Apocalyptic fiction grounded in realism | Cries Of A Dying World with G. Michael Hopf

It leads you to what is valuable. In those two weeks, what is valuable to you? To me, it's family and it's love. That's what's valuable. And therefore, I think that's what people should seek out if you know you only have this amount of time. I bring you a multi-millionaire, world-famous celebrity to teach you about the most fascinating ways in order to live a far better life. Every single Thursday, you just need to subscribe by hitting the subscribe button. I'll see you every Thursday to re-spark your life. But what you don't know is who I am interviewing, G. Michael Hoff, and why I'm interviewing him. Well, let me introduce him by speaking in his voice. He says, I've written 40 books and my most recent one is called Cries of a Dying World. However, I mostly want to discuss my journey of success from being a combat veteran in the Marine Corps to becoming a USA Today best-selling author who has sold 2 million books and has gone on to own and operate a successful publishing. I'd also discuss overcoming adversity. How? Because I lost my son and I've been able to take that grief and channel it into something productive and meaningful. Wow. What a life. G. Michael Hoff, are you here with me? I am here, Raymond. Thank you very much for having me. Now, that was a pretty big intro. You've got to live up to all that now. Yeah, I do. So thank you very much for that. Did I write that? That sounds pretty good. Who is that guy? So tell me about your books. Well, I've got 40 of my books. They're all fiction. I first started writing apocalyptic fiction. One, because I actually like the genre. I like science fiction. But people ask why apocalyptic fiction? It's not because I like to look at the chaos and the mayhem and everything that's happening. In those situations, I have always found it fascinating people's responses to things and just the overall human condition. And it stems back to a moment in my past when something happened. I was a bodyguard at the time, and I was working on a large detail, and we all got fired. And one event, three different emotional responses to it. It's always stuck with me. So as a big reader of apocalyptic fiction, I've always been looking for kind of just, again, not the kind of grittiness, even though my books have that. I want to understand why people do, why humans do, why humans react the way they react, because they will. You see it in a tense situation. You always have three elements. Say you've had mass shootings before. You always have the person that runs toward it, the person that freezes, and the person that runs away from it. What drives that person to do any of those things? Why do this person run toward it? Why do they freeze, and why do they run away? And so there's a lot of that in my books, kind of exploring the human emotional state and the human condition. So I started out writing apocalyptic fiction, done quite a few of those books. I've done really well with them. And then I dove into writing Westerns, because I've always loved the Wild West. And it's something that's uniquely American. It's definitely very Americana. And I got into writing those. Again, I'm a big fan, so I write what I want to read. Yes. Well, I like post-apocalyptic movies, where some horrible thing has already happened, and now the filmmaker's exploring how people react to it. I just really enjoy that genre. Yeah, I have always. I can't remember the name of the movie now. It was like an ABC movie. Maybe it was The Day... No. It was about a nuclear war. I think the movie was in the 80s. And I just remember the scene where they're in the Midwest somewhere. I think they're looking at St. Louis. You'd see this large mushroom cloud. And it's just... I've always been intrigued by it and fascinated. Some of them are more science fiction-based, some of them are more reality-based. My books are reality-based. In a sense, you have some kind of a real situation or event that occurs. And I typically take the reader... Specifically with my series, The New World, I take the reader as society is breaking down day by day by day by day. You're experiencing that collapse. And it's kind of a slow collapse. When you look at the weapon of choice that I use in The New World series is an EMP. Specifically, I used a super EMP. And the crippling effects it has on the grid and everything that's electrical, anything that has a circuit is gone. Tell us EMP. What is that? Electromagnetic pulse. What does it do? So it fries circuitry, essentially, what it does. So there's two ways of having an EMP. You can have a coronal mass ejection, which is essentially a solar flare from the sun, which supercharges the atmosphere and then sends down electrical pulses, which then essentially supercharges anything that has a circuit to it, which then fries it. And then an EMP is created from a nuclear detonation. So you take a nuclear warhead and you detonate it in, let's say, low Earth orbit. And it too creates that kind of supercharges the atmosphere and you get an electromagnetic pulse, which comes down and again, does the same thing as a CME. Supercharges anything that's connected to a circuit or electrical and it fries it. But it leaves humans and all animals okay. Yes, exactly. So yeah, there's no harm essentially done to the physiology of the human body or biology of the human being or animals or anything. It's just anything that's electrical gets destroyed. So buildings. So if I fell asleep during this event and woke up, I'd look around, I would be okay. Everyone I knew would be okay. My dog or cat would be okay. Buildings would all be okay. But as soon as I picked up my cell phone to do something, I would say, oh, something's gone wrong. And yeah, so for the most part, most electrical would be gone. You know, nothing is 100% universal in an EMP. It really matters where you are located from the blast or from where the EMP or see if it's a CME from where the solar flare hits the Earth. And then it also matters like if you have a car or you're in a bunker or you're insulated here and there. So it's not as if everything's universal, but there's enough systems or infrastructure that collapses that it causes this cascading failures all the way across. The main thing is the grid is the typically collapses. You have like the transformers and things like that, that, you know, and power stations, they go down and they're usually you're not getting those back up anytime soon. And so what's the old saying? We're nine days away or nine meals away from society collapsing. And that's what you would have. You would have this cascading failures across the board, which collapses the grid and the infrastructure and then everything else from there. It's just. Now, how does your background as a Marine Corps, how does that help you in coming up with fascinating ideas for these 40 books? Well, as a Marine, I I've seen quite a bit. I've done quite a bit. I did six years in the United States Marine Corps, three of those years where I mean, I did three deployments in those six years. I spent about half of my time forwardly deployed. And so you see a lot of things. You see a lot of interesting thing. You get put in very tense situations and you see how people react to them. You see things that people only watch on movies and you get to experience those. Some of those mainly are not very pleasant experiences. And that has really, you know, they say, write what you know. And so that's what I've done with my books. I always had some kind of I always kind of like Stephen King always does his books in Maine and, you know, M. Night Shyamalan always does his movies and like around Philadelphia. I do a lot of my books in San Diego or about Southern California because I know it. I know it very intimately and I always tend to have a Marine somewhere in there as well or Marine units in the apocalypse just because that's where I came from. That's kind of part of my, you know, who I am and I understand the culture and how they operate. Maybe you could explain something to me. Anytime there's some horrible disaster, I'm thinking now the Rodney King riots, but that was a long time ago. What I remember is that ordinary people, people who have regular jobs, they have a spouse, they have kids, they want to protect their kids. They're good people. But when they're running down the street in a riot, there is a tipping point and suddenly one person breaks a window and steals some cell phone or something and then all of a sudden everybody feels that tipping point and feels the right to break windows and do things they would never do in their ordinary life. So this is a post-apocalypse event. Like the judge said that all the white policemen were acquitted and the black population legitimately went berserk. Do you have tipping points in your novels or what is the power of tipping point? What is that thing? Yeah, the tipping point, if you look at a riot, it tends to be, some is, I think, rightly so. At what point do you say it's okay to do exercise violence? That's a discussion we can have. There's protests, which I think are legitimate. And then when it turns to violence and chaos and mayhem, I question that. I can understand anger that can build up in a population or subset or a culture. But regardless, so say you're asking the question, they're protesting and then say someone finally picks up a brick and throws it. It takes that one person to give everyone else permission to do something. So the people like to do things and they feel comfortable in groups. And they've done tests on this before essentially that, where you tell somebody something or you give one person the permission. They've done it with food. I know I've seen that before. They'll have a group of people go on, there's food sitting there, and they tell them not to eat it. But they keep it in there long enough, one person finally does. And then it takes that one person to initiate it, to give everyone else the rash, because they're already thinking it, then I'll do it as well. So these people tend to do things and we're kind of herd animals, I guess. But then when you look at, so that occurs, then you have just the impulse for like an apocalyptic situation, it comes down to survival or perceived survival. And when you look at an event that occurs, say something happens, say an EMP occurs. And most people tend to react based on panic because they're not prepared. Most people don't have the skill sets or the resources to withstand going two weeks without food. They don't have two weeks of food at their home. And I'm not saying it's their fault, I'm just saying that they just don't, maybe there's a lot of the means to stockpile, whatever that is. And so what causes them to take to the streets then is just basic primal survival. They need something, someplace has it, and they're going to get it. And they tend to act out differently because now societal norms are gone. When you have an event like that, I mean, we kind of have a social compact with each other to kind of live the way we do. We know that there's law enforcement out there and there's laws. Most people just abide by those. But when you remove that and you create this power vacuum, and then you lay, you couple in the fact that people are panicked and they're coming from a position of lack, like I need that or I'm going to die, then they don't have that worry about law enforcement or police or laws or going to jail. They then will go and do the things that they feel is necessary so they can survive or their family can survive. All this craziness that happens in a post-apocalyptic world is the fodder for your books. Yes. Yeah. I've always found it fascinating because if you say you had the grid collapse, there wouldn't need to be an apocalypse if people, I mean, as far as the violence and the mayhem and the chaos and that that stems from it, if we all work together, if we all came together and coordinated with the goal of finding a solution, there wouldn't be the violence and chaos, that there's always a subset of people that will panic and or it's two people, they panic and they react in a negative way or there are opportunities that see something they can get and they seize on it. You take those two groups of people and then they move in the direction of like, I'm going to go get it. Again, some people are just, they see the power vacuum and they swoop in or the other people are just panicking because they don't have it and then they swoop in and then that causes chaos and then that based upon what we were talking earlier is that ripple of that kind of trickle down effect where people see the 10% crash in the stores like, well, I'm going to go for it too. They're doing it. I don't want to be left behind. I'm going to go next door and steal stuff too. And so then you just have people just, everything's just, the societal norms break down. This is why I advocate preparedness. I am a big, big, big proponent of prepping and preparing. For hundreds of thousands of years, we haven't had electricity. We only had electricity for the last few hundred years. So if we lose electricity, you're right, we don't have to panic. But of course, your books wouldn't be interesting unless there was panic and opportunism. Oh man, that's exciting. You sold me on your books. So I think your favorite book, or at least your most recent book, is Cries of a Dying World. If I was to delve into this amazing G. Michael Hoff author genre, would I start with that book or which is your favorite? Well, my favorite is actually my very first book that I wrote called The End. It's the first book in the series called the New World series. And that is the one that deals with the EMP, super EMP. It's a very complex book as far as lots of different POVs happening. And I remember when the publisher at Penguin was like, it's very complicated. There's lots of moving parts and things like that. And there is. Because I wanted to give the reader not just kind of a one point of view kind of way of seeing it. I wanted them to see everything that's happening in the world, not just say from a family living in the suburbs, but also from someone in the military. What happens in the military when you have an event like this? Well, I can tell you they're going to break apart. They're probably going to disintegrate. And most people wouldn't believe that. But I can guarantee you the military would fall apart. Then I also take the reader into what's happening in the halls of government or what's left of government and what's government's typical response to something as large as a continental grid down scenario. And I just have them see what's happening everywhere. And then the opportunists and I take them on a day by day by day basis as things are just completely falling apart and people's reactions and the violence is like this crescendo is building as things collapse. Wow. So I'm right now finishing a Malcolm Gladwell book, which is nonfiction. And I'm aching to delve into a fiction book. And you're the guy. I didn't know when I started this interview that I would be so sold on your books and your background. But I'm finding it very, very exciting. But before we go, we need to delve on another issue. And that is how you used your amazing skills in order to overcome the grief of losing a well-loved child. There's two things. And I've been blessed and fortunate to have mentors in my life, which I think are important. I think everyone should have a mentor. I'm a big believer in having a coach too. And there are two different things. Coaches are different than mentors. But we can talk about that if we want another time. But I've been blessed. I've gotten lots of wisdom from mentors, as well as I really dove into, for a lot, just I want to have peak performance. I want to be able to maximize my life. So for the past several decades, I've always focused on self-improvement, not just physically, but also from a mental and spiritual state. I always believe in what I call the trifecta, body, mind, and soul. And I think when they're all in harmony, you are operating at optimal and have the ability to continue to perform better and level yourself up as a human being. And when I was faced with losing my son, I took time to grieve. I have a way of, I don't know where this came from, but I've always had this ability to look at something pragmatically while also allowing myself to grieve, but not allowing myself to grieve where it then starts to impact others that I'm responsible for. I'm not sure if that makes any sense. And because I have this saying, and I hope it doesn't come across as harsh, but I do have this belief, and I've had it before, and we have lost other people, that life is for the living. And it doesn't mean that we don't forget the dead or the people that have moved on or allow ourselves to grieve and process through suffering. But I don't think that we can stay in that state, that emotional state, because if you have other children, if you have a spouse, if you have other family, staying in that state doesn't allow you to also take care of them and nurture them and also provide for them. Being that I'm the provider, I'm the man in the family who provides, that is also a responsibility for me to do as well. And I was able to reframe, I'm able to reframe when something negative happens. Again, I allow myself to grieve. And by the way, it's relative how long you do that. But I do think there should be a moment in time where you go, okay, it's time for me to do what I need to do for my other children that are here, for my wife that is here. Because if not, then they suffer as well as they're already suffering too. I just can't check out. And so I was able to process through that. Also looking at it too is celebrating their lives. He was an adult when he passed away. And to celebrate his life, think of him that way. And then know that I've also got two daughters that also need me, they need their dad. And then to learn from that relationship I had with my son. Because being a parent is hard. It is not, right? It's not an easy thing to be a parent. There's all these books out there, we're talking about books, all these books about being a parent. But we make mistakes because we're humans and we're fallible. Those moments like that also give us the time to reflect. And you can't go back and change things. But can I then reflect on being with my two surviving children, what can I do to be a better dad if I wasn't for him? And so this is where I reframe things and go, even in bad things, I want to reframe it. And is there a place in this to be better? Can I learn from this? I hate to use the word opportunity, but is there this opportunity for me to seize on out of this horrible situation that I can take and then be a better father, to be a better husband, to be a better friend? And so I do that. I allow myself to grieve and then I just, okay, it's time to get back, life is for the living. And then that's kind of, I know it's kind of a long answer. I'm not sure if it's all clear, but I think that losing anybody is difficult. Losing a child is incredibly difficult because it kind of defies the order of things, how we look at life. We think that we go and then they go. You don't look at, I remember it was my grandfather's words hit me when my aunt died, his daughter. I remember I found him and he was crying in the den and he hugged me and he goes, your kids aren't supposed to go before you. And I watched him and then I watched him kind of with dignity, kind of pick himself up and kind of move on with his life. That was kind of inspired me as well, because it's not easy. And so again, life is for the living. And I don't want to oversay that, but I think it's important to know that. And then that whoever's gone, that they've moved on. We love them. We remember them. We cherish them. And then we have to go back to living and doing the things that we have to for those who are still here. So what a strange dichotomy this interview is. On one hand, you talk about cherishing the living. And on the other hand, you spend your life writing books about the world dying and people dying. It's very interesting. You've got both halves of the equation, isn't that fascinating? Well, death is a part of life. There's a certain thing, what Ben Franklin talked about death, the taxes. We know we all have an expiration on us. We don't like to think about it all the time, but we definitely think about it as we get older. I'm 55 now and I think about it more than I did when I was 45, more than I was 35. And now I think about it more because I want longevity. I want to be around for my kids. I want to actually know my grandchildren whenever they decide to show up. They're not here anytime soon, but I want to know them. I want to know them. I want to actually have them know me. And so I do think, I mean, I don't think about death in a morbid way. I think, was it Marcus Aurelius that had a thing that talked about the – well, I'm going to forget this right now. But Marcus Aurelius talks about this in his works. He was a Roman emperor. Memento – oh, I'm going to have to pull it up. Anyway, he talks about, like, he actually believed that it's important. I think he wrote about it in Meditations. It's important to know that you're going to die, therefore you can live. I'm paraphrasing. Michael, what I've always found funny is that everybody knows that everyone who was born a long time ago is already dead and that everyone who's alive today is going to die, including themselves. Everybody knows it. It's not a secret. Everybody knows it. And yet, when it happens, everybody denies it. Like, if I get a phone call saying, your friend Alan just died, my first reaction is, no, I just spoke to him yesterday, as if somehow that undoes the death. It's like the strangest thing. Everybody can't believe it. I don't think there's anything else in life that you know for sure is going to happen, but you're surprised every time. Maybe you fake a birthday party saying, oh my gosh, I had no idea. But going back to, like, I write about it, I'm actually just curious about why humans react. And when you look at the book Cries of a Dying World, Cries of a Dying World is everyone is faced with the same fact. Everybody. Because there's an asteroid that's coming called Colossus, and they're given two weeks. It's going to impact. And it's an extinction-level event. The world's not going to be the same. It's going to reshape the surface of the Earth. And so everyone's given two weeks. And the main question that's posed, and I want the readers, like, what would you do if you knew you only had two weeks left to live? How do you live those two weeks? What do you do in those two weeks? And it explores these different characters once they get the news, what do they do with that time? Do they forgive people, right? Because these books aren't about the event, they're about people. Yes, I got that. In that book, the main protagonist's name is Ethan. He's estranged from his son. He's also widower. And so he's already dealt with death. And so he's been trying to rekindle the relationship with his adult son who's in college. And so he makes that a point to do that. So he drives to where he's at. And it follows other characters as they're struggling in the moment, some turning to God, some turning away from God, some turning to violence, others turning to just like, let's just sit here and just hang out. And how important is family? And all these questions are asked, and you see all these people's different reactions. Because why would somebody, you know, there's two weeks left to live, go and destroy a Target store and take a TV? What are you doing with that? Like, why are you robbing a bank? But there would be, I would put money on it, people that would back like that. And I'm like, why? What drives you to do that? Because the value of those things is zero now. And so it leads you like, what is valuable in those two weeks? What is valuable to you? To me, it's family and it's love. That's what's valuable. And therefore, I think that's what people should seek out if you know you only have this amount of time. And so that's the main point of that book. I think that I'm going to race right out and race to Amazon and get one of your books. I'll look at them all and then make my own decision, but probably The End or Cries of a Dying World. And I instruct my dear subscribers, I think this guy, because of his natural talent, and because of his background in the Marine Corps, who've seen things that you don't want to see, and he brings that, he brings his wisdom to his books, and I can't wait to read it. Amazon, Cries of a Dying World, or The End, or whatever other one you want. What an amazing experience this interview has been. I had no idea. We were introduced by a dear friend of both of ours. And so I loved you just because he said I should. So I interviewed and it's been fascinating, more fascinating than I've ever expected. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Well, thank you, Ray. Wow. I sure hope you enjoyed that fascinating episode. Please make sure you subscribe and please tell your friends if you like it, that they will probably like it as well. For your information, this experience, this service, this podcast has been sponsored by the Orbit Coaching Program. All of my friends, all my world-famous speaker friends, all have coaching programs. Mine has been independently rated as the number one high-level coaching program. You cannot purchase it. You have to audition for it by me personally. If you're interested, please email me at respark at Aaron.com. Respark at A-A-R-O-N. Say that you're interested in being considered for the Orbit Coaching Program and include your cell phone numbers that I personally will call you back.