publishing has released them morning after, if you're looking for a copy of it,

you might come to Doron's publishing, and it will be distributed in Barnes and Noble

and Amazon and other places too.

People listen, you know where you got to go.

All right, she just mentioned it for you.

You got to purchase copies.

And while you're at it, remember, look into the other books in the series, because this

is something that is going to be a non-stop page turner for you.

Books like this can help put things back in perspective, because if there's one thing,

regardless of where you fall politically, during those years that the book addresses, man,

we were all in that same playing field, right?

We were all stuck at home.

We were all dealing with the same fears and looking at the world around us and having

the same uncertainties.

So let's get back to having a conversation and starting it from that equal playing field

and see where we can go tomorrow.

Roberta, this has been a true pleasure.

An absolute delight.

Keep up the fantastic work and once again, thank you for being a guest on People of Distinction.

And Benji, I thank you so much, you've been excellent to talk with.