Voices for Voices®

Crafting Fantasy: The Art of Building Worlds That Last (Ep 284)

• Founder of Voices for Voices®, Justin Alan Hayes • Season 4 • Episode 284

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Crafting Fantasy: The Art of Building Worlds That Last (Ep 284)

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Ever wondered what an air marshal does during those long hours in flight? For Ben Sanford, it became the perfect opportunity to handwrite the first three volumes of his epic fantasy series. In this fascinating conversation, the former military member, border patrol agent, and federal air marshal reveals his transformation into a published fantasy author with multiple series under his belt.

Sanford takes us deep into his creative process, explaining how he falls into the category of storytellers who have vivid tales already formed in their minds but must develop the craft of writing to bring them to life. "It's easier in some ways because you already have the plot outlined in your head and you have the characters in your head," he shares. "Everything's all set except your ability to write it."

The Chronicles of Arax, his seven-book fantasy series featuring gargoyles as antagonists, required extraordinary attention to detail. Sanford created entire ecosystems, languages, maps, and timelines spanning thousands of years of fictional history. His commitment to realism within fantasy shines through as he discusses how flying creatures would fundamentally change medieval battle tactics—a thoughtful approach to worldbuilding that elevates his narratives.

Perhaps most valuable for aspiring authors is Sanford's candid assessment of publishing challenges. "Your worst written book you'll ever do is your first book, and if people don't like that first book, they're not going to read your great books you write later on," he observes with striking honesty. He also highlights the critical distinction between creating content and marketing it: "You can write a masterpiece, but if you don't know how to market, it'll just sit there lost along 20 million other manuscripts."

Discover how diverse life experiences can enrich storytelling as Sanford reveals the unexpected connections between law enforcement and fantasy worldbuilding. Whether you're an aspiring author or simply curious about the creative process, this conversation offers valuable insights into the craft of creating worlds that readers can lose themselves in.


Chapter Markers

0:00 Welcome to Voices for VoicesⓇ

3:01 From Air Marshal to Author

9:18 Two Types of Writers

18:13 Chronicles of Arax's Series

26:22 Writing for Young Readers

31:15 Marketing Challenges for Authors

33:56 Creating an Entire Fantasy World

#FantasyWorlds #WorldBuilding #CreativeWriting #StorytellingTips #FantasyArt #ImaginationUnleashed #CharacterDevelopment #BuildingLore #WritingCommunity #EpicFantasy #FictionCrafting #NarrativeDesign #PlotTwists #MythicalCreatures #VisualStorytelling #VoicesforVoices #VoicesforVoicesPodcast #JustinAlanHayes #JustinHayes #help3billion #TikTok #Instagram

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Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes:

Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of the Voices for Voices TV show and podcast. I'm your host. Founder of Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes. Thank you so much for joining us on this episode and our over 280 other episodes in our catalog. We had this huge goal that we were going to try to hit in-studio episodes and out-of-studio episodes of a total of 300 by the end of 2025. But this last 30, 45 days or so, we've really kicked things into high gear, so we're going to be hitting that 300 number a lot sooner.

Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes:

I don't know where we're at in 2025, but it's only because of you watching and listening, whether you're here in the United States or close to 80 countries, 800 cities across the world. Thank you for taking the time out of your day. If you're commuting or just hanging out relaxing, and some nice summer weather, if that's where you're commuting or just hanging out relaxing, and and some nice, uh, summer weather, if that's where you're at. I know some parts of the world it it's kind of the opposite, so we have a winter, winter type of conditions, but, uh, hopefully you're enjoying yourself.

Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes:

And again, thanks for uh tuning in and, if you can do us a big favor, give us a big thumbs up like share, subscribe, follow all those things. They're free and they help us march again towards our goal of wanting to help three billion people over the course of my lifetime and beyond this episode. I say this and I feel it in all the episodes we do, but this episode really has a double edge to it because the guest that we're going to be talking to today is a former military member, so he's a veteran, and so having that service to country learning that may possibly have affected kind of mindset, that goal, orientation of leading him into being an author and a mentor for so many, especially one of our guests that we have had on a few times here, david Solomon, and through his generosity of connecting with our guest, mr Ben Sanford. Thank you so much for joining us.

Ben Sanford:

Thank you for having me.

Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes:

You're welcome. Yes, well, pretty wide open. We can maybe start with your military career and kind of just kind of go through a little bit of a timeline. Then we'll get into the publishing and then we'll get into current state.

Ben Sanford:

My military career. I was in the. I was in prior enlisted, then I was in ROTC, then I was a commissioned officer for years before I resigned my commission, but most of mine was in the reserves but most of mine after that was federal law enforcement. So I was in the border patrol and I was an air marshal for most of my career. So that federal law enforcement.

Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes:

So I was in the border patrol and I was an air marshal for most of my career also, which is that's right, good sir, good thank you for your service. Those are also uh, important areas.

Ben Sanford:

Yeah, yeah, the air marshal bit helped me. I mean, I met so many interesting people traveling around the world.

Ben Sanford:

That gave me a lot in writing well, I have in my my one video. I did the first video I ever did on tiktok I had. I always said there's two types of writers in the world. There's those who are natural writers, who are looking for a story to tell. Those are people who are very gifted at writing. Then there's a second group of writers which, unfortunately, I fall under, and those are the people who have a story to tell and they're looking for a way to write it, and in some ways it's easier, in some ways it's harder.

Ben Sanford:

It's easier in some ways because you already have the plot outlined in your head and you have the characters in your head. Everything's all set except your ability to write it. And it takes a long time to write a story when you are trying to learn how to write. But at least you have the idea, the visions in your head. It just gets to put on paper one thing. With that, with that um in mind, it's like, if you don't have this, I mean I have, when I was writing in racks, another story popped in my head, so I'm trying to finish that one now too, and when those are done I don't know if I have anything else to write so no, it's interesting, my uh, a little bit of a little parallel.

Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes:

I talked to my um therapist on the mental health side and that and uh, there was a time where I was I said like I was afraid of things, that I think I was going to run out of things to do or to be a part of, and I said, justin, I don't think you're going to run out of things to do, but I'll just throw this out.

Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes:

I think you'll something, whether it's in the writing space or in combination with your law enforcement and ROTC career, because there's just so much, so much is day to day that goes on, that a lot of people just they don't know about, and I think there's a there's a big interest in that, like okay, so what does a law enforcement officer like? What is the? I know there's no regular or average day, but just to learn some of those things you know there's. You know, people like myself that just like to learn and go. Oh wow, like I never. I never thought about that.

Ben Sanford:

Yeah, it was. It's funny Cause that was in the air marshals for most of it. And the air marshals is a totally different job than any other law enforcement, because really you're just paid in case something goes wrong and if nothing goes wrong, then you did your job.

Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes:

So really it's passing time sitting on an airplane for many hours which of the time writing because of yeah that time of clarity and more clarity and more more focused.

Ben Sanford:

Easier to focus than when yeah the thing you're going on I literally wrote the first, um, the first. My iraq series is a series of seven books. It's a fantasy series, and the first three I wrote while I was flying and it was basically, um, I wrote it by hand, and so when I finally finished with air marshals, when I finally typed it up, you know I had to go take all my notes, which are. I have them over here I still my wife refuses to let me throw them away because you might want to keep something. Why do I want to keep this? I'm not a pack rat, but I literally have a stack like three feet high of binder notebooks that I wrote chapter by chapter on. Then I had to piece it together and, and what I planned to be a trilogy ended up becoming, I thought, become six books, and it became seven eventually. Um, yeah, so it's all. It was all handwritten for the first three and a half books, and the first book in my freeborn series was handwritten as well.

Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes:

Yeah, for our viewers and listeners. Can you, can you name all the books, just so they can?

Ben Sanford:

have a name to the this is the first version of this is uh, this is I don't know if you can see it on there this is chronicles of iraq's. Book one of war and heroes I have. Uh, that's the first of seven. The second book is called the siege of corral, the third is called the battle of yaten, the fourth is called the making of a king, the fifth is the battle of tory north, the sixth is fall of empires and the seventh and concluding book is called restoration. That's all it. That's all. The whole arc goes from one to seven. It's done.

Ben Sanford:

There won't be any sequels unless I die and somebody else wants to pick it up and do a shoot-off. I left enough loose ends at the end so you could do other stuff if you wanted to. But it also has a conclusion where okay, this is where it's settled, hopefully forever. My other series is called the Freeborn Saga and that is now what's going to be a trilogy and now it's going to be four. I'm in the middle of book three called Dragon Wars, and book four should be the conclusion. I hope. I hope it doesn't go to, but hopefully it will be done with four.

Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes:

Great. It sounds like you have as far as characteristics or traits in you of helping others, whether that was most of your time in the Air Marshal or with your books. You're wanting to inform or entertain individuals that helping other mindset was that something? That said and like at an early age or just over time, it just started to uh marinate, yeah well arax arax.

Ben Sanford:

I originally wrote the arax story um for my nephew when I was I. I wasn't um, I was in high school when I wrote the first version and or actually the second version. The first version I was much younger but I wrote in high school which is now basically books one and two, but really poorly written Um, and for several reasons. One, I was like when I was getting English class in high school I wasn't very good at English, cause I hated the subject and I hated the stories we had to read were so boring or um, you didn't understand them or basically they never catered to what I was interested as a, as a, as a young boy, you know like I liked wars, with adventure and war and action, and they didn't do anything in that English class. If you didn't, if you didn't couldn't read their boring stories and incorporate it and talk about it, then you wouldn't do well. And I was like, why don't we have stories that boys and even girls would love, like adventure stories? Why are we making kids read stuff that they don't like it's like, and make that part of the curriculum? And so, with that in mind, I wrote a Rax for that age group to spark imagination and I try to include in Rax though it's a story about following a war in a mythical world, I want to have the humor in it and the horror and the romance and the adventure and the mystery and the camaraderie and the friendship and the brotherhood and sisterhood of all the characters and all the things you love in all your stories, but all put it all in the one story that there's something for everybody and and something that you want to know what happens next.

Ben Sanford:

I guess the best compliment I ever got from it was people said it was addictive and and my brother you know, he never heard, I never really cared if they were raised, but he loved, he loved. He said the one thing he always told me he goes. I didn't want it to end Right, so he was slowed down towards the end of the books and not want it to end, of course. Then again, those are my closest people to me saying that and you're never you're. What was the phrase I heard from one one author saying you never. You're not half as bad as your worst critic says you are. You're never. You're not half as good as your best fan says you are. You're somewhere, somewhere in between. But being what someone's saying is they're addicted to the story and that's that's a great compliment and they didn't want it to end. But as far as, like you're saying, what motivated me most is probably because it's like you know, I always see, like I watch movies and I criticize them like what they should.

Ben Sanford:

Why did they do this, why did they do this? And, like you know what, just make your own story and do it the way you would do it, like take everything you loved from all the different movies you loved and stories and books and songs or whatever, as you throw it all together and you get rid of the stuff you don't like and keep the stuff you do like. If you don't like you have love triangles your story, then write a story with no love triangles. If you don't want to have, um, drone on about endless descriptions, then make sure you you tailor it back and where you just give them just enough to move the story along. Um, and I'm sure people read my stories and take the same thing from them. They're like no, I don't like this and they want to reimagine what they want from something else, but that, in a gist of it is I wanted to make a story that kids would love to read.

Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes:

I think it's important for authors especially authors how the information is consumed and read to be real cognizant of the age range that you're writing towards and writing for making sure that the scenes and the characters and the plots and the plots and that really do line up, instead of having, let's say, a more mature book and saying, oh well, this is actually for eight to 12 year olds or just a number like that. And I think that's important for me as a parent. My daughter's six and so she's just getting started, but I'm starting to think about those types of things. When we go to the library or bookstore and we start looking and if a book is in the section that lines up where my daughter is age-wise and reading-wise, that's going to be an area that I'm not just yourself to really just do that human, humane thing of all right. Well, I wouldn't want my son or daughter to read this at eight years old. This is more like at 18.

Ben Sanford:

Like my sister-in-law. She loves the Rax books but she loves Freeborn more. But her grandson, my great-nephew, he's very creative and imaginative but he would love this story but he's still not. They're going to wait until he's a bit older for him to read it. So it's like I think 12. It's funny.

Ben Sanford:

Every author is very subjective, right? What is appropriate for what age group, right? Like for Rax? For me, um, there is, um, it's probably the violence. It's like cause, it's war.

Ben Sanford:

I try to make things realistic, right? So if you're looking at ancient war, for medieval warfare, and the gargoyles in my story are the antagonists, are like the major antagonists. There's bad humans too. But when you have creatures that can fly, it changes like, like. Imagine medieval and ancient battlefields, like rather, it's the Battle of Cannae or the Hercan Forest or any of these other ancient battles, vakari. And if you try to implement, instead of just two large armies with interlocking shields, jabbing each other with their swords and spears, if you have people that could fly over top of it, which changes the dynamic of the battlefield. But I try to do these ancient battles and I try to. But I try to do these ancient battles and I try to. Each battle is a little bit different in the books, unique to the setting that they're in. But it's like I have. I don't. I try not to sugarcoat the violence. I don't over glorify the violence, but I just tell it exactly. I try to make it realistic the way it is.

Ben Sanford:

It's like language, right. It's like some people may consider swearing to be if you use the f-bomb or use the lord's name in vain and some people like think you know, even if you say crap or use the s-word, that's swearing or you know, I do use the s-word a little bit. I have some characters from earth there and they're a bit more different than everybody else. So there's a couple, maybe once per book. There's a word in there that might be borderline. So is it appropriate for a 12 yearyear-old? Oh, absolutely. It would be fine with them. It would be rated G as far as the language.

Ben Sanford:

But violence I mean that's pretty subjective. Some people might think it's. The violence is not graphic. I've had reviewers say that violence is not graphic at all and other people are like they wouldn't have their child who's 10 years old read it because it's pretty. It's kind of like if you see Lord of the Rings, you see lord of the rings. You see the orcs. You see the battle at minus tirith, when they, when gothmog drops off, chops off all the the, the gondorians heads and he shoots them over the wall. You know he says release the prisoners. Um, that's pretty graphic scene, but other people like that's not graphic at all, so it's really subjective.

Ben Sanford:

So I would suggest, like if a parent maybe read the book with their kid if they're under 12, and you can filter out some of the stuff you can. You know when you read, like I read stories to my kids when they were younger and I was like you know, if there's something that's a little bit, I would just skip over it and I think over my entire rack series there's two scenes, two love scenes and one in book one and one in book five. No books, no book one and book six on a wedding night. I try like writing love scenes is not my thing. I didn't want to be a prude and not show anything, but I wanted to have. I didn't want to be obscene, I want to leave enough to the imagination. And if you look at the now, if you look at the bible, you look at the song of silence. Okay, it's very. It alludes to stuff but it doesn't get into detail. So you try to make it as subtle as possible at the reader user imagination. You don't want to leave it out either, because it's part of the building up of the story.

Ben Sanford:

It's really important to these characters, um, cause it serves a certain purpose and a point in the story. That's kind of like uh, the old phrase, uh, people don senseless violence, and I always use the phrase like I like violence. That made sense, like, yeah, if you ever saw die hard. Um, when you watch die hard, every time john mcclain there's 12 of the bad guys. He kills one of them you're like, wow, that's great, you got that guy. And every time somebody good dies you feel bad. So you should have you should feel pain when a good person dies in the story and you should feel elation when a bad guy finally gets you, or a sense of relief. You should have some emotional attachment. If it's that much cost, if life is on the line, like the value for human life, you should have some emotional attachment to that.

Ben Sanford:

Yeah, but I try to make the books as realistic as possible, though it's a fantasy setting and that means everything, whether it's the humor, the horrifying part. The scary part should be scary, the horrifying part should be horrifying and the romantic part should be romantic and the adventure part should be adventurous, even though the story starts off a little slow at the very beginning because you're trying to ground the characters. So the problem is, you don't want to lose your. You don't want to lose a reader at the beginning, but you also want to have, especially in a long epic with so many characters. You have to start off grounded with the main character and invest the person first about who he's about and his origin. Try to do that without boring people. That's the magic sauce. I don't know if I nailed it or not, but people can read it and find out.

Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes:

I think so. As far as how important is networking and I'm saying the writing, the author industry to bounce ideas off or just have a conversation, not trying to take any information from another individual's stories, but just on like, oh, I never thought about that, like I could maybe be a little bit more efficient, or I never thought about this particular way. Is that? Have you found that to be important with any online? Groups or or any my problems.

Ben Sanford:

I wrote. I wrote my iraq's books before I knew anything about book publishing. Like, I read a lot of books and I wrote them. Um, now I'm doing the marketing. After the fact, and it's the biggest mistake I made you need to market a book before you release them, and if you have your last book my last book just came out in January, but even then I didn't understand from the people who helped me publish it that you have to start marketing before it gets released and if you wait, then you're basically crap out of luck because it's hard marketing.

Ben Sanford:

The only thing you can do is you have to do social media, and I was never, because of my line of work, I never did social media. Me and my wife were like no, no, I don't do, because I couldn't put my face on tv for anything, or even a podcast or even facebook or any of that stuff, without there's an air marshal. I had to go. You know I was covert. Um. So, that being said, um doing social media. If you've never done it before, especially like a diet store, like I am, it is it's different. I mean, I just joined facebook a month ago, along with instagram. Instagram I did a year ago but I didn't really put anything out there and we did maybe a couple posts and I did tiktok, um, the first video I did is probably like four or five months ago and that's a, and that took me. I remember my first video. It did take me like eight hours to figure out how to even work the device and like know how to cut up and cap and add all these different stuff to it. And so that's probably the biggest challenge is because anything you do that like a skill set, like writing, or like writing a book, or maybe inventing something or creating a product, whatever you do, that's part of it. But the bigger part is marketing it, because if you can't market, it't mean and that's a totally marketing. It's a totally different skill set than than writing. So you can write a masterpiece, but if you don't know how to market, it'll just sit there lost along 20 million other manuscripts.

Ben Sanford:

And if you are self-published like I've gone to self-publishing around um, and you edit your books and I've edited my books so many times and then you still find mistakes, even because there's stuff that spellcheck doesn't catch. And you try to catch stuff and it's maybe grammatically it's not a misspelled word, it's just a wrong word. It's like, and you don't catch it In your human eye you only can glare a page so long. You're going to miss things. And it's kind of like if you see, like a courtroom, when they rely on witness testimony and they swear this person did it, and then they find out 20 years later and you convicted somebody on that one witness's testimony and 20 years later down the road they find out no, the person was innocent, the witness was wrong. It's because our eyes trick us. We see things that aren't there. So when you're editing you're going to miss. You have to edit over and over and over again and even then you're still gonna catch, especially if the manuscripts you're like you know you got a four or five hundred page book, it's. It takes a long days we a couple weeks to go through a manuscript. Then you gotta that's just one time through and you probably still miss stuff. And when you already wrote a book and you go back and you find it and even your own editors didn't catch it and it's still. That's just frustrating. So but you're going to have that. But the worst part is because you have words that are spelled right. They're just used wrong. That's the biggest mistakes. And if you're Rick, create a fantasy world, if you misspell your own words that you made up and no one can catch that. But you right. So you have to know, like like arax was hard for me because it was a different planet altogether, so there's different animals and different plants and different trees. You know if, if I created, create a whole different um ecosystem, and so you have to use all these different words you make up, you gotta.

Ben Sanford:

You have a book, tons of books, just a catalog for one whole notebook just for plants and trees, one for animals, one for all the cities and the armies. And in the back of my Iraq's book I have the appendix sections in book one. I have appendix section in each book, but in book one I have a timeline of their history over the last 3,000 years. I have a listing of the armies. I have a map in the back of the book and a listing of the armies. I have a map in the back of the book and the listing of the armies for each of the different realms and where they're located in the map. So if you're following the story, you can follow, you can see where, which, where, all these different armies are.

Ben Sanford:

I just don't make it up out of. You ever see a story where you're watching it seems like they just won, they had a huge victory. You think they won the war, but then the next, the next story, they're like oh no, they have this other army. It should come out of nowhere. Well, where did they come from? At the very beginning, you know where everything stands. You know exactly what the strength is from every kingdom and realm.

Ben Sanford:

And I have a ship the Earthers. There's people from Earth stuck on this mythical planet set 500 years in the future, and the people from Earth have advanced technology that these people don't have. So these people are fighting with bows and arrows, the guys from earth. They build a seafaring ship from their the crash starship and it's called the stenics. That which is the name of my llc and my stenics publishing is because of that ship. So I have a diagram of that ship in the back of the back of the book so people can see what that ship looks like by the synopsis.

Ben Sanford:

But all those little details I try to put in there after a while it gets a little overwhelming. It took so long to write a Raxi. You lose yourself in the world you create and it's like when it's finally over, you're like, wow, I can breathe again. But I have this other story I've got to finish. This is another fantasy world. So I tell you this right now if I do write, ever write anything, ever again, it's going to be a contemporary book, probably something to do with football, but it's going to be nothing to do with fantasy realms. I am done with fantasy. After these two books, these two series is there. If you ever, if you ever end up doing reading my, my iraq series, you get to the end you'll be like, wow, yeah, I I don't think I could ever, if it's a big burned up.

Ben Sanford:

I don't think I could write them ever again. I'm like I can't go back and do that. That's too much work.

Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes:

Yeah, and to your point, it takes, uh, I mean, a lot of jobs, a lot of things we do. It takes time and patience and I would think that patience would if you didn't have patience before you got into the editing process and and, uh, you have four or five hundred page books that that that's.

Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes:

That's something that you, you learned. But, like you said you, you got to finish the editing before the book can come out, and it takes some time yeah it's, and originally my the first person that the first publishing group I had to publish my first arax book.

Ben Sanford:

When I handed the manuscript they made me they said you gotta cut. It was actually books one and two of arax because it was that big. Like I didn't realize how big the book was because you don't really know it was 600, some pages single space, but it ended up being it would have been a thousand page book and they made me break it in half.

Ben Sanford:

So now, yeah, you don't, or I can cut 170 000 words out of it. There's some stuff I might have should be able to cut, but most of it I thought was pretty necessary for the story and it's either. So either you cut, break it in half, or you um cut parts off, but then again it's kind of like there's lots of. Every author has their darlings, have their stuff, they everything they write they don't want to throw away because they put so much time in writing it. A better editor might help you cut that out. But I'm still thinking the first two books, what I could have cut out and I don't know what I could have cut out to keep the story going, probably because there's so many characters as the story goes on and there's so many different storylines going on that go concurrently and it's trying to cut something out without.

Ben Sanford:

It's kind of funny because I get to the final battle in in my last book and because there's so many characters, if you, you want to touch base with all of them, to give them all a little bit, even the minor characters to give, because this is the end, this is the final thing.

Ben Sanford:

So let's say you're writing a book, writing these chapters for a final battle and you touch base with one character, for he's a minor character, but you give him like a half a page, even though they say half a page, right, and then before you know it, if you touch base a lot of like 15 different characters, you're already in, like you know, getting into 10, 15, 20, 30 pages and without even really moving the story around a lot.

Ben Sanford:

So it has to be a part of the battle that they take shape in, or you want to put them in a perspective that they experience a certain thing at the battle, that you can tell what's going on over here by using that character. But by the time you get done you've got to be careful, because you're sort of a balloon out of control. I always thought when I was in high school school the problem was writing enough words to do a 200-page or 500-word essay. Now it's like trying to take words out and still tell the story. So you want to make the story as lean as possible, but if you leave too little information, people can't conceptualize what you're trying to tell them. So that's the dilemma I think every writer deals with.

Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes:

And the other biggest problem. I'm sorry, go ahead.

Ben Sanford:

No, no, no, you're fine, continue please the other biggest problem is if you're doing a series of books and your first book is book one, you have to understand your your worst written book you'll ever do is your first book and if people don't like that first book, they're not going to read your great books you write later on. You could write if your last books are like classic, like the best books ever written, but your first book in the series is C-spot run. No one's ever going to read your masterpiece because book one sets the standard and that's the problem. If I could do things over again, I would have taken book one and just read, read through it. I'd read it down, lots of parts of it to really make it really stand out that's.

Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes:

I'm glad you mentioned that. I I've never heard of that, but that that makes so much sense. But right, you have a yeah, you have book one that's gonna just like anything your first time practicing or doing anything and it's still still a lot to learn and tips and tricks and all those things and to have that, like you said, that's something that is not interesting enough to readers. They're not going to have an opportunity to actually get to the later books where you're going to more refine your craft than that now your covers. I'm wondering do you do you do your own art or what? What's that like?

Ben Sanford:

okay, there's two. Each of the book series have different types of covers. So my iraq series um, I needed a cover artist to do the covers for me. Um, my friend of mine recommended his cousin named carl mullein, and I never met carl. I called him, I'd always talk communicator over the phone and he would take about six months to do each cover, and so I don't know if you guys can see on the screen, but this is book one. This is a racks of um of war and heroes book one.

Ben Sanford:

Now I gave him a rough idea of how to do it and and he basically was, uh, he worked for Marvel comics and he also did a lot of the graphic novels he did cover art for he always went to a lot of you know, a lot of comic cons and sold his stuff. Um, so his are more like like a graphic novel type covers. They're kind of like comic book type covers, which my wife doesn't like. She likes classic, like fantasy, fantasy, romancy, freaking covers which they have, which my freeborn is, more more traditional covers. So for carl, I gave him the ideas and he wrote or he drew all all those and he put the colors on them. But when he get into the seventh book. He did. He did the outline, he did all that but he didn't color it in because he died right before he colored in. So my last book, which is called restoration, this is the author's copy with a little band across the front they give me. That's called restoration. So this one's a bit different than the other ones because this one does not have his colors on. This is what the publishing company they just had they did. One of the people just fill in the color of the colors. So this one looks a little bit off compared to the other ones. The other ones are looking a lot sharper because that was carl's work. Um, so I actually dedicated book seven and I put the dedication for the whole series for him, for his contribution, because you're really the covers I think really stand out for and I wanted I should explain to my wife.

Ben Sanford:

I was like look, the iraqs is a track. It's original audience is supposed to be young teenage boys. It's like you have a young son who loves to read and wants an adventure story. It's for him and they find it's funny. When I go to comic cons or I do to, I go to book signings or book fairs, it's the men are usually drawn to Iraq's, the women maybe freeborn. So it's it's, though there are crossover Like. I have a lot of like I've had. I have a lot a lot of girls I know have read racks and they love it. Um, and a lot of a lot of guys have read Freeborn and they love it. But the covers themselves are more like very diverse as far as, like, there's a racks, it's a, it's totally one type of cover and Freeborn is, you know, more of a traditional fantasy government. It's all because of him, because of Carl.

Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes:

I love him. It's such detail. It's just incredible for someone to have their mind work in that.

Ben Sanford:

I can only draw stick figures. I don't know how people draw anything.

Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes:

I'm right there with you. How can people learn more about you? How can they find your books? How can they purchase them?

Ben Sanford:

for anybody who's watching and listening and wants to check it out I have a website called stenixpublishingcom and it had all the books are there. Um, you can look it up. Like it gives a little bit of synopsis of what they're all about. Um, they're all on Amazon as well, so you can go to Amazon and purchase them up. And and Goodreads I've had.

Ben Sanford:

I have a lot of reviews for books one and two of Iraq's on Goodreads and as well as freeborn. Um, so I'm thinking like, if you go to Goodreads, the only problem is if you look at Benjamin Sanford and you go to like Goodreads, there's other people named Benjamin Sanford selling books that are not me, but you can see that. If it's Chronicles of Arrax, if you look up Chronicles of Arrax, book one of War and Heroes by Ben Sanford, and you'll find it on Goodreads, it'll pop up and all my other books are connected to it by there. There's other books there by people named Ben Sanford that aren't me because it's at the bottom of the page, but you'll see all of them on there. But if you go to Stenox Publishing, which is S-T-E-N-O-X publishingcom, that has everything on it and also links where you can purchase them. If anybody has Kind kindle unlimited, I put the all. All the books are on there for free. If you have kindle unlimited, because they reimburse you by just paying, you get paid per page if people read them. So if you want to read them, the only problem with the racks I will say if you get on kindle unlimited, the problem with the racks is the map and the timeline and all it's in the back of the book.

Ben Sanford:

So I don't know, I should. I should have had them when they did that put that, the map at the beginning of the book. So I don't know about you, but if you're following the story, you need to see a map to see where the characters are going and it all. So it all makes sense. Um, yeah, so we'll see. I don't know if you guys know what the stories are about, but about, but Arax is more of a. Gargoyles are the main antagonists and they were created by their creator and they betrayed their creator, who cast them down upon Arax in mortal form, not if that rings a bell or not. So they can't possess people's minds or be like demonic entities, but they're. But they breed in great numbers and they want to destroy mankind. And the whole story of arax is in the author. History is the war between man, humans and gargoyles and in the in the recent years, before the start of the story, uh, one human named tyro aligned himself with gargoyles and that tipped the balance. So now he's threatening to conquer everything.

Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes:

I'm going to have to cut you off. We're out of time, so if you don't mind, can we come back and do a second episode?

Ben Sanford:

Absolutely.

Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes:

Okay, cool.

Ben Sanford:

Well, let's log out It'll take about five minutes for Zoom to do this thing and same length, perfect, all right, great.

Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes:

Thank you so much. We'll see you soon.

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Justin Alan Hayes

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