01.08: Kameron Hurley on perseverance and building a resilient creative career

Building the Oracle - with Jay Swanson

Kameron Hurley is a Hugo Award-winning author and a trained historian. She was the guest of honor at this year's ConFusion, and she joined us on the pod to talk about the challenges of living a creative life, along with what it takes to support yourself as an author. We discuss the importance of perseverance and why it is crucial to develop multiple revenue streams for the content you create. Kameron and Jay both shared their experiences trying (and failing) to balance their health and well-being with the constant demand to grind out new content.

The interview with Kameron was recorded in late January 2020, but was not released until 15th April. In the interim the Coronavirus completely upended the world, and the intro and outro to this episode were recorded during the lockdown in Paris. The topic of the conversation seems even more timely and immediately relevant, as everyone has been confronted with a medical and financial emergency that puts our lives and livelihoods at risk. So after the interview, we discuss how Jay's prior experiences have shaped his response to the Coronavirus crisis, and what practical things we can do now to help our businesses, and more importantly, help each other get through the pandemic.

There is a language warning on this episode!

You can find more information about Kameron and her writing on her website www.kameronhurley.com, or follow her on Twitter and Instagram on @KameronHurley. And if you love her writing, then consider joining her awesome Patreon and get a new short story every month, plus a lot more.

Sea of the Unknown - How I got to Paris.
Grab your copy here now: https://jayswanson.me/sea-of-the-unknown
Have you hit on hard times with the pandemic? You can use this code MAKE2020BETTER to get 100% off the eBook (the code is good through May 10th, 2020). If that's the case, we really hope things get better for you ASAP! Take care of you and happy reading 😊

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CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE
Building the Oracle posts on the 1st and 15th of every month. It is hosted by Jay Swanson and Richard Bilkey. You can tweet at us on @jayonaboat and @rich_bilkey, find us on Instagram at @jayswanson and @rich_bilkey and follow Jay on YouTube.

Our Super Patrons at the time of recording were Kevin, Karin Bates, Mystery Man, Susan French, Dixie Rose, David Guy, figures.seven.three, Steve, Jane Baker, Founder Timeless Capital, and Mr & Mrs DJ Poseur. If we are ever on an interstellar adventure, these are who we'd want as our crew.

This episode was produced by Zach Egan.

Our theme music is "Glory" and our ad music is "Light," both by David Cutter.

We record everything on a Rode Procaster and mix in Adobe Audition and/or Audacity depending on how out of our workflow we've fallen.

The show's art is from Jay's book Into the Nanten, illustrated by Nimit Malavia.

Gustave the dog sleepily protects us every week as we record.

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