Six years at City College. Thirteen restaurant jobs. Calculus III three times. By 23, Joy Lane was lying in the grass, ready to walk away from her last final and everything she'd worked for.

In F College: A Memoir of Doubt, Self-Discovery, and Resilience, Joy goes back to that breaking point and walks readers through her final semester, building her story the way an engineer builds a system, with equilibrium, stress, and failure points.

In this episode of Author Hour, she joins Lex Statzer to talk about the classroom moment that convinced her to tell her story, what her ADHD diagnosis changed, why community college deserves more credit, and how a provocative title survived a team poll. She also shares her writing routine of two pages a day, why editing was harder than writing, and her advice for anyone afraid to start their own book: do it for yourself first.

For more information on Joy Lane, visit https://scribemedia.com/authors/joy-lane

For more information on F College, visit https://scribemedia.com/published-books/f-college

For 16 years, writing a book sat on Greg Hiebert's goals list. Deep down, he was afraid no one would read it, and if they did, they wouldn't like it. He finally confronted that fear, and the result was You Can't Give What You Don't Have, a book about the self-care leaders need before they can give love, patience, kindness, and insight to others.

In this episode of Author Hour, Greg joins Travis Stoliker to talk about how he got past the fear, why he fought to keep the book in his own voice, and how it became required reading in leadership programs years after launch. He also shares his journey through two bouts of prostate cancer and a Parkinson's diagnosis, the daily choice to "wallow or win," his positive point system, the seven habits at the heart of his book, and his candid advice for new authors: books do not sell themselves.

For more information on Greg Hiebert, visit https://scribemedia.com/authors/greg-hiebert

For more information on You Can't Give What You Don't Have, visit https://scribemedia.com/published-books/you-cant-give-what-you-dont-have-creating-the-seven-habits-that-make-a-remarkable-life

For more information on Changing Altitude, visit https://scribemedia.com/published-books/changing-altitude

What makes an experience extraordinary? Paul Zak has spent more than a decade answering that question in his lab, measuring what he calls the brain's "give a damn" signal and building a company, Immersion, that movie studios, theaters, educators, and brands now use on six continents.

In Immersion: The Science of the Extraordinary and the Source of Happiness, Paul turns that research into stories, from a tense encounter with an intelligence operator to helping Sony test movie trailers. In this episode of Author Hour, he joins Eric Jorgenson to talk about how a decade-long research program becomes a book, why every good nonfiction book is built like a sitcom, and how Immersion paid for itself in paid speaking engagements within its first month. He also shares why he chose more control over traditional publishing, how he uses AI as a "combative coauthor," why he still wants a human narrating his audiobooks, and his best advice for anyone thinking about writing a book.

For more information on Paul Zak, visit https://scribemedia.com/authors/paul-zak

For more information on Immersion, visit https://scribemedia.com/published-books/immersion