S5 EP219 | Hearing Voices or Losing His Mind? Inside Blurred Lines with D.I. Jolly

Hello My happy People,

Today I am sharing my chat with multi-award-winning author D.I. Jolly (known as Jolly). He discovered his passion for storytelling at just seven years old after playing the video game Gabriel Knight. Captivated by the character, he decided early on that he would be a writer.

It would be several years before his dream would become a reality when he unintentionally wrote his first book, A Guy, A Girl and A Voodoo Monkey Hand, as a teenager. That milestone proved to him that writing wasn’t just a dream, it was something he could actually do. Since then, his work has evolved from comedic noir into more serious, thought-provoking stories, often exploring deeper themes through pop culture-driven genres.

Originally from South Africa, Jolly has lived in several countries and now resides in Berlin, Germany. His writing spans a wide range of genres, including psychological thrillers, paranormal romance, fantasy, and an incredible collection of short fiction. Beyond novels, he has also worked as a story writer for the sci-fi strategy game Nexus 5X and founded a monthly poetry and writing event.

While Jolly's current profession does feed his creativity, he still hopes to one day write books full-time. His stories are more than entertainment, he aims to create something that makes people think, feel, or see things differently. His book Blurred Lines is a great example of his incredible creativity.

Listen now to learn more about Jolly and his work.

Jolly's Website

Jolly's Berlin Poetry Club

Read Blurred Lines Page 1

Jolly on Linktree

Jolly on Amazon

Buy Blurred Lines

Transcript

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Dianne Burckhardt 0:01

You're listening to BookBanter with Diane Burkhart, your Book Talk podcast. Join me every Wednesday for real conversations with authors and publishing insiders, where you get to connect with the humans find the books you love. Let's get on with our show today. Hello, my happy people. Today is April 22nd, 2026, and today we have a deeply unsettling question to explore. What would you do if you could hear what other people were thinking? All the time. And you couldn't turn it off. Then one day one of those voices starts screaming for help, but it's all in your own head. Would you trust it? Or start questioning your sanity. We delve into this and so much more with today's multi-award-winning author. So without further ado, please welcome to BookBanter with Diane Burkhardt. D.I. Jolly. The way that I like to start these shows out is just to have my guest tell everyone who you are and what you do.

SPEAKER_02 1:08

Hello, my name is D.I. Jolly. I'm from South Africa, but I live in Berlin. I'm an author and a video game writer. I have 12 books published at the moment. I've got three more sitting on a shelf. I've worked on a number of video games, only one of which has been released, but that's still very cool for me. In Berlin for the last 10 years, I've also hosted a writing event called Poetry Club, and for that I have written over 300 short stories in the last 10 years. That's incredible. Practice makes perfect.

Dianne Burckhardt 1:41

Well, you know, and I have to tell you that one of the things that I did in preparation, I felt it was necessary. The first thing I did when I got up this morning was I played several games of Fortnite. It just seemed like good preparation.

SPEAKER_02 1:54

You might you might get a little disappointed to know I've never played Fortnite.

Dianne Burckhardt 1:58

I like it because of the storyline through it. I love those. It's like whenever you were mentioning the video game that got you interested in being a writer. I love those kinds of games. The one that you have to investigate, that you have to do puzzles to advance your story. I love those.

SPEAKER_02 2:14

Oh, yeah, no. I mean, the the old school Sierra games with the point-and-click adventures, Sierra and Lucas games, which were then Monkey Island and Salmon Max. No action, no running around, no like just pure story and puzzle solving. That very much fits my headspace.

Dianne Burckhardt 2:31

Oh, yeah, me too. I mean, so I can understand how that could be an inspiration for where you wanted to go with your career. But that isn't really how you started your career, though.

SPEAKER_02 2:43

No, but I mean it very much was the inspiration because at seven or eight years old, I went, I want to be him. And of course, your parents are like, well, do you want like merch with the face on? Do you want things? I'm like, no, no, no. I want a full-length duster. I want white t-shirts and blue jeans because that's how he dresses. I don't want to, you know, Batman doesn't wear Batman t-shirts. He's he dresses like Batman. Exactly. I don't want a Gabriel Knight t-shirt. I want to be Gabriel Knight. So I want to try and write things and I want to dress like him, and I'm definitely going to move to New Orleans one day.

Dianne Burckhardt 3:13

So whenever you started planning your schoolwork to go towards your goals, what did you focus on?

SPEAKER_02 3:22

Yeah, fun story. Um my family's business went out of business when I just as I turned 16, and I was expelled because we couldn't afford school fees. I never finished high school. Wow. It's now illegal to do to students what was done to me. You're no longer allowed to punish the child for sort of problems that the family's going through. The school is supposed to find a solution. I just got expelled. Wow. That's crazy. Yeah, I I don't even have like I think in the United States it's a GED, like a standard you're now at a level where you technically can leave school. I was just old enough because I just turned 16.

Dianne Burckhardt 4:04

So what did you do after that?

SPEAKER_02 4:06

I lied about my age and I got a job working in a restaurant because my brother was older than me, and I knew a bunch of my brother's friends, and they were getting into restaurants as one does just after leaving high school. So we all lied about my age to say I was 18, because you have to be 18 to serve alcohol. So I lied about my age and got a job in a restaurant and just started working. Because I always wanted to do the writing thing. That was always something I did on the side anyway, and I just kept that going until the day I kind of finished a book, which was when I was 19.

Dianne Burckhardt 4:41

So then what led to you moving around to different countries?

SPEAKER_02 4:46

My father was English, so at one point I went and lived with him for a bit to try and go to college in the UK, where I did courses in art and computers, but uh mostly I learned that I didn't want to be an artist or work in IT. And then kind of I liked traveling. I I took the idea of going out and sort of finding yourself literally, so I kept going. I had the opportunity to travel because I was working and you can work in service anywhere. So whenever I had the idea or the opportunity, I sort of jumped on a plane and went on the next adventure. Ended up living in seven different countries.

Dianne Burckhardt 5:23

That's incredible.

unknown 5:25

Yeah.

Dianne Burckhardt 5:25

It's like I've only lived in three. So the the thought of living in seven is just amazing. I I love going to different countries and spending extended amounts of time there because you learn so much more when you're immersed in a culture than when you just visit a culture.

SPEAKER_02 5:40

Yeah, you know, you need a couple of months to sort of not just figure out where the restaurants are, but which ones you actually like, you know, how to get around without needing to look at a map. Make actual friends that if you bump into, it's not like, oh yeah, I I remember you from the last time. It's like, oh hey, Jolly.

Dianne Burckhardt 5:55

Yeah. Do you think that this experience of for one thing, working in a service industry, you meet so many people that way. You get ideas for so many characters by all of the people that you have to deal with. Plus, you're doing it in different countries. Do you think that that really gives you a better breadth of information for creating your worlds?

SPEAKER_02 6:13

I think it definitely helps with sort of the realization that some people are cliches, but most people are really just people. And it really doesn't matter where somebody is from. There is a version of your favorite person in every culture everywhere. Like background and culture sort of informs sort of the starting blocks of somebody, but everybody has the potential to grow into anybody else or whoever they want to be. And it kind of takes away that idea of the cultural stereotype, the background of like, oh, you're from here, therefore you're like this. The more the more people you meet, the more you realize that everyone is just someone.

Dianne Burckhardt 6:52

So what brought you to Berlin?

SPEAKER_02 6:54

I was technically based in England and I don't like England very much. And I was living in a small town, which didn't help. And the company I was working for at the time, which is a giant company, which I'm not going to give the name of, because they don't need advertising, um, sent me to Krakow in Poland for six months to help set up a new office there. And I remembered how much I loved living in a city. And then they fumbled that so badly that sort of two weeks before I'd been told I was doing a great job and I should expect to stay for a long time. And then I got a phone call one morning going, Oh no, we're actually not allowed to uh be based in the UK and live in Poland for longer than six months. Otherwise, you have to pay taxes in both countries. So you need to leave today. Oh wow. And I went, You you told me to expect to stay for a long time. And they're like, Yeah, we're booking you a flight. You need to leave the office, go back to your hotel, pack up and go. I'm like, I have a girlfriend. And they're like, Yeah, you should probably call her. I'm like, what? And then I wasn't allowed back in the country for six months.

SPEAKER_01 8:03

Ugh.

SPEAKER_02 8:04

So I got back and I went, I don't like this country, I don't like this company very much. So I resigned the day I got back. Sort of as soon as I went back into the office. And then I wrestled with the idea of what do I do now? And as much as Krackell was this thing that I'd really enjoyed, I'd been there for six months. The re even the relationship was very new. And it was more the toy that had been taken away from me rather than the thing I really wanted. And I've had friends in Berlin since I was 18. Every time I'd been to Berlin, I'd had a great time. It always felt very familiar, it felt very like a place I could live. And I wanted to live in a city where you can get away with English a lot more. There's more opportunities for English-speaking jobs, thinking practically. So I was about to turn 30 and decided that. If not now, then when? And sold everything I had and within four weeks was in Berlin.

Dianne Burckhardt 9:03

Do you still have family in South Africa?

SPEAKER_02 9:05

Yeah, my mom and one of my sisters and a nephew and a cousin or five.

Dianne Burckhardt 9:10

That's actually one of the places on our bucket list. That's where we want to go next.

SPEAKER_02 9:13

South Africa's beautiful. Everyone should go to South Africa. I'd go more often, it's just really, really, really far away.

Dianne Burckhardt 9:20

So now that you have moved to Berlin, what made you decide to start your own poetry club?

SPEAKER_02 9:26

Poetry Club started. It started in two ways. Uh my book, Mostly Human, came out and I did a book reading in my favorite bar, as one does. And we all sort of agreed that it was fun to do something different in the bar we were all at all the time, anyway. And I'd been pitched at the time an idea of a quick turnaround short story anthology where a bunch of writers were given a theme and a time limit, and whatever we wrote, that was it. And that never took off, but I liked the idea, so I went, well, why don't we pick a topic, give ourselves a week, and whatever we come up with, we come up with, and we just read each other these short stories or poems or whatever. And a week later, four people rocked up, and we all had short stories that we'd written based on the topic. And it was sort of such a fun and wild thing that happened. We just kept doing it, and now it's been ten years, and we still do it. That's great. It's no longer weekly, thank God. But it was weekly for five years. Wow. So for five years I wrote at least one short story a week. That's amazing. Yeah, I couldn't keep it up. I can imagine. Like after a while it it became I'd written sort of what is a hundred and two hundred short stories in five years. I was like, I need to write something else. I I need to not do this every Monday.

Dianne Burckhardt 10:55

Yeah, I can definitely understand that. Now, does your day job that you have fit into your life as a writer at all? Does it inspire it? Does it feed your creativity?

SPEAKER_02 11:06

My current day job isn't. Um I mean, I I've I've got a couple of side projects, but they're all writing related. I'm very part-time working as a fiction editor for a publishing company and the lead narrative designer for a games company.

Dianne Burckhardt 11:22

Yeah, I was looking at that. That's a very cool game.

SPEAKER_02 11:25

Yeah.

Dianne Burckhardt 11:26

Was it Nexus 5X?

SPEAKER_02 11:28

Nexus 5X, yeah. That was the game that came out. That I was the principal story writer on that game. That was a lot of fun.

Dianne Burckhardt 11:34

That's a cool game. I was checking that one out.

SPEAKER_02 11:37

Oh, I know. I loved working with those guys. It was a great company to work for. They're a cool bunch of people and such a fun project to be on. I'm currently um sort of in stage three to work uh as a senior creative writer for another video game company, which would then be a full-time pure writing position, which is kind of a dream. That would be a lot of fun. But I've always found that kind of writing, writing for somebody else easy, but also because it's not my idea, it's sort of a different switch in my head. So when I then go to write my own stuff, it's like, okay, then switch over to this side, and then it's like the two sections are very separated in my mind, which makes doing that work very easy.

Dianne Burckhardt 12:20

I understand that whenever we moved to Europe, I did ghostwriting. And yeah, it's a totally different thing when you're writing projects for somebody else than when you're creating your own stuff.

SPEAKER_01 12:30

Yeah.

Dianne Burckhardt 12:30

Since you are doing work as a writer for video games, does that mean that whenever you go and buy video games, you can write them off as research?

SPEAKER_02 12:40

I'd love to, but sadly no. I think it's it's it's still entertainment.

Dianne Burckhardt 12:47

Because I actually know a sci-fi writer who does that, that because she is researching sci-fi and storylines, she gets sci-fi video games as references.

SPEAKER_02 12:58

I wish I knew how to write things off. I actually don't. I'm very bad at the business side of things. I'm I'm very good at the writing. That's about it. All of the rest of it, I just sort of wing it.

Dianne Burckhardt 13:09

That's where accountants come in. Yeah, if I could afford an accountant, if I could afford anything these days. Oh God, I understand that.

SPEAKER_02 13:18

I'm a full-time writer. I am so poor.

Dianne Burckhardt 13:20

Yeah. Right now, just trying to come up with the money to buy a block of ISBNs. Have you checked that out in Germany yet?

SPEAKER_02 13:27

Oh no, I don't self-publish. The publishing house I work with is tiny. I think I'm the only author that I actually work with, but still it it means I don't have to do that.

Dianne Burckhardt 13:36

Yeah, that's good. I know one of the earliest books that you wrote was A Guy, a girl, and a voodoo monkey hand, which I really love the title of that. It's quite vivid. Thanks. What inspired that story?

SPEAKER_02 13:52

Yeah, I wrote that when I was 19. And to me, it still reads like it was written by a 19-year-old. Um, it it started originally as sort of emailing with a friend way back when who kind of went, I'm bored, tell me a story. And I went, I'll I'll tell you the advent. And I was traveling around and I was like, I'll tell you the adventures of Jolly PI, a private investigator. And it it really was like five or six really long emails of just nonsense I was making up at the time. And then I kind of got to the end of all of that, and I'm like, if I put these together and maybe put a little bit more effort into it, I could get somewhere. And so I started sort of rewriting it from the beginning and then went through and kept going because it was so much fun to write. And by the end of it, I was like, I've got 75,000 words here. I've I've accidentally written a book. Wow. And then sort of that idea of like, oh ho, I can write a book. I've if I've done it once, I can do it again. It was sort of the sort of great sort of step forward in my mind of like, oh wait, I can actually do this thing.

Dianne Burckhardt 14:58

So you kind of became an author by accident.

SPEAKER_02 15:00

Well, I it you kind of. I mean, it was something I always wanted to do and had been been working at, but like the first time it really the first sort of idea that went that far was very much inspired by just play, which I think is true of a lot of writing.

Dianne Burckhardt 15:16

I know you have been credited with saying that that first book went through several rewrites between the first draft and the final published version. How many rewrites do you think you actually went through on that one?

SPEAKER_02 15:28

Well, at one point I had to change the name of the protagonist because I kept a jolly PI until I finished the book and then went, I can't actually use my own name. It took about four years before it was published, and I didn't write anything else in the meantime. So every time I sat down to write, I was just going over that book again and again and rewriting it and trying to make the jokes funny to other people, not just myself. But even then, like four years ago, I got in touch with a proofreader to go over that one again just to clean up the language again. So the latest version was updated yeah, three, four years ago.

Dianne Burckhardt 16:09

Are you happy with the current final version?

SPEAKER_02 16:11

I am. I can't really read my own stuff once it's published because I want to change it and I can't really. Oh yeah. I think that happens to a lot of authors. I mean, it's that thing of like, is it the best thing I've ever written? No. Is it my the favorite thing I've ever written? No. If I could pick one book to get really famous, it still might be that one.

Dianne Burckhardt 16:30

Thinking about that book, can you see how much or your storytelling has evolved as a writer since that first book?

SPEAKER_02 16:37

Oh, absolutely. I mean, like any art form, inspiration or talent, rather, is in my head is the patience to spend a lot of time to get good at something. And writing like drawing, the more you practice, the better you get. And after just 10 years of poetry club, I can look back on things I wrote before Poetry Club and after poetry club and just go, this is chalk and cheese. Yeah. It is so different. So looking back, a guy girl in the Voodoo Monkey hand has a very special place in my heart. I don't think I could write a book like that again. Or now. I think my the way my brain is wired, I wouldn't I I would automatically write that book completely differently.

Dianne Burckhardt 17:21

Now, the book that we're actually focusing on today is Blurred Lines. Yeah. And I went and checked it out on Amazon. It doesn't have very many reviews, but you have five stars. You have five reviews, and each one of those is a five-star review. How does that feel knowing that readers who reviewed your work clearly love it?

SPEAKER_02 17:41

It's not a bad feeling, we're gonna tell you that. Um, I mean, blurred lines, oof. Yeah, it's it's this funny thing. Like, I'm I'm not a very famous author, but I'm I'm somebody's favorite author. And I know that because I've had people reach out and tell me, which is a great day. Yeah. Yeah, seeing people's reaction to blurred lines is great because it's a book I'm incredibly proud of. Like when I finished writing that book and read over it for the first time, I was like, oh hey, look, I actually wrote the book that I had in my head when I started writing this book. And it's like being able to draw your exact imagination. Like it was an incredible moment of like, no, this this is the book I I had in my head when I started writing this book.

Dianne Burckhardt 18:26

That's amazing because I know for me, a lot of times whenever I start something, the finished product is not even close to what I originally envisioned. Yeah, right. Because at some point the characters take over my head and go, you know, your idea was cute, but we're not doing that. We're gonna do this.

SPEAKER_02 18:43

Right. That's been my experience with everything else I've ever written. But this is like I had such a sort of a focused idea, and I really liked the idea. And I sat with the idea for a long time before I even started writing it. And I always just every time I sort of glanced back in it in my head, I was like, I just like that idea, and I need to, I need to use it. I just can't do it right now because I'm working on two or three other things. And then yeah, wrote it all out and then sat down and read it. I'm like, wow, no. This is this is this is the book. This like I don't know how I did it, but I did it.

Dianne Burckhardt 19:16

As an author living in Germany who writes primarily in English, do you find it harder to promote your books here?

SPEAKER_02 19:23

I find it hard to promote my books everywhere, but no, like, I mean, I think maybe it's just because I created a writing community. I know a lot of people who are English speakers or at least speak English. So it it's always been within that crowd quite easy to tell people about my books and promote my books. But you know, I'm I'm not a widely successful, widely known author. So promotion has always been this thing that I've sort of tried, but never really known what I was doing.

Dianne Burckhardt 19:56

Well, I know you also write across several genres. You write paranormal romance, psychological thrillers, you write fantasy. It often tends to be difficult for some authors whenever they do write across so many different genres. Have you noticed that it's hard to get a consistent readership with such a variety since you're not focusing just on like thrillers?

SPEAKER_02 20:17

Yeah, I think Bait, my romance novel, is far and away my most successful book. I mean, it doesn't have the most reviews, but oh, it's definitely had the most reads. And I definitely know that the bait readers would like me to write more in that world. And I just really don't want to, but I mean I do understand that if I focused in one spot like that, there is an audience sort of sitting there going, well, we'd love to read more of your stuff if you wrote this. So there is sort of that. I I know I'm I'm doing myself no favors by writing within the genres that I do, but for me, it's always like I I have the characters in my head, and I like to take the genre that best tells their story rather than have the genre in my head and tell the story in that world. Does that make sense?

Dianne Burckhardt 21:08

Oh yeah. To me it does. Now I know you have a Patreon presence, and currently that is a way that you share a lot of your short stories. Do you plan to just keep them there, or do you also publish them in collections?

SPEAKER_02 21:23

I've got two short story collections published. Two the Poetry Club Volume 1 and 2, because they're all Poetry Club stories. I originally had all of the stories, well a lot of the stories that are on my Patreon were originally on a website of mine for free. And at a certain point, I kind of I sort of I insulted myself. It started to feel like the more I sort of had available for free for people to read, the less value people gave to my work because they're like, well, there's so much for free. If he doesn't care, why should we? Yeah. And I don't know if that's true, but that's kind of how it felt, and that started to become a sort of a negativity in my own head. So I I well, you know, if I if I don't put value to my work, I can't really expect other people to do that for me. And so I made the decision to just put it behind a put most of it behind a paywall and just go, look, there's still 50, 60 short stories you can get for free. You can still go and buy the books. But also if you like what I do and you want to support me and you want to have access to all of this stuff, here.

Dianne Burckhardt 22:28

Now you can and the truth is, I mean, people don't seem to realize a lot of times even a short story can take hours to write and rewrite and get perfect. And that's time that you have spent that has value. It's work.

SPEAKER_02 22:44

Yeah.

Dianne Burckhardt 22:45

So many people think oh well you're a writer it's just creative.

SPEAKER_02 22:48

You know why are you making it a lot of it's a lot of things you love to do it so you know you get the joy out of the creating. And I'm like yeah and chefs love to cook you still go and buy their food.

Dianne Burckhardt 22:58

Exactly. It's like we still need to make money.

SPEAKER_02 23:00

Yeah.

Dianne Burckhardt 23:01

Because some of the stuff takes a lot of time to actually get you know you have to pay for the website that it's on you have to pay for your internet service to be able to access all of these things. We actually pay out a lot of money to do these things.

SPEAKER_02 23:16

Yeah proofreaders cover designers editors personal time investment. I mean writing you you're you're asking somebody to dedicate months of their life for something that you're going to finish in a day and then go more. Yeah no I'm not paying you for that. So now why don't you go ahead and tell us about blurred lines blurred lines uh the well the elevator pitch for blurred lines is what if you could hear what people are thinking but had no control over that power and it is this book about Miles who can hear what people are thinking but has no control. He can hear what everyone around him is thinking all the time. And if I based that idea on social anxiety that feeling where you feel like you can hear what people are thinking and they're all thinking about you and they're judging you and this overwhelming pressure of all of the potential eyes and minds directed at you. And while Miles knows that no one's really thinking about him because he can hear that people are just dealing with their own lives I like that pressure and that presence and those ideas sort of push into his head and massively overwhelm him. And then doing the research on social anxiety I learned about safety behavior which is then the other side of that coin where people become so crippled by their fear and so protective of themselves that the the steps they take to prevent putting themselves in bad places becomes negative as well. Because they're locking themselves away and they're isolating themselves too much. And I thought you know for somebody who really can't control this, that also makes sense. But it's a book so there needs to be a plot line so one day while Miles is sort of trying to balance his behaviors where he still goes to a grocery store rather than get stuff delivered or you know he still tries to put himself out there. He hears somebody screaming for help but it's in his head and he knows it's not like a normal thought and he knows that this is something different. This is this is intense in a way I've I've very rarely felt before and that means that I'm probably the only person in the world that knows that someone's in trouble. And now I have to wrestle with what do I do with that knowledge? Do I pretend it didn't happen and go back to my my my little locked-in cage and do nothing or do I try and find this person because I'm I may be the only one that can and it sort of it starts to break that pattern and it doesn't break cleanly like he decides he's going to do something about it and that immediately starts he immediately starts sort of a downward spiral while putting himself in positions that he's super uncomfortable in. And yeah because he can hear what people are thinking it gives a wonderful ability to because it's a very zoomed in book. It's very very focused on Miles. But because he can hear what other people are thinking you can do a bit of multi-perspective writing within the story because you can go through Miles to pick up on other characters within the book which was also then a lot of fun to write.

Dianne Burckhardt 26:31

One thing that I thought was really interesting about this was just reading the synopsis, it made me feel uncomfortable. And that's exactly what I would want from a thriller you know because I was sitting there thinking okay first of all I can't even stand if somebody's trying to talk to me while the TV's on. It's too much noise. I can't focus it gives me anxiety when that happens.

SPEAKER_01 26:52

Yeah.

Dianne Burckhardt 26:52

So the thought of all of these people around me and their thoughts coming in it immediately just gave me a shiver.

SPEAKER_02 26:58

I know and that smiles all over like it the world is incredibly loud and overwhelming all the time.

Dianne Burckhardt 27:04

And I think that's just that's such a great premise that it just automatically gives you that uneasy feeling and that is such a great thing for a thriller.

SPEAKER_02 27:14

Thank you. Yeah I mean like I said it's very zoomed in you're stuck with this dude who's not okay and that you're supposed to feel trapped a little bit. Because I mean he's not a hero he's he's barely functional.

Dianne Burckhardt 27:27

But that's what makes him great as this character.

SPEAKER_02 27:30

It was a lot of fun having him in my head for such a long time.

Dianne Burckhardt 27:34

It's one of those things where it's like if somebody comes in and they're Superman and they go around saving people it's not that impressive. He's Superman. He has all these powers but when it's somebody who is troubled and it's why Batman is so good because he is troubled. Yeah he's that anti-hero those are the kinds of characters that people can actually really identify with because they see those handicaps within that same person.

SPEAKER_02 28:00

Yeah no I mean I'm also a big Batman fan and I remember very clearly sort of watching the animated series when I was younger and the realization of Batman has chronic nightmares. It's like oh no he's he's there's there's nothing okay about this person.

Dianne Burckhardt 28:16

Yeah. I mean he's completely trauma driven. Yeah. He's not out there saving the world because he's a hero and he you know has superpowers it's because he's dealing with his own trauma and trying to save other people from that same trauma.

SPEAKER_02 28:29

Yeah. Wildly broken human being and so is Miles. Yeah. I did a lot of consultation with doctors and psychologists and stuff for this character because I wanted it to be I didn't want to like demonize therapy or like glorify therapy. And I remember the the psychologist I was consulting with read the book at the end and I'm like what do you think? And she goes it's very realistic in a way that I don't like I'm like well what do you mean? And she's like well it's it's it's a book I kind of want him to be completely better at the end but that's not even nearly how life works so I love it but I still feel so bad for him I'm like perfect. Yeah like he's definitely better than at the beginning of the book but he's not fine the book takes place over like a two weeks no one's fine after two weeks.

Dianne Burckhardt 29:23

Yeah. Are you working on anything new now?

SPEAKER_02 29:27

So in February last year I decided to take the pressure off a bit. I mean Miles is a hell of a book to write and I'd done some other stuff I'd done some fantasy stuff and you know bait and stuff in between but I wanted to take the pressure off a little bit and I I got into the idea of sort of the airport novel book you pick up at an airport and by the time you land you've finished it and you've had a good time reading. Yeah. So I I set my mind that I was going to write the first draft of a book in February last year. And I did. And then I liked that much so much that I decided to keep doing it and in May I wrote book two and then I tried to write book three in August and life happened and then December and life kept happening but then I decided from February to February made made a nice circle in my head so one day in February I sat down and wrote 12000 words. Wow yeah that was a that was a that was a day but it means in the last year I've written this noir style pulp fiction y detective series or trilogy rather um which was just so much fun to write I did like four page outlines on day one and then just which I don't usually do and then just ran through and wrote these fun sort of gritty dark character driven first person detective novels sort of utilizing a little bit from a guy girl in a voodoo monkey hand kind of all the same character names but a very different kind of story. So it's still you know a guy girl in the voodoo monkey hand is Jones P.I. Frank Oslo the police chief who is a recurring character in all of my books and Jones's Secretary Ella and like the desk sergeant in the police station all of those are the characters from A Guy A Girl and a Voodoo Monkey Hand which is sort of this comedy tongue-in-cheek slightly supernatural book and now I've written this much more gritty much more sort of down-to-earth detective series which has been a lot of fun to write but being me they still sort of meander down some pretty dark alleyways.

Dianne Burckhardt 31:33

I always love it whenever somebody takes one character even if they write different genres they take one character like a police chief or something and keep having them pop up in all of their books that is like such a great little Easter egg to to search for whenever you're reading people's work I start out with writing Historical Fiction Westerns and in the current book that I'm writing right now I have this character sitting in the bath reading a book and she's reading the first book in that series nice yeah I'd I'd I I'd like to do that too.

SPEAKER_02 32:04

I mean um at one point in Bloodlines Miles is in a coffee shop trying to hear what he can hear to try and find this this person in trouble. And one of the voices is somebody reading mostly human nice what is the name of that series that you're talking about it's uh the the working title is just Jones PI. They're all just on a shelf at the moment I finished like I said I would they they still need a lot of work they're mostly first or second drafts. I finished the third one just in February so I'm sort of giving myself a little bit of time to forget everything I've written sort of step away from it all before I go back because I know I'm gonna have to go back to book one and go through all of them again. So I've I've also made myself a massive task to go through not just not just do the read through of one book but three.

Dianne Burckhardt 32:53

This is just a good incentive for anybody who's interested in that book to go and follow you on social media so they can keep an eye on you for when you do publish them.

SPEAKER_02 33:01

Exactly and then there'll finally be sort of one genre going out for a long time. But I was just I I wanted to do something that was fun to write and fun to read but I'm it's still me. I still have you know by the third book Jones is kind of having a nervous breakdown because it's been three heavy cases in a row and he's just like oh I'm not okay. The third one is much darker than the other two and then the third one a young police officer goes how are you managing to deal with this because like I've been on this case for a week and my relationship's falling apart I feel like I can't talk to anybody about this because we're not allowed to talk I I feel like I need help but I don't know how to ask for it because I can't tell anybody about it. And he just goes oh I'm not okay don't don't don't be fooled I'm like I think the line is you know when a heart gets broken and put back together enough time some parts are just broken. Like I'm not okay I'm just functional. See and I love characters like that.

Dianne Burckhardt 33:59

That you see them completely broken but still going.

SPEAKER_02 34:03

Yeah and he just goes no no no you don't you you're you're not allowed to share case details but you can tell your partner that you're not okay they can still hug you and make you a cup of coffee and try and make you feel better without you telling them what you're actually going through. Like don't don't isolate yourself that way because you don't want to be like me. I don't want to be like me.

Dianne Burckhardt 34:25

So now seems like the perfect time to do our five quick questions that never turn out to be quick but I hold out eternal hope that it'll happen one day.

SPEAKER_02 34:35

Are you ready?

Dianne Burckhardt 34:36

Okay let's go sure I've done stand up comedy let's go so question one the story driven game Gabriel Knight helped inspire you to become a writer and you later worked as a story writer on the game Nexus 5X do you play video games and if so which one do you play the most I do play video games and at the moment I play a lot of more casual games because I do it in between other things so rather than being busy and diving in or I don't have the week to play a very heavy story game.

SPEAKER_02 35:13

So at the moment I'm playing a lot of Mario Kart and I'm replaying Diablo 2 quite a lot because I can beat that in two solid days. Oh I like Diablo 2. But I've got Claire Obscura and the Final Fantasy Rebirth sitting staring at me for the next time I'm so sick that I can't leave my couch for two weeks and I can just put it on and play through until the game is over.

Dianne Burckhardt 35:38

I used to have like well I still have them all of the Batman video games but I you know finished them all and I'm like I want more of those there's a new one coming out good I'm very up to date with game news because I'm I'm still technically working in the industry.

SPEAKER_02 35:56

So now question two you write in several genres from paranormal romance high fantasy to dark psychological thrillers which genre is the easiest for you to write first person nois I've always found sort of that detective voice lives rain free in my head the sort of the you know so there I was standing under a a street light trying to light my cigarette in the rain wondering why I was standing in the rain.

Dianne Burckhardt 36:24

Do you think that still goes back to Gabriel Knight influence?

SPEAKER_02 36:27

I'd like to think so. I mean it was always it was kind of how it started it was sort of the the the detective voice.

Dianne Burckhardt 36:35

But yeah I've always found that sort of flow of consciousness much much quicker to write question three you have lived in many different places around the world which one feels most like home to you I'd have to say Berlin because it's it's you know no one forces me to live here.

SPEAKER_02 36:53

So and that's sort of the the choice I made. So I'm very happy and very comfortable living here. I know where everything is I know how the city works and I've got a lot of friends here. That being said South Africa will always have a place in my heart and it's very it there there's always the a home home feel and um I lived in Edinburgh for a long time and the I've got that thing in my head of if I won the lottery I'd always buy a place in Edinburgh so that I could always go back to Scotland.

Dianne Burckhardt 37:23

Question four what is one thing you found most surprising once you moved to Germany I find that the you know Germans and the Scots are kind of the same.

SPEAKER_02 37:33

They sound mean but they're not I was standing on a train platform like week one into being here and I watched a very what you'd call sort of a conservative looking woman with a pram reaching the top of the stairs and this hardcore East German punk dude maybe 60 if he was a day bright white mohawk leather jacket spikes tattoos and he gets to the top of the stairs and he's just like oh can I give you a hand and just picks up the front of the pram and she's not afraid of him he's not angry at her and they just have a little chat as they walk down the stairs he says goodbye she says thank you they go one way he goes the other and it's just oh it's just that's what you do. He wasn't being polite or he wasn't being nice. He was just oh we just helping somebody who needs a bit of help for 10 seconds because that's that's normal. And that sort of normalized just give a hand where you see somebody needs a hand. And I see it all the time still and that kind of struck me as especially coming out of England where you don't you don't talk to people you don't know.

Dianne Burckhardt 38:40

Oh yeah here in Germany it's like being back in Kansas you know people smile at each other they say hello everybody is friendly. I mean they may sound gruff they may not look like they're in a good mood but they are and they're friendly and people talk to you and it's like yeah I love that about here.

SPEAKER_02 38:58

Yeah they're not being rude German is a very direct language it's just you know the inclinations for what is polite in German don't exist in English. So the the translation comes across very direct but they're they're much nicer than they sound. I mean just four days ago I flew back from England and at the train station at the airport waiting to get the train home a guy from I think South Germany by the sounds of him had a little problem with the ticket machine and I was standing there and I went oh where are you going? You need to go here and he was i it it's this ticket basically was all I said to him and he was like okay cool thank you and a minute later he taps me on the shoulder and went here I bought two tickets so you can get home too. Oh that's so nice. Just like oh you helped me so here I if you need a ticket now you have one.

Dianne Burckhardt 39:49

So now your last question is one that we are asking everyone this season because we're going to build a database that we're going to print in our year in book buying guide our book banter magazine that comes out for holiday shopping in November. So your question is what book to movie adaptation do you think was the best that you have seen so far?

SPEAKER_02 40:09

Dune. Ah yeah the specifically the Denny Velneau versions of Dune it actually like the the movie version is so good that it makes the book make more sense.

Dianne Burckhardt 40:20

Now that's praise.

SPEAKER_02 40:21

Yeah because I I tried to read that book when I was 16 and gave up twice and then tried again in my twenties and got through the first one and like uh and then watched the movies and reread the book I'm like oh I get it now.

Dianne Burckhardt 40:32

That's something whenever the movie can actually make you love the books more.

SPEAKER_02 40:36

Yeah like I it I I understand the the the slight variations from the the book to the movie but he's such a good visual storyteller. There's very little dialogue in the movie if you actually go back and sort of think about it. He's so good at the visual aspect of what is such a densely written book that you know the writing doesn't create a lot of pictures but this movie provides them in such a way that I was like oh I get it now.

Dianne Burckhardt 41:04

So now why don't you go ahead and tell our listeners again who you are and where they can find your work.

SPEAKER_02 41:10

I'm DI Jolly I'm I'm the writer of Blurred Lines as well as the award winning Bait and several other things you can find my books on Kindle, Kindle Unlimited and in print on Amazon. You can also find over 300 short stories of mine on Patreon at patreon.com forward slash DIJolly you can find me reading some of my short stories on YouTube where I also post sometimes strange book ads because I find making stuff like that is kind of fun for me. I'm on most social media stuff but not Twitter mostly at DIJolly or if you if you google my name you'll find me.

Dianne Burckhardt 41:52

And as always to make it very easy for everyone we're going to put links to your social media in the description of today's podcast so everyone can just click and go find your presence online and go buy your books.

SPEAKER_02 42:03

Cool there'll be a link tree that's the easiest way to do that.

Dianne Burckhardt 42:07

So yeah we like to make things easy for people. Yeah this has been absolutely fabulous. You are so much fun to talk to it's nice to have somebody who has a lot of the same references that I have yeah it's always it's always nice to meet somebody you get along with yeah thank you so much this has been fantastic.

SPEAKER_02 42:25

Oh my absolute pleasure thank you so much for having me this has this has also been my first sort of attempt at doing any sort of podcasting so really just making it so easy yeah oh that's always my goal so there you have it folks my conversation with the multi-award winning author D.I.

Dianne Burckhardt 42:41

Jolly I really enjoyed this one. Blurred lines raises some interesting questions about what we trust in our own minds. And I'm glad we got a chance to dig into all of that and more with him. And I really hope he will come back with his new Noir series whenever that's ready because that sounds like something I would personally love to read. Now don't forget to come back next Wednesday when I'll be sharing my conversation with Sylvia Clare. I've actually known Sylvia for a while, at least virtually she and I are in the same online memoir writer's group, Memoir Mentors on Meetup.com. We talked about her latest memoir, Traveling the Alphabet Geographically it's built around her goal of visiting at least one country for every letter of the alphabet, but it's a much bigger story exploring personal growth, healing, and how travel shaped her life and as always there's more coming from Burkhart Books and Bookbanter productions, with new episodes and ongoing projects continuing to roll out. Currently I'm actively working on several projects at once. I have started to set up the next issue a Bookbanter magazine which publishes in November for holiday shopping. This one will easily be the largest issue we have published so far, which is why I'm starting on it now. I've also begun recording videos for our media courses that will be available soon at Burkhartbooks.com. These classes are designed to help authors or actually anyone seeking to promote themselves and their work to the media for promotional opportunities. I'm working on two books at the moment I'm writing my medical memoir, Free Bed Haircut with each craniotomy, for which I hope to have a cover reveal coming very soon. And we'll also be publishing our first book from DS Stevens in our new Paranormal romance Haunted Hearts series. Book one is Langston Watch Hotel and we're looking at an October release date for that one. There's also a merch job coming and so much more. I'm really busy behind the scenes. So you should be sure to sign up for our newsletter at burcroutbooks.com slash subscribe so you can keep up with all of our updates because there is so much coming from us. It's just ooh it's been really busy and before we go I want to give a quick shout out to Lynn Hugo author of Mothers of Fate and several other titles. She recently supported us through our Buy Me a Coffee page and we are truly thankful for her support. So please go check her out and let's support her right back. I think that is more than enough for today so you know what that means it's time for you all to go forth and be really happy. We have so much stuff coming out for you. Thank you for joining us today be sure to subscribe to BookBanter with Diane Burkhart on your favorite podcast streaming service because if you love books like we do you do not want to miss a single episode of this podcast