A Cup of Coffee with Author and Producer Joe Compton, Go Indie Now Founder

November 2021 – Here I bring you another author that I met through social networks. Yeah, I met this guy on Twitter. He lives on the west coast of the United States, across from where I am, on the east coast! But with his media platform, he manages to connect with people from all over the world.

As I have mentioned before, I follow so many wonderful people on Twitter and Facebook. People who continue to inspire and motivate me, while working on their own projects and promotions. I’m curious about who they are, where they grew up, and how they manage their writing, their creative process and their everyday lives. I also want to know how they got to where they are.

I had the pleasure of getting in touch with Joe Compton. He is into thrillers, horror, crimes and mysteries. He published his first book, Amongst The Killing, in 2015. Since then, he has collaborated in 2 more books: Awethology Dark (anthology, October 2015), The December Awethology: Dark Volume (anthology, December 2015), and published one more book, We The Moral Majority (2020).

But his most important creation is the Go Indie Now project, which he started in 2018. Go Indie Now is a media platform for indie creators- indie in reference to independent artists, including writers and musicians. Joe, being lead and producer, has been creating shows and activities often to share time with those artists. He uses live videos frequently, which is a fantastic opportunity for his guests to interact with others.

I want to know more about Joe, and I want you to get to know him. Here’s our conversation:

Hello, Joe! My blog is Full of Coffee, I know you like coffee, so how do you like it?

• I like it black. I started drinking coffee in the Marines and when I started I went the full creamer and sugar route and I didn’t get it. Always loved the smell and the aroma but I grew up in a time when there was no such thing as Starbucks, believe or not. If you wanted coffee you would have to go to a diner or a donut shop. So after trying it the terrible way with all that crap in it, I ran out of all the crap and it was too late to get new supplies. I had night-watch and I needed that boost. So I just drank it as it poured in the cup and never looked back. We also didn’t have energy drinks when I grew up, there was JOLT Cola and that was it and it only came in one flavor…unleaded. 🙂

My late mom loved her coffee black. She would make coffee with warm milk in the mornings, but it was black coffee throughout the rest of the day. I want to know where did you grow up?

• I was not too far from Compton (California), actually in a Los Angeles suburb called Hawthorne. We moved to Mission Viejo when I was just starting school until the 4th grade where we moved to Torrance and that’s where I really grew up and stayed till I graduated high school. Actually my parents and brother stayed a lot longer after that, I went to the Marines.

Wow, that must had been quite an experience to be part of the Armed Forces. You are actually from California! how did you end up living back there?

• I lived in Denver, Colorado, then Austin, Texas, and I got laid off from a job I had for 4 years and my parents lived in Northern California so I really had no other alternative. Lived with them for like 4 months and I got my own place and have been here in Northern California ever since.

Did your childhood influence your love for reading and/or desire to become a writer?

• Oh yeah. I’d also say that was my dad who did a lot of that too. We went on road trips a lot when I was growing up and we would visit cool places (at least cool to us) like The Hobbit Used bookstore or go to UCLA campus (my Dad is an alum) and peruse the college bookstores. We also had a routine of Sunday Brunch at El Torito, then a trip to the Waldenbooks or to the movies. When I stood in line for a movie for the first time for The Raiders of the Lost Ark and saw how much people loved going to movies, then smelling the popcorn, and then watching the movie on this massive screen, I fell in love. I knew I was going to do something in movies one day and I did.

Interesting! I personally couldn’t visit bookstores until I went to college, and the connection between books and movies also fascinates me. When did you decide to give professional writing a try? Did it affect your personal life?

• So it actually saved my relationship. My then-girlfriend (who became my wife, and now my ex-wife) and I took a trip back to Denver to have her meet all my friends and go to a wedding. A lot of my friends there in Denver were in the film business or in some kind of art.  When she saw how I lit up being around them and how we talked about art, she saw somebody she fell in love with. So when we got back she encouraged me to try and write something. I gave her this manuscript I wrote called Amongst The Killing (my 1st published novel) and she saw this big hole in the plot and when she showed it to me I started working on it and never looked back.

You are a writer, podcaster, and producer. How do you handle and conquer all of your projects? (I need to learn a few tricks!)

• The key is balance, my young “Padawan”. I like schedules and all but really it’s about giving yourself the time to do a little of this, a little of that, a lot of that, and some of that too. Then switch them around so the project you gave a little to, make it the project you give a lot to next time. Always make time for yourself and what you love. It’s okay to have that time and not be “productive”. It’s healthy actually.  Scheduling yourself or setting goals, like I have a daily goal, a weekly goal, and a monthly, yearly, 5 year and 10 year goal too. I think giving yourself something to strive for really helps push you when nothing else will. 

Excellent advice, I’ll take it very seriously. You have 4 published books, both traditional and independent, including some collaborations. Tell me about your first published book! Tell me a bit about it.

• Well, a couple of those are anthologies I just have a story in. My first published book is called Amongst The Killing, it is a tale of duality in that we are seeing a timeline of a mass-murdering survivalist awaken into that person and a young, hotshot Detective living his dream of being in the LAPD Robbery-Homicide Division and how when their paths cross, their story unfolds, and they are the ones telling it. Each chapter shifts points of view, one chapter will be in the Detective’s eyes, the other in the Mass Murderer’s eyes. This is their story.

You run a big project with the Go Indie Now production (videos, presentations, interviews). Tell me a bit about what it’s about, and how it all started.

• Go indie Now started because when I became an Indie Author I was so embraced by a community of strangers and so encouraged by them that this struck me as unusual coming from the film world and having worked in the music industry as well. So I thought I know so many in the film world who felt like me abandoned and hardly supported once the flavor of the month changed to a different filmmaker in the area. So I thought selfishly I wanted a place where all my artist friends could gather and we could learn from each other and support one another. Then it blew up into this whole other thing, a media conglomerate that now produces about 200 hours of video a year, and talks to about 40 or 50 new indies every year while we have a core of 30-50 people who have been with us for a long while.

It’s a very interesting and praiseworthy project, the way you’ve taken the time and effort to create a space to bring together all these artists. You work your magic in terms of organization, topics, and diverse guests. Any future plans you want to share with us?

• Amongst The Killing is getting a polish with my Indie Publisher Three Furies Press. It will be out in 2021. Then I will hopefully have a third book ready for 2022. I also plan to shoot and make a short film that I have been dying to make in 2022, and Go Indie Now will keep going, bigger, better, and with a lot of cool stuff to come.

Wonderful! Can’t wait to see what else you have to show us. Thank you so much for sharing your story with me, with us.

I hope everyone enjoys this interview as much as I have enjoyed writing it. It’s a great opportunity for me to meet all these incredible writers.

If you want to know more about Joe, you can follow him on Facebook @Joedream, Twitter @joedream73, and Instagram @Joeidfilms73. Also visit his Go Indie Now website Goindienow.com and YouTube page/channel joeidfilms73 to follow all the wonderful people he has as guests for interviews and news, and follow Go Indie Now on Facebook @GoIndieNow.

I’ll keep reading, I’ll keep writing, I’ll keep dreaming! I have some more pending projects to work on. Thank you for reading! Time for my tacita de café. Salud!

Para versión en español, vea Fullofcoffeeblog.com/Una-tacita-de-cafe-con-el-autor-y-productor-joe-compton-fundador-de-go-indie-now/