This Life Or Another From Melissa Payne Do You Choose To Stay Here Or Change

0:00One of my favorite podcasts on arrow dot net ARROE dot net is foodie paradise. It gives me the opportunity to share and break bread with the biggest names in the kitchen. Restaurants are wherever food is prepared foodie paradise only on arrow dot net. ARROE dot net. Enjoy your exploration. Hello. Oh, there you are. How are you? Good. There's a Melissa pain. Oh, Melissa, I'm blessed. I get to talk with you directly instead of having a producer at the front. Oh my God. What a beautiful day. Why it is a beautiful day. I agree. Well, I got to start things off by asking this brand new book in this life or another. Did you have the night of many endings? Oh, my older book. I think we talked about that. I didn't mean to. We sure did. And but see, the thing I've always believed in is that when you bring up like a book like that in a title like that, it's like the next project. Are you going to relive your own book that you just lived?

1:02And I just feel like it's like, Oh my God. Here comes Melissa with something that's even deeper into our hearts. Do you know how many people you're going to touch with this new book? Oh, I love that you say that, Arrow. Thank you so much. I hope so. I truly hope I do because it meant a lot in the writing of it. And it's one of those books that I think, yes, kind of deals with questions that not all of us have the answer to. I certainly don't. And so I think I do hope that it's such as people and I hope it sparks a lot of conversation too. It's going to because I have a podcast on I Heart Radio that's that really does every week. I do it. And it's all based on one thing is that if you don't ask yourself the questions and get to know you, why are you giving it to other people who've never walked in your shoes? And it's and that's why I love this book so much. And I think this is the reason why I fell in love with Rusty. Is that you give me this person I now have an identity to relate with. I appreciate that. Rusty was, um, I, I, I loved writing him.

2:03He actually, the idea for him came from this, um, I think it was a reality. Show I saw it was a guy who fixed up old cars. Did you ever see that? And I can't remember what network it was on, but he fixed up old cars. And that's all this guy did and he loved it. And, and I love, and he was funny and he had this like big personality. And I didn't take all of it into Rusty, but I took a lot of him. And he just fascinating. As a character. And so Rusty just kind of sprang to life over, you know, a series of, of attempts and writings and months, but I enjoyed writing him. You bring up such a very interesting question. And, and what it is, it is the realm between life and death, the choices that are profound and there are some consequences. And I do love listening to stories like this because in July of 2009, I was there. And, and but yet you can't just walk into a circle of people and say, so what did you feel? So I, I depend on people like you, Melissa to share these stories. So I don't have to go into that circle with others to ask that question.

3:03Wow, Aero. So what, did you have what people call a near death experience? I was right there in the hospital. I went into meditation when the doctor looked at me and said, Hey, look, you're having a heart attack right now. And he says, I can't predict anything. And I went into meditation. I looked at my wife and she was maybe 25, 30 feet from me. And I just thought to myself, I've got to get back to living. Don't let this be that moment. Oh, that gave me chills. Yeah. So, so you've been there and you understand parts of what that felt like. And it is hard to, I'm sure it is incredibly hard to share that with other people because not many of us have that opportunity to face such, it's so starkly. Many of us do, but that a lot of us don't. And then also that idea of when we're not here, where are we? Yeah. And you know, I think I'm just at that stage of life where I have less years ahead of me than I have behind me. And so those questions come up a lot.

4:04Yeah. And, you know, so writing from that was more almost as much a personal journey as it was, you know, a work of fiction because I wonder. And so to play within that area and to ask myself those questions, well, what happens for this character is? And what will he do when faced with this? And so those were like kind of profound questions for me. And I find those to be the one thing that unites every single one of us is that we don't really know what happens. Yeah. I'm not going to claim that some people, you know, we don't, we all have beliefs and different beliefs and all of that, but we don't really know until we're there. And that to me somehow brings me peace and that idea that we're all in the same vote here without that also brings me a sense of, I don't know, calm, which is bizarre, but maybe that's just where I am. Well, I love the way that you present Rusty Wilson in the way that he's got to make that choice. He can stay in his disappointing life or he can, he can grow into this alternate,

5:06alternate ego style life. And I mean, that's where a lot of us are in this day of AI technology and social media. And, and I always, and you're going to think I'm the freak. I always go for, I'm going to stay in this very disappointing life because I'm here to learn something. And if I sit here and I falsify my records, what did I learn? How to be a fake? And I don't want to be a fake. I want to go through the storms. I love what you said, actually, because that's one of the biggest questions that Rusty is facing. He is at, he's, it's on the, even the 60th birthday, he's kind of looking back and going, I haven't lived the life I think I was supposed to live. For him, particularly, he was saved from a fire when he was two years old by his older brother, his older brother, Paris, in that fire. And so Rusty felt that like responsibility of now my life should be something. And we think in this world that to be something, it has to look a certain way. It's got to be big. It's got to be splashy. It's got to like be like on the front page news. This was an exploration of a, just of a life. Nothing splashy, nothing fancy.

6:08And the question was, well, what makes it truly meaningful? Is it all the things that we do that get a lot of attention? Is it the small day to day choices that we make that affect the people around us? So I love what you just said, because it directly affects, it directly relates to, I think, Rusty's journey to and what a lot of us. Well, it's because I'm a daily writer. I've been daily writing since July of 1994. So 32 year old arrow versus 64 year old arrow. I mean, I laugh at him because he had such spunk and ambition. He feared nothing. And I just want to go back and just hug him and say, please, Mellow out. Can you just Mellow out? I mean, did you feel the same thing in writing a book like this? Because you know, there's going to be a lot of readers out here going, can we just Mellow out? Because she's got it. She's put it here writing. Like I said, again, Rusty is an identity for a lot of people who don't want to talk about it. And that and I'm so proud of you for putting Rusty in this story. Well, thank you so much. Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of people, what I hope is that in the writing of it,

7:09it was a lot of self reflection for me. And so I hope if that's what somebody else wants or gets from it, I hope that it sparks conversation and I hope it starts thinking and I hope that it gets people to a point where they feel like, okay, maybe I can really, maybe there's things I struggle with in my life, you know, regret. We all all of us have regret. Some of us carry it heavier than others. And sometimes I think it's a matter of do we look back and say, I wish I'd done it differently and then I think my life would have been better or what did that, what did that choice back then that I regret? Who is it need me today? Am I am I the better before it? And how has that been impacted the people around me? So when you brought up the night of any endings, it's that same idea of like how we don't know another person so we know each other's stories. This is similar in it's more internal. We don't necessarily always understand ourselves and our motivations. So we really understand our story. Where do we come from? Why are we here? How do we get here? Where are we going? Well, the titles of your book, Melissa, they really do tie together and I'm not saying,

8:13hey, everybody has to start within the drift. But come on now. The air you really do have it, it all connects together. And I think that's why I have to read your material because somewhere in every one of these stories, there's a connecting line. And I'm going to find that Easter egg. I just I just I see it in the titles, but I know there's something in one of those paragraphs that's going to make me say, this is it. She knew it all along and we had to find it. I love it. When you get there, please let me know. I you know I will. You know, I'll be. But where did you get the courage and the confidence to give yourself permission to explore like this? Because you do go into areas that people like to push away. But not you, you went for it. I think it's precisely because I don't have the confidence to experience it. I think it's because if you just, you know, I'm in a place, most of my life, I'm in a place where I feel like I'm still learning. I feel like I'm still growing as a person.

9:14I have none of the answers. I have a lot of ideas, you know, I write from my heart and I write from the questions that I may struggle with or that I'm curious about and I'm curious about people. So I think it comes from a very like genuine part of me. And then I find as a reader, I love fiction that explores this. You know, I love the books, the correspondents. I loved how explored getting older and technology and, you know, kind of relationships. I love those of my kind of stories too. So it's just where I naturally go as a writer. I mean, maybe I have a horror story and me. Who knows? Oh my God. Can you imagine that? Oh my God. That's got to be the next one. Please do not move. There's more fun and laughter and the inside scoop of what it's like to be a writer with Melissa Payne coming up next. The name of the book in this life or another, we are back with author, Melissa Payne. I just want to say, ladies and gentlemen, this is the true sign of an honest

10:14to God teacher and she does teach. She helps people writers in Colorado and that she does put herself in the values of their lives as well. They need to know that about you that you are not just putting words on a page that you activate everything that you do. Thank you. I certainly try to. I certainly try to. I think if I'm going to be in this discipline and this career that it is important, to me, it's always important. And I think we talked about this, especially in the 90 many endings. I'm writing often about real people. Yes. Not the characters aren't real, but they will come across as real people. And any time I do that, I always know that there's going to be a reader who will relate to this person. And so I never want them to be a caricature. I never want them to be disingenuous to who we set them up to be. So that when people read it and they feel themselves reflected, they also feel respected and a little honored in this. And so those are the things that go through my head, just probably why I go a little crazy every time. Well, as, as that people person that you are, and I do believe that you're also

11:14a silent watcher because you study people's actions, reactions and their determinations, as we grow older, one of the things that we're facing, you and I probably is the fact that everybody around us is getting older as well. And those that we looked up to as elders are now Alzheimer's, their bodies are broken. How are you dealing with that as a writer? Because you know that it's headed toward us. And we've got to figure out as writers how we can teach those that are going to be around us. Was that too deep? Yes. My God, I went deep. Did you know? You sure did. And I love it. And you actually hit right at the where I am in life. You know, I've got my, we've got elderly parents. I have my mom. And you know, what I'm learning is that watching her, there's a saying and I should remember who we're for this. But the saying is remember, it's their first time going through life too. And that's how I look at my mother. It is beautiful. And I think it's something we should all remember both for people older than us and younger than us. So when I look at my mom and I see the struggles that she's facing, I just

12:18remember to honor her and be compassionate and remember that I'm going to be there. Yep. And so what kind of legacy do I want to leave behind me so that when I'm at that place where life is harder, our brains aren't functioning the way we wish that they would. Our bodies aren't doing what we want them to do. And I hope that I get to that stage, right? That's also a blessing to get to that place too. And I hope that when I'm there, I've left enough things behind me for others who are coming along doing it for the first time to. Yeah. I guess just just treating all of this as growing older. Now I love that you got deep. This kind of stuff I could talk about all day long, but because I don't know, I mean, getting older is not fun, but it is, it is a gift. So, you know, I'm just doing what I can with that gift. I always believe that writers and authors are really writing dear future reader moments. And sometimes I wonder what happens if that dear future reader is you? You left the message for your future self.

13:23Well, I love that. Gosh, well, then I hope what I give to myself is an idea for another story. Don't you love that sickness? Oh my God, I cherish it. I swear to God, I do. It is like a sickness. You're right. It is a true addiction. I just want more stories than how can I tell a different story? Yeah. So I hope it's a little nugget like I'm going to write this. And this is perfect for where I am right now. To write this. I'll sit there with my wife and I'll go, how is it that these pins don't come with ink anymore? Like they used to and she says, you're writing so much. But I swear pins don't come with as much ink as they used to. No, I think you're right. They dry out or they fall out. Where can people go to find out more about everything that you're doing? I mean, I realized that the new book is where our focus is in this life or another. But I want them to enjoy your entire presence because every one of them, like I said, has an Easter egg in it that we're all going to find and have our own interpretation.

14:27Well, I hope so. And I think the one in this one is that, you know, it's just that chance to really ask those questions of, is am I supposed to live a big life? And I already impact people around me. And with Rusty, you know, what I love about this story too is it was really fun to write his little spirit guide, Ike the turtle. That gave a little bit of levity to the story and allowed me to kind of explore that kind of the questions that could be asked him from not a person, right? He's getting asked questions of being guided, even though I continue to say he's not a guide. But he's be pokes at Rusty to kind of look at things differently. And as a writer to do that from a turtle's perspective was completely different for me too. And that was a fun challenge. I enjoyed that. Oh, you're talking my language now. I'm sorry. You got it. We got a talk turtle talk here because Timmy has been with me for years inside this forest. And I and turtles are such an amazing, total animal because they carry their house on their back.

15:31But more importantly, they understand the vibration of the earth. So that I was inspired by the fact that Rusty had this as a spirit guide because turtles are powerful, totem animals. And that that's one of the reasons why I try to get people to look deeper into what's around them, such as something as simple as a turtle. I love that that they carry their house on their back. And that's everything that that is such a beautiful way to look at this because particularly Ike and who he represents in this story, which we won't talk about, but he is a representation of home and for Rusty throughout. You know, he's that one. He's the turtle he picked up on the side of the road. He's the one link he has because you've on Steiner doesn't look right. But he's this link to like the to his life. And that's an important thing throughout this is to have him still rooted in the life that he lived. So then let me ask you this question as the writer and the author, the sign of the turtle,

16:33really honest to God is, is that you're moving too fast for too long. You need to slow down and pace yourself. Okay, Melissa, is that a personal message for you? Wow. I want to ask my husband. I want to ask my husband that one. He would say I'm moving too fast because I get out of bed and I just don't stop. But I feel like I have well, no, I don't know. You know what, Arrow? This is one of those questions I'm going to have to wrestle with. Yeah, you do move a little too fast. Well, you got to come back to this show anytime in the future. I always have fun with you and it's never enough time. Same with you. I appreciate all your questions and the work that you put into your shows. I think you bring a lot out of each author and everyone you interview. So I appreciate you having me here. Will you be brilliant today, okay? You got it, you too. Thank you.