Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
My day job is being a small business owner with my wife, Stephanie. We have two daughters, one who is finishing up college another one about to start college. This is my first book, though I have been writing articles for years.
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
The Blockchain Code: Decrypt the Jungle of Complexity to Win the Crypto-Anarchy Game. I serve on the Technology Advisory Group for the State Bar of Arizona and was repeatedly asked to write and educate the legal community about Blockchain and began writing an article. It was impossible to do justice to the topic in an article, so I wrote a book about it. I was shocked by many of the details as I wrote the book and I explain this in greater detail in the Preface and Introduction to the book.
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
I take complex concepts and pare them down to their core elements so that they may be understood. Few topics are as complicated as Blockchain and cryptocurrency, so for The Blockchain Code, I worked on making my chapters as short and focused as possible so that each concept could be understood. As I wrote this book, I continually looked at the word count of each chapter, working to shorten it. In some cases, this encouraged me to break up a section into two more focused chapters. Less is more. Concise writing is a sign of clear thinking.
What authors, or books have influenced you?
Michael Lewis’ The Big Short and Dan Brown’s The DaVinci Code were very influential in creating my first book, The Blockchain Code. I describe Brown’s influence in the Preface and Lewis’ impact in the Introduction of the book. I also read Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass while it was being written. I felt like I had gone through the looking glass myself, so to speak, while writing about Crypto-Anarchy, cryptocurrency, and Blockchain. It is such a strange world.
What are you working on now?
As I write this, I’ve just published The Blockchain Code. So, I’m busy promoting it as well as my day job, running an IT consulting and outsourcing business based in Phoenix, Arizona.
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
I am still working on how to promote my book. However, I have two websites: modern.expert and blockchaincodebook.com. Modern Expert is my author/publisher/consultant/speaker site. The blockchaincodebook.com is dedicated to the book. I have social media accounts and the amazon.com page where my book is sold. I’m open to suggestions or feedback from others on promoting my book. Book promotion is a new experience for me as a first-time author.
Do you have any advice for new authors?
I spent a bunch of time planning my book, figuring out how to organize it, and got hung up for far too long on some chapters early on trying to make it perfect. Planning is very important, but especially when writing a book, having more content written early on may help you better understand what it is that you are writing.
There are some chapters that I wrote and then discarded. This process was incredibly valuable as it helped me understand what I was not writing about. For my next book, I will spend less time planning and more time writing out of the gate. It may be easier to organize what you have already written than it is to force your words to fit into a plan that will likely be altered anyway. The more I wrote, the easier it was to understand the structure of the book that was required to convey the message.
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
To always assume that everyone is going through some private, personal struggle that you know nothing about. Be kind, be patient, and be helpful where you can.
What are you reading now?
At the immediate moment, I’m taking a brief break from reading a new book, but I am reading quite a few articles on Blockchain and cryptocurrency developments that are helpful as I present and write articles that help educate on the topic and promote my book. I read both non-fiction and fiction books, though generally more non-fiction than fiction.
What’s next for you as a writer?
For now, I’m busy promoting my book. Speaking and writing articles about the book and the topic are both important right now. What will the next book be? We’ll see…
If you were going to be stranded on a desert island and allowed to take 3 or 4 books with you what books would you bring?
These are not books that I routinely re-read, but if I was going to be stranded on a desert island, I would probably bring The Bible and The Road Less Travelled by M. Scott Peck. Maybe To Kill a Mockingbird and The Hunger Games to mix it up. I’d probably bring a copy of The Blockchain Code so that I could keep working on it until it’s “perfect”. It was hard to call the book finished, but you have to at some point.
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