Of Love and Sacrifice with Author Gordon Buttars

This is a video about Of Love and Sacrifice With Gordon Buttars

In this episode of Roundy’s Rants, Raves & Reviews, Tanya interviews author Gordon Butters about his life and writing, including growing up farming in Burley, Idaho, retraining in computer programming, being laid off in 2001, developing debilitating tremors, and turning to self-publishing. Gordon discusses his books—Worlds Without End, the 10-volume Flyboy series, Frosty (inspired by his mother’s brother lost in WWII), a four-volume pioneer-era series set in Clarkston, Utah, and his latest novel, Marney, a 1973 Burley-based historical fiction story of young love, conversion, and sacrifice featuring a wheelchair-bound heroine and Ben Howard. They talk about weaving real places and events into fiction, letting testimony shine through without preaching, and using AI for research, illustrations, and promotional interviews, plus where to find his work on Amazon and his website.
https://gordon.buttars.me/Author/

00:00 Welcome and Introduction
00:38 From Farming to Programming
02:07 Layoff and Bookstore Dream
03:07 Tremors and New Calling
03:56 Discovering Self Publishing
04:56 Books and Works in Progress
06:47 Dream That Sparked the Novel
08:03 Writing as Spiritual Gift
09:55 Burley Idaho Time Capsule
12:33 Ben and the Big Sacrifice
15:36 Doubts Faith and Humor
18:26 Romance Done Tastefully
21:13 Polygamy in Pioneer Fiction
22:28 Researching Real History
23:28 AI as Research Partner
24:07 AI Photo Illustrations
25:21 Getting Details Right
26:50 AI Marketing Interviews
27:29 Marnie Tells Her Story
31:13 Reading Habits and Writing
33:30 Poems and Personal Faith
36:24 Where to Find the Books
38:36 Testimony and Farewell

In a world full of uncertainty, how does one cope with unbearable loss and pain? A Christmas tragedy finds Steve and Maria struggling to find hope. With the love and support of family and friends, will they find peace as they walk through the fire of Uncertainty?

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:37

Welcome to Roundy's Rants Raves and Reviews. Today I am so honored and excited to finally get with my friend Ms. Gordon and talk about his books and especially his latest book, Marnie, and the stories he has to tell and the message that he shares in this. That is so beautiful and so welcome. So, Gordon, will you tell us about yourself and kind of what you've done in your life and what you're doing now?

SPEAKER_02 1:04

Well, I consider that I've probably lived three lives. My first life was that of a farmer. I grew up on a farm in Burley, Idaho, and that's all I ever wanted to do was farm. And so when I got home from my mission, that's you know, I got right into it. My dad retired not long after I got home. I married my wife Bonnie in December of 1978 and ran the farm for about five years until I had a crop failure in '81. I had a frost that wiped out my bean crop. I farmed one more year after that, but I couldn't really make up the difference. And the farm economy was bad at that time, and so I had to find something else to do. My dad died at that same time, and I had two little kids, just a newborn baby, and I didn't have time to go to school to get in something else. So I found a 12-week course in computer programming in Salt Lake City. And I'd never done anything with computers before, I didn't know anything about them, but I was always kind of a logical thinker, and it sounded interesting to me. So I signed up and I did well and went through the course and then spent about three or four months looking for work and a place here in Rexburg, took a chance on me and brought me here. And that's what brought me to Rexburg. Been here ever since. Worked for them until they closed up and left town. And then I worked for the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory in Idaho Falls for a number of years. And they was always going through layoffs and hiring spurts. And I got caught up in a big layoff of several hundred people in 2001, just after the 9-11 deal, six weeks after that. So I spent time trying to find work after that, put sent resumes all over the country and couldn't find anything. So then I decided, well, if I can't find a job, maybe I can make a job. And I looked around, what kind of a niche is there here in Rexburg that isn't being filled? Rexburg didn't have an honest-to-goodness bookstore. We had a little LDS bookstore, but that was all. So I started looking into starting creating my own bookstore. And I found a place that would help me get started and support me and things, but I just couldn't get any financing. I couldn't get anybody to believe in it, and had me jump through all these hoops, and finally the last hoop was impossible to jump through. And so I had to give up on that. And it was shortly after that I started having my tremors and started gradually, but within nine months, it took over my entire body and really threw me for a loop and made it so I couldn't work. So I was able to eventually get disability. And my writing career started probably in about 2011, 2012, something like that. My son was home from college and he was majoring in creative writing, and he was participating in the nano rhymous. Yeah. And I thought, well, I've got a story to tell. And I started writing, and I kept writing and writing, and it was supposed to have been just one book. Turned out to be 12 volumes. So I cut it down to 10 and I went through and polished it. And couldn't get anybody interested in it. And I discovered self-publishing. And at first I was intimidated by it. And looking into it, it found out it was really a piece of cake. So I did a test run on a second book that I had written, a one-volume novel called Worlds Without End, that is set on another world, but it has to do with normal everyday human being people who have problems just like we have here. One person had need to be forgiven, the other person had need to forgive somebody, and how the and I worked in how the atonement of Jesus Christ is universal throughout all of his creations. And how and so anyway, that was the first one I published, but after I got that one done, I figured it out. So I published my Flyboy series, which is that's the 10-volume series. Then I just kept writing. I've written after that. I wrote a book called Frosty, which is another World War II era thing. It's based off of my mother's brother, who was lost during the war. We didn't have a whole lot of information. I just pieced together stories that my mother and aunts had had written down about him, and I just filled in the gaps and made a story out of him. And then I've written a four-volume Pioneer Era series that takes place in Clarkston, Utah, from that covers the 1870s, clear up into the early 1900s. And then my last one that I finished is Marnie. And I'm currently working on one called The Wiseman, which is a reimagining of the wise men story. And in my story, there's not three of them, there's 12 of them, and they're not from the Orient, they're from the Lost Tribes of Israel. And it's turning into it's quite an adventure story. It's different from anything else I've read. All my other stories, they all got little twins of romance in them, just to keep them interesting, you know. You gotta have that. But historical fiction is my thing. I like to weave my characters' lives through the fabric of history. They don't change history, they just participate in it. And and and so Marnie, I consider it historical fiction because I weave it into the times of 1973 in Burley, Idaho. It involves the Arab oil crisis that happened in 1973 and the gas prices and you know things like that. It of Watergate going on, and so these things are kind of all mentioned within the story and the within the framework. But more particularly, I worked it into the setting that Burley was when I grew up, and so it was all places and times that I knew well. So I really enjoyed writing morning, and how it came to me, I was ready to start writing something else. And one night I had a dream about a young woman in a wheelchair with no legs, and so the next morning I started writing her story, and I thought it was going to be a short story, but it turned out to be pretty thick, actually.

SPEAKER_01 7:37

I was gonna say it's definitely not a short story, it was a beautiful story.

SPEAKER_02 7:43

I just I can't keep things short.

SPEAKER_01 7:47

Well, when characters start tell or telling their stories to us, we just have to do what they tell us, I think, sometimes.

SPEAKER_02 7:53

That's right. I find oftentimes that the story writes itself. I'm as excited to find out what happens next as the person reading it when I'm writing.

SPEAKER_01 8:02

I'm glad I'm not the only one that has experienced that. I've been talking to other writers too, and they all say the same thing that it's like their characters are talking to them and they don't know what's always coming next, sometimes too. And when they and in fact, when I was talking with some of them in our writers' group, it was when they get writer's block, it's because they're trying to force something. And when they stop trying to force it and they go back to just letting the character and it go, that the writer's block disappears.

SPEAKER_02 8:27

That's that's the way it is with me. I have really not had writer's block. I can just sit down and start writing, and the stories come. I consider it a gift because I'm not that smart to come up with all this stuff, so I feel like it's a gift.

SPEAKER_01 8:41

I find it's very much a spiritual thing too, that way that it's just something that's coming, and I'm just kind of the vehicle for the story to be shared, is what I'm finding myself to be in a lot of ways.

SPEAKER_02 8:51

You mentioned a spiritual thing in my writing. Since it is a gift, I feel obligated. I need to let my testimony shine through and my my and let it kind of be a teaching thing without really being preachy, if you know what I mean. Even though Marnie went through all the missionary discussions and I used the discussions that I used on my mission because that was the time here again, another historical reference, but it wasn't as a preaching thing, it was just here's how the missionary discussions worked at that time, which is what it was.

SPEAKER_01 9:24

Let's just be there. Yeah, that was the fun thing when I was reading Marnie when I they were in those so many moments. Like I was telling you before, that I just remember my dad telling me about things and when he was growing up, and it was very similar to his experience in Hogden where he grew up and the farming and the dances and stuff you were telling me about and stuff too. It's like it was just it's it was very familiar to me with the way my dad described his youth growing up and things like that, especially and even the missionary discussions, how he you know, how he was teaching the missionary discussions when he was on his mission. When I was reading about Marnie, I'm like, this is my dad's mission. This was exactly how he taught people. So it was very cool to read and it feels close to that story in that way because I listened to my dad's stories and stuff. So it was very fun. What was you mentioned she came to you in a dream, but and you started writing the story. What was the what was the most fun part about writing Marnie's story to you? What was like the best part about writing her story?

SPEAKER_02 10:26

The trip down memory lane.

SPEAKER_01 10:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:29

Yeah. High school and the graduation and the time afterwards and the missionary discussion, the whole thing. It was a trip down memory lane for me.

SPEAKER_01 10:39

Well, tell me about you. We were starting to talk about some of these things. So what are some of the things that you include about your life and what was real and stuff about early at that time in Marnie's story? What are some things that you really brought out to help us be there with you?

SPEAKER_02 10:56

Well, the uh there's the senior picnic at Indian Springs, for one. That was a fun day. I remember going to that and then all the buses and everything lined up and things. Just like in the story and the games that we're playing, and the picnic and the bunch of ladies' brownies and those kind of things, cruising overland is the main street in up in north and south through through Burley. Main Street goes east and west, but overland is the main drag. And cruising overland and going up and down, going to Grizzly Bear Pizza. That was a favorite hangout. Dairy Queen, that's where my friends and I always hung out. So that's why I had them at Dairy Queen a lot of times. The Alfresco drive-in that's no longer there. That was fun to go to the drive-in theater and things like that. And I loved the cars, putting the cars into the story. That was fun.

SPEAKER_01 11:47

I noticed that, yeah, the cars were fun. We might we go to car shows. My dad sits and tells stories about the cars he owned and the cars that were out of the time. And again, we were talking about the times dragging down Wasatch Boulevard and you know, Pleasant View and Ogden area, stuff like that. And so, yeah, very much that way. What was one of your favorite spots that you that you put into it that was your spot when you were growing up?

SPEAKER_02 12:12

Well, I like to say Dairy Queen. Yeah. But we went to this, I had them go to the city of Rocks. That was always a fun place to go. Shoshone Falls. That's still one of my favorite places to go, even though it's clear down the country by Twin Falls. Those are some of the places that I used to go to. Indian Springs. I went swimming there quite a bit. The drive through Albion, stopping at the Annie Lori Inn that I mentioned in the story, that's where I actually formally proposed to my wife, although we knew what was going to happen long before that. So that Annie Lori, we it burned down, it's no longer there. Oh no, uh a lot of places that are in the story are real to me. And the thing I was gonna say is my characters are real to me. My wife keeps saying they're not real people. Oh, yes, they are. Oh yes, they are, yes, they're very real, and there's a lot of there's a lot of me and Ben.

SPEAKER_01 13:52

Tell me about Ben, because we know Marnie is the name of the book, but Ben seems to be almost as much of a character with Marnie as anyone in this. In fact, it's almost more of his story in some ways.

SPEAKER_02 14:02

And it's his with the subtitle of the story of Young Love, Conversion, and Sacrifice. The sacrifice was on Ben's part. Because here he was, he had his plans all made after high school. He was going to go to Rick's college, and then he was gonna go on a mission, and then he, you know, he wanted to open an automotive shop. Now, I'm not a I'm not a mechanic, so that's part's not me. But uh, those those were his plans, those were his goals, and he made them known to her right up front. And when he asked her to the prom, he just got the prompting to ask her. And how is this girl with no legs supposed to dance? And he got he was gonna go on by and he got the prompting again, so he stopped and turned around, sit down, and asked her to the dance. And she had been praying that somebody take her to the dance because that was her senior year and it was her last chance, and she was always kind of invisible. So he started, he befriended her and started after he invited her to church on Easter, and they just kind of started seeing each other. And he said at one point, oh, of the fact that she wasn't a member of the church, and she went to church on Easter, and it turned out that what she found there was what she had been looking for, she'd always been kind of religiously inclined, and her parents were not, they'd quit going to church the church. I think they were Presbyterian. Is that what it was? Yeah, I think so. And she just felt like there was something missing in her life, and when she went to church on Easter, she found it. And the missionaries happened to be in that meeting by chance, because well, nothing happens by chance, but then and she started taking the lesson, but it got to the part where you know they were seeing each other a lot, and and she got serious with him first because well, the poor girls had never had any any experiences with dating and boys and stuff. But Ben had he'd had well at the very beginning of the story, his girlfriend broke up with him, and that's why he needed to date to the prom. That's why he asked her. But as the story went along, she basically proposed to him, she says, Ben, you've got more decades left than I have years. Marry me, then when I'm gone, you can go on and fulfill the rest of your dreams in your life, and so that was the sacrifice on his part. He had to think about it, and he counseled with his bishop, with his father, and of course, in prayer, and uh turned out this you know, that was the thing for him to do. Well, in the end of the book, he got to do all his plans anyway, so kind of like Job in a way. So Job's sacrificed and all the things that he did, and then he got back what he had sacrificed, and then some right.

SPEAKER_01 16:51

I loved Marnie uh so much because it it reminded me how we she just trusted the faith of the Lord so much. I mean, from like I said, she was always spiritually minded, and she just when she knew it, and she didn't hesitate. Where so many, so many of us just hesitate to listen to that spirit and to do it. She's just like, Well, this is it, so do it.

SPEAKER_02 17:15

She just wrote her moment of crisis when her aunt oh my goodness, that aunt, yeah. And and just ripped on her and really made her stop to think. And is this really true? And and then it just so she had to work through that. And it the thing that got her through that is Elder Thomas Monson was at the state conference. Now, whether he was really there at that state conference, I don't know. I just threw him in the story, you know. And I I always liked his story about yellow canaries with gray on their wings, and that I felt that Marnie. So I I worked that into the story, and that that settled her question. Well, turn around and write around, bam, all of a sudden, he went to a missionary farewell for one of his friends. Gosh, am I really want to give up this? Am I ready with why can't we wait? You know, and so he went through his moment of crisis as well. And then that was, I think, when she told him that I've got more, you've got more decades than I have years. So anyway, there was all kinds of conflicts within the story.

SPEAKER_01 18:23

And there's so natural to all of us, right? We all have our doubts, we all have our moments you know, to follow prompting, to listen to that spirit, to go with the with what we know is right. And then the doubts that we have and the the moments when we're like, am I doing what's right? Am I sure what we're doing? And all of us go through those moments. And so even if it's not that exact experience, it is so relatable to who to each of us going through light, period.

SPEAKER_02 18:53

There was a lot of light moments in the story too. Like going they went grocery shopping and she put the he put the box of fruit loops in the cart, and she put her hand on her hips, Fruit Loops, are you really? Yeah, who doesn't like Fruit Loops? And anyway, there was that. And the time when he came home from work all greasy, grimy, and she made him take his clothes off on the doorstep, and then he drove by and honked and waved.

SPEAKER_01 19:21

I don't see my dad still has to do that. See, my mother was when he comes home from the garden, it's like you gotta take off everything right now, and you put it straight into the wash. I mean, it's like it's still that way with my mom and my dad. It's like very much. I mean, there's washrooms for a reason. And we so in the door, I also love their love moment. There's so much tenderness, and I love that you did not shy away from the honeymoon giddiness of love, right?

SPEAKER_02 19:47

It was so fun to fun how she was really looking forward to it. She was fantasizing over it. She bought that nightgown and yeah, that came right down to it. She was too shy. She had to have the tub filled with bubbles so he couldn't see her.

SPEAKER_01 20:04

Yeah, it was so fun. To anyone listening, it is totally spice-free, it is totally clean, but you but it's it goes right to that lovely awkwardness of new love and new marriage moments that it's just so beautiful.

SPEAKER_02 20:19

I like to work that kind of thing into all of my stories. So you gotta have a little bit of romance and you gotta have a little bit of spice, you know. You know, without yeah, with without getting, you know, too uh personal, too graphic, too descriptive. Yeah, because you know it's part of life, it's part of the age, love. So very human. I didn't shy away from doing that. I appreciated that. Some people might find it offensive, I don't know, but that's their problem.

SPEAKER_01 20:51

I thought it was great because you know, even though asking, you know, Ben asking his dad and stuff beforehand, like, how do I deal with this?

SPEAKER_02 20:58

How do I oh I loved his conversation with his dad about you know what can I expect? And he says, Well, he told him that when the right woman at the right time in the right place, he said it'll be the most marvelous thing when you see he asked her if you knew what a woman looked like, and he said, Well, yeah, it's uh Playboy Junior High, and somebody showed me and said, Well, so when you see her for the first time, you hold her in your arms and how soft she is, it'll be the most wonderful thing. And then Marnie had a similar discussion with her mother, and her mother says, Well, all my mom ever said was that it's no picnic, and then she says, She was right, it's more like a Thanksgiving feast. And Marnie says, That good, huh?

SPEAKER_01 21:44

I loved it, it was so beautiful to have that kind of positive attitude about it because so many people, especially in in faith, and especially they come out and are like, Oh, I didn't know things and it's talk taboo and all these things. I'm like, dude, I was never taught that way, and my parents talked openly about how beautiful it is in the right time and right place, the right things. And so when you were talking about that way too, I was like, Oh, but it's not this bad taboo thing that everyone has been always talking about. It's not like that for everyone.

SPEAKER_02 22:14

So I kind of figured it was a teaching moment I felt.

SPEAKER_01 22:17

So yeah, it was great.

SPEAKER_02 22:18

You'll find that in in in all of my stories. There's something similar to that.

SPEAKER_01 22:24

I'm excited to start in on the rest of them. I'm like, I gotta get the rest now.

SPEAKER_02 22:28

Well, for example, in my series called Beneath Gunside, it takes place in Parkston, Utah, and that's where my dad grew up, that's where my ancestors were from. And it involves polygamy. And in in the story, he he was a knothead to begin with, and he these two girls, twin sisters, they hated him because he was always tormenting them. Well, he had some things that go on a near-death experience and some things that kind of brought him around. And then the one girl decided, well, he's not so bad. And so they started courting. And then when he asked her father if he could marry her, she says, Well, yeah, but you got to marry your sister too, because they were identical twins and they were codependent upon each other, and one couldn't really function without the other, so so I worked. In the story, it was he had two wives. And it's you know, historical. And people might frown on that. Oh, you can't write about that, but it's historical. It's the way life was in those days. And it's and to them it was perfectly normal.

SPEAKER_01 23:29

Yeah, exactly. It's and when we I always tell my students when I'm teaching literature and stuff and history, we have to be tourists in history. We have to go back and experience what it was without judgment, because it's what they knew, it was what was right for them. And we have to understand where we came from and where they were to understand ourselves now. And when we don't do that, I love historical and historical fiction because of that. You can put a historical character in there and live through that in a very real way, in that way. And that's why again I loved about Marnie. And I can't wait to read the rest of it.

SPEAKER_02 24:06

With all of my my my writing, it's that way. I learned so much by researching the history to make sure that I have my facts right. I don't want to put my character someplace that didn't exist at the time or doing something that I wanted everything factual.

SPEAKER_01 24:22

So that's and that's half the fun of writing too when you're doing a circle fiction, it's getting to do the history research.

SPEAKER_02 24:29

In my current work with the wiseman, I was really hesitant to start it because I didn't know anything about ancient Hebrew customs traditions, and I didn't know anything about that that part of the country that they were traveling to. So fortunately, I've got a as always shied away from artificial intelligence, but it turns out it's a good research tool. It's kind of like steroids, and I'm able to, as I was mapping the route there's taken, I could go into Google Maps and I could look down into the valley where I was pointing looking at, and I could get the descriptions and from the all of that, and so it really making that adventure come to life for me. So and that's what I did with all my stories. I didn't have to do a whole lot of research with Marnie though, because it all came from up here.

SPEAKER_01 25:18

It was it was there from your life and everything that way. Well, I also loved with that before I ask another thing, is like you did use some AI for fun in the book, which I absolutely I'm not a big fan of AI either, but the way you used it to create photos, the illustrations, yes. Yes, and they looked so most of them came out really well. But like I thought I was actually looking at pictures from that time. I was like, how did he do this?

SPEAKER_02 25:47

Yes, it was done with AI. Some of the pictures aren't as good of us as others, but let me find some.

SPEAKER_01 25:55

A few times I was like, AI is working well in this way because you know it was working as a good tool for this choice. Yeah, there's an evaluation, you know. It was so much fun to see you put in like it was a real story that it was like the here's their photo album of their life as they're going through in the chapters, and it was fun to see them be real that way.

SPEAKER_02 26:21

Whoops, let me get that word in the reserve. This particular copy has colored pictures. You can get them colored, it costs more, but you can get you can get the colored edition or you can get the black and white pictures. And for myself, I got the colored one, but all of our trips to primary children's hospital, that was where I had to do a little bit of research. I remember the old primary children's hospital building that had the rounded windows on the edge and it was up on the hip. It's not the the primary children's hospital we know today by the university. No, I had to do a little bit of research to get my facts straight on on that hospital. I'm just like it's right close by in here, I think, because it was it's it's right here close. I had them staying at uh little America.

SPEAKER_01 27:05

That was yeah, I have been to that little America and stuff along the way. Oh, yep.

SPEAKER_02 27:10

Yeah, the old primary primary children's hospital. That's the way it was back then, and the things that were on their tour of Temple Square, I had to research that to get the things that were there at the time. And Lagoon, when they went to Lagoon, I had to research that to make sure that they weren't riding something that wasn't there at the time.

SPEAKER_01 27:30

And uh Colossus is like what the only thing that's like been there the entire time now.

SPEAKER_02 27:35

And Colossus, I don't think it was even there then.

SPEAKER_01 27:38

At that, yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_02 27:39

Yeah, so so I had to tie that in. And that little trip to Lagoon, that was kind of a fun, fun thing because that was always a place to go.

SPEAKER_01 27:49

Yeah, it was like a destination for a lot of people. Well, it still is. I mean, the group, how many school groups still take? If you've been for them anymore, that's the problem, yeah, exactly. It's gotten pretty expensive, but it's still the place. A lot of people still go every year, it's crazy. And you also did some fun things when you were first putting this out and marketing it too. You were interviewing Marnie. Yes, that was okay. I want to know how you did that because that was so fun to watch. That was entertaining.

SPEAKER_02 28:18

That was with AI, of course. I I did all of the different pictures of her, and then the then I worked myself into it, and I had AI do her voice, and then I recorded my voice, and I merged them together to have have that interview, and that was kind of fun. And the part of the interview is the best, is where she tells the story herself, and maybe you could cut that into this somehow, because that was why don't you briefly tell your story, Marnie?

SPEAKER_00 28:47

I've spent the last five of my 19 years perfecting a very specific kind of magic trick, being seen without ever truly being noticed. In the crowded hallways of Burley High School, I'm not really Marnie Cummings. I'm just the girl in the wheelchair. I've become a part of the architecture, as invisible as the trophy cases or the lockers, and I was perfectly content with that. If they didn't see me, they couldn't pity me, and I didn't have to explain how I'd learned to navigate a world that wasn't built for wheels. Then Ben Howard walked into my life, and the invisibility spell started to crack. When he asked me to the senior prom, after his girlfriend had dumped him and left his plans in tatters, I expected it to be a charity date. But as we started spending time together, cruising overland in his far-out GTO, listening to cool music on the eight-track player, something changed. Ben started to see past the chair. He saw that I wasn't just surviving my life, I was transcending it. But it wasn't just Ben who was changing. He set me on a journey I never expected, a path of faith that led me to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. While I was finding a new sense of purpose and belonging, Ben was standing at his own crossroads. He had ambitious goals and was faced with sacrificing the very future he'd spent years planning. The day of my baptism was charged with something holy and electric. I looked at Ben, knowing what he was giving up for me, something I never dreamed was possible. What I did that day changed the rhythm of my weak heart, and I know it changed Ben's life forever. We were just two kids in 1973, caught between the roar of car engines and the quiet whisperings of the spirit, learning that love isn't about the plans you make, but the sacrifices you're willing to make.

SPEAKER_02 32:20

That was the part where she talks about her story. And I did the same thing with my gunsight series. I I traveled back 1870, 1880, and I sat down in their living room and I sat down and talked to them with him and his wives. I did a similar interview with them. That was kind of fun. It's more of a slideshow type thing. And then I did an illustration, I call it. I used the same AI to try to create an audiobook, but of course they I couldn't publish it because it was the wrong, it had to be a human narrator. But I took a section of that where they went for the horse for the ride on the horseback ride along the river, and I took that into a slideshow kind of as a oh good.

unknown 33:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 33:08

I made that into a slideshow where they that it just followed the narration of the story. So those are all on my website. You can find them on the Marnie page on my website.

SPEAKER_01 33:20

That's so cool. I love that I've been showing away from AI for so many reasons as a teacher and stuff like this, but I'm finding that in writing and stuff, the marketing and things like this. Yeah, I want to avoid it in the writing, but using it for research and using it for the right tools and using it for marketing stuff can be so fun. I've got to figure out how to do all this. And you've just been playing with it and having a great time. And it's been so fun to see those come out.

SPEAKER_02 33:44

I'm figuring it out.

SPEAKER_01 33:46

I'll have to pick your brain because I'm like, yeah, I'm not that great at that kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_02 33:51

I'm like, but I'm still learning, but it's it's been quite helpful.

SPEAKER_01 33:55

It's been quite helpful. Yeah, it's been fun. So when you were younger, so I know you were like in in farming as those. What were your what were you into reading? Or were you a reader, or were you I've never been a reader, I really haven't.

SPEAKER_02 34:09

All my main reading has been always been World War II history type stuff. That's been pretty much my thing of reading. My first grade teacher taught us to read wrong, and it's stuck ever since. You know how you speed reading, how you can go through the page really fast. Well, she caught you doing that. She had whack your wrist with a ruler. She made us read one word at a time, and that is how I read today.

SPEAKER_01 34:35

Oh no, that's okay.

SPEAKER_02 34:39

I'm really slow, so it's it's a slow reader, so I don't read much, but that doesn't mean I can't come up with stories.

SPEAKER_01 34:46

Apparently not. And that just gets sort of that old adage. A lot of people are like, Well, if you can read, you can write. And I'm like, There's plenty of people who, like I say, don't read or haven't been big readers who come up with amazing stories.

SPEAKER_02 34:59

And do I think something funny? Okay, you know the trouble that Ben was having with the composition class, yeah. That was me.

SPEAKER_01 35:07

Oh, got it.

SPEAKER_02 35:09

Yeah, I almost didn't graduate because of that composition class, and it came right down to the wire. And so, yeah, at my 50-year class reunion, the composition teacher was there, and I he didn't remember me, and he didn't remember my struggle and failing. I so I reminded him of that, and then I told him, guess what? I'm a writer.

SPEAKER_01 35:34

So beautiful.

SPEAKER_02 35:36

So that's that part of Ben in the composition class. That was me. The way he had people uh Marnie try to proofread and type his papers. I had people do that for me, so I could pass the class.

SPEAKER_01 35:47

I did for my husband in college, and now that's all he does is like type and write reports and things like this, and it was so funny to watch. So that transition. He was a big reader, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 35:59

My wife is the one who wanted to be the writer, she majored in English and stuff in college, and then after we were married, she took a cre uh children's writing course, and it just never panned out. And she was into poetry, and I never was much of a poet. But guess what? In the last nine months, I've written several poems.

SPEAKER_01 36:17

That's a great that's what I started out on in high school was poetry and short stories.

SPEAKER_02 36:24

I've always been never been into poetry. So last fall I got started in that, so I've written like 20, 21 poems now that were good enough to publish on my webpage.

SPEAKER_01 36:36

Yeah, that's awesome. See, that's my dad. He's like he's a mathematician, but and he's always like, Oh, I'm not a big reader, not a big writer, although he's reading a lot more now. He's into historical fictions and stuff. But he's always written songs and music. And so I'm like, Dad, you're a poet, you can write, which is so funny because he doesn't think of himself in that way, but he is an incredible poet with his songs. His songs are just absolutely gorgeous, and they're all very personal, religious, family about so many personal spiritual things, too.

SPEAKER_02 37:09

That's the way my poems are. I've got a I've got a poem about my baby that died, I've got poems about my personal beliefs, I got a poem about the sacrament, and I got I got a poem about farming. And so, anyway, I've got several. The last one I wrote was thinking about Pioneer Day coming up, so I wrote a poem about my heritage and and uh things like that.

SPEAKER_01 37:36

So beautiful. Well, I'm glad you started writing because it's incredible, and so glad you're doing it.

SPEAKER_02 37:45

It keeps the gray matter stirred up. Hopefully, it'll keep my mind sharp. If I ever do get Alzheimer's or something, I'll probably think I'm Ben Howard or Kurt Rosson or one of my characters or all of them or something.

SPEAKER_01 37:58

You'll be in your stories, you'll just live there.

SPEAKER_02 38:01

Yeah, I'll live there. I'll probably be telling those stories like they happened to me or something. If I go if I get that bad. But it keeps the matter stirred up, keeps me acting, gives me something to do, keeps me out of my wife's hair.

SPEAKER_01 38:16

It's and it definitely is helpful for others. I found it very beautiful, and it reminded me a lot of my own testimony and my own experiences, and just to remember you know, that faith that she had in there. And so, so fun to do.

SPEAKER_02 38:32

I just wish I could reach more people. That's one reason why I wanted to have this podcast with you to see if I could at least get it out there something else. Hey, that sounds like an interesting story to read. Problem is being able to get my word out. I'd like to come and visit with you again and talk about some of my other stuff in more in detail.

SPEAKER_01 38:50

Absolutely. I'm I'm thinking we should make a series out of this. So the next time you're ready, let's get on and talk about things for sure.

SPEAKER_02 38:56

Yeah, next time let's do my gunsight series. I'll be excited about it. Pioneer hair thing. We can go into and I've alluded to that a little bit here, but we can go into depth in that one.

SPEAKER_01 39:07

I love that. Well, where can we find your work? Where can we follow you on this journey and find your work so we can support you and can get these lovely stories in our own homes and hands?

SPEAKER_02 39:19

Okay, well, I have my let's see get that in the camera. Where's Larry Lego? Here's my website, Gordon but Gordon.butters.me slash author.

SPEAKER_01 39:34

Very cool. And I'll put it in our description below here as well.

SPEAKER_02 39:38

You can't really see it in there, but I do have a dedicated Facebook page for my writing. But everything's available through Amazon. But my my web page, it's it's kind of simple, nothing fancy, but you can go and read the synopsis of each book and what reviews I've gotten I've put on there, and then you can click on the picture of the book and it'll take you directly to Amazon. And they're in paperback and hardcover and ebook, they're all ebooks as well. And I have rec got, I did do two audiobooks that I recorded myself, and I was thinking of doing more, but I didn't get any success on those, and it wasn't worth my time. So I haven't done any more audiobooks other than the artificial voice on Marnie. But that was more as a proofreading exercise than anything, anyway, because I wanted to hear it back so I could hear her voice. Yeah, make sure that it was is it was I've found all the things. I've got an editor that goes through things for me. She's great. I gotta give a shout out to my editor, Joni. Joni, she she's become a very dear friend now, and she was looking for something to read. And my best friend's wife and her were in the same writing group. And anyway, we got hooked together through that. And I'm not gonna tell you why she charges me because it's really a good deal.

SPEAKER_01 41:01

Well, it's always nice to have someone who is gonna give you that deal and help you out and be a good editor because my editor and I are she's amazing too, and we're friends, and it's it when you can have that relationship with your editor, it's awesome.

SPEAKER_02 41:13

And she's one of my biggest fans, too. So she really enjoys what he wrote.

SPEAKER_01 41:18

That's so good. So before we leave, then what is a message that you find is through your books, or what message you want to leave us with today that we need to hear or that we should know or understand?

SPEAKER_02 41:34

That God is real, he lives, Jesus Christ is our savior, and they are involved in the details of our lives. I've involved them in the details of the lives of my characters just to show that. And like I said earlier, my writing is a way for my testimony to shine through and hopefully be an inspiration to others.

SPEAKER_01 41:57

I agree. Amen. Well, Gordon, it has been a pleasure to be with you today and to talk about Marnie. And I can't wait for our next conversation about your other books and to have things. Maybe one of these days I'll get up to Idaho or we can you if you ever get down here to Utah, we can meet up in person, even and do that. My husband sorry was never gonna live there, and now it's where we're at.

SPEAKER_02 42:25

You get past Brigham City and you're in no man's land. I probably just offended half your audience, didn't I?

SPEAKER_01 42:34

It's okay. A lot of us are like, it's getting too big. It is so fine. There's a lot of places that it's crazy.

SPEAKER_02 42:42

It's true that like Ben said when he was driving through Salt Lake City, these people are nuts. There's a lot of and uh Marty says, Yeah, it can be a rat race at times. He says, Yeah, and the rats won.

SPEAKER_01 42:55

Well, this to think about that now. I mean every time I swear to go up to Salt Lake or any place, I'm like, there's new roads, there's new construction, there's new I'm like, it just gets more and more.

SPEAKER_02 43:07

That's everywhere you can run, but you can't hide.

SPEAKER_01 43:10

It is very true. It is very true. Even in the small towns anymore, you it just it's coming. So fight in the mountain somewhere.

SPEAKER_02 43:20

Very good. I appreciate that. And thank you. It's really nice to meet you, Tanya.

SPEAKER_01 43:24

It's been very much a pleasure.

SPEAKER_02 43:26

And let's do this again. Let's do.

SPEAKER_01 43:29

Let's do. Thank you for being here with me today. And everyone, check out Gordon and all of his work and see us next time on Roundies Rants, Raves and Reviews. I know you are loved.