Joey Puente Will Help You Find Your Favorite Book

This is a machine-generated transcript. There will be errors. The audio file is the record of the episode.

HOST INTRO

Picture this. You walk into a bookstore that doesn't just sell books. It radiates community energy. Where the staff just doesn't recommend titles. They know the genres you love. Where author events aren't just readings, they're cultural happenings. Welcome to Diesel, an independent neighborhood bookstore in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles. Some of the authors Diesel has hosted include Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, William Gibson, particularly relevant to the conversation we're about to have, and a recent event with Walter Mosley discussing his latest Easy Rawlings mystery. They're hosting Cory Doctorow on the week that we're recording this episode.

Lee Schneider (01:04.524)
I'm delighted to welcome Joey Puente, Diesel's sci-fi specialist, into the future lab.

Lee Schneider (00:36.064)
So, Joey, welcome to the podcast. It's great to have you here.

Joey Puente (00:40.374)
Thank you very much.

Lee Schneider (00:42.07)
So tell me a little bit about Diesel. What kind of store is it?

Joey Puente (00:46.388)
Yeah, so we're a neighborhood bookstore. That's what we like to bill ourselves as, serving the West Side, Santa Monica, Brentwood areas. And we're a general bookstore, so we don't specialize in any specific kind of book. We do the whole gamut, all new books, not known to use stuff. So we are just

booksellers. want people who love books and people who live in the communities in which they are selling the books. you know, so definitely a conversation with the community around us, as so to speak, of what books get carried and what books get sold, what books come back in, what books don't sell, etc. We have been at our current location for since 2008.

That was when Diesel in Brentwood opened. But Diesel, as far as an entity, has existed since 1989, and with the first store in Emeryville, and then in Oakland, which until last year, last August, existed still in the same spot. It was purchased by the longtime manager and

shifted into becoming a different bookstore, East Bay Booksellers. And then last August, it burned down, which was crazy. And they found a new location on the same street about a half mile away. there's still East Bay Booksellers, Desol One, basically, still exists in some form and not owned by the original owners, but by manager Brad.

great guy. And there's been other diesels throughout history. There was two in Malibu, in 2003, was the first one in Malibu. And then in 2011, I believe, yeah, 2011 was the second Malibu store. And then there's been one in Larkspur, and that was in

Joey Puente (03:10.294)
trying to think of when that was. That was in 2012, 2013, around there. That one no longer is around. was, that's now, it was a BookSync and now I guess BookSync was bought by Barnes & Noble recently. So that's an interesting shift in transition for Barnes & And then there was one other one which is still owned by the original owners.

in San Diego in the Del Mar area and they changed their name to Camino Books but it's the original owners from 1989 from the original Diesel And then last August Richard Turner bought this Diesel in Brentwood and that's this is the Diesel name still but everybody who works here worked here before. I've personally worked at Diesel since 2005. This is this month actually.

is my 20th anniversary at Diesel. So I like what I do. That's,

Lee Schneider (04:14.229)
That's awesome. I had no idea that long tangled history of the Diesel bookstore.

Joey Puente (04:18.846)
Yeah, it's been a journey. And I have worked at all the, I have done shifts and worked at all the different Diesels throughout the time of Diesel. I put books on the shelves, I've opened the bookstores, I've painted walls, put boxes in my car, driven them to the spots. I've done everything.

Lee Schneider (04:23.723)
Wow.

Lee Schneider (04:44.471)
Wow. So this almost demands the question, what keeps you in this? What's, what is the attraction for you?

Joey Puente (04:53.782)
I love books. I love reading. I love being able to find the right book for the right person at the right time. And that is honestly one of my great joys is to be able to take disparate bits of information from people like, hey, what do you like? like, I like this, this, this, this. I'm like, I know the book that you want to read right now. And I can, it doesn't even have to be

about what kind of books you like to read. It's more of what do you like in general kind of thing. And I can be like, OK, well, because you told me these things, I believe that this would be the book. And having someone light up when I tell them about the book that I'm handing them and they're like, this is perfect. How did you know? And that's like,

Yeah, yeah, I feel it. Like, I really feel the connection there. And so many times people come back and they'd be like, that book that you recommended to me was amazing. How did you know that was the book that I needed right now? And it's just, know, it's a, you know, it's an art, it's a little bit of science, it's a little bit of, you know, social engineering and what in a certain way, or, you know, I'm building rapport with somebody and then I'm, I'm enthusiastic about something and that enthusiasm.

translates. like, so if I'm enthusiastic about something, people will get enthusiastic back. And so it's, it's a, there's a little bit, it's like some finesse to it. But yeah, yeah, that's just being able to, to get people the thing that they will love. I love curating. I curate like everything. So, you know, I, I like to like make mixtapes. I've always liked making mixtapes, things like that. Just like, okay, here's what's the vibe. What are we doing? Here's

here's what the party is gonna be like. And just being able to do that kind of a thing. But here's a book. It's a different, it's the same sort of thing. It just works differently.

Lee Schneider (06:52.906)
That's fun.

Lee Schneider (07:02.017)
Well, when you go as a reader, when you go into a bookstore, seeing those staff picks, whether they're verbally done as you're doing it, or there's a little section of staff picks, that's one of the fun things about the bookstore experience, that someone actually has a passion for picking out the book. If you're left to your own devices, what genres do you read in?

Joey Puente (07:24.198)
yeah, yeah.

Joey Puente (07:28.438)
I read fantasy, I read sci-fi, I love those genres. love the fantastical, I love the magical. love the feeling of also looking forward and seeing, know, what can we look forward to in the world? what can we, like, it's obviously there's a little bit of escapism for it.

But it's also, like, I live in the real world. Reading books about the real world doesn't super interest me unless it's something really compelling. I'm more interested in exploring ideas and, like, big ideas, big things, big worlds.

Lee Schneider (08:14.081)
What's on your staff pick list right now?

Joey Puente (08:17.588)
Right now, my staff pick list is The Daughter's War by Christopher Buhlmann. That book is one of the most incredible books that I've read recently. it's a fantasy novel that made me feel like fantasy can say more and be about more than just being

you know, swords, dragons, wizards, you know, and it can, uh, it's, it's so full of grief and beauty and the loss and the worthiness of loving things that you will lose. And all of that is within a backdrop of a fantasy war with goblins and

a unit of a military unit of women training giant birds to fight the goblins. Like, so like if I say it that way, it sounds crazy. What are you talking about? But it's when you actually get into it. I I honestly forgot that it was written by a person by a man and that this the main character Galva was not a real woman telling me her experience in the war that you know, and so

Lee Schneider (09:26.625)
Yeah

Joey Puente (09:46.943)
that kind of separation just made that book incredible. it was one of the, I read it and I was just, this is a huge moment for me. I gave me the same feeling that I got when the first time I read Patrick Rothfuss, Name of the Wind. And when I read that one for the first time, got the feeling that, this is the moment for fantasy too. It can be very literary, doesn't have to be

about the same sort of thing. It doesn't have to be about the epic journey to the slay the dragon. It can be very, you know, can have a smaller story with bigger implications and bigger impacts, but you can also be very literary with it. And you can have very, your writing can be beautiful and you don't have to fall to the normal convention kind of thing. And then,

Lee Schneider (10:41.281)
Hmm. How did this all how this all get started? Are you going to give me another one on the list? All right, give me. Yeah. So let me just feed that feed a question in there. Well, I'll do a little at it. So what else is on the list?

Joey Puente (10:47.218)
yeah, I was gonna keep going.

Joey Puente (10:57.214)
So, other things on the list right now, I'm just thinking to myself, that is in the store. the other thing is that I think it's, it's a book that's impossible to talk about, but it is so incredibly good. It's called comfort me with apples. It's by Catherine Valente. And you can't talk about the book because anything you say kind of spoils it in a way.

And it's a book that you just have to read and experience. And when you read it, you have to just read it through. can't look up anything. You can't Google any words that you're like, what does that mean? That sounds familiar. You just have to read it. It's only about 120 pages, so you can do it in a couple hours. And then you read it, and then you go, I have to talk about this with somebody, but I don't have anyone to talk about it with. So you send your text to all your friends.

Download this book right now, read it. We have to talk about it. Don't look up anything. Don't read the jacket. Don't read reviews. Don't look at the back. Just read it. And then you'll start reading it again just because you want to see the things that you missed the first time to catch it again. And by the time you finish it that second time, your friends will been finished reading it the first time. And then they're going to start texting you. And then you have a whole group chat going crazy.

I call it, short but not sweet. it's just, it's a very different book. And to me, it's like a thorn in my mind. I think about it all the time, but I can't articulate it until someone else has read it. like, it's like a, like kind of like a virus maybe in that way. But yeah, I made all my friends read it. And then they're like, why'd you make me read this? That was crazy. That was so good. And now we have to talk about it. And like,

Joey Puente (12:52.63)
Yes. And then just to, as a swerve, another book on my, my recommend is Priya's Kitchen Adventures. And that is a world cookbook for kids, for young chefs. So it's got, it's really great because it's got recipes for all over the world. And what I love about it is that it gives you picture steps. So this is what, you know,

Lee Schneider (12:54.398)
That's great.

Joey Puente (13:22.752)
so many cookbooks, just list, right? Even cookbooks for kids just list what you're supposed to do. And this one has pictures for every step of like, here's what it should look like. Here's what this part should look like. Here's what this part should look like. And then it also gives you instructions on here's how you cut a bell pepper. Here's how you prep this. Here's how you do spices. Here's how you do garlic. And so many cookbooks just assume that. They don't teach you anything about like knife skills or how to work with

Lee Schneider (13:37.185)
Hmm.

Joey Puente (13:52.437)
what you have and et cetera, so on. I feel it's just such a good cookbook for young people, obviously, to learn cooking who are interested in cooking, but also just adults too who just never really were told and just assumed that, hey, here's how you do it.

Lee Schneider (14:13.741)
Fascinating. we'll we'll all get you get the links or at least get the right titles from you later, because I'd like to put those into the show notes. So what got you started in your appreciation of science fiction and fantasy? Was there a book you read as a kid or later or when did that happen?

Joey Puente (14:22.592)
Yeah, absolutely.

Joey Puente (14:33.758)
As far as I can remember, it's what I've been interested in since way back when I was I was born in the 80s. I was very I was born in 1980, so. I remember. Getting my first computer like a Tandy Radio Shack Tandy with the cartridge things in the slot and plugged into TV. I think I was.

five or six when I got one of those. I didn't know what I was doing. I was just typing. I learned how to change the color of the background. I've always been interested in technology. My grandfather is a scientist and he has always been very also on the cutting edge of tech and things like that. He always had gadgets and he would go to China and Japan and Hong Kong when I

all the time when I was growing up. And that was when those places were center of technology. Everything cool was made in Japan for the longest time. And he'd bring back all these crazy gadgets and things like that. And he would show me things that, eight, nine, 10, I'm blowing my mind. He gave me a Game Boy before they came out in the States, because he got it from Japan. And because he went he physically went to Japan and he saw the Gameboy and he brought me one back. And so it's always it's always been a thing. It's always been an interest. It's always been a passion. It's always been part of, you know, what I've been doing and who I am. And I think I think the first like real sci fi novel that I read was third grade and it was 20,000 leagues under the sea. And I remember reading it. I don't remember anything about it. I don't think I understood a word, but I was fascinated at the same time of the whole idea of like the Nautilus, the ship that is a squid and is in the old time and how

Lee Schneider (16:31.533)
Mm-hmm.

Lee Schneider (16:37.623)
Haha.

Joey Puente (16:56.262)
funky futuristic that it was even though I was eight years old and I really didn't have the kind of perspective that I do now. But it was so fascinating to me that these worlds existed and that's what I wanted to exist within. Yeah.

Lee Schneider (17:14.049)
That's fun. It's great to think about how a Jules Verne title with what I'm getting at is his worldview. What was mind blowing at the time? Is a ship that's like a squid or even a ship that can go underwater at all and stay underwater for a long, long time and the way he imagined what was there. It seems like today's

Joey Puente (17:36.384)
and it's

Joey Puente (17:42.474)
Yeah, yeah.

Lee Schneider (17:44.184)
Today's science fiction and fantasy people, there's just so much that is already weird. You wonder how they even decide what to write about.

Joey Puente (17:56.843)
Well, I read somewhere that science fiction is a time capsule. And while as much as it's looking forward into the future, it very much represents our concerns and our anxieties and what we're worried about in the now, right, in the moment. And if you watch something, if you watch a sci-fi movie from the 80s and you watch it today,

They have completely different priorities for what is an anxiety. Like, the running man. Have you watched the running man recently? So the running man opens, well, in the Bakersfield massacre, blah, blah, blah, blah. But when he goes to jail, when he goes to prison, the prison camp is called the Wilshire Exclusion Zone. So that's...

Lee Schneider (18:36.203)
Not recently, but I know what you mean, yeah.

Joey Puente (18:53.984)
here. That's that's I'm in it. I'm in the open air prison area that was in the Running Man. The TV station, the TV station is the building that they filmed is in Culver City. It used to be the Sony Pictures building. It's the Culver one now. But that that was the TV station. That's where they everything happened. That's where they started, you know,

Lee Schneider (18:55.447)
Yeah.

Joey Puente (19:21.734)
put the people in the pods and shot them into the city. it's like all this area that West LA, which is now, you know, one of the most upscale places in Los Angeles, all of that was rubble of ruin and a prison, you know, and it was gangs on the streets and all these crazy things and, you know, the conversations between the characters, just the office workers and they're like, you know,

pretty soon we're not gonna be able to smoke at work anymore. And it's like, that's interesting. And then they're like, it'll cost a dollar for a bottle of Coke. And they're like, that is also interesting. Like that's purposeful, that's intentional. They put that in there to say something. That's not an accident that these people have this conversation in film that is being recorded and is going to be shown. It's like, that's...

That's some somebody thought about that like, what in the future they're going to be really controlling and they're not going to let us smoke at work. And that's that's a crazy liberty to take away. But as far as you know, now in or within the current context of things, it's I'm seeing lots of things, you know, 10 years ago, very, very big focus on dystopia. You know, everything was a dystopian sub setting, know, especially for young adult stuff, for stuff for the younger readers was very focused on this kind of dystopias and the tyrannical rulers and all of these things that are If you think of our current climate, we're kind of living in that sort of thing. But that was what people were responding to. what the time capsule is telling us. This is the future we're worried about. And I think that the tastes are shifting a little bit as far as that goes into different sub-genres.

Lee Schneider (21:33.26)
I was going to ask you about subgenres of paranormal fantasy or more positive fantasies or fewer evil kings or what are you seeing the things trending towards?

Joey Puente (21:48.906)
So right now, the biggest thing is romantisy, obviously. Like that is the huge genre. I don't know if it's a genre so much as a motif kind of thing, but that's what people, that's the popular thing. That's the book tok thing. That's what is getting the big flashy releases now. That's what the book agents are buying and publishing.

But I think that the deeper story is that's a trend. That's a trend, and that's what's getting people in the door of the bookstore. Like, I want to read ACOTAR because I've heard so much about it. And then they read it, and they're like, OK, what do I read next? And you can go to Book Tok and get your reading list from there, and it's just to be pop books, just boom, boom, boom, boom,

here, it's like it's almost a you could write a roadmap like you start you start with ACOTAR A Court of Thorns and Roses for those not in the know. Sarah J. Massie, you start with her. And then you go to, you know, her young adult series or you go to some. Why can't I think of the book it can it's in my head. But you go, there's a roadmap, there's a roadmap and you can, you can follow it or you can ask, Hey, I really like ACOTAR What is a good suggestion for me after? I can be like, well, what, did you enjoy about it? What was the thing that you really responded to? Was it, you know, the intrigue? Cause we've got to have stuff for that. it the love story? Cause we've got stuff for that. And, but as far as the as my digression. As far as the true story, I see a huge upswing in queer stories, particularly with horror. There's so many queer writers and writers of color. I think it's a really cool moment to be reading genre. And genre, from all my time in the bookstore, genre used to be a dirty word.

Joey Puente (24:10.613)
And if you got put in a genre, the authors did everything they could to not be put in genre. Because once you get put in genre, you never leave. And I think that the stigma on that is kind of wearing off. And there are people who are purposefully going towards that being wanting to be like, I'm writing genre. I want to be in the genre. And so you've got really cool stories by people who have not been published before traditionally. just to like Chuck Tingle, for example, I have just because I have the book here, a book on my desk. Chuck Tingle, who went viral for writing unhinged, crazy, erotic short novels, has started writing real novels. And they're all like horror, like actual horror stuff and they're interesting because he's doing these terrible things to his characters but there's a tenderness to it and they're all very focused on the queerness of the characters is vital and it's not an afterthought. It's not just like I need to plug this in because I have to hit the demo.

Lee Schneider (25:33.804)
Mm-hmm.

Joey Puente (25:36.534)
It's the, no, I'm a queer person, I'm writing a queer story. And I think that's really cool to see. just, then apart from that is like the kind of the cozy kind of comfort stories. Top of my list is A Psalm for the Wild Built by Becky Chambers. Just fantastic, lovely book.

Lee Schneider (26:01.514)
Mm-hmm.

Joey Puente (26:06.165)
honestly top five all time for me. And I've been seeing like there's more of those kinds of things that are happening, these sort of low stakes, small stories that are very lovely in their own way. For Song for the Wild Bill, it's just a beautiful world that feels like so plausible. We could have this. We could have this world if we just reached out and decided this is what we want. This is the world we want to live in. We can take it. Everything is so plausible. Everything makes so much sense in that book. then the dark horse of the genre right now, I think, is definitely lit RPG. That's what's next. That's what's popping up. And it starts with Dungeon Crawler Carl, which is huge. It's a huge, huge book, huge series. If you haven't heard of it, do know about it? Okay, so Matt Deniman, who is the author in 2020, he started writing it and he was publishing it serialized on Royal Road website for these kinds of things for people to publish. And the elevator pitch is that

Lee Schneider (27:11.262)
No, I don't. Tell me about it.

Joey Puente (27:30.933)
How I explain it to people, it's like, imagine Ready Player One and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy put together. so page one, world ends, and the survivors of the world ending are basically rounded up, put into a dungeon under the earth, and forced to fight their way through it for the entertainment of the rest of the galaxy as a TV show. And the...

We had Matt in the store recently and how he puts it is, you know, a guy and his ex-girlfriend's cat are trapped on an alien game show. And I think that's probably the better, the better elevator pitch. But for people like people who are in the know with, you know, Pitchhiker's Guide and Ready Player One, like that's the thing that they'll respond to. But for people that are a little outside that genre, the game show one works also, or probably works better. But

Lee Schneider (28:10.645)
Yeah

Joey Puente (28:29.041)
It's been an interesting thing because it was an online phenomenon because he was self publishing it and he was getting big and he self published these books and then he got picked up by traditional publishing last year for the first time. they've been releasing the original books in hardcover instead of self publishing them. And so it's catching on and he's got

He's got all these deals in the works. He's got a TV show coming. There's a web comic. There's going to be a graphic novel soon. There's any kind of media thing that you could do. It's going to happen with Carl because that's how passionate the reader base has become. And that was all organic ground floor stuff. And the seventh book was just published in hardcover last month on the 22nd. we had him for his only West Coast event for that book. And we had 500 people and people traveled from, had a guy who came from Australia to be at the event, which blows my mind. But this is for something that nobody really knew about, or it's like very under the radar, but you're gonna see it everywhere. You're gonna start seeing it and you're be like,

Joey told me about that. And it's also one of those books that people are really passionate about the audiobook because the audiobook experience is very great. The readers are fantastic for that.

Lee Schneider (33:38.252)
I wanted to ask about dystopian worlds and utopian worlds There's a big range between say William Gibson and Becky Chambers

Joey Puente (33:51.242
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Joey Puente (33:58.986)
Mm-hmm.

Joey Puente (34:07.401)
The mask off, yes.

Lee Schneider (34:08.555)
What do you think is going on in writers and readers that there is more, I would say, looking at the future in a positive way or creating a role model for the future that looks a bit more fun to live in, not in a cool dude, OMG way, but in a, you know, this looks workable, kind of alluding to what you were saying earlier. So.

Joey Puente (34:27.699)
Yeah, yeah.

Joey Puente (34:35.145)
Yeah, like.

Lee Schneider (34:36.563)
Why do you think, is that happening? Is there a movement toward that? And why do you think it's happening?

Joey Puente (34:41.173)
I definitely think that there is a movement towards that. And it's being driven by mainly I feel just in the in this could just be me in my reader bias of what I've experienced and what I've seen seems to be driven by queer people writing books. And they're imagining better futures for themselves. Right. Or they're imagining the book that they wish that they had when they were 12. And they had all these questions they didn't know and they didn't have any hope because everything looked, in the media landscape was depressing and full of just negativity, talk about who you were specifically. And being able to turn the tables on that and be like, you know, I want to be the person that I wish I had when I was young and having that kind of like that stewardship of the next generation in a way or of just other people in your community to be like, hey, we're in this together. We're the only, you know, ultimately the only thing that is real are other people, everything else we've made up. It's all things that we can change whenever we want. It's not.

Nobody said that the Supreme Court has to have nine judges. God didn't say that. That's a rule. That's a thing that we made up. So we could change it. Any time we could do whatever we want, we just have to decide as consensus. so being able to talk to your community in that kind of a way of like, hey, it's not that bad. we have all these means and the technology and the will to make our lives better.

Joey Puente (36:41.353)
we can and we should and we are going to. And in that way, like they say, survival is a radical act. if you just being able to wake up tomorrow means that you are doing something that they, big T they don't want you to do. They want you to give up, go away, leave them alone. And so that kind of...

Revolutionary resistance in a way is important for marginalized people to experience and in what is more revolutionary and what is more completely terrifying to someone who rules over fear is that people who are hopeful and unafraid and ultimately that is is important and I'm

Lee Schneider (37:31.785)
Hmm.

Joey Puente (37:37.334)
and being able to be a small part in that apparatus, be like, hey, have you read Becky Chambers? No? Okay, here you go. Take this. the, we go back to William Gibson, you know, we have like Neuromancer, we have The Bridge, and those guys are really cool, right? They're stylish. you know, you go to Neal Stevenson, one of my favorite authors, Neal Stevenson, Snow Crash, one of my favorite books, the book I've read the most, possibly ever.

and I don't really reread books, but you know, he, he lampooned it in snow crash because, you know, hero protagonist, here we go. The main character is hero protagonist and he's, he's one of the coolest guys in, on the, in the metaverse. You know, he's top dog on the leaderboard. Everyone wants a piece of him. He's a legend, but in real life, he delivers pizza, right? He lives in a shipping container. That's in Baldwin Hills and overlooks LAX. I didn't realize that until my latest reading of it.

I was like, oh wow, know where he lives. I know where all this stuff is. so I feel like that's a very straight white guy specific power fantasy of, you know, I'm gonna change the world because I'm so cool. And I'm just gonna go in and everyone's gonna do what I say. everything is going to...

be different because I am that powerful with my coolness. And I know that it's not how those books actually go. But the idea that you have the Matrix, right? And you have Keanu Reeves, and you have this really stylish resistance. And they're super violent. But also at the same time,

You you think about that, is that that's made, that's a story that has that really the Matrix shift was a cultural shift at a time. And now you look back here like, actually, that's like a that's a queer allegory. It's been co-opted by certain people, obviously. But, you know, both of the directors and the people who wrote it, they both are trans now or have always have always been trans, but out as trans and live as

Lee Schneider (39:44.788)
Mm-hmm.

Lee Schneider (39:57.567)
Mm-hmm.

Joey Puente (40:05.607)
as their gender, their true gender. And that colors everything, you know? And even like you think about Fight Club, right? Fight Club, also that kind of very traditional male power fantasy sort of thing. And that was written when Chuck Palahniuk was in the closet and he didn't even admit it to himself that he was gay. Now he's out and he's gay and he's living

his true life, that's also, you know, that's commentary, that's critique. And it's an interesting kind of way to think about, like, these kinds of ideas and how they're shifting and what the shift is becoming.

Lee Schneider (40:51.454)
That's fascinating. I hadn't thought about it in that framework. So thank you for that. Really interesting. Part of what Diesel does is have author events. And there have been some big names. By the time this airs, you're going to have Cory Doctorow. So what among those events has really stuck with you? Or you have a few favorites?

Joey Puente (41:00.415)
Mm-hmm.

Joey Puente (41:05.685)
One of my favorites.

Joey Puente (41:14.709)
Uh, the one that, that really sticks with me at the moment is the, the Matt Deniman one a couple of weeks ago, because we had, rented a theater, we had sold tickets and it was, it was a lot of work. was about two and a half, three months of our energy culminating in this one night, this, these couple hours. And, uh, you know, I worked 11 hours that day and

you know, got to the venue, was setting things up, making sure everything, all the, all the contingencies were in place, setting up the proceed, like the processes of how to get people in the door, get people in their seats, get them their books, get the line organized for the signing after it and everything. And it really went off almost perfectly. Uh, was, there was a couple of hiccups, but they, they weren't.

showstoppers and everybody that went that everyone who bought a ticket everyone who showed up everyone who watched you got to see the event happen live they had a good time and no no complaints nothing nobody everyone was just so gracious and it was just really good energy all around and i was really like like i was exhausted that day obviously but it was such an invigorating experience of

these people who were, you know, some, had people showed up three hours early and they're waiting outside the venue and I'm like, Hey guys, like you don't have to be here right now. Like it's, it's okay. You, don't want it, you know, it's hot out. You're in, there's not a lot of shade. I'd like you to just, you know, go get some food and come back later. Like, don't worry about you're going to get in, you're going to get a book, you're going to get to sign. It's okay. and, but I would hear them.

to each other and make conversations, people just strangers having connections because they like the same book. seeing that happen is really cool. just seeing a whole family show up, it never happens. Like, you know, their grandfather, mom and dad and a kid, know, intergenerational of, I don't know if I'd let an eight-year-old read the books, but he showed up, he brought, you know, it was

Joey Puente (43:41.15)
It was really cool to see that and see that kind of energy and that kind of passion, that kind of like community meeting, because everyone had something to talk about. Everyone was friends, even if they never met each other. So that was really cool to see.

Lee Schneider (43:58.836)
That sounds great. Yeah, that sounds really great. You have a podcast of your own that you do. So tell us a little bit about that.

Joey Puente (44:04.182)
Yes, yeah, we have 11s. It's called 11s and 11s with the reps and it is posted at 11 a.m. every Wednesday on YouTube. we have two or three publisher reps and one bookseller and they talk about the books that they're excited about for the week. so you get like each like two or three each and

A lot of the times it's stuff that's coming out or just come has just come out because we're reading things in the future all the time. I'm reading stuff now that doesn't come out until three months from now at the earliest basically. So I'm the one looking forward always. So by the time something's come out, I'm so ready to talk about it.

That was, I felt that way about about Psalm for the Wild Built. I read it, like, I read it six months before it came out and I was losing my mind about it. By the time it came out, I was so excited. It was like, I wrote the book. It was like, I need, I need everybody in the world to read this book because that is, this is the book. And we, we almost had Becky Chambers in for an event, but she got

She for the second book in the series, but sadly she got sick and she couldn't make it, but she signed everybody's book, which was really great. it was, it's just, that's like an all-timer book for me. Let's come back to it, but yeah.

Lee Schneider (45:48.563)
Hmm.

Nice. And this is my wide angle question. What do you think is the state today of science fiction and fantasy writing and publishing?

Joey Puente (46:05.93)
I think it's really good. right now we're in the Romantacy upswing. We're going to hit peak Romantacy soon, and then the next trend is going to intercept it on the sine wave of what's hot, what's not, what have you. I think we're going hit the peak Romantacy, and then we're going to get the... Whatever the new trend is, going to...

start going up and I think that trend is going to be

dark romance, which has existed in the indie publishing spaces for a long time, but with the publishing or the publish, excuse me, but with Alchemized being published and being such a huge phenomenon of a book, even though it's, you know, it's

It's really dark. Not a lot of good happens in there. I feel like that's going to be what's going to intercept Romanticy, because it's going to hit mainstream soon. But I feel like once we get past that, once we go a level deeper, it's a really good time. It's a really good time because there are

people who are getting published, like I said, who have never been published before, like as a, as you know, a group. Uh, so we're getting a lot of, a lot of really cool authors of color, a lot of queer authors, a lot of queer authors of color, cause you know, intersections and all that. And we're getting different stories by different people and we're not totally, we're not totally captive to what

Joey Puente (48:09.762)
is the mainstream any longer. I think that that's kind of moving apart in that way. there's so many ways to get books now, to get your book published, right? And like I said, Alchemized was fan fiction. I don't know if you know this. Okay, so welcome to class. Alchemized, which

Lee Schneider (48:32.605)
No, I didn't.

Joey Puente (48:39.722)
is, which was published two weeks ago, officially, started its life as Harry Potter fan fiction with a alternate setting, characters are, were Harry Potter characters, but in a different kind of world sort of thing. And that got really popular. And so it got picked up and they're like, okay, you have to make it not Harry Potter.

So the author, she rewrote it and made it not Harry Potter, the common knowledge is that it was was Dromini fan fiction originally. don't I'm not sure how familiar your listeners are with Dromini or shipping culture in general, but Dromini is Draco and Hermione as the main relationship of the characters. So.

It's a... The main character is Hermione and her adversary, love interest, is Draco, but they have different names, the different world, different setting, but that's what it is at the core. But that's also been kind of happening in other spaces. know, Ali Hazelwood, her first book, The Love Hypothesis, or her first major published book, The Love Hypothesis, started off as fan fiction as well.

Wow, there's lots of... That's where the foot gets in, right? That's where we start. So people who know what to look for are looking through these fan fiction websites and they're like, there's something about this. This is something that we can make something out of. And they're getting picked up by major publishing houses. You're going mainstream.

Lee Schneider (50:18.153)
Mm-hmm.

Joey Puente (50:38.142)
or they'll self-publish the books themselves, and then that gets picked up by, if you get caught up, you catch on to a certain extent, you get picked up by mainstream publishing. So like the indie to mainstream gap has never been smaller. And the people who are in the indie spaces, guess what they are.

the people who don't get published by mainstream. there's definitely, know, people are looking for it, people are looking for it and they're finding it and then it's getting broad appeal. I think, I think, specifically for genre, it's a really good time to be a genre reader, especially if you like new things and different things and stuff that has not really...

hit the mainstream and has caught on yet.

Lee Schneider (51:37.961)
Good, that's good to know. It's optimistic view.

Where can people find out more about Diesel, whether they're locals or online?

Joey Puente (51:52.023)
So yeah, dieselbookstore.com is the best place. We are on Instagram at Diesel Bookstore as well. We don't have a Twitter. We're on Blue Sky, dieselbookstore.com at Blue Sky. But we have a newsletter, sign up for it. We do sign book events all the time. can pre-order if there's an author that you are excited about.

We might have them come in. You can check our events page, our calendar of events, but all the books that we do, or all the sign, all the signings that we do, we ship worldwide for anybody who wants a signed book from that author, etc. We have, right now we've got a Max Miller Tasting History signed promotion going on. He's a huge YouTube guy with cooking.

cooking books. We've been partnering with Taylor Jenkins Reid for her books to get them signed and send those out. And those go all over the world. So we've got a lot of things going on all the time. And so it's the newsletter and our website and the events calendar always got new stuff going on.

Lee Schneider (53:15.734)
Well, thanks so much for being on the show. I really enjoyed the conversation today.

Joey Puente (53:20.714)
Well, thank you so much for having me. It was really fun. I can talk about books all day, every day, as you can tell. It's my job. Exactly.

Lee Schneider (53:27.465)
You're in the right line of work.