S4 EP198: David J. Gibson, Author of the Dystopian Fiction Novel Elite Memories

Hello My Happy People,

Dr. David Gibson is back on the show, and this time he’s traded forensic botany for a dystopian adventure. The longtime scientist and professor known for Planting Clues: How Plants Solve Crimes returns to chat about his bold new novel Elite Memories, a futuristic story where memory transfers, sentient animals, and survival all collide.

We talk about what inspired this unexpected leap from nonfiction to sci-fi, how real science sneaks into his storytelling, and why even in a world ruled by technology, it’s still human nature that drives the story. David also shares how years of studying ecosystems shaped the way he builds worlds on the page, both real and imagined, and why writing fiction might be the most freeing experiment of his career.

If you love authors who take creative risks, scientists who spin great stories, and tales that make you think while keeping you entertained, this episode is for you.

David J. Gibson, PhD, FRSB, is an Emeritus Distinguished Professor of Plant Biology at Southern Illinois University Carbondale and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology. He’s written several acclaimed works on ecology and forensic botany. With Elite Memories, he steps into fiction, blending sharp science with a wild imagination to explore what makes us human.

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Transcript

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Dianne Burckhardt 0:02

Welcome to BookBanter with me, your host, Diane Burkhart. I hope you will join me every Wednesday as we explore all things to do with, well, books. Let's get on with our show today. Hello, my happy people. Today is November 26, 2025, and I hope you are having a wonderful day no matter where you are. And for those of you who are about to celebrate, I hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving that is filled with good food, friends, family, and a lot of fun. But for today, we have got a fantastic author for you. This man has been with us before whenever we were talking about his book Planting Clues, all about how forensic botany is used to help solve crimes. If you haven't checked that one out, you definitely need to do that. But today we are talking about his first sci-fi book. And without any further ado, let's get right to his interview. But be sure to stick around to the very end because we have got a lot of fantastic announcements for things that are coming up in the next few weeks. But for now, let's bring out our guest. Please welcome to Book Banjo with Diane Burkhardt, David J. Gibson. Since you have been on the show before, you know I always like to start out by just having my guest tell everyone who you are and what you do.

SPEAKER_00 1:23

Okay. Well, I'm happy to be back again on the show, so thanks very much for the invitation. I'm David Gibson, and I'm a retired botanist living over here in the United States, although I'm British. So I worked at Southern Illinois University for 31 or two years, and uh been retired for two years now. Uh so my focus has been botany and ecology, and I've written several books on botany and ecology, but now I'm kind of switching it up a little bit and starting to do some fiction.

Dianne Burckhardt 1:55

Yeah, the last time that we had spoken, I think just about the time I was putting out the magazine that you were in, you just retired. Yes. And we had to switch up your title to show that you had retired as a professor.

SPEAKER_00 2:08

Emeritus, yes.

Dianne Burckhardt 2:10

Yeah. How has your life been since stepping away from academia?

SPEAKER_00 2:15

Well, it it's been a gradual stepping away because when I retired, I still had several graduate students that were finishing up their degrees, and so I had to work with them to get them finished up. You know, they have to defend their thesis or dissertation and um get that all written up. And even since they finished, there's still several academic journal articles that we're working on to get published. And um I've been teaching a summer course, an online course, um, as well. So I'm still doing that, and and then I've got a uh an academic book that's coming out in March that I've been working on with some colleagues. So it I haven't didn't really step away, it's gonna step back. I don't know what the right term is, but just sort of more gradual, if you like. But it what's what's good about it is I don't have to go to all those meetings anymore, and you know it just it gives you time to just do those things that you like to do as well as to start doing some extra things.

Dianne Burckhardt 3:20

Do you ever sometimes feel like you're in the Godfather and it's every time I try to get out, they pull me back in.

SPEAKER_00 3:29

Yeah, maybe a little bit, although although you know they the they don't do that actually, I think. Uh you know, and I noticed this before, once someone retires, it pretty doesn't take long for them to sort of forget you a little bit, you know. The the system moves on. I mean, there's new new professors now and all that sort of thing. So, you know, I'm I'm the old fella that if I go in in the building and kind of tot around and and you know everyone's always so busy, and I'm just got plenty of time to talk to anyone. Well, and I'm sure the students appreciate that. Yeah, that well they they did, but I don't know them now after two years. Yeah. My students have have finished up and gone. And uh the the the undergraduates, I don't know who they are at all now, you know.

Dianne Burckhardt 4:12

So that's too bad because they're missing out on a wealth of knowledge.

SPEAKER_00 4:16

Well, you could you could say, you could say, yeah, perhaps.

Dianne Burckhardt 4:19

Now, when you were on here the first time, that was in season two, episode 58, and we talked about your books, Planting Clues, and the novella that you had, Juice of the Cursed. I always say this wrong, Hebron?

SPEAKER_00 4:32

Right, yes. Yeah.

Dianne Burckhardt 4:34

And how were those books received? How are they still doing since then?

SPEAKER_00 4:38

Well, Planting Clues was the main book, and Juice of the Cursed Hebron was was the chapter that the publisher didn't want in it. The chapter about forensic botany used in fiction. So that was a standalone, I call it novella, but it wasn't really a novel, but it was a standalone chapter. That's available for 99 cents, or you can download it for free. And people have been downloading that. But Plant Inclusive has done has done well. Of my books, it's now the one that's sold the most copies. My Grasslands ecology book was the kind of the top of the list, but now Plant Inclusive has overtaken that. And it's been well received. I mean, in addition to being on your show, I've given a lot of interviews, a lot of presentations, a lot of reviews have been published in magazines. And so it's been it's been really nice. I've really enjoyed having that book out, and um it's done well, I think.

Dianne Burckhardt 5:29

Well, I know I really enjoyed it, and my hardcover copy of it is sitting right here beside me on my desk.

SPEAKER_00 5:34

Excellent.

Dianne Burckhardt 5:35

And I plan to be using that whenever I'm writing my FBI crime thriller series that's going to be coming up in a couple of years here.

SPEAKER_00 5:42

And that's great. I I you know I'd really encourage crime fiction authors to pick it up and and other similar books. There are other books not on forensic botany, but uh on forensic zoology and things like that, and and other books that talk about the source of evidence that is important in in crime fiction. So that's great.

Dianne Burckhardt 6:00

Yeah, I think that gives a lot of touches of reality whenever you're using things like that in your stories.

SPEAKER_00 6:06

Yes, exactly. Yes, and I and I tend to, I think we probably talked about this before, but when I read crime fiction now, I tend to kind of pick up on that sort of thing. I'm kind of looking at them, what sort of evidence are they are they talking about in in these different scenes and does it make any sense and that sort of thing? And mostly it does, so it's it's it's good.

Dianne Burckhardt 6:24

Most of your publications are grounded in your scientific expertise. Now you're building an entire imagined world in science fiction. What was it like to open that creative door and let your imagination run free for once?

SPEAKER_00 6:40

Yeah, well, it was it's a bit strange. Um, and you know, I started writing, and we're talking about the the fiction book, Elite Memories now. I started writing that as a little idea for a little short story because I I thought I'd just give it a try and see what it was like. And it just got too long. You know, I hadn't finished it, and then so I kept going. It was it was interesting because I had this idea, the idea that um human memories could be transferred into the mind of a body, and in this particular case that they were transferring memories of people whose bodies were dying into healthy bodies, which raised the issue of where do you find a healthy body, it's gonna have their mind destroyed. But that's what was happening, and then it all went wrong, and it the memories were transferred accidentally into animals. It was kind of a strange idea, uh, but I kind of ran with it, and uh, but it did make me have to do a lot of thinking, not just about the the scientific feasibility of the whole idea, but then what happens to these animals that have human memories in them now, and how how do those animals, which are human animals now, what do they do and how do they exist, and so forth. So it gave me a lot of opportunity to kind of think about some scenarios and and develop some characters, uh, the main character being Damon. It's been fun to do that, actually.

Dianne Burckhardt 7:58

It's almost like a reimagining of the island of Dr. Moreau.

SPEAKER_00 8:02

It's something like that and and other things, animal farm and things like that too, yes.

Dianne Burckhardt 8:08

In your latest work, you mix a biomedical thriller elements with Dysotopian romance. I mean, this is a very interesting blend and rather bold. What was it that motivated you to bring these elements together for your story?

SPEAKER_00 8:25

Well, you know, when I wrote the first draft of it, and you know, like many first drafts of novels, it was a bit of a mess. But I sent it to a developmental editor called CB Moore, and she's excellent and really took me to task about where is this story going? Where what's the story arc? What's the main character's motivation, and all these sorts of things that I hadn't really thought about as this story just kind of like vomited out of out of me onto the paper, you know. So I had to you know think about what could have happened, and and I wanted to bring some different things in. Of course, they've got the scientific part of it, so I had to kind of talk about that, and that's of course sort of interesting to me. But then in trying to develop the the main character, Damon, I thought, well, what else is going to be going on with him in his in his life of going from a human to a dog, basically? So, you know, along the way, a little bit of romance, not not much, it's not it's not a it's not a rom-com or anything like that, but some other little things that could have been going on that would just kind of add, I thought, to the the main arc of the story.

Dianne Burckhardt 9:31

One of your big ideas that you have through the storyline is eternal life and coming at the ultimate price. How do you balance the scientific side of these concepts with the human and ethical questions that come with this kind of thing?

SPEAKER_00 9:49

Yeah, and that's a real problem or issue. You know, any any medical advance comes with some sort of price, and but it's not the first time, of course, that there'd be medical ethics issues. I mean, the idea of a organ transplant, heart or kidney, you know, that is coming from someone that's dying or just died into someone that needs to live. This is kind of the other way around, putting a mind into a healthy body. And yeah, it's it's really pretty reprehensible idea to take a healthy body and destroy the mind just so another mind can come come into it. And I don't really get into that ethical issue too much in elite memories. But the prequel that I'm currently working on is about one of the other characters, one of the antagonists in elite memories called Shania Torney, who's the medical director who developed this mind transfer process. And I get into that a lot more in in this prequel because as she develops this process, she has to wrestle with the idea that we're just discussing and has to get uh you know permission to do the trials to perfect the process. Now she in the prequel she starts off doing it in lab rats, which is what so many medical uh processes develop in first of all, and then in chimpanzees, which they're arguably sentient animals, but then at some point she has to test it out in humans, and so that raises a real issue that I discuss in in the prequel.

Dianne Burckhardt 11:18

What was the name of your prequel?

SPEAKER_00 11:20

Shanya's saga.

Dianne Burckhardt 11:22

And is that going to be a full novel or is it going to be more like your curse of the the hemnon that it's just like a a one-chapter shoot?

SPEAKER_00 11:32

It's in between. It's a novella, it really is a novella, and currently it's about 40,000 word, 37,000 words. Oh wow, yeah. And so I I've had a developmental editor look at it and I revised it, and it's currently now with uh Laura Zelensky, who is a copy editor, and she was the copy editor for Elite Memories and gave me a lot of good feedback, and uh, we talked about additional scenes. So it may get a little bit longer, that's what I'm saying. So it's gonna be about 37,000, 38,000 words.

Dianne Burckhardt 12:04

I was wondering if you were going to keep it as a novella or if the story was going to expand itself and become a novel.

SPEAKER_00 12:11

Well, I mean it, you know, it's not done yet, so it it it could do. You know, I would have no problem doing that. I'd I'd like to make it as long as not as long as possible, but a little bit longer. But um, you know, as it is currently, I told a story that I wanted to tell. Well, let's see if the developmental editor thinks there should be more.

Dianne Burckhardt 12:28

It'll be interesting to find out how you go with that later.

SPEAKER_00 12:32

Yeah. Yeah.

Dianne Burckhardt 12:33

Why don't you go ahead and tell us a little bit more about elite memories?

SPEAKER_00 12:39

Well, as we've mentioned, it's a dystopian science fiction novel. So it's set a little a little bit in the future, not too far distant future, and it's in a uh society w in which we don't have countries anymore, but we have authoritarian leaders. And at some point during the beginning of the story or before it really started, the super rich people in the world decided they're done with countries and the limitations of being in countries. They just want to have these big uh sort of fiefdoms, and so they set up these centers. And the people that are fortunate enough, rich enough to live in these centers are called elites. And those that have to live outside, which is most of the population, are more subservient and they're called underlinks. And so there's a huge discrepancy between the the rich and and the poor, have and the have nots. And this um memory transfer process is developed in the Boston Center, which is one of two North American centers, and it's to help perpetuate the population of elites. They also have the problem because of environmental pollution, that the fertility rates are incredibly low, and so they're just not replacing their population with newborns. But this process is developed as a way to continue themselves, because then as their body ages, they can have their mind transferred into a young, healthy body, which of course is going to be an elite. And so they they are perpetuated, become essentially called immortal in a way, the idea. The the andlings don't have access to this process at all. And so their populations, of course, have to continue to turn over. So that's kind of the world that this is going on. And and but what happens is that all of a sudden the transfers of memories don't go to the new body, but um they get accidentally transferred away and end up in animals that become then sentient. And so these animals which are ex-humans start running around like, what's going on and what can we do? And we don't like this, and all of a sudden they say, Well, we don't like this society anymore, so we want to take it down. And so that's the story develops from there.

Dianne Burckhardt 14:47

I don't know what is more chilling, the idea of that disotopian fiction or how close it seems to some particular plot points that are going on right now in the world.

SPEAKER_00 14:59

Yeah, I know. I didn't write it on purpose like that, but I I think it's just with what's going on right now, that influenced me to be thinking about that, because we are thinking about that, right? I mean, I think most of us are thinking whether we agree with it or not, we're thinking about what's going on. And so I think that impinged upon my mind as I was creating this this world and this story was what if the world went to that extreme and then there was this medical process that would make it even worse or better, depending upon your point of view, for the the rich, for the elites. You can just imagine people in that situation loving the idea that when their natural body ages, that they have the ability to move their mind into some young body. And I don't want to give away too much about the book, but you know, they they have choice about who that what their new body is gonna be like. They get to choose. I want I want someone to look like a Greek god or something, you know, or something like that, you know.

Dianne Burckhardt 15:55

Well, I think that will carry a lot of weight for a lot of people, that it can speak to a lot of their ideas, but then give them a nice little thriller chill too with the fiction that you built around that base.

SPEAKER_00 16:09

Yeah, yeah, because I don't think, I mean, people might like the idea of this elite and handling society. I mean, if they're gonna be an elite, I suppose they might like it. But then to see that it might have problems and that they may end up as a dog or a coyote or something, you know, I'm not sure that people would be so happy with the idea then of this process that was gonna save save their life is actually gonna have the potential to turn wrong. And the reason why the mind ends up in animals actually has a much more nefarious reason that is brought out in the course of the book as well. It it wasn't a deliberate process for minds to get transferred into animals. That was a an accidental byproduct of of something else that was going on that uh it becomes clear as the novel progresses.

Dianne Burckhardt 16:52

I actually think if I could transfer into my dog, it wouldn't be that bad. That is the most spoiled animal that I think lives on the face of this earth. He has more toys than I had as a child. Yeah, yeah, that's that's true.

SPEAKER_01 17:05

Yeah.

Dianne Burckhardt 17:06

Now seems like the perfect time to do the five quick questions that never turn out to be quick. But you've experienced this before, so you know what's coming.

SPEAKER_00 17:14

Oh well, I don't know what the exact questions will be, but I got some idea.

Dianne Burckhardt 17:18

Are you ready?

SPEAKER_00 17:20

Yeah, yeah.

Dianne Burckhardt 17:21

Question one What is one thing that makes you laugh? Oh gosh, I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 17:27

Um, I I think my sense of humor is is when things go wrong and it looks funny. You know. I I know with I got three younger brothers, and most of our conversations are kind of sarcastic digs at each other, and you know, and if something goes wrong, it's like, oh, this happened to you, ha ha, your car broke down, you had to walk home.

Dianne Burckhardt 17:47

That's a very brotherly thing, though.

SPEAKER_00 17:49

Yeah, I think so. Yes.

Dianne Burckhardt 17:52

I know my husband says that it is his job in life to make sure that I laugh or at least smile every day. So he does something goofy. And so he is definitely the thing that makes me laugh all the time because he has made that his mission in life.

SPEAKER_00 18:06

Oh, well, that's maybe I'll try that out. My wife, you'll be very surprised.

Dianne Burckhardt 18:10

It could be fun.

SPEAKER_00 18:12

Yeah.

Dianne Burckhardt 18:13

Question two What hobby or activity do you turn to when you need a break from writing?

SPEAKER_00 18:20

Well, I try to exercise, you know, it takes my mind off things. So that's one thing. You know, I like watching sports on TV. I think we've talked about this before. You know, football fan, if I can say the word football or soccer, you know, Saturday and now Sunday mornings are a big time for me to watch some English Premier League and my team Brighton.

Dianne Burckhardt 18:41

We watch a lot of that over here. In our house, it's football and American football. Yeah. Question three. What was your favorite toy or game as a kid? Oh my gosh. For me, it was jacks. I loved jacks. I still have my jacks from when I was a kid.

SPEAKER_00 19:03

Yeah. Well, we used to play Monopoly a lot growing up. That was a favorite game of ours and our family. And, you know, toys, I used to like to build model aircraft. Used to be able to buy these kits of plastic and you'd glue them together and make a spitfire or something like that. And I used to love to make those and then I'd hang them up on the ceiling in my in my room.

Dianne Burckhardt 19:28

Oh, yeah. We have a whole shelf in our living room that is nothing but World War II planes and submarines and battleships. That's my husband's favorite thing to do when he's bored.

SPEAKER_00 19:39

Yeah, yeah. I should get back into that then.

Dianne Burckhardt 19:42

There are some amazing kits that they have out there. It is really incredible, all the stuff that they have available now.

SPEAKER_00 19:49

Yeah, I bet.

Dianne Burckhardt 19:50

See now for me though, I always liked the model rockets that you could actually blast off. Oh, yeah, I didn't do too much of that. Those were fun. I'd do that now too, if we had some space to shoot them off. Question four. If you suddenly found yourself living in the future you imagined in your books, what would be the first thing you would want to explore?

SPEAKER_00 20:16

I suppose it would depend upon if it was in elite memories, I'd sort of depend upon my status. You know, if I was a underling, I wouldn't have much opportunity to explore anything. But if I was an elite, I'd probably want to get out and and look around and see what's left of the natural environment. Um, because you know, one of the things that distresses me always is to see how human societies have destroyed the planet or or are destroying the planet and have affected now. Every time I go somewhere I knew and I'm I'm looking out across some landscape or some vista, I always try to imagine what would it have looked like two, three hundred years ago before all these houses, all these buildings were there? What would this valley have looked like? And I just try to always try to imagine that. And I I don't know whether the future that I'm constructing elite memories would have some more of that or not. I don't I don't know. But um, I certainly want to kind of look into that sort of thing.

Dianne Burckhardt 21:11

Do you ever draw pictures of like your town that you're talking about or do maps so that you can kind of keep everything straight where everything is and what's happening where?

SPEAKER_00 21:22

I probably should have done that because I set the elite memories around the what you call the Boston Center. And there wasn't any particular reason for choosing Boston as the US city that would become the center, but it in retrospect it probably wasn't the most sensible location. Because you know, Boston's on the river and close to the coast. Could have done it being a bit more landlocked. But no, I hadn't done that. I mean, the cover, which I didn't do, that group called Get Covers did, has these kind of futuristic buildings as silhouettes, which I hadn't really thought about, but you know, when I told them the time frame, they presumably thought that's what buildings would have looked like. So the actual kind of the physical structure of what was was going on in this Boston Center wasn't so critical for the development of the novel. So I didn't think about it too much. But there are other aspects that I did have to think about was how they would travel outside and so what sort of futuristic travel it would be. We wouldn't just have cars like we have now. In a hundred years' time, it's gonna be it's gonna be different in some respect.

Dianne Burckhardt 22:25

I know for me, I'm just a very visual learner. So whenever I start talking about a town or a city or anything where I have to give directions in the story, I always draw it out first so that I have that visual image in my head. Otherwise, I get turned around myself and I can't really describe it well in my my work.

SPEAKER_00 22:44

And that's a good idea because I know my brother-in-law, Stan Smith, writes his futuristic novels. And we talked a lot about how he how he does it. And for all his characters, he finds an image online that matches his idea of what that person would have looked like. And he has that on his writing page, or uh he uses uh scrivener, and so you can put things in images and refer to them, and he writes out a complete kind of summary of that character that will never go in the book, but it's just something he can keep referring to to make sure that he's one consistent with how he describes that person. And that's something I really probably should do.

Dianne Burckhardt 23:22

It's amazingly helpful because I use plotters, the one that I got. Oh, and you go in and it can do timelines, it can show you when that character came into your storyline so that you're not saying, Oh yeah, they were there for this event when they didn't come in till later in the story. And if you put down that this character had blue eyes in the first book, but then you say they have green eyes in the second book, it keeps you straight through all of these descriptions. It is so helpful.

SPEAKER_00 23:49

I could really use that because I'm having to go back and forth and look for these things all the time. And I have made that eye color mistake that was picked up for me, I think, by the developmental editor or something, you know, like I thought they had blue eyes.

Dianne Burckhardt 24:03

That's why I got the program because my first book series that I did, there were seven books in that series. And by the time I got to the seven one, I felt like I was spending more time going back and forth in my notes, my handwritten notes, trying to find all of these facts that I had kept little notes everywhere. Nothing was organized, and it was so hard to find the information I wanted. I'm like, nope, I need a program that's going to keep me organized. I can find the stuff when I need it and not spend two hours searching for whether or not my character's name originally started as Connor C-O-N-N-E-R or C-O-N-N-O-R.

SPEAKER_00 24:38

Yes. Yeah. Now I do I do keep a uh what they call cast of characters. I do have that as a document with all their names and and a little bit about them. So I do have that much, but I I don't have the fully fleshed out thing that I'd probably need to have.

Dianne Burckhardt 24:52

Yeah, you should look at Plotter. It is fantastic.

SPEAKER_00 24:55

Yeah.

Dianne Burckhardt 24:56

It is so helpful.

SPEAKER_00 24:58

I'll have to look up Plotter and see if that would be worth the investment. It's wonderful. We need all the help we can get.

Dianne Burckhardt 25:05

Yeah. Now your final question. I'm asking everyone the same question this year because I'm creating a list to put in the year-end book buying guide of author recommendations to readers. So when somebody comes up and asks you for a recommendation of a book they should read, who is the first author that you go to?

SPEAKER_00 25:25

Um I think it would be uh this guy, Sebastian Falkes. Have you read any of his his work?

Dianne Burckhardt 25:32

No, I haven't. I'm familiar with him, but I haven't read anything of his yet.

SPEAKER_00 25:36

I love his books, and they're they're quite varied. They're mostly either about Europe or Britain. Bird's song was the first one of his that I read, and that was part of a three-book series based around World War One in France and various characters. And it is rich in detail. I mean, he puts incredible detail in into his novels, wonderful character development. I've enjoyed everything of his that I've read, and I haven't read them all yet. He's got about a dozen or so books. So he he's a strong recommendation from me.

Dianne Burckhardt 26:09

And is there a particular book that you tell people to start with?

SPEAKER_00 26:12

Well, Bird Song, but there's another one of his Charlotte Gray by the author of Bird Song.

Dianne Burckhardt 26:20

That one I have looked at, but I I haven't bought any of them yet. I haven't bought any new books in a while.

SPEAKER_00 26:25

Yeah, well I just pick them up when I when I can.

Dianne Burckhardt 26:29

I know you're still working on your prequel to Elite Memories, but what comes next after that?

SPEAKER_00 26:36

Well, I've got some notes for writing a sequel to Elite Memories, Damon's Journey, which is what happens after the end of Elite Memories. And so I've started working on that. But the main one I'm I'm trying to get to is something again completely different. After my mother died four years ago, or just before she died, actually, she was in the home. I discovered in in my bedroom at my parents' home a couple of diaries that she'd written. No, none of us knew she was keeping these diaries, and they're dog walking diaries. So every day she'd take a the dog she had at the time out for a walk around the village Cookfield in in southern England, and she would just write a couple of lines about what she saw, what plants were in flower, what animals she saw, what the birds were doing, and so forth. And so we've got 15 years of these diaries. Oh wow. And yeah. And so I'm trying to write a memoir around those diaries that fleshes out more of her life and also the plants that she saw, because I can talk about the natural history part of it. Um, and and also some of the locations she visited, because the village of Cookfield in something was founded in 1093. So it's very old. There's a lot of old buildings and so forth, a lot of interesting places that she would walk past and say, I'm walking past this house now, or I went down here. So I think it'd be a really, a really fascinating memoir to write. And it's made a bit more poignant by the fact that she got dementia and went into a home. And it took a while before anyone realized that that was happening to her. But looking back at those diaries, you can actually see a decrease in the frequency of the entries over the last few years. And I just wonder whether before the visible effects of dementia were apparent to my father and all of us, that perhaps this is some sign that she wasn't able to keep up with this passion of hers, keeping these diaries. So I think that's an area to explore as well. And so I think this would be a really I think it'd be a really fascinating book. So I'm I'm currently I've got her diaries all transcribed in Scrivner, and I've started to write some of the the what I call the vignettes on the plants, and I've been querying publishers to see if I get someone to take this on to publish it for me. Because I'm finding that um while I'm comfortable writing a novel and in depublishing it, I think something like this, I think I'd be better off by having a publisher help me get the book packaged properly. So it looks looks good. So that's a project that I'm I'm working on. Like I say, I'm querying publishers, and oh my gosh, that's hard. I've worried 30 so far, and most of them don't get back to you because they're too busy. So it's it's hard to get any any feedback. But um that's another that's a big project for me right now.

Dianne Burckhardt 29:21

Well, and besides that, writing memoirs are such a completely different style, too. Yes. You've already started out in like the nonfiction academic work, then you're going into disotopian science fiction, and now you're stepping into a completely different realm.

SPEAKER_00 29:39

And I'm beginning to realize that because I think my first attempts at querying publishers fell flat because I didn't know what I was doing at all in terms of a memoir. I didn't even know I was going to call it a memoir. Um but yes, I realized that to make a memoir interesting to a reader, that's a whole different way of writing, which I need to figure out. So yeah.

Dianne Burckhardt 30:02

Now remind everybody again who you are and where they can find your work.

SPEAKER_00 30:07

Well, David Gibson, and you can always look me up on davidjgibson.com. That's Jay for John, davidjgibson.com, my website. And my books are all available on the in the usual sources, Amazon and other areas. Uh if you go to bookstore.org, which carries the independent books, uh, elite memories is there. So all my books are available through the usual sources, put it that way. So look me up on social media or through my website and to get lists of them, you should be able to get get things.

Dianne Burckhardt 30:40

And as always, all of your information will be in the description of today's podcast as well as on our website, burkhartbooks.com slash podcast. And you will also be featured in this year's book buying guide that'll be coming out in November for holiday shopping.

SPEAKER_00 30:55

Excellent. Maybe I'll have the uh the novella Shania's saga out by then. I'll let I'll let you know if it's out by then.

Dianne Burckhardt 31:02

Yeah, that'd be perfect. I'll drop it in there too.

SPEAKER_00 31:05

Exactly. Yeah, be great. Yeah.

Dianne Burckhardt 31:07

This has been so much fun. I'm glad I got to talk to you again. And in the future, whenever you have more stuff coming out, let me know and we'll bring you back again.

SPEAKER_00 31:14

Yeah, no, that's great. Uh I appreciate it very much. And it's great to have the opportunity to talk because you know, writing is a pretty lonely business most of the time. And um, it's good to talk to someone else about what's going on and and ideas and things that uh always kind of freshens you up and gives you a little bit of inspiration to get back to it, which is what I'll be doing in a few minutes.

Dianne Burckhardt 31:34

Oh yeah. Every once in a while, whenever I start getting just really frustrated with everything, I'm like, why am I doing this? Then I get to have an interview with another author and I get pumped up again. I'm like, okay, let's go do this.

SPEAKER_00 31:45

Yeah. Yeah. I spend a lot of time on threads, which is the Instagram thing. And you can kind of get the algorithm, curate it to ignore all the other stuff, and mostly just look at the book community. And so I've I get a a lot out of that from seeing what other authors post about their frustrations and their successes and so forth. It's it's just kind of a way to kind of feel that you're part of that broader international community of writers.

Dianne Burckhardt 32:11

Oh, yeah, and that helps so much.

SPEAKER_00 32:14

Yeah. Yeah.

Dianne Burckhardt 32:15

Thank you so much for doing this.

SPEAKER_00 32:17

Oh, thanks. Thanks. And uh hope to talk to you again soon.

Dianne Burckhardt 32:20

So there you have it, folks. My interview with the incredible David J. Gibson. Be sure to go to Amazon and check out all of his published works. He has really got some fascinating things that I have really enjoyed reading. Now, I also want to mention that his prequel that we discussed, Shanya's Saga, is available for pre-order now on Amazon as well for just $2.99. So be sure to go and check that out. We are coming up on the last two interviews for season four of Book Banter with Diane Burkhardt, and next week we have another returning guest, and this one is also another Dr. David. Next Wednesday, I'll be sharing my interview with Dr. David Weil, a former director of the Center of Advanced Lung Diseases and Lung Transplant Program at Stanford University Medical Center. He now provides assistance to transplant programs across the country that seek his advice about how to improve the delivery of transplant care. But he is also an accomplished author. The last time that he was on our podcast, we discussed his memoir, Exhale, Hope, Healing, and a Life in Transplant. But then we also discussed his more recent book, All That Really Matters, his first fiction novel about the life of a transplant doctor who deals with high-stakes surgeries and moral dilemmas. And then he finds his love life on life support. All that really matters was his first fiction novel, and we get into that in depth in his previous interview. But this time around, we discuss his latest book that is in pre-order right now and will be published on December 9th. This book is much more personal. Tell Me I Belong: A Journey Across Faiths and Generations. It's a heart-wrenching memoir about religion, a journey of self-discovery as Dr. David Wilde discovers his family's past. It was a wonderful discussion, and trust me when I tell you, you do not want to miss out. Now I'm actually trying to get through all of this pre-recording a little bit quickly this week because I am working so hard on getting our book Banter magazine out for you. I'm hoping to have it out for you tomorrow. It might be Friday. I have just a few more things to drop into the magazine. It is almost completely done. We've already done two rounds of edits. Everything is set except for these last few book reviews that need to be dropped in and edited, and then it's all ready to go. I just have to load it up. I am a little worried because this is the first time I will be using this new flip book program that I just purchased this year. And this is like the big publication that I'm putting in there. It is 132 pages long. And for the first week that it is available, we're going to sell it for just a dollar. That's $1.99 off the cover price, but I want to do something special to really help get this to kick off and start building this business because next year it is actually going to go from being just a hobby that I am doing and not trying to make any money to something that is going to be an actual business. And this is my first product that I'm really putting out on the market for book banter production. So I hope you will check it out. It will be on our website and I will be posting a link in the podcast description so that you can just click and go and find it very easy. And just one last thing. A special thank you to one of our sponsors. If you have a few middle grade readers on your holiday shopping list, you definitely need to check out Valerie Sherard. She is a fantastic author of middle grade reader books, and I cannot recommend her books highly enough. She has a great non-fiction book for kids that help to teach them about communication, and she also has some wonderful fiction novels. There's so many to choose from. I am confident that you will find something for every middle grade reader on your shopping list. So be sure to go check her out. And if your middle grade reader happens to enjoy a little bit of fantasy adventure, you definitely need to check out A Bend in the Breeze. I really enjoyed reading this book. It was a fun adventure with great characters, and it's just a good read. But that's it for today, folks. I have got so much stuff to get done before tomorrow, so please keep watching our website at Burkhartbooks.com. And if you're an author who would like to be part of season five of Bookbanter with Diane Burkhart, we will be opening up interview applications here in the next few weeks. You will be able to find out first if you get on our mailing list at burkhartbooks.com. After we have that open to our followers for a few weeks, then we'll open it up publicly across our social media. But if it's anything like last year, we filled out the entire season in the first three months. So be sure to get in quick because spots tend to go fast. I think that's it for today, everyone. I hope you have a wonderful week. You have a fantastic gathering with friends and family if you celebrate Thanksgiving this week. And for now, it's time to just go forth and be really happy. Or I guess in this instance, thankful.