At LightMinded Arts, we believe in creative freedom, not creative delusion. So when I sat down with Michele DeFilippo—publishing veteran and founder of 1106 Design—I knew we were about to bust some myths and drop some truth bombs about the wild world of self-publishing.

Michele’s been in the book biz for over 50 years. She started in traditional publishing at Crown in the ‘70s, survived the desktop publishing revolution, and now runs a company that helps indie authors publish like pros—without getting fleeced by vanity presses or hybrid hustlers.

1. The Self-Publishing Trap: Don’t Pay to Lose Control

Here’s the brutal truth: most “self-publishing companies” aren’t helping you publish—they’re helping themselves to your wallet.

“Authors pay to produce the book, then lose control and revenue,” Michele said. “It doesn’t make sense.”

Real self-publishing means you’re the boss. You hire pros to edit, design, and format your book. You keep the rights. You keep the profits. Anything else is a dressed-up scam.

2. DIY Isn’t Always Smart

Yes, you can format your book in Word. Yes, you can slap an AI-generated cover on it. But should you?

“The DIY message has led to a flood of terrible books,” Michele warned. “Authors have the creativity—but they need professional help to make it look like a bookstore-quality product.”

And don’t get her started on AI. While tools like Grammarly are handy, AI can’t replicate human emotion, nuance, or design instinct. It’s not ready to replace editors or cover designers—especially when it spits out low-res images and typography that screams amateur hour.

3. Print, Ebooks, Audiobooks: Don’t Skip the Formats

Despite the hype, print isn’t dead. Audiobooks are booming. Ebooks are convenient. Michele’s advice?

“Start with print and ebook. Add audio if your audience demands it.”

Smart indie authors let the market decide. Fiction leans digital. Nonfiction sells better in print. Audio is growing fast—but it’s expensive, and narrators usually want upfront payment, not royalties.

4. Retail Royalties vs. Real Revenue

Retail sales are the hardest way to make money. Amazon takes a cut. Printing costs eat your margin. You need to sell thousands of copies just to break even.

But business authors? Coaches? Speakers? They use books as tools—to land clients, book gigs, and build credibility. That’s where the real ROI lives.

5. Marketing: The Part Nobody Wants to Do

Let’s be honest. Most authors would rather write than market. But if you think your book will magically sell itself on Amazon, you’re dreaming.

Michele pointed out that authors who write books based on their coaching businesses tend to do better than novelists just trying to sell their one-off stories. But without marketing, books are unlikely to get found, and your story will languish in the black hole of bookseller’s digital shelves for eternity.

1106 Design offers DIY marketing resources and vetted pros. But Michele’s advice is clear: learn the basics yourself. Especially if you’re writing more than one book. It’s a skill that pays dividends.

6. Lightminded Takeaway

If you’re bootstrapping your creative career, don’t fall for shiny shortcuts. Publishing is a business. You need to think like a publisher, act like a marketer, and write like a human. Michele’s insights are a masterclass in keeping control, staying professional, and building something that lasts.

Want to publish like a pro? Start with Michele’s free guide: Publishing Like the Pros. Its free on her website at: https://1106design.com/

You can also check out the full interview on YouTube at:

Or you can also find it on podcast, wherever you get your podcasts.

Often, you’ve heard about self-mastery. Its one of those things that we all think we have, but we never sit down to actually self-evaluate.

It’s easy to see when other people have it, though depending on the focus of their mastery, it might look different and be completely subjective. For instance, someone might have great financial self-mastery, and be able to keep their spending under control, while they have terrible self-mastery over the junk food they consume.

But learning to master yourself is an inner strength that can lead to strong results, and continued improvement in many areas of your life.

Begin With A Single Goal

I think my journey of self-mastery, started at a very young age. I was in Junior high school, we had a student who had been caught masturbating in the mostly empty halls of the school, and in class. Granted, the boy had some issues, but when I told my mother about the incident later that day, she made it clear, in a very unassuming way that she hoped I would never debase myself with pornography and the like. I resolved then and there, that I would live a chaste life. Regardless of youthful temptations, I was able to keep my values that my mother and my God had instilled in me from childhood. This was my first experience with controlling my appetites and desires, and I strongly believe that it blessed me in so many ways. I’m now married, have children, and a very healthy relationship with my wife, a relationship that I don’t think I could have had, if I’d lived below my values growing up.

As I grew up, I learned the value of sacrificing my wants for now, for my goals in the future. I always wanted to serve a proselyting mission for my church when I turned 19 years old. So I worked hard and saved, and was able to pay my way to serve for two years, preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ in the Philippines. That was an incredibly enriching experience for me, and a place where I learned to love God more, love the people with all my heart, and learn valuable life lessons along the way.

In college, I had similar experiences of working hard so that I could pay for my apartments, tuition, and dates without going into debt. I would work hard all summer long, and part time during school in the construction industry to get all my expenses paid in advance. When I finally graduated with my bachelor’s degree, I had a new truck, a work trailer, and no financial obligations.

I didn’t kick back and relax though, no, I worked hard for two more years, bought and remodeled a condo, got my MBA, and found my wife. Shortly after being married, I had my cheap ghetto condo, paid off, schooling done without any debt, and a good job paying $45k a year (that was around 2012)

How did I do that on such a meager budget? Self-Mastery. I’d learned to control what I wanted now, with what I wanted later. For a guy who loved food, loved cooking, I survived most of my college life on rice and eggs, two of the cheapest foods available. Every penny I made, went into owning my condo free and clear, and making sure that I could live debt free.

Here’s the thing you might be wondering, if you’ve seen some of my other content, “Brent, don’t you use debt?” The answer is yes, I do. In fact, I went into some debt to buy and fix up my condo. In my work, I go into debt there also, but I view debt in a different way than many. I’ll explain that in another article. For now, you need to understand that by exercising mastery over my wants and my goals, I was able to achieve every goal I set out to accomplish, and that has carried through my whole life thus far.

Goals Without Self-Mastery Are Pointless Wishes

I know somebody that was struggling financially. They came to me and asked for help figuring things out. After looking at their finances and their goals, it was easy to see the disconnect. They were making 3 or 4 times the money that I was, but they were living paycheck to paycheck. There was no reason they should have been struggling they way they were. I was saving and investing, while they couldn’t even qualify for a mortgage.

When I showed them their credit card bill, and we walked through all the silly stupid expenses they were accruing every week, one of them got it. The other one, the one who was responsible for most of the reckless spending, clammed up. Not only did that person refuse to accept the hard truth of their destructive habit, but they refused to even talk to me for days following it. And guess what, that person did not make the changes needed to move forward. If anything, the problem got worse.

When we find ourselves in the clutches of a personal flaw that needs to be corrected to achieve our goals, it can be one of the hardest things to overcome. But overcome it, we can.

One of the hardest things to overcome, is not personal choices, like the examples above, but cultural choices, as those are the choices that have been made by us and for us for multiple generations and geographies. In those instances, you not only have to buck your personal habits, but also the social norms that are holding you back.

This is why honestly sitting down with yourself and meditating on your goals and what in your life is holding you back from those goals is so important. It’s the first step to achievement.

The next step is not to just change your habits, because that can be herculean. What you need to do is to see yourself as the new and improved version of you first. This in itself is tough. In the book, “The Richest Man In Babylon,” one of my all-time favorite books, there is a story about a rich man who started out as a slave. He had tried to escape his captivity, but failed. The reason he failed, and was easily caught, was because he did not see himself as his own master, he always saw himself as a slave, even if for a short time, when he’d escaped slavery, he had a slave mentality that was self-defeating. It wasn’t until he started seeing himself as a free man, a master of his own destiny, a rich and powerful leader, that he was able to find his freedom.

Once you see yourself as your own master, and not as a slave to the self-destructive habits that hold you back, then its time to go to work. Itemize all the good qualities you have as your best self, and here’s the trick, LIVE THEM!

By seeing yourself as the end goal before you start the journey, you can make the journey possible, no matter where you’re starting.

I’ve had to do this myself, multiple times. Growing up, I always saw me and my family as poor, and that we’d never be anything but poor. It wasn’t till I saw myself with a higher financial potential, than I made myself into that sort of person.

When I found out that I had heart and digestive problems, I had terrible eating and exercising habits. Not only that, but I prided myself in those destructive lifestyles. It wasn’t until I saw myself as a person who goes to the gym and has a mostly high-raw vegan diet, that I was able to turn my life around and start living a much healthier me.

Our circumstances in life may have put us in the places we are now, but there is nothing but your own self that is keeping you there. Learn to see yourself as the person you want to be, then go out there, and be that person.

At Light-Minded Arts, I’m sharing my creative journey, going from hammer to Hollywood—and I want you too to find your way into following your dreams.

To help with that, I interviewed John DeDakis, a veteran journalist, novelist, writing coach, and motivational speaker whose career spans over four decades, including time as a White House correspondent and senior editor at CNN’s The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer. But his real passion? Helping aspiring writers become published authors and using storytelling as a tool for healing.

1. From Breaking News to Breaking Ground in Fiction

John didn’t set out to be a novelist. His writing journey began while working at CNN, where the grind of editing pushed him to seek a creative outlet. “It paid well, but I needed something more,” he said. That “something” became fiction—eventually leading to a six-book mystery series featuring Lark Chadwick, a young journalist navigating trauma, truth, and transformation.

His journalism background shaped his fiction writing in powerful ways. “In journalism, every word has to count,” John explained. “That’s true whether it’s a 30-second reader or an 80,000-word novel.”

2. Interviewing Hitchcock and the Power of Listening

One of John’s most memorable experiences was a 40-minute one-on-one interview with Alfred Hitchcock. “He was gracious, approachable, and thoughtful,” John recalled. “I asked him about life after death, and he riffed for two minutes about how all thought is energy. It was surreal.”

John’s ability to go deep in interviews—whether with icons or everyday people—is rooted in his belief that listening is a superpower. “When you’re listening, you’re learning,” he said. “Guys could really benefit from listening to the women in their lives.”

3. Writing the Other and Stretching Your Voice

John’s protagonist, Lark Chadwick, is a 20-something woman—a bold choice for a male author. But he embraced the challenge. “Emotions aren’t gender-specific,” he said. “I was surrounded by young women at CNN who shared their stories. They became my beta readers.”

This approach echoes a broader philosophy: write what you know, but don’t be afraid to stretch. “Every experience fuels your creative well,” John said. “Even the jobs you hate can introduce you to unforgettable characters.”

4. Publishing Realities and the Rise of AI

John’s path to publication wasn’t easy. His first novel took 10 years, 14 major revisions, and 39 agent queries. “Take good notes,” he joked. “It’ll save you nine years.”

He’s traditionally published, but even with that credential, marketing falls squarely on the author. “It’s not selling—it’s telling,” he said. “You’re just letting people know your book exists.”

As for AI-generated books? John’s take is clear: “Without editorial oversight, it’s flabby and riddled with problems. Who wants to read that?”

5. Advice for Aspiring Writers

John’s advice for young creatives is refreshingly grounded: “Get a day job. Do what you love, but support yourself. Every experience is grist for your fiction.”

He’s now expanding his work into grief recovery, helping people use writing to process loss—whether it’s a loved one, a job, or even a sense of identity. “Grief is universal,” he said. “Writing can be a way through.”

Whether you’re a contractor-turned-creative or a student with a story to tell, John’s journey reminds us that writing isn’t just about words—it’s about listening, living, and learning. And sometimes, the plot twists in life are the best material of all.

6. Contacting John DeDakis

John is very interested in helping people through the journey of processing their grief. He’s keenly passionate about it, and if you have a group that could benefit from his help, he loves being part of speaking events to help. Learn more about how he can help you from his website at: https://johndedakis.com/

You can also catch the whole interview on my YouTube channel at: https://youtu.be/DjjhfTiUYSQ

 or on my podcast, which you can find on my website here, or where-ever you get your podcasts.

Before you click away from this, listen up, whether you’re a believer or not, God actually plays a huge role in your career as an artist and business owner. Don’t believe me? Well, read on.

Ok, so this might sound a little bizarre. Why would I bring God into the discussion about how I’ve gone from nothing to being a financially independent artist?

I get the skepticism: After all isn’t the love of money the root of all evil? So why would He help me make more of it? Or doesn’t religion stifle creative freedom? How about this one, wouldn’t He rather have people read His scriptures than rot their brains on my fiction?

All valid arguments, but lets dive a little deeper, and see why bringing God into the equation can make all the difference in your artistic career.

1. Why Would God Care About My Business As An Artist?

Ok, first off, if you didn’t already catch on to this, I believe in the christian God. My opinions are not meant to be evangelical, nor are they meant to reflect specifically on the position of my church (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints). They are merely the convictions that I’ve developed over the years, and I feel strongly about them.

As those beliefs relate to my artistic and financial endeavors, let me preface this by stating that I believe God considers me to be one of his children. As such, I believe that He wants the best for me. Granted the best for me may not always feel like it in the moment, as his aim is grander and more eternally reaching than my narrow views. So while He’s trying to help me grow and return to live with Him some day, I also believe that He wants me to be happy while I’m here on this Earth.

But its not just my happiness He wants to help me with. Plenty of people find that their lives are anything but. Here’s where He really comes to play. When you’re running a business, you need to develop certain leadership traits that make you a better businessman. Among those things are Salesmanship, relating to people, confidence, public speaking, vision, integrity, resilience, endurance, humility. All of these traits are things we learn as we become more like Christ.

In my life, I spent two years of my life as a full time missionary in the Philippines. I wasn’t technically a salesman, but many of the same principles of being a good missionary still carried over from my proselyting such as: building relationships of trust, help them feel the spirit, help them to act. In sales we do something similar, we build a relationship of trust, we help them feel the need for our products, and then we invite them to act by purchasing our goods.

In my church, I’ve volunteered my time in leadership positions, and in general service positions. I’ve been humbled when I’ve taught, I’ve been empowered when I’ve taught.

Consistent attendance has instilled a culture of learning, growing, caring, and working with teams. The best part is, this training you receive to live your best life possible carries over into all aspects of your life, including your career.

When you’re at your best, you’re more likely to succeed in all you do. Can you see the correlation between your career aspirations and being a disciple of God?

Well, what about the art?

2. How Does He Help Me Be A Better Artist?

Assuming you already believe in God, or that you know enough of Christian beliefs to answer this, I pose this question: Who created everything?

Bam!

If we are the children of God, and he is the ultimate creator, are we not entitled to inherit some of His creativity?

Its already in us. By being more Christlike, we also become more creative, unlocking our true potential. Not only that, but as our will aligns with His will, we start to unlock some of his grace to create things that inspire people to good.

There is a lot of art out there that is brain rot. Some of it is even called “Brain Rot.” I can only imagine that God would want us filling our minds with something a little less degrading.

But what if we’re fiction writers?

Yeah, I get it, there’s plenty of people publishing inspirational content out there, but I’m doing fiction. And lets be honest, my fiction isn’t preachy. If there’s a message to bring anyone to a higher power, I think I missed that myself. But here’s where I feel that my efforts are still valued:

My values put me in a position where the fiction I create is more wholesome than the majority of the fiction out there. My goal, and I’ve stated this over and over on my website, is to write fiction that the whole family can enjoy.

If mom or dad reads one of my books, and their pre-teen picks it up, I don’t want the God-fearing parents to be embarrassed by why their kids just discovered about their reading habits. I want to make entertainment that brings clean reads into peoples homes.

In that, I feel that my goals towards art and entertainment aren’t at odds with God’s will for me in my life.

3. Where Is God In Your Life?

As an artist, we all draw inspiration from somewhere. I’ve seen art that lifts me up, I’ve seen art that takes me to dark places. I’ve seen art that makes me question everything. Sometimes I just like art that makes me laugh.

Whether that art is put into us by some higher power or not, is not what I’m trying to place before you right now. What I’m trying to say, is that when you make the effort to align your life with God’s will, you’re more likely to tap into His enabling power to help you along the way.

Life is hard enough without God in our lives. Why shut Him out when He might make all the difference in helping us get through all the hard times that will inevitably come our way.

Plus what’s the worst that can happen? Say you choose to follow Him and he turns out to not be real, so you ended up living a better, more charitable life and will be remembered by future generations as being a really good person. Or you choose not to follow Him, and he turns out to be real, then you’re stuck, eternally kicking yourself for your folly.

On Storytelling, Marginalization, and the Power of Fiction

What happens when a self-published teen author grows into a visionary editor championing marginalized voices? You get Ceylan Gunduz—pronounced “Jay-lon Goon-dooz,” with a duck face if you want to nail the Turkish accent.

In this episode, we dive deep into her journey from glue-stick books to Editor in Chief at One Brilliant Arc, a story studio startup that is helping authors, especially marginalized voices amplify their authentic voices.

Why Storytelling Matters

As always, Light-Minded Arts is about helping creatives shift from struggling artists to working creatives. Ceylan’s story is a masterclass in that transformation. She started young—memorizing books before she could read them, sketching her own stories, and eventually self-publishing a novella that “grabbed her by the throat” and demanded to be written.

But her path wasn’t linear. Like many of us, she faced burnout, societal pressure to conform, and the tension between marketability and authenticity. That tension, she says, is where story structure becomes a gift—not a cage.

“Story structure is just the proven pattern of beats that resonate with people. When you bring your emotional truth to that framework, you get something both marketable and deeply authentic.”

Marginalized Stories and the Lie of Polish

Ceylan’s mission is clear: help creatives tell stories that don’t fit the commercial mold. She argues that mainstream storytelling often demands a “polished lie”—a version of reality that’s digestible, sanitized, and stripped of nuance.

“Performance polish is a mask. It’s a lie. And marginalized voices are often forced to shrink themselves into someone else’s version of the story.”

Whether it’s a Navajo elder sharing oral history or a Japanese-American woman recounting internment camp trauma, Ceylan believes the raw, unfiltered truth is what connects us. And fiction, she says, often holds that truth better than reality.

Fiction vs. Nonfiction: Which Tells the Truth?

Ceylan leans toward fiction—not because it’s escapist, but because it’s soul-deep.

“The objection to fairy stories is that they tell children there are dragons. But children have always known there are dragons. Fairy stories tell children that dragons can be killed ” —G.K. Chesterton 

Still, she works with nonfiction writers too, helping them apply story structure to real-life narratives. Her editing process is collaborative, intuitive, and deeply human. She’s not just polishing grammar—she’s co-creating emotional resonance.

Act II: Where She Is Now

If Ceylan’s life were a three-act structure, she’s in Act II. The call to action has happened. She resisted it at first, but now she’s in the thick of the journey—facing tests, challenges, and the slow grind of building something meaningful.

She’s not writing her own stories right now. Instead, she’s helping others find theirs. And while she hasn’t had another story “grab her by the throat” lately, she’s open to the possibility.

“If a story ever comes knocking again, I’ll answer that call.”

AI and the Soul of Storytelling

We couldn’t end the episode without tackling the elephant in the creative room: AI. Ceylan’s take? Balanced and brutally honest.

AI can generate content. Fast. But it lacks soul. It commodifies creativity, and while it’s a powerful tool, it’s not a substitute for human truth.

“There’s a difference between art and content. Artists are now seen as content creators, but our stories are not a commodity.”

She urges creatives to use AI responsibly—learn the tools, stay relevant, but don’t lose the human heartbeat of storytelling.

🎤 Final Thoughts

This episode was a reminder that storytelling isn’t just a craft—it’s a calling. Whether you’re in Act I, resisting the call, or deep in Act II, facing the grind, your story matters. And if you’re lucky enough to find your people—those who resonate with your truth—you’ve already won.

Stay light-minded. Stay creative. And remember: dragons can be beaten.

To learn more about the services that Ceylan and One Brilliant Arc can offer you as a storyteller, visit their website at: https://www.obaconnect.com/

Hey all, I’m kicking off a new segment of my channel here. Up till now, I’ve just been showing little skits and giving my best advice for people leaving the safety of traditional jobs, and giving one in the artistic field of writing and film-making a try. FYI, I’ll still keep putting out these sorts of videos, I have a lot to discuss on that end.

But as our friend LeVar Burton used to always say on the Reading Rainbow, “You don’t have to take my word for it.”

That’s right, I’m going to start bringing guests onto the show to share their experiences on their artistic journey as well. And who better to be our headliner, than my own wife, the one who gets to deal, first hand, with all the emotional trauma I’m inflicting because of my career change.

The Spouse’s Point Of View

Just by way of introduction, my wife, Colette Lindstrom, is a voice over artist and musician, though she spends most of her time (by choice) raising our kids and managing the house. (Check out her Voiceover work here, to see if you want to hire her for your next project: https://youtu.be/vVjdzOzcDHg )

When I proposed my goals of leaving the construction world and retooling my whole career to writing and film-making, she was very supportive. But underlying that support is fear.

It took years for me to become a proficient contractor. There’s skills you develop, there’s relationships you build, and there’s the ability to make money, once you have it all figured out. 

I’d been doing construction since before I could drive myself to a job site. Back in the day, my dad hired me onto a framing crew at the age of 13. That’s 30 years for me in the business, and now I’m telling her that I want a change.

If it took that long to get settled into that career, how long would it take in a field I knew practically nothing about? But I got lucky and married a woman who has faith in me, and doesn’t want to squash my dreams.

Part of having her willing to go along with me, is the fact that during our married life, I’ve built a relationship of trust with her. She knows the planning and study I put into everything I do, and she understands my ambitions will drive me unrelentingly towards the end goals. 

One of the reasons it took me ten years to get to this point, was because I was determined not to hurt her financially. I made the decision that I would keep our family firmly grounded before making such a risky change. She saw that preparation, and trusted me that it would work out.

This trust though, is fragile. If you’re married, you need to be mindful of how your actions will affect your loved ones.

Part of my plan, is to build a film studio. I’ve got lots of articles to share on that in the future. But in doing so, I wanted to acquire land, investments, and buildings to make it all come together. Sometimes, this meant taking out loans.

In the construction world, I’m used to taking out multi-million dollar loans. It’s a necessary part of my business as a contractor/developer. But my wife doesn’t generally know about all that. She doesn’t really want to know about it either.

But as soon as I asked her to sign a mortgage on our house so that we could purchase and start developing a parcel of land for my studio, she got nervous. I could almost see her face turn green. We had paid off our house some years back, and moved into a new house, mortgage free, and now I was asking her to leverage it all for the studio.

She signed. We went under contract for the land, and we will be picking it up in the new year.  But none of this would be possible if she didn’t trust me, because financing and real estate investing is not her forte.

So what am I saying? Well, every relationship is different. Me and my wife are blessed to get along very well. We know and embrace both our strengths and weaknesses, and we lean on each other. 

Nothing I’m doing in my new artistic career would be remotely possible without my wife, her support, and her encouragement. If you’re making the switch, or want to, like I’ve done, the first and most important thing you can do, is to make sure that your house is in order, and that your family still comes first.

If you’d like to learn more about Colette’s voice over, she doesn’t do audiobooks, but she does commercials, info blurbs, and singing. Check out the links below to learn more about her and if you want to hire her, you can message her via our contacts page here on LightMinded Arts.

Links:

Also, check out our interview together. Its available on our LightMinded Arts Podcast, or on our YouTube channel and: https://youtu.be/tSz8PNugwn0

Don’t forget to check out Colette’s voiceover reel. Find it here, and if you like it, reach out to us on our contact form and we’ll help get her voice in your next commercial or narration. (fyi, she doesn’t do audiobooks at this time): https://youtu.be/vVjdzOzcDHg

When it comes to filmmaking, there is so much gear out there, and its easy to get caught up in the latest and greatest. But there’s another side to gear for creatives, that is important to take into consideration, and that’s the ability to travel with it, and setup and take down when you’re a one person show.

I’ll admit, that I too get caught up in my gear. Whenever I have a big project, I’ll often use that as an excuse to invest in some more gear to help me make that a better production. But if I was to take all of that on a shoot, it would fill up my truck and take hours to pack and unpack. So I needed a very portable setup. Here it is, and best part is, I can carry it all on my back.

1. For The Single Person Film Shoot

If you haven’t seen any of my videos, you should check out my YouTube Channel at: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCosUlYjbzVQ4_Zv9xFNVOqQ there you’ll find a bunch of my videos, and in those videos near the beginning, I like to add in a short skit. Most of these are done all by myself, or with the help from my wife.

The problem with being a new content creator, is that your channel may not be monetized yet. So how can you afford to pay for help? You can’t. So you make due with as little as possible, and hope that eventually you can afford to hire crew.

Most of my skits were filmed almost entirely with this simple setup (keep in mind, I’m not an affiliate for any of this, so I’m just giving my honest opinion on these things):

A Kemimoto hunting duffle bag. Cost was: $90 on Amazon.

• This thing is amazing. It has duffle styled straps to hand carry it, but also has backpack straps to hike with. In addition to that, it has several pocket for organizing stuff, and my favorite thing, the bottom unzips, and where it would normally hold guns, now becomes a perfect spot to hold tripods, umbrellas, and light stands.

1. Inside my bag

FHI, most of these prices were as of early 2025.

I have a Panasonic HC-VX981K camera $800 from B&H (most everything else I got was from B&H, so I’ll just mention this the one time.)

• Not my favorite camera ever, but its lightweight, has great autofocus, and some manual functions. Honestly it does the job, and I use it a lot.

DJI Osmo Gimbal. It also came with a Hohem mic-01 $268.

• I haven’t had a chance to use the gimbal much, but I’ve really liked the Hohem mics. Their sound is a lot better than my Tentacle lav, and so I use this quite a lot, and especially if I’m using my android phone to do video, I can plug it right into that and get great audio.

Sennheiser AVX-ME2 mic $800.

• This is really handy, as I can plug it into my Panasonic camcorder hot shoe, though you still need to plug the jack into the mic receiver on the camcorder. I don’t care as much for the audio on this as I do for the Hohem, but its still good, and might sound better with your voice than mine. It’s very sensitive, and often I like to use it as a hidden microphone in nearby plants or other things, not just on my person.

Smallrig RC100B lights at $200 each.

• These are great. They’re small, lightweight, bicolored, and using my goldmount adapters ($80 each) I’m able to keep all my batteries here and in my nicer filming gear the same format. I’ve got these mounted to some umbrella foots which were about $25 each, and that allows me to quickly set them up and attach one of 3 of my umbrellas that fit in the gun case portion of the bag. As you may know, those umbrella lights are pretty cheap, but very effective. I’ve got a white translucent umbrella, a silver reflector umbrella, and a deeper white reflector umbrella. In total, those 3 cost about $65, and they take up hardly any room.

Also in the gun case portion of the bag, I’ve got three 7 ft Westcot light stands at $55 each.

• I like these, because they don’t weigh much and they fold up really tight. For the lights I’m putting on them, they are perfect.

My kit would not be complete without my dummy head. $35ish from Amazon.

• When that first showed up at my house, my family was pretty weirded out by it. I think it would be fun to put it in someone’s bed for them to wake up next to, but I haven’t gotten around to that prank yet. But I use this head on a tripod that I got from AliExpress $20 for almost every skit I shoot. In fact, I sometimes wonder how I ever got by without it.
• I use it for shaping light where I’m going to stand. I use it when I’m pulling manual focus, and I need a stand in. I use it also if I want to do a quick color grade clip. Of all the high tech gear I own, that has quickly become one of the most useful tools I own.

2. How much did it all cost?

Don’t worry about going back through with a calculator. I’ve already summed it up for you. I spent about $2512 before tax. Shipping was mostly free. Then again, there are a few things I forgot to add into this. Like the misc grip gear, maybe $100. SD cards, another say $50. My gold mount batteries, would have cost a pretty penny too, but I have a bunch of those lying around from my normal film gear, but if I were to buy them, that would probably add another $81 per battery, so about $240 for an equivalent setup. I had a 5 in 1 reflector and a GoPro 360 camera that I threw in there too. I don’t recommend the GoPro. If I could justify the cost, I’d probably trade it in for an Insta360. But you don’t really need that, and I rarely use it. Oh, and don’t forget to buy an extra battery for your camera. That comes in handy too. I don’t remember how much that cost me. Lets just say $100 to round it all out.

That would bring the final price of my kit to about $3000.

So while there might be some cost savings still available, I can tell you that I’ve spent more than that on a single piece of equipment that gets used far less than this entire kit.

And while I won’t be wowing anybody with my fancy gear, I can get quite a bit done with this simple setup, and if I wanted, I could even go back country, by myself, which I have done in a skit for an upcoming video, and still have everything I needed.

If you want to see how this all fits together, check out my YouTube Video, where I show this kit in all it’s glory: https://youtu.be/fL_vqdK-kPM

Book 1 in the GearLock Series

Do you like the hard-boiled mysteries of Raymond Chandler? Do you like the whimsy of Terry Pratchett? How about the swords and swagger of Xena? Well, this has a little bit of all of that. It even has an emerging element of steampunk.

Hey all my friends and fans, I’m so excited to share with you the release of my first book of a brand-new series: The GearLock Series.

This is so much fun, I’ve been waiting to let you all know about it for some time now. And best part is, if you want to help spread the word and leave reviews, you might be able to get a copy before its released (details to follow).

Big Trouble In Spur Central

In the gritty human city of Spur Central, trouble is brewing. It always is.

The entire Cosmos is about to ratchet its Great Gears and pit all sentient animals against each other in a long-awaited war to see who gets to ascend to the next realm. None of that matters to Dick hu’Mar, a private investigator that’s too good for his own good. When he and his sour-faced partner, an ugly stinking cat, get hired by two dames in dire need of a mystery solved, they find themselves plunged into the politics and danger of this pre-steampunk world, where highly leathered brawn beats against brains every day.

With little time: love, life, and money, (most especially money) are on the hook, and hu’Mar must solve the case, if he can, and avoid getting killed in the process.

Is This Book For You?

As you know, I strive to provide clean fiction to all my readers. For that purpose, any explicit material is mild, but don’t let that fool you into thinking this book is weak sauce. Dick hu’Mar is one tough detective, and the cast of characters in this series are about as raw and rotten as they come.

In this book, I make no excuses for showing my characters at their worst. After all, a good hard-boiled novel needs a little bit of grit. And grit we get, with a world where nearly every animal is sentient, and willing to war over a common prize, a prize that has dire implications for those who attain it, and those who miss out.

If you’re ready for a truly unique tale, full of mystery, mayhem, and fantasy, give this book a try. It is the first in what I expect will be a 6-book series, where I’ll try to release the next installment every year. Don’t miss out on this!

Release Date

This book is expected to be released March 2, 2026. There are plans to have it available in print, ebook, and audiobook. You can pre-order Now at Amazon.com by following the link:

Or at Barns and Noble:

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/hard-boiled-cabbage-brent-lindstrom/1148353176

Or any other book seller you prefer.

If you are a book reviewer with over 100 subscribers, you may qualify to receive a free copy before the official release. If you think you qualify, fill out my contact page, and let me know how you’d be able to promote the book.

(an old fashion radio-drama styled story, with the help of AI)

Have you ever listened to the old-time radio dramas? I went on a kick one year where I listened to a whole bunch of them. They were pretty fun in a retro sort of way. Everything had to be done without visual aids, so that a radio audience could understand the story. This led to a little extra dialog that conveyed the story, something you might avoid in a movie, but I decided to try writing and producing one myself. And since I’ve been pushing the limits of AI, to see if it can help creatives or just replace them, I used several AI tools to see how far they could take me.

Who Is This For?

This was written for kids and families. The 38-minute story follows several kids as they discover a portal to Dimension X inside one of the lockers at school. It’s full of teasing and fun. Perfect if you’re on a drive and need something to distract your kids with for a little while. Some adults might enjoy it too, but it was mostly made for early teens and pre-teens.

How I Used AI To Make This?

This was actually one of my simpler projects. I spent about an hour writing it for a couple of weeks, then did two edits, one on my own, then one using Sudowrite to see if it could offer any helpful suggestions. Sudowrite is an AI writing tool, one that I’ve been experimenting with a little. I don’t use AI to write any of my stories. I’ve tried to see what kind of stories it can write, and they are all terrible. Instead, I use AI to help edit and suggest fixes. Even then, it’s not something I can just feed it, and expect it to hand back a polished draft.

The role of AI when I’m editing, is more to help me come up with ideas on how to improve a draft, either by adding more description in areas, or finding areas that I can elaborate on. Usually what happens when I do an AI edit, is that it reproduces my work, with slight changes, always shortening and destroying my work too much to make sense with the overall story. So I have to go through its version, and cherry pick the items that strengthen it. It’s very laborious, but it is helpful. If you’re a writer though, I wouldn’t worry about AI taking your love of writing away just yet. It’s not really anything close to reliable in crafting a quality story yet, especially in longer form content.

As I made this, I used one other AI tool. Since this project had a $0 budget, I couldn’t hire actors to voice all the characters. However, I do have a subscription to Elevenlabs. This was instrumental in helping me bring the story to life. But AI voices, like AI writing tools, are still not there yet.

I first tried text-to-speech. The problem with that, was that it couldn’t get the inflections and acting right. And true, you could spend a lot of time encoding pauses, and whispers and things into it, but then you end up spending so much more time on it. So rather than waste my scarce hours on that I recorded every line of dialog myself, acting out all the parts.

I’d go through the script and do a file with all of one character’s voices on that, then go through the script and do all the next characters dialog. Then I took that over to Elevenlab’s voice changing tab. This provided a much more reliable sounding script, that matched fairly close to my acting job, but in all the different voices. That however was not void of its own issues either. There were some areas that I had to re-record and send through the AI generator again to get right.

I think that stems from it converting my voice, into text, then using a different voice to follow that text, but with the rhythm cues from my recording. This was mostly effective, but it did change some of the words in the process, and it muted some of the reactions. Also, not all voices on Elevenlabs are created equal. You’ll notice when you listen to this show, that the jocks’ voices came out a lot dirtier than some of the other characters, and some of the characters sound more boxy or muted than others. You have to really work on finding the best quality of voices to get the best quality of voice changes.

It was all a fun exercise to learn more of what AI can and can’t do. To be honest, getting real actors is still the best way to approach a project where quality counts. But without AI, I wouldn’t have been able to do something like this without help.

Do I Like AI?

For the last several months, as I’ve been experimenting with AI, I’ve come to see where AI really is, versus where the hype is. Not long ago, I was terrified that AI was going to come for my new career and kill it before I even got it started. But AI isn’t really there yet.

It has its uses, but it has major limitations still. There is a lot of AI hype in the market right now. I’ve got dozens of subscriptions to all the latest AI tools, just to put them through the ringer, and since I’m not paid to promote any of them, I’m happy to say that most of them are not worth the trouble.

But there are some that do make life easier from a budget producer’s standpoint. I’ll do an entire article on all my pros and cons of AI later, and what I’d actually recommend, but for now, I hope you enjoy this radio drama. It’s been fun to make, and I’m releasing it right in time for Halloween. 

Don’t you hate it when someone does you wrong? Who wouldn’t hate that? Should you blame them for the mistreatment. Sure, why not, if that’s a fair assessment.

But wait, the title of this is called, “Don’t Blame Other” so what gives?

Ok, ok. Blame is a probably the wrong word. Sometimes, other people are truly at fault for wrong doing. You can’t always turn a blind eye to that. But lets look at this from the perspective of accountability. Not theirs, but yours.

No, no, they did…

Please, if you’re going to be successful in life, you can’t let other people’s decisions run your life. Let me explain.

1. How We Allow Others To Hold Us Back

You have dreams, you have goals. Depending on who you ask, they might be realistic or far-fetched. It doesn’t matter. What matters is our actual decisions. When we fail to act on our goals, the only person we have to blame is ourselves. So who do we blame? Usually, someone else.

Why do we do that?

Sure, maybe it was someone else who cheated us out of the money we needed. Maybe it was someone else who asked us to help them out with a different project and put off doing our own. Maybe it was someone else whose opinion really matters to you, and they thought your ideas were frivolous.

There’s a lot of reasons we might find blame in others when it comes to accomplishing our dreams. If we can’t find anyone personal, then we tend to go impersonal. We blame YouTube for not showing our videos to very many people. We blame publishers for not even reading the book we submit to them. We blame the government for our poor health because they allowed GMO foods into our grocery stores.

Lets not forget God. Often we blame him for anything and everything that goes wrong in our lives, especially when we can’t find anyone else to blame. Why did I get this disease? Why did he take my loved ones. Why are his followers such hypocrites.

Have you noticed the single person in here who we don’t blame? That’s right. Its ourselves. We’re always happy to take all the credit for any good accomplishment in our lives, but we hate accepting blame for ourselves.

But legitimate things do affect our success in life. I’m not arguing that. When my pool business failed and I lost $500,000, as much as my house was worth at the time, I tried for weeks to find someone or something else to blame. Was it my partners, was it my employees, was it the market, my customers? I could write a list of all the things that went wrong, and happily assign blame. What hurt most, was seeing how other pool companies were starting up at the same time and succeeding.

That pain came from knowing that some other entrepreneur was successful, and I was not. In the end, I had to place the accountability squarely on my own shoulders. Once I did that, I was able to re-contextualize all the things that went wrong. I turned those failures into learning experiences, so that next time around, I would know where my blind spots were. As a business owner, the buck starts and stops with you. Sure you need to assemble a good team around you, if you can, but if you’re risking your hard earned money, or that of someone else, you are responsible. So accept that responsibility, and get to work!

2. How To Break Your Cycle Of Blame

Is it too hot outside to work? Do your feet hurt too much to work? The easy answer will always be yes.

I’ve been blessed that one of my superpowers is to always take the hardest way possible. Maybe you’re saying that doesn’t sound like a superpower, more like a weakness. Sometimes I might agree with you. But here’s the thing, I don’t always like working in less than ideal conditions, but I always love looking back on my accomplishments, seeing the hard that I pushed through, and feeling proud of it.

It’s like hiking a mountain. I went on a hike once, worst hike of my life. I was with two other guys, one who was an athlete, one who never got off his butt and away from his computer screen for more time than it took to go to the bathroom.

So we start hiking this mountain, one of the tallest ones around us. It was to be a half day hike. I’m pretty good at hiking. I’ve done enough of it, am conditioned for it, and I was looking forward to it. Our pale friend who just saw the sun for the first time that year, was not so conditioned.

While me and my athletic friend had planned accordingly and brought enough water for ourselves, probably a liter or two each, the other guy had instead brought a backpack with a 12-pack of Gatorade. That in itself wasn’t terribly odd. What was odd, was that within the first hour of the hike, before me and the other guy had even touched our own waters, and before we were even a quarter of the way up the mountain, he had drank all his Gatorade.

It wasn’t long after that, when he started showing major signs of fatigue and heat exhaustion. Not wanting to turn back, he insisted on continuing. Knowing that I could probably handle the hike with less water, I gave him most of mine, saving just enough to wet my throat for the remainder of the hike up, where I would refill my water on a snow-cap.

I underestimated the length and difficulty of the hike. The last quarter of the hike became more of one where we had to crawl on all fours, just to make the final ascent safely. By the time I got to the top, he had drank all my water, was about to have heat stroke, and I was now entering heat exhaustion also.

Luckily, we found the snow-cap at the top and replenished our water, but if you’ve ever been heat exhausted, you might know that it doesn’t go away once you’ve cooled down. We rested for a good hour up there, and the one friend was ready to give up and die up there. I was feeling pretty miserable too, but we talked him into going down, and would you believe it, going down, because of our conditions, was harder than going up.

There were times that I, in no good shape myself, had to help the other guy down, as he was pretty well shutting down. By the time we got back to the car, I was about to start dry heaving, and he was nearly comatose.

Here’s the thing though, I’m glad I did that hike. I’m glad that I was in a position to help that other friend make it down the mountain. I’m glad I made it to the peak. Could I have blamed him for not being in shape? Or for not turning around? Or for taking all my water?

Sure, but what good would that have done. I saw a lot of beautiful country and wildlife, had fun with friends, and I survived with a cool story to tell. I felt so miserable and sick, and maybe I even entertained blaming him for a while, but I was the one who chose to give him my water. I was the one who, even though I felt miserable, was still able to get him back off the mountain. I pushed through the pain and did something good.

Through it all, I became more experienced, gained a little more wisdom, and became a little more resilient to hardship.

That’s the trick, push through the hard times. Difficult things refine us. They keep us from being overwhelmed. They let us know that our limits really are more than perhaps we give ourselves credit for.

And if we do have legitimate limitations to our abilities, we can always use that creative brain of ours to find a work-a-round to accomplish our goals. The adage: Where there’s a will, there’s a way, has endured through the generations because it is true.

Don’t blame anyone but yourself, and reach a little further. Let your ambition take accountability for itself, and you can do wonders.