Episode 072 - Mentoring and Collaborating with Interns with Robert Blake Whitehill
March 30, 2021
Robert Blake Whitehill discusses MENTORING AND COLLABORATING WITH INTERNS, including the logistics and requirements of an author establishing an internship with a college or university, how he determines what work he asks his interns to do, and how he got past the idea that “if you want something done right, do it yourself.” He also discusses the considerable responsibilities he has as a sponsor, and shares what he receives in return for his investment of time and effort.
Robert Blake Whitehill trained as an actor at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, and at The Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre in New York City. An early focus on feature screenwriting earned Whitehill film festival wins at the Hudson Valley Film Festival and the Hamptons International Film Festival. He has written episodes of Discovery/Times Channel’s THE NEW DETECTIVES, DARING CAPERS, and THE BUREAU. Robert served as the Vice President of Independent Film Acquisitions for Centerseat.com.
Robert is author of the Ben Blackshaw thriller series, which his company Calaveras Media is developing into a feature film franchise. His biopic inspired by the live of Robert Smalls is in development with Legion M. Robert lives in New Jersey with his wife and son. For a number of years, he has worked with the Montclair Ambulance Unit as an emergency medical technician.
"It's just fascinating and enriching for me to not get exactly what I want, to see what their ideas are, and to realize that they may connect with their demographic in a way that I would never be able to fathom being some decades out of college myself." —Robert Blake Whitehill
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Matty: Hello and welcome to The Indy Author Podcast. Today my guest is Robert Blake Whitehill. Hey, Robert, how are you doing?
[00:00:06] Robert: Great to see you, Matty.
[00:00:08] Matty: It is great seeing you as well. Just to give our listeners a little bit of background on you ...
[00:00:12] Robert Blake Whitehill trained as an actor at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, and at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theater in New York City. An early focus on feature screenwriting earned Whitehill film festival wins at the Hudson Valley Film Festival and the Hamptons International Film Festival. He's written episodes of the Discovery/Times Channel's THE NEW DETECTIVES, DARING CAPERS, and THE BUREAU. In fact, Robert is a repeat guest because he appeared way back in Episode 008, talking about screenwriting. Robert has served as the Vice President of Independent Film Acquisition for centerseat.com. He's the author of the Ben Blackshaw thriller series, which his company Calaveras Media is developing into a feature film franchise and his biopic inspired by the life of Robert Smalls is in development with Legion M. Robert lives in New Jersey with his wife and son. And for a number of years, he has worked with a Montclair ambulance unit as an emergency medical technician.
[00:01:04] And so that was actually quite an abbreviated version of Robert's resume. And I think that it's a good illustration that he is a great person to talk about our topic for today, which is options for assistance. And we're going to be talking about exactly what option Robert went to for assistance, because he's obviously a busy guy and maybe couldn't do it all himself.
[00:01:25] But I wanted, Robert, to start out our conversation, now that the listeners know part of what you do in all your time, was there a moment where you said to yourself, you had the straw that broke the camel's back moment and you said, I can't do this on myself. I need help. Do you remember what that moment was?
[00:01:44] Robert: Yes. Definitely. It was where I said, Oh my gosh, I have a PR company they're working on my behalf. And what they're doing is they're accepting my fee, it was a good fee, but they're not doing PR for me as much as they are training me on how to do PR. And it was then that I realized how much of the onus of publicity fell to me, particularly in the area of social media.
[00:02:11] And I said, all right, I can do it. And I went along and did it. And there's this period in the year where I'm not actually writing a rough draft and that's fine. I can attend to social media matters then. But when I'm trying to write a rough draft of the next Ben Blackshaw novel, I'm very busy and I'm very engaged and it's difficult to pay attention to the demands of social media so that you're continuing to publicize your books in between publication dates.
[00:02:38] So I said, I need a little bit of help. And I had to think about how to do that. And I'd been aware of interns and internships, and that was the route I decided to go. ...
[00:00:06] Robert: Great to see you, Matty.
[00:00:08] Matty: It is great seeing you as well. Just to give our listeners a little bit of background on you ...
[00:00:12] Robert Blake Whitehill trained as an actor at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, and at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theater in New York City. An early focus on feature screenwriting earned Whitehill film festival wins at the Hudson Valley Film Festival and the Hamptons International Film Festival. He's written episodes of the Discovery/Times Channel's THE NEW DETECTIVES, DARING CAPERS, and THE BUREAU. In fact, Robert is a repeat guest because he appeared way back in Episode 008, talking about screenwriting. Robert has served as the Vice President of Independent Film Acquisition for centerseat.com. He's the author of the Ben Blackshaw thriller series, which his company Calaveras Media is developing into a feature film franchise and his biopic inspired by the life of Robert Smalls is in development with Legion M. Robert lives in New Jersey with his wife and son. And for a number of years, he has worked with a Montclair ambulance unit as an emergency medical technician.
[00:01:04] And so that was actually quite an abbreviated version of Robert's resume. And I think that it's a good illustration that he is a great person to talk about our topic for today, which is options for assistance. And we're going to be talking about exactly what option Robert went to for assistance, because he's obviously a busy guy and maybe couldn't do it all himself.
[00:01:25] But I wanted, Robert, to start out our conversation, now that the listeners know part of what you do in all your time, was there a moment where you said to yourself, you had the straw that broke the camel's back moment and you said, I can't do this on myself. I need help. Do you remember what that moment was?
[00:01:44] Robert: Yes. Definitely. It was where I said, Oh my gosh, I have a PR company they're working on my behalf. And what they're doing is they're accepting my fee, it was a good fee, but they're not doing PR for me as much as they are training me on how to do PR. And it was then that I realized how much of the onus of publicity fell to me, particularly in the area of social media.
[00:02:11] And I said, all right, I can do it. And I went along and did it. And there's this period in the year where I'm not actually writing a rough draft and that's fine. I can attend to social media matters then. But when I'm trying to write a rough draft of the next Ben Blackshaw novel, I'm very busy and I'm very engaged and it's difficult to pay attention to the demands of social media so that you're continuing to publicize your books in between publication dates.
[00:02:38] So I said, I need a little bit of help. And I had to think about how to do that. And I'd been aware of interns and internships, and that was the route I decided to go. ...
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[00:02:47] Matty: Was the organization that you pursued that with one that you had a connection with before the internship came about?
[00:02:53] Robert: Specific to my case, I've lived in a college, now a university, town for a number of years, and I also had established a company that could work with any other company. My company is Calaveras Media. And it's important for credibility when you're approaching interns and organizations that connect businesses with interns, that you have an actual business, an LLC, is helpful, with a track record. And so that was very important.
[00:03:23] So I work with Montclair State University. I have a wonderful intern who reaches out to other internship programs at other schools, particularly Parsons School of Design. I've got some amazing artists to work with. And it's just you sort expand as you can, as your capacity to do it.
[00:03:43] But I think it's important to note that working with interns for me is not about. getting assistance. It's not about free labor. I am very grateful, don't get me wrong, for any minute or hour of a day that I can concentrate on writing and not worry about whether social media is being created and posts are going out. I am very grateful for that. But if you are considering working with interns, you must have a mindset of service to the interns. In addition to some various specific laws regarding how much work they can do, how many hours they can put in, the Division of Wages and Hours has a lot to say about internships and the value proposition for the intern.
[00:04:29] There's management of interns. There's if they're getting credit from their college for working with you. There's a lot of paperwork involved in terms of maintaining that connection, the relationship, their evaluations to be done for them. You might even have a face-to-face, via Zoom of course, conference with their advisors just to check on their progress.
[00:04:54] So it's very involved. And I think the main thing is to maintain an attitude of service to the intern rather than what the intern is doing for you. Because it's a lot of work to work with interns. I've had as many as 10, one time even 12 interns at work on behalf of Calaveras Media and the various properties. And it can be very engrossing.
[00:05:17] Fortunately, I had an incredible, I still do have an incredible lead intern who handles many of the details in regard to scheduling Zoom meetings for meeting new interns, scheduling Zoom meetings for ask me anything sessions with business executives that can come in and talk to the interns.
[00:05:36] So it's not just my voice that the interns are hearing about their potential path toward a career that they might be interested in. So much to undertake. So one cannot take on an intern lightly. It might be easier, it's certainly easier, to simply hire an assistant for a few hours a week or whatever you might need. Because there isn't the concept of service and mentorship to an intern at that point.
[00:06:05] Matty: So it sounds like when you first entered into this idea of having an intern, it was specific to social media. Is that right? Social media and PR?
[00:06:13] Robert: Yes. Social media certainly, and I learned a lot about social media in the process. I had learned a lot from my PR company that I was working with. But after that, the period of that relationship ended, it was in relationship to the book release, and I learned a lot. Then we moved on to doing the social media myself, and then I realized I can't do social media and write this next rough draft of the next book.
[00:06:38] So I definitely needed help with that. And I'm learning about hashtag, call to action, keeping images in the social media, wonderful things. And the great thing about the number of interns that I've met over the past five years of working with them is that they know a lot about social media, more so than I, so I'm learning a great deal from them. I can nudge them in certain directions, to coach them so that their social media posts are more effective for this industry, publishing, a media company. But yes, definitely social media was where it began.
[00:07:09] And from there it expanded to artists. I said, let me help readers see what's going on in a book that was written for grownups, therefore has no illustrations. There are screenplays that I've written. Again, I create images in one's mind, but how can I help a potential reader, a potential sort of in a business-to-business side? How can I help a potential producer see the value in the screenplay when they're not reading it, when it's not in their hands? And so we expanded from social media to include artists as well, and illustrators. So that was a wonderful thing.
[00:07:49] And my sole tip to the artist was, find the moments of key, peak emotional intensity in the stories and illustrate those. And it has been revelatory, not only in terms of each intern's unique style of illustration, but what moments they find. Some of the moments they have in common, if more than one are working on a given intellectual property, they might pick similar moments, the same moments, but then there are other moments that are really different, and they present them uniquely. So it's been quite a journey for me working with them and seeing writing that had no illustration brought to life in a very visual way.
[00:08:34] Matty: Have you ever thought about taking that further, of doing a graphic novel version of any of your books?
[00:08:41] Robert: Great question. And I have considered it. I don't think it's actually the right time for it now, for me personally as running Calaveras Media, but I will say that there is a graphic novel / comic, I'm not sure which it will be, in consideration for the script that I wrote about Robert Smalls and that script is moving along in the development process very nicely. And there is a graphic novel, it will not be created by my interns, per se. I had that conversation with the company that is developing that script. And they said, the interns that you're working with are terrific, but at the moment for a piece that we're going to invest in as a sort of Robert Smalls adjacent kind of PR property, we need to go with someone who is very established and whose name will attract a number of people.
[00:09:34] So it would have been a really amazing leap for someone who's an intern to leap into a graphic novel illustration role, but I understand where the optioning company's coming from.
[00:09:44] Matty: I'll just mention for anyone who is intrigued by the graphic novel idea that back in Episode 038, I talked with Joshua Howell about graphic novels for adults, so I'll include a link in the show notes to that.
[00:09:59] Robert: And to your point about graphic novels, one of the value propositions for a Calaveras Media intern is that we set up, as I might've mentioned it, Zoom ask me anything sessions with industry greats and industry executives. And we've had a number of illustrators in the game cover world and the character creation world, and also a fellow who runs a local comic book shop, East Side Mags here in Montclair, New Jersey. We've had them in so that the illustrators can pick the brains of folks who are well advanced in a career, farther down the road than our interns currently are, and I would just hold that out as if people in the industry, if you can have access to people in the industry, that is a wonderful thing to give to the interns is access to other executives, other greats that might be on the path for their career.
[00:10:57] And again, never was I thinking about a career in teaching, but I'm always thinking of ways to enrich the value proposition for the interns so that they will be receiving equal to or greater value than what they are contributing necessarily to Calaveras Media.
[00:11:16] Matty: When you started out, did you start out with one intern and the program grew?
[00:11:22] Robert: That's exactly what happened. I started out with one, I think it was actually two interns and I split up the social media world into Twitter and Facebook and Instagram and other things of that nature. And it keeps their workload manageable. And it was just very helpful for them to do it along those lines.
[00:11:41] So yes, it definitely started out with one or two. And there's varying degrees of readiness when you begin working with an intern. But with any luck, you will mentor them from being rough at it to competency, to skills, to excellence, to mastery, even, from where they began. So you need to see it the way you would craft an arc of a character. There's got to be an arc in the skill set for your interns as well. And you've got to do your best to support them in getting there.
[00:12:08] One of the things that I do for interns who are in the marketing side, and who are actually writing the copy for the posts, if they're interested, I will mentor them in crafting a Blackshaw adjacent short story that I will then publish along with the novel, the next novel that's coming out. And I think we're going to have three really great short stories coming up with the next Ben Blackshaw book called BLAST. I've got three particularly great interns that love to write. First of all, we start talking about the plot, then I ask them to please write a draft. I give them notes on the draft that they've created, and we might have that exchange a couple of times where I'm working as an editor, but they get credited as having crafted a Ben Blackshaw adjacent short story.
[00:12:53] It is published. And again, that's part of the value proposition that an intern on the marketing side might well receive, because often there's a creative writing bent that they said, okay, I may not be an author, but I'm going to go into marketing where there is a creative spark required. And I can say, don't necessarily stop writing fiction. Here's a place where your bent, your yen to write fiction can go and I can support them in that.
[00:13:21] Matty: Do you feel as if the there's overlap between the Ben Blackshaw reader demographic and your intern demographic?
[00:13:30] Robert: I actually don't feel that there is. And I find that reading novels and reading a book series is more the realm of an older person. I've spoken with so many interns. One of the requirements for their internship is that they do read the screenplays, that they do read the Ben Blackshaw books, as they're able to fit it around their schoolwork. But typically an intern is a young person in their late teens and early twenties. They're in undergraduate or graduate school. Their reading list is so extensive that unless they are asked to read something like the Ben Blackshaw adventures, they're into their textbooks. They're working very hard on projects, so they are actually speaking to people who might be a little bit older in terms of their posts and reaching out.
[00:14:25] So there isn't a tremendous amount of overlap, but what they have in common, at least as they've read the Ben Blackshaw books is they've least put their toe in the water on an adventure series. I always ask somebody, what is their preferred reading when they're considering the internship, and there's all sorts of things -- paranormal, young adult fiction. It's not always action-adventure pieces. They might go to the movies to have that itch scratched. So it's really interesting. That's a great question. And only when you asked it did I realize, the interns aren't necessarily in that demographic that are Ben Blackshaw readers. They are definitely in the demographic of screen movie goers, so in that respect, I would say, yes, you're right on. But for books, no. For movies, yes. And the screenplays that they're illustrating. Yeah.
[00:15:17] Matty: It does seem as if a possible benefit that interns could bring is to bring that perspective of a different generation. And so I think that of my two series, the Ann Kinnear series, I do believe appeals to an older audience, but the Lizzy Ballard books, since they have a character in them who's 16, 17 during most of the books, could well appeal to a younger audience, but I have no idea where that younger audience is. So I know that people are selling books on Instagram. I don't know how. All I do is if I go on a dog walk and take a pretty picture, I post it on Instagram.
[00:15:55] But I can imagine that an intern who's living in the demographic that you might want to appeal to, could, rather than looking to the author for guidance could say, just let me take this platform that you the author know nothing about. And then I would think that you would want to be vetting the kinds of things they were putting up to make sure it was brand right, let's say, but the details of how they went about it might be something that you wouldn't ever be able to give them direction on if it wasn't a platform that you were familiar with yourself. Is that something for the screenplays, for example, is there an aspect where that would come into play for Calaveras Media?
[00:16:34] Robert: Yes, absolutely. And you're right that part of my management or mentoring does involve making sure that let's say in the case of illustrations, that there is an appropriate tone. The subject matter of the Robert Smalls script, currently called DEFIANT, that is very serious. And so the tone of the illustrations needs to have a maturity, a gravitas, and it cannot be whimsically comical, for instance. So there needs to be some adjustment on that front. And it goes well beyond let's say Instagram, with which I was not very familiar, or TikTok, which we're just starting to consider entering into.
[00:17:15] It's more important that I let the intern flex and try things out and experiment. So this is a for them, not necessarily for Calaveras Media, it's lower stakes. They're not getting graded. I want to see them do their experiment, really express who they are. See what they're like in terms of the copy that they write and see who they are and find themselves because they're going to get normed and told what to do and regulated throughout their career. This internship is an opportunity to create a body of work that will be deployed in a legitimate, actual, real life business setting that they can refer to. But it's really about letting them do, in terms of style, in terms of moments that they choose.
[00:18:05] And to that end, we have each intern, whether they're writing the copy and creating posts or doing illustrations, they've got what we refer to as a discrete hashtag. It's a hashtag that refers to their work. It's not a barcode, but it could be hashtag their initials, and usually begins with CM, Calaveras Media. So that anytime they want, when they're sitting down with a prospective employer, that can say, all right, here's a portfolio, of course, and here's a website where I have my work, but they can always go into Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, put in that discrete hashtag, which we've tested to make sure it's not applied to any other use. It's theirs and all of their work for Calaveras Media comes up right away. And that is something of great value so that they can show that their work and who they are, has been appreciated and deployed in a real-life business setting.
[00:18:56] Matty: How many social media platforms are you or your interns working on?
[00:19:02] Robert: I have three Facebook pages, Robert Whitehill's just personal and also has the most following. It's the oldest. Robert Blake Whitehill is my author page. And then Calaveras Media has a page of its own, not terribly extensively utilized, but it does get posts made to it. Then there's Instagram, which is getting more and more development of late. And then there is Twitter and I have RBWhitehill there, but I also have characters that have their own Twitter handle, recurring characters like Ben Blackshaw himself, he's got a Twitter handle and he posts periodically. So they're like sock puppet accounts, but they allow like Maynard Chalk, he's a bad guy who comes back in a couple of books, and he is diabolical and pretty insane. And there can be some amusing, sometimes shocking posts made in that account, in the vein of that character. I would say that we've got three, four, there's seven or eight platforms or accounts spread across Twitter and Facebook and Instagram at this point.
[00:20:15] Matty: And do you have the same intern coming up with posts for Maynard, or are they sharing that responsibility? How does that work?
[00:20:23] Robert: We typically assign a given account to a given intern. They may have several, but that's theirs to develop the voice of that account. Yeah, he's a favorite.
[00:20:34] Matty: What is the normal tenure of one of your interns?
[00:20:37] Robert: If they're getting a course credit, which is something that of course requires additional management from me as the managing director of Calaveras Media, if they're going for course credit, it can be the semester is a good gauge. Some say, you know what? I want to work with you now in this semester, I'll go for course credit in the next semester. And that means I have the pleasure of working with a given intern for a couple of semesters, which is really a treat. Some come aboard, they do their whole reading and onboarding process during the summer, against the day in the fall or spring semester when they'll go for course credit. And we always support them in however they want to shape the internship. But I would say it goes forward in semester blocks.
[00:21:21] I do have an intern who is working with me on a light kind of ad hoc basis. She was working very closely while she was an undergraduate at school and she was getting her graduate degree. And then from time to time, she still helps out simply because she knows what she's doing. She's created a very important app for the Ben Blackshaw series. She is familiar with opening leads into Hire a Red Hawk, which is the Montclair State University Career Planning and Support Office. They know her, she knows them. And so she's been with the company for years off and on as her schedule allows and permits. She's gone on to full-time employment and still from time to time, she will pitch in and it's tremendous to have that level of continuity. She also knows all the passwords to all the various authoring platforms and social media sites. So it's really helpful. One less thing I've got to deal with.
[00:22:22] Matty: It seems as if the blessing and the curse of that kind of scenario is that it opens up opportunities, like you had mentioned, you were looking into TikTok, it opens up opportunities that you might not otherwise pursue. But then you have that platform out there where an expectation has been set.
[00:22:42] So let's just say that you have an intern who loves TikTok and pitches to have an active Calaveras Media, Robert Blake Whitehill, Maynard Chalk presence on TikTok, having trouble imagining Maynard Chalk on TikTok, and then sets that up. And then the end of the semester comes and now you have this platform that still requires care and feeding. So how do you balance the opportunities with the responsibility for ongoing maintenance? Or do you consider maybe it's just a one semester kind of thing?
[00:23:12] Robert: There may be lacunae in the volume and level of productivity. One thing that's very important for interns is that I give them three options in terms of how they work with Calaveras Media. They're working the internship, they have an opportunity and at their discretion to slow, pause, or complete and halt their internship in accordance with their needs and wishes. So they can slow it down. Look, I got a lot of exams. I'm not going to be as productive going forward for the next couple of weeks. And that level of accountability is one of the things I try to encourage so that their lines of communication are open. And they get a response back from someone that's managing them and says, okay, cool. Line of communication is open. Thank you very much. We know what to expect from you, and I think that's very accountable and responsible of you. So that they're slowing it down. I've got exams. I've got a family member that needs some help. I've got other things that I need to attend to. We totally roll with that. So that's slowing it down.
[00:24:12] Pausing means, look, I really want to continue this internship, but I need to take a break because exams are crazy, life circumstances are cropping up. And that's fine.
[00:24:22] Or they're holding. And they say, look, we've worked together for a number of months. The semester is coming to an end. I've done what I came here to do. Thank you very much. And I'm moving on. In that particular case, something that all interns, whether they're alums or currently working, I will continue to invite them to the ask me anything sessions. They can always get a work reference from me. I will be glad to serve as that. And I'll also be glad to craft letters of recommendation for them moving forward. Again, the value proposition continues past the end of it.
[00:24:56] But there might be a slowdown, to answer your question, until another intern steps into that spot. And that's fine. I've no objection to it. And the most important thing for me to be doing is making sure that interns are having an enriching experience, and that I'm writing the next book because there's no better PR than publishing your next book.
[00:25:16] Matty: You had mentioned that one of the interns that has come back, has stayed with you a long time, still helps you out despite her full-time job, as I understand it, you had said that she has the passwords to all the publishing platforms. So it sounds like you've expanded beyond just having assistance with social media. Is that true? Does she help you out with more of the logistical or production side of your publishing business?
[00:25:39] Robert: We do have interns that are video producers and editors. We have we just finished creating an incredible piece called, PARDON ME. It's taking one of the short stories that I wrote with an intern. In fact, that intern who has such longevity with the company, and another intern created this video, where about 63 people took a very brief paragraph, 63 people from South America, the UK, Turkey, Canada, from all over the world, they took with their various backgrounds, their various accents and their various looks. It was really neat. They took like a paragraph or two, and these were all edited together into the full reading of the story with subtitles. So that was a really remarkable experience.
[00:26:30] Yes, definitely we've expanded the roles a tremendous amount. And a lot of that depends on the interest and creativity and level of intensity of the intern. But if they want to do video production, I have an intern that's throwing me questions as author to answer on video at my discretion. She takes those pieces, and she edits them down and presents them on Instagram. Really impressive people. Letting them flex their muscle in a direction that they want to go, so that at least whatever their work career holds for them in the future, they consider that they had this kind of latitude and it's very important. They might not experience that again in a work situation until they achieve a certain corporate level, whether they're in a middle or upper management echelon, but at least they get to taste that apple, as it were, while they're here working with Calaveras Media.
[00:27:20] Matty: It seems clear that you're really not saving any time with your internship. Like I've got to believe, especially if you have a dozen interns at a time, that it's taking you like 10 times longer than it would if you just wrote the social media posts yourself. So you obviously have a very different motivator than just saving yourself some time by diving into the internship experience.
[00:27:46] Robert: You know what, I think it takes care of the realization that a writer's life is a very solitary one and the opportunity to engage with energetic, creative people who for a couple of months will share your interests in working with the properties that your company is working with. It's really energizing for me. So I get a benefit that extends well past, as you so aptly identified, well past any labor-saving aspects. Because it's not saving labor, but it is taking care of a side of me that maybe is a little bit didactic, maybe does have a yen for creative contact with other people.
[00:28:36] So I think you've really identified something and I'm so glad you did because having an assistant through an internship, it is not about saving anything for yourself, necessarily. They are providing value, of course. But again, I refer to the Division of Labor, Wage and Hours, there’s a link that we could provide so they can learn more about that. If you're not creating an enriched environment for the internship, you're not doing an internship or running an internship correctly, in my opinion. It's got to be enriching. You've got to be engaged. There's criticism and mentoring of their work that's going on in an ongoing way, expansion, diversification of the roles they're doing as personnel shifts and changes.
[00:29:23] Yes. So there's a lot of easier ways of going about this and it all started from, Oh my gosh, I need to focus on writing the next book, writing the next script, editing the script for this company. And it evolved into some really terrific friendships and relationships that I hope will persist down the years.
[00:29:43] Matty: For anyone who's thinking about starting to work with someone, whether that's with an intern or an assistant or in any other sort of, I'll say, supervisory kind of role, how did you make the decision about what you wanted to have them do? Because I have to say that the two things that stand in the way of me getting an assistant are, one, money and, two, this feeling that if you want it done right, you have to do it yourself, especially for something like social media, which is so personal. Was that a consideration for you? Did you feel comfortable with that right off the bat?
[00:30:17] Robert: What I learned in working with interns is that the first few posts may not be what I would wish, but I can mentor and shape their work in an ongoing basis. And happily, thankfully, it is never going to be exactly the way I want it. I'm in fact, leavening the loaf of what I would do with the creative energies and insights of another person.
[00:30:47] And you might have heard that there are feature films that have 10 writers, 20 writers, they have writers that are not credited, a list of writers. Like THE FLINTSTONES was a movie that probably had, they said, more than 30 writers involved on it. It was a troubled script, and they didn't know what to do. So they kept throwing writers at it. To that extent, it might not be productive, but having the insights and energies of another person.
[00:31:14] And particularly because I maybe have had a tendency to micromanage in the past, this gets rid of that because what I've realized is the work that they do is so much more interesting than I might've prescribed for them to do on my behalf. The illustrations, the way that they attack it, I'm learning more about art and the mediums that they work with where, okay, this one has a little bit of an oil painting, but then I got on the computer and did this. Wait, you worked on an oil painting in a computer? And the results are so cool.
[00:31:47] Yes, I can see that if you want it done right, but you've got to redefine what right is. And it means including the insights and the energies of a legitimate part of your team. Maybe you're not paying them cash. And don't be surprised if seniors do ask for a stipend in their senior year, because they've achieved a certain level, they've worked on certain internships with other companies. So that can happen, but it's just fascinating and enriching for me to not get exactly what I want, to see what their ideas are, and to realize that they may connect with their demographic in a way that I would never be able to fathom being some decades out of college myself.
[00:32:37] Matty: That's so great. As always, this has been so interesting, Robert, and I appreciate you sharing the insights about how you maybe started looking for assistance and ended up doing much more for the people who you partnered up with. So please let the listeners know where they can go to find out more about you and your work online.
[00:32:54] Robert: Well, thank you very much. It's been such a great pleasure talking with you about this because it is important, internships are crucial to me and the pleasure that I get out of this work experience, being an author, solitary author.
[00:33:08] If you go to RobertBlakeWhitehill.com, that's where the website is. Things are a little bit more dynamic and changed up on Instagram, which is Robert Blake Whitehill. On Twitter, feel free to follow, it's @ RBWhitehill. And you can see retweets from the other sock puppet accounts like NITRO EXPRESS, Ben Blackshaw, or B Blackshaw, tons of them, but it all starts at RBWhitehill. And Facebook, also Robert Blake Whitehill, Robert Whitehill. I welcome folks to join as friends to me personally, as well as on the author page, Robert Blake Whitehill. And Calaveras Media, if you want to learn more about that.
[00:33:49] Matty: Great. Well, thank you so much, Robert. This has been great.
[00:33:51] Robert: Pleasure's been all mine. It's always great to see you and chat with you, Matty.
[00:02:53] Robert: Specific to my case, I've lived in a college, now a university, town for a number of years, and I also had established a company that could work with any other company. My company is Calaveras Media. And it's important for credibility when you're approaching interns and organizations that connect businesses with interns, that you have an actual business, an LLC, is helpful, with a track record. And so that was very important.
[00:03:23] So I work with Montclair State University. I have a wonderful intern who reaches out to other internship programs at other schools, particularly Parsons School of Design. I've got some amazing artists to work with. And it's just you sort expand as you can, as your capacity to do it.
[00:03:43] But I think it's important to note that working with interns for me is not about. getting assistance. It's not about free labor. I am very grateful, don't get me wrong, for any minute or hour of a day that I can concentrate on writing and not worry about whether social media is being created and posts are going out. I am very grateful for that. But if you are considering working with interns, you must have a mindset of service to the interns. In addition to some various specific laws regarding how much work they can do, how many hours they can put in, the Division of Wages and Hours has a lot to say about internships and the value proposition for the intern.
[00:04:29] There's management of interns. There's if they're getting credit from their college for working with you. There's a lot of paperwork involved in terms of maintaining that connection, the relationship, their evaluations to be done for them. You might even have a face-to-face, via Zoom of course, conference with their advisors just to check on their progress.
[00:04:54] So it's very involved. And I think the main thing is to maintain an attitude of service to the intern rather than what the intern is doing for you. Because it's a lot of work to work with interns. I've had as many as 10, one time even 12 interns at work on behalf of Calaveras Media and the various properties. And it can be very engrossing.
[00:05:17] Fortunately, I had an incredible, I still do have an incredible lead intern who handles many of the details in regard to scheduling Zoom meetings for meeting new interns, scheduling Zoom meetings for ask me anything sessions with business executives that can come in and talk to the interns.
[00:05:36] So it's not just my voice that the interns are hearing about their potential path toward a career that they might be interested in. So much to undertake. So one cannot take on an intern lightly. It might be easier, it's certainly easier, to simply hire an assistant for a few hours a week or whatever you might need. Because there isn't the concept of service and mentorship to an intern at that point.
[00:06:05] Matty: So it sounds like when you first entered into this idea of having an intern, it was specific to social media. Is that right? Social media and PR?
[00:06:13] Robert: Yes. Social media certainly, and I learned a lot about social media in the process. I had learned a lot from my PR company that I was working with. But after that, the period of that relationship ended, it was in relationship to the book release, and I learned a lot. Then we moved on to doing the social media myself, and then I realized I can't do social media and write this next rough draft of the next book.
[00:06:38] So I definitely needed help with that. And I'm learning about hashtag, call to action, keeping images in the social media, wonderful things. And the great thing about the number of interns that I've met over the past five years of working with them is that they know a lot about social media, more so than I, so I'm learning a great deal from them. I can nudge them in certain directions, to coach them so that their social media posts are more effective for this industry, publishing, a media company. But yes, definitely social media was where it began.
[00:07:09] And from there it expanded to artists. I said, let me help readers see what's going on in a book that was written for grownups, therefore has no illustrations. There are screenplays that I've written. Again, I create images in one's mind, but how can I help a potential reader, a potential sort of in a business-to-business side? How can I help a potential producer see the value in the screenplay when they're not reading it, when it's not in their hands? And so we expanded from social media to include artists as well, and illustrators. So that was a wonderful thing.
[00:07:49] And my sole tip to the artist was, find the moments of key, peak emotional intensity in the stories and illustrate those. And it has been revelatory, not only in terms of each intern's unique style of illustration, but what moments they find. Some of the moments they have in common, if more than one are working on a given intellectual property, they might pick similar moments, the same moments, but then there are other moments that are really different, and they present them uniquely. So it's been quite a journey for me working with them and seeing writing that had no illustration brought to life in a very visual way.
[00:08:34] Matty: Have you ever thought about taking that further, of doing a graphic novel version of any of your books?
[00:08:41] Robert: Great question. And I have considered it. I don't think it's actually the right time for it now, for me personally as running Calaveras Media, but I will say that there is a graphic novel / comic, I'm not sure which it will be, in consideration for the script that I wrote about Robert Smalls and that script is moving along in the development process very nicely. And there is a graphic novel, it will not be created by my interns, per se. I had that conversation with the company that is developing that script. And they said, the interns that you're working with are terrific, but at the moment for a piece that we're going to invest in as a sort of Robert Smalls adjacent kind of PR property, we need to go with someone who is very established and whose name will attract a number of people.
[00:09:34] So it would have been a really amazing leap for someone who's an intern to leap into a graphic novel illustration role, but I understand where the optioning company's coming from.
[00:09:44] Matty: I'll just mention for anyone who is intrigued by the graphic novel idea that back in Episode 038, I talked with Joshua Howell about graphic novels for adults, so I'll include a link in the show notes to that.
[00:09:59] Robert: And to your point about graphic novels, one of the value propositions for a Calaveras Media intern is that we set up, as I might've mentioned it, Zoom ask me anything sessions with industry greats and industry executives. And we've had a number of illustrators in the game cover world and the character creation world, and also a fellow who runs a local comic book shop, East Side Mags here in Montclair, New Jersey. We've had them in so that the illustrators can pick the brains of folks who are well advanced in a career, farther down the road than our interns currently are, and I would just hold that out as if people in the industry, if you can have access to people in the industry, that is a wonderful thing to give to the interns is access to other executives, other greats that might be on the path for their career.
[00:10:57] And again, never was I thinking about a career in teaching, but I'm always thinking of ways to enrich the value proposition for the interns so that they will be receiving equal to or greater value than what they are contributing necessarily to Calaveras Media.
[00:11:16] Matty: When you started out, did you start out with one intern and the program grew?
[00:11:22] Robert: That's exactly what happened. I started out with one, I think it was actually two interns and I split up the social media world into Twitter and Facebook and Instagram and other things of that nature. And it keeps their workload manageable. And it was just very helpful for them to do it along those lines.
[00:11:41] So yes, it definitely started out with one or two. And there's varying degrees of readiness when you begin working with an intern. But with any luck, you will mentor them from being rough at it to competency, to skills, to excellence, to mastery, even, from where they began. So you need to see it the way you would craft an arc of a character. There's got to be an arc in the skill set for your interns as well. And you've got to do your best to support them in getting there.
[00:12:08] One of the things that I do for interns who are in the marketing side, and who are actually writing the copy for the posts, if they're interested, I will mentor them in crafting a Blackshaw adjacent short story that I will then publish along with the novel, the next novel that's coming out. And I think we're going to have three really great short stories coming up with the next Ben Blackshaw book called BLAST. I've got three particularly great interns that love to write. First of all, we start talking about the plot, then I ask them to please write a draft. I give them notes on the draft that they've created, and we might have that exchange a couple of times where I'm working as an editor, but they get credited as having crafted a Ben Blackshaw adjacent short story.
[00:12:53] It is published. And again, that's part of the value proposition that an intern on the marketing side might well receive, because often there's a creative writing bent that they said, okay, I may not be an author, but I'm going to go into marketing where there is a creative spark required. And I can say, don't necessarily stop writing fiction. Here's a place where your bent, your yen to write fiction can go and I can support them in that.
[00:13:21] Matty: Do you feel as if the there's overlap between the Ben Blackshaw reader demographic and your intern demographic?
[00:13:30] Robert: I actually don't feel that there is. And I find that reading novels and reading a book series is more the realm of an older person. I've spoken with so many interns. One of the requirements for their internship is that they do read the screenplays, that they do read the Ben Blackshaw books, as they're able to fit it around their schoolwork. But typically an intern is a young person in their late teens and early twenties. They're in undergraduate or graduate school. Their reading list is so extensive that unless they are asked to read something like the Ben Blackshaw adventures, they're into their textbooks. They're working very hard on projects, so they are actually speaking to people who might be a little bit older in terms of their posts and reaching out.
[00:14:25] So there isn't a tremendous amount of overlap, but what they have in common, at least as they've read the Ben Blackshaw books is they've least put their toe in the water on an adventure series. I always ask somebody, what is their preferred reading when they're considering the internship, and there's all sorts of things -- paranormal, young adult fiction. It's not always action-adventure pieces. They might go to the movies to have that itch scratched. So it's really interesting. That's a great question. And only when you asked it did I realize, the interns aren't necessarily in that demographic that are Ben Blackshaw readers. They are definitely in the demographic of screen movie goers, so in that respect, I would say, yes, you're right on. But for books, no. For movies, yes. And the screenplays that they're illustrating. Yeah.
[00:15:17] Matty: It does seem as if a possible benefit that interns could bring is to bring that perspective of a different generation. And so I think that of my two series, the Ann Kinnear series, I do believe appeals to an older audience, but the Lizzy Ballard books, since they have a character in them who's 16, 17 during most of the books, could well appeal to a younger audience, but I have no idea where that younger audience is. So I know that people are selling books on Instagram. I don't know how. All I do is if I go on a dog walk and take a pretty picture, I post it on Instagram.
[00:15:55] But I can imagine that an intern who's living in the demographic that you might want to appeal to, could, rather than looking to the author for guidance could say, just let me take this platform that you the author know nothing about. And then I would think that you would want to be vetting the kinds of things they were putting up to make sure it was brand right, let's say, but the details of how they went about it might be something that you wouldn't ever be able to give them direction on if it wasn't a platform that you were familiar with yourself. Is that something for the screenplays, for example, is there an aspect where that would come into play for Calaveras Media?
[00:16:34] Robert: Yes, absolutely. And you're right that part of my management or mentoring does involve making sure that let's say in the case of illustrations, that there is an appropriate tone. The subject matter of the Robert Smalls script, currently called DEFIANT, that is very serious. And so the tone of the illustrations needs to have a maturity, a gravitas, and it cannot be whimsically comical, for instance. So there needs to be some adjustment on that front. And it goes well beyond let's say Instagram, with which I was not very familiar, or TikTok, which we're just starting to consider entering into.
[00:17:15] It's more important that I let the intern flex and try things out and experiment. So this is a for them, not necessarily for Calaveras Media, it's lower stakes. They're not getting graded. I want to see them do their experiment, really express who they are. See what they're like in terms of the copy that they write and see who they are and find themselves because they're going to get normed and told what to do and regulated throughout their career. This internship is an opportunity to create a body of work that will be deployed in a legitimate, actual, real life business setting that they can refer to. But it's really about letting them do, in terms of style, in terms of moments that they choose.
[00:18:05] And to that end, we have each intern, whether they're writing the copy and creating posts or doing illustrations, they've got what we refer to as a discrete hashtag. It's a hashtag that refers to their work. It's not a barcode, but it could be hashtag their initials, and usually begins with CM, Calaveras Media. So that anytime they want, when they're sitting down with a prospective employer, that can say, all right, here's a portfolio, of course, and here's a website where I have my work, but they can always go into Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, put in that discrete hashtag, which we've tested to make sure it's not applied to any other use. It's theirs and all of their work for Calaveras Media comes up right away. And that is something of great value so that they can show that their work and who they are, has been appreciated and deployed in a real-life business setting.
[00:18:56] Matty: How many social media platforms are you or your interns working on?
[00:19:02] Robert: I have three Facebook pages, Robert Whitehill's just personal and also has the most following. It's the oldest. Robert Blake Whitehill is my author page. And then Calaveras Media has a page of its own, not terribly extensively utilized, but it does get posts made to it. Then there's Instagram, which is getting more and more development of late. And then there is Twitter and I have RBWhitehill there, but I also have characters that have their own Twitter handle, recurring characters like Ben Blackshaw himself, he's got a Twitter handle and he posts periodically. So they're like sock puppet accounts, but they allow like Maynard Chalk, he's a bad guy who comes back in a couple of books, and he is diabolical and pretty insane. And there can be some amusing, sometimes shocking posts made in that account, in the vein of that character. I would say that we've got three, four, there's seven or eight platforms or accounts spread across Twitter and Facebook and Instagram at this point.
[00:20:15] Matty: And do you have the same intern coming up with posts for Maynard, or are they sharing that responsibility? How does that work?
[00:20:23] Robert: We typically assign a given account to a given intern. They may have several, but that's theirs to develop the voice of that account. Yeah, he's a favorite.
[00:20:34] Matty: What is the normal tenure of one of your interns?
[00:20:37] Robert: If they're getting a course credit, which is something that of course requires additional management from me as the managing director of Calaveras Media, if they're going for course credit, it can be the semester is a good gauge. Some say, you know what? I want to work with you now in this semester, I'll go for course credit in the next semester. And that means I have the pleasure of working with a given intern for a couple of semesters, which is really a treat. Some come aboard, they do their whole reading and onboarding process during the summer, against the day in the fall or spring semester when they'll go for course credit. And we always support them in however they want to shape the internship. But I would say it goes forward in semester blocks.
[00:21:21] I do have an intern who is working with me on a light kind of ad hoc basis. She was working very closely while she was an undergraduate at school and she was getting her graduate degree. And then from time to time, she still helps out simply because she knows what she's doing. She's created a very important app for the Ben Blackshaw series. She is familiar with opening leads into Hire a Red Hawk, which is the Montclair State University Career Planning and Support Office. They know her, she knows them. And so she's been with the company for years off and on as her schedule allows and permits. She's gone on to full-time employment and still from time to time, she will pitch in and it's tremendous to have that level of continuity. She also knows all the passwords to all the various authoring platforms and social media sites. So it's really helpful. One less thing I've got to deal with.
[00:22:22] Matty: It seems as if the blessing and the curse of that kind of scenario is that it opens up opportunities, like you had mentioned, you were looking into TikTok, it opens up opportunities that you might not otherwise pursue. But then you have that platform out there where an expectation has been set.
[00:22:42] So let's just say that you have an intern who loves TikTok and pitches to have an active Calaveras Media, Robert Blake Whitehill, Maynard Chalk presence on TikTok, having trouble imagining Maynard Chalk on TikTok, and then sets that up. And then the end of the semester comes and now you have this platform that still requires care and feeding. So how do you balance the opportunities with the responsibility for ongoing maintenance? Or do you consider maybe it's just a one semester kind of thing?
[00:23:12] Robert: There may be lacunae in the volume and level of productivity. One thing that's very important for interns is that I give them three options in terms of how they work with Calaveras Media. They're working the internship, they have an opportunity and at their discretion to slow, pause, or complete and halt their internship in accordance with their needs and wishes. So they can slow it down. Look, I got a lot of exams. I'm not going to be as productive going forward for the next couple of weeks. And that level of accountability is one of the things I try to encourage so that their lines of communication are open. And they get a response back from someone that's managing them and says, okay, cool. Line of communication is open. Thank you very much. We know what to expect from you, and I think that's very accountable and responsible of you. So that they're slowing it down. I've got exams. I've got a family member that needs some help. I've got other things that I need to attend to. We totally roll with that. So that's slowing it down.
[00:24:12] Pausing means, look, I really want to continue this internship, but I need to take a break because exams are crazy, life circumstances are cropping up. And that's fine.
[00:24:22] Or they're holding. And they say, look, we've worked together for a number of months. The semester is coming to an end. I've done what I came here to do. Thank you very much. And I'm moving on. In that particular case, something that all interns, whether they're alums or currently working, I will continue to invite them to the ask me anything sessions. They can always get a work reference from me. I will be glad to serve as that. And I'll also be glad to craft letters of recommendation for them moving forward. Again, the value proposition continues past the end of it.
[00:24:56] But there might be a slowdown, to answer your question, until another intern steps into that spot. And that's fine. I've no objection to it. And the most important thing for me to be doing is making sure that interns are having an enriching experience, and that I'm writing the next book because there's no better PR than publishing your next book.
[00:25:16] Matty: You had mentioned that one of the interns that has come back, has stayed with you a long time, still helps you out despite her full-time job, as I understand it, you had said that she has the passwords to all the publishing platforms. So it sounds like you've expanded beyond just having assistance with social media. Is that true? Does she help you out with more of the logistical or production side of your publishing business?
[00:25:39] Robert: We do have interns that are video producers and editors. We have we just finished creating an incredible piece called, PARDON ME. It's taking one of the short stories that I wrote with an intern. In fact, that intern who has such longevity with the company, and another intern created this video, where about 63 people took a very brief paragraph, 63 people from South America, the UK, Turkey, Canada, from all over the world, they took with their various backgrounds, their various accents and their various looks. It was really neat. They took like a paragraph or two, and these were all edited together into the full reading of the story with subtitles. So that was a really remarkable experience.
[00:26:30] Yes, definitely we've expanded the roles a tremendous amount. And a lot of that depends on the interest and creativity and level of intensity of the intern. But if they want to do video production, I have an intern that's throwing me questions as author to answer on video at my discretion. She takes those pieces, and she edits them down and presents them on Instagram. Really impressive people. Letting them flex their muscle in a direction that they want to go, so that at least whatever their work career holds for them in the future, they consider that they had this kind of latitude and it's very important. They might not experience that again in a work situation until they achieve a certain corporate level, whether they're in a middle or upper management echelon, but at least they get to taste that apple, as it were, while they're here working with Calaveras Media.
[00:27:20] Matty: It seems clear that you're really not saving any time with your internship. Like I've got to believe, especially if you have a dozen interns at a time, that it's taking you like 10 times longer than it would if you just wrote the social media posts yourself. So you obviously have a very different motivator than just saving yourself some time by diving into the internship experience.
[00:27:46] Robert: You know what, I think it takes care of the realization that a writer's life is a very solitary one and the opportunity to engage with energetic, creative people who for a couple of months will share your interests in working with the properties that your company is working with. It's really energizing for me. So I get a benefit that extends well past, as you so aptly identified, well past any labor-saving aspects. Because it's not saving labor, but it is taking care of a side of me that maybe is a little bit didactic, maybe does have a yen for creative contact with other people.
[00:28:36] So I think you've really identified something and I'm so glad you did because having an assistant through an internship, it is not about saving anything for yourself, necessarily. They are providing value, of course. But again, I refer to the Division of Labor, Wage and Hours, there’s a link that we could provide so they can learn more about that. If you're not creating an enriched environment for the internship, you're not doing an internship or running an internship correctly, in my opinion. It's got to be enriching. You've got to be engaged. There's criticism and mentoring of their work that's going on in an ongoing way, expansion, diversification of the roles they're doing as personnel shifts and changes.
[00:29:23] Yes. So there's a lot of easier ways of going about this and it all started from, Oh my gosh, I need to focus on writing the next book, writing the next script, editing the script for this company. And it evolved into some really terrific friendships and relationships that I hope will persist down the years.
[00:29:43] Matty: For anyone who's thinking about starting to work with someone, whether that's with an intern or an assistant or in any other sort of, I'll say, supervisory kind of role, how did you make the decision about what you wanted to have them do? Because I have to say that the two things that stand in the way of me getting an assistant are, one, money and, two, this feeling that if you want it done right, you have to do it yourself, especially for something like social media, which is so personal. Was that a consideration for you? Did you feel comfortable with that right off the bat?
[00:30:17] Robert: What I learned in working with interns is that the first few posts may not be what I would wish, but I can mentor and shape their work in an ongoing basis. And happily, thankfully, it is never going to be exactly the way I want it. I'm in fact, leavening the loaf of what I would do with the creative energies and insights of another person.
[00:30:47] And you might have heard that there are feature films that have 10 writers, 20 writers, they have writers that are not credited, a list of writers. Like THE FLINTSTONES was a movie that probably had, they said, more than 30 writers involved on it. It was a troubled script, and they didn't know what to do. So they kept throwing writers at it. To that extent, it might not be productive, but having the insights and energies of another person.
[00:31:14] And particularly because I maybe have had a tendency to micromanage in the past, this gets rid of that because what I've realized is the work that they do is so much more interesting than I might've prescribed for them to do on my behalf. The illustrations, the way that they attack it, I'm learning more about art and the mediums that they work with where, okay, this one has a little bit of an oil painting, but then I got on the computer and did this. Wait, you worked on an oil painting in a computer? And the results are so cool.
[00:31:47] Yes, I can see that if you want it done right, but you've got to redefine what right is. And it means including the insights and the energies of a legitimate part of your team. Maybe you're not paying them cash. And don't be surprised if seniors do ask for a stipend in their senior year, because they've achieved a certain level, they've worked on certain internships with other companies. So that can happen, but it's just fascinating and enriching for me to not get exactly what I want, to see what their ideas are, and to realize that they may connect with their demographic in a way that I would never be able to fathom being some decades out of college myself.
[00:32:37] Matty: That's so great. As always, this has been so interesting, Robert, and I appreciate you sharing the insights about how you maybe started looking for assistance and ended up doing much more for the people who you partnered up with. So please let the listeners know where they can go to find out more about you and your work online.
[00:32:54] Robert: Well, thank you very much. It's been such a great pleasure talking with you about this because it is important, internships are crucial to me and the pleasure that I get out of this work experience, being an author, solitary author.
[00:33:08] If you go to RobertBlakeWhitehill.com, that's where the website is. Things are a little bit more dynamic and changed up on Instagram, which is Robert Blake Whitehill. On Twitter, feel free to follow, it's @ RBWhitehill. And you can see retweets from the other sock puppet accounts like NITRO EXPRESS, Ben Blackshaw, or B Blackshaw, tons of them, but it all starts at RBWhitehill. And Facebook, also Robert Blake Whitehill, Robert Whitehill. I welcome folks to join as friends to me personally, as well as on the author page, Robert Blake Whitehill. And Calaveras Media, if you want to learn more about that.
[00:33:49] Matty: Great. Well, thank you so much, Robert. This has been great.
[00:33:51] Robert: Pleasure's been all mine. It's always great to see you and chat with you, Matty.
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