Intro:Revenue chat episode 172. Hey check out my other great interviews at TonyDurso.com/radio or using your Android or iPhone get the app at TonyDurso.com/mobile. That’s TonyDurso.com/radio or /mobile. This is revenue chat radio with your host Tony Durso, interviewing successful entrepreneurs and giving you actionable advice and insights, let’s rev it up. Tony: Welcome I’m your host Tony Durso, with two high profile and high volume talk shows, I’m doing what you would expect, that’s right I’m combining them into one great show, can you pardon my dust while I expand? The new show is called the Tony Durso show. I will continue to broadcast every Friday at 1:00 p.m. on Voice America’s influencers Channel, and you will continue to find the show published every Friday on iTunes, on the mobile app and everywhere you’re listening to my shows now. And despite a few changes hey it’s still me, Tony and you continue to hear from successful entrepreneurs who tell us how they made it to the top in their field. You’ll also hear from celebrities, VIPs, and game changers, the new show is one hour in length and you get two great interviews instead of one, how about that. Now the music of the spotlight will be the main music for the new show, yes I know you’ll miss the revenue chat music which I wrote and produce myself, but there’s good news there my new TV show the Tony Durso TV show will play that familiar music, and you’ll catch this live on Mondays on Facebook, YouTube and throughout social media. That’s going to start soon, please stay tuned for that announcement. I appreciate you as a great engaging audience and I do hope you understand this consolidation, as I am expanding tremendously. The summary continue to listen to my shows just as you normally do, the way you normally do, the music has changed and the show is one hour instead of a half hour, not too bad right. And there’s a new TV show which I’ll tell you more about in the future, all right so far? Thanks again for being a great audience, I love your feedback and welcome your comments as always. Tony: All right Revenue crew, let’s rev it up here we go. Today we set the stage for revenue chat with V. Lakshman award-winning author of myth born, and here’s some facts about him he grew up in Bangkok Thailand, where he first discovered his love of the martial arts, mythological heroes and exotic lands all of which influenced the development of characters and the world in his debut fantasy series myth born, fate of the sovereign. Myth born media is a division of dawn’s light media, and is in negotiations for a motion picture film series. Production is to begin later this year with the release sometime in 2019, it’s so great to have you on my show Vijay, welcome to revenue chat. V. Lakshman: Thank you Tony, I’m really happy to be here. Tony: Thank you, and the honor is mine. We have so much in common, you’re a multi author, you’re an award-winning author, you’re a martial artist you’ve done so much, it is really my honor and I can’t wait to share your information with my audience. And I think the first thing we’d like to know please, how did it all start for you, what’s your backstory? V. Lakshman: Well, I won’t start as far back as where I was born and all that unless you guys find that later to be interesting, but you know in all honesty I was on my way to medical school and I had finished undergrad, I was taking that break in between and I had applied to a video game company called Bethesda Soft Works. And lo and behold they answered this single moment in life where my mother told me all those years I would be wasting playing D&D would never help, absolutely helped me, it got me the job. I got hired as a producer, and one of the first games I made for them was the Elder Scrolls arena, and that ended up getting RPG of the year, then game of the year and then became the launch of one of the most successful role-playing game franchises in the world today, which has spawned I think seven sequels. And it is one of the quintessential hall-of-fame role-playing games that are out there, and I’m happy to have been in a small way there at the birth of it, and still an avid fan of it. Tony: You know I understand that game is played by hundreds of millions of people, I mean that is intense. V. Lakshman: Yes, and interestingly it launched my videogame career and also ended my career as a doctor before it started, and I ended up becoming a video game designer and producer for the next 30 years. I had the honor of working at some of the best studios that are out there, I ultimately ended up cheering or spearheading development for Vivendi Universal in LA. I think you and I share living in LA together in our in our histories and I mean share living in the same place. You know and I had the chance to launch over 85 video game titles, those titles have done well over a billion dollars in lifetime sales, if you look at what games sort of are quintessential out there, I’ve had a chance to work on some great ones crash bandicoot, fire of the dragon, Lord of the Rings, we mentioned elder scrolls. I’ve been in the business for 30 years and I’ve enjoyed every single moment of it, I just loved it and it is what birth my writing career, because you have to be able to write and write clearly to be a video game developer. Tony: That is very exciting, there’s so much to talk about, but one thing I do not want to forget or miss, we’re going to talk about it now. I understand and I know you have a love for martial arts, you’ve done a lot in, do I understand this right Vijay you’ve spent thousands of hours in combat fighting with opponents all over the world? V. Lakshman: Yes. Tony: Vijay you’re a video game yourself. V. Lakshman: What’s interesting is I grew up in Bangkok Thailand and was surrounded by Muay Thai and different kinds of martial arts that are prevalent all through Southeast Asia, when we came to the United States I came here right at the tail end of believe it or not the desegregation of schools. When I got here desegregation had been I think Virginia was the last state to desegregate schools, and they did it sometime in like 1968 or 69 and we moved here in 1973 or 74. So the teachers in the schools still remembered at times when these were segregated classes, and people were very I mean it was a very divided nation. And then the Iranian oil crisis was looming over us, and I look brown I don’t think people differentiated between Iranian and Indian or even care. Tony: Oh no, now I understand why you’re talking about thousands of hours of fighting, no just joking. V. Lakshman: But ultimately what ended up happening was, my mom kept saying turn the other cheek I kept getting beaten up coming home from school, I was under 10 years old and my dad finally said enough, enough is enough. He had noticed people training in the martial arts in the back of loading dock of the hospital where he worked, I said before he’s a doctor. And he noticed these guys at lunch break they would be training in the back doing form, so he went out there and asked one of them if they would consider training his son and they said well bring him by this school, under the direction of Grandmaster Manny Agrella. And it turns out just by luck for me Grandmaster Agrella is one of the renowned martial artists of the world and one of the best trainers of black belts, his black belts have a consistent rank in all competitions in terms of their prowess in combat, in Kata and in weapons. And he doesn’t train kids, I was the only kid in the class I don’t even know why he accepted me because everyone else then, I was eight or nine and the next oldest person was 18, and there’s a huge difference in an 18 year old and an 8 year old or 9 year old. But he took me in anyways and I started training and I trained for 35 years, and I fought everybody, he had me fight everybody all the time and I grew up basically living the martial arts, and it has been something that I am so proud of and so happy my father put me in it and so thankful to Grandmaster Agrella for having trained me to the point where I could defend myself, but also all the other benefits that come from any kind of athletic training positivity, sportsmanship, focus, concentration, all those things, I benefited from all of that at a very young age. Tony: That’s impressive, and is that karate Shotokan or kendo or what is his style? V. Lakshman: So his style was called Tung long whoosh one, it was a hard style of karate Grandmaster Agrella came up training in Shotokan, he also trained in a Chinese type of hard style under Grandmaster Wein and he also trained in judo, and so Tung long was an aggregation of the things that Grandmaster Agrella had come up with, an became the thing that ultimately trained us. We were trained in close in, ground fighting, we were trained in kicks, we were trained in punches, we were train in throws and grappling, chokehold, mission holds, weapons but we also were trained in how to defend ourselves against those same things. We had real in-depth knowledge of how to go about being very careful in watching our opponents, understanding what they do and then being able to combat against them using their own techniques or the defenses of their own technique against them. Tony: Absolutely impressive, and we’re going to talk about martial arts non-stop, so I think we have to take a break and talk about your books. The audience is going like all right what about the books; okay I can see the correlation. So we’ve just been leading up to this, now what I actually like to do is if you could take us through a summary of the books, tell us about your series, tell us how it started I’d like to hear the whole thing on that please. V. Lakshman: Sure you bet, so the log liner the short script is this is about a young apprentice assassin who finds out that his master has been ordered to kill him in the next eight days, and he has to figure out how to survive, and book one is actually a countdown starting at eight days and working itself backwards to day one where we find out how he actually goes about surviving, that’s the short example. Tony: I like that, now can we have a little bit more. V. Lakshman: You bet, the inspiration probably was my own instructor I was convinced he was trying to kill me all the time. Tony: See, there was a reason we were talking martial arts, now I see it all fits. V. Lakshman: No I’m joking, but the inspiration actually was I can’t stand these fantasy novels that focus on some cackling bad guy in a pointed hat up in a tower, blasting everybody who shows up with bad news and just being evil for evil sake. One of the things I learned in video games is everybody is a hero in their story, everybody, no villain comes in going oh I’m a villain they think they are a hero doing the right thing for a cause, that cause just may not be what we agree with. Ultimately what I wanted to do is write a story from the standpoint of every character having a really true, honest-to-god, belief they are the hero in their story, and what happens when those characters don’t see eye to eye with each other. And I think that’s why my books have gotten such good reviews and so much acclaim, because drama really is in the shades of grey, it’s not in the archetypes of white and black. And so I think that that’s something I’m pretty proud of in terms of the book. Tony: I like that, I like that a lot, and it is such an a powerful statement what you’ve said, it wasn’t too long ago that I thought of someone that maybe wasn’t operating in the best way I liked and then I had a little sort of an epiphany that everyone has their own agenda, everyone believes they’re doing the right thing and everyone has a reason for what they’re doing. And I’m not even joking Vijay, when I realized that the next time I communicated with that person, it was like an almost whole change of attitude and everything and the cooperation and everything, it just changed. Now it was as if it was magic, it was just such a powerful realization when you realize that. And I love it because it’s not just black and white, good and bad, there are shades and there are reasons. V. Lakshman: That’s right, and what I wouldn’t recommend is cooperating with someone who’s trying to kill you. Tony: I agree with that, don’t cooperate. AD: Hey think of all the things you work hard to provide your family your home, a college education, your entire lifestyle, how do you make sure all of those things are still possible even if something unexpectedly happens to you. You know the old way life insurance used to be a pain, you would deal with an agent who came across like a used car salesman or scheduled blood tests at a doctor’s office and read over paperwork filled with fine print and legalese, now with Ethos the application only takes 10 minutes online, with honest upfront pricing. 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Lakshman: But I think what is important to me that was number one. the second thing I was really interested in doing was all of us have been guilty of this, I think if you grew up in 80s there was a somewhat of a narrow focus on a male lead and especially in fantasy, the chainmail bikini clad girl at the feet of Conan looking up at him and he’s defending her, and he’s got muscles and a giant sword and all that stuff. I just wanted to change all of that, my books pass what they call the best del test, and the best del test is used with movies to show whether or the female characters are empowered, and they ask a simple question and that is, do two women exist in the storyline that have names that talk to each other and not about a man. And my book passes that with flying colors, I have so many strong female characters who are literally driving the plot forward, who have complete and utter clarity in what they want to do. Who are ruthless when they need to be and who are smart and who are also stupid, but they’re not smart or stupid based on their gender, they’re smart or stupid based on their character just like the men in the book. And I’ve been applauded for having these women, these powerful women who are now changing the way that the typical trope of fantasy works, and I’m excited about that. Tony: I like that, that’s very good very cool indeed. So you’re not typical and then another thing that I believe you’re not typical about is the fighting, now yes I know we spent a long time talking about martial arts, but your series is not just swords and bashing and stuff like that, can you take us into a little bit of the unique types of fights and fighting combat that you have there? V. Lakshman: Absolutely, it’s been my experience that on the best day in a combat match, the difference between the guy who won that day and the guy who came in 10th place is literally hundreds of a second. It was who was on and who was off, it wasn’t one guy has some secret technique or is just so much better than the other guy, it’s that someone made a mistake, someone wasn’t on, someone wasn’t focused and the fights are over quickly. They’re not these long drawn-out, and by the way I enjoyed the princess pride and the long sword fight, but it’s not like that, it’s not like that right in real life. In real life it goes really fast and it goes, and people who miss a move or aren’t paying attention they don’t have their head on a swivel, there they’re going to go down and you see it all the time where trained people are taken out by someone from behind who they didn’t notice that the guy was there. And so you know might the fighting in the book really does reflect this kind of knife’s edge that you’re on, and because I asserted so early in the book and frankly in the very first few pages of how quickly you can die, I think the readers find themselves sitting on that nice edge worried about every character because they know that if things go down, they’re going to go down quick and they’re going to go down badly. And just because someone is a master or an expert or whatever doesn’t mean they’re going to survive, and I think that kind of danger that’s ever-present adds a lot of tension to the story. And a small little sidebar, the first time my nose is broken somewhere between ten and twelve times. The first time it ever got broken, it was by a woman one of our combat instructors was a female instructor, and I was sparring her for the first time and knocked her down with a leg sweep and then went over to help her up and off the ground she flipped herself to her feet and punched me with a back fist and broke my nose, and I remember my instructor looking at me saying the lesson here is never ever judge someone based on their gender. They’re trying to take your life, they’re trying to fight you if you give them a break because they are a woman or something you can die, and I think that’s one of the reasons why I didn’t have any examples of females and female bikinis, my examples were combat instructors that would break my nose if I took my eyes off of them. So I think that the combat in myth born rings very true, at times it might even be comical but it is dangerous nonetheless. Tony: You’re right, it is not very typical because we’re accustomed we are trained when we see the good guy in a movie, the good guy in a book we know he’s always going to win, he’s always going to come out strong in any fight even if he’s captured. We always know that because he’s the good guy… V. Lakshman: But he’s the last action hero. Tony: Right, he’s the action hero, but here we don’t know who can win because it’s a real world playing field anything can happen, even if you’re more knowledgeable or a better fighter doesn’t mean the other guy can’t outmaneuver you somehow and take you. V. Lakshman: That’s right, and I think ultimately one of the things that the book does, I hope it does well, is it describes quick, fast, inside fighting moves that work. And here’s a little funny side bar the first pass I went when I went through this when my publishers read it and one of the people on the publishing team also is a trained martial artist and he came back to me and said hey look I love it, I get it, you’re going to have to make some of this more vague because it’s too descriptive and if someone tries to do these techniques they’ll kill someone. And so I had to actually pull back on the writing and make it a little bit vague, because they were telling me that I was basically writing a book on how to kill. Tony: Well there is some in the audience they want that book. V. Lakshman: No, that wasn’t my goal. Tony: I got you. We have a couple minutes left, there’s a couple of things I really want to ask and I’ve got a surprise question for you, but first I want to know because we talked about games earlier and elder scrolls and all that, is there a game in the works for myth born? V. Lakshman: Absolutely, I started production on an interactive storytelling game for myth born. The interactive storytelling game is similar to what you read back in the 80s when it was called choose your own adventure, where it would tell you like if you want to pick up the sword turn to page 80, if you want to grab the gem turn to page 90, and then you kept reading and you work your way through the book with your own sort of adventure. Well the interactive storytelling platform it works on an Amazon Alexa, it works on Google Talk, Google home and what you do is you talk to your Alexa, Alexa will tell you what happens, what the room sounds like with a narrated author telling you the description and then asks your choices and you decide what you want to do and Alexa sort of interactively story tells with you through the adventure, and I think that’ll be a really cool product for everybody. Tony: Conceptually or whatever, do you think this is something that will come out this year next year or when? V. Lakshman: So in general video game development, especially on a new platform like this which is of the Amazon Alexa, the Google home products, the apple Siri, they’re all sort of tied to what the manufacturers are going to do in terms of different skills and different kinds of tools. So I’m a little bit lockstep with what’s happening also on the Alexa that’s not under my control, normally building a game like this would take a few months and then testing it would take a month and then they’d be out. So if all things went good, it would be out by Christmas I’m hoping, but I’m going to have to assume that some things aren’t going to go the way that we plan and so in my mind I’m looking at probably in early 2019 release. Tony: I got you, well when that comes out Vijay please circle back to me because I’d love to cover that as well in an interview. V. Lakshman: Absolutely. Tony: And now I got to ask you this, we talked about martial arts, we understand there’s a lot of combat and fighting, I say a lot I don’t know exactly but there is some that say that, but also this book is heavy in magic and it begs the question here Vijay, I know you grew up in Asia the land of magic and mysticism to some degree, so I have to ask the question do you know any magic? V. Lakshman: Keeping my wife married to me is probably the best spell I’ve been able to succeed in, certainly creating my kids is the kind of magic that I hope everyone has the benefit of having been blessed with. Tony: Great answer so far, great answer just so you know that. V. Lakshman: But in all honesty, what I also didn’t like about fantasy books was magic was this crutch that allowed in some books that allowed authors to solve the problem by just some kind of crazy spell, and then boom it’s all done and you’re safe. I mean the question in Lord of the Rings is if they had an eagle that would fly them home from Mordor, why didn’t they just put the ring on an eagle and drop it into the volcano, why the long trek with dwarves and elves and all the whole fellowship. Tony: Oh I know that because the Eagle would have turned into a big monster, and help rule the world. The Eagle couldn’t touch it just like Gandalf couldn’t touch the ring either, it would destroy them and also several other so. V. Lakshman: You’ve schooled me, actually that’s a good answer that’s a really good answer and I’m a geek and that’s a good answer. Tony: Really? It kind of just struck me as like obviously the eagle can’t touch it or else it would destroy the eagle. V. Lakshman: So I would add it in photo and put him on the back of an eagle and they just flew him there. Tony: Hang it from a rope so that it doesn’t touch the eagle. V. Lakshman: But what I did was, actually a world that you think is better but in fact magic underlying the system is nanotechnology, and what you learn soon is that myth born is actually a sort of an onion that you have to sort of unpeel, but the world itself is the product of a crashed terraforming starship that it’s Nanites got free, and in order to reconstitute its own mission objectives, it borrowed from the dreams of the colonists that were in hyper sleep. And so the world of myths is born, and these myths have come to light and sort of filled the gaps that were missing from the technological records. And now imagine a million years have gone by, the world has evolved much of that original knowledge is gone but the Nanites aren’t gone they’re still there, and the dreams haven’t gone anywhere either they’re still there too. And you have a world now that actually follows the rules of science, but it feels like its magic. Tony: I like that very interesting, and we’re definitely going to have to have you back because there’s so much I still want to ask but I don’t want to forget and what’s very important is your website is Mythbornmedia.com is that right? V. Lakshman: That’s correct Mythbornmedia.com and if you want to like us on Facebook you can find us there, you can Instagram us on Mythbornmedia.com the book series is called Myth Born, so you can google that it’s available on Amazon right now, book 3 just launched and it’s a 5 book series so I’m working hard on book 4 and the audio book is going to come out next month. So actually by the time this show comes up the audio book should be out, so I hope everyone has a chance to try it out, but certainly come to our website, like us on Facebook, like us on Instagram and tweet us I’m happy to respond. I’m on Facebook live every Thursday at 3 p.m. to talk about the book again, about all the different things that go into writing this kind of world-building fantasy epic. Tony: Fantastic and if somebody just goes to your site, is there a link there to buy the book at Amazon? V. Lakshman: There is, it’s a buy now button just click it. Tony: Perfect. Okay, you heard that revenue chat audience buy now, get the book because book three is coming out really soon, the audio is coming out and you definitely want in on this because I know there’s some good stuff in there. He’s going to give you some magic, and he’s going to give you some great fighting techniques and you’re just going to have to figure out the kill moves okay? And Vijay if someone wants to contact you and reach out and say something, can they actually reach you at Mythbornmedia.com? V. Lakshman: Yes, Vijay@mythbornmedia.com and you can reach me, and I tend to respond so if you’re interested in reaching out Vijay@mythborn.com. Tony: Love it, thank you so much what a great interview, I love this subject, I love this topic, I love speaking with authors and martial arts and everything else, really great, very stimulating thank you Vijay Lackshman award-winning author of myth born, again that site is Mythbornmedia.com I just want to thank you so much for honoring us today with this interview. V. Lakshman: Tony it was really my pleasure, I’m just humbled to be on your show I know what great guests you have and you are a great interviewer, and I really appreciated the opportunity to be here, thank you so much. Tony: Thank you and again the honor is mine. All right and thank you to everyone, we appreciate you listening and stay tuned to our next show on revenue check. Our next episode is with Pinchas Taylor, the mechanics of positive thinking, all right thanks again and until next time remember you can make life better for yourself and everyone choose wisely