We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Ryan Conner. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Ryan below.

Ryan, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

I’ve been a stand-up for 20 years and have written for TV for 12 years. Stand-up is my greatest passion, however there are ideas that are too complex and serious to distill into stand-up without losing too much of what you want to say. In early 2016, with the increasing presence and acceptance of authoritarian rhetoric in politics and media, and eventually action, I couldn’t think about anything else. The primary focus of these thoughts was how do you get democracy back once it’s lost. This obsession sparked an idea for a story, one that would require a lot of research. From the Summer of 2016 through the next Summer, I read somewhere in the range of 60 books on totalitarianism, civil wars, insurgencies, and anything I could find whose tangents touched these subjects.
I imagined this story being a feature film. I outlined the story, but felt reluctance to write it because I knew it would never be made. I called my best friend, Quincy, and told him the story. He loved it, but said it sounded more like a novel. He said the film version would be six hours. I told him that I wish I were writing it as a novel, but I’m only a human and you have to be super-human to write novels. He disagreed.
I have been obsessed with literature since I was a little kid and always thought of novels as impossible to write. But taking Quincy’s and my manager’s advice, I started writing and the fear melted away. I wrote the first draft longhand in four weeks in 2018. Since then, I’ve done many revisions and have now completed by far the most meaningful project I’ve ever worked on, and it’s something I am proud of without reservation.
My novel, The Party, is a satire about totalitarianism and I hope you will read it. It will be released as an Amazon Exclusive (Hardcover/Paperback/eBook) on December 5th, but you can pre-order today.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I started doing stand-up 20 years ago in DC. I was lucky to become a full-time comic after two and half years, headlining colleges and small clubs. Then I moved to NYC, where I lived for seven years. There I did standup, writing, and some acting. In 2012 I moved to LA where I’ve continued to do the same, although I’ve added writing novels to the list.

I’m proud of my stand-up work, from being a finalist on NBC’s Last Comic Standing, appearing on the Late Late Show, releasing a #1 album, and having another successful album and special. But nothing has fulfilled me like writing my novel, The Party. In stand-up, you can convey parts of your world-view, but the form does hinder you. With my novel I was able to represent life and humanity without obscuring their complexity, while maintaining the same sense of humor that’s in my stand-up.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

I finished my novel about a year and a half ago. I thought it was time to approach publishers. Then I found out that my comedy/tv reps are not in the same world as those who publish fiction. As a comic, I could write a book of essays and find a publisher without much of a problem. But fiction is another planet. I started digging in and learned that most agents and publishers focus on YA, mysteries, and drug-store/pulp fiction, because that’s where the money is. It makes sense, but it’s inconvenient for me.

I thought I had to try, so I wrote query letters, which is custom for finding a fiction lit agent. I put about 20 hours of writing and research into each letter, as each agent seemed to want different things from their queries. After sending about 15 of these and only receiving one reply, I felt I was wasting my time. I had spent roughly 300 hours on these letters and no one had requested my manuscript. The sole reply was from a kind agent who said she was very interested in my novel, but as a reader. She said the business was struggling more than ever and she couldn’t commit to a new client.
I was frustrated, but I started looking into self-publishing. I was embarrassed by it at first. Then I read that Mark Twain, Jane Austen, and Willa Cather self-published. Then I no longer cared about cynical people making jokes about my book being self-published. I read a lot, and despite The Party being self-published, I think it belongs on the same shelf as books released by the major publishers.
If you’re writing a book, a film, or wanting to shoot a comedy special, do not stop when you see a wall. Figure out a way to get around it. In the end, the vehicle for releasing your work is irrelevant. The work is all that matters.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

I can’t stand social media. That has been my Achilles heel as a comic. I just cannot bring myself to care about it. Does it negatively affect my career? Sure. But there are worse things.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.ryanconnercomedy.com
• Instagram: @ryanconnercomedy
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ryanconnercomic/
• Youtube: @ryanconner

Image Credits
Photo by Byron Morton Book cover by Alejandro Baigorri