Go get it now. Please check out my new nonfiction book, The Mysterious Case of Rudolph Diesel.

Publishers Weekly gives the book a starred review, calling it a thrilling investigation and a wildly

enjoyable outing. Lee Child says, outstanding and a conclusion worthy of James Bond.

Historian Jay Winnick says, equal parts Walter Isaacson and Sherlock Holmes, the mysterious case of Rudolph's

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everywhere you get your books. Please check it out, and I promise you'll love it. Welcome to Dedicated

with Doug Brunt. You have just gained access to an exclusive insider's look at the lives and works

of some of your favorite authors and hear conversations with the world's greatest writers

as they discuss their writing lifestyle, creative process, latest work, and behind-the-scenes

revelations.

Welcome to Dedicated. I'm your host Doug Brunt. Today we're talking with Omar Epps and Clarence A. Haynes.

Omar is a producer, actor, rapper, and author. I first saw him in the film Juice, starring alongside Tupac Shakur.

I later watched him in the show House, which I was obsessed with, where he was starring as Dr. Eric Foreman, then as Darnell in the hit show This Is Us. He's won so many SAG, NAACP, and other awards that if I list him, we won't have time to talk with him. He's also the author of the memoir from fatherless to fatherhood. Clarence Haynes is the author of the nonfiction work, The Legacy of Jim Crow, and has been an editor for Penguin Random

House, Amazon Publishing, and Hachette, all best of the best. Together, Clarence and Omar are out

with their second book in the Nubia series. The first was The Awakening, and they are now out with

The Reckoning, which is getting great reviews. Guys, welcome. Thanks for coming in. Thank you for having

us. Thank you for having us. So today we're having coffee instead of cocktails for two reasons. One is it's 11.30 in the morning, which by itself would not always be a deal breaker. But the second reason is they are on a big book tour. So we can't send them out to the rest of the day drunk with all this work to do. Yeah. So, Omar, if I could start with you, I'm wondering how you are pulling this writing thing off. And I want to tell a quick story which listeners to the show know, because Diana Gabaldon was in here a couple months ago and, you know, writing in the same fantasy category where you guys are. And she's often on the set where they're filming the show, used to be filming the show before the strike. And the actors will come over to her and they'll say, Diana, I also want to write. I love it. I just don't know how to do it. Like, what advice do you have for me? And she'll say, well, the price of admission is you have to just sit down and write. So here's what you need to do. For two weeks, every day, I want you to sit down and write for 10 or 15 minutes and then come back to me in two weeks and we'll talk again. And you can probably guess what happens. Nobody ever comes back. They don't do it. It's the simplest vice to give, but hard to take. How with all the constraints and demands on your time for other things? How are you doing it? Well, for me, it goes way back. I've been writing for as long as I can

remember. I actually, I've always said that acting came to me because it became an extension

of my writing. I was an only child growing up in Brooklyn. And so in my imagination, I sort of had to play all the parts of like

playing with my toys and who's the bad guy who's the good guy and stuff like that and I was

writing short stories and poems and dabbled in music so I've been writing my whole life it is my

fortunately my acting career took off so quickly and it's so young and I became

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