Identify the Fear with Brennan Storr

Identify the Fear with Brennan Storr

Kelly Kennedy: Hello, welcome to episode 76 of the business development podcast, which also happens to be our very first Halloween special. Today, we are graced with author Brennan Storr, author of A Strange Little Place and host of the Ghost Story Guys podcast. And I am very, very excited to have this conversation with him.

He is one of my favorite horror authors. He is Canadian. Stick with us. We're going to learn about authorship, podcasting and get a little scare along the way. Stay tuned.

Intro: The great Mark Cuban once said business happens over years and years. Value is measured in the total upside of a business relationship, not by how much you squeezed out in any one deal.

And we couldn't agree more. This. This is the business development podcast based in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, and broadcasting to the world, you'll get expert business development advice, tips, and experiences, and you'll hear interviews with business owners, CEOs, and business development reps. You'll get actionable advice on how to grow business brought to you by capital business development, capitalbd.ca.

Let's do it. Welcome. To the Business Development Podcast and now your expert host, Kelly Kennedy.

Kelly Kennedy: Hello, welcome to the Business Development Podcast, and today on the show I have our very first Halloween special, I know Business Development Halloween special, but I'll tell you what, I have a passion for scary stories.

Some of my favorite podcasts are scary horror podcasts, like I love Scared to Death, I love Jim Harreld's Campfire, there's just so many great horror podcasts and really, this podcast would not exist without my love for previous scary podcasts and just falling in love with the podcasting field in general.

And So I decided that for this day, Halloween special, I'm not sure what episode it is, because we are pre recording. I will let you know when we get there. But today I have an Albertan horror author, Brennan Storr. Brennan Storr is a versatile creative based in Victoria, BC. He is the dedicated host of The Ghost Story Guys, a podcast that has captured the hearts and imaginations of over 4 million listeners since January 2021.

Brennan has been fully immersed in the world of podcasting, sharing captivating tales of the supernatural and the unexplained alongside his co host, Paul Bestall. Additionally, Brennan is the author of A Strange Little Place, available on Amazon. It is a compelling work that explores the enigmatic stories That defy explanation, inviting readers to embark on a journey into the unknown.

With a keen eye for visual storytelling, Brennan skills as a photographer and graphic designer, add depth and creativity to his podcast, enhancing the overall experience for his dedicated audience. Brennan, I can't tell you what an honour it is to have you on the show today. How are you doing?

Brennan Storr: Hey, I'm great.

Thank you for having me. It's an honour for me to be here.

Kelly Kennedy: No, no, no, not at all. You know, I reached out to you and I reached out to you because I absolutely love your book. I love A Strange Little Place. I think it is the best horror compilation book ever written in Canada. That is my like opinion of your book.

I think it's so Well done. And you know, when we started talking and we talked about your journey as an author and now as a full time horror podcaster, you have you have a podcast called The Ghost Story Guys. And yeah, like an absolute ton of episodes. Yeah, like I just, I needed to know your story.

This is one for me. This podcast, this particular one is for me. And it's an absolute pleasure to have you on. So, you know, Take us back. What has that journey been like? Who is Brennan Storr? Tell us from the beginning.

Brennan Storr: So I, I grew up in in Revelstoke, B.C. or a part of Alberta as, as as I'm told.

Kelly Kennedy: A hop, skip, and a jump.

Brennan Storr: That's fair. I mean, I think attitude wise, we're, we're basically Alberta. Yes. But yeah, so I grew up in Revelstoke. I lived there for the first 24 years of my life. Revelstoke's a mill town. You know, my, my old man drove. He worked for the railroad, he drove cab and then kind of dropped off the map.

You know, my mother worked in a grocery store. So I grew up very working class. Creative stuff was just not on the radar. I, you know, I was always a quote unquote smart kid, but just was, you know, they didn't really know how to encourage you in that direction. Right. I mean, they did their best, but you only know what you know.

Yeah. And so that I could ever do anything creative, longterm, just, yeah, not a thing. So graduated high school, worked in the family store, ended up moving out to the coast here in 2007 to Victoria. And I, basically the way my brain works, I I'm neurodivergent a number of ways. And so my brain kind of, I have to be shown something before I can kind of. And I was lucky enough to meet my now wife who kind of said, here are some work options that are not making sandwiches which is what I'd done in my family deli for a long time.

And I just kind of expanded out from there. And in 2009, I started thinking, you know, I used to like writing in high school, I should start writing again. And I wrote a restaurant review blog of all things. Oh, really?

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Awesome.

Brennan Storr: And I, you know, talk about a wrong headed way to go about it. You know, I would spend hours writing these sort of dense reviews full of jokes that no one really cared about.

I, I won an award. And I think this nicely illustrates how my creative life has gone. I would spend hours writing these, these restaurant reviews. I won an award for a tweet.

Kelly Kennedy: That's amazing.

Brennan Storr: I, I was nominated for best blog and funniest tweet. And I'm not lying when I say I cheated my butt off. To win that best blog award and I still won best tweet.

And even now, you know, I produce this the ghost story guys, which, you know, as you mentioned, we've got about 4 million total downloads sort of about 30, 000 people a month. And my most popular thing I do is our Instagram account where we have 93, 000 followers. You know, it's just sometimes things flourish in unexpected ways, but yeah, that's what got me started writing.

And then I, I'd always had odd experiences. You know, I wouldn't say I was a believer. I was raised Catholic. It, I always liked to say it didn't take very well. So I was very much an atheist. I didn't believe in anything, but I had a few weird stories that my family would tell me. And you know, a couple odd experiences of my own that I couldn't quite classify and I would tell them at parties, you know, it was, it was one of those things where you just, everyone's had a few drinks, you break it out, everyone gets a little spooky.

It's, it's, you know what it's like. And then in 2011, I thought I'd actually try my hand at a longer project. Cause I've since realized I have ADHD. So, It is difficult for me, or was difficult for me to stick with a project long term. Yes. Not understanding that. I always just thought I was someone who gave up easily, which as it turns out is not the case, you just kind of have to work with your, with your brain chemistry.

I didn't know that at the time. So I thought I'm going to plan a trip. I'm going to write about it and I'm going to see if I can pull that off. And if I can pull that off, maybe I can write a book. So I, I, I picked the Mr. Olympia competition in Las Vegas. I drove down to Vegas and I wrote, I blogged about it the whole time.

Got to Vegas, I Research the hell out of Mr. Olympia bodybuilding competition before that. I, you know, so I wrote bios of all the major competitors. I predicted my, my predictions for the the top three and yet went there, took pictures, met a lot of people, wrote about it. And of course I had no idea how to sell this to anyone.

I didn't know. I still, to be honest, don't know how that works. The freelancing world is a mystery to me, but. I did it for myself to prove that I could. And just before I left, I submitted an an entry to a story competition here in Victoria called, so you think you can write. So I went to Vegas, did that thing on the drive back, I was in a truck stop in, I want to say Ely, Nevada, when I got a call saying that I had made the cut, I was one of the four final four contestants in.

So you think you can write so amazing the whole way coming back from, from Mr. Olympia, I was. Composing these stories, my assignments. I remember being in Revelstoke on my laptop in the A& W composing one of the stories. And that was sort of my introduction to writing, you know, as an adult essentially, you know, and, and getting this indication that, okay, maybe I can actually do something with this.

And it was a few months later after that contest was over I was telling, walking around town with a friend of mine, telling her some of these, these ghost stories and it just clicked in my head. I thought, geez, I wonder if I could, if I could do something with these and it kind of started in my head as a family history project because I didn't want to out note, say, I'm going to write a book because in past I'd said, I'm going to do X and it just kind of hadn't come together.

I went back to Revelstoke and I just talked to some people and I, it kind of went out from there. I treated it a little bit less, you know, I used to, I used to read detective novels. I still do. And so I thought, what would, what would, what would my detective novel heroes do? And so I went to the museum and I started asking questions and I got some names.

And I went to those houses, and I talked to those people, and it went on from there.

Kelly Kennedy: I just want to mention, like, for our listeners, this is one of the things that makes this book so well done. You can tell that the amount of research that, that Brennan went into to, to write these stories and make sure that he gets The authentic accounts from the real people is absolutely next level.

And I think that that's what sets your stories apart, Brennan, from some of the other stories that I've heard or read, and it's, it's just literally the amount of detail and the amount of, you know, firsthand evidence or firsthand reports that are part of this book.

Brennan Storr: Well, thank you. I appreciate that. I, it was a, it was a big point of pride for me to, to do it that way.

Because I read about 60 paranormal books before I kind of started this project. And one of the things that bothered me about that topic is there's a lot of, some, many people say more. So they say, and it would really bother me saying, well, who, who are these people? Who is they? Yeah. And so I, I thought, no, we're going to have first person interviews, firsthand interviews with people.

And it was nuts. I mean, at one point, the first edition of the book is much more specific about names. Yeah. The second edition, which was just released last year by Beyond the Free Publishing. I, I did away with that because it was a hassle, but to show you that my commitment to getting the names, right, I actually had to hire a courier.

In Cave Creek, I think it's Cave Creek, Arizona to go to a house in the suburbs, have an elderly gentleman sign a release form, bring it back to the office and fax it to me. Just so you could use the name. So I could use the name. So I was that at the time I was working as an office manager for a consulting company, so it was very important to me to be as factual as possible.

And at the time that meant I have to have all the right names because otherwise people are going to say, oh, well, that's. Again, my commitment to that has wavered somewhat because getting people to sign off is a nightmare, but, but in terms of making sure I got first person stories, that was, yeah, very important.

And, and I actually helped put to bed a famous American true crime story. Really? In the process of this. Yeah. I'll, I'll, I won't tell you the whole story, but there is a famous American fugitive from, I want to say 1885 who took off. He was a clerk in the, in the Capital, I think. And he took off with payroll.

I think it was what, 75, 000 at the time. Wow. And he disappeared with his mistress and he left behind his wife and kids. And He, he is buried in Revelstoke.

Kelly Kennedy: Wow.

Oh goodness.

Brennan Storr: Craven Silcott. If there's any, any history buffs out there, Google him. I think I've written, I think I wrote an article for a Rev Quarterly about Craven Silcott, but yeah, he is, he is buried in Revelstoke as I think under the name Edwards.

Kelly Kennedy: Wow. How did you come across that? How did that, how did that come to light?

Brennan Storr: So the most famous haunted house in Revelstoke. And of course, you know, that something is famous does not necessarily mean the stories about it are true. Although there are, you know, I have verified stories from that, that location going back at least to the 1950s, but that's another conversation.

It's called Holton house. It's now a bed and breakfast and, or was, I don't know that it still is, but it's a very beautiful Queen Anne style house at the top of Farwell Hill and Revelstoke. And I needed a way into the story. So I decided the way to do that was to go right back to the beginning. And the house was built in 1897 by a man named Charles Holton.

And so what I did is I pardon me, I should say he built it for his wife, Lida Edwards. And so I went back and the story of Holton house starts with a story of Thomas Thomas Holton is, yeah. And and lied to Edwards. And so I told their whole stories and I had to learn about both, both people.

So sorry, Charles Holton, there we go, Charles, Charles Holton. I traced him back to Sweden his family back to Sweden, I found the record of their passage, I actually discovered his family lied about where he was born. In order to have him declared an American citizen. Oh, wow. Because he was born in Sweden.

Okay. They, when he, when they arrived during the first census, they claimed he had been born there. Interesting. And for her Light Edwards, yeah, her family was was from Ohio, I believe Youngstown. And her father was part of this at the time, very scandalous local election. And so it just, yeah, just a lot of historical research.

I'm lucky enough that I live right now, maybe an eight minute walk from the provincial archives. So I spent a lot of time going through microfilm. It's all digitized now, but at the time I was spooling up reels of microfilm, taking screenshots of, you know, 120 year old papers.

Kelly Kennedy: Wow. Yeah, that's, it's crazy.

Like, like I said, the amount of detail that you go into. So you know, first off, you know, I love your book. I hope that everybody listening to this show buys a copy. You will not regret it. Mark my words. I don't care if you love business or what you have, you have any type of inclination or you love anything paranormal.

Brennan Storr's book is amazing. Brennan, I, you know, you're the first. Published author that I've had on the show. I've had, I've had authors on the show where, you know, they, they wrote a smaller book or a book that was, you know, not necessarily what they do, but this was, this is a substantial book. What, what is that process like, you know, for the listeners that I have on the show who maybe are thinking about writing their own books?

What is the process of having, of writing a book and then, and then getting it published? What is that process like?

Brennan Storr: So I was wondering that myself when I started. And again, I, you know, I have no connection or had no, I know more people now, but at the time I had, I was a grocery clerk from a little town in the mountains.

And so I had no connection to the world of publishing. I had no idea how any of that worked. And so I knew that if I tried to solve the whole problem at once, I would freak out and I wouldn't even start. So I forced myself to just focus on the writing. And then when I felt the writing was done, then I would deal with publishing, which is what I did.

And so actually, thanks to our mutual friend, Jim Harold, who I can't stress enough, Jim is a wonderful, he's not just a great businessman. He's been doing this full time for 17 years. Jim's a great person. And I, so I, I was listening to his podcast and I went through all his authors that he'd had on recent, say the last year.

I made a spreadsheet of their names, the names of their book, and I found out who published their books. And I went to each publisher's website, and I looked for their submissions, and I figured out. Who were taking submissions and who among them required you to have your own marketing plan? Cause that's not something I knew how to do.

Okay. And so I needed someone who was going to do, or at least help me do all of that. I needed at least help. I didn't, I could do it some, but I needed pointers. Sure. So that ruled out a lot of stuff because a lot of the publishers at that time in that field required you to have a marketing plan in place.

If they wanted you to have an, a pre, a prebuilt audience, which at the time I did not have. Sure. So I narrowed it down to four publishers. There was Llewellyn out of Minnesota, and then there were three British Columbia based publishers who didn't specifically do ghost books, but they did like folklore.

Yep. And so I thought if I maybe pitched it as folklore, they might be interested. And I should say right up front, my story is a, again, one it's, this is eight years ago now, and two, it's atypical even for the time, but what I did is I printed off. Like a, a binder, I, I, I basically printed off a, or not a binder, a manuscript and had a bound.

I had four of them done and I just mailed them along with a letter to each for each of the four publishers. And from what I understand that normally doesn't work because publishers receive unsolicited submissions all the time. They go on the slush pile and most of them never get read. And I would say I think two of the BC based publishers said, no I think one was new star books.

They, and they wrote me a very nice letter and they said, this isn't really an art in our sort of remit. So no, no, thank you. The other one was a little more terse and then the third one didn't respond and Llewellyn. But this is about half the length we would need the book to be. And I, again, I had no idea how long the book is.

You know, I read books, but I didn't know how long. So I had to go back and I had to essentially double the length of the manuscript. Interesting. Which is some of which I did for, you know, additional research and some of which I just. Really squeezed the research I had, because I had hours and hours of tape conversation.

Which at the time I was having to transcribe myself because now you have software to do that. Yeah. You have, you have Descript and you have all these wonderful programs that would have saved me dozens of hours. Yes. But at the time you didn't have that. Sure. So I had all these conversations and I just had to actually force myself to transcribe more of them to find more information.

Yeah. And yeah. And, and so I, I completed it. They you know, she, the, the editor who found my, or who read my, my submissions, she had to pitch it to her committee, which she did and they liked it. So then it was just a process. It took about a year from signing the contract to actually putting it out. And.

Even, even then, when it was out, you know, the publisher, Vanessa or my, my publicist, Vanessa was wonderful. She was a wonderful person, but as a new author, no one cares about you. Yes. You are the lowest man on the totem pole. And what I learned is you have to take a guy like a strong hand in your own publicity.

So I would argue that of the actually thinking about 35 shows over the course of promoting strange, which is kind of crazy for me to think about now. I found most of them myself. Wow. Wow. I would say maybe about 10 of them they found. The biggest ones I did, I found like Coast to Coast Radio, which had an audience of millions.

I found that one. I got in that one myself Mysterious Universe at the time, which had a massive audience. I found that one myself. They brought me Jim Harold. I had, and this is actually something that's valuable to think about for, for authors. Make friends in your space, but you don't have to be a overbearing about it.

You know, with Jim, what I would do is guys like Jim Harold, and Micah Hanks, they used to have live streams. And so I would just pop up in live streams and I would ask the odd, ask a couple of good questions, fix my name in their heads. And I would just do it every now and again, I would pop up in a stream and ask a question or make a comment.

Yep. Never, never try to control the floor, never be overbearing. Just say, Hey, I'm here trying to be a helpful member of the community. And then when the book was getting ready to come out, I was able to go to Jim and say, Hey man, I'm doing this book. I would be honored if you would write a forward for me.

And because by that point he knew my name, he agreed to look at the manuscript and he wrote me a very lovely forward. Oh man. That got me on the paranormal podcast, which was huge. And actually when I started doing ghost story guys in 2017, I was helping my at the time co host Ian promote his book and having the connection to Jim and getting him on Jim's show took us from 300 downloads an episode to a thousand downloads an episode.

Wow. So those connections paid off down the road.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Yeah. No, I, I believe it. Like I said, like, that's where I, that's where I heard of you, right? Like I was listening to the Jim Harreld podcast is paranormal podcast. And Jim is amazing. If you're listening to the show and you like paranormal stuff, the paranormal podcast is.

Yeah, like 18. Is it 18 years old? I don't know. It's very old. It is in my mind. It is the original paranormal style podcast period. It really is. It's the one where all the others are measured against and he has all these amazing authors come on, come on the show and talk about their new books or, you know, whatever if they're creating new film or something like that.

So if you have like interest in the paranormal at all, and you haven't come across it yet, that's an amazing place to go back to. He's got multiple shows, but yeah, I remember listening to that and you know, you telling a few of the stories and then, you know, that you were originally from Revelstoke and I was like, Oh my goodness.

Like I, there was no question. I had to get your book. I think I bought it right there that moment. And I was not disappointed. I, I absolutely love it. I, I really believe that it is the best local or Canadian ghost stories book I think I've ever read. And it's like, I've been reading them since I was a kid.

Brennan Storr: Oh, thanks man. I mean, I've got some, some good competition there. You know, Barbara Smith was of course Canada's possibly Canada's most famous ghost story author, but I, I will, I'll, I will certainly take the compliment.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, absolutely. Well, you know, since since this is the Halloween special. Can we potentially get into a couple of the stories that are in the book?

Sure, yeah. Or, or heck, like, you know, even some stuff that you maybe got on the ghost story, guys, I think that would be kind of cool too, but you know, there were a couple stories in the book that I found interesting. One that I, one that I honestly had a laugh at, and I didn't think that there would be something that I would laugh at in the book, but there's one story in the book about the field where, where people keep seeing this ghost in the, in the cow field, and this ghost keeps letting out all the cows.

Yeah. I remember just thinking I would be so pissed off if I was a farmer. And every time I go out, stupid ghost is letting out my cows. I got a good laugh out of that.

Brennan Storr: Yeah. I love that story. And the funny thing is that story comes from a, a real old timer. His real name is not included in the book by his request, but it comes from a real old timer in town.

And what I like about that is that it just. It doesn't make any sense. No. You know, I think we spend a lot of time, too much time trying to craft this narrative around ghost stories, you know, Oh, there's unfinished business or they're coming back for a reason. And I, and I, I mean, I think one of the things that makes me slightly less popular in the field is that I think the truth of all these things is that.

It's likely far more complex than we can possibly comprehend. I think if there is life after this one, I think it as is, pardon me, I think it as, as incomprehensible to us now as this life was when we were in the womb. Sure. I think it just. So that story is such a great example of, well, it happened. Why, who knows?

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, yeah, no, it's a, it was an interesting one to you. And I totally agree with you. It's like, you know, regardless of what your beliefs are, I think the answer is there's a lot more we don't know than we do know. And regardless of where you stand on the spectrum of what you believe in life. You know, believe me, there's probably a lot more that we don't know.

Brennan Storr: I mean, I can tell you a story that I think nicely encapsulates that it's actually not in the book. I, I have this bizarre connection with the state of Pennsylvania and for anyone wanting to fully hear the story of that, the episode of ghost story, guys, the call of dreams is worth checking out. But just one example, I have a.

Not only a connection to Pennsylvania, which again, is, is sort of further elucidated in that episode. But I have an obsession with missing people. I've actually known a, a, a surprising number of people who've gone missing, including someone who, who went missing on the Trail of Tears. And I was reading a book about these disa about a a, a particular swath of disappearances in the us which again, I won't get into here, but I suddenly had this very vivid.

Mental image in my mind. I had this mental image of, of a pink brick building. And I had this memory next to a road with a crumbling stone arch to my left. It was a two lane road behind the building. I, I imagined there was a, a river and before that was a fence and there was like grass all around it.

And to my right, I, I imagined there was a bridge. And I just had this very unshakable image. And I felt like, I felt like there was someone watching me, but there was no one around and I just had unshakable image. And I thought, well, that's very vivid. Fine. Okay. But over time I got, it kept, it kept coming back to me and I thought, I wonder.

I wonder if that's a real place. I wonder if that's maybe, you know, maybe it's a real place. So I started looking around Google maps Google street view, I should say in industrial places in, for some reason I was doing it in Maryland. I don't know why I was convinced that somewhere in Maryland and I was looking and I was looking and I was looking, couldn't find it of course.

And then I had occasion to meet this fellow, he was another author who was doing what they call hypnotic regression. You know, he believes he can hypnotize people and, and make them relive their past lives. And he was trying to get some kind of certification, but in order to do that, he had to have a certain number of volunteer hours.

So I was referred to him because he needed subjects. And I thought, well, you know what the hell, I'm not doing anything on Monday. So he did this regression with me. And, and again, is it, does it, you know, is it real? Who knows? There was a point where afterwards you could ask questions of what he called your higher self.

And of course you're, you're hypnotized through all of this. So I have the recording of me having this conversation. Now the session was meant to last for 45 minutes. I was curious why I have such an interest in missing people. And he began asking this question and this higher self, who I will say the speech pattern on, on the recording is completely different from my own.

It said, I don't know, but I wish he would stop looking. I keep trying to distract him, but he's basically like a dog with a bone. And it said, he's looking for something and I have him convinced it's in Maryland, but it's not, it's in Pennsylvania. And so I was listening to the recording afterwards. And I thought, oh, that's interesting.

Okay. And I was, so I was reading another book about this particular swath of disappearances in sort of the central U S and it was discussed that one of the bodies was found frozen solid. And at the time it was attributed to the weather, but the pathologists who are reappraising the case, they said, well, in actual fact.

The weather is not cold enough to freeze a body solid. You, you would freeze, but there would be a warming and cooling over the course of a day. This body was frozen so solid. It had to sit at room temperature in a pathologist's office for a day before they could do anything with it. And he said, the only way that could happen is if it was frozen, flash frozen using commercial technology.

Wow. And so I thought, oh, and I, so I Googled a set of terms incorporating this and the things I'd seen, and I found it. It's a real place. Wow. And it's almost exactly as I had imagined, except instead of there being a stone arch over the road, there is a crumbling stone homestead in the trees just to the left of the, of the building.

The building is a red brick, not pink, but when I saw it, I saw it at sunset. Yeah. When it would look, there is a bridge to the right. There is a river behind it. There is a stone fence at the very back of the property. So there it is. It was a real place.

Kelly Kennedy: Wow. That's so great. And how did you, how did that make you feel?

Brennan Storr: Very confused. Because, you know, just like as with my sort of other weird connections to Pennsylvania, you expect there, you expect there to be a, there's a. Like there's an arc, right? There's got to be a reason for this is happening. There's a story. Yeah. What happens next? Well, nothing. There's been absolutely nothing.

Nothing. I I've like, I once had a dream about a little town on the railroad. In an industrial area. And when I woke up, a voice whispered a name to me and I Googled it and it was a real place. And I went there finally in 2016. Yeah. Nothing happened. Nothing, you know, there was nothing dramatic, nothing crazy.

It felt very familiar. And certainly it was the place I dreamed about. There was no great revelation. It was just kind of, Oh, okay. Yeah. And that was kind of the same thing with finding this place. There was no great revelation. It was just, Oh, okay.

Kelly Kennedy: It makes you wonder. What the purpose would be, Hey?

Brennan Storr: It really does.

And you know, it would make a great book if there was a purpose. Totally. So maybe I'm going to get, if I, if I get abducted, you know, there you go. Listen to, listen to call the dreams. You'll know where to look for me.

Kelly Kennedy: Absolutely. I want to go back again to the publishing phase. So, you know, you've got your book published.

What does that process look like? Is there costs up front for you or does the publishing house take over some of that cost and then you know, essentially have a commission structure. What does that look like?

Brennan Storr: Yeah, so there's no upfront pardon me. I should say in traditional publishing, there's no upfront cost for the author.

I was given a very small advance. I was given an advance of 1, 000 US and then the contract I signed was I would get 20 percent of physical revenue and 35%, I think of, of digital. So Kindle. And I looked around and as I understood it at the time and you know, experience has borne this out. That's pretty common for first time authors.

Sometimes there can be a little bit of wiggle room on digital. Yeah. And I tried and there wasn't, but typically that's what you're expected to get. And the contract specified, I managed to keep media rights. So when I finally published the audio book in 2020, I retained full rights to that. So whatever royalties, and we can talk about the audio book publishing process, but I retained all those royalties bar, whatever the platform took.

Kelly Kennedy: I see. Okay. Yeah. Cause like, you know, I listen, you know, I'm on the road a lot. Right. So for me, I listened to the whole reason that I started this podcast is because I'm a listener. I listened to books. I listened to podcasts. I listen. And so, yeah, my first experience with your book and the way that I have, it is on audible.

Brennan Storr: Right. Yeah. And it took me a long time to knuckle down and do that. It's again, it's just a focus thing, right? It's I'm not medicated. So my, sometimes it's hard for me to focus on things that are not routine. Like by now the podcast is a routine. Sure. So I produce a lot of shows, but I've been doing it for a while.

Like I can do that, but the audio book was, it took some time. It took literally the pandemic forcing me inside. To finally finish it. And the, as I mentioned, the, the revised version of the book has been out for almost a year. I still haven't done the audio. Yeah, but yeah. And that I just published myself through audible.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes. Yes. I, it is you. I wasn't sure if it was you or not until we spoke today, but it is definitely you reading the book on audible.

Brennan Storr: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's the way to go. If you're an author and if you are comfortable reading it, that's the way to go. Cause paying someone to read it is expensive and you don't, your royalties from Audible are minimal.

Especially if someone's buying the book using Audible credits, which, which I do, I have an Audible subscription myself. Sure. I think I would get about a dollar something. Okay. From those sales. Yeah. And for example, one time my book was randomly chosen as the deal of the day. And so what that means is Audible heavily promotes it.

Yeah. And to give you an indication, I think this is great proof that all you need is promotion, the right promotion, because my book for that day was on the bestseller list sandwiched between Matthew McConaughey's new book and the Queen's Gambit. Wow. And we moved more copies in that day than I had up to that point in the preceding year and a half.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Yeah. Wow. In a day.

Brennan Storr: In a day. I think we moved 2000 copies. In a day and my end of that was less than a dollar per copy.

Kelly Kennedy: Oh boy, that hurts.

Brennan Storr: It hurts. I was, I was spending money in my head. I don't mind telling you cause I was looking at my previous revenue and kind of my previous per unit. Cost or per unit royalty and I was thinking, Oh, that's about four or 5, 000 bucks. I could, you know, I had a, I had a business that failed and, or I was part of, I was part investor of a business that failed.

So I was financially hurting to that point. And I thought, Oh, this is going to help. Sure. And instead it was just enough to pay off the the, the rest of the credit card bill. My former business partner had left me with, so, you know, it was, it was helpful, but not as helpful as it could have been.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. No kidding.

No kidding. Like what is, is being an author a lucrative thing? Is it something that like, People should consider doing for the good of the world. Or is it something that is just frankly good for you? Like it's one of those things where I feel like when most people write a book, they think, Oh, this is great.

This might be like a great passive income strategy. Is that the truth?

Brennan Storr: No, no, it's, it's not. I mean, especially with the advent of AI, there's a thing going around on TikTok. They're telling people that a great side hustle is just have AI write a book for you and put it up on Amazon marketplace. So what that's doing it, maybe the first couple, maybe pulled that off, but what that's doing now is it's just filling the market with dross that's drowning out legitimate authors and even those legitimate authors, it's, it's hard to make a living.

I mean, most of them are doing other things. I was fortunate enough to go to an event for Andrew Piper in Toronto in May. Andrew's a very successful Canadian horror novelist and. I was surrounded at that table by talent. I was, you know, Steve Strad who's actually from that, living in Edmonton right now.

Duncan Ralston, Tim McGregor, extraordinarily talented people. And they all have full time other jobs because they make pennies. I shouldn't say pennies, but they make very little money from their books. They, and they have. Solid audiences, like Duncan Ralston's womb went viral on Tik TOK. He's, he's sold a lot of those, but he still works for a cable company because that's what pays the bills.

And I would say that, you know, we moved total between physical, digital, and audio book, about 6, 000 copies of strange. Yeah. And my total intake was, I would say probably less than 10, 000 us.

Kelly Kennedy: Wow. Wow. See, I think that there's a misconception that people that write books are always doing fairly well. Oh, no, But it's because it's so quiet and like, you know, you ask anybody, how many authors do you even know?

And the answer is probably none or like one.

Brennan Storr: Right? It's the same thing with filmmaking because, you know, as we're seeing with the strikes right now, everyone thinks movies, like people who make movies are millionaires, but they're not. There are by far more working class filmmakers than there are wealthy ones.

And so many of those guys, you know, they're, but their gap between films, especially directors, they're just maxing out credit cards until they get the next film, which pays off the previous film, the debt from the last time you're out of work. Wow. And that's very common, but there is this sense among artists where you kind of have to, and I see it with podcasts too, you kind of, you can't let them see you bleed.

You know, people like to bet on a winner and so if they know you're struggling, maybe there's a little less inclined to, to Oh, maybe this guy, if he's struggling, maybe he's not very good. Instead of everyone's, most people are struggling, but they, you know, they don't want to let on. And, and that's something we, I try to be open about, you know, I mean, as you mentioned, I'm a full time podcaster now, but even myself, you know, I'm moving to London, Ontario here, hopefully in a few weeks and I'm going to have to find work.

Just because, and I've been trying to find work here in Victoria, I, I just can't, but yeah, I, I have to find work because while I make, you know, reasonable amount of money making the show it's not enough to, I can't save money, I can pay my bills, I can get by, I cannot save money. Sure. There's just not enough there.

And so if I want to have any kind of financial stability, I need additional income.

Kelly Kennedy: So what has that meant for your writing career?

Brennan Storr: I've got the one book and that's it. And I have no intention of writing, I mean, I would like to write fiction, you know, I, I have I've you know, again about six started projects in fiction.

I've actually written some audio dramas for our podcast. I really like doing that. Yeah. But in terms of another ghost book, like, like strange, no, the money. It doesn't balance, I, it costs me probably almost as much to write it as I got from it. Yeah. Because again, I, I had to physically take time off work, go to Revelstoke, which was a two hour ferry ride, and then a seven hour drive away.

And, you know, I'd pay for my food. I had family to stay with, thankfully, but if I tried to do that anywhere else, I would have to pay for lodging. Yep. And that would just very quickly become a, a non-starter. And, and also, yeah, it's a time consuming process. You have to be able to last and if you're. Unless you're getting a sizable advance.

That's just not realistic.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Yeah. Like, you know, I I've, I've toiled with the idea of writing a book because I love books. I really do. And, and I, I, you know, I love business development and at some point I think I'd like to put those two together, but same kind of thing. It's like, I can't imagine like, what is the timeline?

Like, how long did it take you to write strange? I, cause I know it's not an easy process.

Brennan Storr: Okay. So, I mean, I, I should say I wrote it in fits and starts. So it took me three years, but it would not take me that long now. Like it took me. I, in the second edition, I've added about 30 pages and I would say that took me much less time.

That was cause I'm, I'm a much quicker writer now and, and yeah, it's more, more of a process, but even the authors I know who write a book every year, you know, guys like David Weatherly they're doing a bunch of different stuff in order to make ends meet. They're just not making it from books. What I will say though, is if you feel called to do that, don't let economic considerations stop you.

Because even though strange, you know, didn't burn down the house, I didn't, you know, I, I didn't get rich strange led to my meeting, my former co host, which led to the podcast. The podcast has led to me being here and a bunch of other things that would just would not have happened otherwise.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, no, I agree.

I agree. I think that there's. Steps, right? And we don't always see them, but it's like, I wouldn't be where I'm at with the business development podcast with my business. Had I not taken a whole bunch of steps that led me to this space and taken the opportunities as they presented, met the people that were presented to me, had great interviews like this that led to the next things like.

There's a lot of synergy and I've talked with a lot of my, you know, entrepreneurial guests about coincidence and I think it's kind of funny being a Halloween podcast that we might talk about this. However, I think at this point, I am truly a believer in synchronicities and one step leading to the other and everything that you doing up to a certain point has led you to where you are today.

And I feel like if any of those things had changed. You may not be where you're sitting. They all take you here.

Brennan Storr: That's, that's very true. I mean, as I mentioned, you know, I had a failed business in 20, the business failed in 2018, early 2019. It was financially devastating. You know, I was I was a minority investor in a cannabis company.

That just didn't survive legalization. And I mean, there were other factors at play, but that was, you know, a large part of it. And I, it was just, again, I took a massive financial hit, my mental and physical health took a huge hit. I recognize the, like the eternal strength I had to develop from that.

Is now helping me accomplish the things I'm accomplishing now, you know, I think you can, you can, yeah, you have to take, you have to take something from, from the struggle. You have to like try and, and, you know, let those things guide you instead of kind of letting them take you down. And one of the things I do, I love to tell people is always try to be listening because you never know.

What you're going to what you're going to learn. For example, my brother in law is a high level social media consultant in the UK. We don't talk a bunch, but he is, he is, yeah, he, you know, he consults for the government. Like he recently had a meeting at number 10. He consults for various, you know, NGOs and celebrities and things like this.

And he has a group chat where a bunch of social media professionals just. Kind of shoot the breeze. And so I am kind of just embedded in that thing like a tick. And I just try and grab little bits of information from there. And so someone mentioned this app called camo that allows you to stream, turn your cell phone into a webcam.

That's a much higher quality camera than most commercial web cameras. Because of that, I filed that away. And then I met another author or another podcaster who mentioned the platform we're using Riverside. And I filed that away and because Riverside is great for exporting video in various formats. Yes.

And then I have a friend who's helping me with YouTube. He mentioned that video podcasting was taking off while audio was stagnating. So I was able to combine those three things. And now we have a steady stream of video content, which is feeding our YouTube growth. But without those three unconnected pieces of knowledge, I wouldn't have been able to draw all that together and each on their own, you think, well, okay, well, what do I need a camera for?

You know, who the hell wants to look at this? Yeah. Or, you know, I've already got Zencaster and Zoom, why do I need Riverside? Yeah. But when they all come together, it, it works. And it's, again, it's synergy and it's being able to recognize. Recognize relevant information, even though it may not be relevant now.

And honestly, I think that's one of the reasons the show has grown the way it is, because at the beginning I future proofed, I set things up in such a way that we could grow. You know, I made sure that we owned our music. I made sure that we owned all our, all our logos, all our graphics, nothing was built on pre existing IP, nothing was built on other people's work.

It was all original, cost a little more, but we owned it. And now those shirts, I sell those shirts across the world. I sell stickers and, and mugs across the world. You know, I, I actually run a small record label now with the guy who made our music because, you know, I didn't, he didn't want to take money, but I wanted to reward him somehow.

Sure. And so now I released about six, seven different artists on a small label and it's all kind of because one, you future proof and two, you kind of let. The information you find dictate the path you go on.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes, I agree. I agree. You know, like, I don't think that I could have started this podcast and not just because, you know, it's a business development oriented show and that's my background, but like, I don't know if I would have had the bravery to take this step to start this show had I not.

Spent an entire career in business development, talking to people and practicing my speaking skills, right? Like, and even then I can tell you, and you know what, any podcaster will tell you this. When you first start a show and you're sitting there talking to a wall, it's a pretty weird, it's a weird scenario.

Like, getting started in podcasting is more of a fight against yourself than it is worrying about other people or what they're going to say. You're, you're so in your own head and you're so you know, is this good enough to be, are people even going to care? Like my entire first like months of starting the show was fighting my, myself inside about whether I'm good enough to even be doing the show.

Brennan Storr: I hear you. And I think that's a little bit of the artist's curse, right? And I think there's a little bit of the Canadian curse. I remember reading an interview with. Michael J. Fox, where he said all throughout his early career, he just had this feeling like someone at some point was going to knock on the door and say, sorry, man, this all happened to the wrong guy.

We're going to take it all away. It's, this was not meant to be you. And I do think that's a little bit of a Canadian thing.

Kelly Kennedy: Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Yeah. I just remember like in the beginning, it's just such a weird thing because you don't know like you don't know whether your podcast is going to be successful or not.

You don't know if anyone's going to listen. And when you're doing those initial recordings and just kind of learning and learning everything because for me, I'm self I'm self produced. So like I had to learn audio production, I had to learn, you know, hosting, advertising, how to figure out. Everything. And so for me, it was like a brand new job, brand new experience over and above my actual job, which is all of us.

Right. Just starting out in podcasting and yeah, I'm so thankful though. I love it. I absolutely love podcasting. I love business development. So the two go together and I get to have amazing interviews like this, which I look forward to. And, and, but yeah, it's. It's all synchronous. None of this could have happened without previous steps leading me to this place that I didn't recognize at the time were leading me here.

And I think that that's truth for everybody.

Brennan Storr: Yeah. I look at another great example is in 2011, I wanted to get on the radio. I, so I thought it was going to volunteer up the university of Victoria, Campus Radio Station. And I've never been to university. I don't have, I just have a high school education, but I thought I'll, I'll want to, I would love to be on the radio cause I just grew up loving radio.

Sure. And while I was up there, I met this Pakistani journalist who was a political refugee. From Pakistan. And so he, he came here and we became friends and I started working with him and we eventually started this, I helped him start this startup newspaper and I, you know, the lessons I learned from him were not, I think the lessons he intended to teach.

And I'm not going to talk about all of them here, but one of the lessons I learned is don't try and do everything yourself because I watched him and this was actually a mistake I saw my business partner repeat in the cannabis business is. Intelligent people try to do everything themselves because they think they're the only ones who can do it right.

And one of the things I learned is, no, that's not true. And I watched both those guys hamstring themselves because they refused to delegate. And so that's something I've tried to do as much as possible with ghost story guys is I've tried to re say, Oh, who wants to help with this? And, you know, we're, we're currently, I'm training up an editor who's helping me out like just on a volunteer basis right now.

And she's great, but I still have to, I have to fight that instinct to be, Oh no, I can do everything myself and go, no, no, you've seen how this goes. So you can't be the spoke that everything goes through or the hub, which, through which everything goes, because if you go down, the whole machine goes down.

Yes. Yeah. And that was, yeah, again, like just these bad experiences.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes. I see both sides. I see both sides. Right. Because on the other hand, it's resources. Do you have the resources to be able to upkeep that extra training, that extra person to produce? It's like, I think every podcast is like, I can't wait for the day that someone else can deal with the production of this show.

I can, I guarantee it because once you get into podcasting and you recognize, okay, like, there's a lot to this. It is not just getting in front of a mic and having a great conversation. There is a whole lot of backend work going on behind the scenes to make this show public to you, the listener. And I agree though, it is something that I feel like I've gotten really good at.

Thankfully I have Cole, and Cole, Cole helps me as well. And I'm learning to do better at that delegation, but I totally get where you're coming from. From the like, I know how to do this, I know the way I want it done, and I want to make sure it's perfect every time, so I want to take it on, but the extra hours in your life that that takes is...

More than I'd like to admit.

Brennan Storr: Yeah. On the flip side of that, when you see control fully, you know, which obviously I could never do cause I'm a control freak, but when you see control fully, it makes your life easy, but you have the sword hanging over you. And an example of this, we'd recently had a couple of podcasters on our mini show the hosts of a, of a true crime show and really wonderful people, but they had recently returned.

To their true crime, their primary true crime show. Yeah. After being headhunted by a major network, they were headhunted, headhunted by AMC. Wow. To do a show for them. And so full salaries, they had a full team underneath them. They had writers, editors, producers. All they had to do was turn up, say the words, and it was all taken care of.

And at one day AMC just decided, yeah, you know, this, there's not as much money in this podcasting thing as we thought. So after a year, they just line item vetoed the entire division, not just their show, the entire podcast division, hundreds of people. And so, you know, it's, it's kind of like you built your house in, and it doesn't matter how nice your house is when the volcano goes, the volcano goes, and that's the danger of fully seeding control.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. And I think that like, you know, I think that's why a lot of people go into business for themselves, right? People like to have that feeling of I'm in control of my future. I'm in control of whether this succeeds or fails. I'm in control of whether or not. I close this business down or I keep it going and vice versa for a podcast.

And I think, I think a lot of podcasts or podcasters would have a challenge with seating over all that control for that very reason, because I think most of them started it. Wanting to know that they were in control of the future of that show or, you know, whether it succeeds or fails or continues or not is completely up to them and their effort.

I, I think that's an entrepreneurial thing. Like I think all podcasters in my mind, regardless of whether you're making money on your show or not, you're entrepreneurs. Like. You are taking, you're building a business, you know, what you do with that business, whether you monetize it or not, is something completely negligible.

The reality is it's entrepreneurial spirit that led you to starting that show.

Brennan Storr: Yeah, I couldn't agree more.

Kelly Kennedy: So, you know, I want to, we've talked about authorship and I appreciate it because I don't know much about it, but I've always had questions and I think you've answered a lot of them. Do you have any advice for a new author?

What would you say if somebody wants to write a book, but they're just afraid to take that next step? What piece of advice might you give them to encourage them?

Brennan Storr: I would, I would challenge them to identify the fear more than anything. What are you afraid of? You know, are you afraid of the time commitment?

Are you afraid of failing? And, and to that, I would say, you know, failure is irrelevant. I mean, it's not failure unless you've set yourself up for it. So if, if you're gonna start writing a book, you know, don't advertise it. Don't say I am now writing the great Canadian novel. Don't be like that. Just shut up and do it.

But yeah, one of the things I think people don't think about though, and I think when it comes to podcasting, when it comes to anything that involves the public is they don't reckon with whether or not they want to be known. Because I know some really talented people who do not want the public gaze.

And I think some of them self sabotaged quite a bit before they had that realization, before they realized, Oh no, I actually don't want people to know me. I like making what I make, but maybe I don't want to have an Instagram account where I show off my art. Or maybe I don't want to have a podcast where I talk about X, Y, or Z because I actually don't want people knowing me.

Interesting. And so I would, I would challenge them to identify what their fear is. If, if, if there is a fear other than that, I would just say, do it for the love of it first. Yes. Just, just, if you want to write, just do it. Don't, don't say you're writing a book. Don't say you're writing a series of tone poems.

Just sit down and write and let it happen and then see where it takes you. And the other thing is I would encourage you to do is find community. I think that's so important and that's something I've struggled with, you know, Victoria is not a very friendly city and you know, I've been here 16 years now.

I've learned this. One of the reasons I'm moving find community, find people who like what you like. And they will, if you find the right people, they will help support you through the rough patches because there's going to be times when you're rolling that ball uphill and it just falls down. You think, oh God, I don't want to do this again.

Yeah. And it's easy to give up. But if you have people who understand what you're going through, that can help because they'll say, you know, no, this is normal. You're not failing. You don't suck. This is just something that happens during the creative process. Actually a great example just briefly is I used to find after I finished a show, cause this used to be a bi weekly show, I would finish a show and I would go into a deep depression.

A deep depression. And I've always struggled with depression and anxiety, but this was a particularly bleak depression. And then I found in 2018, the podcast, the movie crypt, which is hosted by the film directors Adam Green and Joe Lynch. And I listened to god hundreds of hours of the show. And one of the things I learned was that that is so common among artists.

You finish a project and all that energy has nowhere to go. So you can go into just a dip. And so once I understood that. And part of this was me having to reckon with the realization that you're an artist, which was, you know, again, growing up blue collar, that was not an easy thing to admit. Yes. I said, oh, okay, now I understand what that is.

And that really helped mitigate a lot of it because I recognize that pattern. And so then I could just go, oh, okay, this is what this is. I will focus that energy on something else. I'm not just going to sit back and do nothing. I will focus that energy. Elsewhere. And so, I mean, that was only community in as much as I was listening to someone else.

But if you have actual community around you, again, that just makes life a lot easier.

Kelly Kennedy: That makes so much sense. I could see that, you know, especially like, you know, I want to say, I don't know if I want to call this necessarily an artistry, I guess it is, I guess, you know, podcasting is an artistry. But I guess what I'm getting at is I could see that if you're, if you're putting so much of your time into something, and then that something just.

Vanishes and you don't have anything to put there. I could definitely see how that could be incredibly hard on you. Like, regardless of what it is, you know, like, I think, you know, people that lose their jobs face that same level of depression. People that lose anything meaningful in their life that they put a lot of time into and then they have nothing to replace it with, at least in the, in the meantime, I think that's an immediate trigger for depression or anxiety.

It makes perfect sense. It makes perfect. So, okay. So what do you do? So now if you have a project that ends Brennan, do you immediately go into another project? How do you mitigate that anxiety and depression?

Brennan Storr: I don't know if my solution is the best one because I, I never stopped working. So I don't know if that is something I would recommend.

1. It's a, maybe a little bit of a problem for me. I find a little too much personal worth in working. So I work a lot. I also have hobbies, you know, and that's something I kind of force myself to, to do more because the old joke, right? You work for yourself and you'll never stop working a day in your life.

And so I, I could work seven days a week quite happily and I would but it's, it's not a healthy way to be. I know. And I would work like when I, when I'm going through a really bad patch psychologically, I know because I work until one or two in the morning and then I fall asleep on the couch, walking and watching a movie.

And then I wake up and I'm back working by nine, 10. So yeah, you got to have other things you like doing, you know, and being, again, with, with the ADHD sometimes your brain is not going to want to do what you want it to do. And you have to learn to pivot because that will also lead to depression. If you are, you know, sometimes I'll sit down.

And it's time to do the script for the next show. And brain will not do it. Brain will seek dopamine in any other way. Oh, let's go see what's going on on Twitter. Let's go see what's going on over here. And I, it'll do anything except the thing you want it to do. And what I've learned is go do something else.

Okay. It, you know, even though you think, no, I have to get this done. Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. Grinding it out is just going to, it's not going to accomplish anything. And if you do manage to eat something out, it's going to be terrible. So instead what I'll do is I'll go throw on a movie. You know, I'm a, I'm a giants.

I watch like 30 to 50 movies a month. I love movies and so I'll go throw something on. And then usually what happens is about 45 minutes into the movie, brain goes, Oh, you know, I'd like to go work now. And so then I paused the movie and I go work. And so just kind of lean into your, learn your personal rhythms and then lean into them.

Don't beat yourself up because you're not, you know, you're not a wake up at 6 AM and start grinding kind of person. That's okay. You have a natural work rhythm. You know, my thing is I'm, I'm really focused for four hours. But when I'm on, I get the work of about three people done in four hours. Yes. And so learn your rhythms, value your rhythms and, and just lean into them and accept that this is how you work and that's okay.

And now it's hard to do that when you're working for someone else. So that can be a challenge. You know, again, I've. I was lucky enough working for Cortex, which was my, my previous full time employer, the consulting company I managed for, I worked basically managed managing a teleworking office. So I, I was, I was kind of the central hub and everyone else kind of rotated around me, but I could set my own hours.

Yeah. And again, not everyone's going to have the value of that and not probably the the opportunity to do that, but as best you can try and work within your rhythms.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes, I, I love that. I love that. I think, I think you nail it. I, I've never heard somebody say that before, but I think that makes a lot of sense because I think everybody, whether or not you have ADHD or not, You have a working rhythm and a time that you're more effective and a time that you're just not as effective.

And so I love that idea that like not all eight hours are created equally and I believe that wholeheartedly. If you have an eight hour day, that, that doesn't mean that all eight hours you're going to be full productive. You might only be full productive for two or three hours, but in that two, but in that two or three hours, you might be able to knock out eight hours worth of work.

Brennan Storr: That's it. And you know, one of my great pet peeves when it comes to work and emotional stuff, but work especially. We'll focus on work is we have this, this wrong headed notion that because something is happening in your mind, it's not, it's just in your head. Well, you know, what's in your head, in your head is a bunch of fatty tissue, tissue and chemical impulses.

Everything that's happening in your head is real. It is, it is a, it is a physical, tangible thing. You just can't see it. Yeah. And if you don't. Pay attention to those rhythms. Well, this is the, it's a little bit crass, but this is the example I like to use. I tend to, again, I tend to use this more about like emotional expression, but it works for work too.

If you have to, if you have to, again, pardon the expression, take a crap and you don't do it, what happens? Does it, does it go away? No, it doesn't go away. Yeah. It just builds up, it builds up, you get uncomfortable, you get crampy, you become a really difficult person to be around. You start to stink and eventually it comes out anyways, it makes a huge, embarrassing mess.

There's no different difference between that and the chemical impulses that make up your emotions and your bio rhythms. They are chemical impulses in your head and you cannot stoicism is. Well, one stoicism is usually poorly understood, but two, you can't be entirely stoic. It just doesn't work. Some people can just as some people can go a long time without taking a crap, you know?

So I know some people go every once, every two days, bless them. I wish, you know, but most people that's not true and just because your brain doesn't work that way, doesn't make you less. And in fact, learning to harness that makes you more. So don't, you can't ignore these things just because they're quote, in your head, being in your head is not an indication that something is not real.

And anyone who says that has a very limited understanding of how the human body works and is not to be a it's not an example to be followed.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. What is real for one person? Just because you don't experience it the same way, doesn't mean it's not real.

Brennan Storr: That's it. That's it. The human body is sure.

We are all mostly alike in function, but we're not entirely like, and to say, well, it wasn't like that in my time. Again, that's nonsense. Yes, it was. You just ignored it. And as a result, you lost a lot of worker productivity.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Yeah. No, I agree. Yeah. No, a hundred percent. I, I totally resonate with that. And, you know, you've accomplished a lot despite struggling with the challenge of ADD.

So congratulations on that. Thank you. And learning how to harness it and learning how to work around that is very commendable. I, I think a lot of people just struggle and it sounds like, you know, you struggled, but you found a way to work with it. And I think that that's incredibly commendable.

Brennan Storr: I, I, and thank you.

I still do struggle. You know, there are days where there's a running joke on Instagram. They describe ADHD as bees in your head. And there are some days where it's just bees in my head and you know, I'm not, not much is getting done. And again, you say, okay, well I'll go to the gym, you know, I'll go for a drive.

I'll figure it out that way. Just, this is not going to be quote productive time. But again, even that can be productive time because you're, who knows what inspiration comes while you're doing other things.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes, yes. I wanted to go back to the book, if that's okay. There's a part in the book specifically it's at the Thunderbird Developments, where you talk about a scenario that reminds me so much of Poltergeist.

Like, that might have been the actual story of Poltergeist. like, oh, there's totally a Poltergeist connection here, but it's not. I don't, where did, tell us about that, that story.

Brennan Storr: So yeah, there's, there's a development in Revelstoke. It's, it was built in the seventies, if I remember right, called the Thunderbird homes.

And they're up behind the old set behind the cemetery. And there is one story from up there where I was approached by a friend of a friend. They had lived in, in this one house. And I think the chapter is called the house by the graveyard. Yes. Yeah. Or the, the graveyard next door. I think.

Kelly Kennedy: It is graveyard a hundred percent.

Brennan Storr: Yeah. Graveyard next door. I think it's what it is. But anyways, they had had some experiences there. You know they are the primary ones. You know, the youngest daughter would see a man, a shadow man, essentially, who she said was angry. There was a general feeling of anger in the house. The family would hear, or the youngest, the eldest daughter would hear what sounded like static and voices, but there was never.

Anyone actually responsible for it. It was just even coming from nowhere. Sometimes when this happened, they would see things flip past doorways always at night, these kinds of dark shadows. And there was some things I talked about in the book, which you later turn out to just be nothing, you know, for example, exploding glasses that just happens, you know, glasses, glasses, just do that.

You heat them up enough and cool them enough over time. They just, they blow up. So I don't think there's anything to that, but the other things they were, they experienced were, were very real and. There is sort of a tendency within the paranormal genre to try and attach these stories to a re a reason based on history.

So of course, with the graveyard next door, so there was all these rumors that graves were disinterred to make way for the Thunderbird homes. I think partially because of the popularity of poltergeist. Yes. This was expected. So I went to the city and I talked to them and they claimed that, no, that they said that everything there is, that was always deeded land to the cemetery.

There was nothing disinterred. But you know, these experiences were borne out and the family had the experiences they had ultimately it ended, I believe it ended the marriage for the, the, the father and mother who lived there at the time. But I also went and spoke to the woman who lives there now, or at least was living there when I wrote strange and she had no such experience.

Kelly Kennedy: Really? Hey, that's so, so interesting.

Brennan Storr: But I also gave a talk at the high school a few years ago and I spoke to a kid who had some stories from across the street from the cemetery and there is a stream that runs through there and some people connect these things to running water. There it's, and it turns out Revelstoke is in fact riven with underground streams.

A lot of them were covered up when the town was developed. Now why, who knows, but there does seem to be some kind of connection to running water between running water and these experiences. And that may explain what happened. In that house.

Kelly Kennedy: It's so, I don't know, I struggle with it because reading your book, it makes Revelstoke seem like this incredibly haunted place.

Like the amount of things that people are experiencing from, and you know, I know you don't touch on it per se, but like. UFOs to say ghosts to gremlins to Bigfoot, like it seems like it has everything. And do you think that there is just something particular about your hometown that is making it such a hotspot for paranormal activity of all types?

Brennan Storr: I do. Yes. Now, do I know for certain what that is? I do not, but I do think it is particularly. Unusual in that respect. It is, it sits at the confluence of several rivers and some people believe that that has something to do with it. There, there's an old Tibetan legend of a, of a being called Za, GZA, who lives in river valleys and guards the veil between worlds.

And I actually talked about that connection a little bit in the new version of the book. Okay. I know I won't get too deeply into it here, but so, you know, the confluence of river valleys, you know, some people believe that has something to do with it. It, but yeah, I, I do think it is a particularly unusual place.

I've had this backed up by other people who claim to be sensitive to such things. There's an interesting concentration of missing people. Yeah, it's a strange, it's strange, a little place.

By and large, people there don't know it, you know, most of the stories in the book were unknown to me. And again, I spent the first 24 years of my life there and.

It, it, it comes in weird in weird waves. Like for example, you reached out to me. That was, I hadn't heard anything about strange in a very long time. Really just kind of, yeah, I run a website haunted rebel, stoke. com or. ca camera, which or strange little place. com where people can send in stories from rebel stoke, but.

I haven't had much and then you contacted me and then I was contacted by a woman who lived near the sawmill who had a story for me. And then I was contacted two days later by a researcher from Kamloops who did some work at the Three Valley Gap Hotel and wants to talk more about the actual. Phenomenon in Revelstoke.

So Revelstoke kind of comes in weird waves into my life, even though I haven't been there almost two years. And as it turns out, as all this is coming up, I am headed back there this coming weekend, not this weekend, but next weekend.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. So it is, it seems particularly strange. And I, I wonder if not all towns.

Have a certain level of strangeness and people are just not talking about it. Or like you said, it's anything to do with this subject. I can totally get being a professional and be like, look, I don't, I don't really want to talk about this. I can totally understand that side of it, right? Because it's like, you know, you got a business or you got all these other things going on and you're like, look, I don't want to be the crazy guy.

In the town, but I wonder how much weird things people experience in everyday life, wherever they are not just Revelstoke, but around the world around Canada, wherever you're at, where it's just not talked about. But somehow you've managed to find all these people in one town and put together, frankly, an astonishing amount of information regarding a very small place in Canada.

But it seems to be this incredible paranormal hotspot.

Brennan Storr: Well, thanks man. Yeah, I, I do think, I think this stuff is more common than we like. I, you know, it, it, it just is, you know, but, but quite often there is what people think, what people expect when they hear ghost, the words ghost story. And there's the experience of it.

And the, the expectation is usually a small Victorian child or someone in period dress, you know, and we've actually had listeners write in to say, why is it always someone in period dress? How come there's no ghosts in yoga pants? The thing is. People do talk about that stuff. It's just the popular narrative is X.

So that's what gets repeated on shows. Cause that's what people want to see. They don't necessarily realize that's what they want to see, but that's what they want to see. But I had a friend of mine, you know, she, she cleans houses here or used to clean houses here in Victoria. And one day she was in the house, she had her headphones on.

It was a really nice old house out in the country. She was cleaning a mirror, had her headphones in and she looked up and there was a woman standing behind her. And she just went, Oh shoot. You know, I didn't realize someone was home. So she pulled out her headphones, turned around to say hi, the woman was gone.

And what remained looked like a figure of a human cast in frosted glass. Hmm. And then it just dissipated like smoke, but it was real. This person, you know, again, she was not expecting something spooky. It was the middle of the day and she called me right away. She said, Hey, this just happened. I don't know what to make of this.

Yeah. And that's not uncommon. Another friend was out for a walk one day and she saw a guy gardening and the guy looked up at her and he looked really surprised and he disappeared.

Kelly Kennedy: Like the ghost looked surprised?

Brennan Storr: Well, see, that's a question. Now, is there somewhere a man telling a story About a woman walking up into his yard, seeing him and disappearing.

Kelly Kennedy: Interesting, like a parallel world or a parallel dimension.

Brennan Storr: Yeah, it's, it's so much more complex than ghosts. Sure. And that's one of the things that keeps me coming back is, I mean, sure it's spooky and scary, but also it, it's like this tantalizing clue to the greater nature of the world around us.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Yeah. No, totally. It, like I said, it's like who knows? There's no way to tell. Right. We'll, never ever know . It's just some weird things are happening. Brennan, it's been amazing having you on the show. Man, I want to talk so much. We're coming to the end of our show. I, I've so much, I feel like we, some point I want to have you back, so we'll, we'll have another conversation about that down the line.

'cause I think there's more I wanna chat with you about, because you are a professional podcaster now too. That is something that I haven't had on the show yet. And I would love to have that conversation, but I feel like that might be a show all on its own. But you know, I wanted to chat with you because your family, was it a deli that your family owned in Revelstoke or was it a grocery store?

Brennan Storr: It was a grocery store with a deli counter. We were, my mother was, was half owner with with her business partner.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. So you've had a lot of experiences in this book. There's, there's multiple chapters where you chat about your experience. I think one of them is chapter 11 for people that are referencing the book.

Oh yeah, yeah. But, you know, you spent a lot of time in Bocchi's not only did you spend time there, you actually lived in the apartment above the store. I did indeed. Can you tell us about your experience at Bocchi's yeah.

Brennan Storr: So again, I, that was the first place I lived. I basically lived at home. I graduated. My mother said, you have a year to live at home and then I'm going to start charging you rent.

So I moved out I think that winter I moved out into the apartment above Bocchi's and I was, I mean, when you consider what I was paying for rent now, it's, it's ludicrous. I mean, that apartment would go for, I think, 10 times as much, but it was Revelstoke in the early 2000s. So everything was cheap. And again, I didn't have much of the way of belief about this stuff.

I Filled it with all the crap that a 20 year old or, you know, I guess 20, 19 year old fills his first apartment with. I had a foosball table. I had a mini, a beer fridge. I had a home theater system, all that crap. And I would fall asleep listening to music in the other room. You know, it was just, it was sorted.

And then over time I kind of became nervous. About sleeping with the door open and said, oh, that's weird. Okay. So I closed the door and then I felt like, Hmm, I got to lock it. I'm going to lock it. That's weird. And then over time I didn't, I didn't feel comfortable having music playing in the room anymore in the next room.

So I turned that off. And then one night I was laying in bed, getting ready to go to sleep and it had been a busy day at work. And sometimes I get that, you know, when you're, you're laying in bed, you, things are just like the noise of the day is kind of in your head. And I just wasn't thinking too much about it until I realized the noise of the day.

Wasn't just in my head anymore. It was in the room and it wasn't the noise of the day anymore. It sounded like someone was having a dinner party. I heard glasses clinking. I heard people, I heard the low murmur of conversation. And I was the only person in this building. There were no other apartments. It was an enormous apartment that ran the entire top of the building and the store was long closed.

And I, I like to joke. I very bravely kept my eyes closed and forced myself to go to sleep. I had a whole series of, of these kinds of experiences and then I had a girlfriend move in and she went through exactly the same thing. She loved having all the space and then all of a sudden she wasn't comfortable being there.

You know, X, Y, and Z, she finally, she wasn't comfortable being there alone. And I eventually moved out and I happened to be at a Denny's. One night and a waitress came over and said, Hey, you, you you lived above Bocchi's right? And I said, yeah. So do you ever notice anything weird up there? I said like what?

And she described exactly the same progression of emotions as I, as I'd experienced. And later I met a another tenant who had had exactly the same thing happened to them. And I think the thing that really weirded me out was after I'd moved. I was working downstairs one night, I was doing the books at the end of the day and the store was closed.

I was the only person in the building. The upstairs apartment was empty. The, the landlord had been showing it earlier in that day and as I sat there, I heard what sounded to me like bass, like from a party and now our next door neighbors at the time had kids in their late teens, early twenties. So I thought, ah, oh, they're the kids.

I knew that. Parents were in Mexico. So the other kids were having a party with the parents of Mexico doing the books. And then it occurred to me, no, no, they went with them this time. I thought, oh, geez, I hope no one broke into their house is having a party in their house and kept doing the books. And then I realized, no, that bass sound that's coming from upstairs.

That's not next door. That's upstairs, but upstairs should be empty and it's about 10 o'clock at night, about 10 o'clock at night by this point. And okay, that's. So maybe someone broke in, you know, maybe like the landlord was showing it to people, maybe one of the local homeless guys wandered in there and there was the stairwell that ran upstairs connected, there was a door that connected it to the back of the office, essentially the back of the store.

We kept it dead bolted from our side, but. So I went over there and I opened it and I looked in the, it immediately to my right was the outside door to the apartment and it was closed and it was locked and it was locked with the landlord's key. So no one could have gotten in, but I hear this, this bass banging and I thought, oh man, I don't know what's going on.

And then it starts to come closer. That bass sound starts to come closer and I didn't know what to do. And then I heard creaking on the part of the steps that was just outside my field division. And I slammed that door and I locked it and I ran home so damn fast. But I'll tell you one that, that got me even more, it's not a Revelstoke story, but this is one of those things that really started to shift against, shift my point of view on this stuff.

I worked in a haunted office building in Victoria when I worked for this consulting company, that's, I was there for seven years. And over time, man, it just got worse and worse. And what I noticed was I would tell my friends these stories, but if I was doing it on the phone, If I talked about these things in the building on the phone, I would lose signal.

But if I changed the subject, my signal would come back. And if I did it outside, fine, didn't matter what I was talking about. But the second I went inside, I would start to lose signal. Yeah. And so one day, again, beautiful day, middle of the day, only person in the office. I'm talking to a friend of mine and I'm telling him all these stories and I start to lose signal and then I start to get white noise and I'm very annoyed.

And then I hear him talking, but it's all distorted. It sounds like this. It sounds like, so it sounds like speech, but.

Horribly distorted. Sure. And it was unpleasant. So I shut it, I hung up, called him back and I said, what, what the hell were you saying? And he said, I thought that was you. And I thought, okay, that's strange. And now these are iPhones. These are not, you know, old analog cell phones. Yeah. But later that night. I was driving around with a friend and I, I like to, I'm a very much a night person.

I like to be out at night. So we were out driving around and we were listening to the police scanner. There used to be a channel where you could listen to the, the Victoria police scanner. So we're nerds. So we're listening to the scanner and just kind of scoping out what's going on. And I tell my friend the story.

So you're not going to believe what happened today. We're driving and I tell them what I just told you. And then in the middle of the police band broadcast. Right between, you know, 332 at 42nd street, it cuts out and this deep voice over the police band. I'm kidding. I'm not kidding. It starts laughing just through the radio, through the police band.

I looked at my friend, he looked at me and then the police band kicked back in. No one referred to it.

Kelly Kennedy: Oh my gosh. Is this shit ever like, does it, does it still freak you out? Or like at this point is just so much weird stuff happened to you that it's just, it's a normal part of your life.

Brennan Storr: It depends on what it is. It depends on what it is. Most of the time, it doesn't really happen much anymore. If I'm honest, it doesn't really happen much in my day to day.

I'll just, you know, I'll have again, like feelings or something that might keep me out of trouble. That's, you know, that's a whole other conversation, but that doesn't happen as much. But when it does happen, unless it's really dramatic, it's kind of like, well, yeah, here we go again. Yeah, there are times where it's unnerving when, when it happens.

Late at night, you know? Mm-Hmm. . We were, we just got back from the uk we were visiting my mother-in-Law and at one point we heard this like cra terrible crashing sound in the apartment and or in the house rather. And the, there was this flash of light. And I said, I woke up and I said to Nick and my wife, I said, what's going on?

She goes, oh, it must be mom walking around. And then the, the, the light in the hallway flashed again. Now bear mind, this is three in the morning. Yeah. There is no way her mother could have turned the, could or would've turned those lights on 'cause her room is right next to the bedroom. I'm sorry, her bathroom is right next to her bedroom.

So for, she doesn't have to have to turn any lights on to get to the bathroom. Yeah. And the switch to turn the light on that flashed is on completely the other side of the landing. So I would have heard her crossing the landing and then crossing back to her bedroom and closing the door that just flashed on.

And I will say sometimes when you hear things at like three in the morning or something like that happens, and again, I'm not saying that was paranormal, but it was very strange. Sure. That is concerning. You know, there was a time I was laying in bed with Nick and I heard. What sounded like two girls in the living room talking about the movies on my shelf.

And I got up because I thought someone had broken into my house. Sure. There was no one there. Weird.

Kelly Kennedy: So, oh man, like I, I get chills just thinking about that. Oh

goodness. Yeah. You talk about, there's one part in the book, you know, chatting about the flashes and it's where you made a trip back to Revelstoke. Oh yeah. And you were, it was, it was dark out and it was later at night and you were just walking across the street from Bocchi's. I think just reminiscing about your time there and how much of your life you'd spent there.

This is after you, you hadn't worked there anymore or you weren't living there either. And you mentioned that you, you're standing across the street looking at Bocchi's. And then in the upper window, there's a blue flash and you're thinking to yourself, like, that's so weird. Like, Oh, like who would be taking pictures?

It's like late at night. It's dark. Like, and just as you think that the blue flash goes through all the windows in the whole building. Holy crap. I would shit my pants.

Brennan Storr: I ran. I ran. I again, very bravely ran. And what's interesting is that happened again in Victoria. No way. Yeah, I was in my office and I heard what sounded like paper rustling in my boss's place, my boss's office.

So I went in to check, he wasn't there and there was no, there was nothing in there. So I went back into the main reception area and I saw what looked like a photography flash. Yeah. And I thought it was someone outside. Then I realized, no, it happened again. It was coming from the conference room. I went into the conference room, there was no one there.

There's no camera, there's no flash, there's no light. Wow. Yeah. And, and funny you ask about that. We just recorded episode 171 of Ghost Story Guys yesterday. And we had flashing light stories on there as well.

Kelly Kennedy: Oh, amazing. Amazing. And that's what I wanted to trail into. This is, this has come to the end of our business development podcast Halloween special.

I know it's not typical, but I love a good ghost story. I love a good scary story. And today we were We were graced with Brennan Storr, and he is a published author of A Strange Little Place, and if you are a Canadian, you should 100 percent buy this book. Hell, if you're anywhere in the world, you should 100 percent buy this book.

It is amazing. And then Brennan also is the co host of The Ghost Story Guys, and it's, yeah, you've got hundreds of episodes at this point, don't you, Brennan?

Brennan Storr: Oh yeah, yeah. 170 main episodes and then a number of bonus shows and the, the audio dramas I mentioned. And I also co host a movie podcast called weird together where we talk about the latest and greatest in independent horror films and that allows me to write off all my movie rentals.

Kelly Kennedy: Amazing. Amazing. So yeah. Okay.

Brennan Storr: It's a bunch of different stuff.

Kelly Kennedy: Perfect. So if people want to buy A Strange Little Place?

Brennan Storr: So you can find that on Amazon. I, it is in some booksellers, but because it's primarily published via Amazon it's on there published through beyond the fray, which is an outfit out of, I think, Nevada.

But yeah, so on Amazon is the best place.

Kelly Kennedy: Perfect. And is it still available on Audible as well?

Brennan Storr: The first edition is the second, the first edition is no longer available to purchase in physical. The publisher relinquished the rights about a year ago. So the second edition is not currently available on Audible, but I hope to remedy that soon.

Kelly Kennedy: Awesome. And where can we find the ghost story guys? If people loved a good scary story.

Brennan Storr: Yeah. Yeah. Come, you can find us everywhere. Find podcasts live. We're also at ghoststoryguys. com. We're on Instagram as the ghost story guys. We're on Facebook as ghost story guys. And we also have a Facebook group, which we called the ghost story guys finally made a group.

Kelly Kennedy: Amazing. This is the end of our Halloween special. You're listening to the business development podcast. We were graced with Brennan store until next time we'll catch you on. The flip side.

Outro: This has been the business development podcast with Kelly Kennedy. Kelly has 15 years in sales and business development experience within the Alberta oil and gas industry and founded his own business development firm in 2020.

His passion and his specialization. Is in customer relationship generation and business development. The show is brought to you by Capital Business Development, your Business Development Specialists. For more, we invite you to the website @ www.capitalbd.ca. See you next time on the Business Development Podcast.