From Trader Joe’s to Twelve Books in Six Months: The Full Origin Story | Authors First with Tony Kay

This is the complete conversation from Richard Lowe’s hour on Authors First with Tony Kay, on the Artist First World Radio Network, lightly edited for readability.

The introduction

Tony Kay: You’re listening to the Artist First World Radio Network, artistfirst.com. Tony Kay in the studio. Thanks, audience, for joining us worldwide. All broadcasts are available free on demand; simply visit artistfirst.com and you’ll locate thousands of hours available there. This hour on Authors First, it’s my privilege to introduce our guest: Richard Lowe will be joining us. For your convenience, we have his website posted at artistfirst.com: realworldsurvival.com. Go to the website and check it out, and believe me, you’re going to be fascinated with our guest. Hey, how you doing, Richard?

Richard Lowe: I’m doing fantastic, thank you. How are you?

Tony Kay: Thank you for supporting the arts and joining Authors First. You’ve got a great story to tell. An interesting life in computer science for 33 years. You took early retirement. You were a top tech for Trader Joe’s, and we love Trader Joe’s outside of Cleveland, Ohio; my family and I go there frequently. A great company to work for, a wonderful philosophy of business. And then you decided you were going to do something you’ve always loved: photography, traveling around the country, national parks, special events, and you’re quite the photographer. Congratulations on that skill, that eye. And an author. You’ve written thousands of articles and blogs, and I’m just overwhelmed with the level and quality of your material. Thank you for stepping aside from computer science to share your words, because you have a passion for liberty, for rights, a passion for helping humanity worldwide. And at Artist First Radio we have listeners from every nation on earth, especially military personnel and those living in foreign lands who love English. So welcome aboard, Richard Lowe. Audience, I’ve given you plenty of time to go to the website: real, R-E-A-L, world, W-O-R-L-D, survival dot com. Bring it up for the show. You’re just a prolific guy. I don’t know when you sleep. You’ve written several books that you’ve self-published, and I want to congratulate you for your ability to research a topic and put it together in a concise, practical manner. Today, with so much happening in the world, we’re all concerned about surviving, especially when it comes to our computer safety. So Richard, welcome.

Richard Lowe: Well, thank you. I’m happy to be on the show. I was wondering if you were going to shut up… that was a lot of introduction. It’s a little overwhelming to hear it all read back. Is that really me?

Tony Kay: Yes, it is.

Falling in love with computers

Tony Kay: Having an artistic eye, a love of photography, and then growing up with the technology: when were you introduced to computers and that whole world?

Richard Lowe: Well, I was in college back in the late 70s, early 80s, and I had a class to fill because my schedule wasn’t full, and I took a class in computer science. It was just to fill the schedule. I mean, I thought it was dorky. But then I fell in love.

Tony Kay: Wow.

Richard Lowe: The language was called BASIC. This was a long time ago, so the computer was the size of a full room, and that computing power is equivalent to what you have on your watch nowadays. It’s amazing how much it shrunk. Then I was playing around on the computer and started writing games, started writing utility programs to help other people. The teacher started noticing me and got me some jobs. Then I took another class, and that teacher decided to start a company, and he asked me to come on as his first employee. It was a brand new startup, and it was just what I needed. Within two years, I was vice president of consulting of that company, managing about a dozen people and having a great time. After that, it was just cruising along: I became vice president of another company, senior developer at another one, and finally wound up at Trader Joe’s.

Tony Kay: Things were happening all the time. Programs and machines were getting smaller and having more power, and the tools we take for granted every day were in the process of being developed. And it all began for you through a college course taken to fill the time. You hear that, students out there? Young and old, whoever you might be: go take that course. Find that subject you have a passion for, or maybe you just have spare time and want to learn more. Who knows, you could be the next Steve Jobs.

Richard Lowe: Well, I had one of the most fabulous instructors. His name was Mr. James, and I believe he’s passed away now. This was at San Bernardino Valley College in California. He was a great guy, had a sense of humor, and really motivated me to get going and learn it. He was one of the first teachers I really had a connection with at the college level. He had a love for computers and a love for people working with computers, and you could just see his face light up as he was showing me all these things. It was quite interesting.

Tony Kay: Mentors are everywhere. If you have an interest and show excitement, they’ll pop up, and the synergy will be there, and you’ll be bouncing ideas off each other before you know it.

Richard Lowe: Exactly. I’ve had several mentors through my entire career. One of them was named Steve Davis. He wound up at Walt Disney as one of their CIOs. He came in as a guest lecturer for one of my computer science teachers, and he’s one of the people who got me hired in that first job. He is one of the smartest people I’ve ever met, an incredible person. He was my first mentor in the work world, and it was just: wow. I’d never run into that before.

Tony Kay: It’s extremely motivating, isn’t it? I tell young people in high school: the excitement really begins in college, because of the type of people you’ll meet, the depth of your topic, the exposure you’ve never had, the freedom to reach out and study something and become an expert at it. And the people you meet, you’ll have for a lifetime, professionally.

Richard Lowe: What I found in college was: you can either just take the courses and go through it, or you can become excited about certain subjects and look for the teachers and other students who can become mentors or work with you. That makes it much more exciting.

Tony Kay: Were you carrying a camera at that time?

Richard Lowe: No. That was back in the old film days, and cameras were expensive, and I was just scraping by, so I didn’t have a camera then. I’ll tell you the story of the camera a little later if you want.

The Trader Joe’s years and the leap

Tony Kay: So life moved on. You got out of college, went into a professional field, and ultimately ended up at Trader Joe’s. That’s a great tenure: you gave them 20 years of your mind, your life, and you grew.

Richard Lowe: Yes, that was a fascinating experience. I’d actually worked as a consultant for Trader Joe’s for a couple of years, and they got a good feel for me and liked me, so I managed to move over from VP of consulting to Director of Technical Services and Computer Operations at Trader Joe’s. It was a great place to be. Very stable. They have a very good corporate attitude of growth and supporting people: individuals are important, customers are important. You know how it is at Trader Joe’s, and it’s the same way in the corporate office. I was there 20 years, and it was a lot of fun.

Tony Kay: And so, with mixed emotion, you looked at where you were and where you’d like to go, and suddenly you took that opportunity.

Richard Lowe: Well, I’d been at Trader Joe’s for 20 years, and I was making quite a bit of money, and we had a really good retirement fund. I’d always wanted to be a writer. I looked at my retirement fund and my savings and all the other assets I had and thought: you know what, I’ve got enough here for quite a few years. Not enough to get through the rest of my life, but I’ll take it now and build up a new career in what I want to do. And that’s what I did, and it turned out to be a really good move.

How does Richard Lowe write books so fast?

Tony Kay: You’re so prolific, and your material is well done. When you think about a topic, such as your latest book, how do you go about organizing your thoughts and laying it out? Do you pre-plan?

Richard Lowe: Yeah, I do what’s called a mind map. It’s kind of like an outline, only in graphic form. You free-form your ideas out, flow them around, and figure out how it fits. Usually it just takes a few hours, and basically it boils down to an outline at that point, but the mind mapping software is much less rigid than an outline. From there, I just write. I start from the top and write to the bottom, and a lot of my books I write in a couple of days.

Tony Kay: How nice. So you’re coming from a wealth of background on the topic already.

Richard Lowe: Yeah. I was a manager, of course, and I’ve done a lot of management through my whole career, so a lot of my books are on the business side of things. There are books on computers and computer security, of course. And the survival book came about because I’ve been through several earthquakes and several other disasters and had to learn how to survive. I took a look around and realized I didn’t fully know how to survive, and other people knew even less, and I said: I need to write a book on this to help people. The whole concept of both the computer security book and the survival book is: you can either live in fear of an earthquake or a tsunami, or you can know what it is, understand it, prepare for it, and then not be afraid.

How do you prepare a family for a disaster?

Tony Kay: Okay, Richard, what’s in there for the sinkhole? I just had to throw that out. But what about the basic elements of any kind of disaster? There could be a river overflowing across the road while you’re in an automobile.

Richard Lowe: The idea is, first of all, you start by looking around. It’s called situational awareness, and it’s actually the difference between people who get mugged and people who don’t, and why certain people tend to have crimes committed against them all the time. If you’re not aware of your surroundings, things happen to you. So a good portion of the first part of the book is: walk into a room and take a look around. Where’s the window? Okay, your grandmother’s in a wheelchair; if there’s a fire, how are you going to get her out? Think it through.

Once you’ve done that, sit down with your kids and your wife and your friends, have a little get-together, get some popcorn, and talk about what you’re going to do if there’s an earthquake. What are you going to do if there’s a fire, a hurricane, whatever the disaster is in your area? Make sure your kids are involved, because kids are smart. Go over these things and plan it out. Okay, kids: if you’re in school and we’re at home and there’s an earthquake, I want you to do this. And they’ll tell you, well, we can’t do that because of this and this. Okay, how about this? And then you don’t have to worry as much about your kids when that disaster happens, because they’re trained. They understand. They know what to do, and it’s much better than them not knowing.

Tony Kay: It’s kind of a drill, come on. If you know you live in an area prone to fires, floods, earthquakes, or the roads clog up, or there’s no electricity and it’s winter. Thinking ahead, planning, knowing your area and your surroundings, and then creating a training method: we’re not only going to have this stuff, we’re going to actually use it and be prepared, right?

Richard Lowe: Yeah, and then you do some dry runs. Let’s pretend there was an earthquake. Now, you’re at school: what do you do? You can walk through it at home, or you can actually do it semi-for-real and get everybody on the same page. What if there are no phones, what do you do? What if there’s no electricity? In an earthquake or a fire or a hurricane, there aren’t going to be any phones or sewer systems or anything like that for a while. So what do you do? That’s what the whole book’s about: what do you do in those situations, and how do you prepare for them when, by definition, you don’t know what the disaster will be before it strikes.

For example, one of the things you want to do is create what’s called a bug out bag. It’s also called a go bag. It’s simply a duffel bag, usually one per member of the family, with what you need to survive for a day or two, that you can grab and go. When the police come around and say, we need to bug out right now, you’ve got five minutes to evacuate, you grab your bug out bag and your box of medications, and you’re out of there. You prepare that in advance, because in those five minutes you don’t have time to prepare it. My book goes through how to do that.

Tony Kay: Something as simple as your wedding album?

Richard Lowe: You could put in a couple of those things if you want. But you put in maybe a blanket, a change of clothes, maybe a pair of shoes, some food that’ll last a while.

Tony Kay: Precious jewelry, metals, gold?

Richard Lowe: I wouldn’t do that. I’d put that in a safe deposit box at the bank. In survival, you’re worried about surviving.

Tony Kay: I think we ought to have some liquidity in there. Not large sums, but come on.

Richard Lowe: I recommend putting in a couple of hundred dollars in small bills.

Tony Kay: There you go. Thank you.

Richard Lowe: And one of the reasons you want small bills is that it’s interesting how, in a disaster, everything starts costing $20. And you know why? Because the ATM machine only gives out 20s. So you want to make sure you have ones and fives and some change in your bug out bag, so you don’t have to pay $20 for everything.

Tony Kay: You’re giving away the topic: Real World Survival Tips and Survival Guide, by our guest this hour, Richard Lowe. Website: realworldsurvival.com. Go over there right away; you won’t be disappointed. There’s so much more we can’t cover during this show. We do need to assess and become educated, and that never ends. And in our mobile society, we’re moving around a lot. We may end up in Florida, where they have problems we’re not familiar with, or in Minnesota, where they have other issues.

Richard Lowe: In my book I go over several examples of things that actually happened to me. I was in a couple of earthquakes. They weren’t huge, not like the one that hit Japan; they were more on the order of magnitude seven. But the furniture dances all over the floor. I had a couch that moved into another room. Shelves fell over, and books everywhere, and they fly like missiles.

Tony Kay: Oh my God. If you’re in the vicinity, you could get hurt by your own possessions.

Richard Lowe: Easily. The advice is: get under a desk, get under something. And then I looked around and thought, okay, all my desks are glass. I need to fix that. That was the situational awareness part.

Tony Kay: It’s like making your home child-proof. Even if grandma and grandpa have nine of them, like I do, you still have to remember: things have to be put up, the little ones are coming. Get rid of the guns and the knives, the sharp objects, the toys they can swallow. Just because you don’t have a child underfoot every day doesn’t mean the home can’t be ready. And that’s something Richard Lowe is going to tell you how to do: look around, take observation, get inventory, and be ready, be prepared, and then you don’t have to worry. If I know it’s there, I have a sense of security.

Richard Lowe: Yeah. You can either worry about it, or you can be prepared for it. The problem with worrying or being afraid is it tends to freeze people. It tends to make them not do anything. So just stop that. There’s no need to be afraid of an earthquake or a hurricane. You just prepare for it. Obviously, if I was in the middle of an earthquake, I’d be terrified right now, especially because I’m in Florida and it would be totally unexpected.

Tony Kay: We live in snow, and there’s ice, and the electric lines go down, and now 20,000 people are without electricity for two or three days, however long it takes. That can be a very dangerous situation if you or people you love have health issues. A lot of people in our area will go buy a gas-powered generator they can run extension cords from into the house, to keep the refrigerator running and space heaters going.

Richard Lowe: Of course. Exactly.

Caught in a forest fire

Richard Lowe: And then I was caught in a forest fire. I mean literally in a forest fire. I go over that in my book.

Tony Kay: That’s terrifying. If you boil a cup of tea and get just a little burn, it can really be uncomfortable. But if you’re in the middle of a forest fire…

Richard Lowe: It’s frightening. I was driving home from college, and I lived in Lake Arrowhead, which is a mountain, about a 30-mile commute. And I looked, and both sides of the road are on fire, and it’s on fire in front of me. And I’m like: okay, I’m going to die.

Tony Kay: Or you turn around… but it doesn’t matter, right? You had fire on both sides.

Richard Lowe: There was actually a fireman there, and he stopped my car and got in, and he directed one of those helicopters with the water directly over me, and basically cleared a path to get out.

Tony Kay: There are our tax dollars at work, for Richard Lowe. It’s a good thing they saved you that day, because look what came after: your rich career, 33 years in the computer science industry, all the contributions you’ve made to successful businesses, and now your prolific writing, so graphic and skilled and well thought out. Thank you for pulling it all together. Audience, please, if you haven’t already, visit realworldsurvival.com. And I love the fact that your books are ebooks. They’re computer friendly. Tablets are out there; our kids are gravitating toward reading everything on their mobile devices, and that makes it an affordable way to get content. And I don’t just mean kids, I mean people of all ages, including myself. You’ve got a big project planned for 2016. This December 1st, 2015, you’re with us, but in 2016 you’ve got the whole calendar year laid out, and you’re going into the sci-fi area. I think that’ll be a fascinating journey.

The ten-volume science fiction series

Richard Lowe: Yeah, I’m writing a science fiction series. It’s going to be 10 volumes, and it’s going to probably take me five or six years to write. I’m working on the first one. It’s about a space war far in the future, a pretty big one, and it’s very interesting.

Tony Kay: Is that because of Star Wars coming out this month?

Richard Lowe: No, it’s something I actually wanted to write all the way through college and through my job for many years, and I just never got the time. Now that I have the time, and I can write fast, I write thousands of words a day, I’ve just been writing a little bit each day, and it’s going to be published early next year.

Tony Kay: I didn’t realize you had that much bottled up inside, Richard. Thank you for pouring it out. When your mind is affixed on a topic, you’re inclined to begin the research and discover all you can before writing.

What does a ghostwriter actually do?

Richard Lowe: Exactly. And also, I’m a ghostwriter, which is a whole different ball of wax.

Tony Kay: A ghostwriter. Which means you’re writing material under names no one would recognize, or for other people. How does that work?

Richard Lowe: Generally, a client will come to me and explain that he wants to write a book about some subject, and he’ll pay me to write it. I write the book, and it’s in his name. I’m invisible. That’s where the ghost comes from. Hillary Clinton’s book, and all the famous politicians and military people and everybody else: they’re not writers. They had a ghostwriter.

Tony Kay: So it’s just like: this is my life, this is my philosophy, I tell you a few things, and then you can take off from there. Does that come up on a regular basis? Is there a mechanism for those who have an idea and need a ghostwriter? Do they just pick up the phone and give you a call?

Richard Lowe: They can come to my other website, which is thewritingking.com/. There’s a place there where they can send me a contact, or they can call me on the phone. I’m in lots of groups for ghostwriting. And then we start talking. Usually it starts with a conversation. Somebody will say: I’m 70 years old, I’ve had this memoir I’ve wanted to write forever. We’ll start talking, and they find out that they can get it written with just a few interviews with me, and they’re thrilled. I do the interviews and write the book, and there you go.

Tony Kay: You’re having a lot of fun.

Richard Lowe: Too much fun. It’s not so much like work when you enjoy what you do.

Tony Kay: In writing, you’re enthusiastic, well researched. You take on a topic and pound it out with enthusiasm, and it requires very little editorial work afterward. I’m sure you proof and make sure your sentences are clear, but your writing style is fabulous. Congratulations.

Richard Lowe: Well, every book goes through two proofreaders. They’re not expensive, and I want two different ones to make sure there aren’t any stupid errors. Especially with a book like How to Surround Yourself with Beautiful Women Without Being a Sleazeball. That’s one of my favorite books. That was fun to write.

Tony Kay: You’ve got to get that one right, because if you don’t, half the population will never forgive you. That’s a great title. Would you tell the story behind it, please?

The camera, the grief, and the belly dancers

Richard Lowe: Well, what happened is, when I was married, which was a while ago, my wife got very sick. She was sick for 12 years. She smoked, and she wouldn’t quit, and she came down with lung disease. While she was sick, that’s when I started really being prolific writing, because I had to stay home. I worked, and then I came home, and that was my whole life. So I started writing thousands of articles. And then I got the idea of going out with a camera and taking pictures of the nearby botanical gardens and national parks and things, and bringing them home to her, so she could kind of see life outside and share in some of the adventures. It made her happy. That’s how I got into photography: trying to help her live a happier life when she was slowly dying.

She passed away 11 years ago. And then I went through the grief, and you know how grief is. I had to do something to get out of it, so I picked up the camera. I thought, well, it’s a good thing, get out there with people. So I got out and went to the national parks, and I hit every single thing you can possibly travel to in California. I went to every national park, every state park, every fair, rodeos, government buildings. I took thousands and thousands of pictures. And then I ran into a renaissance faire in Southern California, the Irwindale Renaissance Faire, and I sat down in front of the belly dancers, and my life changed that moment. The belly dancers took a liking to me, because I’m a really nice guy and I know where the boundaries are, and they invited me into their world. Not to be a belly dancer, but to be a photographer of belly dancers. Within the next six months to a year, I became the belly dance photographer in Southern California. By the time I moved, I had done 1,200 photography gigs for different shows, and I went to every show, plus 400 renaissance faires. It’s all on my website, richardlowejr.com.

Tony Kay: Of course that helps with the grief process: reinventing yourself, moving out in a way, meeting new people and new circumstances that bring a freshness to life. Not that we ever forget the ones we love and the suffering they may have experienced, but we’re here, and life moves on, and we need to recognize how much we can give and how much we can do with the time we have.

Richard Lowe: Exactly. So I got in with the belly dancers, and they became good friends. Finally, about two years into it, they decided they wanted to throw me a birthday party. So I had a birthday party with about 40 belly dancers, all dancing for me, in a pirate shop.

Tony Kay: How priceless. What a memory you’ll have for the rest of your life.

Richard Lowe: Oh, I have videos. They’re up on YouTube. Let me see if I can remember the address… SuperDuperSmartGuy.com. It goes to my YouTube channel. It has a thousand videos on it.

Tony Kay: Being so graciously entertained and adored for your work as a photographer must have been very gratifying. But a distraction from writing?

Richard Lowe: Well, I wasn’t really writing at that point. I was more into the photography, and with the computer job, I was on call 24/7 at Trader Joe’s. Literally every day of the year, including Christmas and holidays. To get back to the story: the ladies decided they were going to do a belly dance show for me every year on my birthday. For eight years I had that, and it got bigger and bigger, and finally we had to do it in two nights. Literally 100 dancers each night. All for me. It was great. King for the day.

And then I kept having people ask me, because I have pictures all over my website of these women hanging all over me and looking at me adoringly: how do you do that? So I wrote the book.

Tony Kay: How do you do that? Do you treat women as people?

Richard Lowe: Absolutely. As the gorgeous, perfect, beautifully arranged people they are. You know where the boundaries are. You give them respect, just like you would any other human being. You don’t say “they’re women.” They’re people, and you treat them that way. And interestingly enough, belly dancers, you can imagine, get hit on by all kinds of weirdos. They liked me because I wasn’t one of those. I’m very ethical, and I know where the boundaries are. The book came about because of that, and it focuses on human rights: that men who talk about the friend zone and things like that are basically lowering women, denying them the rights they deserve.

Tony Kay: Thank you for putting out that book. Do you think this is something a 15- or 16-year-old boy should read?

Richard Lowe: I think it would be great. It was written for everybody. It’s obviously aimed mostly at men, and it goes into: treat women this way. You don’t go in expecting something from a woman. Just go in and be friends, and then see what comes from that. If somebody wants a romantic relationship, that’s fine. Just be open and honest and explain what your feelings are. Don’t treat it as anything forbidden or wrong, and don’t treat her badly if she doesn’t want to go there. Treat her like a human being. How would you want to be treated? That’s what the book goes into. It’s a short book.

Tony Kay: And that was your first book? That got you started in writing?

Richard Lowe: That was my third book. It came right after Real World Survival. I did the computer security book first, then Real World Survival, and then this book. Now I’ve got 12 up on Amazon.

Tony Kay: Twelve!

Richard Lowe: In the last six months. There’s another one on survival, which is how to make a bug out bag. Six on business, one on computers.

Tony Kay: Now, the business ones: are those for the novice, or for someone who wants to upgrade their technology to reach the world with their business?

Richard Lowe: These are particularly about management and business: tips and techniques in different areas. Each book explores a different area: how to become a professional, how to be professional, how to act professional. How to manage a consulting project is one of them.

Tony Kay: I need to read every one of those. That would be a big help.

Richard Lowe: I’ve kept all the prices at $2.99, which keeps them cheap so anybody can afford them. About 30 bucks and you’ve got them all. And there’s one on how to plan a party, because I was the one who did all the planning for creating those parties with all the belly dancers, so I learned how to do that.

Tony Kay: That would be great. You should take that on tour. Northeast Ohio: we’d love to see those dancers. Well, no, we’d love to see you, Richard Lowe. But you could bring them along. That would be fun. RealWorldSurvival.com. It doesn’t get any better than this. Surviving beautiful women. I like that.

Richard Lowe: Yeah, it was a rough life, you know.

Practical tips: trash bags, batteries, and CERT classes

Tony Kay: Has photography merged with your survival guides at any level? A picture of a natural disaster, these lunatics on the roof of their house?

Richard Lowe: It would be a great shot, and no, I don’t have any of those, unfortunately.

Tony Kay: Our beloved Dick Goddard, the weatherman from Cleveland, Ohio, who must be a hundred, he’s been on our Channel 8 news forever, an animal rights enthusiast and promoter of the Woollybear Festival. He got caught in a storm in his automobile, and the river overflowed, and he barely escaped. He was rescued, but the water was up to his neck in the vehicle. It can happen to us at any time, and we need to be aware and prepared.

Richard Lowe: Definitely need to be prepared for any kind of disaster, and it’s not hard. For example, going back to the disaster book, one of the things I recommend right up front: get a box of trash bags and put them on a shelf. And you’re going to ask, what do you need trash bags for? Well, if the sewer service stops working, which it will in an earthquake or hurricane, you line your toilet with the trash bags. And then when you’re done, you wrap it up, and you’ve got somewhere safe for all of that to go. The tips are that simple.

Tony Kay: Things you wouldn’t think of. That’s what makes it a great resource, because you’re not in the midst of it at the moment, but if you were, would you really be ready? I love that you have stockpiling, resources, and other information available on your website for free: food stockpiles, water is essential, tips and the blog.

Richard Lowe: Exactly. Yeah, I’m always writing something. I’m writing eight hours a day.

Tony Kay: Wow. That’s what I hear from authors. They say if you want to get good at something, you just keep doing it. Your skill, your art, your way of communicating your ideas on paper gets perfected the more you do it.

Richard Lowe: Exactly. Writing: the key is you’ve got to just do it. Same with photography, same with anything in life. Make the decision and do it, and anything that’s against you needs to move.

Tony Kay: Now, you’re self-published, and you also have ebooks, so you’ve taken a multifaceted approach. How do you decide whether a book is one you want a traditional publisher to handle or something you push yourself?

Richard Lowe: So far, all my books have been done by self-publishing as ebooks. The fiction books I’m writing, I’m probably going to do the traditional route. It was easier to do the self-publishing because I could do it myself. I like having control.

Tony Kay: I think that’s why a lot of authors self-publish: they’re in control of everything. The artwork, the distribution, the ISBN. You can do all the details yourself today with the tools available.

Richard Lowe: The hard part about self-publishing is you’re also responsible for all the marketing and advertising, and there are so many ways to do that, it becomes overwhelming.

Tony Kay: Thanks for joining us and creating this audio file that will be enjoyed for years to come. Time just marches. Every day, eight hours a day, you’re pounding away, and then your photography, and your civic activities. You’re a pretty busy guy. Do you ride a bike too?

Richard Lowe: I have a stationary bike. I put on a lecture and sit on my stationary bike and go for an hour.

Tony Kay: Your lectures: for college students?

Richard Lowe: They’re on a little bit of everything. Anything I’m interested in. Audiobooks, lectures. Something to feed the mind.

Tony Kay: So that’s your time to feed yourself. You’ve got to keep growing.

Richard Lowe: You have to keep growing. You have to have that input of knowledge coming in. That’s actually something I go over in one of my business books: it’s very important not to stop learning and growing when you leave college. You have to continue the continuing education. College gives you a nice broad background, but you’re going to want to focus it on things that are important to you as you go through life. You might need a management class, or a very specific computer class, or learn how to use Word. I’ve taken 75 significant classes over the years as continuing education, plus dozens and dozens more that weren’t as significant, just because things change. Everything’s changed. You’ve got to keep going. It doesn’t stop when you leave college. It shouldn’t.

Tony Kay: A little knowledge will keep you healthy when disaster strikes. And those leather-bound books, those have to be worth a thousand dollars each. Get those in that bag.

Richard Lowe: A book can survive many decades and ultimately be useful. Especially because they’re all electronic now, so they’re stored God knows where. You’d better download them, and then have batteries. That’s actually one of the tips I mention: look at how many devices you have that need batteries, and make sure you’ve got enough to cover them for several weeks. Especially flashlights. Just buy a few packs of batteries. And remember they have dates on them, so you can’t buy too many.

Tony Kay: Should we worry about solar?

Richard Lowe: I didn’t get into that. I think it’s just becoming mature enough to be an option. It’s kind of expensive, and my understanding is the solar power generators aren’t that great yet. But don’t take my word for it. I haven’t looked into it that much.

Tony Kay: And in a year or two, you may come back with new tools for us or new methods. I think we have an acute awareness that disaster could occur at any time, with terrorism in the United States.

Richard Lowe: Yes, exactly. And there’s actually a series of classes available in most localities. It’s called CERT: Community Emergency Response Team. The fire department puts them on, and they’re three-hour-long classes, several of them, that go over basically everything you want to know about how to survive in your area, taught by the actual fire department. I’ve gone through it twice. They’re wonderful courses. They’ll answer all your questions and make sure you walk out of there, again, not afraid of a disaster. I highly recommend that to everyone. Just like a first aid class, too.

Tony Kay: And the panic goes wild during those events.

Richard Lowe: Well, when the World Trade Center collapsed, it collapsed right on the switchboard for Verizon and destroyed it, so there was no communication after that. In a terrorist event, the first thing the police will do is turn off cell phones; they have to. And in any kind of disaster, like an earthquake, the first thing that goes down is communications. Interestingly enough, short-range communications go down, but long distance phones still tend to work.

Tony Kay: You would think this would be common knowledge or common sense, but it’s neither. In today’s world, we’re so technologically driven, and it’s complicated regionally, even within states. We need to be informed and stay informed. I think public libraries do a tremendous service as well.

Richard Lowe: The libraries are great. I’ve been doing some book signings at libraries, and they’re just wonderful. I hadn’t been to a library in years, and then I became an author, and you kind of have to go to libraries when you’re an author. It’s like being reintroduced to an old friend.

Tony Kay: And you see a cut of people: poor, middle class, wealthy, those who are philanthropic, who’ve given back to the community, who love literature. Your public library is a tremendous resource. Audience, please get out there and use them, and meet people like Richard Lowe. And certainly visit realworldsurvival.com. I imagine under resources there are your other links?

Richard Lowe: They’re on there somewhere. Just look around, have fun, and take preparation seriously, wherever you are on planet earth.

Closing thoughts

Tony Kay: Richard Lowe, thank you for joining us. Before I let you go: any concluding remarks for our listeners, or anyone out there on planet earth you’d like to address, other than a hundred beautiful belly dancers?

Richard Lowe: Well, I think the key to surviving, first of all, is: live a good and ethical life. Just be ethical, be good, and be not afraid of things. Learn about something rather than being afraid of it. If you’re afraid of it, go learn about it. I’m afraid of heights. I’m terrified of heights. Every year, I go up in a hot air balloon. Why? Because I prove to myself that it’s really not dangerous. Sure, I’m afraid of it, but what the hell, who cares? Just don’t give in to fear. Always be learning, always be reaching. If you’re in college, take advantage of being in college, and then after college, take advantage of all the continuing education and everything else that’s out there. Buy books and read and write and communicate, and get outside, and turn off the darn TV. That’s actually one of my next books: turn off the TV.

Tony Kay: Or your mobile device. They’re so dangerous, right? The kids are walking around, heads down, and next thing you know, there’s an automobile or a bus in their way.

Richard Lowe: Exactly.

Tony Kay: How apropos. More from Richard Lowe on our survival of technology itself. Thank you, Richard. Thank you so much for joining us.

Richard Lowe: You’re welcome. My pleasure.

Tony Kay: There’s no end; we could do this for hours. Give us a couple of days, and one of our student interns will have your show archived. Thank you very much.

Find Richard Lowe at thewritingking.com/.

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Part of Richard Lowe on Air, his complete run of podcast, radio, and video guest appearances.