Episode 51.Reflecting on a Successful Season One and Anticipating Exciting Changes for Season Two

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Welcome to True Crime and Authors Podcast, where we bring two passions together. The show that gives new meaning to the old adage, truth is stranger than fiction. Here's your host, David McClam. What's going on everybody and welcome to another episode of True Crime and Authors. Of course, I am your man, David McClam. Hey, if you guys haven't already, make sure you follow us on all of our social media.

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One link to a link tree would get you every link you need to have pertaining to the show. Alright guys, so we are here. This is the end of season one. I wanted to come back and say thank you to a bunch of people and to let you know what's going to happen and what to look forward to when season two begins this fall. Let's get started.

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Man, season one was tremendous. I am deeply humbled that those of you that are listening now, even if you just started, that you are here. When I started this journey a little over 10 1 1 2 months ago, I did not know where it was going to go. If you are not new to the show, you know my history when it comes to podcasting. And if you are new, if you listen to the early episodes,

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You also know, but in short, I've been doing this now for just a little over five and a half years. I started at YouTube before then where I spent a better part of 13 years being a part of the rock band video game community. When I ventured out on this concept, it was a brand new concept that I saw no one else doing and it totally merged two things that I loved. I did not know where it was going to go.

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Let me tell you within just the first couple of interviews that I did, especially with the fabulous of Donna Humphrey, the flood gates opened. I had authors coming in from everywhere in large part, thanks to genius books. And the train just kept rolling and it didn't stop there. Then, as you know, in the middle of the season, right around episode 22,

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I decided to throw a third leg in and we called that extraordinary people. Now it wasn't baked in a hundred percent because it was kind of a test. I want to know if I was going to be able to get folks to come on to want to tell their stories. I know I wanted them to so that I can inspire you guys by them, but you never know what happens in new legs. So we call those bonus episodes. These were just extra episodes that you guys were going to get.

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on top of the regular episodes that I was already producing every week. Now somebody asked me, did that create more work? Yes, it did. But it was work that I was happy to do because of the outcome, because of the extraordinary people that I've talked to, because of the stories that I've uncovered, because of you, the listener, we are now baking that into the platform. So no longer would extraordinary people be bonus is going to be part of

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the show, which leads to the name change, because there will be one. But I'll tell you what that is, right after I thank some of these wonderful people. The first person I do wanna thank is God. God is the ruler of my life. As you guys know, I am a Christian. I don't do everything right. I am far from a perfect Christian. I receive more grace on a daily basis.

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then I deserve, I mess up each and every day. But somehow the good Lord decides to wake me up and to continue blessing me. And I'm forever grateful for that. Grateful for my family, especially the three that lives in the house with me, my wife Beth, my daughter Madison, my son Jacob. They are the ones that are the most greatly affected by what I do because of the time in which I have to spend between my regular job and here. So I thank them.

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for their patience and for keeping me going. I will also love to thank, cannot do this episode without thanking this man. If I ever truly had a number one fan outside of my family, it is definitely Mr. Scott Collard. Scott Collard is a coworker that has become a great friend to me and he has listened to every single episode.

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of True Crime and Authors since the day we started last year. He also is my sounding board because he also lets me know what he thinks about the show and things that I can improve on or things that he as a listener would like to see. So Scott, thank you. Your opinions has been invaluable and I can't thank you enough, your wife, your friends and whoever else you got listening to the show for listening to the show.

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I also want to give a big shout out to Alex Sanfilippo and his wife, Alicia. They are the owners of pod pros, which have underneath that has a couple of businesses pod match being one podcast. S O P being number two pod match is where I get a lot of my guests from now. It's a platform that when it was unveiled to me, cause I seen

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I was kind of skeptical. And then once I tried it, man, it is phenomenal. I could not really do my show as well as I do without pod match and the pod pros team also podcasts. S O P this is also part of Alex's pod pros, which is basically a tracker. It helps me keep track of every episode across how many shows I have. I set the tasks I need to do. I set the dates and I check those off. It keeps me on task.

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So I can just put all the episodes I have coming up, give them a number, and I know where I'm at on that particular file and what's done. And if I have a team, I can delegate things to them. So podcast SOP has also been a big help. I could not do my show without that. So Alex and Alicia, I thank you guys very much. Now on to what I consider the main stars of my show.

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I know my name is on it. I know I'm introduced every week, but I am truly not the star of the show. The star of my show is the authors that has taken the time to come on the show. Talk to me, talk to you, let you know about their books. All of them has been very candid with you. They didn't leave anything on the table. You know more about these authors probably.

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than a lot of their readers did before they came on the show. And also my extraordinary people. Couldn't do it without them. The stories that we've heard this year has been invaluable. I hope you guys have learned a lot from those. And if you went through anything like this that you've heard on the show this year, that you could take from them and you can learn how to live life after that. So what I wanna do is I wanna thank each one individually.

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and I'm going to name them off for you. And then I'm gonna tell you exactly how many authors and extraordinary people we talked to this year. So in order of appearance on the show, I wanna thank author Nicole M. Wilden, Kirsten Modulin, LaDonna Humphrey, Sarah J. Rader, Eugene Napoleon, Shannon Jump, Jamie Gehring, David Dean, Alicia Lockhart.

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Steve Rush, Sarah Ennis, A.J. Campbell, Billy the Liquor Guy, Jim Birkenstatt, Laura Quinn, Stephanie Jordan, Bonnie Fawn, Tony Reed, Patrick Shattuck, Lauren M. Leisure, Dane Cobain, Detective Danny R. Smith, Michael Siwa, Shirley Novak, Kendall Lehman, Matt Whitten.

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Fred M. Cray, Wendy Sand Echol, Kate Flora, and C. Joan Baker. All my authors, thank you. And for those of you that took your time to send me a book and you signed it for me, I wanna let you know it is in my bookshelf, I cherish those. I go out and buy the digital versions just so I keep those pristine. So thank you very much.

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And now some of you was counting. That was 30 authors that we talked to within the last 10 and a half months. And now to thank my extraordinary people. Also an order of appearance, Edward Miski, Stephanie Jordan, Guy Morris, Robert Kerbeck, Alicia Lockhart, Dr. Victoria Corre, Cheryl I love Fitz Kohler.

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Jimmy Taro, Susan Snow, Tyler Foley, and Eileen Santos. 12 extraordinary people that we've talked to in the last 10 and a half months. That means that I've talked to 42 people this year. I've conducted 42 interviews for season one.

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Now, if you look at the ticket, that means you have 66 total episodes that we were able to provide for you in this season. That includes every true crime show that I also did. It has been a very busy season and without those 42 people that I just named, I could not do this show without them. Now, I do want to tell you that the main reason I do this is for what you've heard this season.

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I love to tell people stories. Extraordinary people came about because I wanted to give you guys some hope because I've been through stuff myself, domestic violence and violence from a parent being my father. And I know their stories gave me a lot of hope too with that. But one of the main reasons I do this is because I want to inspire people and make friends and hopefully meet some of these good people. And just recently, I got a chance to actually meet Susan Snow. Now, as you guys may know,

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I do have extraordinary people and I have authors that fit both bills. I decide under what leg to bring them on depending on their story. In Susan Snow's case, she is an author. Just like Alicia Lockhart, co-author of the book Strangled with LaDonna Humphrey, came back as an extraordinary person because of her story of surviving death fetish. Well, Susan Snow, in the same vein, wrote a fabulous book called The Other Side of the

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brutal murder of her father when she was 17. I got a chance to meet Susan when she was here visiting recently to do a book signing and it was extraordinary. Everything that you hear on the podcast episode with Susan Snow is exactly who she is. She's a very lovely woman, she's very personable and even though it's been 30 years plus, she still feels the weight and the power and the sadness

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of what happened. So when you read those words in that book, I can tell you because I've actually stood next to her, oh boy, it's real. So I want to thank you, Susan, your wonderful husband Matt, your niece Josie, who also got to meet those two extraordinary people. If you guys have not went out and got a copy of the other side of the gun, as well as every other book that is all these show notes from my authors, go out and do that. Once again, Susan, thank you.

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for letting me know you was in town. It was an honor to meet you. Keep doing what you are doing. I know that writing the other side of the gun and you telling your truth has come at a cost. But in the long run, you will see, and I hope you see now, that it will all be worth it. All right, so I won't tease you anymore, because I said I'll tell you in a minute what the new name of the show is going to be. So let me drop that on you.

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And then I'll tell you what to expect from the rest of season two. The name of the show I feel should encapsulate exactly what the show is. This way, if you look at the title of a show, you know exactly what you are going to get. So when this show started, the name of the show being true crime and authors.

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And if you went to the very first episode, which was entitled, what to expect, I told you exactly what to expect. You was going to have one week, true crime, one week author. Some weeks you got two, three authors because I had so many. I had to get them out. And just for the record, every author that I interviewed for season one, they made it out in season one. So all the authors you're going to hear in season two is going to be brand new. When I added extraordinary people, the name true common authors didn't fit anymore.

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Even though Extraordinary People was a pilot at the time, it caught on. So now I must change the name. So you probably already guessed what it is. The due date of the show now is going to be True Crime, Authors, and Extraordinary People. Now that I have made that name public to you, you are going to see some things that's going to start happening. The first thing you're going to see is the name will change sometime after this episode drops.

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Now for you as my listener, that means you don't have to do anything. The RSS feed will be the same, the episodes will stay the same, your places will be the same, the name will just change. Also, I'm not gonna make you wait another six weeks for this. I'm gonna go ahead and drop the new art that I have had constructed for season two and going forward. As you probably have guessed,

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That means the show is getting totally rebranded. Quick story there, I went back to the same people that I've used before in the past. I tried to get them to rebrand my logos for me because the name needed to be changed. I didn't want to really change the show because I'm a believer that once you get an audience that gets used to your logo and your theme music and everything that's there,

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It bakes into your brain. So when you hear the first beat of my theme music, you know that it's true crime and authors, right? Well, I ran into some problems with that. As sad as it is, you know, I reached out to the original artist. The job that was done was very shoddy. I mean, you should have saw it, dude. It was just like, they just enlarged some words in white and threw it up there. I'm like, I can't, it's like, I can't use this cause it would totally just ruin the brand of the show.

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After trying to work with that person, I had to go find a new artist. Then same thing with the theme music. Went back to the same guy I've been using forever. He decided to stop answering me, but everything happens for a reason. And I think that what you're going to see and hear in season two, you're going to like, I finally got something done that I've always wanted to do. I'll let that be a secret until you actually hear. And then I tell you what it is, but just let's say I have a whole new team.

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All right, so my new artist name is Arslan. And just like everybody else, I found him over on Fiverr. He goes by the name Moazam J. He did a fabulous job. So I hope that you like what you see. It is gonna be the new logo going forward. I'm not one of those people that like to rebrand every couple of years or every six months. Matter of fact, in the book that I'm writing, I talk about the dangers of rebranding.

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almost fell out of my chair when I went to a recent podcast convention and I heard a lady say that she actually has rebranded her show five times in 12 months. And I kind of cringe. I'm like, I don't know how anybody's keeping up with what podcast is what have you branding that much. So rebranding can be dangerous. But that's your first sneak peek into season two. Arslan's work will be on display. You're going to see the cover art change along with the title. Same show, just preparing you.

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for season two. All right, so with that being said, what other things can you look forward going down in season two and then I'll be out of your hair for a little while and I will tell you at the end exactly what date season two will begin. The one thing that we're gonna talk about now, which I didn't talk about a lot in season one, is of course, monetization. Just to kind of let you guys know a little bit behind the scenes of what us as podcasters do.

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It is not as easy as grabbing a microphone and sitting behind a desk and we just upload things and that's it. As a matter of fact, another thing I'm talking about in my book, it kills me when I see people saying you can start a podcast from a phone. You can, but it's really not that easy if it's something that you are looking to do full time. Then you also have to keep in mind of what those files on your phone is going to sound like if you decide that you want to use that.

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to upload that sound is everything. Those of us that does this for a living or for a side job or whatever you wanna call it, we take our sound very seriously. So there's a lot that goes into that. Some AI technology, some sound technology when it comes to plugins and when it comes to boost and things of that nature. Microphones that range from anywhere from $50 up to $400. Interfaces.

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that can cost anywhere from 80 bucks all the way up to a couple thousand dollars. These are things that you don't see behind the scenes. If your podcaster does not have a computer that can do rendering, rendering is basically you put a file together and then you tell it you want it to put it as one file that's called rendering. If your computer is not fast enough to do that, that could take a number of hours in which to complete. So there's a lot of things

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that goes into podcasting. That is why you hear a lot of your podcasters and YouTubers say, rate, comment, subscribe, you know, if you can support the show and we make ways for that to happen just to give you my own personal journey and five years of doing this, I have switched equipment three times. I have switched microphones four times. I have upgraded my monitor twice. And I've upgraded my computer setup.

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twice just to kind of give you a little insight of what that is. And that's just the equipment. Plus not to mention software for editing. If you're doing editing yourself, if you're outsourcing, editing, outsourcing, editing can be expensive depending on who you find. I do teach in my book that you should actually edit your own show first. Because of the fact that if you edit your own show, then you know how to tell other people to edit the show and you know what to look for. But. All of that goes into.

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making this podcast also with time. And that's one of the main reasons I am writing the book I keep mentioning is because the fact that a lot of people don't know the time factor in which it takes to put a podcast together. So if you do like what you hear, and if you do like the job I'm doing, and you love coming to hear the show, nothing's gonna change, the show's gonna still be free to you.

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However, I do have some ways that are a little bit premium for you if you decide to support the show. One of those things will be ad free episodes. So for you, what that means is all the ads that you keep hearing, they become necessary because that is what helps us as podcasters pay the bills and it helps us keep going. If we're getting support from our audience, we don't know if we need those. So we can give you ad free episodes.

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I will be signing up with Supercast. And with Supercast, what I love about them is you can actually try it. So I'm gonna give you a seven day trial period on Supercast to try out all of the content we gonna have there. Now to kinda let you know what's gonna happen is I'm gonna go back and I'm gonna upload every episode from season one at free.

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Now let me tell you what ad free means in season one versus season two. So you don't come back and go, Oh, he duped us in season one. There was some baked ads that I can't go back and take out. However, they were not as necessarily selling things. They were ads talking about other podcasts. So like when I was a part of the deluxe edition network, which I know I haven't told you guys about that. Tell you guys about that here at the very end as well. When I was a part of the deluxe edition network.

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You heard something in the beginning that said that I was a part of that. And then towards the middle end or whatever, you would hear me recommend a podcast from that or there was podcasts over the month. Those with season one will still be there. I will still encourage you. Go check out the podcast that I mentioned. Go check out the Den Network. They're still great people over there. I did not leave there in any kind of malice. So please go and check those out.

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In season two, you won't have any of those because now I'll be producing the files fresh. I know that we're doing this now. And so I'm able to make precautions. As a matter of fact, with the last episodes of season one, I have already set that up. So all I got to do is upload the file and it's ready to go. So Supercast, you get a seven day free trial. It's going to be as low as $5 a month. And then I will also have a yearly price.

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And what this is going to do is you don't have to change your podcast player at all. Any podcast player you have works for Supercast, but you're going to get a new special icon, you're going to get the logo. It's going to have premium at the top. So you know exactly what feed is yours. There I'm going to release episodes early. There will be episodes that's going to be released just to Supercast subscribers that no one else is ever going to hear. I will never make them public. Whether that is a case.

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whether it is a special interview, I will never make that public is only gonna be for my Supercast audience. So you're gonna get ad free, you're gonna get early uploads, and you're going to get special episodes just for Supercast. I hope that you subscribe to that and be a part of that. And as season two gets closer and all of that's done, I will roll out for you.

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how you can sign up for that. Also, we will have a Patreon. Now Patreon is gonna be a little bit different because over there, what I'm gonna do is I'm going to upload video interviews. So if you subscribe to Patreon, you're gonna get the interviews that you hear and you're gonna see the interview because I'm gonna upload the video there.

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That will start at $5 a month. You will have a tier where you can just support the show for as low as $1. Now I can only start that though with season two content, which I'm already in the beginnings of shooting now, because I don't have all the video footage from season one. Sometimes there was glitches. So starting with season two's content, you will have video exclusives.

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Also, I'll be doing special video things over there just for my patron audience. Some behind the scenes, some of what I go through. Maybe I'll show you guys what editing is like. Maybe we'll talk about what's going on daily in my daily life or what's leading up to the podcast. Sometimes there's episodes that I really have a deeper thought that really bugged me that goes past the 20 minutes or an hour that I have, I'll put all of those on Patreon live and charge and video when you guys can see me. So.

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Supercast and Patreon. And I'm also in the middle of getting merchandise. So I'm gonna be setting up a merchandise account. We're gonna do some t-shirts. We're gonna do some mugs, things, all those kind of things. There'll be something set up on Patreon too, that if you go to a certain tier, you will automatically get your gift. You'll get a gift from that. So whether that's a t-shirt mug, we'll let you choose what you want to get. And then we can get that sent to you.

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Now the thing with Patreon, what I'm understanding is that you have to be subscribed to that tier for so long before Patreon will allow us to give the gift out. There's some change made with Patreon, I don't know if that's still the case, but we'll find out, but usually that is the case. But I'm going to have season one and season two logo shirts over there. So if you want to get the old logo or the new one going forward, there'd be some that has some of my sayings on there, all kinds of things. So that's to look forward to.

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And then of course, we still have buy me a coffee. If you just don't want any of that, you just want to support the show. And you can go to buy me a coffee, which I've had that since season one. I'll be linking that all the time now where you can go and drop as low as $1 and as much as you want over there. If you just want to support the show. So those are the four things you have.

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to look forward to when it comes to monetization. If you want to help out, all those things are going to be fabulous. They're all going to be on time. And I think that you're going to enjoy what you're going to get from Patreon as well as from Supercast as well. So I thank you in advance. Quickly, I said, I would tell you about the DEN Network. I decided to leave the Deluxe Edition Network, I think about a month ago. That's why you guys stopped hearing the advertisements. Nothing to do with them.

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Fabulous folks, fabulous people, no malice. It was just that with the timeframe that I have, the show was getting ready to go on hiatus for a few weeks and the demands that you should have in the network, I could not keep up at that point in time. So I stepped aside. So I wanted to let you guys know that because somebody did come and say, what happened with you and the Lux? I don't hear the intro anymore. So that's what happened. So one of the persons I wanna thank is Kate Floor. Kate Floor is the author of Finding Amy.

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And we recently released her episode. She's episode 47, which is entitled Behind the Crime Story, author Kay Flora. Here's why I'm thanking her. The sayings of what they call tag phrases that I have at the end of the show is not something I just throw out there because I wanna throw them out there. It's something that I really mean from the heart and these are mantras that I live by.

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And I want to leave you guys with those because what I say at the end, I feel like is very important to always remember. If you remember, especially staying humbled, you will go a long way in life. Well, when I interviewed Kay Flora, we had a conversation at the end of the show and she said that she really liked my sayings, but she felt I was missing one. So she said, I think you should throw kindness in there because we need to remind people that we always need to be kind.

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So, Kay Flora is the reason why it went from two to three. When I say act of kindness can make someone's day, that was Kay Flora's idea to throw kindness in there. I wanted to give credit where credit is due. So thank you, Kate, for that. It really does fit well with the show and you're absolutely right. We always need to remind people to be kind.

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All right guys, with that said, thank you. Thank you, thank you for being with me this year.

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It's been a long, long journey. And here's what you guys may not know. And I don't know if I mentioned at the beginning of the show, but I'm gonna tell you this now. This show has meant a lot to me over the last year when I started it, because the date that True Crime Monolith was started was September 5th on 2022.

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I lost my mother September 4th of 2020. So those days being so close, I started, I decided to do this podcast thinking about her and she really liked when I was doing David crime and things of that nature. So this podcast is a lot more significance to me than, you know, if I have nobody listening to this show, so I didn't give you guys stats. I know what the stats are, how many people downloaded and all that. That's not important.

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The importance is if only one person listens to this show and they take something from it and my authors get you to go buy their books because they're great and you learn some from the extraordinary people this year and it bettered your life and you felt like that at the end of the day by listening to true crime and authors that your life was somewhat better, that's all I can ask for. So I thank you for sticking around. I thank you for doing.

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This concept with me, it was brand new when it came out. It still kind of is. Cause I'm still the only one that does what I do on this show. So thank you. I do hope you take me up on my offers to help me with the show. Once those things are done, I will come back and I will let you know where you can find all the links from. That will probably be in a few weeks when I do a what to expect in season two. And I have some good people coming up for you in season two.

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Just to wet your whistle, one of the people that we're going to be talking to this year, one of my extraordinary people survived being in a cult and her parents were a part of one of the biggest cults of all time being the Jim Jones in the Guyana tragedy, just to wet your appetite. So we have coming down the line here this season.

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Alright, once again, thank you. I appreciate each of you listening to the show. I definitely could not do this without you, without my authors, without my extraordinary people. If you have a story that you want to tell, please come on the show. If you go to TrueCrimeAndAuthors.com, if you click up in the header right at the top, there's a link that says authors guest episode booking. If you click that and it takes you right to my calendar.

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and you can book yourself a date. If you know of authors that you would like to see me try to track down and get on my show, let me know and I will do that. If you have an episode suggestion, you can send me an email, truecommonauthors.gmail.com or you can go right to truecommonauthors.com on the right hand side and click send me a voicemail and you can actually talk to me if you want to do that instead of sending me an email. Also, make sure you go over and join the Facebook group.

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That's gonna become big in season two. There is a Facebook group, it's always linked. It's at the end of the episode. I'll make sure it's linked down in this episode. Go join the Facebook group. That is the easiest way to get a hold of me. I go over there and check all the time. Me and you can talk, you can comment on the cases, you can suggest things over there. It'll be real time for you and I can get to you more easily. So go join the Facebook group. One last thing.

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When does season two begin? Well you may have already guessed it. Season two is going to begin on the one year birthday of True Crime and Authors, which will be Tuesday, September 5th. That's when your first episode of season two will drop. Remember though, you will soon see the artwork and the name of the show will change now that I've made that public so no one else goes in to steal it.

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And I forgot to mention that the social handles are not going to change. It's a pain in the neck to go changing domains and all of that. So the same links you have now for the show will continuously be the same links. Those won't change just the name.

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All right guys, with that said, I hope that you are being good to yourself, taking care of yourself. If you are in California, I hope you're staying cool. Or if you're in another state that is hot like this one, I hope you're hydrating and staying cool and taking care of yourself. Always be good to yourself and each other. And for the last time this season, always remember, always stay humble.

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An act of kindness can make someone's day. A little love and compassion can go a long way. And this is the podcast where two passions becomes one. Thank you all. I love each and every one of you and I will catch you September 5th for season two. Thank you for listening to True Crime and Authors. Don't forget to rate, comment, and subscribe. Join us on social media.

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on Facebook at True Crime and Authors, on Twitter at Authors True, on YouTube and TikTok at True Crime and Authors, and email at truecrimeandauthors at gmail.com. Cover art and logo designed by Dazzling Underscore Ray from Fiverr. Sound mixing and editing by David McClam, intro script by Sophie Wild from Fiverr. And I'm the voice guy, your imaging guy from Fiverr. See you next time.

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on True Crime and Authors.