Alain Burrese:  Phil, I’ve known you for a number of years now. I think we first interacted when you reviewed some of my work for one of your websites. There was a time when you were almost a constant on every martial arts discussion forum and board I can think of. Where did you go?

Phil Elmore:  I never actually went anywhere. I’ve been here at my desk. Basically I’ve been typing for the last decade. I think I took a nap at one point.

Alain:  What have you been working on?

Phil:  Well, in the years since Paladin published Flashlight Fighting and Street Sword, I wrote 22 novels for Gold Eagle/Worldwide Library in the Mack Bolan universe. This is the property that inspired The Punisher, and was one of the first modern pulp action genres. It ground on and on for years with a staff of authors behind it after the original author sold the series. I was lucky enough to be one of those authors. To be honest, I don’t even know how many of us there were through the years. Jerry Van Cook was one of them, and of course anyone know knows Paladin knows Jerry’s work. Jerry was actually instrumental in helping me get that job. By the time I was done I had written about 1,285,000 words in just that series.

Alain:  I actually read many of the Executioner and Destroyer books back in the late 70s and early 80s. I liked Mack Bolan and Remo Williams. And I still read them once in a while for fun, including a couple that you authored. (You have to check the page with ISBN number and other details to see who authored the new ones.) My hands hurt just thinking about writing 22 of them.

Phil:  So do mine. I was a huge fan of The Destroyer as well, and have read more of them than I can remember. I first started reading the Mack Bolan books when I was a teenager because my father had a huge collection of pulp action books — Donald Hamilton’s Matt Helm, Mack Bolan, a bunch of the copycat also-rans from the late seventies and early eighties. It blows my mind that these books that I loved as a kid are books I later wrote as an adult. It took a lot of time and effort to write over a million and a quarter words, but it was a dream come true.

Alain Burrese:  Was that all you did during the last ten years?

Phil Elmore:  Oh, no. Not at all. I’m a full-service author, content creator, and technical writer. I’ve written for scores of clients over the last ten years. I do everything from product documentation to ghostwriting fiction for some of my clients. You’d be surprised how many novels I’ve written that I can’t admit to writing. I’ve also contributed to an anthology here and there. And I spent several years as a freelance journalist for WND News. I wrote a weekly political column for them for eight years, in fact.

Alain:  Yes, you have been busy. Too bad you can’t share some of those. It seems like you’ve withdrawn from the online martial arts world. I can remember several high-profile feuds you had with people like Ashida Kim and one or two of his students.

Phil:  I still write in the martial arts. My website, The Martialist, is still around, after 15 years. I still do product reviews. I actually still actively write in the self-defense and survival fields, too. I spent a number of years writing magazine pieces for Harris Publications before they closed. I wrote regular columns for Tactical Knives Magazine and a bunch of stuff for Survivor’s Edge, the survival publication that replaced TK. Right now I work for multiple Internet marketers in the self-defense, martial arts, and survival spaces. I guarantee you’ve read material I’ve written that you didn’t know was written by me. I guess you could say I’ve been working largely behind the scenes… because that’s where the money is.

Alain:  Yes, I’ve seen your articles in Survivor’s Edge, it’s a magazine I read fairly regularly. It’s always cool to see someone you know in print. So no more Internet feuds?

Phil:  I gave up on what I’d call “muckraking” martial arts journalism for that reason, yes. Those types of exposé articles just make enemies… and in a few cases, I still contend with some of that bad blood today. It’s not worth it to poke hornets’ nests with sticks.

Alain Burrese:  I would think being as busy as you are, it’s just not worth the time it takes to poke hornets’ nests and deal with what comes next. But at least one of the people you profiled is in jail now, right?

Phil Elmore:  Yes, in jail and awaiting trial on federal firearms charges. No matter how that comes out, when he gets out of jail he’s going to go straight to YouTube and blame me for it. When you make enemies through martial arts politicking, you can’t undo it. There are a  LOT of people in the martial arts and self-defense industries who behave like children who never grew up. But you know that; look at the trolling you deal with every day.

Alain:  Yes, I understand. I do get some undeserved grief from people. I guess it’s part of being a public figure in the industry.

Phil:  That’s got to be the understatement of the year. I’ve told multiple people that Alain Burrese is one of the nicest guys in the industry. It was the quality about you that I found most memorable when we first spoke. That’s never changed… and for some reason, you get some of the most vicious trolling and harassment I’ve ever seen a person endure this side of Scott Sonnon. Scott was another early supporter of my work. He was really inspirational when I was getting my site off the ground. He told me once, “You’re going to have to develop a thick skin if you want to play with the grownups.” He wasn’t wrong.

Alain:  Thank you, I appreciate that as I do try to be nice to people. And that’s really good advice from Scott. I don’t know him, but I’ve seen some of his work and think he’s putting out some good information.

Phil:  And yet it doesn’t protect you from the obsessive harassment of people who get mad at you… sometimes for things you’ve never done. I can think of at least one guy who’s so obsessed with how evil his imagined enemies are that not a day goes by that he doesn’t blame his problems on the Intergalactic Supervillain Master Hacker Fraud Monster that is Alain Burrese.

Alain Burrese:  [laughing] It’s not easy being that dedicated to ruining someone’s career. Or maybe I should start going by “Thanos.”

Phil Elmore:  It’s like you snap your fingers and bad things happen to people with slightly shaky martial arts credentials, right? You and I both know how absurd that is, and how wrongheaded. That fellow you mentioned who’s sitting in jail awaiting trial? He’s an example of the “criminal class” in the martial arts — people you absolutely would not want teaching children and who should be exposed so they don’t have students. Yet if you do that, you make enemies out of them for the rest of your life. At some point I decided I had made enough hassle for myself and I moved into more lucrative, behind-the-scenes areas of the industry.

Alain:  That sounds wise. I figure I could spend my time responding to Bozos or spend my time doing things that will positively impact other people and enjoying life with my family and friends. The latter is so much more fulfilling. So, what other types of work have you done?

Phil:  You name it and I do it. My freelance business has been incredibly busy over the last several years. I also wrote both survival articles and fiction with Sharon and the late Jerry Ahern, two of my idols. The Aherns’ Survivalist series was one of my favorites growing up, and one of the major influences on my action writing. I wrote a series of action parody books called “Duke Manfist” for League Entertainment, an IP company based in Florida, and I continue to write copy and create content for a number of Internet marketers. I stay very busy. I bill myself as an Internet Gunslinger; there’s no job I won’t take on if I think I can accomplish it.

Alain:  Just to give readers a little “how to” in case they are interested in following a path similar to yours, how to you go about marketing yourself and finding all these gigs to keep you so busy? (Yeah, okay, I’m one of those readers interested.) And you don’t have to give away all your secrets, just if you could share something that would help people in that area.

Phil Elmore:  Not at all. People ask me that all the time — “How do I become a writer?” I draw a distinction between an author, which anyone can be if they manage to crap out a book and self-publish it electronically, and a working writer, which means you’re making a living off your work. Being an author feels glamorous, and most amateur writers love the idea of being seen as an author. Those are the people who put “published author” in their signature lines. But it’s actually very hard to make any money worth talking about just writing fiction. If you’re not JK Rowling or George RR Martin, you’re not going to be buying a porsche with the money. I made more money editing for Paladin as a freelancer than I ever did off royalty checks for my books.

Alain:  Really?

Phil Elmore:  Really. Editing is actually a pretty lucrative gig if you find the right people. But to answer your question as far as how to get your name out there, it’s all networking. Client development is a process. You become a better writer by writing… a lot. Practice and making mistakes are what teach you how to be better. But you develop clients by networking. The best to do that is, first of all, you set up a presence through the usual social media and through a website so people can find you… but on the whole they’re not going to. You could swing a dead cat at a room full of people and hit ten to twelve underemployed freelance writers. No, the way you find clients is to get clients and then prove to them you can do the job.

Alain:  What do you mean by that?

Phil:  It’s actually really hard to find a writer who’ll do the job consistently and well. The good ones are few and far between. And it’s always easier to get paid for work that’s already coming in than it is to go and find NEW work. So a client who gives you repeat business is the key to succeeding as a working writer. I develop clients by first doing gigs through sites like Upwork. It’s “e-lancing”, or electronic freelancing. You’ll get paid too little and you’ll be treated like a prostitute (only with less dignity). But if you can find a few clients among those you do work for who understand that you’re that rare breed of reliable, competent writer, they’ll end up sending more work your way. Then you’ll do a number of different jobs for them, sometimes for years, sometimes for months. Every client has a lifecycle, so a working writer is always developing new clients to replace the ones who’ve aged out of their lifecycles and no longer need his help.

Alain:  And I guess it should go without saying, before you are going to get so many writing gigs, you must know how to write. I’ve read your books, blogs, and articles, and I know you are a good writer. Any tips for someone who wants to improve in that area?

Phil Elmore:  Like I said, that’s the other question I get all the time: “How do I become a better writer?” The answer is that you write. You take on work that forces you to learn and get better, and you develop through practice. I’m a much better writer now than I was ten years ago, purely through practice. In terms of technical writing, I have been forced to learn SEO and other techniques that I didn’t know when I started. In terms of fiction, I learned through repetition what worked and what didn’t. You only get one first novel and most of them are terrible. It wasn’t until I wrote half a dozen action novels for Gold Eagle that I got really good at them. So the only way to become a better writer is to write… but you also need the feedback of a good editor. Just churning out numbers alone in terms of word count isn’t enough. You need someone you trust to be harshly honest to tell you when your work isn’t good enough. I’ve been lucky enough to have several editors like that.

Alain:  Thanks, I appreciate those answers and am sure others will too. I also want to talk about the Kydex work you’ve been doing. I have one of the little disposable “pocket bowie” knives you were selling a while back. Are you still dabbling in Kydex work?

Phil:  I am. You can find my kydex sheaths for the Victorinox bird’s beak paring knives on eBay and Etsy. I bill my Etsy shop as Engines of Mayhem, but it’s just my name on eBay. You can find links at my website, Engines of Mayhem. I stopped doing custom orders and have been focusing only on what was selling well, which are the fruit knife sheaths. I’m still pretty much an amateur, but my work is affordable and I’ll replace any sheath the owner isn’t happy with.

Alain:  Where can my readers find you if they want to reach out?

Phil:  Links to every single one of my projects are at PhilElmore.com. There’s contact information there too. I never sleep, so you can call me 24 hours a day, very literally. I’m always awake.

Alain Burrese:  You seem a lot more mellow than you used to, years ago.

Phil Elmore:  Oh, I definitely am. What’s that old saying? “It’s not the years, it’s the mileage.” A lot has happened to me, both personally and professionally, in the last fifteen years. My life has worked out pretty well and, while I’m probably a workaholic, I’ve started to picture what the second half of my working life is going to look like. They’ll probably find me dead at my keyboard one day. I don’t intend ever to retire because I love writing so much. But I do hope I hit “send” and meet my deadline before I… meet my deadline, I guess you could say. And I do hope to work something more like a 40 hour week instead of an 80- or 90-hour week in  the future.

Alain:  We can all hope, I guess.

Phil:  Wishful thinking, right? We should probably wrap this up, Alain, but I have to add this: You are still, without a doubt, one of the nicest people I’ve ever met in this or any of the industries in which I work. It galls me that you get trolled, harassed, and defamed by angry, jealous little people who’ve latched on to you and your success as somehow the cause for their own failures. No matter what, you’ve got a friend in me. And I hope your readers will take that testimony for what it is: completely earnest and heartfelt.

Alain: Well, thank you very much, Phil.

Phil:  Thank you for the opportunity to reach out to your audience. I appreciate it.

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