Ask the Author: Rhett McLaughlin

“Ask me a question.” Rhett McLaughlin

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Rhett McLaughlin Nothing inspires me to write like reading. I don't know the brain science behind it, but it certainly seems that the same part of the brain that gets activated while engaging with a book is the same part that needs activation when generating prose.

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Was collaborating with Link on a fiction book similar or different than your collaborations for other creative projects? How so?

Rhett McLaughlin The process was very familiar in a lot of ways. Over the years, we've figured how to best collaborate by recognizing one another's strengths and playing into those as well as we can. The main difference with the novel wasn't the nature of the collaboration but rather the length of the project. After spending most of career making videos that span anywhere from a few days to a few weeks from ideation to execution, the timeline for a novel was something we had to adjust to.

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I grew up in WV and feel a kinship with the area of NC you grew up in. What lessons from your upbringing have helped you the most as a public person?

Rhett McLaughlin Growing up in a small town makes it easy to spot the desperation in a place like Los Angeles, a city filled with people frantically trying to achieve happiness through accomplishment and accolades. And regardless of how long I'm in LA, I haven't lost the ability to view myself through the lens of the young Rhett from the little town of Buies Creek.

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Hello! Was becoming an author something you wanted to do when you were younger? Or has that desire to write manifested since starting on YouTube? I can't wait to read your new novel!!!

Rhett McLaughlin After falling in love with the Chronicles of Narnia as a kid, I started writing a fantasy novel in middle school. I knew nothing about writing, and had no idea where the story would go. I literally just pulled out some notebook paper and began writing. I don't remember much, but I know that the main protagonist awakens in a strange world, where he walks out out of a large castle-like building with no knowledge of who or where he is. He sees fat, short-legged cattle grazing in the fields around the castle (in my mind, he had awakened in the distant future, where cattle had been domesticated and bred to be even less wild, more like waddling sacks of hamburgers. He then begins walking, where he meets up with a collection of different characters along the way. Eventually, he and his companions reach a large chasm that appears to be impossible to cross. It was at this point that I also found a chasm in my story. I literally wrote my characters and myself into a dead end, and never picked the story back up.

So, short answer to your question is yes, I've always wanted to write, and I since building our audience on YouTube, I've been excited about the possibility of telling a story like The Lost Causes of Bleak Creek, a book in which there are definitely no chasms.

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