174. Seamless Queer Characters in Fantasy World Building with Chad Grayson

“I'm not asking for everybody to center queer characters in their narratives in world-building, which would be nice, actually, you know, as nice as that would be.

But just to include us and to show that we exist and in whatever ways are appropriate in your world, whether that is a more like marginal existence in some worlds.” - Chad Grayson

In this episode on the How To Write the Future podcast, “Seamless Queer Characters in Fantasy World Building,” host Beth Barany talks to sci-fi and fantasy author Chad Grayson about the importance of queer and neurodivergent representation in world building, protecting your creativity, and shares productivity tips for neurodivergent writers.

ABOUT CHAD GRAYSON

Chad Grayson has worn many hats: tech support flunky, gas station philosopher, reluctant middle school wrangler, and, for one unforgettable night, cheese-mold removal specialist. These days he lives in far Northern California, where he writes hopeful, character-focused sci-fi and fantasy that will break your heart and duct tape it back together. He can usually be found painting tiny fantasy heroes and monsters, wandering the woods in deep narrative contemplation, or yelling at his plot outlines like they’ve personally betrayed him (they know what they did).

His superpowers include procrastination, dyscalculia, and making emotionally devastating story beats sound like a perfectly reasonable life choice.

Here is a short story collection that showcases my fiction. https://dl.bookfunnel.com/b2p8y4vi0l

Website: https://www.chadgrayson.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/c.e.grayson

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Transcript

174. Seamless Queer Characters in Fantasy World Building with Chad Grayson

Introduction & Host Welcome

[00:00:00] BETH BARANY: Hi everyone. Welcome to or welcome back to our podcast, How to Write the Future, Tips for Writers and anyone who cares about the Future. I'm your host, Beth Barany. I am an award-winning science fiction and fantasy author who supports, teachers and coaches other science fiction and fantasy authors. I also support creative entrepreneurs who would like to build their own businesses, and I'm a filmmaker, and of course podcaster. All the things. Of course, I run this podcast because I am passionate about helping writers and anyone who cares about the future to help us re-envision how we want to be as humanity. And I think stories are the most powerful way to do that. And so I love to interview other authors and thinkers and futurists and, and people who are thinking outside the box. So today I have one of those people. Welcome Chad. I am so glad to have you here with us today. Welcome. 

[00:01:01] CHAD GRAYSON: Hi. Be thanks. Good to be here. 

[00:01:03] BETH BARANY: So, wonderful. I'm everyone, I'm gonna read Chad's, bio so you can get to know him a little bit.

Meet Chad Grayson

[00:01:09] BETH BARANY: All right, Chad, I love your bio. So here's a little bit about Chad. Chad Grayson has worn many hats, tech support, funky gas station philosopher, reluctant middle school wrangler, and for one unforgettable night cheese mold removal specialist. These days, he lives in far Northern California where he writes hopeful character focused sci-fi and fantasy that will break your heart and duct tape it back together. He can usually be found painting tiny fantasy heroes and monsters wandering the woods in deep narrative, contemplation, or yelling at his plot, outlines like they've personally betrayed him. They know what they did. His superpowers include procrastination, dyscalculia, and making emotionally devastating story beats sound like a perfectly reasonable life choice.

Welcome, Chad. So glad that you are here. Really fun to have you. Welcome again. 

[00:02:18] CHAD GRAYSON: Thank you. 

[00:02:19] BETH BARANY: I love your bio. It is hilarious and wonderful and touching. So let's dive into our questions. I ask my guests to provide questions ahead of time because I wanna talk about what they wanna talk about so long as it's within the framework of our scope.

Integrating Queer Characters in Worldbuilding

[00:02:36] BETH BARANY: We're gonna just dive right in. I often talk about world building and character development on this podcast. And Chad, I really appreciate your questions. Um, so let's just start. In what ways can queer people be seamlessly integrated into futuristic fantasy or secondary world building?

And I just have to say, I, I'm attempting this too in my own work, so yeah. Can you talk to us on that? 

[00:03:01] CHAD GRAYSON: Well, it's a lot simpler than people try to make it sometimes. Whenever I'm talking about the representation in the groups that are in my books, I always get questions, especially from people in my writing group about, well, how do you do that naturally?

Like, I don't wanna like make an announcement whenever the character enters the room, like what their sexual orientation is. And I'm like, it's really simple. Hopefully when you are developing your characters and you're writing your characters, you're giving them little character moments where they talked about their lives or their past.

So you can just have your darkest As and talk about her ex-girlfriend or something. Or just mention like the priest's husband or the priestess, his wife. I'm not asking for everybody to center queer characters in their narratives in world building, which would be nice actually, you know, as nice as that would be.

But like just to include us and to show that we exist and in whatever ways are appropriate in your world, whether that is a more like marginal existence in some worlds. That's appropriate. Or, or if everybody's just accepted, like acknowledge that. Acknowledge that we exist and show that we are present. 

[00:04:06] BETH BARANY: I love that.

Yeah. I love that because, you know, every character has a past and every character has their preoccupations. So sometimes what I like to do when I'm doing my character sketches and starting to understand who my characters are, and actually you're reminding me I have to do this- 

I have to do this for one of my characters-- is, um, to really get clear: What is their preoccupation or interests? And maybe they're going on a date that night. They all come from somewhere. One of my characters has, in my work in progress, he has two moms and a dad. And he just mentions it in, in his enthusiastic way as he's talking about his family, because he is a chatterbox and he is a young man. And then I have my protagonist, my point of view character think about-- She had just met the mother, one of the mothers, and so she's like, oh yeah, I could see the resemblance. Also in the personality.

 So we all do that. We all talk about our families and we all see resemblances between family members, for example. It could be traits, could be physical traits. and so that's wonderful. 

And it's even something that you can include when you're planning your story. You can be thinking about the wider culture and the relationships that person has. 

[00:05:15] CHAD GRAYSON: Some people think you have to have the character walk in announcing their orientation. And that is not what you need That is actually kind of off putting to people that way.

There are some, um, like you just mentioned, there are some science fiction things, writers who do this really well. I really appreciated how in the Expanse series that they had the main character talk about his moms and dads. And it was a group marriage situation that he was raised by. Even somebody like Brandon Sanderson has in the Stormlight archive. I know he's gotten more in depth with it in his most recent book, but even along the way, he had one side character who dates men. It was no big deal to everybody.

 It's really easy to work it in seamlessly. It doesn't have to become a major plot point, although it can, it's nice if it does, but it is so much easier than you think it is. And, You don't have to have the burden of thinking, you have to represent everything all the time. But let's just to acknowledge that those people, that people like us exist and that are part of your world.

[00:06:11] BETH BARANY: Yeah, I love that. I think it's really important to reflect the diversity of reality. A lot of art in the past has basically disappeared groups of people. Genders, races. I mean, women got completely disappeared from so many narratives when they were in fact instrumental.

So that's one of my big focuses in my own work. So I really appreciate that you brought that up. And that we, we talk about it and we think about it. If you've read a lot of stories that do not include diversity, then it could be easy to forget to actually reflect diversity in our own work. just because previous writers have forgotten or made the choice or often it's ignorance, doesn't mean that we can't bring more inclusivity into our work.

[00:06:59] CHAD GRAYSON: Yeah, all these goods have been here all these years. We've always been here, we've always been part of the story of life, and there have been people writing about all these different groups through, over, over time, they didn't get a lot of attention for it. There are some authors who were writing about queer people in the eighties and nineties, but we've always been here and it's nice that we're into a time now where it is seen as more natural to include us.

[00:07:22] BETH BARANY: Absolutely. And It is so important to see ourselves represented in story.I don't know about you, but I've often wondered, uh, how come I don't see anyone like me, you know, who might have my disability, like what I have with my hands, or even someone who has my kind of personality or my interests.

The Importance of Representation

[00:07:41] BETH BARANY: Yeah. or my psychology even 

[00:07:44] CHAD GRAYSON: as a queer kid growing up in the Midwest, I didn't see happy queer people in stories until the early two thousands. 

[00:07:52] BETH BARANY: Mm-hmm. And 

[00:07:53] CHAD GRAYSON: that kept me in the closet until I was 46 years old. 

[00:07:56] BETH BARANY: Yeah. I mean, 

[00:07:56] CHAD GRAYSON: not that it was the only thing there was, it was a big, complicated situation.

But if I had seen some examples of queer people who were not tragic or. Torture or dying of some disease, like it, that would've really changed my life. When, um, Rick Riordan started writing his stories about Nico and making it, clear that he was queer and with his relationship, I saw that first cover of that book and I seriously wept for 30 minutes.

'cause I was like, if this book had existed when I was 13, my entire life might have been different. So seeing yourself in story is, it's very important, especially for younger people, but for everybody. 

[00:08:30] BETH BARANY: Yeah. And what is the title of that book? 

[00:08:32] CHAD GRAYSON: It's the Sun and the Star.

[00:08:34] BETH BARANY: Okay. 

[00:08:35] CHAD GRAYSON: By Rick Ry and, and Marco Shero and it's part of the Percy Jackson series. 

[00:08:39] BETH BARANY: Wow. I love the Percy Jackson series. Yeah. I write YA. And a big reader of YA as well.

[00:08:46] CHAD GRAYSON: Yeah, seriously. I looked at that and I just, I had to pull it over the car. 'cause it was so powerful.

 This is a kid's book and it's got two boys holding hands on the cover and it just really moved me. 

The book was actually good when I read it, so that was good. That was good. That's 

[00:08:58] BETH BARANY: good too. Yeah. That's so good. 

Writing Productivity for Neurodivergent People

[00:09:01] BETH BARANY: Sure. I love your next question. So there you are. You're a writer. It sounds like you have writing really centered in your life and you've prioritized it. So tell us some tips for being productive, especially for neurodivergent people. 

[00:09:19] CHAD GRAYSON: Okay. So I wrote my entire life on the side. It was what I wanted to do with my life, but I never bought into the idea that I could actually do it full-time. I became a teacher. I had a life, I had kids, I raised kids, I wrote a lot, but I didn't finish anything. finally in 2019, I had a big, I dunno if you call it life crisis or, I ended my marriage.

I came outta the closet and I decided since I have the opportunity now, I'm gonna make writing the central part of my life. So since, so July 1st, 2019 was when I made that decision, and I've done it ever since. I have the luxury of having sort of an income that doesn't depend on my writing or having a day job.

So I acknowledge that right away. But I am also neurodivergent. I have ADHD, I'm somewhere in the autism spectrum and I have bipolar disorder. So like that created a bunch of challenges for actually getting the work done. And what I started out doing is: You just have to build the habit in whatever way works for you. And the way you do that is you start out with a really easy, manageable goal at first.

Like say, I'm gonna write for 10 minutes, or I'm gonna write 300 words and hit that. Build up a history of success for yourself, and that will kinda launch you into bigger leaps of productivity.

I started out with a thousand words a day, which for me is not that hard because I, I tend to write fast, but like for, I know some people that would be a challenge, so I'd say like 200 or 300 words a day is fine. That's a book in a year, if you do - if you can do that.

And I have built up over the course of time through, is just repetition of, of the habit is I'm now doing, I write two hours a day and I usually write 2,500 words a day.

I do that three or four times a week. I don't do it every single day 'cause that would wear me out.

[00:11:06] CHAD GRAYSON: The important thing you do is you gotta figure out the way that works for you. You've also got to schedule the time, really.

My joke that you only have to schedule the things you actually want to happen.

And what I started doing was putting my writing time on a Google calendar and sending it to the people in my life saying that this is my writing time, this is what I'm doing during this time. Do not bother me unless somebody important is on fire. Um, I did that and it took a little bit of time for them to kind of understand that and, um, but they did. And flip side of that was I feel, I felt like I was creating a bargain with them, that I would actually be writing during that time so that I wouldn't get to that time and be like, okay, I feel like playing video games or something else.

So you gotta create that contract with yourself and the people you love, that if they give you the time, you're gotta use that properly. And that kind of builds up a little bit of social pressure and that helps. and you gotta find the method that works for you. For me, I'm kind of 60% planner.

40% discovery writer. I have an outline that I does kind of loosey goosey major plot points and then I kind of discovery right my way between those plot and that works really well for me. 

Since 2019, I've actually written, I think I'm on book 13 right now and I've published 10 of them since 2021.

So like, I figured out what made me work. Also, I worked on things that I loved. I didn't write to the market. I didn't create a bullet list of here's how I'm gonna break in and become a bestseller right away by following these trends.

 I wrote the books of my heart, and that made me very motivated to do that.

And I think if you give yourself permission to do that, you'll be much more motivated to meet the, to hit the goal, and you'll produce a lot moreand you'll create a body of work you're really proud of, which is really important. 

[00:12:54] BETH BARANY: I love all your tips. you know, setting a reasonable goal, an attainable goal, scheduling, bringing in your loved ones to help you with accountability and social pressure and, um, working on what you love.

and that's beautiful 'cause now you're pulled into it 'cause your heart is, is, calling to you.

 I don't know about you, but my characters talk to me. And they want their stories told. And the only way to do that is to sit down and do it. They don't talk to me like, um, all the time, but they're almost like, sit down and get to work so my story can come out. That's where they talk to me. Yeah. 

[00:13:27] CHAD GRAYSON: Yeah. Also, there's a thing about that for everybody, but especially for neurodivergent people, it's activation energy. It's the hardest part of the task is starting the task. So if when it comes time to work, you sit down and have a little ritual. Either you light a candle or you put on special music. For me, I sit down and the first part of my writing time is I do a 10 minute meditation, usually a guided meditation from YouTube about creativity or inspiration, and that gets me into the zone, and that lets me get going a lot quicker than if I was just trying to sit down and do it cold.

 I also look at what I wrote the day before and get into it that way. Just have rituals for yourself that get that activation. Mm-hmm. Energy going and you'll find you can accomplish a lot more than if you just sit down and try to like make yourself go. 

[00:14:11] BETH BARANY: I love that so much. I teach that. It's so funny... one person recently said, oh, are you ADHD? And I'm like, I don't know. But I do all of this. I do rituals. I journal before I write. I have music, I have a whole starting ritual and I, I encourage writers to have what I call a starting ritual, the way that you get yourself into it.

And I also liken it to, I did triathlons. I did four sprint triathlons years ago, and you actually have to train what's called "train the transitions". You train, what do you do before you start the race? What do you do when you transition from one thing to another? All of that is something that you can train.

 Humans- we're all habit based, and if you can help yourself have that habit, yeah, you can get yourself into it. And I just love to hear what you're doing and doing meditation before writing that is so, so wonderful. I, I wish more people did that. 

[00:15:02] CHAD GRAYSON: You can also make your work a very pleasant environment if you have that opportunity.

There's a lot of things to do. Just make it as pleasant as possible. Remove as many barriers as possible, whatever they are.That's gonna be the individual per person. So there's not like big tip on that, but just remove the barriers. Make it as easy for yourself as possible.

Protecting and Developing Creativity

[00:15:21] CHAD GRAYSON: So let your brain unleash. 

[00:15:24] BETH BARANY: Yes, let your brain unleash. That is so wonderful. I love that. And that kind of segues us into the next question, which you've been talking about, but maybe there's some more you wanna say, which is: How can you develop and protect your creativity when you have a busy life? 

[00:15:39] CHAD GRAYSON: I gave you a presentation on this a while back, and the biggest tip I have is not to get too sciencey here, but there's part of their brain called the default mode network, which is what your brain is doing when you're not really doing anything mental. So like when you are washing the dishes or in the shower, this is where shower thoughts come from. Like your brain just kind wanders.

Protect your time. Don't necessarily be listening to something all the time, or like be busy all the time. Protect the time that you have that your brain can just work, like you're working a problem in the background. And, just maybe take just 10 minutes a day. Just take a short walk. Don't listen to a podcast.

Sorry. Don't listen to a podcast or an audio book or even music. Just like give you brain time to wander. And that's gonna like, really like stir up that stuff in your default mode network and bring creative solutions to problems and even creative ideas. We get a lot of ideas when we're bored.

Like for an ADHD person, boredom feels toxic sometimes, but it can also be a really great state in which your brain is creating things. So don't try to be entertained all the time. Let yourself get bored. The other thing is, as well as, like the other tips, just like, you know, protect your time. Always realize you're thinking about things in the background.

Be feeding yourself. Good art and also art that you might not like as much. So you can like pick it apart. Constantly be feeding yourself things that inspire you. Take yourself on artist dates. That's one of the Julia Cameron's from The Artist's Way. Be going out and having new experiences. Yeah, just things like that, like just treat your creativity as important. 

The other thing I really harp on is everybody is creative. There's not such a thing as a creative person and a non-creative person. You might have a job you think is not, not very creative, but trust me. You're solving problems. You're coming up with new ways of doing things. You are a creative person, even if it doesn't seem like you are not producing art or writing or craft projects or something else. Everybody is creative 'cause we're humans. And just getting, keeping in touch with that part, that part of our humanity creates empathy and can keep us kind of sane in a world that seems like it's going a little nuts sometimes. 

[00:17:49] BETH BARANY: Absolutely. I feel like you and I could stand side by side and we'd be nodding at each other. Like I teach the exact same things. I love it so much. Especially, you know, science has shown and please do get sciencey. I am a science fiction writer. Nerdy is great around here. I love what you were saying, how that part of our brain that needs to wander and meander and, and it's a good reminder for me too because I am a, a high level learner on the Clifton strengths.

I'm number one learner, so I always wanna be learning things. I'm always listening to a YouTube video or to French radio. I speak French or, talking to a friend through asynchronous audio communication. But the other day I was just so full of doing so much. I stopped, I didn't listen to anything. I took a walk.

Ah, it was great. So it was just a reminder myself to do more of that. so thank you so much for bringing that up and, and to feed yourself. Also, I have a whole freebie that I, maybe I'll, I'll, I'll call it out for this episode, which is "10 Ways to Jumpstart Your Ideas." It is just a laundry list of fun ways, a very short little ebook to encourage folks to do new things.

And science is showing, coming back to brain science that the only way that we're gonna have new thoughts and new ideas is if we expose ourself to new things, new people, new places, new art, new music, new authors, new locations. and that is the only way that we're gonna be able to actually come up with new ideas. And create new kinds of stories and also come up with new ways of being in the world. So yes, yes, yes. Feed yourself art and I, I love, yeah, take yourself on an art estate. Wonderful, wonderful advice. 

[00:19:27] CHAD GRAYSON: We all have like a idea antenna that's kind of out there, like pulling things from the universe and sometimes we just have to learn to listen to that.

And that's what the default mode network and doing new things is about sometimes. 

[00:19:40] BETH BARANY: Yes. And so it makes sense that with a default mode network, and this thing we call boredom is actually an essential part to our human evolution, to our ability to come up with new ideas. I can almost see like, let's have a boredom campaign.

Let's see how bored we can get. What can I do today that's gonna create some boredom? 

[00:20:02] CHAD GRAYSON: That might be a hard sell, but I can see it would be useful. 

[00:20:05] BETH BARANY: It could be funny. Yeah. I mean, oh yeah. I'm gonna go stand in line here or there, whatever. Yeah. so, I have one more question for you as we wrap up for today.

So Chad, this is kind of a nice bookend to the first question I asked.

Representing Neurodivergent Characters in Fiction

[00:20:20] BETH BARANY: How can we as writers properly represent neurodivergent people in our fiction? 

[00:20:28] CHAD GRAYSON: The answer is a little bit the same as with queer people, just to show that we exist.it's a little bit more out of a challenge to understand what neurodivergence is sometimes for writers and not just make, oh, this person's quirky.

'cause there aren't quirky neurodivergent people, but there are also some of us who are. Also, it doesn't hurt to actually state that there are neurodivergent in especially science fictional worlds where this is known about.

In my fantasy book Curse of the Onyx Heart, one of the co-lead characters is Tealy.

He is an elf mage, He's based on my best friend. It's my best friend's D&D character actually. And my best friend is autistic, so I modeled that character after him. And he's an autistic mage, like definitely, I don't ever use that word because it's like about, about like renaissance kind of era.

A friend, a reader picked up that he was autistic like this is he autistic. And I was really proud of the fact that like, I got that right. They love the character and I thought he was a good, a good bit of representation. This takes a little bit of research sometimes because if you've met one neurodivergent or person, you met one neurodivergent person. We are all different and it expresses differently.

There's a lot of really great resources online on what that feels like. There's a lot of writing from people who, experience these. And on my blog, I write about ADHD and bipolar disorder all the time and how it affects my life. Look for primary sources for people writing about their own lives. Tumblr is full of this.You look at the tags on Tumblr and get a first person perspective because if you get only third person perspectives, you're gonna miss a lot of nuance, and you might create some harmful stereotypes, but just include us.

Show that we can function in society, you know. There are high support needs autistics. My granddaughter is one of them, but there are a lot of autistic people who are just fine, just with a little bit of difference in the way their brain works. So show that we can be productive members of society. Show us using our gifts in interesting ways and show that we can have full lives and we're not tortured by our either genius or madness. 

[00:22:29] BETH BARANY: I really love what you're saying because, and I wanna underscore, doing primary research, like when I realized I wanted to start, including those kind of characters in my work. I went and talked to a friend who is neurodivergent and, was diagnosed kind of late, which often happens with women.

And I talked to her and I also talked how do we go about researching this kind of thing. And so I love that you keep a blog. Thank you for, for sharing about your life. And, and there are a lot of people who talk about their life and we have access to that these days, which is one of the wonderful things about the internet.

 I don't know about you, but not everybody knows how to research very well these days. I come from a library background, so I realize I have some skill sets that I have been cultivating for a really long time. But what do you recommend in terms of search terms to make sure we can find those first person accounts?

[00:23:23] CHAD GRAYSON: You can put first person account or blogs by insert like blogs by ADHD people, blogs by autistic people. Look at the tags on Tumblr. Tumblr's got a lot of weird stuff on it, but Tumblr's also a really great for people who are writing about their lives and their own experiences. Just look at the tags, like ADHD or autism or Au-DHD. Those are some terms that are popular there. Also, there are first person resources like How to ADHD is by Jessica McCabe. She is a, um, YouTuber. She also wrote a book called How to ADHD. And it was an amazing first person primary source of how to deal with having ADHD through diagnosis, through how to integrate what you learn into your life.

So, um, I really recommend her. There are other podcasts of a DHD people, that are from ADHD people. So just look up ADHD podcasts. I get most of my podcasts from Spotifys and they have like a whole channel of like neuro divergent resources there. So look for like things that are people's personal experiences that's gonna be most helpful.

You also can do the things like look at the Wikipedia entry for whatever you're looking up. That's a good place to start to know the bare basics of what the syndrome or brain difference is like, and how it works on a scientific level. 

But realize also like you get one primary source. It's better to have two or three at least, because expression of these things is different for each person. So if you can kind of triangulate, you can get to something really realistic that'll resonate with a lot of people. If you just go with one person, that'll be their experience and they'll probably resonate with people. But if you wanna go broader, get like two or three at least references on something to really, like, like I said, triangulate what that looks like in a broad group of people. 

[00:25:08] BETH BARANY: I love that. I love your, your use of triangulate. That's so wonderful. There is one more question that I like to spring on folks as we wrap up.

it won't be too outta the blue. My question for you is for those who want to think about how to write the future, how we might use our fiction to reshape, how we wanna be in the world? Do you have any tips for those writers who are thinking along those lines? 

Writing the Future: Hopeful Fiction 

[00:25:36] CHAD GRAYSON: I think it's really important to think about things that are possible and where we might go in a hopeful way. I do not like grimdark fiction. I don't have anything against people who write it, but it is not my thing. I tend to wanna imagine us solving our problems. I think that's more useful on a society level than just wallowing in like how bad things can get, which is, it has its own, has its own use.

'cause we do need those stories of warning. But just when you're especially writing futuristic things, think about just how we, how we look at the problems we have today that are societal, like near societal collapses that are coming in with climate change, with the problematic society with income inequality. We have an opportunity to look at how those problems can be solved.

And I think we have a responsibility to do that, to show people the way. And in fantasy worlds, we don't have to create fantasy worlds that mimic all the bigotries of the past. We can create fantasy worlds that are more inclusive for different ethnic groups and queer people and for neurodivergent people and for all kinds of different minorities.

We have the opportunity to recreate what has been. And we don't have to just like, oh, well it was middle ages, so of course they're gonna be misogynists. We don't have to do that. We can create different worlds. And I would like to see a lot more people do that because I think it's more useful and more hopeful and also more interesting to include more people.

[00:27:02] BETH BARANY: Absolutely. I love that so much. Well, Chad, thank you so much for coming on How to Write the Future today and supporting, uh, the creation of hopeful, optimistic possibilities for us as humans on this planet. So thank you so much. 

Closing Thoughts & Farewell

[00:27:18] CHAD GRAYSON: Welcome. It was a pleasure. 

[00:27:19] BETH BARANY: All right everyone. That's it for this week. Write long and prosper. That's a wrap. 

[00:27:27] CHAD GRAYSON: