Discovered Wordsmiths: Recent Episodes

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OverviewJ is back, and this time he’s talking about his latest book series which deals with using A.I. for your writing. Our conversation entails the happenings from 20 books to 50k Vegas. J has a lot of thoughts about the future of publishing and the use of A.I.

BookYouTubehttps://youtu.be/ICNtVSdkJVwTranscriptStephen: Cool.

Great. Alright. I’m just gonna start us off. New episode, Discovered Wordsmith. I’ve got Jay Thorne which he has been on here.

It’s been about a hundred and twenty episodes ago Wow. Since he was on. Yeah. It’s been a while. He just made the mistake of saying, whatever you wanna ask, go ahead.

That love child that you fostered in Hindus are Hindi Himalayas. Tell us about that, Jay. This is breaking news.

J: I can only talk about things that have really happened, Steven.

So I

Stephen: You’re a writer. What the heck? Oh, come on. So alright. Hopefully, everybody knows Jay because I’m not gonna go into his background.

He’s been on here before. I’ll put links in that. I really wanna get on these new books he’s been writing. Let’s just hit that right from the start. You are writing Or have written a series of books about AI, writers using AI, and more about that.

So There’s probably gonna be a million questions on that. I’ve got several written down I definitely wanna cover. So First of all, let’s just start. Tell us about not only what the books are about, but why you wanted to write these books, Especially right now because, that could get death threats from some people writing a book like this.

J: Yeah.

I say this Sort of tongue in cheek, but it’s certainly true. I don’t get nearly the amount of hate because I’m a middle aged white guy, and I have that privilege, and it’s terrible, but it’s the truth. And I see other folks, Women and other people who get hate for it, and it’s just it’s so unfair. But that’s, that’s how the Internet is in general. But

Stephen: Joanna seems to get a lot of people.

And it’s really, folks, she’s been doing this forever. She’s one of the most best voices for all of us. So yeah. Yeah.

J: I think it’s I think it’s lessened more recently, but certainly early on, she took a lot of heat especially in her comments on her website.

But,

Stephen: because I think most are starting to realize. Hey. It’s everywhere. Everybody’s using it. Maybe it’s not so bad.

But, anyway, we’re already off topic. So tell us about your bugs and why you’re writing these. Okay.

J: So I’m trying to think about how far back I have to go to put to give you context for this.

I would say probably two or three years ago maybe, Pseudowrite was just being rolled out in a beta form. And Joanna was telling me she’s you got you have to check this out. That’s this new AI writing tool. And every couple months or every so often, she would say, hey. Listen.

You gotta try this out. And every time I did, I just wasn’t impressed. I was like, I don’t know. It’s not very good. It’s weird.

It, it doesn’t do what I want it to do. And what comes out of it, I have to spend so much time cleaning it up. It’s just not worth it. And so For years, I was very resistant, and I was like, I don’t like it. It’s not very good.

And I said I enjoy the process of creating the words. So whether I think it’s ethical or moral or makes any sense is kinda beside the point. I don’t wanna farm out the most fun part of the experience. It’d be like being a musician, and you love playing live shows. And someone’s hey. There’s this Technology where you don’t have to go on stage. You would be like I don’t want that. Thanks. Other people can do that. It’s fine. I’m just saying that’s not, that’s not what I want.

And I’m saying this because I’m very transparent about it, and she and I’m proud of the fact that I changed my mind because she teases me all the time. And she was like, You hated this, and we almost had a falling out over it. And I’m like, I did. You’re right. And I changed my mind.

That’s what learning is. You’ve discovered something, you learn something, and you Change your mind.

Stephen: You can be called Ebenezer Scrooge because isn’t that what he did?

J: It’s out whatever. Whatever you wanna call me.

I don’t care. So fast forward to GPT CHI GPT three, which is comes out about a year ago. And, again, she’s you gotta try this. And I try it, and I’m like, again, not really excited about it, but it’s starting to get a little bit better. And I’m like, oh, you know what?

Another three to five years, this thing’s gonna be really cool. The following week? Yeah. Literally, just a few months later, this is probably April chat g p t four rolls out, And there’s a paid version, and Joanna is okay. I’m serious.

You really have to try this. And because I admire her and respect her, and we’re good friends, I was like, okay. I will. And so I signed up for the subscription. I got access to four, and that was the moment.

I was like, holy this is different. It was a it was just it’s very deceiving because In the tech world, if you think about software going from version three point five to four, you think it’s very incremental. It’s just very small tweaks or changes. It’s not a big deal. But from three point five to four with chat GBT was a massive difference.

And I immediately saw What was gonna happen? I immediately saw how writers were gonna be able to use this, and I was coming off Of being in the blockchain and crypto space and dealing with NFTs, and that was that was crashing and burning right at Time that AI was kinda coming up, and the difference between the blockchain and the NFT technology that I was really interested in And the AI was that my mom could use the AI. I could tell my mom go to the site and just type something, And you’ll get a response. Whereas when I was trying to get people in the crypto and NFTs, it was like you need a wallet, and you have to go by this exchange and buy it, then you have Transferred over here, and then you have to put this seed phrase in and it was just too much.

Seeing where it was headed I decided to build on the three story method brand because one of the things that I also realized right away is that if anyone can use AI, then everyone will use AI. So what’s gonna differentiate you?

And I thought for me, it’s gonna be my story methodology. That’s what’s gonna differentiate me. Any money can sit down and make the Creative writing prompt. But if there’s no substance behind it, if you have no experience in storytelling, your prompts can be pretty average.

Know, it’s gonna just be pretty bland or vanilla. So I immediately started incorporating three story method into these different ideas. And so I thought about, what about if you were a discovery writer? What if you wanted to map out a series? What if you wanted to do editing?

And Fast forward to now as we’re recording this in November I think I’ve published, I don’t know, seven seven books, maybe, six, Seven months so far.

Stephen: They should have four or five of them.

J: Yeah. Yeah. And I have another one on board for next week.

And, Really, I’m just striking while the iron’s hot. I’m I have the brand. I’ve built the reputation. Not all the people who following me are crazy about Some of them are giving me one star reviews. That’s fine if it’s not your thing.

Whatever. But I think for the most part, people trust me having been in the space since Two thousand nine. They know I have a reputation with author’s best interest at heart, and and so that’s how the books came to

Stephen: be. Okay. Nice.

What you said there’s a series. What are the focus of the different books, the titles in focus?

J: Yeah. I’ve been bouncing around a little bit. So they’ve all been published within the three story method series.

So it’s up to book twelve now in the series, and the original Methodology book is like book one. And they’ve really they’ve been I’ve been following Trends and following my interest. So they started out with the creative process of plotting or pantsing, and that’s what the earlier books were about. Now I’m getting more into the marketing stuff, like email list management nonfiction writing. So it’s like I What happens is I discover a way to use it, and then I try it out.

And if it works, as I’m doing it on my second monitor, I keep a running list of what I’m doing, and then that becomes the next book. Essentially, I’m testing it out myself to see if it works. And if it does, I turn it into a

Stephen: book. So why aren’t you afraid that it’s going to replace you anymore? It will.

It already has. We’re not talking to the real Jay, this is an avatar. This is j a I,

J: Jai.

Stephen: You got his letters to your name.

J: Okay.

So you ask a good question, and this is a bit of a polarizing controversial position. Yes. And hear me out because it’s gonna it’s a bit of a mindbender. So I am cautiously optimistic about the AI in the creative fields. However, I believe that the end game is the end of the entertainment industry as we know it.

So In the short term, I think AI is gonna be an incredibly powerful tool for creatives to do things they’ve never done before. Here’s the problem. AI is not standing still. AI continues to develop. And you’ve been in you’re in the tech world, Steven.

You know how this works. You when you see a new tool, you in your mind immediately goes to what’s the end game? Like, where is this headed? Not where is it now. Right now, it’s a writer’s tool. Where it’s gonna be is this. You’re gonna come home from work, and you’re gonna be like, you know what? I feel like reading a novel, and you’re gonna be like, hey, AI. I wanna read a book.

And An AI is gonna be like, oh, really? And you’re gonna go, you know what I like. And thirty seconds later, you’re gonna have a book, and you’re gonna be reading it. And the AI is gonna know because it tracks everything. It’s gonna know what genres you like.

It’s gonna know what conventions you enjoy. It’s gonna know what types of stories you like to read. Not gonna have to tell it anything. You’re just gonna have to say, I wanna read a book, and it’s gonna customize a book right to you. Now that might sound a little Farfetched right now, but I don’t think it is.

I don’t think that’s that far off. So I think what’s gonna happen is this. I’m not saying that writing is gonna end. I’m not saying that Authors will become extinct. What I’m saying is the business model as we’ve known it is gone.

Alright? So if you think about what has happened since Two thousand nine. Think about rapid release and KDP page reads and reader magnets. All the Stuff that we’ve all been learning and teaching, myself included, that’s all over. Because I think, eventually, what will happen is the AI will become so good That it will generate on demand entertainment for you customized to what you like.

And if you don’t think I’m you don’t think this is true, Think about what’s happening with music right now. Right now, if I if an AI has access to my Spotify history, It knows what I listen to, how I listen to it, when I listen to it. It could start creating AI generated music All on a tone and kind of slide it into my playlist, and I might not even know. I might think it’s a new band that’s got a nineties grunge feel, And it could be completely AI generated.

And that’s that kind of stuff is already happening. Again, I don’t wanna be a downer, and I’m not necessarily that humans will no longer create art. I think we will create art as long as we’re around. But I think we’re gonna revert back to where we were prior to the twentieth century, Where people make art for their friends, for their family because they enjoy it. But this idea of having an industry around entertainment, I think that’s going away.

Stephen: Wow. That’s super scary because technology has always changed and altered things, through time. When Photoshop first came out, it was the end of any design and anybody could do it. Not Very true. When digital cameras came out, when regular cameras came out, it was the end of, whatever.

Things were so you’re right. And that is a Huge. So oh, okay. So that’s, not the first time I’ve heard that type of thing, and you can see it, already going on, like you said. So are you saying you wrote these books so you could sell them now while you had the chance?

And what’s the plans then later? Because these books will become irrelevant.

J: Yeah. I honestly, my plans later is I don’t plan on being a commercially viable author. That’s just not in my future.

Stephen: That’s assuming you already have an unpicking.

J: That’s good. That’s good. No.

In all seriousness, I think you’re gonna have, you’re gonna have your a one top tier authors who might continue to sell books for a while? You’re gonna have a in a they’re gonna have an audience that they’re gonna serve. But think about think longer term. Think about kids that are being born now. They will never know a world without AI generated art.

They have no attachment to human created art. I hear this argument. People say, humans will always prefer other humans’ art or AI will never be as good as humans. And I’m like, first of all, if you’re still saying always and never in twenty twenty three, you’re you have your head in the sand because you’re not paying attention to what’s going

Stephen: on here. Every time you say tech will never do something, it every time does.

J: Yeah. Every time And the people who are saying that are the people who have the AI companies right now who are trying to sell services to other people. But that’s So so, anyways, there’s gonna be a window. There’s gonna be a sunsetting window where I think a generation or two is gonna die off, And those peep and we’re included in that. And that generation or two who die off will be the ones that have an emotional attachment to one hundred percent human generated art, And everybody born after that isn’t gonna care.

So my long term goal Is that I’m gonna write, and I’m gonna make music for myself because I enjoy doing it. I am giving up on the idea of making money On it, which quite frankly wasn’t even a thing before the nineteen fifties anyway. It’s we act like this has been around forever, and it hasn’t. I’ve had that argument with people. A small blip.

We’re not entitled to this lifestyle, and I’m always astounded when people act as though this is our Our birthright it’s in the constitution that we should get paid to publish books. Like That’s had an

Stephen: argument with people about football in high school. I was like, okay.

J: Yeah.

Yeah. All so what I’m doing right now is I am there’s nothing I can do about this. There’s nothing you can do about this. There’s no regulation. There’s no there’s no laws.

There’s no organization that’s gonna stop this. This AI is if the genie’s out of the bottle, it’s gonna keep getting better and better. So I can’t do anything about it. So my position is I’m gonna make the most of the situation. I’m gonna do the best I can with what I’ve got right now.

And right now, AI is a tool. And if it helps authors for the next two to three years make better stories, then that’s, that’s what I’m gonna do. But I don’t have any sort of vision for this. I don’t think I’m gonna be writing these books even a year from now. I already I can already see that This tailing off.

And my assumption is that probably by early next year, the AI is It’s going to be so good that a lot of the books that I’ve written and published about it are going to be unnecessary.

Stephen: Yeah. You’ll just ask AI to write and improve second edition Yeah. Go to the beach.

J: Yeah.

I don’t know. As we’re recording this the GPTs came out. They’ve been out for about a week, and I’ve been playing around with that. And It is basically the next step. It is if you we’re gonna do a computer coding, but do it by just telling the computer what you wanted.

That’s what these GPTs are. So an example, I was working on one and editing one where I would say, Okay. Here’s my here’s the first draft of my novel. Tell me what’s wrong with the pacing, the character development, the you name it. I just tell it that.

Like and it just it will either fix it or and that’s why I’m saying that is not that far from the next step of Created for me.

Stephen: And the other thing with technology is that a lot of times, it Doesn’t get rid of what’s there. It changes it in different ways.

So people that used to do drawing with art, they do it now digitally. And then they use Canvas to manipulate photos and stuff like that. So there is still an element. We may not even see and realize where we fit into some of this. There still may be some difference in elements.

But, like you said, it’s not the author sitting there For six months, a year, five years for some people putting words on a page, it’s a different way of sculpting and doing it. And that’s an unprecedented in the past. It’s happening at such a fast changing rate. We don’t even know what’s going on sometimes every day, every week let alone in six months. Yeah.

And

J: I’ve had some people tell me wow, that’s a really pessimistic outlook. And I’m like, No. It’s really not. If you listen to what I’m saying, what I’m saying is the gold rush mentality of the past fifteen years is over. And traditionally pub traditional trad pub was never a gold rush mentality.

That was always in a very exclusive club. We’re just simply going back to the way things were, Which is people really writing stuff because they want to, because it’s the process that they enjoy. I don’t think that’s a bad thing at all. Again, I don’t think that let me back up. I think another misconception folks have is that if I could just write full time, my life would be complete.

I had just go sit in a cabin in the woods And just work on my stories and get paid for it. That’s heaven. And I can tell you firsthand, that is not true. That’s what I thought I wanted until I had it, and it’s not what you think it is. And I know people poo this.

And they’re like, no. That’s not true. You hear celebrities say this all the time. You think you want fame, but if everyone could experience fame for a day, they might think twice about it.

And I’m not saying authors are famous. What I’m saying is that vision you have, that idealized version of yourself sitting in a cabin in the woods writing is not what you think it is. And every author I know who has had that experience, it fundamentally changes their relationship to the art. Because when you are writing And publishing for money, it changes your approach. It changes how you feel about it, and it becomes more like a job.

Stephen: The grass isn’t always greener No. Because now it’s digitally created. And, it’s funny. I heard the same thing about, Winners of lotteries, the big lotteries that people like, Oh, my life would be so great. This was in Forbes or money or something.

And they were talking to financial advisers, the guy that won that four billion dollars or whatever. They said he’s gonna be broke in ten years. He’s going to be living in an apartment that’s worse than what he had with nothing to show for it and a lot of creditors asking for the money he doesn’t have Because he went crazy and bottled this up. So what you just said, people always think this is so great this other way, and it’s Not always. We mess it up.

And that’s what the author thing is. But, there’s Still some things in there at least right now even with AI because AI doesn’t, at the moment, Give us necessarily always the best. You gotta tweak it. You’ve been doing that with your stories. You’re how did you learn and teach yourself, and what do you do to tweak those prompts to get back what you want instead of Taking what’s there and editing ninety percent of

J: it anyway.

Yeah. Yeah. I this is one of those moments where you just you’re in the right place at the right time. Know, that’s what happened to me. It’s I don’t think it’s ever happened to me before in this way, but I you said for joy.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. There’s that. Yeah.

I Think You know this, but a lot of people don’t. And then I spent almost twenty five years as a classroom teacher. And one of the things that I had to do was I had to learn how to ask questions, And I had to learn how to listen because anyone who’s had children or been around children, you know they don’t do what you tell them to do. That’s not how it works. Right?

You have to listen. You have to ask questions. And a lot of times in learning, just asking the right questions Prompts people to think a certain way, and you help create these openings for them. And and that’s a very, succinct way of explaining what I think good teaching is. And when I even right now, I think AI is basically like a seventh grader.

If you tell Chi P T to write something, it’ll be extremely concrete just like a seventh grader. It’ll write exactly what you want, and you’re like, no. That’s What I meant. So I think right now, part of the skill set in using these tools is communication, and that’s what writers are good at.

Alright. So if you’re a good writer, you’re a good listener you’re a good podcast interviewer, you can transfer those skills to AI, and you can ask it questions. You can say to it, tell me what I should be asking you. There are these little things that you can do. Again, these are skills I picked up in the classroom That I think work with AI.

And so I think that’s been the key for me is having more of a conversation. Like, when I see These post on x or these books that are, like, the five hundred thousand dollar chat GPT hack. I’m like, that’s BS. That’s it’s not about a prompt. It’s about a process, and a process is more like a conversation, which is why they’re called chatbots.

Stephen: Exactly. And you mentioned education. There is an area that I totally foresee being Totally unrecognizable in twenty years that there’s so many issues right now with our education system, so many changes going on. And of the things I remember reading a while back was, how do we know our education system works?

Have we ever really looked at it and proved That our education system does work. Spoiler

J: alert. It doesn’t.

Stephen: Exactly. And people are realizing that, and there’s so many changes.

I’ve been working with some schools on the video game thing, and some of these kids, man, when they get this stuff, the tech stuff, they’re just Gone. You don’t even have you sit back. And I’m like, so why are we paying all these teachers when AI just A teaching job is going to be not so sought after, I think, in the future. Just one area.

Yeah. No. But tell parents that. Tell parents that, yeah, our education system really isn’t working. My kid needs to go to college.

Why? Nobody wants it anymore, and they don’t get it. It’s such a different world, and twenty years from now, it’s gonna be so different from what we have

J: now. Yeah.

I mean, I can’t pretend to even look forward a year from now. It’s just it’s mind boggling to even try and contemplate that. If humans are terrible predicting Future, we’re all awful at it. No one does a good job at it. But one thing I can tell you is that our lives will look radically different Maybe in a year or two.

It’s just everything we do is gonna be completely different. That I know. Now what that is, I don’t know. And that’s why I say don’t get depressed if you’re an author and you’re thinking great. I’m just you know, I can’t write books anymore.

I no. You can. You just might not be able to sell them anymore. There’s a big difference there.

Stephen: Which Kinda, we’ve been saying for a while.

Your books are the gateway to other things. I tie I’m working on a series of books For video game creation and stories in video game. So that ties into the classes I’m teaching, the books, the classes. And, it’s More and more added. I’m working with some of the local esports teams and with the high schools.

We’ve got a new local digital paper, and I’m like, hey. You don’t have anybody covering esports. We need that added. So it’s One aspect.

And like you said, author’s looking for this as a full time author. But if you have things other business aspects that tie into it, that’s your best bet.

J: Yeah. Author wasn’t a profession on the tax forms prior to nineteen thirty. Author.

So yeah. Just consider yourself we should all be grateful that we had a small opportunity to have that experience, but, that’s and, just back from twenty books Vegas, the last one, and Becca Syme, a very well respected researcher and coach in our circles, Basically, stood on stage and said what I’ve been saying for two years. She validated what I said, which is the gold rush is over. And all the stuff that we’ve been doing, like I said, the rapid release and the pay per click ads and the reader magnets, all that stuff doesn’t work anymore. It’s over.

Stephen: And I’ve been seeing that looking at various things just with my stuff. Tell us a little bit about twenty books. This was the last one. Everybody listening, don’t get too excited because you can’t go to one.

J: You can get excited because Joe Solari is taking it over, and he’s already doing some great things with it.

He bought the contract from Craig Martell, Michael Anderlecht for the next three years at the Horseshoe Casino. So there is gonna be a conference. There’s gonna be a convention there the next three years, but it will not be twenty books. It’s called Author Nation, and Joe has this vision of making it both an author and a reader event, and he’s really going big on this. He announced the keynote on Thursday night is gonna be the one and only Gen x legend, Kevin Smith.

The OG indie filmmaker, author, comic book guy. He yeah. So it’s gonna be really cool. It this past one, ironically, was my first and last twenty books. Jay broke it.

I that’s all my fault. I’m not really I’m real not that interested in really big conferences, and I’m not a big fan of Vegas as a city. But I wanted to go and see people who I hadn’t seen in a long time. The pandemic kind of, that made it difficult to get together with people for a number of years. And I’m glad I did.

I got to spend time with people I hadn’t seen in a while or never. And it was great, but it was definitely a It was a milestone. It was a marker of an ending. And it’s it wasn’t just me saying this that this version of publishing is ending. Twenty books is ending.

If that’s not a big signal, I don’t know what is. Clearly, this is colored through my perspective, but I talked to so many people who were Either thinking about a transition, in a transition. And to be fair, this started way before AI came on board.

Authors were seeing a decline in royalties, decline in page reads, decline in reader engagement. This was this all started Several years ago, this isn’t just because of AI. So I think this was the trajectory of the industry. As Becca said, it’s a maturation. so Now instead of being this startup techie innovative space, it’s now it’s now a mature industry.

Three. It’s calcified with in into certain rules much the way traditional publishing is. Again, it’s not a judgment. It’s not a good or bad thing. It’s just you have to realize that the rules we’ve been playing under no

Stephen: longer apply.

And that’s a, valid point. Things always change. They always have. People that get so upset about it, I don’t guess, like it’s always changed. And just with books, look at libraries.

You used to go to a library to have a book. Now, there’s meetings. Now, they had records. And now then they had cassettes. Then they actually, some libraries used to have reel to reels.

And then they had CDs. And now you can use your digital tablet to get digital music and movies. And They don’t even have VHS out there anymore. They don’t even have the cassettes now.

It’s play on. So things constantly change, and people are like, oh, I wish Libraries were like they used to be. What do you mean? With DVDs and movies.

Okay. But some people are saying they want it when it was just, books that you weren’t allowed to talk. So Yes. Yeah.

And,

J: you’re we’re the same age. You probably remember in the early in the mid I remember having a conversation with my family. I told them I set up a Citibank online banking account, and they were like, oh, I would never bank online. That there’s I would never purchase anything. You put my credit card on the Internet.

Are you crazy?

Stephen: Yeah. And all my kids were like, you mean I have to go to the bank?

It’s What’s a bank? Great. Isn’t my check just supposed to appear, and ain’t I supposed to just get the money with this card?

J: I don’t think my kids have ever seen a checkbook. I don’t think they’d even know

Stephen: what to do with one. Yeah. We I had one child that kept getting upset because their bank account went under. It’s would you balance your checkbook?

They’re like, what’s that? I looked. There was money in there. Yes. But you wrote a check.

Yeah. It doesn’t come out automatically when you write it, But it’s just how things have changed, and it’s always been that way. Tech is always that way, always changing. So Alright. So what are your future book plans?

How many more of these are you looking at? Are you looking to do any anything else with that?

J: We’ll see. Right now, I’m going on a idea by idea basis. If I get an idea in chat GPT and I think authors would benefit from it, Then I pursue it.

And right now, I still have a number of those ideas. I’m looking ahead to The the fall of next year, I’m looking at possibly some leadership positions in schools or small colleges. I think we talked a little bit about education earlier. I think education is gonna be a place where they’re gonna need a lot of support. I think it’s gonna be An ugly, brutal move forward.

I can say this because I was in the industry for a long time. Education is a very conventional industry. It’s very slow to change. And and the technology is gonna leave it behind, and the kids are gonna be the ones To suffer. And I’m looking I’m looking in that realm but I’m putting my money where my mouth is.

I’ve I have two or three trunk novels that are just gonna sit on my hard drive for now. I really have no interest in publishing those. I’m writing a lot of sort of memoir Why are personal narrative things because I want to, not because I’m trying to sell them? And I have unpublished and discontinued many of my author services Because I can’t with a clear conscience sell support to people to a system that doesn’t exist anymore. And I, I get I have, Not explicitly, but I’ve had some interactions with some folks online who are saying things like, oh AI will never be as good as humans.

And they’re saying that because they’re selling services to others. And I think that I just think that’s wrong. And, and That might not be their intention. They might not being malicious about it, but I’m not gonna be part of that. So I have, I’ve stopped my mastermind group.

I have, I’ve like I said, I’ve unpublished certain things. I’ve ended my community partly because I’m transitioning to something new, but also partly because that’s just stuff that isn’t relevant anymore.

Stephen: Yeah. You mentioned that I got an author mad at me at a round table because they had a book on how to be a writer, that type of thing. And one of the first things I said was, my word of advice is Write a whole lot more and quit buying books and reading about how to be a writer.

They did not appreciate me. But it’s the truth. I’ve told that the kids and stuff. And your thing with education, from my viewpoint also, That’s the area that is going to be changing even more than anything else, and it’s the area that needs The most work and help.

And there’s so many things we fail with our kids and don’t understand and realize it. Absolutely. I had that when my kids were younger. They didn’t have homework, and I asked the teacher about it. They said studies show that homework doesn’t really help.

That the if the kids don’t understand it, They don’t understand it at home. They don’t get the homework done, and then they’re just more confused. They’re like and a lot of kids hate it. Blah blah. It they found that homework doesn’t help, and I’m like, that’s Very interesting.

But there are still people like, where’s your homework? You need to sit down and do homework and but if it’s not the best way to learn, And why do it?

J: Yeah. And, this is this could be a whole another episode.

Yeah. Part of the problem with education is that parents The only perspective parents have of education is their own, which is often twenty to thirty years out of

Stephen: date. Which was already Out of

J: date. Which is it was dated then. Yeah.

Exactly. And so when parents, parents expect to see kids sitting in single desks In rows with the teacher at the front of the room talking and that is not how people learn

Stephen: anymore. No. No. I talk about edX, Which I don’t know if you’ve seen that online courses.

They offer certificates and maybe even a few small degrees, something like that. But when I mention that to parents and stuff at Talks, I’m like the guy who started it had one class Where there were more people that finished it with their certificate than have attended MIT in the whole history of MIT. So if you could reach that many people in one class in three months, then why are we building these buildings and going to these places? It just it doesn’t end. I get oh, man. I have practically get attacked from primary teachers mostly. It’s like they just will defend it to the death. But it’s like that’s just not where it is

J: anymore.

No. No. And it’s really hard for people our age and older to Come to terms with that. There’s this sort of nostalgic glow they put on, their own upbringing as if that was somehow ideal, and yet we forget that There was a lot about living in the growing up in the seventies and eighties that sucked.

Stephen: BuT, I think I’d pick Gen X pretty. Oh, we’re still

J: the best. But Oh, absolutely.

Stephen: I saw a meme the other day. It said Gen X Still the only generation that knows how to set the clock on a VCR.

Yeah. Truth. That was great. Alright, Jay. Is there anywhere you wanna tell people that they can find you or where to get your books and all of that?

J: Yeah. If you’re really interested in seeing where AI is going, especially if you’re, like, a creative professional if you’re doing any kind of creative work and you’re wondering how AI fits into that, I have a week a free weekly newsletter I’ve been publishing since March called Creative AI Digest. Go to creative a I digest dot com. You can subscribe. You’ll get it every Monday, and it’s just my take on where things are going.

It’s real it’s not breaking news. There’s a bunch of newsletters that are doing breaking news. I’m not doing that. I’m being more thoughtful about the tools and the stories and things that are coming out that I think are relevant to people like us.

Stephen: Nice.

Nice. And you’re doing some Gen x thing with Jim. Yeah.

J: That’s a passion project.

Jim Kukul and I are Buddies, we both live here in Cleveland, and we have something called Legacy X, which we’ve been we’ve been working on, and It’s still in development. We’re not we don’t have anything fully formed, but the idea is we wanna help other Gen Xers Leave a legacy. And by legacy, we don’t mean a fancy boat and vacation home. We’re talking about the stuff that matters. That’s at legacy project dot org if you’re interested.

But right now, there’s just not much there but I can certainly follow-up with you as we develop

Stephen: it. By this could be a month or so before this goes out. So by then it might it’ll be closer to something.

J: Yeah.

And we’re not being exclusive. If you are a millennial with a Gen x mindset or a boomer with a Gen x mindset, you’re welcome to. It’s it’s more about the attitude than anything

Stephen: else. There you go.

Alright, man. I appreciate you taking some time and we will talk later. Yeah. Thanks

J: for having me on,

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OverviewConfessions of a Knight Errant is a comedic, picaresque novel in the tradition of Don Quixote with a flamboyant cast of characters. Dr. Gary Watson is the picaro, a radical environmentalist and wannabe novelist who has been accused of masterminding a computer hack that wiped out the files of a major publishing company. His Sancho Panza is Kharalombos, a fat, gluttonous Greek dancing teacher, who is wanted by the secret police for cavorting with the daughter of the Big Man of Egypt. Self-preservation necessitates a hurried journey to the refuge of a girls’ camp in rural Texas. Then a body turns up nearby that is connected to Middle East antiquities, and they are on the run once more.

Gretchen McCullough was raised in Harlingen Texas. After graduating from Brown University in 1984, she taught in Egypt, Turkey and Japan. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Alabama and was awarded a teaching Fulbright to Syria from 1997-1999. Her stories, essays and reviews have appeared in The Barcelona Review, Archipelago, National Public Radio, Story South, Guernica, The Common, The Millions, and the LA Review of Books. Translations in English and Arabic have been published in: Nizwa, Banipal, Brooklyn Rail in Translation, World Literature Today and Washington Square Review with Mohamed Metwalli. Her bi-lingual book of short stories in English and Arabic, Three Stories from Cairo, translated with Mohamed Metwalli was published in July 2011 by AFAQ Publishing House, Cairo. A collection of short stories about expatriate life in Cairo, Shahrazad’s Tooth, was also published by AFAQ in 2013. Currently, she is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Rhetoric and Composition at the American University in Cairo.

BookWebsitehttp://www.gretchenmccullough.wix.com/gretchenmccullough

FavoritesYouTubehttps://youtu.be/3ff8O98jt3ETranscriptStephen: So today on Discovered Word Smith I have Gretchen McCullough and you may notice if you’re on YouTube watching the episode that there’s no video because Gretchen is not.

Anywhere in this hemisphere of where I’m at or at least I should say this continent. So we had a bit of a spotty connection and we turned off video to make sure we could hear everything. So Gretchen, welcome. How are you doing today? I’m

Gretchen: doing great. Thanks for having me on your show.

Stephen: Yeah. And I’m excited.

So let’s jump right into that before we start talking about your book. Tell us a little bit about you. And where you are at the moment.

Gretchen: I’m sitting in my bedroom and it’s dark outside. It’s quite noisy. I live in a really busy part of Cairo. And yeah. That’s where I am. It’s across the Nile from Tahrir Square where a lot of Americans probably are familiar with Tahrir Square because of the uprising.

It’s not that far from the square. It’s a huge island called Zamalek. And you can walk everywhere in this area. You don’t really need a car. It’s a neat burrow. There are lots of coffee shops. Yeah.

Stephen: Nice. What, why what brought you to Cairo?

Gretchen: It’s a long odyssey. I taught in Egypt in the 1980s and then I taught in Turkey and then I taught in Japan. And then I went and got an MFA from the university of Alabama. And I had a Fulbright in Syria in 1997 to 99. And. I went back to Tuscaloosa, Alabama for a year and a friend of mine said, there’s a job in Cairo.

You’re perfect. Why don’t you apply? And I did. And I got the job at the American university in Cairo in 2000. And I’ve been here ever since.

Stephen: Gretchen, where are you originally from?

Gretchen: I’m originally from Harlingen, Texas. It’s called the Rio Grande Valley. It’s near the Mexican border, near Brownsville. It’s the very tip of Texas. That’s where I grew up. I’m from a very small town.

Stephen: Big change.

Gretchen: Yes. I wanted to get out of that town in 1980 and I didn’t realize how far I would go.

So I’m very far from home where I grew up.

Stephen: Okay. So tell us about some of the other things you like to do besides writing.

Gretchen: I’m a tennis player. I like to swim. I play pool. I love to read. So those are some of the things that I do in my spare time. Teaching right now on that, that, that takes up a

Stephen: lot of time.

Talk about your book confessions of a night. Oh, I’m sorry. Go ahead.

Gretchen: No, I didn’t say anything.

Stephen: Okay. Maybe it’s a lag stuttering. We’re going to talk about your book Confessions of a Night Errant. So tell us a little bit about this book and why you wanted to write it.

Gretchen: The book is, was based on the last, uh, story of my short story collection, which is published here, was about was inspired by the 2011 uprising, and I started looking at the novella, and I thought, Oh, what happens if those two characters go to Texas?

So that’s how, that’s how the idea for the novel started. But the novella, which was published as a, originally published in a short story collection, was inspired by the 2011 uprising and there were lots of crazy things that happened during that time. We, I was here. I didn’t leave.

Stephen: Wow. So tell us a little bit about the story. What’s it about without giving everything away?

Gretchen: It’s about two guys. One, one is an American professor who’s an environmental activist who’s been accused of being a cyber terrorist. And he’s been accused of hacking into the, one of the largest publishing companies.

And New York, but he’s not he’s really maladroit. And he has a friend who’s a Greek Egyptian, who’s a ballroom dancing teacher. And the two of them are on the run. Gary’s on the run for the American government and Carol Lumbos is in the run from the Egyptian government.

And, but they come back to Cairo. Gary’s trying to find his novel, which he lost, because he only had one copy of it. And Carolumbus is trying to find his long lost son. And it goes, their adventures go from there. And

Stephen: this isn’t the first thing you’ve published, correct?

Gretchen: No it’s the third book.

I published two books with a small press in Cairo. One was called Three Stories from Cairo and it’s a bilingual book of short stories. It I published on one side is three stories in English and my husband translated them into Arabic. So you flip it and the other side is in Arabic. And then the second collection is called Charizard’s Tooth, and it’s stories about expatriates, basically.

Stephen: And we’re going to talk a bit about that because your stories are influenced by your living coming from Texas, moving to Cairo and you’ve got That influence in there. We’re gonna talk about that in a bit coming up. So is this book part of a series that you’ve

Gretchen: got? No, I don’t think so.

I’m I just finished a draft of another book. It, it does, it has really nothing to do with, um, with these guys. These guys were in the novella was in the short story collection, and then I developed it into, a big novel, but. It’s not part of a series, no.

Stephen: Okay, so what are your plans for your next story?

Gretchen: I have a draft. I worked on I’ve worked on a draft. The university gave me a leave. And the new book is set in West Texas in the 1930s and it’s based on the idea of the CCC camps under the New Deal. They were building parks and they were and they, there’s a huge, there’s a huge swimming pool in West Texas that is completely fed by natural springs.

It’s probably the size of a football field. It’s huge. It’s called Balmorae. Anyway my, my novel is about the guys who were work, working at this camp. There’s one woman, there’s a nurse. So it’s a completely different kind of it’s not completely different because the confession sets, set in a girl’s camp and, a girl’s summer camp, but this is totally different.

This is Men and it all men together So it surprises me that I would write a man book, but I think I have

Stephen: Okay And I like that my grandfather worked in the tri seas camps.

Gretchen: Oh, really? Oh, okay Yeah, I mean I thought

Stephen: in fact Please go ahead. No. No, go ahead. I was gonna say in fact after he died and we dived into some articles and some papers of his, we found out that he during the Korean war, he was assigned to the tri seas camps and he never left the States.

My grandmother thought he was over in Korea fighting at the war, but he was here in the States the whole time and she never knew that their whole life.

Gretchen: He never mentioned anything about his experiences.

Stephen: He talked about his experiences, but he made it seem like it was just part of it. And he was over in Korea.

So I don’t know where the miscommunication or confusion came from, but it was like, everybody’s what he wasn’t in Korea during the war. That’s what he went, it was. I don’t know. It was all before my time. So

Gretchen: that’s funny. One of the characters in my book is a there were many guys who were World War One veterans who were running these camps and he was he the captain of the CEO of the campus is a veteran from France.

So I had to also do a lot of research about World War One besides doing a lot of research about the 1930s.

Stephen: Oh, okay. Nice. So we’re going to talk about some of the. Influence with living in Cairo. But before we do what, tell me, tell everybody what some of the feedback you’ve been getting for your stories so far.

Gretchen: Some, it’s a fun book. It’s there’s some serious elements in it, but it’s a. Rambunctious kind of entertaining tale and lots of crazy things happen. Some people really love it. It’s pretty fast paced. It moves very fast. Other people feel it’s too wild and it’s too far fetched.

But I’d say that’s the world I live in. Yeah. That’s been the feedback.

Okay. There’s a lot of humor in the book.

Stephen: Okay, good. If you had a choice Would you to see these turned into a movie or a TV show?

Gretchen: Oh, I wish, but it, I don’t see that, I don’t think it would be very viable Since part of it takes place in Egypt, I think there would be a lot of challenges for film right now.

So I don’t know how that would happen, but anyway, it’s every writer’s dreams.

Stephen: Let me ask this since you’re living in Cairo, but the stories are a lot taking place in the States. How are you releasing these? Are they, why do you have an audience in Cairo? What, how to. What’s that like for you with living in, in Egypt, but having books based on something in the United States.

Gretchen: I Wouldn’t say, I do have some sort of, I probably had more of an audience when I was publishing in Cairo when I was publishing the books and the small press locally, because we had lots of signings and got a lot of publicity for it. But right now, the situation in Cairo is, the economic situation is not really very good. So it’s hard for people to buy books. My book, I got the university to order my book, but it’s really unaffordable. Yeah, so I don’t know about, and really I wrote the book for an American audience. I had that in mind and the publisher, the publisher is a boutique press out of Seattle that’s publishing, writers who were writing about the Middle East.

Stephen: Okay, perfect. So you found a nice fit with a publisher.

Gretchen: Oh yeah. He’s he was a great fit. Unfortunately he passed away, but his widow is still kept the press open. It’s called Kuhn Press.

Stephen: And. Do you have a website that people could go to, to find out more about your stories?

Gretchen: Yes. It’s Gretchen McCullough fiction, writer. com.

Stephen: Okay. We’ll put a link to that in the show notes for

Gretchen: everybody. Yeah. There’s another Gretchen McCullough, believe it or not in the world. She’s an internet linguist. That’s not me.

Stephen: Oh, okay. So do you have you said books are hard to get. So are there any good bookstores?

Gretchen: Some, quite a few of them have closed. thEre is one not too far away. It’s called Dewan and it used to be owned by two sisters who loved books, but things became just really difficult in terms of, books have to go through customs and there are taxes. And I think they, they got tired.

And they sold it to someone else and it has not it’s become a bit more commercial bookstore. It used to be a real independent, a real independent bookstore. It’s become more

Stephen: commercial. Okay. So Gretchen, do you have any favorite books or authors that you like to read?

Gretchen: Oh, I have lots of favorite writers.

One of my all time favorites is Mark Twain. I love Mark Twain.

Stephen: What’s your favorite Mark Twain story?

Gretchen: I love Huckleberry Finn. I love, I just reread Innocence Abroad. That’s hilarious.

There are so many writers, so many good writers. I love, I really started to appreciate Gabriel Garcia Marquez and also the Portuguese writer, Sara Mago, because they write with, about the fantastical and the bizarre and that sort of seemed to be Resonate with me. As I said, living in, in a world where things are so unpredictable,

Stephen: right? Okay. So if you either in Cairo or if you came back, visited the States and you’re around hometown, somebody came up to you and said, Hey, I heard you wrote a book. Why should I get your book? What would you tell him?

Gretchen: It’s fun. It’s entertaining. It’ll make you laugh.

Stephen: That’s all great.

All right. So we talked about this a little bit, mentioned it. So how often do you come back to the States for visits?

Gretchen: I come back about twice a year in the summer and at Christmas. Okay. To see my parents and to see my, my, my sister and brother and family.

Stephen: Nice. Okay. So you’re, you still have, you still touch base in the States.

You still, come back a bit, but you’ve mostly lived in Cairo for most of your life now. And your stories. Have a lot to do with the U S being based in here. How do you write a story living in one country, but writing about a different country?

Gretchen: Do you mean like, how do I write about the U S living here or the other way around?

How do I, yeah, how

Stephen: does, how does living in Cairo affect your writing when you’re writing about the U S

Gretchen: oh, that’s a great question. I think I probably have more distance on the culture because things are so different here. I can sometimes see things that uh, that I think I don’t know that I don’t agree with or everything’s becoming so technological that people don’t spend much time talking to each other.

Yeah. And I think that still even in Egypt, people spend a lot of time, face to face interaction is really important.

Stephen: Also you said your husband, please finish.

Gretchen: No, I was just going to say people, priorities are different. People are not as work centered and define themselves as much by the work that they do in Egypt. Family is extremely important and people spend a lot of time with their families.

Stephen: Okay. And so you said your husband translated, uh, your one book into Arabic. When you look at like the reader feedback in the sales, considering it’s a book set in the US, how does all that compare? With Cairo readers compared to U. S. readers.

Gretchen: Oh, I don’t know. Cause I don’t, we do, we did that. The reason we did that was because Mohammed felt that my stories would resonate with that because they were about the neighborhood. He felt they would resonate with, Arabic speakers. So that was one of the reasons he translated the story.

But it hasn’t gone the other way around. Confessions of a Night Errant hasn’t been translated from English to Arabic. It’s a huge project to translate a novel. But we have translated. I bet. Yeah, it’s just huge. We have translated his work and from Arabic into English. He’s a very good poet and he wrote a book about Izmir Turkey.

It’s called a song on the Aegean sea. And we translated that.

Stephen: Okay. So have you thought about writing stories based more in Cairo or even between Cairo and the U S?

Gretchen: I have most of my books have been set in Cairo, but the last one that I want to describe to you in West Texas is completely American and I have a Syrian character in West Texas in the thirties, but I don’t have any Kyrene connection in that book.

Stephen: Okay. Okay. So you’ve gotten a little bit of both.

I imagine. It have you, with the book you wrote for Texas, did you come back to visit and say, Oh, you know what? I put this in my book and that’s wrong. It’s not like that in the States. Did you find anything like that you had to

Gretchen: change? That’s an interesting question because I went initially about five years ago to Sol Ross University in Alpine, which is a really remote town in West Texas.

And I went to the archive and that’s how I initially got the idea to write about the, this huge swimming pool. And then I came back anyway, I wrote I’ve written a draft of it and I thought, I never saw the swimming pool. So this past summer I went with kind of some trepidation, oh, gosh, what if I got it all wrong, but it was a surprise to me because I just added a few things and, but it was good to see the pool and to swim in it.

It was an interesting experience. It’s a gigantic pool in the middle of, a very arid landscape. And it’s, and they’re fishing it and they’re turtles and it’s an incredible natural spring swimming pool, but no, I’m surprised like you, I’m surprised. I thought I, I would have gotten it all wrong, but I, it’s mostly from my imagination, but of course I did lots of research.

Stephen: Okay.

Oh, you faded out.

Gretchen: I can hear you. Can you hear me?

Stephen: Okay. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. You fade it out there. So Gretchen, since you’ve written several things and since you’re publishing very wide you’ve got books published based in Cairo and U S. So I’m assuming they’re available like on Amazon and those places. What are some things that you’ve learned about writing and publishing yeah.

Things that you’re doing different now or things that you would advise other people to do?

Gretchen: Yeah, I wrote a first novel in my thirties and uh, it was never published and I really took it to heart and. I think it was a mistake to take it too much to heart that it wasn’t published. There might be different reasons why people get rejected. And sometimes you need to work on your writing more.

Sometimes you haven’t found the right reader or editor for your work. And sometimes your writing might not be the latest trend or trendy enough for whatever big houses are looking for, but it might be very good. So I think that’s something that I’ve learned is that. Sometimes if you get rejected, it’s it doesn’t mean you’re not a good writer,

Stephen: right? Good. Okay. All right so Gretchen, I apologize a little bit of the delay in the Back and forth, but I think your books great. And I think it’s wonderful that you’re writing these books based in Egypt and the US I think more people need to expand globally and let’s embrace that a little bit more.

Gretchen: Yeah. The book is really about being between cultures. So I think if anyone’s interested in, and the humor also about how sometimes people don’t connect, um, even Americans who, returned to the U S after living outside might enjoy it. There’s a lot about, my, my Egyptian character.

There are things that he can accept and he doesn’t like, and there are lots of funny things that happen in the book. So I think it’s about being in between,

Stephen: nice. Okay. Great. Gretchen I’ve enjoyed talking to you today. It’s nice nice to hear that the car horns sound the same in Cairo because I heard some of the traffic in the background because I’ve never been out.

I’ve only been up. Yeah. I’ve only been up to Canada. So sometimes, especially for. People in the States, it gets hard to imagine other countries and what they’re really like. So I think it’s fascinating that you moved from Texas over to Cairo and you’ve basically been there for so long. So I think that was very fascinating for me very much though.

Thank you.

Gretchen: Thank you for having me on your show.

Stephen: Yes. All right.

View Details

OverviewWith inspiration from her own life, Kalee Boisvert has developed an easy-to-use system for women, young and old, to take control of their finances. Make Money Your Thing is an approachable guide to take women on a journey from avoidance and overwhelm to feeling comfortable and in control of their finances. This book provides simple action steps to learn the basics of money management, understand the importance of balancing the books, and embrace the uniqueness of your own personal situation. The end result is women feeling good about where their finances are right now, and building a solid foundation for where you want to go in the future. When money is your “thing” you can feel completely at ease about making it work for you–

BookYouTubehttps://youtu.be/vWXdJt5G6PMTranscriptStephen: So today on Discover Wordsmiths, I want to welcome Kaylee. Kaylee, how are you doing

Kalee: today? I’m doing well. Thank you so much for having me.

Stephen: Yeah, this is great. And we, right before we started, I mentioned I don’t get a lot of nonfiction, so I’m excited about this.

Yay. All right. So before we get started talking about your book tell us a little bit about you, where you’re from, and some of the things you like to do besides writing.

Kalee: I am from Calgary, Alberta, Canada. And a little bit about me. What else? Sorry.

Stephen: jUst some of the things you like to do besides writing.

Okay.

Kalee: Other than writing, I love reading. I am a big bookworm. So I think. By nature, it was destined to write a book, but I love reading and I’ve discovered how easy it is to read off my phone. Now I have a one year old and so I can’t really have books out because he has a tendency of ripping pages.

So he’s at that. That very destructive stage. So I read on my phone, but I find it so easy that I can read on the go all the time. So I’m reading way more books and book talk has actually gotten me a lot more interested in some of the books that are on there and are popular. So for a book talk and all that, but I do love reading.

I love like my guilty pleasures, like real housewives watching the real housewives of everywhere, those shows. And then I’m also always really busy with my kids. I’m a single mom. I have a nine year old and a one year old. Like hobbies include going to the park and things like that.

Stephen: Nice.

Okay. And so with all that going on young kids and busy why did you want to write a book?

Kalee: Silly me. Yeah. I think it’s because of how much I love books in general. So I’d always wanted to write a book. I’ve read books like, and just like love, like I see authors and people who write books is just, to me, they’re like celebrities.

I think it’s so amazing because it’s a long, challenging endeavor to write a book.

Stephen: You probably realized that way more when you actually wrote one.

Kalee: Exactly. Exactly. And I. kept receiving the message like I started writing stories when I was young when your teacher would ask you to write a, couple page story and mine would go on for 20, 30 pages and that was like grade four.

And because I was like, how do you develop A story in two pages. So for me, it was like this very elaborate the character development and everything But the teachers you could tell didn’t even read it and i’m assuming it’s because they had a lot of grading to do and I It went beyond the assigned work.

So in their defense, I’m sure that was what was behind it. But in my mind, I was seeing it as, Oh, maybe I’m not a good writer. That’s the messaging I took to believe. So then I decided maybe I wasn’t meant to write. But it was like a few years back. I was just sitting in my office and I said out loud.

I really want to write something because it just had all come back and it just, I don’t know. It was just like, I was pondering this has always been a goal of mine. And a colleague happened to be walking by and he’s Oh, I just met a book coach at a networking event. I was at, do you want her card?

And I was like, absolutely. So I met with her and she turned out to be my book coach and really get me on the path to writing. My book and the rest is history, but that was my journey. So it’s something I’d always wanted to do and then thought that it wasn’t something that I was good at or meant to do.

And then, coming back full circle, finding someone to just help get me on that path again. It’s really intimidating and scary writing a book, especially the beginning, early stages, right? You’re like, it’s like, where do I start? What do I

Stephen: do? You get a blank page and you look at it and then you start writing and you’re like, Oh, this is going great.

It’s wow, how close am I to being done? It’s like you wrote 500 words.

Kalee: Not close at all. Yeah. It’s a long game for sure, but it, so it’s been an amazing journey. I really enjoyed

Stephen: it. Nice. Okay. So let’s talk about your book. It’s called make money. Your thing. Tell us a little bit about it.

Kalee: Okay. So it’s I really wrote this book to help inspire and empower women with their finances.

So as I mentioned, I am a single mom and a financially independent woman. I was raised by a single mom. And so growing up. Money really showed up as a source of like stress and struggle and early on, it was like, I wanted to learn it and figure it out because in my mind, if I could figure it out, it was like math.

I had a very like much a math mind too. I loved math. And so it felt like a math problem. If I could figure it out, then, maybe I could fix it and solve the problem. And I felt really like helpless back then as a child, like there wasn’t much I felt I could do, but it was, how about if I learn as much as I can?

And then as I figure it out for myself, then I can teach other women and I can help women like my mom one day so that women don’t have to go through that. And so that was always the goal, like my passion and why I got into the finance industry where I work. So it just felt like very natural. Then to write a book about money.

And it’s essentially like I put in one book, everything I’d want women to know about money, what I’ve learned in my experience in this industry for 15 plus years. So I share stories of women and their journeys and their stories of themes I come across quite often in my business. So it doesn’t mean I don’t think any two people are exactly the same when it comes to like their financial lives and their, their goals and their journeys.

But I see similar themes, so I would use those. As stories to share with the reader so they can really relate and see themselves in these stories of these women and then insert like the teaching or the, the lesson or the insight I want to share with the reader and then at the end of each chapter, I have action steps because.

As a finance person, the big thing for us is we can tell you everything you need to do, outline it, one thing after another, just say do this, and then this, and you got it. That’s what you need to do, but I was finding so many people just weren’t.

Taking the steps like they weren’t doing it and I can only do so much. So with this book, it felt I’m giving them these steps of action to take, and I’m giving them in like very like small, tiny homework assignments. So it doesn’t feel overwhelming where the reader actually. Wants to do the things and they, they understand why they’re doing it and what the impact is by, for getting to know their numbers.

And so it’s we think of a budget is like, Oh, like most people just don’t get excited over it, but I try to make it more exciting in the chapter. And explain why it’s so powerful to know those numbers and where it can lead you to by having that awareness about where your money is going.

So trying to break down these somewhat boring financial topics and make it fun, interesting, and really make it comfortable for women. So again, I wrote the book for women. Wanting women to feel comfortable because this industry has been very male dominated for quite some time now, the finance industry.

And as a result, how it is presented often forgets the interests and the needs of women. So that’s what I really wanted to do is get women really excited and engaged and put something out there that really felt like it was for them.

Stephen: And I was going to ask you this, you, I think you answered several of the questions that popped up in my head.

I was going to ask it, to be, to say it’s focused on women doesn’t mean a man couldn’t read it and get something out of it, but the way the material is presented is it mostly focused to a single mother woman or is it any woman?

Kalee: I would say any woman, but you’re right. Men have read it and they’ve enjoyed it and they’ve given me great feedback.

But I write it from the perspective of women and as a woman because I think, we get it or it’s just that whole again, I share stories about I love for the real housewives or my dating experiences. Somehow I relate it to money. And I think as women, it’s just, it’s stories that we can see ourselves in or relate to or get.

So I did want to write it from, as a woman. For perspective of women. So women can feel like, Oh, okay. Yeah, I’ve felt that way too. So it’s just different. It’s just giving the female perspective. And so of course men can read it. But again, it’s just, this industry has been very from the perspective of men, because that’s just.

It’s like by nature happens when you have more men in the industry as well, that, the material is presented more in, in their perspective. So you’re right, men and women and then women of all sort of stages of life, whether you’re a single mom or a young person just getting started or nearing retirement or already in retirement, I think there’s something for everyone in this.

That’s what most people or the feedback I’ve been getting is that there’s, So people who have said I already, have read a lot of finance books. I feel like I’ve got it all, have still given me the feedback that they got something new out of reading the book, which is really

Stephen: exciting.

Nice. Good. And I was going to ask you what the feedback’s you keep answering my questions before I get there. But mind reader too. That’s your next book, right? That’s your follow up. How to be a mind reader. So it made me think, and I’m glad you said that the way you did and what the focus is, because it made me think another very popular finance book for the common people, you might say, is Rich Dad, Poor Dad.

Everybody knows that one, but the point is for authors, jump around a little bit, that just because there’s another book out there that already covers finances, doesn’t mean your voice. Couldn’t do it in a way that fits people better, rich dad poor dad doesn’t fit a woman.

You know the title so I’m glad you brought that up and mentioned that It’s not like the financial information is going to change and be different

Kalee: So it’s still exactly it’s still the same concepts. It’s about investing. It’s about, the power of science And I think with women there, it just goes into some of the topics that as women, I see pop up more than men.

Like men seem to be willing to sometimes dive in before they know in the finance industry, which is great. Because it takes a little bit of that. It’s a bit, it can be a bit scary, but women seem to just be sitting on the sidelines still. And the fear is almost like paralyzing and they don’t do anything.

And so if anything comes of it, I want women to feel like they can take the action. So it’s just giving them that little bit of a confidence boost that maybe they need as the first step in, in making progress. So yes, I think women and men, I don’t see them as different or, one knowing more than the other.

I think it’s just, they have different needs and they’re at, and certain things appeal to them more or there’s, women needing a little bit more of that confidence. And and the whole first part of the book is about the money mindset piece where I do come across a lot of women just writing themselves off saying, I don’t understand, or I’m not good with math.

I’m not good with numbers. Money just isn’t my thing. And that’s why I wrote this book. Make money your thing. Anyone can do it. Helping, what I see as women almost just deciding they’re no good at it right from the get go before they even give themselves a chance. And I think they do that far more than men, unfortunately.

So having a whole piece devoted to that, and

Stephen: you can definitely say, I wrote this book for myself and I’m sharing it with everybody else because you’re. The ideal demographic in many ways.

Kalee: And I made money, my thing. That’s what I say in the book. I’m like, I made it my thing. Again, I grew up, we had no money.

We had nothing. Like we lived in subsidized housing. We didn’t have enough money to buy groceries sometimes. And now fast forward. And I’m, I’ve done all the things I’ve I share that in my book about all the goals that I’ve accomplished and, buying my dream house on my own and things like that.

It’s just, it’s really empowering. It feels so good. There’s an element of. I can do anything when it, when you can achieve like a money goal you have. And I think confidence like that for people, it’s good for any element of your life. Cause then you can take on big things like write a book when feel like this is, wheelhouse, I don’t know how to write a book, but you just dive in and do it.

Cause I’m like, I could do anything.

Stephen: And so you mentioned there’s action items to do with each chapter. Do you have a workbook or are you thinking about a workbook for people?

Kalee: I don’t. That’s a great idea. Yeah. I try to keep it simple. I know with a lot of the books I read that have action steps, I read a lot of nonfiction and sometimes the action steps can lose me when it feels like homework or You’re taking a whole master’s degree in a new program.

So I tried to keep it light, but you’re right. Like getting, some sort of course or something, getting people going on those just to give them that extra push is beneficial. I’m sure. Absolutely.

Stephen: Just a thought. Cause if someone’s reading your book and they’re comfortable and they enjoy it, it would motivate them to get going.

And having that workbook right there, just, here’s the action plan. Let me take the notes and write down what I’m doing.

Kalee: I know, I, that’s a great idea. I know we want to do I’m working with a group of women to do is like a book study. And I’m like, that’s such a fun idea. Cause we can go through that too with people reading the book.

So you’re right. Making it widespread. So all women can take those steps.

Stephen: That’d be cool. So let me ask you, Miranda, you said you read a lot. What’s your favorite books and authors?

Kalee: I’m all about the thriller type fiction books now. It’s really popular. I was reading a post of someone on a Facebook group and they said they were researching what are the most popular genres and it’s one of the biggest selling, right?

It’s they said it was like romance and thrillers, not necessarily together, but.

Stephen: And the funny thing is the biggest reader of thrillers are women, like middle aged women are the biggest demographic of thriller reader.

Kalee: That’s me. They know, I don’t know why we like it. It’s so fun though. It’s that like twist and turn and what’s going to happen.

I don’t know.

Stephen: Do you

Kalee: have any favorites? I Frida McFadden. I’ve gone through almost all of hers. Okay. And I found out about her on BookTok too. So I wasn’t familiar. So I do get a lot of my thriller suggestions from BookTok.

Stephen: Oh, nice. Yeah. I hadn’t heard of her. I’ll have to look her up, put some links on the show notes.

Yeah. Yeah. It’s really good. Are your kids readers?

Kalee: Unfortunately, no. Oh, no. So Jax destroys books. He’s my one year old, which is terrible. And my daughter, no, I wrote a kid’s book too. It’s it’s about a little girl learning about money. And I was like, Ivy, like when it came in the mail, I was like, can you read my book?

And it’s not very long or any, it’s a kid’s picture book. She got two pages and she’s I’m going to finish it later. Yeah.

Stephen: Yeah. Family’s not the best to tell you how good the book is or not.

Kalee: No, she just doesn’t like it. And I don’t know why. I think she hasn’t found the right genre for her.

I’m hoping. I tell her about when I was a kid, I was like, I loved like goosebumps and Nancy Drew and all that stuff. And I would explain, and she was like, no, I’d rather just watch the show mom. I’m like, wow.

Stephen: One of the things I work with kids is storytelling in video games and there’s a lot of good stories being told in video games.

That might be something that if you Find a good story based video game that you and her sit down and do together. Some of them, there’s one I saw, oh, and I forget the name of it. I apologize. But it’s an adventure game, but it has cut scenes that are pop ups and it’s all text. It doesn’t talk to you.

So the other gateway drug, a lot of times that we. Mention is comic books kids sometimes get into certain comic books because of the pictures and the reading and then they move on to other readings. So just a couple thoughts.

Kalee: Yeah, those are good ideas. You’re right because the video game idea is very appealing.

Or so what do you think my next book? I really want to aim it at. young adults. And my book coach was like, think of presenting it in a different way. And I’m like, Oh no. What do you think then? Like late teens, young adults, because she’s right. You get to that stage of life and it’s almost like you don’t have time to read books.

I remember it was like head down you’re in university or whatnot. So that was like the years where I didn’t read, but I want to create a money book for people like that. Cause it’s such an important

Stephen: time. It would probably be very, we talk, I see all the time people like I never learned this in school and how come nobody taught me that I had a stepdaughter that had no clue that you were supposed to balance a checkbook and keep track of that and she kept going under because she’s I took money out, but it said I had money.

I’m like, how many checks did you have to? I wrote three or four. That’s why you’re going what do you mean? And she just didn’t understand how that worked. And that’s a, to me, a simple thing so that, and she was at the time, like 1920 that would probably be a perfect time, but like you said, maybe they’re not, maybe this is where you need that videos or something to go with the book, maybe a book with videos or something.

Kalee: Cause it’s a tough stage. Like it’s almost like they’re really busy, but you’re right. They need it. It’s it’s such an important point in life because it could set you on your whole trajectory for what’s to come with money. And in the finance industry, we always give those, great charts and say if you started at the age of 19, putting away a hundred dollars a month, and you’d be a millionaire.

And everyone looks at that and goes. Why didn’t I do that? I’m like, that’s what your book is going to get people doing

Stephen: it, right? That’s when they’re older though. But I had several kids all graduating within a couple of years of each other. And I showed them like, look, you have this money right now.

You got from graduation. If you put it into this with an average return, blah, blah, blah, blah. When you’re 55, it’ll be this much. They went. Huh. I’m gonna get a new monitor for my video games, and it’s just like I don’t think they get and I know I certainly didn’t, I had a great couple jobs that if I had just taken even half of that money I made, which I didn’t need it all for living, most of it went to stuff or doing things I didn’t need to worry about and do, but if I had done, I’d be so My life would be very different right now.

And it’s hard to get the kids to grasp that. I

certainly

Kalee: didn’t. Yeah. It’s like our brain isn’t connecting it, that investing now and putting it away. It almost seems then I don’t get to enjoy it, but it’s you do. It’s like future you. So it’s still for you, but it’s like this disconnection of Oh no.

Like it, I’ll think about that later. I’ll do it later. I have plenty of time, just like with debt and the credit cards. It’s people are it’s so easy to spend and use it because it’s almost like you don’t think that you’re the one who’s going to have to pay it at the end of it.

You just think, Oh no, like that’ll just push it off to another day. And then it almost feels like you’re like, Oh, someone else will take care of it. I got to take care of it.

Stephen: Yeah, I just read a story about a guy telling a story about his friend who. Got a credit card, ran it up till, almost total max.

And then the next month he was trying to use it and it was bouncing. He’s what’s going on? They’re like you used it all up. He’s doesn’t it reset at the beginning of every month? No, little things like that, that you don’t really, but I think even now today’s kids are. More distanced from that because we don’t use cash.

We don’t use checks. We use a card and boop. And it’s just they net when they’re younger. They don’t see the money. They don’t see the transaction. It’s just you put this card in and everything’s magic. And I don’t think that gets explained or goes away.

Kalee: No, it’s yeah. It’s we’ve changed money in, for the more convenience.

Yes. but for not necessarily the better because there is no visual. And yeah, my daughter says when do I get a credit card? I’m like you’re nine years old. So not for a very long time. And it’s not actually just like a gift card or you just go tap. I’m like, you actually have to pay the money back.

It’s not your money. So they don’t, they have no idea. It doesn’t make sense.

Stephen: There were a couple of times when my kids were younger. They wanted something, but they didn’t have the money for it. And I got it and loaned it to them. And then they paid me back and they paid me with some interest. And I know some parents were like, that’s mean and blah, blah, blah.

No, that’s not, that’s what parenting is for. That’s what it is. I’m not just. Buying them stuff. So they’re, catered to, and I think it helped a little bit that they, neither of them have credit cards and they just live off what they make and, put money aside. I don’t think I failed completely there, but probably a little better.

Kalee: No, that sounds amazing. Anything like I tell people because when it’s, when people don’t think when people are not feeling confident about money adults, oftentimes they don’t feel like they can, teach their kids. It’s almost this idea of I don’t know enough to teach them or whatnot.

But I think as parents, we have to remember really, it does fall on us because they’re not learning in the education system, which, okay, that’s fine. And then knowing it falls on us, it’s just. Be like aware of that and have those conversations and give them those examples of real life. Like you were doing where they can actually like experiment and see.

Oh, it’s taking me even longer to pay it back or it’s taking me a really long time. I do with my daughter now. I do give her like. An allowance for doing work that she does like cleaning up cause her brother destroys the house. So she’ll clean up, which is so helpful. And I do pay her and she starts to see like how much she earns for that.

And then when she goes and has her own money and wants to buy things, she’ll look at things and say, Oh, it’s, Oh, that’s 20. No, that’s too expensive. Like she gets to start now making decisions, knowing I worked this hard to make this money and this costs as much. And then weigh the.

Cost benefit or like how much does that mean? Starting to get an idea of what money means. And so I think there’s so powerful for parents. So what you did amazing, like just giving these options, like our actual real life experiences that they’re going to have later on in a nice, like safe environment where you’re not like going to come after them and, take their car and their house if they don’t make a payment, nice, safe environment for them to experiment,

Stephen: right?

If you don’t hear about these. 23 year olds going bankrupt because they have so much debt, so hard. That you did some writing when you were younger stories but now you’ve written a nonfiction. So how did you approach starting to write a nonfiction book? How did you organize your thoughts or what got, how’d you get started writing?

What are some things you can maybe help others who want to write nonfiction? Absolutely.

Kalee: So I think the big part is like getting down your thoughts of what you want to get across to the reader. Like usually with a nonfiction, there’s almost like something you’re trying to teach or share. And you probably have a very specific set of ideas of what you’re hoping.

The reader will learn, like how do you want your reader to end up? Again, like there’s usually in nonfiction, it’s an element of a journey, something you want them to grow or, develop or do. So I think it’s just like writing down all those. Those lessons or things you want them to learn.

That’s what I did with the money book. So it was like, I wanted them to learn some of the money mindset piece. And understanding your numbers and what is budgeting and knowing your net worth how it’s so important to stay in control of your finances. There’s these ideas that I wanted to get across and then, just writing them with the very like finance oriented, thought process I was going through.

Obviously, what came out of it was like a textbook, which was so boring and no one would want to read it because no one likes reading textbooks. That’s very much an obligation in school. So working with the book coach was so helpful because I would have these, ideas and it’s. basic form, which was again, boring and needed a lot of work, but then it would be like, okay, what is a story about someone you’ve worked with or come across that, experienced this, the good or the bad, and can you share that?

And so I was working with a book coach who is experienced in fiction writing, and it was so beneficial for a nonfiction book because nonfiction is still. Sharing stories. That’s what engages a reader like a reader is always going to be engaged with storytelling. And so you can’t lose that, whether it’s, fiction or nonfiction, you’re still going to have that nonfiction I learned, which was like, Eye opening for me.

So she would give me like writing exercises where it would be like completely different scenarios And I would just have to like a rewrite about a zombie apocalypse or something like to get those creative juices flowing So I could take that into my non fiction work And it was so beneficial having someone pull that out of me because I would have never thought to do that.

Like the version of the book that I probably, started with, it’s not at all what it became. But it became these stories and sharing stories of myself. So I think, start with that outline and it’s going to be probably. pretty technical and, point form and sort of these are the bullets you want to cover.

But then think of like fun and exciting ways that you can share them. That’s going to pull the reader in. That’s going to have the reader like wanting to know what happened. And do what was a big lesson for me was going through the edit, editorial, like with my editor, the process where she was doing like the structural edit and her telling me about how you really want to make sure you’re taking your reader on a journey.

This is where they’re starting and you might know where you want them to end and then that’s how you want to rearrange the book as well. So again, you might have that outline and the points. But how can you see them, how can you see a reader going on that journey, like where they’re starting to where they end up and preferably breaking that into parts, maybe like three part, most nonfiction books have four part structure or three part.

They have some sort of like separation like that. Not saying you have to, but again, that’s how it unfolds and think of it as taking the reader on the journey. So that’s. the order of things. So that might rearrange your points when you start going through, and Oh, this one’s about, just getting started and making sure your mindset’s in place.

That should start first because, they’re not going to do the budget and all that if they haven’t worked on their mindset. So it’s going to help your whole writing process, seeing that unfold, seeing you. Bring that the reader on your journey with that journey with you or and I think that’s really key for nonfiction.

Stephen: And I’m glad you said that today’s nonfiction book isn’t like yesterday’s that they are very much. Feel of a story or more casual in how it’s presenting the information getting even further from that textbook feel and I’m glad you said that because I was going to bring that up, that’s what people are more used to that casual story type of.

Telling information.

Kalee: Yeah. Because no one just think if you’re saying, if I say to you, okay, so what you need to do is put away this amount of money every month, and then in five months time with interest, it should be that, or what if I say, can I share a story with you about a client who ended up being a millionaire?

By some really great habits that she put into place early on. And, at first she was really nervous and scared because of blah, blah, blah. Like those are going to draw you in more and resonate more, I think, than that very yeah, let’s do that. Do that.

Stephen: Absolutely. Absolutely. KAylee I think your book sounds great.

I’m, I love hearing that it’s a focus. for women. That’s a great way of doing it. And I think it’s like you said, a demographic that means approached in a different way rather than a just general book. I think that’s wonderful. So before we get going do you have Any advice for authors or better yet, if somebody stopped you on the street was I heard you wrote a book on money, why should I get your book and not Rich Dad Poor Dad or something like that?

What would you tell them?

Kalee: Yeah, because mine is for women. No. Oh, and because in mine, I’m wearing some pink boots on the cover. No, it’s, I think it’s just, One I wrote where you can feel really comfortable sitting down and just reading some chapters and feel really at ease non intimidated. So that was really my focus and not feeling like you’re doing some sort of course and being put on the spot where you should grab a text or a notebook and start taking notes.

So I did make it really, again, the story is very relatable. You see yourself in them, I would hope. Very like. Easy action steps at the end that I think anyone can do while reading the book and an easy read that you can do in one sitting that doesn’t feel overwhelming. Like I wanted to cater to more of the majority of people concepts, oftentimes like the rich dad, poor dad, and some of the other finance books really like hone in on a specific thing, buy a bunch of real estate and build up this whole real estate portfolio and things like that. And that’s not realistic for everyone. I wanted it to be something that people feel like wherever they’re at right now, that they can actually do things and see change and really make a big impact. That they didn’t have to Be, I think a lot of these books feel really overwhelming and put really high expectations on us.

And sometimes it’s just we want to just have more joy in our lives and feel like we’re doing the right things with our money. Like as simple as that. And that’s what I hope this book gets across to the reader.

Stephen: Nice. Nice. Hey, you mentioned real estate. Yeah, I actually recently got into buying some real estate.

I was able to buy both park place and boardwalk and put hotels on them. So I understand the concept.

Kalee: I love Monopoly. Like Monopoly is a great game, but you’re right. It’s hard being a landlord. It’s a lot of work.

Stephen: Yes, especially in Monopoly. All right. Kaylee, I appreciate you taking some time getting on today.

aNd I wish you luck with the book and let me know if you get a workbook or that teen book. I’d love to talk to you again about that.

Kalee: Absolutely. Thank you so much. Thank you for everyone for listening too.

View Details

OverviewG. S. Gerry doesn’t just write books, he creates humorous experiences with the written word. When life kicks you in the nether regions find a way to see the humor in it all.

I am all about Mastering life Experiences Through Humor. My purpose is to share my own experiences to help you laugh at my pain, and laugh through yours.

G. S. Gerry engineers uniquely hilarious concepts that are quirky and utterly unique, geared towards entertaining those on the lookout for that one truly unique experience. Using a visionary approach towards life, laughter & entertainment.

Derald Grake destroys his life the moment he decides to sell the family home. After capturing the American dream, this father of 4 hopes to solve the complex formula of buying low and selling high. Witness one ‘normal’ family embark on a hilarious and entirely unexpected journey involving, among other surprises, assassins, meth, murder, and the end of Amazon.

Wrapped inside this intriguing mystery are eye witness accounts and compelling evidence to separate truth from fantasy. Follow the clues, sort through the lies, and put the pieces together of this twisted reality.

From award winning author and visionary creator G. S. Gerry comes the critically acclaimed debut Meth Murder & Amazon.

BookWebsitehttps://gsgerry.com/meth-murder-amazon/FavoritesYouTubehttps://youtu.be/uY5vbwr8Ex4TranscriptStephen: Today on Discover Wordsmiths, I have Jerry. Jerry, how are you doing today?

GS: I’m great. How are you? Thanks for having me. It’s a

Stephen: pleasure. It’s a good to have you on and you mentioned it was raining where you’re at. I live in Ohio. It’s raining here. Also. Where are you located?

GS: Started in Land O’Lakes, Florida.

So 30 minutes from Tampa and I feel like it’s been raining every day nonstop since the summer started every day at some point it rains like it was torrential

Stephen: downpour today. Wow. Okay. We had a like monsoon. The other day I lost electricity for three hours. It was coming down so hard.

I couldn’t see my neighbor’s house. It was crazy. Yeah.

GS: It did knock out the internet here earlier, but not too

Stephen: crazy. Yeah, I felt like we were in Florida. Yeah. All right. We are what, before we talk about your book I love your background, by the way, that’s a great background. Tell us a little bit about you and some of the things you like to do besides writing.

GS: Yeah I’ve actually been only writing for about a year and a half. I never thought I was going to be a writer. I had a crazy situation at work that kind of led me to hey, I want to be a writer. And so I can tell you about that real quick. I was working on a project. I do a lot of technical report writing at work on my new cyber security and credit card compliance. So you select your card at Walmart, Target any kind of store, right? Those customer, those companies have to have a compliance report. And so that’s where a company like the one that I work for come into play. So we write a lot of long reports look at a lot of controls. And so I had a situation at work.

I gave a customer a report and the next day she calls me and she’s Jerry, this report. It’s completely the same as last year. I’m like, Oh, gosh, please don’t tell me that’s the case. This is like a 500 page report, start reviewing the report saying we went on site. We didn’t, there was no on site.

We were in like the pandemic, like early pandemic at this time. So I was like, Oh, she’s right. We have to rewrite this report. So the guy who was on my team, he was the guy who was leading the assessment. And he’s the one who wrote the report. He copied my work. Yeah. Word for word and turn it into the customer, like it was his work.

So we had to rewrite the report. It went from 500 pages to 750 pages. And it takes me like two months to fix the report. And afterwards, I’m like, man, I just wrote a novel. That’s it. I got the story. I’m just going to write a book. That’s just what I did. And so that’s how it even led me to this crazy journey here.

Stephen: Wow. And you still have your job doing the big reports?

GS: yeAh, I still do that. It definitely keeps me busy. It’s always interesting. You get to see a lot of interesting and complex environments and then customers that you get to use all the time. Like you, you remember when Target had that big breach and all the credit card numbers got leaked out, Home Depot, et cetera.

So there’s a company, a third party company that’ll actually come in and say, Hey, this company is secure. They’re okay to take, continue taking credit cards. Or in the cases of like target, right? Because the company that actually does the assessment misses something and there’s a huge breach that leads to fines and all these other things.

So it’s a pretty big deal. We come in and do these assessments. They can take, anywhere from a couple of months to 6 plus months, depending on how big the customers.

Stephen: Wow. Wow. That’s a, that’s an investment. That’s time. That’s do you enjoy doing that? Does writing help you with the stress, that type of

GS: thing?

The writing does help with the stress. I’ll say that. That’s why I started writing in the first place. It’s a lot of learning. I’ll say that. So I feel like I learned a lot. throughout the job. No two environments are the same. Even if they use similar technologies, it’s always different.

I like it. It’s different. Definitely pays the bills.

Stephen: So you needed to relieve some stress and you wrote a book that is very interesting title, meth, murder, and mayhem. How’d you come about the title and tell us a little bit about the book. Yeah.

GS: So it’s a, it’s meth murder and Amazon.

Stephen: Amazon. Yes. I’m sorry. You’re right. And I just started a minute ago. Didn’t I?

GS: You did. That’s okay. So yeah, meth, meth murder and Amazon, you can actually buy it on the Amazon. And so this is a true based on true event story about the worst home selling experience of your life. And so as I was going to sell my house in Colorado, that’s my first house, by the way, so my first time selling a house.

And along the way I actually get accused by my own real estate agents of murder and making mess while I’m not even in the state. And how many real estate agents does it take to sell houses? It sounds like a running joke, right? And so most people would be like, take one. And I was, I usually say, you would think but in my personal experience, I actually took three real estate agents.

One of them the guy who actually sold me the house, he wasn’t even living in Colorado. He moved out of state and was in Arizona. So he wasn’t marketing my house, really doing anything to sell the house. So I fired him. I’ll go to the next real estate agent. She’s, I think she’s okay.

She’s a good person. We go on vacation to go visit my mom. My mom is sick. She has, early stage cancer. So I was like, Hey, let’s take a vacation. We’re going to have an open house. And so I’m on vacation where it’s me and my wife and my four kids at the time, we’re sitting in like Panera bread parking lot.

And I got a call and my real estate agent is Jerry. There’s someone inside the house. I was like, excuse me. What do you mean? There’s someone inside the house. She’s yes, there’s someone inside the house and they’re hiding under the bed. No one’s supposed to be there. I’m like, absolutely not.

No one’s supposed to be there. She’s great. I called the cops. Cops are on their way. Cops show up all of a sudden body’s gone. A few days later, they have a meeting at the real estate agency and they’re like, Oh, by the way, when we were at the house at the open house, we went around and we checked everything and we were in your garage and it smelled like burning plastic in there.

I was like, Oh, no, it was something burning right it’s like they’re an electrical fire and something catch on fire real estate agent goes no burning plastic means math. And so we think that someone could be smoking meth or making meth on the premises so we’re going to need you to get a meth test done.

Or we’re going to flag your house on the MLS for suspicious behavior. I’m like you’re absolutely not going to do that. I will sue you. So you can just consider this to be another relationship. So that’s two real estate agents that I finally find another one. And the book essentially was just this crazy rollercoaster of, from the time I actually decided I’m going to sell my house until I finally sell it.

And so it takes six months, three real estate agents and just a whole slew of just. Nonsense that kind of occurs throughout the process. And so I take you on an interesting little journey along

Stephen: the way. Wow. So it’s based on real events. But it’s not nonfiction. It’s a fiction story. No,

GS: it’s nonfiction.

I really tried to keep it true to how the story unfolded. Now I will say I changed all the places, all the names, right? Everybody has funny names. Everyone has like a funny location they live in. But the actual events that happened did really happen. And so one part I go to talk to the news and so I’m I’m on Denver seven news.

This is really happened. They come, they do an interview. I tell them the whole story. And they screw that up. So this whole thing is in the book, but I go on news, right? It airs at 9 PM. Not even 12 hours later, my realist, my new real estate agent. So real estate number three calls me and she’s Jerry, what did you do?

I’m getting people calling me the nastiest names, asking me, how can I do this to your family? Like you’ve got to take this down. And so what happened was the the news agency. When they started the on air broadcast, they, pan out to the curb appeal, they show the house wall and the front yard is the new real estate agent sign.

And so this is, she’s with Keller Williams, the ones that accused me of the murder and the meth that was remaxed. And so people weren’t even listening to the whole broadcast. They’re not even reading the article. They see the number and they just start calling her up. Calling her out. And so it got taken down.

I talked to the news agency and they’re like, yeah, we can’t edit anything that’s already aired. It’s just coming down. So there’s a lot of events that transpire along the way.

Stephen: So what do you what genre did you put this in to put it out there?

GS: So I decided to make it like a humor slash comedy, but it also has some suspense.

There’s some mystery in there. It has a little bit of everything, even like almost like horror, right? This was like, someone’s like real life nightmare. Could you imagine selling your house and then boom, you get accused of murdering somebody and then you get accused of making that right.

Like you can’t make this stuff up. So I write with a funny twist on it with a funny spin on it. And so that’s why I thought, humor would be the best way. Plus I, I choose really funny character names for my books. And someone was like crappy to me along the way, like the real estate agent accused me of meth and murder.

She got the name Dobby Snobby. And so I’ll make fun of her throughout the book. I’ll make fun of her name. And just all these different things. But if someone was like really good to me, like it was like a positive element as part of the whole story, that’ll get an actual really good name. And I’ll be like, Oh yeah, they helped me out.

Just different things like that.

Stephen: Wow. So what type of feedback are you getting from people reading it? What are some of the comments?

GS: A lot of people would say Hey, this is a crazy rollercoaster ride. If it wasn’t backed up by cold, hard facts, I really wouldn’t believe it. I tell, I would tell my friends this story, like before I even wrote the book, what happened, they’re like, stop it.

You’re making this up. I’m like, no way. I couldn’t make this up if I tried, right? This is so unbelievable. It has to be true. And I get really good feedback. Just Hey, this is really different. This is really unique. There’s really nothing out here. That’s like this. And so that’s what the goal was when I originally decided I was going to write a book, cause I wanted to do something really different and to set myself apart.

Stephen: Nice. Yeah. So it, this is crazy. It sounds perfect for either a movie or a TV show. What would you choose for it to be?

GS: Either or, right? I think it could make a great TV series. I think you could make a great movie, right? I was thinking who could be the main character, which would be me. It’d be like, hey, Ryan Reynolds is a hilarious guy.

He would be, like, a great actor to portray this. And you could definitely make it a whole season but there’s even a lot of stuff that happened before I tried to sell my house. So I could actually write other books about this as well. But I hired, Yeah, a prequel, I could even do a sequel.

And so the prequel I had I was going to finish my basement in this house. And so you think like contractors, everybody know contractors are sometimes shady. I did what I was supposed to do. I’m like, Hey, I want to get my basement finished. So I’m going to subcontract out all this work.

You have to frame it. You have to get drywalling done. Water, electricity, right? All these things. So I would, bid it out. I wouldn’t hire the most expensive guy or the least expensive. I try to go in the middle. Man, I had the worst experience. It was only supposed to take three months. It takes almost a year to actually finish my basement.

And just like anything you can think of that can go wrong from like a contractor’s perspective did. So I was like, I could totally write a book about this. I call it framed, maimed, and plain to blame.

Stephen: There you go. I got some good, interesting with houses. I think this would make a great movie. I, and a lot of times, I go either way, but this particular one, put the right budget in it, get the right actors, and I think it’d make a really great, big

GS: absolutely movie.

And it’s really, most of it happens inside the house or at, at a parking lot or something. So it would be a pretty small budget, right? Like you wouldn’t need a lot to make it happen.

Stephen: It’s one setting, the house,

GS: just the house, things that happen inside the house. But it was fun.

It was fun to write about. And so I do tell people like it’s nonfiction, but it almost reads like it’s fiction because of the way I use the characters and the names, but also teach like the readers about what the different elements are when you try to sell your house, some people might be going through Hey, I want to buy a house or, Hey, I want to sell my house.

So I teach you about staging different things you need to look out for. What all the different showings means open house. So I try to add, a teachable element to it as well.

Stephen: Oh that’s cool. So it’s a fun book that you learn something from. That’s right. Yeah. What not to do sometimes.

So you also mentioned, you’ve got a book coming out soon, a second book. What’s that one about?

GS: So I do have a new book coming out September 22nd. It’s called hysterical hangouts with behind legs. And it is a true life reality show, but in a book. And so it follows the time honored tradition of, you meet the girl of your dreams, you fall in love.

And the only thing left to do is meet the family. What happens when you meet the family and they’re a little wild and what you might call crazy? And so along the way, the main character who is the boyfriend that’s dating the girlfriend, he decides, Hey, I’m going to do an undercover reality TV show.

And so he has a undercover camera and he goes through all these different events with her family, whether it’s her mom and dad she has three brothers. And so each episode or each chapter of the book is set up as an episode. They’ll be like episode one, here’s the title. And I’ll actually give it a rating and add in like the TV elements, like rated TV, 14 for language alcohol, suspense, whatever’s in there.

And so I try to really make it like a you’re really watching the reality show, but you’re reading in a book.

Stephen: Cool. And that comes out next month. You said in about a month. Yep. Yep. Next month. Cool. And do you have any plans beyond that for another book?

GS: I feel like I could probably write some books just on crazy things that have happened throughout my life.

So the, this new book coming out hysterical hangouts with the hind legs, I left it open ended for a reason. It’s, it is fiction. This new one is fiction. I’ve been married to my wife for 18 years now and she has seven brothers and sisters. And so this. This first book was only about the brothers.

So I thought I could make a sequel to it of just her sisters. And so I can do then even do a followup trilogy with not only the brothers and the sisters, but what happens when they all have children. And so the different like dynamics that come into play when you have brothers and sisters

Stephen: and then kids of all those people.

Wow. Okay. So do you have a website that people can go to and find out more about you?

GS: I do. So my website is gsjerry. com. On there, there’s obviously information about the book. There’s also some blogs. I also have some free recipes I like to cook. Don’t worry, they’re meth free. But I do have them labeled as meth lab creations.

So someone might see that and be like, oh, heck is this? It’s just free recipes that I’ve

Stephen: come up with. That’s pretty good. I like that. Putting it right in there.

Sorry. I’m sorry.

GS: What? Oh, no. I was just going to say, you just got to take ownership sometimes, right? If someone says you do something, it’s better to just, oh yeah, you got five

Stephen: minutes, right? You need a teacher. Yeah. Something,

GS: so I actually, so there is a shop on there as well. And so you can actually, there’s some merchandise on there.

One of them is a coffee cup and it says, don’t mess with me until I’ve had my coffee. There’s another one. It’s like an apron. It’s I can’t remember what it says off the top of my head, but it’s basically don’t mess with me or you might end up in the recipe or something like that. So they’re finding a little place on meth.

Stephen: Don’t mess with me or I’ll put you in my next book. Yeah, exactly. I see. I would get you one that says follow me to my meth lab.

GS: Oh, that’s a good one. Yeah, I can totally do that. It’s so tough though, right? Because some people are so sensitive, they’ll be like, Oh, this guy’s joking around about meth and all this stuff, right?

And meth’s like a huge epidemic. Yeah. Around the world and I get it. That’s why I got accused of the meth, because Colorado is like the meth capital of the world, apparently. That’s what they told me. And wow. Yeah. So after this all happened, whenever they accused me of this and I fired them, I actually, this isn’t in the book, but I actually went to talk to a lawyer about this and I explained what happened.

And there’s no way they can do that, blah, blah, blah. So I like shared with them the story. Lawyers contacted the real estate agents. They’re like, yep, this did happen. But that’s all we’re going to tell you then they finally go on through the discovery process and they find out that because Colorado has such a problem with methamphetamine, if a real estate agent even suspects Colorado.

That there’s a possibility of meth on the premises. They can do whatever they want, essentially. And there’s nothing you can do about it. So when this happened and they’re like, Hey, you you’re making meth in your garage or someone’s smoking meth. I was like, that’s gotta be defamation, slander, right?

Like something, right? Like you can’t just say someone’s making meth with no evidence. That’s just nonsense. But in Colorado, they can do that.

Stephen: Wow. Crazy. And so somebody basically waited till you were selling the house and you went out of town and they. Moved in and took over for probably just long enough to make a batch.

GS: It’s actually even worse than that. So I don’t want to, I don’t want to leave any spoilers, but what’s under the bed and who’s under the bed. It’s hilarious.

Stephen: Let me ask you, Jerry your book sounds hilarious. I think that’s a great situation to turn into a book. Do you have any favorite books and authors that you’ve liked through the years to read?

GS: I do. So I like C. S. Lewis. He has some great books. So it’s funny, right? I’m sitting here talking to you on a podcast, being an author. And I was the kid growing up that. Played a lot of sports. And so we had book reports to do in school. I’m like, all right, what’s the movie I can watch? I don’t have time to read these books.

And so I’d always get good grades. I always get A’s in my book reports. But the older you get, the more you realize reading is just part of life. You have to read for your job. You have to read for pretty much everything. And so when I was growing up, I hated reading. I didn’t want to do it. I just wanted to go play sports.

Now that I’m older, I do C. S. Lewis. My mom passed away a little over a year ago. And someone was like, Hey, you should read this book by C. S. Lewis called A Grief Observed. And it was when he lost his wife. And so I read that, right? I lost my mom. It’s different. But a lot of the elements and the things that he talks about on there, I was like, that’s super relatable.

So it definitely helps. And then he just has great visual descriptions, great elements in his book. So he’s just a fantastic author. As I read more and as I write more, I noticed that there’s some things that he does that I do as well. Like he’ll actually use run on sentences. He’ll actually like, and things abruptly.

And I definitely do that. So I thought it was cool to just see that kind of similarity there.

Stephen: Yeah I work with kids and one of the activities I’ve tried to pass on is. If you read the book to the first lion, which in the wardrobe the end of the book, the battle is all of four paragraphs.

That’s the whole battle, but the movie it’s like 10, 12 minutes long or something, but there are all sorts of creatures and all sorts. I, tell kids that’s, the difference between a plot and a story, here’s the plot. We had a battle, we won and the story in the movie, they expanded and made it much more exciting.

Trying to do an activity using that to, write your own battle scene, that’s better than, that’s how

GS: you get, that’s how you hook them, though, trying to get them to do something that they actually want to do. No one wants to write book reports, and then you have to use the right grammar and the right punctuation and spelling, right?

It’s just no fun. But if you give them a fun thing to create, kids love that, right? It lets their imagination kind of run

Stephen: wild. Yeah I totally agree with that and I have thoughts on that and I’ve talked to several teachers, I’ve talked to other parents, other adults, and everybody I talked to all agrees about the reading and that, but then the people in charge are making all this common core stuff and shoving it down their throats and these books are the ones you should read, I’m like, let them read something they’re enjoy, they enjoy, hit them with the books when they’re older, once they’re hooked on reading, don’t Throw the bad stuff at him early.

GS: Absolutely. You take a lot of the elements males are usually hands on, and of course, boys are going to be hyperactive in their classes. They don’t want to be in class. They want to be bouncing around, playing with stuff, building stuff. Harness that energy and get them outside, right?

Teach them how to use their hands. Learn skills. And that way, but they don’t do that in

Stephen: school. Encourage kids like you tell me a story about a made up baseball player or a fake baseball game, or, use sports and learn how to tell a story, but yeah, that’s a whole nother discussion.

GS: We could talk on five podcasts.

Stephen: I could probably do a whole podcast on education and storytelling. I’m sure. Now that you’re reading a little bit, do you have a favorite bookstore in the area? You said you had four kids. Do you take them to any bookstores? So

GS: I actually have five kids now. So we had four kids when the mess and the murder happened.

I just had a baby last year in November. It’s almost nine months now. And you have to have three boys, two girls. We have a lot of books that our grandparents have given us over the years of, they need a book first. I think we’ll probably go to Barnes and Noble just because that’s probably the closest one.

There are some like mom and pop bookstore I could say, but they’re like not on like the way where I’d be going, so I usually just go to Barnes and

Stephen: Noble. Okay, fair enough. Fair enough. Alright, so we’re gonna talk a little author stuff before we do though. If you’re out on the street and somebody said, Hey Jerry, I heard you wrote a book.

Why should I get your book? And I think we’ve already covered that, but what would be the quick pitch you would tell them?

GS: I would say, I would just tell them like, Hey, you want to read something that’s unbelievable and true. Oh, and by the way, you’re going to laugh your ass off. I guarantee it.

And so I think that pretty much sums it up, right? Like my books are always going to be funny. There’s always going to be some humor element to it, but it’s not even just that, right? Like it has so many other elements that just. Make for a great story. And part of it is just being unique, I think, is my trademark, right?

Like I don’t think I don’t do things the same way that a lot of authors do. I don’t write a lot of the same ways that a lot of authors do, but that’s on purpose. And so I figured it gives me a leg up when I get to tell people about the

Stephen: book. Yeah. I haven’t read your book, but it sounds to me like it’s a combination of Breaking Bad meets Dork Diaries.

That’s what it sounds like. You

GS: know what’s funny is, so when this happened and the real estate agent actually called the cops on me and accused me of murder, I told one of my friends about it. He’s dude, that sounds just like Breaking Bad. I was like, I haven’t watched it yet. I was like, that’s it.

I’m just going to watch it. And it’s like the third episode they’re doing the open house and they’re making meth in the basement. I was like, yep, this is it. They had to watch breaking bad before they did the open house. And so it must be, I’m like the reincarnation

Stephen: of buddy. So you’ve written a couple of books now.

Your second one’s on its way. You got an idea for a third one. What are some things that you have learned that you’re doing different now than you did when you first started?

GS: Yeah. So when I first started, I had no idea what I was doing. Let’s be honest. I was like, Hey, I want to do something different.

I want to create a really unique experience for the readers. And part of that is I’m going to just, I’m going to write a way that no one’s ever even comprehended. And so I’m going to, I’m going to misspell words on purpose. I’m going to make up my own words. I’m going to have run on sentences on there.

I’m going to break up the the way that the characters actually have their narration. So it actually forces you to take these pauses. But not only that, I’ll even go a step further and I’ll actually bring an audio element. So there’s like fun little remixes in the book. So like London Bridge is falling down.

I’ll make a remix of that to my own little like rhyme along. And so I just do random things to like, really keep the readers engaged and focused. Not only that I would say marketing so when the book first came out last year I didn’t know what this thing marketing was. I’m like, hey, this is a great title, right?

But they’re just, people are just going to see it and they’re just going to buy it Metford or Amazon. What could be better, right? And but that’s not how it works. There’s a lot of competition out there. I think there’s something like 30 million books on Amazon. And there’s a million books that come out every single year.

So you guys like anybody that’s an author, they’re going to have a lot of competition. So what sets you apart? How do you stand apart? And a lot of that comes from marketing. And so I had no idea what I was doing. I didn’t even start marketing until after the book came out. Even just to piggyback on that, as I was going through Amazon to release my book, Kindle has the ability to do a pre order, so I’m like, all right, great, I’m gonna put this pre order for 90 days out, and so then I go to start doing the same thing on the paperback and the hardcover editions.

There’s no pre order there, but I didn’t know that and so i’m like filling out this section So i’m like, all right Maybe it’s the next page is going to ask me when does it want to release? And so like I get to the last page and I hit and it’s like, all Do you want to submit a hit submit and be like your book is going to be live in 72 hours?

I’m, like, all right now going back now like i’m not taking it down And so I just let it go so it actually released a month earlier But obviously I didn’t know because I’d never written a book before or never gone into this idea of writing a book Now that I have read it, I actually put this new book on pre order about six months out.

I’ve been doing a lot of marketing and social media posts and everything just to bring attention. I’ve gotten reviews ahead of time as well as I submitted for awards, so I did win an award from Literary Titan a couple weeks ago. So I’m trying to build some positive momentum, right up until the launch date and then I’ll do some different tactics as I go along.

But definitely didn’t have any clue what I was doing the first time. And so part of this, right? Like I would have never done that the first time because I didn’t know what I was doing the second time. Now I have a good idea. I know how to market it, where to go what social media platforms to use, things like that.

Stephen: So I love that you said that and to point out to others, I know. A lot of people have a lot of anxiety about publishing and it will, they’ll go to conferences, they’ll go to author events, round tables, and the quizzing. And I always see people that okay, I’ve got one chapter done in my book, but tell me how do I publish?

Where do I publish? Who do I send it to? What? And I’ve been, as I’ve been talking to people, I’m like, Calm down. That’s like the last thing you got to worry about and figure it out. And most mistakes can be corrected which is what you sounded like you said, Oh, I messed that up. Keep going.

And you lived.

GS: That’s right. Yeah. That was a fight another day. I feel like it didn’t really hurt me overall in the long run. I probably could have sold more bucks originally, but there’s a lot of people I knew that I already told the story to. And so I was like, I wrote a book, they’re like, no, you did it.

Stop it. And I was like, I absolutely did. And I’d tell them about it and they’re like, okay, I’ll get that. And so personally, I feel like word of mouth is going to be always be the best marketing tool that you can have. Yeah. You can post on social media, but. It’s so tough to get people’s attention on social media, especially with so many different things.

We go viral. What’s going on? So I feel like word of mouth, talk to somebody, go to the coffee shop. Oh, what are you reading? Hey, I wrote a book. You want to hear about it? And so there’s all these different ways to get your book out there besides just the normal, like a post on social media, 900 times a month and all these different other tactics that are out there.

Stephen: And you mentioned unique style. So you talked about breaking things up and how you’re writing the characters and putting things in the book. Do you think that’s actually helped you now that you’ve done that?

GS: I think so. And so whenever I was first starting out with this, I’m like, all right, I’m going to use this really unique style if it flops.

Hey, that’s fine. Like I tried something new and it failed. But if it doesn’t I’ve got something to talk about that nobody else is doing. And so I think that’s really played to my advantage because you can go read the reviews and almost everyone has pointed out like writing style, but in a positive way.

And so you don’t have to follow the normal traditional writing style. You have to develop your characters this way. You have to. Write the sentences this way. It has to flow this way. That’s absolutely not true. Like you can write however you want. If it flows, and the readers enjoy it, then you’re going to provide a positive experience.

And it’s just going to set you apart.

Stephen: And usually authors don’t think that way or don’t try and experiment like that until they’re more well established. Have you heard of, or seen the road by Cormac McCarthy? I haven’t. I recommend looking that up sometime, even library or whatever. It is a great, interesting book.

It’s. Post apocalypse the world is basically destroyed and the whole book is written like Without periods and commas and everything’s in lowercase and it’s almost like a big run on sentence. It’s very interesting, but he uses it to help convey the stark feeling, the depressive feeling of the book.

Yeah. I’ll

GS: definitely check that out. Yeah, it’s definitely interesting and that’s just one of the reasons I did it the way that I did it. It was like, hey. This will who can say they read a, wrote a book, right? And then I was like, hey, tons of people write books all the time.

What can I do differently that’s going to really stand apart, maybe stand on its own? And so that’s why I chose the writing style. But I definitely will use wrong sentences. It’s fun. But if you think about how we text, really, this is where the idea came from. Whenever you’re talking with people, like you’re not caring about what your grammar looks like.

You’re not caring about the period here or a comma there. Now, I will use the right punctuation all the time, but I won’t I’ll just run sentences on together. And so it almost read like how you and me are talking right now. We don’t talk in complete sentences. We talk and run on sentences all the times.

And so as you read it, it’ll almost feel like you could hear yourself like reading it out loud and it really flows well.

Stephen: And I think one of the things people have talked a lot about is writing to make sure it sounds good in an audio book, because a lot of people are doing audio books and some of the more structured ways we write, putting, she said, he said, or something gets very monotonous in audio.

So something, if somebody’s talking fast and telling a lot of information, a run on sentence. Makes sense in audio. You don’t see all the punctuation in audio and it can convey that feeling of being, or, Oh my gosh, you wouldn’t believe I just went into the house and then I went upstairs and there was somebody in the bed and they were just like, that doesn’t have commas and stuff in there when you’re saying

GS: it.

Absolutely. And so I do have an audio book for the meth murder on Amazon. And I use this platform called ACX and so they have a tie into iTunes, Audible and Amazon. And so part of that, you can actually submit your script to anybody out there. That’s a narrator through this platform. And so you can actually take auditions and that’s absolutely what I did.

And as I said, my book has some crazy elements to it and there’s like funny little word plays and even like songs in there. So I literally spent the most difficult parts. Of the books as a narrator and I was like, Hey, I want a male. I want him to have really good community timing. I really want him to take ownership for it.

And I got like the first five and they were like, so boring. They are like drawn out. I was like, all right, not you. And then this one guy like totally took ownership of it. And every part that I gave them one part was like. From the interview that I had with the the guy from the news agency.

And so he’d be like, Hey, go up the stairs. Oh, no, wait, that’s too fast. Come back down the stairs. And so I literally would write it like that Oh, no, wait, stop, pause. And so there’s all this different back and forth between me and the news journalist. And so I sent it to him and I was like, if this guy can do like these parts good, like he’s going to be great.

And sure enough he nailed it. And so he’s going to be the narrator for the second book.

Stephen: Oh, nice. And when does that is the audio book out for the murder mayhem or

GS: murder? It’s funny. You’re not the first one that’s done that. I think it just goes together. Cause you know, M and M. So yeah. Yeah.

Meth murder name is on. It does have an audio book. We did win an award for that as well. And then we’re in the rank for another book award at the end of the year. The new one, I don’t know when it’s going to come out, but I’m trying to get it to line up like almost identical to when the Kindle releases.

Stephen: Nice. Great. All right. Jerry it’s been really great chatting with you about your book. It sounds fun. It sounds like you had a great time writing it too.

GS: Yeah. Oh yeah. It was definitely a fun time. Like I said, I never thought I was going to be an author, but as I started doing it, I wouldn’t give it to people.

I was like, Hey, read this. If it sucks, tell me, don’t make, let me make myself look like a fool. And no one really gave me any negative feedback. I was like, all right, I might be onto something. Then I like had submitted to my first editorial review. I was like, all right, if it’s going to suck, they’ll tell me.

And I got my first review. And I think they said, I was like Robin Williams on speed. I was like, Oh, that’s a good name shop. And when compared to Robin Williams, I thought it was a good thing. But it was really good review. So I’ve gotten a couple of negative reviews, but they don’t leave any comments are like two stars and they don’t say anything. And I’m like, maybe they thought that was like similar to

Stephen: another book, but You know with the way that whole system works could have just been somebody scrolling through Amazon saw meth I don’t agree with drugs and they clicked on two and you know that they moved on

GS: I do read the reviews.

I actually like reading them. I’ll actually take them. And if I’m like working on the description for the book of someone from something super whittier, it was like, Oh, that really captured like what I was after for the description. I’ll add that in there. So I definitely read the reviews. I think part of it is right.

Like you can’t be too serious, but with yourself, but you also got to have thick skin, right? Not everybody’s going to like what you write. Everybody’s going to like how you write and don’t like the story, right? Tons of reasons why people aren’t going to like your book. So if someone doesn’t like it, Hey, that’s okay.

If you get a ton of good reviews, you’ll be like, hey, there’s always going to be somebody that’s going to be on the other side of the

Stephen: coin. Yep. All right. So before we go do you have any advice you would give to other new authors out there?

GS: Yeah, I would definitely tell them write what you know.

I think Mark Twain said that, write what you know. And I think that’s important. I feel like I’m a funny guy, so I’m going to write funny stuff. But. The reverse of that, right? If you’re not funny, don’t write funny things, right? Because readers, it’s going to come across to the readers. It’s going to sound weird, right?

But if you’re serious serious things, great stories. But just stay true to yourself because that’s, what’s going to make, come across as a reader is just really genuine. If you try to do something that you’re not going to, they’re definitely

Stephen: going to know. Agreed. All right. Jerry, I appreciate you taking some time chatting with me today. It’s been really fun. I wish you luck on your

GS: book. Yeah, thank you very much and thanks again for having me. It was a great time.

Stephen: Yeah, good.

View Details

OverviewGrowing up in New York in the late 1960’s, Audrey Birnbaum assumed that watching Holocaust documentaries was a perfectly normal family activity. On her first day of elementary school, Audrey sat in the cafeteria, unwrapped her liverwurst sandwich, and excitedly told her new classmates about her public television proclivities. Her Brady Bunch-watching peers had never heard of PBS, but they had heard of PB&J (and they weren’t too keen on liverwurst either). They made it abundantly clear: Audrey’s childhood was, in fact, not normal at all.

We will never know whether it was schoolyard bullying or watching tragic Shoah documentaries that was responsible for Audrey’s acute sensitivity to others; but that empathy may have helped pave the way for her choice of medicine as a career. Audrey chose to specialize in Pediatric Gastroenterology – for who needed more help than children; and where could anyone feel more suffering than in one’s gut? Day in and day out, she watched intricate family dynamics play out in the context of fragile health. Audrey listened to each patient’s story until she could retell it with clarity and give it meaning. Through witnessing and recording these tender dramas, the seeds of writing had been planted.

BookIn the summer of 1941, eleven-year-old Wolf is coming of age amidst the rubble and antisemitism of war-torn Nazi Berlin. Destitute and facing imminent deportation, he must leave behind his ill sister and travel with his family across a continent entrenched in war. With nothing in hand but expired visas to the US, Wolf and his family must figure out how to sneak aboard the Spanish freighter the Navemar, a ship that will gain its reputation as the “Hell Ship of Death.” But this is only the beginning of Wolf’s saga.

“American Wolf: From Nazi Refugee to American Spy is a heart stopping true story full of last-minute rescues, near-death encounters, and survival against untold odds. It is also a story about coming of age, family dysfunction and national identity, and is a resounding testament to the triumph of the human spirit.

Using the extensive, detailed notes compiled by her father, author Audrey Birnbaum retells in memoir style a poignant and vivid account of Wolf’s childhood in Berlin, his riveting escape from Nazi Germany, and the continued challenges he faced even as he reached freedom.

Favoriteshttps://thevillagebookstore.net/

YouTubehttps://youtu.be/if0lOOeo1O0Transcript[00:00:00] Stephen: today on Discovered Wordsmith, I have Audrey. Audrey, how are you doing this morning? I’m great,

[00:00:06] Audrey: Steven. Thank you so much for having me.

[00:00:08] Stephen: It is great to have you on and I’m excited to hear about this book but before we talk about your writing and your book, let’s find out a little bit about you.

[00:00:15] So tell us some of the things you like to do and where you live outside of writing.

[00:00:20] Audrey: Stephen, I live in Westchester, New York, and I have not always been a writer. This is pretty new to me. I actually. I want to say I was a doctor, but I think I’m allowed to say I still am a doctor, but I don’t

[00:00:34] Stephen: think you ever stopped being a doctor.

[00:00:37] It’s one of those

[00:00:37] Audrey: professionals that I want to hold on to that title a little bit, though. I don’t walk around like I didn’t put MD on my book because I thought that was, I don’t know. Ex I do. I’m a pediatric gastroenterologist.

[00:00:52] Stephen: Wow. That’s a mouthful. That’s a lot.

[00:00:53] Audrey: It’s a mouthful. It’s people will have trouble saying it.

[00:00:57] I usually say kids from here to here . But [00:01:00] people are, they’re good with that. Yeah. I

[00:01:02] Stephen: study kid farts,

[00:01:04] Audrey: yeah,

[00:01:05] Stephen: probably what the answer the kids would like, . . I’m sorry. Go on. Tell us more about you.

[00:01:10] Audrey: Yeah so that’s that’s so I stopped working in 2020 and right before the pandemic.

[00:01:16] Not that I knew it was coming. I’m, not psychic, but that happened and

[00:01:20] Stephen: just so happens your next book is a conspiracy theory book about,

[00:01:26] Audrey: bUt that gave me, a lot of time to do. This, I think I had planned to do some other things and, other hobbies. Actually, I do sing. I’m in a couple of courses because I can’t decide which one I like better.

[00:01:38] I have a pop acapella group and a more classical choral group and I like them both. And then I was planning to do, I don’t know, ballroom dancing at a long list. And then, pandemic. Said no to those things. And so that allowed me an opportunity to really focus [00:02:00] on the writing of this book, which I did obsessively and compulsively.

[00:02:07] Stephen: So doctors don’t usually leave much time for much outside of work life. It’s very hectic, busy, stressful life. But it’s also, I hear rewarding usually good pay and all that. So why would you want to stop doing that and just look into writing and make writing more a part of your life?

[00:02:30] Audrey: Oh, writing is so profitable. Don’t you think? I’m not, we’re not,

[00:02:36] Stephen: yes, it can be.

[00:02:37] Audrey: Yes. No, I’m not doing this for that reason. I would say that, it really started in 2018. So going back a couple years, I had 2018 was a bad year. For me it was it started I think with I had a case of identity theft that was like the beginning of a bad year.

[00:02:57] Oh geez, geez. I did not, you know that it happens. [00:03:00] It’s, but then I had a ski injury in Colorado. I

[00:03:05] Stephen: wasn’t really you or the other person

[00:03:08] Audrey: that’s really me. I was doing an aerial acrobatic move. Not, I’m not on purpose though. And and I broke a leg very. Very badly and I came back to New York and had to be carried up to my house by the fire department so that’s how bad it was and I And then a week later my father died and so it was like, you know like a bad series of events and then I had to write a eulogy while I was on narcotics, which was probably a good thing.

[00:03:46] And I knew my father had this experience of being, in the Holocaust and that was going to be a big part of his the story I had to tell, but I, it had been so long since he told us these stories that I really didn’t [00:04:00] remember the details. And I had to. tRy to figure out what to write and what to tell about him.

[00:04:06] And I remembered that he had written down his life story years ago, maybe 13, 15 years before. When he retired, he typed out his life memories. And it was somewhere in my attic, somewhere. I got on my ass, and I… Hall myself backwards up my attic stairs and found the dusty copy of this thing that he had typed and started to go through it and found what he needed for the eulogy and we put that away and then I was off my feet for two months and not at work.

[00:04:44] And it’s the first time in my life I had ever not worked. I’ve literally been working since I was 11. Not in the home life. I’ll go into about why I was working since I was 11. That’s another book for another time. But so then I was,[00:05:00] at home, on drugs with my leg going like this and some kind of rehab machine and not doing anything, not wanting to be idle.

[00:05:08] I’m talking to my mother who was widowed a lot and she said, Audrey, your dad really wanted his book published and the book was I don’t know if you could see, but it’s it’s a pretty big tome. Yeah. It’s like a one pound tome. And, and so I started really reading it cover to cover, and I thought, wow, this is amazing, so much detail.

[00:05:28] He remembered so much from his childhood, growing up in Germany, under a Nazi regime and I thought. Yes, this absolutely should be published, except it is absolutely unpublishable because it’s really not good. So that really, got me thinking that if I ever was to do this, I would have to really rewrite it completely from cover to cover.

[00:05:51] buT I was still working. So after a couple of months, I went back to work on crutches, which is very hard, by the way, to do a colonoscopy on crutches. I don’t recommend it [00:06:00] to anyone. But I, I think also, coming back to work again, 2018 being a bad year, my mother, a couple of months later broke her hip and so I was going to work and doing the widow mother broken hip thing and but I started to think this is maybe a time I should start thinking about, uh, maybe at some point not working, um, in medicine for the rest of my life.

[00:06:29] Starting a new chapter,

[00:06:31] Stephen: literally, right? And that’s interesting. I’ve talked to a lot of authors that they do that, but they usually stick with their main career, retire and then write. You’re obviously not completely ready to retire. I think that’s, a lot of people would probably find it difficult to leave a profession like.

[00:06:50] Medical profession to go into writing a book. Cause as we joke, it’s just so lucrative to do. Do you find, and I know working with kids, [00:07:00] that probably was mostly good days helping kids. Do you find fulfillment or are you glad to get rid of that? Stress or whatever was with the medical.

[00:07:10] I’m just curious as to your feelings on doing this and moving away from medical a bit. Yeah.

[00:07:16] Audrey: I think that I think two things, I think I, I started my career really early. I was 22 when I graduated medical school. But just a very accelerated life of rushing through everything.

[00:07:27] And so again, like never having taken a break, I felt like maybe a little bit done. And I really loved patient care. I can’t emphasize enough how much I enjoyed my patients and my interactions with families and the caring part was all positive, I think you’ll. Speaking to a lot of doctors today, they’ll tell you the more and more administrative stuff became, part of the end of day to late hours of night.

[00:07:57] And it became a little bit more than I [00:08:00] wanted, but I think more than that, I just really wanted to do other things. I always felt like I had this creative side that was untapped and that I had put away and couldn’t get to because. The work was just too consuming. That just wasn’t enough time to do, to balance it all and to do both.

[00:08:16] And so I did the opposite of what all my friends did. Their kids left the house and they went back to work. My kids left the house and I left work at the same time, which I’m a little guilty about. I was like, I’m supposed to be home with my kids and then go back to work and I did the opposite and I feel forever guilty and I hope they forgive me.

[00:08:34] Stephen: But I love that. Because I think too many people put off what they really want to do and what would be fulfilling in their life because they have this notion, this is my job. This is what I got to do. I got, you, you took that step an inspiration for many, I hope

[00:08:50] Audrey: yes.

[00:08:50] And I did it with therapy because it was such a hard decision, but no, it’s really hard. It was the idea of leaving work was. It was a painful [00:09:00] decision. There was pain in my leg and the pain in my brain. And I, it was not easy. And then I had to make sure I could afford to, which was, that was also really hard.

[00:09:10] The idea of not having a steady income was. Yeah,

[00:09:17] Stephen: I Bet I, I know a lot of people have that issue, which keeps them from doing what they want. And I understand about the a little bit about the administration stuff with in the medical world. My mother was an orthopedic nurse for 45 years and what drove her out was they Changed and upgraded the computer system and it was like broke.

[00:09:38] It was horrible. And she was like in tears and it’s just retire. You’re many

[00:09:43] Audrey: tears, many. Yes, I’m a good, I’m a good crier. So I understand.

[00:09:48] Stephen: That would, that could be your next thing. You’ll get an acting gig on some soap or something where you have to cry a lot. And

[00:09:54] Audrey: Here, I have a button somewhere that when you push it, they just come.

[00:09:58] I thought I might try it [00:10:00] today, depending what you say. Oh, it happened at

[00:10:04] Stephen: any moment. Who’s that? Who’s that? There’s that one, one interviewer that like always tries to. That gets people to cry and you always hear the actress of that. I wasn’t going to cry, but you got me to cry. No, I

[00:10:16] Audrey: don’t want to pull it off.

[00:10:19] Always. Yeah.

[00:10:20] Stephen: All so you talked a little bit about finding this book, wanting to redo this book for your dad. I want to find out a little more about what’s in the book. You said it wasn’t really publishable and you had to redo it. So walk us through reading it and what’s in there and what pushed you to keep going and then what you had to do to actually get it out into the world.

[00:10:41] Audrey: Yeah. So basically it is my father’s story about living through the Holocaust. He was born in Berlin in 1930 and he left. Germany in 1941. So he really lived through the [00:11:00] Nazi years and his escape was really is by the skin of your teeth escape. And I don’t want to give away too much about how he left, but cause that’s the exciting part, but.

[00:11:14] He is he was profoundly detailed about his life to a point that was astonishing. If I could tell you that I could draw you an architectural blueprint of his apartment in in Berlin the color of the walls, where the bathroom was. Every piece of furniture and, which was great because it was material for me that I could do something that was thoroughly believable.

[00:11:43] But if, as a reader, you would not want to say when you first walk in the apartment, there’s a foyer and then to the right is Anita’s room. And after that is the bathroom. It was written a little bit like that, which again, fabulous for me to make something completely [00:12:00] honest and true, but had to be.

[00:12:01] Written in a readable way, but the story itself of escape and survival was. Dramatic and then when he came to this country, there’s a whole other story about immigration and identity and trying to become an American and all of this in the backdrop of a very dysfunctional family, which makes it very relatable because don’t we all want to read about dysfunctional families and, some of it’s funny because I thought it sounded funny, um, because, his mother was a little crazy and erotic and his father was a bit of a pumpkin and a buffoon, I guess would be a better way to put it.

[00:12:44] And and that created a lot of errors in judgment that led to them getting stuck in Germany longer than they should have. Why did they stay? And, I, he didn’t really. Explain it. He documented it, but I don’t think [00:13:00] he really analyzed it. There wasn’t a lot of assessment, so I did the assessing for him.

[00:13:04] So what I had to try and do is which was a challenge, was keep it in his voice even though they were my words, and assess it in an an adult way that he was a little stuck, I think in the frozen, in his childhood experience. And I had to analyze the motives of the characters that was, yeah, and give it life.

[00:13:27] Does that make sense? Yeah.

[00:13:28] Stephen: Yeah, absolutely. To have the narrative there, were there parts where you wished you were able to talk to him to get more information that there was things you wanted to know to put into the book or did you? Yes. Okay. Okay.

[00:13:45] Audrey: Yeah. In some parts, I think also, I had. I think the biggest difficulty I had actually were not with him, but I think there were things that he didn’t know.

[00:13:54] I had to research a fair amount. Like he, he wrote this before the [00:14:00] internet. So he didn’t know certain things. He, there were family members that disappeared. He didn’t know what happened to them. Friends who he just. Who got left behind in Germany, he didn’t know. So I, names of family members he didn’t remember.

[00:14:15] So I did a lot of research to try to figure out who were these people, what happened to them. And of course I had access to the Holocaust Museum’s database where I was able to find out what happened to his closest friends. A lot of sad stuff that maybe it’s better that he didn’t know. Then there was a very big story about his sister and what happened to her because the family got separated and she got I guess left behind due to some visa issues and her story of what happened was really fascinating.

[00:14:47] And again, I don’t want to give it away, but I would have liked more detail, but it’s possible because he was so young that he wasn’t always told the entire story. And [00:15:00] she. Wasn’t around and I asked my cousins or her children who obviously adults now if they could shed more light on it And I don’t think she had shared more intimate details So I would have really liked to have known more so I could only share just what he wrote so yes, I Would have liked a little more but I think he did give me enough To write a detailed moving story.

[00:15:30] And and I, I just want to say that, there’s a lot of Holocaust stories out there, and I’m not saying that this one is more dramatic. My father didn’t, he wasn’t in a concentration camp and he, there’s a lot of suffering to go around and a lot of very moving stories.

[00:15:48] But I finds that, everybody, has a story. Everyone who survived it has a story that’s moving in its own way. And the story still needs to be told. [00:16:00] I think again, this story is unique in its own way. Again, because of family situation, because of how late they were in Germany.

[00:16:09] And so I hope people just, can enjoy it and enjoy the way I’ve told it.

[00:16:15] Stephen: So would you say it’s closer to a nonfiction documentary or a fiction, not action story, but drama story? Where’s the,

[00:16:27] Audrey: no, I don’t think it reads like a documentary. I always felt like it read like. More like a novel.

[00:16:33] Okay. Even though it was, I, it’s, I can’t say it’s a memoir cause I, it’s not his words exactly though. Sometimes I used his, I did, sometimes he had a really nice line and I used it directly as is, but I felt like it read more like. As if it was a novel written in the first person, I saw it in my head as a movie, like that was, okay, as I was writing it, and I was, yeah, that was [00:17:00] to me, it was a movie and it was like, I would say it was like 50%.

[00:17:05] Like some combination of Europa, Europa mixed with Portnoy’s complaint, because the later part is all the awkwardness of, coming of age and, being a young man, being in the service, there’s a lot of and a little bit of the namesake to, I’ll throw that in too, because there’s this whole first generation American identity.

[00:17:28] So a combination of those

[00:17:31] Stephen: three. Got it. So if you came across a spot that maybe needed more depth to it, more, how did you go about putting in dialogue or describing something or writing it so that it fit what was real and what was there, but made it an interesting story to read, how did you like handle that?

[00:17:52] Cause that seems like I’d be frozen. It’s I don’t want to. Miss misrepresent what he’s putting, but I also want it to be [00:18:00] interesting for people to read. And I know a lot of the movies and stuff based on true events, that the dialogue, they just. This is probably close to what they said, type of thing, how did you handle that?

[00:18:10] Audrey: So part of it was that, I knew some of the characters. I knew my father, I knew my grandmother she was alive until I was, 16 years old. And so I’m going to use the Schitt’s Creek example. You may not get the reference. I like

[00:18:26] Stephen: that show, yes.

[00:18:27] Audrey: Yeah, everybody loves Schitt’s Creek, but I think when there was an interview with, I can’t remember the actor’s name. The father who plays the father.

[00:18:35] Stephen: Yeah. I can’t remember his name off hand.

[00:18:37] Audrey: And they were talking about just creating the show. He said, the humor is not in the one liners. It’s in the characters themselves. If you have good characters, they speak for themselves.

[00:18:49] And so I think that we had the characters of my grandfather and my grandmother and my father and my aunts, they were already well [00:19:00] developed. And I think I had developed them well early on, even from going back to like, when they got married back to the old country. And so once you had that. I could embody them and I knew what they would say.

[00:19:12] I knew who they were. And so when I wrote for them, I was writing as them and I could speak for them because I already knew who they were. I knew what they would say. So I didn’t find it difficult because it’s, to me, it didn’t seem artificial.

[00:19:28] Stephen: Nice. Okay. Yeah. And I love that because that’s, fiction writers often say when they really understand their characters and get into it, that they just go and you’re just trying to keep up and write down what was said.

[00:19:42] Audrey: Exactly. They wrote themselves. I felt like they were writing when I was writing, I never, I sometimes didn’t know where I was sitting because I was, I felt like I was there in, if I was in Germany or if I was in Washington Heights, wherever I was, like I was so immersed [00:20:00] in writing that I literally, I could not tell you where I was sitting in the house.

[00:20:05] It

[00:20:05] Stephen: just, you hit that flow. Yeah,

[00:20:09] Audrey: exactly. It was total flow.

[00:20:11] Stephen: Yeah. Nice. So what type of feedback have you been getting from people who just discovered it, from maybe other people who lived through similar or had family members that lived through similar? Have you heard any feedback on that?

[00:20:24] Audrey: I have. So most of my readers so far have found it really emotional and very immersive. I think the feeling was like, they also said they feel like they’re there and they root for, I think, because I present my father as this sort of, awkward, just trying to try so hard to become once he comes here, first it’s like an eventual they get out and then it’s can he become the man he wants to be?

[00:20:53] And fit into an American society after all the tragedies that he experiences once he’s here, they’re [00:21:00] rooting for him. So that’s the feedback that I’ve gotten. And then the people I I’m publishing with Amsterdam Publishers, who’s like a large international publisher, mostly like Holocaust and World War II memoirs.

[00:21:13] And so I’m now part of a authors group. And there’s other people publishing their memoirs and again, it’s been very enlightening because Of course, now I realize there’s other people and they have their stories too, and it’s wonderful to read. And sometimes there’s similarities, uncanny similarities, and you’re like, really?

[00:21:31] Your parents were crazy too? But that’s because everybody, not really, because everybody who lived through this, everybody has a story, whether they were hiding. Plain sight, pretending to be Christian, hiding under the floor, or it’s whatever. There’s our they all have good stories.

[00:21:48] They’re worth reading. They’re interesting and dramatic. And all of us next generation, we’re all crazy as a result.

[00:21:56] Stephen: That must be, my, my [00:22:00] family didn’t go through that, but to hear that and know that growing up must be a totally different perspective on, uh, just being who you are and being in America and not having to, live through that totally different than somebody who’s. Family has been here for 200 years or something, yeah, I said

[00:22:20] Audrey: It’s an immigration story, but it’s a little unique, I think, because when my father got here, um, first of all, we were in the middle of a war and everyone was anti German and he was German.

[00:22:32] And then everybody pretty much was like, anti Jewish too. They were I don’t really want the Jewish refugees to come. So that was like a second thing. And then a lot of Eastern European Jews didn’t like German Jews because they were like, Oh, the German Jews, they’re so snobby. They think they’re so superior.

[00:22:50] So there was like, there was this, and plus he had already been through like the trauma of. The continuous loss of everything, lose your school, lose your clothes, [00:23:00] lose your friends, lose your furniture, lose your money, lose your sister, lose your family, so there’s it was very, in that respect, I think it was a little bit of a decision.

[00:23:09] Distinct immigration experience. So I think, there was a lot of trauma for him that it created a lot of things, anxiety and, behaviors that whether he passed that down in DNA or just behavior, I couldn’t tell you, but it was. It was a bit of a unique experience.

[00:23:34] Stephen: And you mentioned something about your father when he was young and coming over and all that did, was it difficult for you to write your father as a character and things that Of how he was before you were even born and what you knew of him. And, cause still you gotta have some sort of a little bit of a character arc in there, without making him like the big superhero or [00:24:00] something, you know what I’m saying?

[00:24:00] That you want to idolize your father. Was that a difficult thing for you to do?

[00:24:06] Audrey: So I think to be like as honest as I can be, like, I think my father was a difficult father because of his traumas that he experienced. And by the time I was an adult and a parent, myself, I had already You know, forgiven his, whatever difficulties that he had come to terms with that.

[00:24:30] But I don’t think that I fully sympathized with his experience until I read and understood what he had written and all the losses he experienced. I could not believe. I knew, again, the escape story. I got that. But I didn’t know how much else was in it and how deep the losses went, even after he came here, how difficult it was.

[00:24:56] So I think I developed a real sympathy for the child that [00:25:00] he was that I never really had before. And so I think I was able to imbue sympathy for the young person that I was writing about and not the adult father figure that I knew.

[00:25:15] Stephen: That would be very difficult, I feel I’d have a hard time doing that myself, so I applaud you for that, definitely.

[00:25:22] Audrey: Yeah, that’s a lot of tears. A lot of sobbing occurred.

[00:25:27] Stephen: Did your mother like the book?

[00:25:30] Audrey: Oh, yeah, my mother and my sister loved it. They… Cried buckets when they read it and then, and I was thinking, I kept thinking like, Oh, I wish my dad was around to see this get published. And then I thought, Oh my God, I could never have written this if my dad was around because he would have prevented me from writing it the way I wanted to, I, I wrote my version of events and that was not his, this is what he wanted, but that’s.

[00:25:59] That’s not [00:26:00] what, that’s not what I wanted to say.

[00:26:03] Stephen: It’s he wrote for himself. He wrote for his own reasons and you wrote to get the story out into the world and to share it with

[00:26:12] Audrey: others. I think he wrote really more as a legacy to his family. Like he really dedicated to his children and grandchildren.

[00:26:19] This is my life story. This is, chronicle of my life. And yeah, and exactly. My motive is to. It tell a story to the world that should be heard. Exactly.

[00:26:32] Stephen: So do you have any plans now for another book? That’s a big auspicious beginning what do you, what’s next? ?

[00:26:40] Audrey: Yes, I do. Actually I’m in the middle of writing another book and it’s fiction and it’s much more fun and totally different.

[00:26:47] And now I realize like how in, in a way it’s easier because I can manipulate. the characters as I want to, I don’t have to follow as, I’m like, I think nonfiction is hard. [00:27:00] Because it, again, that narrative arc, you have to, you have to have a conflict and conflict resolution and where’s your ending.

[00:27:06] And sometimes with a biography, you can’t, sometimes There is no, I, in this book, in my dad’s book, I definitely tried to create that kind of narrative arc with where I ended it and having a resolution. But I think it’s, with fiction, you can manipulate it just right. Time it just right.

[00:27:27] And so anyway, yeah, so I’m writing a book. It’s a, it’s called The Climb. It’s a, it’s an ensemble cast of people on vacation. People with bringing all their problems with them on vacation, getting together and running into some trouble and having to work together. And it’s fun, humorous, um, totally different

[00:27:53] Stephen: genre.

[00:27:55] Great. And do you have a website that people could go to if they have, want to see more about the [00:28:00] book?

[00:28:00] Audrey: Yes, it’s, audreyBurnbaumAuthor. com

[00:28:03] Stephen: Okay, we’ll put links in the show notes for that. Okay. Yeah. Let me ask, do you have any favorite books of, that you’ve read throughout your life or authors that you really like?

[00:28:15] Audrey: yEs, I do. I have it’s funny. I was thinking about this and I was thinking I have more male authors that I like than female authors. And I thought, is that bad? I do really like Jonathan Franzen. I really did like his last book, Crossroads very much. I love Philip Roth. And I love Jonathan not Jonathan. John Irving. And then I Zadie Smith is a favorite woman author of mine. And Chimamanga Adichie. I hope I didn’t mangle her name too much. And Elena Ferrante. I think those would be my… Top contemporary authors. Okay.

[00:28:58] Stephen: Nice. There in [00:29:00] Westchester, is there any bookstores that you like to go visit?

[00:29:05] Audrey: Yeah. The Village Bookstore in Pleasantville is a, which is a town away from me, is a lovely, sweet bookstore where you can get lost in and, just You know, it’s real brick and mortar, find a book, get help, buy a gift, lovely

[00:29:26] Stephen: place. Okay. All right. So we want to talk a little writing stuff about opportunities, which I have some questions on.

[00:29:33] But before we do if someone said, Hey, I heard you wrote a book, why should I get your book and read it? What would you tell them?

[00:29:40] I would

[00:29:40] Audrey: say that it’s a, this is a, it’s a character driven story and it’s a family drama and It’s a it’s a good read whether or not you want to read a story about the holocaust or not. So if you’re the kind of person who does want to read like a holocaust story or you’re a World War II buff, you’re going to like it.[00:30:00]

[00:30:00] But if you also just want to read a heartwarming story about a boy who’s living through some difficult times with his family and It’s trying to find his identity even for I would say even a YA audience might find that to be something they could relate to. So I think, a lot of people could find something in this book that they would connect

[00:30:22] Stephen: to.

[00:30:22] Nice. Okay. AUdrey, let me ask you this. You did not choose a first writing project as an easy project. You chose one that is probably very… So everything else should be easy. So what are some things you’ve learned through this process that are helping with this next book?

[00:30:43] Audrey: Yeah. I, I didn’t accomplish this entirely on my own.

[00:30:47] I had help in the sense that I. Had, friends who read for me, which was really helpful. I had a friend who’s an author, Katie Size, who [00:31:00] read my book and gave me some hints and clues, which was really helpful. I. Realized pretty early on how difficult it would be to get an agent. And so I decided instead to go to a niche publisher, which was helpful.

[00:31:14] But on the bright side of that, the rejection, not getting an agent was really helpful because I actually put the book down for a long time. And then when I came back to it, I think improved it a lot. So that was, I think, a lesson to, put it down. For a little while and then come back and look at it again, freshly with fresh eyes.

[00:31:40] And you’ll see things, you’ll see where the writing is weak and where you can prove it. And so I think that’s one important lesson, and then also that, finding landing like a niche publisher, I think to me, that was. Very helpful. It’s getting [00:32:00] it moving to make sure that it actually made it somewhere.

[00:32:03] Stephen: oKay. So you mentioned in email about talking about not missing opportunities and taking advantage of opportunities. With this one book, has there been some opportunities that you regret that you’ve missed? And the reason for possibly talking about that? Or have you, do you have some great opportunities that you’re glad you did?

[00:32:27] Audrey: Do you mean opportunities with the, with writing itself, you’re saying? Yes.

[00:32:32] Stephen: Yeah.

[00:32:32] Audrey: I’m

[00:32:35] apologizing, I really, I’m

[00:32:37] Stephen: not An Agent, which would have been an opportunity, possibly, to get in a big publisher, a big possibly, who knows what, foreign rights movies and stuff, and you didn’t do that. Do you regret not choosing An Agent? Do you wish you had?

[00:32:54] Audrey: Oh, I think I see what you’re saying. Okay I think that…

[00:32:58] I would have [00:33:00] liked to, I think I, I think an agent didn’t choose me. Let’s be clear. I did put it out. I maybe didn’t, do it as aggressively as I might have. But I’m not sure that this genre lends itself to being picked up by an agent, to be fair. It is a niche genre that may not, at this particular moment in time, have the appeal that an agent would.

[00:33:34] Really be interested in. Just to be completely fair, this is, not necessarily, Holocaust literature, not necessarily what people are really interested right now,

[00:33:46] Stephen: flying off the shelf for every day.

[00:33:49] Audrey: Exactly. So I think like I recognize that after, a couple of go arounds with seeking out agents.

[00:33:56] And I. So I, but I didn’t give up, [00:34:00] I wasn’t gonna give up and I did not want to self publish I, I could have, I certainly would be a way to go, but I, that wasn’t the route that I wanted to take. I Didn’t think that it would be easy to get noticed and, and I didn’t want it to be a vanity project either, so I I was looking still for real representation.

[00:34:22] So I think I found, I found a good publisher, a legitimate publisher, and, I feel, represented.

[00:34:29] Stephen: Are there any other things that may be coming up that you’re going to do to help promote the book that you wanted to make sure and take advantage of either setting up somewhere or some conference or something going on?

[00:34:42] Is there anything besides podcasts? I

[00:34:46] Audrey: am, I’m, right now I’m. I’m working with so social media, the marketing part of this is all, brand new for me. I’m not, I was never really on social media before. So I now do have an Instagram and I do have Facebook. And so I’m working on [00:35:00] that.

[00:35:00] I do have something coming up in January that I’m very excited about, even though January is always away, but the book isn’t. Officially launching till October. It’s available for pre order September 15th, and then it’s it’s going to be available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble in on October 23rd and January there’s a, the Reagan library Reagan presidential library in California has been doing a program, really beautiful program on outfits. And, but it’s not just outfits. It is a Holocaust related program. And I’ve been invited to speak there in early January and speak about the book, which is, an amazing opportunity because ultimately.

[00:35:44] Besides the book. And again, I’m not doing this because I think I’m going to become rich from this book, but the idea is really to get the story out and to tell my dad’s story. And and so that to me is a marvelous opportunity. And as you can see, I like [00:36:00] to speak, so I will. Do it more. And that’s, so that’s my, to me a big opportunity.

[00:36:07] Otherwise, I’m going to probably be doing be setting up, uh, talks and temples, continuing education programs, and, neighborhood things. I have not set that up yet because I don’t physically have the book.

[00:36:20] Stephen: And I love about doing that talk because that’s a perfect venue to be, everyone listening to the talk is interested in the topic.

[00:36:31] And I think that’s something a lot of authors don’t think far enough and wide enough that I, if there’s a writer’s conference in the area, I see a lot of authors setting up at a table to sell their crime fiction or their fantasy. And I’m like, That doesn’t make sense to me because everybody at this conference is a writer with their own book.

[00:36:52] They’re not looking to buy a book to read, and I, I think there’s opportunities out there for [00:37:00] people to do things outside of just. Book and library related things. So I love that you’re going out to do this talk and you’re doing things with the local community. Have you looked at other Jewish events or other synagogues or anything out there that you could go work with and talk with or anything like that?

[00:37:20] Audrey: I’m planning to approach, it’s a little early yet still, but I’m planning to approach the the New York version of the Holocaust Museum. It’s called the Jewish, it has a different name, but it’s so I think I’m going to do museums and then all of the, there’s plenty in Westchester, plenty of local synagogues.

[00:37:40] And there’s also a lot of groups that are children of Holocaust survivors, like smaller groups that I’m. Planning to approach. So all the in person stuff I’m planning to do for the fall and set up. So I haven’t done it yet, but it is. Next on my list of things to do.

[00:37:58] Stephen: Nice. I like [00:38:00] that thinking outside the box.

[00:38:03] Are you using the same writer name for this book as your next book, or are you separating those?

[00:38:10] Audrey: No, it’s gonna

[00:38:11] Stephen: be the same name. Okay. Have you Do you have any thoughts or concerns about someone who picks up a book about the Holocaust and then they look at your next book and it’s like completely different fiction any concerns about people going, Hey, this is not what I wanted.

[00:38:27] Now I do.

[00:38:28] Audrey: Oh I I had. No, I’m just, I, again, I’m not in this as, for me, I’m in this not to there, I know there are some writers and they’re very targeted in terms of, this is my audience and this is who I’m marketing for. And this is exactly the type of literature I’m doing.

[00:38:49] I’m right, from the heart and. I’m going to write what I want to write that could be another memoir in the future. It [00:39:00] could be, so I, it’s maybe that’s not a good business approach, but it’s for me, the goal was not, um, yeah, I’m, I’m a later in life.

[00:39:15] Right in, in, and I maybe don’t have the, this is one project, I’m putting this away, I’m starting the next project, and. We’ll market it accordingly.

[00:39:27] Stephen: The other thing I’ve seen and think about too is you’re not so much worried about selling two different products. It’s more about you that you’re the brand, you’re the product almost, you know, if someone.

[00:39:41] I am the brand. Exactly. If somebody does like the first book. And they like the writing. Even if your next book’s fiction, it has nothing to do with the Holocaust or anything like that. They may say, you know what, she got this story out. I love what she did and I’m going to stick with her. I [00:40:00] like that.

[00:40:00] And it’s a different approach than like you said, a lot of authors get really focused. Oh yeah. I write in three genres of three different pen names. I got three different websites and that’s a lot to do. So I’m just I actually love that, you’re, this is me, this is what I write.

[00:40:17] Audrey: Thank you for being so supportive, Steven.

[00:40:19] Stephen: Yeah, and

[00:40:20] I’d love to definitely check it out after the next book and see what the feedback read that first book, this is different, but I love it. That type of thing, because I think that’s a, a. A way of marketing and getting out there that a lot of authors avoid cause we’ve been told to, but I don’t think that’s completely right.

[00:40:43] I think you’ve got a good angle actually.

[00:40:46] Audrey: No, I think, listen I, the truth is, I think that really good authors can spend quite a few years on a. On a novel and write very different books. And that’s, I think, to their [00:41:00] credit. And I think you know who those authors are. But also this book was a commitment I made to do something, in homage to my father, which I did.

[00:41:12] And now that I know that I can write and I can finish a book. And now I’ve got the bug and I really enjoy writing, it’s a great pleasure that now I move forward and now I’m going to do the kinds of stories that I want to tell and they will be different.

[00:41:27] Stephen: And that’s beautiful.

[00:41:28] I love that. All right. Audrey, I appreciate everything today. I think that book sounds wonderful. I agree. I think the world needs some more of those, even though there are plenty of things happening that take people’s attention and something that was a hundred years ago may seem like eh, it’s old news.

[00:41:48] It’s still something that we shouldn’t forget that affected people and people’s lives. To this day. So I love that you did that. Do you have any advice for anyone else that is [00:42:00] in a similar situation where they have a parent or a grandparent that has a story to tell and they might want to write a book and get that story out?

[00:42:08] Do you have any advice for them?

[00:42:11] Audrey: Yeah, I think it’s don’t hesitate to start putting it on paper, just start writing, don’t critique yourself till you have it down, excuse me, from start to finish, and then edit it and edit it but find, even if it’s somebody else’s story, I think you still have to find your own voice as a writer, um, you’re still telling it, and I think that’s the, probably the biggest challenge is in finding your own writer’s voice and knowing if you have one.

[00:42:45] Because yeah, because people still have to be able to, feel, they have to still feel it for it to be. To feel the emotion of the story. You can’t just, again, it’s a show not [00:43:00] tell.

[00:43:01] Stephen: They have to connect to it. Yeah. Very much. Great. Audrey, thank you for being on today. It’s been great talking to you.

[00:43:08] I wish you lots of luck not only with the book, but with your talk in January. I hope that goes very well for you.

[00:43:15] Audrey: Thank you. Thank you. I’m very excited. Thank you so much for having me, Stephen. Thank you.

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OverviewAshley Earley grew up in Georgia, where she spent most of her time running wild in the woods of her backyard, building forts to create her own fantasy worlds, obsessing over books, and experimenting with her writing.

Today, she lives in Colorado with her dog and still spends her time devouring any book she can get her hands on, writing, and editing for her clients at Earley Editing, LLC. In May of 2021, she graduated with distinction from University of Colorado Boulder, receiving a B.A. in English with an emphasis in Creative Writing. She also enjoys snowboarding, exploring, annoying her dog, constantly eating chocolate, and sharing her writing adventures on Instagram.

Her Thriller/Suspense short story, Chasing Hair of Gold, won first place in the 2016 Writer’s Digest Popular Fiction Awards.

As a writer, she leans into fantasy or horror due to her love of all things creepy. As an editor, she loves a little bit of everything when it comes to fiction. Give her that steamy, forbidden romance, give her vampires, or even that young lovey-dovey stuff with all the twists and turns!

BookWebsitehttps://www.ashleyearley.com/

Favoriteshttps://www.tatteredcover.com/

YouTubeColorado, Discovered Wordsmiths, fiction, georgia, mind architecture, skull of hearts, thrillerTranscriptStephen: Today on Discovered Wordsmiths, I have Ashley to welcome. Ashley, how are you doing? I’m good, how are you? I’m doing good. Before we get started, we’re going to talk about your book, Heart of Skulls. Before we do that tell us a little bit about yourself, where you live, what you like to do and some things, hobbies and stuff outside of writing.

Ashley: Okay. So I originally grew up in Georgia, but I live in Colorado now. I ended up moving out here for college and never went back or leave the mountains. So

Stephen: do you ski now?

Ashley: I snowboard, so I’m like,

Stephen: the cooler person. Okay, cool. Got it.

Ashley: Yeah, so I do snowboard when I’m not writing. I love reading. I have little coffee reading dates with my friends.

I have a dog that I go hiking with quite often. Yeah, and then I run my own business, so I do that a lot of the time as well. So

Stephen: pretty busy. Your own business related to writing or something separate? Kind

Ashley: of related to writing. I write, I book edit. So I run my own book editing business with a couple other editors on

Stephen: my team.

You ever argue and yell at yourself about what should or shouldn’t be in a book?

Ashley: I do when it comes to my own books where I’m like, yeah, this works. This doesn’t work. Oh my gosh, I’m a terrible writer. Like the typical stuff.

Stephen: All right. What’d you go to school for when you went to Colorado, if I may ask?

Oh,

Ashley: I majored in English with an emphasis in creative writing.

Stephen: So do you feel that has helped you with your writing career now? Or is it like it was nice, but not so much.

Ashley: It was nice, but not so much. It did help with my editing career because I got to critique people in person and kind of fall in love with critiquing content.

So that’s. That’s what I do now. So I’m a developmental editor who focuses on the content of someone’s book and how it flows and all that good stuff. So it helped me with that and got me passionate about critiquing people. But otherwise for writing definitely not. I would say that they don’t really teach you like the writing techniques people should be aware of.

Stephen: Interesting. See, okay. And I ask that my own personal passions I feel we focus with younger kids in school way too much on spelling and grammar when they have no reference to what that is used for and where I feel we should work on just having kids tell stories and learn about how to tell a story and what makes a good story because once you write a bunch more, the spelling and grammar makes sense and falls into place.

And I’m sorry, but The kids that are going to struggle and not get the writing and not get the grammar and just have a hard time with it are not going to be any better by starting earlier and pushing it all through school. But they might become interested in telling stories and want to work at it a little harder, or it might make more sense and be easier.

I just think we should do that more for younger kids.

Ashley: I think that’s very true. So with being a developmental editor, one of the things that I emphasize. Two things that I emphasize a lot is the show don’t tell technique and then story structure. A lot of people don’t know like the story beats and how a story is supposed to evolve.

So that’s one thing that I’m always like teaching people. And I’m like, I know that this editorial letter is like 20 pages, but let’s listen for a second. I promise this

Stephen: will help you. You know what? I have a really good idea. We should talk about that later. How’s that for a good idea? I like it. Yeah.

No, spoiler alert. That is what we are going to talk about later. And I totally agree with you that we’re all, we’re jumping off topic. We’ll get back to your book. I promise.

Ashley: I’m passionate about this. I can talk about this all day.

Stephen: My first story. Like many, I had no clue, and I just started writing and I meandered.

It had a plot, had some good stuff. I didn’t understand what wasn’t good. I didn’t know why, that is. So then when I finally sent it to an editor and came back and it was like, it literally was 19 pages of red ink of notes and extra stuff she put in and I looked at them and at first I was like.

Oh, man, I’m horrible and put it away. Then I said look, if I want to do this I didn’t go to school. So this is how I’m going to learn. I need to learn what they said. And I ended up understanding in a green and I ripped out literally 35, 000 out of 70, 000 words from the book, because I was like, The I totally get it because these are the chapters that I like, let me just do this cause I don’t know what else to write and I’ll just throw this in there, but they made no sense.

They didn’t, progress the plot. They didn’t help the characters. It was just I only have 40, 000 words. Let me write something. So I get another 5, 000 and it, and I understood that. Yeah the, and the whole beat thing and all that. This goes back to what I said a minute ago. It took me so long to understand that because I was trying to learn it.

It was much, much better when I wrote. And then I replied it to what I wrote and I’m like, Oh, I get it now. I see that. So now it comes up. So again, it goes back to my whole thinking. Why are we so focused on spelling and grammar for kids? They are never sorry. Hate to tell teachers this hate to inform parents of this.

The kids that are in third and fourth grade now are never going to spell their whole life because it’s always going to be done for them. They’re not going to have to worry about spelling on anything. Ever. That’s just going to be a reality. I’m sorry. I would

Ashley: say okay we can teach spelling, but grammar is one of those things that even I have to reference.

Like grammar books to make sure I’m using a comma correctly. Yes. I’ve never been able to like grasp how many rules there are when it comes to

Stephen: commas, like that. You can’t memorize them all. And when you’re being creative, you’re thinking of the story, not the comma, and that brings you out of the flow.

And also, need to addendum there. When I say they’re never going to have to spell, I’m not saying we shouldn’t teach it to them. I’m just saying it shouldn’t be such a major focus. It should be a little more cause they need to learn to spell because if they can’t even get close, they do, but you still got to get close and there are definite reasons to learn spelling.

But I think. The focus is so much on spelling and because we can quantify what they’ve learned. Whereas when you learn to write a story and it’s creative, you can’t put numbers on that and quantify it because my horror story, everybody may say it sucks except the horror people. They may love it. And so am I go get an F or an A on it?

Depends on my teacher that year, so I understand why spelling is focused on. It’s just not actually as helpful. to the kids later. And again, if you write stories and you learn to write the spelling will come without even trying, that’s my

Ashley: thought. Yeah, no, I definitely agree with that.

Cause that’s how I started writing stories when I was 14. As a 14 year old, I don’t know how to spell restaurant. That’s one of those things where I got close and then autocorrect helped me. And then I was like, okay, like eventually I’ll remember how to spell.

Stephen: And I being a tech guy, loving most of the tech and working with it.

I would totally encourage parents, homeschool parents, teachers to make the kids learn using a dictionary and I know they do, but, I come across as everything they’re learning should go away because tech will do it all, but it’s not, I really think kids should learn to use a dictionary.

I think they should still go back and learn to use a card catalog. So they understand the Dewey decimal system a little bit. And then they also understand alphabetizing a little bit,

Ashley: yes. Oh my gosh. So no, I was actually homeschooled up until college, my whole life. And my mom literally was like, no, you’re not allowed to use the internet.

Here’s a thesaurus. And here, like we had a literal like collection of thesaurus. And so my mom gave us dictionaries as well. And she was like, go off. That’s it. We would play. If we played Scrabble, we had to use the dictionary. We weren’t allowed to Google anything. So those things were like, you had we had to do that

Stephen: kind of stuff.

That’s pretty cool. Let me ask you this. You, I don’t know how much you learned about what public schools were like or what the curriculum was. Do you have any insights onto what your curriculum was like and what was good and bad about it compared to what public school is? And that’s a pretty deep, intense question.

I understand

Ashley: that is. I would like the one thing that I know that was like really weird that I found out way later growing up that I was a little upset about was that with being homeschooled, my mom had us go through the entire textbook of any for any subject we had. And then I find out later, I’m like.

Wait, these kids are literally like their teachers pick and choose what they get to learn from the subject every year. I was like, yeah, here’s a textbook. That’s 2, 000 pages or something. You can

Stephen: go through that entire thing within the year. You better get working. Yeah. So I was like, ugh.

The reason I asked because I’ve. I’ve gotten, I’ve been trying to learn more and more about homeschooling because when the COVID hit and I was starting to write my books I said, you know what, there’s a lot of parents out there that need help with this and I can’t help with math or science. I could, but that’s not my brand, my focus.

If I can help with story, which leads to spelling and grammar and help them in writing aspects. So I’ve done that a little bit. And what made me think of it was because my kids. The school they went to was a STEM alternative type school and they did a project where they were learning about the Suez Canal and they had to do a project that they would make a model that would lift a toy boat.

So they were also applying the physics about, distribution of the water in the thing and how to, how it lifts the boat up and what volume of water do you need to lift this size of boat and that, and so they did this. project that encompassed that, but then they also included art with it because they couldn’t just, a shoe box or something.

They had to make this nice model and how to make the model. So it was encompassing multiple aspects of learning. And I thought, wow, that they probably learned more about the Suez Canal than reading two or three pages in a history book. Yeah, doing that. And the same with the table of elements. They had a group that they only had to learn two elements, but they had to learn who discovered it.

When was it discovered? How did they discover it? What were the science experiments that helped them, say this is an element and all that. So they really had a deep dive on it. And then they, All had to report. And I’m like, you know what? They may not remember the whole table of elements, but they know they can look it up.

They may have heard of the other elements, but those two, they know forever. They will know that down cold. And it’s probably better than me. I learned all the table elements and I sure couldn’t tell you much beyond hydrogen and oxygen and,

Ashley: Ask chemistry. I’m not a science person.

Stephen: Okay. We just really, drove off the deep end there, but I think that’s cool.

I love the conversations like that. Yeah. It’s just

Ashley: a conversation, no pressure,

Stephen: you get me going. I get passionate about the education stuff with kids because I think teachers. My solution to all of our problems is, and it’s going to take 20 years to fix it. That’s the thing. I have a solution that’ll fix everything in the next 20 years.

We take what the politicians are getting paid from all the donations or whatever. We give that to the teachers and what the teachers get paid. We pay our politicians because you’re only going to get politicians that really want to do it. So there’ll be passionate about it. And you’ll get teachers that have been like, I am making so much money.

I am going to be the best teacher ever. And those kids getting taught. We’ll figure out how to solve everything when they’re 20 years old. All right, we’re going to get back to show. Don’t tell and actually talk about your book a little bit. I enjoyed the conversation. I hope it, you don’t feel like, Oh my God, shut up.

All so Ashley, your book is called heart of skulls. Which I assume is a nice comedy romance, right?

Ashley: Oh, absolutely. Totally not gory. There’s no blood, like not even a spill. Like

Stephen: that’s it. None whatsoever. Great. Can’t wait to hear about it. So tell us about your book. So

Ashley: Heart of Skulls is a suspense horror novel about the evolution of a serial killer.

So definitely gory, definitely bloody. There’s a romance in there, but nothing crazy. He’s definitely propelled by his love for his girlfriend. But the reason for that is because I wanted to answer this question that I’ve always had, like watching documentaries about like Ted Bundy or other, murderers that are like maintaining this normal life.

And then they go home, have this, have a girlfriend, have a wife, have children. They have this normal seeming life, but they’re getting away with murder on the side. So I wanted to answer that question of like, how are they doing this? And. Have this normal life. Like how can you juggle both of them?

So that’s how heart of skulls was born I just played around with a bunch of true crime documentaries tried to answer that question nature versus nurture kind of deal

Stephen: Nice. Okay So what’d you discover? What were the? things you may have found out or felt by the end of the project,

Ashley: it was an interesting project.

I’d never written horror. The end of the book was something that I had turned in for one of my college classes and it developed into a bigger thing. But with like nature versus nurture, definitely both is what I discovered with at least my main character, Scott, I think that’s a theme for some like actual.

Serial killers and true crime and all of that. I think it’s a little bit of both, but with how does a killer maintain a normal life? I just manipulation. It’s a whole lot of, all right, I’m juggling this and this at the same time. And I’m, I’m having my cake and eating it too. Like

Stephen: so did you do, they always say even the villains.

Make somebody feel some sympathy towards them to understand and, really get into the character. Did you do that? And how did you do that? I

Ashley: think you feel that in the beginning, but the further you go into Heart of Skulls, the deeper you get into his mind and how he’s thinking and rationalizes and is this is what I’m doing and this is why the crazier he sounds.

So I don’t think that the sympathy is so much there anymore. At least I tried to kill it off because I didn’t want anyone to… Sympathize too much with him. Cause I’m like, okay, yeah, he had this rough upbringing. It’s, it’s explains it, but it doesn’t excuse it,

Stephen: okay. And I ask so just FYI, I live within about a half hour or so of where Jeffrey Dahmer grew up, his hometown.

So just, we’ve never wanted to go visit. There’s not a big tourist attraction. Yeah, I would imagine

Ashley: not. At least I hope it’s

Stephen: not. I’m sure it might be for some, but so there are two movies you made me think of. One is called Behind the Mask, The Rise of Leslie Vernon. It is like a college documentary of a serial killer.

And it’s, you should watch it. I think you might enjoy it. Yeah, for sure. It’s, it’s… Not quite poking fun at the whole slasher genre, but it’s not like a serious documentary, obviously it’s got an interesting a mix in there. I think you’d enjoy it. The other one, and I warn you, you may want to skip this one, but it totally made me think of some, it’s called martyrs.

And there is an American remake that kind of sucked. So if you look it up, do not watch the later American remake. I think it was like 2008 or whatever. Go for the early original. Okay. It is, but I’m warning you and anybody else listening, I’m not recommending you watch this. Okay. Because. It is the most disturbing movie I’ve ever seen in my life, but I bring it up because there’s a lot of bad disturbing stuff going on.

But at one point I, me and my buddy do a podcast and we were talking about the movie on the podcast. Okay. And I said, Is it bad and wrong of me that I like empathize with these people that are doing all of this? And he said, Oh my God, I’m glad you said that. Cause I felt the same way. And I’m like that’s some good storytelling to make you feel bad for the bad guys, yeah, you should look those up. I think you’d enjoy them. But again, Martyrs is disturbing. Just so you know, I’ll go in hesitantly. Yes. Yeah. The original it’s just, it’s I don’t know what else to say about it. It’s one of the most disturbing things I’ve ever seen in my life.

Ashley: That’s interesting that you bring up like empathizing with the bad guy because with the Netflix show for Dahmer, I, that’s how I felt and I’m like, no, like he does all of this stuff way late, like later yeah, okay.

I could feel bad for his younger self and understand how he got to this point, but I don’t want to feel bad for him.

Stephen: You almost feel bad for feeling good or, empathizing with them. That’s a, that’s hard to get across when you’re doing something like that. Yeah, but I

Ashley: think everyone will take like heart of skulls a little differently.

I’ve had some reviews come back and they’re like, Oh, I sent by myself sympathizing with. The main character over and over again. And I was like, okay, so like this person’s a little more like sensitive. Got it. I think everyone will take something away, like in a different way, but

Stephen: That’s great with horror because everybody likes different.

Horror is one of the probably broadest genres out there really, because there’s so many things you can do with horror and when you get something good like that, that you get different people responding to different parts of it, I think you’ve done a pretty darn good job then. Ooh. Okay.

Then. Yay. So people are enjoying the book overall.

Ashley: Yes. That was surprise. As an author, you put something out there and you’re like, this is going to get terrible reviews. Like you’re like preparing yourself for the worst. And then. With reviews coming in, I’m like, Oh, okay. I didn’t do too bad.

Stephen: Nice. Okay, good. And I’m assuming with horror that this is just a standalone, not part of a series?

Ashley: I’m thinking that it’s going to be a standalone. If I write something that kind of hints to Heart of Skulls, it’s going to be able to stand on its own as well, because I do have another idea, but we’ll see.

Stephen: Okay. Are you working on another book now? I’m

Ashley: not, because I’ve been so busy with my editing clients and then promoting Heart of Skulls, and I’m like, okay, I need to take a break, but I do have a writing retreat planned in March, so at that point I’ll have no choice but to write.

Stephen: Okay, alright, and while you’re that far ahead planned, I can barely plan what I’m doing tomorrow.

Ashley: My critique partner and I just had an idea because I’m gonna go to Georgia. I’m gonna go back home to visit for a little bit. And she was like, okay we’ve been talking about doing a writing retreat for like years. Let’s just go camping and. Block out the world, sit down and actually do what we’re supposed to be doing.

Okay.

Stephen: Nice. I like that. Do you have a website that people could go to, to check out your everything about you?

Ashley: Yeah. So it’s actually early. com, but it’s. My last name is spelled a little weird, so we have an extra E in there, but it’s A S H L E Y and then E A R L E Y dot com. I don’t know how we got the extra E, but it’s there.

Stephen: My daughter can empathize with you because her name’s Megan, but it’s M A E G A N. And, nobody knows how to spell it,

Ashley: at least she doesn’t accidentally spell early the wrong way. Cause I’ll be writing and then I’m like, I add the extra E and I’m like, oops, hope my editor doesn’t think I’m stupid.

Sometimes it just I’m on autopilot,

Stephen: yeah. No, that’s what autocorrect’s for. So Ashley, let me ask you some of your favorite books and authors.

Ashley: Ooh, okay. I love Sarah Dreamos, so my favorite series of her is the A Court of Thorns and Roses. I’m actually, funny enough, I’m reading A Court of Silver Flames right now and I have it on my desk.

Stephen: That is a big

Ashley: book. Yes, it is. I’m reading that right now, just started. And then, I love Frankenstein. I was actually just talking to someone about how many times I’ve read that book. And Dracula is also one of my favorites, so I would say those. I do love Jane Eyre as well. Like one of my favorite classics.

Stephen: Nice. Yeah. Back and forth. So for you, is Frankenstein horror or science fiction? It’s both for sure. I would agree with that. Yeah. Yeah. And so here’s a little I guess brag and I’m not gonna say it’s a humble brag. It’s just, so Bram Stoker, who wrote Dracula, his great grandnephew, Dacre, has been in charge of the estate, and he does talks and stuff about Bram’s book, Dracula, and some of the cutting edge forensics and stuff that’s in the book from the time and all that, but they’ve written two co A prequel and a sequel to the book that Dacre has been involved with the release, but then he also did like this Kickstarter and this is probably the, but you’re too late for it.

And I apologize for telling you about it now, but he found a guy that creates. Authentic originals and they did an authentic original of Dracula with the same looking cover. But this guy goes so far as to get the same paper, he sources the same paper and uses it in there. And they got the same cover that looks worn.

It looks like it’s been for, and I missed the Kickstarter, but I had been talking to Dacre and somebody was like, really, this is taking too long. I want my money back. Which if that’s not how Kickstarter works. And he said, would you be interested in the book if you give him the money and he shuts up?

So I am getting a copy of the UK original edition and it even has. I’m sorry. I can’t wait to it

because it’s in the same like mustard yellow cover, but the guy used and he even has a dust that he puts in it. So it smells like it’s been sitting on a bookshelf for a hundred years. That old dusty smell. Oh gosh. I know. I’m so excited. You

Ashley: should be. I would be fortunate. Freaking out.

Stephen: All right.

I’ll put your name down as a note to remind myself when I get it I’ll send you some pictures. Please do. It’s going to be a while yet still, but I was very excited that I could be a part of it.

Ashley: Yeah. That’s amazing. That’s I

Stephen: keep going off on tangents. You’re great to talk to. We,

Ashley: yeah, I know I’m such a, I’m such a nerd. Like I, I just can’t help it. Like I literally took a. Horror and gothic novel class in, when I was in college. So I had to read Mary Shelley for that and Dracula. So I’ve had to read Frankenstein about five times in my life and then Dracula only once, but it was so impactful that I finished the book before anyone else in the class.

I was

Stephen: in it. Yeah. Now I remember reading it and thinking, wow, this is almost a romance with vampires. And

Ashley: it’s crazy. And it’s so ahead of its time with how provocative it is and how just like inappropriate is for the times with all of the vampires and everything and how You know, we’ve got the Mary Sue in there, but then we also have all of these other characters that are just acting crazy for their time.

Yeah. Very inappropriate and not

Stephen: ladylike. So I don’t know how much history of it you’ve delved into, but the sequel to it. Dacre helped write with JD Barker and I so happened to know somebody who was friends with JD Barker. So I’ve been in a couple of conferences talking to him and stuff, not just me.

It was a group. And he said when they were researching to write the sequel, they actually went to the same monastery and library and found the same books that Brom had been researching and he had written notes in the margins. And so they. And there was like 100 page first couple chapters that the editor had them completely cut out that got added into the prequel in a way.

So yeah, you should look up Dacre Stoker and see if he’s doing a talk sometime that you could attend, you’d probably. Love it. But all these

Ashley: things, books. Now I need those. I didn’t know

Stephen: about that

reading

Ashley: list because of you.

Stephen: That happens to me all the time. I’m talking to the author that I’m like, hold on, wait a minute. Let me write that down. And I’m like, I don’t need any more books on my list. I’ve got a stack. I’m never

Ashley: going to finish my collection. it before I die and I just keep adding more I’m like, okay, I guess I’ll just leave it for my children.

Stephen: I’m trying to learn to read faster, but that’s not working so well. All that was books. Do you have any favorite bookstores that you like to go visit in the area?

Ashley: Bookstores. So in Colorado, we have Tattered Cover, which is like a, it’s a, an indie bookstore, so there’s no, it’s not a brand or whatever.

They have three that I know of where, around the area that I live in, and all the bookshelves are different, all of the chairs in there are different, and the atmosphere is just so homey. And it’s literally smells like books. So they have old ones in there too. So I’ll go there and I’ll just toodle around and do whatever and sit down in one of their chairs and read for, I don’t even know how long.

So that’s one of my favorite places to go to.

Stephen: Nice. Okay. And FYI, Kevin J. Anderson, sci fi writer he lives in Colorado. Oh,

Ashley: okay. So funny enough, I know my parents had a neighbor who was writing like thriller books, but I never got the chance to meet him before he moved.

Stephen: Nice. Okay. So we want to talk a little bit about Show Don’t Tell, do some author stuff.

But one last thing for anyone listening that likes horror, which I love getting horror authors on, I don’t get it very often and I end up talking about all sorts of stuff because it’s my favorite genre of movies and books. But if somebody is listening and they’re like that doesn’t sound too bad.

If they were walking down the street and ran into you and they said, Hey, I heard you wrote a book. Why should I get your book and read it? What would you tell them? That’s a

Ashley: good question. I would say that if you were someone that was, even if you didn’t read or watch True Crime, I should say, it’s more than just about the serial killer.

It’s about the relationship that the main character has with Natalie as well. So that’s why I say that there’s a romance, and that’s what propels him to do what he does, because Scott does end up killing women that look similar to his girlfriend because he doesn’t want to kill her, but he does.

So there are a lot of layers, I would say, when it comes to Heart of Skull. So you’re not just reading a horror, gory novel. You’re definitely also getting the other side of things where it’s a real life type of situation as

Stephen: well. And I love that. The best horror isn’t all horror and horrific.

And that’s what also makes Dracula so great. It’s not every scene with fighting a vampire. There is so much humanity and development of the characters into there. Oh, and they really expand on that in the sequel and prequel. Just so you know. I have to

Ashley: check it out. But I think that’s one of the great things about horror is that we really tap into Humanity.

And we bring that to the forefront and we’re, we try to make it so convincing that yes, this could definitely happen in real life, even if we have a terrible monster, you can take that monster and think about it in a different way. Like maybe it represents an internal struggle or something like that.

Like we really. Poor writers really tap into that kind of thing to really freak out readers.

Stephen: Got it. That’s a good thing. That’s what they want. Yes. So let me ask you, Ashley, you went to school creative writing and you’ve written your book, you’re working as an editor and working on more books, hopefully.

So what are some things you’ve learned in that whole process that you’re doing different now than you did at the beginning, maybe things that. You thought were the right way to do it, but discovered that’s not the best way. So

Ashley: talking about, whether the schooling was worth it for writing, they never taught show.

The show don’t tell technique was never grasped by anyone in our class. We had no idea what we were doing and I didn’t fully grasp what show don’t tell meant until I started my editing company and started getting certifications and I learned more in my certification than I did in my classes. Full honesty, it was actually really upsetting.

So I’m like, Oh my gosh, I paid like this much money for this certification. And then I paid this much money for a college degree and it was useless in no way. So I would say if you want, if you’re okay with me delving into my little show, don’t

Stephen: tell please go.

Ashley: So show don’t tell I’m sure as is something that’s like.

Overshared, like it’s something that’s overemphasized with people where they’re like, Oh, you should be showing and not telling da,

Stephen: da, nobody tells you what that means. No one tells you what it means.

Ashley: So as an editor, I have to walk clients through what exactly that technique involves and what you should be doing.

There’s a great emotion, the source book that’s out there. Good book. 10 bucks on Amazon, highly recommend it to every client I have because I even keep it on my desk when I’m writing or editing if I’m like trying to make suggestions to my clients. But for an example of telling, and I have a whole written thing here this is telling and it’s once upon a time there was a castle and a dragon and even a tasty looking hawk, very choppy, very to the point not the greatest opening, right?

Or, even if it’s in the middle of a book. But this is an example of showing. Smoke blew from the dragon’s nostrils, talons digging into the stone as it scaled down the side of the castle. With the beast’s mouth agape, it extended its neck to engulf the tasty hawk. We’re usually showing without even realizing it most of the time.

When we’re going into… more descriptive detail about what’s happening on the page. It’s more immersive for readers in that way than if you were saying, once upon a time dah, and listed out a bunch of things. You really want to grasp reader’s attention and make them. Stay hooked to the page, but there are instances where telling is okay.

And that’s where people come in and say, Oh, it’s overdone. Da. No, while you shouldn’t say, he was angry. You should show it in a different way. He balled his hands into fists or he clenched his teeth, something like that, build off of that to continue showing there are. Like, this is an instance where telling is okay, and it’s like an outside perspective where the guards cast wary glances her way.

That’s like the main character seeing the guards and being like, okay, like they’re looking at me in this particular way, like she’s analyzing what’s happening and it’s a bit telling, but there is an instance where it’s okay to directly include that emotion without being like he was angry. So that’s where that technique being like, Oh, it’s overused.

Like it’s overdone. Da. It’s not, we accidentally do it. All the time when we’re trying to make readers stay hooked to keep turning those

Stephen: pages. Yeah, and it is such a tough thing until it clicks and you really get it. And what helped me was I go to a lot of author fairs and when I was just starting writing, I wasn’t trying to be a part of them.

I was just visiting and I buy books from lots of different people and I bought these. Books from this guy, one of the first guys I ever ran into that was indie. So I’m like, okay, I’m gonna buy some of your books. And he had a book of short stories and I like short stories. So I said, okay. But it was more like a little kid telling a synopsis of a story.

It was in your instance, like the dragon got angry and blew fire and killed the knight. That’s not an interesting, great story, but it is a story. It’s just, what can you do to make it better? And that’s what actually helped me click. With Show, Don’t Tell is, Oh, I see it now. Let me describe the dragon tensing up and the heat of the air.

And

Ashley: why was that dragon angry to begin with?

Stephen: No. Yeah. So reading something bad. Really helped me understand better. So I actually, and this is something I don’t know, maybe good or bad. I made that into an exercise for myself. I would take some of my favorite books and find a nice passage that analyzing it, looking at them like, wow, this really is a great writing.

And I would take it and transform it into the most boring writing. I could taking out all the show, taking out all the description and making it. As boring as I could. And that actually reverse engineer process helped me understand what they’re doing better. And then I would try things like how would this have been written a hundred years ago?

How would it be written if it was science fiction instead of a romance or whatever? And that little exercise. Yeah, it helped me a lot because like you said, show don’t tell is so hard to grasp when people just tell you, Oh, show don’t tell, what, what elaborates. Yes. Yeah.

Ashley: One of those, or it’s okay, if you’re telling me what it is, like telling me to do it, tell me how to do

Stephen: it.

Yes, exactly. Yeah. You work with your clients on this. When you get something, do you have, what are some of the things you do have them do to get better at the show showing instead of telling or understanding it, is there any techniques or anything you use with your clients? Kind

Ashley: of do in my editorial letters, I usually like outline what show don’t tell is and the different ways it can be used.

But if I’m directly like in the document and I see he was angry, what I’ll do is I’ll take that sentence and I’ll be like, okay, like this is telling, and I’m going to show several examples of how you can show it. So then they can directly see in their book. Okay. This is what I wrote. And this is what. I’m being suggested to do, and they don’t have to take that suggestion of he balled his hands into fists or anything like that.

There’s so many ways to show different emotions. It’s just to help them grasp how they can do it and how they can implement it to their main character or a side character that they’re trying to, put focus on and stuff like that. So that’s where I am like, okay, directly in there showing them how they can do it.

Stephen: Nice. So they get a real life example of their own writing, which goes back to what I said would help be better for kids. See, it all tied together. Yeah, exactly. One of the other things I discovered along with show don’t tell that fits very well. So Stephen King says, rip out all the adverbs, adverbs paved the way to hell or something like that.

That

Ashley: type of quote. I also tell all my clients

Stephen: that one. Yeah. So what I realized thinking of that and reading King was. A lot of his show don’t tell is because he’s trying to get that same adverb without saying the adverb. So a lot of his description, a lot of his emotion and what’s going on in a scene is because he doesn’t want to say tiredly or shallowly or, something like that.

Ashley: Their shoulders were drooping and they just looked a little sad. Their eye, they could barely keep their eyes open. There’s so many ways. I love it.

Stephen: And he definitely for whatever you may love or hate about Stephen King. He definitely reading his stuff can, especially some of the early to mid stuff is a real master class in drawing people into the book, and that’s, in support of what we’ve talked about, if you don’t know how to spell and you don’t know grammar, we can fix that.

We can help you. You can get better, but if you can’t draw people in your story, the rest of it’s irrelevant. They got a. Really feel a part of your story to enjoy it in some way, cause Lee Child with Jack Reacher does not draw me into it the same way Stephen King does. I don’t feel a part of the world so much as I’m like, interested and just engaged with, Oh my gosh, what’s happening next?

Totally different styles.

Ashley: Yeah that’s. That’s what I try to emphasize. I’m like, okay what are you looking to get out of readers? What is your goal? What do you want them to feel? What do you want them to take away from your story? That’s such a big thing that you need to think about that.

Not a lot of us really sit down and think about when we’re writing a story, it’s usually like what comes later, and we got to actually sit with it and think about it. That’s where I come in and I’m like, okay, you should start thinking about this, how to market and get your book out there, get it.

scene, get people interested. And then, what’s the first thing that people judge when they go to into a bookstore, the book cover, second thing, the synopsis, but they’re going to open up to that first page, read the first line, the first paragraph, maybe even the first chapter before they decide whether or not they’re going to buy

Stephen: it.

Yeah. And if they’re not engaged, which that’s a whole nother discussion, because I personally have not enjoyed critique groups, especially as I’ve written a few things myself, because. Critique groups don’t seem to help me get better. And most people get so focused on that first chapter that, yeah, you may draw somebody in, but then you get a bad review because the rest of it sucked.

There wasn’t enough and critique groups. Oh, you’ll appreciate this. So the one critique group I go to, there are two gentlemen who are very. Alpha predominant in the group. And they are thriller writers, both of them. Some new guy got up there and he’s writing a horror story. And it was several pages before you understood that this main character that we had been following around was actually a ghost.

And you didn’t get that at first. And they said, Oh, that should be like in the first paragraph, first page, you need that. And I said, You guys do not understand horror whatsoever. I says that will totally destroy the mood of the horror book. That will make no horror readers want to read. And they argued with me and I’m like,

Ashley: it’s a great twist to reveal later on.

And then that’s like that moment where it goes. Okay. I want to find out why this person is a ghost. How did they get here? What are they doing here? There’s so many questions to answer.

Stephen: And I, I argued with them. I’m like, it is not a thriller story. Horrors have a different arc and and I, that’s important.

I think for people to understand that you need to understand your genre and what makes it great. You wouldn’t have a romance where they don’t kiss. But I can name a lot of thriller books where nobody kisses, so if the romance writers are, reading a thriller, they’re like where’s the kissing, yeah.

Ashley: One of my favorite things that I found while I was writing Heart of Skulls was I found a beat sheet, like the save the cat beat sheet dedicated to horror. And I, that helped me out so much, even though it was like more dedicated for. Like a horror story with a monster. You can still take that and switch the monster with an internal struggle.

And it still has the same beats. It still follows the same flow. It’s it’s just, it was so great. And it was so useful. I actually, I think I posted that to my blog somewhere. So if anyone’s listening, I want to go check that out. It’s somewhere on my website.

Stephen: Got it. We’ll put a link up to your website.

And I would argue with that. The Save the Cat is another thing I didn’t quite understand. The Hero’s Journey I didn’t quite understand. Cam Weiland does a lot of podcast and writing. And her is just a little different. Similar to both of those. I said, okay everyone says I got to use hero’s journey or save the cat.

And it’ll be a good book. I’m trying to like cram all these scenes into this structure, but I’m not understanding the structure. So again, once I’d written a little more. I started to see it and without even realizing it, I wrote something. I’m like, ah, that doesn’t fit there. I need to move it. And this is better here.

And I’m like, now I get it. There’s save the cat right there. And I didn’t even realize it. Yeah. You gotta get some writing under you. Yeah. And

Ashley: not just even using save the cat, using similar resources where it’s okay. You, some people just need like that different explanation of even if they read save the cat, maybe it doesn’t click, but they read the same thing from someone else that explains it a little differently.

And that’s what makes it click. Like you need multiple resources for those types of things before it’s like you have your

Stephen: aha moment. You absolutely agree. And Doing it hands on, Cam Weiland has that whole database of the movies and books and it says, here’s the pinch point in the first conflict and all that.

I went and read tons of those and I’m like, okay. Now I still don’t get it, when I actually took a movie I had watched and tried to apply the beats to it, then I had to do it myself, I had to have enough knowledge to know what the end result was supposed to be, but I had to sit down and do it myself and going back to the show.

Don’t tell that you got to do it yourself. You can read All the books you want, I’ve read Stephen King’s book a hundred times and all these other articles and podcasts and everything else on show don’t tell, but until I was able to look at my writing and say, yeah, I can expand that and get the reader more drawn into it is when I understood it.

Yeah, that’s,

Ashley: that’s, it’s like a hands on kind of deal you can read as many craft books as you want, you have to have that sit down moment with your own writing and be like, okay, how can I make this better? You have to be able to admit that to yourself before you

Stephen: keep going. Yeah, and too many writers…

that have been doing it maybe a couple of weeks, a couple of months, they want to know what craft book should I read? What more book? I’ve got these 50 of them and what more should I get? And how do we publish and how we do this? And I know I’m not super experienced, but I’m like, what are you writing? I’ve been working on the same thing for five years.

Oh no. You need to go write like 10 other things before you even worry about reading a craft book before you worry about the publishing. And unfortunately I don’t have enough. Chutzpah to say, I really know what I’m talking about, but that’s what I’ve discovered for myself that I try and pass on.

No,

Ashley: I agree. Like I’m very selective with the books that I recommend my clients where I’m like, okay, here’s a list of three. When you read these and you feel a little confused, I’ll have more for you. Come back.

Stephen: Yeah. Take it slow. You’re way better off to just sit down and write another short story to write another book and put it aside.

And then worrying about. Editing it once again and revising it once again and reading another craft book, you know i’ve seen people at these critique groups that read a craft book and then they bring their stuff back and it’s You didn’t apply anything you read Yeah, it’s great that you read it, but that means you have to like to apply it.

And I’m guilty just like a lot of people. It’s, Oh, Hey, I got 300 books on my shelf, but I have story genius right here on my desk. And I haven’t got that one. This is

Ashley: one I usually recommend to people story genius by Lisa Krohn. Cause it’s one of those where you worry about it when you’re done with that draft and then you go in and try to apply.

The things that are in this book, but it’s not like something you worry about while you’re writing.

Stephen: I would recommend to anybody listening to find, like you said, a couple, three or less craft books, ones that speak to you that someone recommended. And read in detail and apply it. Don’t read to get done with it.

Read a little bit, highlight it, read it in depth, and then go and apply it to your writing right then and there. Whatever it is that you’re learning, apply it and then go read more. You’ll get way more out of reading one book in depth like that than you will buying the 300th book on your shelf.

Ashley: For sure.

I totally agree.

Stephen: All right, so we’ve been chatting quite a while and I’ve been batting. Babbling quite a bit. I hope everybody got something out of the your show. Don’t tell, because I think our tangents, my brain works sometimes, especially like you said, when you start getting passionate about it, it’s like, ah, oh, Hey, I see your heart of skulls right there in the background.

Oh yes.

Ashley: And I also have the save the cat outline for heart of skulls.

Stephen: Beautiful. Did you print that out yourself? Cause that’s looks like 11 by 17 or something. Yes, I did.

Ashley: Yeah, it’s just a printout for the cover because I got it and I wanted to be able to see it every day once I had it. And I haven’t taken it down.

Stephen: I will say a lot of people use Word and I think more authors I talked to use Word, but I found Word hard to use when I really wanted to. Have the flexibility to move things and I can much more easy, easily visualize save the cat, the hero’s journey, the beats in the cork board on Scrivener than I ever could on Word.

Ashley: Yes, I love Scrivener. I will, I refuse, I edit in Word because I have no choice. I need like track changes, the comments and all that, but Scrivener is what I use to write. I will not use anything else. It’s.

Stephen: It’s my go to and people say, Oh, it’s just so confusing and so hard. And I’m like, really, do you use all the functions of word or did you just open it and start typing?

Ashley: Word is complicated. I still can’t even grasp everything that it can do. I’m just like, these are the specific things that I know how to do. And then that’s it. But that’s another tangent. I’m

Stephen: sorry. Yeah, exactly. So we’ll have to have you back on and we’ll just call it the tangent show. And we’ll talk about all the things we didn’t talk about today.

That sounds like there’s probably a lot.

Ashley: I’m there for it. Let’s do it.

Stephen: So March, you’re going to be on your own writer’s retreat. We’ll make a note, get back in touch with me and we’ll find out how that writer’s retreat went and see what new things you’ve learned that we can talk.

Ashley: Yes. I’m totally down.

We’ll do it. Great.

Stephen: All right. Ashley, it’s been great talking to you. I’ve had a lot of fun. I wish you a lot of luck on Heart of Skulls. I love horror.

Ashley: Thank you so much. And thank you for having me on. It was truly a

Stephen: pleasure. Yeah, great.

View Details

OverviewColin is Irish and used tales of his homeland to create his horror novel, Country Roads.

When Luke Sheridan moves out of Dublin city to rural Kilcross with his wife and baby, he imagines the worst part will be his extended commute to work. They can look forward to enjoying the countryside and being part of a small community. After all, his old friend Declan Maguire lives in the house next door and is a Garda in the nearest town.

But Declan’s devilish attitude towards drink, drugs and women means trouble is never far from his door. And worse, gruesome murders and the appearance of sinister figures at night mean the countryside is becoming a very dangerous place to live.

Country Roads —don’t go outside alone.

BookFavoritesWebsitehttps://colinleonard.com

YouTubehttps://youtu.be/0cmZn4vZ8bITranscriptStephen: today on discover wordsmiths, I have Colin Leonard, how are you doing today, sir?

Colin: I’m great. Thanks very much.

Stephen: Oh,

Colin: please. No. I’m my book was just released yesterday and we had a launch party the day before. So I’m this is a timely interview as well. I’m all about the book at the

Stephen: moment. Nice. Awesome. All right. So launch party, congrats. Was it fun?

Colin: Yeah, no, it was great.

It was Bridgescape Press, my publisher organized this and we had a good few people online and yeah, just had a great time and nice chat about folk horror.

Stephen: Nice. And that’s the book Country Roads, which we’re going to talk about in a few minutes. But before we get to the book, tell us a little bit about yourself where you live and some of the things you like to do besides writing.

Colin: So I live in County Mead in Ireland in a little rural, it’s not even a village, it’s a little tiny cottage with a scrap of land that keeps me busy when I’m not writing, repairing the house and trying to keep the field from growing too wild apart from that, I have a young family. So the rest of my time is taken up with.

Their activities, which they are big into sports and music. So we get to bring them here and there, watch their matches and watch their performances. So that’s Yeah, it’s a lovely age that they are at the moment. What do they play? Two of them play piano, one plays violin and they play soccer and cricket as

Stephen: well.

Wow, nice. Yeah I had piano lessons when I was young and still play music. So it’s a great thing for kids. Yeah, definitely approve.

Colin: Yeah, no, it is. It is fantastic to do it.

Stephen: So let me ask with a family and everything, why did you want to start writing and why’d you want to write horror?

Colin: I’ve always been writing on and off.

From when I was a kid, I was always encouraged by my parents and my school teachers my, we were made aware. All the time that my grandfather was a poet, he had stuff published in the national newspapers. So he was a farmer in the truck driver as well, but he took the time to write poetry. Then leading into secondary school, I continued writing genre type stuff and entering it into competitions, some of which I won and got into the school magazine and that kind of thing. But life takes you in different places. Even though i did english literature in college i didn’t end up working in that i did different things travel different places but once my life became more settled and i got a bit older i became more focused on trying to get published and concentrating on.

Learning my craft a bit more and given a bit more time to writing.

Stephen: Nice. Nice. Okay. So your book is called country roads. And it’s full core. Tell us a little bit about the book. So

Colin: it’s as you say, it’s called country roads and it’s set in Rural ireland in somewhere similar to where I live and where I grew up.

It’s about a guy called luke sheridan who moves to Displaced from the city with his wife and his baby, and he does that kind of at the behest of his old college buddy Declan McGuire, who’s a local Garda but it just so happens around this time, there’s a series of brutal murders in the area, and, but it’s coming from a supernatural element.

There are some horrible Creatures from Irish folklore that are creeping back into our domain. I

Stephen: love that. And I love my, my son has a book with Irish ghost stories. He picked up when he was over there. And I’m imagining that you don’t read this book to your kids. Oh, it’s set right here by us.

And it’s got monsters. Let’s read it for bed. No,

Colin: I did get a congratulations from one of my daughters. And she said, I can’t wait till I’m old enough to read it.

Stephen: And then it’ll be on you, kid, not me. So yeah, you remember that field you were in? Let me tell you about the monster I wrote about in that video.

Your wife will love you. You’ll be on the couch forever. And

Colin: all this was true

Stephen: based on true events. So why did you choose a horror genre to write specifically?

Colin: Ireland. Is very kind of spooky. I think there is does the weight of religion and that kind of gothic Catholicism around and then there’s that mixed in with the the sense of folklore and myth, things like the banshee and all that.

So that was always around me. And then I grew up watching. Things like critters and gremlins and the omen and all that. So as well, I think so much more writing than that than gets labeled horror is horror. I see horror as nearly anything that’s a bit off that’s in a minor key. The kind of music that appeals to me.

TV shows and all that, that mightn’t just be labeled horror, but I think they have a horror element. If you think of things like musically radio heads, the pixies, all that, just a little bit off.

Stephen: And I agree, especially for movies, music is huge, but horror is just so broad that you can have multiple.

Types of stories within horror and it’s easy to get horror elements in lots of other types of stories. If you’re not straight horror too that’s a benefit.

Colin: Yeah, exactly. And even there’s so many different types, whether it’s slasher or ghost stories or, but yeah, no, apart from that, I just like.

Giving myself a good fright.

Stephen: And I like that you used elements from Ireland because Ireland’s got a great history of supernatural folk stories and things. You’ve got a lot to draw on from the country.

Colin: Yeah, absolutely. I try and base most of my work in Ireland, just apart from right.

What, I just I feel there’s so much here to explore. In that

Stephen: spooky sense. Agreed. Agreed. What type of feedback are you getting from readers other than your kids?

Colin: No, everyone seems to like it so far. Of the ones that I’m reading, I’m not going to read the bad ones. But They’re focusing a lot on the fact that it’s a small town horror, with unlikable characters and A creep, creepy imagery and it’s funny, I wouldn’t have described it as small town horror so much because our small towns over here are much smaller than American small towns but it does have that sense of a community and how they.

Clash against each other and how, so I’ve based a lot of things on warring characters against each other as much as against the evil elements in the story.

Stephen: Nice. If you were given a choice between movie or TV show, what would you rather turn this into? I

Colin: would see this more as a TV show to tell you the truth.

And it’s because it’s multi P O V and I first envisioned it as episodic. Okay. I see it like those little miniseries from Nordic countries or the uk things like Kala or Requiem. That kind of low budget, grainy, acted, but spooky vibe to it.

So I’d say as a TV series more

Stephen: I love that you described it as grainy. That, that feel of that. That’s. That’s a great description. I know Netflix uses tags and that’s a great tag that they should put on some horror. Yeah, it fits very well so you mentioned multi point of view that’s a lot of times harder to pull off Why did you choose the right multi point of view instead of focusing on one character through the whole book?

Colin: Yeah, I that was just the way I envisioned it and as well I would have been reading a lot of stuff that was, that’s the kind of thing that was appealing to me at the same time. So all the different characters popped into my head and I just didn’t want to stick with one. I wanted to to pop in and out of the others.

And also some of the characters whose POV you’re in. Die. So I wanted to have the reader a little bit on edge that he’s not quite, they’re not quite sure whether the head that they’re in is going to be attached to the body by the end of the chapter.

Stephen: And it does help bring people in closer to the characters.

Like you said, that slasher feel almost where you. You empathize with each character and then they start getting knocked off. Who’s next? Oh man, don’t let so and so be next. As long as it’s not, Hey, he killed my favorite character. I can throw the book aside. I’m done with that. So Colin, do you have a website that people could go to and check out your book?

Colin: I do indeed. I’m at Colleen Leonard dot com and that’s C O L Y. L e o n a r d dot com. Why,

Stephen: Collie

Colin: Colin Leonard. com was taken up a long time ago by other people. I was wondering, do you remember when we had to get invited to get a Gmail address? I’m of that vintage. So Colin Leonard was gone, but Collie Leonard was still there.

And since then, everyone started calling me Collie as well.

Stephen: Okay. I love that. So do you have any plans for the next book?

Colin: I’ve written a few I’ve written a couple of novellas that I’m polishing up and I have completed another novel and I’m hoping to start sending that out soon once I complete edits on it.

It’s this one’s really tight single point of view. Just to go completely the other way. And it’s it’s set in a city as opposed to the countryside. Okay.

Stephen: But it’s still horror. It’s

Colin: still, Oh yeah, absolutely. It’s still horror.

Stephen: I love horror. It’s my favorite genre myself. I sometimes don’t read enough of it anymore, but it is my favorite.

So let me ask you a couple of questions about. Where you live in that. So growing up or as an adult, what are some of your favorite books and authors that you’ve read?

Colin: So at the moment, my, who I’m really into is Nathan Ballingrude. I think he’s just amazing. He did became deceived TV series, monster land, North American lake monsters.

Is his collection of short stories and it’s mind blowing. I think he’s the best writer working in the genre at the moment. Apart from that, there’s another, an English writer called Tom Fletcher, who has a story called which bottle or a novel called which bottle, and it’s very much in that folk horror vein as well.

And I’ve read some of his other stuff and he just writes exactly the sort of thing i’m into I would read outside of horror as well. People like emily sanjohn mandel, Who did station 11? I don’t know. I know that. Yeah. Yeah, and jg ballard was always a Someone I’ve been really into.

Yeah, there’s tons and tons,

Stephen: but most of the writers are readers and have good lists of books to read. Yeah. Do you have a favorite bookstore? Close to you that you like to go to,

Colin: I don’t have any bookstores close to me. Then depending on how you define close, there’s there’s one about an hour away called academy books in draw that I like to browse in and they support local

Stephen: Okay, nice. I like to put links and maps. So if people are going to the website and go into any of these locations where we’re mentioning books, they’ve got a bookstore to look up and go to and support which I totally push people support bookstores, go to bookstores on vacation. So we’re going to talk a little bit of author stuff, but before we do if somebody stopped you on the street and said, Hey, Colin Hey, Colin, I hear you wrote a book, why should I get your book and read it?

What would you tell them?

Colin: I would say, if you want to read something that’s set in a creepy Irish setting, with a feel of wrongness creeping into the contemporary society from ancient evil, then give this one a go.

Stephen: Ancient evil, I love that. That’s one thing. We talked a little bit about folk horror and the rich history of some of the creatures from Ireland.

We don’t quite have as much of that because, the conquerors came and took over America 200 some years ago, wiped everybody else out. So we don’t have that long history behind us with the monsters so much. We’ve got newer ones and we’ve usurped things like Bigfoot, There’s a long history with Native Americans, with Sasquatch and Bigfoot.

You have to really dig. It’s not part of our culture anymore, which I think is a shame. Other countries like Ireland, you do get that as part of your mythology and culture. We don’t have it quite so much, unfortunately.

Colin: Exactly. And we a lot of that stuff is passed down. True generations my grandparents would have told us spooky stories and pass them down.

And there’s really good work. I think being done here as well by the folklore commission where over the years, they’ve collected handwritten accounts and oral accounts from older generations about little myths and local legends and all that kind of stuff. Some of which can be quite

gory.

Stephen: Yes. Yeah. And I think that’s great. I love that. I actually do a horror movie review podcast with a friend and we’ve watched movies from all over the world. And there, there’s some really great ones from, Ireland, Scotland, other parts of England Turkey and, various other places.

And I love seeing some of the. The difference in how different countries perceive the horror and supernatural.

Colin: Yeah, no, exactly. There’s there’s a bunch of good Irish horror out at the moment. There’s a movie called you are not my mother, which is based on the changeling myth as well, which is very scary.

If you haven’t seen

Stephen: that. No, I know the myth. I haven’t seen the movie.

Colin: Yeah, no, it’s very grim. That movie really captures a certain essence of urban Ireland

Stephen: as well. So nice. I’ll have to look that one up. We did watch Grabbers, which was set in Ireland. You know that one?

Colin: I do. Yeah. And that’s, it’s funny. Some of Irish horror as well.

Does have that comic element or that absurd element to it as well. I think we go two ways. We either go nasty and absurd or sad and grim.

Stephen: Yeah that one cracked me up. Obviously I’m not Irish at all. I’ve not been to Ireland. But you got that stereotype. Americans have stereotypes different countries.

Everybody has a stereotype of people from our countries. So what are you going to do if you have aliens invading Ireland? You find out that they are basically allergic to alcohol. And they can’t suck your blood, so let’s all get drunk at the pub. And it was just, that premise was hilarious to me.

Colin: Yeah, exactly.

Stephen: No, it’s very good. Okay. So there’s the book. Let’s talk a little author stuff. You mentioned What, before we get to that, what are some things that you’ve learned in your writing from when you first started to now that you’re doing different or that have changed?

Colin: One thing is I know a lot of people say, write every day.

You don’t have to write every day, but Write as many days as you can. No one’s going to discover you if you don’t put in the work. And there was a podcast I used to listen to called the bestseller experiment, and they were very inspirational where they would talk about just doing a 200 words a day challenge.

So even if it’s just 20 minutes, you can grab here or there just to Keep you writing fish as it were because sometimes I would have gone months and months without putting pen to paper and on that same topic I I discovered ways to be able to write all the time So whereas before I might have needed to be in a particular setting sitting down with a laptop or whatever I’ve learned to write on the run whether it be in Car parks or snatched moments of any day.

Stephen: Okay. And do, what do you use to write? Do you use like word or Scrivener? Do you have any other tools that you really like?

Colin: I use, I will do a lot of stuff in the Google verse. So I use Google docs on a tablet is how I wrote most of my first drafts. And Use a note taking app if I’m doing stuff really on the fly.

Stephen: Okay. All right. So you mentioned for our discussion for authors about opportunities. So what type of opportunities are you talking about?

Colin: I’m talking about, as I said, no one’s going to Discover you or come along and find you the way a soccer player might get spotted by a talent scout. So you have to go out and look for opportunities.

And what I mean by that is, and what I did later in life is studying. The kind of writers that you’d like to be like the kind of stuff that interests you, the presses that publish the books you’re interested in. And then if you look for the open calls, they have the anthologies they put together.

And if you try and, learn how to format things properly to submit all that sort of stuff the things to the, around the sides of writing that you have to learn if you want to give yourself the best opportunity of being published.

Stephen: And I think a lot of authors still get into this not, they’re new, they’ve never written and they get into it thinking, oh.

I’ll write a book and everyone will love it and I publish it and I’ll make a ton of money and put my day job and I think in the back of the mind, a lot of authors still think and feel that way, though I don’t think it’s ever really been that way. And but then there. almost ashamed to, stand on the soapbox and say, Hey, take a look at my book.

And the opposite or the connected part of that is the opposite. The same type of wrongness is the people that stand on their soapbox everywhere and say, Hey, look at me, read my book. It’s Hey, this is a NASCAR convention. Nobody cares about your horror book. You know what I’m saying?

There’s a lot of opportunities, but just Shouting to the wind everywhere. Doesn’t necessarily provide you opportunity.

Colin: Exactly. Yeah. You have to focus. And like I over the last few years, I really tried to find out as much as possible about the kind of people who are putting out the stuff I like to write.

And cause if you don’t like to write it, what’s the point? And. Just going for things there’s often low, I had a mentorship as well that I applied for about getting your book published and that was quite local. But if you, if I wasn’t looking for that and applying for that, then, that taught me how to improve my cover letter and my pitch and all that sort of stuff.

So there’s more to it than just sitting down and writing you to give yourself the best chance possible. You have to do that bit of research and that’s interesting as well. It’s really interesting to listen to podcasts like the one you’re doing here and. One’s on craft and one’s by other publishers just to find out what’s going on.

Stephen: And talking with other authors and sometimes, authors, it’s funny, the same author that will get on Facebook and blast every single group they’re in with, Hey, read my book. are afraid to go and set up a table at the library for an author event. They don’t want to do it in person, but they want to do it anonymously behind.

But with the way things are really, if people see you and shake your hand and talk to you, that’s how they get to know you, especially in a local community. I know a couple authors that they will. They do one of those like on a Friday night different bands come in and set up and, they call it rock the lock cause it’s an old locking lock system for moving barges.

And so they, they do rock concerts on Friday night throughout the summer. And I know an author who sets up a table cause you can rent tables and set up for your business and people get to see your face and get to know you. You may not sell a lot but it’s the community getting to know you. And that’s.

A big thing for authors, just getting people to know you and see your face.

Colin: Exactly. And you learn so much from that and even things like beta reading for other authors and helping out that way. Yes. It’s invaluable to improving your own craft.

Stephen: Have you done gotten involved with maybe an open call or some other opportunity that maybe you were hesitant, but turned out really well and you were surprised.

Anything like that you’ve done?

Colin: Oh yeah. Though I submit to lots of anthologies and I’ve been lucky enough to get into a few, the horror library series by dark moon books. i’m in seven and eight which was just released now and if you don’t Give it a go. You’re never going to you’re never going to succeed.

I used to back when covid was on and we were all sitting around I used to There was a flash fiction competition for a publisher in the uk And I was determined They had a competition every two weeks and I was determined I was going to get selected by it. So I wrote on the team every couple of weeks, never got in.

But each of those stories became the kernel of something else. And three or four of them got published in other venues since then.

Stephen: Nice. Yeah. So sometimes you just gotta… Keep trying, take the plunge. I know people get discouraged. They had this writing contest and I entered and I didn’t get chosen.

Okay. But you understand like 2, 500 people entered that and you entered it one time that there could be a ton of reasons. It may not have been your writing. It may just have been somebody else had something that just caught the fancy of the judges and nailed it. Or maybe you, what you wrote was good, but.

It was very similar to something that won the week before. So they’re doing, so you gotta just keep doing it and over and try multiple,

Colin: yeah. Like the numbers for until open calls and competitions are phenomenal, but. The more of them as I say, that’s why you have to keep looking at and whether it’s true social media or listening to podcasts you’ll find out more places to submit The more you do that, the more you learn and the more, the better you’ll get as

Stephen: well.

Agreed. All right. Colin, I appreciate you coming on today, chatting with me. Before we go, do you have any last minute advice for new authors?

Colin: No, just that keep writing keep reading as well. And Read widely

Stephen: agreed If you’re in a horror author read some romance and learn some things from it, right?

Exactly. Yeah All right. Thank you for being on call. It was great meeting you. I wish you luck.

Colin: Thanks so much you too. Thank you Stephen

View Details

OverviewSaph Dodd has been writing for as long as she’s known how. Since she first picked up a pencil and learned to string sentences together, she’s been creating fantastic and intriguing stories.

This twenty-six-year-old writer adores reading, especially action-adventure, fantasy, and horror stories, as well as lore and mythology.

Her first novel, published when she was sixteen, spurred her to continue to do what she loves. Writing is her passion.

She lives in a small Tennessee town with her family: a younger sister, Jennifer, a constant source of inspiration, and supportive parents.

Bookhttps://www.jumpmasterpress.com/product-page/sovereign-fourth

FavoritesYouTubehttps://youtu.be/CYSX-gHrdJATranscriptStephen: Today on Discovered Wordsmith, I have Saf Dodd. Saf, how are you doing today? I’m doing really well. How about you? I’m, I’m doing good. I’m not as pink as you are today.

Saph: Yeah. Pink is, it’s a takeover in here.

Stephen: Got it. Okay. So we know you like pink. Before we talk about your book, tell us about some other things about you, what you like to do outside of writing.

Saph: Well, shocker. I like to read. Okay. Mostly action, adventure, fantasy or horror, but I also I also do makeup. I’m a full time beauty specialist.

So like I, I do makeup looks a lot and I

Stephen: cause, Oh, nice. What’s your cosplay characters,

Saph: Ladybug from miraculous ladybug, Marinette from miraculous ladybug sailor moon, Alice from Alice in Wonderland, both versions and Cinderella. And a couple of characters from Bluey. That’s what I’ve got in my roster right now.

Stephen: Oh, nice! My daughter loves Miraculous Ladybug. Oh, yes, I love it. I actually know that one a little bit.

Saph: I actually got to meet the voice actress of Ladybug at Huntsville Pop Culture Expo when I was there to sign books.

Stephen: Oh, nice! Yeah, that’s always fun to do. There’s been a lot more of those in recent years.

I think it’s a good change in the culture that there’s so much of this available. So tell us where do you live? And if there’s anything really cool about where you live. Well,

Saph: I live in Nashville, so it’s Nashville, Tennessee. To music city, I guess, like, I’ve lived here all my life and it doesn’t seem like it’s that cool.

But, like, I guess, like, everybody moves here to get big and country

Stephen: music. I can relate. I live near Cleveland, the rock and roll capital. I’ve only been to the 1 time. So, yeah. Nice. All right. So why did you wanna start writing, and then what made you wanna write this book? Okay, so

Saph: I have literally been writing for as long as I know how, I knew how I started at a very early age, just writing stories down in notebooks and stuff because I, I, and I, I would excuse me.

I would try to, I would tell stories to my mom before I knew how to write. And then, like, when I learned to write, I was like, this is so cool. Now I can put my ideas down. And, you know, there wasn’t much structure to it because I was a really young, but it’s built, it’s built into something more of a, more of like a craft that I do.

And I, I started writing because, like, I felt it in me. I knew that I needed to, like, I was always destined to write. And this particular novel was really hard for me because I wrote it to eat, like, because I wrote it to get through my grief over losing someone very close to me. That’s why the main core themes in Sovereign Fourth are lost in grief.

So I wrote that to help me kind of move on and cope. It’s dedicated to my uncle.

Stephen: That’s a that’s a coping mechanism. That’s a way recommended is writing your feelings, writing things down and channeling that into a story is, I guess you could look at it as taking the bad thing and putting it into something good.

Yeah.

Saph: And then it became my debut album. I

Stephen: know a lot of people do. Nice, nice. I do like that you have been telling stories since you were young. That’s one of the things I’ve been working on talking to parents about is, you know, our kids should tell stories. Our kids should learn to tell stories more so at the beginning than spelling or grammar because that will come and that’s exactly what you’ve done.

You’ve told stories and now you’re writing stories and now you’ve written a book.

Saph: I’ve always had an insane imagination.

Stephen: Describe insane imagination. I love that description. What do you mean by insane imagination? I

Saph: am so full of ideas, like to the brim. I’m always like, I work on, I’m working on 2 projects right now, mainly, but I also have 3 other side projects, you know, like. I’ve always got something if I get bored with one thing, I can move to the other and then I’m still being

Stephen: productive.

Nice. Great. All right, so we’re going to talk about your book Sovereign Fourth. Tell us a little bit about it as much as you want to give away. Okay. Well,

Saph: It is about dragons and dragon riders. And it’s set in a kingdom, or an empire rather and reminiscent of ancient China and ancient Japan.

So a lot of the culture is far eastern. They, they were kimonos and, you know, Juntos, stuff like that, like the traditional rare Han Fus. And so I did a lot of research, a lot of research so that I could build this world properly. And I didn’t want the regular, like, the usual medieval kingdom setting for dragons.

I wanted something different and I figured that this hadn’t been done before. So, as far as I knew, it hadn’t been done before. So it was like, well, you know, I could do it this way. And it’s, it’s like. A lot of the themes are grief and floss, of course, but then there’s also a lot of action, a lot of adventure.

And there’s found family. You know, some people really like that genre. But, yeah, it’s, it was like, that’s I don’t I don’t know how else to say about it. I’m sorry.

Stephen: I’ve never been interviewed before. So did you do any, that’s fine. Did you do any research into what types of dragons there are in Chinese mythology as opposed to.

Saph: I did, I did, and I decided to stick with your typical picture picture of dragons because I wanted them to have wings. And dragons, like, in ancient China did not have wings. They were serpent, like, and there are dragons in the universe that I write that are like that. There are different species of dragons.

It’s just the most common 1 is the 1 that has 4 legs and 2 weeks.

Stephen: I got it. So you kind of made it your own. Yeah. Okay. And so the. You said it’s got dragons. It’s medieval. What’s the basic story? Is it someone trying to take over a kingdom or what’s going on in the story? Okay.

Saph: So it starts with 10 month, the main character, and she’s a little girl and she witnesses the death of her mother.

And then. Like for her entire life her dragon has been watching her from afar. She does not know she’s a dragon rider But her dragon Artemis has watched her grow up because dragons and dragon riders cannot be super separate or they will feel it and it’ll be very upsetting and very distressful for them.

So, you know, Tenma’s father agreed to let Artemis stay in the woods outside of their house so that he could watch Tenma. And one night, there’s a fire, and Tenma’s sister Mira and her father Miros appear to have not made it. Tenma run, like, she sees somebody in the house while she’s trying to get to her father’s room, so she runs back upstairs and it ends up, she gets thrown out of a window, and that’s how Her dragon was able to save her.

Now she is the sovereign, which is the conduit to the God of lightnings, the conduit to the God of lightning. And she was chosen at birth and her father wanted to keep her from that. So he would, he didn’t allow any of that to be part of her life. And then, but when he passed away, she was brought to the Capitol where the court wizard Lasan.

Is going to train her to like, harness the power of hero, learn magic, and some sword fighting. So she becomes the court wizard’s apprentice. There are really, like, I love my cast of characters, but I’m a little biased. There’s a Lynx demon who is my favorite. They’re called Sabellans, and Sabellans used to be animals that are demons that turned into humans.

And so he has cat ears and a cat tail and he’s 1 of my favorites to write about. He’s very snarky, very smart alecky, very, you know, aloof into and then they’re my 2nd favorite character is Katania. She is a seer and she, like, there’s, she’s part of the elite guard and so she’s like a rank above 10 month, but she’s always been like, a mother figure to 10 months since she came there.

And this book is about her learning how to harness this power and also losing a lot of people that she loves. You know, there’s a lot of, I wouldn’t say I’m James R or George RR Martin levels, but I do, I don’t shy away from character death because I feel, but I always want to make it mean something.

I don’t just kill characters because I want to, I want to make it mean something, their death that can progress

Stephen: the story further. Okay, and. So this seems a very deep book. It’s not, is it, is it like YA or what genre level would you put it at? Like, I,

Saph: I don’t want to say YA because I know that there are like 13 year olds that are included in YA.

Like, a lot, like, it does touch on some troubling subjects, like human trafficking and stuff like that. So, there’s nothing explicit in it, but I think it’s more for an audience of 16 to 27 year olds, you know. Is more of my target audience. And I’m not sure what that’s called, but that’s,

Stephen: well, I think there’s a, there’s the new adult genre, but that a lot of time is drama, not fantasy.

I, I have a problem with some of our designations. Cause like YA is more of a demographic, not a genre, you know, there’s horror in YA, there’s romance in YA, you know? So it’s, so this is like why YA or new adult fantasy is what it sounds like. That sounds

Saph: cool. Yeah,

Stephen: it’s that’s something to check

Saph: out.

Yeah, for sure. But like,

Stephen: I’m sorry. We got a bit of a lag. I apologize. Go ahead and finish what you were saying.

Saph: I just, I’ve put like, and every, almost every character mentioned in the book, even side characters have like a full fleshed out backstory that I only have. So I started a Patreon to start posting that stuff, but you know, like I nice.

Stephen: Yeah, what were you gonna say? I was going to ask if you’ve ever read the Dragon Riders of Pern series.

Saph: I have I read them when I was very young. Okay. And that’s what got my interest in dragons started. I loved all of Anne McCaffrey’s books. So she,

Stephen: Actually, it’s funny, I got a… Sorry, I got a buddy that loves those books.

I couldn’t get into them as much. There’s other fantasy I do read, but for some reason I just couldn’t get into Dragonriders.

Saph: It’s a unique genre. And, like, I, I love, I took a little bit of inspiration from them because the different types of dragons are different colors. So, like, Artemis, Temma’s dragon is a bronze dragon, which is one of the, he’s the last bronze dragon.

So, and they’re very large, so they’ve different size, shape and

Stephen: color. Okay. Have you run across the Dragon Lance series? I have not that you might want to check that 1 out. It is a wizards of the coast. So it’s associated with Dungeons and Dragons. In fact, it started as Dungeons and Dragons campaigns. But it’s a world the world when the books start don’t have dragons, but the whole First trilogy is all about the dragons coming back and there’s a war.

So that’s one of my favorite fantasy So check Dragonlance out. Yeah for sure. What’d you say? It was called again Dragonlance Series, the first one is dragons of autumn twilight

Used to be some of my favorite fantasy when I was younger

So I’m sorry. Yeah, go ahead. What type of feedback are you getting? What type of feedback are you getting for your books?

I’m

Saph: mostly positive and I’m really happy about that. I don’t think I’ve gotten a bad review yet, but, you know, someone might have not liked it and just not reviewed it. I know, like, I know that there’s always room for improvement, you know.

You never stopped honing your craft. Always.

Stephen: Yeah. Yeah.

Saph: So but it’s been getting pretty positive feedback. I went to, I was invited to sign books at Pop Culture Expo in Huntsville last April. And I sold out of my

Stephen: novel there. That’s amazing. That’s awesome.

Great. So if you had a choice, would you like to see this book turned into a movie or a TV show? TV

Saph: show, because I think that if the people who did Game of Thrones and stuff like that got a hold of it, it could be something really great because I don’t know, I feel like movies, you have to cut out, you have to cut out stuff in movies and like, I don’t know, I need like, lose the creative license when you do that.

It’s like, If I, if it was going to be turned into some kind of media, I’d like it to be an either an anime or a TV show because there I can, I have say so and stuff like that.

Stephen: Right? I’d, I’d love to have more really good anime fantasy. Yes. So do you have a website that people can go to. I

Saph: don’t have a website.

I have a Facebook page. It’s just SAF do. Okay. And I have a Patreon as well. Just if anybody was interested in that. It’s, I post backstories chapters, pictures of characters that I’ve done. I put like in the, also the journey of publishing. I try to show a little bit on there. I, it’s, it’s still brand new, but.

I do have lots of plans for it. I’ve got this this month’s bonus chapter is already finished. I just have to edit it.

Stephen: Okay, great. We’ll make sure and put a link in the show notes for that. Thank you. So, do you have plans for a book? You mentioned you have a couple of projects. Do you have plans for a book to in this series?

Or what are some of your other books coming up?

Saph: Okay, so this series, has 3 books, 3 installments. The 2nd, 1 is being edited right now. So hopefully be released by sometime. Beginning of next year. And I am working on another project that I’m going to take to a publisher that is, is Rumpelstiltskin meets Prince and the Popper.

And if you don’t know, like do you know Rumpelstiltskin? Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Okay. Well, do you know the Prince at the Popper? Like the two that look to the same and soft places? Of course. Okay. So the idea, yeah. Is that rumple still skin? Was promised a firstborn child if he spun gold is drawn to gold for this woman and this woman Was desperate because she was going to be killed if she didn’t spin the straw into gold.

So she took the deal and Whenever she made she marries the king and gets pregnant, you know, it will still skin shows up again and tells her he that’s what he wants And she has the baby, it turns out there’s twins, one has golden hair, one has brown hair like their mother, and Rumpelstiltskin shows up at the christening to take the baby, and he’s like, I know that this one is the firstborn, because I cursed you to have, for your firstborn to have hair like the gold that you so desperately needed.

And so he takes the girl and names her Lena. And he deals in names and names, or if you take someone’s name, it makes them go insane. And so he deals in names and he says, he tells Lena that he got his her name from the sun goddess because of her hair. And, you know, skip forward, Lena is now on a pirate ship.

And I’m working as an herbalist for the pirates. And she ends up back in the kingdom where she was born. Her sister finds her and then they talk and they explain each other’s lives and what happened. And then they swap places for a year. And that story is the story of Laina trying to get through learning how to be royalty and not blowing her cover.

And she ends up like her cover gets blown in the first five minutes by one person who is it’s Ellenway, her sisters. Private tutor and he’s blind. So he’s like, I’ve heard Ellen. We’s voice every day for 10 years. I know that’s not you. So who are you? And so he said, she tells him his, and then he helps her learn how to be a princess.

And then the rest of it’s like, there is action and stuff like, you know, rumble. So it’s getting wants to get her back. But you know, that’s

Stephen: the gist. Nice. Okay. And when do you have a plans for that to come out? What’s the hope?

Saph: It is in the editing process right now, and I’m not sure I’m going to go to the same publisher.

I’m thinking about going to another literary agent and you know, like, querying the manuscript. Because I’d like to have representation. And hopefully get it to a nice publisher, you know, my publisher is great. It really is. It’s just, they don’t have they don’t have a lot of the resources that. A bigger publishing company would so, like, I’m paying for all my own ads and stuff like that.

So. If

Stephen: I got just a warning, just a warning that may not change with different publishers, my understanding they only do so much and only for the biggest. 1, so you may not see any change. Yeah,

Saph: but it would be nice to, like, be able to go to books a million and see a copy of my book there.

Stephen: That’s true.

Very true. Okay. So let me ask you do you, who are some of your favorite authors? Some of your favorite books? We’ve mentioned a couple already, but what are some of your favorites?

Saph: This this series, it’s the, it’s the Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer, who is my favorite author of all time. And this is my favorite book from that series.

It’s basically just like fairy tales retold in a sci fi setting. So I enjoy, I enjoy stuff like that. I enjoy, obviously I enjoy fairy tale retellings, but I’m also really like I’m trying, I’m drawing a blank. I’m sorry. They wrote the the Kelly Armstrong. That’s who I’m thinking of. Yeah. Kelly Armstrong.

She wrote a series, like a couple of series about supernatural stuff. So. I really like her, too, but Marissa Meyer, she’s

Stephen: got it. Okay. And do you where you live in Nashville? Do you have a favorite bookstore in the area that you like to go to

Saph: the books? A million out here is really great. I like going there.

And I also like, there’s this little, I live in a little town outside of Nashville. So, like, there’s this little bookstore that’s like, locally owned and I love going there.

Stephen: Okay, what did you know what it’s called? Oh, great reading rock books. Okay. I’ve got a couple of friends that actually live in the area. So, I wonder how many. Yeah. All right. So, and before we talk about some other stuff. If you’re walking down the street and somebody wasn’t into music, but they were into books and they said you wrote a book, why should I get your book and read it?

What would you tell them?

Saph: Because it has heart. And it does deal with some heavy subjects that I feel like, aren’t talked about enough. So, you know, I don’t shy away from the difficult subjects as a matter of fact, I seem to

Stephen: towards them and that’s actually a noticeable and a good thing with your generation.

There’s been a lot more understanding a lot more awareness of mental health and and the. Pitfalls and the problems and not just ignoring it and not the stigma that lots of people have an issue. And it may be a temporary thing. It may be for just a little while because of certain things you know, but it’s definitely better from, like, before me, the boomer generation.

Down to you. You know, my kids generation. There’s definitely a difference in how the mental health issues are handled. So I think your generation could definitely be applauded for your much more understanding of that and awareness of it.

Saph: Yeah, it is a lot better than it was 50 years ago.

Stephen: Yeah. Well, 50 to 80 years ago. Yeah. 50 years ago was not too long ago for me. So let me ask you, Sav you’ve written some books, you’ve got some you’re working on. What are some things that you’ve learned that you’re doing different now than when you first started?

Saph: I learned that I’m a teller instead of a shower.

So I’ve been really working on Like bettering my not, not having passive voice, not having too much telling more showing, you know it’s really hard because I’m a very descriptive writer. So it like I want to describe the person as tall, muscular, well, you know, well built, something like that. I, it’s very hard for me not to use descriptive words and to just like, if he’s tall, he has to duck to get in the room, you know what I mean?

So like, I, I’m, I’m struggling with that a little bit, but I am getting better. And so I feel like that’s my main skill that I’m working on right now and I’m doing that differently. Also the publishing process, like, I, before I went into this, had no idea what it was like. So I’m doing more like to advocate for myself, you know, and my writing.

Stephen: Okay. So you mentioned a publisher and you know, hoping to get a different bigger and that type of thing. And what, what our topic is that we decided we were going to talk about was earnings for an author. And what, what that currently is, what it could be, why maybe it should change and that type of thing.

So why did you want to talk about that topic? Let’s start there.

Saph: Well I just feel like I see people like self publishing on Amazon all the time, and that’s great. I’m glad I used to self publish on Amazon. You know, I would have an editor look over my work and I’d do that. But it’s like if you publish on Amazon, then your ebook is free.

So like. You’re not getting paid anything for people to consume. Well, I, that is, that’s how it was when I was on Amazon, when I would self publish on Amazon,

Stephen: put it in Kindle

Saph: unlimited. I don’t think so. I, I just, I just I would like, it’s been a while. I would just upload it to the Kindle direct publishing site and then it would be reviewed for 12 hours and then it would be posted.

But because it was published on Amazon, they all every time I published a book on Amazon, they always put it on the Kindle for free. So,

Stephen: okay, well, maybe that’s part of the problem because. That has never been true that it’s forced to free. In fact, it’s difficult to get your things taken for free.

Did you have it listed somewhere else for free first? I did not. That’s interesting because I mean, I’ve got my book up there right now and my ebook is 3 and my print book is 10 and you can set your price for your ebook through Amazon. Now, if you’re in Kindle Unlimited, it’s free for Kindle Unlimited subscribers, but you get paid per page read.

Oh, okay.

Saph: See, I didn’t know any of that. Like, I didn’t have anybody to explain it to me about Amazon. So I was just desperately searching for a publisher that would take Sovereign Fourth and. You know, the publisher that I was jump master and they’re great. They’ve taken really good care of me, but, you know, like, once my contract goes up with them, I’m probably going to take time from 4th to another publisher just to, you know, like, and they’ve already talked to me about it.

They said that that was fine because the rights are only being borrowed right now. And, you know, I just feel like. It could get more recognition and maybe like, and I feel like people don’t value people’s writing. Like, it’s not like, it’s not like I agree with important skill. I agree with that. Yeah, but like, I don’t if we didn’t have creative voices in the world, imagine how it would be.

You know, and I like you put your work, you put your, you pour your heart and soul into your work. And then it’s like, you only get like a couple of dollars less for every copy sold. So like, and I know that they have to do it that way because they’re a small publisher and they only make, you know, they can’t, they have to make their ends meet too.

But one day I would like to be a full time author. Be able to live off of it.

Stephen: Well, just to understand that if you have an agent and you go to like random house or something that you’ll get a small advance like a thousand dollars or 5, 000 and then when you’re all done with the book, you might get another thousand to 5, 000 and then they will sell the book until they’ve earned that money back and you won’t get any more money.

For sales until after that fact. And most from my understanding, most authors don’t even make back their, their royalties from that. So I’m just not trying to burst your bubble. I’m just setting expectations that even if you get signed with Penguin or random house or something, it’s not just going to be some big check that you’re suddenly going to get.

And they only do so much. They, they, they take an even bigger percentage of royalties. So for like a 10 book, you might only get 40 cents for everyone that’s sold after you pay out on your advance. So just making you aware and anyone else listening that that’s really how it works and you’re still expected to do your own marketing and like to get on podcasts and to do things like that.

So. And you did touch upon a pet peeve of mine, though, that for music, cause I’m a musician and for writing is that you practice as a musician for years, you go through lessons, you practice, you play, you just spend all this time perfecting your skill. And then you come out with music and people say, well, I’m not going to pay for that because they, like you said, don’t value the skill that it took, or they come out, you come out with this album.

That’s an amazing album. People are like, eh, you could have done better. And that’s not really, and they don’t have any understanding of the skill, what it takes and the same with writing, you know, most books now are 15 to 20. Hardbacks are 25, 30. And people are like, Oh, I’m not paying that for a book. It’s like, but really this book, it costs as much as a movie ticket.

And a movie ticket is for two hours. And this book will last you for like six to eight hours of entertainment. So I don’t people’s thinking on that. It is annoying. But like you said Jumpmaster and many of the other publishers do help out and help get some of that out there. I know I, I thought Jumpmaster had a wonderful booth at the scares that care that I was a part.

So you do get that benefit. Have you ever looked into not just self publishing, but selling your book through your website?

Saph: I don’t have a website. I just have a Facebook page and a Patreon.

Stephen: That’s, you know, Patreon too. That’s just some, an option you have as an independent author is being able to take your book and having the website, put it on the website. So if I put my print book on the website for 10, I’m plus shipping. Don’t count shipping for a minute, but it’s 10. I would make more by printing the book myself and selling it, then putting it on Amazon and letting them print and sell it.

And have you ever heard of book funnel book? What book funnel? No, I haven’t. Well, there’s another thing for you to mark down with book funnel. You can actually offer your ebook. For sale and it’s directly from you. So you can send people to your, your book funnel page and they can buy the book at the ebook and get it onto their Kindle to read without going through Amazon or Cobo or anything.

So something to check out. Yeah,

Saph: I just typed it in the browser so I can go there When Frankie went off the call.

Stephen: Right. There we go. So when you were doing your first book did you find an editor or did your publisher get an editor and edit?

Saph: Well, I did both. I have an editor that edits all of my work and he like, he’s great.

And then I had, I had him edit the manuscript first. And then when I was satisfied with how it was, I sent it to the publisher and then the publisher went through a few times with me and we agreed or disagreed on changes. That’s so I’ve, I’ve done both.

Stephen: Okay, and that’s 1 of the things personally that I like about being independent is I can find and choose an editor myself, but it is 1 of the costs that publishers quite often take on.

So, that’s, you know, they, they compensate that through slightly lower royalties to.

Saph: Yeah, no, I understand and I’m not like, I’m not like, salty about it or anything. But like I said, I am trying to make

Stephen: exploring your options as an independent author.

Saph: And I’m trying to, I’m trying to get it to where I can one day make a living off my writing because that would be a

Stephen: dream come true.

And, and that’s actually, I mean, I totally agree and applaud and think you should. You’re young and you’re still starting out writing. So, okay, I’ve written a book. I have a publisher. I’m going to try another publisher. I might try and publish something myself. Or I have done that. I might try and put something on my own website.

You know, you’ve got all these options to explore. It’s figuring out what works best for you with, you know, what you’re offering. I know there’s one author that I met at a conference. She did a talk and she doesn’t write just books. What she does is. She writes serial fiction that’s only released on her website and you have to pay to get access to it and every day from January 1st to July 1st, every day.

She posts a new chapter, a new section of the story and it continues for those 6 months and people pay to read it every single day. And then she compiles it into a book and sells it at the end of the year. So that’s a total different way of selling a book and promoting a book. But then, you know, those are the options you get in today’s publishing world, which I think is great.

I love that. That’s one of the reasons I’m so attracted to it. Yeah. You know, you’re not selling your book. I, I’ve, I’ve been, I worked for myself for many years and I hear people all the time saying, oh, my book’s not selling. And my response is always, well then figure out how to sell it. I mean, that’s your option.

That’s your, you own that. So, you know, if it’s, if you don’t want to spend the time marketing, you don’t want to spend the time figuring out that stuff, then your best bet is to find a publisher and sign on with them and let them handle that you get less money, but you also have less work. Well,

Saph: you’re right.

And I, I knew all that because I did like, self published before I went to jump master and I’m even promoting stuff now and like it, you know, it’s always good. So, like, always be your own hype man. And my mom, my mom is a great handler. She got me on the radio and everything. Whenever we went to school, like.

Stephen: So, wait, so how did you get on the radio? What, what would you do? What was that like? Well, it was

Saph: a local radio station that had a video camera and a guy coming up with a microphone, just kind of checking off the call. And my mom grabbed them and pulled them over to the Jumpmaster booth and she grabbed my arm and she’s like, This is a published author and she’s selling her book here today.

It’s like, mom.

Stephen: Nice. Nice. So did they talk to you and did you have a good time with that?

Saph: Yes, I did. It was very fun. I was so nervous cause I was put on the spot, but I think I did

Stephen: okay. Good. But that’s, you know that’s part of the reason I do this podcast is to give new authors a chance to get on a podcast to talk about their book and kind of figure out what they want to say.

That’s part of the, You know, because there’s not a lot of podcasts, not a lot of avenues out there for a brand new author to get an interview or something, unless you’re paying for it. So I just, that’s why I did this. I wanted to have that avenue.

Saph: Thank you. Okay. My battery is running low. I need to go get my charger.

It might,

Stephen: it might just, no, I think we’re coming. We’re coming to a close here pretty quick. So, I I’ve loved talking to you. I think your book sounds great. I love the fantasy before we go and you get disconnected. Do you have any other advice for new authors?

Saph: You can’t just, it’s finished the book.

That’s what I have to say is like, you can edit a bad book, but you can’t wait. If you have nothing, then there’s nothing that you can do. So like, don’t be a disgrace, even if it’s, even if you write it and you feel like it’s awful. Finish it because you can,

Stephen: yeah, I agree. And I think people need to write a lot more to figure out what really is good for their writing.

Yeah. Sometimes write one book and yeah. Yes. Yeah. Right. And that’s why you wrote, right? Exactly. All right, Saf. I appreciate you jumping on and talking today. Your book sounds great and I wish you luck on it. Thank you. Thank you.

Saph: I appreciate you having me. It was great to meet you.

View Details

OverviewSoulworm, the debut novel of Edward Willett, now the award-winning author of more than twenty novels and twice that many nonfiction books, has just been made available once more in a new edition from Shadowpaw Press Reprise.
A young adult fantasy novel, Soulworm was originally published by Royal Fireworks Press in 1997, and was shortlisted for the Best First Book award at that year’s Saskatchewan Book Awards. It was written in the 1980s while Willett was news editor of the Weyburn Review newspaper, and is set in Weyburn in 1984—which nowadays gives it a Stranger Things vibe, although at the time it was a present-day tale.

Edward Willett is the award-winning author of more than sixty books of science fiction, fantasy, and non-fiction for readers of all ages, including the Worldshapers series and the Masks of Agyrima trilogy (as E.C. Blake) for DAW Books and the YA fantasy series The Shards of Excalibur, originally published by Coteau Books. His most recent novel is the humorous space opera The Tangled Stars (DAW Books).
Willett won Canada’s top science fiction/fantasy award, the Aurora Award, for Best Long-Form Work in English in 2009 for Marseguro (DAW) and for Best Fan Related Work in 2019 for The Worldshapers podcast, and a Saskatchewan Book Award for Spirit Singer in 2002. He has been short-listed for Aurora and Saskatchewan Book Awards multiple times (most recently for his YA science fiction novel Star Song), and long-listed multiple times for the Sunburst Award for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic.

Websiteedwardwillett.com

BookYouTubehttps://youtu.be/soin5a_PcvETranscriptStephen: Today I want to welcome Edward back to the podcast. How are you doing, Edward?

Edward: It’s good to see you again.

Stephen: Now that we’re in winter, last time I talked to you, it was like negative 20 or something, and you were talking about walking around outside in the snow. Do you have a nice weather now?

Edward: Is it actually over the weekend? It was more like 30, 31 Celsius. Put up around 90 Fahrenheit. So we’ve had some really helpful.

Unfortunately, our air conditioning is broken. And so getting back fixed, but today it’s quite cool. It’s 18, I think for a high today. So

Stephen: yeah. It’s been awful humid here. We’ve had rain off and on for a couple of days, so it gets really humid and that’s worse. I’d

Edward: rather have heat. I went to university in Arkansas, so I know heat and humidity.

And I was in marching band.

Stephen: Oh, nice wool uniforms and stuff. Black ones at that. Oh, man, we had dark maroon and gold. You put that on and I played drums when you carry that big heavy equipment.

Edward: Our drummers were lucky. They got to wear a kind of a peasant shirt with an open collar and something lighter.

But all the rest of us were stuck in these winter weight woolen uniforms.

Stephen: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. All right. It’s good to have you back again. We’ve talked with you before about some of the books you’ve had, the anthologies, short stories, some of your other books. So today we’re going to talk about a new book for you

Edward: called soul.

Yes. Although it’s not really a new book. It’s a, it’s an old book and a new edition. It’s my debut novel now out in a new edition.

Stephen: Oh, that’s awesome. In that, and that’s probably why you suggested we talk a little bit later for the author stuff about revisiting and revising. Perfect. All right.

So give us a little bit of the background history here of Soul Worm, how it fits into your overall list of books

Edward: And when I came out of university, I had decided in high school that I wanted to be a writer, but I also knew you couldn’t make a living as one. So I was actually working as a newspaper.

I went into journalism. I was working as a newspaper reporter and then editor of my hometown newspaper. I was editor at the age of 24 of my newspaper back at Weyburn, Saskatchewan, and it was sometime during there that I wrote Soul Worm. I can’t remember exactly, but I was living in Weyburn. And so the book is actually set in Weyburn.

And at the time it was a contemporary fantasy novel, now it’s a historical fantasy, because I kept it in 1984, I think, is the year that I set it in. So yeah, it wasn’t the first novel I wrote or the first one I tried to get published. It was, however, the first one that got published in 1997.

So even by that point, I, it had been about, At least 10 years that I’ve been sending it around and but that was back in the good old days when everything was typed up and you sent it out in a box and you waited forever. And then you got a either you got it back. If you’d sent enough postage or you if you were lucky, you got at least a letter back.

Sometimes they just lost the manuscript. So I don’t really miss that way of doing things. I bet. So that’s yeah. Though I was frozen there for a moment on my screen so that was the background. And because it was written while I was in Waburn, that’s why it’s set in Waburn. And it was inspired by Waburn.

Waburn is a prairie town of about 10, 000 people, but it has a hill, which is a little unusual in southern Saskatchewan. The river kind of curves around the bottom of this hill and there’s A water tower, an old water tower on top of the hill. It looks a bit like a lighthouse. It’s a distinguishing feature of Weyburn.

But I was driving through town and I looked at that hill and I thought, what would be more interesting on that hill would be a castle of some sort. And that was the inspiration. So I started thinking about parallel worlds and how there could be a world just like ours, only there’s a castle on that hill instead of a water tower.

And then I decided they could also have a forest because, there weren’t a lot of trees and and that was it. And then I thought what would be happening there? That might. Connect the two worlds and I came up with this idea of the the soul worm, which is a creature that feeds on negative emotions and hate and violence and stuff like that.

And somehow one of these gets into our world and these race of priestesses who fight it in that world have to send somebody after it and they accidentally, literally accidentally, the wrong person gets sent. And it’s a teenage acolyte of these priestesses who actually doesn’t. No, what she’s doing or have the power to fight soul worms as far as she knows.

And and she’s also stuck in the body of a teenager in Weyburn. Who’s been in a coma. She only came in her spirit and she had to have a body and that’s where she ends up and she’s can’t even influence what this girl is doing to begin with. And the soul worm itself possessed this girl’s best friend.

So that’s the setup.

Stephen: Nice, nice. And I love this because you said it was your first book but you didn’t Get it for a while and then you’ve done so much since then, and now you’ve gone back to it. So let’s jump around just a little bit. Why did you decide to go back to this book and re release it?

And what was that like going back to something you wrote

Edward: 30 years ago? I can show you one reason. I, this is the original, this is the original soul worm. And I absolutely hate that cover. It looks like a graphic novel. I’ve actually met the artist. And it is a moment in the book, although, as I always say, when I’m doing school readings, and I did quite a few because this is my first book.

So I did quite a few school readings. I always said in my defense, first of all, that girl’s supposed to be 16 or even younger. And she looks. In her twenties minimum, and she was not wearing a mini skirt in my story that was put on there by the artist. Anyway, she yeah, so that was, that is a scene.

That’s the very moment at which this, she falls inside this magical circle and her spirit gets sent into our world, but I didn’t like the cover. That was one reason. And so I did a new cover. So now this is the new cover. It’s also very shiny.

There you are. It reflected in the cover of the book. So that was one reason. And the other was just that it’s been a long time. And the other book is long out of print. And I had to write. I also have my own publishing company now, so one of the things I have done through that company, I’m publishing a lot of different people and a lot of different books, but among other things, I’ve been publishing new editions of the books that have come back to me because they’re no longer available.

So this was an opportunity to put my first book back out there into the marketplace a little bit. I’m not expecting it to sell millions, but if it sells a few copies, that’s good. And it’s also interesting to me because it is my debut novel and. So it was, it’s interesting if anybody cares to compare what I write now to what I wrote back then, it’s interesting for me to compare what I wrote back then to what I write now.

Stephen: So what was that like looking at it, reading it? What did you go, Oh man, I can’t believe I wrote that. And did you change a lot of it? I

Edward: didn’t change a lot. I tweaked it here and there, the language here and there, my, and my, my the way I feel about The uses of commas and things like that has changed over the years, so there’s just that kind of copy editing stuff going on, but I was actually, it sounds a bit egotistical, but I was actually quite pleased with reading what I wrote back then, and I was writing at, at a professional level all those years ago, and it just took a while to, and even then, the publisher that I had was A terrible publisher, so I was happy to have an opportunity to bring it out myself for that reason as well.

And it was sometime after that before I really had my first novel picked up by Daw Books in New York, and then that’s been my main publisher. I have 12 novels with them now. But even going back at this one, it is a simpler story than I would probably make it now. But I certainly Recognized my writing what I was reading.

It wasn’t like reading something from a stranger, even though I didn’t really remember some of the details until I read it again this time around. Yeah, it actually stood up pretty well. And I was pleased.

Stephen: Nice. And that’s a good thing. Nowadays is You know, to get your rights back and you have that option to publish.

Whereas,

Edward: it was a completely different era. I don’t know what, if I were coming along now, I don’t know what approach I would have taken. I might have immediately started self publishing and maybe that would have been good in some ways, but I think the process of, but I went through all those years ago of writing, sending stuff out and then writing something else without even thinking about it until it came back from the publisher.

I probably had, by the time this one sold in 1997, there wasn’t any money involved, but anyway. I had probably, oh, I must’ve had at least 10 unpublished novels either in circulation or just sitting around and I had decided not to sit in the mouth, but I’d written at least 10, maybe a dozen novels by the time this one came published.

And as I said, this wasn’t the first one I wrote. The first one I wrote, I brought out from shadow pop press completely rewritten. That one took a, I really rewrote called star song. I just brought that out last year. So that was the first. book I wrote seriously and although I modified it quite a bit, large chunks of the original book are in there and it was nominated for a Saskatchewan Book Award and for an Aurora Award.

So I clearly was doing something right all those years ago, even though it took me forever to find a publisher.

Stephen: So you have written multiple books since that a bit, but it’s still the same. Type of style. It’s a sci fi, a little fantasy element in there. Did you always want to know for sure that’s the genre, that’s the style

Edward: you wanted to write in?

The very first complete short story I wrote, which if I ever find it, I’m going to put it online, but it’s in a box somewhere and I haven’t come across it for years. It was called Castor Glass Hypership Test Pilot, and I was 11 years old, so I would say I was pretty, pretty firmly set on on what kind of stuff I wanted to write very early.

I had two older brothers who read science fiction fantasies, especially the next oldest brother, and so those books were around my around the house. It’s somewhere here. Is it still here? I don’t know. I have a book that belonged to my brother, still has his name in it written by Robert Silverberg called Revolt on Alpha C which was actually Robert Silverberg’s first novel.

It’s still here. Published when he was 19, I think, because he was an overachiever, but that was the kind of thing that was around. And of course, that’s what I latched onto. And I started reading that very early. And I was a voracious reader. I read all sorts of stuff. I remember loving little women, which is very different and things like that.

But I was reading a lot of science fiction, so I latched onto it very early. And once I started writing, everything was in that genre. I wrote it. I wrote three novels in high school. One was called the golden sword, which was a fantasy novel. Although I later changed it to the silver sword. When I realized that you couldn’t even lift a golden sword.

Probably couldn’t fight with it.

Stephen: No, you just have to change the

Edward: magic sword. It could have been a gold colored sword, but anyway, at some point I changed it to the silver sword. And then the next one was called Ship from the unknown, which was, what? I never paid any attention to that.

This was about a mysterious ship that shows up in a coastal town. Of course, I lived in the prairies as far from the ocean as you can get, and these kids end up on it. And the next thing they’re battling a technological miracle! Hidden society. It’s like Wakanda. This was tucked away in the jungles of Amazon and was planning to take over the world.

And somehow they managed to stop it. I don’t even remember that book. I have it here somewhere, but I haven’t read that one in a long time. And then my third one was also fantasy. It was called Slavers of Falk. And it was serious fantasy because it had a map and all the best fantasies have maps,

Stephen: right?

I was thinking, huh? That book you wrote when you were 11, that should be your next anthology. You compile is established writers and like their early school day stories, compile them all.

Edward: That might be fun, but I suspect most writers would be very unwilling to do that. I did years ago in a world science fiction convention was in Denver.

So it must be at least 14 years ago. I think my daughter was eight at the time. I actually suggested a panel and we held it of writers reading from their juvenilia, and I read from Slavers of Falk. Connie Willis was on that one but she didn’t really read juvenilia, but she wrote, she started as a true confessions type romance writer, so she read some of that.

Joshua Palmatier was on there, he’s doing all kinds of anthologies, and he’s also an author now One of my fellow authors was then too, and he read something, I don’t remember what he read, and then we had Sarah Hoyt on there, and she read, she started writing in Portuguese, and English is her second language, so we all had different stories, but it was fun, and and people enjoyed that panel, they like to see how people have progressed, especially people that they now know as established writers.

Stephen: So what, how many other books do you have that you theoretically could revise and get back out that aren’t out there?

Edward: The next one would be the dark unicorn, which was my second novel, also published by the people who published soul worm. And it was shortlisted actually. So I’m a shortlisted for a Saskatchewan book award for best first novel when it came out and the dark unicorn, which was my second novel was shortlisted for best.

Children’s book at the time. They didn’t have a way category. So I’m going to do it next, I think. And then let me see. Is there anything left? I put out Andy Nebula Interstellar Rockstar as from the streets to the stars. Yeah, no, I think that’ll be it. I think after that I will have put out everything that I have that was in a previous edition that is now Come back to me.

So I think that’s the last one left.

Stephen: Cool. And what would you tell other authors that may want to go back and revise and re put out old books or stories they may have never

Edward: published? I did that too, because with my first thing I published through shadow pop press was a collection of short fiction.

So it was a mixture of stuff that had been previously published, but also some short stories that never found a home. And now at last they had a home. Yeah. You can do it. That’s all I can say. You I would not expect unless I suppose if you were, Brandon Sanderson or somebody and you decided to do that, you probably make a lot of money.

I suspect it has to be a labor of love and you just want to make sure that those stories if you still believe in them, that they’re out there and that readers can find them. And that’s the reason I’m doing it. It’s not like I’ve sold a huge number of copies of any of these, but they’re there and they do sell occasional copies.

And so there’s still people discovering these stories that I wrote. A long time ago. It’s not a financial thing at all. It’s very much. I just want to have those stories out there. And I think there’s a lot of authors that are doing that, that are putting out new versions of or not new versions necessarily, but at least bringing out books that rights have reverted to them and that are out of print.

And it’s one of the things that the What you can do in publishing now has made available to authors and I think a lot of authors would like To see some of the stories that might otherwise have vanished to be back out there. And in fact Shadowpaw press is also publishing books like that I have an imprint called shadowpaw press reprise and I’m getting a lot of books Where the publisher died.

In fact, one of them was my publishers, the Cotto books here in Saskatchewan. And I’ve republished two or three from there. There’s another one I just did. Again, the publisher closed down and the rights reverted. And they’re authors who don’t want to climb the rather steep Learning curve of publishing your own stuff.

They come to me and I put it out and I’ve done several of those so far.

Stephen: Oh, that’s nice. Do what’s the feedback been on, somebody getting this book or any of those other revised books that, this was written 30 years ago, but the author. Or your book. I wrote this 30 years ago.

It was my first one. I have people said, yeah, you should have left it away. Or are people glad to get these? I

Edward: haven’t had any feedback on soul worm. I’m glad it’s out there. That’s all that really matters. And I don’t know. I think I know some of the authors One, for example that I republished, Anne Lazurko has a book out now that’s getting all sorts of critical acclaim, and her first book, Dolly Bird, was one of these books that I’ve reprinted, and so she’s very happy to have it, because now she promotes her current Book she can also now know that her first book is available for readers who like her new book.

They can go back and find that one. But I don’t know exactly what readers are saying when they read these old books. Nobody has told me, no, you should have left that one in the drawer. Nobody has said that to me anyway, but they may just be being nice. I don’t know.

Stephen: If people don’t like something, they’re more apt to give you that negative feedback and tell you that, it’s when they do like it, that you don’t always hear that as much.

So take it as a

Edward: good thing. That or just nobody’s reading it.

Stephen: There could be that too. That’s true. So is this available as ebook and print

Edward: or just ebook? It’s available in both ebook and print. I held up the print copy, but yeah, and everywhere. It’s wide. It’s not just stuck on Amazon or anything.

It’s available. Everywhere books are sold and any bookstore can even order it. And if you ask them to, which would be, I really wish you would tell them to bring in a hundred copies or two, just to be sure they have enough. Oh, and no return, but don’t send them back again after they don’t sell. I

Stephen: need a hundred of these for gifts for the year.

Every author would love that. Just need one person to do that at every store and we’re good. That’s all we need. So do you write under any other pen names or anything like that, that you have things out because you have your publishing company and use other people publishing through you? Do you do multiple genres

Edward: and keep things separate?

Not particularly, although I do have pen names, but they were both. given to, or not given to me, but I was asked to use them at DAW. So I’m E. C. Blake, who wrote a trilogy called The Masks of Agrima. And I have used that pen name outside of DAW. A company called Rebelite published a book of mine, which they titled Flames of Neviana.

And They went under pretty quickly. They weren’t in operation very long, so I brought that out through Shadowpaw Press under its original title of Blue Fire, which I like that title better. Although when I do look around, I see there’s actually quite a number of novel books called Blue Fire, but I still like it also is really nice because it’s makes a nice little square block of blue and fire about the same length of word.

So I’ve done that one. And then my other pen name was Lee Arthur Chain, and he’s only written one book called Magebane for DAW. I think what happened with DAW was I started off Edward Willett wrote science fiction. My first three novels for them were science fiction. And they said, you should switch to fantasy.

It’s selling better. We’ll give you a fresh start. So I became E. C. Blake. No, I became Lee Arthur Chain first. And this was like a fantasy standalone called Magebane. And then I became E. C. Blake because the Masks of Agreement trilogy Functionally, it was YA. The main character is a 15 year old girl and she only ages up to, I don’t know, she gets to 16 over the course of the book.

Although it’s, but they said we don’t do YA. But because it was a young female character, they thought maybe initials in case somebody cares and they might think that you’re a woman that way if you do that. Okay. So I became E. C. Blake for those three books and then used it again. But I went back to being Edward Willett with that and everything I have written since then has been.

Stephen: Back in the Star Trek original series, DC Fontana was a woman and they made her use the initials because they were afraid people wouldn’t read or watch sci fi.

Edward: It’s almost the other way around. I’ve got sorry, my phone just went off. Oh, and it’s spam too. It wasn’t even real. Now it’s buzzing over there out of the way.

Yeah, and it was interesting because it was actually the other way around because I was writing a young female character. They thought. Maybe it’d be better to be initial so that people might think that I was a woman, right?

Stephen: So you mentioned a couple of times about YA and young children’s, not all of your stuff is in that realm.

So that’s something that I’ve said is newer that the YA category, I’ve had a few people argue saying, Oh yeah, we had YA back in the eighties. No, not. Really? So how do you decide if something’s YA or children’s or adults? That’s a good

Edward: question. If I’m trying to sell to a publisher who specializes in YA is really a marketing term.

Back when Heinlein was writing what you would now think of as YA, they were just called juveniles, which, I’m glad we got away from that terminology. The explosion in YA probably goes back to Harry Potter specifically. But Yeah, I, for me it’s basically is, goes down to the age of the character and what they’re, I think that’s really it.

And then there are certain ways that, like the Masks of Agreement was published in the adult science fiction market, fantasy market. Although it was functionally a ya because the characters were so young, the main characters were so young. But all that meant was that I didn’t even think about, the level of violence or anything I, that I felt was appropriate.

I just wrote it as I would Now, given the way ya books are now, I don’t think there’s anything in there that’s, that wouldn’t fly as a ya book because they are far more wide open than they were once upon a time. So that’s the only definition I can give is that you have a young character and it’s a young character whose concerns are those of young characters.

I guess it can be a young character who’s operating in the adult world and everything is seen through an adult. Lens and I think that pushes it into the adult but even my stuff that’s been published as adult I don’t know what it is about how I write but this last three books I get did for none last three But a three book series I did for dog called world shapers The main character is established early on as 27 years old and yet when it got short Longlisted for the Sunburst Award up here for Best Canadian Science Fiction Fantasy.

They put it in the YA category and I don’t know why. There’s not a single teen character. There is in the third book, but there’s no main character that’s a teen and they’re grown ups. So I don’t know. I don’t know why it got tagged as YA. So I guess I don’t really know the answer to that question.

Stephen: That’s good. I think sometimes I don’t like. Like I write middle grade and I hate when people say, Oh, you write middle grade because middle grade is a demographic. Whereas you can have fantasy middle grade, which is totally different than the dork diaries or totally different than even Harry Potter, it’s fantasy like an element, but it focuses on magic and wizard, so I hate saying, Oh, it’s middle grade. I like fantasy for middle grade, I think it’s more like you said they go for certain the tropes, the feel as opposed to something like Jack Reacher or some other Patterson book or something.

Edward: I’ve never managed to sell a YA book to a.

Why a publisher? So I’m not sure I actually match that demographic or at least that marketing slot very well at all.

Stephen: So for anyone listening before we go if they like your books, if they like fantasy, science fiction type stories what would you tell them why they should get soul worm

Edward: and soul worm is fun because first of all, it’s got a stranger saying stranger things vibe now, because it said in 1984, which actually, if you go back, you’ll notice.

I picked a font that might remind you of another, yeah, so there’s that, but it’s, I’ve always enjoyed the fantasy mixing into the real world and I think that’s the appeal of Soul Worm and a lot of those. Kinds of stories contemporary fantasy. I don’t think the term urban fantasy even existed when I wrote that book either.

But that mixture of fantasy with the real world. And in this case it has the, it’s a little different setting because it’s set in a small Saskatchewan town. Which to me is not exotic, but it might be to somebody reading it somewhere. My wife likes to say that we think Tuscany is exotic, but the people in Tuscany, Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan is exotic.

It’s all a matter of perspective. So I guess it’s got that going for it. And if you’re interested in and seeing something that. Somebody who’s now getting old wrote when he was young. You can compare it. You can get that and then you can get all my other books and you can read through them and you take notes and figure out my progression of writing as you go along.

Stephen: Published order. That’s a big thing, especially like in comic books, what’s the published order as opposed to the timeline order and yours are all separate. So timeline doesn’t pertain to this. All right. Edward, it was cool catching up with you. I love talking to you again. I’m glad we got to meet up on it.

I hope you get your AC fixed for the weather. So it turned

Edward: out there’s also asbestos. We have to have taken out of the basement before they can put in the new furnace. So that’s what I’m juggling this week. Oh man, it’s a very old house, almost a hundred years old.

Stephen: So yeah. Wow. All right. Hey, I wish you a great day and I appreciate you getting back on and catching us up to.

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OverviewToday is a different episode. I’m not talking to an author, this has to do with video games. Though it’s not focused on video game storytelling as I’ve had in the past. It is related.

I am talking with the coaches for the BioMed Science Academy eSports team. BioMed is a local alternative STEM school and they are one of over 200 schools in Ohio with eSports teams.

This is important, because it shows the rise of videogames and how our culture is changing with that. Video games are still growing and there will be more future for today’s kids to be in the video game industry – as storytellers or other.

If you are a teacher or school administrator – this is a good episode to help introduce you to eSports. If you are a parent, there’s a lot in here that you may not realize. I hope to do more episodes that deal with video games and video game storytelling.

Websitehttps://www.biomedscienceacademy.org/YouTubehttps://youtu.be/_LRowafEIpUbio med science academy, biomed, esports, mind architecture, storytelling, video gameTranscriptionStephen: Great. Okay. So today on Discover Wordsmiths, a very exciting conversation for me. If anyone’s been following along on this podcast, I’ve had several interviews with some people in the video game industry where we talked about storytelling in video games. And today I’m continuing that with a couple of teachers at a local school, Biomed STEM Academy, which I’m very excited to talk to because they have an e sports team, one of the few in the area.

So welcome Eric and Alexis. How are you guys doing?

Eric: I’m doing wonderful. How

Stephen: are you doing today? I’m I’m really doing great. I’ve been excited. I went to Blossom last night. So I went to bed late, but then all I could think about was talking to you guys. So if I yawn, I apologize. You’re not boring. It’s you know, body picking up.

Before we start delving into this to inform parents and students or whatever tell us a little bit about biomed and what biomed is.

Eric: So we’re at biomed science Academy and biomed is a STEM plus M school. STEM stands for science, technology, engineering and mathematics. But we also have a medical pathway as well at our school. And what we do is instead of just teaching math, I will teach math in terms of different science and technology and engineering and even some of the health pathway.

So the math that you see not only goes with the state’s standards, but I’ll also give those applications in the STEM field. And that’s not just me, but the entire school that that’s part of our mission and vision.

Stephen: And my kids, after they went there, what I described that people is instead of just sitting down for a history class, where they tell you the Panama Canal was built at this time, they say, Go do a research on it and build us a working canal that you can move levers and adjust it and then tell us how it affected the economy in the area.

And I’m like, Oh, my God, that tells you so much more than just it was built in this time. You know, about biomed. I remember the table of elements. You know, when I was in school, it’s like, okay, memorize the table of elements. As much as you could. Who cares? Nobody, you can look it up. So who cares if you memorized it?

But you guys put them in groups. Because that’s important working in groups in the world and companies. And you said, okay, this is your one or two research. These tell us everything you, you can find out about it and give a report. And I guarantee those kids remembered those two better than everything else.

And I always thought that was such a great approach to learning and more, much more exciting. I don’t know if the students get it so much, but I would. So, all right. So what we’re going to talk about a little bit more in depth today is your e sports team. And I was really excited about this because I’ve been trying to find out more about video game storytelling and it connected to e sports because Ohio just approved e sports teams in high schools to get varsity letters this year.

And I was super excited about that. So I convinced you guys to get on here and listen to me and talk to me a little bit. So tell us exactly what. eSports is for the world in general.

Alexis: To make it as easy as possible to understand kids play video games competitively against each other.

Eric: Go ahead. Oh yeah.

I was going to say we, we use e sports just like, just like any other sports where we are going to build the community with one another. We have we have problem solving. We have team bonding. It is competitive like those other sports while it might not be physical, but all of those same skills that you do in those traditional sports.

We also hone in on those in our e sports community as well. And we also have a good time. Yeah.

Stephen: So there’s a whole lot there to unpack and point out to people the benefits here, but I don’t want to just spout it all. Let’s, we’ll do it in a conversation. So when you say, first of all, That so who can join the e sports team?

Eric: So for us, anyone can actually join e sports. We are broken into two kinds of divisions. We have a club aspect and an actual competitive aspect. We do have to break it up. We are in a particular league and in that league, the middle schoolers are no longer allowed to join the actual. competitive side.

So we do split it up into two. But anyone can join the, anyone can join our esports team. If they are in middle school, we’re actually going to get them prepped for when they do come to high school, that they are ready for those actual competitions.

Stephen: Okay, so what you said skills and then you said prep, what exactly does that mean?

Cause I’ve, I’ve talked to parents and they’ve said, well, how do they do that? If they’re sitting in their living room playing Donkey Kong, what’s that mean? Do they just don’t get it? So tell, tell me what you mean when you say to get them prepped and the skills they use,

Eric: I’m going to, to make this easiest, I’m going to pick on super smash brothers to make, to make it a lot easier for me cause I don’t know all of the games out there.

But what we do is for our, for specifically that we’re in, there are certain rules for when they compete and we make sure that one, the students understand what those rules are. So they can also use that to their advantage, you know, so they can learn the, the, the how do I want to say it? The mechanics.

So they can learn the actual mechanics of, of the game before they actually get to the high school level. The next thing is that way they can also communicate to each other as a team, like, hey, we have to verse these people one on ones. We have to put our best person first, so they’ll have, they’ll have to decide.

amongst ourselves, who’s the actual best competitive player and then strategically determine who’s going to go next and then after that. But we’ll also have practices where they’ll determine like, hey, if you’re going to use a grab, you have to watch out for X, Y, and Z, because you’ll be vulnerable to specific attacks, counters, and so on.

Stephen: And first of all, so I know a lot of parents probably like, what the heck is Smash Brothers? So tell us, again, there’s just so many things. I don’t know what I’m bouncing around. So let’s, let’s, let’s say football, baseball. So parents understand that my kid picks up a baseball. We practice throwing it. They practice catching it.

They get there and you throw the ball and they bat and they run around the bases and they learn the rules of the game. With Smash Brothers, it’s a video game. It’s a fighting game and characters and the players choose their own characters, which have strengths and weaknesses for each. So how, how would you say to, to, for a parent to wrap their mind around?

How is what you’re doing comparable, but also different than regular football, baseball? Practice and skills

Eric: actually see it. No, no, no. I mean, that is, that’s, that’s, that’s a lot to process. I wouldn’t see it that different. Cause even in football, they have to, they have to hone physical skills, right?

Yeah. They

Alexis: have to figure out what their strengths and

Eric: weaknesses are. And. With, with Smash Brothers, it’s, it’s going to be the same thing. They have to, they have to understand all of the different characters, strengths and weaknesses kind of like what you were saying. But they’re also going to have to be able to play to their opponents.

So if they know what their So you’re going to get around their

defense. Same kind of concept in Smash Brothers, you know each character, each person will pick a character, and then they’re going to have to know that character’s strengths and weaknesses to be able to overcome and actually defeat that player. Oh, sorry, go ahead.

Stephen: I was just saying, in my thinking you’ve got…

The guy who is maybe not as heavily built has a good arm. So he’s the quarterback, the guy that’s, you know, the refrigerator and he’s in front of the quarterback, the little wiry guy that has quick feet and he runs and catches you know, but you might have two guys, one guy can. You can pass it to him and he’ll hang on to it and run like the Dickens, whereas another guy can run fast and catch it better.

So that’s the same thing here. It’s just that they’re using the, the avatar of the video. Yes. The one pushback I get from a lot of parents, and I’ve heard this from multiple is, well, this is going to just change our culture. And I point out that football has not always been a high school. Equivalent class or thing.

It’s only been within several generations and we’ve changed that. Golf is a sport now. In high school that kids can play and golf is not the same. It’s, it’s a single player thing as opposed to a team thing. So this is just another extension in my mind. No.

Eric: And I, I, I would completely agree. And to piggyback off of that football nowadays.

Is not really the same as football was 10, 20, 30, 40 years ago as those rules and like even the equipment that they wear is constantly evolving. Yes. So, I mean, and that’s going to be, that’s going to be the same thing. So. Things that were in the past. Yes, we will still kind of do them today, but it just looks a little bit different.

Stephen: And so two other big things I always like to point out is that number one. You can have a bigger variety of kids that can be on a team and join a sports team. Whereas I was not necessarily big enough to really play football. I might’ve been able to run, which I probably would have done very scared to keep.

So I wouldn’t, I could have played baseball, but the point is It’s very connected to physical ability. And even today, most high schools, the sports teams are male dominated. There’s not as many female teams, basketball, baseball. Yeah, we do have the teams, but you don’t get the mixture of male and female playing on the same team.

E sports allows all of that. Plus, I’m guessing you can have a bigger team than most football, baseball teams. More kids that can join it. So, how many kids do you have on the team?

Eric: In general, we, for the competitive or in all of e sports

Stephen: together? Competitive on all of it together.

Eric: So all together, generally around 50 or so, which for us, that’s, that’s massive for those who don’t know much about biomed, we are a smaller school with graduating classes in the around 70s or so.

So you have 50 students in it. That is. A very massive number. This year currently, we are still in the process of registering teams and getting teams ready, and the only one that’s ready so far is we have one Smash team that has about eight or nine players. Yeah, about. But we know that there’s some other people that are trying to put other teams together, so we’re kinda in a weird limbo waiting for them to make sure that We have all of the players to make sure that we have a team.

So,

Stephen: so what are some of the other games that you could play or are played in competition?

Alexis: There’s Valorant, there’s Apex Legends, Overwatch 2 Mario Kart 8

Eric: Rocket League, Rocket League, oh,

Alexis: Fort, Fortnite, can’t forget that. Yeah, Fortnite. Male schoolers love Fortnite. Yeah. We can

Eric: do chess too.

That’s, that’s another one that I was also about to say is chess which is, you know which is also really cool. Is there any others? Am I forgetting any? I’m sure there’s more. We’re in a specific division. And in our division, there’s only certain games that you can play competitive. And there’s a whole bunch of different divisions that you can, that you can join just in our specific one.

Those are pretty much most of the games. Oh and in case we forgot to actually mention smash brothers, that, that, that went to obviously,

Stephen: you know, to help people wrap their minds around it. Sports have changed and evolved and are different. You know, we think of high school sports football baseball, but like I said, now there’s golf and golf is definitely not a I have to be super strong and super fast.

It’s a skill race car driving, which I brought up Gran Turismo in the movie. That’s out. That’s a different skill, but it’s considered a sport and some of the other sports out there, you know, the, the triathlon where you have rifle shooting and skiing and tobogganing this, the toboggan sled, that’s a sport ice skating, the figure skating, all of these are different with different skills.

This is just the modern skill.

Eric: to, to add on to that, cause I do completely agree with that too. There is still a level of. Physical skill that is needed. ’cause as, as you were playing a lot of these things, when you’re playing in these competitions, a lot of these things happen at a blink of an eye super fast.

So you have to be able to quickly take in all of that information and then, Physically react. It’s, it’s just that that physical reaction isn’t necessarily a, a tackle or a sack or maybe a kick of a ball. You’re, you’re, you are moving your hands and you actually have to be quick with that in itself. So there is still a physical level to it.

It’s just not as not full body. Yeah, it’s not full body. You’re not breaking your bones. Hopefully. Yeah, hopefully while doing it.

Stephen: But reiterate again. You can have boys and girls on the same. Yes. Yes. You could have somebody who’s in a wheelchair that could never have even done necessarily golf and getting around on the course they can play e sports.

And I know some of the new adapter controllers words

Eric: right out of my mouth because that’s actually about what that was. I was going to say is I is more acceptable. Accessible. That’s the word I’m trying to say. It is more accessible than a lot of your traditional sports. And for those parents who who are listening and you are concerned with, Hey, like, Hey, maybe your child has some accessibility things that they need like assistance on.

There are a whole bunch of special controllers that help that are designed for multitude of different how do I want to say it? What’s the word? Physical abilities. Yes, yes. No, for sure. Thank you.

Stephen: Thank you. And also somebody, and I know when my son and daughter were in school they had a lot of friends that were identified as being on the spectrum what we used to call autism.

I, I know that still comes up, but they try and use that on the spectrum more. And. With the input of football or baseball, they would never be able to compete and, you know, not do something like that. It gets overwhelming, but the video game interest is usually a lot stronger and that gives them something they can go do.

So again, the diversity and the inclusion, that’s buzzwords in, you know, this decade and video games are it. That’s what gives it to everybody. So why did Biomed decide to do an e sports team?

Eric: I’ll be honest with you. We weren’t here yet. Yeah. We we weren’t here when they started. If I

Alexis: had to take a guess.

A lot of kids really

Eric: wanted it. Yeah, no, for sure. It was, it was started by Mr. Alex Wolf. He’s still teaching. I, I forget where he’s at now. But he, he started it and then it was passed down to Aaron Ettinger. And then it was passed down to us. I do know this for our community since biomed, it is a, it is a a choice school.

So we actually pull from a whole bunch of different districts. So we don’t have any actual physical sports ourselves. Most of those students go back to their, like. Hometown home district for it. But eSports is our actual only competitive sport that we have that’s specifically biomeds. Mm-hmm. . And it’s also really nice because everything is done at the actual school.

Mm-hmm. that it, we can actually we can host, we can host the entire eSports mm-hmm. right here on campus.

Stephen: So, so do some of these kids have some big rigs, some pretty impressive setups for their home stuff?

Alexis: Some of them have told me about their home setups, yeah. No, for sure, for sure. And they, I’ve had kids tell, ask me too, like, can I bring in my PS5?

And I’m like, is that a good idea?

Eric: Heh, heh, heh. But yeah.

Stephen: So when they come in for a practice, we’ve touched on this just a little when they come in for a practice, what’s a practice look like? It’s I assume it’s not just chaotic. Turn on TVs and play video games up. Time to go home. What? What are you doing at a practice for the kids?

So

Eric: each week Each week or every other week, we will have a little, like a little mini lesson before we actually start our competitions, not our competition, our, our practice. And in those mini lessons, there are things on like community and respect and being a team player. So we’ll have tiny little conversations about that.

It’s, it’s. easy to forget that we’re dealing with young ones, you know, and so some of these things, like they’re still, they’re still trying to build these skills. So we’ll have, we’ll have a conversation about that. And from there though, it does kind of depend on each team and their strengths and weaknesses.

Last year we, we went through and our Smash Bro or Smash Bros. Captain. He went through and he watched all of the others play, all of his other team members play, and he identified like, hey, you’re constantly getting thrown because you are doing X, Y, and Z, so in order to combat that, you can, and they will kind of work through, they’ll work through some of those strategies together as a, as a team.

Stephen: And then who do you compete against? Because I know the new generation, young generation, the studies are showing that they’re less interested in traditional sports. They’re not watching football, baseball, basketball as much, but Markiplier and PewDiePie, Not them thinking otherwise, you know, and I know these kids watch the twitch streaming like constantly Do you compete against and who watches these and you know, tell us a little bit about the competition

Alexis: Just the different schools that are also in our league.

They, they kind of come up with a schedule for us to be like, oh, this week you’re going to compete against this school for a school that came to mind Akron STEM. Yeah. That

Eric: they’re one one, one also thing. So we are in the division and what’s kind of unique again with e sports compared to your physical.

sports is we play all of our competitions actually at the school. So we’ll play people that are two, three, four hours away still in Ohio. But we’ll be able to get on at the same time. We don’t have those long bus rides to get to, to get to one another. So really Like Alexis was saying, anyone in our division we’re just putting a roster, they come up with it for us, and it’s not always the same.

I do know that they’re working on some of the fine details for that. I will say, I actually don’t know who we’re competing against this year because they haven’t completed those rosters yet.

Stephen: The season starts in January or something, right? Is that it?

Eric: Yes and no. So, if you think of your traditional sports, you know, football is just in the fall.

Generally, like, track is in the spring. We actually have both a fall and a spring season. All of the same games are played in the fall and in the spring. So, for the fall, chances are only our Smash Bros. team is going to be ready to start competing, and we have scrimmages this week, and the actual season starts next week.

But in January… We have an opportunity to reorganize ourself. So the Smash team will probably want to play again. But as I was saying earlier, there’s people who are interested in like Overwatch and League. If they, if they miss the deadline for this season, they’re always able to get their team together and play in the spring season.

So we are starting now and we will also start again.

Stephen: Got it. Nice. And can anybody watch these? Do they stream the competitions? Some people do. We didn’t

Eric: do it last year. Yeah last year was… Alexis and I first year, so there was a lot of information that we had to, to gather. There is, there is streaming.

Most of it does happen through the official Discord, but we can, we can stream through Twitch if we want to. And we can have parents or whoever wants to watch, watch. That’s something that is on our… To do list as it is quickly approaching

Stephen: for us. Yeah. And so if you like compete for seven weeks or whatever, and you win, is there then a bigger Ohio state competition is a national competition?

How does that work?

Alexis: Yep. There’s like the quarterfinals, semifinals and finals. So that’s in November. I believe

Eric: I do know for it for sure That there is like once we once we are let’s say we we win in our actual division We’ll play against other divisions again within our league But our league is only for Ohio I don’t think that we have a national at least for the one that we’re specifically in But that doesn’t say that there isn’t other leagues that Schools can join that do a national

Stephen: competition.

Akron have the like Ohio state finals or something like that. They, they host.

Eric: They did last year. Yeah, they did. Akron, Akron did some and Mount Union also, Mount Union also did some as well. It might have also been like the different seasons as well. Yeah, cause Mountain Union I think was at the end of the year.

Yeah,

Stephen: yeah. Nice, they’re both up around us. Yeah, yeah. But again, you can, you should be able to stream it. You know, not necessarily. But I, I think it’d be exciting to go like to Akron and see all these teams actually competing with the video games. I’ve had many, many kids come through the house and video games have always been a thing.

And I’ll tell you, so, so if you guys played the kids, do you get your butts kicked?

Alexis: And he’s played more than I have. Last year I coached Valorant and I still am not clear on the rules.

Eric: No, fair, fair. So I played against Smash and I was able. So, I was able to beat most except for our top three players.

I was not able, I was not able to beat them. But also, I grew up playing Smash Brothers, so I played, I played a lot, but now as… I get older, I don’t have as much time to, to play, to play the games. So yeah, they whooped me. You

Stephen: guys are much closer to that age group, but I’ll tell you, if they add space invaders in there, I’ll take any of those kids on.

Eric: If we go. Killer instinct, the Super Nintendo version. I actually had them pull it up on one of our big TVs up here and I was able to defeat two or three of them in a row without even getting hit. So yeah, you want to take it back to like old school killer instinct? I got you. . Oh, .

Stephen: That played street Fighter two on Super Nintendo and they would get so they were so good.

Played so much. That just for show at parties, they would actually sit with their backs to the TV and fight and fight each other. Wow. And it wasn’t just on the opposite sides. They were like right there. And with the moves cool. Because they, because that’s the other thing people don’t understand is when you get those top baseball players, the top football players, they, they practice throwing, they practice throwing, they, they practice hitting.

They practice hitting. They practice until they get it. So minutely tuned. One of my favorite stories is Dr. Er Larry Bird. He was doing a Pepsi commercial back in the 80s. And what they wanted to show was, you know, he shoots and he misses. He drinks a Pepsi, he shoots and he misses. So they were filming this and they said, okay, shoot and miss.

It took them like 34 times to miss the basket. Because they were tuned and trained. And that’s what these kids are really doing. You know, I can sit down and I can play video games. Ooh, I won. You know. But these kids are like immediately pro level. In the game against other people who have been playing it for thousands of hours.

And the skill level is unheard of at the normal person level. And I think parents still regard the video games as, oh, that’s a kid’s thing, but it’s growing beyond that. And these kids are definitely highly skilled at what they do.

Eric: And again, I feel like for, for those who, parents who are still. Again, like there are skills with those hand eye coordination and to be able to just quickly interpret what is happening in that specific scenario and to react appropriately like that’s, that is, that is very difficult to do.

Stephen: Yes. And I’ve been pointing out the Gran Turismo movie kind of shows that video games lead into real life as much as anything else, you know, that’s only one kid that actually joined the actual racing circuit after training on video games. And how many times have we heard the stories that combat pilots using drones now have been trained on video games?

Eric: Mm hmm. I will say with our, with our military, they have also started using. They’ve started using things like Xbox controllers on their like bomb defusal robots and stuff like that. So even being able to navigate a video game controller, such as the Xbox controller. If they go into the military, they literally might be using it if they go into something like bomb defusal, which is really cool.

Stephen: And I’ve also been telling parents. That the reason the OS OHSAA approved it for varsity letters is because so many schools are recruiting college for eSports teams, but they were having to go outside of Ohio because we didn’t have a lot at the time. And now there’s like 200 and some schools that have eSports teams and parents are like, what?

And the kids, oh my God, it’s so hilarious because the kids go, wait. I can get a college degree by playing video games. I’m like, yeah, I keep playing overwatch And the parents are like, oh my gosh, and it freaks them out a little bit. The the younger parents like you guys not quite as much they get it a little more But if you start getting parents with kids that are teenagers and they’re in their Forties or so they don’t always get it and you tell them.

Yeah, these kids are getting scholarships to college Maybe not all full scholarships and maybe not you know full rides and stuff like that But it’s starting to happen and it’s going to come it’s growing bigger every year, I think All right, so anything else you guys want to add or say about the eSports these sports teams that I missed asking you about

Eric: It’s always I mean, it’s always it’s always a good time. I don’t know. I don’t think I got

Stephen: anything I always connect it to that The video game industry is bigger than movies and pro football put together and and that’s a number I throw at parents how big the industry is and that there are plenty of companies looking for Not just programmers.

Video games have grown beyond having to program to be in video games. There’s so many jobs in the industry that it’s a good one for kids to actually think of as a career. It is not just something that the nerds do, it’s something a lot of people do. That wasn’t quite the case even a decade ago. No, for sure.

So the one I love throwing out, I’ve got, I printed it off from indeed. com, is Blizzard was looking for narrative design storytellers starting at 98, 000, no college degree in the requirements. Wow. And that’s just the one I use to shock parents. So. Go ahead.

Eric: So I’m also I’m also thinking with that. So definitely the, the creative storytelling is a critical part in video games.

And it’s really cool to see those who want to be writers and authors and stuff like that. Being being a creative storyteller for a video game industry is. absolutely phenomenal. And even if you didn’t want to do that part and if you’re thinking like, oh, it’s just video games working for a company like NVIDIA, they make graphics cards, but not only do they make graphics cards, but those same pieces of hardware that give you the stunning visuals, they’re also used in a whole bunch of data centers to quickly process a whole bunch of different information.

They’ll use that. To model things like infectious diseases and that spread of infectious diseases, they’ll work on heavy heavy computations as well. So even if you’re not necessarily interested in the video game aspect of it, like those are those pieces of technology that do fuel it are also applicable in a whole bunch of other fields as well, which is really

Stephen: cool.

Yes. And I, I’ve been talking to the. Primary school, middle grade because they do teach a narrative storytelling class and talking to them about that. So that’s the other thing is these skills and video games are permeating the kids lives so much that kids in third and fourth grade are learning about making video games in one way or another.

You know, that also, I think people need to understand that kids that. Don’t know anything about video games or anything to do with the coding or, you know, how are they work? There go be a little bit behind in the coming world because it’s permeating the life more and there’s more of that Available.

So I love that bio meds that progressive with you know, third graders doing it on

Eric: not Not necessarily eSports as a whole but like kind of like games kind of like games and education Have you heard a blue kit? So Bluekit is, it, it, it’s, it’s where you can… You play a whole bunch of different games, but in order for you to complete an objective, you have to answer a whole bunch of different questions.

And what we as teachers can do is we can input our content into these questions that students have to answer. And depending on how many that the students actually get right, they’ll be able to like move so many spaces or collect so many things. So we can actually still use video games as a way to get students to study and to work hard.

But we’re also keeping their interest at the same time. So they want to do well in this game, so the only way to do well in this game is to actually study and learn the things that you have to learn. So, even as educators, we can leverage the idea of games to get students to… Learn the things we need ’em to learn or want, or want them to want them to,

Stephen: to learn.

Get ’em where they’re at, not where you think they should be or where it used to be. Yeah. Because if you’re,

Eric: oh, yeah, so, no, sorry. Yeah, yeah. No, all

Stephen: you. No, no, it’s, it’s all you.

Eric: Oh, yeah. I was gonna say, compared to just skill and drill, like, Hey, do 20 of these, you know, then students are bored, dozing off, and they’re not gonna do anything, so, right.

But yeah.

Stephen: Yeah. Yeah. You know, you have dysentery and you’ve died.

So that was something I thought of going back a second. Some of these games are on multiple platforms. PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo usually has their own games. And then some are on like PCs with Steam and all that. Is there like guidelines on this game played in the league is going to be on this platform?

Or, or how does that work? Because some of them are cross platform and some are not.

Eric: The, the cross platform ones, you are allowed to play cross platform. I do know that. Yeah but then there’s like Smash and Mario Kart. Yeah, there’s, there’s some games that are specific to a system or a what’s the word?

Launchers, like, for example, Fortnite has to go through the Epic Games launcher. So there are some… Yeah, it does. It does just depend, but I can tell you this, though. If there is a game and the students are able to play it on PC, they’re playing it on PC over a console. Most of them are really good. At the mouse and keyboard compared to the actual controller.

Stephen: Okay. That’s interesting. But that’s expected. I mean, they start off with bio med with computers and they have computers for everything, for their whole careers. It lives with them. I know my kids my son still uses his laptop five years out of school. So it’s getting a little old. But like, what about.

I know I’ve heard a lot of gamers, they will use wired controllers because they’re more responsive than the wireless. What do you do for Nintendo? Do they get wired pro controllers or do they use Joy Cons? We

Alexis: got a Switch, so like, we have the Joy Cons ready to go already. And did anybody use a wired one last

Eric: year?

I don’t remember it. We had a couple people use a wired, not, not many, but some of that for us at least does come down to funding. Anything that we get for our esports team, we have to either find grants for or we have to fundraise. So, last year we did a fundraiser and we were able to buy a Switch. And we were also able to buy a copy of Super Smash Brothers, but this year we’re going to also do some more fundraising because our computers are a little bit older and we want to keep things as up to date as, as possible.

Stephen: Right. Yeah, I bet the computers get more, way more expensive than the consoles. Oh, for sure. For sure. All right. Well, guys, I love talking to you. It’s been great. I know you’ve got class coming up. I have another meeting soon. I appreciate you taking the time and I’d really like to stay in touch. Find out how the season’s going with the kids, what they’re doing.

And then if you have fundraisers or if you have something going on, keep me in mind on your list and shoot me an email. I’d love to. Stay involved in knowing what’s going on. Cause I mean, you guys are a mile away from or five miles away. You know, I think it’s awesome that you’ve got this and you’re doing it.

So thank you guys.

Eric: No, thank you. That would actually be really appreciated too. Yeah.

Stephen: Let me know. I don’t have a huge audience in the area, but I do have some people if there’s a fundraiser, if there’s, oh, that was something else. Do you guys have a team name and jerseys and stuff?

Eric: No. Yeah, we actually talked about, we talked a little bit about getting like shirts made for them.

Last year, because they had shirts made I think the year before, but we, we weren’t able to get any last year, but I know this year that we’re actually really trying to get I know shirts more than jerseys per se, but still kind of, I guess the, in the, in the, in the same vein, with our actual, because we have an actual e sports logo as well to, you know, get that on it.

So that is, that is something that we’re definitely also looking into.

Stephen: Cool. Well, if you open it up to parents and stuff, buying some of the swag shoot me that too. Cause I’ll definitely get a shirt and wear it around. No dude, that’s awesome. All right, guys. I appreciate it very much. It was a great talk.

And again, I’ll let I’ll let you know when this goes live. I’ll probably put it up pretty soon because I want to get this out and I want parents and people to be able to see it and see how the world has changed and wake some people up to it. Thank you guys very much. Thank you. Have a good night.

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Overview

South Carolina author Sasscer Hill, an amateur jockey and horse breeder, writes mysteries in series - The Nikki Latrelle Horse Racing Mysteries (five volumes), The Fia McFee Mysteries (two volumes to date), TRAVELS OF QUINN, GRIPPING TALES OF FACT AND FICTION, and now a new series The Janet Simpson Cozy Mysteries, of which MURDER AT THE WILLCOTTS HOTEL is the third volume. This novella is short, but Hill’s ability to create memorable characters involved in a tight cozy mystery heightened with humor makes this book asset sail! The main character Janet’s observations are present in the opening lines: “I remember the afternoon Kate arrived at the Willcotts Hotel. It wasn’t that she blew in like a pink breeze, her hat piled with coral flowers and feathers. It wasn’t her small, prancing poodle, its collar encrusted with coral-colored rhinestones, and it wasn’t the bellboy staggering beneath her three pink suitcases. No, the memory is sharp because it was the day I met Paul Delaveev…’ The theatrical flair established, the cleverly designed mystery unfolds.

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https://youtu.be/UqQkZNp8h5U

Transcript

Stephen: today on Discovered Wordsmith, I have Sasser Hill. Sasser, how are you doing today? I'm

Sasscer: doing well. Thank you.

Stephen: Good. Yeah, I'm excited to hear about your book. But before we delve into that, tell us a little bit about who you are, where you live, and what you like to do besides writing.

I

Sasscer: am living in Aiken, South Carolina. I moved down from Maryland 12 years ago, which is where I did most of the horse business I was involved in for 32 years. And then I came here because it is a horse area and I knew it'd be a very favorable area for me to stick around with horsey people and see horses.

And it's also a dog town and I love dogs and it's every other car that goes by has a dog with its head sticking out the window. So it's really a nice town.

Stephen: Nice. And when you say horse business, what exactly were you doing? I was

Sasscer: breeding foaling, raising, breaking thoroughbred racehorses.

And I was also an owner who raced them and I did that for 32 years.

Stephen: Okay I would expect there's some horses in your books. Sometimes.

Sasscer: Oh, yeah. Are our horse racing murder mysteries. The ones that have been out and actually, they're rather traditional mysteries. They have a little bit of.

Blood and guts in them, nothing too strong, but now I'm writing I'm trying my hand at a few cozy novellas, because they're quick and easy to write, and cozy mysteries are so popular right now, so I thought why not see if we can get a little bit of that income as well as what I usually write, so it's

Stephen: been fun.

Okay let's delve into that. Talk about your books a little bit. So today we're going to be talking about Murder at the Wilcots Hotel and this is not your first book. Is that correct?

Sasscer: No, it's like maybe number 9.

Stephen: Okay. So are these in a series or are they just separate individual books?

Sasscer: Most of them have been my first series is a five book series about a gal named Nikki Littrell, female jockey, very young.

The next series I wrote, if you want to call it that, was a two book deal for St. Martin's featuring a really strong character, female character named Fia McKee. But years ago, when I was in a Sisters in Crime group that I met, and I was taking we were doing critiques, this is when I was still up in Maryland the Sisters in Crime Chessie chapter, that was my chapter wanted to do a bunch of collections of mysteries.

So anthology. So I wrote two anthologies for two different two different stories for two, two different anthologies, and they did quite well. And they were both about a gal named Janet Sim Simpson, and she was a middle aged, if not beyond middle aged female.

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OverviewLuna rey hall is a queer trans non-binary writer. they are the author of space neon neon space (Variant Lit, 2022), no matter the diagnosis (Game Over Books, 2023), the patient routine (Brigids Gate Press, 2023), and loudest when startled (YesYes Books, 2020), longlisted for the 2020 Julie Suk Award. they are the winner of the 2013 Patsy Lea Core in Memorial Award for Poetry. their poems have appeared in The Florida Review, The Rumpus, & Raleigh Review, among others.

BookWebsitelunareyhall.com

FavoritesYouTubeTranscriptSo today on Discovered Luna. Discovered Wordsmith. I have with me Luna. Luna, how you doing today? Good, how are you? How are you? Good, good. And I see you’ve got a twins jersey on, so I’m gonna take a guess where you’re from, but uh, could you tell us a little bit about yourself, where you’re from, and some of the things you like to do besides writing?

Yeah,

Luna: definitely. Um, I, yeah, I’m an author. I’ve this, I have three books out, including the patient routine, which I believe we’ll talk about today. Um, I’m from the Twin Cities, been in Minnesota my whole life. Uh, and outside of writing, obviously I love reading. Um, I love doing art projects. Um, I’ve been collaging recently.

Um, I like to do graphic design. I do a lot of graphic design for my. Social media and stuff. So I’ve been getting into that too. Um, I have two dogs. I play with them all the time. Uh, they take up a lot of time. Yes. Um, otherwise that, that’s kind of the main thing. Uh, that’s, that’s kind of what I do in my day to day.

Stephen: Nice. What are you the dog breeds? My

Luna: older dog is a Beagle mix. Um, and his name is, uh, Yoshi. Great,

Stephen: great name. Oh, that’s interesting. I had an author here named Yoshi.

Luna: Oh yeah. You know, great name. So, um, and then my younger dog is, um, a pit terrier mix and Oh, nice. Yeah, she’s, she’s, uh, just a pup, just a little over a year old.

So,

Stephen: yeah. I. We had, uh, two dogs when my kids were younger, both rescues best dogs I’ve ever owned in my life. Uh, one has since passed away and I miss her greatly. But the other one sitting over there being a scaredy cat is a boxer and maybe English bulldog mix. We’re not really sure. Oh, sure. But, uh, yeah, she’s a great dog.

Anxiety though, when I leave, so that’s a problem.

Luna: Yeah, my dogs. Yeah, they’re very anxious too. And I work from home in my day job, so I’m here all the time. So whenever I leave, they are a mess.

Stephen: No. Yeah. Their time. Yeah. Same here. What, what, what do you do for a day job? I

Luna: work in education publishing. Um, right now it’s in like assessment, so like standardized testing as an editor.

Hmm. It’s not, no, it’s not super fun. My writing is significantly more fun. Right, but it pays the bills.

Stephen: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I’ve, I am into helping kids with writing and showing parents and teachers how teaching kids to write can lead to things they can do in their future, including storytelling and video games.

Yeah.

As an outsider, I’ll give it that. I’m not in the system. I see some things that could definitely work better and need improvement with our education system and the common core is not one of the good things.

Luna: Yeah, no, I fully agree. Yeah. Um, luckily I work in a lot of like accessibility and accommodation areas, so I get to work a lot of like braille.

Large print type of stuff, um, that kind of stuff. So that’s, that’s great that I can do something that’s very useful because yes, some of it’s, um, quite painful to get through,

Stephen: but yeah. Yeah, I was just, I was just talking to the Pittsburgh Library. They had a, a fair, and they were showing. About getting braille books into braille, which I would love to do because I’d love to have my book available to everyone.

Even if only one kid ever reads that book in braille. You know, there’s one kid that wouldn’t have read, been able to read that book, right? Totally. Same with large print. ’cause my son has issues with his eyes and he likes. Print, but sometimes it gets too small for ’em. So, you know, I, I think, uh, more authors, especially kids, authors, should look into doing some of those alternatives, even though eBooks have helped and audiobooks have helped.

Luna: Yeah, no, definitely. Yeah. And accessibility is so, don’t wanna say it’s like easy, but it’s, it’s so, it’s so important and it’s something that we actually should try to do more of. It’s easy to put resources into it if you care. So that’s, that’s what I’ll

Stephen: say. Agreed. I, I think we’re definitely better off than we were 20, 30, 40 years ago.

Yeah, definitely. But there’s still some room for improvement. Yeah. So, okay. Alright, so let’s, uh, actually talk about some of your stuff. Uh, um, so why did you want to start writing? Yeah.

Luna: Uh, I don’t have a, a super fun like coming to writing moment. Um, I always like to say that I had no clue what I was doing, like wanting to do when I went into college.

So I was at a community college, um, just trying to get generals done and I had to take an English class and it was a fiction writing or screen screenplay writing one of the two. And. I was like, this is kind of fun. Like the first thing in college that I was like, wow, this is kind of fun. And surprisingly, I was not, you know, a big writing kid when I was in high school or younger than that, or reader, like I, English was not one of my strong subjects.

Um, So, uh, once I took that class, I was like, oh, I like this. And then I had to take another English course, so I took poetry, which is my main, my main focus. Oh, good. Um, and I was like, oh, I love this. And I’m, and I feel like I’m okay at this. Like, it was a combination of the, I’m good at, I’m good at this, and it, it, uh, feels good to do it.

So, um, After that, I just kept writing and it, it’s evolved into this, you know, a decade later. Um, and I keep writing primarily just because I have so many, um, especially with like this book, the patient routine that just came out and some of my previous books. Um, I feel like I just have, um, There are a lot of like specific things that I, I want to and need to say.

So I think that’s, um, why I continue to write is that it, you know, maybe one day if I feel like I’ve gotten to the point where I’m like, ah, I don’t have anything else to say, then maybe I’ll stop. But, um, I. For now. I got, I got things to

Stephen: say. Well, I, I love that. It was a discovery process and you found what felt good and comfortable.

Yeah. I, I, I, I know, I agree with you. I’ve heard a lot of people that do the, uh, oh, I’ve always wanted to write, and my focus was, you know, always on writing in high school and, you know, and. Not everybody comes to it that way. And not everyone. I’ve talked to people who, for years, wanted to write a book and then they retired from their day job and suddenly they had the time to do it.

So yeah, totally. I think that’s an important message for lots of people. Yeah,

Luna: and I mean, I, I sucked at English in high school. I mean, it was not great and you know, I did not, uh, I was not a big reader at all, like I said, and I, um, sur surprised, I think I surprised a lot of people when I was like, I’m gonna pursue writing, you know, as a career.

Nice. Um, and they’re like, what? Like, that’s not you. Like, well actually I think it is.

Stephen: So that, that’s awesome. And. I’m gonna preach for a moment, uh, what something you just said there, you weren’t great with English in high school. That is actually like the least of what you need when you write and telling to tell a story because so many people miss that storytelling part.

They’re so focused on the craft, writing the sentence, and in school we teach kids spelling and grammar. Before they’ve written a single thing. Well that’s like, you know, just in the, you know, nebulous. Why am I learning spelling? Why am I learning grammar? It doesn’t mean anything. Yeah. But if we, I feel if we taught kids writing, just writing stories, telling stories, sitting around in a circle and telling stories.

Before we worked on spelling and grammar, that they would do better with the spelling and grammar ’cause they have something to refer to in their heads. Uh, I, I’m fighting a, a, a system, so yeah, I, I

Luna: definitely feel like there’s something to be said about, um, feeling the creativity of kids in writing. Like instead of kinda, uh, extinguishing

Stephen: it and with the software and software that’s still coming.

All that spelling and grammar is the least you have to worry about. ’cause you click a button and a lot of it gets fixed. So all the time we spend on that, yes, it’s good to know, but you know, it’s the same like civil war. I couldn’t tell you all the battles of the Civil War where they were or when they were.

I know they exist and I can look ’em up and that’s kinda how most people are with dates and history and stuff. And I think that’s kinda where our English is going to get to as far as the rules and the grammar and spelling. Uh, again, my opinion not shared by everybody. Uh, I think I’m, I’m on the leading edge in a hundred years, I’ll be revered or something, so yeah.

Yeah. So let, let’s talk about your book. The important part of what we’re discussing. Um, it is called the Patient Routine. Uh, tell us a little bit about it. ’cause I, I, it sounded very interesting when I was reading over the blurb.

Luna: Yeah. Um, the patient routine follows, um, a character named Ashton. They’re a college age non-binary student, um, and they’re suffering from health anxiety, what used to be called hypochondria.

Um, and they’re having an episode, um, that they can’t really shake off. So they decide to check into the emergency room, and in the process of that, the hospital goes under lockdown and everybody in the hospital is trapped in there until the situation which, you know, I won’t try to spoil too much, um, gets resolved.

So it’s a. Mystery thriller. Um, it’s, it’s all done in verse. Um, like I said, I study poetry for my, you know, my, my M f A, my b, f, a, all of that. So I’m, um, that’s kind of the mode that I write in. So it is a very playful with the page and formatting and language. Um, But it’s definitely a, uh, spooky story as well.

So I mean, it’s got, it’s got a little of everything, um, in there and it’s definitely a journey of, uh, you know, the self finding oneself in, um, the larger mental health sphere, the hospital system, um, gender. And a, a ton of other things, but that’s kind of the basics of it.

Stephen: Nice. So it’s it’s your jabber walkie.

Luna: Yeah. Nice. Something

Stephen: like that. So is it a medical thriller or, uh, straight up horror more, uh, what would you say?

Luna: Yeah, I’d say it, um, it’s definitely more like body horror. Um, it leans more towards that. I mean, there are definitely some medical aspects, obviously. Hospital. Um, but it definitely leans more towards just, um, the horrors of being trapped in your own mind.

The horrors of the medical system, but not in the terms, not in the way that I think most people think of, of like medical thrillers where, um, you know, the, the disease or the, what’s happening is like a really focal point. Like Ashton is the, the main focus in what’s happening with their.

Stephen: Okay. And, and can you think of any books or have you read any books that are similar to this to give people an idea if they’re interested?

Yeah. Um,

Luna: I think when I, I think when I pitched it originally, um, it was a mix of the Troop by Nick Cutter, um, which is a masterful, uh, body horror, um, piece of work. And then Eric Rocha’s, um, gosh, what’s the name of that book? It’s their first, um, book. There’s, uh, things have gotten worse since we last spoke.

It’s a queer horror book. Um, those were kind of my main inspirations. And then there was a bunch of, uh, like novels and verse that I read, um, to kind of just see structurally so that those also took influence. Um, I’m thinking like, Um, was it long? Way down by, um, oh gosh. Jason Reynolds, I believe

Stephen: his name is.

Luna: Long way down. Um, I’m just Googling things. Got it. Yeah, so those are, those are kind of the three books that I, when I was pitching people. Those are the ones that came to mind.

Stephen: Okay, nice. So if someone’s read and liked those or a combination of those, uh, they’d probably enjoy your book? I

Luna: would definitely

Stephen: say so, yes.

Okay. And what type of feedback are you getting from readers?

Luna: Uh, yeah, so far it has been extremely positive. Um, We’ve gotten, I think right now, uh, I think there’s like over 50 reviews on a bunch of, you know, platforms. Nice. Um, and it’s been very positive. You know, a lot of people who are, I, I think my favorite piece of feedback so far has been, and it’s happened two or three times, I’ve noticed, um, people have been like, I hated this book.

The first like few pages or the first like, Few sections and by the end of it I loved it because I think it is one of those things where it is harder to get into. ’cause it isn’t straight prose, it isn’t, you know, something that’s super, um, easy to get into if you aren’t used to reading poetry, if you aren’t used to the structure and kind of the.

The norms of poetry. ’cause it definitely leans into those. Um, but I think once you get past the fact that it’s poetry and the past, the fact that it’s not just paragraphs, then you can kind of get into the story and actually enjoy it.

Stephen: So definitely if somebody’s, uh, you know, uh, all my, all the books I’m reading sound alike, and they’re all the same, blah, blah, blah, I need something a little different and to mix it up.

I mean, that would be, uh, a good reason to pick up your book right there. Uh, I would think so. Something, yeah. You know, uh, and I know I, I think that way quite often. You know, I love certain things like Star Trek or what, you know, but if I watch too much Star Trek at one time, I get burn out and I’m like, ugh, I need something different.

Right. And then I’ll pick up. Foundation by Asimov Way different, but still a little si, you know, so, right. Yeah, uh, definitely. Uh, for someone looking for that type of thing, uh,

Luna: okay. Yeah, no, definitely. I think, you know, if you’re, yeah, definitely. If you’re looking for something different or if you’ve ever, you know, Wanted to see, uh, you know, I, I think it also works in the other way where people, if you’re scared of poetry, maybe this could be an easy way to get into it because it has a lot of the elements that regular fiction

Stephen: books have.

Yeah, that’s a good point. Poetry with a plot.

Luna: Yes. Yeah, it’s, it’s pretty much an epic poem. Um, you know, like the old classics.

Stephen: The, the, the really, really

Luna: old class, the really, really old, you know, the, the Dante Infernos and the, the Homers and the Iliads and all that. The Beowulf. Yes. So, uh, it’s definitely along those lines too.

I guess maybe I should have pitched that too.

Stephen: Yeah, well, you know, I guess it all depends on who you’re talking to. Yes. Yeah, that’s true. I, I, because I could, if I throw out to certain people, Hey, it’s a little bit like Beowulf. Oh heck no, I’m not reading that. You know, but there’s other people. If I say, Hey, it’s a little bit like Be Wolf, really, I think I’ll check that out.

So, yeah, all depends I guess. Yeah, totally. So Luna, if you had a choice, uh, would you like to turn this into a movie or a TV show?

Luna: Oh, geez. That’s, um, I think it’s definitely more of a, a movie. Um, it’s a, it’s, uh, and it’s a novella, so it’s, it’s a short little piece. Um, So it, it goes by quick. I’ve, another piece of feedback I’ve gotten is that it’s very, you know, one, one sitting type of read where you just kind of go through it, um, just in one shot.

Um, so I think it would probably fit a movie more. It, it doesn’t, I don’t know how you could expand it into a nice, like, nice Netflix style where they really milk it for all it’s worth. Um, but I. Hour and 25 minute movie. Oh yeah.

Stephen: Nice. And, and horror quite often loses something if you extend it too much. Uh, there’s very few examples of Yeah.

Really good horror TV shows.

Luna: Yes, that’s true. Yeah. See, uh, there, I mean, that’s few that have done it well, but, um,

Stephen: that’s not an anthology series. Yes,

Luna: true, true. I do love like the, the Hing on Hill House. That’s great.

Stephen: Yeah, that was exactly what I thought of one of the few ones. But the Bly manner wasn’t quite as good, right?

Luna: Yes. So, you know it all, yeah. Con yeah. Contact of the series and uh, source material that also helps.

Stephen: But, um, very much so. Do you have a, a website that people could go to and check out all your books? Yes.

Luna: Yeah. Luna rey hall.com. That’s l u n a r e y h a l l.com. And I’m at Luna Rey Hall on every social media platform

Stephen: there is.

Nice. And we’ll put, uh, links in the show notes to all that. Awesome. So do you have any plans for your next book?

Luna: I, well, uh, I do have another book coming out, um, in. January, it’s my second full length poetry collection. Um, I like to think of it as like a sister project ’cause it is also about health anxiety, but more personal.

Um, when I was talk, I was just talking to a friend about it actually. Um, and I was saying like, The poetry book is more about the hopeful aspects of mental health and my personal journey and the horror book. The patient routine is more about the, how can I make this experience as scary as possible to reflect some of the horrors that I’ve had in my life, but not.

To push it to the extreme. Interesting. So, um, so yeah, so that comes out in January. It’s called no Matter the Diagnosis. Um, and, but I do, I’m, I’m constantly writing. So I have another book that I’m pitching right now that is also a horror book that’s about, um, analog horror. I don’t know if you know what that is.

It’s like a. It’s like a YouTubey type thing where um, it focuses a lot of like on mystery and old. I like to think of it as like old broadcasts that, uh, have like secret messages. Okay. That’s kind of the easy way to explain it. Um, okay. But I’m, yeah, I’m also working on my next, I’m doing everything apparently.

Yeah. So, um, I’m also working on a full novel length project too. That will be my first novel. Um, so we’re seeing how that goes. Um, I have no experience on that, so, um, that’s taking it slow and, um, that’s, those are my, that’s what I’m working

Stephen: on. Oh, nice. And, uh, now you’re, are you doing all of these in pros or was this just for the one and you’re doing, uh, regular type non-pro writing?

Luna: Um, yeah, so I have the one that I’m pitching, the analog horror one is kind of like a mix of both. Um, it uses prose, some poetry, and then it also has like letter writing in it too. It, it’s, it’s all over the place. Um,

Stephen: well, is it called, uh, a pistol area, right? Is that, that’s what that’s called. Okay. Yes. I keep my terms straight.

Luna: Um, But yeah. So then, um, but the novel is a novel in verse. Um, that’s just, that’s my go-to. I, I, I feel like, I think in poetry now, I’ve just been so used to it. So when I’m writing, it comes out like that. Okay. Um, I’m not sure. I, I’m always, you know, someone asks me if I’ll write like a, just a standard fiction book one day in Prose, and I was like, I don’t know, you know?

I don’t know if I could, like, I feel like I’m, so I’d have to go back to school maybe and learn from fiction writers. Um, Yeah. So, um, a mix of prose and verse

Stephen: uh, writing. But, but also they always tell you, you know, write what you know. And you, you discovered writing. Yeah. So if you think and write well in prose, the, the people you start picking up, kinda like Katamari there, you know, with the rolling ball picking you up.

Uh, That, that that’s what they’re going to like and want. It’s, it’s what makes you stand out too. Right. You know? Totally. It’s, it’s that thing, uh, that’s different about you, but also something that’s not so far different that nobody wants it, you know, you know what I’m saying? Totally. You don’t have that

Luna: balance.

Yeah. I get that.

Stephen: Okay. So, um, What are some of your favorite books and authors that you’ve read? Oh, geez. You mentioned a couple earlier what your book was like, but your personal favorites.

Luna: Yeah, so, um, actually the Troop by Nick Cutter is one of my favorite books ever. It really got me back into horror. Um, I was super lucky to have Nick Cutter blurb, my book.

That was an amazing experience. I, I go back to that book like once, once a year at least. Um, one of my favorite, I have two favorite poetry books that I always recommend, which are Black Aperture by Matt Rasson, um, and Blood Dazzler by Patricia Smith. Both are great. Um, those are, those are my go-tos. I’m also a big fan of, uh, I, I read a lot of comics, so I, I read a lot of, um, Saga is my favorite, like graphic novel.

My

Stephen: son loves Saga.

Luna: Yeah. Fantastic. Um, I have the collector’s editions behind me. I love that.

Stephen: Oh, I see right there on the end. Yeah. Yes. I recognize the cover

Luna: with a big stack of books in front of it too. Um, so those are kind of those Yeah, those are my, um, those poetry books. I go back to all the time and saga.

I read a bunch too. Um, But the troop, um, I’m, I’ve been a big fan of, um, queen of Teeth by, um, Haley Piper. She’s great. Um, yeah, so those are, those are my, I guess off the top of my head, those are my

Stephen: favorites. Okay, great. And where you live, is there a favorite bookstore that you like to go to? Yeah, I

Luna: love, um, moon Palace books in St.

Paul. They’re great. Um, I’ve read for them a couple times and they’re a very, Uh, queer friendly, uh, very accessible stores. So they, um, they, they have my heart right

Stephen: now. Nice. Okay. I’ll put a link to them in the show notes and a map so people can get to ’em. Awesome. All right, so before we talk some author type things, um, tell everybody if someone pa saw you on the street and said, Hey, I heard you wrote a book.

Uh, why should I get it and read it? What would you tell them?

Luna: Um, I like to think because it is, um, pride month while we’re recording that you, yes. It’s should support, you should support trans, non-binary authors and, um, especially ones that are writing in verse. ’cause that is a, a very niche field,

Stephen: um, population of one at the moment that I know of.

Luna: Yeah. So, um, you know, support, uh, experimentation.

I’d say that’s the biggest thing that I. Would, uh, preach is that, um, if you like this type of work and or you even have ever thought about it, um, make sure that you, you shout it’s, uh, um, shout it out ’cause um, nobody will continue to publish it if it just. Dwindles correct. And yeah, there, there are, there, there are other authors who write, you know, horror in verse who write, you know, novels in verse, um, currently.

Um, and they’re awesome, but they are few and far between.

Stephen: Yeah, I don’t think I can actually name another horror verse book or writer, uh, other than what you’ve talked about off top of my head. Yeah, there

Luna: was, um, oh my gosh. And now I’m gonna of course blank. It, there’s this great werewolf one, um, that was inverse and I’m totally blinking on it, so

Stephen: we’ll, we’ll, we’ll get up and maybe put it, put it in the show tonight.

Yeah, yeah. I’ll send it. So, yeah, that’d be perfect. Uh, let me ask you, since uh, you’ve been writing a couple things now, you’re working on a couple things, what are some things you’ve learned that you’re doing different now than you did from the start?

Luna: Yeah. Um, I think the biggest thing with like my first book, it was, um, and my first book is called Loudest When Startled, it’s a poetry book about gun violence and masculinity, family, et cetera.

Um, I think the biggest thing that I learned from that is that now I know more in my audience, like what my. People who have continually read my books, um, what they want out of me. I think that’s a big thing that I’ve learned. Um, another thing is kind of just like trusting myself. I think that’s a big, just like, especially with the patient routine, that was a big leap of faith to just be like, I can do this totally different, weird thing and make it a success.

Um, Otherwise, I mean, if I didn’t trust myself, I think I’d just be writing the same book over and over again with different, uh, you know, variations. Um, right. I would never have jumped into a different genre, a totally different, uh, community really with the horror as opposed to poetry. Um, so I think those are the two big things that I’ve learned.

Stephen: And I love what you said about, um, your, your audience and what they want, because that sometimes can be a hot topic, you hear write to market, uh, quite often. Yeah. In the publishing and writing in, you know, groups and stuff. And a lot of people are like, ah, you know, write to market’s bad and blah, blah, blah.

But the, there’s, I’ve discovered people take that. Saying in two different ways. You can have right to market, which means, oh, I wanna write a, a successful horror book, or a successful romance, you know? And I went and studied all the tropes and I threw ’em all into this book, and now I wrote it and it should be successful.

You, you weren’t. Writing what you wanted. You were writing what you thought would sell, but if you have an audience like you mentioned, and there’s certain things they want from your books, there’s certain things they want from horror books. You write what they want, you’re writing that is also writing to market, but you’re not doing it in that sleazy way.

That’s what we should all be doing, is writing what our audience wants to read. If not, if we’re just writing for ourselves and what we want. We don’t really have a right to complain if nobody else likes it or buys it. Sure. But if we understand our audience and we’re writing what we want, but what they wanna read, also that’s a VE debt or Venn diagram in there.

Uh, I think that’s super important to understand that distinction in a couple different ways of saying right to

Luna: market. Yeah. Yeah. No, I totally agree. I think it. Yeah, I mean that’s, that’s a said. Yeah, I agree with what you’re saying. Yeah.

Stephen: Alright. Good, good, good for me. You agree? Yes. So, okay. So our discussion, let’s talk about this.

And I was excited because you’re an l uh, forgive me if I get all the letters wrong. It’s changed on me. L G B T Q I. Is that it? That is,

Luna: yes. I mean, yeah, definitely. Um, LGBTQ plus is also acceptable. There’s, you know, many acceptable

Stephen: directions. So there’s variations, I think. Yes. So, uh, which is not even something 10 years ago that was really on anyone’s radar or part of the discussion of genres and things.

So the first thing I wanna ask you is, are you finding it. Easy or harder to get into. It’s hard to tell ’cause you haven’t written before, but do you, do you find that saying, I’m L G B T Q writer, do you find, uh, the difficulties or what’s easy about it? Uh, you know, what, what’s different, I guess, than someone that’s not an L G B T writer?

That you can tell, that you can see. Yeah. I know that’s a weird question because you haven’t been writing for 50 years in multiple genres.

Luna: Yeah. Um, I think for me, well first of all, being queer permeates, like all of my writing, like everything I write is very queer. It’s all very, um, part of, you know, I don’t think I’ll write a book that doesn’t have.

A main character that’s,

Stephen: and, and we, we mentioned this earlier, they always say, write what you know. Well, there you go. Right? Yeah.

Luna: Yeah. So, like I said, patient routine, they’re very non-binary and that is essential to the story. Um, the books I’m writing now, they’re all trans characters and that experience is very integral to the story.

Um, So, yeah, I mean I think that’s from my limited experience over the last, you know, 10 years. ’cause I definitely, I started writing when I was not out. Um, so my first book came out right where I was starting to be out. Um, so a lot of those were written very, um, I would say, Shy or frightened of letting on that I was a queer person, um, letting on that I wasn’t, you know, this man that my family and everybody had thought I was.

Um, so I mean, those things are just like constants for me in my writing always now, like the, just being queer is part of my, my work now. Um, and I guess that as, as opposed to, and I. In both poetry and horror. It’s very, they’re very accepting, uh, communities, the author, communities, the writing, the readers.

Um, so I mean, I haven’t had any like, pushback. I definitely had some feedback where people didn’t understand the crux of, um, particularly the patient routine. ’cause it is a very, you know, queer. Climax, I would say, where, you know, um, if you hadn’t experienced that, and maybe if you weren’t paying attention through the whole thing as closely, you might not catch on to everything.

Um, but I mean, yeah, I definitely feel, or I mean, right now, I, I could not pull the two, I couldn’t pull writing and queerness apart for me. Like they’re just inter, they’re integrated now. Okay.

Stephen: If that makes any sense. No, absolutely. And I. Uh, you, you know, you said about 10 years ago is when you first started.

In the last 10 years, the, the avenues have changed a a lot. Mm-hmm. That there’s more avenues. You mentioned the bookstore near you that’s accepting and allows you to come and read. Whereas pre covid 10 years ago and all that may not have been a possibility. People, you know, oh, that’s going to hurt our store, or, oh, we don’t have a section for that.

You know, and, and I think there’s more. Of that out there, uh, you know, to, to give you those avenues.

Luna: Yeah, I definitely think visibility and, um, celebration of queer work has definitely increased in the last 10 years. Um, luckily I live in a state and, uh, the Twin Cities metro that is very accepting and very, um, progressive, uh, for the most part.

Um, so. I hope, my hope is that 10 years ago it would’ve been okay too. But um, yeah, no, I definitely understand what you’re saying. And yeah, I think the, especially for bookstores, the, um, I guess there’s something to be said about the, like the genre nature of. LGBTQ

Stephen: plus. And, and I’m so glad you mentioned genre ’cause I was going to bring that up.

Uh, but for, for people who do listen to the podcast regularly and get it, uh, I’m, I’m going to just bet there’s somebody, oh, I can’t believe that he’s talking to an l LGBTQ writer and that’s, I don’t wanna listen anymore, blah. I’m sure there’s somebody like that, but Sure. But you know what, I have never. I like to read horror and I like to read fantasy.

I have never taken a horror book and crammed it down somebody’s throat and say, you must read horror because I think it’s the best. I can’t imagine you’re going to take your book and shove it down anybody’s throat and say, you must read this because I said you should. I don’t understand the people that think it’s their duty to the world to denounce any genre because they don’t like it, and that doesn’t even make sense to me.

Luna: Yeah. It’s a, it’s a difficult, um, subject for some people, I guess

Stephen: you could say. I, I, that’s a very delicate way of putting,

Luna: you know, Saying anymore? Yeah, I think, you know, some people are just, uh, not open to Right. Um, The, the, the width of the human

Stephen: experience? Well, I’ll say for anybody listening personally, I’m probably not going to go into the store and pick up an L G B T book.

That’s fine. I’m not your target audience. You know, I, I go and read aza, but if one was on my desk, somebody said, Hey, you’d probably enjoy this. I’d at least give it a try, but I don’t, I wouldn’t stop listening to a podcast or something like that because of. This one interview or something. I, I just think people need to move on.

You know, why, why do you care if other people are enjoying Luna’s books? Let them go enjoy it. That’s great. They’ve got something for them to read that they wanna read and enjoy. Yeah,

Luna: definitely. No, I. I

Stephen: agree with you. Well, I’ll let you know once this airs, if my subscriber rate goes down. Yeah. We’ll know who we don’t wanna, who we don’t wanna talk to.

Luna: Yeah. Hopefully I don’t kill too many of your

Stephen: subscribers. That’s fine. You know what? If people are close-minded and they wanna drop the podcast because I talked to you and you’re on here. Let ’em do it. That’s fine with me. There you go. Keep the rest of them. Uh, now there is one thing, uh, that I, I know you probably deal with that I deal with.

So I, I write middle grade books, fantasy books. Yeah. That you write L G B t L G B T Horror At the moment we’ll say, but here’s what bugs me. Middle grade L G B T Q, those are demographics. Those are not genres. You can’t just say, I write middle grade because a kid that likes, uh, dork Diaries is not necessarily going to like where the red fern grows.

There are two different genres and what people need to understand is you can have a demographic, but within those demographics you still have all the same. Genres. So you write horror, it’s in the L G B T L G B T Q demographic. I write fantasy in the middle grade demographic, uh, which is way different than an adult fantasy book.

Uh, you know, so does, does it. I don’t know, do you run into that or think about it where people just say, oh, he writes L G B T Q? Well, I don’t write romance necessarily. I don’t write, uh, you know, literary fiction. I write horror. Totally different than just, uh, you know, lumping. I, have you ever, you know, thought about that or is that an issue for you?

For me, that’s an issue. Yeah.

Luna: Um, I think my most straightforward answer is that I don’t care. I, I totally understand and appreciate, um, what you’re saying, and I think there has been a lot of push for. You know, generalizing, I guess, you know, I love that word. Word. Everything. Everything and anything right.

To sell it. I mean, I think that’s the biggest thing is that it’s all to sell these things. So you can sell the category, you can sell the author, the, the, the book. Um, but definitely when I’m writing, I’m not, I’m not thinking about it. You know? It’s just, it is what it is. And. After the fact. Um, you know, I wasn’t like going into this and I was like, I wanna make a horror piece specifically.

Um, it just ended up being that genre because of the content. Um, so I mean, yeah, I definitely don’t, I. For me personally, you know, it’s, it’s not a, it’s not a big deal or a big thought. That’s something for my publisher to deal with.

Stephen: Got it. That’s probably a personal pet peeve of mine. Sure, sure. But, but the other thing is with the L G B T Q is sometimes, what does it matter?

It doesn’t always come into or affect the story. Much, if at all. For example, uh, the Lord of the Rings. I know there’s been a huge argument and debate and whether Gandalf is gay or not and they should tell us, or um, I think rallying had some of the same issues with some Harry Potter characters who’s gay and who’s not.

It’s like, hold on a second. Harry Potter is basically middle grade. These kids are in school. There’s a little bit of flirting and you know, standard kid, uh, dating type stuff. It’s not really affecting the story if someone is gay or isn’t gay. And I think, I think a, as a society, we need to get past that point where we have to focus on that part of it.

That it either is or isn’t. And it’s just part of things. Let’s worry about the story. What do you think about that?

Luna: Yeah, I mean, I definitely think representation is important. Yes. In, in the, um, especially in, you know, Early grade, middle grade. Ya, it’s definitely important to show that these characters exist and that they are fully fledged characters and, you know, there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of nuance to that conversation, but, um, true.

Yeah. I definitely think that, um, you know, uh, again, I, I do kind of think it just goes back to that they’re trying to sell. You know, X, Y, Z and they’re labeling things that really don’t, like books, really don’t need like labels and that kind of terminology. I think

Stephen: I, I, I agree. We, so, um, let’s focus on story.

Luna: Yeah. So, um, yeah. But, um, I mean, if people wanna debate on if a character is gay or not, like, Go for it. That’s my opinion. Like go for it. Um, especially if it helps a kid or, you know, helps someone, uh, well that’s a good point. Accept

Stephen: themselves. That’s a good point. Yes, you’re right. I mean, come on. For almost a hundred years now, we’ve, uh, heard the story of, uh, the Seven Dwarves that all lived together in one house.

Let’s think about that for a moment, folks. Yeah. They’re pretty gay. Yeah. I mean, that’s been, that’s been in kids’ stories for a long time. Totally. Yeah. Alright, so, uh, Luna is, is there anything that you would say to an audience, uh, about being an L G B T writer or L G T B books in, in general, uh, that something that you, you’d like to just get out?

Luna: Yeah. Um, I definitely think if you’re, you know, an LGBTQ plus person, a queer person and you wanna write a story, definitely go for it. ’cause there’s an audience and there are people who wanna listen to it and read it. And it doesn’t matter that you aren’t fitting the standard, um, paperback, bestseller, um, ideals.

Um, you could say. Um, so yeah, that I can just say we need. We need more of that. We need more people to just be themselves and to really do weird, cool, creative projects. And, um, that’s that. Yeah. I’ll

Stephen: just leave it there. Okay. Agree. Agreed. And if that isn’t for you, great. Go back to the 3 million other genres that are available on Amazon.

Yeah, definitely. I, I, I, I look forward to. Not having that distinction that you know, that if, if you pick that, it doesn’t have to be the, the, um, sexuality or the L G B T Q ness of a book doesn’t have to be the focus of it. It, it, we need to get to the point it’s past that to the story and how well the story’s told and uh, everything else is just, Part of that, that that’s what I look forward to.

Yeah. Uh, you know, I, I have no problem reading books with straight characters, gay characters, bi characters, trans characters. But I’m not, I even, even the, the hero characters. I, I, I don’t care to read a book where the focus is on that. Sure. I, I wanna read a spy thriller or something, you know what I’m saying?

Uh, it, it just, that’s what it is. Great. It can be a part of the story, but not a spotlight.

Luna: Yeah. Nope. I, I hear you.

Stephen: All right, man. I appreciate you taking some time chatting with me today. Uh, it’s been great talking to you. Thank you.

Luna: Yeah, definitely. Thank you for having me.

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Robert Wolf, M.D., grew up as the only child of Ervin and Judit Wolf. Their stories of their escape from communist Hungary, and his father's tragic history of escaping the Nazis twice but having his own parents taken to Auschwitz, inspired Robert to document his parents' tales and share those stories with Jewish groups and others throughout the United States. In "Not a Real Enemy" Robert shares his family saga-and the forgotten history of the nearly half million Hungarian Jews who were deported and killed during the Holocaust-through an epic and inspiring tale of daring escapes, terrifying oppression, tragedy, and triumph. 

Robert Wolf is a national speaker and is featured in national media and TV including ABC TV, NBC TV, CW TV, FOX TV, CBS TV and more.  

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Stephen: today on Discovered Wordsmith, I want to welcome Rob Wolf. Rob, how are you doing

Robert: today? I'm doing well. Hi, how are you? Thank you for having me.

Thanks for inviting me.

Stephen: Yeah. It's great to have you on. We're gonna talk about your book not a Real Enemy, but before we do let's find out a little bit about you. What are, where do you live and what are some of the things you like to do besides writing? I.

Robert: Hi, I'm Rob Wolf, and I was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan the Detroit area.

I was raised kindergarten through 12th grade in a small town called Mount Clemens. Suburban Detroit. Famous for Thomas Alva Edison and Sulfur Baths back in the day. They those don't, I don't know even know if those exist anymore, but back in the day it was very popular resort for that.

Stephen: Yeah, I don't think Edison still exists. No.

Robert: He was the Elon Musk of his day, I would say. Yeah. So yeah. And then I went to Tufts University for undergraduate. I was fortunate enough to get into Tufts University near Boston for undergraduate. And then I went to University of Michigan Medical School and I graduated in 1988. Loved Ann Arbor.

What a great place to go to school. Again, very privileged, very competitive. Always a, it was a great school to go attend and it was a great school to to be an alumnus as well. And then then I did residency. I, my residency, I'm a radiologist, so I did a year internship at Framing Framingham Union Hospital near Boston Boston University affiliate.

I did my radiology residency at Brown Rhode Island Hospital in Providence, Rhode Island. And then I did a neuroradiology neuroradiology fellowship at Yale. University in New Haven, Connecticut. Now, by now I'm 30 years old. I've done half my life. I'm 60 now, so now I'm about 30, finally ready to make a living after all those years of indentured Ry.

And so I've lived half my life in New England and half my life in Michigan. So I've bounced back to forth. There were no jobs when I finished my fellowship back in the nineties. So I took what I could a place in Massachusetts that I was moonlighting as a senior resident and as a fellow.

I needed a radiologist, so I took a job there and I was there four years, and then back to Michigan for seven years, and then back to Massachusetts with my wife at the time. And worked a few jobs inpatient, outpatient hospital work tele radio, tele radiography work. I still do some teleradiology now.

I'm, I do two days a week, part-time, Wednesdays and Thursdays just to stay, stay in the loop. I can tell, we'll talk a little bit more about that when we talk about the history of my book, but Besides medicine, which I've been doing. So now I've been doing that, let's say 33 years in radiology, 34 years.

And it's been a great it's been a great run. I've been part-time since I was 43, so about half of my career I've been part-time and the other half pretty much full-time. And, night call and weekends and all that other stuff. Besides radiology, I love sports.

I love all sports.

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Ben joins us from New Jersey where he goes to college. Ben may be young and isn't known, but he is an experienced author with several books under his belt already with many planned in the future.

Ben has also talked with an author, Sue Bentley, that he admires and got her permission to use some of the animals names from her book in his book. Listen to what Ben shares about his books and his advice for writing.

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Stephen: today on Discovered Wordsmiths, I want to welcome Ben Levine. Ben, good morning. How are you doing Levin? Let me rewind and back that up. I'm messing this all up today.

Alright, so today on Discover Wordsmith, let me welcome Ben Levin. Ben, how are you doing today? Good morning. I'm doing all right.

Ben: Thank you, Stefan. And you,

Stephen: You're doing all right. As long as I keep getting things correct instead of messing things up on what we're talking about. Sorry.

That's okay. All right. So Ben tell us a little bit about who you are, where you live, what you like to do, some things you outside of writing. I'm currently going

Ben: to college at Fairleigh Dickinson University, and I am, I live in Mottville, New Jersey. In addition to writing, I like to read, relax, sometimes go on walks and do active stuff, even though I don't do it as often as I'd like.

Stephen: Gotcha. And being in school that keeps you pretty busy. Anyway. Yeah, I remember. Yeah, it's a fun time. Good time. You like to read, we're gonna talk a little bit about some of your favorite books and stuff later, but what are you studying in college? Creative writing. Okay. It fits right in.

How's that going? You enjoying it? Yes. Yeah. We'll assume you're doing well 'cause I don't want you to embarrass yourself if you're not. So we'll just say, Ben, I'm glad you're doing so well in college. That's good. But let, we're gonna talk about that too, also a little bit about what it's like to write while still in school.

And you started writing before college, so we'll talk a little bit about that too. Let's talk about your latest books. You've got several books out in a series. Tell us a little bit about that. You mean about Nellie's friends? Nellie's friends? Yes.

Ben: What exactly do you want to know

Stephen: about it? Sorry.

Tell us what the series is about. What it is it's about healthy. Is it mystery? Little bit of it's a.

Ben: Okay. It's a kid series, a little girl series about a girl named Nelly who moves to Illinois from New York. And after she leaves all her friends behind her favorite hobby becomes making new ones.

Each book is about a new friend she makes and the adventure they have together.

Stephen: Okay, nice. So why did you wanna write a series of books about a girl who's trying to make friends?

Ben: The idea initially came to me in fourth grade, a time when I was obsessed with things stereotypically meant for girls, like dolls and girl books, and part of me wanted to explore this interest more.

Okay. And Nelly's friend seemed like the right way to do it.

Stephen: Nice. Okay. You know what are you using any of these books for part of your schoolwork, creative writing, or is this all on the side? All on the side. Okay. So are you picking up some things in college that are helping with the writing?

Or are you Yes. Okay. Like what have you learned in school that's helped with your latest writing? I have to think. Okay. Yeah. Sorry. Throwing 'em at you, you're not ready for, got it.

Ben: I've never really thought of it that way but I'm almost certain I've learned

Stephen: something.

Yeah. I hope, yeah. You're spending a lot of time and money there, so I hope they're giving you something right. That's true. How many books do you have in the series right now?

Ben: Published or in general

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I want to welcome Jennifer Lawrence and apologize to her once again. We did a whole episode and talked about a lot of great things - that I forgot to record. So she graciously agreed to get back on and redo it, even though she was super busy with school and family. Thank you.

Jen lives in Nashville, TN with her family. She is also a teacher and has written a series of books for kids - The Mystic series. We discuss her book and having her daughters read and help with the series. We also discuss the difficulty in marketing middle grade books and some things you can do.

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Stephen: big surprise today, I'm welcoming JL Lawrence to the podcast for the second time, but most of you don't even know what the first time was. So she was gracious enough to get back on because we switched recording mediums last time and I forgot to hit record. So we had a great conversation and then didn't even record it.

So hopefully we can recreate all that great conversation that we had. Jen, tell us a little bit about you and what you like to do besides writing.

Jennifer: I do, I guess in my off time or my real job, whichever way you wanna look at it, is I'm a high school teacher so I teach marketing and I spend a lot of time with the students.

'cause we do a lot of competitions like the one we just went to in Orlando to compete internationally. Had some good results there. So really enjoyed that. And keeps me a little bit young when you're constantly surrounded by teenagers. Yeah. So sometimes I feel really old. Sometimes it helps you feel young.

It's a double edged, but but I do enjoy it. I've been teaching for 20 years, so it's, it's been a good run and I've enjoyed it. And then when I'm not teaching and not writing I mostly spend a lot of time doing stuff with my kids, like with soccer or whatever it may be.

Stephen: Yep. The life of a busy working parent.

Yes. It. Your kids are a little older. My kids are just a few years older than yours, and it starts settling down a little bit, but then you start going I don't know if I wanna do that other stuff. 'cause boy, the stuff with the kids was a load of fun,

Jennifer: yep. Yeah. I've got three, my oldest one graduates in two weeks.

Stephen: Oh, wow. So it's really busy time right now.

Jennifer: Yep. She just had prom yesterday, so got to enjoy that and now ready for getting ready for

Stephen: graduation. Nice. I remember those just a few years ago. All right. So tell us about your books. You write middle grade. Tell us about your latest books and why did you choose to write middle grade your high school teacher?

Jennifer: It's my journey. It was actually a little crazy. I started with an adult fantasy series that I had in my mind for years and just finally came into fruition. And then when I finished it, My daughter, who was 14 at the time, was like why didn't you write something that I could read? So I was like okay.

So I thought about it, and so I took the same character and brought her back to high school to create my first young adult series. I. And so that she, and that was a four book series so that she could have something to talk with me and work with me and read. And then in the last couple of years, I just really got to thinking about, other, my youngest one now is just 14, but was 12 when I started thinking about it.

And so I started thinking about what else I could do to reach her. And, a lot of fun ideas that I had over the years. I love dragons and a lot of mythical creatures that's always interested me and so I just figured out how to put a spin on it and came up with the Dragon Master

Stephen: Chronicles.

Nice. And have your kids read the books now? I.

Jennifer: Yes, my my youngest one has actually worked with me through it. Like I'd write a couple of chapters and then I'd read 'em t...

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Catherine lives in Tucson Arizona and is a bass player. Good combo - author and bass player.

She has written a sci-fi novel called Aztec Eagle that is the first of a series. She is also with Jumpmaster Press.

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Stephen: today on Discovered Wordsmiths, I wanna welcome Catherine. Catherine. Hello. How are you doing today?

Catherine: Doing fine, thank you Steven.

Stephen: Alright, so we're gonna talk about your book Aztec Eagle, but before we do that, let's find out a little bit about you.

So tell us a little bit about where you live and some of the things you like to do besides writing. I

Catherine: live in Tucson, Arizona, and of course with the fabulous weather we have here for most of the year, I enjoy outdoor things like bicycling and hiking and indoor things like making music.

Stephen: Oh, nice.

What do you play? I

Catherine: play bass guitar. So do

Stephen: I. Good, good choice.

Catherine: Yeah, my my husband and my daughter and a friend of ours had decided they were gonna put a little trio together. They had a keyboard and drum kit and a singer, and when I heard them perform the first time, I said, you really need a bass player? Yeah. Yes. I'll have to learn to play bass.

Stephen: And so I did.

Yeah, that, that was the same with me. I had some friends that had a band, they needed a bass player. So my buddy showed up and said, hi, this is a base, this is the e a d and G strings. Each fret is a half step go. Literally, that was my introduction. Let's go. Yeah. Alright, so Katherine why did you wanna start writing?

Catherine: I have to think back and I was in elementary school and I think what happened was my older brother had an assignment in his class to write a short story. And I read the short story that he wrote. I thought that was just the coolest thing and I'd like to do that too. So I started writing when I was about 10 years old.

Stephen: Nice. Nice. That, that was about the time I was reading Stephen King. All right. We're gonna talk about your book, Aztec Eagle and it, you said it's your seventh book, correct? That's correct. Yes. Okay. So tell us about Aztec Eagle and is it part of a series or is it a standalone?

Catherine: Aztec Eagle is book one in a series called the Aztec Eagle Series.

Book two, we hope we'll be out later this year. And I'm editing book three we're on our way. A little bit about it. It's set maybe 200 years in the future where earth has one colonial planet called Alpha. But the story starts in a small town in Mexico on the shore where a young urchin named Enrique is selling trinkets to the tourists, and he meets a captain in the peacekeeper Pilot Corps.

And the interesting thing about this pilot core is that many of the pilots have a neural implant. That allows them to connect with their aircraft so that they're getting data instantaneously from their aircraft. And the way they select for pilots who get this implant is if they have a high cyonic ability.

And as it turns out, young Enrique, who was maybe five years old at that time has a pretty good cyonic talent. And El Capitan takes him under his wing to develop and train the cyonic talent. And Enrique then just becomes fascinated with becoming a pilot. He's obsessed with it. And of course, as with all obsessions, he runs into some major difficulties.

He's poor, he can't afford secondary education. He can't, he can hardly afford the books for his schoolwork. So there are obstacles to conquer. And then his world turns upside down when he finds out that El cap. His hero, who, he was planning to become a pilot and be just like El Capitan and fight side by side with El Capitan.

His hero defects to the other side goes over to the rebel cause, and now Enrique has a dilemma. What does he do? So that's, that gives you an introduction without giving away too

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Stephen: so today on Discover Wordsmith, I wanna welcome the great Jim Beard, who is the better duo, better half of the duo of Flinch Publishing. That's what I hear at least Jim? Oh,

Jim: wow. Okay. This is starting off on the wrong foot already.

Now. I can never talk to John again. My partner, my publishing partner. Wow. Okay.

Stephen: We'll just not tell John you're on here, and then we'll, okay. Yeah. This

Jim: is just between you and me. Nobody else is gonna hear

Stephen: this. Nobody at all.

Jim: Wow. Wow. Yeah, he's, he's already, supremely jealous of me, so now it's just gonna be worse. Nice.

Stephen: Jim tell everybody a little bit about yourself to give an intro here. Okay. I

Jim: am a a writer, editor, and publisher of adventure Fiction. And pop culture nonfiction. And then I also whenever I can, I will write licensed fiction too. I don't do as much of that as I would I would like to.

But so I wear several hats and do a lot of different things. And I actually have two small press self-publishing firms, and we already mentioned the one. So that's flinch books with John Bruning of Cleveland, Ohio who will never speak to me again. Thank you. Oh,

Stephen: I'm sorry. I just broke the band up.

Jim: And and then Becky books which is just me.

Stephen: And actually you mentioned the license stuff. That was the first time I met you. It was actually years ago at pioneer Village down mid Ohio. Yeah you had a little table like set up behind the mill. Yeah. In the middle of nowhere.

It was like nobody was around you. Yeah. It

Jim: was a card

Stephen: table. Yes. And I had found out that you wrote a story for one of the Star Wars comic books I had, and I had that brought it down to have you sign. Yeah.

Jim: You're reminding me that we only see each other at bigfoot shows. Yes.

Stephen: Yeah. Which is funny because about it, it's this for sure.

And that's kind funny because that's not your main thing up until now you.

Jim: That's, that's interesting because I have been utterly fascinated and in love with Cryptids, all my life from when I was, a little kid and and just want to be around that kind stuff.

But I chose to do that because I do have a lot of like monster or supernatural related things and I've that kicked it off for me. I've actually started doing some crypted shows now and finding out that I do very well at them. That the people really seem to spark. When, when I bring Cold Check the Night Stalker or Love it, I don't have, I can't get it anymore.

I used to have an in the X-Files book, but unfortunately I can't get copies of that. I,

Stephen: I've got that. Yeah I got a

Jim: copy from you. And I was just, before we started recording here, I was just telling you that this lasted show that I was at, which I. Surprise, surprise that I got the idea that I'm finally going to do an actual Bigfoot book.

Yeah, that'd be great. I actually can, hold that up when I'm at these shows and say, look, I have a Bigfoot book. It's not just it's Bigfoot.

Stephen: Yeah, I saw you asking for stories in that and I got excited 'cause I love reading that stuff. I actually thought of replying one, but I'm like, nah, I don't wanna mix it with asking you to be on the podcast and applying to the book.

I don't wanna feel, I'm mad. That's okay. Yeah. But I don't think I was ready for it, listen, I

Jim: mean, honestly, if this first one does well, I will certainly, want to do other another in fact, I had to, I got more pitches than I had slots, right? The book. And I had to actually turn down, four people.

Everybody turned in great pitches. Which is an editor's dream. It's also a nightmare too, 'cause you, 'cause then you have to weigh two really good ones and you gotta go so who knows maybe a second volume, but it's, I gotta get this first one out first.

Stephen: Good.

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Don lives in Ohio with his wife and recently retired. As a retirement goal, he wanted to write a book and he's written a series of humor books. Along with writing, he has been practicing standup comedy.

Book

Website

https://donake.allauthor.com/

YouTube

Transcript

Stephen: today on Discovered Wordsmiths, I have Don Ake.

Don, good morning. How are you doing? Good morning. It's a

Don: great morning here.

Stephen: Yes. It's finally getting warmer around here though. We've got some cold temperatures at night still.

Don: Been a weird spring but yeah. We'll take

Stephen: the sunshine. Yeah, definitely. So Dawn before we talk about your book let's find out a little bit about you where you live and some of the things you like to do besides writing.

Don: I live in Jackson Township and right now, this is a transition period for me 'cause I retired from my day job in

Stephen: September. Okay.

Don: And so I writing. I'm spending most of my time right now, even in retirement writing my fifth book which will be a business related book. Oh, nice. But besides that I like to play tennis.

Since I retired I've been doing some standup comedy. Really? Yes. So I'm a humor doesn't translate. 100% over to standup, but I've never had time to do standup and my friends have always wanted me to get back on stage. I used to do standup years ago, and so since yeah, since September.

I've been on stage several times and that's a fun thing to

Stephen: do. Yeah. Cool. You, you write humor books and we were gonna talk about writing humor later, so that'd be great to talk about how it's different than standup comedy and compare and contrast that a bit. We'll get into that a little bit.

That'd be great. Why did you wanna start writing these humor books?

Don: It was an interesting thing in that I wrote a humor column in college at the University of Akron a long time ago. And I, at some point a few years ago, several years ago now I started, I wanted to start a humor blog.

So I call the column that I wrote for the University of Akron book, delight was called Aches Pains. Alright, play on my name. And so when I started the humor blog, I called it Aches, pains, humor Blog, and I, at the beginning of the blog, I said, yeah, I'm just back after a brief 32 year respite. But the thing with humor writing with me is even though I had taken all that time off and I had written stuff, I'd written some sketch humor I'd done standup comedy in between.

So it, it wasn't like I hadn't written anything but humor writing comes naturally to me. So it wasn't, it wasn't too long after I started blogging that. I was back doing what I do very well and do naturally. So then I started this humor blog in 2011, and by 2015 I had enough of enough following and enough material that I put it into a book that's called Just Make Me a Sandwich, which is my first humor book.

So I never set out to write a book. I was just having fun. I was just writing blog posts and all of a sudden I have a book. My my goal, one of my life goals was to write a book after I retired. And so I figured after I retired, I'd have time, I'd write a book, and so I, I forget the math. Now it's I fulfilled one of my major life goals like seven years early.

Okay. Which, is very rare. Followed up, just make me a sandwich a few years later with will there be free appetizers, and then kept writing. And then a couple years later introduced in 2020, right? In the middle of this pandemic. The current one, Turkey terror at my door. So that's the history from college to now.

Stephen: And that's cool. I remember the book Delight 'cause I went to Akron also. I, I don't know if I remember your column, but that was 30 years ago tell us a little bit about Turkey terror and the other books. It's humor writing. So tell everybody a little bit about what that means and what they can expect to see in the books.

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Avyan is a young writer, 10 years old in fact. Yet, he's an experienced author that has written a non-fiction book for that his fellow classmates enjoy. As a bonus, Avyan donates his profit to his school.

Book

YouTube

Transcript

Stephen: today on Discover Wordsmith, I have a very special guest. This is Avian and he is 10 years old right now, but wrote his first book when he was six. Avian. How are you doing today?

I think I was like

Avyan: eight

Stephen: or something. Yeah. Oh, you were eight. Okay. So you were eight still. There's a lot of people my age that are trying to get one book published and with them, this is Mom Monica. So welcome you guys to Discover Wordsmith. How's everything going today?

Monica: Going good. And thanks for inviting us for

Stephen: podcast.

Yeah, absolutely. I think this is great. I, one of the things I like to do is, Highlight young people and kids doing these types of things, because I know there are parents out there who don't understand that kids can do this stuff in today's world. And I think we limit our kids sometimes because the parents don't understand what all can be done.

So I think this is great. So Ian you're 10 years old now, correct. So I assume writing books is not your full-time job. What are some things you like to do besides write? I.

Avyan: The first thing that I don't have a full-time

Stephen: job. You don't, not next year. You're getting one next year I think.

I don't know. Okay. Alright. So what do you,

Avyan: What do you I like reading and I like space and like mysteries. Space mysteries, that kind of thing.

Stephen: Nice. And

Avyan: I do also, I play piano and ty, I do TaeKwonDo since five years.

Stephen: Both. Wow. So you're busy. Yeah. I, TaeKwonDo, I have a cousin who did TaeKwonDo.

I did a style of martial arts called Kwan. It's Korean. So I, I love martial arts. I think that's great. My kids both did it for many years. Oh, okay. When they were your age. So we'll talk about some of the things you like to read but you play music and martial arts and you so I think that's great.

Active kid. That's wonderful. Yeah.

Avyan: I also like basketball.

Stephen: Oh nice. Are you tall enough to play basketball? Cuz I wasn't. Yes.

Monica: Nice. He's quite tall for his age.

Stephen: Good. Yeah. Hopefully you'll stay that way cuz I played a little basketball in sixth grade and by the time I was in eighth grade, everybody else had grown and I hadn't, so I stopped playing basketball.

Abian, you wrote a book called True or False a couple years ago, and you wanted to donate the money to charity. First of all, tell us why did, what's, what is the book about and why did you wanna write it? So the book was

Avyan: actually a school project. My teacher, like my gifted teacher she had this project like for me and my friend who was also in gifted to write this book.

And she gave a couple of genres to just get us started let's say like nonfiction or fiction or realistic fiction, like the true or false type nonfiction, which I selected. And then there's app called Book Creator. She gave me a this account for it and book creator like help me like.

Make the book itself. And then for the publishing part, my parents like just got this idea for the publishing and then they

Stephen: published it

Avyan: and then we just decided that we would donate the money to charity.

Stephen: And what charity are you donating the money to? So

Avyan: Most of it went to my school. Nice.

And the other part of it went to the American Heart Association.

Stephen: Nice. Good choices. It's always good to help out the schools. I love, doing what I can to help schools and education myself. So

Monica: that's what like the Stephen, we thought because this whole book thing started with the book project.

And so it came from the school. The whole thing started because of him being in the gifted class...

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Gustav is from South America where he lives with his large family. He writes for a very thriving science fiction fan base there. We discuss his sci-fi military book, Colony, but also about being a South American writer and trying to sell in the United States.

Gustav is a Jumpmaster Press author and loves what they have done to help his career.

Book

Website

https://gustavobondoni.com/

Favorites

https://www.kelediciones.com/

YouTube

Transcript

Stephen: today on Discovered Wordsmiths, I have Gustavo Bond. Bond. Is that correct? See, I didn't ask the last name. Alright, so Gustavo, welcome to the podcast.

How are you doing today?

Gustavo: I'm doing great. Thank you for having me. It's great to be here. Yeah.

Stephen: Yeah, this is great. Tell us a little bit about yourself. Some things you like to do, where you live, that type of stuff outside of writing, things you don't besides writing. Cool.

Gustavo: I'm from Buenos Aires.

I'm currently in Buenos Aires. I live in Enos Aires. Nice. I have two young daughters. I live with my wife and two daughters, plus two children from my wife's previous marriage. So there's a lot of us in the house. Nice. Outside of writing, I I have a day job. I work for an internet company and I also enjoy I enjoy reading.

Of course. That's I think you probably

Stephen: get that lot books behind you there.

Gustavo: Yeah. And if you look to the, like to that side, there's also a little display case with a bunch of models in it, airplanes and cars, which I actually built. I also like to do some art. So the, if you look above the models, lemme see if I can make like right above the models, there's one draw.

One of my drawings is up there, which actually they were, there was two of them hanging on that wall before I put up the display case. So

Stephen: yeah. Nice. So I think you're the first South American author I've interviewed. Cool.

Gustavo: Great. Great to be the first. Yeah, it's, a lot of South Americans write science fiction and fantasy.

But not a lot of them speak English or work in the US and the European markets. So it's not unusual that you might not have run into too many of us.

Stephen: Oh, that's interesting. I think it's great cuz I've been getting authors, all continents. I think it's great talking to such a big variety.

Gustavo: Yeah. It's cool.

Stephen: So you've got multiple kids. I know what that's I've had the same how do you find time to write?

Gustavo: So generally I try to find a little bit of time to write when they're at school. And after that, when they're watching cartoons in the afternoon, the rest of the time becomes a little bit harder.

But if I have to write during during A fight in the middle of my house, I can actually do that. I've done it. So

Stephen: arriving under fire?

Gustavo: Yeah, during the pandemic. The pandemic was actually very good training for that because like they were here all the time and they were small. They were like, one of them was two and the other one was four.

During the pandemic. Oh, wow. They were really needy, really small. And so that was good training, like writing when Yeah, when the world is like coming down around your

Stephen: ears. So I wanna talk about your book Colony but I find it interesting I wanna ask you, there it is. Ask you, you mentioned that a lot of South American authors like to write sci-fi and fantasy which is interesting to me.

Why do you think that is? There's a tradition

Gustavo: not only of straight science fiction and fantasy in the Asimov vein, but actually science fiction and fantasy in Latin America has been spilling out into every genre. So if you look at the last few greats from Latin America, if you look at Mario Osa, who is Peruvian, or if you look at Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who is.

Who is Colombian or even our own Argentinian superstar who is Borges. That's basically,

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Dale lives in Kansas and writes mystery novels. She's liked mystery since she was young. Unlike most authors, she uses Linux for her writing and we discuss this.

Dale Kesterson was born in Manhattan, NY and grew up on Long Island. Since then, she has lived in six widely diverse locations, from New Orleans to deliberately moving to a town so small it does not have a red-yellow-green traffic light. She has been creating stories and putting them on paper since the age of seven, even writing and producing a neighborhood play at twelve. Life, however, kept her busy doing things such as majoring in science in college, teaching math and science, studying nursing, and managing a small home business with her husband. Odd creative opportunities presented themselves throughout the years, however, with two highlights. Dale did a two-year stint with an opera company where she performed pantomime characters while singing with the chorus and she worked on a radio show as an anchor and character voice artist. She co-authored the first two Time Guards novels, and now pens the Lauren Kaye Mysteries. Resort to Murder was the premiere in 2021 and Staged for Death followed in 2022. Dale is a seasoned traveler who is also a professional photographer. In 2018 she auditioned for a part for a community theater and has been active as an actress, singer, and assistant director with two local community theaters in her area. Her roles have included Cinderella’s Stepmother in Into the Woods, the store psychologist in Miracle on 34th Street, and most recently, the dual parts of Mrs. Dilber and the Ghost of Jacob Marley in A Christmas Carol – A Ghost Story of Christmas. Dale lives in southwest Kansas with her husband (of over 30 years) and their hairless cats. When she’s not writing, performing, or appearing at conventions as an author or panelist or songstress, she does handcrafts. This lady hates being bored!

Book

Website

Dale Kesterson – Author & Performer

Favorites

YouTube

Transcript

Stephen: . So today on Discovered Wordsmith, I want to welcome Dale Kesteren. Dale, how are you doing today?

DAle: I'm fine. Had an interesting weekend, but it's, it worked out

Stephen: okay. Oh, good. Good. Yeah. So I wanna talk about your book but before we do, let's find out a little bit about you.

So tell us where you live and some of the things you like to do besides writing.

DAle: We live in a tiny little town in the middle of nowhere in southwest Kansas that is so small. It doesn't even have a red, yellow, green traffic

Stephen: light. We've got one and we don't have a post office. So I understand. We have a post

DAle: office.

We don't, we have a grocery store. We have a drug store. We have a we're the com county seat. So we also have the county community critical access hospital.

Stephen: Oh, here we are.

DAle: But if you eliminate the cats and the dogs and the cat and the various other animals, it's the population's about 900.

Oh,

Stephen: okay. Ours, if you count the cows, it doubles our population.

DAle: Yeah, I can understand that. If you double, if you count the cows, the population of the county triples. We're in the middle of wheat and cattle country, but we moved here and everybody gets startled by this. We moved here by from New Orleans.

Stephen: Ooh, nice. Ooh. That was a

DAle: change. And our daughter was asked if she could do voodoo dolls and love charms and such. When she, we got up here and she's going you moved here from New Orleans. It was the pit of hell. But it was deliberate and it was before Katrina.

Stephen: Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah, I was down in New Orleans a couple years ago and some of the trolleys were still offline from Katrina.

DAle: Katrina completely decimated the city. Brennan's is gone. I didn't know what Brennan's was. The world famous restaurant, Brennan's is no longer, and it's you don't go to nowhere. You can't go to Brennan's.

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CS Devereaux declares she's a southern writer and has a story - Fall from Snowbird Mountain - that uses her southern-ness.

Book

Website

https://www.csdevereaux.com/

Favorites

https://www.facebook.com/winderbinder/

YouTube

Transcript

Good morning. Welcome to Wor Discovered Wordsmith. See, I'm already fumbling. I wanna welcome CS Devereux to the podcast.

How are you doing today?

Devereaux: I'm doing great, Stephen. It's good to see you. Good. Thank you for having me on your podcast.

Stephen: Yeah, this is great. I think it'll be fun. Tell us a little bit about you, who you are and some of the things you like to do, where you live, and that stuff other than writing.

Devereaux: Okay. I grew up in Birmingham, Alabama.

I live in Chattanooga, Tennessee, but I did a vast amount of things in between there and here. I've lived in major cities all over the us. I've traveled a lot. And had varied career paths, but I've always been a creative person whether I was painting or designing or writing. I began my working life in New York City as a flight attendant for a major airline.

And did that for about four years, and then went to work for a marketing company in LA and that took me all over the world. I lived for a few years in Tokyo and Hong Kong while I was with them. And Then moved back across the country to Atlanta cuz I wanted to be closer to home. And I had basically learned how to be a designer while I was with them rather than, I didn't learn a whole lot about marketing, but I learned a lot about designing.

And I was went to college and got a BFA degree. In painting. I had the instincts there, and so I used that in Atlanta and eventually that led me into carpet and rug design, which if you know anything about the area Atlanta, Dalton, that's, that. It's not an unusual place to, to go because in, in my designing, one of my most favorite things to do was to design a custom rug for a client.

I liked, oh, I loved it. I loved the textures and the colors, and just getting my hands in it. And so it was a natural. Transition for me there. And so I stayed in the southeast at that point for the most part, but I still traveled a lot and all along the way I kept journals and so I was always writing.

I actually began writing when I was about a. 11 or 12 years old when my mother gave me a diary and that got me into a lot of trouble. But we can talk about that later. Cuz I started making up stories and So I kept journals and wrote and, but I didn't begin writing seriously until after I retired about 10

Stephen: years ago.

Okay, great. So you said you were in marketing for a little bit. I'm gonna jump a little bit here. Has, have you found that's helped you market your own books now?

Devereaux: You would think so, but I don't know that it has I'm pretty much a loner. I like, I'm like the introverts, introvert.

I don't like being in front of people. It's a lot for me just to do this and talk to you. But in, in marketing a book, you do have to get out in front of people and when the marketing. My experience was before was pre-computer, and so I am not particularly technol, technologically savvy.

Much of the marketing, successful marketing, I think is done online and I just don't know how to do it. I try and, I haven't even gotten my off my Facebook. Author page set up yet, because I looked at it and I got confused and I said, somebody's gonna have to help me with this. I asked my husband, he said, I don't know.

And my son's too busy. There's just nobody to help. I go to author fairs and that sort of thing. And since I my book just came out a few months ago, so I'm doing book fair, book the comic cons, the cons with publisher, and just anything that comes up.

Podcasts because it's easy to talk. And that's as far as I've gotten so far because the actual marketing only could begin. When my book was published, really.

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John Bruening is from Cleveland and writes a series of pulp fiction for his Flinch press publisher. These are modern books that have that pulp flair.

This episode is also a cross-over episode with my Relentless Geekery podcast. The 3rd voice you hear is Alan Baltis, co-host on that podcast.

Book

YouTube

Transcript

Hey John. Hey, John. Okay, you got your

Stephen: mic off?

Let's see.

Alan: How's that? There we go.

John: There we go. Okay. How's the look, how's. Looks fine. I got that sort of shiny thing going on here. That's

Alan: true. You got the, a little bit of glare from the window, but it casts your face in

John: a heroic, it's a noir kinda thing there.

Exactly. Yeah, I had a second.

Stephen: All the radiation from his monitor and that's what makes him,

John: yeah it's gonna turn me into some kind of a superhero or something. That's what we would hope. Try these, this boy. Okay, there we go. Exactly. These are for like, far away. And this screen is it's like my eyes have reached a point where there's no sweet spot.

You just have to like,

Stephen: to nerd it up there, my glasses so I had Lasix a couple years ago when I had cataract surgery, and so I can see far away. I can see things just fine, but up close I. Can't see. So I asked them specifically my glasses to tune them for how far away I normally sit to the computer.

So these glasses, I can't really read with them, but at the computer it makes everything look perfect. So there's nerding it up. I think

John: I followed that. Yes. I just had an high appointment in December. I had a, I had an appointment in December and I'm in the earl They told me early stage cataracts, which really sucks.

I'll be 60 at the end of this year and I'm just I'm gonna need eight months. I'm gonna need the eight months between now and December to just get my head around that concept. But yes, yeah, we've

Alan: actually talked about that before. I don't have any diagnosis of cataracts yet, but I'm really not looking forward to it because I'm really flinchy Ah-huh.

We're gonna bring that in about things going near my eyes. I hate putting in eyedrops. I hate, like, when I get puffed at, when they're doing the they don't do that anymore. Test and stuff like that. It's just

Stephen: they're modern now, Alan, they don't do the puff. They have a device. They actually stick on your eye and make everything go watery.

Wavy

Alan: I do have the new one, but even like that the little thing moving into my field of vision and getting uncomfortably close, I'm, there's. I know we always jump around in our discussions. There was a great book, great Books by Gene Wolf, the Shadow of the torturer books. Remember those? And one of the things they talked about how one of the most base human instincts is to protect your head.

Like you, you react to stop an arrow sword, whatever might be coming at you before your thinking. Mine could do it, right? And one of the ways in which somebody gets dispatched is he's got two heads and they, he protects the one but the other one gets killed and that still kills him. So there's a science fiction fantasy reference that even that incredible base human thing of avoiding falling and keeping your temperature and.

Protecting your head doesn't work if you're zab bile bro type where you've got two heads anyway,

John: guys, I'm gonna go shut my door and hopefully my dog won't gimme one second, I'll be right. Sure.

Stephen: Yeah, we're gonna talk Pulp Fiction. Hey, we got five minutes left, so let's mention Pulp Fiction a bit.

That's how

Alan: it goes. I really, I actually did, make some notes to try to get, I made notes as to good questions to ask and stuff. Here we go.

Stephen: Here we go. Don't ruin things now. Good questions. Oh man, John, so

John: we started yet, what are we doing here? Yeah,

Stephen: we kinda roll and we,

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Kyle is the author of sci-fi book - Space Pirate. He lives in Alabama, where he not only writes but runs a small publisher called Jumpmaster Press.

Book

Website

www.rkylehannah.com

https://www.jumpmasterpress.com/

Favorites

YouTube

Transcript

Stephen: Today I'm discovering wordsmith. I wanna welcome Kyle. Kyle. Hello. How are you doing this? Great afternoon.

Kyle: I am great. It's a beautiful day. So same

Stephen: here. Same here.

First thing I've really gotta say to you is, oh no, Mr. Bill.

Kyle: Isn't that? Yeah. I, excellent. And you're wearing a

Stephen: grumpy old men's shirt, right?

Kyle: Yep. Grumpy. Do what I want. Yeah. I do what I want. But

Stephen: we're some of the people that would recognize that? I think

Kyle: Oh, the bill? Yeah. Yeah. It was, it's actually a dog toy.

But when I saw it, I said, oh no, it's mine now. Nice. And I actually play it a lot during Zoom meetings. Somebody will say something and I'll just, And it's a perfect attention getter. Nice. Nice. All right we're

Stephen: gonna talk about some of your books and about the business you are a part of jump, master Press.

But before we do all of that, let's find out a little bit about you. Where do you live and what are some of the things you like to do besides writing?

Kyle: Okay. My name is Kyle Hannah. I live in the suburbs of Birmingham, Alabama. I retired from the Army about eight years ago. I spent 30 years as a paratrooper in finance and logistics guy.

If you see me walking around, it's usually with a sm slight limp. But you know what, it was worth it. I got to travel a lot. I saw the world. And that's not too bad for a country boy from Alabama. Nice. But these days I write, I edit I, I go play in the backyard and just enjoy the sunshine and just enjoy retirement.

Stephen: Nice. I see a guitar in the background. You play. I.

Kyle: I, I play at it more than I play yet there's also a keyboard back there. There's a bass. Yeah. If anyone just walked in and looked, they'd say, wow, you're a musician too. And I'm like, Yeah, sure. Yeah.

Stephen: I've been struggling to try and learn some chording on guitar.

It's just so small for me. I'm a bassist and a drummer. Oh

Kyle: yeah.

Stephen: All right. So let's talk about some of your books. I know we picked out a

Kyle: couple that we were gonna talk about.

Stephen: So why did you, after being in the Army and a vet, why did you wanna

Kyle: start writing books? Actually I started writing in high school.

I had a very overactive imagination, and this was years and years before anyone said the initials, a, D, H, D, but that was me to a t. So instead of acting out in class and getting sent to the principal's office and then getting home, And getting in even more trouble, I decided to apply my gift toward just sitting quietly and letting my mind wander.

And I spent most of my high school years getting, good grades, but most of my time my head was down and I was writing something and somewhere in the house, I still have those. 35, 40 year old stories. They're absolutely horrible. They will, no one will ever see them, but they're still here somewhere.

And believe it or not, for one of my series I wrote about five or six years ago, I actually pulled out some of the ideas. I wrote in those stories and incorporated them into this universe I created, and it actually worked out very well. And I keep wanting to go back and go, I've got this, that I could possibly, and then I start looking at it again and go no, it's just too silly.

No, not gonna do it. Nice. Okay. Yeah I've been writing for years. I never really took it seriously until I was deployed to Afghanistan in 2002. That's when I wrote my true first novel, came home, put it on a shelf until 2010. And then since 2010 it's, I guess it's been an average of a book a year.

I'm, I've got 12 novels out. Nice.

Stephen: That's great.

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Like many young men in high school cursed with a dash of creativity, Jim found a love for writing, which everybody else thought was practically useless. Those folks urged him to get good at math and science instead, and so he worked at those, but he was never sure if he could hack them out at a university level. After he graduated said university with an arts degree (where he had to read an awful lot), he wondered what other young people had gone through the same thing. It's always been his dream to inspire young men and women to pursue STEM projects, as he thinks the world could use as many helping hands it can get and he thinks they are up to the challenge.

In other news, he grew up near Toronto, Canada and devoured any written adventure he could find, including many of the works written by Kenneth Oppel, D. J. MacHale, Christopher Paolini, and Rick Riordan. Later on, it was Jim Butcher, R.A. Salvator, Hajime Isayama, and Tsugumi Ohba who fueled him through his early adult years and to whom he associates much of his personal growth to.

HUNTED BY FIRE

What is fifteen-year-old Felix Deltorei supposed to do when he longs for rebellion? In his world, where the dragon Gods reign with barbaric force, such thoughts could cost him his life.

The risks have been drilled into Felix and his friends since they were children. The war between humans and the winged Gods ended with a treaty; humanity would serve them or be driven extinct. Hundreds of years later, under the watchful eyes of the Gods and their devoted followers, those same laws remain.

Felix knows he has to find his place in the world before he's found out. Surrounded by teachers who only ever value faith, obedience, but also technological advancement, Felix strives to achieve security and a better life in the only way he knows how; with his inventive mind. However, just as he gets his chance, one of the province's famed inquisitors arrives in town. Little does Felix know, the devastating events about to take place will risk exposing him, but they will also push him out into a journey that might mean the deaths of the ones he loves if he can't escape in time.

Book

https://www.amazon.com/Hunted-Fire-Fires-Innovation-Book-ebook/dp/B0BMJHVV61?crid=2TB7C2XUR1EJF&keywords=hunted+by+fire+hepburn&qid=1686180951&sprefix=hunted+by+fire+hepburn%2Caps%2C79&sr=8-1&linkCode=li2&tag=mindarchitect-20&linkId=72abbb0572766aa2d984f3dd170f5155&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_il

Favorites

https://www.amazon.com/Collection-Butcher-Calderon-Captains-Princeps/dp/9123926066?crid=1ET2A04TIHM9&keywords=jim+butcher&qid=1686181072&sprefix=jim+butche%2Caps%2C114&sr=8-8&linkCode=li2&tag=mindarchitect-20&linkId=e0c438b5bf58633b201722c12a68625f&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_il

Website

Jim Hepburn Website

YouTube

Transcript

Stephen: today on Discover Wordsmith, I wanna welcome Jim Hepburn.

Jim good afternoon. How are you doing? It's a bright, sunny spring day here. How about you?

Jim: Yeah, no, it's good, Stephen. Thanks for having me. It's it's kinda cloudy, overcast, but it's warm, so that's what

Stephen: matters sometimes. To let our audience know a little bit about who you are, tell us some of the things you like to do, where you live, and things you do besides writing.

Jim: Yeah, sure. So I live up in Canada. I'm right around the Toronto area there. And I I spend a lot of my time when I'm out riding, I usually either cook or do I do lots of jiujitsu also. I love doing that. Getting beat up for fun is great. And and yeah, between that, hanging out with my dog and my fiance and then writing that that captures about 95% of the time that's there.

Stephen: So what's your favorite thing to cook?

Jim: Oh, pizza, hands down. I yeah, no, I you know what was funny? It was my family has always loved pizza forever, and I could eat pizza every day of the week if I had the opportunity. But for Christmas, my mother gave me this.

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Matthew Bennett Young is a British author and has published in many forms (picturebooks, flash fiction, short stories and poetry) although his big passion is for picturebooks. Not only does he write but sometimes he illustrates as well. He is also anartist-educator and has been teaching his inspiring workshops all over the world. Hecurrently resides in Montreal and is a member of Artist Inspire and Culture a L’Ecole.He believes all creativity is a form of expression and is essential for wellbeing,especially now, and it takes practice!

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OverviewThis is a super special episode. Jeff Strand is back to talk about his novelization for the movie Attack of the Killer Tomatoes. This cult comedy horror movie is over 40 years old, and Jeff does an absolutely fantastic job with the writing.

You may notice something else of interest – there are 3 people on this episode. That’s because this is a big crossover with the Horror Lasagna podcast and that other person is my co-host, Rhys.

Bookhttps://www.amazon.com/Attack-Killer-Tomatoes-Jeff-Strand/dp/1959205676?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1684786568&sr=8-4&linkCode=li2&tag=discoveredwordsmiths-20&linkId=5138d8901de0de032118d60c379cd842&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_ilYouTubehttps://youtu.be/bbWHojO8AFETranscriptStephen: So this is a special episode. It’s not even one of our bonus episodes, Reese. This is just a special episode. It’ll take the place, the highest place of honor amongst all our episodes. So it’s a crossover event. It is. We’re going to do this with Discovered Wordsmith also. So Jeff you get to be on my other podcast twice.

You’re one of the lucky handful. Before we get rolling, everybody knows. Me and Reese, all four people in Ram Motion that listen to us. Hello. So first of all, we’ve got a guest Jeff Strand. So Jeff tell everybody a little bit about who you are and then we can start making fun of you.

Jeff: I’m a writer. I have written a little over 50 books. My most recent one was demonic. Tomatoes, the novelization, which I assume will come up at some point during this discussion.

Stephen: Oh, we probably should have

Jeff: some young adult comedy pretty much all over the place, but mostly horror comedies where I’m at.

Stephen: And I know I’ve mentioned you to Reese and others a couple times that I just fell in love with your books.

And I texted you the other day, I said, oh my God, I’m reading the attack of the Killer Tomatoes and it’s your best one. I am l out loud laughing and I’m reading it to my son, just bits and pieces and he’s laughing, just listening to the little bits I put. We wanna talk a little bit about the movie and the novelization a bit My first question, Reese.

Oh, you had a couple questions. Background. I did

Rhys: actually Jeff, this is the first time I’ve met you. And aside from a friend of ours who we know who left a long time ago to go live in Alaska, Alaska is one of the three places that I’ve told my children I should never go because I probably never come home from.

So I’m gonna ask you to disuse me of my romantic notions of what Alaska’s so what was it like growing up in the great white North?

Jeff: I didn’t know any different, so I, I was born in Baltimore, but I grew up in Alaska from six months old till 15. So I, didn’t know any different.

So the fact that it is light, 24 7 during the summer. It was not weird to me. That’s just the way it is. The fact that it gets, I would get on the bus to go to school and be pitch black and then by the time I got on the bus to come home for school, pitch black. There are a little bit of daylight in the middle, so the long nights during the winter, the long.

Days during the summer, that was just the way things were. So people would visit in the summer and like, how can you sleep? It’s, four in the morning and it is bright out and, but that, none of that stuff was weird to me. What was, what I realized was the most weird and didn’t impact me at all growing up was in Fairbanks.

You were in Fairbanks. Like right now I’m in Chattanooga, Tennessee. I, think nothing of, I’ll drive to Nashville tomorrow, I’m gonna go to Atlanta. Knoxville, the whole, continental United States is at my disposal without it being that big of a trip. Whereas in Fairbanks, Fairbanks was the only place I was unless we took a vacationed anchorage, which was like six or eight hours.

So there were tiny little towns that were basically a, gas station and maybe a restaurant. But for the most part, I, if you were a resident of Fairbanks, that’s where you spent all your time because there weren’t other cities that you could just drive to on a casual basis. Nowhere else to go.

Yeah,

Stephen: I talked to a lot of Canadian authors and it’s the same thing. They’re like yeah, I got a favorite bookstore. It’s three and a half hours north of me. I’m like, do you have anything closer? No. That’s like the closest, and I thought it was bad here driving eight miles to get to the.

Grocery store. Yeah.

Jeff: Fairbanks had everything, it had a movie theater, it had bookstores, it had restaurant stuff, but you just, there was nothing beyond the boundaries of it. Yeah.

Stephen: So did I know we go a little south here into Amish country and there’s lots of places that have horse and buggy set ups.

So did they actually have like dog sleds set ups that people drive to the movie theaters to

Jeff: see the movies? No. You had dog sleds that were people training for the Iditarod race, but you didn’t have people who were dog sledding as a means of transportation.

Stephen: Oh, there you go. See my, my fantasies are gone.

They’re dashed on

Jeff: the rocks. Yeah. This was Fairbanks, which was the second biggest city. If you’re in Anchorage, it’s basically like any other big city Fairbanks. Quite a bit smaller, but yeah, you didn’t have the, mush.

Stephen: Let’s go to the movies type thing. The, Riker from Star Trek was from Fairbanks, so Good company.

Yeah. And he did live in Kemp for a while, which is one of the reasons I went when, after I read his, the one book Cyclops Road, I went, oh my God, this guy like was in Kent about the same time I was. Living in this area and we’re like two days apart. Reese, you call me old man cuz we’re like five months apart.

Jeff is actually two days older than me I’m not the oldest anymore.

Rhys: Look at that new senior man in the room. Yeah,

Stephen: Look at that. All right, so first of all, the movie itself now, I know a lot of people probably haven’t seen the movie which is good. That’s what we want. We want movies like that.

It is not your typical horror movie, especially for what Reese and I do, it’s comedy. Jeff, how would you describe the movie and what you enjoy it with? It.

Jeff: It’s just, it’s as silly as you would think from Attack of the Killer Tomatoes. It’s weird seeing stuff saying, it’s one of the worst movies ever made where they don’t acknowledge that it’s a comedy.

It’s not a straightforward movie about Killer Tomatoes. It wasn’t some guy saying, we’re gonna make the scariest movie ever about, killer Tomatoes. It’s a goofy comedy from beginning to end. It’s. Just joke. Not every joke lands, but a lot of them really do. Even, 45 years later, there’s lots of genuinely funny stuff in the movie. And, it, some of the jokes are overplayed, some of the, they’re, it’s not, A flawless masterpiece of cinematic comedy, but it really works. I think. I love the movie. I think it’s really entertaining and fun. A

Stephen: absolutely agree. And if you like airplane movies, there’s probably a lot in this you’ll like, but the funny thing is, I like attack at the Killer Tomatoes, but I’m not as big on airplane.

I, I never,

Jeff: I love airplane too. So Airplane, naked Gun, all those movies, they’re all in my wheelhouse.

Stephen: Yeah. I’m weird. I know. My son tells me I’m a weirdo for not liking him, and I’m like, I don’t know. I, when I saw him, I guess I didn’t find them funny, so I. It just stuck.

Jeff: But I agree with your son here.

So

Stephen: like you said, with Killer Tomatoes it’s got some things in it that are very subtle and you have to really pay attention sometimes to pick up on ’em. And there’s a few jokes that are little outdated, let’s say. Nowadays it probably would get people upset, but the stupid little things, like they go into that conference room and it’s so narrow they have to crawl across the table.

But they don’t make a big show of it other than if you think about it or when the Japanese guy hits the picture and it’s the Arizona and it falls in a fish tank. And the funniest part for that for me is there’s no fish tank in the room. So where did that fall into the fish tank? Yeah. That, it’s little things like that I think are great.

Jeff: Yeah, the conference room is great because it doesn’t overplay, it’s not like wacky music, like it’s just people trying to retain their dignity while they. Gets seated in a room that’s way too small for them.

Stephen: What’d you like, Reese?

Rhys: I mentioned to Steve just before we started, I liken it almost to a mad magazine.

Because it, it moves so quickly between one joke to the next and the scenes. So you are probably 30 to 40 minutes into the film before you actually have any recognizable recurring characters because everything is just happening so fast. And then they do the same kind of like Mad magazine used to do with, they’d have little.

Jokes that would be running across the bottom, like a ticker tape kind of thing. And you’re like where’d that come from? So that’s one of the things, airplane and those kind of movies are almost a genre unto themselves. But this feels like something that’s a little set outside because and I’ve mentioned it before with movies, they have a literary feel and this does feel like I’m opening a new issue of Cracked Magazine whenever I’m watching this.

Stephen: Yeah. Mad Magazine was superior though. It

Rhys: was. Just throw some love to the other stuff.

Stephen: Yeah. Yeah. So watching the movie, Jeff, and I’ve read the book, watched the movie now, I told Reese I owe him a copy of the book because it’s just pretty fantastic. He’ll love it. How did you come about and get this, okay, first of all, I, if anybody hasn’t read the book we’re trying not to get Jeff arrested so we won’t mention him killing Mr.

Tomato book writer, but that, that right there made me laugh. That was the prelude, and you just flowed right in with the feel of the whole movie. And then each scene you expanded on. So let’s back up. How did you get the gig and why did you wanna do it and what took so long? This is 40 year old movie.

Jeff: Part of it was just, it would be a really fun book to adapt, because the book is, the movie is just, all jokes. I’d love to do an adaptation of airplane too. They’ll never let me do it, but that would be, so what really happened was I was thinking of, what to tweet, what will amuse my Twitter followers?

And so I just said, how is it possible that no one is. Invited me to do a attack of the Killer Tomatoes Novelization, not, it was not meant to be a legitimate solicitation of work. It was just something funny to tweet. And then Mark Miller had Ency Apocalypse books sent me a private email and said, Hey, if you’re serious about that, I’ll see what I can make happen.

Yeah. And then within a few weeks I was on a Zoom call with the filmmakers. Who were all in, my resume is pretty good for someone to write an attack of the Killer Tomato. It’s not oh man, let’s take a shot on this guy who has no experience in that particular genre. It’s like when it was announced, they’re like, yeah, Jeff Strand, attack of the Killer Tomatoes.

Yeah, that makes sense. But it was Jeff Strand doing Casablanca. Wait, what? But Attack the Cold Tomatoes is something that I can pull off. Basically their, they, the only request they had was keep it as family friendly as the movies. The movie, it’s a, it’s pg but it’s 1978 pg, so it’d be a right.

Fairly strong PG 13. Now I check for that, which is what I would’ve done anyway, and I basically pitched it as I’m going to treat it like you guys had Marvel Cinematic Universe money to make the original movie, and so they were all in and. I was set free to write the attack of the Killer Tomatoes.

Rhys: Did they have any any.

Handcuffs as far as like lore goes or anything like that you had to follow or were you, because the movie’s very short on where they came from or anything like that? There’s not a lot of backstory to it. It just jumps right in. And they developed it more in the later films. But. Again, some of those weren’t the exact same people, so I wondered if they were like, Hey, you need to stick to this and you can move from there and go forward, but start here.

Jeff: No, there was nothing and I treated as a wow. Self-contained cause original. My original thought was, I’m gonna weave in elements of all the movies and the cartoon series and all that. I thought, no, cuz if this is successful, If someone else wants to do a return of the Killer tomatoes, I don’t wanna step on their toes.

So there are no George Clooney jokes. There are no, professor Gangrene isn’t in. I basically, I decided I would stick exclusively to the first movie and not mess with what other people might wanna do if, there is a future of more attack of the Killer Tomatoes novels. But yeah, they, there was no, you need, these characters need to be in it.

You need to stick to this. It wasn’t, I did a short story that never got published. For a major video game franchise and they were very strict. Yeah, these characters need to be handled this way. What happened ultimately was that the story went to their lore person who said, that’s not really the direction we wanna take with this character.

And I got paid info, but they didn’t use this. Story’s not like that. It was, have fun, we trust you. They read it, it wasn’t like they, they have read the book. They love it. Oh that’s good. No no, no handcuffs, no stick to this. Just

Stephen: have fun. Which is good because like I said, I read it and I was laughing and I love your books.

And this one just made me laugh even more than normal. So just. You had a structure, but you were able to do what you wanted with it. I think it worked really well. But the weird thing to me was why choose a movie Novelization now because they’re not that popular. They used to be way more popular, but nobody sees too much, especially for a low budget movie from 40 years ago.

It’s an super. Interesting choice cuz it fits us well. And the fact that we’re talking about this low budget movie that had sequels Reese, I mean that, that’s, oh yeah. So why? I know it was like, Hey, let’s make this happen. Why do you think they wanted to do it? And I’m moving novel. The

Jeff: psycho apocalypse has done some vintage novelizations, so they’ve brought back some that were written at the time, but they’ve also gone back and done, creature and stuff like that.

And they’re, they’ve announced a few more. They’re doing nail gun, massacre and Dead girl and redneck zombies. So they’re there’s a little bit of a niche market. We don’t know how big it is. It’s too early to gauge the success level of stuff like attack the killer tomatoes. But really it was just a fun thing.

It’s, I think you need to pick movies that people can see the novelization. Potential in like technical tomatoes. It’s, it’s going to be a really dumb book. It’s just easy, fun. It’s not meant to be a literal pa, it’s. It doesn’t follow the previous trend in novelizations, which were, you have seen the movie in the theater, you’re never gonna see it again unless it goes into a second run.

But you’ve got the novelization so you can relive the story of et the extraterrestrial, right? Whenever you want in book form. Whereas now it’s just you have to bring something more to it. So it, it’s not meant to just be a transcript of tackle the killer tomatoes. It’s basically all new jokes, unless I took their joke and used it to springboard to something else because the jokes in the movie are, Perfectly good.

My job was not to retell stuff that already works, the movie. My job was to take the framework of the movie and expand on it and do all new jokes.

Stephen: And even there though the two I thought of reading it, the one with the bad Japanese over dub with the guy’s lips movie. And then you hear a voice say, and then I said, and that cracked me up.

Cuz obviously the Godzilla movies and everything else. But then the musical number, I don’t know if I’ve ever read. Such a great retelling of a musical number in a novel format. And you did that great, expanded that scene. Wonderful. So I think you broke new grounds. You pioneered a new, modern modern novelization of a movie.

Cuz the stuff makes you laugh in the movie if you have twisted minds like some of us. But again, the book just expanded on all of that, making it even funnier, I think. Yeah,

Jeff: what I wanted it to be the best way to read the book. You could read it without any prior tomatoes experience. The best way to do it is to have freshly seen the movie, cuz a lot of it is callbacks to the film.

So the optimal way to experience it and you watch the movie and then you go right into the book and then I think it, there’s a lot of stuff that works even better in that context. But yeah, the point, again, it’s not to. You could watch Tackle of the Killer Tomatoes whenever you want. It’s on streaming, you can get the multiple DVDs.

There’s the big collector’s edition. It’s very easily accessible. So what I wanted to do was give the book its own identity. It works as a separate, but it’s completely linked to it. It’s not, I love Attack of the Killer Tomato. This wasn’t me being better than the movie. This was having fun with various aspects of it and trying to.

Very similar tone with a completely different experience with

Rhys: the frenetic pacing of the film. Was that at all of a challenge when you were writing it? I would think it would be hard to get into a groove and, pound a bunch of pages out because the movie

Jeff: shifts gears so quickly from scene to scene.

The scene, not really, because I’ve got experience in it, this, there’s a reason I was the right guy to write this book, so I’ve done my. Adult horror comedy novels. I try to treat the horror legitimately, but have lots of laughs. But I’ve done young adult books that are just joke.

So I’ve done, Oh, it’s not, if you read a Attack of the Killer Tomatoes and then you read my book, A Bad Day for Voodoo, there’s, you can see there’s still the meta element. And so I’ve, I have done books that are just pure comedies all the way through. So it wasn’t like, okay, how am I gonna tackle this?

I have that little experience. It’s hard. It’s not oh yeah, I could just easily knock this out. It’s a, it was a fun book to write. It is, when you are doing something that is just, joke after joke. And you’re not letting the characters or the story carry you through. Cuz I’m, I’ll be honest, kill the novelization.

You’re not going to get deeply invested in these characters. I don’t care if it’s funny or not, I’m just, I need to know what’s gonna happen to this guy. That’s not the experience you’re gonna get with it, and it’s, it’s not a scary book, it’s just. As funny as I could possibly make it.

So yeah, you do need to keep the pacing up. You it, yeah. Creates a scenario like, like the movie airplane, like the movie Naked Gun, like attacking the killer tomatoes. You can’t let up on the laughs because the book doesn’t. To have the framework to allow you to say, let’s just cool down for a couple pages.

No, it has to be nonstop throughout, which is not for everyone, but the people who love it.

Stephen: Which actually you, even you do a lot of fourth wall breaking in the book and you even reference that. It’s okay, Mr. Arthur, now maybe we should slow this chapter down and not put so many jokes.

So the joke was the not doing so many jokes which I thought was pretty, pretty brilliant. And, Every Reese, so we talk a lot about the special effects in movies, and the special effects in this one obviously is not computer graphics. They do it wonderfully though because they don’t try and make all these big, scary looking tomatoes.

They just take like garden tomatoes and put ’em on the ground, then overdub it with every Yeah. What what are thoughts on the special effects? I know a lot of people would say this movie sucks, like you said, because the special effects suck. But I think the special effects are part of the comedy.

Rhys: The movie starts off with one of arguably the greatest special effects in all of cinematography when they accidentally crashed the helicopter that they hired for the scene. Yes. Then they’re like, oh, hey, let’s just use that in the movie. You don’t get much more authentic than that. After that, the special effects they use ramp up because it starts with just tomatoes and then it progresses from just tomatoes.

There’s some stop animation at tomatoes. Yeah. In the grocery store. Towards the end of the film, they figured out how to make giant tomatoes out of foam and put them on wield carts. So you know, it slowly built up over time. But again, it’s not, you’ve referenced before Steve in movies where they try to show too much of the bad guy.

Yeah. And it ruins it. And in this case, even though they’re being silly, they’re still being very prudent with the usage of the giant tomatoes and things like that. So I think it works really well, especially for the film, the way it’s, the way it’s set up.

Stephen: Yes. Agreed. Jeff I know some of Reese’s favorite movies, like all 1200 of them.

What are some of your other favorite horror movies?

Jeff: Shawn of the Dead is my favorite horror movie and favorite movie, so it’s it works brilliantly as a comedy and brilliantly as a horror movie. So it’s not like attacking the killer tomatoes that in Shawn of the Dead. It’s really funny, but you’re also fully invested in the characters.

When things get serious, there are actual stakes. So that’s my, I’ll swing over to my. Poster and then return of the Living Dead. One of my all climb favorites that one. I think to me, that’s the eighties horror movie that holds up the best. I think it’s, it still plays just as well now, even though a lot of the stuff that they originated is now, zombie lore.

It’s got, the fast zombies, that Return of Living Dead, that wasn’t 28 days later that was living dead. The fact that, they. A hit to the brain won’t kill them, that you have to dismember them. The fact that they the meta aspect, the fact that this is based, neither Living Dead was just a movie, so the character’s referring to neither Living Dead.

So it’s got all kind, talking zombies. It’s got all kinds of stuff that was done later, but it does it all in one movie. So that’s one of my old time favorites. I love the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre. That’s probably my favorite, just. Straight horror movie, although that has lots of dark comedy tune, it’s got the funniest line of any movie of,

Stephen: look what your brother did to the

Jeff: door.

That one line is the most perfect comic relief line ever because it is completely logical in a. In a movie where suddenly logic shouldn’t apply, right? So it’s like you’ve got this guy wearing, human skin chain, sawing a door, and of course you’re gonna be upset that this guy chain saw your door.

But in the context of the movie, you don’t think they care about their door. So then to have, look what your brother did to the door just suddenly takes you back to the reality of the situation is. Absolutely brilliant. So original Texas Chainsaw Massacre. And then there’s, as for more obscure stuff that maybe not a lot of people have seen, may one of my all-time favorites.

Yeah, that’s a good one. Lucky McKee with Angela Bees that I saw that at f Film Festival and it rocketed to the all-time favorites and there’s a Lower. Much, much, much lower budget we called found, which is just one of the darkest and most, I dunno, that one disturbing things. That’s something good you should cover.

Check it out.

Stephen: Yeah. Yeah. We’ll have to look it up. Yeah. Reese always makes notes of any he hasn’t seen. And then we’ll watch movies in reference, here’s 20 other similar ones. Jeff, have you seen Todd in the book of Pure

Jeff: Evil? I have not. I’ve heard it’s really good. It, oh. You

Rhys: would enjoy it?

Stephen: We enjoyed watching. We reviewed it enjoyed it. Another one that comes to mind PMA of the Paradise. Yes.

Jeff: I hadn’t, I. Family of Paradise is something I’d been wanting to see for a really long time. And back when I first saw the documentary Tear in the Aisles, they had a clip from it. It’s where he hits I think Garrett Graham in the mouth with the toilet plunger, and I’m like, I have to see this movie.

But I didn’t know what movie it was and they didn’t, the documentary didn’t identify the clips, so I would watch the end credits. They had the long list of all the clips, like I don’t know which one it is. I don’t know which one it is, cause I haven’t seen all these movies. So I finally discovered that it was Fent on the Paradise, but I could never find it on video.

I finally saw it about three years ago in. The actual movie theater. They Wow. The theater. Atlanta played it. So I went, so my first experience with fans of The Paradise was seeing it on the big screen with a big crowd. And it was wonderful. You looked as it was meant to be.

Stephen: Not in our basement, in the dark, race. Yeah. Like most of the bad horror movies we’ve watched through the years. Yeah. So re what else you got Reese? I know you had a whole list and I’ve jumped in. Oh no.

Rhys: You, we’ve covered a lot of it. I you had gone to Bowling Green for school. And while you were in Bowling Green, did you ever go see Mary B’s fingers?

Jeff: I did not. I’m not sure what that is.

Rhys: There is, there’s a small Museum, for lack of a better word. And they had a display of the last public execution in Bowling Green. And it was a farmer who in a mad rage butchered his wife basically. And when the sheriff showed up, he. Put three of her fingers into jar full of whiskey to use as evidence in the case.

And those fingers have lasted this entire time. They’re still in a jar on display in this museum along with the Hangman’s rope and the knife he used and tickets for the hanging. But it seemed to Cobb and bazaar and enough. I wondered if it was something that you had seen while you were there.

Jeff: No, I spent too much time in movie theaters and bookstores. I missed out on the fingers.

Stephen: And I did. Yeah.

Rhys: It I’m building it up, but it really is, you walk in and you’re like, yep, they’re there. And then you’re gone.

Stephen: But really, how many people can you go up to and say, have you seen Mary B’s fingers?

Oh yeah, I’ve been there. You get no. What’s that? Let me tell you. It’s all the presentation, it’s true of doing something that they haven’t done. I love doing that. Yeah.

Rhys: I also had noticed that your first publication was in a literary magazine, and my brother and my dad back in the seventies were big into getting, Isaac Azimov and astonishing tales delivered to the house, so they had subscriptions.

And I wonder if you think that society is at a loss now that. Literary magazines seem to be a thing of the past.

Jeff: Yeah, it’s not as much fun. I used, cemetery dance. It’s published very infrequently now. It’s still a print magazine. I got the latest issue a couple weeks ago.

But yeah, I used to get tons of them. I would go to the bookstore and there’d just be a whole rack of horror fiction magazines and I would. Read a lot of new stuff that way. Now I really don’t, now I either read anthologies or just novels. So yeah, it’s, it was more fun to, I wasn’t getting published regularly back in those days, so I would get lots of rejections.

So I have, I don’t have a big stack of literary magazines. I’ve been in, I have a big stack of rejection perspective magazines. Yeah. It’s still, it’s more fun to, see your story in an actual printed magazine. It’s like the.

Stephen: The fake money drop off. You take all your rejections, put ’em in between the two magazines you’ve been in, and so it looks like you have a huge pile of these literary magazines.

Oh, there goes Reese again. He’ll be back. I’m sure we’ll just keep going and we’ll pretend these ghost we’re doing so well. So Jeff, for people listening, we asked you a little bit about yourself. What books would you recommend that someone start with? I discovered Cyclops Road because I got a free copy.

I’ve told you that. Oh, look. A free horror movie. I’ll, or book, I’ll take it. So what books do you recommend

Jeff: of my own? Generally I would interrogate them. Okay. Do you want the goofier stuff or do you want the more serious stuff? In the absence of any information, I generally go with Wolf Hunt. Which is a super violent comedy horror crime werewolf book.

So that’s like my default. I also sometimes will say Autumn Bleeds into Winner, which is a coming of age thriller, or Alison, which is a telekinetic horror thriller. Lots of humor in all of those. So I don’t dweller is one of my most popular books, but it’s also. Sort of an outlier cause it’s very sad.

And I don’t generally do bummer books, but dweller is a bummer book. So that probably is my most, the most popular thing I’ve ever written with readers, but it’s not necessarily my starting place and stuff like pressure again, that was. One of my most popular ones, but it’s also very dark and intense and so on.

If you’re like, okay, what best exemplifies what a Jeff Strand book is, and I’m all over the place, but I generally would say, okay, Wolf Hunt Alison, or autumn Bleeds in the winter.

Stephen: I haven’t read Alison or Autumn Bleeds. I did pick up Allison when I saw you, but Wolf Hunt and Forbidden Forest and Blister.

I like those forbidden forest and wolf hunt. I’ve got those on audio and I’ve listened to ’em a couple times. Oh, cool. Because they’re good fun to listen to it. They crack me up still. And it’s. Also at the scares of that care, which you were recently at when I saw you, Armon, Shimerman was there and he wrote some, what I call fan fiction Alternative Shakespeare history.

And those are much heavier to read now. Even comment, I said, yeah. I liked reading the first one. I said, but it takes so much brain power to read it. I said, I need to get something. You know that a little more fun and easier to read and your stuff has fit that perfectly. Plus then I’ve gone back multiple times.

So for everybody listening, you got a favorite movie, horror movie that we’ve done, you watch. Great. Here’s some favorite horror books to add to that collection. Everything’s Got

Rhys: Teeth is the Jeff Strand book that I own.

Stephen: You actually have one? Yeah. I didn’t know

Rhys: that. Awesome. When you first brought him up this is what I was saying about literary magazines.

They’re so nice because you can read authors, several authors you’ve never heard of, all in one compilation. But you brought Jeff up to me and I was like, oh, I’ll check it out. And so I just picked that up and I enjoyed it a lot. I like anthologies in general,

Jeff: but Thank

Stephen: you. What’s.

You’ve got some other great titles like Dead Clown Barbecue, which I’ve got digitally you haven’t read yet. Was that one of the Mayhem books or not, or is that an

No?

Jeff: Dead Clown Barbecue’s a short story collection. Okay. I’ve got. Five. Five of my books are just collections of short stories. It’s gleefully, macab tales, dead clown barbecue.

Everything has teeth candy coated madness and freaky briefs. Then the others are not novels. Okay, and then one non-fiction book, the Writing Life,

Stephen: which again, for all the writers, if I put this up on my write, everything I is. My, I have two writer books that are go-tos that I have both read both of them a couple times, and one was Stephen King’s on Writing.

Yeah, that’s a good one. I think his beginning autobiography part is just, Great read to listen to, it’s not dry or anything. And then the advice, yeah, that’s okay. But then the other one is your writing life because it’s so personal and down to earth and makes me laugh while also making me feel better.

It’s yeah, I had a really crappy day. I feel like the worst writer in the world. I’ll read some Jeff Strm because he’ll make me feel a little better about my life and it actually has. So you’ve,

Jeff: that’s what it’s supposed to be. It’s not a book about here’s how to write the perfect query letter, or here’s how to create characters that you know, come to life.

It’s meant to be, here’s what it’s like if you do a book signing and no one shows up and here’s how to cope with rejection. It’s kinda like the real stuff about being a working writer who is not making, a hundred million

Stephen: a year. Which I absolutely love because that’s why I started the podcast because I was tired of going into all those Facebook groups of people going, Hey, look at the a hundred thousand I made this month on the three books I’ve written and I’m going, I can’t relate to that.

And I’m looking around going, there’s 50,000 people here. You can’t tell me. 50,000 authors can relate to that. And that was the genesis of the podcast. All right. What you got? Anything else to add to this conversation, Reese, before we let Jeff go? Oh,

Rhys: just really quickly and if you can’t say anything it’s fine, but during some of our research for, I don’t remember which movie it was, one of the ones recently became across that somebody was working on a movie called Blister.

And at the time I think Steve had asked if I knew who that was by, and I said, I have no idea at all. And so we’re wondering if you had anything to do with a movie option.

Jeff: I do not. I have lots of movie stuff going on, like there’s actually really cool stuff happening, at this very moment that I’m not allowed to talk about.

But Blister is not one of them, so that was okay. Blist Blister is really, it’s one of my best selling novels, but the movie interest has been, Almost non-existent. So I’ve got lots of cool stuff going on. But yeah, if there’s a movie being made a blister, they’ve either done it without telling me or it’s someone else.

Stephen: Blisters is an interesting book of yours too, because it’s not super dark, but it’s also not super funny. But it definitely is that, just cuz someone doesn’t look like you, watch how you treat ’em.

Jeff: Yeah. Now you were leading up to the question I was ready to say yes, but I can confirm nothing, but sorry.

Not me.

Rhys: No, it’s it’s funny because a lot of the movies that we review are either early in someone’s career or the people never really took off and became huge directors or anything like that. So a lot of times you’ll hear about projects they’re working on and they will never ever see the light of day.

And I thought it would be, if you could actually confirm that it was something you had work been involved with, maybe it had a better chance of

Jeff: being done. No, I can officially deny. Excellent. Hopefully this will be outdated and, blister have been this massive success. He was, no, I’m not involved in a b movie.

Stephen: As soon as a big one comes out we will review it and we’ll do a link between this one and then we’ll get you back on to tease you about it. All right, I’m ready. That’s why we work. All right, Jeff I appreciate you taking some time chatting with us today. Thanks for having me. Yeah.

Thanks so much. Yeah, thank you. We’ll let you know when the episode goes live. You can hear about all the background stuff that we discovered, and then tell us about the things we didn’t know. All right. Thanks, sir. Thank you guys.

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OverviewCatherine joins me from Houston Texas where she lives with her husband and kids. She is a recovering lawyer, though she still does writing for a hospital.

Her book is a medical thriller about a person who’s immune system can cure cancer. The book is timely in that it talks about bodily autonomy.

Bookhttps://www.amazon.com/Panacea-Project-Catherine-Devore-Johnson-ebook/dp/B0BT8DT52M?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1684274932&sr=8-1&linkCode=li2&tag=discoveredwordsmiths-20&linkId=c18b2d2746e0cefcbaaf43bf4a06c656&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_ilFavoriteshttps://www.amazon.com/My-Daughters-Keeper-Historical-Holocaust/dp/B09WHQBXJK?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1684284093&sr=8-1-fkmr3&linkCode=li2&tag=discoveredwordsmiths-20&linkId=8ea06d34a20d766c7fd284b9fa287482&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_ilYouTubehttps://youtu.be/2NcyGbkA4t0TranscriptToday on Discover Wordsmith, I have Catherine Devore. Catherine, how are you doing today? I’m great.

Catherine: How are you? Thanks

Stephen: for having me. Yes. It’s great to have y on. I’m doing well. Thank you. Before we get rolling, talking about your book, the Panacea Project, tell us a little bit about you, yourself, what you like to do where you live, things like that.

Some of your hobbies.

Catherine: Yeah. So I I live in Houston, Texas. Grew up here mostly. Although I was born in Chicago and then made my way down the middle of the country down to here I am a former lawyer. I like to joke that I’m a recovering attorney. And now I work part-time at a large children’s hospital as a writer and editor.

Nice. I have two kids. I have a 14 year old and a 16 year old. They keep me really busy. I what do I like to do for fun? I I love to do stuff with my kids. I’ve got one who’s a theater kid and one who’s an athlete. So between rehearsals and track meets, I’m pretty busy. Yeah. Of course I love to read all the time.

Houston has a really great restaurant scene, so I love to go out and eat with my husband. And I also, I’m obsessed with coffee, so I’m almost every day you’ll find me in some Houston Coffee house probably trying to write or. Or reading something

Stephen: Great. Nice. Love that. You’re actually the third or fourth recovering lawyer that I’ve had, so there must be something with that needs to push people in the, it also seems to be big.

Seems like a lot of it people go into writing books. Yeah. Yeah. And being busy with your family and that we’re gonna talk a little bit about that later in some of our author talk in finding time. And that I love hearing that because that was the goal of the podcast is to show other authors that you are not the only one with a full-time job, with a family, with other commitments, that there are others like that.

Out there that not everybody is sitting in a cabin typing out words and getting three books out a month and making a million dollars a month and stuff. Not everybody’s like that. I think that’s great. You’re right in there to show people, hey, yeah, this can’t be done. So yeah. Let’s talk a little bit about your book.

Why did you, oh, wait. Before we even do that what do you do for the Children’s Hospital to write?

Catherine: So I’m in a small team of, there’s three of us actually, and ironically enough, we’re all former lawyers and writers. And so we do a variety of things, but when we help edit grants and manuscripts, we don’t have a science background.

But I think coming from a legal background, we’re really good at. Kind of synthesizing complex ideas and helping people to just write as pers persuasively and succinctly as possible. And then we also just do other various writing projects for the hospital. Like a, on from a marketing

Stephen: perspective.

Okay. That’s an interesting gig. It really is. That does, do you find that doing that helps your fiction writing? You

Catherine: know, I haven’t, I’ve only been doing this job for about a year and a half now and I haven’t actually done any creative writing since I started that cuz I was, trying to transition back into being in the workforce.

It remains to be

Stephen: seen. Okay, great. You were a lawyer and now you’re doing some writing and other stuff. Why did you want to get into writing and why did you wanna write your book?

Catherine: I’ve always, ever since I was a kid, I’ve just been obsessed with stories. I used to stay up late at night and get rug burns on my elbows cuz I’d lay in the hallway reading, trying to sneak books.

And just been obsessed with the idea of how stories are crafted. And I think once I started working as an attorney, I realized I really needed a creative outlet. And I guess I was talking a lot about a book. And about writing a book. And so one day my husband came home, we live near Rice University, and they have a great continuing education program, and he brought home a pamphlet and he had marked a course, like a one day course for novel writing and was like, you need to do this.

And I realized I, how much I had actually been talking about it. So I just jumped in and. Started writing a novel and went to that course, met a really great group of people, joined a writing group, and it took off from there. And that was the beginning of my writing journey and it was 12 years ago.

So

Stephen: it’s been a long journey. So you started when your kids were really little because you said you have teenagers.

Catherine: Yes. So they were two and four when I

Stephen: started. Yeah. And we’re, again, we’re gonna talk about time. I’m sure there’s some, there’s a

Catherine: reason it took 12 years.

Stephen: Okay. So let’s talk a little bit about your book, the Panacea Project.

Tell us a little, without giving it all away tell us a little bit about the book and what it’s all about.

Catherine: So the Panacea project tells the story of Calla Hammond. She’s a young woman who discovers that her immune system can cure cancer. So she joins a medical study to help translate that into treatments for other people.

But word about the study leaks out and when it does, obviously she becomes the focus of really intense attention from. All over the world and everybody starts to try and take advantage of her because of what her blood and her bone marrow

Stephen: can do. Nice. So it’s a medical type thriller.

Catherine: It’s a, it crosses some genres because it, it has some.

Aspects of women’s fiction, but if I had to put it into one box, I’d say medical thriller

Stephen: for sure. Okay. Is there any other writers or any books out there that are similar to yours that if people liked it, they’d say, Hey, let me read Catherine’s book.

Catherine: A absolutely. I the books that immediately come to mind aren’t necessarily medical thrillers, but so Jodi Ultz my Daughter’s Keeper was a huge influence on me, and that’s a story about a girl who is born to essentially save her sister’s life because she is an exact bone marrow match with her sister who has leukemia.

And then another book called The Farm by Joanne Ramos. Not a medical thriller, but it’s about Surrogacy farms. So it both of those kind of address the issues of autonomy and who owns what comes out of our bodies. And then from the non-fiction side the Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Slut was a huge influence for me.

Stephen: Nice. And I think Robin Cook does a lot of medical, right? Yeah. And I, and actually Michael Creighton started with that a bit. I was

Catherine: just about to say, that’s I u I’ve been a thriller, a lover of thrillers and medical thrillers my whole life, and I’ve, yeah I adore Michael Creighton, so Yeah, for sure.

If you like medical thrillers check him out.

Stephen: Nice, nice. And is this a standalone book, or do you have plans for a series?

Catherine: It is a standalone book. Yeah. I don’t have plans

Stephen: for a series. Okay. Are you working on another book?

Catherine: I am. I am working on an idea for another book. It’s completely different.

Like my reading habits. I’m all over the place, and so when I write books, as a matter of fact, the Panacea Project is the second book I’ve ever written. The first one was Pure women’s fiction. It was a mother-daughter story. So the new one that I have rattling around in my mind is more of maybe speculative fiction.

So it’s about a woman who kind of dies by mistake and ends up having to navigate this very bureaucratic afterlife too, to try and get

Stephen: back. Reminds me of dead Like Me, the TV show. Oh, I haven’t seen that one. It’s reapers and their afterlife and as they go to kill other people.

And the girl that. They focused on died because a toilet seat from the i s hitter oh no. Yeah, it’s a quirky, dark humor book or story. Yeah, definitely. I’ll have to check it out. Cool. And so what type of feedback have you been getting from people who have read your book?

Catherine: So far mostly really good.

Yeah, people have, I people have especially loved. It’s a fast read. They say it’s a page turner. Most people finish it really quickly. And I think there are, and I, a lot of people tell me that. They get mad at me cuz they’re like, and now I’m crying. So they say the ending makes them cry, which I understand because the ending makes me cry every time I read it.

Even one of my, one of my editors we had to read, we were read, doing a last copy edit and she emailed me at one point and was like, and now I’m crying again. So I do think it moves people to think about the topics that I really wanted to. To make people think about in the book, which is like bodily autonomy and who owns our bodies and the things that come out of

Stephen: them.

Nice. Okay, good. That’s, I made people cry. That’s actually, not a bad thing in this instance.

Catherine: I hope it’s like good cry. It’s not. Yeah, it’s They like, the, they loved the characters and they were really invested in them and were moved by the ending.

Yeah, that’s good.

Stephen: Trying in a good way, right? Yes, exactly. So if you were given a choice, someone had came up to you, would you rather turn this into a movie or a TV show?

Catherine: I think this would make a good movie. Yep. I think it would be, yeah. It’s perfect for,

Stephen: for that. Yeah. I, listening to you, I would agree though if you had a series following a doctor and, these type of things, that could be a good series.

Thank you.

Catherine: Yeah. I have had a few people ask, ask Are you gonna write a sequel or a prequel? And I, like I said before I feel like it’s a standalone book, but to your point it could be interesting to, take some side roads and explore what some of the the, not just the main character but the other characters in the book.

Their journey. As they go through this process.

Stephen: Right. Great. Katherine, do you have a website?

Catherine: I do. It is cd johnson author.com.

Stephen: Nice. That, that getting harder to get just your name for website know.

Catherine: And my name is too long, like Katherine Devor Johnson author. It’s just, it’s too long.

So we had, I had to. Had to smosh it

Stephen: down. Yeah I’ve had people, I’ve had to adjust mine. I have a secondary website that forwards to my main website cuz somebody’s no one’s gonna know how to spell Schneider. I’m like German people will. So anyway so I wanna talk a little bit about the time and the writing the other stuff.

But before we go, anyone listening. If they said Catherine I like thrillers and I heard you wrote a book. Why should I get your book and read it? What would you tell ’em?

Catherine: I would tell them I’m gonna, it’s gonna, I’m gonna repeat a little bit of what I said before. If they want a fast read that kind of grips them right from the start and doesn’t let go, then this is the book for them.

And also, if they want a book where. They can fall in love with the characters and really be provoked to think about some deeper issues. Then this is the book for them.

Stephen: Nice. Great. It seems to fit today’s world quite well.

Catherine: I know. Not on purpose, but it worked out. It worked out that way.

Unfortunately,

Stephen: this book took you 12 years to write. You’ve, you had a career, you had family. What were some things you learned through that long process that maybe you were doing different at the end than you’re doing different for the new book?

Catherine: Actually this book, so the whole, my writing pro, my, I guess my writing journey took 12 years.

Okay. Okay. So I started out writing that first book. Okay. That women’s fiction book. And I, if nothing ever happens with that book, I learned so much from just the process of writing that book, which took I. I wanna say eight years from start to finish, because I had, the two-year-old, the four-year-old, and

Stephen: and the husband and I husband.

The hu Yeah. Husband. Husband should be a bit. I know I’ve been one.

Catherine: And part of the inspiration for the Panacea project was our family’s cancer experience. So in the middle of all that, my husband got cancer. And that definitely shut down creative writing for a while.

And the good news is that that he’s doing fine. He had surgery and then it came back after 18 months and so he had to have radiation therapy. But I. But he is doing great. It’s been over five years, so he’s actually, with the type of cancer he has had considered cured. And my mom had two strokes five years ago, and so I am now her primary caretaker.

She doesn’t drive anymore I do all of that. It’s, there’s just, there’s been a lot. So it was a slow process. So I wrote that first book, rewrote It, worked with an editor. And started the process of trying to get a literary agent. And I sent 197 query emails. And finally, and of course at the end, that’s when everybody, I started getting full impartial requests and had to play them all off each other.

But I did end up with a great agent and we tried, we pitched that book, we got it on the desks of some big publishers and some smaller ones, but it didn’t take, and so in the meantime, all of that, Cancer stuff had happened and all the medical things with my mom. And so I had come up with the idea for the Panacea project and I pitched it to the agent and he was like, Ooh, I like that idea.

Go write that book. And like I said, I think the experience of writing that first book made it easier to write the second one. So the Panacea project came out of me in a year, which is fast for me after the eight years writing the first book. And so we pitched that again and again. It just wasn’t getting traction.

So I had some friends who were, are also writers and had the same experience with their agents and publishers, and they had decided to go with hybrid publishers. So I submitted the book to two hybrid publishers for consideration and I got accepted at both, but went with one that’s out of Austin called Greenleaf Book Group, and they’ve been.

Absolutely phenomenal and I couldn’t be more happy with the experience.

Stephen: Nice, nice. Great. And our discussion is about writing and time, and you mentioned a couple things in there. A lot of people that wanna write do it because they’ve got they, they’re stay-at-home moms or dads. They’ve got little kids, but they wanna write.

They’re not their old career. How do you write when you have little kids?

Catherine: Oh, let’s see. You write when you can and even then, I would get these snatches of time to myself and I’d end up just spending the whole time just staring at the wall, maybe just working through a plot point or how I wanted to develop a character and I wouldn’t write a word.

And so it was just something that happened in fits and starts pro. Even if it was just in 15 minute increments, if it was 200 words a week. So you just have to, at least from my experience, I’m not telling anyone what to do, but. You just can’t give up and you’ve gotta find time when you can and not beat yourself up if when you do find that time you don’t write anything.

Cuz I think anytime you’re working through a story, even in your mind, you’re making progress. And then you, sometimes you just have to get creative. I, I was lucky enough a few times I could take a weekend day or even two days. My husband would stay home with the kids and I might have checked into a hotel room and just.

Done nothing but right for a day or two days. And like I said before, I was in a writing group, so we would meet once a week and that, that was nice cuz you can create accountability for yourself and you’re surrounded by people who are doing the same kind of thing. So I would just say do whatever it takes.

Don’t beat yourself up if you don’t make the progress you wanna make. And certainly don’t

Stephen: give up. I would agree. And I think that’s important. Don’t beat yourself up. I told you one of the reasons I started the podcast is because a lot of the groups and a lot of the other podcasts, you always hear the same people that are like, oh yeah, my career took off and they’ve bought five dip books that I’m working on, and I get to write for six hours a day and walk my dog.

And I have, a chauffeur. Now it’s just and then all these other people I’m talking to are like, yeah, I can’t relate to that. That’s not me. And it. Made people feel like I’m not a real writer, I’m a failure. I, but everybody’s situation’s different. And like you just said you gotta take what you can get.

This is what you got. Keep writing. It. Doesn’t mean you’re not a writer, doesn’t mean you can’t get the book done. You just gotta do it differently and keep going at it.

Catherine: Yep. I couldn’t agree more. I think persistence is the key. And also just being flexible, it wasn’t even, obviously it took me a long time to write the book, the first book, and even the second book.

I know some people can get books out, in a month or two. And for me it was a year. But then you have to be persistent about. How you get it published, how you get it out in the world. It can be really hard to break into traditional publishing. And and also, so there’s that. And then I think that the way that we consume media is changing so much so that you’ve gotta be open to other pathways to getting your story into the world, like hybrid publishing or self-publishing.

And I love that the stigma that was attached to those things is it seems to be going away. And I love that. It’s not great hybrid publishing. You have the resources of a traditional publisher, but you’re paying for it yourself as the author. So that is definitely a roadblock for a lot of people.

And I don’t love that. And I know I’m certainly really lucky that I. Get to utilize that option. But my hope is as we keep moving forward and the industry changes, all of that’s gonna become more accessible to more and more people.

Stephen: Agreed. And it’s been changing even over the last couple years.

And you mentioned that little fits and starts. I know. Some of the tools now out there allow you to work on your desktop, on a laptop, on your phone, on a tablet, anywhere you’re at. With little kids or like you said, your husband going to the doctor, going to the hospital, you might be waiting, who knows, 10 minutes.

You might be waiting an hour and a half quite often, and you pull out the tablet and even if you get a couple sentences, it keeps that flow going because one of the problems I found is, Like you, if life happens and writing becomes the lowest priority that you don’t do for a while, when you do get back to it, you gotta get going again to get in the whole thing going, what was this story about?

And now I’m, I. Several months different and my feelings and thinking on the book. So I don’t wanna change the whole book or the tone or anything like that. So it takes, sometimes it’s even more work than if you were able to sit down for three, four hours a day and just write, because you have to catch back up and that’s very difficult to do sometimes.

Catherine: That is so true. I’ve had that experience so many times when. I’ve had to take a break for a few weeks or even a few months, and you’re absolutely right. You, it just, there’s, you’ve gotta ramp back up into it. And that’s some of that, what feels like that dead time I was talking about where you’re just thinking, but it’s absolutely necessary to the creative process.

And you might not be writing down words, but But you’re doing work. And the other thing that I, what you said, it triggered a memory for me is, so much of both of my books are emails that I sent to myself because I learned the hard way. I’d be on a walk or something and I’d have a great idea and I’d think to myself, oh, that’s such a great idea.

I won’t, there’s no way I will forget that. Absolutely. Forgot it every time. Yeah. So I just learned, it was like the second I had a thought. Just shoot an email to myself. Yeah. Love that. And also, yeah, in terms of tools I’m a big fan of s Scribner. I don’t know if you’ve ever used

Stephen: that to write I, but I use, I discovered it early.

Oh. It’s just

Catherine: so great because you can create little documents for each chapter so you’re not just scrolling through an endless Word document. Yes. But then you can still look at everything together. I just, it’s so powerful. So all the writers out there check out s

Stephen: Scribner. And it’s funny you say that because they’re really Are two different camps.

I’ve talked to a lot of writers and I hear, oh, Scribner’s way too hard and complicated words fine. Then I hear others are like, oh man, Scribner is so easy to use because it does everything I want rather than word, which is just maddening. And it’s so interesting to hear that because I discovered Scribner because I was writing the first book that very few people have ever seen and probably ever will see.

Of course. And very quickly I’m like, oh my gosh, this is mad mean trying. I realized, oh, this chapter goes better here. And trying to move a chapter, but with Scribner, you just drag it around. It’s a lot easier. It’s great.

Catherine: Yeah. It’s so modular. It’s like little puzzle pieces. It’s just, it’s, I don’t even use all the functionality of it, but just that is enough for

Stephen: me.

Yeah, and I’ve tried to explain that to other authors. I’m like, look, my car, I can pop the hood and it’s got this little sensor and I can check this thing. I didn’t use that for the first week. I drove it. I just got in, hit the gas pedal and steered the wheel. Just get on Scribner and type some stuff.

Figure out the rest as you go. Don’t, yes. Overwhelm yourself. And, but it does like we’re talking about does take a little time. And I’ve discovered more features as I’ve been using it. Yeah. And. What was it like when, don’t I’m not trying to pry. When your husband had cancer and you were dealing with all that, I’m sure the emotional level was just out there and you’re writing a medical thriller.

So once things calmed down a bit with your husband, what was it like going back to the book, which I’m assuming you really hadn’t visited much probably for months. And now you’re done with a medical crisis and now you’re talking about a medical crisis almost. What was that like?

Catherine: I actually didn’t start writing the book until after we got through that.

Okay. But it was definitely hard and emotional to, to put myself back in those those moments. Sorry. No, I still get emotional about it. It was, when someone asked you like, what’s the worst day of your life? I can pinpoint that day, I bet when he came home and was like, so something’s wrong.

But I, I’ve really tried to channel all of that into the book. And the unfortunate truth is that so many of us have had cancer or know someone who has cancer and they’ve been through this in some way. So hopefully I’ve done that experience justice and people can connect with that.

Stephen: Nice. Good. That’s a positive thing to come from it. Yeah. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to get you upset on that. No, it’s ok. I,

Catherine: I, it’s just, yeah, I’m just a super emotional person. Sorry.

Stephen: But I love how you used that into your book and I you said it made people cry at the end. I would bet.

There was a little therapy in writing the book, and I bet that knowledge and just the feelings came out in the book and probably made it way stronger, which is one of the things you can do with writing is you aren’t joking all the time. It’s yeah, piss me off. You’ll be dead in my next book.

That’s the author joke. But how often do we use our emotions and take ’em out on the page? In one way or another you get mad at somebody and you jump and you write that fight scene in your book. You had a great moment with the kids or stuff, and now you’re writing something similar in the book.

You, you, it’s a way to get those emotions out. And me personally, a lot of authors are introverted, so sometimes getting the emotions out is a little difficult and this is a way to do it, I think. So I, I. I, I’m just saying I think you may have learned a lot about writing, but I think the emotional part of it probably came from that a

Catherine: lot.

Oh, absolutely. Yeah, and there was actually a part of that, that, that experience that I didn’t even mention, which is that made it even harder or, and more, more emotional. The day I brought my husband home from his surgery two of my friends called and said that another friend from high school was in hospice care with stage four gastric cancer.

So it just felt like cancer was everywhere. And I was able to see her, but she died four days later. And she actually plays a role in the book. And and yeah, to, to your point to what you were saying, I really hope that I was able to infuse it with all that emotion that you can see from me right now.

And also it’s a tribute to them. And it’s my like, No, sorry for the bad language, but Fu Cancer fantasy, which is, I’m gonna wipe you from the face of the earth. Killing that, killing off that character. But for me it was

Stephen: cancer. Nice. Got it. It. And there’s a really good video game out there with the same type of premise.

I think it was actually their kid got cancer and they created a video game to help them. Deal with it during the treatments that the kid could actually go in to shoot at and fight cancer. And I love that. Leave it out for a charity thing. So now we’re talking the time. Now your husband’s better.

Glad he is. And that you can now concentrate on the books. Your kids are a little older, teenagers, so mom, we don’t need you around as much. I remember that stage quite well and so does it. But you’re working for a hospital and stuff now, but does it free up, not just. The time, but your mind, you’re not having to think about the kids as much, not having to worry about your husband as much.

You got your job, but you put that aside at the end of the day. So do you find that your writing feels different now or you have more time for it or anything like that?

Catherine: Man, I wish that was true.

As of this moment I don’t feel that way and I, it’s just been such a busy time. My daughter just went through the process of, I. The way she’s at school, she had to apply to high school and did this whole thing to apply to a magnet program here in Houston. And it’s just been I don’t know.

I I feel like every second is filled with either work or kids, even though you’re right. My son is driving now and that’s taken a huge load off, even though I just feel like my heart is traveling outside of my body every time he gets in his car. But I do have hope for, I think very soon it’s gonna all settle down and I.

I do hope that I’ll be able to get back to being creative with my writing.

Stephen: Good. Good. So when do you think this next book, what’s your expectations on completion and getting it out?

Catherine: I’m not setting any expectations on myself so that I don’t get too stressed out. Yeah, I’m gonna, I think my goal is to get through the end of school.

I have my site sent on June, and that’s when I’m, I’ve got, it’s on my to-do list. I’m like, I’m gonna start trying to write every day. I’d love to finish it within a year of starting it. So maybe that’s a soft goal. There you go. Great. Check in with me June, 2024.

Stephen: Okay, great. We’ll look for that.

All right. Katherine, it’s been really cool talking to you. I appreciate it. But before we go, do you have any last minute advice you would give to new authors out there?

Catherine: Let’s see. I think in addition to the, don’t give up. Be persistent and be flexible in your approach. I think one of the most important things I’ve learned, and I hope this doesn’t seem strange, is to be really judicious about who you get to read your work.

Pick a few people, maybe three or four. I wouldn’t say. What I’m, I don’t wanna give people hard and fast rules, but, I, I found with my first book, I got a little overwhelmed because I gave it to so many people and I had two experiences. One, I got a variety, such a variety of feedback.

It was hard to really sift through it. And then the other thing was that a lot of people will say oh, we wanna read your book, but then they don’t. Yes. And then you’re sitting there and you’re like, Ooh, do I poke them? Do I not? And I think it’s really just some people are afraid to. They say they wanna read it, but then they’re afraid to read it cuz what if it stinks and they have to be honest with you or they have to lie to you about it.

So that was one of the biggest lessons I learned. Be careful about who you give it to. Give it to someone else who’s, is gonna be honest with you, but also constructive because I don’t think that feedback that tears you down. It’s just not

Stephen: helpful. Correct. Yes. I have several people that have read my stuff and they’re like, oh yeah, I’d love to read it and give you some feedback on that.

And then their feedback is, oh, I liked it. Yeah. That does not help me. And, and I talked with a couple people and I, they were like I, if I don’t like it, I don’t wanna hurt your feelings. And so I’m like hold on. Don’t you think it’s worse that if. I get told it’s good and then I release it and then people gimme one stars and rip me apart online.

That’s way worse. Aren’t you like setting me up to get hurt more? I’m like, it seems a little vicious to do that actually, and people are like, oh, I. I just personally can’t hurt your feelings. I’m like, okay, then I don’t need you to help. I want people to tell me when they got bored or what they didn’t like about a scene or a character or parts of the book so I can improve it and get better.

You don’t have to hate me. You don’t have to hate the book. You don’t have to rip it apart completely, but give me the. The feedback of, yeah, I, my, my son’s good at that. Eh, I just didn’t care for that scene. I didn’t like that character. And, he was too wishy-washy or whatever it happens to be. I love that way more.

Catherine: Oh yeah, me too. I’ll take that any day of the week. But I think people are just they’re just afraid if they’re your friend. Or a family member, some of them can be really afraid to do that. I’ve even had that experience. Now that my book is out, I’ve had people tell me I’m struggling with to write in my review cuz I want it to be perfect and I don’t wanna hurt any, hurt your feelings.

And I’m like, listen, I’m probably not even gonna read it cuz reading this review stresses me out. But it’s just been such a surprising phenomenon that people. Even once the book has been out, have been afraid to give feedback sometimes. Most people have, but I’ve encountered a few are like, I’m just scared to write a review cause I don’t know exactly what to say and I wanna make it perfect.

Stephen: You can call ’em a little bit and say, most people out there won’t read the review either. And if they really wanna help If they give you a four star, it’s probably even better because when they, the studies and things I’ve heard is when people look at a new book and there’s not a whole lot of reviews, but they’re all five stars and they all happen within a week or two.

It’s oh yeah, all their friends and family went on there and they ignore it. And actually people are more impressed just by the number of reviews and as long as it’s not super low. So a four is. A four without, a lot of writing is probably just as good as anything else. Or better.

Catherine: Exactly. Yeah. It’s so interesting. All the things that go into writing a book, marketing a book, all

Stephen: of it. So yes, absolutely. All right. Catherine, thanks for taking some time today. I appreciate having you on. I wish you luck on your book and hopefully we’ll hear about you when the next one comes out.

Catherine: Thank you so much. It’s been such a pleasure to talk to you.

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OverviewMolly was a school teacher and now write middle grade books. She has read her books to her class and engaged them in storytelling. This also leads to a nice discussion about teaching kids storytelling and how grammar and spelling fit into that.

Bookhttps://www.amazon.com/Game-Molly-Perry-ebook/dp/B075JR3QQ1?crid=3NFENCLWNRDW3&keywords=molly+perry+the+game&qid=1683676488&sprefix=molly+perry+the+gam%2Caps%2C97&sr=8-1&linkCode=li2&tag=discoveredwordsmiths-20&linkId=0ed61c0871277e55e0640776a075104e&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_ilFavoriteshttps://www.amazon.com/Ramona-Collection-Vol-Beezus-Father/dp/0061246476?crid=26VMSOTLXS0MX&keywords=beverly+cleary&qid=1683676640&sprefix=beverly+cleary%2Caps%2C107&sr=8-2&linkCode=li2&tag=discoveredwordsmiths-20&linkId=a7410eeaf66d9d21ee69f2284f263fcc&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_ilWebsitehttps://mollyperryauthor.com

Tom Holbrookhttps://riverrunbookstore.com/Fire Keeper’s Daughter – Angeline Boullie

Sea of Tranquility – EMily St. John Mandel

The Ferryman – Justin Cronin

In the Lives of Puppets – TJ Klune

The Climate Book – Greta Thunberg

Poverty, by America – Michael Desmond

Knowing What We Know – Simon Winchester

Chain Gang All Stars – Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

Happy Place – Emily Henry

YouTubehttps://youtu.be/oBJLeKk7Vl8TranscriptStephen: today on Discover Wordsmith, I wanna welcome Molly. Molly, good morning.

How are you doing? I’m doing

Molly: great.

Stephen: So I know we live fairly close by, so since you’re in Ohio, and I have a question for you, how do you know it’s springtime in Ohio?

Molly: Oh,

Stephen: no more snow. No, the opposite. You get more snow than you did during the winter.

Molly: Oh my gosh. I have snow right outside. My, yes. That’s Ohio.

Welcome to Ohio. But when spring comes, Ohio is beautiful.

Stephen: Yeah. Yeah. All right. Molly, we’re gonna talk about your books today, but before we do that, why don’t you tell everybody a little bit about yourself, where you live, what you like to do outside of writing

Molly: books. Okay. So I live in in the suburb of Cleveland, Ohio, near Lake Erie.

And I have been I guess teaching. And the other thing that I love to do is dancing. I’m, I love to do swing dancing and all kinds of contra dancing and all kinds of dancing, and it brings me a lot of joy. Where do you go for dancing? It’s all over the place. There’s little venues and different, like church basement, church basements and one that’s nearby is a community of saints in Cleveland Heights.

And we just it’s wonderful because the people are very down to earth and it’s all group dancing and just, and then, we have a little break in the middle where we socialize and of course we have to eat nibble. Nice. It’s a, and it’s just so good for your body, but it’s also good, releases any stress.

You just, you laugh and you enjoy each other. Nice. And the swing dancing is a lot of, it’s mostly on the west side of Cleveland. I live on the east side, but we carpool over and it’s, you don’t have to be perfect. You just move to the music and Nice. Good. Yeah.

And so I, one of my earliest memories. Of me as a child, I would I was like, I would be dancing around the house, holding my ma, holding my notebook with my stories. So I combined both things and teaching I guess I was just a natural born teacher, I loved children so much. And it’s, it just I think if I had to say something about teaching that is that when you have two choices, when something goes, awry in the classroom, you could be very tough and say, this is the rules and this is, but I found that kindness and is a huge part of my approach to teaching.

I’ll tell a quick story that I was teach, I taught third grade most of the time. Now I’m teaching just groups, little small groups, which I love too. But I was teaching third grade and we were studying the different states and. The kids were doing all these parts of the project and one of them was to do a a big poster and it had to have the name of the state and they had, books and things to do, write about him, pictures, and they had to put a cap.

We learned what a caption was, so everybody was working on him. My little boy comes up to my desk and he shows me his poster in progress, and it was a wreck. It was a mess. It was awful. It was just scribbled all over. He, and so in that moment I had a choice. I could have said, oh my gosh, that’s a wreck. You have to start over.

Oh my God, I can’t believe, blah, blah, blah. But I decided to go a different route, and what I said to him was, what you have here is a good start. But I think we could use another poster, go get a new poster. And there was no crying. This is not, wasn’t being mean. He grabbed the poster. I sketched out a few, the letters on the name of the state.

And I went, we put the pictures, lay them out, and I said, okay, Luke on those pictures and type over the thing, tape over what I wrote and then bring it back and let’s see what we can, else we can do. And he was happy as a clam. I didn’t have a breakdown. He was excited about the project and I feel like I didn’t mess up.

Nice. Nice. And so yeah, I, that’s how I approach children all the time. I’m, when they’re, if you go from a positive approach, it’s just tremendously more powerful.

Stephen: Yeah. Nice. Okay. And we’re gonna talk about teaching and working with kids later, cuz you’ve written some middle grade books. So let’s talk about those. So you’ve got two books out right now. Tell us a little bit about those books.

Molly: Okay the main characters are,

Stephen: Lily. What are the titles? And I know you have them if you wanna hold ’em up too.

Molly: Yeah. So this is the title of the first book And I wrote this book in front of my third grade class and they chapter by chapter, they listened.

But this book is called The Game and it’s the Game is where three main characters three children Lily, who’s about 12, and then her brother Jimmy, and I’m gonna hold up the second book cuz there’s a picture of them. Lily is, and this was a little bit older Jimmy, her brother and their next door neighbor, Jamal, who is their best friends.

And in the first book in the game, they are they’re playing a game like Monopoly and that they found in their father’s startup children’s museum. And so they roll the dice and they pick a card and it said go to Ottos antiques. And they said, what? But they took their tokens, they stuck ’em in their pockets and they took their bikes over to this antique store.

And Otto is a main, is another character. But he sends them down the basement and they open up a, they open up this guidebook that they find about sweet Abundance, which is the name of the la cartoon Land. And so they open it up. And so without going into too much more detail they go to the back of the basement and Jimmy climbs under these curtains.

And he says, oh, wow. And he opens up the, they open the curtain and he’s a cartoon and they’re stunned. And so they end up crawling through the window and they go to this cartoon world called Sweet Abundance. And there they they meet all their car, their tokens turn into a. They said in the guidebook, if you add water, tokens will come to life size.

So they, so that’s another funny thing about Jamal, he’s a great character. They’re sitting in there, they said as a, we all, if he was add water to the tokens, but we’re in the middle of a park, I don’t know how we can do it. So Jamal takes the van token and he spits on it, and he says it’s water.

And he puts it down and it’s and it grows. And then they had the other one was the the other one was a dund. And so they spit on that token and he gets to be life size. And so they’re scratching the din. And they said, oh, what’s your name, boy? And in perfectly clear words, as I say, he said they don’t give, do dogs tokens with names in the factory, come on, don’t you know that?

And he said, I really prefer the name Bernard, because St. Bernard’s. They get to be heroes. They save people. It’s right up my alley. So nice. So those are the main the two, the three kids. And they drive around in the van named Randy. And they drive around sweet abundance and they meet different characters.

But the main part of the story is that there is a villain named John Hartless, which I think is a great name for a villain. And he looks like a s nightly whiplash, if you ever watched that right. Cartoon, the top hat and everything. And he wants to take over sweet abundance and he chases them around and finally skipping through all the different parts of the book.

At the very end, he’s got them, he’s cornered them. And there’s just nothing left. And Lily doesn’t know what to do. So she stands up and she kisses him on the cheek and he says, no, no one’s ever kissed me before. And my mean aunt raised me and he starts to shrink like the Wizard of Oz, but he doesn’t shrink all the way.

He gets to be like a four or five year old boy. And he starts crying and he said, my aunt looks very mean to me. And a, an adult character in the story steps in, and he says, it’s okay, Jo Little Johnny, I’ll take care of you. And pretty much that’s, then they go back and they end up being asked to come back again.

And you know that there’s, they’re losing all the color in sweet abundance. And so they somehow get, oh, they, in that story, another character comes up that is a very big favorite, as my grandson designed it. It’s a a robot named Tramo and Trio they find him in this antique store in a box.

Cause they’re, they got a letter saying that, please come back. We need you. The color’s disappearing from sweet abundance. And trio they push the right button and he comes alive and he’s got spring legs and he jumps all over the place. And they go back and the color is missing.

So they, that whole journey to find the color and also another main character is missing also. But it’s a beautiful story of what Ha Oh, forgot. The most important part in the second book, Eddie is the v is the bully at school. And he’s bullying Jimmy and he follows them into sweet abundance by mistake.

Cuz they go through this into the, through the store, the antique shop. He follows them in and What happens to Eddie in the story is really amazing. He’s really mean and he, he chases them around and a second car is actually born in that story cuz he chases him around in their car little car.

And he, things work out and he ends up so much better and they all end up as very close friends by the end. Nice. So it’s really lovely ending.

Stephen: Nice. Great. What would you say you work with middle school kids, younger kids, what other books out there are similar to these that you could point to for re readers that are interested?

Yeah,

Molly: I wrote them down that I have used before. One of them first, actually, the first one is an old book that is actually when I was a child. I read these Beverly Cleary books. In fact, she just died at 105 or something. And the characters were very real in there. They’re, they’re not these I don’t know.

The they, they get into me scraps, scrapes, and so Beverly Cleary is a huge, was a huge influence. And even though they’re old books, I like them. What did I do with race? Oh, here. So I read the book that I really liked was the recent book was the Voyage of Sparrowhawk. And the author is Natasha Farran, and they go on a journey also.

They are in a boat and they get into all kinds of scrapes and they go to these various different places. And the other one is Mr. Lemon Cell’s Library by Chris Stein. And it’s, again, it’s another adventure. They had this museum that’s really really strange, but really cool in there. So those are the, some of the books that Similar.

Stephen: Nice. Great. And have you had any of your students reading the books? What have they, what have people said about the books?

Molly: Okay two things. One, as I was reading them to my class as I was writing the first book when I got near the end, the kids in my GRA class, they’d like to lay on this rug while I was, I read stories to them.

He jumped up and he started saying, this is gonna be a movie and I’m gonna be Jimmy, and you’re gonna be Lily, and you’re gonna be Jamal. And they were just completely, they became the huge fans that really pushed me into getting it, published and everything. And then I I got I hear from the kids at my school who’ve read them.

In fact, in the second book, the second car, and it named Tony, she raps and my brother said to me, you’re really not gonna write, try writing raps are you? Molly said, give it a shot. If it comes out horrible, ill, I’ll take it out. So Tony does all these raps and these in my school, these girls that ha love my books and read them their teachers said they were marching around the classroom going with my determination, I’ll reach my destination.

And yeah, I there, there’s one girl that I see in school, she carries my book around with. Nice. That’s great. Yeah, I have, and I had I actually ran into some parents of a, of the From the class where I read the books the first class, and they were the parents there. And I ran into them and they remembered me.

I actually didn’t remember them exactly, but you

Stephen: get how many kids every single year. Yeah. You,

Molly: but I smiled. Oh yeah. I remembered their son. And he said he just loved your books, and she said, and she said, we credit you in your books to his love of reading. I thought, I wish I had a video of that I could carry around my head.

That was the most, I almost wanted to grab the mother and hug her. And I’ve I, the comments that I’ve gotten, I actually got a letter from a girl I, or she’s a paper letter and It was, oh, I almost should have brought it with me. But anyway, it was I just, she she is a student at the school of where I wrote the book, and I don’t teach there anymore.

And she said, you had my two brothers. And she said, but I, she said, I got lost in the story and I just love the characters and I can’t wait for the next book to come out. And so I I wrote back, I, I found out who her mom was and I remembered, and I called her and I said, how in the world did she read the book?

She said, oh no, our. Your books at our house is a big deal. So Nice. When she read it. So I received an actual paper letter and I’ve actually posted it on Facebook for my friends to see

Stephen: them. That’s beautiful. Love that. Yeah, kids, it’s great. That’s one of the things with kids, they, when they get into stories, they are so into it and love it.

And that’s one of the best things. Writing, reading with kids and all that. A absolutely. You get a group of adults and you read a little bit to ’em. They’re like, so kids are always so fun.

Molly: Oh yeah. They, there’s no holding them back, they it just comes. And I think that’s what I really love about them.

Stephen: Yeah. Obviously one of the little boys thinks that your book should be a movie. What do you think a movie or TV show for the books?

Molly: I like the idea of a movie. Yeah. I like the idea of a movie. It’s it lends itself to it. There’s the description of them. And in the first book I do have illustrations.

Second book, I did not do illustrations. Someone said in middle grade books, you really don’t need them. But I can see, I can, so here is a picture Oh, nice. Of, that’s Lily and Jamal and Jimmy, and they’re in the basement looking in that guidebook before they climb through the window and get into sweet Abundance.

And the the woman who, Sylvia Masic, who did the illustrations, she, it was strange because she just really liked the book and her kids liked the book. She’s the illustrator. And in the book, in this picture, she put little clues on his backpack. No. There’s a picture of the van somewhere on the shelf.

And the dund, the Bernard and then there’s thing that says dead end in one. In the first scene, they meet the main, one of the main character in Isador Benefactor. He’s the president of the bank and he’s like the head of the whole place of sweet abundance. And they found him. And originally I put him in jail, but that’s too close to Monopoly, so I called it that he was stuck in dead end.

Ah. They named did it. And so she put the word, this little sign that said, dead end there. So Nice. It’s the, yeah. And the kids. I I just love their reaction to it. I just love their reaction. Great. So yeah, I would say a movie. Okay.

Stephen: See, I always had the idea, you know how in the summertime some of the theaters show kids movies like every Tuesday and you could get a pass.

Oh they show like 10 movies through the summer every Tuesday or something like afternoon. Oh, that’s great. What I would love is to take my book and turn it into a cereal cartoon, and then every week for those 10 weeks, they show three minutes of the whole thing. I, that’s what I would love to do if it was, if I could figure out how to make it possible,

Molly: yeah. That I would, yeah. That’s a very, I didn’t know about those. I have to look for ’em and see if I can go see them.

Stephen: That’s, yeah. Yeah. I used to take my kids to ’em. It’s a lot of fun. Yeah. Molly, do you have a website for people to check out?

Molly: Yes. It’s molly perry author.com.

Molly

Stephen: perry author.com.

Molly: All I’ll puts. Yeah. Yeah. I I have on there some Just some posted. I just, things that are on my mind, it’s not necessarily, it should, I’m kinda learning about it. So yeah, they, and they can order the, they can order the book on the website. There’s a, the person who did it, they wrote the word Amazon, and if you just click on the word Amazon takes you right to Amazon on the

Stephen: Nice.

Okay, great. And what’s your plans for your third book?

Molly: So I’m about three quarters of the way through writing it. And the third book is wild, crazy also. They don’t go to sweet Abundance right away. Because the thing I didn’t tell you about the first book is they I did they found the game in the first book at their father’s.

Museum. He was trying to start up a children’s museum, which does get started up. And they found the game in a in a wooden box that was locked up cuz it was all just packages and things. And in fact he so they were left alone in the museum. He had an appointment and so they pulled it out and they played the game of Monopoly.

And so it sends them to the to the antique store. But this time it starts out with the characters’, main characters of the book showing up at their house in Mayville. That’s the real world. And they, the, is it, our benefactor is with the little little Johnny and Bernard at their front window, at their front door.

And he said, you gotta come right away. There’s very big trouble and we really need your help. And so they They get in the they go to the museum and they said, we can’t tell you now, is it her and his brother was there also, blah, blah, blah. And so they go to the museum and they find and they wanna make sure that the game is okay at the museum.

And and there is a twin museum in a suite. Abundance is a cartoon museum. It’s a twin. So they came because the game disappeared from the museum in sweet abundance. And they had come to the real world to see what if the game was still there in the real world of the real world. And they found out that it wasn’t, it was missing.

And so it was horrible cause I didn’t know if sweet abundance was gonna disappear. And so the father, Says we have to, oh, little Johnny crawls under the table, which normally kept the game was on display. And he, you hear him pulling and he crawls out and he’s ho there he’s holding the game.

This package the wrapped a package with these silver, that silver tape, and it looks like a spider and he holds it up. And so some things happen, but the father goes back to his office, which normally is his little tiny office in the museum, with a beat up old desk and a, a file cabinet.

And the father said, follow me. And everybody follows him. And they opened the door and the music, the offices changed. It’s huge. It’s beautiful. It’s big. And there’s a big new d the desk with his old swivel chair, which he’s very grateful for. They got the old swivel chair, but on and on. The one wall is this huge painting, so they all gather around the painting and it’s a painting of a field and a mountain, and there’s a little cabin at the top of the mountain and in the air, some birds.

So what I didn’t tell you in the first book is they talked about ho sweet abundance came into being. It was very short part of it. It turns out that is, the villain, John Hartless had run away from his job as an artist in this company because his boss was really mean. And so he went up to his cabin where he goes to relax and he starts drawing pictures.

Of this world of sweet abundance. And he drew it enough and says, and as if you believe in something long enough, it’s gonna become real. I thought I was gonna get a lot of flack from it, but everybody accepted it. And so he opened the trap door in the cabin, and he went into sweet abundance.

So there’s a, that, that’s what the cabin is at the top of the mountain and in the air are two new characters in the air. They said, they look closer and they said those two birds over there aren’t really birds. And they look, they said they look like little dragons. So they look closely in there.

They’re these two, two little dragons. And so the father opens up the package and there’s another character that appears. It’s actually a diary of a journey. And it turns out it’s the grandfather of Isador and. Otto. And so they take the guidebook with them and they said, and the father said, we follow me.

They go back to the room where the game was and they push this big bookcase away from the door and they open up these doors that open up like wings, whatever. And they see this hallway, this dark hallway with bricks, and there’s a torch stuck into the wall. And they said, this is where you’re gonna take your journey.

So the all the the kids go into that hallway and Jamal and of course Bernard goes and the three kids and and Tramo trio’s in this thing. I haven’t talked about him. And then I don’t know. This may or may not continue, but Right. But I had little Johnny say, you know what, I’m not, I’m brave.

He’s a little boy and he runs in with them and he begins to change and get to be their age. And he’s part of the team. I don’t know, it’s too many characters, so I don’t know what, but I like little Johnny. Anyway, so they go into this and they climb up this, these steps and they see these two little giggling faces of those two dragons and one’s green, sparkling green, her name is Emerald and the other one is Purple Sparkling.

Her name is pear Purple Emerald. And so they go in there and they climb up, and they see them at the top and they go into the store. And they’re in the cabin where, from the first book where they had actually created the Land of Sweet Abundance. And they go on this journey to.

Find the games. And it’s crazy because there’s another, they go open the trap door again and they go down and there’s railroad tracks in there. And Lily’s really thrilled that she doesn’t, that she doesn’t have to continually TRAs around, because there’s a train and a, an old fashioned train shows up with the, these smoke popping out.

And it’s Bruno, he’s the train and he, they travel on this train towards sweet abundance, but they go down this mountain and that’s where the real problem of the story actually comes about because it’s really bizarre. But they are encountered with a rat. His name is King Poison, and he, oh they stop in halfway down the mountain and they go into this house.

They see this lady sitting on a porch and she’s asked them for cookies, but she seems very suspicious. And, but they go in the house and she actually changes into this rat, this female rat. And she’s wearing this old baggy dress and there’s a, and she’s trying to capture them. So she said, you should go into this little wire box where she had two, two cats that were her kind of prisoners.

And but they somehow they won’t, they don’t go in to the thing that the cats actually popped the door open. And all the other people that were waiting outside, the traveling people broke into the, went in, and she ran away. And so if the next part you meet her name is of course, now I’m not gonna remember her name, but she goes to, oh no, her name is Malice.

And actually the word malice popped in my head before I started writing the book. I had no idea what the book was about, but there was gonna be a malice. And so she goes over and meets up with, and she’s Terri and she’s scared to talk to King Poison because she left the, everybody the cats escaped and everybody escaped and she ran away.

And he’s furious, but then they they go chasing them and they are Chas chasing them. And as they’re going down the mountain they no that when they go down the mountain, that’s when they meet Alice, the whole thing. And then they escape the house and they go down the mountain and they have to stop again.

It’s a crazy thing, but I won’t tell you about that, but up in the mountains, they see the wrath. They see king poison and they see malice and hundreds of rats. Wow. So the whole thing about the rats are, is that they said, somebody says in one part of it, they just, I wish they would just go home.

And one of them said they can’t go home. Rats have no homes. They live in behind the walls and in sewers, but they have no home. And they’re gonna find, there’s a home in sweet abundance, another land, a cartoon land, and the rats wanna take over sweet abundance and king Poison has the games, but they’re disguised as dice in his safe.

Stephen: That, that, and that’s a lot coming up, A lot going on.

Molly: First of all I’ve been telling everybody, I don’t know I know I have too many characters. I know I have too many characters, but everybody knows the main characters so well. So I have, the dragons and then the rats and the Bruno the steam.

So I don’t know, I guess that’s part of writing the book. You have to play with it.

Stephen: Great. Okay. So let me ask you a couple things about your teaching in that. Okay. Because I, with my books am working on a study guide and I’m working on like words to know and cuz I wanna get kids writing a bit more.

So as a teacher of young peoples what’s some of the problems you face getting them to read and some of the problems they have with the books and reading and e and even enjoying it and all that. What do you see as some of the problems?

Molly: I think the problems are, first of all, if they are, they they need help in learning how to read.

Then for some of them that’s where they really get difficult and they just don’t want, they know they don’t wanna do that. And I think for, as a classroom teacher, when you read, when I read a book to them, I’ve read some Roll Doll books and there’s one Roll Doll book, the short book, and it’s hilarious.

And I burst out laughing. Year after year I burst out laughing. I can’t stop laughing over these books. And the kids start laughing. And so I said, oh, you’ll have to, I’m sorry. And they said no, it really was really funny. And or I’ll be reading to them, so I’m going from another angle of reading to them instead of, then getting to the books that we read that they have to read.

And I’ll say, what do you think is gonna happen now? And they have all these ideas, so that’s to just get them. Hooked into the book, into the story. I said one time I tried various things and I said let’s make a little short story together. So I said in this book that I just read, this royal doll, he has this character.

So I said, let me just name some characters and I’ll put ’em in there. And I’ll tell you the beginning of it, are you up for it? That’s what I say. Are you up for it? And yeah. And so I say, okay, is this there in this character? And I said, the problem is da. What does there think of a better problem?

Yeah. He could have lost his homework in his, in trouble with the teacher. Oh yeah, let’s use that one instead. So I, and we create this story. I don’t, I can’t spend too much time on it, but I create a story and then I’ll say what, let’s brainstorm some Some endings. We talked about the characters, blah, blah, blah.

So that’s, it seems like a, a ti for some principles that’s wasting my time. I should just really teaching vocabulary and make them read the book. And and then she’s right, we should learn the vocabulary, but I just want ’em to get the idea of loving, of the process of writing a book so they understand the book.

And then I read to them every day. I read to them every day. And so they oh the other thing about before I get into that as a teacher, as I read to them an unexpected consequence or good, it was a good consequence happened about, from my books, they started bringing in from home their books that they wrote.

It could have been like two pages I thought I. If I made an assignment, everybody has to write a story, but all these books start coming from home that they were writing at home. The parents were so excited that they were doing that. If you, I think your general attitude towards the book that you’re trying to teach is excited, then I think that they get into it a little more.

I, repeat your question again so that I

Stephen: make sure No, I was just chatting because I like what you do and what you said about that. One of the things, and again, fu this is a touchy subject because first of all, I think our teachers are extremely undervalued and not admired. I have said for quite a while that I have the solution to fix everything in our country.

And what we do is we take the pay for the politicians and the pay for the teachers and switch ’em and Oh my God, yes. 20 years. The kids going through a system with highly paid teachers would have all the answers to everything, and we wouldn’t be listening to politicians that are underpaid. And it would solve our

Molly: problems.

And having them tell us how to teach too

Stephen: is right. And what you said about the principal thinking you should teach ’em grammar, teach ’em vocabulary, teach ’em spelling. But to what end? What’s the point if the kids don’t know how to use the spelling and use the grammar to write stories or tell stories, or read and understand what they’re reading, what’s the point in learning all of that?

Because, spelling, my, my cousin doesn’t spell great. And he says, why do I have to, I put everything on my phone. It tells me what I spelled wrong. So if you’re learning spelling in a vacuum what? No wonder they don’t care and wanna learn. But if they see, oh, I’m writing stories and these stories are exciting and people are reading ’em and enjoying them, and I read stories it’s it all feeds on itself.

That’s my thoughts and opinions. Abs.

Molly: Absolutely. It really does feed on itself. Absolutely. I saw this the, this Teacher, this really super teacher that they gave us, came to talk to us, and she told us about a thing that she did with spelling, and I loved it. What she does is she said, she has her spelling list from the book, and she said, but from their stories that they write, she said she finds books, words that are misspelled all the time, said, and she said she adds them to their individual.

So you have the 10 words, and then these words that she finds in their writing that are misspelled she adds them to individual’s spelling tests. I thought how you, how do they do it? So what she did was she gave the spelling test. And then everybody gets in pairs at the end for the last three, and they swap this card, which she keeps an index card of all the words that they misspelled.

And if I had your list and you had mine, I would give you those three, three words from their card of all these spelling words that they, words that they misspelled in their work. And and then if they spelled ’em right, I call, I call ’em and I crossed off the things on their card.

They said, yes, I’m gonna get everything off of my card. I said, yes, I bet you will. And so it, it individualizes their spelling, but you’re right. You need to know how to spell the words, but if there’s a motivation to do it it’s, I don’t, it’s very hard.

And I you do it and I. I had this one teacher. She was very smug. She said to me, how is it that your, the kids’ spelling scores on the tests are so high? I said they misspell them first, and then they spelled ’em right for a test. She was just very annoyed. She left. She didn’t, that’s impossible.

I said, I got it from a teacher’s top teacher. She told me how to do it. But I don’t know. I, sometimes it’s the way you teach the story you have those readers with the short stories of it encourages love of reading and writing. I, my first year of teaching, I had this principal who was, yes, they needed a better principal.

So she comes in to look at me, to observe me. But she just really wants to see my lesson plan. And I said, when I saw her, I said, oh, you gotta come to see my reading group. This is cuz there was three groups and I had my top group in front of me when she walked in and I wasn’t looking at her, I thought that she was following the group.

I said you wrote this little short story in the reader. I said, everybody, did you come up with your own ending? I changed ending to the story and they were all excited cuz these kids were like super brilliant kids and they were reading some of their own endings to the story that were in the book.

So I dismissed them and then, I went over to her and she was just looking through my plan book and I said, did you like the lesson? She said, your lesson plans need to be in more. These are very scattered. I wanted to just say, is that what you got outta this visit? Oh my.

Stephen: And right there. I love that you do that.

And I, I think that’s part of the problem is we’re so focused on the paper of what Common Core says we should do. Oh, yeah. And the kids aren’t really learning. And we’ve gotten, I know a lot of schools will spend a whole week preparing the kids for Common Core, so all they’re learning is how to take the Common Core test.

They’re not learning and oh, yeah. Telling, there’s so many things in telling a story. Like reading the stories, like what you did. I think some exercises I’ve suggested and some people were like surprised is the kids all went and saw the new Harry Potter movie, or the new Star Wars, or the new cartoon that’s out from Disney, whatever it happens to be.

So the following, if they, if you see it in the classroom or they’re all talking about, it’s like, Why don’t we write fan fiction? Why don’t we write our own story with those characters? What happens next? Oh, that’s a great idea. And then they’re, because they’re interested. Who cares?

Because then you can introduce some spellings. You know what, this is on our spelling list. It, you could use that word here. And when they see it, it clicks so much. Because I noticed with a lot of early write writers, adults in the, not just kids they read all these craft books. They read all this, how to do this, that, and the other thing.

But they haven’t written anything, so it doesn’t click. Oh, I know that. That’s okay. So we’re teaching spelling, we’re teaching grammar, but we don’t teach ’em how to write a story. So none of that clicks. And I, if we wrote or what you said hey let’s stop here. Why don’t you write how this story would end?

Yes. Yeah. And you could do, and then you could take what they wrote and do the grammar. You could do the spelling from that and that they’re more

Molly: engaged. Yeah. That comes later. First they’ve gotta be psyched. Yes. If they don’t like that story, I’ll say, yeah, now you got a great story. But we, we have to do, have to fix up the spelling.

So do you want me to circle the words and so you fix it up. Do you want me to do that? Oh yeah. If I had said cir, there are circled words. Fix them. It’s a whole different, yeah. I tell this story. This is, I didn’t plan on telling this, but I was teaching at this school and I. This little boy had run out of his, out, ran away from out of the building.

He hated school. And so they pulled him out of that school, and I don’t, they came to our, the school where I was teaching, and the principal stuck him in my room. She said, I’m giving him to you. I said, okay. So he came up to my desk, the kids were working, and he was. And so I said to him would, I just would like you to write me a little story.

I didn’t know anything about him. So he said, oh, I said, but make it funny or exciting or something, I got ’em all prepped up for it. And he wrote this story. It had to be maybe 50 words. And he came up and he pointed it down on my desk and I looked at it and the words were all mushed together.

There, there were, there, it was un unreadable, but I saw the little word, the, in the middle of it. And so I came up with this, come here. I said, I said, I feel cheated. He said, what? I said, I feel cheated. I said, you wrote a story. I don’t get to hear the story. And he said, why? I said, I can’t read it.

And he looked at and he said there’s the, I said, I know I saw it. I said, but now I don’t get to read your story. And he said I could rewrite it for you. I said, would you? And he sat down and he, now that’s a take B. He, he calls up a kid, this story is a mess. I can’t read a word of it except that word the redo it and the kid does this.

No, I’m not. And you run this building, he voluntarily sat there and I said, if you put your finger between each word, I’ll be able to see it better. Cause that’s where we teach. And the story was a nothing story, but I read it and I was exci, I was excited about it. And he and I. Did very well.

That was many years ago. I ran into his sister and I said, how is he doing? He said, oh, he is happily married. He has two little ba two little kids, and he is part owner in the gas station where he works. And I said, fantastic. So I’m not saying he was this genius, but he probably was very good with his hands.

And, but he found a home in my class that he was safe. He wasn’t gonna run away. I wasn’t gonna beat him up. And that’s part of what you’re saying. It’s gotta be an atmosphere where, you’re encouraged to do things. And I once taught haiku and I was being observed by this principal.

And cuz I, the new job, a possibility and I had all these people in the back and I had this haiku lesson, which is my favorite, one of my favorite lessons. And I had this packet with all these haiku that I had found. So I told ’em about the history of the haiku, that it third grade class. And I said I said, this describes a mountain and the fish jumps in the water at the end.

So I said, it tells a little story. I said, we’re gonna do haiku, but we’re not gonna follow how many, we’re not gonna count how many sounds or anything, we’re just gonna enjoy the haiku. When you get the high school, you’re gonna have to count the sounds. But right now, so I did, I wrote down a baseball haiku that, from another class that had written, it wasn’t the, it wasn’t the one that was from the Haiku book.

And at the plate holding the bat, bam, home run, whatever. And of course they understood that they could picture it. And so then I said, but let’s read some of the other ones. And we went around and, I said, we don’t have a lot of time, so just somebody, we’ll take four people, volunteer, look through the thing.

Who wants to read? So they read them. And so I said At the back is this pink blank with these lines on it. I said, see if you could write a haiku what could we write a haiku about? And they said, baseball. And then they said spring, summer, vacation all these different things, going to Camp Thanksgiving.

I said, yeah, go for it. Try something. So I, this is what I tell other teachers that are new. I said, I walked off the stage, I let them be on the stage. So I walked off to the side and I said, okay, who’s willing to, I said, and I said, let’s, I turned to the principals and every, I said, now we don’t wanna criticize.

We’re just gonna listen. Yes. I said, because they’re brave to do this, to come up in front. So they came up and they were okay. They did it and we all were, we’re all very happy with them. And then like a gift from heaven. This boy said, can I write some at home and bring them in? I said, let me think.

Should you write some at home and bring them in? Yeah. Nice. And so we wrote all these haiku and we walked out and my principal said, you’re hired. And because I stepped off the stage, it became theirs. It was them, I wasn’t grading them at the time, and, it, and so my, the one lady, no, it wasn’t her, it was this woman I shared the classroom with.

She said, Molly, what you do is you love them into submission mission. And I do, I love the kids, and I don’t have, I, that’s, and that’s part of teaching, but it’s also, I love the stories and I, I and I, and I. I, I did play a trick on that boy with the thing, but I, I didn’t do it with being

Stephen: mean, but Yeah. But you’re right. Like when you told the principal, we’re not criticizing because in the younger grades we need to encourage them in writing and their stories because that’ll get ’em excited and then they’ll read. And once you read your spelling and grammar becomes easier and better.

Absolutely. But we have it so backwards in that the only time we ask ’em to write something is, what did you do this summer? That’s the only thing you ask. And then we say, here, read this book. We know it’s dry and you’ll hate it, but you have to read it cuz we said so, okay, let’s do spelling.

And there are all this stuff in it. It gets ’em like, who cares? By the time they’re in eighth, ninth grade, they’re like, I am so tired of spelling. But if we just worried about. The story and the reading in the younger grades then when they’re like,

Molly: you’re a great teacher.

Stephen: I’ve been told that, and I do love to teach and I work with kids a lot.

I always have, even when I was younger. It is just, honestly, I don’t think I could have handled all the politics and the stuff. I would’ve been one of the teachers driven out by all the administration.

Molly: Oh I could not go back into the classroom because every minute is scheduled for me.

I can’t tell my stories. I’m a storyteller. If I, I would say one time I said about the word said to this one little group or one class. I said, I hate the word said. I said, but my son David, he’s the one who helped me with the word, said, they’re looking like I lost my mind. And I said Them. He, I said he had written a story for school and he asked me to look at it and he had misspelled, s e d I said, which is how he should spelled?

So I said, I dunno how you’re gonna re I, I really wasn’t being tricky. I just was, I don’t know how I can, I teach kids how to spelled. And he got up off the table. He said, let’s try this. And he took a step, s a i, and he was stepping with each letter. I said, do that again. S So I said, okay, fix your words.

Fix the word setting paper. And so I went to school and I said, I got this great idea from my son how to spell the words that, what’s his name? They wanna know everything about you. His name is David. And I said, get outta your seat. I said, let’s try what he did. I told them the story and they were gonna go, oh, walking around s a i, I said, So I shouldn’t have a word misspelled said in our, and I know that there would be teachers who say, I wasted all this teaching time playing around with step stomping around the room.

But you know what? Fun is good. That’s my motto, by the way. Fun is good.

Stephen: Exactly. And they learn through that better. And I think sometimes hitting them with, here’s a list of 10 spelling words for the week. Go home, memorize it. And the spelling test at the end of the week, and then 10 more next week.

So many kids, my, my stepson was bad at math and he had a hard time with math and working with him, what we discovered was that he would work on a lesson and work on learning a principle and a topic, but then when he went to the next one, he forgot all of that. And so it wasn’t connecting and it made the next one harder and yeah.

Great. Some kids. Thrive in that I’m gonna sit down and memorize 10 words and get ’em right next week and 10 more. And other kids are just like my brain’s turning to mush. But, If you wrote stories and told stories and they used those words, they would, so many more of them would then get it.

And there’s just, we’ve been learning that kids learn in different ways and work in different ways and it’s, is it more important for them to do 10 words a week and forget all of ’em and never be able to spell hardly any of ’em correctly? Or is it better to learn five or six that they use and they know how to spell really good and can always spell it?

It’s like my kids when they went to school, instead of learning in chemistry, all the elements on the table, cuz we had to do that, we had to try and memorize them and where they were and the A two letter combination and, memorize that. Instead, they were put in the groups of five and they got assigned two elements each and they had to research it.

Who discovered it? Oh my god. Discovered. And what led to that and how does it work with other elements. And so they became experts at just two elements. And then they had to give a presentation, which got ’em in front of kids talking. And so they all heard about all the elements, but they only really worked with two.

And there were parents arguing that now my kid doesn’t know all of ’em. Like they know ’em as well as they would have, but they know two of them like intimately

Molly: and it was right. And they, and if they needed to know another one, they know how to research it and find out

Stephen: about it. Yes. We don’t need to teach ’em how to memorize these element, how to look it up, research it, work with other people, how to give presentations.

And the rest of it comes, it falls. You work with other

Molly: people. That’s. Very

Stephen: important. Nowadays it’s big. They teach classes on it. It’s like, why teach classes? Just put ’em in the groups. They learn how to do

Molly: it. That’s right. That, yeah, that’s, yeah. The, I love that. I love that style of learning. In fact, when I was taught my third grade class, we learned about Native Americans and there was a map of all these different tribes.

And so I broke the kids up into five groups and this is after talking a lot about their culture and food and blah, blah, blah. And I said, we’re never gonna learn about all of ’em. It’s impossible. I’m doing exactly what you’re talking about. So I said, here, I’m gonna break you up in groups of five.

And I said, and I said, I’m not sure how to do this. Should I, should you pick a tribe? I said, I don’t want everybody to pick the same one. Cuz then you can get together, you can make, pictures of their homes and, Oh my God. They went crazy. But the, and it turns out we picked five different tribes and I gave them time in class to, and I think I gave ’em an outline of, food, this, what to do.

And then they made a presentation of it and they loved it. They loved it. And I just went around from group to group and we, and then they made their presentations. And I, when, I learned so much about Native Americans that about these different groups and some things about how certain things that certain tribes do well, they, they actually got passed along through, so some of the things, maybe the north or the south, right?

They got pa passed along. And like the Totem poles. They were, I think the north first, and then they finally they found ’em in Florida. So the, those things who knew I didn’t know about, but that’s really learning some interesting stuff about it. And the one year I did that, and there was a mother that came in to videotape their presentation because they’ve been working so hard on it.

That’s when you get worried, how much were you involved in this? But yes. Yeah. But anyway, but no, the more involvement, the more you’re off the stage. The talking head, because I remember taking a class in college and the ta, the teachers talked about that, and he said, when you just stand there and talk to them, usually only one third hears anything you said.

That I never forgot that. And your enthusiasm. Should be in the classroom. No, they shouldn’t be in the classroom because they wouldn’t let you.

Stephen: It’ll kill me. But no I’m working on some presentations to give the classes so I could come in as a visiting author. Yes. And do things with storytelling with video game.

That’s video game storytelling is where I’m really pushing some things because they can relate to that yeah, it’s stories, it’s video games. You can do it now, that type of thing. And that’s gets them more excited about what story is, even though it’s told in a different way in a video game.

But that’s where they’re at. That’s what their interest is. So instead of fighting it, use it.

Molly: Yes. That’s the difference. That’s the way that teaching should be. You shouldn’t be, I walked down my, in my school and there’s these teachers sitting at their desk and they’re pointing to things and then the kids are working.

And I’m thinking, I’m falling asleep, just walking, seeing you sitting at the desk. Right?

Stephen: It’s not the 18 hundreds anymore,

Molly: but you’d be surprised all up and down the hall, people sitting. And then you see one, I saw there’s one teacher. I love to watch her. She’s pacing around and up and down and the kids are all wound up and excited.

And I that’s a teacher. Not that you have to be that way all the time. But, and and just, they, you need to get them participating and doing and creating. Yeah.

Stephen: And we gotta the, this is a whole nother topic. And I know we gotta get going here, but yeah, we gotta watch the.

We’re so concerned about the grading system and who’s getting A’s and B’s, that we only focus on those numbers and we have to quantify it, that we’re missing what the kids may actually be learning and what’s useful and helpful and making ’em, people I know there’s some new, the kids, the high school my kids went to, they had different ways of grading whether kids were passing or not, and what their grades were.

And I like the system. I don’t think it’s perfect yet. I just think we need to, discuss, open our eyes and talk about it more rather than this is the way it’s always been. Let’s keep doing it.

Molly: Also I find that, who’s creating all this stuff? I don’t know if they’re in the classroom, creating textbooks or creating curriculum.

I don’t know if they’re in the classroom. Do they have any, and so how can they even begin to understand things that you can’t write about in a book? You’re, you, the way that you care about them, the way that you. Your personal enthusiasm. I don’t think that is addressed, but the teachers who haven’t and do it, the kids come back to visit, they come back to visit me.

Absolutely. And I’m talking about that and, I that’s that’s it’s, we have such an opportunity. You have those kids together. You don’t know what the heck’s going on at home and fear of the world blowing, going to heck right. And all that stuff. So you have a million different things going on.

And for you to just tell them to study for this spelling test, that’s the least of their issues we should. Start campaign.

Stephen: I’m sure we’ll be in touch a little bit more. I’ll let you know when the episode goes live and I’m sure being a close teacher and stuff I might shoot you some emails and have thoughts and discussion.

That’d be awesome. I’d love it, Abby. And sit down for coffee one morning or something. Oh, Abby, she’s a character. Yes. Yes. I’m gonna see her at the end of the month at the writer’s conference over at the library. Oh, I’m gonna be there. Oh, I’ll see you there on the 25th. Yeah. Yeah, I’ll be

Molly: there. Yeah. I’m gonna, I have to leave a little bit early, but I’ll be there for most of it.

Stephen: Great. Oh, excited. I’m, there’s an author I’ve been talking to, I want meet, so yeah, it’ll be a fun day. Okay. So Molly, before we go real quick since we’ve been talking about writing and your stories and your books do you have any advice you’d give out there to parents of their kids to encourage them to write or anything like that?

Or young kids that are writing.

Molly: If, just off the top of my head, if you if you can read a simple story with them, sit down, and then when the story’s done, we’ll say Billy and Johnny and that story, maybe we can make an adventure with them. And you write what their ideas are and, and then say, okay, if they’re old enough, read your story.

You become the just the writer, the script scribe, whatever. And depending on that, but like with the haiku, I’ll say why don’t you write one? And I, that day I had the kids a hard time getting the kids to stop coming up with more, running to the front, waiting to write another one.

And finally my time was up. They were really, I said if you wanna go home and your teacher will listen to them. Nice. And they were psyched, and that’s what we’re looking for. Yeah. You, if you you’ll get them to write if you appreciate their efforts, maybe. But in the end, say yeah, I love this.

We, we really got a great story now, but now here’s the part that we all have to do. So what do you think that would be? I’m not gonna, we have to write it in Anitas writing. Yeah. We’re gonna have to do that. But before we do that, we have to do stuff. Here’s, if I as a, I don’t like to talk as an author particularly, but when I was in school and when I have to write things, what do I do?

I have to fix what’s, what’s mistakes and I have to read it again. And one of the other, and I said, and when you write your stories cuz my kids were writing stories for me at home and bringing them, they typically would repeat the same thing over and over and over again.

So I said, can I give you one hint? I said sometimes I, when I write it, I do this. When I write a story, I’ll write it and then I find myself writing the same thing over and over. So would you mind if I like, circled that paragraph and said, you just, you know you’re doing that? And they said, yeah. I said, then you don’t, because then it won’t.

Cuz they say, my story’s five pages long. My story’s 10 pages long. I said, it doesn’t have to, it doesn’t, it’s not, but I’d rather have it one page long or two pages long. But you’re not repeating cuz you have some good story, but you just wanna make it even better. So that’s, and they let me circle ’em, but I have their permission.

It’s, when you get back a thing from a teacher, it’s all red and all that you.

Stephen: Yeah. And I love that you just said that you have their permission, you get the kids involved empower them. They want to get better. They wanna learn, they wanna know. They really do. But again, when we’re just hitting them and all that it turns ’em off.

Yeah, absolutely. Yep.

Molly: Yep. All right. I, you make a good teacher.

Stephen: All right, Molly, it’s been wonderful talking to you. I wish you very much luck on your books and I can’t wait to see you in a couple weeks. Okay. I’ll see you soon. Thank you. Take care. Bye-bye all. And I’ll let you know when this goes live. Oh

Molly: Yeah, please.

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OverviewJake Brown is the author of 50+ books and creator/host of ABOUT THE AUTHORS TV. With over TWO MILLION viewers and counting since TUBI TV began airing Seasons 1 & 2 in the Spring of 2022, The Associated Press recently spotlighted that ABOUT THE AUTHORS TV “has found an audience among both fans of the writers they profile on the show along with an aspiring crowd of wordsmiths just learning the craft.” The first-of-its-kind streaming television project, which Publisher’s Weekly has already reported, “features long-form interviews with best-selling authors across all genres,” along with promoting their new upcoming releases.

Bookhttps://www.amazon.com/Heart-Studio-Jake-Brown/dp/1550228315?crid=246XC67BI7YSF&keywords=in+the+studio+jake+brown&qid=1683063494&sprefix=in+the+studio+jake+brown%2Caps%2C103&sr=8-15&linkCode=li2&tag=discoveredwordsmiths-20&linkId=a61471d4ea1abcb21cc138682a6679be&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_ilAuthor TVhttps://www.youtube.com/c/AbouttheAuthorsTV

YouTubeTranscriptSo today, and then I’ve got a great Of author on my podcast. He’s got some great pictures of stuff in the background. This is Jake Brown. Jake, how are you doing today?

Jake: Great. Thanks for having us. Thank was me, I should say, in the show by extension. Great.

Stephen: So is that really signed by heart?

Jake: Yeah that’s, I co-wrote that book with them years and years ago. Bless their hearts in two thou back in 2006 and seven. Wow. And then I met them in 2009 and they signed that and comically, I was sitting there in the Ryman’s dressing room waiting to meet them, and I was so nervous.

As understandably anyone who grew up on heart would be that they would like the book too. Cause this is my first time hearing. Did they like it? Did they hate it? And Alison Krause and her husband are sitting there as well, and I didn’t even know. I was polite. I talked to them. I, but I wasn’t like, oh, you’re al and it wasn’t that I ever get like that, but I was almost too passive.

So she leaves. And the cuz everyone else was getting, her, the manager for heart comes in and she goes, oh, it’s so nice you got along with Allison and her husband. And I felt like a jerk cuz they brought them out later on. She came out later on stage in, sang these dreams with Nancy Wilson.

But they’re, they were the sweetest, I wrote that book at a point in my career where It’s fair to say that I had written, authors, I’ve been doing this 25 years in 55 books. So at this point I’ve gone through peaks and valleys like everybody, but I had written mass market hip hop paperbacks for five straight years, and it was reaching a point where I either needed to.

In my career trajectory, I needed to start writing for bigger audiences, publishers, et cetera or not. And the Tupac Shakur State authorized a book through a fe shakur’s mother called Tupac in the studio that actually launched this series. And then Hart was the next to say yes to it. And that.

Put me on a different, that put me in a different league. And then that got me nice. An audience with Lemy and we wrote the Motorhead in the studio book, and so things just started rolling. So I hang it there because it has perpetually been like my good luck charm.

Stephen: Nice. We’re just jumping right into things and everybody listening.

It was probably like, okay Steve, shut up. Let Jake talk because he’s way more interesting,

Jake: but No, currently talking too much. I’m happy to answer any questions you have though.

Stephen: Yeah. Yeah. That’s awesome. See what I would’ve done if I was hard knowing you were nervous if my agent said, Hey.

This guy’s really nervous or something. I would’ve come in and slammed the what the hell? Those book sucks. I can’t stand and just, messed with you. And then I would’ve told you how much I liked it. But that’s just me and that’s probably why I’m not in that position.

Jake: Only thing that was cool is Nancy Wilson told me that she had not only read it, but her kids had read it and Cameron Crow had read it, who at the time they were married and that, and growing up an influence.

The size. He was on me through fast times and say, say anything right and this kinda stuff. I was definitely definitely honored at that. Are you able to edit this? Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Hey, gimme 30 seconds. I gotta one.

I got signed for this ups. Oh yeah. My bad. So one.

Stephen: Sorry about that. No, not a problem. Not a problem.

Jake: Yeah, man, so that, that kind of got things launched and then a few years later I had another opportunity to write a book with Joe Satriani, oh, his memo. It was a musical memoir, which I’m careful to say because at some point he will do his own.

I’m sure more. I was born in this date and, but we really Got into every, if you’re a fan of whether it’s, flying in a blue dream or surfing with the alien, the early stuff all the way through his more recent work, it doesn’t it, we did the paperback update. In 2017. So there’s a couple records past that, but you can really hear firsthand from him.

And one thing I started doing with these books that became a sort of key part of how I write books is I think first person narrative, if it’s gonna be like in Joe’s case, is really exciting for the fans. But if you can blend that, and it’s not me, I’m not the only one that does this, but I tried to do it a little bit.

But in the studio books, I talk to all the engineers, the producers, the song, the songwriters, the guitar players, the band members, past, present, whatever. To the degree the artist allows me. And we, and that’s been pretty thoroughly through that series. And we reconstruct every one of these records as you’re listening to them.

You can read along with pretty much every sound lyric, lick, drumbeat, et cetera, you hear. And that kind of, Echoed outward into this Kenny Aronoff book. The drummer Kenny Aronoff, he was John Lanham’s term in the eighties, probably got 200 number ones. I met him through the Satriani book. So what I mean is you also get opportunities where you meet people through that.

Led to this U s USA Today article. I have friend of here from Beyond the Beats in 2018 where I interviewed God, in that first book we had Lar Ulrich, Tommy Lee, Joey Kramer, the drummers from Aerosmith, Motley Crew, guns N Roses, Jane’s Addiction, foo Fighters Taylor Hawkins. Gimme a really elaborate one.

Red Hat Chili Peppers journey creds Clearwater Revival. It was just an incredible list. Smashing Pumpkins. So there’s been a kind of weird pattern throughout my. Music writing career where one project typically Initiates another. Initiates another Teddy Riley, legendary king of new Jack swing, inventor of that genre.

My prerogative, writer, producer, and that’s coming out. We hope at the end of this year or early next year, but it’s actually being shot right presently. So there’s a lot of these projects, gest date, sometimes over long periods. Sometimes you write them in, two or three years. Sometimes you write them in seven or eight years.

Sometimes you write them in a year. It just depends on the contract. But yeah, so all of that. Laid the groundwork for what I do now, which I can get into when you’d like. That natural songwriter series is right There is another one. So they just I profile all the songwriters on Music Row and chronicle the stories behind them and their songs that write all the country music hits that you hear on the radio for the most part.

So it’s been a very interesting definitely career.

Stephen: No, yeah, it sounds like it. So something you said, and I’m gonna jump on while we’re fresh for authors. You did a project, it led to the next project. It led to the next. Sometimes you hear this I’m just not getting anything that I like or what, sometimes you gotta get out, you gotta improve your odds.

You gotta get out there, do the do the work. And music’s that way too. Just sitting at home in your living room, waiting for that. Agent to call or that band or whatever. Sometimes I found a band I played with because I went to an open mic night and they were playing with, and they said, Hey, we’re, I was listening to ’em like, wow, these guys are pretty good.

I enjoy it. And they said, Hey, we’re looking for a basis. I went, Hey let’s talk if I hadn’t gone, so same thing with writing it. Anything creative always needs that.

Jake: Yeah, and there’s a, it’s called Always Be Writing as the rule. And, I ghost write on top of the 50 plus in my own catalog.

I’ve ghosted another 40 books, I think over the last, 10, 15 years just to pay bills. And if you, and then I’m writing scripts for the show when I’m not writing those. If you’re not writing. You’re just, you’re not a writer, right? And that’s just the cold, hard truth of it. They’re not. Now with that said, writer’s block, I don’t believe in writer’s block because a, so an example of a lot of the people I talked to for the show authors, and I’m sure that you do, they start in journalism.

You don’t, they don’t, editors don’t care if you’re not inspired people, word counted, deadline. You write it and deliver it. It’s the same thing with a book. If a publisher puts up a contract and they’re paying you in advance, To write a book. Write the book. Now that sounds overly simplified, but if you do it long enough, you get into the rudiments of that to be able, if you’re having a bad day with one chapter, you flip to another.

If you’re having a hard time with one character, work on another. If you’re having a time, timeline issues, one timeline work on the next. So there’s never an excuse to not be writing something, or if you’re not writing edit. Go over your own material again and again and again.

And if you’re having problems with it, think about it or listen to it on we get a lot of people that talk about the benefit now with technology and word even has, and Google has it too. You can have one of these deals where it reads to you out loud, right? You can hear so many things that you wouldn’t see reading when you hear something to know what, okay, and then maybe you just sat there that day and listened from an editing standpoint, and then you, okay, I fixed all these things.

Or this needed to go, it might lead you to a new door. So that theme is important because in 2020 I got stranded, like millions of people at home, and I had written this book. You see how thick that is? 600 page first country music producers guide of its kind had every one of the big guys and ladies all under one roof had their old backs stories, they hit stories behind their hits, et cetera.

We’re going out to promote and my publicist calls me and says, Barnes and Noble has called. The publisher. The publisher just called me book’s not coming out in physical because they’re closing all the stores. So in other words, everything we had planned for this could not be really done. And then Zoom came into the mix, I think like 3000 people had Zoom in February of 2020.

And 3 million people had it by April, right? Yeah. So by the time I was catching onto it in May, Four months into its big boom, it was already thank goodness established. And so we went out and did morning shows. We did a bunch of, a very long list of really nice, podcasts and all, a lot of ’em very new because it was like this new boom happening.

But also in the course of all of that, I said, I, for years have wanted to adapt the format of doing like what we’re doing or what I do with bands to authors and. Part of that, and I want to be very respectful of podcasts like yours, which allow this, but one of the things I ran into in 2020 that was really maddening when you’re trying to promote a book, you have a finite amount of time to do it in.

And a lot of the peers that I deal with ran into the same thing is because there was a big advent of new podcasts happening and publishers were just pushing everything they could out. You would wind up. For 10 minutes of 45 minutes or an hour talking about the book. And the other 50 minutes would be spent not on the book.

Often it would be spent talking about how different the podcast was from all its competitors where there is post-production, and that can be done in post, and then you can spend more time talking to the author and I get it, it was like a thing where people were all competing for the same listeners and it was a whole new thing.

So I took a lot from that campaign and things I thought podcast did really well and things that I wanted to do that I realized I couldn’t do in that format. But streaming television had just. It had been around, but it hadn’t really had that Tiger King thing kinda if that guy gets a streaming television thing, anybody should get one.

So it was like, okay, what if I could. Put together a TV show, which is really crazy sounding, where I have a set, which is about a mile from me in Hendersonville here in Nashville where I film. Nice. Yeah. And just start, and start formatting this around the idea of Episodic Lake streaming television, which is not, didn’t exist in the format of author interviewing authors.

Where we went over the whole career. And started like I do in the books with the musicians when we talk about childhood and go all the way up. Now, that’s not unique in the fact that like your podcasts or lots of other great podcasts talk with authors in the timeframes that, exist for that.

But sometimes, as you might be getting somebody on and all they can really talk about is that one book they’re promoting. You know what I mean? Whatever. So the idea here was that first of all, it was gonna only work of a streaming network, picked it up. And we initially had some potential with an Amazon thing, and then there was all of these really well-intentioned and really left-wing voting apparatuses, but their iPhones that were making documentaries and Amazon had a self.

Video publish kind of pipeline that Jeff Bezos just stopped. So there was no non-fiction content going to Amazon for a year. And that was probably really healthy just to let the content be more about, non-political things. But it also shut out like educational programming. It shut all these.

So we had to go out and pitch this. And I went ahead and financed a $30,000 production overhead out of my royalty checks for the year and anything I could go strike, built the set, started reaching out to authors like Brad Meltzer, sum Monk, Kidd. Some of the amazing people that signed on at first, Heather Graham, Catherine Colter, and I just started throwing it at the biggest names that I’d grown up reading that were the biggest influence on me because I thought, you know it, I wanna start big and see if I get any interest in this.

And because I was an author of 50 books as a host, I can talk, with them about process. And luckily it worked, man. So we’re over 700 authors in two years later. Seasons 1 0 2 got picked up. God blessed them by tv. B Television, tv. Tv. I saw that. Yeah. And there’s 54 episodes in seasons one and two.

There’s another 68 that are gonna be coming here in what we’re talking about, seasons three and four. And I actually I have a little blurb I can read you. It’s actually Yeah please. I’ve just been putting together the frustration with streaming is you get approved and then they accept it, but then it can take three to four weeks for it to gest date down into the viewing cycles or algorithms, however that works.

So I’ve been working on this press release, but. We put together with Seasons three and four, there’s the Oscar-Winning Martian basically says, if you’re interested in getting together with the creators of the Martian, the Lincoln Rhyme franchise, star Wars Bones, Indiana Jones, Trueblood Billion Dollar Box Office franchise, Rambo Shining Girls, Donny Brasco, the Goonies Poltergeist, Blonie Longmire Troll Hunters spike TV’s doing the Marshal from Kim Stanley Robinson happen.

Leonard Judy Moody. It goes on and on. And then you went, we went back in time to Sarah Poretsky and Erica jg pioneers that were doing this when nobody else was in variations of crime fiction. In Perret’s case. And in Erica Jong’s case, really fear of flying, launched the second help launched the second wave of feminism.

Joyce Car oes was like an absolute shock that opportunity came. And that’s what I mean so once word of mouth started getting out Between 2021 when I was producing 2022 when it launched, and just now 2023, we’ve had over 2 million viewers. And that’s just come between the YouTube channel and Tubi and that’s just all come from organic word of mouth.

Nice. Because the other thing that we got was absolutely no press. Nobody would cover the show. Nobody would give us any on the mainstream level of that. And it was really an eye-opening thing for me because quite honestly, you get a little bit insulated and comfortable. As a music biographer when you write books with famous bands because you get used to being on Right.

You know what I mean? I don’t mean that in a negative ego way, it’s just people call and they’re like, Hey, we’re doing it. Like music’s greatest mysteries. I’ve been lucky to be a cast member on that show for a few years now. Breaking the bands, you get these invitations and I don’t do a lot of them, but I do the ones that I think are really cool.

That’ll be to the fan bases I write for. But this was like guys. You had my last five books in parade. What do you mean? You’re not gonna give us even a little blurb? They were like, you’re the competition now, dude.

Stephen: You’re not our yeah, sorry to, if you didn’t realize this, there’s probably not people going to the Soone.

Oh my God. A Jake Brown book. Oh, who’s this heart man? I’m probably That’s not what they’re buying it for. No offense to you.

Jake: But what I mean is even in that regard though, Joe Satriani was the kindest press sharer I’ve ever done a book. Oh, that’s cool. I love doing that out to c b s, the Hollywood Reporter to anywhere, variety all kinds of magazines that he could have completely been like.

Yep. He was great. Let’s talk about me. And he, yes, he’s so generous. And so what I’m saying is that kind of thing. And then afterward with a lot of the bands, I’ve been fortunate, as sad as it is, like lemy passing, you get, you sometimes get brought in to do that talking head stuff because you worked with that person and maybe like you were maybe only one of a couple people that got lucky to, so all of that went away.

So we had to build this from the organic ground up. And you know what did it we were very blessed was the authors social media, Twitter. Post the election era really changed and became more organic and grassroots again, and there was a lot less of the stigma. Oh, you’re on Twitter trump’s on Twitter.

Just keeping it real. Whether you were prohi or against him, it just went, it so Twitter has been a lifeline for us on top of YouTube, which has been the absolute reason we are existent because what we do on the YouTube channel is we’ll do early premieres, we’ll do advanced sort of previews.

We’ll do promos, but we’re pumping out new author interaction every week. In terms of new authors we’re interviewing, even if we’re months away from filming, like their actual, I have a, the set I reshoot at, but we’re just really. Trying to keep an organic connection with the people watching the show that are fans of the authors that want to hear in length about their catalog.

Some of these episodes run two hours, some of them run Wow. An hour and 45 minute. And yeah. And my host clips are as clipped as they can be. So the majority of the time you’re spending are with the authors. That’s awesome. And I mentioned like seasons one and two, just as highlights. It was like TC Boyle, Karen Slaughter, Brad Meltzer and Ranken.

Scott Tau. Katherine Coulter. Heather Graham. Chris Baha, and John Le Squad. We had ley Bailey’s final televised interview before he passed. Wow. Career length. Yeah. John Douglas who created, they created a mine hunter over so it just, it continued within seasons. Three and four, I mentioned Joyce, Carol Otz, there’s Jeffrey Deaver, there’s Barry Eisler, there’s Craig Johnson from Longmire.

There’s all kinds of. Joe r Lansdale, she kenon Joe Pistone, like it was Donny Brasco who wrote a bunch of books.

Stephen: Yeah. I was looking on Tuby, I was going through the list. I was supposed to be watching a movie with my son, and I’m like, oh my gosh, I’m gonna be talking to this guy. And oh, look at these authors.

And he’s yeah, that’s great. Can we watch the movie now? I’m like, you don’t get it. This is like huge.

Jake: It’s been, yeah. And the thing that it’s been really rewarding about it is our fa our viewers range from teenagers. All the way up to retirees who are just starting to figure out they wanna write a book.

It’s an ageless profession. We are certainly not the first to say that As you figure talk about in your podcast, people start at all ages. They do a job, their kids are off to college, okay? They can finally write a book. Mom’s been at home, a very common story. Mom’s at home with kids and now she has some time and they go off to school or whatever it is that you get that little bit of time every day to write it leads to these kinds of careers and many, most.

95% of the people that we talked to. It wasn’t like a, oh, my dad was an author and I’m an actor. Or he was an actor. I’m an actor. Cuz there was no familial help. It was like every one of these people went through the same things that every day oth people trying to become authors do. And did, and the other thing that we really try to emphasize is like aspiring authors.

There’s a bible of advice in this show like I’m sure on your podcast. We try to pull as much of that out as we can about the everyday life of a writer. You might have a million seller book and it might be 10 years before you have another, and then you might just be writing for a living in between then.

And so there’s always kinds of things that we hear about, whether it’s agent good or bad, agent stories, editor stories whatever kind of writing someone did to break in that they maybe don’t wanna talk about, but we try to touch on to just glean from what they got out of it, that they took forward with them.

So the idea is that whether you’re a, a kid, you’re in your twenties, 30, 40, 50 sixties, or whether you’re just a fan. Of this author, you don’t wanna watch skip five episodes and then you might find another one you like. Yeah. So the idea is a kind of a combination of discovery and education. As nerdy as those themes can sound within the realm of books, they’re very exciting.

You have a billion dollar budget movie in fiction. You can go anywhere you want on the page. And so we hear about these amazing. Minds that are creating, like we have a science fiction edition, locus Magazine. In fact, tomorrow is gonna be airing Kim Stanley Robinson’s episode, and there’s a whole science fiction edition.

There’s 40, 45 authors coming up all across that spectrum, men and women from all those generations. There’s a horror edition coming up. I have a UK edition seasons five and six, which is gonna be 80 episodes I’m actually filming now. So hopefully within the next year or two we’re gonna aim to build the largest on streaming episodic archive of author interviews.

That possible. So that’s

Stephen: the goal. That’s awesome. That’s the goal. The service not only for authors, but for people reading or people that are like, I haven’t been reading much, but that looks interesting. Or, and for kids, I love that. And the fact that you’re on a TV station, tuby YouTube, it’s video, it’s big name people, smaller name across the board.

I mean the, I don’t think some people realize that the benefits to the whole author community that you’re doing it’s phenomenal.

Jake: We’re, yeah we’re, and you know what, I appreciate that, but I say it in, in Congress of this being a community of people. And I say that not because it’s the cheesy thing that you say.

It’s really true. I nobody would watch this if the authors who agreed to be on it didn’t go out and promote it to their fan bases, bottom line. So I try to vocalize that credit as much as possible at the same time. It’s really notable as well to your point, that not only are we profiling the.

Hundred million selling catalogs, Dean kus, someone like that. But we go, we really do profile, like Deisha Philia won the National Book Award. She just came out with Secret Lives of church women. We have a spectrum, Jeanine Cummings of American Dirt. There’s some really prolific. Authors that are new, but they’re really building amazing catalogs.

Attica Locke, who’s really an amazing fiction author that also wrote on Empire. I had Don Winslow on last week. We talked all about his catalog. He’s going into retirement from this to focus full-time on film. Yeah, so the Richard Russo from Empire Falls was just on, so we’re starting to John Banville.

So the, when I, sometimes, the other thing is I get these really daunting as interview assignments, and so if you’re a writer, and then they ask me, so you’re, did you retire from book writing to do this? I said, no, we’re quite in tandem. But all the script writing I do, and I do elaborate prep. I do really extensive question guides and everything is I really try to honor their catalogs without fluff questions, but in depth things that I’m not suggesting other people ask, but I have gotten feedback from in terms of Hey, I really liked that we talked for 10 minutes about a book that no one bought.

But I love as much as we talked about the big hit series that everyone keeps buying that, that felt

Stephen: pretty cool. I like that.

Jake: It’s it’s a responsibility.

Stephen: I think I, I get that. Yeah. And you’re. You’re actually one of the more prolific long-term authors that I’ve interviewed. The whole idea of this was to get newer authors that no one knows about.

Now I’m sure there’s a lot of people that don’t know your name. Jokingly. I said about No, there. Yeah. I know. I’m gonna, I’m gonna, but that’s what’s the whole idea because it didn’t really exist and I think you’re on the next level of something like that. So I know you got a hard out.

I don’t wanna hold you up. Oh no, we’re good. Another few. But yeah. But, so tell us about what are some of the latest books you’ve been writing and what’s been coming out? What’s, what have those been? Because we have talked a lot about the, but we’ve jumped around a bit and I think that’s awesome because the energy of the podcast is great.

Jake: Yeah. New books are I’m trying to think of what I, can I, you know what? I have to confess that I can’t stand. I can’t stand with the whole, like I can’t really talk about that cause it’s under con, like this and that. But it’s true. And a lot of the people I talk to when I’m like, come on, just, and they can’t, so it’s really it has that kind of sheen of ego, but there’s no, you’re under contract, but I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you too.

Stephen: Okay. Yeah. I still doing the music biographies are you doing? Yes. Okay. I just,

Jake: It, I say it almost humorously because I’m writing it with the artist. But if the artist like the manager finds out and then we get in trouble cuz they’re trying to sell it. Yeah. But the one that is going out that I, that is, we’ve done enough on the people who are fans of Teddy Riley and New Jack Swing NUJ, Jack City was a movie based on the sound.

That this guy grew up making records out of his mom’s apartment and the projects in Harlem. And whether it was New Jacks, whether it was Bobby Brown, no, my Prerogative, or Keith Sweat, or Johnny Kemp or Guy, or as he graduated to Michael Jackson and then Blackstreet, and then on and on he’s just had one of the most.

Indisputably singularly influential careers in music. And I had the privilege for the last eight and a half, nine years, we’ve been working on this book quietly together. So it’s gonna be hitting store shelves at some point this year. I read a lot of hip hop, just, but now I do it, I only do authorized books as I have for years now.

Because I think it just gives me a chance to get much more personal with the right, with the artists and corrupt. From the Death Row era is another artist that I’ve been working with. Wow. And that’s fun. We’ve got d o c in that book and Snoop and Daaz and all the Death row camp. If you’re a fan of the Chronic and you’re a fan of doggy style of those records I grew up on from the nineties and eighties, I’m a child of the eighties high school in the nineties.

You’ll enjoy that book. There is a volumes three and four national songwriter are at some point in 2024 going to get out. That’s, there’s like a, that’s probably a two book deal cause that’s like a 700 page thing and I’m not cutting from it. So it’s gotta be cut in half. So it can be, cuz these, that’s the other thing I try to do is really keep these stories as authentic with the songwriters or with the producers.

I’ve got my behind the board series, which is Nashville, but also has Two Rock. There’s a volume two and three of Beyond the Beats coming out at some point here in the next couple years. And I’ve got an audiobook deal with Blackstone that they’ve been very patiently working with me on because they’re exorbitantly expensive and irritating to record.

And I read them myself, and then I have to employ editors to edit them. So it makes it sound like I did it competently. Full disclosure. And we weave in interviews. From the actual artist that I talked to, so that’s cool. Drum the beats. Yeah. Doctors are rhythm at the hip hop producers, so it’s more time consuming.

But yeah, between all of that. And then it’s a seven day a week endeavor doing this show. So I, if I get six hours a night of sleep, I’m happy. I interview probably 10 authors a week for new episodes. We film another five for the upcoming. So it’s just, I’m blessed to be in the third decade in this career, man.

And one thing I say to anybody who asks me about it is always be writing, always be trying to think out of the box. Always be thinking about marketing, which people hate to do. They think, oh, I’m gonna hide away and write my book, and then when I get done, it’ll all work out if you get done. And you and I, even with the ghost writing, I do, we try to do proposals while we’re doing it and have an idea of where we’re gonna be putting it when it’s done.

Because the whole point in writing a book is not. It’s first to do it for yourself, but then theoretically it’s to do it for readers. Think about the whole point of why we’re talking here. It’s because all of these authors made these indelible impressions on their readers. And then those readers when turn hear about how they created those books.

If you were just to say I don’t really talk about how, and some people do, some people are very, or they’re like Stephen King and they’ve just done so many interviews that lowly me or whoever is not gonna, but I really, we really try to honor the catalogs and get the full story and do it in a way that you can sit at home on a Friday night and watch it if you’re really book nerdy or or while you’re on the gym.

You at the gym, you can listen to it on your phone. You can, we don’t we don’t do. Like a podcast version because it’s a, you can stream it and listen, right? And we don’t wanna, and the other thing is I really tried to be respectful of is there’s so many great people like yourself doing book podcasts.

There’s fr friends of fiction which Patty Callahan, Henry hosts and some others and her partners. There’s a lot of really great. New content for authors looking for tools on how to do this in the space. And yeah, that’s something we just really tried across the genre. Every genre, every generation we try to profile, because that could be the next whomever or someone watching that could be like, you know what, like Eel James was.

That was, there was a lot of fan fiction that came out of that era that launched new authors. Yeah. There was a lot. Yeah. So hopefully roundly watching the show, you’re getting a sense of these people’s careers, their catalogs, their advice and how to move forward in your own writing

Stephen: career.

And you said something about the marketing. I think the way the mindset authors miss, for example, the Heart book, if you were, he, if you didn’t have other people promoting it, but if you were hesitant to market it to get that the word out there, then all the Har fans would miss that book. And they want it they’re like longing and dying for it cuz they love heart.

The same with just about any book that’s the, mar you’re not. Trying to get people to buy your book. You’re giving them an opportunity for some entertainment they want rather than entertainment they don’t really want, but it’s

Jake: there. And on top of that, yeah, we tr like Hart Souls at the, that book for years was sold at their shows.

Joe Satriani sells that book on his, G three tours all over the world. Bands go out these days and tour to make a living. It’s a bottom line. So if you’re writing with a band that you can then negotiate to get the book on their merch table as an example of thinking out of the box. That’s what I’m talking about.

This show was a completely out of the box concept. I have a wonderful agent, Frank Wyman at Folio Lit that helped me guide me on it. And I’ve been doing it 25 years, said I’ve been 35 instead of four, 34 instead of four. 44. I don’t know that I would’ve had the experience in maturity and had made the mistakes.

I’ve made, as many as I’ve had successes. I’ll tell you right before we go 2014, I had reached a peak. So starting from 2001, I was 24. I got my first book deal here. There’s, I was 37, 38. I know I had peaked, I had more press than I could have asked for this book In you for sat.

I could not sell a book to save my life for 2015. No matter who I called, no matter with my agent. So it you, every author that’s successful is also gonna prepare to go through dips of not being successful. And you have to reinvent yourself every few years. And so this show is, thank goodness me giving an opportunity to reinvent myself a little bit and learn so much.

Imagine getting to we both get to learn so much from the people that we listen to, and that’s the whole point is we can all learn more. We can all do better even if we’re successful. There’s always people competing for that next reader. It’s dollar and people think, oh, don’t judge a book by its cover.

They all do. So like the bottom line is the more. Depth we can give anyone beyond that cover. We’re trying to, because we’re in such a quick, phase now with the way people take in their reading, even their audiobook or their, my wife is a voracious reader, but she’s also a voracious audiobook listener.

Anyway I, we just have tried to and been lucky to fit into this new 2020s format and we just hope people keep watching and appreciate anyone who does. You can go to the YouTube channel about the author’s tv, Twitter. To b you just search about and it’ll pull up about the author’s tv.

And we thank you so much for Yeah. Helping promote it

Stephen: and I’ll put links in the show and it’s great talking to you. I appreciate e everything you’ve said. There’s been tons in here for authors. Yeah, man. But I hope musicians who liked bands will check out the books. Me too.

Jake: I appreciate it.

Thank you so much. All right. Thanks Jake. Take care, buddy. Bye.

View Details

OverviewI talk with Roland about the recent ALLI income survey and we discuss A.I. and ChatGPT.

Ben Monroe is on to talk about his horror book, the Seething. Ben’s got to be a great guy because he likes Weird Al and writes horror. Ben takes a simple thing – family vacation – and turns it on it’s head to create his horror novel.

Then we delve into the roots of horror and classic horror. We share a love of The Shining, but there are plenty of horror authors besides King. This include movies which are its own form of story and way of telling the horror.

Bookhttps://www.amazon.com/Seething-Ben-Monroe-ebook/dp/B0BRPQN12C?crid=4GM9ORR3BBZI&keywords=the+seething+ben+monroe&qid=1682385939&sprefix=the+seething+ben+monroe%2Caps%2C135&sr=8-1&linkCode=li2&tag=saschneider-20&linkId=dd4c9e51f9ed9cc5275bb9ccc68cdfe6&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_ilWebsitehttps://www.benmonroe.com/

Favoritehttps://www.amazon.com/Complete-Fiction-H-P-Lovecraft/dp/B086PMZQZB?crid=1T4V9Y7PT8RJ&keywords=lovecraft&qid=1682471131&sprefix=lovecraft%2Caps%2C99&sr=8-6&linkCode=li2&tag=discoveredwordsmiths-20&linkId=d30fc5d73dc0d2502f681c744c96c74c&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_ilDark Carnival

Rolandhttps://indestructibleauthor.com/Alli author income survey

AI and ChatGPT

YouTubehttps://youtu.be/ZJ7txizo_8QTranscripttoday on Discovered Wordsmith, I want to welcome Ben Monroe. Ben, how are you doing today? I’m doing good, Steven. How are you? Good. Nice and sunny getting ready for springtime. A little chilly, but still sunny.

Ben: It’s about the same out here actually.

Stephen: Okay.

And where is out here? Tell us a little bit about you where you live and some of the things you like to do besides writing. There you go.

Ben: So I live in the San Francisco Bay area specifically the East Bay area. I’m just south of Oakland. We’ve been having rains and storms and all kinds of craziness for the last few days.

Last week we got snow up in the hills, which probably isn’t a big deal for you, but for us it’s wow. Snow, right? Yeah. Yeah. We don’t know how to dr. We don’t know how to drive on that, so we just stay outta the mountains. The hills even. Yeah I’m a East Bay nato pretty much. My folks moved to the Bay Area when I was about three years old in the early seventies.

Things I like to do when I’m not writing, regular stuff, hang out with my family. Watch movies, a huge movie buff. I love, in fact, that’s one of the great things about the East Bay here is we have, I think, hundred 80,000 acres of usable open space. So there’s plenty of hiking trails and stuff to, to do, to get outside.

Never hurting for things to do around here.

Stephen: And we beforehand, we were chatting, we found out we both like weird Al. So yes, that’s a good thing. I’m sure somebody doesn’t, but Oh yeah, I, who cares

Ben: what they think,

Stephen: right? Yeah. There, there’s some TV show or something I saw where the one character mentioned Weird Al no one goes, how old are you?

It’s oh, that shouldn’t be loud. That’s just wrong. So what’s I agree. What’s one of the favorite movies you’ve seen recently? Oh, gosh. What

Ben: Neil, I actually haven’t seen a lot in the last few weeks. I saw, oh, you know what? Watched recently? The Quick and the Dead Sam Ramey Western from the early nineties, which I hadn’t seen in years.

And it was great. It was so much fun. Sharon Stone plays the, I’m sorry, the that tough bitten gunslinger who comes back to town to take revenge on, all the wrongs done to her. She was awesome and. It was funny because I was thinking at the time that was like Sam’s first mainstream movie.

I think he had just done the Dark Man movies or something, and then all the Evil Dead and stuff before that, and so this. While as nuts as it was very toned down from your usual Sam Ramey stuff, but you could still see those Sam Ramey trademarks, closing in on a bullet and watching it, tracking as it’s shooting out the gun through Gene Hackman’s head and

Stephen: Nice.

I

Ben: haven’t actually, I

Stephen: think it’s on Amazon Prime now. Okay. Yeah. I haven’t actually seen that one though. I do a lot of the modern westerns. My father was a big Western guy. Nice. Okay. So your book wanna talk a little bit about that? It’s called the Seething. Tell us a little bit about your book and why you wanted to write it.

Ben: So the seating it’s a story about family having a pretty bad vacation. They go to the mountains, they’re sorting some stuff out, they’re one of those familiar transitionary places that a lot of families go through and they’re trying to figure out what they wanna do next and what direction they’re going.

And they go back to stay in the childhood home of Gay Barnes, who’s the dad of the family. His father had passed away mysteriously three years earlier. And while they’re there, over the course of a week, they start coming into contact with the reason why the dad disappeared mysteriously a few years earlier.

So there’s a lake monsters and stuff, and, it’s pretty creepy and scary. Hopefully.

Stephen: It’s not a romance. No,

Ben: no, not at all.

Stephen: Okay. And why’d you wanna write this particular book? So

Ben: go back to the East Bay Hills for a moment. Cause that was actually the genesis of the story. I was hiking around lake Chabot, which is right on the edge of Oakland, Castro Valley, that kinda area a few years ago.

In the middle of one of our big droughts. And. I was hiking around this lake and these little pontoons, where the people can park a boat and get out and fish and do stuff. The boats go up and down as the

drought was noticing. I was enjoying hiking and running around for years. These floats were getting lower and lower and lower until they were basically resting on dry land. The lake had receded so much that they were just sitting there. They weren’t floating, they were sitting, and maybe this is a writer brain thing.

I like to think it’s a writer brain thing. It’s definitely a my brain thing. I started looking at it thing going, wow. And I don’t know why this popped into my head. I read a lot of horror. So I started thinking, wow. If there was a monster in that lake, it’s a lot closer to the surface now as the surface was coming down.

So it, it’d be a lot easier for a monster to get you. And then that kind of started a train of thought of if, let’s say you are a monster, a thing, right? And your habitat, your ecosystem was being eliminated. What would you do to get out? How would you try to survive? And that’s one of the central points of this book is how the thing in the lake is trying to get outta the habitat that it’s been trapped in years.

As things are going And so then it was just an idea that stuck in my head at the time. I was writing a lot of short stories and I kept thinking about that lake and that monster and just kept coming back, see, you have a cat too. Yeah, I do. I kept coming back to that idea and then I started writing it and it just took off from

Stephen: there.

Nice. And we’re gonna talk some more horror later. Do you read a lot of horror? Is that your favorite genre to read? That’s my

Ben: favorite genre. That’s actually, it’s primarily what I read. A little bit of non-fiction here and there, but I have I don’t know, I just, I always fall into it.

Aside from that, I’ve got a few fantasy authors that I enjoy. Most of them are sadly, old dead white guys Tolkin and people like that. CS Lewis I love. And I think those intersections between fantasy and horror, which meant we can talk about later. But mostly for fiction.

I read

Stephen: horror. Are there any books or authors that you can think of that are very similar to the seething?

Ben: When I was pitching the thing a lot of the comparisons that were making were to things like the Shining Stephen King’s, the Shining these jaws just for the sort of the ominous way.

He, although honestly, I read the book a million years ago. I’m more familiar with the film, the way. The water attacks were shot so sinister and strange. While I was writing it it’s actually funny you mentioned how much of a fan your dad was in westerns While I was writing it, I was getting into, Louis was reading his stuff and reading a bunch of John Steinbeck as well, which doesn’t seem.

Really connected, but I was really getting into the way Steinbeck and Lamore describe a setting especially a rural setting. My book is set up in the Sierra Nevadas, like it’s a imaginary version of the area around like Tahoe, Donner Pass, those kind of areas. So up in the mountains.

And so I was really interested in the way they described a setting and made it feel so real in the natural sense. Those things. And honestly lovecraft’s the color outta space was a big influence

Stephen: on it as well. Yeah. No, that was just recently a film that, eh, it was okay. I don’t know if you saw it with Nicholas Cage.

I didn’t.

Ben: It’s, I hate to say it’s on my list to make it sound like I’m gonna see it next week, cuz my list is years long at this point. But it’s right. It’s one of those ones I’ll see, one of these days.

Stephen: Yeah, I, it was all right. They really tried to do something a little better and different than some past Lovecraft movie in interpretations.

Right.

Ben: And the color has been made into a film a few times too, so I’m curious to see what they did with this version.

Stephen: Yeah, it’s got a definitely higher budget than most of the others yeah. So what’s reader feedback been like for this book?

Ben: The book actually doesn’t come out until March 23rd, but there has been some advanced reviews up.

There are, I think there are five reviews on Good Reads at this point from some people that the publisher sent it off to. And it’s all five star reviews, and the reviews are pretty complimentary. Everyone who’s read it seems to like it. I’ve heard back from a few h I’m sorry, horror Writers Association colleagues that I sent early versions to.

And they all really enjoy it. I think an answer to that question and the people who have read it have told me they like it, and I’m hoping they’re telling the truth,

Stephen: so Good. Great. Do you, if you had a choice, we’ve talked movies a little bit movie fans, TV fans nowadays also, if you had a choice would you like to see this turned into a movie or a TV show?

A movie or a TV

Ben: show? If I had my choice I would love a limited event series is what they call ’em now, right? I think it’s the thing, like a three to six episode long show of just that story. I like to think that there’s too much material in there to make one movie out of, that’s because I’m in love with every word that I put in there, right?

And I’m sure a com a competent, screenwriter, and director could, get right to the really important points and get most of the points across, but, I think it would do well as a limited run show. And it has an ensemble cast. There are enough different characters in it, but I think it could be interesting.

It’s, and it’s told from a few different perspectives as the book goes along. So I think it would be interesting, nice to play in that format

Stephen: a little bit. Nice. Now, typically horror, our standalone is this a standalone and if so, what’s your plans for your next book?

Ben: As written, it’s intended to be a standalone.

Yes. What I’ve been doing though with this book and just about every other short story and honestly the book that I’m working on right now I’m creating sort of my own little setting much like love crafted with arkham and dunwich King’s main Dairy castle Rock area. The settings in my stories the main city is Acosta, California.

Which is, Acosta is a Spanish word, meanings on the coast. It’s down on the coast about halfway between Santa Cruz and Santa Barbara is my imagining. And so there are connections between these stories. While none of them are really specifically, sequels to each other or part of a series, any one of ’em could be read in any order.

Stephen: Okay, good. And so we were talking about authors and books. Oh, before I ask that, do you have a website that people could go to and check out all your books? I

Ben: do, yeah, definitely do. Check that out. Really complicated name. It’s ben monroe.com. Got it. Good. And it’ll come right up. Just make sure you spell it right.

If you don’t, who knows where you’ll end up.

Stephen: But you can somebody else trying to swipe your name

Ben: exactly. Some with Monroe with a U. And yeah, you can find links. So I post links to places to buy. All the anthologies that my stories have appeared in, I’ve got about a dozen short stories out over the last couple years.

You’ll have links to, there’ll be link to this webcast probably in, in the next week or so as well. Every appearance I make gets up on media page. If you ever wanted to know, you know a lot about me and watch me ramble on about monsters for hours and hours. That’s the one stop shopping

Stephen: for you.

Got it. Cool. So you mentioned some good horror authors and like The Shining Witches, one of my top three books of all time. So who, what are some of your favorite all-time books, all-time authors.

Ben: Oh gosh so many, so I always, I had to throw out Lovecraft cuz, Lovecraft was really my real introduction to real horror.

As a kid I had watched all the universal monster classics. I was in the Wolfman and, Godzilla not universal, all that stuff. And then I stumbled across a Lovecraft story when I was about, I think eight or nine years old the outsider, which is great.

And that sort of blew my mind. So Lovecraft were, he’s, you’ve seen this kind of problematic today, but he’s still, seminal to me big fan of Stephen King. Love his work. Some other authors more recent oh gosh I guess not really recent. Peter Stra I was getting into a few years ago poppy, is he bright?

Pen name of Billy Martin. I was really read a lot of their stuff back in the early nineties in college. I was obsessed with lost souls Kathy Coachs, the Cipher is great. Recently oh gosh. Grotesque Monster Stories by Lee Murray. It’s a collection of really great short stories, is good.

And not out yet, but they hide by Francesca Maria, another great collection of Monster Stories is coming out in April. I got a chance to read the sneak peek of that, and that’s nice. That’s a lot

Stephen: of fun. Nice. You mentioned king Straub. Did you read what was the book they wrote together?

With Jack The Talisman. Talisman. Talisman,

Ben: yeah. Black House.

Stephen: Oh yeah. Have you read Black House? I haven’t got to that one

Ben: I did a couple years ago. Yeah, it was good. It was good. Interesting. I, it’s fun when those guys, king did it in The Shining and Dr. Sleep and then they did it in Talisman and Black House when they come back to those stories after so many years.

And see how this character has literally, grown up, interesting character

Stephen: studies. Yeah. So that’s cool to hear. It’s on my list. Ha. It’s, that list. Yeah, exactly right. And I mentioned before we started about bookstores. Do you have a local bookstore you like to go to?

Ben: Sadly, no. Okay. I wish I did. There’s there’s Dark Carnival in Berkeley, which is a great story, famous science fiction. Imagine a fiction bookstore which is just far enough out of the way that I don’t get there very often. Sadly, I live in a town that really doesn’t have any bookstores. I’ve gotta go about 20 to 30 minutes out my way in either direction to go.

Got couple half price books in those directions, which I love. It’s a treasure hunt when you go there. Dangerous

Stephen: floor.

Ben: Yeah. And actually I shouldn’t say when I say I don’t have any in town, that I’m like, that’s only because a new bookstore just opened a couple months ago. I think it’s called Books Inc.

And I haven’t had a chance to go there yet. So that’s on my list. My list, we’re gonna use that word. A lot of things to do in the near future is swing by there and check ’em out. Cause it looks like a great bookstore. Nice. I just haven’t had a chance to visit

Stephen: yet. If you stop shoot me an email.

I’d love to hear about it. I can put a link in for it as long as I’ll let you know. As long as they’re good. Which, it’s hard to ruin a good bookstore.

Ben: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Unless it smells weird. I’m pretty much happy at any bookstore, you

Stephen: know, and even then sometimes there’s some charm to that.

There can be. I wanna talk about a few other things. We’re gonna talk about some classic horror and how the storytelling that goes with classic horror. Before we run into that though, if somebody came up to you on the street and said, Hey, Ben, I heard you wrote a book. Why should I get your book and read it?

What would you tell ’em? Because you

Ben: feel sorry for me? No. I it’s a good story. It’s relatable. The characters in this story are pretty much every everyday Joes. They’re just regular people with regular jobs. And then, and this, my, this is actually my favorite kind horror and this is what I think king really does well.

And, go back to Lost Soul, is that book that I love. I think that was really good as well. Regular people. When suddenly they’re confronted by something so out of the ordinary, they just dunno what to do. You’re having a regular life and then you know, a monster shows up. What do you do? And that’s really what the seating is at its core.

It’s regular people having regular problems, and then the monster shows up.

Stephen: Nice. Good. All right. The seating and you mentioned some future books. What have you learned from when you first started writing and the short stories and the anthologies to the book you’re working on now?

What have you learned and what are you doing different?

Ben: The main thing I’ve learned I’ve come back to there’s a couple things, but the main thing is really the difference between a short story and a novel. And obviously one’s short and one’s long, but when when I first started writing a novel seemed overwhelming.

It seemed, oh my God, how do you write a novel? Cause you read a novel. This takes a few days or maybe a week or two, depending on your schedule. And. The idea of writing a novel, I don’t have time to write a novel in a few days. Of course nobody does that, right? But yeah, gotta get yourself in that mindset.

And what really helped me shift a few years ago, I was just outta sorts and I needed to do something to get some exercise, get out, get outside and do something. And so I took up trail running. And, which was a lot of fun, of its own sort of thing. Like I said, I love being outside.

I love being in the mountains and the hills. And so that was fun. And I started thinking a lot about the difference between basically sprints and long distance running. I could go for a short run around the block. That felt pretty good. If I was gonna go for a 5K trail run, that was something I had to build myself up to.

And so that became a metaphor for my writing process as well. Do the little short things. They’re fun, they’re good, they make you feel good, but then focus on that longer goal as well. So the novel became something that I could come back to over time. And when I wrote this evening, that was really how I did it.

I wrote, I think probably. A dozen or more short stories in that same period, and I would just keep coming back to the seething. I follow a lot of open call groups on Facebook and keep an eye out for people who are looking for stories for anthologies, and I’d have an idea if an idea struck me and I couldn’t get it outta my head, I would write that, send it in, go for it, and then go back to the seething and let the seething kind of bubbled along as I was working on these other things.

Okay. Yeah.

Stephen: Nice. So for authors one of the genres I’ve interviewed only a few people in is horror. And there’s probably reasons for that, but it’s one of my favorite genres. And you suggested, Hey, let’s chat a little bit about Classic horror storytelling. Which I was like, yes, please, because partly because I love horror.

I watch horror movies for two months. Around Halloween, I read horrors novels, a friend, and I do a mo a horror movie review podcast. That’s something else I do on the side. So I’m like, yes, let’s talk about classic story time. I’m always, Bringing that up in the podcast about what I see in the right, the movies.

You mentioned all the old Universal and Hammer films and Godzilla and all of that which I’ve read or I’ve watched also, and a lot of classic horror Dracula from over a hundred years ago and some of the classic sci-fi horror from the twenties and thirties. I love that era and stuff.

So what. First of all, why did you choose that as a topic, which I, again, I thought was wonderful. And what have you learned from classic horror novels and stories that you’re bringing in yours, like Lovecraft?

Ben: It’s interesting because if I asked you, I’m gonna interview you for a second.

If I asked you what’s the earliest, what’s the earliest horror story you can think of?

Stephen: There’s Frankenstein and Sure. And recently I’ve been reading vampire from Pari, Uhhuh and Camilla, I read those when I was doing a lot of vampire stuff. But you go all the way back and you got Giles, which is a horse.

There you go. Okay. Yeah,

Ben: See that’s where I’m going. People think Frankenstein, people think Dracula. People don’t think, if I say, what about the Odyssey? The guy curses the gods and the gods curse him back. And it’s not, and you think of the honesty. You think of, oh, there’s, Ady on the boat with this guys and they’re sailing around and having adventures.

They’re sailing around, they’re having an adventures. They land on the island of Cersi who curses again with the cursing, curses his men turn them into pigs and feeds them to the other sailors. That’s whore, yeah. They go a little further. And they end up on the aisle of poly fema, right? This giant who traps them in the cave, gets drunk, eats them live, right?

Eats them. There’s a description of the story where he gets so drunk, he starts vomiting up parts of guys, right? And then to get, then they get ’em back by sharpening this stick, sticking right in the face with it, papa’s eyeball. And then, and that’s gross and sad. And then, and you shoot forward a few, a few hundred or maybe a couple thousand years further, you got things like Beowulf, which again is seen as Yes.

An epic adventure story. The first couple of chapters or stanza or whatever you call ’em in that kind of poem are about who’s essentially Jason Voorhis, in, in another timeline, storming into the hall of Hero. And tearing these vikings limb from limb, and ba finally, Baal finally fights, like rips his arm outta the socket, beats the monster over the head with it.

I think there was actually a scene in one of the Friday 13th movies where a guy is beaten to death with his own arm. And this is something I’ve been thinking about for a while now and is actually very much an influence on the next book that I’m writing the one that I’m working on now, which when I’ve gotten further into it, I’m happy to talk more about that.

Is that, the horror story is at the roots of so much fiction. Going back to, I even think, we don’t have records of the old. Story is told around the campfire by the Village Wiseman, back in the Neolithic times. But I guarantee you most of those stories were nobody go outside the circle of light or the demons will get you.

Yes. Now we know those demons are bears and wolves and mountain lions, stone Age people didn’t know what they were. It was that horrible, hairy monster with the fangs that would tear you li from limb if you wandered outside the village. Yeah. Another a great example I’ve.

I think it’s great cause I came up with it. But an example I’ve used, fairly frequently to explain this a little deeper is Look at the story of Red Riding Hood, right? The girl who goes into the woods to visit, her grandmother gets there and her grandmother is basically, been eaten by the monster and the monster’s put on her clothing to trick people into, come on here, I’m a nice old lady and let’s have tea and then, kill you and eat you too.

And that’s essentially the story of the Texas Chainsaw Massa. True, almost down to the identical monster. That’s just, it’s interesting to me how, for a genre that is seen as, ooh, horror why do you wanna read horror? It’s we’ve doing this for thousands of years.

As long as we’ve been people, as long as we’ve been able to tell each other’s stories, we were warning each other not to do

Stephen: certain things. And I just read, oh, and I wish I could remember where I read it a while back that the best that, that the difference between horror and Supernatural is horror happens as a buildup, whereas then the I may have this wrong, but then the supernatural happens afterwards and it’s the horror that really gets us, because it’s those internal fears, those parts of us that we’re afraid of the dark, we’re afraid of what’s hiding under the bed and all that.

And like you said, it’s been going on for centuries. And when people say, Things like that. Oh, why would you wanna read horror? My buddy Reese says, horror is one of the only genres where there’s something for everybody. If you have a romance, you know what romance is? If you have a sci-fi, you pretty much know what sci-fi is, but horror can be.

There can be a romance horror, there can be a romance sci-fi absolutely. Or a horror sci-fi and horror has so many, some people like I don’t really like the slasher movies. I don’t think they’re interesting. But some people think that’s horror and that’s all horror is, but then you get something like Crimson Peak with a lot of rich details and atmosphere, and that’s much more gothic horror i, I think you’re right that we all have that little secret. Fear inside us. And it, we want, why do people ride roller coasters?

Ben: And I think it’s interesting that horror side start for a moment. I like to think horror. I know it’s a genre. It’s a book category, so it’s clearly a genre.

I always like to think of it more as a tone, than a specific genre. If I told you it’s a horror story, that doesn’t tell me anything. If I tell you it’s like again about the seething or Stephen King stuff, it’s a story about everyday people having everyday lives, and then there’s horror added onto that, that’s a little more descriptive.

And so to me, Horror. I like to think of it more like I, I repeating myself as a tone rather than specifically always a genre. And I also think in that regard, it’s really interesting that horror, we call it a genre for now, is the only genre that’s named after an emotion, right? Can you think of, I always dance around romance cause maybe they call ’em love stories too sometimes, and that’s, an emotion as well, but you don’t feel action.

You don’t feel science fiction. You feel horror gets you.

Stephen: Very true. And different people are horrified by different things which is another great. A reason to read it. Cuz again, you can find something, goosebumps will scare some eight to 10 year olds. Really. They gotta keep the lights on, but when we read it, it’s corny and tongue in cheek.

But I know when my kids were little and red goosebumps, man, some of those freaked the kids out, but I w I was different. I read The Shining when I was like 10 but most 10 year olds aren’t reading The Shining because Yeah, exactly. It’s total, but it’s also. Told in a different way.

So horror and then the Walking Dead is completely different from either one of those. So what are some of the classic tropes in horror that you think help, help or hurt horror?

Ben: Oh gosh. I, I think. I think an overreliance on splatter and gore and the really, the in your face stuff doesn’t help.

Everything’s got a moment for it, but I think a good buildup and then something shocking is more effective than just shock. Shock. I’m trying to think off the top of my head. Go back to King for a minute. He had a thing, I think it was in on writing, where he described the, what he calls the three types of horror.

One is horror, which is the existential weirdness going on. He, his example was, it’s when you walk into your house and realize that everything in it has been replaced with an exact duplicate. That’s whoa. What? That’s unsettling. Terror is feeling that clammy hand on your shoulder while you’re looking at your house and.

And then he says, and the third type is gore, which is the eyeballs exploding. It’s the monster behind you biting your head off and squish going everywhere. And I love that, that he says he’ll always try for horror, but if he can’t get there, he’ll shoot for terror. And if that’s not working, he’ll go for gore.

He says, I’m not proud, I just wanna get to the effect. And I think he does tend to hover between horror and terror more often than not. But when he does Gore it’s great. And yeah, that’s the answer to your question. Yeah I think and stuff that works, I love a slow buildup.

Anything I like to describe some horror stories as a chili pepper story. And I, I hope theThing is one of those where, you take a bite of something spicy and it’s ooh. It’s spicy, but by the time you’re like the fifth or sixth bite, you’re like, I can’t take this anymore.

It’s too hot. Put it away. It’s too much. That’s what I really like that buildup that just keeps getting worse and worse until you I can’t take this anymore, but there’s still five chapters left in the book.

Stephen: I can’t put it down.

Ben: Exactly. I gotta finish it. It’s so good, but it’s too hot and right.

Stephen: I had that definite experience when I was younger. I was reading the Amityville Horror. My parents had gone out and I was in the middle of the book and realized it was like 10 o’clock at night pitch black, except for the one light above where I was. Everything else was dark. I did not move until the, my parents came home.

And Oh man, I shouldn’t have said that cuz now I lost my train of thought. What we were talking about. I’m sure it was a good idea. It was a great one. I it would’ve made everything, it would’ve been monumental. You would’ve

Ben: gotten the Pulitzer Prize for tubing and everything, right?

Yeah.

Stephen: Man, know the opportunities pass. Oh, in another world. I got it. So I agree with you on the slow burn Totally. And good horror needs that you can’t. It’s what I said earlier, horror and terror. You said it not horror and supernatural. Yes. It good scary stuff. Needs that horror. It needs that slow buildup.

It can’t exist. When it just starts off jumping out at you. I’ve been in a critique group where somebody was reading their horror, the first couple pages, chapter or whatever of their horror story, and there’s these two guys in there that immediately jump on ’em like no one’s ever go by this it’s horrible because you don’t tell us anything about what’s going on.

You don’t give us that. This character we’ve been following is actually a ghost and blah, blah. And I’m like, hold on. You’re totally wrong. You guys write mystery and action thriller. Totally different than horror. If you start, if you cut out the first two chapters that this guy read and just start with this ghost, nobody will care in the horror genre.

It’ll be horrible. I, in fact, I would tell him he. Said the ghost a little too early, that you should have let it build a more and given us some hints and stuff like the movie, the others with Nicole Kidman, slowly dawns on you that, oh my God, they’re the ghosts. Or 6 cents or something like that.

Spoiler. Yeah, spoil. Hey, if you haven’t seen the others or sixth sense it’s about time. They’re old enough.

Ben: Yeah. Yeah. I was just gonna point out, anybody watch this who hasn’t seen the others? Of course, now, you know the spoiler. Definitely go see it. It was completely eclipsed. It came out the same, almost within months of the sixth sense.

And it just, everyone saw the sixth sense. Nobody saw the others. I don’t, you’re actually the first person I’ve met in years who’s just randomly brought it up. So kudos on you.

Stephen: Me absolutely worth watching. Me and my buddy Reese reviewed the others on our podcast. Oh, nice. And it was fantastic because you’re, go, it’s.

It was done very well that you’re picking up on what’s happening in slow increments. If you’re really paying attention, if you’re not, it’s a total surprise at the end. But you

Ben: asked him earlier what good horror movies I’d seen lately and that comment actually just made me remember one I think it was the Shutter original.

It came out right before Christmas called The Apology. Which was great. It’s not a supernatural horror story. It’s more of a thriller kind of thing. It gets really squishy toward the end. And it’s one of those things where you’re watching it. This is this is basically two people having a conversation for a couple hours.

It’s getting weirder and darker until you figure out what the point, what one character’s point in having this entire conversation is. And then you’re like, oh crap, this is terrible. This is horrible. And then everything just, escalates or deescalate. Goes to hell on a hand basket from there.

That’s, so the apology probably at least on a shutter, if not elsewhere it’s

Stephen: definitely worth watching. Yeah. We, it sounds a little bit like the autopsy of Jane Doe. Yes. Yeah. That’s a slow burn, which is great. And it’s learning things and yeah. And I.

Ben: I think that’s something, going back to your comment about the writers group earlier, I think at least for me, I can’t speak for all horror writers and readers, but that’s something I really like as aficionado is.

Getting into a story, I’m just like, I’m just gonna trust the storytellers and see where this goes. And Jane Doe, autopsy of Jane Doe is a great example of that. It’s just sinister and ominous and things weirder and weirder. And you’re then, when you starting out, what’s actually going on and the supernatural elements come up, it’s really exciting.

It’s thrilling cause it’s just, Okay, here we go. This is where it’s starting to get

Stephen: really cool, right? Yep. All right. Ben it’s been a wonderful conversation. I love talking horror. I don’t get that very often on here. Before we go though, again, your books to the seething, I’ll put links in the show notes to your website.

Do you have any last minute advice you would give to new authors? Oh

Ben: gosh. New authors, so I’ve really only been writing fiction for about four or five years now. My first novel in the Belly of the Beast and other Tales of Catula Wars, actually a collection and novel came out about five years ago, and I had so much fun.

I just kept going and that, to me, that was a log jam breaking moment. I had been wanting to write fiction for so long. I had a lot of stuff in my head that was keeping me from doing it. And so the quick version of all of that distilled into answering your question is don’t sweat rejections.

People are going to not like what you’re writing and you can’t let that, you can’t let that get the best of you. Just keep writing, do it. You’re gonna find your audience if you’re enthusiastic about what you’re writing. You’re gonna find other people who are as well, and the people that reject your stories are just the people that aren’t interested in what you’re specifically saying at that time.

And that might just be, it primarily is based on their own preconceptions. They like something that you, it’s different from what you like. Think about every time you’ve had a conversation with a friend about a movie you really enjoyed and they didn’t like, doesn’t mean that your opinion’s bad. Just means that you like something they didn’t.

Art is the same way, and so just write it just. Sit your ass in the chair and

Stephen: start writing a and there’s so many avenues nowadays to reach people and different audiences and people are wanting more specific things and they enjoy the stuff, not the necessarily big names on the shelves.

The same old. There’s lots of people wanting different. So yeah, I agree. That’s a it’s a new world out there.

Ben: Small press. Andy Horror is thriving right now, so this is a great time to get started.

Stephen: Nice. Great. All right. Ben, wonderful talk and I’ll make sure and let you know when it’s live and I wish you luck on theThing.

Yeah,

Ben: thanks Steven. It was great talk to you.

Stephen: Yeah, it was.

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OverviewDiane lives in Cleveland and likes to bake, besides her writing career. She has written several books focused on her faith and has another coming soon. In keeping with her baking likes, she also has a recipe book.

Diane is an inspiration as she started writing later in life, and has enjoyed several years of a wonderful career.

Her Bookhttps://www.amazon.com/Take-Limits-Off-Diane-Ehrlich-ebook/dp/B0BMW5TFFR?&linkCode=li2&tag=discoveredwordsmiths-20&linkId=44c112981e58f57119c00b18c8fbecaf&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_ilWebsitehttps://reformministry.com

Favoriteshttps://www.amazon.com/Heaven-Alcorn-Randy-ebook/dp/B000FCKCJC?crid=36XO6ODHHWTWC&keywords=randy+alcorn&qid=1681927606&sprefix=randy+alcorn%2Caps%2C94&sr=8-1-spons&psc=1&spLa=ZW5jcnlwdGVkUXVhbGlmaWVyPUExRldYUVFJRlk1MDVBJmVuY3J5cHRlZElkPUEwNDQ0NDEyMVRJTFRUTkkwMDExRiZlbmNyeXB0ZWRBZElkPUExMDAxMzIzUElTRTdNMzQwWEVCJndpZGdldE5hbWU9c3BfYXRmJmFjdGlvbj1jbGlja1JlZGlyZWN0JmRvTm90TG9nQ2xpY2s9dHJ1ZQ%3D%3D&linkCode=li2&tag=discoveredwordsmiths-20&linkId=2b90b3b9136f64fb76ed4f532f4014e0&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_ilYouTubehttps://youtu.be/j-ZkcRV60nkTranscriptOkay. All right. So Diane, welcome to discover word Smiths and I know what type of day you’re having. It’s probably rainy because we live very close to each other. So how are you doing on this rainy day?

Diane: I’m doing great. It’s cozy here and everything’s good, so no complaints.

Great.

Stephen: Good. It’s good to have you on. I’m excited because of the genre you write in. You’re the first time I’ve had anyone with that genre, so it’s great to have the variety which I hope that the people listening enjoy hearing authors from different genres. So before we get into that though tell us a little bit about yourself where you live, some of the things you like to do besides writing.

Diane: Oh, sure. My name, my author name is Diane Erlic, and I had that name for all my life except till last June when I got married for the first time. And so I’m Diane Drought now, but I kept that name for the sake of my books and everything. Yeah, I turned 68 and I got married the first time, so Wow.

Congrats. So I’m happy and we’re having a great time. Nice. But I live, yeah, I live near Cleveland, Ohio, and lived here all my life. Went to school in Cincinnati, got a degree in design, so I have a creative streak. But when we get into talking about the books and everything, that part was very unexpected.

I didn’t expect to write up into, I have six books up on Amazon now. I’m working on a seventh and so we’ll get into that, but I really don’t have any experience with that. What do I do besides writing? I love cooking and baking. Anybody that knows me knows to come over at dinner time or let me know.

Gimme 30 minutes notice. And I’ll have dinner on the table cuz I got enough stuff in the freezer. Beautiful. So we love to entertain. One of my books is on the Gift of Hospitality, which I absolutely love. Otherwise, we’re very active, over 50 people. We both spend plenty of time at the gym and walking and getting together with people.

So that’s in a.

Stephen: Nice. Great. So what’s your favorite dish to cook?

Diane: Oh, gee. I love baking the most. I guess I just had some friends over and I said, come over for we had dinner, but I taught myself how to make tiramisu. Ooh, okay. And It was difficult, but boy, it was good. Nice. The leor that, yeah, the leor the Kahlua that you put in it really carries the flavor and it was really fun to share with people.

That’s one

Stephen: of those that you’re like, oh, I messed it up. I gotta eat all the ones I got time to. Sure. More. Really.

Diane: That’s why we’re at the gym all the time.

Stephen: Yeah. And then they end up tasting better. Okay, I’ve eaten 50 of these things today and I might be feeling the effects.

Diane: Sure. Yeah. When I met my husband, I said, we’re the perfect match.

I love to cook. He loves to eat, so perfect. It

Stephen: works out good. Yeah. Okay tell us about your books in general, but most particularly the newest one, what it’s about and. Why you wanted to write this?

Diane: Oh, okay. Yeah. I’m currently working on my seventh book and I happen to have a little, I don’t know if it carries.

Oh, wow. Proof pulls up. But I have a mockup of the cover if you can see it. Okay. Yeah. And the name of it is called Seeing Heaven from Planet Earth okay. I lost it for a second there. I took a nose, guys. Sorry. So anyway, this this was inspired by blogs. I have a website and a, and monthly blogs.

We’ll get into that in a little bit, but as our connection, you and me is through writer’s group with Dave Van Horn. And so I was at my writer’s group one night and you get to read things and they critique you. It’s very helpful. And Dave just, he’s such a idea person and said, if you have enough of these blog articles, you’ll have another book.

And it was like a light went on. I go, yeah, because it’s a devotional. People in my genre, Christian inspirational Christian growth, love, something that they can ha have read for one day, put it down, and then read something new for the next day. It’s called a devotional and so you have different topic.

And different things that, that just carry them through the week or whatever. However, somebody wants to do it, but this is based on the parables of Jesus. When I started doing my research, there are tons of books out there already written very scholarly about the parables of Jesus.

That’s not what I wanted to. Doing my research, I found that this type of reading writing called simile and called parabolic teaching, it’s this is like that. So when Jesus taught, he said his I, the iconic phrase was, the kingdom of God is so he would use something from everyday. That people could recognize and immediately understand and identify with, and then he would take it to that higher plane of the kingdom of God, and he would just move people than to understand that hidden realm of his father’s kingdom.

So that’s what I attempt to do with these everyday topic. And then I pivot and say then the Bible says this, so this equals, this is like that. And it helps people picture and understand the Bible’s take on a specific topic. So hopefully I’ll be done with this. I’m hoping by this summer, but for sure by fall.

So I’ll have that out on Amazon and ebook.

Stephen: Nice. Nice. And you’ve got several books out and that you said they’re all very similar to this. Why did you choose to write inspirational Christian books?

Diane: Here, I’ll tell you my long story. Okay, great. That’s what we’re here for. I became a Christian in 1983.

My brother explained to me that I could know God personally, that all I had to do was turn to him and. Lord please forgive me in my sins and come into my life and show me the way that you want me to live. And I did that very thing. Jesus is real. His power is real. He’s there. He’s real. He’s alive.

So through the Bible and through P Prayer, God will start to communicate with you in your mind, in your heart, and in your. Things that he has for you or different things that he wants to say to you. It’s very personal. That’s why you hear us being born again. It’s a personal relationship. It’s you and him, together, and that’s how life was always meant to be.

We were never meant to be estranged from God, trying to do it all on our own. So with Heaven’s help, at the time when I became a Christian, then I started to go to church. I started to teach Sunday school and I started to teach junior high Sunday school. The parents wore me, these kids.

A little wild. I don’t know if you can do it, but I did and we had a wonderful time. I started to write a newsletter from my students and I mailed them out every week, and the parents said that the kids would run to the mailbox to get their newsletter. Junior high hopes. As I worked on those, Again the light bulb went on.

Maybe I should do a book. People suggested that I didn’t know at the time that I was touching people that I had a talent for this, but it was a talent that I tripped over and discovered. And so people enjoyed my re writing. I had to learn my craft. If I was gonna write a. I had to learn grammar, punctuation, sentence structure, all that good stuff.

I hadn’t expected to become an author. It was overwhelming at first, but then as I finally just leaned into it, sure enough, I had a book, junior High Hopes, while that was just my training wheels that never got published, but I had to get started some way, right? The book that I wrote and published after that was a book called Transforming the Queen.

Now you probably can’t tell this from my manner and my mannerisms. I’m very, a very happy, upbeat person, but at one time in my life, in my thirties, I was in deep depression. I couldn’t even go to work in the morning. I was living at home. I was one of those bounce back ba baby boomers that came back and lived with their parents.

They were very patient with me. But as I began to pray and read the Bible, and especially with forgiveness issues, and just seeking God to help me in my heart, that heaviness lifted. I came out. Of all that depression and there’s really not a trace of it. Now, of course, that was a lot of years ago. I had to really work at it.

There was a lot of self-determination. I had to decide, that I needed to stand up on my own two feet and have the right path in front of me. But that’s what I did. So this book is actually my. Of logging how I came out of that and the different heart issues and the, and pain and different things that I was experiencing at the time that now I’m perfectly healed from.

So that book, it took me five years to write that. But, and then I did self-publish, so that was my first book.

Stephen: Nice. Good. And how many books did you say you had?

Diane: I have six full paperbacks. The next one that I wrote, I was teaching a Bible study at a church, and our topic for the Bible study was called Take the Limits off of God.

So again, this is another devotional, just different topics that we covered as a group that I had the notes for. And again, eventually I had. To create a book out of it. This is probably one of my most my best selling book because of that devotional style where people again, could, can select a topic, read it for the day, and I’ve actually had five star, I have five star reviews on Amazon for this book, and I’ve received some very kind notes from people over the years thanking me for how touch, how touched they were by this.

The next book that I wrote was to help people. It was to offer something for people’s self-esteem, not necessarily just directed at women, although by this time I was working with women’s groups and again doing some public speaking in that. And so my next book is called Confidence Shall Be Your.

And this is a really good guide to not just trust in yourself and rely on yourself, but rely on God for that godly confidence that being able to look someone in the eye and smile, say your name, introduce yourself, take away all the shyness and the self. You know it, you know the things that would intimidate you for being around other people.

And so this gets you, into society. It gets you moving and helps you to get over those people fears that a lot of people get bound up with. After that, I wrote a really interesting book. It’s called Seeing Behind the. And it’s a book on spiritual deception. Unfortunately there is a dark side to the spirit realm that the Bible describes.

And as a Christian, you became, become very well aware of that reality too. So this is for people to help them stay out of that dark realm that is only deceptive and. Wants to hurt and harm. So this describes this, the spirit of the gift of discernment, discerning of spirits where you can actually understand the different things that are coming at you every day and have a better wisdom to know how to tackle some of the difficulties in life.

The next book that I wrote is called Tabernac. Again, this was totally unexpected, but the Lord started to speak to me through scripture and talk about the the priesthood of all believers that the Bible describes. And so this is a book on prayer, on worship and the term is called ministering to the Lord, where you can actually through praise and worship.

Just spend time just protecting the presence of God. Just extolling God and just having this wonderful prayer prayer closet, prayer time that is so uplifting for you, but also, to pray for other people and events that are going on in society. It’s amazing. I’ll tell you something really fun.

God called me to prayer because I do what’s called intercession and it’s praying deep in the middle of the night. Three in the morning you’ll find me up and God called me to pray the day of the boston Marathon bombing. You remember that? For the Boston Marathon and deep in the middle of the night I was woken up out of a sound sleep, and I heard the word pray come to my mind.

And so I wanted into deep intercession. And then the next day I found out, about that horrible bombing, but only there was two nap sex with bombs and only one went. So by a miracle, only three people were killed. Many injuries, but they survived. And those people got to run that marathon, even with their prosthesis and, all the injuries they got across that finish line.

So that’s prayer, intercession, and the power of it. And then finally during Covid I had been doing writing. Recipes and, writing down my favorite recipes and everything. And I started to assemble some notes on the gift of hospitality. Sure enough here, recipe for sharing.

And this is actually my front door and I, and I have actually pictures. So in 2016, I was 65. Let’s see. No, 60. And I moved from a condo into a freestanding single family home that was twice the size and needed a lot of rehab. So with the help of a friend of mine who does that kind of work, I rehabbed a 2000 square foot home.

Wow. Beginning to end. Roof shutters painting the whole thing. And all for the sake of having a big dining room and a di big living room and a big kitchen so that I can have friends over. So I documented that whole thing. There’s pictures, and then the second half of my book is all my recipes. It was a fun book that I got to write during Covid.

So that’s out on Amazon too, and I’m actually gonna do a revision on that hopefully this year, cuz I’m gonna include a chapter on how I met my husband on an over 50 singles dating site. And how we got together. So those are my books in the, in a Books in a nutshell. I did one little ebook, it’s called How to Write a Book.

I did a seminar for a women’s group one time and wrote a, did a class on how to write a book and kept the notes. I thought, that is a, something that’s widely searched by people and if. If you go to Amazon, you’ll find it and come download it. It’s just a little ebook, but it’s all the experience that I learned and I took away from all my years of writing and self-publishing and I think it’s very helpful for people.

But that’s just a short booklet. It’s the ebook. So that’s great.

Stephen: So you’ve written for several years in several books. What are, I’m gonna jump around a little bit on questions. Sure. What are some things that you’ve learned from that first book to now that you’re doing differently in your

Diane: writing?

Oh, okay. My composition comes a lot easier now. And so mainly It’s the, it’s, I taught myself this summer how to do my own eBooks. It’s probably the software. And and I had employed an editing service on one of the books, but I think I’m just gonna, do my own editing. And then also For this heaven book, I think I’m going to purchase this software called Atticus, where I can actually typeset my own interior of my book.

I’ve already I’ve already hired out someone to do the cover, so I guess my learning experience now is in the software, in the production. It’s a lot easier for me. I understand it. It’s not such a big, black hole of learning. My learning curve, is a little easier now and and I really enjoy the computer and the software part of it too.

So you go from the creative part, the writing and the composing, and then you get into this very practical mode of making sure that your writing is good, that it’s powerful, that your sentences make sense, that they lead to one another, that your paragraph breaks are makes sense. And that you just put out a really good product for your reader.

That’s my goal. Nice.

Stephen: And you’re working on this book to get out soon. Do you have any plans for things after that? Any books after that?

Diane: Yes, I do have a book planned for next year. I haven’t gotten a title yet. Over the years, I have other books that I never published that I have lots of material.

I’m always taking notes and writing things down. Yeah, I think re readers will see another book out of me for next year. Nice. Okay.

Stephen: And the people that have read your books, what type of feedback are you getting from your reader?

Diane: Like I say, I have five star reviews on Amazon.

Right now I don’t really get I just opened a Facebook for my ministry. It’s called Reform Ministry. I haven’t gotten any too many followers yet. Not a whole lot of feedback, but. Like I say, I’m writing these blogs I started last year and I have blogs above on my website. I’ll give you the name of my website Yes.

For viewers. So they can go and follow me on the blogs, but it’s reform ministry.com. R e f o R M I N I S T R y. Dot com. That’s my website. There’s a lot of pages on it. There’s a lot of information. There’s a bible reading schedule if you want that. I talk a little bit about my beliefs and then all the books are posted up there and then these monthly blog articles and they’re all up there, includes a picture and I, I have a tracker on my blog and so I can actually see where people, I wrote it, I wrote all these down.

I wrote all these states and countries Nice. That where people visit me from Now, there’s no place to actually interact on the blog article because of the setup of my website. I’ve been read by people from New York, New Jersey, Iowa, California, Ohio, North Carolina, Florida, Connecticut, and Utah. And those are just the recent ones.

And then the countries where people have visited me and viewed the pages, Ireland, India, Canada, China, Tanzania, Malawi, Israel, and India. And those are just some of the recent. So it’s really fun for me to go on my tracker every day. I see if people are reading me, how long they’re on there, what pages they view, and from what I can tell, I am getting a lot of readership and that’s my goal right now because I just wanna put out.

Important, good information for people that they can read in their spare time. Nice.

Great.

Stephen: You yourself, do you have any favorite books and authors?

Diane: Right now I’m reading a Man and he’s very famous called, his name is Randy Alcorn, a l c o r n, and he’s written many books I’ve been reading.

Books for a lot of years. The one that I’m in the middle of right now, because it pertained to what I was doing, it’s called Heaven. And he just intricately describes what the Bible says, about heaven. And it’s actually a physical place. We are gonna have physical bodies. We’re going to eat, we’re gonna know people.

It’s gonna be just a carryover from life on Earth, so it’s very exciting. Nice.

Stephen: Okay. I’ll put a link in the show notes to that. Sure. For people. And do you have any favorite local bookstores?

Diane: Right now there’s not too many bookstores in my area. Just I have started looking at the Good Reeds website.

For books that people recommend. And then just the Amazon bookstore is probably my go-to. Okay, that’s

Stephen: fine. And so we jumped around a little bit, covered some of the author topics already. But if somebody came up to you and said, Hey, Diane, I heard you wrote a book inspirational devotionals.

Why should I get your book and read it as opposed to all the other ones out there? What

Diane: would you call? Yeah there’s a lot of. Material out there. I have a lot of different topics. All these books are different topics. So what I tell people and what I have on my website is that you can actually build for yourself.

A library of these books, and if you read them, in the order that I just gave you, you would have a full all encompassing understanding of the Christian life. Everything has been touched on. So if you take ’em as a whole and use them as your own personal library. Then you would have a very well-rounded understanding of what the Bible calls us as Christians.

Nice.

Stephen: Okay. And what would you tell somebody, let’s say they don’t read Christian inspirational, but they wanted to find out what your books are about. What would you tell ’em about why they might wanna read your books if they’re like I don’t care about all that. What would you say to them?

Diane: I would say to them, That’s

Stephen: a tough one.

I’m sorry.

Diane: Yeah, that’s ok. I would say them just try it. I wrote down actually to, I wrote down a little challenge for your viewers, for people Okay. Who have never read. Don’t take my word for it. Don’t even buy my books, I put ’em out there for the world. But here’s the challenge for your readers.

If you just get yourself a Bible, yeah. You can go online, it’s there, or go to a bookstore or maybe dig one up outta your attic, I don’t know, wherever you keep it. Or maybe it’s on the coffee table. Yeah. And it’s always been there and you just have, you have to dust around it every weekend.

I don’t know. They don’t put ‘

Stephen: em in hotels anymore.

Diane: No, I guess not, but it, but every, it’s online. Everything’s online. So go find yourself a Bible, go to the New Testament, because then you can learn about the savior Jesus, and just read, instead of getting overwhelmed. Oh, I’ve never read the Bible.

It’s so hard. I’m not gonna understand it. It’s not hard. Yes, you can understand it and just read a chapter. Those are the big numbers. It’ll say, one, two, whatever. Just read yourself a chapter or a paragraph or a little bit for the day, and then. Just turn to God and say, God, what do you have for me from this?

What do you have for me? And do the Do it for a week, do it for a month. However long it takes you to get in a little bit of a groove, God will start to present himself to you. It’ll be very personal. It’ll be very warm. It’ll be very inviting. He loves you. He wants to communicate to you. And that’s probably him calling me now,

stop this phone. But but just to get back to that, it’ll be very warm, it’ll be personal and you’ll know that you have a friend in heaven who loves you, who wants to help you, who has power to help you. Who wants to help you through your deepest needs. And I just challenge your re your viewers to just try it themselves.

Nice. Great.

Stephen: That kinda made me think, wasn’t there a show several years ago called God Calling that Yeah,

Diane: there’s a book out. Yeah. Called, yeah. God Calling. All

Stephen: right. Diane I think it’s been a great talk. Like I said, you’re the first Christian writer I’ve had on here with Inspirationals in that, so it’s, I love having a variety of authors to show what’s out there.

And I love the fact that you started this not when you were 20, when you were in your sixties already, or late fifties already. And congratulations on being married by the way, so for everybody. So I love that all aspects about you. We do have, we both sit in on Dave’s meetings sometimes and we do have a lot of writers that listen to the show.

So before we go, what advice would you give to some new writers out there?

Diane: Be encouraged that whatever you’re writing, if you’re writing from your heart, then you can make it into a product that people will identify. And want to read because you have a voice to help someone else in whatever experience you’re expressing, you have a voice to help the next guy.

So keep up the good work and just give it a try. Great.

Stephen: Wonderful. Thank you. I appreciate that. It’s been great catching up with you and having you on. I will let you know when this goes live. Thank you.

Diane: Thank you so much.

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OverviewCindy Jarrett retired as a school teacher and took up writing. With her partner, she’s written several kids books, which is nice since she taught kids for her hole teaching career. We discuss her books and what it’s like to move to a new career.

Her Bookhttps://www.amazon.com/Firefly-Fourth-July-Elaine-Reynolds/dp/1938768833?crid=WH6X0ND8FP4I&keywords=firefly+fourth+of+july+cindy+jarrett&qid=1681252000&sprefix=firefly+fourth+of+july+cindy+jarrett%2Caps%2C87&sr=8-1&linkCode=li2&tag=mindarchitect-20&linkId=12da7e9e896a161fa6176f858ab63b22&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_ilYouTubehttps://youtu.be/pPfw60_5LroTranscriptToday this is an interesting and special podcast for me. I have Cindy, Jared on and miss Jared. And I can’t call you by your first name. It’s very difficult. She was a teacher when I was in high school at my school. It is nice to see her again. And I’m glad to have her on.

This chair, how are you doing? I’m doing great. So I know you taught, but what are some things you like to do besides writing? I

Cindy: like to go to movies.

Stephen: Ah, you go see it man. This weekend,

Cindy: I went to see, oh gosh, what? I can’t think of the name of it right now. Tom Hanks is in it.

Stephen: Oh a man called Otto.

Cindy: Yes. A man called Otto is wonderful.

Stephen: Yeah. Part of that was filmed on the Keigo Valley Railroad. Cool. Yeah, the whatever train scene there is that was right here, Northeast Ohio.

Cindy: Yeah. It made me laugh and made me cry. So

Stephen: nice. It was a good movie. It did look good. It did look good. So we’re gonna talk about your books.

You have several books out and you have a co-author, and I don’t get a lot of these types. They’re children’s books, picture books. So it’s great to have an author that writes that. So tell us first about your books what they’re about and why you got into writing kids’ books.

Cindy: My co-author is my best friend since the middle of 10th grade in high school, so that’s over 50 years.

We won’t say how many. Okay. But she gets me into all kinds of stuff. She’s got me into cake decorating classes and Tai Chi and. Bow making bows and all kinds of stuff. And she said one day that she would like to write children’s books, but she doesn’t like to do anything on her own. So what I write with her and I said, sure.

Like I always do, I always go along with her

Stephen: ideas. Got it. And I bet there’s some stories from back in the day that we won’t talk about here.

Cindy: Yeah. We were with another friend and Elaine had said that she wanted to write children’s books, but she didn’t have any ideas. And the friend said, why don’t you write about a star, a sea star that wants to be a star in the sky, cuz I’m never gonna write that book.

And Elaine said, oh, that, that sounds like a good idea. But a couple of years went by, we didn’t act on it, and then our friend passed away. And so when we decided that we were actually going to tackle this we thought about her idea. And so that was our first book. We dedicated it to her. That’s how Sammy the Sea Star came about.

Nice. And we, she was a teacher also. She taught elementary and middle school, gifted, gifted student. And I taught at the high school, so she has a lot of imaginative ideas. We draw on our past childhoods and write about things that we thought were cool when we were kids. And I’m, I was a typing teacher, so I’m a good proofreader.

I know my English punctuation rules really well, and so we, we make a good combin.

Stephen: Nice. Okay, so you weren’t like, oh, I’ve always wanted to write and I finally did. It was just kinda something you came upon. Yeah,

Cindy: We just decided to be something that we did after we retired, although I’m still working, but I’m probably going good at the end of this year.

Stephen: Good for you. Okay, so you write kids books and you have an artist and you’ve got How may I out now? For what’s been the feedback, what are people saying when they read the books?

Cindy: Matter of fact I just got a feedback today. My, my aunt had purchased one for one of her nieces and she said that she was home today and they were coloring and her favorite book is Adventures with Grandma.

So she made her own cover to Adventures with Grandma. That’s awesome. She colored her own and there was another lady. That we met when we were in Hartville, and she was so excited to meet that She bought all four of the books and said that she was just so excited to finally meet the authors and that.

Almost everybody that we meet says that the kids really love the stories. So it’s a great feedback.

Stephen: Yeah, I read the Firefly one and it was enjoyable. If my kids were still young, it would’ve been a great one to read to them. It’s not necessarily something I’m gonna pick up myself to read, we, we’ve got it when a kid comes over now.

And you’ve traditionally published these, is that correct?

Cindy: Yes. My, my friend Elaine, she also writes books with another girl. They write books for teachers in the gifted program, and those people pay them a certain sum to write the books, but then they only get 10 cents per book that they sell.

Wow. And so she said she thought that we needed to do our own. We don’t actually publish them ourselves as far as like doing something with getting on the computer using a certain program or something like that. We found a kind of a person that’s an in-between, I guess you could call it.

He helped us find our artists and. He takes our books and puts the pictures and the words together for us on the page, and then he sends them to a publisher or a printer and they print them for us. So he’s. That’s

Stephen: how we did it. Okay. And do you have digital versions or are they all printed versions?

They’re

Cindy: all just printed. We have har soft bound and hardbound books,

Stephen: which for kids books seems to be the most prevalent especially picture books. They’re very difficult to do digitally and make it work. And you mentioned Hartville I know that’s for us a local like a swap and flea market, and they have an indoor stores and stuff.

So what are you doing to market these? Because I’ve, you and I went to the library with Kathy. She has a pop-up bookstore and you mentioned Hartville. With kids books especially, you gotta get ’em in their hands. You gotta be there. So what all are you doing to get the word out and get the books seen by kids?

Cindy: We have a website of course, although we don’t seem to sell a lot of books on the website pretty much if you do your own publishing, you have to get out there and go to craft shows. That’s what we’ve been doing. Going to craft shows and selling the books ourselves. We feel like we make the most profit that way.

Okay. We have gone into classrooms. Done presentations with the kids done art projects with them based on the books, and they’ve really loved it. Nice. So that it’s, that’s pretty much it.

Stephen: Nice. I like the art project. So do you work with kids to draw pictures based on just the words and they think, or are they creating their own stories?

They’re

Cindy: not creating their own stories, but we, with the Sammy the Sea Star, we used paper plates and we cut out different sea star shapes and they could. What shape they wanted and then they decorated their own sea star with nice markers and glitter and all kinds of stuff. And then with the Firefly book They were able to create their own firefly and decorate it the way they wanted

Stephen: As long as you weren’t shooting off fireworks in the classroom.

No, that sounds fun because when you write adult books, You can’t really do that. Adults don’t wanna color their own sea stars, right? It was a totally different environment, much more fun to go do those things. I think

Cindy: we also made a presentation at Southeast High School because the kids in one of the English classes, had to write their own stories and color them.

And then they were going to go over to the elementary school and read their stories to the students. So we did a workshop with them also. How we got into writing and how we go about it it really is best to just write about things that you know about. Although you do have to do some research too.

Stephen: Oh, that. No, that’s interesting because these are kids’ picture books. So what research do you do for a kid’s picture book?

Cindy: Oh, we did all kinds of research on the Firefly book. Fireflies are very interesting and that’s why we, one of our trademarks is since we were teachers, we don’t wanna just give the kids a story.

We want them to get facts. So in the Sammy Des Sea Star book, there are a lot of facts about sea stars, but what has become our tradition in all the books, Is to include a page or two in the back that has additional facts about the animals or the subject matter in the books, websites that the kids can go to if they want to find out more information.

So

Stephen: nice. Yeah. And I love that cuz I kinda have the same thing. I write middle grade and I include words to know in discussion questions. And I’m working on creating a whole study guide. So it’s, the, that thing you just can’t stop working with kids and doing those types of things becomes a part of all of it. Yep. So I can imagine these. Maybe not. If you had a choice, would you like to maybe see these turned into a TV show or a, an animated movie or something like that? We haven’t thought that far. That would be an interesting workshop for even younger kids is to animate the stories and, use some movie maker animation program or something.

That would be a fun workshop, I think. Yeah, it. All right let me know if you ever wanna do it. Cause I’d love to do that. That one with you, with the kids. That would be pretty fun.

Cindy: You probably know a lot more about it than I do but

Stephen: I’m not good with art. I’m not good at drawing. And either that’s

Cindy: why we needed an artist.

Stephen: Yeah, people, yeah. My, my cover, I hired a guy to do my cover cause I’m. Yeah. Stick figures, that’s still the best of my abilities on it. I do stuff with Reese Sampson. He always would do stuff for me withdrawing, oh, that’s interesting. You mentioned a website. What is your website?

It’s

Cindy: called fun Hyphen Dimensions.

Stephen: Dot com.

Cindy: Okay. And all four books are listed there and they could purchase them

Stephen: there. I would make, I’ll make sure and put links in there. Okay. For that. And we were talking about bookstores. We don’t have a whole lot of bookstores real close to here, but I’ll mention Kathy, she’s gonna be on the podcast in a couple weeks.

Kathy Klein is doing books of Go-Go, which is a. Bookstore and you’ve gotten involved with her. Do you, do do you set up and do things with her often or do you, does she just have some of your books?

Cindy: She works at the church that I was secretary at Edinburg Burg, United Church for 15 years.

Okay. And she works in the preschool there. That’s how I know her. Okay. And so the kid watch and the preschool have purchased my books and. That was the first time when you and I were there at the library. That was the first time that I had worked

Stephen: with. Okay. Nice. Yeah. Cheryl O’Connor got a copy of my book and got a picture of it on the intermediate shelf, and I’m like, oh my gosh, it’s on the shelf, yeah. More importantly, it has the little numbers and stuff that kids can check it out. Oh, good. That was the, important thing to see that, that kids could go check it out. So that’s kinda fun. Yeah.

Cindy: We were excited. Yeah. She’s bought a couple of our books too, and we’ve gone out to Southeast and read to.

The kids on to Read Week and done a presentation out there. And then the kids can find the book in the library.

Stephen: I love that. Yes. I think more people should encourage that, especially authors for kids in middle grade and all that. Encourage the libraries, encourage the kids.

They think it’s taking away from their income. But ma’am, when I was in school and I would read a book in the library, I’d go buy the book or buy more by the author and or, wanna keep reading more. That’s how kids do it. You kinda gotta understand that. Yeah. But you’re doing the marketing, you’re going to lots of fairs and trade shows and things like that.

A about how many of these are you going to like per year?

Cindy: That’s a good question. See, my co-author goes to Florida for six months out of the year, and so she does three different sales down in Florida. I do three or four up here after she leaves, and we probably do. Six to eight in the summertime when she’s here.

Stephen: Wow. Yeah. Wow. That’s a lot. And. I asked that because I know a lot of authors listen and a lot of ’em don’t wanna get out and push their book. They feel like a used car salesman. And I think it’s important because people gotta see you and know you, and when you’re there and they see you, they trust you more.

And if you really think, people shouldn’t buy your book, then maybe you shouldn’t have written

Cindy: it. Yeah. Really we’re excited about our book, so we love telling people about the stories. Nice. And they always want it autographed, I don’t think they value it more when it’s autographed,

Stephen: Yeah. I’m got a couple coming up that I’m going to be doing and I’m trying to, because right now I just got the one book and a couple prequel stories, so I’m trying to figure out what the, oh, look on my table one. I need to get a few things on there to make it look a little more interesting, especially for kids.

Yeah.

Cindy: We tried to do some crafts. Went along with the books too tried to get the kids to come over and look at ’em.

Stephen: Yes. Yeah I’ve got a floor mat I’m gonna put in front of the table that says this is not a trap door and it looks like a trap door. Cause I write fantasy, so I figured it fit.

And then my original intent was to do the Wizard Fest in Kent. With this first book I wrote, I didn’t. Before the pandemic, and now I’m hoping to maybe get in, but, so I wanna put up a magic candle with a wand so kids can point at it and see if they have magic to light the candle. Oh, that’s cool. Yeah.

Little secret. It’s a remote control that I’ll have in my pocket because, I figure if kids are coming up, their parents are probably coming up, right? So there’s nothing better than the kid lighting the candle with the magic wand and the parents not being able to do it. Kids love that type of stuff. I did when I was a kid, yeah. So that’s my whole, that’s my little shtick that I’m working on. Very good. Very good. So maybe we could, you we’ll be at a show together coming up sometime at Hartville or something this

Cindy: summer. This is not the Hartville flea market I’m talking about. You’re inside. Nowhere outside actually.

Okay. It’s not the Hartville flea market. Okay. It’s a winery that’s there. Oh. And they have a sunflower festival. Nice. Okay. Yeah. And they set up and people can go and pick sunflowers and then come to the show and buy things from

Stephen: the vendors. Nice. Maybe I’ll look into that one and set up for that too.

Yeah. Yeah. Nice. We talked already, we touched on the traditionally versus independently published. You explained. Why Have you thought of looking into publishing it independently and doing it more yourself instead of going through people? No,

Cindy: we haven’t thought about it. Okay. We are not real.

Computer knowledged. I don’t know how that’s not the correct English, but we don’t know a lot about computers. Everything that we try to do on the compu, actually Elaine tries to do most of it cuz I give up in failure. But it takes us a long time to get anything accomplished. So we’re happy to go with this guy.

He’s very good and really helps us out.

Stephen: And I think that’s important too, because a lot of people are like, oh, you should definitely independently publish. And others are like, no, find somebody to, there’s options nowadays, whichever works for you. And I think that’s important.

It, it’s better to write another book. Or to then to spend that time struggling just to make a couple extra pennies on the one book you have that thank you. Yeah, that sounds good. Yeah. And do it and enjoy it. Why not? Stress yourself out.

Cindy: Yep. We have a lot of fun writing

Stephen: them. Yeah, I can see that would be a fun thing is kids’ books.

I’m not, I don’t know. My brain doesn’t quite work at that level. Middle grade seems to be where my brain, I don’t think I matured past that. So maybe that’s the problem.

Cindy: Cause Elaine, top fourth grade, I guess she’s more oriented to that. Audience

Stephen: Yeah. That could be. And I just think I never matured and that’s what worked well.

Cause I know I tried to write, did, let me ask this. Did you, because Elaine got you into it, did you ever try and write like an adult thriller or anything like that? Or you just No, this works for me. No, I didn’t. That’s very important. Yeah. That’s important to two too. Also when you guys are doing. What do you use to write?

Do you use word or longhand or how, what do you do?

Cindy: We, because she’s in Florida and I’m up here, a lot of times we just sh I’ll write something, I’ll send it to her on the computer and then she’ll change some things and send it back to me, and then I’ll change some things and we just go back and forth

Stephen: Okay, nice.

And then you get a artist to match up with the, now do you use the same artist or have you used different artists? We’ve

Cindy: used three different artists. A different one the first and second time, and then the third and fourth book is the same artist. We really liked her, so she did both of those books.

Stephen: Okay. Yeah. Now, Again, my brain doesn’t work that way. How a lot of people say, oh, a kid’s picture book, there’s 50 words in the whole thing. That’s easy. I could write 20 of those a day. What makes it difficult and what’s the process you go through to make sure it is up to, a quality book?

Cindy: As far as the pictures go or the

Stephen: writing? No, the writing. The writing.

Cindy: I tend to first. Write the story. Elaine tells me what she has in her head. We’ve written to ’em together, but the last one is basically a true story about her grandsons. And she told me, we went back and forth about how we were going to do it for a year at least.

And then she finally got things. In her head about how she wanted to do it. So she told me the story and then I sat down on my computer and wrote the story out which she seems to have a hard time. Doing in the very beginning. Okay. And then she likes to take it and really find the exact words that she wants to use because she doesn’t wanna just tell the story.

She wants the kids to feel the story and understand what’s happening. She gets real picky about the wording. Okay. And then I pick it apart as far as the punctuation, the capitalization, and everything else goes until we end up with a product we’re happy with.

Stephen: Nice. Okay. That sounds like a great process though.

Each person using their strengths and it, I don’t know. I can see a lot of people just thinking that it’s super easy to do a kid’s book, but I think it’s super hard because because of the limitations. You can’t use super long words with big structures of sentences. It’s gotta, but it has to be engaging and not plotting and boring.

Because there are some books out there I’ve read with my kids that I’m like, yeah, that we’re not reading that one again.

Cindy: Yeah. We don’t dumb down the language. We like to challenge the kids as far as their reading level goes. would be a good idea for us to do a vocabulary list that the teachers could.

Stephen: Yeah, some words that are in our books you’re not gonna like to hear this. That is something you could do and add it on the website that they could go to download, because then you could add on the website where you’re going to appear and what new books are coming and keep people informed.

It’s that little, go to the website to get this free thing and also check it out so you can come. Go get more books and, Yeah. Keep the ecosystem going. Yeah. Something to think about. If you ever need to do it and you need a little help, shoot me a message. I can help you out with that.

All right. That sounds great. Yeah, because cuz again, I think working with the kids, Is super important rather than, oh my gosh, a competitor, or I’m gonna charge you or anything like that, that’s why I started doing what I do with my books because these kids have a whole life ahead of ’em, and I personally don’t think we do enough in the schools.

To work on storytelling. We do a lot with grammar, we do a lot with spelling. We do a lot with even history of words and things, but we don’t, we read a lot of books, but we don’t always focus on the craft of story itself. And I think that’s something we could do a little bit more of with the schools or, outside of school, after school, writing extra classes up.

That, that’s where my focus is. On things yeah. All right. So before we go and I love talking to you, it’s been great. Do you have any advice for authors out there that are thinking of writing picture books?

Cindy: I guess I would start with write about what you know, but then if you really have a subject that you’re very interested in and you don’t know a lot, then you need to do research on it. Think about selling them yourselves, even though it’s a lot of work, it’s very rewarding. Elaine and I get to hang out together and be friends while we’re selling our books, which is great.

So if you wanna get a co-author it’s a lot of fun. And I guess I would just say to sell your own books and I think that way you get a lot more. Connection with your audience and with the people that are buying the

Stephen: books. Agreed. Especially with kids are just way fun to Yeah. To talk to about the books.

When they get, when they love the stories in the books, they get so excited about it. And that’s, the best thing in the world when they just like, can’t stop talking about whatever the book is. So that’s exciting. Do you have any rabid fans of kids that like, oh, I’ve got your book. I loved it.

Cindy: Oh just the one that I told you today that my aunt said that her niece, that was her favorite book. All of our books have morals too. Not morals, but messages for the kids too, which I think a lot of the kids need to learn today. The Sammy, the C Star book message is you’re special just the way you are.

The Firefly one is Don. Don’t let the worry bug bite you. Stop worrying so much and just believe in yourself and you can do whatever it is that you wanna do. Nice kids need to hear that.

Stephen: So a agreed. We need, I have no problem with video games and stuff, but I think sometimes the, those messages that we got with some of the books are missing.

They, you don’t get that from a YouTube video. So

Cindy: the last book that we did is about Getting out and seeing what you can do to save the earth, basically. Oh, nice. Cause that’s a big topic right now with in the news and everywhere, so in the back, we have a list of things that kids can do to help with protecting the earth.

So Nice. And give them some ideas of things that they can do too. It’s not just an adult thing.

Stephen: What book is that one? What’s that called? That’s called

Cindy: The Old Man in the.

Stephen: Old man in the tree. That one I don’t remember seeing. I probably did, but I remember you just came out in

Cindy: December,

Stephen: Ok. Got it. Alright Ms. Jar, it’s been really great talking to you. I’m glad you took some time and hopefully I’ll see you this summer as I’m getting out in the area. Encourage all authors listening to get out and anybody listening from Southeast or from northeast Ohio. Look us up. Come to some of these festivals and fairs.

Bring your kids, get a book to read. Everybody always says kids have too much screen time. Let’s change that. That’s how you do it. Exactly. I hope you have a great rest of your day and I’ll let you know when this goes live. Okay, thanks. Yeah. We’ll, po stop it. Maybe. Oh, now it’s not stopping.

Failed to stop. What the heck? Oh.

I might have to just refresh it. Okay. Wow. I have never had it do this. You broke everything on my recording today now. Wow. All right. I’m going to hit refresh and see what it does.

View Details

OverviewToday I’m talk in with Cathy Klein. Cathy started an independent bookstore that is a popup. Meaning, she travels to various places and sets up to sell books. She was on recently to talk with us about new books coming out and she should be on again soon.

We talk about what books she likes and how she chooses books to be in the store. This is interesting, because she is usually limited in space and doesn’t want books that will sit without selling.

Websitehttps://booksagogostore.com/

YouTubehttps://youtu.be/bb9OVzjqncITranscriptSo today I’m excited. I have a friend of mine, Kathy Klein, on the on discovered word Smiths. I’ve known Kathy for a decade ish, decade and a half, something like that. Our girls were in Girl Scouts. We were both Girl Scout leaders.

Kathy, welcome to the podcast. How are you doing today? Thank you. I’m doing good. Thanks. And it’s a nice warm day here in Ohio, so Yeah,

Cathy: surprisingly for February.

Stephen: Yeah, that worries me. I wonder what March is gonna be like, exactly. All right, so this is going to be an interesting discussion and podcast because.

I’m not talking to Kathy about a book she’s written. I’m talking to her about an endeavor she’s involved in where she has started a pop-up bookstore. And I think that is something I’m very excited about. Cause I always ask the authors, do you have a favorite bookstore? And I try and push people in the libraries and push people to bookstores, support them.

Don’t just order Amazon, don’t just go to the chain, go find the local and that’s exactly what you are. But instead of saying, Hey, this is my relocation. Come visit me. You’re like, Hey, I’m gonna be all over and I’ll probably be close to you. So where did this idea come from and why did you wanna do.

Cathy: It actually came from another pod, a podcast that I listened to and they had a guest on there from North Carolina and she had a papa bookstore called Shelves.

And I started following her on social media and looking at what she did, and I thought, you know what? I can do that. And I always wanted to get back into the book business cause I used to manage border. Store and before that Walden books, when that was still a thing in malls, my

Stephen: gosh. I probably ran in you at some point.

Oh yeah.

Cathy: Oh yeah. Cause I was at Walden Books, I don’t know, for a number of years. And then I opened the Borders bookstore that was local, more, most local to us in Kga Falls. Until I had my oldest daughter and I always wanted to go back to it. And now that my, both of my daughters are in college, I thought this is a good time to get back into the book business.

So when I heard about the popup idea, I’m like, that’s something I’d never thought of, but I can do that.

Stephen: So I love that. Yeah. A large part of what I do is I. I work with kids and parents showing them that, hey the future is not the fifties. Getting outta school and getting a easy job while you pay for college and then getting a job at a company that will eventually give you the gold watch, it doesn’t exist there.

There’s too much turmoil and things changing and the telling our kids that, Hey, there’s gonna be a job for you. Is lying at times. And I encourage people to look into avenues. I’m not saying go do something and that’s your full-time career, but something you could do on the side. So how full-time is this for you?

Cathy: It’s actually ending up being more than I anticipated, but it’s a new business I have to spend my time, I teach preschool as well, so that’s my more of a full-time job than this. But this takes up just as much time. At home, getting everything prepared and advertising, and learning social media and algorithms and how to get my name out there, that’s a whole new ballgame for me.

So it’s taking up a lot of time, but I have fun doing it, so it’s not working.

Stephen: Exactly. Yes. I love that you just said absolutely everything. I’ve preached to others in that a lot of new authors are told that you’re running a business. You may write a book, but you have to run the business. If you don’t wanna run the business, then either you’re doing this as a hobby or you’re going to spend a lot of money hiring someone to do it.

So when you say get prepared and that, give us an idea of some of the things you’re doing. I know some of the things you’re doing, but the listeners, what they wanna hear from.

Cathy: So when I started, I just started contacting local businesses and asking if I could come to their business and set up to sell books.

And most everybody was very welcoming and were like, yes, you can. You let us know when you wanna come. And I would set up and I would advertise for them. They advertise for me and people know that they can find me to purchase books. And I carry mostly new. Then I was wondering, and I’m still working it out, so it’s all a work in progress, is moving from space to space, the best idea, or should I focus on a couple of businesses?

So Holiday’s, winery, that’s local to us, they contacted me and said, would you like to come once a month and start a book group for us? So I’m like, yes, that would be great. And then Lost Trail in Canton has also done the same thing. So now I’m at Holiday’s, winery and Lost Trail Winery and Vineyard in Canton once a month doing a pop-up book sale and once a month doing book clubs.

So now I. Kind of permanent spots where people know for sure I will be. And then I also wanna be available at other times. So I offer porch pickup. If you have a book you want me to order, I’ll order it. I’ll I say I book dash it to you. So I’ll bring it to you. You can come to my porch and pick it up.

I will have it available at a popup. So there’s all different avenues that I can get books to. And we don’t have anything locally to sell,

Stephen: Books right here. So lemme set that picture for people that don’t know where we live. Cuz we live in the same small town. Yes. We used to only have one traffic light.

We do not have a post office. And I think there are still more cows in the town than there are people. So that, that, that’s the mood. Yeah. I lived in California and they said, oh, there’s a. Grocery store, but it’s way out of the way. And I’m like, okay I don’t have the money. Tell me where it’s at.

I’ll go to it. It was literally 1.2 miles away. Oh my. And nobody went. It was too far. Our closest is eight miles away. Exactly,

Cathy: exactly. And for us, the closest bookstore, if you don’t, if you wanna go to an indie bookstore, you have to go more into Cleveland for New. There is a great use bookstore in Kent last exit, and I love them.

To have an indie bookstore, you have to go more Akron or Cleveland, which is a pretty good drive for us.

Stephen: Yeah, so I, there’s just so many parts of this that I love, and I love things you’re doing in the market and thinking about that, trying to think outside the box and pushing it, and you realize that they are, it’s a new business and all of that, right?

So what’s your success been like? You don’t have to give us numbers, but have people been receptive? Are they coming back? Are you like knowing you can set up and sell?

Cathy: Yes. Yeah, so it’s been very successful so far. In my eyes, have I made a profit yet? No, but you have to put in, to get outta Other than that, I’m happy with how things are going.

People have come back. I’ve had return customers. I offer a loyalty card, so I’ve seen those coming back to get punches. So I know, even if I’m not remembering you. Exactly. I know you’ve been here because you’re bringing your loyalty card back, which is great, and. People have been very receptive business for the most part.

Business owners have been extremely receptive. I’ve been invited back everywhere that I’ve been so far and I’m actually think starting to think about that. The last couple months I’ve tried just staying at the two wineries that I mentioned and it’s been great. However, what if people don’t wanna go to a winery?

Maybe I should think about going to some of these other small businesses. Again. There was an ice cream shop in town that was great for me in different places like that.

Stephen: Yeah. And you not only are running the business, but you’re a reader, so I know you, you make a lot of comments on good reads, and you’ve mentioned a lot of books that you have read.

Oh, So what, how do you choose the books? I assume it’s not just what you enjoy,

Cathy: right, unfortunately, probably more of that than not. But I do have other people that I go to and say, What do you suggest for the horror genre? Because it’s just not my thing. You probably, I have a ton of Stephen King behind me because when I was a kid, I started on Stephen King and I loved it.

Awesome. As we grow and our tastes change, my reading style tastes have also changed. And I’ve not, Focused on the horror genre as much as I used to. So I have people that I know that do read it and so I’ll ask for their suggestions or if they have children that are in middle grade or young adult age range.

I’m not reading those. So what’s the most popular thing right now? And I’ll get other people’s advice on what to get. For those things. Plus, I am a big listener of podcasts, so I’m always listening for new authors, local authors anything that podcasters are talking about that are more, maybe not necessarily New York Times bestseller list titles, but things that they know that everybody enjoys reading just because they have read it, their followers have read it and recommended, as a matter of fact Brendan Slum wrote The Violin Conspiracy, and I heard about that book on a podcast.

I read it and I loved it. And so I had chosen that for our first book club title in February at Holidays Winery. And so many people had told me, I would’ve never picked that book up if you didn’t tell me about it. And they ended up loving. Almost as much as I did for the most part. I think they all really enjoyed it.

And so hearing about these books and he, I actually heard him on a podcast not too long ago and his paperback just came out and that’s what I had purchased for our book group. But as far as his hard cover, he did not have terrific sales. He wasn’t that New York Times bestselling author, I don’t believe for the hard cover that could have that.

I could be wrong on that. But now people are, Discovering him and his book. I had a hard time getting enough copies for everybody because my distributor just kept running out. He’s I like to get different ideas from all different places.

Stephen: And you do have a big variety. I know you set up like a Christmas time at the school.

They always have a craft fair, which a lot of places do in schools do. And you also coordinated with the library for an author event, which I went to and several others. And a teacher that I had in high school was there and she’s was on my podcast. I interviewed her last week. She’ll be on soon. You’re, I, the attitude I see is it’s not just me and everybody else is, stay away.

You’re really embracing the whole environment and culture and everything around books, but also reaching out to hey, the schools and hey, other authors and the library and so many things. What are some things that haven’t worked for you? Have you tried anything that was like, okay, that’s just not working?

Cathy: Not really. I’ve had good reception at most places and I think it’s just a matter of. People discovering me and the things that I’m trying to do in the community, because I had that idea for the author event because I love going to author events, but I go to Cleveland, which you know, I’m fine with doing because I wanna meet these people.

I wanna get their autograph and. Hear them talk about their writing process and their books. And so I love doing that, but not everybody can do that. And I thought, wouldn’t it be great if we can start doing that in our community and having authors and my family was like, mom, you’re just getting started.

Why don’t you just wait? Instead of, you just started having these pop-up book sales and you’re gonna plan an author event. And I’m like, you know what? I’ve got the idea now, so I’m gonna run with it and if it works out, I can do more of. And, I think that it went fairly well. We didn’t have a turnout like they do in Cleveland, but we’re a very small area.

So I think that once our, in my presence is more well known and people know that these things are more available locally, that it could become, something that people look forward to in our.

Stephen: Absolutely. And they all gotta grow. And I like that instead of oh, we tried it once at the library, it didn’t work, so forget it.

You can’t have that attitude. Because not every author has a successful book till they’re fourth, they’re eighth, they’re 12th. Yeah. Sometimes, sure. So the same thing with running other items for business. Now I forgot where I was going. What question? You say all this stuff and I’m like that’s like the rule book of running a new small business.

Everything you’re saying is Yes. What you know you should be doing. I keep thinking of all these things and then I think of something else and my brain goes, frizzled. So do you have any upcoming events besides the winery and all that? Are you looking at now spring, are you looking for beach reads?

What changes as you do these throughout the. Yeah,

Cathy: so I, I get people that give me suggestions on different things and then other ideas will pop into my head. So for Valentine’s Day, a friend of mine had said, why don’t you do blind date with the book? So I had wrapped up books and people that came to popups, or if they saw it online, they could.

Pick out a book that, and I just, as if you’re not familiar, you just give a short description, but they don’t know the title, they don’t know the author. They’re just taking that chance on the blind date. And so that worked out well. And then in March, I thought March is St. Patrick’s Day, so I’ll have a Lucky Day sale.

So if people visit me, they can pick a coin out of the bin and it’ll say, 30% off your entire order. Or a tote bag for. If you spend this much money, you get a free tote bag, things like that. So I’m trying to offer people different discounts because I know that books can be expensive.

So however, if you think about it too, when you’re buying a book, even if you’re paying full price, if it’s a trade paperback, let’s say those are around $17. It might take you 17 hours to read it. Maybe it’ll only take you eight hours to read it. Regardless. That’s only a dollar or $2 per hour for your entertainment where you’re paying how much money to go see a movie these days.

I have no idea. Even anymore $12 or whatever it is locally, which is a lot. Yeah. To me, but obviously inflation is everywhere, so I think I get a lot more bang from my buck in the entertainment of reading a book.

Stephen: Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely.

Cathy: But yeah we’ll, and as far as bee treats, I think that’s a great idea and different, different thing, promotions and things like that to get people interested in realizing what is out there

Stephen: too.

Yeah. Absolutely. Do you have any particular books that you mentioned the one you found, but do you have any particular books coming up that you’re looking forward to?

Cathy: Yeah, actually the Girl in His Shadow by Audrey Blake, I have. Not read any of hers. It’s actually two women that write together and they put the name Audrey Blake together and we’re doing this one for book club for March at both wineries.

So I’m really looking forward to that. It’s not it is historical fiction, which I do read, but it’s a little bit different. So I’m looking forward to getting into that. And it’s an author I haven’t read before, so I always love doing that. Reading something by somebody that I hadn’t read.

Stephen: Nice. Okay, great.

All right is there something else that I haven’t asked about doing this? Oh, there, that’s what I was going to ask you. You say you have a distributor so you’ve have somebody that I mean any other bookstore, that they have a warehouse and you tell ’em what you want and they deliver ’em to you.

Okay. And that’s how you get what you want. What do you do? If you buy five of a book and only one of them sells, and you know it’s a year and a half later, what do you do with that? Yeah,

Cathy: yeah. So I haven’t, obviously I’ve only been in business about six months I can return them if I would like.

But I have to pay them to send them back. I have to ship them on my cost, and I have to pay a 10% penalty for returning them. So to me, that’s not worth it. I’m just going to keep the books and run my own sale. I would rather just recoup the money that I paid for it than paying them more money. To take the book back they’ll just say all items and you never know. I was actually thinking about that just the other day. If I have titles maybe that I’ve had for a while that aren’t selling, if I put them away and then bring ’em back out, say in the summertime, people aren’t used to seeing them, it could be something new to them.

You never know.

Stephen: Exactly. Or hang onto it. And a year later you find out they’re turning it into a movie. So hey, get the cover before you get the MO movie cover.

Cathy: Exactly. And then I just went to Cleveland a couple weekends ago to see Marie Benedict. I like her a lot. She writes historical fiction about strong female characters that aren’t as well known in history.

And we’re doing Lady Clementine this month for one of the book. Which she writes, and then I saw that she was coming she has a new book out, the Mitford Fair, so I got in a few copies of that. I brought it with me. She signed them. She was more than happy to hear about the bookstore and to sign those so that, that’s a little bit something extra if I can give to customers that maybe they weren’t able to see.

You know her or go to visit, then they can still get an autographed copy of a book. And same with Celestine in the fall. I met her in Cleveland and she said, I will absolutely. And she signed every book I brought for her and they all sold. Cause people were like, I love this author. And they wanted to have an autograph book.

Stephen: That’s awesome. I love that. When you texted me about the whole idea and what you were doing. Yeah. I was like that. I love this. This is so perfect. I wish with it, it’s the answer to bookstores closing down. We can’t afford the rent on this whole big building. But you know this.

Yes, it’s a little smaller, but people can still order through you. Yeah. And if you should build and, yeah. That’s what it is there anything,

Cathy: lots of people were ordering through Christmas books that I wouldn’t have fought to carry and, but they wanted them as gifts. I said, just give me a few minutes.

I would look it up. Yes, I can get it. I can have it. And usually I can have it within a week, if not within a couple days.

Stephen: Nice. And. I’ve always encouraged that because people are like, oh, I’ll just order it on Amazon. It still takes a day or so and Right. You’re help with you, you’re helping someone local a small business rather than Amazon doesn’t need our money anymore.

Yeah. Always encouraging that. And I do love that you’re working with the library and doing things with that. Yes. And by the way, the writer’s fest over the weekend wet fairly well. Oh, yes. Oh, good. Yeah. I’m hoping they do it again next year. And I told ’em, I, here’s my card.

Gimme a call when there’s other events going on because at Christmas, I know the black Friday, the library, they were doing readings for kids and stuff. And I’m like, I’d love to do that. You doesn’t have to be my book. I, other kids Christmas stuff that’s. Hopefully we’ll start bumping in each over the place.

Cathy: Yes. I was supposed to be at the Writer’s Fest, but my youngest daughter had bowling tournament, so I was in Indianapolis over the weekend. So I said I can definitely give you some information on local authors

Stephen: yeah. Yeah. Awesome. I appreciate it. Yeah. Alright, any last comments about running a bookstore?

Cathy: It’s a lot of fun. It’s hard, but it’s a lot of fun at the same time, and I’m glad I’m doing it. Nice. That’s the short of

Stephen: it. I’ve said before I started writing, I said, authors are way cooler than actors because actors are a little separated and not standoffish necessarily, but they’re just separated from.

People, but most authors could walk down the street and they’re not getting mopped. Even though the people that know ’em may go, all over ’em and like crazy and stuff. And authors are much more willing to, let me tell you, and let me give you a hint. Oh yeah. I’ll sign that. Or, things like that.

Yeah. Exactly. I love that about that. I love that you’re doing this to help local authors help, big name authors too. That’s wonderful. Yeah. Thank you, Kathy. I appreciate you being on.

Cathy: Thank you.

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OverviewREADERS: Abby is a professional writer (after being a lawyer for years) with over 35 books to her name (and multiple pen names). She also is currently the author in residence at the Cuyahoga Public Library.

Abby talks about learning to write and the mistakes she’s made. She didn’t start writing cozy mysteries, but tried her hand at other genres. She discovered her own voice and what worked for her.

WRITERS: Abby has experience writing many books, and we discuss finishing your book. Her experience allows her to offer some great advice.

Bookhttps://www.amazon.com/Where-Wild-Peaches-Grow-Novel-ebook/dp/B09PBJDR5G?crid=1OFKXF0P4LJDZ&keywords=where+wild+peaches+grow&qid=1679956230&sprefix=where+wild+peaches+grow%2Caps%2C102&sr=8-1&linkCode=li2&tag=discoveredwordsmiths-20&linkId=0b8a06ffa1e761b242e6df712253054b&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_ilhttps://www.amazon.com/Deadly-Inside-Scoop-Parlor-Mystery-ebook/dp/B07WJF48NC?crid=33KTUAQE2T5HJ&keywords=abby+vandiver&qid=1679956358&sprefix=abby+vandive%2Caps%2C98&sr=8-1&linkCode=li2&tag=discoveredwordsmiths-20&linkId=ba91c596ab1cbc938b6746de2ac4e38d&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_ilFavoriteshttps://www.amazon.com/Little-Fires-Everywhere-Celeste-Ng-ebook/dp/B01N4VW75U?crid=L1YVY0UI7UID&keywords=little+fires+everywhere&qid=1679957601&sprefix=little+fires+everywhere%2Caps%2C111&sr=8-1&linkCode=li2&tag=discoveredwordsmiths-20&linkId=0fd2ea5818aa0f8de9cee2890bc62fc5&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_ilhttps://www.macsbacks.com/

YouTubehttps://youtu.be/z0SaRwaQWyYTranscriptToday on Discovered Wordsmiths, we have a Abby Vandiver, right? I got it. . And she’s gonna be talking to us about her large selection of mystery books.

Abby, how are you doing today? I’m great.

Abby: Thank you. How are you? Thank you for

Stephen: having me. It’s great to have you on. Abby and I were at an event together at the library locally, and Abby was the long-term writer there. Much more so than the rest of us had been doing this more professionally longer, and we were all in awe.

But it was a great couple hours fun time. So I asked her if she’d like to be on, cuz I thought everybody’d love to hear about her. But for before we get into the writing and the reading tell us a little bit about yourself and what you like to do besides writing.

Abby: Thank you so much for having me.

It’s such an honor to be here and be on your podcast. I’m so excited about it. So about me, I don’t know. I just told someone the other day because Abby is a pen name, and I hadn’t been writing for a little for a few months. I don’t know, I’m just unmotivated. I’m not stuck or have a block.

I don’t like when people say, oh, I’m just blocked. I just haven’t been motivated. I’ve been doing other things. And she goes, oh, but Abby, you love to write. And I said, that’s because you only know Abby. You know the real me. I have other interests. And those other interests are just sitting on the couch doing nothing but watching like HGTV all day.

I will do the Food Network all day and I will do the Hallmark Channel. So usually if I put it on any of those three channels I don’t change the channel and I just sit there all day. I love movies. Before the pan pandemic turned the world upside down, I would just go to the movies all by myself and sit there and I would be so happy.

And lately I’ve also been hanging out in the real estate world and doing a little real estate invest. And it’s it couples with my hg t v love, so those are things other than writing, which I really enjoy. So I not only write, but I teach writing as well. Those are the other things that I like to do and spend time with my grandchildren.

Stephen: Nice. Well, I can picture you with overalls in a tool. Fixing up a house, but that kinda, I can picture mis, you get this house, you go to fix it up and you find a dead body. That sounds like the next mystery book, doesn’t it? ?

Abby: Yes, it does. It really does. And that may be

Stephen: an idea for me.

Yeah, there you go. I’d love to read that. That’d be great. But you have to make sure the character is you in the overalls and tool belt. Cause I think that would really be great. Yeah.

Abby: When I write because my cozy mysteries always, I write them in first person. So actually they are me. When I’m writing it, I always feel like, I’m speaking me.

Okay. So you’ll never find one of my characters who eats onions because I don’t like onions or they won’t do things that I don’t, won’t do, and they’re always reluctant. I write cozy mysteries and I might be getting ahead of myself with your questions. That’s true. I write cozy mysteries and they’re amateur.

And usually in cozy mysteries, they’re all gung-ho. They’re ready to solve this case. Every one of my amateur slews are reluctant because who actually wants to go chasing after a killer? In real life I would never do that. I used to be a lawyer, and sometimes I may have represented killers but I would sit, I wouldn’t ask.

I never asked, are you the killer ?

Stephen: Didn’t, don’t ask questions. You don’t want the answer to that. Exactly, . All right, so we’re going to talk about where wild peaches grow and you have a big picture behind you. I

Abby: do. I still have a big picture. Let’s see. Can you see it? Yeah. That’s awesome. But I also have the book.

Stephen: Great. So give us a little bit about what this book is about. So

Abby: this one is actually not a mystery. I’ve written 35 books and I think this is the only one that really, there are some aspects of mystery, but it’s a women’s fiction. And it takes place in Naches, Mississippi and a little of Chicago as well.

And it’s about two estranged sisters that had to come together when their father died. Now, when I was originally writing this story, I did put a murder in it because I put murder in every book and my agent. Don’t kill anybody in this book. And I said, oh my gosh, how do you write a book and you don’t kill someone?

I really struggled with this book. It took me like four months to write. I can write a book in about 21 days in about three weeks, but not this one. Cuz I go, oh my God, is there a story there if no one’s murdered? But I did. I did have someone die , but they were not. ,

Stephen: so Nice. I love that you say that, how do you write a story like that?

Because I was originally trying to write thriller type books, Uhhuh , and I was working with an author helping me a bit, a couple authors actually. And I really kinda came to the light bulb conclusion. It’s wait a second. I write middle grade fiction. That’s what this is. That’s why I’m struggling so hard to write a, an adult thriller cuz that’s not where my brain is.

And I’m like, what do you mean? I don’t think I could write a story with a murder in it. Not like that. So I love how. Different authors, how your brain works and how you fall into the genre. You’re good at writing.

Abby: So let me tell you a little secret though about thrillers.

I guess it’s not a secret. The difference in a thriller and a mystery is in the mystery. If it’s a murder mystery, the dead body shows up, someone dies, and for a cozy mystery, it just shows up. The murder happens off scene. But in a regular murder tracy Clark’s hide or something like that.

The murder can happen right there in the book, but, and so you spend the rest of the book trying to figure out who done it right. But in a thriller, no one has to die because the thriller What makes it a thriller is that you’re trying to stop the crime from happening. So the entire book is written about whatever they do to stop the murder.

So no one really has to die, although a lot of times, I guess you kill the bad guys off with, The guns and everything, but,

Stephen: And then I always think of shows like 24 with Key for Sutherland, where it has good elements of both. There’s a mystery as to what’s going on and who’s doing what, even if it’s not really a mystery, but it’s a high action thriller story.

There’s a lot of crossroad behind between those, but you don’t see Jessica Fletcher running around with machine guns and explosions, so you gotta

Abby: Exactly. And that was me because I tried, I have this book too. I tried, so this was my first book. It’s called in the beginning. That’s a

Stephen: great name for a first book,

Abby: that shows, I always tell this story that shows what a terrible old writer I was not necessarily writer, but poor concept I had of the writing industry.

Because if you Googled in the beginning, you would not get Abby Vandiver, right? You would get God. So I’m competing against God in my title. I’m not gonna get very

Stephen: far right . No, that’s not the best way to start. Cuz it seems your whole career is just gonna go down from there, .

Abby: Exactly.

In this book I wrote it, it’s about, it’s alternative history, alternate history. Mystery sci-fi kind of book. And and so people, when I wrote it, compared it to Dan Brown’s book the first one that he had came out. What was that first one? Angels and Demons?

Stephen: No, that’s the second one. That’s the second one.

The Da Vinci Code. Yeah,

Abby: da Vinci Co. So people compared it to that. They go, it has a damn brownish vibe to it. But the only thing was there was not apparel around every corner. People weren’t dying and, falling off of bridges or whatever happened in that one, running around Vatican, whatever they did, I don’t know.

Vatican might have been the second one, but, you not a lot of action. And so people complain about that. So I said I can do that, I can do that. I can write some action. So I did the next book. It’s. irrefutable proof and I had someone die in there and get killed. And I tried to put a gun scene, I think in that one.

And then the third book I did, I tried to go a little bit further incarnate. it’s called. And then finally I just threw up my hands. I go, I can’t write this. Like with you’re saying I can’t do a thriller. This is who I am. And I couldn’t do, I didn’t know who I was at the time. I just knew I couldn’t do that.

I couldn’t put the violence on the page. I couldn’t, I don’t curse in real life, swear. So I just couldn’t put them in my book and I thought, I need something different. Came around cozy mysteries. Nice. Hey, I can do that. Yeah, . So that’s why I changed. So there’s all, there were only three books in this series.

It was self-published. And it did well for me and got my name out there and people enjoyed it, but I didn’t know how to write. It’s just a lot of things that don’t move the story forward that I thought, oh, this is so cute. I’m gonna put this in here, and put this scene. Oh, I love it. And it had nothing to do with anything, it’s things that should have been delete,

Stephen: delete. So I realized one of my early writings, and then I got back from the editor. and it, there was more red and like 20 pages of comments, , oh God. And I’m I, and that was like an eyeopener. It was like, wow. So I basically remember a story where there’s no conflict, nothing bad is happening, and you wonder why they’re suddenly ramping up for this epic like meetup at the end.

And I’m like, I get it now. , and I, I. Run into a few authors at conferences and stuff where they talk about conflict in that, and the author goes, oh, but I don’t like that. I just like my characters to have a good life. And it’s I’m always wondering so you don’t sell many books, do you?

Because nobody cares to read that.

Abby: So I, as I said, I teach classes, so I teach that conflict has to. In every book and on every page on every line, even the first line. But I think what people don’t understand is conflict doesn’t mean, it’s a sword fight, or a car chase or someone’s shooting conflict is just tension.

So I always use example in one of my books it’s called love, hope, and Marriage Tropes. And the first line is there was going to be a wedding at the funeral. So that’s conflict right there, because those are like two, opposite things. A funeral home, you, that’s where dead people are.

Marriages where people say, oh, and your life is just starting. So you can ease conflict into things just by, putting an obstacle in the way of your protagonist. And it can be nothing but it’s raining outside and they need to go out, and they don’t have an umbrella. It’s just different things.

So conflict is important and it doesn’t matter if you write children’s. Or thrillers or a memoir, you need to show

Stephen: conflict, agreed. That’s important. Yep. So you mentioned Dan Brown. Can you think of any other authors or books that are similar to where the Wild Peaches grow or your other books?

So

Abby: I wanted it to . I wanted to write like Celeste Inc. Little Fires Everywhere. Yeah. So she wrote a story about kids that were in school and their mother and their babysitter. No, you wouldn’t. There’s no car chasers. There’s fire at the beginning and at the end, but and she just took like everyday.

but it was a page turner. I found myself just couldn’t wait to get, so I wanted to do that. I based it off of that, but also I think it Brit Bennetts the vanishing half, that as well. I did write a book previously about that along with my good friend Catherine Dion it’s called, it’s a self-published book and it’s called At the End of the Line.

So that’s , but I wanted to do that and I learned to write Omni mission so that I could put that in the book. But I don’t know if it’s like anything. I honestly, I’ll tell you the truth. So I’m really getting really good reviews on this book and people say it’s a beautiful story, beautiful writing, and I can’t, for the life of me remember what’s in that book.

I dunno what I wrote, . And I keep think saying, I’m gonna read it so I can write another book like that. I go, wow I must have did a really good job. I wish I knew what it said, , so I kinda remember the story, but the things that they make mention of I don’t remember those things in detail.

That’s because I never go back to read my story.

Stephen: I totally get that. And I often wondered, cuz you always get the authors, people are saying, on this book you wrote 32 years ago, this particular character was doing this particular thing. And they’re like, I have no idea because I don’t remember what happened

And I’m like, how could you not remember what happened in that book? You wrote it, but man, it’s true. You get done writing it and it just like seeps outta your brain. It’s been so soaked up like a sponge in you that you just want to get it all out and you forget. Exactly. Yeah. It’s crazy. Forget,

Abby: and I forget quickly.

I remember once when a game of cones came out. It was right when it came out. And I was on a panel and the moderator said I’m gonna go around the, it was a Zoom panel. I’m gonna go around and, tell me about your book. And I thought, oh my God. So I took the book and I put it down low so I couldn’t see it.

And I read the back of it so I could see what the book was about so I could explain it because I had the faintest idea. What is this book about?

Stephen: Did I write this one? When did that, when did I write this one? .

Abby: That’s funny you said that because one time someone wrote to me and said, I love this line from your book.

And they wrote it and what they loved and they said, that was just such a good line. And I thought it is a good line, but I didn’t write that and I, so I was all set to write her back and say that she was mis. It must have been another book that she read and then I said, maybe I said something similar and I should find it so that I can tell her what it is.

And I had actually written that

Linee,

then you worry, can I ever do that again?

Stephen: Yeah. But it’s okay cuz you don’t really remember what you wrote before. Yeah. So if you had a choice, Abby, would you prefer to turn this book or your other books into movies or a TV show? So where

Abby: Wild Peaches grow, I would turn into a movie and wear a daily inside scoop.

A game of cones and a killer Sunday. I think they should be TV shows on Hallmark if anyone’s listening because they hallmark’s mystery is called. What is it called now? I forgot. They’re, they have a mystery channel. Yes. Yes. Mysteries and movies or something like that. Yeah. It should be on there.

So Hallmark, if you’re listening,

Stephen: No. Yeah, they the and they seem to have. A lot of those, except at Christmas. Christmas is all the Romcom stuff. All the romcom, yeah. Other than that, you get, what’s her name? Tea Garden or whatever. That’s always on there.

Abby: Oh, so you watched the Hallmark Channel

Stephen: too, huh?

My parents watched Hallmark Channel and I catch a bit of it here and there.

Abby: I’m gonna have to come on and hang out with them. They seem like cool people.

Stephen: Yeah, my, my father was always big on the Hallmark Christmas stuff and he would start in like September and it finally got to the point I’m like, I had to stop ’em because it got to be like end of October.

He is oh, I’m sick of Christmas movies. It’s not even Christmas yet. You keep watching the same ones over and over. Maybe we should adjust this behavior .

Abby: That’s funny.

Stephen: I’m sick of Chris . Yeah. Yeah. Cause he would start like in July watching them when they would come on and then hit it just like

Abby: Christmas in July.

Yes, of

Stephen: course. So Abby, do you have a website? I.

Abby: What, what’s that? It doesn’t matter what you put in Abby Vandiver or Abby Collette. It’ll take you there. Okay.

Stephen: We’ll have to find that. Yeah, but you can find

Abby: me on IG and Twitter. Instagram. Twitter. I’m on Facebook. I don’t visit as, as often but I’m there.

Stephen: Okay. You really just said, I’m on an ig. I lo . You’re hitting it with the young kids there, aren’t you? .

Abby: That’s because I had to have a young kid show me how to work it. Yeah. , I had to enlist my grandson because I couldn’t do it. He was 13 at the time, and I was complaining to him. I was like, I need to learn how to do this because people are getting on this.

And he says, Grammy, I’ll show you. I go, no, because it’s complicated. Grammy, you do this and this, and I’m like, what? Cut off? So yes, he was, he’s 17 now, but he was 13 at the time. He taught me. Nice.

Stephen: Nice. Yes. Alright. Abby, what are some of your favorite books and authors that you like to read?

Abby: Yeah, so I’m not good. That’s not a good

Stephen: question for you, . Okay. We’ll move on. . We know your own books aren’t your favorites. ? No. No. . Do you have any bookstores you’d like to go?

Abby: Yes. So Max backs books on Coventry? Yep. Yep. Is a great bookstore. I love them. And Logan Berry on Larmer, those are my two favorites.

Now Apple Tree Books is close to me. It’s just down the road and every. And I love it too. And every nano Remo, November, nano Remo comes up I’d sit in the window there for them and we type the drum business in. But Max Beck is so good to me and Logan Berry, they’re so good to me. And they’re just quaint little bookstores, just that you can go in and just wander about and read the titles and look at books.

And my books are. Too.

Stephen: So they’re very supportive of local authors. Max Books has a page on their website with a lot of local indie authors, and Logan Berry does an author thing each summer. They four weekends. The author Alley yeah,

Abby: They expanded it when I first started doing it.

It was just the one weekend, but now they’ve expanded and I go every year. I love that author Alley. It’s called.

Stephen: Yeah I’m go but we’ll probably be on different weekends cuz I’m going to the kids and children’s fiction week you’ll

Abby: be there. My friend Molly Perry, she writes children’s books and she has great children’s books out.

So yes, so I’ll probably come cuz I always come to support Molly, so I will see you there.

Stephen: Nice. I’ll look her up and maybe I’ll get her on the podcast. That’d be great. Oh yeah, she’ll love that. Yes. All right, so Abby, I wanna talk some other stuff, but before we do, If someone came up and said, I didn’t know you wrote books, and I saw this one where the Wild Peaches grow, why should I get that book and read it?

What would you tell ’em? Oh, because it’s good.

Abby: Okay. , that’s all I would need to say. It’s so good. I don’t know. People have said it’s a tear jerker. I, and people have said, I think this is true because I write about family in all my books, that it’s, it’s relatable. And I think that’s what’s important when you’re writing a book that people can see themselves in it or see situations that they know about and the people that they know.

So I, I do think that’s true about all my books, but in where Wild Peaches Grows grow I. It shows it even more. It shows the dynamics of two sisters and what they have to deal with and the death of a father, and when they reconcile about all the things that. Have transpired since the last time they’ve seen each other and the reason that they’ve not seen each other.

And every book I write there is an elderly person because I love elderly people. But they’re the ones with the wisdom, right? They have been through life. They know what’s going on, whether they were a cool person or a nerd person during their lifetime. Some people say, oh, you don’t know about my kind of people, young people, or We don’t do things like that.

Oh, they’ve seen everyth. . And so I try to put an old person in there because that’s where the wisdom comes from. And in every story, you have to have a moral or lesson in a book. And that’s usually where it comes from. So I’ve got a feisty old lady in there who don’t take no mess.

and I think that, it’s a book. People have told me it’s a book that after you close it, you sit down and you think about it when you know, after you’re finished reading, you. About the things. And so I like that. I think my first book in the beginning was like that too. It’s a thought provoking book, and I think that’s why you would enjoy where Wild

Stephen: Peaches grow.

Nice. Great. So let me ask you this. Wild Peaches isn’t your first book. You said you’ve written over what, 30, you’ve written 35 or so? Yeah that’s not, a month or two of writing. That’s a couple years. So you’ve. Experience that a lot of authors I talk to don’t. So what are some things you’ve learned from that first book in the beginning to what you’ve written now?

Abby: Oh, I’ve learned so much. Especially how to name your book . I don’t think I’ve ever

Stephen: love that, but I figured I’d let you do it. ,

Abby: yeah, I named that one and I think I named where Wild Peaches grow. And in between that my friend Catherine has named all the books. And maybe Game of Cones. Berkeley came up with that.

Penguin actually came up with that, but I knew better than that. I’ve learned so much about the craft of writing. storyteller Storytelling now. So before I started writing, I was a lawyer, so I knew how to set up an audience and deliver a line or two to them to keep them interested and to get them on my side.

And that’s what you wanna do when you write a book. You want, even if you don’t have, characters that are likable. People always say you have to have likable characters. , you don’t as long as you present them. Just like when I was an attorney, a criminal attorney I had defendants that may or may not be guilty.

I had to present them well. But I, but things like pacing and flow and things like that, I had to learn. And a lot of times, so now I help people write and a lot of times I think that’s what people have a problem with. It’s pacing and flowing, but mostly it’s how to tell a. So I think that I don’t think that I have a problem with that or with dialogue, but putting the story together to make people not skim through it, like information dumps and things like that.

I think those are the things that I learned how to keep the story moving forward and that’s so important. And so something that I from teaching, I see a lot of people are unable to do as they move that story. To move their story forward and then they get stuck, so I have little secrets that I tell ’em.

It’s not secrets cuz I tell everybody how not to get stuck, how to get started, how to write a book in a month, and you

Stephen: can do it. Nice. Yeah. And I like the part you said about moving story forward, cuz that’s a skill you definitely have to learn. Most writers have read their whole lives or they read heavily and it’s so easy.

It’s like a magic trick. It’s oh that looked easy. I could do that. And then you really can’t, just cuz you can read a book doesn’t mean you can. , but you can learn the skill. It’s something you can get more of and get better at. And that part of moving things forward and being not kill your darlings, not so close to every little word you write.

And being able to pull things out and move things or change things to make, because it’s the story that matters, not that you wrote the story. I think that’s the concept. I’ve learned myself a bit, still learning I should. .

Abby: Yeah, I’m still learning too. I would whatev, whenever I start a class out, that’s one of the first, I always do a power reporting presentation.

That’s one of the first slides that I have is writing is hard. Writing is hard. It’s just that, people always come in and tell, come to me and say I wanna write a book. People tell, always tell me, when I tell ’em about something, about myself or whatever, that I should write a book.

And I tell him, writing his heart, it’s just not you. Doing Open right. Sitting down. Although I tell people, just sit down and start writing your thoughts. But there is so much more to the craft. And when I first started and I wrote in the beginning and people were telling me what was wrong with it, I thought, who knew?

There were rules to writing. I just thought you could sit down and do it. But there are rules to writing that you have to stick to. I have people that come to me. . I’m not sticking to the rules. I’m gonna come up with something new that’s never been done. That won’t happen cuz there’s nothing new under the Sun Bible said it very well.

They’re even rewriting Shakespeare and rewriting Jane Austin. It’s just the spin that you give on it, but there’s no subject or idea you can come up with that someone else hasn’t already written a book.

Stephen: And even, JK Rowling, she wrote about wizards. She wrote about magic.

She wrote about a school of magic. She wasn’t the first one. It just really clicked with people and was done in a way that people really enjoyed and could relate to. She had a hook. Yeah. That’s what you have to do. Gotta have a hook. Definitely. And cozy mysteries, you’re not the only cozy mystery writer out there, but there are people out there that will read a certain cozy mystery and go, yeah, I really don’t care for this.

But then read yours and go, yeah, I get it. This clicks. Every author,

Abby: that’s exactly what happens all the time. Yep. There, read my book and go, yeah,

Stephen: wonderful . Every author gets that, great. You don’t like my books. Go find one you like. And somebody else does like it. And I think other authors need to remember that sometimes it’s hard.

It’s very hard.

Abby: Yes, it’s very hard. You just have to take your time and, follow the rules and and finish your.

Stephen: So you do teaching also, and that’s another interesting aspect because you write cozy mysteries mostly in your genre, but people taking your class don’t necessarily have to write cozy mysteries.

How do you handle people that are wondering what to do in a certain genre that you don’t write in? How do you handle that?

Abby: It’s true. I, most places I go, people don’t even know what cozy mysteries. But basically there is a narrative arc that all books have to follow. So that’s what I teach.

You have to be able to create characters. And characters are universal. They’re in every genre and you have to make them authentic and believable. And no matter what you’re writing there’s a technique to that. You have to have authentic dialogue. So there’s an art to that. I teach that. I teach about the narrative arc, so where.

Do certain things in the book, where the exposition and then the climax of the book, and then the falling action and resolution. Those are all things. that are necessary. The story question I teach about, when you write a book, you should have a question. Each genre may have a different question that you have to answer by the end of the book but it still has to have a story question.

For example, my book I write murder mysteries. So the question is will the killer get. . So you answer that, yes or no? Of course you’re gonna say yes cuz you don’t want a cliffhanger. But yes, the killer gets caught at the end of the book. So the entire time I write the book, I have to be moving toward that ending that I decide to answer my story question.

If it’s a thriller, will, will the government of the F be able to thwart the president’s murder? If they’re. Shoot the president or whatever they’re trying to do some governmental agency, try to blow it up or whatever. Then if you say yes, they will thwart that, activity.

Your entire book has to be moving toward that question. So that’s for, that’s universal. That’s in every book that you have to answer your Your story question. So that’s what I teach, like the bones of the questions, how to write your story in scenes and whatever you feel you’re seen up with then that’s what makes it different from everyone else.

But underneath the foundation, it’s just like a house. , you got a foundation on a house, your house may look different when you get through cuz you painted it or you put, an attached garage instead of a detached garage. But it’s all the same with the foundation, right?

Stephen: Oh absolutely. And I think that’s important for authors to realize and I think that’s what makes everyone’s voice so unique.

Cuz we are all using the same building blocks, same structures with that. Yeah. All right. So Abby before we go, it’s been really great talking to you again. I’m sure we’ll run into each other. Yes. But do you have any other last minute advice for authors?

Abby: Finish your book, . That is so important to finish your book.

You should know before you sit down to write it. You should know what you’re ending. because I tell everyone, it’s just like the g p s, on, on your phone or in your car. If you’re trying to get somewhere, you can’t get there if you don’t put in your destination, right? So finish your book, know your ending.

That’s always my advice because you can fix it later, if it’s not quite what you want, but you can’t fix something that doesn’t exist that isn’t. So that’s always my advice.

Stephen: Nice. Great. All right. Abby, thank you for taking the time, talking to us about your book and I hope we run into each other sometime this summer or next event somewhere.

Oh,

Abby: I’m certain we will. Thank you so much for having me. I really have fun and I appreciate it. Thank you.

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OverviewREADERS: DC Gomez is a bestselling author, so there’s a lot to discuss. She tells us about her latest book series – the Intern Diaries – and we talk about her other top books. If you’d like to see her, she has many upcoming events displayed on her website.

WRITERS: For the writers, we talk about choosing the write as a hobby or career. You don’t have to be a full time writer or you fail. She brings a unique perspective because she has been a bestselling author.

Bookhttps://www.amazon.com/Plague-Unleashed-Intern-Diaries-Gomez/dp/1733316094?crid=3DFMTMGQDLM6D&keywords=plaque+unleashed+dc+gomez&qid=1679432864&sprefix=plaque+unleashed+dc+gomez%2Caps%2C92&sr=8-1&linkCode=li2&tag=discoveredwordsmiths-20&linkId=6305694975210050e0deca8f945c93e3&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_ilFavoriteshttps://www.amazon.com/Keeper-Lost-Cities-Shannon-Messenger-ebook/dp/B005C776A8?crid=2Q2T0SDL32CZB&keywords=keepers+of+the+lost+cities&qid=1679442316&s=digital-text&sprefix=keepers+of+the+lost+cities%2Cdigital-text%2C119&sr=1-1&linkCode=li2&tag=discoveredwordsmiths-20&linkId=3e32056f586efcd8da35489e3e7f3ebb&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_ilhttps://www.amazon.com/Alchemist-Paulo-Coelho-ebook/dp/B00U6SFUSS?crid=2HDI99DS1AGZN&keywords=the+alchemist&qid=1679442411&s=digital-text&sprefix=the+alchemist%2Cdigital-text%2C101&sr=1-1&linkCode=li2&tag=discoveredwordsmiths-20&linkId=d436eb6589f3897d1d100e294e78dc7b&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_ilWebsitehttps://dcgomez-author.com

YouTubehttps://youtu.be/n0cLx3bUlxkTranscriptSo this morning I have as a guest, a wonderful wall of books and their owner DC Gomez. So DC Good morning. How are you?

DC: Good morning, darling. I’m wonderful. How are you doing today?

Stephen: I am doing great. And it’s not actually morning for you, is it?

DC: No, it’s still very morning. I’m actually in East Texas.

Stephen: Yes. Ok. Okay. Okay. I had you in the wrong spot in my head. Why don’t we do that? Tell everybody a little bit about you, some things you like to do besides writing where you live and whatever. I am

DC: a USA Today bestselling author. I’m an award-winning author, which is fun.

I’m also a podcaster, so I’m so excited to be here. She’s connecting cuz it’s hard to be on the other side of the microphone. I was like, oh, what am I doing? This doesn’t happen often. I am in east Texas. So for everybody who’s wondering, the weather yesterday was 32. Today’s supposed to be 80. So living the Texas dream, what can I say?

It sounds like Ohio. . Thank you. It’s this weather that goes up and down. You’re going? I think I’m good. I think I’m good. We’ll take it from there. So I do multiple genres, which is interesting for most people because I go from urban fantasy to lit to straight children’s books and devotional.

So I do a little bit of everyth. And one of the things that I enjoy to do, I’m a reader, obviously, in the background, so I’m a huge avid reader, but I also enjoyed when I have free time. So today, this Sunday, as soon as we’re done, I’m gonna go food shopping so I can cook. So that’s kinda nice, some things that I do.

Stephen: Nice. Okay. Now I gotta jump on something real quick that you brought up. You write in mul multiple genres and just about everybody’s advice is don’t do that. Stick with one genre, do different pen names, but you have done it. And not only that, you’ve been on a USA bestseller list, so let’s even before we even talk about everything else, Why did you choose to do that and do you find all the different genres about as successful or is there one you’re more focused on?

DC: One of the things that I can be honest with myself and the world is I probably don’t have the bandwidth to handle multiple pens. I just the nature of what it is, I just don’t. I will look to be able to, I think I was multi managing multiple Facebook page and became very real that I was like, I couldn’t do this for multiple pendings.

Like I could not handle the switching back and forth. So it became very obvious to me that I needed to make a decision. So why do people want you to have only one pen name? Let’s be honest. It’s easier to market. Your readers can stay. If you pick urban fantasy, this is what you’re gonna do. And then everybody can jump in the urban fantasy bandwagon, it’s kinda easy.

The difference comes in when you have multiple genres is you stop branding to a genre, but you do to a brand. So what people can expect from DC, and this is what I tell ’em, is you’re gonna get tons of quirky characters. You don’t like quirky characters. I am not your girl cuz this is what you’re gonna get.

You’re gonna get tons of action, you’re gonna get some shenanigans and ventures, and one of the things you’re probably gonna get is faith to black. So you’re not gonna get a lot of exclusive sex from me. You’re not gonna get tons of horrible languages not because I don’t use them, but because that’s just not the brand.

Since I do write children’s books, the topics tend to vary. So you will know what a Charlie book is, my children’s series compared to a cat lady book. So it goes from there. But the brand is very much, it’s gonna be, humor is gonna be full of action’s, gonna have quirky charact. And somewhere underneath is gonna have the message.

So that’s kind what I focus on, just because switching from brand genre to genre just became something I couldn’t handle it. I have friends that have multiple, and I’m like, whew, you’re my hero. I can’t .

Stephen: I I love that and I think I’m going to have to Ruminate on that for a while myself, because I have, when I first started, especially, I pushed back and basically, oh, you’re a newbie, so nobody wants to listen to you.

But I was like, but that’s not how I read. I said, I’ve got I read the Suki Stack House, which are the romance paranormal stuff, which guys usually don’t read. I love them. But I turned around then and went and Ra read Dean Koontz and I read I. Yo young adult books when they are interesting.

So I I have Asamov, I got done Reading Foundation and went right into something completely different. So I’ve always been like, but that’s how I read that. So it doesn’t make sense that I should only write , and people are like, oh no. Write just one genre. That’s all you do. . I’m like, but other people do it well, yeah, but that’s Stephen King and he’s his own brand.

I think that’s really it. You said characters, so people like your writing and your characters. The genre is not as important. They like what? The way you write and I think sometimes. There are lots of readers, there are lots of authors that do that across multiple genres. So think what, every time I get some advice, I always think that’s good advice, but it may not be always true.

Stay true to yourself if it doesn’t feel right. Then stay true to what feels right for you, and that seems to have guided me better than just following advice. .

DC: That’s probably the best way, is be authentic to you and what feels right, because you can canvas everybody and everybody’s gonna give you million advice.

If it doesn’t make sense to you, it’s not gonna work. You’re not gonna make it work, it’s not going to feel right. You’re gonna be fighting yourself a lot, right? One of the things that you have to be aware is if you’re going to go brand and mixing your genres, it’s gonna take longer. So whatever is, be very aware what success means to you.

Because achieving it, it’ll take a lot longer because yes, people are going to have to get used to you switching gears and they’re gonna have to get used to it. But readers will follow and I think along with that though, cuz I write middle grade I think if there’s any demographic of readers, middle grade, don’t care about genres so much as they do what they like and they read the ones that read tons and yes if they read Percy Jackson and Love Jackson Rodin comes out with something else, they’re like, oh, Rick Rodin has a book and it’s the author and the brand at that point.

Stephen: And I think maybe that’s it. A lot of the advice you get is adult writing adult books. I don’t think that applies most of the time in the middle grade realm, and I think that’s something I have to always keep in mind. , for any middle grade writers and readers? I

DC: think for writers as a whole, one of the things we have to be very much aware is that it is easier to become successful if you stick to a very niche.

That’s just the nature of what it is. People can find you. You can target that entire demographic faster. That’s not how you write. You’re just making yourself hate what you do. And this is supposed to be fun and enjoyable. So if it doesn’t fit, I’ll say don’t do it. Find something that resonates with you and makes you feel happy

Stephen: inside.

Yeah I agree. I think I’ve come to terms with, I, if I was on my deathbed, I think I’d regret more. Not writing all the things I wanna write, then I would, oh, I should have written one genre. I so I go, that works for me. So before we go off too far in a tangent, cuz we could probably go on for this forever, we wanna focus on your book a little bit.

It is, the new one is Plague Unleashed. So tell us a little bit about that and tell us about touch. Your other books a bit, cuz now I’m interested in all the genres you got.

DC: I think I need to probably do some clarifications. We’re definitely promoting play cuz it has a new branding, it has a new cover.

The whole So plague is book two and the Intern Diaries. So the intern diaries is five novels, three novels. And it’s based on the four Horse Mental APOs and Plague is probably one of my favorite ones because it’s just straight, wild. There’s zombies running around in Texarkana, so for anybody who’s been in East Texas, we’re like itty bitty town in the middle of nowhere, but everybody crosses us.

It’s fun. And you had typical, cuz I wanted, this is obviously before the pandemic, so you’re looking at 18 time. And the question one is, what if God forbid, Pessin had, and we’re talking horsemans, of course, a plague that won lose that didn’t meant to happen and is turning people into zombies, right?

So this is a question that I wanted to play with the intern Diaries is one Horsemans that’s introduced in one Supernatural Bean at a time. So by the time you get to Book five is Oh hell breaks loose. With plague. It was you got isis, ISIS is death’s new intern and death has a rule. You can’t kill people.

So if all the horsemens, you’ll find out the only one not killing humanity’s death. Imagine that. So ISIS is been tasked with figuring out what happened with humans. Don’t kill them because if you kill them, the, their souls are lost and death is gonna get mad. And when you do it, you better hurry up because 20,000 people are coming into Texana.

She’s no pressure whatsoever. None. So you have ISIS running around town with her guardian who happens to be a 5,000 year old talking cat. A boy. Genius is going through that 1112 age of Angst because nobody understands them, so he’s angry. You have an entire community trying to figure it out.

People just keep appearing walking around and trying to eat each other, and ISIS is trying to knock them out and put them somewhere until they can find a cure. Does not wanna help. I said, we talk quirky. There’s tons of quirk, there’s tons of madness, and all these people are just running around going, what is going on?

So yes. Nice.

Stephen: Super fun. And you said quirky characters, which, that’s always intriguing to me. That’s some of my favorite type of reading. When we, that I also find it interesting you’ve got, The Christian based four men of the apocalypse, or four writers of the apocalypse, but you mix in ISIS from Egypt, mythology and combine a little bit there.

So

DC: ISIS is her, she’s actually a 24 year old. Form. And her parents did name her after goddess of the apocalypse, the goddess of Egyptian. So you do get a little bit of that. If you read Constantine’s story origin, you find out that he is from Egypt. So there is this whole Egyptian mythology touch in there that you tend to be like what is going on?

And I think the reality when it comes to us in our. We’re influenced by everything. know? So sticking to one genre tends to kind of, oh, one theme puts you very much into a small box. When you let yourselves just play with everything you know, you’d be surprised how much more fun you have.

So with this story is politic, a little bit of Egyptian, a little bit of Roman Catholicism, since we’re playing with a lot of that put Christianity in there, put all these little pieces, and you tend to find humanity. And I think that’s the beautiful thing about. We’re all a mixture of everything, so when you put it in a book, you going.

God, this is going to turn interesting and bad. Cause I’m also sending this in the Bible belt. So it’s like you have zombies in the Bible Belt. .

Stephen: I must say now I’m a little upset with you because that to read list that I told you about that I have, there’s now five more books that are getting added to that.

So thank you much for adding to my time. I love that. So if someone. A lot of times people are like what ki what’s it like? Is there another book or author that you would say you are writing or your books? These books are similar to

DC: if you like, urban fantasy, cuz this is a catch with it.

You have to enjoy the madness that comes with it. It is first person, so I have to give people that disclaimer. If you don’t like first person books, ISIS’s story is gonna drive you insane because it’s in her head and through her eyes. So if you enjoy temperature, the dressed in files is what you’re gonna get.

Or if you. Kim Harrison, the Halls, because it’s straight urban fantasy, it is definitely appropriate for a young adult just because the language unlike Kimson, and Jim doesn’t have a lot of the whole sexual it’s not meant to be that adult base. It does faith to black if she ever, I don’t think ISIS having kisses anybody in this series and put it in this perspective.

So you do have a series that. Applicable for anybody in like high school all the way up and up, but is very much madness and shenanigans all through it. Come on, you got a talking cat. How much more can you have? Who had more money than God? So Constantine is just ugh, attitude to the core.

You have ISIS who’s just trying to figure it out. What did I sign up for? So this is book two and it’s eight months after she signed up being a death intern. And at this point in time is when she finally realize. The horseman are real. She has no clue. Like for the longest time, Constantine’s like, girl, please, what don’t you go to church?

She’s what is that supposed to mean? You know that book relations, the horseman’s don’t, girl, don’t you read? And that attitude that comes with him, he’s oh my God. And she’s is this the apocalypse? He’s oh God, no. No. Nice. So when you’re introducing these things that we hear a lot.

and honestly put a person in there who has no clue. You just have a blast. You go crazy.

Stephen: It’s so much fun. Nice. Cool. Alright, so what type of feedback are you getting? Cuz you said this is book two, so some people have read book when I’m assuming book two. What type of feedback are what? What’s people saying?

DC: Here’s DuPont. I thought it was amazing. When I have people go in, they love Constantine. I was like, he’s such an angry little cat. It is one of those series that I think to some extent, like many of us, it’s very kind of cult bubbling. You’re either gonna love it or you’re gonna be like, There is too much pop culture references in this book.

There is too much shenanigans, so the readers might reader us truly enjoy the series. And so when we wrapped up the series, I had a lot of people like, I’m gonna miss them. So we all fell into this bubble of oh my God, what are we gonna do now? So the. World has become Reaper’s world. So it’s a whole universe that has every other size story kind.

One of the things that I did, you were talking about writing in genres. My urban fantasy all takes place in the same universe primarily. Cuz I didn’t wanna have to develop a whole magical system for every single story. I was like, no, my mind cannot process that much. He was like, how about we just stick you?

So all the urban Fanta all stays place, not to mention. Then I get to play with my characters. I get to have ISIS popping up somewhere. I get to have art show up, Constantine, get rules, the universe so he can send messages to everybody. So my linchpin in this universe is Constantine. He’s been around for 5,000 years.

So he knows everyone and everyone knows him. So anytime you wanna make a connection to all the books, just bring up Constantine. They’re like, oh, that, oh yeah, Constantine, that cat. So it’s super.

Stephen: So every time you’re talking, you’re telling me about this cat and all it. I keep picturing Alison Wonderlands, Cheshire or Cat with that attitude.

I just picture him in my head with what you’re telling me.

DC: A little bit more evil . Okay. And a lot more serious .

Stephen: Got it. Okay. I that’s good. That’s good. But if people are re if they’re focused on that character and that sticks with. You couldn’t ask for anything more because they they wanna see what happens.

DC: It’s one of those things that happened by accidents. So I have a reader’s man that is free. So the origins of Constantine for anybody’s looking to see what does she write? It’s a free novella. You can pick it up anywhere. And I honestly asked one of my first beta readers, I was like, Hey, I need to do a free magnet.

What should I do? And he’s you’re Constantine. And I’m like, the cat you what? Like we gonna talk about the cat. He’s yes, do the cat. I. . Okay. So I had to go back and sit, like seriously, go back and go in. I know you’re 5,000 years old. Where are you in history? Where do I put you? So Constantine goes back to the very first empire in Egypt.

So we going to Memphis all the way. And then because I have this obsession with Egyptian mythology, so who do we have to introduce? Bud ABIs. Cause he is like my favorite. So you get to find out who death is. According to the series, you get to meet a very cranky. Who hates what he does and this really bubble of fur that happens to be Constantine.

Cuz everybody’s was he a prince? Was he a man? I was like, no, he’s always been a cat. Like he’s always been a cat. He just happens to have to be a cat now with a lot of money and a lot of power. So there’s a difference. But Constantine has always been a cat. When I wrote it, I tell my brothers like, this is an underdog story.

He’s for about two pages . That was about it. Yeah. And that I love that. I haven’t written as much as you have, but I love discovering that when your characters like grow on their own and suddenly you’re like, okay, I gotta go change my outline. I gotta change the dialogue at the beginning cuz it doesn’t fit the real character that’s emerging.

Stephen: And that’s one of the great Lego fun parts of writing, okay.

DC: Yes, absolutely. And Constantine did that. I think that story, I had a whole outline of what I wanted and midway through it went sideways and I’m like, this is not what I’m writing. This is. What is going on? And I’m sending messages to my editor like, this cat hates me, like this, hate, I dunno what to do.

So I literally wrote this as I kept rewriting this outline cuz it was not working. I was like, Constantine is one way. And I thought it had some other way and it’s just we’re just gonna go with it.

Stephen: Yeah, and that’s exactly what we were talking about earlier. Just go with what feels right. Go with your gut.

I love that. So if you had a choice this series of books, would you rather turn it into movies or a TV show? That’s

DC: such a hard question, and I keep going back and forth. Which one would I prefer? I will love to see a series because you can go in so much depth with these characters. You can truly bring their personality to life at the same time.

A movie would be fun because there’s five books. You can do a five bam, knock it out. But a series will give you a whole bunch of depth and you can play with all of them. You can explore. All these different craziness that goes behind the scenes and normally you wouldn’t have enough time to do in

Stephen: a movie.

And I love asking that question because things are so different than they used to be with movies and tv. A lot of times the people read the books would say, I’m not even gonna bother with the movie because it’s not gonna be good. , but that’s not always true anymore. They’re starting to understand if you really capture the essence and of the book and even get the author involved before it was always like, okay, we paid you go away.

We’ll do whatever we want. And then it flops and they’re like we don’t know why it did, and that’s not the case anymore. But then the TV shows have evolved instead of oh, we have to do a TV show that’s 24 episodes from September to May. It’s eh, we can do eight episodes and schedule it and put it out at the ideal time for.

And really delve into the characters. And really, so it’s such an interesting question. In today’s world, 20 years ago, it would’ve been completely different.

DC: Absolutely. It changes the way we

Stephen: see everything. Yeah. I love it. And it, it allows the choice of what would work best. It, what would do, would it work best as a two hour or three hour movie now and get all that action and all that.

Or is it best as these characters that build up and we grow over time? Stranger. Would not have been successful as a movie in the theater, probably would’ve flopped big time as my opinion. So yeah, I love the answer. I love talking about that with all the authors. Do you have a website that people can go to and check out all your information?

I

DC: do. You can check out dc goman author.com. I’m not very creative of my name, so I’m like, listen, it’s hard enough to find me. Let’s just stick to that. DC Gomez author seems to work

Stephen: as a web guy. You don’t wanna be creative with your web name. I do your main name. Nobody will find you and it’s pointless.

They wanna be able to find you. So stick with this basic as you, you can still get as long as no one else has your name, . So this is it. What are you working on for your next book?

DC: Right now I have two different books that I’m playing with. Trying to decide which one is gonna come first. I’m working on a trilogy, so the last book in the trilogy is getting ready to Come out, which is the order of the assassin series.

It’s a spinoff of the intern, so one of our characters, cup Inia, which turn assassin now up is to figured out trying to clean up who actually betrayed the odor. So he moves to Salem. So I signed notice, I promised my mother I was gonna do a book in Salem. Lo and behold, there has to be a book in Salem.

So this is it. So I’m trying to figure out do I join, jump into book three deployed and actually bring it all together. I go into Cat Ladies, I dunno. I have options and I’m kinda, I’m doing an exploratory year figuring it out, what’s next for me. So

Stephen: yes. Nice. Funny you say that I seem to keep coming around the Salem cause I wrote a short story for my kids that involved Salem Witches.

In modern day. And then about a year after that, I went with a group of authors to Salem and we wrote a group of short stories that we released as an anthology. So I got to visit all the places that I had only seen on Google Maps from my original story. And then I found, and you may even be part of this, there’s a gathering of which authors coming up in Salem this year and next year.

They already have it planned for next year. It’s 55 authors and stuff. I’m like, okay, I guess I need to go back to Salem just to meet all these authors and see what’s up with that. So it just keeps coming back. It seems

DC: It’s such a fun town. I recommend it. I love it. So yes it’s very much a okay, who are some of your favorite books and authors that you like to read? .

That’s such a hard one. Can you tell them I addicted?

Stephen: I was laughing thinking of that. Yeah.

DC: I am definitely in love with urban fantasy. So Kim Harrison, when it comes to Urban Fantas is one of my tops. You talk about Charlene Harris, I love her stuff as well, but I also read a lot of middle school as well as young adults.

So things that I’m waiting for patiently saying loosely, is the last book in the keepers of the Last City. So it’s a middle grade series. I’m in love with this. I’m just wanting, let’s wrap it out. Like I don’t have enough patience to wait. And I also love Rick Gordon and I like Rick Gordon insets, like I love the books that he’s pushing out.

Yeah, I love a lot of this stuff and I’m a huge fan of a lot of my indie friends who have amazing books. So favorite books is usually one of my reading now. Cause other than that, I’m like, there’s

Stephen: so many so what’s the one book you’ve read two or three times in your life? Gone back to.

DC: Probably the Alchemist, believe it or not, this is probably the book that has changed the way I see and the idea of dreams coming true.

And that is a very short book. It’s over 20 years old. It still has that touches my soul every time I read it. And probably You still there with me?

Stephen: No. Oh. You there? I’m

DC: here. Are you? Hello, are you there? I can see you.

Can you see me? Hello? Hello? Can you see me? Steven? Can you see me? Hello? Oh. Hello?

No.

Stephen: Go have it. Yeah, we were froze. So sorry. You were talking about the Alchemist and how much you liked it. I think we caught most of that. Awesome for that. So if not maybe when we meet sometime. I will say though, I love what you said about magic. because I noticed we one of those things that things happen in your books that you don’t think about and plan, I realized a lot of my stories are essentially showing kids there’s magic in the world and there’s magic all around you and you can bring out the magic.

That kind of is the overall theme of everything I’ve been writing without thinking about it. I love what you said about magic, that’s great. In your town, do you have a favorite bookstore that you like to go? I

DC: have a very small town, which is hard. So basically you can either go to Books a million or you can go to the library.

So I tend to spend a lot of time at Books A Million, which is fun, to the point that I think the people know me by name. So this is where I spend my time. Just even when I wanna write or pick up a book, I tend to go to books A Million cuz that’s what we have

Stephen: here. What’s there? Yeah. Okay.

Yeah. All right. We have a little bit of a author discussion, but before we do that, if someone came up to you on your, on the street and said, Hey, I heard you wrote some books I was looking at these new, this new series you got, why should I get your book and read it? What would you tell ’em?

DC: Ideally it will be, comes back to, do you like to be entertained? Do you wanna escape from life for a little bit of while and enjoy some characters that are having a blast trying to figure it out their own lives? Usually I write for people to engage, entertain, and just of get lost in a book.

That’s usually the essence of why I write. So if they enjoy fantasy, you enjoy characters or you enjoy, just to have really fun read, pick up a book, you’re never gonna go wrong with the.

Stephen: Agreed. Agreed. And if it really doesn’t click with you, put it down, go find another one. Give it to somebody that would like it pass it on.

Okay. So before we talk about our discussion, we’re gonna talk about writing as a career versus a hobby and how to choose and whether you should choose and all that. where are some places that you’re going to be over the next couple months? Any visits, anywhere or any conferences?

DC: I have a really packed schedule, so I’m confirming things as we go.

I’m going to be doing, I’m gonna be in Jackson and Florida, Jacksonville, Florida in March for the Facebooks convention. I’m going to be in Savannah in July, which I’m exciting. We’re gonna do Tyler beginning of April. So I have a whole bunch of events that we’re literally locking into. To make sure we get them all in.

So it’s exciting. It should

Stephen: be a really funny year. And you’ve got a calendar, I think, on your website, correct? Yes.

DC: That’s the one thing that’s getting updated this week now that we’re confirming a locking an

Stephen: event. Yes. Great. Okay, so you brought up the topic of writers choosing to write as a career or as a hobby, which I think is a good topic because you have been on u s a bestselling list, so you’re a bigger writer than most of the people I talk to, and I think that’s wonderful.

Where does that choosing come in? Where can you say, I wanna be full-time? If you’re just starting what advice do you have? What thoughts do you have on that?

DC: One of the biggest things I think people have to realize is it is okay not to be a full-time author. It is okay not to make this a business.

because if you decided to make it a business, you have to treat it like a business, good, bad, or indifferent, and it’s really hard because as creative, when I think of writing, think about it in three parts. You have the arts, which where the stories come into play, you have the craft making this into a book, and then you have the business of where it comes into selling it and be able to be remarkable.

And thinking about promotions and thinking about reaching your audience, a lot of the times that we see is we have a lot of. . We’re trying to figure out, do I do this? Do I not do this? And we’re putting in hobby money and expecting business results. So one of the things I, one of my TikTok partners says that the best.

I was like, never thought about it that way. And one of the things that is really hard, and she, Jamie Dolphin, who’s an amazing author, says, and a lot of the times we turn into writing because we love it. It is our passion and escape. Then we turn into money, we monetize. , then we find ourselves burning out because we have nothing to escape or every day cause the things that we were doing for fun and we’re doing it for work.

So it is being very honest with ourselves and saying, what is your definition of success? Would you be happy with five, 10 people reading your book if you won more than that? What are you willing to do for it? Are you willing to mark it? Are you willing to learn? Are you willing to take classes? Are you gonna do ads?

What are you going to do to get you to be. Not saying competitive, cuz I don’t think authors compete while there is 8 million books out there. So you’re competing for eyeballs. You can make a really good community. You can have a really solid tribe, both of authors and readers who love your books. without feeling that competitor, without feeling salesy.

I think that’s the issue. A lot of authors feel like, I don’t wanna think of this as a business because I don’t feel like I’m selling. I don’t wanna be that used card salesman. You don’t have to do that, but you do have to decide. Business is a business, are you going to be trying to be marketable?

Which means you have to think about sales. You have to think. , is your website up today? Is your Amazon page, are you gonna go wide? Are you gonna go Kindle Unlimited? There’s a lot of those discussions that you have to be able to do. And here’s the part that is hard for a lot of people. I do a lot of coaching from sparring authors, is writing is a very selfish kind of profession.

Nobody can do it with you is literally just you sitting in front of a. Here’s the problem. Most people don’t take vitamin seriously, so most of your family is I can’t go out cuz I’m gonna ride. They’re like, what do you mean you can’t go out? What are you doing? Or even more I need five hours to work.

You’re home. Why can’t you do the laundry? Why can’t you clean? Why didn’t you cook? Why you not taking care of the kids somehow? This is the only profession that we have that people downplayed. I was like, you’d be OK if I went to McDonald’s for 10. But I can’t sit here, write for 10 hours. Were you home?

Why didn’t you do these things? I’m like, but you think these ads are gonna happen magically,

Stephen: or with that it’s like you spent, last year you wrote a book and put it out and we’re not living in a million dollar home. So it obviously isn’t worth it. And I always think, but wait a minute, I know people that go to a job year after year, and they struggle to keep up with bills.

what’s the difference? At least this is an enjoyable, and I think people also, like you said, if you have a good career and job, you can do this as a side thing. And it doesn’t have to be a full-time, a hundred thousand dollars a year to be a successful career and make you happy. I got a friend that a couple years ago, changed careers to drive truck and so he leaves usually Sunday afternoon and comes back Friday.

and he has every evening with three or four hours, he just sits in his truck watching tv. And I think, dude, if you would write for one of those hours, you would get a book every couple months done. Because you have five days a week, nobody bugging you and you have to be off the road. You can’t be doing something else.

Yep. It’s just, I think, again, like we said earlier, people hear the advice and or they feel like they gotta be a full-time author, they have to make a hundred thousand or they, but think about it, if you just sold one or two books a month and you had enough money to pay for scripter to pay for the advertising, now it’s a fun hobby and.

Enjoy your life with doing it. And sometimes it is more fun than other stuff. , it’s one of

DC: those things, it’s a lot of the getting the pressure of ourselves and giving ourselves grace to be in this space and to know, okay, what are you willing to do? Like, why is it a business for me and not somebody else?

A lot of it’s probably, cuz my mind works a little different I’m very much into, I like having the swags that goes with it. I like having the book box that goes with it. I’m now open up an Etsy. So I have an Etsy shop that you can buy a merchandise for that you have. Nice. That’s something that I enjoy the control, I enjoy the disability.

I enjoy running a small business, but I also realize my time is very limited. So a lot of the people in my life, I’m going, when do we see you? I was like, Oh, be this event. Do you wanna come and visit? They’re like, no, it was, we’ll have

Stephen: dinner . Be careful with that. Cause I invited my cousin mentioned, Hey, I’m gonna be at the library at this author event.

You guys all stop in. They took it to mean he needs support, so let’s go and hang out with him for three hours and sit there. And I wanted to talk to the other authors and and they like monopolize my time. Which I was happy, they were so willing to support me, but it was like, great, you’re here.

You, you made me feel good. You bought a book so I could sign it. Great. Go away . I’ll you later.

DC: There’s them.

Stephen: I also work a lot with kids, and this falls along that lines. I think we need to do a little more storytelling in school, having kids learn it more. Practice it more because writing can be a.

Career, a side hustle something they can do their whole lives and be happy about it. There’s a lot of people that have a 40 year career as a lawyer, and then you, they say, oh yeah I’ve published eight books also. What it’s because it’s a fun hobby. It allows me to relax and enjoy the fantasy or whatever it is.

And so I think kids need to realize that they can do this right from the start, from an early. because honestly the best way to learn to write is to write more and be honest about your writing.

DC: It’s one of the things that gives them a creative outlet that is very healthy, that is very balanced, and then they can express themselves.

A lot of the things that comes with middle grade as well as sand adult books is it comes with so much energy and they have so many emotions and so much. And we’re better to express it than a kid at that age. And sometimes the hardest part for them is writing the, finding the right words to say everything they want.

But once they find themselves into a book and they start writing is amazing. The things that they can come up with and how well they do it, which I’m always blown

Stephen: away. Yes. Yeah. Kids because they, they haven’t been told you have to do this or you have to do that. And I’ve talked to a few teachers, worked with a few groups of kids and I’m like, look, we’re gonna work on story.

We’re going to write and stuff. I don’t care what you misspell, I don’t care what the grammar is. That’s all stuff we can fix. And that’s stuff you’re gonna be learning in school anyway. What we want now is to worry about your story and making it alive and vibrant and exciting for people to read. And that’s where I like to focus.

Okay. Let me ask you this. What would you say going the other way we’ve talked about it doesn’t have to be a full-time career, it can be a fun hobby. What would you tell people that say I do wanna write, I wanna make it a career. I want to become a USA bestseller. I want to be able to have enough money to quit my job.

What advice and would you tell.

DC: This is the part that they have to make some really important decisions at the beginning is a, do you have a budget? And how much are you willing to expend? You know what I mean? That’s one of the things. I was on a panel last week and one of the authors says, most authors who writing don’t make $4,500 a year.

And I was like, woo, that’s such a scary thought. But are you gonna go traditional? Do you wanna have a publisher take care of everything or you gonna go Indy? And if you go in Indy, you have to realize you gotta pay for everything. So you have to have the money up. So the decisions is, if you’re trying to make it a business, is making sure you understand what does that success means?

What are you trying to achieve every year? What is your mark? Are you aiming to have? How many new readers are you working on a newsletter? How are you gonna bring people into your works every single time? And I think that’s the hardest part about it, is. Because we’re living in a world that it doesn’t magically happen.

It’s the interesting part. Back in the days, people fell in love with the books. Then they met the author. Now is the other way around. They wanna get to know you. Are you coming up authentic to them? Are you connecting with them and then are you selling them? There is a whole science to the art of selling that sometimes we take for granted.

So sometimes if you’re trying to make that business decisions, you have to. It’s gonna take you a few years. It’s not gonna happen like every business in this country, but also what is, what does success means to you? You have to know that from the beginning. I hear a lot of people like, I’ll be happy if I sell one book.

I was like, so if I buy you a book, will you be happy? That’s not what I meant. What exactly did you mean? That like you have to be specific in order to achieve these work because it’s not, you’re just aiming at pie dreams. You’re aiming for all these things. You have to be able to say, this is what I want, and work towards that.

Stephen: And be honest with what you want, like you just said. And realistic because, and I think a lot of the new authors still have that fantasy in their head of, oh, if I write a book and get it out there, it’ll be world famous and everyone will love it. And I’ve learned, and I laugh now because I thought this way a little bit.

But you say, so who is your book for? Oh, it’s for every. . All right. You obviously are new because no author that’s been writing for a while ever says it’s for everybody cuz they understand it’s really not. So you need to be realistic about it. And I also tell people that they need to worry more about the fun of writing than worrying about.

Cuz I I’ve seen authors. At these conventions asking panels of authors and stuff, it’s do you recommend we publish on this? Do you say we should advertise with this? And when you talk to them, they’re like, oh yeah, I haven’t even started my book yet. Why are you worried about how you’re gonna publish yet if you haven’t even do you, did you outline it?

Do you know who your characters are? Because that’s way more important right now than what you’re go the publishing. You can actually screw that up several times in different ways and still be successful and figure it out. But you screw the writing up and you’re not, and it doesn’t matter what you do with the publishing.

So that, that’s what I’ve tried to get others to understand and again, My problem is I am not a, oh look, I’ve got 20 books out. I’ve been on the s USA bestselling list. I’ve been on u s A today, whatever. And on Oprah I am not that person. So it’s hard for me to say, this is what you should do and for people to listen.

So I love when , I’m talking to a, an author that is a full-time author and has been on that and is saying the same thing. There you go, folks. Listen to DC.

DC: It becomes a very understanding of who you are and what you want. What we see a lot, and I know I have a lot of my peers who also saying it is sometimes our dreams don’t match the amount of work we wanna put into it because it’s going to take work.

Whether you decided to do a Kickstarter or you’re gonna do a book funnel campaign, whatever you are going to do, it takes work. And it takes having cast skin. Everybody’s not gonna like your books, but here’s the reality. Do we, like every book we read, we don’t. We don’t like every genre we read.

What makes us think that everybody’s going to like it, but it’s also understanding who is our audience. You said it really well. Who do you want to read your books? Who are you targeting for? I know very well that my target audience is usually gonna be females between the age agents of 25 to about 45, who enjoy urban fantasy, who enjoy working characters, can it be broader than that? Absolutely. But usually that’s what you’re looking for. Who does that demographic? Why? Because it’s going to help if you’re going to be running ads, it’s going to help you if you’re going to be marketing at different organizations, but you have to be very comfortable.

Everybody’s not gonna like him, right? , everybody’s not gonna be your tribe. And what is it that success means

Stephen: to you? Yeah, and I think when you, when people are like, oh, but I feel slimy if I advertise and I’m pushing it, and maybe it’s because you haven’t defined who you’re talking to about your book.

Maybe it’s cuz you really do feel like that used car salesman that no matter who comes in, I’m gonna sell ’em this car. And if you feel that way, maybe you need to define, because if you write a picture, and it’s a great picture book for five year olds or seven year olds, whatever.

If you are talking to a five or seven year old, you’re like, oh, look at the bunny. And oh look, he’s got a sad face and you don’t have a problem pushing it and selling it cuz you’re not in that sales mode. You’re talking about the book. , but if you got a 12 year old, you’re going to have to really push it to get a 12 year old to buy a picture book.

And maybe that’s the mindset to think of that if you have the right demographics and the right tribe, you’re not selling it so much as sharing it with them and you’re doing those readers a disservice. If your book is really good and they really would enjoy it, it’s a disservice not to get them to read it and understand.

Different mindset. I think

DC: once you change the way you’re looking at the marketing side or the business side or the process that we have, it changes how you treat it. Because here’s the thing is nobody ever complains with McDonald’s. Put Onion app, right? Nobody ever complains when Hobby Lobby sends you an email about their sales.

Then why? As creators we get upset. It’s oh my God, I can’t send a newsletter saying that I have a sale. I get emails every day from coach. I’m never mad when they tell me to have a person sale. I’m never upset about it. Why? Cause I’m expecting you to sell me things, right? So we change the way. As a writer, people expect you to send them words. We write for a living. Why are we mad when we send a newsletter telling them of our days? So you right, change your mindset, change the way you’re looking at it, and then understand and be very comfortable with, are you willing to do the work. If you’re not, then stay as a hobby and enjoy it.

At the end of the day, I don’t think we should be suffering authors. You should be fun

Stephen: and enjoyable and I would honestly bet if somebody said, oh, I just wanna do this as a hobby. I am going to publish it and put it on Kindle. I’m gonna do this. They’re more interested in making sure the book is fun and they enjoy writing it and all of that.

I bet they would do way more success in sales and all that than somebody that’s only focused on getting done so they can sell it and make money. That relaxed attitude comes through in the book, comes through in the sales that you do and talking to people and all that. It, again, a mindset thing, I believe.

Absolutely.

DC: Totally agree with you. Yes.

Stephen: Alright. So DC I appreciate you taking so much time talking to me today. It’s been great fun. Hopefully maybe I can catch up with you at a con or something somewhere. Sure. Before we go I asked you about what would you tell people to read your book?

What would you, what would be some last minute advice you would give new authors truly

DC: to enjoy the writing process, to understand who they. To be authentic with themselves and to give themselves the grace to learn and be new at this job. And if you treat it as you’re new every day you are gonna learn something.

And every day you’re gonna enjoy

Stephen: it more and more. Nice. Great. Love it. All right. Thank you for being on and talking with us today. And I will let you know when this goes live and we hope to see some more good stuff from you.

DC: Oh, thank you so much. It’s such a pleasure. Thank you. Thank you. Have an amazing day.

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OverviewREADERS: Stephanie lives in Wales and shares her horror novel with us. She talks about reading horror and how she likes the build up to the horrific parts. She has only been publishing for about eight years, but feels her folk horror story Reborn is great horror and is a sequel to The Five Turns to the Wheel.

AUTHORS: We talk about rejection and how authors can deal with it. Everyone deals with rejection, and even authors that have written more than one book get rejected.

Her Bookhttps://www.amazon.com/Reborn-Stephanie-Ellis-ebook/dp/B0BF3QLN17?crid=RI39CDEVUG0D&keywords=stephanie+ellis+reborn&qid=1678646438&sprefix=stephanie+ellis+reborn%2Caps%2C103&sr=8-1&linkCode=li2&tag=discoveredwordsmiths-20&linkId=08578a52740e9fdd2a2a112e8557a321&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_ilFavoriteshttps://www.amazon.com/Sell-Haunted-House-Grady-Hendrix/dp/0593201264?crid=2H323PWGZ5KYQ&keywords=grady+hendrix&qid=1678646971&sprefix=grady+hendrix%2Caps%2C103&sr=8-2&linkCode=li2&tag=discoveredwordsmiths-20&linkId=bc8b39da44d31709d7e7f6f86c3f9e50&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_ilWebsitestephanieellis.org

RolandFind Roland at https://indestructibleauthor.com

Our topics today are:

• Bookshop.org will start selling ebooks, plus start publishing their own new books!
• Despite what ‘they’ keep saying ebooks and Indie books are selling strong
• Indie author Hugh Howey’s Silo (aka Wool) coming to AppleTV+

YouTubehttps://youtu.be/z_a_2-4neAMTranscriptAll right, so today on Discovered Wordsmiths, I want to welcome Stephanie Ellis. Good morning or afternoon, Stephanie.

How are you? I’m fine.

Stephanie: It’s actually good evening now. It’s nearly six o’clock and it’s if I open the curtains, it’d be dark outside and it’s very cold. I think it’s about five degrees

Stephen: and going. Okay. Yeah. So why don’t you tell everybody a little bit about yourself, where you live because of the big time difference and what you like to do besides.

Stephanie: Okay I’m currently living in Rexton in North Wales with my family. We did live in the south of England for about 30 odd years and then came back up to this area because I’ve got family in Shopha just over the border. My husband’s Welsh and we are trying to find a place to, to live after Covid d cuz that made us ch rethink our lives basically.

So we found a place in Rexton, which is gathering a little bit of. On the viewing platforms because of a certain football team which we can hear when they’re at home because they’re 10 minutes that way. So if they’re if it’s their plane at home, open the windows and you can hear everybody.

It’s a lovely part of the world, a lot of countryside around to do a lot of walking. And we can visit elderly parents as well quite easily. So when I’m not writing, I read and I. And I read . But I do walk. I do walk. I like forests. My husband likes hill climbing and mountains. Yes. And I think we’re in the right part of the world to combine the two.

I go to the gym, so I get up from a desk or get up from a chair and put a book down. That’s important. . Yeah, and I try and do some drawing, which I used to do a lot of, but I let that go. But I’ve tried to pick it up again recently and my one ambition is to learn old English. I’ve got a book, I keep starting it.

I get about six chapters. and then something else happens and I leave it for months, then I have to go back to the beginning. I’ve done the same chapters several times now, . Wow,

Stephen: interesting. Wow. There, there’s several things. First of all, I wanna make sure I’m clear when you say football, it’s not American football.

It is the

Stephanie: original British football. The round shape or not? What looks like rugby to us. Your football looks like rugby to us. Rugby shoulder pads, . And Rex, I believe my son was really big in the Crypted community. And I think Rexo has a history of the forest there being a big UFO sighting At one point, I think I, I haven’t years ago, maybe I’m wrong.

Stephen: I

Stephanie: haven’t heard that, but I have joined a local writer’s group and one of the writers there is publishing a book about Rex some and the little quirky tales associated with it. So I will ask him

Stephen: about that. Yeah, that’d be cool. I think that’s it. I could be wrong. My son was much more into it. . Alright.

So why did you wanna write to get started writing and get a book out and all?

Stephanie: Writing was never something that I’d considered growing up. I was of the generation where you were told you had to have a career and you do your A levels, you go to college, you do various things. The creative arts didn’t get a looking, but after having kids, then a bit of a career break, I went back to work, but I got my job as a part-time librarian in a junior school, and then I moved up to senior school and I started to.

What was in the libraries there and I was thinking, I can do this. And when you’re in a secondary school, because that is your 1116 year olds, it can go up to 18. You were getting in the more adult fiction as well. You would introduce them to adult fiction at that level. And I was reading it. I thought, yeah, I’d quite like to have a go at this.

I started to write, It was initially versed as well in my day job as a techn author tech. Three years ago, I would write verse just to poke fun at people quietly, I should say . But on the story side, I found I enjoyed it and I wanted to continue it now, and. When I say I need to read each day, or reading is part of my life, writing has become the same.

I have to keep doing it. I dunno whether you are the same. You have, there’s this urge you haven’t picked up a book and you need to read. Yeah, you haven’t picked up your pen. You need to write.

Stephen: Yeah. Yeah. And I do get the draggy part. It’s ugh, I don’t know if I feel like writing or I don’t whatever.

But then you sit down and suddenly it’s oh, look, I got 1500 words, . It’s just you get so into it. A part like you said, a part of you. I agree. Yeah. I will say that when I, the writing the publishing side, that only happened about eight years ago. I’m 58 now. I’ll be 59 this year. I don’t make any secret of that.

Stephanie: And the lines on my face will give it away. . But I know that a lot of writers out there sometimes think they’re a bit too old or they’ve left it too late to write and to do this sort of thing. And I’m, I just keep mentioning my age cause I’ll say no it’s never too late. Just cuz everybody else’s profile picture looks as though they’re in their twenties or when you get to my age, you look about 10 show your face just

Stephen: right . Yeah. If it makes you feel any better, you go look back at some past episodes. I’ve got all age. I know I had one man who was a lawyer his whole career, and then at 74 he decided to write a book. There’s plenty of people on the podcast that are 50 and above probably even more so than below 50.

So that is good to hear. Yes. And I’ve their numbers . So you’ve only been publishing for eight years, but you’re still. Newish. And what’s your current book that we’re gonna talk about? Tell us what it’s called and a little bit about it. Okay.

Stephanie: It is reborn, it is a folk horror sort slash dark fantasy, and it’s the sequel to the five Turns to the Wheel.

Both of these were published by Bridget Scape Press, and although it is a sequel, I would say I’ve written it in such a way that it is a standalone. So as you read through it you are fed the little bits of information you need to follow the thread of this particular story. Before I talk about reborn itself, I’ll set the scene a little bit because it is very much a world I’ve created.

So it’s a little corner of rural England that I’ve named the. And there are six villages there. You’ve got a village in the center and the other five around them. So it’s like a wheel. And alongside this very rural little area of England, you’ve got a supernatural world called Umbra. It’s under the rule of somebody called Quail who is the son of Mother Nature.

Now, these people in this supernatural world, which I, it is just outta sight, just beyond the value. You can’t quite see them, but they can come into the real world and. For this world to survive, they need the blood sacrifice of the people in the world. And the contract is that if they sacrifice, then the brothers survive and the villages prosper.

So it’s supposed to be a two-way thing. In the five turns of the wheel, you had the main character, Megan, who is also main character reborn, and she was one of the villages who wanted to put a stop to the rituals that happened there. And. She did this, but there’s one bit I’ve forgotten here, . There are three characters in Umbra, Tommy, Betty, and Fiddler, who are the sort of bridge between the worlds.

They come out into the villages and they lead the rituals, and I’ve set them up as a sort of parody of a mama’s troop. The little groups that would go round the villages performing plays over the centuries. And so you’ve got Tommy, who’s the master of ceremonies, you got Fiddler who does the music, and then Betty is the comedic character who dresses up as a woman.

Supposed to be comedic, but mine is a bit of a monster. Anyway, she stops all these rituals, but when she thinks she stopped it all, the mother Nature sends her into Umbra to lessen the cruelty of the people who live there. So she’s put in charge of everybody, but in doing so she’s made a rod for her own back.

She is tormented by Tommy, Betty and Fiddler are there. They don’t want to be there with her doing this. She says cuz Tommy is actually Megan’s real dad. And then who she thought she had destroyed. She’d destroyed the body, but she hadn’t destroyed his spirit. And so he has actually sort of implanted himself inside her mind a bit.

And she is stuck with his voice. She’s stuck in this world with all these creatures that she doesn’t wanna be a part of, cuz of their cruelty and what have they, what they’ve done to her life before. So at the start of reborn, she’s in a. She’s miserable, she’s haunted by this parasite in her mind as you’ve got Tommy, Betty, and Fiddler, who are equally feeling, ugh, because they are weakening.

They haven’t had any blood sacrifices or anything like that. So the story of reborn is Tommy, Betty and Fiddler Sneak out of Umbra. They want to seek their mother’s forgiveness and be allowed to hunt and to have the blood sacrifices against her. They go off to, to find. Megan too. She leaves this world to seek the mother because she’s been told that the mother can free her from Wales’s voice and can restore her husband live.

So she goes off on a quest. It is very much a quest sort of book. And then there was a third thread, and this is a new introduction. The mother had, her husband was the horned god suno, and centuries before he had. Banished cuz he overstepped the mark bit. The mother is in charge here, I will say

So he’d overstep the mark, but he is allowed to return. So it’s his return. So you’ve got three strands. You’ve got Megan on her journey, you’ve got Tommy, Betty, and Fiddler on theirs, and then you’ve got Suno on his and they’re all converging to the one place to face the mother, gain her forgiveness and to be reborn in various.

Whether they achieve that aim, whether Meghan frees herself, whether the three regain their strength, whether the horn God has allowed his position at her side. Again, whether it all starts again, you won’t know unless you read it, but that’s basically the story. But underlying that is a, a. Fourth strand, but it’s about the character Betty, because when I was writing these characters in the five turns of the wheel, I really enjoyed them.

They are monstrous. They’re grotesque, but they’re such great fun. But Betty being this animalistic creature, I wanted to see where he came from. What made him like his, or why did the mother make him like he was? And so you, throughout you find out what his real name. Why his behavior is like, is why he does what he does.

And so basically that’s the story. So it’s very much a quest with some rituals in there. Not as much as five turns, but the rituals at the end of rebirth or whoever achieves it or whoever gets that far.

Stephen: Nice. Okay. So you said it’s a folk horror, it sounds very fantasy ish, like Epic quest but it doesn’t sound like a middle grade or young adult necessarily.

did considering you said you’re a librarian for kids why’d you choose to write in horror genre?

Stephanie: I was a librarian for kids. I like to read very widely, and when I first started writing it was via short stories and flash fiction and that. It tended towards the dark side, and when I found a submission call for a, i, it was a horror anthology, and they wanted them on the theme of potatoes.

And I’ve written a story called Death is Not a Potato, and I sent it in. I thought it was dark. I’d never done a horror story before. And they said, no, it’s not quite what we want. . It was set in the siege of Latin grad and there was death and rats and things, but it wasn’t quite what they wanted. I still like the story by the way.

It’s not been published yet, but she said this was Teresa Darwin at night Watch Press at the time, and she said, send other stories for other calls in future. And I did. And she started publishing them and I found I enjoyed them so much. The horror side is where I write. When I read widely.

I do read horror but I also read a lot of dark fiction as in. Yeah. Classics. But the darker side I I grew up loving Dickens and then I went through a Russian face , and they’re very grim with old classics and so I’ve read all that. I was never one for the lighthearted or the overtly lighthearted I would say.

So it’s always been the horror that’s called to me, though I do try other genres, but with the darkness in. I can’t quite write light stuff. People occasionally say, can you write us a story with a happy ending or hopeful ending? And I’m there and I’m, I like, I just can’t some, something always goes amiss.

And in, in this children’s, in the school libraries, there’s a lot of There was light fiction there, but when I left, I was actually starting a horror shelf. They didn’t really have too much horror in there, so I created a horror section and I was building that up quite nicely with the indie as well, because you find.

A lot of librarians when they get books in for kids, they’ll be sent box of book boxes of books from various people like Scholastic and things, and they’ll buy them and just put them on the shelves. And I thought, no, I love buying books. I want the kids to choose the books themselves. So they tell me what they wanted.

I’d have a look and see what I think is Ginger. That’s the horror. It’s a brilliant website and it has they do young adult. Fiction on there. So I’ll be seeing what was there and what I’d like to read , so that I’d spend the school budget or that was given the library for these books and build it up that way so you got something more personal.

So I would get all thoughts in just because you read. Kids’ fiction, you don’t have to write children’s fiction. I do there’s a lot of really good young adult stuff out there. Not necessarily horror, but more day-to-day realistic stuff. Stuff that where they focus on issues that kids face today.

Whether it’s race or gender or anything. Like that. So there’s a lot of really good writing out there, but I’m, as I say, I’m not your light fiction and I’m not quite a children’s picture book writer. I’d like to have a go, but it would probably be subverted .

Stephen: Got it. I love that though, because you discovered what you write and enjoy writing.

I know a lot of authors think, oh, I read this particular genre, so I should write that, and they fall into the tramp of forcing themselves to do and it doesn’t come out right and it doesn’t feel good. I was lucky enough a local author friend of mine and a couple authors actually I talked to, helped me realize I wasn’t an adult writer.

I wasn’t a thriller writer. I was a kid’s fantasy writer, and once that clicked with me, the writing became so much easier. So I think that’s an important lesson for any authors listening. Sometimes what don’t force your writing. Be honest and write and see what it is. Yeah, sometimes that’s much better.

Stephanie: Yeah, I would say write what you enjoy. And I do remember writing a bit of five turns and it was leading up to the end. And these creatures I created were rampaging around the countryside and destroying everything. And I can remember actually sitting there with a grin on. And I thought it just shows that you’re really enjoying it.

Although I was enjoying it so much that it was going to end in a certain way that I suddenly realized I didn’t want it to, because otherwise there’d be no more five turns books. So I slammed the brakes on, but that was one of the few books a few stories, you just sit there and if you’re smiling as you’re writing, you know that you know it’s working for.

hate, I’d hate to be forcing myself, .

Stephen: Yeah. And you said you’re published through Bridgets Gate Press, which I’ve had several authors on for. Yeah. So is your book available wide that people can get it in? Pretty much all the stores?

Stephanie: It’s on Amazon at the moment. I know Bridgets Gate they’re relatively new press and they’re starting to get their books out into stores, I believe this year.

That’s their reign. They’ve been going for. A year in a bit. I know that books can be got from Barnes and Noble and all sorts of places online, so I’m not sure about the store side of it over there, but there is something they are building up at the moment.

Stephen: But it’s available in the online stores?

Yeah.

Staphanie: Yeah. And it’ll have all the links in the places actually on their website, which is bridgets gate press.com. So if people go there, they’ll find all their books. I would say they, they are a very good press and they’ve been putting out some really good work lately that I’ve enjoyed reading, cause I’ve been formatting some of the

Stephen: books.

nice. Ok. I guess you have a . Nice. Good. That’s always fun. Do you have a website yourself?

Stephanie: I do. It’s stephanie ellis.org. It’s all no spaces in there.

Stephen: Okay. That’s good to know. And the book what is the feedback you’re getting from reader?

Stephanie: They’ve enjoyed it. Most of them have read five turns.

One or two have read it. I looked at one on net galley. I try not to read reviews too much. Occasionally I would’ve a look and there was one who said that they, this, they hadn’t read five turns, but they’d read this one, and they were able to make sense of it and they really enjoyed it. People seem to like the world I’ve created and I like that world I’ve created and I keep expanding it.

So I’m actually gonna, I’m at, I have started a third one. I’ve only done about half the first chapter, but I’m going back there and I’m gonna spread it out a bit more across the country and bringing a few more rituals and have a bit of fun with it.

Nice.

Stephen: Okay, great. And if you were given a choice.

Someone asked you, would you rather turn your books these two particular into a movie or a TV show?

Stephanie: For these, I would love to see them as movies. I think there’s enough in them for you to just sit. And watch on a big screen. I think folk horror is very good on the big screen. Yeah, it is very atmospheric and it can just pull you in.

So yeah movie for mine for those. Anyway, I did put some, do a little collection, short stories set in the same world. They could be a TV series, so I can have

Stephen: both. There you go. Thank you. Either one, right? Yeah. And you mentioned a third book. So what are your plans for your next book? This

Stephanie: one. I would love it to finish it this year.

I dunno whether I would considering everything else I’ve got to do, but we had some snow recently and it was really cold and the ice surrounding it was a skating rink. When you down south in England, you don’t get much snow. Go into Wales and it all comes back. So I’m getting used to the cold weather again.

But I thought I would really like to write a book that’s set in the deep mid-winter, bring in some old Yu traditions. There’s the tradition of Mother’s Night as well at the start. So I’m going to set a story when it’s cold, when it’s Yule, and when the three certain characters come back and.

They just decide to have Christmas their way . How that would be, I don’t, I dunno, what’ll appear I don’t know, let’s just say the snow might not be very white for very long .

Stephen: Okay, got it. I, that’s more of a krampus type Christmas story.

Stephanie: Yeah. Yeah. I just thought it’d be one to have fun with at that time of year.

Stephen: It’s an old tradition that we don’t really do anymore, but people used to tell ghost stories on Christmas Eve. They’d sit around the campfire and tell ghost stories. Yeah. And that was an old tradition. I have a whole stack of Victorian ghost story books set at Christmas time, and it’s just something that people don’t think about.

But I, man, when it just, one day I. Oh my gosh. Dickens Scrooge is a Christmas Carol. It’s a ghost story. It just never clicked in my mind to frame it as a ghost story, even though it absolutely is a ghost story. And I became fascinated with that idea of the ghost story at Christmas, and I think that’s a great thing to do.

Steaphanie: They still do it on the B BBC over here. Or at Christmas they’ll put out a ghost store and it’s usually an Mr. James or something like that. And I like that because it takes you away from all the material or the commercialization of the season and it brings you back. Into that sense of, oh, it’s cold out there, it’s a bit wintry, and it makes you feel, yeah, it is Christmas.

It’s just this strange little link. It just seems and I think they actually have been putting that out on a podcast cuz I ran across one. where every December 24th, it’s a new ghost story, Christmas ghost story. Yeah. You, like you said, Mr. James or some of the other ones that are already out there.

Stephen: It’s not a new story. So yeah, I think that’s cool that they do that. So Stephanie what are some of your favorite books and authors? How

Stephanie: long you got ? My favorite book, I would say my favorite book is Something Wicked This Way comes by Ray Bradbury. Ray Bradbury, his language, it’s poetic, it’s dark, and it is just perfect writing.

He is somebody I would love to have written but I never. So I like his works. I like Shirley Jackson. I’ve got a collection of hers. Of course. It’s very good writer. Grady Hendrix. There’s a horror writer cause he blends in humor. He’s brilliant. I called him a Chilean last. Last year and actually met him and I didn’t know what to say, so it was but he’s brilliant.

He is you he’ll talk and his presentations, he’s wonderful. On the sort of indie scene, there’s a couple of writers I really like POI Hall. He does folk horror. He’s done a western recently. . And then there’s TC Park and she does thrillers and she’s done horror as well. She’s her recent book.

Hummingbird is very good. And I would say people often look down on the indie, indie writers or self-published writers. These two have been published with small press and also I know that Nat TC Parker self-published, but the quality of their writing and the presentation is so if you find a small press, if you find someone self-published, don’t look down on them just because they’re not one of the big five or however many there are these days.

Give them a chance. Yeah. Occasionally you find something that shouldn’t have been published because it’s just someone taking the mickey a little bit. I think I’ve found a reprint of, I think it was a Conan Doyle story or something. I was looking for it for the school library and I didn’t really see who published.

And it came through and it was all double spaced and the font was awful. And then I looked and it was create space back in the day and I thought, I can’t justify that for a formal setting. I’m not in the library anymore. I’m working I’m writing full-time or trying to, so I’m working from home since we moved.

but I am a little bit wary, but I do like to buy and read Indie where I can. Nice. And I’ve got hundreds of books, yeah.

Stephen: Yeah. Who doesn’t? . Have you read the Halloween Tree? Yes.

Steaphanie: I actually bought that in for the school library just before I left. Nice. Good. And I really enjoyed that. And as I say, he’s got a very poet.

Way of speaking. I got dandy lime wine. I brought that about a year ago. I hadn’t read it before. And people kept talking about it. Yeah, and it’s the same in there. It’s the way he uses language. It’s just, I dunno, the imagery, it’s just brilliant.

Stephen: Yeah, I’ve talked about Halloween Tree on my website recommending it because it’s lesser known, but it’s a great book for kids because like you said, one the way he writes in his use of language is different.

So I think that’s good because the kids have to maybe work a little harder to read it and understand it. So it’s not a bad thing. And yeah, there’s,

Stephanie: sorry. I was just gonna say there’s a sort of magical element to it as well. Yes. That feeds.

Stephen: Yeah. And the whole history of Halloween that he weaves into there with this kind of adventure mystery type story yeah, I thought was good.

I, it was something I was trying to push and recommend for other librarians to put into their schools for kids. Yeah. That’s great. I love that. So do you, now that you’ve moved and have so many books, this is important. Have you found a local bookstore that you like to.

Stephanie: At the minute, there’s only Waterstones.

I haven’t found any other little bookshops in Reham. If anyone from Reham who listens to this, let me know. , you’ve got your usual shelves in the charity shops and I’ve made sure that I’ve joined the library. So I’m back in there as well, but at the minute it’s Waterstones cuz the one that I used to go to in South Hampton had a cafe with it.

And I used to love going in there, buying a book and having a drink. And that was my treat for myself, . Nice. I would love a place in Rexton to have a little cafe in bookshop together, but I haven’t found anything like that. So at the minute it is only Waterstones. .

Stephen: Yeah. Maybe you’ll find one in the next town over sometime.

That’d be good. Yeah. Okay. So before we talk about some author stuff let me ask you one more question about your writing and your book. You’re new to the town, so I could imagine somebody saying, Hey Stephanie, I heard you wrote a book. Why should I get your book and read it? What would you tell ’em?

Stephanie: Ah, I was trying to work out the answer to that before. I would just say to give something different, a go don’t stay. The familiar all the time. What I write is a little bit different, but it’s fun. So I would say if you haven’t really read horror, folk horror is a good way to go because it brings in the familiar, the sort of environment that people are aware of and then introduces all these other little elements.

But they might be a bit creepy, but they’re fun at the same time. And that’s the way I. This particular sort of section of my horror ride in the folk horror as a way to explore the countryside, get a taste of the English countryside the traditions, and just have a bit of fun with some rather grotesque characters.

Stephen: That’s great. I love that. Thank you. Thanks for sharing that and your book. It sounds great. I’ll make sure we have links in the show notes to everything. So let’s move on to some author stuff. Always exciting to move to that aspect. You’ve written, you said you’ve been published about eight years.

You’ve written a little more longer than that. So what are some things you’ve learned between in that time that you’re doing different now or that’s good advice to pass on to others?

Stephanie: One of the things I’ve learned, and it’s something I’ve referenced a couple times recently, When you get, you have beta readers, I believe you say beta readers over there.

Yeah. Yeah. So beta readers, I didn’t really start off with those. I just plowed my own way on. But then as I got to know people and other writers, they would offer to read some of my work, and it became a bit of an exchange and that helped, it pointed out things. But when I joined a group where we do a sort of rotational critique, , there were a number of writers reading my work and then offering feedback.

And I remember one story that I’d really enjoyed writing and I really had a lot of faith in. I thought it was quite a strong story. And there were a few people commenting on it, and I think it might have been about four people. And they all had different ideas. They were saying, you should do this, you should do that, you should do the other.

And by the, when I’d read all those comments, I thought this dance has over my. They’ve pulled it to breezes. It’s not going anywhere, but I liked it. So I sent it away and flame, it’s the flame tree press and they accepted it. And I think that was pretty much my first pro sale or one of my first pro sales.

So I think the thing I’ve learned is you need people to read your work before you send it. It does help in terms of. , but don’t let too many read your work because otherwise you lose confidence in your writing. You lose sight of your story. So it depends how strongly you feel about your story. But to keep that self-belief, I would say keep to your own, stick to your guns if you really like it.

Don’t worry too much about what others say. And I’ll also say, when it comes to other people reading my. The short stories I used to get a lot of people reading and looking at it these days, I don’t bother so much. If somebody says they want to read it, I’ll send it to them and I’ll come back and comment on it.

But I think you get to a certain point with shorts that after a while, you know whether it’s any good or not. You’ve learned a lot. and then it gives you the confidence to send it out. You might get rejected. I still get rejected as we’ll talk about it in a bit. . Yeah, we’re talking about that.

That’s a yeah. But yeah, so that’s one of the main things I’ve learned. I still try and find someone to read the novels or the longer work because you can have little plot holes that you’re not aware of. You can be too close. So for a bigger piece of work, I am more inclined to ask somebody if they would kindly be to read and just give me a sense of the story.

As when it comes to critiquing. Yeah, just be careful how many you invite to look at your work, .

Stephen: Got it. So when you’re writing, what software and services do you like to use?

Stephanie: I write in Word. If I’m self-publishing, I will pull that into something called Scribers, which is a free, I’m very much about freebies, by the way.

This is open source software, desktop publishing software, which is, which offers you all the things that Adobe’s in design does. Basical. , there are things, obviously it won’t do, but it will allow you to produce a quite a good quality PDF file. I use Collibra to produce UBS convert books into different formats.

And so that’s very much what I use. I know Bridget’s Gate, they provide editorials that they get the editors in and the formats and the covers for the books. But when it comes to self-publishing, yeah, I use Word to create the document for upload to Kindle Collibra to. Do the eub and as I say, scribe us to do the pdf Oh.

And something called gimp for unfortunate name for a cover graphics and things. And I go to Pixel Bay or Unsplash for free, copyright free images. So that is in a nutshell how to do a book on no

Stephen: budgets. got it. And Gimp has the lin. Moniker of naming where GIMP stands for Gimp Image Manipulation program, I believe.

Yeah. Typical pre open source software. Naming convention. Yeah. Yeah. And what are you doing to market your books? I know you go through Bridget’s Gate Press and obviously you do podcasts. What else are you doing in the market?

Stephanie: I would say that Bridges Gate Press, they have been brilliant cuz they’ve hired a publicist and he finds all sorts of contact.

But what they’ve also said is that we don’t have to necessarily stick to the work we’ve have published through them. We can also reference our other work. So I’ve been able to bring in a few other things that I’ve done but apart from that, I’ll go to social media, which I’m rubbish at. should improve.

I am found over at Hory. There’s a website called hory.com, which hosts submission calls on behalf of publishers. And it does all sorts of things there. And what I do every week on a Friday, I create indie bookshelf releases, posts. So if you’ve got something, it’s called Hory, but it can be speculative fiction.

It can be younger it could be work aimed at younger folk as well. And I’ll put up books on the shelves for. If you’ve got a book cover and a link, I’ll put it up. So you’ve got January’s books that have been out. I’ve got February’s books up. I’ve even got books up through to maybe July, possibly.

But it gives you a bit of free promo. So somebody clicks on that post, they’ll just see rows of book covers and they can just click on it and go to find out for information or a pre-order link or something like that. So there’s little things like that. I do for my own work, but I also do for other authors.

And I think if you share other people’s work, they will also help you share yours. People say writing is a lonely business or an isolated business. It can be. But if you build up a network, you’ll find that if you put in the time and the effort to help others, then they will help you to Nice. All right.

Stephen: So our topic of discussion to get to that, that you suggested was rejection. And there were two aspects of this that I thought of. That one, the obvious one people think of is, oh, I submitted my book to a publisher and they rejected it, or I submitted my short story for this anthology and they rejected it.

But the other aspect of it is two you mentioned is just having people read it and not like it, not enjoy it, say bad things, one star reviews and that thing. I think those two things together cripple a lot of authors. They’re afraid to do anything, tell us why you wanted to talk about rejection and some of your experience with rejection.

Stephanie: I think I wanted to talk about rejection because I want people to see that I am the same as anybody else. I still think of myself as a new writer, although I’ve achieved a certain amount now, but, I’m still writing and I’m still getting rejected for short stories and various other things. But there’s one thing I noticed when I look at other writers, whose careers have developed in parallel, a number of them will share their rejection stories, but there are some who don’t.

And you look at them and you get this distorted view and you keep thinking they’re successful all the time. How did they manage it? And you start to judge yourself and you compare yourself to them and you. , you must be lacking in some way. But so the first thing is that I’ve learned is that not all writers actually tell, talk about their rejections, but I decided that I would be quite open with mine.

Not necessarily saying what I was rejected from all the time, but just to show that I’m like anybody else that I can, yeah, I can get a book out, but I’ll still get her a short story rejection, which I actually. It was either this morning or yesterday. So there is that. But I think because writing is such a long-term career, if you want to write and if you want to get your work out there, you are gonna have to face rejection day, not day in, day out, cuz that would be dire on a very regular basis.

And if you are not prepared for that, then you are going to. Your mental health will it’ll damage your confidence, it’ll damage your self-esteem, and you can go into a downward spiral and that will affect your writing. So you’ve got to look at it a little bit dispassionately and learn a little bit about the publishing industry and talking about short stories.

I remember looking up a website a while ago, and I’ve got note here. It’s Aaron Ruel. He’s got a blog site called rejector nancy.com. and he did a post a while ago. And it did a breakdown of acceptance percentages for some magazines. So I think it was Apex Magazine was not 0.35% acceptance rate, where Pseudopod was 3.33.

This was back in 2017. So immediately you learn that acceptance rates are very low. So yeah, you got rejected, but they’re not gonna accept lots and lots of people. Then it may be that what you’ve written for a submission call might have had thousands of. Stories sent in. I believe lockdown actually contributed to this.

During Covid, everybody started to write, so when I sent a story into Samantha calls, the editors were saying, oh, we’ve got a thousand submissions. So again, your chances are going to be reduced somewhat. So there are those things that are part of the practicalities of it, and if you learn that tempers it a little bit, you.

I’ve got a chance, but with all this against me, I can’t necessarily expect it. So if you learn that little aspect of it. And then there’s also the fact that when you send a story in, if it’s for an anthology, it may be that they’ve already taken on a story similar to yours. Or it may be that they’ve chosen several stories and yours doesn’t quite fit what they’ve chosen so far.

It may be the same with a, a novel or a novella. They might have decided on a certain theme, but yours doesn’t quite fit. It might be perfect in terms of writing, but it doesn’t actually quite fit what they’ve asked for. So again, when you learn that, that can still keep you. Going along keep you sane, basically, right?

You learn it’s not all about you and your writing. Some people do get rejected by not following submission guidelines. I was over at Hory, I was their co-editor for a Trembling with Fear, which is their weekly flash scene and it’s flash fiction. And we will get people sending in stories of 5,000 words plus or a novella That’s automatic rejection again, so learn what the acceptance rates are or be aware of them, I would say, so that tempers things a little bit.

Make sure that you followed all the guidelines and then that will keep you same, but you do have to keep at ease. It’s not going to be. An immediate success. Some people are lucky. They might strike lucky first off but for most of us, it is a long slog and you’ll suddenly get an acceptance, and then you’re down in the pits again of the right of

Stephen: depression.

And I think some of the problem authors do to themselves because I know and this is a common thing, I’ve gone through it. I’m sure you may have, and lots of people do that. You write that book, you spend so much time in life and pour into that one book, and then you’re like, oh I’m, this is the best thing ever because you’re very close to it.

It’s hard to tell and I just, everyone’s gonna love it and I. Now I can chuckle a little bit. When you have the author, when I talk to ’em, I’m like, so who’s this book for? Oh, it’s for everybody. Never True. And every time I hear that, I know they’re new and don’t have a whole lot of experience. I’m not saying they’re bad and wrong, it’s just the thinking.

Yeah. You have at the beginning and the, like you said, when you get rejected, it’s not oh my God, your writing sucks. Your writing might suck. But that’s a whole nother problem. . But it like you. When you’re so close to your book, you think everybody should read it and everybody’s gonna love it.

And then when you get that one no, people are like, oh, this isn’t horrible. There’s thousands of places to submit to. There’s thousands of readers. But I joke and I’ve told other people, a friend of mine has done military sci-fi, has 33 years, 35 years of military sci-fi that he’s written. His books have space ships that are shooting at each other, unlike every.

And he got a one star review that said this wasn’t a romance book. I hated it. No, it wasn’t a romance book. It didn’t look like a romance book. So that’s rejection, but that’s not his fault necessarily. And I think everybody takes that way too personal, which I understand why. But we’ve gotta, like you said, remove ourselves from that.

If we were the publisher editor, we didn’t write any of the books, we would say, oh, that. Goes to this place and that one goes to this place. But when you don’t know that you submit to all of ’em, if it’s not the right one, they’re gonna reject you. And again, keep going because somebody’s going to like it somewhere for something.

You gotta look at

Stephanie: it. Yeah. You were just talking about one star reviews and things, and I I know when you read one, I’ve had the occasion one . I’ve even had a dnf, believe it or not, . Yeah. Believe it. You take it to heart and then you have remember yourself as a reader and the books that you don’t like, right?

And I’ve never got past the first page of James Joyce’s Ulysses. And there’s other books that people rave at their classics and no, I don’t like them. And so if you remember how subjective you are as a reader, you can remember that other people are the same. When they come to read your book, at least they’ve given you a chance.

At least they’ve had a. . And it may be that the same person might reread the book or the short story on another day and have a totally different opinion, right? It’s human nature. There’s stories that I’ve read, first off, and I think, no, I’m not too keen on that. and then some months down the line I’ll read again and say, oh yeah, this is really good.

So it, it depends. You’ve just got to remember the subjectivity of it.

Stephen: A and there’s, like you said, there’s a lot of books that people love and and fantasy, which is my main genre of reading or horror, which is my other main genre. And I’m like, yeah, I can’t really stand it. I don’t like the author.

I don’t like their writing. I don’t like, A classic example for me, which by the way, you were talking about school librarian for 11 year olds and reading the when I was 11, I’d already read the Shining by Stephen King and The Lord of the Rings Trilogy . I a lot of us that loved to read started early and read way outside of our age group, but I ha I, when I read Lord of the Rings, I got done with it and I’m like, I must have missed something because I did not enjoy.

And so at some point in the future, I read it a second time and I’m like, Nope. Still didn’t really care for it. Fellowship of the Rings I like, but Return of the King, the third book, I’ve read it three times now. I still cannot tell you what happens in that book. Now. There’s millions of people that love talking and think he’s the greatest and have read the books to tat.

I’ll probably never touch him again in my life because I really didn’t enjoy him. But that’s I don’t think he’d be too bothered by my one person rejecting his book, what, as popular as his stuff is. But the point is that one person isn’t your whole reading audience. Find out why they didn’t like it, what they normally read, and don’t target that type of person.

Make sure you know that’s not the type of person you want. Learn from it is what I. Yeah. Yeah.

Stephanie: You talk about books. I, with Dickens I read a lot of Dickens early on. I had his Christmas books given me for Christmas when I was about 11, and then I started reading all his books and I read PWI papers back then and everyone had said, oh, it’s this funny book.

And I read it and I thought, nah. And then I’ve read it. I dunno, it must be about 10 years ago now. I remember chuckling away all through it because I finally understood. I think I read. Of what you were supposed to read. People encourage you to read the classics at the wrong age but then you come back to it later and.

It’s good. I will say I’m never gonna reread Ernest Hemingway’s the Old Man in the Sea again, because I had to study that at school for two years, which on a little novella is terrible. It is Ug , so I will never look at that again. But other books I’ll probably give another try. ,

Stephen: A good example to me is the old TV show.

Maybe you’ve seen the Archie Bunk. TV show that we had here in America. It’s from the seventies. He was a racist, a bigot, opinionated. But it was a comedy and we were supposed to be laughing at him. And I know a lot of people, oh, I love Archie Bunker, but when I watched it as a kid, I didn’t get it.

But when I watched it as a young adult suddenly clicked and I got it. And I understood they were pointing out the problems in society by using Archie Bunker, and I got it more. . I rejected it the first time and then after that I enjoyed it. So sometimes it does take more than one. Of course, if you’re ascending to a publisher, you don’t get a second chance

Which is a whole nother point. I feel unfortunate that so many people then concentrate on that first, like five pages. That has to be so super and blockbuster and action oriented. Get the conflict out and the mood and all of that in those first five pages, or it’s not gonna see the light of day.

And I find that unfortunate because some of my favorite books have a slow burn, a slow build for the first 50, 75 pages before the action really kicks in. But they’re such good books. We tend to, oh, it’s gotta be, we gotta see the dead body on page. And that for horror, I think for horror, that doesn’t work so well.

It ruins the horror a lot of time. Yeah.

Steaphanie: I like a slow build. Yeah, I like that. Yeah. But I picked up comic McCarthy’s new on the passenger from the library yesterday and it’s, you’ve gotta read it in a week cause it’s only allowed, you’re only allowed it for a week. And I started reading it and I’m struggling.

I’m about halfway through and there’s a lot of quantum physics in there. There’s no explanation of the

Stephen: What’s the name of it? I need to get this book. It’s the Passenger . Ok, I got it. I love the Road and Blood Meridian. I’ve read those. All the pretty horses didn’t quite do it for me, but I saw the passenger and it was, the blurb sort of portrayed it as a thriller almost.

Steaphanie: I started reading and the first bit of writing is. Hallucination episode that a girl is having pretty much, and that’s all in italics. And that breaks up throughout the story. And I’m trying to see where it’s going, and I’m not quite with it yet, but I was thinking if that was one of my , I’m not there. But if that was me writing and sending into a publisher have been rejected because it’s right.

It’s not there on the page. But then again, if you’ve made your name and you’re that, They’ll give you the chance to build up to this point. And I did go to Good Reads and see what people said, and some was were raving about it and how brilliant. And I was thinking, yeah. And then there were others who were struggling a little bit like me.

I’m not stupid. I’ve got a certain amount of scientific background, but the level of science in there and what he would veer off into, I was thinking, oh no.

Stephen: The, that’s a super good point on a couple levels. So you mentioned the road. There’s a book that if it had not been Cormack, McCarthy would not have got published.

That I could not send that book written the way it is into a publisher and get it published. They would want to edit the heck out of it. Capital letters and punctuation. Because that book totally blows the convent. and I know a lot of authors that say, oh, I wanna write my art. I wanna do what I wanna do.

That’s fine. And that’s what Indie self-publishing is great for. But then don’t turn around and say I don’t know why no one’s buying my book. It’s revolutionary. You gotta be on a level of people know your name and trust your name before you can hit ’em upside the head with something that’s revolutionary and blows ’em outta the water.

I know I have a author friend who wrote something. His quote to me was, yeah, I didn’t get an editor cuz I don’t think any editor would quite understand what I’m trying to do and and it’s the first book he ever r wrote and it didn’t go anywhere. So that to me said, yeah, that’s not the time to do it.

Once you have the experience, maybe. So maybe the rejection is because you were trying to be too crazy and revolutionary, you need to get something to get your name out there first.

Stephanie: Yeah. Publishers they, and I’m trying to get an agent for something I’ve written cuz I thought it’s slightly different.

It’s dark historical fiction. And at the minute the rejections are all coming in, but I know that they will only, and it is the same with some of the small presses and the publishers, they will only take you on if they can think. They can build up a platform for you if they’ve if there’s more to you.

So I think they’d want to get you known in your work accepted before they take on a more experimental

Stephen: idea. Or at the least. Because the world of hybrid publishing is a little more prevalent now, and I don’t, a lot of times an agent publisher won’t reject you because you wanna do that. You can have in your contract I’ll give you this book, or I’ll have three books in this series that’s yours.

but I have this other thing I’m working on. I’m keeping that myself and publishing it. And a lot of times now, not always check, but that’s a little more acceptable than it was even five years ago. They understand that this is what you’re promising, but this experimental one, and if it does do well, they might turn around and say, Hey, we wanna publish that.

Let’s come to some agreement. Write something else like that and we will publish it. You I think with the right mindset, you got the best of everything, the best of both worlds in the publishing. You can choose to do anything you want. Indie, just understand if nobody’s buying it, it’s not necessarily rejecting you, maybe it’s just not right for today’s world at this time.

Stephanie: Yeah. And there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of competition out there, so they might not have found you either.

Stephen: True. People not finding you doesn’t mean rejection necessarily. Yeah. That’s part of our job is making sure we get found . It’s not the reader’s job to find you, it’s your job to be found, I think.

Yeah.

Stephanie: Yeah. That’s the other thing with marketing. Cause of push your work out there and then I, it is a very, I dunno whether it’s a British thing, but you don’t want to put yourself, push yourself in people’s faces too much. But if you don’t do that, they’re not gonna see you work.

Stephen: I would agree that does sound a little more British, but it.

Sounds a lot like introverted authors in America, . Cause I know a lot of authors with that same type of thinking, and I have many a time, especially as I’m watching Dr. Who or something, then I’m like, man, I should have been British. I was born in the wrong country. . But if you want to, you can be an author all you want.

and have your friends and family read it and have your books published by yourself. If you’re not wanting to have huge following and hundreds and thousands of people reading it, great, fine. But you can’t not get yourself out there. And then also say nobody reads me. It’s one or the other.

You gotta do something to get yourself out there and you will have people. No there’s a seven point something billion people, so you’re not gonna have 7 billion people like your book, but all you need is that couple hundred, couple thousand that do. That’s just gotta find them.

Stephanie: Yeah I was gonna say that’s how, or being a, being an author I think has changed in recent times.

In the past, if you were published, all the marketing and everything else fell on the people who are publishing you. But now, even if you are part of a publish, Even the main, you know the bigger names, you have to do a lot more promo yourself. Yeah. Whereas really, as you say, we’d rather be hiding in a corner of the house with our books and ignoring the rest of the

Stephen: world,

Okay. I love the discussion. Nobody has wanted to talk about rejection. So that was a great topic choice, Stephanie. Thank you. Before we go though do you have any last minute advice for authors that you would offer? Do it. Don’t wait around thinking, oh, maybe I’ll do it one day.

Stephanie: If you’ve got, I know it is hard and that life gets in the way a lot, but I was writing on a corner of the sofa in the front room and learning to tune everything else out around me. So to get on and do it, but I would say if you’re going to write, read. Read, widely read in your genre. I do know some writers who don’t actually read that much and they don’t read the books and the genre that they want to write.

So familiarize yourself with that. And if you can build up relationships with other writers, whether it’s online you might get to meet them in real life. I’ve been lucky with a few and they’ve become really good friends and they will form your support network as you go. So you can offload to them in private and have a little rant about acceptances and rejections and everything else and what somebody might have said online.

So you’ve got, you build up this little private world as well, and you don’t feel so isolated. So build up your network. Read widely, enjoy your writing, and don’t do it before it’s too late. or do it. I agree. I

Stephen: could say. Yep. It’s never too late until it is. But you can do it now. I agree.

I love that. All right. Stephanie, thank you for being on. It was great talking to you. I appreciate all the great advice you gave and your book sounds wonderful. I wish you luck.

Stephanie: Oh, thank you very much for having me. It’s been fun. Great.

View Details

OverviewYoshio is a 16 year old author. He hasn’t written just one book, he’s written two! We discuss his writing and how he took advantage of a family vacation to get the book done.

Due to his age, there were some problems publishing. He tells us about those problems and some of the things he did to help overcome it.

In this episode:

• writing his book on a family trip
• starting with short stories
• problems faced because of his age
• inspiring even younger authors
• plans for the future

His Bookhttps://www.amazon.com/EIGHT-WANDER-Yoshio-Daggett/dp/B0B86KPG56?crid=2F7Y2YNK5FWT1&keywords=eight+wander&qid=1678231356&sprefix=eight+wonder%2Caps%2C101&sr=8-1&linkCode=li2&tag=discoveredwordsmiths-20&linkId=90b745ddfcbd423626a8a96cb4005a18&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_ilFavoriteshttps://www.amazon.com/Dry-Neal-Shusterman-ebook/dp/B075RK464B?crid=BWA0SF0M2JS&keywords=dry+neil&qid=1678231478&sprefix=dry+neil%2Caps%2C100&sr=8-1&linkCode=li2&tag=discoveredwordsmiths-20&linkId=107b8a75729ca60cc99afb5c0ff1a807&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_ilhttps://thebookeryplacerville.com/contact/Websitehttps://yoshio-daggett.yolasite.com/

YouTubehttps://youtu.be/VibiERSLG9QTranscriptToday I’m very excited for today’s episode of Discover Wordsmith.

I have Yoshi with me and Yoshi is 16. Yoshi, how you doing

Yoshio: today? I’m good. I’m good. How are you?

Stephen: I’m well. I’m doing really great now, talking to you. I love talking to kids that are doing things like this. Awesome. I encourage that. Before we roll about your book, tell us a little bit about you and what you like to do.

I’m going to guess you go to school though, that may not be something you like . What else do you like to do?

Yoshio: Yeah, I do go to school. It’s school. I love traveling. whole family loves traveling, so we always go on trips and all sorts of. I love hiking, swimming reading of course.

Yeah, all fun stuff.

Stephen: Cool. We’ll talk about some of your favorite books later on. But you’re on the podcast because you’re 16 and you’ve written two books and got them published and I think that’s fantastic and it. Right there. I get a lot of people that tell me, oh, kids can’t do this. You know what, we’ve got proof right here

And there are a few others I’ve known also. So I’m excited to find out about what you’ve done. Why did you wanna start writing? You said you did your first book at 15, so what made you jump into this and wanna start?

Yoshio: Yeah, so back in like fifth grade, my teacher had us do these fun like writing exercises where we got to get a prompt and then write a little short story for that.

And I just found that so fun. And after a while of doing that, I’m like hey, why don’t I just do it on my own time? Because it, I enjoyed it. So I started writing short stories and printing them out and bringing ’em to school and having my friends read ’em back in fifth. and I’m from there.

I just kept writing more and more until finally I’m like hey, might as well write a full length book. So

Stephen: Nice. So you realize that’s pretty much how Stephen King started, right? really doing his thing. Yeah, I didn’t know that. Writing stories for his friends. Then he did the school newspaper and threw in his own stories.

Cool. Yeah. So I love that you got excited about that , and you enjoyed writing. You said you’ve written short stories. About how many have you written?

Yoshio: Oh maybe 15, 16. They’re super, like short stories just to entertain my friends and I did write one full length book in sixth grade that was maybe like 80,000 words, but I never ended up publishing.

Yeah, but you still have it, right? I do. I

Stephen: do. Th those are called trunk novels. You stick ’em in your trunk and you leave ’em for, for years. Yeah. So just remember that when you talk to other authors that your trunk . All right, so this book we’re gonna talk about is Eight Wonder tell us a little bit about this.

Yeah.

Yoshio: So it’s a middle grade like adventure fiction kind of thing. And so it’s about these eight kids who are all cousins and they go on a big backpacking trip together, and they get lost in the woods. And so basically the story follows them just learning how to survive building shelter, that kind of thing.

And yeah it’s a fun, fun adventure. Okay.

Stephen: And your what was the title of your first book?

Yoshio: My first book was called the C Myth.

Stephen: Okay. Yeah. And are they both like middle grade?

Yoshio: Yeah. The C Myth was probably middle grade between middle grade and young adult probably. Yeah. Okay.

Stephen: Which fits because they say, write what you know, that kinda fits what you know, right?

Now, is fantasy your favorite genre to read?

Yoshio: I would say probably I love fantasy, but I’ve gotta go with science fiction. For me that’s what I primarily read. Yeah.

Stephen: Okay. Who are some of your favorite science fiction author?

Yoshio: Ooh. I love Neil Schusterman, James Dashner, Suzanne Collins.

Those are really good authors. I love their books.

Stephen: Nice. What’s your favorite book of all time?

Yoshio: That’s such a hard question. . I don’t know. One of my favorites is Dry by Neil Schusterman, and it’s like a sci-fi. survival novel. That one was really good.

Stephen: Nice. Okay. And have your friends read these books?

Yoshio: The ones that, that I published or the ones that Yeah they have.

Stephen: Okay. Where have, where is this available that people can check it out?

Yoshio: They’re on Amazon, barnes and noble.com, all sorts of bookshops online. They’re in libraries, all the El Dorado County libraries and a few in other places.

Yeah, all over the

Stephen: place. Nice. Nice. And we’ll talk more about the publishing on the second half with authors. Cool. Why did you choose to write this particular story? You said you’ve written some short stories. So why did you choose to write this particular story as a novel?

Yoshio: So originally it wasn’t going to be published like for everybody because I had a knack for writing and I actually wrote my second book before this one ate wander.

But I was going on a big year-long trip with my family and I have seven, or I have six cousins. That we’re really close to. And so I was like, hey, as a going away gift, I might as well write them something cuz that’s something I’m good at. So I I wrote them up the story and I originally published it just for to print it so I could ship it over to them.

And so they got it and read it and those things were filled with typos cuz it was just for them at first. But then the words started getting around and people started buying ’em and reading ’em and contacting me and they’re like, Hey, this was really good. I’m like, oh, I didn’t know you were gonna read it.

I thought it was only for my thought only my cousins were gonna read it at first. And but after that I’m like I need to polish it up if other people are gonna be reading. So I did that and and yeah that’s how it got, how it is

Stephen: today. Oh, Oh, okay. I gotta ask, you said a year long trip

What was that all not many people I know take a year long trip. What was that for? Yeah, it was

Yoshio: really special. My my family took a year long RV trip to tour the United. And it was a blast. We’re home now, but we spent basically an entire school year just touring around and yeah, it was a lot of fun.

Stephen: Nice. Did you do remote schooling? I would assume I did. Yeah. What did you think of that compared to going to school?

Yoshio: I missed the social aspect for sure, but it was actually really nice because it gave me so much more time to write and just spend time with my family and such, so it was good.

Stephen: Nice. Okay. All right. And is that when you wrote this current eight Wander book?

Yoshio: I actually wrote it right before. Before we left. Yeah. And then I published it when we were on the road, okay. Yeah,

Stephen: you did say that. I’m sorry. That’s all right. So now that you’ve had people reading this book, if somebody said, Hey we’d like to turn this into a movie or TV show, which one would you prefer?

Yoshio: I would’ve to say movie because I don’t know, just census aim towards a younger audience. It’s young, that age doesn’t really invest in TV shows as much as like teenagers or adults. Just cuz I don’t know, shorter attention spans. I think it’d be a really fun movie and it’s it’s short enough that it feels stretched out if it were a TV series.

So I think a movie would fit best. Okay,

Stephen: so these are one shots. They’re not a series of stories.

Yoshio: They are, I’m actually working on a sequel right now, but as of now, it’s just the first one.

Stephen: Okay. So it’s the first one. Yeah. But the two that you have published aren’t in series? Yeah. Okay. All right. And do you have a website?

Yoshio: I do. I do. What’s that? I think it’s yoshi dot dagit yola site.com.

Stephen: Okay. Yeah. We’ll try and look it up and get a link in there. Did you put that up? I did. Yourself, I did. Yeah. So did you get to do it as part of a school project or did you just

Yoshio: do it ? I just did it just cuz it never, that kind of thing.

Never really came up in school. And I’m like I’ll just do it myself. Yeah.

Stephen: Okay. So how do you balance doing school, all your other activities and writing?

Yoshio: Yeah, prioritizing that kind of stuff is really hard. Obviously school is a big priority, but writing is is also big. So what I try and do is have a schedule where when it’s structured, it’s easier to fit everything in you.

and so I try and get school out of the way first and then . That way I can take as much time as I want writing, nice. Okay. And you mentioned a sequel. What’s that going to be about?

Yeah, so the sequel is gonna follow the same cousins, but this time they get lost out at sea instead of in a forest, which is where the first one takes place.

And That’s what the second one will be like.

Stephen: Okay. Wonderful. we talked a little bit about your favorite books and authors. Do you have a local bookstore that you like to go to? I

Yoshio: do. I do. We have a used bookstore down on our main Street and it is called The Booker. And it’s just, it’s a great.

Stephen: Nice. And where actu where exactly do you live? I live in Placerville. Not your address, but like general

Yoshio: that Yeah. I live in this little town called Placerville in California. Know that?

Stephen: Yeah, I lived in Escondido down southern California. Oh, no way. No way. Cool. Yeah. Nice. All right, so here’s the tough one for you.

Before we talk some author stuff, . I’m sure a lot of kids at school, teachers, maybe other parents come up to you and they say, so you wrote a book. Why should I get your book and read it? What would you tell ’em?

Yoshio: It’s just, it’s a fun adventure I’ve had parents and teachers tell me that their kids loved.

and it’s, it has little bits here and there that are handy when it comes to outdoor survival and it’s just a fun story I think. Yeah, it’s fun for me. Nice.

Stephen: Okay, great. Wonderful. I love when kids do things above and beyond little more out of the norm, so you should be applauded for that.

Very nice. All right, so let’s talk some author stuff. This is of great interest to me. A lot of fun things here that we’ve wanna delve into. So before we get started on some of the topic of publishing when you’re not an quote unquote adult. Yeah. You’ve written a bunch of short stories, which I think is more wonderful than you believe, because.

One of the things I’ve found in talking with others is that writing and writing and gaining that experience is way more important than some people realize. A lot of people write one book and then they spend five years trying to publish get it published and out there. And they miss the experience of writing more.

And you’ve written, you said about 15 short stories, and now two books you’re working on your third and you have a trunk novel also . Yeah. So do you feel that you’ve learned and grown and changed with your experience writing since the first one you wrote?

Yoshio: Absolutely. For sure. In fact, if I pull a the dusty binder out of the back of my closet for the trunk novel, Just looking at the words that I used and the type of the flow that the writing follows.

It’s just a huge difference and I’m, even though it’s not going anywhere, I’m super glad I wrote it because it gave me all that experience and yeah, definitely a huge.

Stephen: So you said you wrote your first story back in fifth grade. Has your fifth grade teacher read the newest stuff you’ve

Yoshio: written?

She has. She has. I actually did an assign, not an assignment, assigning and talk at my old school. So yeah.

Stephen: How exciting, fun was that? Have all the younger kids coming up to you? It was so much fun. I still have. My brother goes there. So I still have kids coming up to me when I go to see my brother there asking, oh, when’s this, when’s the second eight wonder gonna come out?

Yoshio: And that’s just, that makes me very happy. nice.

Stephen: I’m going to guess, I’m going to tell me if I’m wrong, but I’m going to say that having the kids, the teacher’s, parents coming up to you and saying, wow, this is really good. Keeps you going, keeps you wanting to do more. For

Yoshio: sure. A hundred percent.

That’s. , one of the best parts of writing is the feedback and just seeing the people who read and enjoyed this story, it makes it worth it for sure. It’s a lot of fun.

Stephen: Cool. So what software do you use to write? I’m going to assume you do it digitally with a

Yoshio: computer or something, . I do. I use I use Word.

I like to keep it simple word is my go-to writing tool. .

Stephen: Okay, so this leads into our bigger topic of discussion, which I think a lot of people may be interested in. You’re 16, you’ve published, that’s difficult because of your age, because services want you to be older. And so what are some, how did you publish and what are some of the trials and tribulations you’ve had to overcome because of your age?

Yoshio: Yeah. My first two books I published I self-published and I went through a program called K D P. At first I’m sure you know what it is but it’s a self-publishing company and it’s really handy. It’s really nice. But one of the problems I faced was for like banking account details, they don’t allow minors to set up their banking.

To take out that money. So I had to go around that and figure stuff out for that. Alright,

Stephen: We won’t go in the details if it starts. Sound a little shady here. But your parents are involved and encourage all of this for you.

Yoshio: Yeah, for sure. They are a huge huge part.

My writing and I couldn’t do it without ’em, for sure.

Stephen: Nice. And you said you also have set up through Barnes and Noble and a few other places that you published. So you, you’re published wide? am. Do you put in your profile that you’re 16 or are you avoiding that and just putting the books out there?

I

Yoshio: I say that I’m a teen author so I don’t have to like, update it all the time. . But yeah I say that I’m a teen author on

Stephen: the books. Okay. And you don’t need to give us details, but you’ve worked out things with a bank account I’m going to assume got your parents involved. Are there any other things you’ve run into because of your age that you think would not have been difficult if you were.

Yoshio: So I have a publishing company called Precipice Publishing, and when I was setting that up it’s hard for a minor to do that kind of thing. And my parents helped me and it’s all sorted out. But that was something that was a bit difficult to sort.

Stephen: Okay. So in, in a couple years when you’re 18 and you’re legally allowed to have the bank account and do the Amazon account and all of that are you gonna switch things over at that point? Or did you set things up to keep ’em the way they are now?

Yoshio: Yeah, I’ll prob, I’ll probably switch things over just cuz it’ll make things simpler.

Okay.

Stephen: Have, did you think that, oh man, I’m getting experience writing. I’ve got experience writing novels and published novels that’s going to help me later in life. Or were you just writing cuz you enjoyed it?

Yoshio: At first I was writing cuz I was, I enjoyed it for sure and I still am. But looking at future opportunities, I think writing is.

A great asset to have whichever field of work you go into or whatever whatever you do. Really writing is a big part of everything. So I would agree. I think it’s a handy skill.

Stephen: Yeah I would agree with that. And as we were talking about, you wrote a bunch of short stories, so you’ve got a lot of experience writing.

You’re getting even more so if you write this third book, maybe even a fourth. Before you’re 18 or about the time you’re graduating, you, you’ll have more experience than most adults that are out there writing . And I truly believe that experience is super helpful to publish more or make a choice as to what direction you want to go.

Do you feel that you’re preparing yourself for a writing career or, Some other plans that this’ll just tie into.

Yoshio: Yeah, so writing right now is like what I’m like a job basically, but what I’m aiming to do, In the future is become a nurse anesthetist. And writing will be like a side thing that I do, like publish books.

But if it becomes successful enough that I can make a career off of that, then that would be the dream. That would be that would I you, have you ever heard of Michael Criton? I have

Big fan.

Stephen: He used to be in the medical field in his first book under some pseudonym was about some patients and being a, in the medical profession.

So you, you’ve got someone good ahead of you there, . Awesome. So I take it you have plans to go to college or nursing school or something like that? And I like how you. Say, you might keep this as a side thing, which I also think is important because in today’s world, I know you’re still in high school, you may have heard of this, but there’s a lot of turmoil in the job market at times, and a lot of of people don’t have jobs.

My mother was a nurse for 45 years. cool. She worked at the same hospital her whole life. But that just really doesn’t happen anymore. I think having this skill of writing as a backup, Is important and especially cuz you’ve already published a couple books. So when you’re 18 or 22 ish and you’re just graduating you, you have four or five books every month.

Could be generating some income, making your life a little more stable because you don’t have to worry so much. Have you thought about that or was it something that you came upon? Oh, I guess so afterwards. . .

Yoshio: Yeah. Yeah. That’s. Definitely an important part, the whole financial side of that. And then plus I get to say I am an author and get to experience being an author.

And writing is always fun. So there’s the financial side and then there’s, oh, I get to keep writing side of it. Which is good.

Stephen: I love the fact that you said that you wanna be one thing, but writing also, , you’re still a writer, you’re still an author. You can do it on top of the other stuff you’re doing.

You can do it while you’re in college and you continue. Nice. So let me just ask, did you write all this stuff and then tell your parents you wanted to publish or did you tell ’em at the beginning you had a goal? What was their reaction? What’d they say? .

Yoshio: So the first book that I told you a little bit about called the C Smith I intended to publish it in the.

Just because I’d written so many short stories and I wanted to write a real book to put out into the world and for other people to read. So they always knew that I was interested in publishing but never really became serious until I finished ate wander and things. Opportunities started popping up and I’m like hey this is a big thing.

This is.

Stephen: Nice. So what opportunities popped up going to your old school for book signings? One, I assume? What other things have come about that you didn’t expect?

Yoshio: Yeah, I didn’t expect just being able to do the book signings and talks. I’ve done ’em at a couple of places. And those were really fun.

Getting ’em in the library. That was that was really exciting. And just this kind of thing, being on podcasts and getting to talk to awesome people like you is it’s the great part that I didn’t really expect going into the field. Nice.

Stephen: So what are, besides doing podcasts, what other things are you doing to market the.

Yoshio: Yeah, so I do social media, I do the talks and signings obviously the podcast. And yeah that’s pretty much what I’m doing to market.

Stephen: So it’s all hands-on. Go see people because Yeah. Being 16 again. Trying to run ads without the bank account, without that’s probably if not extremely difficult.

It possibly completely a no-go for right now.

Yoshio: Yeah. Yeah. It’s good though cuz I like being engaged with people and so it works.

Stephen: Good. Good. I love your attitude about it. It is what it is, so do what you can, right? Yeah. All right. So Yoshi I love talking to you about this.

In fact, I’d love to have you on again before you graduate school to see how things have changed. So let’s keep that in mind. Awesome. What advice would you give to other young people, teenagers pre-teens about writing that are out there listening to this?

Yoshio: I’d just say start it do it There’s not an age limit for creativity. You can write when you’re young, when you’re old, when you’re middle-aged it doesn’t matter. It’s just getting the pen on paper and the words on the computer. And just starting that whole process, that’s the most important thing, and it’ll take you from there.

Trust me.

Stephen: Nice. That’s awesome advice. I’m gonna make that a clip to play for some young people. Awesome. Uh, And I did have a 10 year old on here that wrote a picture book. Wow. You’re 16. And I have had a guy that 74 retired lawyer that wrote his first book at 74. So huge age range of people writing.

Yeah. So you’ve got a great start to it, a great jump, . Cool. All right. Yoho, I appreciate you taking some time after school today and getting on and chatting with us. Anything else you wanna say about your book or about being an author before we go?

Yoshio: Just keep writing and reading and yeah, that’s it.

Stephen: Okay, great. All right. I appreciate it. Thank you.

View Details

OverviewTroy reads a chapter of his book “Teaching Moments”.

His Bookhttps://www.amazon.com/Teaching-Moments-Max-Boucher-Mystery/dp/B09QNYN32H?crid=25G7C5T9KF6HK&keywords=teaching+moments+troy+lambert&qid=1677695487&sprefix=teaching+moments+troy+lambert%2Caps%2C83&sr=8-1&linkCode=li2&tag=discoveredwordsmiths-20&linkId=10c63af6a1d0895cc0664df44e54d48f&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_il

View Details

OverviewTroy is back and this time we are talking about Plottr. If you don’t know Plottr, its author software to help plan out and plot your story before you start writing. We discuss the benefits of using it and why the company has created the functions they have. He also tells a bit about what to expect.

WebsitePlottr – Plan Your Books Like a Pro

YouTubeTranscriptStephen: All right, so let’s move on for some author focused stuff. And we’re gonna talk about plotter, the software tool and what you do there and all that.

But before we do that for the authors listening, what tool, what have you learned, and you hinted at this a little bit last term, but what have you learned writing these books for the last 15 ish years? And what do you do different now than you did?

Troy: Oh my goodness. So when I first started out there, there’s a couple things that I did when I first started out that I have completely and totally flipped.

And the first one was that I just used word because when I first started writing, when I was a teenager I used a typewriter and even when I was younger, so I learned to type when I was like eight, my grandpa gave me an old royal, and then I used an IBM Electric for my first novels in college.

Ok, nice. So some of you are gonna have to go look that up. That’s okay. It was before Google. Even though Google knows about it. But anyway, so when I first started out, I was just using, in fact, I was using Word perfect when I first used that. Wow. You could use tags in there. You could use tags in there.

Oh my goodness. And some of my novels that I first wrote in college, the last time I saw them, they were on three and a half inch floppy disc in Word Perfect Five. Now, as far as I know, you can never convert that. And that’s where I want those books to remain. I’m eternally grateful that no one ever picked those up.

They were horrible. But that’s part of the writing process. You write horrible books first and then you write good ones. But anyway, so when I, but when I first started doing it full-time, I was writing in Word a lot. And part of the reason was that I, in my day job, I did a lot of technical writing and I wrote in Word as well.

And so it was a very familiar program. It was very easy for me to transition to. But that did cause me issues because my brain would be confused when I opened a word about what I was doing. Are we working or are we writing fiction ? And so it would take my brain a while to figure that out. So shortly after I started to write full-time, I got Scribner.

I switched to Scribner for writing. And the reason that was a game changer for me were a couple different reasons. First of all, there were some powerful tools in Scribner that I could use to stay focused, to keep myself better focused. And on top of that, it was something different than Word.

So I would open Scribner. My brain would like, oh, we’re writing fiction. Okay. And it would, it caused a shift, right? So that was, that’s one of the things that I changed when I first started writing too. I was very much a discovery writer. I would just have an idea and I would sit down and write it.

And that didn’t always go super well. And sometimes the second draft was a grueling. Process. Just a terrible process to be honest with you. And it was because you, if when you started with just an idea, you’d let yourself go wherever. Sometimes that’s really cool, but sometimes you end up in a place where you’re like, how in the world did I get here?

And this is no longer a story, so you have to back up and figure things out and move forward. So I was writing I the second book in my first trilogy that was actually commercially successful. And I I was like, you know what? If I knew the ending, I was about two-thirds of the way through. And I’m like, if I knew the ending of this book, it’d be much easier and faster to finish writing it.

Huh, okay. So I actually outlined the last third of the book, and this is like I was an English guy and a story structure guy, so it’s not like I didn’t know how to outline. I just didn’t but I, so I outlined the last part of it and sure enough, man, that process was easier and it was faster, and I thought, Man, maybe there’s something to this.

So my next book, of course, I started with an idea and only about a third of the way through it, I was like, you know what if I knew the end of this familiar story, right? . So then I planned out the rest of it. And so my next book I tried, I’m like, okay, I’m just gonna plan the book. Let’s see what happens.

And man, my writing process was much faster. My first draft was better, my revisions went faster, everything about it went faster. And I was like, huh, okay, maybe there’s something to this planning thing. And so I started to find different ways to plan things and I started with like whiteboards and court boards and all that kinda stuff.

And eventually, which is a long way around to say, eventually I found plotter and was like, okay, this is a game changer for me because now I can clean my office, make my wife happy. And but also this is just a much more powerful way to do the things I was trying to do in other ways. It just gave me the right tool to do that right.

And make it happen easier.

Stephen: And we’ve had similar journeys in that regard. I think everybody just starts off with, oh, I have a blank page. Let me start writing. And I still talk to a lot of authors that use Word, but you, very quickly, when I started using Word, I was like, oh, you know what?

This makes more sense later. It’s how do I move that? Oh, copy it and paste. And it became a nightmare now where it was that. And so I looked around, discovered Scribner, like you and the corkboard and moving things around and just all, it made a lot more sense to me. And I’ve tried to talk to other writers that have you really given it a chance?

Cuz they’re like, oh, it has too much. I don’t know what to do. I’m like, don’t worry about it. Just start writing. Word has a million things that nobody ever uses, but nobody seemed concerned about that. So I it’s a me it’s a mindset. Yep. And like you. Then after I’d written some stuff and I started getting feedback from editor and readers and that I started growing and realizing, yeah, I missed this plot point, or oh man, my book two of what I’m working on right now, I had this major thing where they went to this town and they were looking for this house, and oh, they found it, they got point to it, and I read it.

I rewrote it. I, and had others read it. It wasn’t until this recent drafting rewrite that I’m redoing most of it, that I said, wait a second, this is the son of the guy. He would know where the house is. Nobody picked up on that. So I’ve learned a little bit of outlining goes a long way, and that’s where plotter comes in.

I remember Jay, one of his conferences or something that I went to is the first time I heard about plotter and correct me and say whatever to defend or whatever. I think I wouldn’t have appreciated plotter without already have written some things and tried to outline and understood what good an outline would do.

Because the first time I looked at plotter, I was still really new. And I’m like I have no idea. And I put it aside, even though I had a license for a couple years before I, I used it, now I use it and I’m like, okay, this makes sense. Story beats and the structure and I can choose different structures to put the book in what fits and all that.

So for the newbies, tell us a little bit about what plotter is, what it does, and what it can do for them.

Troy: So I’ll start with the simple act of plotting because there are some people that still wanna be that discovery writer, right? Yes. They wanna, okay, that’s fine. Because what you’re writing, when you write what you’re calling your first draft is not a first draft.

It is a zero draft, it is an outline draft. And you usually, if you’re a, if you’re. Aspiring to make your writing better. You plot later, you look at the draft that you’ve written and you go, okay, now what do I have? And then you can tear that apart and look at it if you analyze it correctly and go, okay, where are my story beats?

Where are all those things? And you do that before you write the next draft. That’s the most important thing, right? Is because that speeds up your draft, your second drafting process and makes it easier cuz you’ve told yourself the story, but you’ve written a 60,000 word outline, essentially. Okay. And that’s okay.

It’s actually okay. It’s all right to be a discovery writer. People are like, you’re such a plotter. And I’m like, yeah. But I also acknowledge that there are other paths that you can follow. Ok.

Stephen: Dif people’s brains work differently. Yeah. Things really do click

Troy: differently. Yeah. People, and here’s the other thing.

Okay. New writers, just, let’s just get this outta the way. You’re gonna write horrible first drafts forever. I just wrote a first draft in November. I did nano with a whole bunch of people for, it was a lot of fun. And what did I get out that November exercise? A horrible first draft that I now need to revise.

Just finished book number 31 weeks ago. What I have, what am I working, what was working on just I on this podcast, revising that because it was a horrible first draft. You’re gonna write horrible first drafts. Be okay with it. Doesn’t matter. Everybody’s the same. Doesn’t matter how many books you’ve written you, you’re gonna write a horrible first draft end of story over with.

Okay? But the process of outlining itself doesn’t have to be this huge structured thing. So when you’re first starting out, I tell people, start with know five things about your book. Start by knowing five things. Now if you’re writing mysteries, you wanna know who did it, how they did it, how they get caught, and who catches them.

Okay? Pretty simple, right? The reason you wanna know those things is so you can drop some clues along the way. Yes. Right. Lead your reader towards that conclusion. Not clues that make it obvious, but that lead your reader towards that conclusion. But for different genres, there are other things that you should know.

Romance, who’s the love interest? Who is the secondary love interest? Because in a romance, actually the lead romance person is the hero. The secondary love interest is the antagonist. And that’s where the conflict comes from. Okay. Different structure, different genre, different story, idea study, story structure.

When you’re new, this does not mean go to college. In fact nevermind. We won’t talk about that. That’s a whole other

Stephen: conversation.

Troy: Yeah, that’s a whole other podcast. We can come back and do that later. We won’t do it right now. Except to say that there are tons of ways to study story structure. And what I mean by study it is to look at different types of story structures, see which one resonates with you, whether that save the cat story, grid story circles like Jay Thorne that uses the different things like that.

Look at things and look which one resonates with you. Then take your favorite story that you really love and tear it apart and put it on some kind of a plot line, or somehow analyze it and see why it works. Now what that translates to is then you write first drafts that have better structure because you have an innate understanding of story structure.

So even as a brand new writer, what you’ll find is the longer you write, the more you understand story structure. The more, more you become a spoiler at the movie and you need to keep your mouth shut if you wanna stay married. . Yes. And that’s just cause you know what’s gonna happen. Now that doesn’t, for me, that doesn’t take the enjoyment outta the entertainment.

I still wanna see where it’s going and how they’re gonna get there. But I glass onion, man, I had it pegged. I was like, she’s gonna die. Did I say that out loud? No, because my wife was four feet away and she has heavy objects nearby that she could chuck at my head. . So no. But so understand story structure.

Okay, but, and then for Potter, what plotter is it’s a visual tool similar to like note cards on a on a court board. That, but more powerful electronic with tags, ways you can tag them, ways you can filter them, ways you can add more content to them. But don’t start with all of those things. Just start by writing some summaries of what you think you’re gonna write in those steam cards.

And just put all of your ideas in whatever order down on a plot line. Now you’ll see in plotter there are different plot lines down the left-hand side and across the top are chat. You can set it up as being chapters or beats or whatever structure you happen to write in. There are times when I will start something and I will start, like I’m starting a series.

I’ll start with what I call an idea book. And the idea book is just me dumping all of those ideas onto a plotter type plot line, right? And it doesn’t matter what order they’re in. Doesn’t matter if they’re even good ideas or bad ideas. Cause I can sort them later. I just write all of them. And then I can sort through those ideas and determine, is this a problem, that there’s a solution for you?

Is it a conflict? Is this something that needs to happen in the story? Is this one of my ideas that maybe it was late in the afternoon and I’d hit the bottle a little too hard before I was doing this, and it’s just terrible and I need to get rid of it, right? But you just write all those ideas down. So when you’re first starting out, just be free with your ideas.

Allow your creativity to roam. When you get into plotter, there are things you can do. There’s the timeline section where you can do those little note cards, right? There’s an outline

Stephen: section, which I love and that’s super important for me.

Troy: Super important, and especially when you start adding story structure, okay?

But before you even get to story structure ideas, just get your ideas or take the draft that you’ve written as a new writer. You wrote this first draft. You have no idea what it is, and pull it apart scene by scene, and put it on those plot lines and see what it looks like. Because what you’re gonna do with story structure is you’re going to check your work.

So being a full-time writer is like giving yourself English homework every day for the rest of your life, okay? And much like your English homework, you’re going to go back and check your work at some point. And so that’s one of the things that Potter enables you to do, is go back and check with a story structure and see, how did I do?

Does this line up? Do I have an inciting incident? Is there a midpoint to this book? What is it? Does the midpoint come at 75% of the way through the book? Probably a problem is my inciting incident happened way too late. If you’re a new writer, probably you can probably take the first two chapters that you wrote and delete them, and that’ll be a great place to start in editing your draft.

But, and not always. So don’t do that. Just willing. Don’t nobody just right now, go to Word or wherever you’re using and just delete your, no, don’t do that, but . But anyway the point is that what you’re doing is you’re getting yourself distance from your work and looking at it objectively. What do I have?

And then checking my work.

Stephen: And that can be really difficult in and of itself. It’s especially a challenge.

Troy: And so part of this is if you summarize it like you do those summaries, like I’m talking about, you allow yourself distance. You’re not reading the story, you’re reading a summary of what you wrote that day and be honest about what you actually wrote that day.

Be honest with yourself. Don’t try to impress anybody with those scene cards cause we’re never gonna see ’em and we don’t care . So just be honest with yourself about those scene cards and what you’ve actually written and it can enable you to really take a look at your work in a different way. But the other aspect of plotter that’s really important is the notes, characters and settings sections, because the notes section is awesome for research.

I don’t know about you, but I’m a nerd and I do lots of research for my. Sometimes a little too much that I know way too much about how Strict Nine Works or how to actually successfully slit someone’s throat without making a whole lot of noise. Because it’s a very noisy way to kill. Anyway all of that set aside.

Okay, so I put a lot of my research in the notes section so I can refer to it easily, but the characters and settings section not only allows you to capture the information about your characters from this book, but to capture them from an entire series. So you wrote that book back in book One back three years ago, and now you’re in book three and you realize that Susie, who was in Book one should now make a reappear, but you can’t remember what Suzy looks like.

So you go back and you read Book one and then you lament that you ever published it because your writing has approved so much in five years that you are horrified and. But you start to go down this rabbit hole of reading that book and you come out of it and you still don’t know what color Suzy’s eyes were, but you’re in a really bad mood.

So instead, if you have those facts in a series Bible and Potter is one of, I would just say one of the mo, the easiest and best tools to contain that information in, because it’s all in one place. It’s very succinct and you can change it from book to book. There’s all kinds of tips and tricks that you can do with that series Bible.

But having a series Bible is invaluable. I know writers that have written a whole series, then they have some fan that’s a super fan that goes back and actually creates a series Bible for them of the entire series because they can’t write the next book until they reconcile all those different facts and settings and people.

And so if you can keep track of that along the way. It’s going to save you a lot of trouble, time, and trouble. It’s going to save you research, and it’s also just gonna help you to be a better, more organized writer. So what potter’s really about when you boil it down is efficiency. This is the most efficient way to plan your books and to keep track of your characters over a series and to do those things.

It’s about efficiency and effectiveness, really what it’s about.

Stephen: And going along with what you said the plotter, Scribner, any of these tools, I would say to get the most out of it and understand it, you would have to have some writing under your belt. I think a mistake a lot of writers make is they’ll go to conferences, listen to podcasts, and yo know, I’m a beginning writer and I wanna know it all.

And they listen to every podcast, read every magazine in book. I’m like many. I have way too many writing books that I’ve not even read more than a quarter of the way in But to really grasp what it can do for you, you gotta have that experience under your belt already writing some short stories.

In a book or two, even if you just put ’em aside, will help you understand these tools to make your writing even more effective and better. I found that with Plotter, personally using it, the first couple times I used it, I’m like, I don’t know what I’m putting where. And it’s eh, whatever.

Troy: Yeah. And it does help to have some of the experience, and this is also what I call tool procrastination. There are different things that writers do to actually avoid the act of actual writing. Like I’m a writer. What have you written lately? Not much, but I’ve been doing a lot of research on tools and how to write, and I’ve read a lot of books in my genre.

None of those are bad. But you need to be writing like the whole idea is to be writing at a regular time. You need to develop writing habits. Super important. If books and tools start to invade on that time, you need to stop the madness, right? And just don’t do it. So tools, what I say is, first of all, keep things simple.

Kinda like word and script, like you were talking about there, there are tons and tons of features, right? Just because an advanced feature is there, doesn’t mean you have to use it. Doesn’t even mean I have to know how to use it, right? I don’t use the tools in Scribner nearly as much as I used to.

Since I have plotter, I use Scribner in a completely different way than I used to, right? And I don’t use hardly any of those advanced tools, and it didn’t cause me to delete Scribner from my computer, not buy the new version. What it did instead. It enabled me to go, okay, I know that this is here and if I need it, it’s, but most of the time I’m just going to stay in this area right here.

Same thing with plotter. First of all, keep it simple. There’s all kinds of tutorials out there, but one of the first things you can do is just get into it watch the basics tutorial. We have a weekly training and we walk through how the program works, right? Show up at that weekly training.

Learn how the program works at the very basic level, and then go from there. Start simple, keep it easy, and be writing. Don’t be using your tools and your craft books and your studying of story structure to keep you from actually doing the active writing.

Stephen: L learn as you go seems to be a very good method for just about everybody.

Not I know someone will say that didn’t work for me. But it, it’s definitely worked for me and most of the people I talked to use the tool and use what you know about it. If you don’t use everything, don’t stress out and don’t take your time to, oh, I gotta go figure this out and learn this.

If you don’t need it and it’s not helping you right, then you’ll learn it later. You’ll pick it up. Just keep using what you know and works for you at the moment that, oh yeah, that’s worked for me amazingly well.

Troy: Yeah, we have tags in plotter, which, and I’ve seen people, like I saw this gal and she literally had probably 20 categories of tags and you just kept scrolling through all the different tags she has in plotter.

Generally speaking of most of my books, I use six tags. And that’s just because that’s the way I work with the software and the way it works for my mentality and my books. Can you use lots more? Yeah. Can you not use them at all? Yep. You can do that too. Whatever way that you, what that works for you.

And sometimes that massive amount of freedom, and I have all this choice can become overwhelming. So I tell people what you can do is you look at someone whose process you’d right? Friend of yours, whatever. Follow that process. And then you’re going to have a moment that I call the and then moment and people will be like, can I copy your writing process thing?

I’ll tell ’em about my process. They go, can I copy that? I’m like, sure. Because I also know you’re not going to copy that. It’s not going to work for you long term. You’re gonna copy it short term. You’re gonna have your and then moment, and you’re going to adapt my writing process to your writing process by adding the things that work for.

So don’t worry about what someone else is doing, all the different features that you see in there. Just find your process and what writes for you. And again, this is a part of your writing process. This is a writing tool. It’s designed to get you writing and get you finishing that first draft. It’s not about creating the perfect outline in the perfect plot.

It’s about writing that book and getting it out into the world. Yes,

Stephen: and that’s what we gotta remember. The end result is the book. And the book needs to be entertainment. Enjoy. For fiction, entertainment, enjoyable, written well. And it doesn’t matter if you’re using Word or Scribner or you’re writing it long hand.

People, like you said, used to type out a typewriter and have to change whole pages. You need to be able to use the tools effectively to come up with a good story, not depending on the tools to create that good story. You can do it in any way. The tools are. For you to use to make things easier for the writing.

And people shouldn’t be able to tell, oh, they used the Save the cat plot line in plotter when they did this. . They shouldn’t be able to tell that.

Troy: Yeah, no. If they can, you made a mistake. Yes. Because the story now, and this is accepting with the exception of other writers who study story structure and may come to your story and just automatically realize what’s going on.

Oh, that’s a midpoint. No, but most people are not gonna do that. What readers will tell you when you do something wrong in your story is, there’s something wrong here. This does not work. They will not be able to tell you most of the time why it does not work. And this is the purpose of developmental editors and other people that look at your work before it goes out into the world, is they can tell you why.

The reader can’t tell you why. The reader just goes, I’d like that book until chapter four, and then something went wrong. That’s so it, it is important to understand that like those story structures are there as a guideline. People will go, oh, my inciting instance is supposed to happen at 12.5%.

I have 72,000 words in my book, and they start doing math. No, stop the madness. If you’re close, you are good, right? If you’re somewhere, you have a 70,000 word book and you’re somewhere between eight and 12,000 words, when you’re inciting, instant happens, good to go relax. This is a story. Let it happen. So don’t get caught up on the story structure to such a point that it takes the creativity and the joy out of your story and turns it into a formula.

Yes. That’s why we don’t use X Excel. We aren’t dealing with formulas. We’re dealing. You say

Stephen: that, but I knew somebody in a business situation that used Excel to write their correspondence notes to people. They’d write in one cell, print it out, and it would print 63 pages of blank pages, and they’d take the one that got printed on to send it and put the rest back in the thing.

So yes,

Troy: Uhhuh , I’ve seen people do that. I’ve seen people plan books in, in Excel too. And so now this is, if you use that, don’t worry. Like I’m not dissing on you or anything because there are methods at work in Excel, right? What I mean is by that, more than that is you’re not doing math, you’re not doing formulas like that.

If you are a general word count in the range, you’re good. It’s let’s think about the story and what’s happening there as well. Because the reason we love stories as people is because they’re different, because they’re entertaining, because they take us to a different place. Because you do things differently in your unique voice.

So don’t get hung up. Don’t just relax. Relax. Yep. This is fun. Primarily. This is

Stephen: fun. Don’t let the tools control you. Yeah. Which is another reason to use ’em when you have a little bit of experience writing so you feel more comfortable. Troy, coming up what are some things that are, that you can share with us that are coming up with plotter that may be of interest to people?

So

Troy: there’s actually some really cool features coming up. So we just released cha characters by book, which is a really cool feature that allows you to modify your characters as they move through a series. But we do have some more advanced world building is one of the things I’m really excited about in that we have notes, characters, and settings, but we’re gonna add more to that where you can add, if you’re writing a fantasy, you can add objects and you can, because it enables you to develop the software, enables you to develop those relationships between those and a character and that type of thing.

Or if you have a magic system, there’ll be more, an easier way for you to encompass that as part of your plotter notes that you can refer to on a regular basis. One of the other ones that’s really cool is we have a chronological timeline thing coming that’s so for historical writers, you can have one timeline that’s this is the order that things actually happened in history.

And then here is your story so that you can refer to those two things. It’s been something that’s been on our radar for a while. Historical writers and even even for me, some of my books, like there’s a definite timeline. Like it’s not historical, but there’s a definite timeline that I can see the value of creating a chronological timeline of what actually happens in real time.

And then if you’re having flashbacks and stuff, what actually happens in your story? And tying those two things together and making sure that they match up. So that’s one of the things I’m most excited about. There’s other little fixes coming up. We have actually have an act structure that allows you, instead of just having the chapters across the top, you can have acts and scenes within the chapters and things like that.

And that’s another thing, like I’ve seen the beta of that. It’s coming out of beta very soon, and it’s super cool and it’s gonna be super useful.

Stephen: Wow. Cool. I love the chronological timeline thing cause I had this idea for a story that, to, that when you’re reading the story it didn’t happen chronologically.

It was like snippets of time. But the main character. It what showed his progression to the dark side, essentially anger and all that. But they didn’t happen in chronologic order. So I was trying to wrap my head around how to accomplish that and not miss things and make it oh, look at the, all the plot holes,

Yeah. And I think it was way beyond my skill, but I loved the concept of doing that well.

Troy: Yeah. And it you know what, it’s interesting you said that like it was way beyond your skill, but perhaps with the proper tools and as you’ve developed your skill further, that story can become a reality. Like teaching moments is a story I had an idea for really a long time ago, but I really didn’t have the ability to write a dual plot story and have it work super well until.

I had the right tools and the right experience to do that. And so the, you make an absolutely great point there in accidentally in talking about the chronological timeline, about the right tools and the right skill level to pull something off. And sometimes having that tool is that’s all the extra spark that you need.

You’ve already got the ability well enough by now, but you go, man if I had that, it would make it that much easier. And sometimes that little thing is all that you need.

Stephen: I like that. And I do that you use the tools you’re talking about. And I think most of the. Author tool services out there, they do use it.

That’s not true everywhere about everything. I’ve been in the computer and tech world a long time and talked to people that it’s you developed this and you’re trying to sell it, but it’s not running on your computer right there, . It’s yeah. So I love that.

Most

Troy: of our developers are writers. Most of our customer service people are also writers our support people. So like most of the people in the company are either writers or aspiring writers. And and the first one to create the product was Cameron Sutter, who created it for his own writing.

That was the purpose of the software. And then as he showed it to people, and I was one of those people that, one of the first people to see it, like out in the. And went, whoa. Hey, wait a minute. That is a game changer. And it, of course it has developed a ton since that initial time. The first time I downloaded it in 2017 and nobody knew what plotter was.

To now is a huge difference in the different features that we have, but most of those features came about from writers who went to our website and said, Hey, you know what would be great if this was in plotter and it did this? And we went, huh, you know what? You’re right. And so we we added that to our roadmap and stuff like that.

Nice. So you can go suggest features, vote on things in the roadmap and that you think would be a great thing to have in plotter. But the primary point is this is a software created by writers for writers. We know what you’re going through, we know what you want. And sometimes I can see an idea and I go I might never use that feature, but I can see the value that would have for other writers.

And that’s what that’s. One of the ways that we’re able to do things that other software doesn’t always do because we really are listening to our users and what they

Stephen: need. Great. I like that too. I know I’ve been in communication with Dave Chessen about Publisher Rocket at times and gotten direct feedback from him on some suggestions and problems and things.

So I love that you guys are like that. I think there are a few companies out there that aren’t like that and those are okay. Good software. But it’s nice to have companies that understand and are down in the trenches, so to say.

Troy: Exactly. Dave Justin’s a great example.

Atticus is a great example. Like that software is being shaped by writers and editors who are using it and saying, Hey Dave, hey team, these are some things that would be great if you could incorporate this into your software. And their team is going, you know what? You’re right. This is something we could definitely do.

Stephen: And that’s another software that has had a lot of changes since it came out too. Yeah. Troy, I told you, oh, it’d be about 15 to 20 minutes each half, and here we are, an hour and 10 minutes into it, . So we’ve got a great conversation. It’s been really fun talking to you.

Hopefully I’ll run India at a conference somewhere and we could share that beer and enjoy some stories. You

Troy: betcha. Sounds fantastic,

Stephen: man. Before I let you go could you give some advice to the new writers out there besides all the great advice we’ve already discussed, do you have any like last minute advice you could give them?

Troy: My primary advice to you is just find your own path. Be who you are. There are people that will be hobbyist writers forever, and there’s nothing wrong with that. And there are people that will be publishing giants eventually, and there’s nothing wrong with that. And there’s nothing wrong with having the aspiration for each.

Find your own path and your own. There’s so many ways you can go with writing today but just stay true to yourself. Writing for a living is one of the most amazing and most awful jobs you will ever have, and both are true at the exact same time. And so I just wanna tell you have fun. That’s what this whole thing is about, is have fun and find your own way.

And if you become that publishing mogul, or even if you just write a first draft, come and see me at a conference or something like that, I’d love to talk to you about it.

Stephen: So speaking of I said I’d let you go, but hold on. Are there any conferences or conventions or anywhere that you or some other plotter team will be that people could come up and meet you and learn more and check things out?

Troy: So I’ll be at, actually be at l t e in Utah next week. But, and I go to that conference almost every year, but next year I may not. I’ve been invited to a conference in New Orleans at exactly the same time, which is really interesting. But we’re at a lot of different conferences. We’re a lot of online conferences, a lot of other conferences.

We’ll be, definitely be at 20 books every year. We’re at 20 books to 5K in Vegas. One of my favorite conferences of all time Go every single year. You’ll see somebody from Plotter, maybe me at n if you’re part of that organization. And we’re at all kinds of different conferences and we’re planning to be at more as much as we possibly.

Stephen: Okay, great. We’ll look for you. I’ll see about what’s coming up and put a few links in the show notes for people if they wanna check it out and link to the website so they can check out plotter. Definitely get that. Yep. Plotter

Troy: plotter.com. Plotter without an E and that’ll get to there.

Or Google us, you’ll find our YouTube channel. Our, we have a Facebook group that’s super active and we can answer all kinds of your questions. You can find us in all kinds of places we’re not hiding at all. Great. All right, Troy. I appreciate you taking so much time and chatting with me today.

Stephen: You have a great rest of your day.

Troy: You betcha. Thank you. Have a wonderful day.

View Details

OverviewYou may know Troy from his work with Plottr. We’ll get to that. Troy is also an author – which is one reason Plottr has been so successful. The people working there know writing and use that knowledge to fashion a great tool.

If you haven’t heard about Troy’s writing, tune in today as we discuss his books and writing. Troy has written over 30 books in the mystery and thriller genre. We discuss his books, which he doesn’t get to do as much as talk about the company he works for. The current series is focused on Max Boucher and we talk about book 2.

His Bookhttps://www.amazon.com/Teaching-Moments-Max-Boucher-Mystery/dp/B09QNYN32H?keywords=teaching+moments+troy+lambert&qid=1677254687&sprefix=teaching+moments+tr%2Caps%2C99&sr=8-1&asin=B09QNYN32H&revisionId=&format=4&depth=1&linkCode=li2&tag=discoveredwordsmiths-20&linkId=561bd7fedd945eea4217c647a9a56c18&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_ilWebsitehttps://troylabertwrites.com

Favoriteshttps://www.amazon.com/Gray-Man-Novel-Book-ebook/dp/B002N83GSA?crid=3P6KY2SF2NO1K&keywords=gray+man&qid=1677255019&sprefix=gray+man%2Caps%2C106&sr=8-2&linkCode=li2&tag=discoveredwordsmiths-20&linkId=d8bb869be54b9fb7c03734bc7c8822e4&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_ilThe Rediscovered Bookshop | Where Books & People Meet (rdbooks.org)YouTubeTranscriptso I’m excited to get on with this. All today on Discovered Word Smiths. I have Troy Lambert and if you don’t recognize that name, go listen to a few other podcasts.

He’s been on several and we were joking at the beginning being on Jay Thorns. So I’ve snagged a couple people from Jay at times. Troy you do work for a company we’re gonna talk about, but tell, before we do that, we’re gonna talk about your books. Tell us a little bit about you and who you are, where you’re from, that type of thing.

What you like to do besides writing and working on software company stuff.

Troy: Oh, my goodness. So besides writing and working on software stuff I have two very talented dogs and one of them is a German Shepherd. And if you wanna establish a writing and basically routine for your life, get a German Shepherd because they’re very German.

And they’re going to they want a rigorous routine. You don’t take ’em for a walk on time. You’ll get out, you’ll get your steps, I promise. Nice. But anyway, , so I just wanted to throw that in there. But so

Stephen: that’s our best writing advice I probably ever heard. You wanna be a good scheduled writer, get a German Shepherd, get a German

Troy: Shepherd.

It’s that’s the answer to all of your, if everyone had one, the world would anyway. No, probably not true. But anyway but I’m like a lot of other people I wanted to write when I was young, I knew I wanted to be a writer. I was six years old, wrote my first book. George and the Giant Castle never been published, oddly enough.

Didn’t get picked up. But but when I was about 14, I knew I wanted to write full-time. I knew this was it, this is what I wanted to do. But all of those wise people in your life, like college counselors and parents and stuff like that, told me it was an impossible dream. I said, you’re a creative guy, but you need to be able to do something that makes money.

And being a writer full-time is an impossible dream. And so I believed them and I tell people, basically three decades later, a collection of hairnets and name tags and various career starts, I decided I should probably figure out this writing thing because otherwise I wasn’t sure what I was gonna do with the rest of my life.

And things were just kinda a mess. I’m like, I didn’t know. I honestly didn’t know what am I gonna do? And so yeah, so basically then I decided to write full-time and my timing was pretty good. Indie publishing was just becoming an accepted thing. It wasn’t quite as dirty of a word by then.

And so there was that, there were a lot of small presses emerging. Because of the digital first options of publishing, there were a lot of small presses coming out that could, that would actually take on writers that were a little lesser known and you didn’t have to deal with the agent thing all the time and things like that.

So that resulted in, for me, a hybrid career. I’ve been working as a writer full-time since 2009. Oh, nice. Just

Stephen: a little bit before the revolution.

Troy: Yeah. Before the revolution happened, I was in the middle of the revolution and didn’t know I was in the middle of a revolution. I was just trying to exist in my writing career with what was happening and re and later on we all realized, oh, we actually were in a revolution, but most of us were just head down trying to get the work done and had no clue how this was disrupting the rest of the world.

Stephen: Most people know you from plotter if they’ve heard you on other podcasts, and we’re gonna talk about that. But other than that, you’ve written many books. I think Roland said 25

Troy: Finish number 31 about two weeks ago, . Wow.

Wow. We need update somebody. Yeah. I told him, I said, you gotta update the stats. Even though it’s one of those, when you say 25 or more books by that point, what people know about you is you can write a book. And you can finish one. And so I’m like, eventually the number doesn’t really matter.

It’s more just about the fact that I’m writing full-time and it that I know how to write and I know how to sell books, and that’s really what it’s about.

Stephen: Nice. That’s pretty good. So tell us about your latest book. I believe it’s called Teaching Moments. Give us a little bit about what it’s about without giving it away.

First, what genre do you like to write in?

Troy: So most of the time I write in mystery and thriller simply because that’s become my author voice, and that’s another, that’s a whole podcast by itself. But teaching mo what teaching moments about is it’s about a detective who I introduced in the first book in the series called Harvested.

And he’s a former Seattle pd. His family was brutally killed, and so he basically broke from the police department and decided he was going to investigate their deaths full-time as much as possible. But he needed to pay the bills. And so became a detective and got roped into kind of being a pet detective type thing.

So he gets hired for these cases, basically to find missing animals and things like that. So harvested is kinda about that. Teaching moments is the, it starts with a similar story, but it’s actually a serial killer thrill. It is a dual plot line. There are two plots happening exactly at the same time, and they don’t tie in until the very end.

And you’ll think that you know what’s going on about halfway through and you are wrong. You’ll find out in the end what is actually happening, and that’s without giving it away. That’s the plot of the story.

Stephen: And that sounds like something mystery people would be like, oh yeah, that sounds great.

And dual plot lines. I know that can be difficult. I bet there’s a good tool that could help you with plot lines in your book, .

Troy: There is came in. Talk about that. It came in very handy because honestly like for people who are new writers, writing a dual plot line thing is not something I’d recommend you do for your first book.

I always recommend you keep your first book rather simple. You’re showcasing to a reader that you know how to write and that you can finish. And when you add complication to it, there’s a certain amount of skill involved in tying those things together without giving things away. And things like that.

And it’s just a little more work. And your first books, you really just want to get your momentum. And then you can do the complicated stuff later. Because I didn’t even realize, I just thought, this is really cool to have two plot lines. And by the time I got done, I was like, man, this is a lot of work.

It was worth it. I love that book. It’s one of the favorite books of any book that I’ve written. And it’s just super, it’s really awesome the way things turned out, but that getting them to turn out that way was a significant amount of work.

Stephen: It’s something that, as you mentioned, your skill as a writer, as it grows, it gives you the ability to do that because you’re not so focused on sentences and words and punctuation cause and plot holes.

You, you’re able to expand. So it’s like you said, not something to tackle right away. .

Troy: Yeah, for sure. I don’t know if I, there’s some experienced writers, I’d tell ’em, man, don’t tag. This is just it’s a lot. It’s hard. Not to discourage anyone, but anyway.

Stephen: Mystery thriller.

Are there any books or authors you can think of that yours are similar to, to give people an idea of what yours are like? So

Troy: really it’s interesting because mine are more similar to Dean Coonish, if you mis mixed him with mysteries. So if you mis mixed him with like Lisa Scott line. Type books or clai is another one that comes to mind that’s got some thriller mystery ish type stuff where it’s more, there’s a little more psychological to it.

It’s a little bit darker in some ways than some other fiction like that. But it’s Dean Kunz. There’s always a dog in my books. People are always I obviously the German Shepherd has some kinda influence and and they’re also, most of the time they’re set in the Pacific Northwest cause that’s where I live and I love it.

Perfect. So there, there’s those two things that kinda combine. Although I have written one set other places, but yeah, so like Lisa Scott line type books, but with a Dean Kuk type feel, that sometimes a little paranormal stuff happening. Other stuff like that, depending on.

Stephen: And that’s a great answer for readers, it’s I know what I like and if you tell me this person’s similar, it makes it easy to say, yeah I wanna go check ’em out or Yeah, I don’t usually read them, so it’s probably not of interest. And I think a lot of authors miss thinking that way.

And I think it would help find readers. So I love your answer cuz it was very clear. I love that .

Troy: It, yeah, it’s helpful from an author perspective, it’s helpful to know whose books are like yours because there is this myth with young authors where they go and I I had it too, where I was like, who?

They’d be like, who are your books for? And I’m like, they’re for everyone. Everyone I love my books. Not true. Okay. I don’t care how great you are, it’s just not true. There are gonna be people that don’t like your books. I teach a lot about writing. There are some people that don’t like my teaching style.

Okay. Cool. There are other teachers out there. It’s amazing, right? Not everybody has the same taste in the same the same appeal. For me I’m like, it’s more about let’s focus on readers that do like this type of thing. And the ones that don’t, I’m not worried about. I’m not trying to read win over Nora Roberts band to go, yeah, you should read Troy Lambert’s.

Stephen: And there’s people that don’t like King and there’s people that don’t like KOTs and there’s people that don’t like JK Rowling and they’re all the tops you would say as far as sales and Debbie McComber. I wouldn’t read one of her books if you handed it to me for free, cuz it’s not what I like.

Troy: And right and Nora Roberts, she also writes under JD Rob, I believe it is. Is that right? Yeah. JD Rob which actually I love those books tho. That’s another author I would consider comparable is JD Rob. But I wouldn’t compare myself to Nora Roberts different pen name, completely different genre, completely different style of books.

So you know, there’s, like I said, everybody just has different tastes and the reason she has two pen names is Nora Roberts fans who like that genre are not gonna cross over to jd. Yes. For the most there will be some crossover and I But there will be very little because they’re so far apart,

Stephen: but she doesn’t hide the fact that she’s writing as different people.

And the point is to keep ’em separated. And some authors agree and don’t agree with that, but it seems to work so .

Troy: And I would say in today’s world, you’re not gonna hide a pen name for very long. No . Just to be honest with you, it’s not gonna happen. There are internet sleuths out there that are deliberately trying to find out who you are and so you’re not gonna hide it for very long. So in some ways I like her approach. You’re just coming straight out with it and saying, Hey, this is me and this is me too. And they’re both me.

Stephen: Yeah. So what type of feedback are you getting from readers for,

Troy: from your. Oh man. I’ve gotten some of those readers that are really mad because I kept them up all night and I’m okay with that.

That’s a great thing, is kinda my goal. But I’ve got really great feedback on both harvested and teaching moments as far as especially people identify with that main character. And I didn’t I, when I initially crafted him, he was one of those, I figured he’s just gonna be this kind of a cookie cutter, kinda the gray man or whatever.

The real, he’s the backdrop to the real story is the bad guys, but people really sympathize and like that character a lot. And so that’s one of the biggest feedback things that I’ve gotten. Is it changed, it actually changed the way I’m writing the next couple books in this series. And having him be a little more character focused on his character journey.

That series, I have five books planned and then it will be over. And I know what the last book is gonna be and I know exactly how it’s gonna turn out. Oh, in interesting. Cause my next question was gonna be, what’s your plans coming up? You’re, this is book two, you’re working on book three now, using the same plot or same characters and all that.

Stephen: What can you tell us about what is coming up from your books?

Troy: So the there’s actually a lot of things going on. So one of the books, the book I just finished is actually what’ll be the last one in this part of the Capital City Murder series. It’s a series. I started with another author he had to drop out because of some family health issues.

And so this book is actually a real pivotal one for that series cause it’s changing the tone of the series and where it’s going. To something that’s more because when I was writing jointly with him, it was kinda more his lead and his style, and now it’s flipping to mine. And so I, this book ha I had to have create some kinda a transition.

That’s what this book is one I just finished. So that’ll be out later this year. And then next in the Max series is a book called Compelled. And all I’ll tell you about the start of that one is, it’s basically about a serial killer who’s been repressed for a while and suddenly decides kinda like Stella gets a groove back, only more murder, like way more murder and And and my wife read the first part of that, which is you can find the introduction to that in the end, at the end of teaching moments. And she said, this is almost too real. This is very scary. And I’m like, It is very scary. It’s intended to be very scary. So great. Anyway, it, that one’s gonna be a lot of fun.

And then towards the end of this year, maybe a little sooner, depending on how fast I can write I’m actually starting a new series, which is a crossover series between murder, mystery, thriller, and romantic comedy. Wow. So it’s about serial killers who fall in love and it’s going to be a blast.

Stephen: So that, that sounds great.

I like comedy in my action, my mystery, my thrillers and all that. I’m not a huge mystery thriller reader by itself, but you throw a little comedy in with it and that’ll draw my interest. One of my newer favorite writers Jeff Strand writes comedy horror often, and I fell in love with it and it’s give me more

Troy: I love, that’s one of the ones that I love. Another friend of mine just writes Hers are almost straight humor and they’re hilarious. And I read them when I just need a break from the serious. Although I tell people you should hang out with mystery and thriller writers when you go to conferences and stuff.

And the reason is we get all of our darkness out in our books and then in bar, we’re really funny. So you should come hang out with us because we’re a lot of fun. Because we don’t, then in real life, we are not as inclined to wanna kill people,

Stephen: We’ll save that for the page, .

Troy: Yeah, exactly.

Works out, works for me.

Stephen: Great. So Troy if you were given a choice this series of books, would you like to see them turned into movies or a TV show?

Troy: Oh, for this particular series, I would say probably movies. And the reason is because each book is un, unless it would be more of a challenge to break each book into se, into what am I trying to say?

Episodes. Rather than, and make it into a season, each book would then be a season. But that would be, I think, more challenging. Now. I’m not like, I’m not a script writer. I go to guys that do write scripts and I say, what do you think of this? So I think they would do better as movies cause each one has a different setting and all that kinda stuff.

Nice. But the capital city murders books I have always thought would make a great television show. They’re shorter. So you could make shorter, almost short, little like triplets of the different books into, and you could make those into episodes and probably make a pretty cool series out of it. So that one I would think differently.

Just it all, a lot of times it just depends on the book and the story, how it would. Nice.

Stephen: I like that you’ve have different answers depending on the book. That’s something that all authors think about , but I think more of us are lately with all the streaming and everything going on,

Troy: well, and there’s a lot of small studios out there and a lot of independent stuff being made and it’s what do you like?

What do you want from sure, I would love for Netflix or somebody to just pick it up and it turned into something, but if a smaller studio made something first and then it caught on, I would not be upset by that at all. We’re living in a different world of streaming where you could have episodes on YouTube and be making nearly what you’re gonna make from a major series if you had the right viewership.

I just at this point, for authors and for others, I’d say just don’t discount the options that are out there. There’s tons of different ways to get your workout into the world and use them all. Yes. And have a good time with it cuz one of the most important things is that you’re having

Stephen: fun.

A agreed. Do you have a website Troy, that people could go to?

Troy: Yep. Is www.troylambertwrights.com. It’s in the middle of an overhaul but at the moment. But there are still some really cool book trailers there and there are places where you can order signed books if you’d like. Or you can find my books all over the place.

Just Google me and you’ll find it. And if I don’t come up, when you Google me, your internet service is down and you need to get in touch with your provider and as soon as they get you back up and running, you’ll be able to find them.

Stephen: Easy to find. Which is bad for the mystery people cuz who knows who wants to kill you but the other thing with mystery people is you don’t get harassed as much as other people do because people know, oh yeah, that guy knows how to kill people. I don’t think I’m gonna show at his. And he mentioned that German Shepherd, yeah. Which is when I’m doing podcasts and stuff, I’m like, if a German Shepherd comes in, suddenly I’m not being arrested.

Troy: The police have not shown up at my house. He’s actually mine. And he just wants to be a part of what’s going on and he’s wondering why he wasn’t invited. So we’ve

Stephen: had many four-legged furry sidekicks on the podcast at times, . So lemme ask you what are some of your favorite, besides Koons and a few others, what are some of your favorite books and authors?

Troy: Oh man. So I just read a book now. I can’t remember the name of the authors. You gotta have to look it up. It’s called weed Lie Here. And it is super. So I’ve read a bunch of books at the beginning of the, of this year. The other guy that’s one of my favorites and he’s a friend of mine, so I but I still don’t feel bad promoting his stuff with Vincent Zand.

He writes some great award, dark thriller type stuff. His Chase Baker series is one that I just eat up. And another one is Diane Capri, like I really love her. Her Finding Reacher series where she has these couple FBI agents that are chasing Jack Reacher and it’s that one’s a pretty cool series.

Like it was one that Lee Child said, Hey man, go for this. You should write it. That’s cool. Advocates her series. And she, for, and the other thing is she’s just such a wonderful person. But she writes some great like mystery thriller type things that really that’s the kind of stuff that I love to consume because of course that’s the kinda stuff I love to write.

The other one is the Gray Man series. The Gray Man series is, . Th those books are just a lot of fun. It’s like Jack Reacher with a guy that’s a little older, so I can relate to him a little more. So I do a geek podcast, geek nerd type podcast, and my co-host has been reading The Gray Man and ranting about it.

Stephen: So yeah I’ve seen the show and I’ve got the first book on hold at the library right now yeah.

Troy: Extremely well written. And again, another guy that’s a super great guy as well he’s a super great human being, but he’s, he writes some fantastic books.

Stephen: Great. Do you have any bookstores that you really like to go to close to you in your

Troy: town?

Oh, yeah. We, so we have a bookstore that’s called Rediscovered Books, and I have two locations in our area, so live about an hour from Boise area. Okay. So they have a bookstore there, and then they have one in Napa and Caldwell, which is another area around us, and they also have an online store.

And they are some of my favorite people on the planet. When Covid hit, they figured out how to weather that and they it’s been a bookstore for years and these, the owners are fantastic and amazing people. But the other thing that’s really cool about them is they’re very vested in local and indie authors.

They’re like, if you have a solid book, it doesn’t matter what your path to publication is, what matters is that you have a good story and they will actually find people in their staff who will read your story and they’ll champion your story to readers. So they’re actually not just about putting your book on a shelf, on a dark space in a shelf that says local authors in their store.

But they’re about showcasing local authors and really promoting them. Nice super great group of folks. And if you don’t, if you don’t have an indie bookstore in your area look them up and order from them online because it’s a great way to support independent bookstores and independent publishing because as we’ve seen in recent weeks, we, some of us already knew this, but big publishers have no idea what they’re doing either.

So

Stephen: Yeah I totally agree. That’s I why I always ask that question because I put links and a map on the show notes to encourage people if you’re traveling, go look up some of these areas and find some of these bookstores and goes to my kids And I, every time we’d go on vacation, going to a bookstore was always on the list of things to do, no matter where it was.

When we went down to Disney, we went to a bookstore and found one. So we’ve got some great bookstores. We found great stories.

Troy: Oh yeah, I can get lost. I’m, I have to be careful when I go into a bookstore, I have to set a timer or something because and have a budget restriction in mind. That’s the bigger thing.

Leave your friend. Especially if it’s a used bookstore. I walked in this used bookstore, so this friend of mine, I, quick story, this friend of mine and I wrote a non-fiction book about Star Trek called The Tile Trek. Ok. Ok. Talked about the philosophy of Star Trek throughout the years. And we’re, we were just finishing up writing this book and stuff like that. And I went to visit a friend of mine over in Idaho Falls, which is my hometown, where I grew up and I saw, Hey, there’s this cool new bookstore there and I haven’t been there. This in the place used bookstore. I’m gonna go in there.

And somebody had come in and sold to the bookstore owner their entire, like all these Star Trek books in his whole collection. And so I went home. To Boise with a lot more than I left home with. Yes. But simply because I found that and I was like, that’s a complete collection. Like what?

Why did you sell that to this store? And I go up front, not too sheepishly, like here, I will just take this stack. Just ring them up. I didn’t look at the prices, I just swiped the card at the end and just hope. Come on. But,

Stephen: Yeah. Speaking of Star Trek you’ll probably appreciate this.

I got to talk to Armon Shimerman on the podcast cuz he wrote a series of books. It was such a wonderful conversation, such a great man. But it was so hard not to geek out , but I will say with all my nerd friends I had a lot of nerd credit going on there. .

Troy: Yes. And here, so here’s the thing about Star Trek too, is this is a very unifying thing, and this is probably a whole other topic, so we won’t dwell on it for too long, but it’s a very unifying thing.

We go to conventions, fan conventions, and we literally, even if people don’t buy the book most of the time, they come up and they buy the book and then they talk to us. But sometimes they come up just to talk to us when they learn. It’s about the philosophy of Star Trek. It starts this huge discussion that’s An amazing unifying thing of all of us surrounding this fake universe that was created by Gene, rod initially.

And we begin to talk about how that has impacted the world and how the world has then in turn impacted Star Trek, which is exactly what the book is about. And so for me I don’t really care how many copies of that book we sell. In some ways what I care about is the conversations that allows me to start with people about aspirational thinking like that, that can move us forward better as human beings.

So I love that.

Stephen: And that really fits Roddenberry’s original thinking of the future in Star Trek. You’re living it right there.

Troy: Yeah. It’s actually, it’s absolutely amazing. It’s an amazing.

Stephen: All right, so Troy, before we move on, then talk author stuff and more about plotter. If somebody came up to you on the street and said, Hey, I heard you’ve written some books.

Why should I get your book and read it? What would you tell ’em? You know what

Troy: This is interesting cause Rod is gonna ask this question a lot, and the question I lead with first is I say, what else do you read? The question, the reason for that is very simply, this is exactly what we’re talking about before.

My books are not for everyone. So if that person tells me that they read Epic Fantasy, Brandon Sanderson stuff, I’m gonna say, you know what? You could pick up my books if you’re interested in a little crossover to mystery and Thriller. They’re thrilling, they’re exciting. There’s clues there.

They’re a lot of fun, but you may not be the type of person who likes to read about serial killers. Now, if you like True Crime Pro podcasts and you like solving mysteries and figuring out on TV before the. The TV detective does and those type of things, then my books are for you. They have clever twists, clever ending.

You’re almost never are you gonna start one of my books and know what’s going to happen in the end. Even if you think you do it, it’s like the guy that’s arrested in the first 20 minutes of law and order, we know you didn’t do it. We’re just waiting for the real bad guy to show up. So it’s kinda a similar thing, but I always ask him first, what do you read and see if it’s even related.

So if I even wanna make that kinda recommendation to them.

Stephen: And I really like that because it’s very true. You don’t want people reading your book that don’t read that type of book because that’s the ones where you get the bad reviews. It’s I normally read romance and this sucked well cause it is not a romance

Troy: well or things like the goat there, there are too many cuss words.

Okay. But I warned you, at the outset there’s, it’s pretty clear what type of book this is going to be. Cause I had a friend of mine that he had one and like he got this scathing review that goes, this was not Christian fiction at all. And I’m like, this is not in any Christian fiction categories on Amazon at all.

I dunno how you found this book and then said there’s just certain qualifiers that you say cause not everyone’s gonna like your work. My brother does not read my book. It’s okay.

Stephen: Yeah. My, my first book, my mother read it, and the only thing that bothered her was I needed the main character to be an orphan.

So for the first five chapters, she’s in this happy household and then they get killed and she couldn’t get past that. And I’m like, I needed it to happen in the story Yeah. Yeah. It there are certain triggering events that people are going to they’re gonna say, okay, I was gonna read your book, but this just, I couldn’t go past that point.

Troy: And it’s perfectly okay. It’s, again, it’s one of those things that every, not everyone’s going to love your work, so be okay. The sooner you’re okay with that, the easier it are. It is to look at reviews, the easier, it’s to just move forward with your author career.

Stephen: Agreed. Agreed. All right. Great. Troy, thanks for sharing all that, because like we talked about, I’m betting any authors listening to this probably didn’t even know you’ve written books.

And I know we get a lot of mystery readers. That’s a huge genre. Hopefully we’ll turn some more people onto your book. Thanks for sharing them.

Troy: You betcha. Thank you. Thanks for letting me.

View Details

OverviewA different episode for the podcast today. We start out with Roland and I discussing author news. As always, its fun to deep dive into what’s going on.

My guest is Jacob Way from Deep Water Gaming, so we don’t talk books. Instead, we have a great discussion on writing as it pertains to comics and games and how author’s can put creative effort into these other avenues to coincide with their writing. I also try to ask some questions of interest to educators and parents and what kids can do now to prepare for this type of career in the future.

Jacob talks about being creative and how that starts at an early age, but how author’s can channel that into more than books. Gaming teaches kids lessons, but so does interacting with content. And kids can develop a passion for entrepreneurship at an early age – which is something that happened to Jacob.

Websitehttps://deepwatergaming.com

Roland’s NewsRoland brings us some great discussions about:

• Amazon fixes problems with returns
• Creating copyrighted works with A.I.
• A.I. in the current workspace
• A.I. voices or audiobooks
• Roland’s 3 areas A.I. is useful

YouTubeTranscripto today, interesting, exciting episode for my podcast and for my other brand line of work. I want to welcome Jacob way to the podcast. He is the president of Deepwater Games. Jacob, how are you

Jacob: today? I’m doing fantastic. Thank you for having me on your podcast.

Stephen: And I must say I’m very jealous of your hair.

I saw the picture. Yeah, the camera doesn’t get it all. . No it doesn’t. It’s very nice. I, my son has long hair. I got not the front long hair and I used to have, not as long, but longer. Very jealous of that. . So Jacob, tell everybody a little bit about who you are and what you do and that’ll lead to the rest of the conversation, cuz normally anyone listening is hearing about a new author with a book they’ve not heard of before.

And then we sure discuss some author stuff. This is like a little different, but I still think it’s tied in. So give everyone a rundown of who Jacob Way is.

Jacob: I’ve been doing entrepreneurship for the last 10 years. I actually started as a print broker that brokered printing of comic books, board pgs, all sorts of different types of books from Taiwan.

And I started that when I was 23, 22. I can’t remember exactly how old I was, but , I had been doing that for a couple years and then I got into the board game space. So entrepreneurship has just been my path for the last 10 years. And now I run Deepwater Games, which is a board game company located in Saginaw, Michigan.

If you’re a Michigan Knight or if you’re familiar with the Midwest, we’re right here. Okay. Detroit is about an hour and a half away. And then we’re in the middle of this, not in, nearly in the middle of the state, but close to the middle of the state. And we make games that are approachable.

We try and do games that, that fit in our mission statement. And when I say games, I talk about tabletop games. So one, it has to be a game that is easy to learn. That doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s devoid of strategy but you should be able to learn it pretty quickly. Two, it is a theme or a story that is not just your traditional castle, European castle story, right?

We want to represent more than just the traditional story structure. And then three, it has to be affordable. So almost all of our games are under $40, and most of them range in the $20 price point. We had our most success when we first started our fourth or third game, something like that.

Was welcome to which was so popular that Daniel Radcliffe talked about it on people in People Magazine which was just nice. Yeah. Crazy okay. , Harry Potter himself is talking about one of our board games. And now we have a game called Monstrosity which sounds like it’s right up your alley as it’s about art and teaching and learning.

And it’s currently in all 1800 target stores as well as 600 Barnes and Noble

Stephen: stores as well. Beautiful. Beautiful. I must say I wish you hadn’t said that cuz I already bought five of your games and I almost seem to collect games more than I should. I was just at my cousin’s yesterday.

We played four different games and taught them all new stuff. I’m like the game master. Oh man. Yeah, I love that.

Jacob: Yeah, we need more of you my friend . I

Stephen: love, yeah, I love games. So here’s where I thought it would be great to talk to you for the podcast for two reasons. We have authors that listen and we have new authors I interview and a lot of times we’re talking about not just doing stories, but branding and other avenues that branding can take for other revenue streams, which comics and games is something that could connect to that.

Yeah. And I also do a lot with parents, educators for kids, and I think we’re missing an opportunity teaching our kids entrepreneurship. And when they get older they’re like there’s no jobs. They’re all taken away by the robots now that I can get, and I don’t wanna go to school and spend $300,000 and then get a $25,000 a year job as is becoming much more feasible not to go to college. That’s a whole nother discussion, . So what you have done is a great path that is a choice that they have more than ever. I think it hasn’t been since like the fifties that interpret ownership and starting your own business has been such a solid choice for people starting out and absolutely moving on.

And it’s not like you have to, oh no, I can never get a job somewhere. It could be part of, it could be the only thing it could grow. And you’ve even changed. So I just wanna jump in, dive in, have some questions, and if there’s anything you think would be super relevant, throw it on out. Just a little discussion on it, sure.

Jacob: Oh, one thing before we jump on I completely forgot to mention when we first met and talked Deepwater games as part of Oxi Media, yes. Oxi Media is a conglomerate of different companies including. Source Point Press, which was a is a comic book publisher, probably the biggest in Michigan, if not the Midwest.

And for about 18 months I served as publisher for Source Point Press. I dealt with Diamond Comics and Yes Simon and Schuster and we sponsored, we were the bad sponsors of New York Comic-Con while I was publisher. I have a lot of comic experience as well, so we can dump jump into there

Stephen: as well.

Yeah that’d be awesome. And we won’t talk about Diamond cuz we might keep things upbeat and happy. . I, I used to do small magic store buying, selling, trading magic cards and dealt with Diamond. Now my son works at a store and deals with Diamond, so that’s all we’ll say about that. Oh boy.

but your table was the whole reason I regretted taking a credit card to that show. . I ended up with board games and comics. My son had helped me carry stuff out f fantastic. These guys owe me. That’s what, that was the deal. . So let’s at, let’s look at the interpreter ship first. So you are not as old as I am.

And you’ve been doing this for about 10 years. You started young about where My son’s at. Why did you choose to go jump in and say, Hey I wanna do games, which isn’t like I’m opening a restaurant or starting a auto mechanic store. I wanna do games and see if I can find people to play them, and I wanna see about creating.

Why did you decide to do that and what were some of the struggles you had to overcome with that?

Jacob: That’s a great question. So I’ll start with. Since I was five years old, I’ve been, I’ve wanted to be an entrepreneur. I still can’t spell the word though, I’ll tell you that. I can’t say years old today.

There’s like way too many Rs and E in there. It just makes no sense. But yeah I’ve always been fascinating with business and I think it’s mostly my genetics. My, my grandfather was an entrepreneur. I never met him, unfortunately. He, a famous story about him is he had all of the franchise rights for Wendy’s in Texas.

Unfortunately, he sold those rights very early and the Wendy’s history and did not really cash into that. But it’s just been in my blood of tra blazing trails, right? And trying new things. And I actually did not start in board games. My first business was the print brokerage.

And the focus actually was on comic books. And if we go back a little bit, even farther I were, was starting businesses all throughout my childhood. My earliest known business that I can remember is I would cut limbs off of the trees of my grandma’s trees, which she loved

And then I’d fastened them into weapons and sell it to the chil children in the neighborhood. Beautiful. Yeah.

Stephen: It’s, you should have followed that up with packs of band-aids. So after you sold the weapons Oh, yeah. You know that Yeah. Missed opportunity

Jacob: at eight. I hadn’t learned about vertical integration yet.

It’s I was a slow learner. , and then I would sell Pokemon cards. I wish I had actually kept that business up. And then I played chess competitively for a little while. And then I was doing chess coaching. Business when I was around 18 years old. So it’s always been something that I’ve been experimenting with.

And it’s really interesting to me when you do see kids that have that spark that wanna do something that, that know, that business is like something they’re passionate about, because it just like art, it happens at a very young age and fostering that is extremely important.

My mom is a single mom and she went to college while she was raising me. And my older brother who’s actually a writer wrote on a couple of our comic books nice. Yeah. And she fostered that, that entrepreneurship, she encouraged it. She tried to connect me with different people that, that would show me the path of how to monetize that.

She really didn’t have that ambition herself. Skipped the generation she at least recognized it in me and tried to foster that. Love that. The path of, yeah, and the path of entrepreneurship is, is winding right? You’ll go one day and I was actually a wedding photographer for a little bit, there’s all sorts of different businesses that I thought this is the business that I was meant to be in.

And in reality it took a lot of those situations for me to realize what I really want to do and to say board games is the end. Goal and the end of my journey that’s where I’m retiring, I would say is probably not true, but I have found what I like to do, and that is helping creators create.

I’m not a creative person as far as writing and drawing goes. I’m creative. Business wise. But I’m very good at talking to creators and finding a way to make what they have in their mind or have on paper and monetize it onto the market. I don’t get bored by spreadsheets.

I don’t get bored by sales a lot of those things that creators don’t necessarily like to do. And that’s where I’ve, where I found my niche, I guess the best way to put it.

Stephen: And I think that, oh, I’m sorry. I think that tagline, whoever I talked with at the table, that was what they said, that kind of sparked me.

Oh, okay. I, if that’s what their, their goal and mission goal is, then that’s exactly somebody I wanna talk with. And I love that what your purpose is e Exactly. That. . Yeah.

Jacob: And that’s the cool thing about Axi Media too, is they have a lot of people at that company that still there today that are there to help creators create.

And there’s a lot of creators there still to this day, right? A lot of the founders are writers and artists and stuff like that but yeah, I mean that having those businesses that failed, having those jobs that didn’t necessarily work out of just take you on a path and I think that one of the most important lessons I’ve learned in life is there is no such thing is failure.

It’s just or failure isn’t a bad thing, really. You. . Just because something doesn’t work out doesn’t mean that, you know it was supposed to work out. Doesn’t mean that you did something wrong, it might just be that thing isn’t meant for you. And there’s a lesson still be to be learned in there.

Stephen: And look looking at it from the author aspect be before even looking at it from my parents and kids aspect in the author aspect helping creators create, I think a lot of authors get so focused on, I’ve gotta write, and yes, you do. The thing is write your next book. That’s the best marketing for your current book.

Get a series and people buy series more and all that. But the numbers show that you gotta have Like the book, 20 books to 50 K. You actually gotta have 40, 50 books before you start seeing enough of a real world profit that you’re making money. That’s what the latest surveys, numbers and all that show.

And I think for me, it never was, I just wanna be a writer and write and that’s all I wanna do. It was always other things. I actually have created a couple board games which I should talk to you about, off, off of this interview. But it was always more about the being creative and what I can do with that.

And you mentioned something else for the entrepreneurship, that it’s not you’re not stuck. Even if you have a job that someone hired you, they tell you, be here every day at this time for this long. We’ll pay you this much. Here’s the job functionality. Then the stuff you do, you, you’re stuck.

You have to do it what they say, when they say it, how they say it. And you do that every single day. . Whereas you, if you get an idea, you can go in another direction. You can add that idea on. And I had an argument with a guy during one of my talks once where he was like, oh I’d never want my kids to do any of this cuz I want them to be guaranteed they get a paycheck.

I was like, where the heck is that happening at? Cuz everybody’d love to know that . And the point was if you enjoy what you’re doing and you’re creative, you can always find a way to bring the money in. And that’s kinda the message. I’ve tried to get out with some of my talks.

Jacob: Yeah, no I agree with you. Like there, there is no guarantees on life, right? There is no guarantee that job that you have currently, it’s gonna be stable. Building value is what entrepreneurship is really about. And even if you have to. Straight from that path.

I’ve had times in my life where I’ve had to get a real job. For a little bit. And I still bring those lessons I learned from entrepreneurship, how to build value into those companies. And the other thing I love about both comics and writing stories and board games too is, and I, and some video games, is that it is, those are all things that kids younger than 18 can start doing, can do right away.

Stephen: You even said you, you made weapons. It’s old them I have a whole box inside of board games. I created Moon, I as a kid, based on all my favorite movies, Indiana Jones star Wars, et and I look at ’em now and a lot of ’em are real, like really bad. But I, that’s, I got started, I got the skill, I got that spark and it built, and now I created a game that people actually played and enjoyed and I’m working on another one.

And same with the writing. Kids can write they don’t have to wait till they’re 18. Yeah. Or outta college at 24. And okay, now I’m gonna be a writer and write. Cause if they have the same 10 to 15 year path that an adult would have, then let’s start ’em when they’re 13. That way when they’re 23, they’re already going with full-time income as a professional experienced already.

That’s my whole goal with kids is these are skills they can do younger and by the time they’re 18, 20, they’re rolling and they know what they’re doing.

Jacob: Absolutely. The. Board games are about problem solving, right? That’s the best way to look at it, is if you break it down into its base base equation, right?

Is that you’re putting a problem on the table and you’re trying to figure out what the solution is. And how do I make the most points in my turn? How do I I know my opponent’s plan, how do I beat them in that plan, right? So problem solving as a skill is something we learned very early.

So really having a way, not just Hey, cr, express yourself creatively, but also creating something just in general, right? Like creating a set of rules, creating a scenario, creating pieces. All of these skills that you’re teaching your child doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re.

Only applicable in the world of board games, right? Hey, I’m teaching my kid how to play a board game or make a board game. That’s what practical applications does that have? But in reality it has a lot of practical applications. When I was in high school I studied and played chess competitively, and that problem solving aspects go back to I still use them today.

18 years later, I’m still using some of the things I learned in chess on a daily basis. I don’t think, I don’t think you should parents shouldn’t think of the actions and the things that they teach their kids. A direct application, right? This should not be if you teach your kid how to draw a comic or write a comic, that doesn’t mean that they have to then become and take this 15 year path to become a comic book artist or writer.

It’s a skill that you’re teaching them that they, that then can distill different knowledge in different ways. Oh, this is how I express myself. That is one of the most important things to learn as a kid, is how to express yourself, right? Who are you as a person? Very true.

Yeah. And e even to today when I analyze artists, when I analyze artists for comic books and I analyze artists for board game I looked a lot at has this person figured out their style? Is this an imitation of somebody else or is this person’s style?

And it was, , it didn’t really matter necessarily. Okay did they accurately represent swords correctly? Did they get the reflection of the water? Correct? It’s not about accuracy, it’s about how you express yourself. And that’s so much more important I feel like in, in life than just learning.

Oh, okay you’re gonna learn all of these elements of art and you’re gonna become an artist. No just like that parent is really concerned about having that kid having the stable income it should be way more important. That kid feels fulfilled in this stuff that they do in life, right?

We spend a majority of our waking time working . You’re not gonna get around it, oh, unless you’re born into money, right? . But you’re not gonna get around this idea that you are spending most of your time. working. And if you can find something that is enjoyable, like I, I feel like I’ve found that’s much more important than the amount of money you earn doing that thing, as long as you can make a living, being happy is so much more important.

Being fulfilled is so much more important. That’s agreed. And being, teaching your kids how to express themselves is the first step to that in my mind.

Stephen: Agreed. And if you know how to create, you know how to think logically. Yeah. You know that you’re never really stuck. I know people who get nervous that, oh, I think my job might disappear.

I don’t know what I’m gonna do. I’ve been out of a job for three weeks and it’s just so make the money. And I, as someone told me that, they’re like, look, if you’re an entrepreneur and you need money, then figure out how to make that money. And that’s the end line. Does it always have to be writing the next book, writing a short story?

No. It could be creating a board game, which authors if you like, oh, maybe I’ll just whip up a board game. Create really coming up with a concept and then good game mechanics is way harder than you would think. it take even a simple game like I did, took way more iterations to get it, so it was playable.

But then for kids, also, the other thing that it teaches them, whether it’s drawing or creating a d and d module even or something is that they. One of the studies I mentioned in my talk is the rate of anxiety and depression in young people meaning under the age of 30 has risen like 18% in the last five, six years.

And yeah, part of that is they’re being told, go find a job and get the gold watch after you retire. And that doesn’t exist. So they get out into the world, they’re like and then they get a job that’s horrible and it’s no wonder they’re getting depressed and anxiety ridden. Whereas if they’re at a young age shown, look, you can draw this picture, you can make art, you can create comics, you can make board games, you can write stories, you could figure out some online thing.

Now for stores, t-shirts as big, you know that they, if they see that and it breaks through the I have to get a job somewhere else. Then they’re empowered to go do that and the world isn’t as scary and life isn’t as scary and they realize their lifestyle, they can make choices. That’s another part of my talk.

If you have a job where you have to live in New York, yeah, you have to make a lot of money and you have to make sure you keep that job. But if you’re doing that same job, but living here in Ohio, you don’t have to earn quite as much money, . So that takes on the anxiety away. So that’s the other big thing, is it teaches kids and empowers them and it helps break through some of the scary adult life,

Jacob: Yeah, no, for sure. And that’s something I’ve talked to a lot of entrepreneurs that are on their beginning of their journey, right? Is you have to figure out exactly how you define happiness, right? What is happy to you? Rarely is it a dollar amount , right? Rarely is oh, happiness is a hundred thousand dollars every year.

That’s not true. That’s not like I could be making a hundred thousand dollars a year and be in Manhattan and feel like sh crap, I could be in, I could be making a hundred thousand dollars a year and live in Ohio and feel much better because it’s much more affordable. Right?

So happiness, you have to figure out what that is. The other thing is that creating things in my mind, one of, one of the cool things about when you start creating things and realizing that you can create board games that people enjoy, you can create comic books that people wanna read is that everything around us has been made by a human, everything around us the computer that we’re talking on, the webcam that is filming us, the coffee that I’m drinking, , it’s all made by humans. Like this, these things are made by people. just like us just the same flaws. And it’s easy to be like, oh Nicola Tesla and Albert Einstein.

These people were the unachievable le levels of reality. But in like how many of those inventions are you using on a day-to-day basis? There’s other things that are in your life that other people made that are much more realistic. And I think realizing that you can have an impact on life itself is extremely important.

The things that are built around you, the road that you drive on is built by somebody just like you. And

Stephen: the improvements and the improvements in the road material. Somebody thought of that Sure. Some engineer probably went to school, learned new materials, and we’re learning new manufacturing techniques.

But somebody said hey, let’s use this hexagon, carbonite factored material for a road, and how much better is that? And then the business sprung up. And I know the last some of the studies I’ve seen that the rate of single person employment jobs that they’ve started has gone up 20% since Covid started 25% over Oh yeah.

Previous years instead of 2%, things like that. And there’s endless opportunities.

Jacob: Oh, absolutely. Our country was founded on small businesses. Yeah. And that’s the backbone of our economy. Yes. People don’t realize that it’s easy to think oh wow, Walmart has a hundred thousand employees or something like that.

It’s that’s not the. Majority employer, it’s usually small businesses, right? You go drive down your street and see how many companies you pass that have less than 10 people that work with work for them. It’s crazy to think.

Stephen: Yep. Absolutely. So what do you, when you say you help creators create, what exactly do you do to accomplish that?

Jacob: That’s a great question. My role in most creation processes varies dramatically. So sometimes I’ll be brought a product that is pretty well thought out as far as theme, as far as marketability, as far as concept core mechanics of the game. Vice versa with comics, right?

There’s a lot of similar thoughts in comics. Just different things like is this story captivating? Are the characters relatable? What perspective are you telling the story from? I see a lot of writers don’t really think about perspective, but in reality, most of the time you have to be like, who is telling the story where, you know, what information do they know, where are what’s still a mystery to them?

So it depends on where the product is brought in on the process. So I’ll give you an example. I have a game right now that we’re working on. It’ll be released at GenCon of this year. And the concept. The mechanism of what you do in the game was very solid, very enjoyable, very approachable created conversation and this is a party game.

So that’s, those are things are very important. But there was no theme and there was no hook. I went into the pro project thinking about those things. Okay, what is the theme? What is the hook? Where are we? Where do we. Hit so that we can sell more units of this game. Cuz I know that the mechanism, the way that people play the game is very enjoyable.

When I help creators create it’s really dependent on the product and it’s dependent on where they are with the product. But in the majority of the situations, my expertise lies in markets, understanding mass market, understanding, hobby understanding Amazon Convention, sales those places, they look for certain things.

They look for a game that’s understandable by just looking at the cover. They look at the back of the box is the back of the box, explain the game in three simple steps. Those things are difficult as a creator because you get kinda wrapped. This is the thing, and I know so much about this game, and like, how can I tell the story?

And I see this a lot with comics too, right? It’s like, how can I tell the story of my comic book in a paragraph on the back of the bo back of the book, , right? How do I summarize 18 months of my writing and to a single paragraph? And it’s easy to get lost in the weeds and be too close to a project so that you can’t easily summarize it to consumers, right?

And that’s why you need to find people that, that can help you with that, right? Either it’s an editor or it’s a co-writer, or it’s what whatever you need in that situation. Sometimes it’s just nice to have that outside fresh perspective. So that’s where I see myself fitting in a lot of these situations is assessing the marketability the sales ability of the product and expanding on it.

And another thing in board games, it’s not necessarily in comics or books, is expansions how do you continue the product? How do I guess you’d look at it as sequels or right storylines or different arcs for comics, but how do you continue the product so that it can continue?

Staying on shelves how could it keep fresh in the minds of the consumers? So that’s kinda where I see myself helping creators the most.

Stephen: So a lot like an editor. The creator came up with it and you help fine tune it from the outside perspective. And like a publisher if someone’s going more traditional route we’ve got this product with the editor and the creator have created it, but now we need someone to help get it out there and put it out in the world.

And as you’ve proven, you started a company that does all of that, and you get everyone. But it’s not saying that somebody could not say I have this game and I wanna put it out there. We have more avenues for that in today’s world than ever. Absolutely. So it’s still, you can have that choice if I like making games, but I don’t necessarily wanna spend all the time going to the cons and setting up tables and pushing it.

Then find somebody like you and make that agreement. And everyone does what they do best. I’ve got four or five game ideas that I if I sat and worked on ’em and really focused, instead of just toying with it on weekends, I could have five games in within a couple years. And it would make more sense for me to hook up with you to push that out.

And that’s the other thing I think parents with younger kids don’t understand is, doesn’t all have to fall on the shoulders of that kit. They, any business they wanna run doesn’t have to be full-time. It could be part-time. And there are other companies out there. Fiver is a great example as something that people can get work and do full-time work.

But not have to necessarily do everything if they don’t wanna start from scratch. And I like that aspect of what you’re doing with that much. It sounds much more approachable than bigger name game companies, .

Jacob: Yeah it, it depends on the way I always phrase it those same people that are looking at self-publishing and looking at trying to start a business is like, are what is, what do you want to do, right?

What is, if you close your eyes and you said, okay, this is what I’d want to do in this creative process, and if I then have you open your eyes and say, okay, but what, how do you feel about tape? How do you feel about boxes? How do you feel about shipping rates? Those types of things that are like business Bs, right?

What is a purchase order? How do you a acquire distribution deals? Those things that like. Boring business. Things in the creative world are very important if you wanna run your own business and self-publish. Now, if you define your success differently, right? And you just say, I just want people to read my pro, my book.

I just want it to be out in the world. And maybe that success means I put it on Amazon Kindle. It doesn’t have to be in bookstores. It doesn’t have to be in Simon and Schuster or the he who not must not be named. Like defining your sec success differently means that you can do different things and you can decide differently if you want a publisher or not.

And self-publishing, like he said, has never been easier. Now Amazon’s making it a little bit more difficult, , as Amazon wants to do. But you still you have so many d. Avenues for which to publish and promote your work. There’s Zup, there’s Kickstarter, there’s Indiegogo, there’s all sorts of different avenues.

And if you define your successes, I just want it to be out there and I want people to play my product, and I want it to reach to people. Then having a 5,000, $10,000 Kickstarter for your comic book is amazing. It allows you to do everything that you want to do. If you have higher ambitions for that product or you want to get there faster.

Some people bringing in a publisher and that situation is important. There’s a lot of people that self-publish that are okay with where they’re at. And there’s a lot of people that self-publish that are trying to reach a new a different platform, right? Like a different size of their publishing.

So yeah, I think it’s really important to define success to yourself before you start that process. The other thing is if you go through a publisher it’s a collaborative thing, right? I’m never gonna sign a game that the designer doesn’t want my input because then what am I doing?

Why am I publishing this right? I’m never gonna sign a design that I can’t talk to the designer and say, okay we think that adding this is going to help that, right? That’s not a good collaborative relationship. And as a creator, you have to assess yourself as being able or not able to take that criticism or that collaboration, cause as being a writer yourself, right? There is a lot of circumstances where writers aren’t able to take cri constructive criticism or constructive Yes. Collaboration. that’s a, the job of the publisher, right? Like they, they are taking a large part of that risk in publishing your work.

So you have to be ready to work with them to make a good product, right?

Stephen: Yeah. So I know you don’t do so much with the comics anymore but I myself have thought of doing a small prequel comic for my current series. I know other authors out there have said maybe I’ll turn it into a comic or a graphic novel.

And I’ve talked to a couple people who just made a straight graphic novel instead of doing the book version. So what types of things do you look for? What would advice would you give them to say, Hey, these are the types of things you need to know about comics to get a story in there because you got books and you got movies and comics are a little bit somewhere in between.

It’s got aspects of visual movie, but you gotta keep that story because you can’t hear anything and then on a page. So what advice or whatever about that.

Jacob: Sure. I think it goes back to that style aspect. There are a lot of Comic creators, comic writers, comic artists that tried to emulate what they’ve seen before.

And I think that’s important to learn, right? I think it’s important to study the masters study, how they did things. But it, the things that are getting attention and getting a lot of eyes are the things that are unique. Right behind me, I’m lucky enough to have a Matt Kent piece of art here.

He did he’s a big board games fan. Fan. I don’t know if Matt Kent from mind Management is his biggest, no, I don’t, but Depth and he’s also got a, his own label at Dark Horse right now. Oh. Oh, wow. Yeah. And he’s a huge board game fan as well. How I got him to do me a little piece there.

Beautiful. The thing is Matt Kent is so unique as stuff is him, right? And I think that’s really important is finding your identity as a creator, and that’s really difficult though. I will say it’s much easier to be like, okay, I like the Avengers. I’m gonna write an Avenger type story.

And I’m not saying that you can’t write a good Avenger type story, but if you wanna be a creator and you wanna self-publish, or you wanna get your stories out there and you don’t wanna work for the big two then you have to find your brand and your identity. So that’s first of all the most important thing.

Finding people that can contribute to your piece of work and not just do exactly how you scripted the panels to look, I think is another very important part. The best pieces of comic book. That were submitted to us had that feeling to it, right? That it didn’t, it’s not necessarily just the writer dictating to the art, the artist this is what I want.

It’s more of here’s the story, here’s the script. This is what I want people to say. I want you to take it and run with it. And that’s super important because as writers it’s easy to be like, okay, this is how I envision it. This is how it plays out in my mind. But in reality, like a lot of times that doesn’t look as good as you imagine it

And finding an artist that will translate your intention into visual visual piece is extremely important. And then finding an artist that compliments the style of writing that you have is extremely important as well. Yeah. Agree. Those are the things that I think are important, right?

Like I think the comic book industry itself is a very tumultuous, we’ll say . I think that’s probably the most conservative viewpoint. I could put

Stephen: on it as PC as we can get it. .

Jacob: Yep. Yep. Tumultuous is what we’re gonna deal with. Okay. . And if you define success in the comic book world as I need to make all my money back that I invested into this, and I need to be paid a fair hourly rate it’s gonna be very difficult for you.

I think you can find success in the comic book industry, and I think that I know a lot of people. Have started in the comic book industry. Like Paul Jenkins is a friend of mine and he started writing Marvel books and did a bunch of that stuff and then moved over to video games and started writing for video games.

There’s a lot of career paths to make a lot of money writing. Or when we say money we really mean have a happy and successful life. But I think that ties really right back to that defining success and defining happiness and what you create, right?

Because I know a lot of people that have just spent tens of thousands of dollars on artists. that’s just a hobby of theirs. And it’s just they’re creating comics because they want to create something. And that’s their happiness, right? They don’t necessarily need to make all that money back.

And comics is just very difficult. Anytime you deal with a $4 product in a market that’s probably three to 4 million people at the most that’s not, it’s not an easy market to, to succeed in. And like regular novels, books, it’s not always one is go make your success.

Stephen: It’s that series. It’s the 20th book you may do and sometimes you gotta keep going if that’s really what you love and appreciate. And I think what the way things are in the world with more people working from home, people getting used to Fiver and all the online everything. And I, in Kindle you can even publish independently though it’s very hidden and they don’t do much with it.

But the point is you can do it a lot easier, cheaper than you could have even five. Years ago, let alone 20, 30 years ago. Oh, yeah. And people are more open to the things that are not the Marvel and DC superheroes. My, my son and I, he wants to do a podcast where each episode he picks a graphic novel that we discuss and none of them Oh, cool.

Are the superheroes that you’ve heard of at all? The first one we’re doing is Murder Falcon, and I have it right here on my desk. I’m halfway through it. Oh, nice. Yeah. Nice. Yeah, that’s the type of thing more and more people are open to that, so you’ve got more of a chance. But just like you’re probably not gonna publish one book and make as much money as Stephen King or JK Rowling, you are not going to make one comic and become Spawn or Batman, and you’re not going to make one game and have monopoly that’s played a hundred years from now necessarily.

Just catch Oh, absolutely. Your expectations.

Jacob: Yeah, just find what you really love about the thing that you’re doing and try to do that more . Like some, for some people like me, it’s selling more stuff for other people it’s actually getting the products there and like creating a page and seeing that page finally in drawing form and that’s interesting to them, yeah I think you’re, I think you’re right on the money that just keep creating. And I think another important thing is push boundaries. Try new things for yourself. If you look at some of the most famous painters in the world and the ones that have museums after them, you’ll see that they experimented, they tried different things.

Van Gogh was not the same painter that he is, that he was at the end, right? Like when he started it was very much, he was doing life studies studies of people, and a very realistic setting. And he moved as he went on into more post impressionist, right? And did a lot more work on colors and experimented and pushed the boundary.

And he eventually found who he was as an artist. Those just like my path in business I had to try all of those different things to understand what I enjoy and what I like. In your creative world, in your creative career, you have to try different things And like you’ve said, what makes you happy?

Stephen: Which I think is something the even younger generation than you, is grasping more than the boomers and the Gen Xs like me that they wanna do something that makes them happy. And that doesn’t necessarily mean hitting that a hundred, $200,000. It’s something that makes me happy. If that means I don’t own a big car, if that means I don’t own a big house and I don’t have lots of stuff inside that house, that makes me happy.

And I think this the younger generations are getting that a little bit more than us past the generations have. And Oh, I lost my thought. What I was gonna say, I’m sorry. But so when you were doing the comic books, what did you look for in the comics to say, yeah I wanna get that one out and published.

Jacob: The biggest thing was definitely is this person unique? Is their story unique? There’s a thousand stories of superheroes. How does this one about superheroes? We didn’t really do much superheroes, but just to give you an example how does this one story of a superhero hit me differently?

One of my favorite books we ever published was a book called Darling. Brilliant book about drug addiction. Not kid friendly, unfortunately but it was about this character who was going through a heroin addiction and how his life just was affected by heroin, but also how his mind interpreted the world around him while on heroin as well.

And there’s just, it’s just a gorgeous book. I highly recommend it. And that’s the type of stuff that unfortunately it’s not always a commercial success, but it’s just a story that needs to be told and a story that needs to go out there. Because one of the other brilliant things about this book is that it’s based on reality.

The author’s brother Died of an a heroin overdose and he found his brother’s journals. Oh. And in these journals, he would talk about all of these things that happened to him, but in reality, none of these things happened to him. It’s just his brain imagining these things. Wow. Wow. The drug addiction.

And it’s it’s crazy. It’s a crazy book. It’s, and it’s drawn in the style that’s Miyazaki but different. Wow. It’s just so weird. And that’s an example that. Can get out there and get told that would’ve never seen the light of day 10, 20, 30, 40 years ago. I know I had a friend in late two thousands him and a another friend were writing a book.

Stephen: They had eight issues done. They did it all had it already, but they got held up. First of all, Marvel and DC weren’t even interested. Didn’t even wanna talk about it. So they were gonna try and do it independently before all the self-publishing stuff. And Diamond basically said, eh, nah, not interested.

So they were done. They had no avenue to do anything with what we have. They ha they would’ve had a chance to get that out there now. And that’s, I remember what I was gonna say is what you were saying earlier, I think authors quite often forget this. Don’t worry about writing this book cuz Oh, I want to make money and I have to make a lot of money, worry more about I wanna write and my craft of writing, my storytelling abilities.

And I’m just doing that. Okay, now I’ll do the next one. And each one is something where you’ve learned, you’ve expanded, you’ve gone different. And pretty soon you’ll have a lot of stuff behind you that you’ve written. And your craft you’re writing will be where it is making lots of money and the things that you already did that don’t need to be forgotten, you can bring those back in.

The back order nowadays is crazy how much people buy stuff that was came out years ago. That would’ve never happened before too.

Jacob: No it’s a hundred percent true, right? Like it’s you just gotta keep creating. And some of the best writers that I know, just, they just kept doing things, creating things, and then eventually it caught on and eventually they either found their audience or they or, and, or they perfected their craft.

And I think that’s important. I, the other thing that I always was looking for is somebody that knew how to talk to me as a publisher as far as what we were publishing, right? So I’ll give you an example, don’t pitch adult content to Marvel, right? It seems super simple, but that’s.

The same idea goes to don’t pitch horror books to action comics or don’t pitch kids friendly stuff to heavy metal, right? . You have to figure out who’s the publishers or who the publishers are that you are interested in publishing with, where your story fits in.

And don’t waste the time of the publishers that don’t fit this blanket email to everybody saying, oh, hey I have this great book and it’s gonna really work with you. It’s superheroes. I, we don’t do superheroes. You can see a publisher’s catalog and get a vibe of who they are pretty, pretty quickly.

And if you’re not doing the research when you have a book to put push to that publisher, they’re less likely to be like, Oh, wow. You’re sending us another pitch that doesn’t fit right. That’s so important to to really think about. It’s who is the publisher that I wanna work with?

Who should I focus on talking to? Who should I try and craft a tailored pitch to this publisher and say, Hey this is this book. I think it will fit in really well because it fits within your horror genre. And it’s similar to this and this that kind of stuff is way more important than the shotgun effect of, here, let me pitch to every publisher.

I can find the email

Stephen: of . Agreed. And that’s advice. I’ve seen the Facebook groups authors get on there and they’re like hey, I just finished my first book. You should all go buy it. It’s written for everybody and you’ll all love it. And chirp, nobody answers.

It’s dude, this is a group for authors. We’re all here for author advice, and your book is a fantasy. No one cares. We’ve got 20 other fantasy authors right here. And I’d be a little crass and cruel. But the point is, like you said, no you’re correct. Figure it out. Where the best place absolutely agreed.

Jacob: I’ll give you, I’ll give you an experiment you can do at home. Okay. go onto your TikTok if you have one, and scroll through and try and find the most obscure video that’s just made for you. Is it, I I have a redheaded, red haired husky and there’s not many red-haired huskies, right?

But on TikTok, they know that and they post, they give me videos of red-haired huskies and then go to that person’s profile and see how many views that video has. And you would be surprised how niche of. Content you’re gonna get. And then how many people watch that niche of content, right? The world is massive and you don’t need a billion people to like your product, right?

To be successful, right? You only need several thousand, right? That’s the reality of the world, right? And why waste your time trying to make the most commercial like Disney products, right? Why are you, right? Why are you trying to make the next Pixar movie when in reality you could be Guillerma Deltoro, right?

Not everybody likes Gui Deltoro , right? No. Not everybody likes how bloody his stuff is. But he has a fan base, right? And you can even go drill down farther and farther. We worked with Adam Green. Adam Green’s a great example hatchet. Yeah. He made the horror movies, hatchet and Holliston.

We did the comic books for Hollist. and you would be surprised how many people are fans of this canceled TV show that only had two seasons. Like they it’s. You don’t need the world to love what you’re doing. You just need to find who in the world

Stephen: loves what you’re doing. Absolutely.

Absolutely. Alright. Jacob, I’ve kept you for an hour. I was like, oh my gosh, it’s already been an hour. Honestly, I didn’t Oh,

really?

Jacob: Geez. Yeah. I’m

Stephen: surprised. . Yeah. I appreciate the talk. It’s been great. I think you, you had tons of great advice for both authors to look at other revenue streams and these are some things that can be done and parents that it’s a reality that this could be something your kids could do in the future and they’re not missing out on life or anything.

To get it all together. Would you have any last words of advice for parents and kids or authors or anything about your company, the games, the comics that you’d like people to know about? And what’s your website? Let everybody know about that too. Sure.

Jacob: So our website is deepwater gaming.com.

We’re on TikTok, we’re on Facebook, Twitter, all of Instagram, all the different places. We’re actually doing a revamp of our website and everything pretty soon. Keep watching for that. As far as recommendations go, I definitely recommend Darling. I’m trying to think of some other ones that are just fantastic.

There’s also this other comic that we published oh my gosh, why can’t it, buzzard and Bone, which is Hatfield versus The McCoy’s meets Harry

Stephen: Potter. I crazy. I remember seeing that one. I think I may have got that one. I’ve got a huge comic book stack that I have to get through that I’m way behind on.

And then I do stuff like, bone is great. Yeah, I think that was one of ’em I picked up cuz I, I can picture it. It rings a bell.

Jacob: and then anything Matt Kent is fantastic too. Like I, I love reading and watching things from creators that have that style that they’ve nailed. And then as far as board games go boo right back here is made by one of my good friends.

It’s at Barnes Noble Stores. He also made cues and cues, which is a great party game as well. That’s, I played that one. Yep. Cues and cues is fantastic.

Stephen: Like two, three in the morning being a little wasted with a bunch of friends and we were laughing hysterically and it’s now we mentioned that game oh my God, don’t mention that game again.

Yeah I

Jacob: played that one. So he made this game Boo, which is basically I’m a chess nerd, right? So it’s just hit the right places For me it’s just like a strategy game where you try and move your cats onto this. actually got a quilt in it. It’s super, super cool. Beautiful.

But besides that I also wavelength is one of the games I always recommend for people. Very fun party game. It’s about communication and then our games monstrosity is one of our biggest hits. It’s in Target in Barnes and Noble. Nice. But my advice really is just you’re gonna learn a lot by just consuming content, right?

I almost always have a podcast on a YouTube video a show on Netflix and. just observe, right? You can observe and see, oh, why did they do this? Why did they tell the story like this? My fiance loves it when I’m interrupting and pausing the show and be like, that’s

why

Stephen: they set up this thing

Jacob: and this story, and it’s foreshadowing.

But you know what the great thing about that is? You’re learning about story structure, right? Yeah, absolutely. And I think that’s one of the most important things, even if your child isn’t interested in creating, or they are more shy about actually creating things. Get them to consume, get them to consume content. It’s not a horrible thing that they’re on YouTube, right? It’s not a horrible thing that they’re watching TV shows. It’s not a horrible thing that they’re

Stephen: playing video games. Yeah. I talked that exact same thing to parents. Yeah. Yeah.

Jacob: They’re learning about the way that we storytelling is the reason that we have civilization, right?

That is what has brought us together as a, as a. Oh my gosh. Science term, that is what has brought us together as humans. , right? Species. There we go. Species is this ability to tell stories and interact with each other. That, I think that’s probably my biggest tip for parents if they’re worried about getting their kids to create stuff, get your kids to interact with creations freedom.

Bring them to museums, let ’em play video. Talk about those video games and story, I’m like, oh, what did you think about the story in this game? Oh, what did you think about the story and this comic book. That’s super important, and for them to start analyzing those things, I’m thinking about them more critically as

Stephen: important as well.

Great. have you liked chess games? Have you tried Hive? Have you played that one? I

Jacob: haven’t tried Hive. I’ve heard it’s really good. But yeah, I haven’t, I’ve tried to avoid, I’m really obsessed with Party games right now. Okay. Just because I find them fascinating. Because it’s not designing fun is much more difficult than you can even imagine.

Yeah.

Stephen: So you ought to try a floor plan. I played that with a bunch of people. , we

Jacob: got that one. Where’s that one? I got that on my desk here. .

Stephen: Yeah. I played that with my cousin and a group of people. And my son loves Gladys or Gladius. Oh. Yep. Gladius is Glads. It’s one of his favorites now. And oh, what was the other one we played?

Oh we got Sovereign Sky, but we haven’t played Sovereign that one yet. Sky. Yep. Yeah. Yep. Whoever was talking to me at your booth was like this is special and it’s a special packaging and we got the expansion. And I’m like you’re just like, just to my arm right there.

But

Jacob: Hive, I know. Train

Stephen: them all. . Yeah, hive is very good. It’s very chest though my son and his friend said they figured it out how to. basically make it a stalemate in the game. Oh, interesting. Every single time. And so they’re like, eh, so I’ve bought the three additional pieces that they offered as expansions and I’m like, here, this changes the game a lot.

There you go. Yeah. Good game. I like abstracts cuz like that’s where my background is. But abstracts are, are hard for consumers, like they don’t do super, super well. So it’s hard for me to, I get excited about, we have this one game that’s been in our queue of pitched games for a while and it’s just this beautiful two player abstract game that just plays very easy.

Jacob: But it’s got a lot of depth and strategy. And I just can’t do it because it’s just not, or I can’t pull the trigger on it because it’s just not like in our realm of what our consumers are looking for. So it’s sad. I never actually like that’s the dirty secret of when you get into the business world of a creative world, right?

So like comic books, board games, you rarely get to actually do the thing that you’re selling . Right? Much I bar I barely get to play board games outside of the prototypes that we that we have. I mostly watch people review and talk about board games. And I barely get to I, at the time I barely got to read books outside of the books that we published.

Stephen: I understand that. Yeah. Have you played Is of Cats?

Jacob: I have, that is a brilliant game too. Yeah, that’s,

Stephen: that’s super good. Talking about esoteric. A little weird. It, my son loves it took me a bit to get into it. I’m like, what the heck is going on in this game?

Jacob: I love polynomial games.

Okay. Patch Patchwork is

Stephen: one of my favorite. Yes. I love that one

Jacob: too. That’s a good one. It’s about quilting too, so it’s like really weird. Oh, what the heck? Yeah. Yeah. I love that one. Picked it up, oh, my favorite game store is having a sale. Where’s my credit card? . Yeah, that’s bad me, all right. Jacob, I appreciate you taking so much time. Doing really cool talking to you. And I personally may be in touch cuz I do have a few ideas for a couple games. Yeah. I’m the toying with the idea. Using it as part of my writing business and attaching it somehow or trying to put it out myself or finding somebody to do it and which way I want to go and Sure.

Stephen: So maybe we’ll be in touch on that. That’d be

Jacob: awesome. Yeah. Just in general. know, My email is jacob@deepwatergaming.com and I don’t mind that being out there because I may not always have a ton of time to, to chat over email. But when I find the time, I try and respond to everybody’s email and talk to them about creation.

I think it’s important. To have a bridge to understand like the business aspect, just as much as you understand the writing aspect. So I’m always trying to answer questions about okay, what the, in, what is the industry like what does it take to succeed in this industry?

But also I love looking at people’s creations and trying to give some feedback like, oh yeah, this is great. Oh this needs some work here, but yeah. Cool. Great. No,

Stephen: I, I look forward to it. Nice. All right, Jacob, thank you very much. I appreciate it was great meeting you and chatting with

Jacob: you.

Great meeting you too. Thank you so

Stephen: much, Steven. Yep. Have a good day. And I’ll let you know after we play sovereign Skies and the others what we thought of them.

Jacob: Oh, perfect. Perfect. Floor plan Only. Good stuff though. .

Stephen: Yeah, Gladius loved it. Floor plan, I liked it. Took us a bit to click with it. I got Sovereign Skies left.

Oh. And fantastic factories.

Jacob: Fantastic. Factories is really good. It’s a solid engine building game. Very puy if you like that type of game, it, it’s gonna hit really well.

Stephen: Oh, good. Maybe we to move it up in the, let’s try this new game list, . All right. Thanks man.

Thank you.

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OverviewBesides his writing, Robb also does speaking about finance. He enjoys helping people and being able to give them financial advice to help their lives. His speaking gigs are full of advice, which has helped his speaking career.

We discuss having a book and speaking based on that book. This is just one area of additional revenue stream that Robb has and recommends.

His Bookhttps://www.amazon.com/Ask-RIGHT-Questions-Right-ANSWERS/dp/0998590002?crid=3HJH8NI6FIDMW&keywords=ask+the+right+questions+get+the+right+answers+robb+hill&qid=1675819922&sprefix=ask+the+right+questions+get+the+right+answers+robb+hill%2Caps%2C99&sr=8-1&linkCode=li2&tag=saschneider-20&linkId=f8fdde86dd982091da30d60bdd8772bd&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_ilYouTubehttps://youtu.be/8mdRIRAcd4gTranscriptI wanna talk some, not just author stuff, because you’re a unique case for people I talked to in interview with a book. Because the author part, the book is not your only biggest focus.

You have a financial advising career, and you are a speaker. So I wanted to just chat with you a little bit on why you chose to do tho all of that and how it, it works, how it’s affecting you. So first of all, you’re a financial advisor. Why did you want to start speaking and why did you wanna write a book and combine all three of.

Well,

Robb: actually each piece came at different times. Okay. Like I was saying, in 1990 19 93, 9 11 happened and all that, and then I got downsized, and that’s how I got into the financial side. Okay. As I was in that I was speaking more about. getting off the drugs and all this kind of good stuff, and it melded together because I, I love talking to people.

I like to see the light go on and all that kinda stuff. And so the two just melded together. The book aspect, it came along a little bit later and to ask the right questions, get the right answers, that book was birthed out of anger because so many people don’t know that. They don’t know what they think.

And then I wrote a couple of other books called are You Willing And Start Over. And those books were with the transformation of my life because there was a time when I wanted to take a long walk off of a short period, okay. It had gotten that bad for me. I just didn’t know what to do.

And I looked at my life and I looked at what I was doing. , the drugs and the alcohol. I had to walk away from that. Okay. Then the funny thing that happens is once you stop doing that, you gotta start doing something else or else that’ll just fill, it’ll just come right back in. And so I started reading and I found out you can’t argue with the.

Okay. There’s a battle that goes on and it happens in those six inches between your ears. you go from, wow, I didn’t know that to man. I can’t believe this to all, could this really be true to, maybe they’re right. Okay. It’s I like to call it mental gymnastics. Okay. I would suggest to anybody that is making a change in their life.

Every book that you. Read it out loud. Read it out loud. The reason why I suggest that is because you see it, you say

Stephen: it and you hear it. Agreed. I like that

Robb: That bolsters it inside that psyche, man. And you just the book it shortens the journey. It shortens the journey so much.

You ever heard that old expression experience as the

Stephen: best? Yes, but it’s incorrect. Do you ?

Robb: Yeah. Do you, you believe that?

Stephen: Okay. To some degree, .

Robb: Let’s take the degrees out and let’s get it down right here. Okay. Experience is the slowest, most unforgiving teacher that you ever want to get with, okay?

So that, like I said, somebody else’s experience is the best. You ever heard that old cliche that everybody can teach you something? Yes. You know what? Everything ain’t worth learning. .

Stephen: Okay. They can teach you something. You got you, but it may not be the best, may not be correct. ,

Robb: that guy standing over there on that corner with that bottle of wild Irish rose in his hand.

He’s teaching me something that I don’t even have to talk

Stephen: about, right? .

Robb: Okay but no, the the idea that we are so much more than what we have become. We gotta get a we gotta get a firm grip on that first, and then we have to discover those talents and abilities that we have that are, they’re, that are just they’re just land.

They’re dormant inside us. and something’s we need a catalyst to get them started, to get those juices flowing. And so those juices start flowing through a couple of things. Number one is anger. What upsets you? Number two, what makes you happy? Those are two areas you can look at to determine what it is that you can develop in your life to impact others in a positive,

Stephen: yeah.

In the one talk I. I tell the that if you wanna be successful, there’s really two things you gotta think about. You gotta think about what you’re passionate about and what you can focus on. Because what the conjunction between those two things is that’s where you’ll be successful. And so let me ask you this.

You could have been just a financial advisor. You could have been working for a company, gone out to people and had your job, your life, your career but in instead, you. Going around speaking and doing books. Did you do this because it makes you more successful financially? It gives you other avenues in case one disappears.

Is it just because you enjoyed doing it? Why did you choose to add? Because a lot of people are like, oh, once I work all day, I’m done. I wanna go home, watch tv, and I’m done with my life.

Robb: For me it was a little bit deeper than that because I. I’m not happy with just to fail.

Okay. We wanna make sure that we’re solving the problem. Alright. There was a story I once heard where , the lady was telling the pastor, she said, oh pastor, that was a real good sermon. You cleared out a lot of cobwebs. And the pastor told her, come back tomorrow sister, and we gonna take care of the spider

Okay? So see it’s not a bandaid. . All right. What I do is I educate people about these different products that we’re sitting down, talking about and all this kinda stuff. I find that people are much more appreciative when you help them solve problem as opposed to introducing another problem.

I have seen cases where people have been sold insurance products that they out. I e term. Okay. There’s not no good or no bad, but there are certain places where certain things fit in the other and certain places where things don’t fit. And I’ve seen situations where people have bought these policies because of the price and it doesn’t meet their expectations down the road.

Okay? And so that’s where I just bring people up to speed as far as the education goes. The speaking is a beautiful thing. , it hits so many people right between the eyes. They be like wow. Look, really? Wow. Wow. And so I’ve put a lot of information together over the years, and I share that really quickly with a lot of people.

And I have them take notes when they’re writing when I’m speaking to take notes, whatever applies to you. Write your question down there and all that kinda stuff. So at the end, I have the q and a. and we go, we do the deep dive into it. I enjoy it. It I just totally enjoy it.

It,

Stephen: it’s phenomenal. So one of the things, a lot of the authors here now is revenue streams, having multiple revenue streams. So that’s what you’ve got. You’ve got. Job, your career, you’ve got speaking and you’ve got your book. Have you thought of any additional things you wanna do? Like maybe an online course or teaching a class somewhere, or obviously more books a workbook or is there anything else you’ve thought of that you might

Robb: add?

The the idea. Spending all these different plates, it keeps you very busy, but are you being productive? That’s the question. Okay. Me, myself, I focus more on educating my client base. It’s, there’s an endless stream of clients out there that, that need what I’m delivering.

Okay. And that’s where I’m at. It’s. So much more about me putting all these different programs and all that out there. I’ve got some relevant knowledge right now that needs to get out to the masses. Okay. And. The best way that I’ve found so far is one at a time. . Okay. Just keep on moving.

And the speaking arrangements. I speak at affinity groups small businesses churches and things like that, and share the information there on that level. And a lot of people are receptive that way. because they’re okay. There’s some things. And when it comes to finances, a lot of people

Stephen: don’t wanna top looks like we

froze.

Robb: They don’t want just put it all out there. So in the atmospheres that that I’m presenting to them they feel very comfortable with that.

Stephen: Okay. Do you have any plans for another book? Or I know I sat in on one of your talks. Do you have a plan for any additional talks or.

Robb: Yeah I get invited to different organizations and all that. And I’ve got several different topics too. The one that you attended was Get your Butt out of the way. I’ve got several other programs that that I do. Yeah, there’ll be, I’ll post ’em on my website at www.rhillenterprisesinnc.com or you can punch in R O B H I L speaker and you’ll get information about me.

But yeah I post them. A lot of the the talks that I give are for specific groups, so they’re not just open to the. , you understand what I’m saying? They’re geared towards delivering a message to a certain demographic within their organization. Yeah, we can, you can go on my website and look at the different subjects that are there and.

Perhaps you’d like to book me.

Stephen: Okay. . That, that, that’s a thought. I enjoyed your talk. I was actually thinking it’d be great. Cause the talk I, the main talk I give is focus towards parents of younger kids, middle school age kids. and basically telling them, look, we’re now preparing our kids for the future work world.

It’s not like it used to be. Kids can’t turn 16 and get a McDonald’s job or get a cashier job at Target or Walmart. All those early entry level jobs are disappearing. And later in life my parents, they had back in the fifties, people, the expectation, the thinking was I would get a.

and I would use that job the rest of my life and I’d retire and get a gold watch at the end. But I always ask anybody know anyone right now that has only had one job their whole life and very few people ever raised their hands anymore because we just don’t have that anymore. People move between jobs disappear, and with the technology.

Our kids will have opportunities we never had. Right now you and I are in two different cities, in two different states. We’re having a talk and discussion. I can see you 10 years ago that was unheard of. But that’s the type of thing our kids are growing up with. So the technology is enabling them to have more and better choices for their career and have control of their life and their career with what they wanna.

Now that doesn’t mean somebody can’t become a financial advisor and go work and be happy and have a great job, doesn’t mean they can’t go and work construction or a truck driver. I have a friend that left his job at age 52 and became a truck driver, and he loves it. you know that none of what I say means that all those are bad choices or all those are going away.

It’s just we’re not preparing our kids right now for what the future will be. And the choices they do have, they carry their phones around, they have their laptops, their iPads, and they use ’em to watch things. They use ’em to watch other people on YouTube and TikTok but they don’t understand and.

that they have a tool in their hand that they could learn skills that will lead to a career before they’re even 18. The one I have a workshop I focus on for kids teenagers to teach them about storytelling in video games because our video game industry is bigger than our football game industry, and there are more people that need.

Find other people to work in video games, and one of the avenues is becoming a storyteller for video games, which is totally different than writing a. . And it’s also a position that the companies want people with experience, and they don’t care about degrees, they don’t care about college, they don’t care about the education because the experience is the education and there’s no good education out there.

So if we had a kid in fifth, sixth grade that started learning how to write stories, learning how to tell stories and video games, made a few little video. The chances are he could get a full-time job at age 18 paying more than he would after a college degree. These are the types of things I work on in my talks and workshops to educate.

So I, that’s what I loved when I listened to you. I’m like, oh my gosh. Me and Rob are two different paths, but very similar thinking. And I’m like we should figure out some way to work together to do some things together, workshops, talks get into a conference and play off each other with something.

I think that’d be. I think it would be too. What the look into that. I’d love to I did at the men event, we were at the Weem. I did a talk one day you did a talk the one day. Now that I know if I ever go again and you’re there, I’d love to just, Hey, go hear Rob. He’s got the similar type of thing yeah, definitely. The yeah, go ahead. No. You

Robb: finish. . No, I was saying that with the way that the workforces are going now, we have gotten so far away from hands on. I’m talking like the welders, the manufacturers and all this kind of stuff. We’ve gotten so far away from that.

Everybody wants to go in and get into these computers and all this kind of stuff. When the opportunity, the real opportu. Lies and us getting back to hands on, back to knowhow and all this kind of stuff because having all these technical people around isn’t gonna do anything when you need to change the tire.

All right. , you got all these technical people, but

Stephen: none of ’em know how to use a rent. And that’s actually something I do talk about, that those type of jobs are going to be the ones more in demand in the future. So if you aren’t controlling your own life and work career with your choices, books, speaking whatever happens to be or you’re not doing one of these face-to-face careers that has to be hands-on.

You’re going to be probably in trouble. We’re going to need less accountants in the future. We’re going to need less even doctors from what I keep hearing in the future, because they found out during C O V D, they’re like, Hey. We could do these remote things and one doctor, instead of seeing six patients a day can see 26 P patients in a day.

So we can get rid of five doctors . And they’re finding out the 90% of what they do in the office can be done with nurses. And now the computer telehealth robots. So we don’t need five doctors. We need one. And so even doctors are going away, but nurses are becoming more in demand. So it’s a totally, our world’s changing so much, but we’re.

Prepared for that. Our kids aren’t being prepared for that. They’re still being taught, go get a good job and work hard and you’ll have a successful life. And that’s not necessarily always the case with what we’re teaching them.

Robb: No. And like I was, I had mentioned earlier about the level of deception.

Okay? The powers that be do not want an educated people thinking on their own. They want to tell you everything they want to tell you. Everything from cradle to gray. This is this two plus two is five. Shut up is not four is five. Okay. This is what we’ve got to get away from a Agreed.

Okay. We have, and I think we’ve got to pick,

Stephen: I think the newer generation is starting to see that a bit, which is why we’re having some of the conflict we’re having that they’re not ex just. Completely accepting and they’re pointing spotlights on some of these problems. That’s my personal opinion on some of the upcoming kids and generation.

I think there’s a lot of change in our upcoming generations and old people like us. It’s gonna get harder to, to live in the world. I mean with a lot of the change that is coming about now, More along the lines of accepting the unacceptable. Okay. It’s being forced down our throats. Yep. And we have, we’ve got to, we got to stand up for what’s And that, that’s writers writing doesn’t wrong anybody. Okay. And that’s where we used to be. I remember when I was in school, we used to say the Pledge of Allegiance and everything was beautiful back. We had civics in school. We learned about our government, our country, and all this kind of stuff.

Robb: Now how do you go from schoolhouse rock to SpongeBob Square? ?

Stephen: If it’s aint consolation, my kids grew up on Schoolhouse Rock also. I got the disk. I had, I they know the Schoolhouse Rock .

Robb: That’s a beautiful thing. Cause what we’re not coming up. Is a bunch of

Stephen: sheep and. That’s what I think what I hear from your talk, hear from your book and the same things, messages.

I’m trying to the big bottom line message is we need to take control of our lives. We need to be the ones in charge of where our destiny is not just following along. And plotting and listening to what everyone else is telling us that I think that’s why I said, oh, I clicked with this guy. We’ve got the same basic message just in two different areas, and that shows that it’s not just one message that’ll cover your life.

There’s areas that same type of thinking applies. And that’s why I was like I love Rob’s talk. I gotta talk to this.

Robb: I do appreciate you. I do

Stephen: appreciate you and I like the fact that your first and last name both have double letters in it. I think that’s, I thought that was pretty fantastic.

It’s like a boggle word

Rob before we get going here I love chatting with you. I’d love to stay in touch and see what’s coming up with you in the future. What advice would you give to authors, not necessarily for book writing, but what to look at for their career as a thinking of how you’ve taken your career what advice would you give to authors?

Robb: For those that want to write a book, I would have them consider who your audience. Who are you directing this information to? Okay. Once you got that down, that, that’s 50% of the way, one, who is it directed to? You gotta figure out who your who is the who?

Who are you? Who is this message for you? Get that down. And that’s half you halfway. Okay. Once you figured out who, so that’s what I would say. Who is it that you wanna reach? That’s the first thing that I would give

Stephen: consideration to. Okay. Great. All right, Rob, thank you. We had a few little technical issues.

I think we’re good. I appreciate you taking some time. And like I said I’d love to stay in touch so we could See what’s going on with you and maybe sometime we can help each other out and get into the same talk or book thing or something. That’d be great. I look forward

Robb: to it. I do appreciate you inviting me on.

Stephen: No problem, man. Thank you. All right.

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OverviewRobb has turned his life around and used lessons from the past to elevate his life. He sees financial situations as a way to help others and has written a book to pass on the lessons.

Most people have financial problems that Robb addresses by guiding them to the right questions. He is passionate about his topic and shares his wisdom through speaking and his book.

His Bookhttps://www.amazon.com/Ask-RIGHT-Questions-Right-ANSWERS/dp/0998590002?crid=3HJH8NI6FIDMW&keywords=ask+the+right+questions+get+the+right+answers+robb+hill&qid=1675819922&sprefix=ask+the+right+questions+get+the+right+answers+robb+hill%2Caps%2C99&sr=8-1&linkCode=li2&tag=saschneider-20&linkId=3de2f24e8efc35f8f4e74fa26257025a&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_ilWebsitehttps://rhillenterprisesinc.com

Favoriteshttps://www.amazon.com/Millionaire-Next-Door-Surprising-Americas/dp/1589795474?crid=776P1415R5BE&keywords=millionaire+next+door&qid=1675820022&sprefix=millionaire+next+doo%2Caps%2C120&sr=8-1&linkCode=li2&tag=saschneider-20&linkId=536df8cd0ee5e1575f0a11c8734facc4&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_ilYouTubehttps://youtu.be/NxOte3RWw2oTranscriptStephen: today on Discovered Wordsmith, I wanna welcome Rob Hill. Rob, how you doing this morning? Outstanding as you. I love that answer. And that’s your answer when I asked you earlier. So I love that something people can learn from. Rob, I’ve met you, but nobody else on the podcast probably knows you.

So before we get started talking about your book, let’s talk a little bit about you. Tell us a little bit about yourself, where you live, what you like to do outside of.

It’s okay. I’m sorry. You know what? I’m sorry that I have no problem with that because most of the people I interview are new authors and a lot of ’em are like in their laundry room or in their bedroom with cats running around. And I love that, honestly, because. It show because too many other authors I think, get anxious.

Oh I’m not in a cabin in the woods writing full-time. I’m not as successful. And what I’ve found after almost 150 interviews is just about everybody. Even the biggest names I’ve interviewed aren’t necessarily that Stephen Kings. We can’t all be Stephen Kings. When there’s stuff going on I actually love that because it makes all my listeners a little more comfortable, so no problems there.

All right. Go ahead. Tell us about you, where you live, what you like to do.

Robb: Like I said, my name is Rob Hill and I’m a financial advisor, author and speaker. What I like to do is I like to see the light come on in people’s eyes because there’s so much the level. of deception is so deep these days.

We gotta get back to the truth of the matter right here. You look at the way things are going with our finances and all this kind of stuff it’s it’s really challenging for a lot of people. A lot of people have no idea what retirement is. They just think that I don’t have to work no more and I’ll still get.

That’s not what retirement is. But then I go into that a lot. The reason that I’ve written this book in a couple of other books was because reading develops the powers of concentration and creative thinking. Okay? It’s something about those black words on that white page. It just rearranges everything.

Okay? And I’m not talking about breeding for entertainment. I’m talking about reading. Improvement personal development. Okay. I spent about 18 years of my life in the drug, drugs and alcohol. Okay. I, one day I woke up and realized that I was so much more than what I had become, and so I had to replace those habits with something else, and that something else just happened to be.

Nice. Breeding is a beautiful thing. It’s a

Stephen: beautiful thing, and I love that you say that because you probably have listened to Anthony Robbins, or at least seen him around a bit. He is a pretty well-known big motivational speaker, and some people like him, some people don’t, but, One of the big things he basically says is we either do things because we want pleasure or we wanna avoid pain.

And we usually don’t do one or the other until it becomes so overwhelming we don’t have no choice. And. It’s so simple to make a change. You just decide to do it and do it. And that sounds stupid. And people always look for that golden panacea, the pill that what do I gotta do? That sounds too simple.

I need to do something else. It’s, it seems to be, if you decide this is what you wanna do, this is your priority, that’s what you work on, and it sounds like that’s what you did and what it, what got you out of your situ.

Robb: See the decision is just one part. That’s just one part. This it’s very simple.

However, it is so simple that it gets complicated.

Stephen: Yes, absolutely.

Robb: The first thing you want to do is you decide that you are not where you want to be in your life. The second thing you gotta do is you have got to control your tongue, . You have got to control your tongue because what you say is what you get.

It’s so true. What you say is what you get. So if you want something other than what you’re living in right now, you gotta start speaking what it is that you want it. It’s

Stephen: the old, you gotta put out into the universe what you want and it comes back manifest. ,

Robb: most definitely. I wouldn’t say the old, put out what you want, universe.

I would call it new because a lot of people have no idea how much control their words have over their current

Stephen: situation. Okay. So we’ve talked, oh we’ve jumped into things. Give everybody what is the title of your book and what it is about, and it’ll make more sense what we’re chatting about.

One

Robb: The one book that, that I believe would make the most difference is called Ask the Right Questions, get the Right Answers for Sound, financial Retirement Planning. And this book goes into four areas of any solid financial plan. One being rules and trust, long-term care, safe alternatives to the stock market, and final expense.

Now, these four area. Need to be visited by everybody. Okay? So many of us are just barreling along and we don’t realize that the road that we’re on goes off of a cliff, but we’re just rolling right along. We just keep on going right along and we don’t realize that it rolls off a cliff.

See, a lot of people think that retirement is an age. Retirement is not an age. Retirement is a financial. . Okay. The reason why they have 65, or it’s gonna be higher than that now, but anyway, 65 was the retirement age was because number when they input that nobody was living to 65, right?

And so now they’re, because of medical advances and all this kind of stuff, people are not. 18 months in retirement, they are living 18 years in retirement or more. So now we gotta where? Where’s all this money coming from? You’ve stopped producing, so now you want to just get paid. This is why in 1978, a law was introduced by president Ford called erisa.

That’s the employee retirement income security. I think that’s a misnomer because what it should be called is the Employee I Retirement Income Security Act. Because what it basically did was it made all W2 wage earners investors, but didn’t tell ’em about it. Okay? This is why we have what is known as a 401k, which was never meant to be a retirement vehicle.

What the 401K did was it took the burden of retirement off of the employer and placed it squirrly on the back of the employee, but didn’t tell ’em about it. Okay? This is where they come up with the, you can do this 401k thing, you can put your money here, and here, but they’re all their choices. You think you got choices, but they’re all their choices.

They said you can pick this and regardless to however the stock market. , the managers still get paid. What happens? You remember Enron, WorldCom and all forget, we get to the cupboard and the cupboard is bare . Alright? Our ours just think about this.

We live in a consumer driven. Now just on his face right there, it really doesn’t say anything. But when you really think about it, when you dig down into it, a consumer driven economy, what does that mean? That means that we have got to get these consumers to spend their money. So then you come up with advertising, all these different TVs, all these different advertisers on advertisements on Televis.

just getting you to separate from your money. You are like, Walmart, save money, live better. Really? No, you don’t save no money, you just

Stephen: get more stuff. It’s that old joke where the wife went out, I spent $3,000 cuz everything was on sale, so I saved money. , right? Yeah.

Robb: And you, it would surprise you how many people believe that people that they will.

Hours driving around looking for a deal. They got the cheaper over there across town and all that. When,

Stephen: what’s your time worth? Yeah, that was my father. That was totally my father. You might, you

Robb: might as well buy it here and use that time to do something else, as opposed to riding around. My my stepmother , she goes out and just buys things just because it’s on , right?

My, I had ads too, like that, man. They would just go to the store and just buy things that they never opened. They sit there why’d you buy this? Or it was on sale,

Stephen: right? Yep. Yep. I think that’s the post depression era thinking it is just, they don’t know what to buy anymore. It’s like the millionaires and billionaires that lose all their money because they had to buy a. Bathtub or something. . So lemme ask you this, Rob. Why did you decide to move into financial planning, financial advising, and write this book? Why choose that avenue? It

Robb: Actually it, it we have to back up to when nine 11 happened.

Okay. Nine 11 was a transition period for me because that was when I was working for the. . I worked at a high energy physics laboratory and nine 11 happened, and the bottom fella, okay, so I had to find a new a new avenue. And so I started working for Caterpillar, and then I decided to go back to school and finish my degree.

All right? I was enrolled in school and I walked in there one. My counselor, she said Rob, you gotta meet my cousin. And I was like why do I have to meet your cousin? She said, because he’s got a job for you. And I told her, I don’t want no job, and anyway long story short, I met with him.

He was a partner with New York Life, and that’s how I got into the life insurance thing. Okay. After a short stint with New York Life and a few other organizations, I realized. , I could help people better if I did this on my own without, because most of the insurance companies and I, I don’t mean anything bad about this, but all they want is sales.

That’s it. They want What did you sell that? That’s it. Me, myself, I go in and educate people cause. . A lot of people, the first thing they out of their mouth is they wanna know how much does it cost? How much does it cost? And I said that’s a great question. However, that’s the wrong first question.

Alright? The first question should be, when does it start? And the second question is, when does it end? Because there are a lot of different types of insurance products out there, okay? And price is not always the best. That’s not always the best indicator of having the best product. Okay. What I do with people is we sit down and we do a forensic audit, so to speak.

Okay? We find out what it is that you have and what it is that you think you have, because nine times outta 10, when I sit down with people, what they have and what they think they have are two very different. . And so we, first, we gotta make sure that you, everything is dressed right, dress then there are other different products out there.

There’s there, there’s so many ways that companies go about selling things. They want to mislead you this way and pull you over this way and it sounds good over here and all this kind of stuff. But at the end of the day, at the end of the day, we gotta find out what the bottom. Okay.

That, that’s what I do. And I’m not gonna say that I’m the sales guru and all that, but when I do put something in place, it’s solid. Okay. It’s gonna meet their expectations

Stephen: all the way. So how did you take this knowledge, this information, and working with people and put it all into a book so people would understand and be able.

Get some benefit from it. People that live in Canada or over in California where you aren’t how did you go about that?

Robb: The idea is simply this. It’s not what you make, it’s what you keep. That counts. Okay. That, that, that’s what it all boils down to. It’s not what you make, it’s what you keep the counts.

Because our government, whether here or anywhere else, our government has an insatiable appetite, okay? They just want more. And if you don’t have everything nailed down, guess who’s gonna get it? Okay? You look at the. You’ve heard the name Vanderbilt. Yeah, of course. Commod Vanderbilt.

Commodore Vanderbilt. He had amassed something like 93 million back in the 18 hundreds. By the time 1973 rolled around, there was not a millionaire in his family. Why is that? It’s because of our government, our taxes. They just keep you heard of death tax estate. Tax here, sales tax, income tax, all these different tax.

We’ve got so many taxes. We don’t know whether we coming or going. Okay. But the politicians that put these taxes in place, oh, they know how to avoid them. Tax evasion and tax avoidance are two very different things. , okay? Tax evasion is illegal. Tax avoidance is. So we want to avoid paying those taxes and how do we do that?

There are a lot of different tools out there and just briefly will and trust. Okay? If you don’t have a will, get one. If you don’t have a trust, you need to look at it because if, let’s just say you got this $300,000 house and you leave it to your. You know what you just did, you thinking it’s going to be a blessing, but actually it could turn out to be a curse because there are taxes that are gonna come with you.

And before he can get take possession of the house, he’s got to pay the taxes first. So the idea is simply this. Why not move all your hard assets into a trust? Okay. The trust is a legal. Okay. The trust does not have to pay taxes, but your heirs can still have access to that property that you leave.

Now, there are many different types of trust and one that really rocked my boat was called the dynasty trust. It stays off taxes for up to a hundred years. Wow. Think about that. It’s a beautiful thing. Now these we live by the Golden Rule. You know what that is, right?

Stephen: Yeah. Do who?

Robb: So these people, they wanna keep more of what they want. They want keep more of what they’ve earned. And they do that through the different financial vehicles that are out there, the will and trust, the, all these different kinds of things. Now, medical. Costs are skyrocketing. This is where that long-term care insurance comes into play.

Nursing homes aren’t no joke. You gonna be paying three, four, $5,000 a month to stay in a nursing home, right? Where is this money coming from? It’s coming from all that money that you’ve been making. Steve, our system forces people into poverty before the government takes over. . So you can’t very well retire with a hundred thousand dollars in assets and expect the government to foot the bill.

No, they’re gonna make you sell everything first, and you’re gonna, you’re gonna be pretty much on welfare. That’s what the government steps in. So in order to stave off this kind of stuff, there’s long-term care. Okay. And the long-term care insurance, you’re gonna pay a small premium over the years, and then in the events, something catastrophic happens and you end up in a nursing home.

Then they’re gonna take over the payments for you. Okay? So it’s better to get it sooner as opposed to later, like all insurance favors your age and your health. Okay? The reason, another main driver for me writing this book and why I titled it asked the right question. Was because people asked the wrong questions.

See, if you asked the wrong questions, you not gonna get the right answer. Okay? I don’t care how many times or how many ways you ask it, if you ask the wrong questions, you are not gonna get the right answer, right? And so sorry. Finish Jeff. No, I was just saying that’s why it’s entitled that because it was out of anger.

Because I would sit down with people and the first thing outta their mouth would say my agent said this. My agent said that, my agent. And I said, wait a minute, hold up. The only thing that really matters is what’s written in the contract. I don’t care what the agent told you. It’s all about what’s written in this contract.

Cause all life and financial instruments, there are, they are. And if it’s not in the contract, they are not obligated

Stephen: to it. So what you said about the questions, it so if someone’s really worried about cost I can get long-term care insurance for 50 bucks, but if I go into a nursing home, it’s only gonna give me a hundred a month.

Whereas I could get another one that’s a hundred dollars and it’s gonna pay 5,000 a month. So that early cost is almost, who cares, cuz it’s, it gives you a lot better. That’s what you gotta look at. That’s, and is that the right there, is that the exa type of example, what you want people to understand after reading your book?

Things to think about?

Robb: Yes. See, the thing about that is when you’re talking about health insurance, earlier is better. Okay. Get it while you’re young. Because even with life insurance the longer you wait, the more it’s gonna cost because all insurance favors your age and your health.

Now, as far as what’s gonna meet your expectations down the road, then we would take into consideration some family history and things like that. Okay. Because if you’ve got a person that’s got heart disease in their family, okay, and. 55 years old, it’s gonna, it’s gonna be pretty, it’s gonna be a pretty big chunk to be set aside.

Okay. So there, there are a lot of different things that need to be looked at when we’re talking about this long-term care insurance. Okay. It’s not a one size fits all or anything like that. It’s tailored to each

Stephen: individual. Okay. So the people that have gotten your book and read it, what type of feedback are you getting from.

Robb: Well, a lot of people like the first thing is I didn’t know that . I didn’t know that. They’re really looking at the way that I go through a short history of how we got to where we are today with regards to retirement and our financial system and all this kind of stuff.

A lot of. Think about inflation. When they say inflation think things are costing more. Things are costing more. Things are costing more. That is not what’s happening, okay? What’s really happening, what’s really going on is that the value of your currency is falling. Your money is not as strong as it used to be.

Since 1913, the US dollar has lost 98% of its value. Wow. they’re still printed, 40 going North . Okay. There’s nothing backing it. There’s nothing backing it. And here we are. We’ve got 300 million people that are running around and have no clue. No clue what’s going on. Okay. We got payments on everything, right?

I Why do you think we have renter centers and all this kind? Okay. Payments on everything. Just, and it, it is ridiculous. See, it used to be, when I was coming up that if you wanted something you worked and you saved up the money to get it. The powers that be said, oh no, we can’t have that.

Give it to ’em now. Easy monthly payment plans and all this kind of stuff, man. And that’s where we’re at right now. You can finance anything these days. Yes. Anything. Why? Because the borrower is servant of the lender.

Stephen: Yeah. Yeah. I’ve seen that and I’ve warned my kids against that. My, my son’s pretty good.

He basic, he has basically no bills, no credit cards, and pays cash for just about everything he can. And he’s doing good there so far. .

Robb: Yeah. That’s a good thing. Now he’s also gotta learn. Pay himself too. See, because a portion of all that you earn is yours to keep. Okay. The 95% of the people that I run into are living paycheck pay.

Stephen: Yeah. Yeah. He’s, he is working on savings and I’m working with them on the next things and looking at that. Hopefully we’ll get some of that,

Robb: a really good book to. The millionaire next door. Okay.

Stephen: The millionaire next door. I’ll put that in the show notes too for everybody.

Robb: Definitely. That is a great book. Okay.

Stephen: All right. Rob, I wanna besides just talking about your book, I want to talk about your career and your talking and stuff. But before we get, move on to that phase if somebody came up to you and said, Hey Rob, I heard you wrote a finance book.

Why should I get that? What would you tell. The elevator pitch.

Robb: Okay. I would tell ’em that because I would say, look, there’s four areas that you, that need to be addressed and you need to look at these four areas. Okay. And that’s what I would say. This right here is just a guide. It’s not going, it’s not a how to, it’s more of a why to, why you need to look at these boys.

And that’s what I would doubt just the curiosity. Why do I need to look at these forms while I read the book?

Stephen: Okay, great. All right.

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OverviewErica reads a chapter of her horror novel This Cold Night

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OverviewBeing a new writer, Erica can relate to getting advice and being overwhelmed with what to follow. We discuss various advice but also what we’ve chosen to follow.

Of course, we give some advice ourselves.

Her Bookhttps://www.amazon.com/This-Cold-Night-Erica-Schaef-ebook/dp/B0BM8F7SRZ?crid=18C3X8R7PKC9G&keywords=this+cold+night+schaef&qid=1674748278&sprefix=this+cold+night+schaef%2Caps%2C95&sr=8-1&linkCode=li2&tag=saschneider-20&linkId=5728077d516f83f9303d5b3cf3af05ef&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_ilYouTubehttps://youtu.be/WjiT-qymkkwTranscriptLet’s talk a little bit of author stuff and find out about some of your writing styles in that. So first of all, what type of software and services do you like to use when you’re.

Erica: I just have, usually what I just use is word.

And I, sometimes I use it on my phone. A lot of times what I do is I write in a notebook and then retype it on the computer and that kind of helps to get a second. It’s almost like a second draft going in cuz you’re, words that you’re like, oh, I used that word too many times, or I, whatever.

So like seeing it back and then putting it on a computer, that kind of helps. , make sure that it looks the way I wanted it to. So a lot of times that’s what I’ll do. I usually write in like actually on paper and then

Stephen: interesting paper. Okay. And you wrote a bunch of short stories. You’ve written a novel.

Are there some things you learned writing, the short stories that you did differently when you wrote the novel then you might have done, or some things you’ve changed about your writing? There’s, I’ve, so since I’ve been writing short stories and sending ’em out to publishers, I’ll get they have an editor, you editor usually looking at them and they’ll send it back with suggestions.

Erica: Hey, we wanna print this, but can you change this? Whatever this, and this. So throughout that feedback I’ve learned one of the, one of the first feedbacks I got was try to make. your characters sound like different people. So like these two characters sound very similar when they’re talking obviously, cuz they’re both from my brain, so I have to think, okay, I really have to get in the secondary character and they can’t sound the exact same as the main character.

And a lot of places don’t want you to use like too much slang or like right mispronunciation. So that was of difficult for. was to make myself, make my writing sound like two fully developed different people. So that was something that I definitely tried to work on. And I think with this novel, it’s from the perspective of the main character.

So that made it a little bit easier because I could say what she was thinking and what she said, and then have the other characters reacting to that and really trying to develop them as best they could outside of her perspective. I think that’s one thing that I really try to do in this,

Stephen: in this book.

Have you you said you learned from feedback from others, feedback from the editor. Do you listen to a podcast? Do you have any books you’ve read, any websites you like to go to? Anything like that?

Erica: I don’t, I, when I was first writing I did, I would go to different websites or I would listen and I think it is helpful to listen to people’s.

But I think if you do that too much or rely too heavily on that, it becomes overwhelming because I feel like sometimes you almost get conflicting advice. I saw something.

Stephen: We’re gonna talk more about that in a moment. Yeah. I’m sorry, go ahead. Yeah, .

Erica: No, that’s okay. I saw something where just for example, like I’ve seen things where it says starting off with dialogue is, can pull the reader in.

know, That’s an intriguing way to start. And then I’ve seen people like, please don’t start with dialogue. We don’t like to that we’d rather start with anything but a quote. So it’s, yeah. I don’t know. You hear so many different things that sometimes it’s it’s so overwhelming that you’re almost like, I just don’t wanna, I just don’t wanna do it.

Because it seems like I said it doesn’t seem like there’s any right way. It’s like everybody has an opinion against, you’re doing

Stephen: in some way. A and that kinda leads right into what we were gonna talk about is advice from other people writing advice and how to figure out what works, what doesn’t, what you should listen to, what you shouldn’t.

So one of the things I’ve told people, and this is my general rule of thumb advice, if I was going to go back and talk to my young, my slightly younger self start writing, I would. Say, don’t focus on getting a book written to publish, to focus on writing and writing and not writing something, and then editing and rewriting it 500 times.

Writing something, putting it aside, writing something else, putting it aside and writing some short stories, writing 2, 3, 4, even five books, different series even. Because I realize now in h. That a lot of the advice, like you said, that I was getting it, would, I’d get conflicted and should I do this, should I do this?

And I was learning it, getting advice about publishing, but I hadn’t even written my book yet, so who cares? But you

Erica: know, so it just, then it becomes more overwhelming cuz you’re like, I don’t, yeah.

Stephen: So I think. Getting a lot of writing under your belt. Then when you hear the advice, it makes more sense and you can apply it more.

That’s my general rule of advice is ignore it all until you can understand and comprehend it. . So what’s some advice you’ve you mentioned some advice you maybe ignored and then found out later that you shouldn’t have or he was like, oh, now I understand that it makes more sense. Anything like that?

Erica: I think that I’ve gotten advice more than once that my intros in a nice way that, that the introduction to the book are when I start writing that the background’s too much. That it’s we don’t need to know everything about this person’s life story. Just get us, but we need to know and get us into the story.

But I really like thinking about their backgrounds and I really like coming up with this specific thing. , but not all of that needs to go in the story. It’s okay for you to have that in your head for your character, but you don’t need their whole life story at the beginning of your book because that does get boring for okay, who cares what’s gonna happen?

So I’ve got that feed. I’ve gotten that feedback more than once where the introduction’s good, but can you cut out this, and this. Just stick to what’s relevant to your story. And,

Stephen: and I, that’s important too because not all advice may apply to you, but it may apply to me something different.

Right.

Erica: You might not have that problem at all, but Right. . Yeah. So for me that was definitely, and it was, I was reluctant to do it after the first one. Cause I was like no, I think it really I really like it. think it’s fine. And then I got it again. I was like, okay, yeah, you’re probably.

Stephen: You, you gotta get that experience to really understand that. Even if you’ve read forever I’ve know several authors. Oh I’ve read. So I know I can write a good book. Totally different skills. Totally different . It is. And

Erica: I think you don’t realize, even like hearing if you’ve had any, like some of my writing is now audio hearing somebody read something that it took you maybe.

I don’t know, two months to write. And they read it in like less than an hour. And you’re like, oh. It so much more goes into it than it sounds like when it’s being read. I think about that with movies a lot, because you’ll see the budgets for movies, how big they are.

Stephen: And you’ll and you’ll see a scene where it’s three, four seconds and it shows a particular. Person with particular clothes on and dressed a certain way or whatever in a setting, but then you don’t ever see that person with those clothes or whatever. So it gives you that feel. You it immerses you in it, but the amount of time they spent on it is so much greater than what it was on screen.

But without even that little bit, sometimes it would draw you out. So that’s why writing you have, like you said, Put this stuff in. So I wanna go back to the one thing you said you put too much like background and things like that in, so how did you handle that? What, did you just pull things out or do you sprinkle it later?

What, how did you handle that? So

Erica: both if it was some things that I put in really weren’t relevant at all to the story and never it was a good thought I had in my head, and that’s fine. Just keep it in your head. And then some of it was they can reveal this about themselves in the middle of the book.

When this happens or after this happens, they can remember something like similar that happened. It doesn’t have to all go right here at the beginning. So both I, I took some out and then I. At took some out and replaced it later

Stephen: in the book, which again, I think is a difficult thing for authors and you gotta have the experience maturity of writing to do that.

That was really difficult. My first book, I wrote without any plan, any thought, didn’t know, and right. Rush through it a little. Because I wasn’t really sure what I, where I was going with, I didn’t have an end goal or anything and I sent it to an editor and came back and it was like just pages and pages of notes and not in a bad way.

It

Erica: was like no, it’s not. It’s never, I’ve never gotten something back where it was like this was just critic. This is just criticism to be criticizing. It’s always been with the goal of helping you, but it is still overwhelming. A lot of times when you see like pages

Stephen: of it, you’re, and I literally, it was like 70,000 words.

I literally ripped out 35,000 words. I was like, yeah, I get it. This what? What? It just jumps. It’s like there’s no flow. Yeah. So it took me doing that to start understanding, I think, Even the last couple things I’ve written have been better, but not as good as they could be. But the latest thing I’m working on, I’m like, oh man I totally am seeing the whole story.

I’ve got the beats, I’ve got the flow. And when I sit down, I know a lot of people are discovery panthers and a lot of people are plotters outliners, and that. I’m more logical thinking, so the outlining fits me very well. I just haven’t done the greatest job at it. I a few little things and I go from there, but I struggle a lot.

Where’s the story going and get it? , but this latest one, I literally got all the beats on Save the Cat, and they all fit. And the story made sense in my head. I moved some things from my original thoughts and now when I sit down to write, I’m like, oh man got 3,200 words today. And I didn’t even realize it cuz it, it took the burden of thinking about the story off of me and I.

Do all the creative stuff. The one part that’s here’s what happens here is a one line sentence of the major point, but it turned into a whole big scene that was fun. And had other things in it because I was able to relax and just write .

Erica: I think it’s like you said, I think if you hadn’t had the experience writing so much before, the more you do it, the, I think just like you said, the naturally better it’s gonna be, you’re.

Say okay, this worked, this didn’t work. And I think, yeah, just having the experience of writing, even if it’s not something you ever intend to publish I think that just writing really

Stephen: helps. And the hardest part for me is, Understanding. Yeah, this sentence is great, this chapter’s great or whatever, but it doesn’t fit with the rest.

It needs pulled out. That’s hard for me.

Erica: That’s really hard to, sometimes you’re like, I got this description. It’s so cool. It’s so immersive, but it doesn’t move the story along and it really doesn’t. It’s not as relevant as it should be, and that’s really hard. Cause sometimes you work on something for a really long time like that.

That’s exactly what I wanted that to sound. , but it just doesn’t flow with the rest of the story. It’s just not right.

Stephen: Yeah, absolutely. So is there any other advice that you’ve gotten that you started to do and realized, no, that’s not the right advice for me? I’ve gotten, not specifically from an editor, but I’ve got, I’ve heard advice about perspective.

Erica: Like unless, and I feel like unless you’re, like some publishers, if you’re trying to write for the specific publisher will say, third person, pass, whatever only, and that’s fine. If you’re writing for that specific, if you want that specific publisher, then write like that. But I think in general perspective depends on the story and how you see it.

So I don’t think. I’ve written stories, like first person present, like I, I turn on the light and I see. But I’ve heard people I’ve heard publishers or just people in general with say that they don’t like that they don’t like that perspective. So I think for me it’s what feels the best for your story that you’re writing.

Cause I think that’s how it’s gonna come off the best. So

Stephen: I don’t really. That, that’s a rough thing for me too. I had, cause I, people kept telling me, you’re head hopping and you’re doing this, and I’m like, no I’m not.

Erica: Yeah. That hops another one. And it’s but, and I’ve done that in a story too where I’ve like head hopped between chapters or sometimes in the middle of a chapter or whatever, and.

Yeah, I don’t, and they’re like, that’s what, I dunno. That’s how I see it. That makes sense

Stephen: to me. Yeah. And it didn’t confuse me and I went back and looked, and a lot of the books I’ve read throughout my life had that because back more in like the eighties into the nineties, it was more common and Right.

Things like that. I even wrote a couple author. That of some books I really liked and said, Hey, I’m a new author. I’m learning this. I’ve always loved your books, but I got a question. It, it has this and it’s head hopping. Why did you choose to do that? How did you get away with it? Is there any advice you give?

And the one answer I got back a professional writer that’s I’ve been writing her whole life. She basically had, that was the times. It’s different now. That’s not how I write. Oh okay. , so that it, it was a little hit me over the head with a frying pan type moment. But it was good to know that.

That’s where I got it from. But I maybe need to learn to be modern. It’s really hard

balance. You it’s so do you have, okay. I’m. Come back to this in a moment. What are you doing to market your book? I, my publisher brought on a publicist, so that’s been really helpful for me cause he’s been setting up all, sorry, one second.

Erica: Yeah,

sorry. So he’s been really helpful with, he’s setting up a lot. He’s reaching out and getting podcasts and d. I was on a radio station and then sharing through he’s got it out to different reviewers to write reviews and we’ve sent out some advanced copies for those of reasons to come on Amazon and good reason, whatever.

But before a publicist, I would try to market, so I would join, like on Facebook for instance, I would join groups of who fans where it was okay for you. , like some groups don’t want you to post promotions for your things and some groups are fine with it. So I would do that. I would try to market two people who I thought might be interested in horror or the books that I was writing.

And a lot of times, like with the anthologies and things, the publisher would do a lot of the marketing. So it wasn’t really something that I had to do that much if I didn’t if they wanted me to do podcast or an interview or something, I would do it, but it wasn’t something that I had I had to reach out that, that much for.

But I did find that especially on Twitter, that the community there of authors and writers is really supportive. And usually if you reach out to people they’re very nice about it.

Stephen: Yeah. That’s one of the things I’ve said. I. Part of what spurred me to actually sit down and start writing was I met a professional author who’s been writing for 35 years and is a known author in his genre and in fact, After we met him, my son was just talking about it at his high school and several of his friends like dropped the books and went, oh my God, you know that person I’ve done all their books.

And that’s when we realized wow, this guy really is like a famous author. Just not. We read. But he didn’t give me any indication of, I, I’m a better author than you. I’ve, I’m more po. I think in general, authors are much more accommodating compared to like actors not so self-absorbed, and they’re willing to help and they can walk down the street without getting mobbed, except for JK Rowling and Stephen King

Erica: No, I do, I think that it is a really supportive, even if the answer is no. It’s in a really nice way. It’s never an unsupportive or critical way.

Stephen: Agreed. Agreed. All right. Erica we’ve talked a bit about advice. So before we sign off here, do you have any other advice that you would give to new authors listening to this podcast?

Erica: I would just say the best advice that I think I’ve gotten is write what you would wanna. and if you’re excited about what you’re writing, then people will probably be excited to read about it.

Stephen: Agreed. I like that. Nice. All right. Great, Erica, it was nice meeting you, talking to you. And we should have a chapter read when this goes live to add on so people can hear a little bit from your book.

And I think that’d be great.

Erica: Yeah. Yeah. I will get that ready for you.

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OverviewErica Schaef is a fan of all things horror and loves to write her own stories in that genre. She is an Affiliate Writer member of the Horror Writers Association. Her work has been featured in a variety of journals, magazines, audio productions, and anthologies. She lives in rural Tennessee with her husband and two wild children.

Her Bookhttps://www.amazon.com/This-Cold-Night-Erica-Schaef-ebook/dp/B0BM8F7SRZ?crid=18C3X8R7PKC9G&keywords=this+cold+night+schaef&qid=1674748278&sprefix=this+cold+night+schaef%2Caps%2C95&sr=8-1&linkCode=li2&tag=saschneider-20&linkId=5728077d516f83f9303d5b3cf3af05ef&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_ilWebsitehttps://brigidsgatepress.com/author/erica-schaef

Favoriteshttps://www.amazon.com/Shining-Stephen-King-ebook/dp/B001BANK32?crid=2NPVNU6PZBQC4&keywords=the+shining+stephen+king&qid=1674748820&sprefix=the+shining+stephen+king%2Caps%2C109&sr=8-1&linkCode=li2&tag=saschneider-20&linkId=5ea78902e642fda245a7e16ad521af9e&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_ilYouTubehttps://youtu.be/GIGIqAQ7ERwTranscriptSo this morning on Discovered Wordsmiths, I have Erica. Erica, how are you doing today? Hi, how are you doing? I’m doing on, yeah, it’s great to see you. Your hair matches your background. Yeah. Yeah. Good . Erica before we start talking about your book and things like that, let’s find out a little bit about you tell us where you live and some of the things you like to do besides.

Okay,

Erica: so I live in Tennessee in a rural area that’s about 40 miles from Chattanooga. So I have two young children, one’s seven and one’s five. So we like to we have a national park right near us. We like to go on hikes. We, I started a garden back in 2020, but during Covid. I started a little pumpkin garden, so I got into gardening a couple years ago.

Not that great at it, but we had a few things grow last year. We had one huge pumpkin, so that was fun. And what else do I like to bake, but I’m also not that great at it.

Stephen: Would you say, huge pumpkin? How huge

Erica: it was. I forget the, what the name of the pumpkin was, but it was something giant pumpkin, and it was like a norm, like my son could sit.

He said, said on that, and he was really

Stephen: proud of it. I’m sure they be. Love that. Yeah. , that’s a, that’s such a fun age for that type of stuff. it. Yeah, it really

Erica: was. And they liked to help. He had he would help me water. He would bring a squirt gun out while he had the hose and he would like squirt plants with a squirt gun.

Stephen: The water. Nice. Good. So with a family and things, why did you wanna start writing?

Erica: I started writing. I think since I’ve been a kid, probably since I was like 10, I’ve really enjoyed writing and I’ve always done it as a hobby. And it wasn’t until probably, I think, 2020 or 2019 or 2020 around Covid when I had some extra time.

And so my kids were at an age then where they would play on their own, but I would be in the same room as them, like keeping an eye on them. And so that was I had the opportunity then. to write while they’re like either outside or playing in a room. And I was like I would get ideas for something and then I would actually finish them through.

Because what I would do before is start an idea and then get bored of it and quit. So once I started finishing through with my ideas, I was like well, maybe I’ll try to send these out, see if they can get published. But that would be cool. And then so things started to get picked up.

I started writing short stories. . And so a few of those got picked up and then I started trying to do more longer form fiction and things like that. So probably the last couple years I’ve really been taking it seriously as more than just like a hobby that if it works. And if it

Stephen: doesn’t, it doesn’t.

Nice. Okay. And so you said you’ve written a lot of short stories. Are some of them out there that people could check out? Yeah.

Erica: Most of them are in anthologies or journals. There’s one that was in the anthology, Lovecraft and A Time of Madness, which is an anthology of short cosmic horror stories.

Nice. Based on what h HP Lovecraft might, sorry, my cat is known.

Stephen: That’s okay. had plenty of cats and kids and .

Erica: Oh, he just likes to touch him. Sorry. So yeah, so that, my short story in that was called Esca and they made that into a the publisher, Sentinel Creatives made that into a audio production, so they had to pass audio production.

And so that’s available as a standalone story on Amazon and

Stephen: Audible. Oh, nice. Awesome. Sorry. Yeah I’ve had my cat on lots of cats have been on the podcast.

Erica: Wanna be on his attention.

Stephen: Tell us a little bit about your book what it’s about and like the genre and things like that.

So

Erica: this Cold Night, it is a, it’s horror but it has some elements of psychological horror. It. Some less, to a lesser extent. It has body horror and a little bit of a jump scare factor. Not too much of that, but it’s set in modern times and it’s set in a country mansion. And it the core of this story, there’s flashbacks within this story, but the chords of the story takes place over one single night, and the main character is visiting a.

House, which is the country mansion after the death of a loved one. So it starts right after a funeral and then takes pla. The entire story takes place in this mansion over one night.

Stephen: Okay, so why did you decide choose to write horror?

Erica: That’s been my favorite genre since I can remember. My, my grandma used to read us stories from the, what was it for kids?

Oh. Those anthology stories for kids. can’t remember now. They were Oh, scary stories to tell in the dark. Oh, yeah. Okay. And things like that. So she would read that to us, and I always thought they were the most entertaining. I was always the most intrigued. And with that genre, I was always hooked.

I always wanna know what happened next or what was going on in this story. What was the, what was making that sound? What was doing? and we, so we would watch scary movies and it’s just, I’ve always found it to be the most intriguing, I think, genre for me. So I was always drawn to it. And then when I started writing, I, it’s fun for me to try to come up with ways to, to be, to frighten people.

So I try to think of what’s the scariest thing I could put in here? What’s the, what have I read that’s really scared me, that I could use that feeling in my own to try to scare somebody. So it’s really fun for me.

Stephen: Nice. Okay. Yeah. And besides scary stories in the dark, what are some of your other favorites?

Erica: Getting older ice Cream Lovecraft, obviously. I like Stephen King. The first time I read The Shining though, there was a part, there’s a part where the little boy Danny is in a, is in the hallway at the hotel and he is like looking at a garden hose. and that’s all he is doing. But the way it’s described is so frightening that I, it was a long time between then and when I finished the book because I was like this is two

So The Shining was a favorite.

Stephen: I’m trying to, that’s one of my favorites. One of my top,

Erica: yeah. And I’ve read a couple other Steven, which obviously were all good, but that one was like, that really scared me. I’m trying to think. The yellow wallpaper, that short story Charlotte Perkins goman.

It’s a short story. It’s a psychological. . Yeah. You should check it out. It is it’s, like I said, it’s psychological but it is really creepy.

Stephen: Yeah. It’s more classic. There’s a lot of good old horror

Erica: out there too. It is. And that’s a lot of times what I end up listening to. A lot of times I read it, but a lot of times it’s easier for me to listen cuz what I’m doing, whatever I’m doing throughout the day.

A lot of times that’s what I’ll end up listening to them. And I like the old, the older.

Stephen: Okay. And so is this book independently published or traditionally do you have a publisher?

Erica: Oh, so it’s a small publisher, bridges Gate

Stephen: Press. Ah, okay. Yep. I’ve had several authors from them. And where, so where all can they find your book?

And you have a website?

Erica: So I do have a website, which is just WordPress, Erica Schaff, which is e r i c a s c h A E. , and that’s on my social media. So I have a Facebook and a Twitter, which is the same Erica Sha. And then, so this book is on right now, it’s on Amazon, Barnes and Noble. And then through the publisher, Bridget Scape Press.

Stephen: Okay, good. And people that have read the story already or read your short stories, what’s the feedback you’re getting and hearing from them? Luckily mostly positive people are saying that it was which is what I was trying to do. People say it was unexpected and somebody said it was like a new twist on a haunted house, which is what I was hoping people would think.

Erica: Nice. Cause you have so many obviously haunted house stories. But I did wanna do something. It was a little bit different while still being in that category of. Of haunted house. So I’ve been really lucky to get really nice positive feedback for the most part.

Stephen: Okay, good. And if you had a choice for this book, would you rather see it as a movie or a TV show?

Erica: Probably. If I had to pick for this one, probably a movie. Ok. This feels like I said, it’s over one night with some flashbacks. I think it would probably work better as a movie if I had. .

Stephen: Okay. And do you have any favorite scary movies? Let’s see. I’ve watched a lot of, they aren’t movies, but the Netflix shows what is it?

Erica: Mike? Mike Flanagan, I think does with like Midnight Mass. That’s a good

Stephen: one. Haing on Hillhouse. The first one was good. The second one was okay.

Erica: Yeah, I think that one was based on the turn of a screw. Yes. Yes. I think if you, yeah, I was gonna, I think if you, it wasn’t as like surpri. I, it wasn’t, I wasn’t as drawn into that one, but yes.

As far as movies go, oh, let me think. Oh there was one that came out on Netflix not that long ago, that was behind her eyes. It was based on a novel by Sarah Pin, bro, I think I haven’t seen that one yet. Oh, you have to watch it. It’s really good. It’s one of the, it’s one of those, you don’t see the, I would say read it first, but then also watch it.

They did the movie, did a really good.

Stephen: Cool. And do you have plans for a next book? Is this the first of a series or is it a standalone?

Erica: This one’s a standalone and right now I don’t have any major plans for anything coming up next. I’m taking a little bit of a break where this winter season and maybe in the spring trying to start up something new.

But I have a few ideas, but nothing really started.

Stephen: Yeah I think horrors difficult to have a series that keeps the feeling going. It, they really lend themselves to standalones,

Erica: right? Sometimes you can have a character maybe that, I don’t know, that kinda like mysteries, how sometimes you have one detective who just goes through different maybe you could do something like that.

But yeah, it would be hard. .

Stephen: Yeah. Okay we’ve already talked about this a little bit some of your favorite books and authors in that. But do you have a bookstore you like to go to over where you live? I don’t, I, we have a Books a Million, which I do it’s, that’s an and then our, I really like our local library.

Erica: It’s really small and like the children’s section is really great. My kids really like it cuz it, it just, , the way that it has it set up is really great for kids. It’s at their level. Lots of colors, lots of things going on, and they have comfortable seats and it’s just a really friendly atmosphere in there.

Stephen: Yeah. I love libraries. I love promoting, pushing libraries. I’ve got an author event coming up in a little over a week at our local library. So yeah, always trying to encourage people. Use your library, go to the library. . Yeah, it

Erica: really is. It’s great cuz like even. Even if you want to try out a new author, a new genre or something, and you’re like, I’m not really sure I wanna commit to it, you can always just go browse, re take out a book and if you don’t like it, bring it back.

And

Stephen: so have you read scary Stories to Telling The Dark to your Kids?

Erica: No, I haven’t read it to my kids yet. I, we listened to a couple of this stories. My daughter’s five, so we listened to a couple of the stories on, and she. So I’m like, okay, maybe we’ll wait a little while. you go end up with kids in your bed all night.

Stephen: You don’t

Erica: do it too fast. But yeah, she she was a bit scared, so Yeah, I don’t, they like like I, I get some like Halloween themed books that are more spooky and they really I recently ran into the Halloween Tree by Ray Bradbury. Which I had never read before last year.

Stephen: And it was interesting. It was not what I expected at all. It, it takes a little bit to get into his style flow of writing. But the whole history of Halloween and all that in the book I thought was pretty, pretty interesting. Yeah.

Erica: A lot of them, a lot of the, like the Halloween theme books has something like that, like some kind of interesting information.

It’s not just. Not just scared not just to be spooky. A lot of ’em might a really cute lesson or something

Stephen: like that too. All right. Before we move on and talk about some author type stuff if someone came up to you on the street and said, Hey, I heard you wrote a book.

Why should I get your book and read it? What would you tell them?

Erica: I would say if you like horror and you like the haunted house kind of genre, trope, whatever you wanna call, you give it a try because I think I, I tried to make it unexpected. I tried to make it a little bit different of the backstory of why this house is founded.

So give it a try. See if you like. Great.

Stephen: Nice. Thank you. Appreciate you sharing all that.

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OverviewSince Fern had been a teacher and now writes MG and YA books, we talk about working with kids today. She works with the Writers in the Schools program to still teach in a classroom and we discuss working with kids.

Her Bookhttps://www.amazon.com/United-Vidden-Thyreins-Galactic-Wall-ebook/dp/B08BWHG4JF?crid=3S6NFKAFICWV9&keywords=fern+brady+vidden&qid=1674058743&sprefix=fern+brady+vidden%2Caps%2C86&sr=8-1&linkCode=li2&tag=saschneider-20&linkId=2832cc89394b44adc7cd08438f1a0993&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_ilYouTubehttps://youtu.be/bEFdeh79ZmcTranscriptSo we’ve got a great topic working with kids, teaching Kids, which you’ve got great experience with. I’d love to talk to you a little bit here, but let me ask you first what software and services do you use when you’re writing? Do you have anything particular that you like and would recommend?

Fern: That is so interesting. You I’ve looked at so many different ones that they’re out there. I write inward, to be honest. I just, when I’m a discovery writer, I tend to not, I have a lot of things going on in here, which, my writing coach and editor, he’s always could you please put it on paper so I know what’s in there?

But , I ha I hold a lot of what’s supposed to be happening in here. And so when I write, I just sit and start writing. Now when I revise that’s when I start doing a lot of plotting. So I’ll do things, with sticky notes and things up on the wall to try to see where the plot holes are.

And then I usually use Scribner. And the reason I like to do that is because I can take it from the word file, put it into Scribner, and then I can move things around. Yeah. Because in invariably there’s stuff that’s now out of order , because I didn’t necessarily write it as chronologically as I thought I did, so I love Scribner for that. And, I have friends that use Scrivener for other things that, they have a lot of plotting help and they have character sheet help and things, and I just really don’t use any of that. I just really love the ability to parcel it out by scenes and then be able to move things.

And then put them back into word ,

Stephen: basically. Nice. Okay. And is that something you’ve always done or is that something you’ve done different since the first book?

Fern: I have, usually like the the first book I didn’t really use Scribner. With the first book I ended up having to cut and paste on Word and, move to another file and rename it, and so that was messier.

That was messier. But when I’ve started using Scribner, it’s really been very helpful in that sense. But the general process of it is, has stayed the same in general. I’m just I just sit down and let whatever happens in the story happen. . And then later I bring some order to it.

And then I find myself, like right now when I’m wrapping up the revision for Gor to Offensive, which is gonna be book two I find that I’m having to thread some things in that happens toward the end. And so now I’ve got a thread, some hints in, because, you can’t just have, magic liquids show up at the end.

You have to like, put them somewhere else, so people are like, really, that’s convenient, so I, I enjoy that

Stephen: process. Nice. And what are you doing to market your books? Is there anything you do to get the word out, get people to notice your book?

Fern: One of the things that I do is that I hired a really great publicist Mickey Holson from Creative Edge Publicity.

He is a really great. Person and I just enjoy working with him. He gets a lot of wonderful opportunities like this one to get on podcasts and to do interviews. And he works with me with the Gales to try to get some editorial reviews ahead of time. And I have a wonderful social media advisor and her name is Amy Ravish.

She owns Abundantly Social and, she is magnificent. She understands a lot of the trends. She understands how to position things and where to position things for the best for the best visibility in social media and when to do it and how to do it. And so she helps me a lot with those. and and besides, the online presence and things, I also love Karina Sakowski.

She is my graphics person. She makes me beautiful pro promotional graphics to use. And then and then I also just love to be in person. I think. I think people like to meet you as an author and so I go to a lot of comic conventions and just local arts and craft fairs and just meet people, plus it gives me a chance to dress up, which I’m a big fan of

Stephen: cosplay.

Nice. Okay. So our big discussion is about teaching and teaching kids, working with kids. So you were a teacher. You decided to leave that because of various. Non-fun teaching things, , which I totally get. So tell me a little bit about what are some of the things you’re doing now working with kids or what you’re trying to do in that regard.

Fern: Sure. So shortly after I left teaching and I joined the Houston Writers Guild Board of Directors. And Wow.

Stephen: Let’s just jump right in there. .

Fern: Yeah. They were needing, the organization had started as a sole proprietorship. And so the lady that took it on, she turned it into a nonprofit, so she needed a board.

So I volunteered. I was like what the heck? And and then eventually I ended up executive director. I’ve been executive director of it for the last eight years. Wow. With a little break in between. And then, So as part of that, I met a gentleman in Nate, Jack McBride, who is, who was part of the Writers in the schools program.

And Writers in the Schools is a national organization and they work with local schools whether they are public schools or private schools. And they bring in a writer, a working writer that does either 12 or 24 week placements or different kinds of placements. And basically you go in. and you’re working with the kids for an hour each week, with each of the classrooms and you are doing writing lessons.

And they, it’s not connected to curriculum, it’s not connected to testing. It’s authentic. Just here’s what writers do, here’s how we enjoy writing and gives the kids the opportunity to experience, the actual creative process and how messy it is. And to be okay with messiness, because you don’t, you kids will ask me like how long does this have to be?

It has to be as long as it needs to be in order for the story to be told. That’s right. I just don’t know. I don’t know what the length of that particular story’s gonna be, my love, and that’s that kind of, just flexibility of don’t worry about it. Tell the story that needs to be told.

Is wonderful for the kiddos. And so I have been working with writers in the schools now for. I think about the full tenure of my time as the Houston Writer’s Guild president because I met him through a conference we were both at. And and I love it. I love it because it is literally all of the best parts of teaching and absolutely none of the not so great

Stephen: that I can understand that and that, that fits right along with one of the things I’ve been working on and I’m just getting started in this whole working with kids.

I have not been doing it as long as you, but. , I’m like, none of what I’m saying or doing is to take away from what teachers are teaching. I think kids need to learn their English, learn grammar, learn spelling, even learn sentence structure and all that. But the problem is that’s all taken out of context when you teach it like that.

Because until you actually sit and write a story and think of something from your imagination, some of that stuff doesn’t make much sense and they forget about it. So my focus isn’t on the core curriculum stuff. It’s, and not necessarily spelling, it’s the imagination and learning how to write a good story.

But then I’m also focusing on how they can use that in the future. Can they write stories their whole life, even if they’re an accountant or an auto repair mechanic. Yes. Can they use their storytelling abilities in business? So much so nowadays it’s becoming a big part of that. . So it’s a skill I think we’re losing in teaching our kids.

Cuz we don’t sit around the campfire telling stories anymore like they did even a hundred years ago. Instead kids are watching the screens all the time and parents don’t know how to help with that.

Fern: And there is an amount of storytelling in some of the video games that have been coming out.

And yes, there is storytelling. There is storytelling, but we don’t really focus on it and we don’t really highlight it to, to the, to an extent of being able to say, okay, kids, let’s look at, let’s forget about the game itself for a moment and let’s just look at the storytelling behind it. And, we don’t really do that.

And but to the point of, with the teachers, it’s very interesting. . One of the, when I started with writers in the schools, one of the things that they usually do is this very self-contained lesson, right? So you go in for lesson one and it’s a very self-contained lesson. It goes nowhere else.

Okay? I sh I show you how to do it. We do something together and then you do it, and then that’s it. It’s done. And one of the things that I have done with the way I do my program with writers in the schools, and I think they like it so far, so far they haven’t gotten rid of me. So I guess they like it is.

Create a continuity. So we’re, I’m doing the same thing I used to do with my kids, right? We are gonna create a world, okay? So first we’re gonna create a map. What kind of stuff is gonna go on our map? How is this gonna function for our world building? Okay? Let’s make up some characters. Let’s think about some backstory.

What has happened to these people before our story even begins? Nothing we’re about to talk about is gonna be the main story, right? And then we have lessons on, okay, so what’s going to be our story? What is gonna be the big issue that they’re going to be dealing with, right? And so across all of my lessons, we are building the story.

And then once we’ve draft. Then we go into revision. Because the reality is that as writers, 90% of our time is spent revising.

Stephen: And that’s where I, I love doing my best writing cuz I feel the story’s done now. I just have to make it better and improve and make it fun. And that I’ve come to really enjoy that part of the process.

And, yeah. Cause that’s where you

Fern: begin. Sorry. Yeah. But I to me that’s where you, that’s where you begin to add nuance. Yes. It’s threading in those little things that you hadn’t thought of, and then you start putting it together and building it for the audience, for the

Stephen: readership.

Yes. And until you’ve written, you don’t understand how to write and the revise and some of that other stuff, spelling doesn’t matter. Grammar doesn’t matter. That’s what I encourage with kids and homeschool parents and whatever. And I think what you said there is one of the things missing is that we work with kids to write, but they don’t really learn story.

They don’t learn the three act structure. They don’t learn the conflict and the rising to the midpoint. And then, the part where the hero’s journey. But that’s not the only framework. But they don’t learn the parts that make a story work and work well. Cause I know a lot of the groups I’m with, when somebody learns about save the cap or learns about the hero’s journey, they’re like, oh, I don’t wanna be constrained and I don’t, and that’s, you’re missing the point.

This is really what you need to do. And I think kids wouldn’t really question it if you’re just. This is how, this is the three act structure.

Fern: Yeah. And what you find, what I had found a lot, and even as a teacher, a lot of times as a teacher you’re doing these short little things where you don’t actually delve into a deeper level of revising or completeness.

A lot of times, we are encouraging kids to, they start stuff and they never finish. And and that’s not a great pattern to do for your life. You’ve gotta dig in sometimes and finish things. And I also find that the teachers are really surprised sometimes when I do a revision lesson, because we are going to, for example, let’s say we wanna elaborate because we haven’t really described, we wanna add some sensory details so that people can visualize things and all of that.

We’ve talked about it. So now let’s circle. , all of our nouns. Where are our nouns? How can we describe each one so we can visualize it better? What are some descriptions that we can give? What are some can someone smell this? Can someone touch it? What color is it? What shape is it? And so you can work with grammar points.

They gotta know what a noun is to be able to find the nouns, right? And so now we’re adding description. What do we call those words? Oh, the, those words are adjectives. Okay. So now these concepts of nouns and adjectives are not on a worksheet. They’re in their own work. They’re finding their nouns, and they’re adding adjectives to make their nouns interesting and their work interesting.

And you can do this with with passive voice. Okay, so let’s look for everywhere where we put the word. Let’s look for everywhere where we put the word felt.

Stephen: Still big problems for me. Sometimes , it’s

Fern: the problem for everybody. And okay, so now that we’ve found these words, how can we change this sentence to make it stronger?

Because look at how weak it is. She felt her heart beating why not Brenna’s heart beat faster? How much more intense that is than she felt. It beat faster, so we can begin to show them how to look at grammar through the lens of how do we apply it as a writer and how do we revise with it to make it stronger by looking at our verbs?

Okay. How many times do you have the word walk? 500. Okay. Let’s see, what other words could we use, that are basically the same thing, but that might help the reader see how they walked. Better. So I think that these are the points where we might miss out if we’re doing these little tiny snippet lessons.

And they’re cute. Okay, we did these snippet lessons and we have this cute artifact, but did we really focus on the writing process? Yes. Did we really, I love that. Push them to do more, to dig deeper, to have to create nuance for their stories. And I feel like that’s what I try to do with with my work with writers in the schools, is to make the kids go deeper.

I always challenge ’em okay a short story really should be about 3000 words long, or l or between three to seven K. , a good short story. That’s a sellable short story. Let’s at least try for one. As a kid. And I’m always surprised at how many go way beyond because now they’ve been challenged, oh, I dropped a gauntlet one K oh, Ms.

Brady Uhuh, I’m gonna go much

Stephen: further. And, that’s the thing. Not every kid is going to be a writer. Not every kid cares to tell a good story or is able to, and you know who they don’t. Yeah. What’s it matter? But the ones that really do it starts clicking with them and you’ve just changed their life forever.

.

Fern: . And even the ones that don’t want to, the, just the challenge aspect of it. I, so I’ve, I’m you doing third grade and fourth graders this year. And so I decided that, we w we always decorate our notebook covers with a collage, to reflect who we are.

And so I decided they were gonna work on a sonnet. Wow. For their poem. Now these are third and fourth graders, and so I was like, okay, A sonnet is 14 lines with 10 syllables. Okay. I didn’t really go into the stress and unstressed and the different types. Okay. That was a little too much.

That be too

Stephen: hard for me too. So

Fern: just okay, this is this what we’re doing. Okay. We’re doing 14 lines, 10 syllables. If you want it to be an exact sonnet, it’s gotta have exactly 10 syllables. But I was like, you guys are third graders. I’ll let you get away with like between seven and 10. You, I was amazed.

80% of the kiddos hit exactly 10 syllables on all 14 lines. They were. going to miss it. They, you could see them working it, you could see them thinking and I, we talked about filler words, like yay or woohoo. Little things that you could do to cheat there every once in a while when you can’t quite make those 10.

And they did it. And I had one lady ask me why didn’t you just do seven? I If you do seven, everybody could do it. Sure. But 80% of those kids hit that mark, and 90 plus percent of them came really close. The one, the next ones that didn’t quite make it would, they made like 10 lines or 11 lines.

If I had said seven, maybe everybody would’ve hit it. But what a lost opportunity for those kids who pushed themselves to the 14 lines.

Stephen: This is probably a whole nother discussion, and I’m sure a lot of people could weigh in on it, but we don’t always have to give participation ribbons, and we don’t always have to make everything simple.

So everybody feels good about themselves because sometimes kids need a challenge and sometimes they gotta understand if you’re not going to rise to meet the challenge, you’re not going to get the end goal. That’s how life works later. And I think that’s a whole nother psychological discussion about our schools in teaching.

But I’m not gonna lay all the blame on the teachers. It’s not their responsibility for some of this parents too whole bit more talking. I’m sure we, we need to have a second podcast just to focus on more of these outsider issues. But lemme ask you this. Have you, you probably know the online service.

Lulu, have you heard of that? I have not, I’m

Fern: not familiar

Stephen: with it. Okay. This is something you probably would like to know. Lulu is what could be called one of the vanity presses. They don’t get your books and libraries. They don’t put ’em in online services. It’s so you can put your manuscript and order books and have books to sell.

They haven’t I got you of that, called Lulu Jr. Which offers a kit that kids can actually, the one I got has pages and the kids write their story and draw the picture, and then they stick it in the envelope, send it in, and about a month and a half later they get a published book, a printed book back. And it’s not for sale online, but you got a code.

So relatives family can go and order that book that the kid wrote. And it’s one of the things I’m telling people about and pushing because if a kid can see that this story they wrote, They get an actual physical book, even though it’s not on Amazon or for sale all over the place. But to say, my gosh, I’m a published author, I have a book.

I think that encouragement is necessary sometimes for kids to say, wow, that was fun. Let me do this again. So it’s, yeah. And actually it’s

Fern: interesting you say that with Lulu, because Lulu Junior right. Is the one that does what? Yeah. And

Stephen: the product is, I story is what it’s called.

Fern: Cool. So one of the things that writers in the schools actually does is we do put together an anthology.

At the end of the placement, you gather the kids work, they pick what they wanna put in the book, and and then you compile it, and we run it through copy.com, which is a local. Printing company here in Houston. They have, they and it’s not like a book.

It’s not bound like a book. It’s, eight by 11 and it’s stapled and, it’s not like a book, but they get that feeling. And I think that is a humongous part of just inspiring kids to be able to say, here’s the work you did, and now we’re going to celebrate this book by having an author signing.

And guess what? You’re the author. So you get to sign all your friends’ books. Oh, love that. On your story. And, we talk ab and we have little reading and we do of like a book launch party. And so it’s really cool. And I’ve actually been trying to get the writers in the schools Houston group to like, try to do something with Amazon, maybe load it on Amazon, get a cup of copies, and, But this Lulu Jr.

My, this sounds like that might be the very wave to go to. But I hate to take it away from copy.com Of course, cuz I love those people. But it would be so nice if it was bound like a book, because there, there’s something about the moment, the first time that you hold your book in your hand and it’s got your name on it.

I don’t know. There’s something about that as a writer. Absolutely. It’s so amazing and I think that is one of the reasons why some writers. end up getting scammed sometimes. And because we are so eager to have that feeling that we don’t do our due diligence and we don’t take our time, and I think that’s of sad for our community, but, okay. And now I have a and now I have something to pitch to the writers and school people over there. Do it.

Stephen: Do it. Oh yeah, definitely. I got two things that what you said made me chuckle. I’m gonna mention to you, so one, I’m a computer programmer by day and I do development.

And over the last couple years I’ve been learning and working more with WordPress, which is an online framework for building websites and content, okay? . And the structure of it, this is my thought, and I need to develop this better, whether it means. How to use what’s there or creating a plugin that makes it do it.

But my thought was that a school internal network could have a WordPress site set up and each teacher could have their students with a login, and the kids could write a story in, the online thing and their school. And so each page they write would be like a chapter in their book, which is fine.

WordPress can do that, teachers can do that. But the part that I think would make it a little special would be that the teachers then would basically have a button to press and say, okay, the year 2023, my class of yo know third period class, gather all those stories, put ’em in order, print ’em out.

So it’s like an anthology book with all their stories. Plus then giving access to people on the outside to be able to come and log in to read. All the stories from that year’s class. Not necessarily, putting it out there for everybody in the public, but so you could get on and read your friend, your kids and their friends and stories.

So that, that’s, it’s funny you mentioned that cuz I’m like, that’s something that’s been on my to-do list to look into to work with teachers, what would work with this? Cause I know one of the core curriculum things is to use the internet. I think it specifically says, use the internet to write a story.

And I’m like, that’s not even a fully fleshed idea of how to do that. And I’m sure teachers are like, what do I gotta do? Lulu Jr. I thought was perfect for that, plus using WordPress and whatever. So that’s funny you mentioned that . Cause that’s an idea, something I’ve wanted to work on now.

Maybe I should go work on it this weekend. But the other thing that I really chuckled about this you said earlier was, , I realized that storytelling is in video games, but it’s a totally different way of telling a story. and I talked with somebody who was a narrative designer for some video games that are out there, some real games on Xbox and that, and I talked to ’em about how that works and what you do.

And I got his book and he has a, he works at a school that teaches that type of stuff out in California. But I actually do a workshop now to help teach and get awareness of storytelling and video games. And I use a product called Blocks Souls, which is kinda like a Minecraft thing, and kids can build levels.

But I focus on what’s the story aspects in the game. And we know we gotta rise to a conflict, but in a video game we don’t control that. And how is that different? So I’m actually doing a workshop that I’ve been, revising on. For kids storytelling in video games and as a career in the future, because the job title has only been around for 10 years, but there’s more video games now that need it.

And the companies basically say, we don’t care if you have a college degree. Do you have any experience? So kids can start , you know that now and get that experience. So I love that you said that because that’s exactly where my head has been.

Fern: It’s so interesting because, so writers in schools has the creative writing piece, which is what I’ve been doing.

They have I did a placement with the Society for the Performing Arts where we had to create a a performance, right? So we had to do a screen screenplay and whatnot. One of the years right before Covid, unfortunately. So it got shut down, so I didn’t get to do it all the way. was one of the programs they have is a gaming program where the kids can create a video game.

And so part of that placement would be, okay, what is this video going to be? Game being about what are the backs, stories? And, creating the storylines to this video game and then doing the video game themselves. And I’m happy that I didn’t have to do it , because I don’t know how I would’ve done the whole tech part.

To be honest, I was struggling trying to figure that out as I was just first, trying to get them to brainstorm ideas for their video game. But and then Covid hit and then, that was the end of that. But it’s a great way to help those kids who are not gonna be writers necessarily.

but who need to practice their writing skills because you do need them in every profession. You need to be able to write well. Yeah. And so here’s a very engaging way to do it. And I, and it reminds me of, when I was in the classroom, there was a local comic bookshop, and it was owned by John Simons, who is the gentleman who actually started Comic Palosa originally here in Houston.

And I remember connecting with him as a teacher and saying, Hey, let’s do something with kids reading comic books, and he was willing to donate some and have a little program and stuff. And I pitched it to my principal at the moment. And yeah, I was told that, that’s not legitimate reading material

I was like we’re losing out on, we’re losing out on an opportunity to hook some kids who are struggling.

Stephen: One of my arguments and. . I know a lot of teachers agree, but I, there are some that just follow along without thinking about, they’re like these are the books we’ve always told them to read, so that’s what they’re gonna read.

And I’m like, but if the kids don’t enjoy the books, if they can’t relate to it, if the book is boring, what good is it? Who cares? If they can answer some discussion questions, cuz more than likely last year’s kids told this year’s kids what the answers were. So nobody even cared about reading the book.

Get them to read a book that they enjoy and who cares if it’s the best book in the world. The most well-written, there’s a new author that I enjoy, Jeff Strand and he wrote a couple ya books that some of the feedback he’s gotten is teachers saying, I gave your book to my kids, boys that never read before, said, this is great.

Can I have another one? That’s more important than saying, oh, they read Catcher in the Rye and took a test on it. And I’m not saying don’t, oh yeah, read Catcher in the Rye, but don’t use that to hook them on reading cuz it won’t happen. Charles Dickens is not who you should be introducing your fifth graders to that are hesitant readers.

That’s why Goosebumps was so big when it was at the height of its popularity.

Fern: Oh yeah. And one of the interesting things in that dynamic of trying to get the kids interested in writing and reading and something that they will enjoy is that, we need to remember what are you actually teaching?

Are you teaching that particular passage or are you teaching reading skills? Because I find that a lot of times what teachers are being made to do with these programs is, okay, we’re teaching this passage. All right. The kids now fully understand this one selection. They can answer gazillions of questions.

You’ve given them vocabulary that goes with it. But can they transfer that skill to any reading material? And let me tell you, when you go to the library or you go to the bookstore, the books don’t come with a vocabulary list. Okay? You need to read the book, and you need to, and you find words that you might not know.

Like I love that about Dean Koons. He uses words that I don’t know, and I have a pretty vast vocabulary, not bragging, but I do. And so the fact that he always, almost always has at least one word, and I’m finding that with Stephen King as well, at least one or two words, that I’m like, Ooh, this is a new word for me.

Exciting. And I figure it out using my context clues, right? I don’t, why are we need to teach kids how to do this. And a lot of times we’re teaching a passage, okay this passage now we know what that passage says, but guess what? That’s not gonna be on the test. That passage is not gonna be on the test.

Stephen: And that harkens back to, I think a lot of people are saying this, that the problem is we’re not teaching our kids how to learn. We’re teaching ’em how to memorize things for that test and moving on. And I know my I had a stepson who was hard tr trouble with math and he did not like it.

I made him do math workbooks over the summer and stuff like that. What I came to realize was he wasn’t connecting lesson to lesson. He wasn’t building those lessons. It was this one and forget it, move on to the next one. And I tried to get him to understand, no, this is information you already learned here.

And that’s what he’s basically been taught his whole life is learn it to pass this test, move on to something else and whoop out, out the brain it goes. And I think, we would be much better off as a society if kids knew how to learn and enjoyed that process instead of, okay, now we’re going to hammer this onto you cuz you have to take three days of testing so we can see how well you’re doing

And let me tell you a new way of doing math. I know it makes no sense to anybody in the world, but this is how you figure it out. . Oh,

Fern: don’t even get me started on my relationship with math. Exactly. math is my strongest. Math is my strongest weakness. I can do it, but, do I like to do it?

No, I don’t. But and part of it was because of how my math classes went, and how difficult it was for me. But I do think that we need to give kids fun, engaging, but be careful not to go into activity. Okay. Because, don’t do something that is an activity because it’s fun. Do it because it will teach something, because sometimes then you to that direction, you’re still having fun, but you’re teaching. And that’s why, and I really quit teaching because I found myself year after year in the principal’s office, this particular one, principal, and having to justify why I did book clubs.

Why I did the interconnected, thematic thoughts across the cultural and stuff, why I was doing this and that. Why didn’t I do this, testing prep thing and blah, blah, blah. Why wasn’t I doing the program they wanted me to? And the reality is that year after year, I showed up with my scores and I said, here’s what they did when they were in fifth grade.

But see, this is what they did now, and they actually did more than one year’s worth of growth. Why? Because they liked it. Yeah. They were entertained. They wanted to read those books. They wanted to do the read alouds, they wanted to do these the thematic things because it was fun when we did the Knight versus Samurai, right?

I would have the kids, half of them would be reading books with nights as the protagonists, Western style nights and half would do samurai and we would compare and contrast how these two cultures. So separate, totally different, yet came up with very similar ideas of what a warrior is. And we would look at our own military, what do we think about our Marines, blah.

And then we would learn really fun, gross things about the Middle Ages. And at the end I would give them this test about, nights and warriors and everybody who had, an 80 or hire got knighted. And let me tell you, I’ve never seen children study so hard for to learn the pieces of what an armor is.

I, because they wanted to be knighted and the whole process with the little fake sword, they just loved it and it was engaging and it was fun. . And so they were there. And so we didn’t have problems in my room. We didn’t have kids having, fights and stuff or acting out very few.

It was rare for me to send anybody out of the room because they were having a good time, but they were learning, and we were reading,

Stephen: so I love that because again, it encourages something fun that they really wanna work towards. Kids don’t care about that letter grade on that paper, but to be knighted, that’s totally different.

And I know I got a couple teachers I know and was talking to that gave me very disgusted looks and changed the topic when I said if we want kids to enjoy writing, why don’t we let ’em write fan fiction? Let ’em write a Harry Potter story or a Star Wars story, and then teach them the elements of a story with something they’re excited about.

Oh no, we can’t do that. Why not ? If the goal is to get kids to write this will do, this is one way that can do it. Yeah I’m not saying our schools are horrible. I just think that there are some things that we’ve fallen into, some non-thinking doldrums that I think could be shaken up a little bit.

Fern: I think what we’ve, what has happened is there was this sense of, oh how do we know if it’s really working? How do we know if they’re really learning? And we started shifting to this mindset that we have to assess and we do, we have to evaluate, right? But how we evaluate needs to be different.

And we need to start looking more at, growth. Because technically, if you really think about it, if you take the fifth grade reading test and you make a 30 on it, okay? , if you make a 30 on the sixth grade reading test the next year, you have made one year’s worth of growth. Correct.

True. Cause it’s one year hard, harder, harder test. And yet we’re expecting these kids, if they were making a 30 over here, now we want them to make a 60 or 70. Okay. That’s more than a year’s worth of growth. So it might not be as it, I, it’s important to see, are they passing it, but more important to see, are they making a year’s worth of growth or are they making more, some of these schools that are quote unquote, maybe not failing or whatever, they might actually be making more than a year’s worth of growth with their kids.

It’s just that their kids came at such a lower level to begin with, that it’s so harder to get them there. So how do we go into those communities and establish. Early education programs that will give the kids enough foundational so that it, they don’t start off at a disadvantage, that’s, think we’re just not looking at

Stephen: it correctly. That’s another area. I would love to get into a school that has disadvantage or problem kids and work with the storytelling in video games and get them excited and see if that changes things for them and the whole No Child Left Behind thing is exactly what you just said.

They’ve gotta quantify it. , but the problem is, , you might have, out of a class of 30 kids, you might have three kids that will never do well with spelling, that will never put the commas in the right place. It doesn’t click with them, but they might end up being masterful storytellers. But we’re not even looking at that skill.

We’re not helping them with that skill. And the missing the opportunities, not only for the schools, but the kids, more importantly that the, that’s a skill that’s being overlooked with this quantifying, the every number and everything and storytelling. There can be some kids that have gone through school and don’t even realize that they could tell beautiful, wonderful stories and maybe be richer than Stephen King, but we don’t encourage it and we don’t know how to bring it out of our kids.

So we miss that sometimes unless they get lucky enough to stumble upon it themselves. .

Fern: Yeah, it’s a, it’s an interesting, I think that there is a lot of gr room for improvement and growth in our schools, and we need to shift how we look at and how we assess. But, unfortunately we don’t have the will to look at it, and to really dig in and say, okay let’s really go back to what real teaching looks like, and let’s stop making the teachers.

Cause I remember having to do, right before Christmas break we would take sample assessment and we would look at our kids, which, you know who wasn’t doing so good with main idea and who wasn’t doing with cause and effect and whatever, all the things. And we would create a note.

With, three or four small group lessons that hit each target. And we would put our little list of who had not failed to master, who failed to master that and what dates we were gonna do that small group with those little kids. And these were fabulous notebooks that we put together. And, where they ended up collecting some dust because at the end of the day, that snapshot has shifted as I move forward.

And a small group is it by nature supposed to be reflecting of that moment of education? I’m teaching you something right now. I’m looking at you. I see that you and you are not quite getting it. So I’m gonna release everybody else to go do the activity. I’m gonna pull you to me right now, and I’m going to reteach right now because I don’t want you to learn it wrong.

right? And and then we would work on that, and then we’d send them out. And we would do these things, these binders and these lesson plans and, six weeks or eight weeks out of small group lesson, that’s not how small groups work. That’s not effective. You’re asking us to do a lot of work so that we could present something so that you can show it off to somebody else to say, we’re working.

And at the end of the day, it’s not working, and so y it’s just, it was just too exhausting. And I didn’t really care for the whole conversation at the end of every year, it’s I’ve already shown you that my children make more than a year’s worth of growth. Let me keep going. I’m making these kids read, I’m making these kids right.

They’re excited. They don’t misbehave in my room. That’s a successful teacher. Why aren’t, why are you on my back? And that’s we run out we run out good teachers cause we exhaust them.

Stephen: Just gonna say that I’ve got a couple friends and family members that are teachers or were teachers and they can’t teach.

They’re just managers of numbers for kids and just, moving on. And I, you I know I learned a lot myself. I’m one of those learners that I’m better if I can read something. If you give me a book and I can read it. I’ve got it. I’ll figure it out and do it. And most of the time I was ahead of where we were in any class.

The teacher was slowing me down more than anything because okay, I already know this material, I’m to the next chapter, and we don’t have any real way of dealing with that in, in the schools. And you get the opposite then too. Some kids may take a little longer and the only vehicle we have is, skip moving up a grade and stay in the same thing.

So we could keep doing it the same way for you . And that doesn’t always work either. I know my kids went to a school here locally high school that they’re they’re new. They’re only like 10 years old. And it’s. Trying to do things in a different way. One of the examples they always gave was when kids were learning about the locks and Panama Canal in like history class, that in math class they had to figure out the amount of water being displaced and they, it does that.

They connected it, but then they also had to do a science project where they had to build a lock system and how that would work to move the boats. And they, combined things in projects like that. So it wasn’t, we’re gonna sit here and read to you the book and teach you the history. We’re going to give you a project.

And then the kids had to go research that on their own. When they were learning the the table, the elements, they weren’t just, here’s this element, here’s this element, here’s this and all that. They were putting groups of two and three and assigned two elements and everybody had to do the research.

Those groups had to research those two elements and then present it to the class. They may not have learned every element on the chart, but they know those two so well that they can know how to learn the others. And they heard it from their peers. And I just thought the system, the way they did it was a better way for a lot of kids.

Not every kid was good. As a lot of times the kids are like, this isn’t for me. I’m going back to my other school. And that happened a lot and that was fine. It is different, but I think we need those different ways cuz people learn differently. Kids get excited in different ways. For different things.

Fern: I think that’s the key is we don’t all learn in the exact same way. We’re very cre teaching children is not the same as creating a product. , these are human being. With very unique abilities, with very unique styles personalities, interests. And so you can’t just do a one size fits all.

You really have to customize it to the kids. And, that’s where doing things that are thematic and that touch on so many different styles of learning will help because you’re going to hit them as they as you go through different projects and you go through different things that you’re going to get there, because you’re not just sitting there reading and answering the questions.

And then the next day we’re doing some vocabulary words and the little spelling test it, we’re, we are engaging with the material on a much more intimate level, a more one-on-one level. And we’re having these discussions and I think that we lose the opportunity to really reach kids, yeah. And they’re bored . And when they’re bored, Then they act out and they do things they shouldn’t, yeah. And then we punish ’em, and then they get upset because they got punished because they were bored, but they already knew this or whatever. And or it was hard for them.

They’re struggling. They can’t make it so they act out so that they don’t lose faith. And so then we have a whole system of punishing kids. Instead of really building, learners. And I love that. And that’s a great tragedy.

Stephen: Yeah. I saw something just a while back.

Somebody said, how do we know our education system is the right one and that it’s really working because our current system has really only been around a hundred years, give or take. And it hasn’t been around for centuries. It’s still fairly new. So if it’s not working, we need to figure that out and we need to see what we can do to make it work.

And I thought that was profound cuz when you really think about it, it’s yeah, you’re right. We know how to make horseshoe because that’s been centuries of making horseshoe, but we’ve only been teaching kids in buildings in this way for a hundred years. . So an interesting thought that, I’ve thought a lot about that since

Fern: We need to look at, we need to look at some app apprenticeship ship programs, because that’s how it was done before, before there were classrooms and things, people apprenticed and they learned from masters and and doing a, an app apprenticeship style program with some of these things, even matching up a with a writer, okay, you, your interest is in writing or, whatever in matching them up with that would be great.

But I do think that where our system started going down was with the child, no Child left behind because then the focus switched from education to accountability and it was trying to fix a problem that really didn’t exist because kids were coming outta schools. They were learning, they were, there were more authentic teaching methods going on in those days.

And and I think that we ended up handicapping the system instead of actually improving

Stephen: it. Our culture tends to fix and change things by reacting in completely the extreme opposite direction of what it was. And none of, I’m not saying any of it’s necessarily bad, it’s just not always the solution because we create other problems.

And, we’ve, I’ve seen that personally with things going on, oh, this is a problem, so let’s go the exact opposite way to the extreme. And it doesn’t, it makes new problems in my opinion.

Fern: Yeah, I think

Stephen: so. I think so. Fern, we’ve been going on forever. This has been an amazing, excellent talk.

I’m warning you, I will probably be in touch with you because I’ve got a couple things outside of this that I may throw your way. With all the things we’ve been talking about we, we share a common type of idea. Before we go though I need to remember that there are listeners and we, I need to serve the people listening.

, if you had some advice you would give to like middle school kids or their parents and teachers as far as writing goes, what would that.

Fern: I would definitely advise for them to encourage imagination and creativity. Don’t worry if it doesn’t make sense. If the story they’re telling makes no sense, it’s okay.

It makes story sense. And let them just of let their imagination go wherever it wants to go. A lot of times we try to bring order too soon to things. And also I would encourage parents to look into programs. There are some wonderful organizations. that are offering programs for kids that are after school programs that are, summer programs that will help the kids to, to reach their potential to, and or at the very least to find out whether or not they like it.

Because sometimes as a child, I remember I went through a lot of things as a kid that I thought I liked. I thought I wanted to be in ballet. I really did until I was in ballet. And then I didn’t want it to be in ballet anymore. . So sometimes you just gotta throw your kid into stuff and go, okay, you think you like this?

Okay, let’s give it a try, and then it’s okay if they just, okay, we tried it. It was not for me. And so I think as a parent, you gotta just give them a chance to explore who are we, I think that’s the biggest question children have is who am I? We don’t know.

We are finding out and it’s so exciting, agreed.

Stephen: Great. All right, Fern, this has been a wonderful talk. I appreciate you taking so much time. We’ve been on way longer than I usually tell people, so I appreciate that. Thank you. And when this goes live, I’ll make sure and let you know.

Fern: Oh, thank you. I appreciate it. I enjoyed talking with

Stephen: you a lot. Yeah, it was fun.

View Details

OverviewFern Brady is the founder and CEO of Inklings Publishing. She holds multiple Masters degrees and several certifications. She began her professional life as a foreign correspondent, and taught for 15 years in Alief ISD. She has published numerous short stories, two children’s picture books, and a couple of poems. Her debut novel, United Vidden, which is book one in her Thyrein’s Galactic Wall Series, was given a glowing review by Dr. Who Online, the official site of the fandom. Also available for purchase is volume one of her graphic novel/novella hybrid project, New Beginning. She has returned to the leadership of the Houston Writers Guild, with whom she served as CEO for four years previously. She co-hosts two podcasts – Author Talk and The Hot Mess Express. Besides being Municipal Liaison for Nanowrimo Houston, she is also a member of Blood Over Texas, Romance Writers of America, and American Booksellers Association. Fern lives in Houston TX with her parents and her talkative husky, Arya.

Her Bookhttps://www.amazon.com/United-Vidden-Thyreins-Galactic-Wall-ebook/dp/B08BWHG4JF?crid=3L4TCG485VW0D&keywords=fern+brady+united+vidden&qid=1673990346&sprefix=fern+brady+united+vidde%2Caps%2C129&sr=8-1&linkCode=li2&tag=saschneider-20&linkId=6e76697d7b545d582e182922d2573d2f&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_ilWebsitehttps://fernbrady.com

Favoriteshttps://www.amazon.com/Christie-Collection-Murders-Announced-Bertrams/dp/0007989261?content-id=amzn1.sym.7d1cec21-d5cf-4aa0-b55a-3303ecdebc2b%3Aamzn1.sym.7d1cec21-d5cf-4aa0-b55a-3303ecdebc2b&keywords=Agatha+christie+books+collection&pd_rd_r=a22c398d-bcaa-47d9-8472-d0a41e8ded42&pd_rd_w=cFZJf&pd_rd_wg=w3zSj&pf_rd_p=7d1cec21-d5cf-4aa0-b55a-3303ecdebc2b&pf_rd_r=Z6DAF1CSQTJGB0DB6PKT&qid=1673990680&sr=8-2&linkCode=li2&tag=saschneider-20&linkId=7cc96de948f06a9fe2ebe846ce926ca7&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_ilBRAZOS BOOKSTORE | Houston’s premier independent bookseller since 1974

YouTubehttps://youtu.be/rDsIUAdd5gETranscriptFern, welcome to discovered Wordsmiths today. How are you doing? I

Fern: am doing well. Thank you so much for having me here.

Stephen: And I love your background. I assume that’s a real background, not a fake background.

Yes,

Fern: this is, these are my real bookcases, which, I have not enough apparently, because, you can see that they’re starting to stack up on top of each other instead of, just in straight. They should,

Stephen: Is that Nancy drew up there in the corner, the yellow bindings?

Fern: No, the, you mean the golden ones? The golden ones The golden. It looks yellow. Yeah. Okay. So that is a really fascinating series. It’s a series of the royal princesses. Okay. And it’s it’s a historical fiction where people are imagining what like Cleopatra for example. Okay. It’s up there.

And so what would she have been like as a young girl before she Oh wow. Became Pharaoh before all of the things that we know historically have happened, what are, what would’ve been like, what it would, what would it have been like? And Maria Antoinette is up there and oh wow. Some of the Spanish princesses, some Japanese princesses and African princesses.

I It’s a really fantastic series to cuz it mixes a lot of historical things of great women who have done been royal women, in, in royal homes. Across the globe. But it’s fiction. It’s fictional. Nice.

Stephen: Oh, I love that. I didn’t even know about those. Great. I’m glad to look those up now.

You just added to my bookshelves, . I’m always happy to do that. Yeah. Oh, I don’t any help, believe me. So Fern tell everybody a little bit about yourself, where you live and some things you like to do besides writing.

Fern: I live in Houston, Texas, which right now is cold, but by the end of the day it will be 80.

So it’s one of those places in which, know, you have to dress in multiple. Yeah. Cold is like 58.

Stephen: Oh, okay. See the last couple ahead. Cause the last couple weeks it hasn’t gotten above the forties for us and Christmas, Ooh. It was in the negatives with a windchill of negative thirties.

Fern: Oh no.

That’s a tragedy down here. Okay. That’s the kind of thing we had that one winter where that February that we had, I don’t even remember. It’s just like my brain has blocked it out. But it was horrible because for one day we were super happy because there was like snow and we were like, oh, look, snow.

And then, it stayed cold and it froze and the powers were out. Power was out. I It was just, yes, no negative numbers. Down in Texas, that’s just like a tragedy. It’s like a tragedy,

Stephen: right? Sorry, go on. Keep telling us about yourself. .

Fern: Oh okay. So Houston, we’re from Houston, and actually started off as a journalist. I was a freelance journalist, a foreign correspondent for a Mexico City Daily Bulletin that published in English. Then I went into full-time teaching. I taught sixth graders language arts e l a, and the social studies. Everybody taught social studies.

And and then, I decided UK teaching was getting a little bit too too much into the testing mode and having to do a lot of things that really were just time wasters that, we made all kinds of binders that made no sense because we weren’t gonna use any of it.

And so I was like, why am I doing this? So I decided to step out and go into full-time te writing. When I hooked up with the Houston Writer’s Guild I met a lady that was part of the guild and she invited me. and I had always continued to write with my kids, I hadn’t really pursued it as a potential real career.

And until I hooked up with the Guild and I started attending conferences and critique groups and things and I was like, you know what? I’m gonna go for this. I’m gonna go for it. So I did. And that was in 2013. And since then I had a couple of children’s books published. I’ve had a lot of short stories published.

My novel in my crazy Thne Galactic Wall Universe has been published. And coming up next month in February, we’re going to be having a book, one of the Dragon and his kitten series, which will eventually combine with book three. United vi. So yeah, that’s a little bit about like the crazy world of Fern.

Stephen: Nice. Great. And we are going to talk on the second half for the authors a little bit more about teaching kids and working with kids. Cuz that’s something both you and I are doing. And I thought it’d be great to talk for the podcast and for my personal reasons also . You told us a little bit about when you switched from teaching, but why did you wanna start writing in the first place?

Fern: I have always been a writer. I, when I was a kiddo I made up stories. I played with my puppets. I had a a set of puppets and I made up little stories and I invited my parents to come watch the puppet show and I charged them for the popcorn that mom actually made. That was me.

And I’ve always just been a writer. I have like tubs of notebooks where I’ve just pour all these ideas and I went through a pirate phase where like a hi. I had a lot of stories where that featured pirates, I think because we watched a lot of Errol Flynn movies during that time at my house.

I don’t know.

Stephen: Show me I what edge, sorry?

Fern: It’s just a it’s what happened. I went through my pirate phase and I still coplay as a pirate cause I love pirates. Nice. But they don’t show up too much in the books, although they do actually show up in gort of offensive, which is gonna be book two, but, . But yeah, I just I’ve always written, I don’t remember a time when I have not been a writer.

I’ve always made up stories and put them on a p on paper and they just live in these notebooks in my attic and, every summer I bring one down to just look at some of the stuff from way back when and see what I was thinking and what kind of person was I back then. And, just flip

Stephen: through. Nice. Okay. The book we’re gonna talk about and feel free to bring in the other series and other books and series, but we’re gonna talk about United vi which is a unique title . So tell us a little bit about that book, especially the title.

Fern: United Villain is book one of Tyne Galactic Wall.

And I consider it like the main line series, right? It’s you know how Star Wars has the nine movies, right? And that’s the main, the Skywalker, right? Main line. And then you have all these offshoots. So that’s how I look at it in my world, is like Brennan and Amy, the Royal House on planet Jordan is the focal point of what is really gonna happen with the Intergalactic Alliance.

And so that’s kind what this book is. And it’s called United Viden because on planet Jordan, you have two continents. You have the continent of Viden, and you have the continent of part. Yet. Now, originally the humans who live on Planet Jo, they came from Planet Drooling and Planet Frater.

Okay? And they were colonists. And so there were humanoids, they were lizard like humanoids, living on j. En Viden and the colonists took over that continent. It’s like the best co land on the planet. So they moved the lizards to the continent of Parta. Okay? So the four Gor Tiv tribes have been living on Parta for now centuries.

And and when we open and united Viden, there’s a threat they’re beginning to unite, right? Which has never happened before. The four tribes have never united. They are always fighting between each other which is why they were so easy to conquer, right? They’re starting to unite and we know that they’re going to maybe a, make an attack on Viden.

King Decile, who is the head of the Kingdom of Dia, reaches out to the principality of Alden, which is the other kingdom on there and says, Hey, we need to unite, fight together. Princes always wanted to marry Brenna. , right? She’s the heir to the throne. And so he pushes for a marriage petal her father gives in, which means she doesn’t get to rule as queen.

And this, unfortunately, her father doesn’t bother to actually tell her what’s happening. He just tells her she has to marry. And so she feels like, wait a minute, has he always wanted Amy to be king? Has he, she begins to realize, she’s the only child maybe he always had this plan, right?

And so she does what young people sometimes do, reacts. She runs away, throws the kingdoms into a war because Amy was like, oh, you’re hiding her from me. Cuz you did try to do. Treating without her, the marriage. So they fighting and then, and so eventually Verna is wait a minute, I should not have done that.

That was dreadful. I threw away my birthright. I should fight for my birthright. I can make this right. So she comes back, but she comes back a little too late. And so United villain is all about how Brenna reclaims her birthright, how she redeems herself, and how she’s able to finally unite the continent of Itin, right?

With Amy to be ready for what is coming. Because little by little, as we see, the Gort tib are making strides towards being able to attack, right? So that’s what the book is about.

Stephen: Kinda. I was gonna say that sounds like a whole lot for one book. But it’s the start of a series, correct?

Yes. Yes it is. And what’s the age range that it’s targeted towards?

Fern: This is definitely for adults, like new adults in higher because it does have very very deep content. It does have violence. There is, a war going on. There, there are some romance scenes because a lot of the book and a lot of the series really is about Verna and her coming of age, and her managing her relationships.

And very specifically with Amy, who she has now slighted because she ran away from a marriage with him. But in the end, she has to forge a marriage with him. And so it’s all really about how does she manage that, and how do they come to terms with each other And are able to defend their kingdom.

And then of course, beyond just the planet, the alliance itself is in jeopardy, which is what we’re gonna see in Book two, which is gonna be out in December of this year. And and then from, so we’re gonna have a much wider scale conflict going on as we move towards them, figuring out how do they relate to each other now.

Stephen: Okay. And so what, you’ve got some other books out. What made you wanna write this book in this series particularly? Is there something, a reason behind it? Oh

Fern: yes. Okay. The World of Planet Join and the galactic wall that has 51 planets in it was born in my c. Like I said, everybody taught social studies and in sixth grade social studies is world cultures.

And we started the year always with, geographic features and then we were talking about different cultural elements and we went, talked about cultures around the world. And so since I was doing language arts and reading, we would read mythology from around the world and we would, read about Knight in Samurai and we would read, we would read stories that kind of went with some of the cultural elements we were learning about.

And so of course we wrote, right? And so I, every year had my students, my sixth graders create an imaginary planet. They had to decide where the land features were going to be and how do those land feature. Affect the development of different cultures on that planet. And we different government styles on that planet.

And so we would create, throughout the whole year, we would create these stories. We would create mythologies for our planets. We would create, what did our warriors look like in our planets? And so basically United villain and all of these stories that happen in Tyne Galactic Wall were born in a classroom.

I was making planets alongside these kiddos and writing these little stories with them. And so I’ve got like a ton of all these just short little pieces of stories that I would work with my sixth graders with. And so when I decided to step out and actually, begin to write as a full-time writer, I was like, I’ve got all this beautiful material.

Yeah. So this is what I’m gonna create here.

Stephen: Nice. And I love that as being the answer to the question of where do you get your ideas, . So that’s one of the best ones I’ve heard. And for me that we’re gonna talk about this more on the second half alluding again. But that’s one of the things I work with kids that I don’t think we encourage them and work with them to use their imagination to come up with stories and the variety of stories that can be come up.

And that’s perfect. I love that, that it fits in with my classical Dungeons and Dragons also where you had to create a whole world. A town. A country, and the politics or whatever that was going on in your campaign, which is, interactive storytelling. All right. Slight technical difficulty.

Fern: I was gonna say about the Dungeons and Dragons. I love Dungeons and Dragons. I play d and d I have a d and d group. We meet every week. We try to meet every week, but, sometimes that doesn’t happen. But mostly we do. And I just love that. And for me, with the kids, it just made sense as a teacher.

And I know we’re gonna talk about teaching later, right? But it just made so much sense to make everything connected thematically, so we’re looking at this element of what cultures in our world look like. What does cultural development in books that we have, right? The books that we that we are reading, the book club novels that we’re looking at and then writing them, and extending it into the writing piece.

And it just, I think that for the children it creates a really good way to hold information because it’s not just, I’m not just talking about geographic features. Now we’re talking about your planet. and what the geographic features do for your characters on your

Stephen: world. Yes. And you mentioned Star Wars earlier and it’s a great example what they’re doing now because, when I was growing up, we had three movies, , and then this is always my we had three movies and in one little sentence, Obon mentioned the Clone Wars, and that’s all we had for 20 some years. We knew nothing about. But as a kid with my friends, we got to talk endlessly. What are the clone wars? What did, what happened, who was, and the stories that could come out of that. So what you’re doing is very similar, that it’s not one story and that’s everything.

There’s so much more to the world and I, I love that and I hope it inspired and sparked some imagination of the kids, each person in their world has a story to tell. And I love that you used that for your series.

Fern: Oh yeah. And the, and Book one is dedicated to them. It’s dedicated to my sixth graders and because that was where everything was born.

And I think that, I like to think that there may be some kiddos out there that went through my classroom that may still have all of these stories. I hope so. Like I have all my attic full of the stories when I was a kid, and who knows, someday they might take ’em out, look at them again and go, Hey, I think I wanna pursue this.

And they might because there was some really good stuff, . We had a lot of fun and there were some really goofy ones. We had kiddos who made worlds out of candy, right? The whole world was made out of chocolate or something. And we had some really fun ones and then we had some that were, that really took it to like whole serious level.

You. And

Stephen: I love that even with the candy one, because okay, you can do that, but now you gotta stop and think how does everything grow? What, how do they manufacture things? How do the people, what do they eat? So you can, if you’re creative, that’s wonderful. That’s really push in the limits and your imagination and thinking.

I know there’s probably some kids that did it just cuz they thought they’d be funny. And then , they probably didn’t work as hard as I might have trying to figure all that stuff out, because to me, that’s all fun,

Fern: And it was entertaining because then they had to figure out, okay, so the mythology, right?

Mythology is all about, the early people. How did they make sense of their world, right? They had, they created parthenons of gods that that guided their world and they created stories about how. , know, how come there’s an earthquake? How come the sun goes across the sky . And so now you’ve got this chocolate world, okay, what are gonna be the myths about the chocolate world, and what are gonna be the gods of the chocolate world?

And so we had, it was entertaining as we went along, and I did occasionally have one or two that decided to can we just start over, Ms. Marie , can I just ? Can I just do a different planet? I’m like, yes, you can do a different planet. Go for it. That’s great.

Stephen: Great. So United vi we’re getting, we can probably sit here and talk forever, , but I, is it already out or is it about to.

Fern: United bid is out. Okay. It’s yeah, it’s on Amazon and anywhere where eBooks are sold. So you can order it on Barnes and Noble, et cetera. All the places that you can buy books basically.

Stephen: And what’s the feedback you’re getting from people who have already read it?

Fern: I have gotten some really great feedback.

I, I think it’s really cool when you have a totally random person that you don’t know reach out to you and go, I loved your book, and when’s the next one coming? I really love that really adds to the pressure of get it done, but it’s good pressure. But I’ve also had some really amazing reviews because Dr.

Who online which is the official like website for the franchise I followed them because I liked Dr. Who, and they followed me back apparently. And they saw my cover, and I did not know this, but they review books and they give book recommendations on one of their pages. And so it was very interesting.

They reached out, they’re like, I think our, I think your book would be something that we would be interested in reviewing. They explained to me if the, if they didn’t like it, they would just leave, let me know privately what they, why they, why it wasn’t gonna work, blah, blah. So I was like, okay, let’s do it.

So I sent them a copy and they loved it. Wow. They loved it. They gave me a beautiful review, which I promptly put on Amazon. Of course. Of course. And and they love, they compared it to Dune. It was, and I think my world is esque. Wow.

Stephen: Although that’s impressive feedback and nice accolade there.

It was

Fern: really cool and I think, it’s, you can see a lot of Star Wars and you can see a lot of Lord of the Rings and a lot of other stuff in my books, but I do love the very, they’re very social geopolitical in nature cuz I love all the intrigue and stuff. So Nice.

And I do have my power wielders and things. That’s like my best review. I was like, that’s my favorite review of all time.

Stephen: I think I’d be putting that review on everything I’d put out . Definitely. Cause if people like Dr. Who and they hear, Dr. Who says your book’s good. That’s your, there’s your niche, there’s your target.

So who’s your who’s your.

Fern: My doctor. Okay. I, okay. I really love Matt Smith. I’m sorry. I just adored him. Thank you.

Stephen: That’s my doctor also. That’s my favorite. My kids are David Tennon. But I also grew up, with some of the past ones. So Brady what number four is like one of my best friends.

That’s his doctor. And the only one I don’t really care for is number two. I’ve, watched some of the reconstructed stuff and I just couldn’t get into him. But the rest of ’em I’ve liked across the board.

Fern: Yeah. Yeah, it’s, there, it, the whole show is awesome. I just love the whole concept and everything, and, but for me Matt Smith was like the epitome.

that’s what Dr. Who should be,

Stephen: Matt Smith was the reason I actually got interested after my kids in the revamped stuff. It was, thanks to him. I thought he, he clicked with me very much. . Speaking of, if you were given a choice right now would you rather see your book as a movie or a TV show?

Fern: I think that my book would probably be better as a movie just because of the scope of the way that it wor that it’s created. It’s it’s very much about the relationship aspect and then there’s a quest aspect. But it could be a TV show. I think at this point, , either one is great because I feel like there’s so much interest in since Game of Thrones, and the Mandalorian and these shows. I feel like there’s a huge audience that wants to see it episodically. Who can, who might not like necessarily to sit through a really long film but could just enjoy little short snippets of it. Me, I prefer to binge watch because I like to see the whole thing.

I like to

Stephen: see the whole, I think studios, executives and. Watchers are discovering that sometimes having eight episodes that are a half hour long and that build the story, build the character, they can put things in it. And it doesn’t have to be flashy effects. It doesn’t have to be over the budget, over the top budget, but you can get story in there that you just can’t get the same in movies there’s a skill to make a movie, tell a story correctly without making it feel like something’s missing.

And you get that opportunity. With the extended TV shows we’re getting now, and I say extended, they’re only like eight, the 12 episodes usually, which is shorter than a normal season. The normal season is going away anyway.

Fern: It is. And then you’re getting like the next level or the next chapter in it.

The next season, but you are right about movies because like I have been reading. The Dark Power Series. Oh. And I had not read it. And I watched the movie Guns Slinger, and I can see why the people who read the books didn’t like the movie. I can totally comprehend because, they’re trying to literally, they tried to condense all these seven books into one film.

That’s, no,

Stephen: I love that the Gun slinger series. I thought the books got better. My personal comment feeling is a lot of people complained about the ending, so he wrote an epilogue ending and I feel the ending was perfect. So my personal opinion is, Forget about the epilogue ending. Just let it end the way it does.

And the movie, the problem was they wanted to do three movies with a TV show tied to it in between the movies. So they had this big, long 10 year plan, and then they’re like, oh, we don’t think it’s gonna make enough money and we’ll just do this. But it’s actually not retelling the story. It’s supposed take place after the last book in another world.

So it’s like a retelling from another universe. And I’m like, yeah, that’s kinda, yeah. So yeah, interest elbow is great, but

Fern: yes. And you know what was terrible is, I didn’t read the books first, which is rare. Usually I read the books first and then I go and critique the movies. But I didn’t, with this one, I actually first saw the film and I saw the film because of Idris Elba.

And Matthew McConaughey. Yeah. And so when I started reading Book one, the Gun Slinger. That’s who worsen my head. I’m, I know that the gun slinger is supposed to be white. He’s just not white in my head. I’m sorry. He’s just intra from that one .

Stephen: I think that’s actually perfect. I know in my books, I don’t really talk about skin tone color at all, and I leave that open even though the artist drew the pictures on the cover a certain way.

In the book story itself, I don’t actually go into that because it’s a fantasy world. And I actually, to make that point, I think in book three, I’m going to have a character that I specifically point out that her skin is greenish. And just to make that point, that use your imagination, imagine who you will.

And I think, yeah

Fern: and that’s interesting because like I do have skin colors and and I have black characters and I have some that are very much Asian characters that, or they have that flavor, but they’re in these other planets. So what I’ve done is take basically our cultures and mesh ’em together.

But I have a lot of indigenous people that are humanlike in the sense that they’re sensient, they have cultures, they have, family, they have societies. They’re not human, d n a, right? Because my theory in my universe is that human d n a would be everywhere. So we would find humans everywhere, but we would also find that there might be other species that would’ve developed into more of a, evolved into more sentient beings, right?

And so that’s the issue that we have in the, at the heart of United Vi, is that, the gor Tiv who are lizard like beings, humanoids. They have had, to deal with the effects of the colonizers, much like the indigenous population got stuck into reservations, right? In America. And so now they’re wanting to reclaim their home and they’re getting help from this cal, the Cal scene who destroyed their home planet and have become space-based society.

And so they’re, their physicality has changed over the years because they’ve been in space for so long that they started out with human d n a. We know that if you stay in space for a long time you begin to change, the humans would begin to change even if you like even with the astronauts, right?

They try to do all these things to keep themselves toned, but ultimately if we left them out there for years, they would come back different. They would come back different, right?

Stephen: And the last couple years, one of the things that. Just, I had to shake my head and got it irritated me the most was when Kenobi came out and they had the third sister Inquisitor and it was a black woman, and people like exploded and got upset about, it’s are you kidding me?

I’m like, first of all, the character was fantastic and , some of the things, the one scene where she’s doing parkour and stuff across the city, that was a fantastic scene. Wonderful. But I’m like, really? This is in 2022? This is what we’re getting upset about, that in a fantasy outer space, world of millions of worlds where we’ve seen ians, we’ve seen huts, we’ve seen woos that were gonna get upset because the inquisitor is a black woman. I’m like, come on, people. Seriously.

Fern: And that’s the, that was part of the ridiculousness, even with the other films in that they were like, oh there’s not enough women characters, really.

Come on. Star Wars was like Princess Leia. I think she was one of the very first I wanna say one of the very first iconic, strong female character leads we ever saw. And it came in a fantasy science, fantasy world. Because we can, and that’s the beauty of the science fiction fantasy world Yeah.

Is that we can actually explore gender issues and racial issues and socioeconomic and geopolitical issues. We can explore these in worlds that are not our own. So there is no confrontational to it. It’s here’s this right, here’s some lizard people. Okay, there’s lizard people on this planet. Do they deserve the right to have a space on the in and live amongst the human population?

and why have they been on these like reservation type situations, and, we can and what are we really exploring? The issues that we had with Native Americans, and the issues we had with as colonizers. So I feel like people who have those reactions are they’re reacting because something inside’s not.

There. I’m

sorry,

Stephen: that’s a whole long discussion on that. . Yeah. You

Fern: got some issues you need to work through

Stephen: And you gotta also remember that the Empire is very much a afraid of the other cultures they were enslaving all the aliens of. So yes, it made sense that everybody, there was a white guy in the empire. It was to point out the fact. That’s a man. I could talk Star Wars in the good, bad, and ugly for days. Let’s not get away from your book too far because we could probably go on, we, maybe we will sometime that’s an idea. .

Fern: I’m happy to do that. Cause I love me some Star Wars.

Stephen: Oh yeah. Alright. So Fern, do you have a website?

Fern: I do. My website is Fern brady.author. No. Okay. Fern Brady. It’s literally just fern brady.com. Okay. Yeah, because I beat the other Fern Brady at it. So here’s the funny thing. Every so often someone will message me about, oh, I love the show you did in wherever.

And I’m like, what show are you talking about? And they’re talking about the other Fern Brady. The Fern Brady. That’s a Canadian comedian. Oh, of Scottish descent. Oh

Stephen: wow. Okay. .

Fern: Yes. Yes. And it’s hilarious cuz she has some books out and and she and I don’t look that different. We have very similar looks and so that’s funny.

It’s kinda funny. But I actually beat her to the website. So www.fernbrady.com, that’s my author site.

Stephen: Nice. Okay. All right. So we’ve talked about a bunch of things that we enjoy. What are some of your favorite all-time books and authors?

Fern: Oh , how much time do we

Stephen: really have? , right?

Do you remember the U2 rattling hum live video thing they did back in the late eighties? They were all sitting there with the camera on ’em and they’re like not saying anything. And the one guy goes, so how much is film cost? He goes, oh, film’s cheap. It’s okay. Keep going. . So this is digital.

It’s cheap . It’s

Fern: cheap. Oh my gosh. Okay. So for me, the books that I love the best, CS Lewis. The Chronicles of Narnia. I remember multiple times reading through all the series. Me Too. The Lord of the Rings. That’s a hard book to get through. But I loved it. I loved every, I loved all the di Digressions of the world building that he just, you know, because that’s Tolkin, right?

He was really more concerned about building these cultures and these backstories and all this. Then I don’t know that it would be published that way today. ,

Stephen: probably The ho the Hobbit and Fellowship I, I like a lot, but the two towers and the Return of the King, maybe not so much, honestly.

I’ve read the Return of the King three times and I still can’t tell you what happened, cuz my brain just kinda shut down. It just didn’t click with me. But Hobbit and Fellowship I like.

Fern: Yeah, and it’s, and you know what I think about those two books? . I really love the changes that were made for the film.

. Cause the books are masterpieces in, of, in and of themselves. But the films are masterpieces in a different way. They what they left out, the way they tweaked it made sense. I could understand why. And, from a perspective of creating a film and I think they’re just masterpieces.

I agree. and you just have to enjoy them separately,

Stephen: And the argument I give to people is that it’s completely two different mediums. Even a book, if you do it with a full cast as a radio play, there are changes you need to make for it to come across well from the printed page to what the cast does.

And sometimes things can be cut out for time. If you really took every scene and made it into a movie scene, it would’ve been even longer than the extended editions and it probably would not be as interesting. So people gotta and realize that they really loved the books and they put everything they had into it, love into it, to get it.

So the feel of the world that what Token was saying is what came out the most and they got the important. For the most part. There’s a few silly things, but , whatever. Oh, yeah.

Fern: Yeah. I think so. And talking about the books, even if thinking about my own book is I don’t think you could just directly go chapter by chapter, putting it onto a film.

I think there would be tweaks that would be necessary because, you’re talking about a completely different medium of, for the story to, to be told. . But like speaking of other authors that I love a Agatha Christie. Oh really? Agatha Christie. I

Stephen: love Agatha. She’s one that I have a hard time getting into.

Just Oh, interesting.

Fern: Yeah. Do you like Conan Doyle? Do you like Sherlock

Stephen: Holmes? Yes. Sherlock Holmes. I do love .

Fern: So it’s interesting because I find that people who love Sherlock Holmes tend to, not necessarily like Agatha Christi, and people like myself who love Agatha, don’t really like Sherlock Holmes that much.

Stephen: What would, there’s a point right there for authors write your story because there’s somebody out there that’ll like it and somebody that won’t. .

Fern: Oh, yes. Oh yes. And I think what made Agatha Christie for me more, more interesting than Sherlock was that I could go back and I could see all of the clues were right there.

If I had paid a little more attention here and there, I could have solved it. And towards the end of my reading her book, I started picking up on what she would do. And that made it super exciting. And for me, Sherlock Holmes was difficult because Sherlock sees things that only Sherlock sees, right?

You, the reader don’t get to see that. And so he tells you what he. Later, but I the way that Agatha would weave in the clues in there that you could actually pick up on, yes. And did I think that’s what draws

Stephen: me. I did get that from the books of hers. I did read, I saw that totally.

And I see where like Orient Express, I’m like, oh, every story that’s used, that type of thing. This is where it came from. I totally get that. And I think my part of it might be is you could say Agatha Christi is a little bit. Literary mystery where it’s more realistic. Whereas Conan Doyles, Sherlock Holmes was almost a little closer to fantasy mystery with Sherlock Holmes, and that’s probably why I like it better.

But also the way his mind thinks, reminds me a lot of MacGyver. And MacGyver was like one of my favorite shows of the eighties, so Oh, I

Fern: love MacGyver . Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And it’s interesting that the dynamics of how her characters versus hi Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson’s characters. think they’re really cool to see how you can do really great detectives and they can be totally different, and they’re still really effective characters.

Stephen: And she wrote more than one type of detective, so Oh, yeah. didn’t stick with just her q p Perro she did Miss Marle too. So you got a bunch.

Fern: Oh. Oh yeah. And so I’ve got her and of course Dean Koons. Oh yeah. I love Dean Koons. And and I’ve only recently really connected to Stephen King because I’m not a humongous horror author.

I don’t like to read a lot of horror stories. And I always had the feel that Stephen King was much more gruesome. And and so what I liked about Dean Koons is he’s horror, but he’s really more suspense. And sometimes just weird. And I liked that. But but when I saw the Dark Power movies and I was like, oh my gosh, this is King.

How interesting he has this. And even in the prologue, in the introduction of it, he talks about how it’s very different from some of the other stuff that he writes. And yeah. So I think it’s, I could definitely follow him in this line of his. Of his writing.

Stephen: Kutz never wanted to be a horror writer.

He always fought to be a thriller suspense writer. But at the time, because King was big, they pushed him into that horror arena, which he never really liked. And he’s definitely gotten out of it and pushed to be thriller suspense. And the Stephen King is pretty much the exact same way. It’s only like the first eight books that are real horror based.

Everything since then is pretty much a thriller, maybe some supernatural elements thrown in here and there. . But they’re really not the horror the Shining or Salem’s lot and those types of things, they’re way different. I Cujo, it was a round hog, oh yeah. It’s not horror anywhere.

Fern: that was such a traumatizing.

Stephen: Yeah, the movie was, there’s an example of a movie that does not play every scene does that take everything out, but captures the essence of the book and portrays it on the big screen without having to be five hours long. So that’s a good example of, I think a King movie done well.

Fern: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. And so those are some of the books that I love. And more recently, I’ve gotten into Rick Orden his series is very fascinating to me. The Percy Jackson, which they did a horrible job as, in the movies there’s a series coming out. Yes. I hope they do a much better job.

Yes. Cause the books are fantastic. What a one, what a captivating idea of what if the gods of Olympus were alive and were real. And what if they’re still around and. What if they’re still doing the same things they were doing and having half kids with humans and stuff. And it’s fascinating and it’s so much fun to read.

I just loved them.

Stephen: I honestly liked the Den books more than I liked the Harry Potter stuff. So I got into it more.

Fern: Yeah, me too. I, it was hard for me to get into the Harry Potter. I liked the movies. The movies I could really enjoy. But the books were hard for me to read. I don’t know why,

Stephen: ha I was reading the books to my kids and halfway through book four reading it to ’em one night they stopped me and said, daddy, w we’ve both already read this and finished it.

We’re on book five. So I’m like, oh man, now I gotta go read all these myself and finish ’em up. . So That is awesome. Yeah. . Alright, so Fern, do you have a local bookstore that you like to go to?

Fern: I really like Brazos Bookstore. Okay. Here in Houston we do a lot of events with them with women in the Visual and literary arts and the Houston Writers Guild.

We we have an annual Haunted holidays event where our members can come up with short stories that revolve around the holidays, that have some kind of element of haunting this to it, poetry, short stories. And so we’ll gather together and dress up and, we’ll, they’ll let us decorate the whole store and nice.

And we read and we have, we’ve had the, during the pandemic, of course, we had to go digital to Zoom, but this past year we actually were live again and in person, so it was really nice. And so I like Brazos and I like Blue Willow. My, the fav, my favorite one was River Oaks bookstore.

But. They closed during the pandemic. And so it was really heartbreaking to see that happen, yeah. Because they had been in part of Houston for such a long time.

Stephen: All right, so let’s finally close up talking about your book and a myriad of other topics that we seem to have branched out onto.

So anybody that likes what we were talking about, pick up Fern’s book because you’re going to like the book, but let’s if somebody came up to you there in Houston, said, Fern, I heard you wrote a book. Why should I get your book and read it? What would you tell ’em?

Fern: I would tell them because it’s fun entertaining, but also it encourages you because the real theme of Book one is that no matter how badly you fail, no matter what a horrible mistake you make, even if you make the most.

Terrible mistake that you could ever possibly make as a human being. You can come back from it. It won’t be easy, but you, there’s always a road back if you really, choose to change to try to atone. And that’s really what she does, right? She threw away her birthright she threw away her position, her authority, she abdicated, and when she comes back, she has to prove they had believed in her because of her birth, but now they have to believe in her because she has to show that she’s worthy.

And so I think that’s a really great read and encouraging for us, because I don’t know about you, but I’ve had my share of failures that I’ve had to come back with.

Stephen: No, never had any of that . Great. I appreciate that. Thank you much for sharing all of that.

View Details

OverviewVal has learned lessons about writing while she worked on her four books. One thing she’s learned, that we discuss in this episodes, is that it helps to plot.

She likes to writie thrillers, and one of her favorite thriller writers, Lee Child, gave some advice that has stuck with Val and she changed how she write because of it.

Roland is also back to discuss the latest news in the author world.

Her Bookhttps://www.amazon.com/Where-Loyalties-Lie-addictive-psychological-ebook/dp/B09RQHBMJ2?crid=1IBY4NI5PJQTU&keywords=val+collins+where+loyalties+lie&qid=1673455395&sprefix=val+collins+where+loyalties+lie%2Caps%2C111&sr=8-1&linkCode=li2&tag=discoveredwordsmiths-20&linkId=d2c85a61a8cdad76b089d1ca80a9db04&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_ilRoland Denzelhttp://indestructibleauthor.com/

• author pen names
• Brandon Sanderson helping authors at audible
• A.I. audiobooks

YouTubehttps://youtu.be/KZABSpUkfa0TranscriptStephen: Okay, so let’s do a little author talking. I gotta ask you about your why to Kindle Unlimited here in a minute. Let me ask you this though. You’re on your fourth book. What have you learned that you’re doing different now than what you did at the beginning?

The

Val: very first thing I learned was that no, you, if you, for me, it doesn’t work for everybody. For me, I’ll never write anything if I don’t actually sit down and. Okay. So when I first thought maybe I’d write, I thought to myself, okay, what will I write about what, who I decide. I decided I’ll gonna write a book, what will be about?

And absolutely nothing came into my head. And this had been going around in my head for weeks. And then I heard May Binchy, do you know May Binchy? Yeah. I heard May Binchy interviewed and she said, I’ve never write anything if I didn’t sit down on my desk and write from nine to five every.

I’ve never done nine to five. My, my stamina isn’t that strong. But then I sat down and I start, and I sat down and started writing, and I was amazed to discover that like words just came to me. . .

Stephen: Yes. I And that I totally agree with you. So I know a lot of people talk about writer’s block and you mentioned earlier about getting ideas.

My, I love when people say where do you get your IDs? It’s like, where don’t I get my ideas? I’m driving down the road and I get three ideas. I’m sitting here writing this book and I get an idea for this other book. It just, once you start that creative juices going, it seems. Not stop. I’m working on a Christmas story for my kids and I’ve been doing that almost every year and it’s, I was like, okay, it’s gonna be like all the others.

Oh, it’s gonna be a short little story. And now we’re up to 7,000 words , and it’s still going . So I agree. It just kinda keeps going. No, I

Val: don’t get writer’s block. I probably get the opposite. I write a lot of crap writer’s

Stephen: blog, then I ,

Val: maybe that’s it. I write a whole load of stuff and then I go back and I think, nah, that’s useless.

I have to get rid of that. But I’ve often listened to Lee Child being interviewed and I heard Lee Child and he said he never deletes anything. He said, because I’m a writer, not a. And I tried that. Once he said it, I thought, yeah, I waste too much time writing stuff that I later throw away and don’t use.

I said, I’m going to do it this time. I’m going to have a plot. But I don’t think, I think about a week later, I’ve written a page that was, as far as a God I just can’t work that way. I just have to keep writing and see what happens.

Stephen: Yeah. We’re gonna talk about writing plot here in a couple minutes.

More of a discussion. But yeah I, I know a. I’ve, everybody has to come to their own way of doing it. And sometimes you have to try and experiment other ways. And that’s where I’ve gotten, this, like I said, this Christmas story I’m working on now. Without even realizing it. started off as a, an almost dialogue only story where it was very little, everything else, but the story seemed to flow really well, and now I’m adding in the other stuff.

I’ve never wanted to write that way. It just kinda happened. I know a buddy of mine, Jay Thorne, talks about doing that all the time. He’ll write the whole book as just basically dialogue and then go back and fill the rest in. And it’s actually working quite well for me this time. So I’m like, oh, okay, we’ll go with it.

Val: That’s interesting because I don’t generally do that. I generally tend to write Page by page till I get to the end. But I had to change something and go back and add something to my most recent book. And I found it incredibly confusing. Like when I said I kept getting big stuff as to what was happening and where I was and it and all the rest.

And then when I got to the end and I send it off to my editor and. . I had this big reveal, and she, at the end of one chapter and she said, you said that already. And I thought, oh my God, I did . I mentioned it three times earlier without meaning to,

Stephen: So I got a few other questions. Let’s talk a little bit about our discussion on plot since we’re here already.

What software do you use to write. Word.

Val: I know nobody does that and nobody does that. But I’ve used Word, all my working in life, I’m very comfortable with it. A,

Stephen: actually, I’d probably say a good 70 to 80% of the writers I talk to use Word. Do they? Everybody hear? Use s Scrivener. I was just gonna say and this isn’t a dig or anything to anybody.

Most of the authors I talk to are newer. Actually having four books put you at the higher end of professionalism for my podcast. No dig against anybody. It’s just the focus is new authors, unknown authors, people you haven’t heard of. But that’s not to say that more professional authors use other stuff.

I personally like Scribner because of exactly what you were just saying. I just, I’m a database programmer by trade, so very analytical type thing. And I realized with word that. It’s all one big long thing and, oh wait, if I wanna change or move something, it’s just cumbersome. Whereas Scribner I kind put things on a corkboard with little synopsis and I can move ’em around, and then I go into it and I write the details.

So we were gonna talk about plot and that kind of fits right in. I don’t do a big outline. I generally have a, an idea of the plot. How do you handle plot?

Val: I did look at Scribner when I started. I got the free version and I looked at it and I thought, by the time I’ve learned that I’ll have written the whole book.

I’m not . And also because I don’t plot, I I don’t think I need it. The odd time I think it will be handy cuz I wouldn’t make the mistake I made there in that book. But I. Generally speaking, I feel I don’t plat. And if you do, and I think S Scribner sounds like it’s perfect for Plattered, but I’m not a platter.

My book generally starts to goes straight to the end. So I find word is fine, but no I don’t plat. Usually when I start a book, I know who the murderer is, I know who the victim is. Most of the time I know why they did it. I didn’t actually in one book, but most of the time I know why they did it. But that’s it.

Then I just start writing. So what I do is I start writing it and when I start to write it, I see it in my head like I’m watching a movie. So then, yeah, so then characters just start doing things and I bite

Stephen: them and I. I’m the Christmas story I’m working on. One of the reasons I think the dialogue type of beginning and why it’s flowing so easily is because I have all the characters in my head pictured very well, and they’re all distinct.

And I have a firm grasp. It’s almost like they really exist and I’m just kind sketching what they’re actually saying and doing. It’s played out in your head and a. I don’t, I know JD Barker talks all the time working with Patterson about intricate plot details outlines, where, each chapter is, here’s all the things going on in the chapter outlined out, and then here’s the sub things and everything is, 50 pages of outline to, for before you even write the book.

I I’m like, Away from that, I get an idea and I even using Scribner, I’ll say, here’s a scene, here’s a scene, here’s a scene. And then I fill it all in and it expands and it changes and that, so I, like we said earlier, I think authors really need to try these and figure out what works best for them. Not just, oh, that’s how does it.

So that’s how I’m gonna do it, even if it’s not best.

Val: Exactly, and when I started, I got really cut up in this whole plot thing. People say you have to have a, an idea where you have your peaks and your candles. What do you call those things? I can’t think of the word for them, they, you’re supposed to write

Stephen: to this.

The word’s gone, like the three act structure with Exactly. Rising action and Exactly

Val: I worried myself sick about that because I couldn’t figure out like, how the hell did I do this? And then I wrote when I’d written my book and I sent it off. To my developmental editor, and she said to me, because I give up, I just thought, I’m not even worrying about that.

So I sent it off to her and she said to me, now you’ve got quite a good grasp of structure. And I said, I have absolutely no grasp of structure. I don’t understand it at all. And she said for some people it comes naturally because they’ve picked it up from reading.

Stephen: I, I was going to ask you that. Do you mostly, or have you mostly.

Psychological thrillers throughout your life that you, it’s just like part of you now. ? No, I’ve read

Val: throughout my life, but I haven’t always read psychological failures. I’d say I, I was like 30, I think. I read my very first aga, the Priesty when I was a teenager, but like reading lots of them, I don’t think I started doing that till I was nearly 30.

Stephen: Okay. All right. And maybe this is why I don’t write. In that genre, cuz honestly I cannot get into Agatha Christi. I’ve read a couple stories and I’m like, okay, I’ve read enough. I, I read the big popular ones and I’m like, yeah, I just she doesn’t throw me. I

Val: mean, when I was a kid different things throw you, I actually wrote an article about that recently about the very first, the Christie book I ever read, and it was called, Let me see if I had the article, I would be able to remember his name.

The man in the brown suit. That was it. Okay. So I’d been going through my tortured romantic phase at that stage, and I went into my grandmother’s house one day and she found these books at the end, at back of a Cupboard, and she gave them to me. And one of them was this, and there was, it was written in 1927, so it was like, it was not a modern book.

But it was about this girl whose father dies and she’s left on her own at a time when women weren’t really supposed to, be doing much on their own. And she decided she’s gone off to South Africa. And I just thought it was such a lovely book. , it was a bit of a romance that she got to do all these amazing things as opposed to the women I’ve been reading about.

I spend most of the time dying in factories and waiting for Ben to come and save them before they dropped down to starvation. And I just thought it was like a breath of fresh air. .

Stephen: Nice. Yeah. I think the books and authors we read when we’re younger make the impact and the imprint on us, and a lot of what we do later stays close to that.

, I still pick up Stephen King and we’ll read him, and even if I book, I’ve read sometimes it’s like manam. I really feel like reading that again, , I think that’s the same way, but I will say, I read Murder on the Orient Express and I went, oh, now I see where the 500 derivative movies and books that use this similar plot came from.

She came up with this first. She

Val: was the first one to do that, so that was very unique at the time.

Stephen: Yeah. I agree. So I’m like, okay, yeah, if nothing else, I can say yes. I have read Agatha Christie, so you know, I’m not missing one of the classic authors , but you do better

Val: than me. I haven’t read Stephen King.

I have seen his movies, but I’ve never read it. Oh

Stephen: There aren’t too many movies that are that good with his stuff. I appreciate some of ’em at. Level, but a lot of his books, one of my favorite top three favorite books of all time is The Shining. I’ve probably read Really? I’ve seen the

Val: movie, never read the

Stephen: book.

Oh. The I do not like the Cubic movie that even though everybody loves it it, there’s actually a TV mini series that was on in the early nineties based on The Shining, and I thought it was much more accurate to the book and a better. Movie watching experience, then the cubic movie. So each of their own, Yeah. Maybe

Val: someday I’ll read, but I’m not really a horror person, to be honest. I don’t like Gore. It gets to well,

Stephen: well, a lot of his more modern books aren’t even really horror. They’re, they just touch upon a little supernatural, maybe . It’s the early ones that have the best horror in it.

Yeah. Yeah. Harry was hit. Do what? was Carrie not his? Yes, that was his first one. Place I remember. Yeah. . Yeah. That one I didn’t care for a whole lot. It was a shorter, thinner story but. The Salems lot, the Shining Dead Zone, Cujo Misery. Those were all, oh, I

Val: saw misery. I saw the movie

Stephen: Misery.

That’s one of the good movies, . So I like that one. Kathy Bates is wonderful and it says Steve Khan or James Khan. Sorry. Okay besides Book Bub, how are you marketing your.

Val: Oh apart from BookBub, I don’t really do all that much. I do different things. I started off doing Facebook ads, but what I found was I got sales from Facebook ads, but they cost me about as much as I was spending on the thing.

So I drop them. I do Amazon, but I don’t find it very successful. What I do is I put my book in it’s late here. My brain isn’t working properly. What do you call those things where you reduce your book? To to 99

Stephen: cents. Oh. Like some sale? Some, no, like

Val: the big ones free

booksy,

Stephen: those kinds.

yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Val: No, I do those about, I do one of my books there about a week before my new book comes out. and then I do my new book. And then after my new book comes out about three months later, I apply for good book Bob Dale. And so far that’s worked for me. If Book Bob ever stopped working for me, I’m gonna have to go up with a different model.

Stephen: And one of the things I wanted to ask you about, you mentioned on the last half, was you go wide and then you essentially pull it down and just put it in Kindle Unlimited. . Whereas a lot of times I hear authors saying they go in Kindle Unlimited first and then they go out wide. So why? Why do you do it the way you do?

Do it?

Val: because I want to do Book Bob. So if you do book, Bob won’t really consider your book. If it’s in Kindle Unlimited, I, they do some big people, but it’ll be very difficult to get your, to get a feature deal if your book was in Kindle Unlimited. So I figure by not having it in Kindle Unlimited and not having had any big sales in it before, that means it does better when it goes on a book.

Bob Dale. Okay. Right. .. Again, everything I do is build around this feature do, which I may not even get .

Stephen: Okay. And so how long do you leave them? Like I assume Apple and Google and Cobo or maybe, wherever else. How long do you leave them there and do you see, do you have good sales and then you see it decline?

Is that when you pull it out or how? How’s that? I don’t

Val: find that I have that great sales there. I do well when I do the book Bob Deal, but apart from that, I don’t find it just very well. I just want them there. So if anything ever happens, like they’re all up and if anything ever happens to Amazon, like they decide to close down my account or something, it would only take me a second to get them all live again somewhere else.

But I leave them there for the year because. , that’s like I do promos, even when I do promos. I think promos will better if you have more places that you can sell your book. So I leave them there for the promos and then I’ll do a promo, say the week before my new book comes out. And then when my promo’s done, I I put it back into Kinder Unlimited and I have my new book.

Stephen: Okay. Interesting. That’s definitely good to hear that you’re having success doing it a little different than a lot of other people do it. So for all the authors listening, like we said with plotting and writing, and so software, sometimes you gotta find what works best for you and know why you’re doing things instead of just that’s how does it.

Val: Yeah. People have told me it’s not a very bright way to do it. They say you’re relying on a book dog deal you might never get, which is true. But so far I’ve been lucky. So for me it works. At the moment. It may stop working. Yeah. Do

Stephen: you find, you’ve got people that have read your first couple books and now they want the next one, so you’re getting people ordering it because they’ve read it, they know it, and it’s building up through all of these couple.

I belong,

Val: I have people on Instagram who have followed me and read all of my books like from the beginning. So I have some people like that who are very good. Like they, they’d be saying like, I sent out my new session. They say, oh, I’m so looking forward to your new

Stephen: book, . Nice. Okay. All right. So let me ask you, Val, before we close things up if a new author comes up to you and asks do you have any advice?

I’m just starting out, what would you. Don’t have

Val: very high expectations. .

Stephen: Wow. Ok.

Val: have patience. It takes a long time.

Stephen: Okay, great. And let me, lemme ask another question before we get going. You write the psychological thrillers. Have you thought of trying any other genre or you just want to keep going with what you have?

As I

Val: said, I’m going to write I’m going to write a time traveler thriller, which is slightly different at some. I always thought what I’d love to do, but I don’t think I’ll ever do it cuz I don’t think I have the time. But I always thought what I’d love to do is rewr write a version of pride and prejudice from somebody else’s point of view.

I’ve always loved Pride and Prejudice. One of my favorite books, , so I always said I’d like to do that from the point of view of one of the minor characters. , that would be an awful lot of work because I’d have to figure out how people lived then, how people wrote, spoke then, would take probably too much work.

Stephen: That, yeah, that does sound like it would be some work, but if you love it, it does make I

Val: do, I absolutely adore that

Stephen: book. Yeah. Okay. I’ll put some links on that as one of your favorite books. great,

Val: but it’s very different from what I write. .

Stephen: Yeah. I, my, what I, my reading is way different from what I write.

All right. Val, I appreciate you getting on chatting with me today. I’m glad we got our tech problems worked out so we can get on. Oh yeah,

Val: thank you Steven. I really appreciate that cuz I was having nightmares about that tech .

Stephen: Oh no, we got you coverage. You’re good. It’s all good. I wish you luck and I appreciate you taking some time.

Thank you.

Val: Thank you for talking to me and

Stephen: Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas to you too. Even though the episode probably won’t come out until after Christmas, but Okay. That Happy New Year. Happy New Year. Yeah. So I was just gonna add that, yeah, happy New Year. Happy Valentine’s Day. It’ll be Valentine’s Day.

So have a good summer. Yeah,

Val: thanks Val. Okay, take care, Steven. Bye. Bye.

View Details

OverviewVal Collins is the author of the award-winning psychological thriller GIRL TARGETED and the international bestsellers ONLY LIES REMAIN, THE SILENT SPEAK and WHERE LOYALTIES LIE (March 2022). All four books feature heroine Aoife Walsh. They are all standalone thrillers and can be read in any order.

A native of Ireland, Val began reading at the age of three and still devours books at the rate of one per week. Her favorite authors range from Philippa Gregory and Sophie Kinsella to Lee Child and Linwood Barclay.

Her Bookhttps://www.amazon.com/Where-Loyalties-Lie-addictive-psychological-ebook/dp/B09RQHBMJ2?crid=1IBY4NI5PJQTU&keywords=val+collins+where+loyalties+lie&qid=1673455395&sprefix=val+collins+where+loyalties+lie%2Caps%2C111&sr=8-1&linkCode=li2&tag=discoveredwordsmiths-20&linkId=d2c85a61a8cdad76b089d1ca80a9db04&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_ilWebsitehttps://valcollinsbooks.com

Favoriteshttps://www.amazon.com/Dawnlands-Novel-Fairmile-Book-3-ebook/dp/B09SZTKFYF?crid=2BCR62Z14Q7X3&keywords=philipa+gregory&qid=1673456553&s=digital-text&sprefix=philipa+gregory%2Cdigital-text%2C149&sr=1-3&linkCode=li2&tag=discoveredwordsmiths-20&linkId=ff39dbb2bb7c9c67ddc6b2e2ae73ad14&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_ilBuy books, stationery and gifts, online and in store | Waterstones

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YouTubehttps://youtu.be/2YaTVIDD344TranscriptVal, welcome to Discovered Word Smiths. How are you doing this? Great. Morning or afternoon actually.

Val: Thank you Steven. I’m very well, thank you. And this is evening

Stephen: here, . It’s evening there. Okay. It’s the afternoon for me. So all over the world. I talked to one person from Australia and they were time traveled cuz they were in the next day.

So they were Oh

Val: I almost up which way around that is.

Stephen: Yeah. Yeah. Alright, so Val why don’t, before we get started talking about your book why don’t you tell everybody a little bit about who you are, where you’re from, what you like to do, those types of. Okay, my

Val: name is Val. I’m Irish. I’ve lived in Ireland all my life.

In fact, the longest I’ve ever been outta the country is four consecutive weeks, . What do I like to do? Since I started writing, I find have far less time to do things than I used to. But I still like to go outdoors. I still like to go for walks on countryside. I love to travel, but covid put an end to that for a while.

we had really long lockdowns here, . But I’m hoping to get back to that again very soon.

Stephen: Nice. Yeah. My, my son loves Ireland. He got to visit on a school trip and he was thinking of trying to move over there, but he is not sure. He just loves the country. And when was this, when did he visit? Oh, man, it’s been three or four years now.

Yeah, four y four years ago.

Val: Oh okay. Ida is lovely. If you don’t mind the

Stephen: rain . He was happy. He got to see where they filmed some of the Star Wars movies, so he was like, oh, made his day. . Alright tell us a little bit about your book and why you wanted to write this particular.

Val: Okay, my book where Loyalty Side, that’s the fourth one in MyFi Wallace Trailer Series. So it led on, from the first one I just kinda led on from there. But why I started writing in the first place was because I was major dun for my office job and I was, it was a really bad time.

There was very little work here and I was just thinking what will I do while I’m waiting? And I thought I’ll try writing and see how that goes. because at the back of my mind I always thought someday I tried. Cause I hadn’t written since I was a child. So I just tried it and then I liked it and then I didn’t have to work for a while because I’ve been redundant.

So I decided, okay, I was going to spend the next year writing my book. So that’s what I did. So that was my first book and it just went down to my second, my third, my fourth, and my fifth would be out March .

Stephen: Oh, nice. Okay. So this is nice time getting ready for the fourth book to come out. tell us without giving things away, tell us a little bit about this book and the whole series.

Cuz being the fourth book people are probably gonna wanna know what the whole series is about, like genre and, the overall plot and what this one’s about. .

Val: Okay. So they’re psychological threaders, they’re all self-contained threads. So there’s a mystery that’s solved at the end of book. No mysteries are ever carried on at the next book, right?

So the thing about the series is the series follows the main character. Her name is Eva, and it follows Eva’s life throughout the series. So in Book one, she’s pregnant with her first child, and then book five, she has a five-year-old. Okay? So the book starts with Eva. She’s early twenties at the time, and she’s married and she’s pregnant with her first child and she takes a job in an office in Dublin, and on her second day, she finds her boss hanging from the city.

Okay. So then she goes to maternity, and when she comes back, the police have already concluded their investigation and they don’t, they’ve decided that it was murder, but they have no suspects. SOFA trained as a journalist, she always wanted to be a journalist, but that’s very hard to do with Ireland, and she couldn’t get any work.

So she gave up and she started doing office work, but now she’s a baby. She wants more control over her schedule. So she sees this as her opportunity because she has. A unique perspective on this murder. She found the victim. She now works with people who’ve known the victim for years, so she can interview them without them even realizing they’re being interviewed.

So of course, it isn’t long before somebody finds out what she’s doing and somebody tries to kill her. Now now she thinks she’s very happily married. But when somebody is trying to kill her husband doesn’t care and he seems to be turning into somebody she doesn’t recognize. So then she begins to wonder, who did she marry in the first place?

So the whole series then just follows her relationships. Through the series. Okay, so then, yeah, so then in the second book, which is called Only Eli May Uma’s, father-in-law disappeared. His name was Danny. Danny disappeared, walked outta the family home 15 years earlier and was never heard from Marcine again, and now his body turns up and it turns out that he was martyred then.

So the most obvious suspect in the police’s eyes is, Eva’s mother-in-law, but Eva doesn’t think her mother-in-law would ever have done anything like that. So she decides that she will find proof that her mother-in-law is innocent. Now, Eva’s last own parents, they died when she was 18. So she’s actually very close to her mother-in-law, who she’s always seen as a surrogate mother.

So she starts trying to prove that her mother-in-law is innocent, but the more she looks into it, the less likely that. Okay, so it’s a whole load of complicated things, right? . So then in the third book, two members and actually an entire family emerged at the home, but two of the members were victims of, or sorry, two of the victims were members of Ethan’s book club.

So Juanita investigates, she starts interviewing members of her own book club and she found, finds, loads of them have secrets and loads of them are suspects, right? And then in where loyalty. Four young people go for a walk on the cliff smore, and one of them falls off. So his three friends say it was an accident, but a stranger who saw the whole thing said, says that one of the guys Ben pushed his friend off the edge of the cliff, right?

So Ben’s family are very wealthy and they hire detectives and solicitors and everybody. To try to prove his innocence, but when they’re not getting anywhere, somebody suggests Eva to his mother and then his mother asks Eva to get involved. So that’s my fourth book. So the book will be out in March. Then

Iska is about a young couple. Their names are Nicole and Matt. Nicole and Matt on their honeymoon, they’re on a beach in Italy and Nicole falls asleep and when she wakes up, Matt’s disappeared and she never sees him. Wow. So then he starts investigating his disappearance. So that’s the book.

It’ll be out in March.

Stephen: I, I got it figured out already. It’s gotta be Aliens, .

Val: No, it’s not. I don’t do Aliens. .

Stephen: Got it. Okay. That’s more my type of book, . Val, what would you say is, like what other books out there would you say are similar to yours in case people are interested and would like to read your.

Val: Oh yeah. Anything that’s a whodunit that’s fast-paced, female-led, so say Sherry Lap Pena Kayle Slater. Anybody like that really?

Stephen: Okay. All right. And did, why did you choose psychological murder thrillers instead of something else?

Val: That’s what I read. , when I said actually, when I first started writing, I started writing an entirely different sort of book.

I decided that I’d write ye because I thought ye would be easier. It isn’t, but then Anne, wait, didn’t turn out to be Ye turned out to be much younger and I, yeah, it was not. I enjoyed it cuz it was the first thing I ever wrote. But then about course, the way through it I started thinking, no, I want to write a thrill.

So then I started writing through instead.

Stephen: See went the opposite. I started off thinking I was going to be writing some adult fantasy thriller type book and ended up find discovering I’m much more of a middle grade kid writer, and I do that really well. I

Val: did, I did my middle grade first.

Stephen: went the other way. Yeah. Is this independently published or do you have an agent publisher? No, I did. Okay. And where, do you have a website? Where can people find this book?

Val: Yeah, my website is val collins books.com.

Stephen: Okay. We’ll make sure and have a link put it. So you said it’s coming out in March.

How often are you publishing your books? There

Val: was a slide today between the first and the second book. All the others came

Stephen: out in March. Okay, so every, so it’d be something people could rely on March. It’s time for the new book. So far I

Val: can’t guarantee it’s one forever, but so

Stephen: far Good, good. What type of feedback are you getting from readers of the series?

Val: Oh, I’ve been very lucky with it. I’ve had a lot of people who’ve reviewed it and all except for the first book, I got book feature deals for it. So that meant an awful lot of people bought it. So I had like thousands of people buying it in one day and it made one, number one in all except the first one made number one in Amazon in international fillers and mysteries and a few others, a few other things like that.

Amateur sls, I think

Stephen: one of, one of the nice. And so I know a lot of people have trouble getting BookBub deals. I don’t know if probably most readers listening have heard of that. How did you get your BookBub deal? Because I know it can be difficult.

Val: I know I heard it. I never even applied the first time because I’ve heard it’s difficult and I was under the impression that if you weren’t like her cope or somebody, you might as well forget about it.

But I had a lady who was helping me with my marketing and she said to me, she didn’t start helping me to my second book, and she said to me, you should put it in for a. A book feature deal, and I got it first time I applied. And I’ve been lucky enough to have got it every book so far.

Stephen: Nice.

Nice. You an Irish mystery, female written, female led, maybe they, oh, we don’t have enough of those on here. So you’re your whole genre and everything may, be a benefit to that. I think that’s great. , but I think it’s

Val: got something to do with the time of year.

And also the first time I applied, I think it was in the middle of Covid, I can’t remember now, but I remember thinking they’re probably best people publishing and that’s why I got it. But then I got the next one, but that was actually in the middle of Covid, so I don’t really know. Maybe Covid got

Stephen: something to do with it.

So okay. Your series do you have plans for a fifth book or are you gonna start a new series, or what’s your next plans?

Val: And usually what happens is by the time I finish one book, I have an idea for the next book. And they just come to me like I’m listening news or something.

I have no idea. No, I, sorry. The fifth book is the one coming out in March. I have no idea. For the sixth. For the sixth book. So what I. I don’t know. He said I might leave it for a year because what I’ve been thinking of doing for a while is writing a time traveling thriller, and I might do that next year, unless in the meantime I’ll come up with an idea for another evening book, in which case I’ll do

Stephen: another evening book.

Nice. I like that just. Ma made me think there was a horror movie I watched with a friend called Grabbers. It’s set in Ireland and it’s aliens, squid, like creatures come, but . So I loved it because it seemed very Irish to me, at least being an outsider that. They found out the aliens were like allergic to alcohol.

So everybody got drunk at the pub to fight off the alien .

Val: I can see why you might think that was Irish .

Stephen: Yeah, I was like, I love this. This is great. Just what you said made me think of that. So that said, though, for your series, would you like to, or would you love to see it as a TV show or as a movie?

Anything .

Val: If anybody wants to make it into a TV or movie, you don’t even have to ask if you can have it . And obviously since there are five, there will be five books in March. A series would make more sense.

Stephen: So is this, I am, I apologize, I haven’t read your book yet, but do you feel it’s something that would lend itself well to an individual episodes every week or one, or the new way of doing it where it’s six or eight episodes for one story and then each season’s like a different book?

What do you think would work best? I can’t actually, Because like the, I can’t

Val: imagine it. I can’t imagine it broken down because I wrote it as one thing. I suppose you could break it down, but I wouldn’t know how to do that. To me, it would seem to make more sense to be like one book and.

Then next book. And this book. And next book.

Stephen: And I’ll made me think as murder She wrote each week was a self-contained episode, but being a full book that wouldn’t really fit. But the, I dunno if you’ve seen it, the Jack Reacher series on Amazon. Oh my God. Yeah. Fan . I became a big fan.

The show was great. I read some of his books and I’m like, these are great. They’re. The I appreciated it because the, it’s very, it keeps moving forward, very fast paced. There’s not a lot of long, lengthy anything. Not a long description, not long conversations, and the sentences I counted in almost all sentences average, like seven words, short sentences and, just so it was all, it was like a masterclass for me in writing in a different way because, Lee Child.

Yeah,

Val: I read most of his books and I never noticed that he had seven word sentences, but I remember the first time I wrote the first book of his that I read the Kiting Fields. I read that I’d never heard of him, and I think he wasn’t terribly well known at the time. I think he only had Buffalo books at.

And I went into Eason, which is a Jane Bookshop here. And at the time they were going through a phase of encouraging people to sit down and read books. And my eyesight was beginning . My eyesight was beginning to go and I found I couldn’t read without my glasses, but I hardly ever carried glasses around anymore.

So I needed a hardback book, which normally I wouldn’t buy hardback books, but I started looking around for hard back books. I’d never normally have picked him up, but he was there, he was hard back. He had big print and I had no glasses. So I sat down and I started reading him and oh my. I would, I couldn’t put that book down.

I was absolutely

Stephen: involved. Yeah I agree. And sorry if Lee ever hears about this, there are so many of his books. unfortunately, I’ve not bought one new they’re at like all the yard sales, all the book sales at the libraries. So I’ve got a almost full complete collection that I got from here.

Sorry Lee, I didn’t help you out there. Yeah, no.

Val: I’ve got almost a full collection as well. But in the early days when I first found him, I bought all these books immediately, all that were out. And then after that for a few years, I kept an eye for them. They all came out in May here, and I bought them all the first week in May, but of stopped doing that after a while.

I don’t do that anymore. I pick ’em up eventually now.

Stephen: So may seems to be thriller month if you’re looking for probably it makes sense cuz people like to grab those type of books for their summer vacation. So if it comes out in May, it’s still new. That makes a lot of sense to me.

Val: That’s true actually. Yeah. And that’s probably why I get football deals cuz well actually think my, usually mine in August. .

Stephen: Where can people find your book? Because being an Irish author I’m in the States where is, oh, everybody

Val: buy, my books are sold mostly in the States. I hardly ever sell them outside of the States, really?

So all my books are in Amazon. All of, excuse me. My voice is going all of my books in Amazon and my newest book is everywhere. So I always do it like that. I run a book wide for a year, and then I put it in Kind Unlimited, so all the others in kind unlimited, excuse me a second. I just have to drink.

Stephen: Sure.

No I find that interesting. I may wanna ask you more about that when we get to the author. We don’t wanna borrow all the readers with some author publishing discussion, so I’m gonna bring that back up. Okay. So Val, tell us again what is your website?

Val: Val collins books.com.

Stephen: Val collins books.com.

Okay let me ask you a couple other questions not specifically about your book. Who are some of your we talked a couple already, but who are some of your favorite authors and favorite? . Okay.

Val: I went through a phase, like I started reading when I was very young, so I went through phases throughout my life, like I used to read, I started off when I was a kid, I would say my kids’ books.

When I got older. I read romance and then I read family sagas, and then I did everything I did, did literature, what have you called? Classics that I was trying to think of the words I did classics. I did comedy, I did everything you could checklist, everything you could think of. And I settled on thrillers.

So now I read thrillers. And when I first started reading thrillers, I used to do my, like child, follow every single book he read. Lima Barkley. I did the same Harlan Colan. I never read all of his books cause. They didn’t all interest me, but I write an awful lot of these books. But now I don’t do that.

Now what I do is I try to read somebody I hadn’t read before. So I try to always read somebody. So I read my first David Bell book there last week. My first Karen Slaughter book, I hadn’t read her before. And everybody reads Karen Slaughter. I hadn’t read her. So I read my first Karen Slaughter book before that as well.

And then every now and again, I take breaks. I I. Tried to do Hillary Mountains, when she died what was her book? The one about. Cromwell, I can’t remember what it was called, but I tried doing that and I’m doing a Philip Gregory book at the moment, so I’ll go off occasionally in tangents, but I always go back to new thrillers

Stephen: again.

Yeah. Yeah. I have some favorites, but I’ve discovered some new authors that I now try and read a lot of, so I go back and forth. Right now I’m reading Dickens a Christmas Carol. I do that every year. , it’s, oh, it’s on my shelf right now. All right. Do you have a favorite bookstore you like to visit there in Ireland?

Where I am

Val: at the moment, we actually don’t have any bookstores, . Okay. If I was going to buy books, generally I wait until I was in Dublin and like in Dublin. The main bookstore in Ireland. S I don’t go into that often. I like, I prefer chapters or ho No Hodges or . There are two bookstores in Graft Street.

One of them closed down, the other one is still open. Whether Hovis is the one that closed down or is still open, I’m not sure, but that’s the one I go into.

Stephen: Okay. Got it. I like to. Support bookstores and libraries and that. So it’s always fun to hear where authors like to read. And then if I’m ever in the area I try and contact the author to go visit the bookstore with them and put up a video.

I’ve done that with a few in Chicago and a few around here and stuff.

Val: If you ever come here, there’s actually a bookstore in nace. I haven’t met it to it yet, but it’s beside Tescos, which is a big supermarket here, and I’ve heard great things about that. It’s a small, independent bookstore, so if you’re ever going to go anywhere, go there.

I’d say they could probably use the sport. The others are big chains. They can do fine on their own. .

Stephen: Got it. Okay, got it. All right, so Val, before we move on to talk about some author let me ask you this. If someone came up and said, Val, I heard you write some thriller books. I like thrillers. Why should I get your thriller and read it?

Okay. What did you tell ’em? Okay, so

Val: I’d say if you like who done its that are fast-paced, plot driven, and female led, then you like my

Stephen: book. Okay. There you go. I appreciate it. Thank you for sharing all that with us. Hopefully some people will hear this and be ready to go get your book in May when it comes.

Thank you very much,

Val: Steven. I appreciate it.

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OverviewJoanna is back, and this time we discuss perseverance for writers. She discusses ideas she has used to help market her books and what it takes to keep writing through highs and lows.

Her Bookhttps://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09DCF49Z8?storeType=ebooks&qid=1672775288&sr=8-2&linkCode=li2&tag=discoveredwordsmiths-20&linkId=3c81edd393db2055ed3512b5753885bb&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_ilYouTubehttps://youtu.be/lrxSP3-DifcTranscriptWe are going to move on and talk to some about some other stuff.

So our topic is going to be perseverance. Yes. But let’s talk a few other things first. So what type of software or services do you like to use writing your book, publishing and all that?

Joanna: Gosh, that’s a good question. Gosh, I can’t believe it. I’m just like stunned here. One thing I do differently, because I know a little bit about book design, is I actually start typing my story in the book format in Design, which is a book design program that’s a pretty

Stephen: hefty one.

Joanna: Yeah. And the reason, and I actually have word and book design. I’ve just started doing this where I will copy everything I’ve written in book design, paste it into the Word document, so I also have a backup. Okay? So if Heaven for Bed technology fails, I have a backup, right? So what I find with book design, by having the story in that layout, so you see the two pages is it’s.

it’s a trigger for me to be really extra picky when it comes to the rewrites, cuz I see it as a book. So I’m very critical compared to if I read it in a manuscript like I, I have, I don’t know, that’s just something that works for me to be really critical. I have to see it in a book and then it’s like my little inside edit editor turns on and I’m just like, and I’ll. . I’ll rip my writing apart to make it better. Yeah.

Stephen: Okay. Yeah. Alright, that is a little different procedure. Yeah. So that’s cool. Alright, so you’ve written several books. What are you doing different than what you did from the start?

Joanna: Oh, gosh, that’s another good question.

The backing it up is different, but I tend, and thank God for my editor, I tend to complicate, like I’ll get multiple because I don’t, I’m not a plotter. Okay, there you go. I’m not a plotter, but come book three and book four, I am plotting. Okay. Okay. I’m just, I just, and I think I’m going to, I’m going to convert and no longer be a Panther and plot more, and I had, oh God, Freddy Cruz, he, mm-hmm. from the greater Houston area.

Stephen: Yeah. He was just on my podcast couple weeks ago.

Joanna: He gave the best advice where he said he will plot like the first half of his novel. and then stop and just let the creativity take over. And I thought that was the best advice ever. So that’s what I’m going to do more of.

And yeah and it’s weird because with the first draft of Book four, because it takes place in Holland I’ve already started keeping it. with two story lines because I think I’m concerned about getting all the details right with the location. So I’m telling myself, okay, take what you’re doing in book four and apply it to book three as you work through the edits.

Yeah.

Stephen: Okay. Nice. All right. And what are you doing to market your book? Oh, gosh.

Joanna: I’m thankful. I’m so thankful for coming on this podcast. Yeah. I’ll do I’ll be a part of different giveaways, it, it, for example, my, I have a sister and she’s a sewist and she has her business called La Laroche Handmade, so she will do a yearly, Contest with SOIs, and so she’ll ask for donations.

So I’ll donate a book, right? I have no troubles donating a book. Okay? Yeah. So if someone needs a book, okay, , you know it, it’s if you’re in the US in Canada, if you need a book as a prize, I have no troubles doing that. I will, like I say, appear on podcasts. I have a newsletter and I’ll talk about my books again, the newsletter you can access through the website, the chase cv, art studio.net.

And I have been going to markets and I’ve been successful let markets, and for someone who is a bit of an introvert who has a hard time, I’m making small talk. I’m doing okay. right? I’m doing okay. As long as I can talk about my books, I’m okay. Great. Yeah and I had a couple of book signings, so that, that’s been pretty cool.

Yeah.

Stephen: Good. Yeah. Okay. All right, so let’s talk about our main topic, perseverance. Yeah. Which I think hopefully everybody understands how important that can be. Yeah. But what made you wanna choose perseverance as a topic to discuss?

Joanna: Just thinking of my own situation and I think of an, if I was a new author now, what advice would I want to hear?

And I’d want to hear someone’s story. And I’m going to say such as mine where I was writing for 10 years and I was having success with three short stories being published and I was submitting to book publishers and I was getting rejections. and when I stopped, it was about three years shy of 2013 when self-publishing no longer became taboo.

And it exploded. And of course I miss that boat. Okay.

Stephen: happy too.

Joanna: I totally miss that boat. I would just say, even if you think you won’t be like, I didn’t, I remember saying to my friends, no I don’t think I’ll be doing any more. And

Stephen: to go .

Joanna: Yeah. And if you need to take that break, that’s okay.

That’s really, that’s okay. And just maybe it’s not your time or it’s not the right time. Okay. And, I still wrote, but it was more. Personal training articles, so I still had my fingers into doing some writing. It just wasn’t creative. And I am, it takes me about a year and a few months to write a novel.

There are some authors out there who are incredibly fast, and they’re publishing, self-publishing a book like every two, three months. That’s not me, that’s not my process.

You take however long you need to write a book that has your name on it that you feel proud about, okay, this, there isn’t a race, this isn’t a race. And another great piece of advice I received was. , do not compare your writing journey with anyone else’s. Yes, I was

Stephen: gonna bring that up. I was gonna mention that.

Yeah. Cause, cause I think a lot of authors still, a lot of people. , they have that thought as, oh, I’m going to write a book, publish it, and I’ll retire next week. You know that it’ll be instant success. And more and more. You hear? That’s not it. It’s the ones that keep going. Keep trying.

I, listen I’ve met and I listened to the podcast called Writers Inc. has JD Barker on it. Yeah. He talks, about some of the things he’s done, Yeah. And it, perseverance. Just keep trying, just keep doing something new, something different. It’s the ones that I’ve seen I’ve gotten some author events, a conference for authors, and I’ve seen somebody who was not attending the conference have a table set up trying to sell their mystery book, and I’m looking at it.

This is a book of fiction, right? Yes. Yeah. I thought everybody’d be interested cuz I’m an author and you’re an author. I’m like, but we’re here to do author stuff. We wanna buy books on how to be an author, how to write craft and all that you’re trying to sell as a fiction book. Nobody wants that right now.

So my point is that people get these expectations. Oh, I’ll go to this author event and I’ll be super popular. Yeah, you’re one of a thousand people. Nobody, yeah. And. Yes. Perseverance. You keep trying, but sometimes you gotta make sure you’re trying things that are moving you forward the right things and you don’t know what that is.

An author table may not be the right thing. It may be, you gotta make sure you’re doing it correctly too. . Yeah. And

Joanna: up. Yeah. And I, for the longest time I was working full-time. And I remember How did that feel? Yeah. Sitting on the city bus. 45 minute drive into work and coming home, and I’d get out my writing and thank goodness I could read and write on a bus.

Like I, I didn’t get mo, I never got motion sick. So I would write on the bus. Okay. And I know I had a few people who’d be sitting beside me, looking at, at what I was riding. And I remember trying to squeeze in if I had a 45 minute or an hour lunch, I’d be grabbing my writing and I’d be writing on my lunch break, if I yeah.

So just trying to squeeze it in when I could.

Stephen: And the other thing, I notice a lot of authors they think that first book and they will spend years pushing that first book without writing a second book. And everything I keep hearing is, write your next book, write your next three books.

Yeah. One series, different series. Just get more books out there. That’s when something may click and someone will discover the right thing and other stuff will take off. It just seems like the strategy of writing one book for five years perfect. Perfecting it and then pushing that one book for the next three years is not the best strategy.

Not necessarily a book a month, but at your pace. Get more books out. And I was just talking to an author. I. and I said, honestly, I think if a new auth newer than me author, what’s the best strategy? I’d be like, write five books in the next five years. But don’t publish any of them until you’ve written all five of them, because you’ll find how much better you’ve gotten and you have a better idea of the industry and you then you can.

do however you wanna release ’em all at once. Schedule ’em out. You can schedule ’em every six months and keep your name out there. You There’s strategies and that to me that seems like if I could go back in time, that’s what I would tell myself to do. And writing each

Joanna: book is a different experience.

Yes. I think dealer’s child, That the second book

Stephen: was hard,

Joanna: right? Like the second book was hard. And I don’t know whether that’s because I had more expectations for myself and book three was a little easier and just cuz of, I think it’s knowledge I’ve gained and this book four seems.

Because of knowledge I’ve gained, and more authors I’ve met. I have an author, another author out of the US who, because it deals with espionage and that’s this field. He’s going to help me. So it’s just it’s plays into exactly what you just said.

Stephen: And that’s the thing with the perseverance.

That’s a huge keyword, I think, for just about everybody. Yeah. I I was talking to an author who’s been a full-time author for almost a decade, has written before that, and he’s questioning, he. I never broke the bestseller list. I’m not selling so many books. I’m ready to retire. Is this worth it for me?

Or what should I be doing? And he’s not giving up, not stopping, just trying to figure out what’s the best next step ne next course for him. And that’s still perseverance still going. And what I’ve discovered for me is author is not. Only title are the biggest part of my whole overall business or brand.

I work with kids on, I’m starting to, I should correct that, work with kids on storytelling for video games. So I’m helping teach kids to write and doing stories, not only short stories and books, but video games. So the books themselves are just part of what I’m doing, and that’s, yeah. Another form of persevering and, getting out there.

Creativity. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. And I know some authors that they create maps and games and all sorts of stuff for their books. Sometimes that’s where, the, their books themselves, oh, it’s not selling well, what else are you doing? Yeah. Uh, Sometimes you gotta think outside the box and We get focused.

Here’s another example. Sorry, went to a conference last year and then an article, . There’s an author talking about how she writes serial fiction. Yeah. And every year she starts in January or in July, I’m sorry. And every day. A new chapter comes out for till the end of the year, and that’s her whole thing.

And, but it’s romance and people are paying tons of money for this and she has a very good living doing it. Yeah. Suddenly everybody at the conference is going, oh, I need to do that. I need to schedule. I’m like, really? This doesn’t fit everybody. I’m like, science fiction people are not going to pay for a cereal every day.

That’s just not the thing. It’s good to go to the conferences and hear this stuff, but again, you have to evaluate it. What works for you. And I switched it up. Yeah. I’m creating a mailing list for teachers and educators and parents that they can sign up. Wow. And it’s a serial fiction story that gets emailed to them for their class.

So every week, wow. The class is getting new story. Same type of idea, but using it for my thing. But if I hadn’t gone to that conference and gotten the idea and then been able evaluate it for my thing, I wouldn’t have thought of doing that. Yeah. So that’s me persevering .

Joanna: I’m actually, you playing with this idea because I like creating art.

For the longest time, I’ve always said I’ve wanted to write a children’s. , and I’m taking a writing. It’s through Simon Fraser University. It’s called the Writer’s Studio. And we, I have to credit, so here I am. I swear all the students, they’re old enough to be my daughter. Okay. , my daughters. But I’m like, it’s okay.

It’s okay. It’s okay. So what happened was two of the students, because we’re on break, sent an email and. , do you want to, who wants to be a part of a secret scribe? So instead of a secret Santa, you put your names like in a virtual hat, and you pull a name and that person has listed, let’s say like for me, I listed skateboards, thriller bathtub braces, like five things I wanted to see in a story and.

So you pull this person’s name and you write a 250 to 500 word short story. So I participated in this and the one I received it was I needed to write about a zebra rowing to shore in a canoe and a crystal ball. And I never thought I had the story in me. and I don’t know about you, but I just, the thought of writing a short story literally gives me hives cuz I’m used to the long form, right?

So I wrote this short story and I thought, okay, I could illustrate this. This could be a short story, this could be a children’s picture book. And I think I just might go ahead and do that in 2023. That would

Stephen: be cool. Yeah. Yeah, that’d be great. Now here’s another thought though that you’ve made me think of.

I’ve run across some younger kids, pre schoolish age kindergarten age, picture books, but it’s about the history of rock and roll, and it has guns and roses in it. It has Prince, it has queen, it has all these classic rock artists done in kid. Picture book sign, it talks a little bit about the rock, and I’m thinking, wow, that’s something you wouldn’t think of because you’re, it’s oh, Barry Land and Unicorns and stuff.

But I looked at, and like I, I would buy that book for my kids. Yeah. So what we don’t have, and I’ve never seen is that same type of kids’ picture book with motorcycles and a mo a kid’s motorcycle gang or something. Not a gang, really, I can guarantee there’s parents out there that would say a motorcycle book for my kid.

Alright, . So there’s another great idea. I think that would be awesome to see something like that. That

Joanna: is a really good idea.

Stephen: Okay. And even better you get a group of these kids that are riding their bikes and they run across a mystery . Yeah, you have the younger versions of your main characters when they’re older or something like that.

Joanna: Think of Charlie Brown and Snoopy, right? Yeah. Absolutely love Sno. And they dealt with some heavy issues, yeah. Oh my gosh. You know what I’m going to be thinking about while I’m shoveling snow later.

Stephen: So I. Getting back with authors a year and a half after I talked to ’em and seeing what they’ve done, what changed, what’s different.

So I would love to make a note and contact you around Christmas time next year. And what’d you do, Joanna? What books do you have? Let lemme see it and talk about that. I’m gonna put it on my calendar when we’re done .

Joanna: I would love that. Now you’ve given me a deadline

Stephen: and I worked a deadline. There you go,

That would be awesome. And I’ll tell you, I don’t have a whole lot of kids in my life, but I would definitely buy a kid’s picture book with, about kids with motorcycles or whatever, I think that would be awesome.

Joanna: Just what you were telling me about the one with the classic rock bands.

Yeah. Which, queen, he’s a huge queen fan. Buy the book. I’d say I’m buying it for my child, if I had that. But I’d actually, I’d be buying the book for me ,

Stephen: For research. Yeah. Yes. Yes. for your book. . Yeah. Yeah. All right, Joanna. As I think we got some great ideas here for everybody.

Merry Christmas, everybody. . This will probably air after Christmas, . Yeah. So before we go tie things up, do you have any other advice for new authors that you would give them?

Joanna: Just write. Just write whether it. 30 minutes during a lunch break, whether it’s writing while on . Okay. I remember once with my kids, I did a writing challenge where I was waking up at 4:00 AM and my youngest at the time was five and she heard me tiptoe downstairs and she came down i’ll bright-eyed in her little pink pajamas and I said to her, You really need to go back to bed.

You don’t get up till six. Mommy woke up at 4:00 AM right to do this writing challenge. So she was really sweet and she did go back to bed. But uh, really just write your story. Sometimes you may feel like you have to put blinders on because you’re gonna hear about all these other authors and their success and their movie deals, and.

Just write your story and make sure you’re writing for you because you love to write. Yeah,

Stephen: agreed. Agreed. Yeah. Great. All right, Joanna, it’s been really fun talking to you this afternoon. Thank, get your shoveling done so I can do my shoveling later this week. . We’ll make sure we get through the holidays.

Thank you so much. Yes, thank you. I appreciate it.

View Details

OverviewJoanna Vander Vlugt is an author and illustrator. Her motorcycle illustrations have been purchased world-wide and her Woman Empowered motorcycle art series has been featured in on-line art and motorcycle magazines. In 2006 her short mysteries Egyptian Queen and The Parrot and Wild Mushroom Stuffing were published in the Crime Writers of Canada mystery anthologies. Her personal essay, No Beatles Reunion was published in the Dropped Threads 3: Beyond the Small Circle anthology.

The Unravelling, her debut novel, featuring the sister duo, Jade and Sage, was a Canadian Book Club Awards finalist as well as its sequel, Dealer’s Child. She is currently working on book three in the series. Joanna is proud of her podcast JCV Art Studio and the many artists and authors she’s interviewed. Joanna’s novels, art and podcast can be found at jcvartstudio.net.

Her Bookhttps://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09DCF49Z8?storeType=ebooks&qid=1672775288&sr=8-2&linkCode=li2&tag=discoveredwordsmiths-20&linkId=3c81edd393db2055ed3512b5753885bb&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_ilWebsitejcvartstudio.net

Favoriteshttps://www.amazon.com/War-Widow-Billie-Walker-Novel-ebook/dp/B07ZY84RCR?crid=2L9OE6QS581TY&keywords=tara+moss&qid=1672775674&sprefix=tara+moss%2Caps%2C114&sr=8-2&linkCode=li2&tag=discoveredwordsmiths-20&linkId=56267903b417ab968d5b00630313278a&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_ilMunro’s Books (munrobooks.com)

YouTubehttps://youtu.be/IunNEcu8pQ8Transcripttoday on Discovered word Smiths. I wanna welcome Joanna. Joanna. How are you doing today? I’m doing

Joanna: pretty good. We’re getting some snow, so I may be out shoveling a little

Stephen: later, right? Hopefully not in the middle of the podcast. That’d be an interesting . We were talking a little bit before we got started.

Why don’t you tell everybody a little bit about yourself, where you live and some of the things you like to do besides writing. Okay.

Joanna: I live on Vancouver Island. So for the Your American audience, if you think of Seattle and I, we’ve actually, we’ve , I’m thinking of snow. We have been to Disneyland and I just remember now when we were, it was around Christmas time.

I am totally going off on a tangent here, but go for it. Okay, love it. So I remember we were driving back. Going through Oregon and there was this snowstorm and we made it through. We have a little Honda element, but anyways, back on track. So if you go north to Seattle, to Vancouver, there is a ferry you can hop on and that takes you to Vancouver Island.

And it’s the. Biggest island on the west coast. Okay. Okay. So that’s where I’m coming from.

Stephen: You, you keep saying Vancouver Island and all I can picture right now is Christmas Island. I just, it’s like somebody needs to make the whole island Christmas Island. That’s where everybody’s destination for December.

It sounds like a tourist thing to make .

Joanna: After. The pandemic. Everyone was coming to our island and I thought this island’s gonna sink. Like all of you guys go home, , right? There’s other parts of Canada to, to visit. But anyways, I was born and raised on Vancouver Island. I’m called a an island girl.

Okay. And yeah, I’ve worked in the prosecutor’s office and actually the office of the police complaint commission. Which deals with complaints. We have municipal police force, so we do have the R C M P, which everyone identifies with the red surge and all of that. But we also have, yeah. But we also have municipal police departments too.

And so if anyone had a complaint with regards to the municipal police departments, that would come to the office of the police complaint commissioner. Okay. And I’ve. Drawn upon my experience working in the prosecutor’s office as a legal assistant and police complaint commissioner’s office and writing my novels in my thriller novels.

So that’s what I like to do. And if I’m not writing, I like jogging. And I seriously, like this time of year, I am binging baking channels, baking shows.

Stephen: Yeah so you should write Cozy Mystery based on like chefs and baking, that, that type of thing. It sounds ,

Joanna: I tell you, I live in a small town now, and there have been a number of storylines that have popped into my head.

Yeah, there you

Stephen: go. . Yeah. So why did you wanna start writing? What made you wanna get down to it and write?

Joanna: Believe it or not, as a kid, I did despise reading. I found it very difficult. I was not the child that was like in group A, I was in group B and the thought of reading out loud, just, I stumbled a lot over my words and we used to have these books, they’re called.

Rupert and I believe they’re a UK book, and you had the choice cuz there were illustrations and just little one line sentences underneath each picture. Or there were the big two paragraphs at the bottom of the page and my mom would like literally say I had to read 30 minutes before I went to. . So I would try to always read the little one line sentences and then she caught on what I was doing.

Cuz parents, they do that , right? And she was like no. The two paragraphs. So it was my sister who got me hooked on the biopsy Twins, which is, it’s another UK publication. With,

Stephen: we’re dating ourselves talking about these things. Cause the 20 year olds are going, what are you guys talking about?

I’m sure .

Joanna: And it was all action. It was all action. And the Hardy Boys, I read the Hardy Boys. It was all that type of action and adventure. And once I got hooked, literally it was like that one story. Once I got hooked that you could read about action at adventure. Then I wanted to read and then I wanted to write my own stories.

So I was writing stories, I’d say from grade seven to about grade 12. Yeah. Nice. So I always like creating stories.

Stephen: So you’ve kept writing throughout your life or you put it off, or, have, are you, have you been publishing all this time or how’s that, what’s that journey been like? I

Joanna: became an adult

Stephen: That’s a horrible thing to say. Yeah.

Joanna: So I it was when I graduated from high school and I went to college to become a legal assistant. I swear that it was the economics 1 0 1 that killed every creative idea in my brain, I was working, I met my husband and we had a family and I just, I stopped writing.

Okay. I stopped writing. I used to create art as well. I just, at that time it didn’t fit into the lifestyle. I had a young family, I stopped, gosh. I stopped for a little bit, but actually I did. Now that I think about it, I started writing again when I was about 25, 20, 28, and I wrote for about 10 years, and then I was just honestly getting tired.

I remember being tired of the rejections I was getting, and I just, I stopped. and I focused on other activities I was interested in. And I got to a point where I was even telling my friends when they’d ask me, oh, Joanna, are you going to get back to your writing? And I’d be like no, I’m not. I don’t, I can’t see myself doing anymore writing, or creating any anymore art.

And it’s true. You never say never, and it was, gosh, about 20 years later, 20 years. . When my mom passed that, I dug out the book I had written in 1999 and I thought, okay, if there’s something that I think is salvageable in this manuscript, I will rewrite it and I will self-publish it. And um, it’s been a great ride.

It’s been a great journey and I am just received back from my editor the edits on book three. and this morning I had a critique session with my critique partner with regards to the first draft PGE of book four. It’s good to be back.

Stephen: Yeah. Nice. Great. Let’s talk about your books a bit. The current book is Dealer’s Child.

Yes. So give us a little bit about what that book’s about and the series overall. Don’t give things away, but tell us a little bit about it.

Joanna: So it involves two sisters. There’s one sister. It’s written in the first person point of view from Jade’s point of view, and she is a lawyer. Defense lawyer, sometimes prosecutor.

Okay. Because in Canada you can be both. It’s, you can be an ad hoc prosecutor. You need to be a criminal lawyer though. So you need to know criminal law. Alright, so when she’s not prosecuting, she is investigating. Criminal matters, usually murders. And in the first book, the unraveling, it was, she had defended her ex-husband on a murder charge, and then later she finds some that finds out that he’s been murdered.

Okay. So she’s just also trying to clear her own name, okay. To prove, and uncover his murder. And the second book Dealer’s Child, the, just the thought came to me of. , what if my heroin Jade has grown up with this idea of what her ide, you she grew up with this kind of ideal background family life and what would happen if she was to find out that during the sixties her mother was quite the.

And she finds out uncovers some family secrets, some family lies, and that ties into the murder of her father, of her father. Okay. That was fun because I remember at the time, every scene in the mother’s point of view in the sixties, I just, I wrote all the scenes in the sixties, all at.

because I wanna make sure I stayed in that point of view with the mob, and it’s listening to Jimmy Hendrix, it’s listening to some of those like stones, some great songs from that era, right? Yeah, she, Jade has to uncover some secrets about her past and it’s , it’s a bit of an emo, it’s an emotional journey, and she’s trying to uncover her father’s murder as well.

Okay. Wow. Yeah.

Stephen: Yeah. She needs to move out of the small town, it sounds . Are there any books out there that you would say are similar to your books that, so that people listening and say, oh, I like that. I’m gonna go check out Joanna’s books.

Joanna: Okay. Yeah. So when I started writing the unraveling, like I said, it was during the.

Late. I just felt, oh my God, I just felt the late 19 hundreds . It was during .

Stephen: It does seem kinda like the Wild West there, .

Joanna: It was during 1999. Okay. And at that time, John Grisham was coming up with his legal thrillers and I just thought, and David Bald Baldi. Like they were coming out with legal thrillers and I thought, hey, you.

I work in a prosecutor’s office. This is th this is what I know. Okay. It may be Canadian law, but it’s still law. People are still breaking the laws. I still have a lawyer, that’s where I see the connection. Okay. It’s with David Baldacci John Grisham, that sort of thing. And even my editor said to me when she sent back the edits, like in book three, she was saying, I like seeing Jade in the courtroom.

She goes, so that’s one thing I’m going to have as like my thumbprint with each book. There will be a few courtroom scenes, and. the puzzle and the fun for me is weaving in, let’s say a clue. She may pick up from a case she’s working on and seeing how it could, it can connect to, let’s say, whatever she’s investigating.

Yeah. Okay.

Stephen: Yeah. So kinda like Perry Mason or Matt Locke. Yeah. Yeah,

Joanna: that’s right.

Stephen: Okay. And these are self-published? Yes. Yes, they are. Do you have like a publishing house you go through or anything? Or is it all just you?

Joanna: It’s me. I use, I’ve just hired a book designer. I didn’t think of this at the time and I wish I had I was, when I self-published the unraveling, I was just thinking about, like I said, my mom had passed and I thought, okay, let’s publish this book and.

A month after I published it, I thought, okay, I got an idea for book two, and then I started writing book two. And then it’s okay I’m in I’m on this ride, I’m doing this. And so then with book three that I’m working on now with the edits, it’s called Spy Girls, and that’s. , it’s a series, right?

But they’re individual stories. You don’t have to read book one to pick up book three or book two, right? They’re,

Stephen: it’s all connected by location and character, more so than our overarching plot.

Joanna: Yeah. Yeah. So with book three coming out, I thought, okay, you gotta brand these. They have to look like they’re connected, but individual.

So I have a book designer. , who’s really good. And biggest lesson I learned is I kept telling her what I didn’t want as a book cover. I said I don’t want the female running away so we only see the back of her. I go, I’ve seen a lot of covers like that. But what she did is she found images were that were female.

that are facing the reader, and I loved them. So it’s it was, I was contradictory because I told her what I didn’t want, but, so she flipped it and I thought, yeah, so I have all, and she went to the lengths where the woman on the cover of book one, she managed to get. Another image of a woman for the cover of book two, and she photoshopped the image of the woman’s nose on book one.

So it is the woman’s nose on book two. Who does that detail? .

Stephen: Wow. That’s funny. That’s good. I love that. Yeah. Yeah. Keeper . So are these available print or just digital? Print

Joanna: eBooks they’re available. I, so they’re available on Amazon. They’re available through Cobo. I also have the eBooks listed through Drafted Digital, which is a great resource for authors.

I’ll get a draft, a digital report saying You’ve sold this book through Barnes and Noble, right? Or all these book outlets. , which I never even knew existed. So I think there’s, oh gosh there’s some, I can’t even remember the Plat, like Yeah, they’re out there , right? Yeah. Google

Stephen: Books even.

Yeah. I use drafted digital and Hoopin stuff and I like, yeah, a year and a half after I submitted a book, it said, oh, you’ve been accepted to I’m like, I forgot all about that. Yeah. And then suddenly I’m like getting these emails like, you sold this many books or rented, checked out books in hoopla and I.

Really. That’s pretty awesome. I love that. Yeah.

Joanna: Hoop loves one. Yeah. Thank you .

Stephen: Yeah. Cause it’s through your library, so I always tell people, support your libraries. Check ’em out. Yeah. If more people will go to the library, listen to an episode and say, wow, Joanna’s book sounds great, I’ll go ask for it at my library.

That’s just helping everybody helps us, helps them, helps the library, yeah. It’s a win-win for everyone. Yeah. I love that.

Joanna: Yep. Hoopla, BLO tech.

Stephen: Yeah, all of those. Scribed, I get it. Quite a few uns actually. It’s weird. I never thought that would happen, but Yeah. ,

Joanna: yeah. Yeah.

Stephen: Joanna, what type of, you’ve got a couple books out, you’ve got more coming.

What’s the feedback you’ve been getting on the ones that are out?

Joanna: The best feedback I received was a reader Facebook messaged. and I enter contests and I’ll get like dealers, child and unraveling were finalists in the Great Canadian Book Club Awards. And so I’ve been another author who I interviewed has said, I’ve always been the bridesmaid, but never the bride.

So sometimes I feel like that Okay. The best response I received was a reader messaged me on Facebook and she was, she said, Joanna, I just can’t put this book. I can’t put this book down. And she goes, I just can’t. And she goes, wait, go. This was with respect to dealer’s child. And I went, thank you.

And then I messaged her again. Can I use your comments as promotional material, right? She goes, yeah, fine. Now leave me alone. I want to read, and I thought, oh,

Stephen: That’s awesome. That’s good feedback. I love that. Yeah. Yeah. So if you had a choice, if someone asked you, Hey, we’d like your books.

We wanna make them into a movie or a TV show, which one would you pick?

Joanna: Either I would just be happy with either. And I know I just had this discussion with one of my sisters where a Canadian author, her book. Was sold for a prime, miniseries. And readers, diehard readers were commenting how I only watched the first 10 minutes and it’s not like the book it’s not going to be like the book, you’re handing your rights over to a total different medium, TV or a movie, and they are going to take this book and adapt it.

To make, a product that will be appealing on the tv, on the screen. So it’s two different mediums. Yeah.

Stephen: Yep. Okay. And you mentioned all these services where you can get your book Cobo yes. Is one of them. So do you have a website that people can go to?

Joanna: Yes. Yes. So if you really wanna support local, it is J for chiana, C for Cat, V for Victor.

Art studio. Dot net n et and I have some of my podcasts listed there. And I have like a little shop where you can buy my books. Yeah. And in the price, I include the shipping and yeah that’s where you can get the books directly from me. And I would include an art card because I do motorcycle illustration.

So you’d get, I try to give more of a personal touch when someone buys directly through

Stephen: me. Okay. Back up one sec. First of all, what’s a motorcycle illustration? What’s that mean? And does your main character ride a motorcycle or something? Yes. Oh, okay. You did not mention that. That sounds really cool. Go ahead a little bit more

Joanna: about that.

Geez, I need more coffee , less Christmas cookies and more coffee. But yeah, so like I said, as a teenager I created art. So I don’t know if you can see it behind me. Okay. Yeah. One of my motorcycle illustrations and what I use, they’re called topic markers. Okay. Yep. And I will get a photo of a motorcycle on my.

I will make enlarge that photo and I will draw that motorcycle on a 11 and a half by 14 and a half piece of paper. And I use the markers which are very vibrant color. There are approximately 300 and something markers. Yeah, I have a, I have 160 and. . It is. It is just so much fun. And my, when I was doing the rewrites for the unraveling and I was thinking about my characters, I remember I just, I looked up and I saw one of my illustrations and I thought, why don’t they ride bikes?

Because there’s a whole group mass, like just big group of. all walks of life, who enjoy riding bikes. And I thought, yeah that’s what the, my characters, Jade and Sage, they ride their mo their motorcycles when they go around the town. And I’m trying to take a little bit from. James Bond.

He may have a different car. Every movie, every book. I think Jade is working on her fourth bike right now. , right? It’s a Honda . Yeah,

Stephen: so So you gotta have a murder at a poker rally or something sometime, right? Fun. Yeah. Oh my. There you go. I do that one. I’d love to see that one.

Joanna: Yeah. A illustrated Harley’s, that’s for

Stephen: sure.

great. That would be awesome. Yeah. But I you’re on an island so you just like going circles,

Oh, okay. A couple other questions. Find out some more info about you. What are some of your favorite books and authors?

Joanna: Oh gosh. I always liked John Grisham cuz I liked the le the legal. , working in the legal field, I liked the legal background. I like thrillers. So I’d say John Grisham, Dan Brown.

Again it’s just, take me on that adventure and the, I remember being glued to reading the Da Vinci Code because it was to actually. Real images of the statues, the buildings he wrote about was really cool. And I love it when an author writes a book where you wonder, is this real or is this fiction?

And Dan Brown did that with Da Vinci Code. Okay. Yeah. Yeah those two are my main favorite. Gosh, I can’t think of any. Oh God, the name came and it went . Yeah.

Stephen: Yeah. Typically authors have a list longer than they can ever remember of books and authors that they love. So Yeah, we, you got a couple good ones, so anyone that likes those probably shares interests with you.

So should check out some of your stuff.

Joanna: Tara Moss and Sandra Brown. Those are the other, yes. .

Stephen: Okay. . Good. Now you can shovel without racking your brain. , . Do you have a favorite local bookstore you like to go to?

Joanna: See, I used to live in Victoria, which is an actual city. , you , can you?

It’s taken me a little while to adjust to the small town, but I’ve adjusted, so Victoria, you can take a, the coho ferry from Seattle. And we’ve been to Port Townsend. Victoria has Monroe Bookstore, which was started by, she was a famous Canadian author. I don’t know how much, let’s say the American audience knows of her.

It was Alice Monroe. Okay. Okay. It is a beautiful bookstore. It’s in one of those like old Like 18 hundreds type building with the beautiful moldings and the curved doorways. Okay. That is a favorite bookstore. We also had in Victoria Boland books. and again, it’s like the stained glass window.

The stained glass lamps, and it is big. Like you, you go in there and you smell books. Okay, , that’s a good spot, right? Yeah. So luckily Victoria’s only about an hour and 15 minute drive where I live now. So when I need my fix, for the city I just head down . Got it.

Stephen: Yeah. Good. Alright, so before we move on and talk author.

Yeah. If were just walking around town, somebody came up and said, Hey, I heard you wrote some books. Why should I get your books and read ’em? What would you tell them? My

Joanna: books are a thrill ride. That’s exactly what my books are. I write to thrill myself. Okay. And to surprise myself. And that’s exact.

Literally this morning with my critique, I was just working on book four. I had said to my critique partner, I go, I never thought I would write this type of an action adventure novel. And so when I initially write, I write to thrill me, to scare me, to also make myself laugh. Like I want to laugh, I want to giggle when I read as well.

And then I have to think about. . Once that first draft is done, then the polishing comes in thinking about the reader. So the reader gets the same experience. I love action scenes and those are hard to write. You give a lot. I give a lot of time to those action scenes so they’re not clunky. So the reader is just like, when my editor says to me, Geez, Joanna, I had to stop and start to reread from the beginning because yeah.

Pulled me in and I stopped editing, I was just like, okay like she got into it and I thought, yes, yeah. Nice. .

Stephen: Yeah. Okay, great. Joanna, I appreciate you sharing the book and talking to us about it today. Thank you.

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OverviewDerrick didn’t set out to be a writer, he started as just a GM. We discuss the fun reasons people start to write and what it can lead to.

His Bookhttps://www.amazon.com/Qetran-Odyssey-Derrick-Hall/dp/B0BLQYNC69?crid=1Z0TZ3107AWW4&keywords=qetran+odyssey&qid=1672167050&sprefix=qetran+odyssey%2Caps%2C85&sr=8-2&linkCode=li2&tag=discoveredwordsmiths-20&linkId=a8478f33b548a8c9dc12f67fd2161dd2&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_ilYouTubehttps://youtu.be/YpY8PnhgDy4TranscriptAll right, so let’s move on. Talk a little bit of author stuff, and we have an interesting topic, which I think some people may totally understand. Before we get to that though you’ve written several books at this point. So what are some things that you have learned on your journey that you’re doing different now than you used to?

Don’t rush

Derrick: it. Don’t try to force it. If you get blocked up, go do something else and don’t push through it. You’re just gonna be beating your head against a wall. That’s probably the most obvious thing I could say, but it’s true cuz first go around my first book, catch an Odyssey I hit some pretty hard blocks and would just sit there and pound my head against the keyboard for hours trying to figure it out.

it didn’t work. And it got to a point where I pretty much gave up on the book and walked away for a couple of weeks, and yeah, it still bugged me. It’s in the back of my head, like a b and a Mason jar trying to figure itself out. But I wasn’t focused on it so hard, and when I came back to. I wrote eight chapters in two hours.

, it’s one of those things where you can’t force it. Yeah. There’s a certain point at where it’s fine to sit and fight your way through a problem, but at some point you just gotta take a break.

Stephen: Agreed. Yeah, I agreed. My, my first book, I still love the concept and the idea, but I really didn’t know what I was doing, thought I did and it’s still kinda sitting around. It’s got a few good things in it, but there’s a lot of stuff that my editor went through and I literally ripped half the book out. 35,000 words eh, okay, these are, but I kept them because the individual scenes could be reworked. At some point if I do that series, yeah, absolutely. But the general overall book, and I think the books I’ve gotten now are just way better. So people are like, oh, but haven’t you gone back to it? No, I haven’t, cuz it hasn’t really called me back, the stuff I’m doing now is just it’s so much better and it’s drawn me in and it’s good, yeah. I just not, don’t have the impetus to go

Derrick: back. I’ve even noticed that in my own work, like from the first draft, first attempt at Kere Odyssey. My work has evolved a ton to where I am now, still early in my author childhood, as it were, , but 300,000 words later, and it’s barely recogniz. So I’ve learned a lot.

I’ve grown a lot, I’ve figured out what not to do and quit doing it and ,

Stephen: right? Yeah. I’m new, pretty new also I don’t, I’m not the experienced wise writer, but yeah, I’ve been doing it for a couple years now and I’ve realized a couple things. Whenever I get people on, whatever social media or Facebook or at a conference or something in there, they’re like I’m working on my first book.

I have got a couple chapters done, but tell me about publishing. Tell me about this. And it’s No, forget all of that. Just sit and write. You need to just write and write a ton. Get a book done and don’t even go, oh, now I can publish. Write another book. Because really, if you write a couple books and you write a couple short stories, you’ll be so much better off when you finally do go into publishing them.

Yes. Than trying to rush that first one. Yes. That’s my advice I give people

Derrick: now, and don’t underestimate the power of flash fiction and writing prompt. because even in the middle of my projects, I have Facebook groups that I’m part of. I have Discord servers that I’m part of that all have a weekly prompt where you, it’s an image or 10 words or one sentence or whatever, and you have to write 500 words, a thousand words, whatever, based on that and do it.

Have an idea. Don’t do it if you don’t. But those sort of things will force you out of the box that is your current work in progress, but still keep the wheels turning, keep the juices flowing. And for me, those have been an absolutely massive help. I have. Another whole document full of these prompts that I’ve written and liked and gone, that’s a short story.

That’s a short story, right? That’s a develop, I could probably turn that into a whole book like it just because it creates ideas, and ideas are money in this business. So it’s important and yeah, I agree. The work you can do that’s out of your comfort zone, even a little bit, the better You’ll. I agree.

Stephen: And that’s both of us still being new compared to a lot of other authors out there, ,

Derrick: right? Yeah, exactly. You gotta start

Stephen: somewhere. Absolutely. And I think people get, like you said, they rush too much. They don’t rush it. You’ll be better off because what happens is they rush it and they’re in the exact same spot and boat five years down the road as they would’ve been if they would’ve just wrote and wrote and concentrated.

but they don’t see it. I didn’t see it. It’s, hindsight, so

Derrick: it’s absolutely hindsight.

Stephen: Yeah. Learn from us. Anyone listening, learn from us. , we’re new enough to be able to say this .

Derrick: Exactly. I’m the old farm mule who will fight through anything and not learn anything else. And I learn by doing.

I, you can’t tell me not to do something. I have to go do it and get hurt and figure it out myself. Don’t be me . Listen to the people who have done this before you. It’s a long line of brilliant people. And pay attention. Learn something long line so you don’t have to

Stephen: A long line of brilliant people, which may not include us.

We’re not saying we’re probably not . So Derek when you’re writing, what software and services do you like to.

Derrick: I use the I use Reed z.com. I use their editor for all of my drafting. Okay. And editing and a lot of things. Okay. I pretty much live there. I absolutely love it. I tried Scrivener, I couldn’t do it. It was too complicated for me. I’m very much a What George Martin would call a gardener. I don’t outline, I don’t plan.

So that whole three quarters of Scrivener was lost on me and Reedsy had everything else in an easy platform. Everything’s cloud-based. I can grab it from my phone, my tablet, my desktop, my laptop, whatever, whenever, and everything’s right there. So it’s super handy for me cuz I jump around a. From different machines trying to get work done and I can just pull it up anywhere and it’s there.

It formats it as you write to look like a book, so you’re not fighting with weird formatting later, and it’s great. For anybody starting out or anybody who’s on the go a lot, I highly recommend Rezi .

Stephen: I like that You’re actually the first author out of 130 episodes that has said that and recommended Rezi, and I find it also interesting that we talked earlier about programming and it, you were having trouble struggling with it.

The reason I believe I glommed onto Scribner so well is because it really spoke to my analytical programmer brain. It just made sense. People are like, oh, it took me so long to learn Scribner, and I’m like, really? I’m like, I opened it up and I was like I just did it. It made sense to me. Yeah, so no, it

Derrick: makes sense to me.

I just don’t have a use for 90% of what’s there. I have, I think five pages total. Of outline between two full length novels, and that’s handwritten in a notebook because I got stuck and needed to figure out a continuity problem. That’s a good way handwriting. I have no outlines. I have no outlines. I have a doc with a list of like names and pronunciations and like basic stuff just to keep my head straight and that’s it.

I don’t plan. . Got it. I don’t do that, so I, I don’t need the database and the wiki and all the craziness of what a lot of people need and used.

Stephen: I’ve been using a lot of the features of Scribner because I focus a lot on wanting kids to learn to write and encouraging kids to write and. Tools and information to help teachers and parents to help kids write.

. So I actually have been creating a Bible for my world so I can keep it all straight and connected. Yeah.

Derrick: Correctly. Yeah. Yeah. It’s a great tool. I’m not discounting Scrivener at all. It’s a fantastic tool. It’s just not right for me.

Stephen: Yeah. There’s the bottom line, what wo works for one person may not work for another and don’t use a tool just because your favorite author said that’s what they use.

It may not work for you. And you’ll struggle and be frustrated and it won’t be any good.

Derrick: Yeah. Everybody’s different. I have friends who write their books longhand with fountain pens in handmade leather journals, and I have friends. Wouldn’t know what to do without Scrivener. And I know people who use Microsoft Word 1997 running on a potato , Clipy.

It just, yeah, Clippy was awesome though. But bring back Clippy, .

Stephen: I’m surprised I haven’t actually

Derrick: It’s a nostalgia thing at this point. But yeah, everybody’s different. Everybody uses different tools. You go to a construction site, you’re gonna see DeWalt, Milwaukee, Nikita, everybody has a different tool that they prefer and that’s fine.

It all does the same thing. It just does it differently.

Stephen: It’s whatever you can use to get what you need. Yep. Agreed. Yep. Derek, what are you doing to market your books?

Derrick: Not. I’m gonna be brutally honest. My marketing consists of word of mouth, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, basically social media, and that’s pretty much it.

And the podcast.

Stephen: I was gonna say, does the podcast, do you think, help bring light to your books?

Derrick: For the 20 people that listen to it? Yeah. , they know about it. May, maybe we can get a. We’ve got five or six episodes at this point. So it’s nothing huge yet. We’re, we started the ball rolling late on that, but it’s still a lot of fun.

Yeah, I don’t do enough. I really don’t. It’s pretty much social media. Okay. But I also have zero budget promote anything. So . Do what you can do.

Stephen: All right. So you mentioned talking about being a reluctant author and how you really didn’t think about being an author. You hadn’t really wanted necessarily to always be an author, but you did it anyway.

So you mentioned earlier let’s repeat that. Why did you say, okay, I’ve gotta write this

Derrick: My world, my characters, my stories all started out in one place, which is the black hole in my brain that is filled by d and d. I was working on a dungeon and dragons campaign for a bunch of friends of mine.

I do a lot of home brew, make everything up myself and basically just hang it on that d and d framework to create a playable world. It got to a point where the world was awesome. The concept was awesome, but my characters were too specific to want to throw to the wolves, as it were of my players, and my plot was getting a little out of control for a campaign and have it be efficient.

It essentially outgrew and ended up being too big and too small in different ways to be a d and d campaign. So it also wouldn’t leave me alone. It got hung in the hung in my head and wouldn’t go away. And I told myself, screw it, I’m gonna write it down. I’ll write a book. Maybe I can actually finish something this time.

Cause I’m horrible about finishing big projects. Absolutely terrible.

Bye. Yeah, so I ended up with a book that was intended to be, one book was intended to sit on my shelf and nobody else’s as a trophy just to prove that I did it. I got my trophy, I put it on my shelf, and it kept bugging me because my story wasn’t finished. So I wrote another one, and another, and now what was supposed to be one book is looking like it’s gonna be a trilogy with a bunch of side branches, which we talked about.

And

what started as proving to myself that I could do something is now what about this sci-fi project? And what about this historical fantasy project? And what about this. Lit RPG project. And what about this other thing? And ooh, that’s an idea. Look, shiny .

feel like a lot of people can relate to that, whether they be artists or writers or musicians or whatever.

You, you start with one thing and end up with a hundred more and it’s both helpful and not .

Stephen: And I think that’s important for others to hear because I’ve heard other people say, oh, I’m not a writer. I couldn’t write a book. Sometimes it just takes a matter of sitting down and starting to type or scribble or whatever it is.

And you may find that it calls to you that’s the only way to describe it. When I really hit upon that story that’s really just buzzing along and clicking, it’s not so much like I’m thinking of what to write. It’s like I’m peeling. To another universe, another dimension and I’m looking in and seeing what they’re doing and I’m just writing it down.

It’s like it channels into me, and I, I think when people get that feeling, then you can’t stop ’em. .

Derrick: Yeah, I’m an extremely visual person. I have a background in art, graphic design, music. I’m very creative, artsy person, and I’m extremely visual. You say something gross in front of me, I’m gonna picture it before it’s all the way outta your mouth.

I’m that guy. So for me, when I’m writing, I’m seeing a movie in my head and I’m just doing my best to translate. That’s all it is. Which is part of why I think they would be better suited as movies, because I’ve already seen that movie and it was pretty darn good. It’s it, like that’s what it is for me.

Like you said, you’re. Peeling back the layers and explaining what’s going on. That’s about it. And it very much is a creative process and it very much is something that a lot of people don’t realize they’re capable of until they actually try to do it.

Stephen: Absolutely. Do you do you think your background with d and d helped and you, cuz you don’t have any writing training, you just started.

Derrick: Yeah. The d and d pretty much, I at this point consider my time as a dungeon master game master, whatever version of that term you prefer. It was a practice run. The thing is, I didn’t really write much of that down. I just pulled it out of my head. , which is the same thing I do to my books , right? I don’t really write it down or plan it out.

I might go, okay, we need to go here, and here in that order, and then we need to end up over here somehow. And that’s my outline. Okay, start, middle, end. I want this thing to happen. That’s a cool scene. We’ll put that in there somewhere. And that’s how I write my books.

That’s how I brain my d and d games and it. Basically a dry run, except now it doesn’t just go away at the end of the night .

Stephen: So have you been concerned about the imposter syndrome or do you feel like, oh, I’m not really a writer, I don’t know what I’m doing. Did that affect you or has you, have you gone through times when you’re just like, I can’t write cause I’m no good or anything like that?

Oh,

Derrick: Yeah. Every single day . Okay. The last two years? Yes. Every day. I think what really helped me through that the most was realizing that A, I’m not the only one. And B, the big famous authors that you look at as people who can do nothing wrong and know exactly what they’re doing, they have it too.

Absolutely. Yes. Toking had it. Lewis had it. Sanderson has it. Martin has. Everybody deals with it at some point. JK Rowling, I’m just rattling off fantasy people because that’s what I know. But everybody deals with it at some point. And it’s like writer’s block, it’s inevitable. ,

Stephen: right? And having an MFA and studying word str or sentence structure doesn’t necessarily help you write a good story.

Those are things that, no, it’ll

Derrick: probably make it.

Stephen: I agree. Writing a good story has nothing to do with grammar or spelling or anything like that. They’re they’re actually separate. That’s what editors are for. Yeah, exactly. You can learn grammar, you can learn spelling, but it’s much harder to learn to tell a good story.

Derrick: Yes, I would agree with

Stephen: that. And we see it with little kids all the time. Oh, let me tell you a story. And I was walking down the street and there was a pebble and I picked it up and then I went and I threw the pebble and it’s oh my God, where is this story going? That’s cuz they’re still learning and the they’re figuring out story. Yeah. And I think a lot of people. In their head, oh, I need to take classes. I need to be taught. What do you play? You said you play music.

Derrick: I hand it to me. I’ll make it, make noise. Okay. I grew up in the same house as a music teacher,

Stephen: okay. You probably had some lessons, but at some point, yeah. You start playing and you start making music and playing other instruments without all that behind you. Some of the best rock musicians didn’t have lessons

Derrick: necessarily. Exactly. Exactly. Now,

Stephen: if you’re a doctor, please go get trained and take classes.

Yes. As your doctor .

Derrick: If you’re new and whether you’re writing fantasy or not, I would highly recommend that you go on YouTube and watch Brandon Sanderson’s le BYU lectures. Yes, they’re free, they’re amazing. Start at the beginning and go through. It’s gonna take you a while, but yes, do it. I learned a ton.

Just from his introduction, let alone the rest of it. . And he picked him up for free hours of information. Yeah, he does. Which is an absolute service to the industry and Absolutely. I appreciate that very much. But yeah, I. Learned a ton. And it’s basically you’re auditing a college class, listening, watching those Yes.

Or listening to those. So do that. If you feel like you need lessons, go watch that. It’s free. You don’t have to go to school. It’s fine. Your computer, your phone, your tv, whatever. Good enough.

Stephen: Agreed. I love that. All right. Derek it is been really great talking to you. A good time. So before we wrap up do you have any last minute advice other than everything we’ve already talked about for some new authors?

Derrick: Just go out and tell your story whether you feel like you’re worthy or not. Just do it. I don’t remember the exact numbers. I did some digging into statistics about writers a while back, and essentially something like if you complete a book. You’re in like 2% of the world population that will ever complete a book, and that’s regardless of publishing, regardless of anyone ever reading it.

If you complete it, you’ve done something that 98% of the world will never do. If you just write it down and start it and don’t finish it, you’re in like 12%. So it’s. It’s a feeling of accomplishment, knowing that, and I’m not saying just do it to be special. I’m saying if you have a story in your head and you want to tell it, get past the imposter of going, I’m not good enough for this.

And just go tell your story. Everybody has a story. If you have one, go tell it.

Stephen: Agreed. I love that. All right, Derek, thank you for getting on tonight. For me it’s dark , so it’s been dark here, . It’s that time of year, so Oh, yeah. I wish you luck on your books and hopefully we’ll see you write some more coming soon.

Derrick: Yeah, absolutely.

View Details

OverviewDerrick wrote his book in between working in I.T. he actually didn’t want to write a book and it’s an extension of his Dungeons and Dragons playing. Like many authors, the book has turned into a series.

His Bookhttps://www.amazon.com/Qetran-Odyssey-Derrick-Hall/dp/B0BLQYNC69?crid=1Z0TZ3107AWW4&keywords=qetran+odyssey&qid=1672167050&sprefix=qetran+odyssey%2Caps%2C85&sr=8-2&linkCode=li2&tag=discoveredwordsmiths-20&linkId=b5e767f171794218e77fbd595bd1933b&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_ilWebsitehttps://www.derrickHallAuthor.com

Favoriteshttps://www.amazon.com/Inheritance-4-Book-Paperback-Eragon-Brisingr/dp/0449813223?crid=3VAL4M9I61PWN&keywords=paolini&qid=1672168262&sprefix=paolini%2Caps%2C102&sr=8-3&linkCode=li2&tag=discoveredwordsmiths-20&linkId=1c7bb8c04ba8b44435fcf259ed574028&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_ilBooks, Toys, Audio Books – Browsing Bison – Deer Lodge, Montana

YouTubehttps://youtu.be/SY9sIWNCQs0TranscriptGood evening, Derek. It’s an evening interview. It’s good to see you. How are you doing today? I’m doing good.

Derrick: How are you?

Stephen: I’m great. Waiting hopefully for some snow tomorrow is cause I like snow in December.

Personally, ,

Derrick: I’ve had snow for two months, .

Stephen: Oh, wow. Where are you located? I’m in Montana. Montana. Ah, yes. If you want some snow, that’s a good place to be. The frozen North . Derek before we start talking about your book, why don’t you tell everybody a little bit about you who you are and what you like to do besides writing?

Derrick: I am Derek Hall. I’m a fantasy author at this point. I think I can claim author, but. I’m just a normal guy. I’m a working photographer, it professional, outdoorsy fellow, like to hunt, fish, camp, all that good stuff. And I’m a massive nerd. I play d and d. I do all of that fun stuff, video games, movies, all of it.

So whenever I have time, I do that. ,

Stephen: What do you do for it?

Derrick: Mostly hardware and infrastructure Networks, new machines, servers, desktops, that sort of thing. Build machines, custom machines.

Stephen: Yeah. I’m a programmer. I’ve been struggling with an s SSL issue today, . Ooh.

Derrick: Oh yes, I’ve done that too.

And I’m a hardware guy. , I’m not a software. Got it. I was, Messing around with Python and some other crap last night going, I don’t know what I’m doing. .

Stephen: Oh, I love Python. That’s a great language I discovered this year. So yeah, if you’re gonna get into it, that’s a good one to get into nowadays.

Yeah.

Derrick: That’s what I heard, but it didn’t help me out much. .

Stephen: Yeah. And you like the canvas stuff. Montana’s a good state for. Oh, it’s fantastic. Yeah. Yeah. That’s I’ve not, I don’t think I’ve spent any real time in Montana. I might have driven through an edge of it somewhere. Yeah, that was love camping.

I, I’ve got a small. Wooded area with a cabin on our property, oh, awesome. Everybody tells me to run electricity to it, and I’m like, no we’re keeping it more primitive. No.

Derrick: Yeah, no. I have a stove and firewood and I go there to get away. Why do I need power? ?

Stephen: Exactly. You get it. You understand?

Derrick: Yes. I completely understand.

Stephen: We’re it guys, we do tech all day. We need some time away, .

Derrick: Yep, exactly. Exactly.

Stephen: What, with all of that going on, what made you wanna start writing? And we’re gonna get into this a bit more on the second half when we talk about select writer. So just briefly a little bit what got you into wanting to write your current book?

Derrick: I didn’t want to write the book . It’s it itself upon me. So I, like I said, I played d and at the time I was running a group. As the game master and I did a lot of home brew, basically, meaning I made up the stories and the situations and worlds and all of that stuff and I was working on an idea for a new campaign, and the idea got both too big and too small for d and d at the same time.

It was too specific to let players come in and ruin it, and I just pretty much said, screw it, I’m gonna write it down. So eight months later I ended up with a novel and. Than another. And now another, I just finished book two on Sunday, .

Stephen: Wow, great. And that’s interesting cuz that’s one of the things when I talk to parents about encouraging their kids to write and getting into writing, that’s one of the things I encourage ’em to do.

I sometimes a little nervous about it cause I’m just waiting for the parents to like, oh my gosh, D and d that’s, still that hangover. It’s, yeah, exactly.

Derrick: There’s still some of that,

Stephen: but. The story making abilities and thinking exactly, the characters and all that is a great practice.

And I even tell parents, I’m like, look, you can do d and d, you don’t have to have all the demons in it or things like that. You can leave out what you don’t like and what your kids to be a part of. Yeah, that’s fine, but you need some sort of adventure, some sort of conflict, it’s a great way of building those stories.

Derrick: Yeah, exactly. It’s a really good way to learn the fundamentals of storytelling. Yes. So you know, you need the tension, you need the buildup, you need the character arc, you need the history, the backstory, the world building, all of that. And it’s a fantastic way to get into it. And it’s a

Stephen: great practice. If later you wanna get into storytelling for video games, because of the nature d and d, it’s not linear.

So it’s another good way to absolutely. Before we start talking too much tech and d and everybody turns off, let’s talk about your books. So tell us what are the books called and tell us a little bit about them.

Derrick: I have it started with an idea for d and that turned into. What I was hoping to be a standalone novel and ended up not being a standalone novel

Now I’m hoping it’s gonna be a trilogy, but who knows? , anyone who writes knows my pain.

Stephen: My short story I was making for an event in Kent turned into a seven book series, so

yeah, I can

Derrick: relate to that.

Stephen: Yeah. So tell us about them.

Derrick: I am a very traditional fantasy reader. I like things that fall into a very traditional fantasy, vain, small party going on an adventure, fighting bad guys, saving the world, that sort of thing. Very straightforward to style fantasy. Okay? Except I don’t take 10 pages to describe a single leaf

That’s what I did. I took my I have my main character, her name is a nara, and this is a, it’s a YA fantasy young adult fantasy. So she’s in her teens and is forced out of her home and sent on this grand quest and gets tied up in all sorts of things. So that’s what I did. That is entitled Kere Odyssey.

And that is book one of what I am calling the Crimson Prophecy. . Okay, nice. And then in the process of writing that, I added a side character that outgrew his part and ended up with a prequel. So that’s out there too. That is called the Trials of Tarsis. And that’s pirates and Revenge and Lost Love and all sorts of fun things in there.

Stephen: Hey, that’s a great thing. Fantasy you can handle just about any other genres. Oh, I know.

Derrick: I love it. I love it. Yeah.

Stephen: Okay, so you mentioned talking and others , what type of, what other books out there would you say are similar to yours? Similar to your writing, similar to your style?

Derrick: Similar to my writing.

I had a friend compare it to. Oh crap, I don’t remember the guy’s name. The Dresden? No. Oh, butcher. Yeah. I had a friend compare it to Butcher very loosely. I haven’t actually read Butcher in 10 years, so I couldn’t answer to that. But I’ve a lot of people, and I would say this is probably right there’s a big influence from Christopher Paulini and his inheritance.

Okay. That’s always been a favorite of mine, so there’s an influence from that. There’s a little bit of Allison Goodman. There’s a little bit of a lot of things. Like I said, I’m a nerd. It’s packed full of references and Easter eggs and all sorts of things like that. And nice. Yeah, it’s I don’t know how to describe that.

I leave it to the readers to do that. . Okay.

Stephen: It wasn’t Paulini like a teenager when he wrote that first book. The Dragon one. Yeah. It was 15, right? That was after my time. But it’s actually, I have a copy on my shelf. I just haven’t read

Derrick: it yet. I haven’t read it in a few years. I can’t speak to how well it holds up, but I’ve enjoyed it for many.

Stephen: Okay, there’s a good recommendation, . Yeah. So what have people been saying about your books? What’s the feedback been like?

Derrick: Feedback has been limited, but good, overall good. Lots of comments on great characters, great pacing, great plot. Everything moves and flows like it should and don’t get bogged down, and the only reason I put it down is so I actually sleep before I have to go to work in the morning, that sort of thing. That means a lot to me because I didn’t set out to actually publish this. I’m more set out to get a story outta my head and proved to myself that I could. So it’s really nice to have put so much work into something and have people be enjoying it.

Stephen: Yeah, that’s great. And I think there are other writers out there similar that you just gotta get it out. So did your gaming group read the

Derrick: stories? I’ve tried to get them to read the stories and. No . I think maybe one of them has read it. .

Stephen: No, it seems to happen. I kinda, I don’t push friends and family too much because when they feel pressured

Derrick: into it.

Yeah. I try not to, I have some I have some family that have read it. I know my mom read it. My sister was talking about reading it and that sort of things. I’ve got. Long distance friends that have read it, but most of the locals are either I don’t read books or I don’t have time.

So

Stephen: Yeah. That’s a cop out, but whatever. I know. . So have you thought of reversing and turning the stories into back into a d and d module adventure?

Derrick: So one of my characters in the, that made it into the stories is actually. A direct ripoff of one of my d and d player characters that got twisted and rearranged and put back together Frankenstein’s style and put into a book just because I liked his, the concept of the character and I liked the name and I wanted to use it.

Okay. And then, I don’t know, probably six, eight months ago, a friend of mine started another d and d campaign and I don’t have to DM this time, so I get to play and guess who I pulled out of the fridge? . Nice. All right. So I pulled my book character out this time and am playing the book character in the d and d game, which is a fun full circle for me.

Nice. Okay,

Stephen: good. Now, other than d n. What would you choose? Would you rather see your stories as a movie or a TV show? Movie. Movie. Why is that? You, ma you answered that, like you’d already thought about

Derrick: it. I have I’ve thought about it extensively. I even fantasy cast the whole thing for a critique group that I meant, but yeah.

Movie I think it’s better suited to a movie. Okay. I think a TV show would drag it out too.

Stephen: That I get a lot of people saying, oh, the new TV shows is great. You get more time to tell the story and expand. But there are just some stories that need that two hour time slot and that’s all it needs.

Derrick: , it might run a little longer than that and you’d probably have to break it up by book, but yeah, still I think a movie would be better suited.

Stephen: That’s good that you realize that and not just going for what the trend is. I like that. So where can we get the book? And do you have a website?

Derrick: I do have a website. Derek Hall, author.com is my website. There’s info there on the books. The characters, I’ve got a map up there. All sorts of fun stuff to check out. And. There’s even a link to my podcast, which I don’t know if you want me plugging that in here, but

Stephen: Yeah, go ahead. Please do. Let’s go bring that up

Derrick: actually.

Okay. Yeah, so I also have a podcast. I have my own with a very good author friend of mine Christina LaFave. We do the What If South Is Up Podcast, which is a, it’s a game show version of world building. So we will randomly ask a what if question and then apply it to the worlds that we’re writing and talk about it.

So it, it’s a lot of fun. We have a great time with it. Oh, that sounds great.

Stephen: I’ll have to make sure, we’ll get links in on the show notes for any fantasy readers that wanna check out on cool podcast. Yeah, absolutely. Great. So when you’re writing these episodes, , like what are some of the what if questions?

Derrick: What if the continents were actually on the back of giant creatures? What if everyone suddenly gained the ability to fly? What if magic completely disappeared from your world? That sort of thing. And it’ll stop and make you think because your writing is, you’re creating a world and writing a story as an author from a very specific sort of, Viewpoint, you have all the information in your head, and then when you’re suddenly presented with something you didn’t plan for you, you kinda sit and scratch your head and go I don’t know.

Why don’t you answer that first ?

Stephen: Yeah. That

Derrick: that’s, yeah. It’s helped us fill out our world building and. Build on what we already had and being able to riff off of each other and talk about it with each other. Somebody will bring up a point that we didn’t think about and be like, oh yeah, actually, that kind of changes everything so I love that. It’s a really fun exercise.

Stephen: Yeah, that sounds great. For authors, have you written any short stories based on these thinkings and episodes?

Derrick: Not based on the episodes. No, I have not. I struggle to write anything short as evidenced by my one book turned into who knows how many . I managed a novella that’s about as good as it’s gonna get

Stephen: Okay, got it. Alright, so what are your plans for upcoming books?

Derrick: Upcoming? I have. What I’m hoping to be a trilogy. I just finished drafting book two. It’s gonna go through proof and edit and betas and all that fun stuff in the next couple of months. And I have a whole nother book to write. And while book two is going through betas and edits and all of that, I’m planning to do a couple more novellas or maybe a handful of short stories depending on how they turn out.

Pulling characters and expanding on them in a way that the main story won’t let me do.

Stephen: Good. Nice. So how many do you have planned right now that you’re doing

Derrick: Three main novels and probably five or six. Little side off shoots. Okay. That’s good. And that’s just in this one world, if I get beyond that, I have a spreadsheet of projects, that I’m, yeah. Who doesn’t, some point, but yeah.

Stephen: Who doesn’t have all the stuff, it’s yeah, I could be writing until Doomsday.

Yeah. . Yep. So Derek who are some of your favorite authors and books that you’ve read? You mentioned a few earlier. those your favorites or do you have.

Derrick: They’ve definitely come highly regarded. Alison Goodman’s dragon Eye Chronicles, I think it’s called. There’s two of those. Dragon Eye Chronicles, dragon Eye series.

I don’t remember exactly. It’s Dragon Eye something. There’s two of those. Aon and ay and they are amazing. I tend to read a lot of more young adult sort of stuff. Paulini is a favorite Tok. Obviously you can’t love fantasy and not like Tok on some level.

Stephen: Let me ask you, are you yay or nay on Sumerian?

I

Derrick: tolerate the Somalian .

Stephen: Okay. I couldn’t get past like page two. My, my son, that’s his favorite token book.

Derrick: I’ve read it. I’ve. Everything that has tol on the cover at some point, including the histories and the appendices and all of that, because I went a little nuts in high school. I tolerate the Samilian and the lasers erian and history of Newman are and all of that fun stuff, but I love, Lord.

Stephen: I’ve read the Lord of the Rings a couple times and it, yep. It just wasn’t the series really for me. I enjoyed the early stuff, but once I got to Return of the King I honestly can’t tell you what happened In Return of the King, I was more of a Dragon Lance guy growing

Derrick: up. Yep. Dragon Lance is good.

I’ve only found those a few years. A ton.

Stephen: They just, white pigman just came out with a new one. Yeah, that it was okay. But it’s the beginning of a trilogy, so I’m hoping it steps up a little bit. And also the inklings that Toki and CS Lewis and a few other. Yeah they got together, there was a book written called Bander Snatch about the inklings.

And I interviewed that author on an earlier episode. So if you’re interested you should go check it out. Cause she had a lot to say about her research. I’ve already been there, ,

Derrick: I saw that and went straight for it. Oh good. Yeah, no, that was a good one. I enjoyed that. That was a lot of interesting information and abrupt book purchase

But yeah.

Stephen: really cool. She printed it through Kent State University Press, which is like eight miles from me. So it was just this whole weird thing. Cause she’s from Cleveland but doesn’t live there now. So I was like, okay, this is destiny .

Derrick: I know where you live now. Yeah,

Stephen: I live by Ken.

Everybody knows that. I talk about that all the time. Alright, so do you have a favorite bookstore that you like to go to close to where you.

Derrick: I live in a tiny little town that has more inmates than normal citizens. We are home to the state prison. Well, We have more towns, . Yeah, there’s more towns.

My tiny little town has one bookstore and I don’t get in there very often, but I do love it. It’s your, definitely your small town bookstore. It’s about half used and half new and everything’s dusty and feels like you’re going. End up getting into some sort of adventure if you turn down the wrong aisle.

And I love that place. It’s great. What’s it called? Browsing bison,

Stephen: books browsing b I love that. All right. I’m gonna put a link to, that’s great too. I like to encourage people to go check out little bookstores in their travels.

Derrick: Yeah, no it’s small for sure, but it’s got that small town

Stephen: charm.

Love me and my kids. When we used to go on vacation, that was always a destination. Find a local bookstore or two. Oh yeah. And go there. So yeah. I love that. Yeah. All right. So Derek to ramp up talking about your books and we’ll move on to author stuff. Let me ask you this one last question. . If someone came up to you and said, Derek, I heard you wrote some fantasy books.

Why should I get them and read them? What would you tell ’em?

Derrick: If you enjoy fantasy with an underdog, flavor and tie ins to real world problems, you’ll probably enjoy the book. Okay? If you feel like you’re being faced with something that you can’t do or don’t know how to do or think is too much for you, you’ll probably enjoy the. .

Stephen: Okay, great. I love that. Thank you.

View Details

OverviewSally graciously reads a couple stories from her book. If you haven’t listened to the interview, she relates other wonderful stories there also.

Her Bookhttps://www.amazon.com/I-Sang-That-Memoir-Hollywood/dp/1639886311?crid=399UON47GR4H6&keywords=i+sang+that&qid=1671717033&sprefix=i+sang+tha%2Caps%2C81&sr=8-1&linkCode=li2&tag=discoveredwordsmiths-20&linkId=0b6cef8862167cffa7c524c33abbec85&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_il

View Details

OverviewI Sang That is a personal journey behind the scenes into the world of music-makers who created the film scores, television music, sound recordings, commercials and concert evenings over the last sixty years. It’s about a Sally Stevens’ long singing career that began in 1960 with concert tours – Ray Conniff, Nat King Cole, and others – and later, solo work in concert with Burt Bacharach. Add to that thirty years of vocals and main titles for The Simpsons, vocals for Family Guy…vocals on hundreds of film and television scores and sound recordings, plus twenty-two years as Choral Director for the Oscars. It’s also the personal story of growing up in a “his, hers and theirs” family in the forties and fifties, and how a shy little girl became a second generation singer in the ever-evolving music business of Hollywood.

Sally’s very short list of credits:
Film Singer: Airplane!, Alien, Apocalypse Now, Caddyshack, Deadpool 2, Dr. Zhivago, The Exorcist, Elf, Forrest Gump, Grease, Mulan, The Princess Diaries, Shrek, Slap Shot, Star Trek

TV Singer : The Brady Bunch, The Carol Burnett Show, Family Guy, Happy Days, The Simpsons, True Blood, The X-Files

Music: Linda Ronstadt, Johnny Mathis, Liza Minelli, Sonny & Cher, Johnny Cash, Michael Jackson, Harry Connick Jr., Frank Sinatra

Sally Stevens is a singer/lyricist/choral director who has worked in film, television, concert, commercials and sound recording in Hollywood since 1960. She sings the main titles for The Simpsons and Family Guy and her voice can be heard on hundreds of film and television scores. She has put together choirs for John Williams, Jerry Goldsmith, Elmer Bernstein, and many others for film scores, and was choral director for The Oscars for 22 years. In the earlier years she toured with Ray Conniff, Nat King Cole and Burt Bachrach, and she has also written lyrics for Burt Bacharach, Don Ellis, Dominic Frontiere, Dave Grusin, and others.

Her short fiction, poetry and essays have been included in Mockingheart Review, The OffBeat, Raven’s Perch, Hermeneutic Chaos Literary Journal, Los Angeles Press, The Voices Project, and Between the Lines Anthology: Fairy Tales & Folklore Re-imagined.

Along with singing and writing, her other passion is photography, and her black & white photographs of film composers have been included in exhibitions at the Association of Motion Picture & Television Producers headquarters in Los Angeles, and at Cite de la Musique in Paris, France.

Her Bookhttps://www.amazon.com/I-Sang-That-Memoir-Hollywood/dp/1639886311?crid=399UON47GR4H6&keywords=i+sang+that&qid=1671717033&sprefix=i+sang+tha%2Caps%2C81&sr=8-1&linkCode=li2&tag=discoveredwordsmiths-20&linkId=0b6cef8862167cffa7c524c33abbec85&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_ilWebsitehttps://hollywoodfilmchoral.com

https://www.sallystevenswriter.com

https://www.sallystevensphotographer.com

Favoriteshttps://www.amazon.com/Selected-Poems-Wesleyan-Poetry-James/dp/0819511927?crid=3C5VYH7NQ7ETV&keywords=james+tate&qid=1671717421&sprefix=james+tate%2Caps%2C103&sr=8-3&linkCode=li2&tag=discoveredwordsmiths-20&linkId=6f5632de9dd6bf8c9fb46f0f083dd6a5&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_ilYouTubehttps://youtu.be/DwzuGwIzPUATranscriptSally, welcome to Discovered Wordsmiths. I’m very excited to talk to you today. It’s one of my other passions is music.

, and I’ve been getting back into playing more music again. So I think this will be a great discussion. I can’t wait to hear some of your achievements. And for those of everyone else joining in that has not read the press release or anything, Tell them a little bit about who you are and where you live and some of the things you like to do, which you’re not really an author, it just, you’re writing about your life.

Tell us a little bit about yourself.

Sally: Thank you. I live in Studio City, California, and I’ve worked in in the music business here in Hollywood for the last 60 years. Literally, the first film score I sang on was How the West was won in 1961. And some of the more recent ones were Deadpool two.

And nice . Yeah. I’ve never had to give a cutoff before on You Can’t Stop This Mother, ,

Stephen: that’s awesome. .

Sally: But it, it’s it’s been a wonderful journey. I’m blessed to have made it stretch this long. I think the reason it lasted so long was I started out for the first 25 years or so just singing.

I was a session, what they call a session singer, and I did solo cues. I did some solo cues in Clte and I sang the Lullaby, secretive Nim and that kind of thing. But most of my work has been Ched Coral underscoring in, back in the variety TV days, I worked on Danny Kay Variety show. I did some vocal cues for Murder She wrote, and that era.

We worked a lot in television and film scoring. And then about 25 years into that, Journey. I had a cha, I never wanted to, what they call vocal contracting. It’s like that’s when you put together a choir or a small group for a composer. And I’d never wanted to do that because I thought of it as something very political, and I thought the other contractors wouldn’t wanna hire me if I did it.

It turned out exactly the opposite. It’s really what allowed me to be active in the business this long because it gives you a closer connection with the composers, with the project. You have to shape the sound to be what the composer needs. That’s, that was a blessing too, to be, to begin that work.

And I’ve done vocal contracting, put choirs together for John Williams and Mark Shaman, Alan Sylvere. And,

Stephen: A lot of, can you say, John Williams, please? Please tell me some of the work you’ve done that he’s

Sally: composed. Oh the first thing I did with John was a film called Amistad. I don’t know if you’re, oh, wow.

It’s the I don’t, I can’t tell you the year exactly, but it was a Stephen Spielberg film. It was a brilliant film. About the story was that the journey of these people who were put on a slave ship and brought across the Atlantic, Loaded into the states here, and they were able to resist becoming that what, which they’d been brought here to become the slaves.

And there was a trial and they were able to return to their home country. It was very we, it was a wonderful project, and the reason I got to do it with John was because I had done a film for Han Zimmer called The Power of One. Ok. Which w which also involved African music, authentic African Music, and with with Amistad, it, it was.

It had to be authentic that we had someone on this, on the scoring stage to help us with the pronunciation of the words and so forth. But it also had it was John’s music, which also has a touch of the classic approach to music. So the choir was, I believe it was either 48 or 52 voices, and we worked about four or five days with those sessions.

We had, some days we had just a women’s choir, some days, a men’s choir, and then mostly it was combined and we also had a 48 voice children’s choir in that film. And it was it, there was one cue. That I went to John’s office to look at, and in those days he still used a movie Ola, which was the, there was none of this digital stuff.

And we looked at this cue, and this was a very emotional cue. There was a, on the ship, as they were coming across, wrapped in chains, was this lovely young woman who was about to be made a slave. And you could tell by the expression on her face, she was not on for this ride. And she was sitting on the edge of the ship, for the bow or whatever, the wall that goes around the deck.

And she was, and in slow motion with all these chains, she falls back into the ocean, into the water and waves and sinks down. And John had written a solo cue for that scene that shot, and he had to find the right voice. It had to have an ethnic quality, but it had to just be the right emotional voice.

So I gathered some demo tapes from singers here in la, which is part of what contractor does. And they were all wonderful, but they weren’t quite right. John listened to them all. I had to be in New York from meetings for the trustees of the after pension and health fund. So I thought while I’m here, maybe I’ll audition some of the young ladies at Julliard and that would be exciting for them.

And so we did that. But again, nothing was quite right. And then someone told me that there was a new opera director up in San Francisco and that I should reach out to him, and I did. And he told me about a young lady, Pamela Dillard. Who was on the road at that moment doing classical tours. And I contacted her.

She was in Birmingham, Alabama at the moment. And sometimes you just get this, you just know I talked to her, talking to her on the phone. I knew this was the right person, and she sent a recording and John loved it and he wrote two more solo accused for her for the film. So that was my first experience with John.

But John is the most gracious. I talk about him a bit, quite a bit in the book. He’s the most beloved, gracious, gifted man in the business, I think. And everybody who’s ever worked for him would say the same thing we had, there was one little solo cue that we had to audition a couple of boys for on a trailer that we did for one of the Harry Potter movies.

It was another kid’s. Yeah and we, I thought there were two little boys that I thought might be the right little boys, so I had them both audition, sing to the track for John, and rather than, have one of them be disappointed in front of their friends, he just said we’ll pay them both we’ll and then we’ll decide later who will use.

So I’m, that’s so typical of how he does.

Stephen: That’s nice. Yeah. So you’ve started off mostly as a singer and progressed into more of the administration work, but did you keep singing? Oh,

Sally: yeah. In order for you the, a vocal contractor is a sag after a covered job and you must be a singing, a performing part of the singer group.

And the reason that they put that into place back in the, or late fifties, I think that was added to the contract, was that there needs to be someone out there on the risers or in the room around the mic with the small group to communicate with the producer in the composer who is in the booth.

And you need somebody that’s knowledgeable about the community that’s part of the community. So the role of vocal contractors floated to the surface out of the community of singers and maybe composer, a particular composer or a particular music department would think someone was doing a really good job.

And that. That contact or relationship deepens. So that I, when I began contracting, and the first score I contracted for was a Danny Elman score. It was Beetlejuice and it was a small group. Just I think it was six or eight of us, I always forget. And then I had done also, I had done PeeWee’s, great adventure ,

Stephen: nice

Sally: and formally a wonderful singer and contractor by Ron Hicklin, who was very, we were all very much a part of the business in the wrecking crew days, if you know about the wrecking crew.

Oh yeah, he was, yeah, definitely side by side with them All from nine to, I, when I started to write this memoir, I’m getting off track. So pull me back if you need to. No, please. . But when I started to write this memoir I dived into my journals and date books that I’d kept over the years. I must have 50 of them.

And I found Paper calendar books, date books from 1965 and 69 72. And in, as I looked through those days, I had forgotten that the union covered activity in this town was so active, so busy that there would be a nine o’clock session, a 12 o’clock session, maybe a two or three o’clock session, or a five o’clock session and nine a seven to 10 session.

It went on from nine in the morning to midnight, many times, six days a week. And the, there were a lot. Nothing paid a whole lot cuz in those days, I, when I wasn’t contracting, you’d write down in the calendar book the time, the ca, capital studio two o’clock Johnny Mann contractor or whatever, but I didn’t know what the project was.

And then, but when I got my paycheck, then I’d indicate the amount that came and the date that it came. And some of those checks were $9 and 27 cents or . In those days the demos for jingles didn’t pay a lot, but the good thing was that it was all on contract. And if those jingles got used, you were paid according to how they were used, whether it was a national spot or, so the, there wasn’t there was a huge amount of activity. Of course, the pays were, the payment was less in those days, but it was the golden age I think of our

Stephen: business. I, yeah, I agree. Now the one thing you said I’m not sure I completely believe you, that really you had musicians come in for sessions at 9:00 AM that’s like an ungodly hour for a musician

Yeah. Late night 2:00 AM I could believe that , no,

Sally: we did we’ve worked at Western sometimes and often the artist, maybe if, like we did some stuff with Wayne Newton at the little studios at Western Recorders, and most of those were afternoon or evening. But a lot of the jingles were in the morning.

The orchestral things were, and the film scoring was often a nine to five day. It was an eight hour day where the orchestra and the choir or the singers worked together. Then it’s evolved more. There are still some sessions like that, but there are more sessions where the orchestra records by. By section, the rhythm and the horns and the strings and whatever.

And then the singers are brought in and they, we sing to those tracks. So it’s not all in one room like it used to be. Sometimes it is, but

Stephen: not. I was gonna say, doesn’t John Williams do that sometimes for the movies, he’ll be playing the movie and recording the score while watching it. Yes.

Sally: You’re on a big story scoring stage and also when I started in the, There was the MGM scoring stage, which is the first one I worked on, which it’s the place where Judy Garland sang over the rainbow, and that studio is now Sony. But the stage is just the same. The scoring stage is just the same.

There was mgm, there was Fox, the Fox Newman stage, which is still there in its glory, beautiful big stage. And Warner Brothers, which Clint Eastwood saved from extinction because the work had slowed down and there, so he the score there is now called the Clint Eastwood stage at Warner Brothers.

And it’s also the same big original space. And it accommodates a large orchestra. When we did the we did a I’m trying to think, we, John Williams projects, we did those vocal sessions as overdubs because the choir was so big, it was 50 52 voices, but many times we’ve done the choirs live with the orchestra.

Stephen: Nice. Nice. So you’re a musician, you’ve sang your whole life. , what was it like trying to put singing life into written life? Because that seems very oh, and by the way just the fact that you did anything with the wrecking crew is super impressive to me. I love those. So what was the it like trying to, did you wanna do like a story five version of your life from, point A to point B, or is it a collection of stories or

Sally: It’s basically first of all regarding the writing.

I, I I’ve always loved writing. I started writing when I was five years old, as soon as I knew what to do with the pen excuse. But, and I’ve also written, I had a ch in the beginning. I, can I go back to the very beginning? ? Oh yeah, please. When I was at ucla herb Alpert, Herb Alpert and Lou Oh yeah.

Lou Adler. They were partners together in a little office on Sunset Boulevard before either of them had their tremendous successes. And they were looking for young singer to sing a song that Herb Albert had written. So a manager took me to see him. I was 19 at the time, I think 20. And, um, and he thought I would be the okay person.

So he said, do you have a song for the other side of that, that in the, this is the days of single 45 records. So I went home and wrote another song and brought it back, and he liked it better than his song. So he said, write another song. And he recorded the two songs that I’d written, and that’s really what I wanted to do.

That was my dream. I wanted to be a, an artist, but I got a chance to go on the road with That song by that record by the way, got to number 10 in Connecticut, but that’s as far as it got . But I shortly thereafter had a chance to tour with Ray Keff on his first tour as an artist. And doing that, I met some of the other session singers and I met my first husband and then we ended up going on a long 47 1 nighter bus tour with Ray the next year later in that same year actually.

And I began to learn more about the session singing business. And, when you have a chance to do that it’s word of mouth. You, someone recommends you cuz you did a good job standing next to them or whatever, and it begins to open up, but it’s so competitive that if you don’t show up when you’re hired, they might find somebody else.

So that became really my focus and I was very blessed and very. Lucky to just have been at the right place at the right time in many cases. And you get to show what you do if it’s a high amdo or something, whatever it might be. Now I’ve forgotten the question. Oh, the right,

Stephen: we were going back to the beginning.

I was asking about getting the singing life onto the written

Sally: page. Over the years, I, I kept writing, I did the writing workshops and so forth cuz I loved it. But I also always wrote poems and I always wrote lyrics. And the first chance I had to write Lyric for a film was a film called On Any Sunday.

And it was the sort of the documentary about motorcycling that Steve McQueen was featured in. And that was for composer Dominic Frontier. And I did several other film projects for him. And then I had a chance to write a lyric for Dave Gren for a film called Absence of Malice. And it was just a little source cue.

It was a, it was a. Christmas song with Chil where children were singing, walking into a Catholic church and 20 years later, and he and Dave had wanted to write something that sounded kind of old English a little bit, so we did that. So about 20 years later, Dave was involved with James Taylor’s first Christmas album and he reached out to me and sits, Alec, can you write a second verse for our little Christmas song?

And so I did, cuz it had been very short in the beginning and James loved it. And it was in his first, and in some of the other versions of his Christmas album it’s a song called Who Comes This Night. And so that the writing was always a part of what I was doing, but in a very small way. It was just special moments, and when I sat down to write the memoir, it. I had written, over the years at those writer workshops, I’d done memoir workshops and poetry and fiction and essay and everything, and I’d occasionally write a chapter or two that I thought was an interesting story to tell. So I had some of those together during the pandemic.

It was a wonderful time to edit all this stuff together. And I had two, two people that were hugely helpful. One is a wonderful writer himself named Gordon Meninga. And he has, he was head of the writing studies at Collge and he also taught at the University of Iowa at Summer Shops workshops. And another one was Laura Munson, who’s a woman writer up in Montana, who’s had a couple of very successful books.

And I sent the memoir to each of them. Gordon sent me back many comments, can you expand on this or what, that kind of thing. During the pandemic though, I, it was when I had a chance to pull this all together. And coincidentally, when you do something for 55 or 60 years, it become, for me, it just becomes your life.

That my community of singers became my family. I was also very active in the the governance of my unions, screen Actress Guild and aftra, which about 10 years ago merged into SAG aftra. And so I was on boards and committees, and I was participating in the negotiations and everything. And when that begins to slow down as it does, as you have to expect that at a certain age, and there are young singers that have begun to do some contracting, and they, they have to, they’re entitled to their time.

But it was very painful because in the early days we were very considerate of one another. We didn’t talk about other jobs when we were there on the stage. But then Facebook happened, , and you get to see all these parties that you’re not invited to as that begins to happen. And it was very painful and it was helpful during the pandemic when things got shut down for six months or so, and you didn’t have to look at Facebook and see that happening.

And it gave me a period of time to adjust to what was really going on in life for me. It’s not over yet. I just worked on a wonderful project for Seth McFarland this last week. But it’s not like it was, and the first chapters of the book are from today. It’s how you feel when you realize that things are changing and you have to adapt.

And then I went back and just started with childhood and the family stuff and kind of got into, I think they’re probably 10 chapters before I’m really into the business stories. But my, both my parents and my stepfather were all singers, all also. And my, I just recently learned from on Facebook I came in contact miraculously by to this wonderful lady who, Laura.

Oh my God. This is the time of life when you can’t remember names.

Stephen: Oh, I can’t remember ’em. So it’s not just

Sally: and she’s a, I’ll think of her name in a minute, but she’s a wonderful writer. And I had posted something somebody else had said, oh, I think I know Kenny Steven’s daughter, somebody posted something about Bob Stevens, who was a session singer and someone this guy said think I know Bob’s daughter Sally.

And I posted, no I’m not Bob’s daughter. I was Kenny Steven’s daughter. And the, and this lady happened to see that she writes about the early film days the actors and singers of the thirties and forties. and she took, she wrote me a note and said, I was a huge fan of your father, Kenny Stevens.

And she started to write an article about him, and she has sent me pictures and film clips and sound clips of things I never knew he had done. Wow. It was just amazing. Wow. Anyway, that’s I knew that there was such a job as a session singer, because both my parents did it.

My mom’s sang on The Wizard of Oz and,

Stephen: nice. Nice. What type of feedback are you getting from people who have already read the book?

Sally: Wonderful kind feedback. I’m just I can’t believe it. So many friends and people in the business and some people I don’t know, have posted on Facebook. I just ordered the book or just started it, or I’m enjoying it.

It’s I’ve had very good feedback. I’m very grateful for that. I never expected it to be a widely read book. I just thought it’d be something interesting for people who wanted to get into the business or who particularly love the business. And that’s probably what it is, but it’s it’s been very warmly received.

Great.

Stephen: What I gotta ask, we, you’ve mentioned a lot of great movie composers. , what was probably your favorite thing to sing at some movie, some score or

Sally: whatever. Oh my gosh. It, I’ve sued such beautiful music where it’s hard to say which is the favorite and a lot of things come to mind.

One of the early films I did for Danny Elsman was D Edward Scissor Hands. And beautiful movie. We used a 20 voice women’s choir group and it was this beautiful I the tone that I love from the Sopranos, which is straight tone and floaty and beautiful. And so that was very special. Everything I’ve done for John has been very special.

I did a project for Mark Shaman. We did this, a couple of vocal cues from South Park, which was just fun because of the, you don’t Blame Canada and oh, I love that song. . We did that in the session. Then we did that for the Oscars. I also was a choral director for the Oscars for about 22 years, and we did an on-camera choreographed version of that south blame Canada version.

And Robin Williams was, did the solo and we were all characters behind him. But that’s another blessing in my life. Was that to work with Robin Williams. Nice. I worked on the last TV series that he did called The Crazy Ones. I love

Stephen: that show. Yeah. Yeah. It was very sad when,

Sally: heartbreaking.

Yeah. You lost him.

Stephen: Okay, so you mentioned South Park, Uhhuh . I love that because you’re talking about Amistad, which is a very deep movie. It’s not comedy or anything. No. And in South Park is just totally off the rails irreverent. But the music that Matt and Trey do in that, that their show and on that movie, and Stu, it’s amazing music.

Really. It’s very

Sally: well done. Yes, absolutely. I’ve also I haven’t worked on the series, but I have worked on, from inception of the shows, I’ve worked on The Simpsons and Family Guy and American Dad. I the main title for The Simpsons that I sing with Danny and Susie Stevens, Logan, my daughter also sang on that.

that air, that main title has been running for 33 years. And the Family Guy main title I also sang on, but I worked on the shows as the music team for Simpsons. Sadly changed about two, three years ago. So I’m not doing the vocal cues within the shows any longer. But we did all the special just the silly songs, that the Village people would sing or that, and once in a while I’d do a sound alike end title.

I do, I did a little Barbara Streisand version of people and stuff like that. And for Family Guy we do, we’ve done cues. One of them was You’ve Got aids, which was a scene in one of the episodes. But ironically, Can I tell you a story about that?

Stephen: Please. . Anyone that would wanna read your book, this is what they wanna hear.

This is what would interest them. So

Sally: please. Now some of these little stories I don’t break, go into detail with on this, on the page. It’s more general. But first of all, Seth McFarlane is one of the most amazing, also the kindest, greatest guys in the

Stephen: business. Yeah. He’s, I love his, he’s amazing.

Sally: Christmas album. Yes. He’s a wonderful singer. He values quality music. He’s insisting on still in these days, using live orchestras to score the Orville, the family guy, and oh, love that. Has some wonderful composers that do his scoring, Walter Murphy. And so anyway we did this little song for the call.

It was, we’ve got AIDS and then a few, and one of the singers on it was a dear gentleman who who was a gay man. And it was sensitive. Cue for him to do, and some, a couple of years later, one of the there was an interview show on one of the public tele or the NPR stations or something, and I just happened to listen to it cuz I’m addicted to NPR R And it was a young man telling this story about hi himself, having had aids and come through it.

But it changed the way he related to people as he met them. And he met, he had met a young man that he was very interested and wanted to know, and, but he was concerned about how to share this information, that he had aids and they were watching television one night and a rebroadcast of this episode came up and it allowed him to have the conversation with this young man.

And I when there was a request even after that time. To reuse, to reen that cue for some other project. And I had to get permission of all the singers, which were protected by sag so that they and this one young man was, he just had over the years beat himself up for being on that song.

And he didn’t wanna allow it to be used. But I was able to share that story with him. And he said, okay we’ll let I nice find, they can do whatever they want. But, it’s it becomes very personal sometimes these projects. And that, when we did South Park Mark Shaman kindly that, that couple of the days before the scoring called to tell me that there was some language in the queue that some people might be offended by.

So to be careful who I hired it with who I booked it with. And there was another episode of the Family Guy where we had a lyric that was, SAC religious in, its in its satirical way. And I knew it was. It was not gonna be something that this one singer wanted to sing. So I had, I just said you can sit out sit this one out.

And we did it without him and then he came back and we did the rest of the cues.

Stephen: I do another podcast with a friend of mine. It’s all about geeks and nerd topics and stuff, . And one of the things we discuss quite often is how comedy is a reflection of our society and it can point out the faults in our society in a way that just editorialization does not.

And absolutely, yeah, that’s some of these shows, like The Simpsons, the things they do South Park too, the things they do in it to point out the stupidity of our life and our culture sometimes.

Sally: Absolutely. Absolutely. It allows topics to be discussed and. Positions to be stated in a way that it’s not gonna offend The people who don’t particularly feel that way.

They’ll they’ll go to the humor of it, or they’ll miss the boil together, . But it does allow those, you’re absolutely right. Yeah.

Stephen: Now did you write the whole book or did you use somebody like, as a ghost

Sally: writer or anything like that? I wrote these, the book, and I didn’t want any help

Good. I like that. Yeah.

Stephen: Thank you. Okay. I’ve been dying to ask. , so did you get to do anything on any Star Wars movie? Yes. Thank. Oh, that’s awesome. I love that. . What, what can, what did

Sally: you do? I sang on a couple of them. I sang on the series, but, I gotta tell you, I’m 83.

I will be 83. Next week on Thanksgiving and thankful. Happy birthday. Thank you. And so my memory for the early projects the ones that I wasn’t contracting, I sometimes I have to look at the list of credits to remember what I did or what I

Stephen: just loved. . You have a huge list, so that’s understandable.

Regardless of age, it’s much more forgiving, being 85.

Sally: I love that. I got another story to tell you about John. I sang for his one of his earlier contractors, Janine Wagner, who was Roger Wagner’s daughter, and she did some of his earlier films. And then he’s used the Master Corral several times too.

But what was I going to just tell you? Oh my god. John Williams story. Okay. . So for the second to the most recent Star Wars film Jedi, something about the Jedi. The Last Jedi. Last Jedi, thank you. My phone rang one day and. It was John and he said, hi, baby. How many low B flats do you think we could find?

And it was like, John, and this story is in the book. It was, that was, he was talking the way he would talk to his five-year-old granddaughter. It was just, that’s what he does. He’s just he calls everybody baby. And so we did, I found 21 low B flat guys with the base in the base community here, and it, that’s pretty low register.

And what John had written for that film was not he had several cues, but most of them were this very sound, which they also used a couple of those cues in the next star Wars, the more recent one they licensed to reuse. But yeah, that I’ll never forget that. Call .

Stephen: Nice. So we were talking a little bit earlier about the Iowa Writers Conference, Uhhuh, or workshops.

Is that

Sally: the what the, there the program is the Iowa Summer Writing Festival, actually. Yes.

Stephen: That’s it. So you’ve been involved with that for a very long time. Like you said, you’ve not been a writer by career, but you’ve been involved with writing. So tell us a little bit about that and what you did with

Sally: that.

Absolutely. It, as you, and I’m sure a lot of your listeners know Iowa, the University of Iowa is legendary. They’re I had known about it and I. And I knew I couldn’t go away long enough to do a writing program, but I thought I’ll investigate the writers festival writing festival.

So I reached out to them and they asked me to send some material, which for most of those workshops you don’t have to do. But I sent it and I got accepted into the M f a poetry program accidentally , but I couldn’t stay away from town. That was that was 22 years ago, and I was very busy and you just, you couldn’t go outta town that long.

So I, I did get finally into the writing festival workshops, and those are like five day and two day workshops over, they start in June and they go through mid-July and you can choose, two or three or one or all of them. So over the years, I’ve done writing workshops that poetry, short fiction memoir, personal essay, flash fiction.

Flash fiction came into being somewhere along the way. And I did a ton of writing, but I didn’t really submit much of anything for the first 10 years. And finally at the end of one of my week workshops, this Gordon Meninga, this dear guy, said, you gotta start sending stuff off. So I did. I sent a couple of flash fiction slash prose poems.

They were just little, like couple hundred words. I sent him off that night and then was to head home the next day. And the next day I got a, an acceptance email from the place I’d sent it to, which was a journal called Hermaneutic Chaos Literary Journal. And they were based in New Zealand. I don’t know how I found it.

It was online or something, but so that, that was so fun. So I thought, oh, this is great. . And then the, I got about over the years, I’ve had about 12 little stories and poems and essays landing in various journals. But the best lecture I ever heard about writing was in the earlier days there in Iowa. They did something called the elevens every morning, which is during the week one of the instructors would come and di give a lecture, and then the workshop started in the afternoon.

And this one instructor walked into his podium with a cardboard box full of letters. And he said, if you don’t get this many rejection letters back, you haven’t even tried. So I am not somebody that was good and still am not good about submitting. And I, it really, you really have to find your reader.

I’ve learned that you have to find the publication that, that, that likes the kind of stuff you write. And in that, Project, you have to do a lot of reading. So it’s it’s and the workshops were fabulous. The workshops were wonderful. I did a few zoom over the lockdown, but it’s not the same as being in the room.

You really get the vibe of how someone feels about your writing or how they don’t feel agreed. And along that way, and I’m sure you’ve heard this from other writers too you reach a point where you have to realize that every comment in those feedbacks, it shouldn’t send you flying to the moon or into the dark cave.

You begin to trust yourself. And I have in addition to the memoir, I have another work that’s long novel. It’s about 90, 80, or 90,000 words, which is a bit long for a novella, but it’s something I literally started back in the eighties when I was seeing a, an a, a counselor who was brilliant but nutty as a fruitcake.

And he would, you’d walk into his office and he would say, ah, you’re toxic. Toxic, you gotta go walk the stairs. And so I’d cycle the two or three fours of stairs and come back in until I wasn’t toxic anymore. And one day I was writing, I wrote this silly little story, which turns out to be the beginning of the me of the novella.

And it’s about a psychiatrist and a patient, and she walks into his office and the first thing he notices is that she’s got a fresh bullet wound in her forehead. And she says, oh, it was just my husband and I taking pot shots at each other. We’ll be, he was fine when I saw him lying in the driveway. And I was trying to be sarcastic with him, but he said, if you wrote a few pages like this every week at the end of the year, you’d be cured and you’d have a book.

So , I kept writing about this lady and it’s a kind of magical realism book, but she has a lot of adventures. So that’s my next project. I gotta get that one out into the world.

Stephen: Therapist inspired stories, ?

Sally: Yes. Therapist on fire. And at the end of the book he’s he gives up his therapy and is playing accordion for parties and she’s all better.

Stephen: So do you think the creativity of singing applied to your writing? Do you feel that it’s just another avenue to express yourself? Or was it something you had to work at?

Sally: I think, I think it. I think I was very blessed. My mother was also always had wanted to be a writer. She ended up, after her singing career, she taught writing at north Hollywood High School here.

And she books were, we never had a lot of money in my household. It was a, his, hers and ours family. My mother and father were divorced. She married my stepfather. He had two children by his first marriage, and then they had three more children. So we were a family of six kids. They worked freelance with their singing and it wasn’t always good times, but the one thing I remember is that books, she, they belonged to the Book of the Month Club. They b and she was a beautiful pianist and she also played the piano at night. But she, there were books everywhere in our house and there are in my house. Some of them are hers. And I guess I just the language part of it was never a problem for me.

And I, it, was it Stephen, when I knew we were gonna have this lovely talk today I woke up for some reason thinking this morning about the fact that writers, no matter what they’re writing about, are writing about their own lives in some way. And the emotions that we feel or we understand or we don’t understand, those are the things we write about.

The experiences will translate them into another character maybe. Everything in Mrs. Billingsley was based on things that had happened to me, but I just tweaked them a little bit. And it’s interesting that, let me gr I’m gonna grab a book. Okay. The actor Jim Carey he wrote a book a couple years ago that was release.

Called memoirs and misinformation. And when I saw that, I thought, oh, damn, I’m gonna get blamed for copying Jim Carey if I ever get Mrs. Billingsley out their end of the world , because he, it’s a fun book. But it’s, and I think you was talking about the connection between music and writing, and I think that there’s a, an instinctive kind of connection between the rhythm of a sentence.

The phrasing. The and I, and one other thing that I’ve, I learned at the workshops, which is very helpful with poems or any kind of writing, is to read them out loud to yourself. Read the, read your pages. Because I, I find things when I do that, that I miss on the page. We get so used to looking at the page.

That you don’t see it anymore. You just know, oh yeah, that’s what I was talking about, blah, blah, blah. And,

Stephen: agreed. So you mentioned you’ve read a lot. What are some of your favorite books and authors? No,

Sally: I was afraid you’d ask that , because I can’t remember anything you say. I James Tate wrote is a poet, and he was the first poet I wrote that he, his book of I’ve forgotten what the title of the book is, but he wrote prose poems that were little stories almost.

And some of them were fantastic, funny, interesting satirical. And that encouraged me with my flash fiction and poet, some of my pros poems. Mostly honestly I realize I have, I love reading biographies, memoirs and autobiographies. I love reading about people. I could go look at my shelf bookshelf in the hall, but I don’t wanna leave the screen too long.

I and I, Kurt Vonnegut, I read his it was the famous book that he wrote about the the war the Fahrenheit,

Stephen: Four, that, that was Bradberry Fahrenheit 4

Sally: 51. Oh, that, that’s not the book I’m thinking of. Yeah. Anyway,

Stephen: I am,

Sally: yeah. Anyway, I love Kurt Vonnegut. I

Stephen: gosh. I’ll look it up.

I can include a link. I’m, I haven’t read a whole lot of Vate, so I’m not familiar with his work, but I know a lot of writers love his work.

Sally: Yeah. And what I was fascinated by was an article that I read about him. It might have been an excerpt from a memoir or an interview that he’d done, but it was, it came the book I’m thinking of came about through his own experiences in the war, in, in Battlefield and seeing his colleagues wounded or killed, or, and I thought, I then I began to worry about, oh my God, you gotta have really amazing experiences to write fiction, to build on that kind of stuff.

And this is embarrassing because I can’t remember anything

Stephen: No that’s not a problem. I don’t remember everything, so I’ll just, I’ll look it up. I’m sure I can. Figure out which book it was.

Sally: Yeah. But there are so many the writers. I haven’t, I haven’t read as many of the classics.

I’m sure as I should have. I’ve gotten back into Shakespeare a little bit and I took a course, Shakespeare course in college, but of course I don’t remember a lot of

Stephen: it. Did you ever sing anything for any of the Star Trek movies or TV shows?

Sally: The TV series, yeah. They, there were they used vocals as underscore a lot in those, some of those projects.

So there weren’t sos but Jerry Goldsmith was he, did he, what was his, yeah, he did the series.

Stephen: Yeah. Yeah. Cuz I interviewed Arman Shimerman who uh, did QU on DS nine. He wrote A book where he took Shakespeare’s tempest characters and put it into the history of the time period.

It’s, yeah. So I did talk to him. So it’s a connection

Sally: there. . Oh yeah. How fun. One of the musical projects I’m working on to help get accomplished as a dear friend, a Coral, a classical composer, has written three coral settings of three of Shakespeare’s sonnets. And we’re gonna record those in a few weeks with the choir here.

And that’s kinda nice. Fun. Wow.

Stephen: Nice. So do you have a website, Sally?

Sally: I do. I have several . The I have www Hollywood film Corral, C h o r a l e.com. And that’s something that again through John. I did a concert with him back in 97, I think it was. Some music from Amistad and other films at the Hollywood Bowl, and they needed the name of the choir for the program.

And I didn’t, we didn’t have a name. They were just freelance singers that I’d gathered together. So I asked John if that would be okay and he said yes, and you could, you should trademark that name because you could record under it. So I did. So we’ve been able to use that for screen credit all these years cuz the studios wanna know that you own something before they put it on the screen.

So there’s that website. Then www sally stevens writer.com and sally, www sally stevens photographer.com/film scoring H t M. Htm. Okay. And those are the writers, the workshops, the websites, none of them are really up to date cuz I’ve been focusing on other things.

The Hollywood Film Corral has a lot of information about film scores that I worked on and contracted and but it’s missing a couple of the more recent ones. And then the Sally Stevens writer, I posted a lot of, some blogs, some poems, some links to other writing that’s been published. And then the photography website is not completed.

I, but I in 19 let. It would’ve been 20 years, 27, 22 years ago on my 60th birthday, I gave myself a couple of gifts. I did a cabaret symposium workshop on the East coast. I did a photography workshop in in the Lair Valley. And I had started taking photography at Essence cuz I’d always been interested in that.

So in about 2002 or three I began doing black and white photography shots of composers on the scoring stages as they were at work. Oh, wow. And the photography website has about, I think about 30 of those with a little bit of credits about the composer. The first one I photographed was Jerry Goldsmith on the Paramount stage, which is no longer there.

And then I photographed John Williams and Steven Spielberg on the so Sony stage. Nice. And and then and over the years, Alan Sylvere, mark Shaman James Newton, Howard, James Horner just Wow. Tyler Bates, the more recent composers. So that’s the website that deals with the photographs of the composers.

Stephen: That’s awesome. Yeah. You’re naming all these composers cuz you know I watch a movie and I’m like, oh, I gotta see who was the composer.

Sally: Yeah. It’s so funny. In the olden days you, the lights were off until the credits ran. Now the lights come up, the minute the credits start and people walk out and they I can’t, I’m glued to my seat.

I have to see who the musicians contractor was and who the orchestrators were and the engineers and blah,

Stephen: blah, blah. To be fair in the older days the credits would last a minute and a half. Now they last 12 minutes

Sally: That’s true. That’s true. And the portable potties get credit and everything gets, everybody gets credit.

Stephen: Yeah. All I just gotta ask, say no but you mentioned The Simpsons. , you sang a little bit. Do you, would you sing just a line or two that you did for The Simpsons? Because my, that’s one of my son’s favorite shows. Oh

Sally: the, just the main title. The Simpsons. The Simpsons.

Stephen: Oh, it’s all, I love that. He’s gonna be tickled to hear about that. And I love all the Star Wars stuff. I appreciate you talking. We didn’t really split it up into two different episodes. We talked about your book in the d writer stuff kind of all mixed up. So a little bit different of an episode, but I think that’s great because your stories are wonderful.

I love that.

Sally: I hope I didn’t get too far off track. I not

Stephen: at. Not at all.

View Details

OverviewCaroline has a serious job and working on her author career is serious work. Which is in contrast to the fun writers achieve when writing. We discuss how authors can balance the two.

Her Bookhttps://www.amazon.com/Ecological-Memory-Caroline-Ailanthus-ebook/dp/B07VBQ68Y2?crid=RI9X6HSRNSR7&keywords=ecological+memory&qid=1671047496&s=books&sprefix=ecological+memory%2Cstripbooks%2C135&sr=1-1&linkCode=li2&tag=discoveredwordsmiths-20&linkId=e5887e868b2ab1de5c849d80965ade06&ref_=as_li_ss_ilYouTubehttps://youtu.be/xm7DBxbf-h8TranscriptBefore we get to our topic of playfulness and seriousness do you have any favorite software or services that you like to use?

Caroline: Yeah, and this is gonna sound a little bit strange cuz I, writers love to talk. This fancy thing and that fancy thing that, you know I use one of the, one of the free Microsoft Word, knockoffs, office, Libra office, open office, maybe Open, yeah.

One of those. And that’s fine. . I also use a lot of spreadsheets, so Excel or a Sheep Knockoff a free knockoff thereof. That’s how I organize my writing, and occasionally I’ll use index cards and graph paper and so forth. And for each book as I’m writing it, I have one file that has the.

I have one file that has odds and ends, scenes that occur to me that I wanna write down, but I’m not there in the book yet. So I put them in this other file, and when I get to that point, I can cut and paste them in. I have various kinds of outlines. I don’t outline prescriptively, it’s not like I write up an outline and then follow it.

I write up outlines in order to figure out what I’m. and then I go and write something out, . So there’ll be outlines and there’s often files that include backstories for characters world building notes, all kinds of stuff like that. Research notes for what, whatever research I’m doing.

And then the Excel files.

like I might have characters names across the top years across the side and then what each character is doing it each year. So I can look across and say, okay, it’s 2000, whatever, where is everybody? And things like that, keep me organized. So it’s a lot of files on two very. Sort of normal programs.

Stephen: Got it. Okay. That sounds great. And I like that you’re using open office in Lieber. Because I work with kids and I talk to parents and recommend those. I’m like, you don’t have to pay for Microsoft or whatever. They work just fine. So they do. I like that. Yeah. So you’ve written two books.

You’re working on a third. What are some things you’ve learned that you’re doing differently?

Caroline: Between now and the first book, the importance of having an elevator speech. Okay, nice. An elevator speech. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the term. Not everybody is. It’s the way you explain what you’re doing to somebody you’ve bumped into on an elevator, so it’s like the 22nd version. The, the 22nd long version of the, and my first book doesn’t have an elevator speech. I didn’t know it was important to have one. And the thing is impossible to describe succinctly. It’s, I don’t wanna, I don’t wanna badmouth my own book. , it’s sprawling, it’s got a lot going on in it and there’s no simple way to summarize all of it.

And that made the, when I went into doing revisions and editing, that made it harder because, if I can’t explain it to somebody quick, I can’t explain it to me quick either. And it just made it a lot harder. So since. One of the first things I do say, okay what’s this? Book’s, elevator speech,

And it makes writing easier, not just, it makes marketing easier, but it makes the writing easier too. That’s a big,

Stephen: easy. Okay. And what are you doing to market

Caroline: your book? Not enough. Podcast, trekkies will recognize this phrase, darn it, I’m a writer, not a marketer.

Stephen: right?

Caroline: But, talking about it on podcasts, I’m trying to learn how to do ads on Facebook. I did a series of library. That worked pretty well. What I would love to do is I would love to hire somebody to take care of this for me. Somebody who actually knows what they’re doing and they have a brain that can, it’s just their cup of tea, their thing, they’re good at it.

I don’t have the money. So if anybody works on commission for this sort of thing, I can offer you a. Come on over. I do have a marketing assistant and he helps keep me organized and focused and he, he is wonderful. If you wanna go, if you wanna hire him, get in touch with me and I’ll send you the link to his work.

He, nice. For what he does. He is wonderful.

Stephen: Okay. All right. So our topic that we’re going have a little discussion on is playfulness and seriousness, which I and I love the fact that you’re a scientist. So people have this stereotype vision of, the serious scientists in the white lab coat or all the time, which probably doesn’t fit when you’re talking about ecology and c conservation, cuz you’re probably outside more than in a lab.

So why did you choose this? And why does it apply to authors?

Caroline: First of all, when it comes to ecology don’t picture white lab coats, picture jeans and flannel and waiter

Stephen: boots, sometimes . Yeah.

Caroline: Nice pair of sneakers. Anyway part of all of these. Writers groups on Facebook and you think that you post a question and 10 zillion people jump on and answer and I think it’s really useful. And I notice what kinds of questions keep coming up, especially from the really new writers, people who haven’t published before or haven’t published very much, and they’re just really trying to find their.

Or people wanting to figure out how to help their kids. Hey, my 10 year old daughter wants to write a book and how do I help her? And a lot of ’em get this, an important thing backwards. They’re talking about getting a literary agent for a 10 year old or trying to figure out What genre to write in based on what’s marketable or how to do formatting and stuff and, no, that’s the wrong kind of serious.

And then they don’t do the right kind of serious because these people, a lot of them, they’re not hiring editor. They’re not hiring writing teachers. They post cover images for, to get feedback on ’em. And these things were obviously put together like in Photoshop or something by

Stephen: serial killer do doing mashup work.

Caroline: Yeah, that’s the wrong kind of playful. It’s not even playful, it’s the wrong kind of, not serious.

The thing is for people who are just starting writing, and I mean everybody who’s writing actually, but especially for people just starting, it’s really important to give yourself time to be a kid. Even if you’re 67, you know the great thing about being a kid or you know about being some kids anyway, is that a lot of children.

They understand that they’re not turning out adult work. When some, when a kid, I’m gonna write a book and they get the construction paper and the stapler and, crayons, Ivanni, who does this? They know this is not gonna be on the New York Times bestseller list. They’re not looking for an agent.

They, they know this is not what adults mean when they mean writing and publishing a book, but they do their. And they’re proud of it. And they come. Aunt Caroline and Caroline, I wrote a book. You did. That’s awesome. That’s amazing. That’s so cool. And you have to do that. No matter how old you are, you have to give yourself time to play, to do the best that you possibly can and not care whether it’s good enough.

Who cares whether it’s good enough, right? It doesn’t matter. . What matters is you’re having a good time in your learning. That’s what’s important. Figure out if it’s marketable later. Figure out if you’re gonna publish it later. A lot of people write five or six books before they get around to one that’s publishable and that’s okay.

You don’t have to publish to be a writer. You just have to write. And so that’s what I mean by playfulness and then the serious side of the coin. You have to approach it like a professional. If you’re gonna be a professional. If you don’t wanna be a professional, that’s fine.

You don’t have to be. But if you wanna publish, it has to meet certain CA standards. You have to hire an editor. I don’t care if you are an editor, , you have to hire one. Exactly. Everybody is better if they have an editor other than themselves looking over. And you have to be able to not take it too personally.

You have to be able to let editors say, okay, this is not good enough. . If you’re if you take that as, I’m not good enough, you’re not gonna be a professional writer. You have to get to the point where somebody can say your book isn’t good enough. And it of hurts to hear that, but you get over that and you go, oh, thank you for telling me.

Now I can figure out how to make it better.

Stephen: Yep. And what you mentioned about kids I’m working with kids. I wanna help show that kids can write and not necessarily be published, but they get the practice in, they get the experience in. So when they’re adults, they’re like, I know I can write. It’s time to be serious about it.

And I think part of what I also try and do in my own writing is show that there’s still magic in the world and that kids. Know that magic, but we lose it as an adult and as a writer. We need to recapture that sometimes. They’re, I’m sitting here watching the snow and I’m fascinated by it.

I love the snow. That’s magical to me. And adults miss that. They just get grumpy and it’s cold and they, but look around at the world. It’s fun. I’m going to bet some of your playfulness is taking your dogs out into the leaves, the snow for a walk and things like that. Would you agree with that?

Caroline: No I would agree with that, but I would disagree with something else. Okay. Yeah, everybody says that kids have this sense of magic that adults don’t. And I remember being a kid and I remember ha, I had a sense of magic in some ways, but I was also , Way too serious about way too much and took way too many things, far too literally.

And the kids around me, oh my gosh, I was constantly being mistreated by other kids who just did not have much of a sense of much really . And, kids have a sense of magic because they don’t know any. They don’t really know what’s real and what’s not and what’s possible and what’s not. So you give them an idea like, Hey, Santa Claus and flying reindeer.

They’re like, okay, why not? It’s not any weirder than anything else I’ve been learning about the world, , right? And things are new and they’re less self-conscious. I remember one time a friend of mine and I and her baby daughter, Were we went to the mall just before Christmas and we walked into, the, this area that was all decorated for the holidays and me and the baby simultaneously said, wow.

But you get older, you grow up. And yet some people, they don’t turn into grownups. They turn into. And that’s not good. Do not do

Stephen: that. That’s my son. He’s 22 and we tell him he is a 75 year old man. .

Caroline: Yeah. I just, you don’t do that. You don’t have to do that. It’s just not fun. But you get older, that’s not the only way to grow up.

The other way to grow up. Is you learn not to take yourself in. Too seriously. Exactly. You learn that if something, see, when you’re a kid, if something goes wrong, you don’t know that it’s gonna go right later. Cause you don’t have the experience, you haven’t had time. You get to be my age.

I’ve had days that just sucked. They’re just awful. No. How can it ever get any better than this? And it. So I know that now it’ll get better. It’ll be fine. Really. You get to learn, you have choices about how you’re gonna react to things. Oh. It’s snowing. Okay, I could be upset about this cuz I have to drive in this stuff, but it’s really pretty and I can choose which one I’m gonna focus on.

I agree. And you learn about metaphor and you learn about mystery and you learn about paradox. And things that don’t make sense, but they’re actually real. And you can, and that’s where the sense of magic comes, where

Stephen: Paradox. Paradox. That’s from the Christmas special of Dr. Who, paradox. Paradox.

Sorry. Bad

Caroline: joke.

Stephen: So what are some things that you would recommend writers do to gain some playfulness?

Caroline: I dunno, there’s a, you remember the old quote? There is no way to piece pieces the way. Yeah. Like that. There’s no way to playfulness. Playfulness is the way. Okay. Hanging out with other playful people might help to get the juices going. But, just. Try it. One, one phrase that really helps me when I’m writing is, it’s okay to write badly.

It really is. You wanna fix it before you publish it, but , it’s okay to write badly. Just give yourself permission. This is gonna suck. I’m gonna write it anyway. You just, nice.

Stephen: Yeah. Agreed. All right. So to, to finish up here, Carolyn. What would be your last minute advice for new authors?

Caroline: Ask specific questions.

Okay. I Why mean?

Because generic advice that you think will apply to everybody doesn’t always. And if you’re not ready, if a piece of advice isn’t the piece that you need right now, it’s not gonna be useful anyway, even if it will be useful. . If you’re not ready to hear something, you’re not really gonna hear it. But when you’re riding along and you get stuck okay, I don’t know how to do this.

When you get stuck, that’s when you go to. An established writer or an editor or a teacher or somebody who likes to read a lot, and you say, okay, here, I’m stuck. I don’t know what to do. And they can tell you, okay, here is the next step. And you take the next step and you get unstuck and you go and that’s how you make progress.

So you don’t look for generic advice. It’s going to apply to everybody. Start writing and when you get stuck, ask somebody. You can ask me, my, my contact information is on my website. Shoot me an email. It’s

Stephen: ca carolyn’s, get outta stuck writing service. , we’ll get everybody flooding you. .

Caroline: I wouldn’t mind.

Stephen: Nice. All right. Carolyn I appreciate you thi This was a nice last minute thing. I’m glad you found the podcast and got you on. It was great, Tania, I hope your book does well. It sounds wonderful. Thank you. All right.

View Details

OverviewCaroline lines in Maryland with her husband and dogs. Her experience working with the ecology has translated into a fiction book about a world disaster and how people react it.

She is a scientist and uses her knowledge to infuse her stories with scientifically accurate information. This doesn’t mean that the books aren’t exciting – I mean if the world is ending, you want to know how to fix it? Caroline hopes her books bring awareness of what could really happen if we aren’t careful of our ways.

Her Bookhttps://www.amazon.com/Ecological-Memory-Caroline-Ailanthus-ebook/dp/B07VBQ68Y2?crid=RI9X6HSRNSR7&keywords=ecological+memory&qid=1671047496&s=books&sprefix=ecological+memory%2Cstripbooks%2C135&sr=1-1&linkCode=li2&tag=discoveredwordsmiths-20&linkId=e5887e868b2ab1de5c849d80965ade06&ref_=as_li_ss_ilFavoriteshttps://www.amazon.com/Wizard-Earthsea-Cycle-Book-ebook/dp/B008T9L6AM?crid=BAC5BEUFD8WQ&keywords=earthsea&qid=1671048033&s=books&sprefix=earthsea%2Cstripbooks%2C99&sr=1-1&linkCode=li2&tag=discoveredwordsmiths-20&linkId=0cd446a99d2963b247c11e4ad33f807b&ref_=as_li_ss_ilThe Naturalist’s Notebook (thenaturalistsnotebook.com)

YouTubehttps://youtu.be/mUpayWxxVdUTranscriptStephen: Hit record when we came in new. It must not have taken it. So let’s back up. I wanna hear all this again. I don’t wanna miss anything. So that was a dry run practice. Okay. It’s the night before your big speech. , I apologize. I’m glad I looked up and saw that it wasn’t recording before we got all the way through Everything.

So am I. Yeah. Once again, this is like deja vu for me. I’m welcoming Carolyn to the Discover Word Smith podcast. But I’m the only one that knows you at the moment. So let’s back up since we’re now recording. And tell everybody a little bit about you and where you live and some things you like to do.

Remember? Okay. Remember we, we talked about that, so you should know the answer.

Caroline: My memory’s not that bad. . Okay. I’m from Maryland. I’m from Delaware originally, but I live in Maryland. What behind me is not my house, it’s my father-in-law’s house. I’m staying with him this week, but he’s in Maryland too.

And I don’t know if you can see it. We’ve got this gorgeous day outside, just that’s the Miles River. Chesapeake Bay is that way. Nice. And my background, let’s see. I like to say I went to a bunch of small weird schools, mostly in New England. I have a degree in conservation biology.

I’m a serious science geek, and I’ve been. I’ve approaching writing as a professional, with that kind of attitude. Since I was maybe 12 years old, I didn’t, I didn’t start publishing until I was in my twenties, but I’ve been obsessed with writing for a very long time. nice. What I do when I’m not writing, do I do anything when I’m not writing?

I like to hike. I like to paddle. I have a couple of beagles. They’re really cute. . I like to

Stephen: cook. You like to cook? We were talking about Thanksgiving and how we were getting ready for Thanksgiving coming up. And tell us again what you said about what you think of the Thanksgiving

Caroline: holiday.

Yes, I said. In my opinion, Thanksgiving is a cooking holiday, and when you’re done cooking, you invite people over to eat the food so it doesn’t go to waste. Yep.

Stephen: Totally agree. Now I’m, I’ve got a couple new interesting recipes. I’ve been trying I like to make Aztec hot cocoa, Hey, Thanksgiving.

Which is something different. I know. Other people have, various things. I, I. When I started cooking the Turkey, it, my father wasn’t very happy because he always wanted to cook the Turkey, but to be truthful, his Turkey was always a little dry. And I thought mine was much more moist. , we’ll just leave that where it’s at

Now your book, cause you’ve got conservation background. Your book is based on that idea. Tell us why you wanted to write this book and a little bit about what the book’s about. Okay.

Caroline: There’s some things about our world that bug me. Environmental degradation, violence, bigot.

All sorts of things. And on a good day I can focus on productive and constructive ways to pursue my ideals and all of that. And on a bad day, I just wanted all to go away and we can start over. So about 10 years ago, I started basically trying to cheer myself. With a lot of daydreaming about option B, civilization’s gonna collapse, something else is gonna happen afterwards.

It’s just gonna be better. And

but I, I got uncomfortable with that because I was daydreaming about a scenario that if it actually happened, would involve a huge amount of suffering and loss and just awful stuff. Really is a way to keep myself honest. I started thinking about what it would be like to actually live through this.

Civilization collapses the thing that comes next. It’s not like Mad Max World. It’s like nice not literally a utopia, it’s believable. They’re there, but nice. A lot of things that bug me, they’re just not an issue anymore or substantially.

but what’s it like to get there? What’s it like to live through that kind of change?

Stephen: Almost a dystopian world that’s going to something better rather than just all dystopian

Caroline: I think it’s really, know, there’s a dystopian phase. Yes. . But I like to refer to this book as post-apocalyptic optimism. There you go.

Stephen: I like that. Yes.

Caroline: Yeah, so the basic setup it’s 20 years after the collapse. By the way, I, the thing that I used to make the collapse happen was a.

Global Pandemic and I published the book in summer of 2019. So then when Covid happened, that was weird. It’s all your fault,

Quite possibly. So 20 years after the collapse and there’s this young woman, Elsie she. Was a cop, but she’s retraining to be an environmental educator, which is really a growth industry, by the way, in her world, because everybody wants to know how to rebuild society and not cause all these environmental problems.

She’s in training and starts having these basically memory flashbacks of a forest. that she played in as a kid. And that’s all that she remembers of her childhood. She doesn’t even know where it was. What her childhood home was. We just, you just not know. Imagine not knowing where you’re from.

So her professional mentor, Andy, Who’s older? He was an adult when the collapse happened. He’s an ecologist, so he says, this forest that you’re remembering, it couldn’t have just grown anywhere. There are particular places where different kinds of forests can go. So we’re gonna see how much of this forest you can remember and see if we can figure out where your home was.

So then the story becomes, Kind of detective story slash road trip through post-apocalyptic New England. Okay.

Stephen: So how, what, what genre you, you mentioned dystopian optimism. Would you say people that like dystopian would like it or do you it’s something that maybe they wouldn’t? Cuz they’re all about Mad Max.

The world’s destroyed and we’re killing each. Is there a particular genre or type of person that may like this, maybe a book or something that’s similar to give people an idea?

Caroline: Yeah, group of the one group of, and I think anybody can enjoy my book, but if I have to imagine, the center of the target audience.

Yeah. Science Geeks . Okay. Yeah I’m not a huge dystopia fan, so I don’t know what people who are fans of that genre would think of this. One of the one of the reviews on my Amazon list for this book I thought it was interesting. They said, I don’t usually like dystopias, but I did like this.

Because it’s not a dystopian, I don’t understand that, that, anyway

Stephen: that’s you should use that. That’s perfect. It, like you said, dystopian optimism. So that’s something new different that, that could definitely appeal to certain types of people. Yeah.

Caroline: I think that’s great.

Actually. I discovered there actually is, and I didn’t know this when I was writing, but there is actually a teeny tiny new genre that it fits into pretty well, and that’s solar. And that’s Fiction about what a sustainable society would actually look like, because in, in my book it’s, there’s no more fossil fuels.

So the way the economy works is completely different. The way technology works is completely different. You get these weird mashups where people are getting around in ox carts and things, and there’s. A character who has a robotic exoskeleton, , ,

Stephen: I like that. Cause things like Firefly and even Star Wars have that where it’s a mash of some old tech like the carts and then new tech blasters and robots.

But it’s melded almost steam punkish a little bit almost.

Caroline: Yeah. You use what works and you stop using what doesn’t. and then you end up in this mix. It makes people go, huh? Let’s see, books that are most similar. The closest one I can think of. And it’s by no means new anymore.

Flight Behavior by Barbara King Solver. Yeah, that was about scientists, about ecologists. and the framing of that book is certain ecological problems related to climate change. But at the same time, it really gets into the personal issues that the characters are having and it uses. It uses sci, the science to develop the interpersonal themes in a way that’s similar to what I’m trying to

Stephen: do.

Okay. So if people have read that book, they might be interested in this. And I love the solar punk genre. That’s a new one. I haven’t heard of that one yet. Not that I’ve heard of all of them. . And you said the book came out in 2019. Do you have plans for a follow up or are you doing another book standalone, or what’s coming up for you?

Caroline: I’m working on a sequel. In fact the, the computer that I’m using for this interview, the sequel is actually up on another window in the sense . Okay.

You’re sharing a screen right now with the not that I could see both. That would be distracting, but , right? Yeah. The next one, oh it’s been a trip. I I set out to write, standard sequel. Okay, it’s 15 years later, what are the characters doing now?

And it didn’t work and I couldn’t make it work. And I tried for years to make it work and it didn’t work. And so then I tried this and I tried that and I tried this other thing and then I, okay, whatever. I’m going. Throw out half the book and see what’s left. Okay. Got it. And okay, now this is too short.

So what if I add this other stuff that I have kicking around? So I just put all this in here. It’s turning into a collection of novellas and short stories that are all, one of them is the, what the characters are up to 15 years later. But then there are all of these other stories that are set.

Different parts of the same world and character, a bit character in the One story will be a protagonist in the other. And it’s really coming together now. I am in I’m in revisions and fingers crossed, I hope it, I hope to come out with it sometime next. Okay,

Stephen: good. Great. Now, do you have a website and where’s your book available now?

Caroline: My book is available lots of places. Amazon, you can’t really, you can’t really get away without Amazon. It’s on my publisher’s website. My publisher, saltwater Media, they go look at their website. They have a storefront that’s on. . Every online seller that I’ve looked at has it on their list.

I can search my book and it comes up. If you’re looking for my work, by the way, the thing to do is to use my name as a search term because Other people can use titles that are similar to mine, but nobody has my name but me. I’m the only Caroline Lanis in the world. I’m not even kidding.

Use my name as a search term. My work comes up as easy as that. That’s great

Stephen: cuz when I moved to California I kept getting calls that I needed to pay for my Porsche cuz there was another Steven Schneider that had a Porsche wasn’t paying for. I’m like, here’s where I live. If you find a Porsche you can have it.

I don’t care. Come and tow it. . Oh wow.

Caroline: Yeah, I don’t I don’t have those props. I don’t have a Porsche either, but, yeah , I do have a website. It’s news from caroline.wordpress.com and I have a blog there where I talk about mostly what’s ever on my mind writing wise, but when I have news like a, a new book coming out or something I do put it on that blog and.

each of my books has his own page on the website and, that sort of thing.

Stephen: Okay, great. And if you had a choice someone came up to you, would you rather see your book turned into a movie or a TV show? Movie. Movie. Why is that? And who would play the parts you thought about that?

Caroline: I have

movie because.

I’ve watched enough movies that they influence how I think and There, there’s a movie in my head of this book, there isn’t a TV show. Oh, good. Got it. I thought about it, I daydream, okay, what if the movie producers come, what am I gonna tell ’em? I don’t think it’ll happen, I can hope. Let’s see. Who would play who? I used to think Russell Crow for Andy, but I’m leaning more towards Daniel Craig.

Nice. Okay. Although,

Who is the man who played the lead in Shan Redemption? Tim Robbins. Tim Robbins. Yeah. I don’t, I haven’t heard Hyde nor hair of him in years. I don’t even know if he’s still working, but yeah he could do it too, because Nice. Andy, is this sort of, mysterious and standoffish and weirdly capable person.

You don’t know what he’s thinking, but he can do anything. Got it. Okay. As for Elsie, I don’t know who would play her. But because it would have to be somebody young, it would have to be

it would have to be someone of color. Elsie is a black Latina. And

I don’t see enough current movies to know to know who fits in that category. These days. I’ve seen movies who have people who, where characters are similar to her, their personalities, and they can. Movie Bulworth came out like 20 years ago, 20, 25 years ago. I don’t remember the name of the woman who played the female lead.

Yeah. But she would’ve done it. Okay. Only, now she’s too way too old for the part. Yeah. Yeah.

Stephen: You gotta watch that. Okay. Let me ask you this. Carolyn what are some of your favorite books and authors that you’ve read through your.

Caroline: Oh. There’s so many. I could start listing favorite books today and not finish until next week.

Yeah, not the

Stephen: problem. What’s your top, top two or three?

Caroline: Oh, where’s it of Earth? See by Ursula Gwen. Nice. Excellent. Whenever I run into a problem when I’m writing, it’s always okay. How would La Gwen do this? Overstory, I forget the name of the author, came out a couple of years ago.

Yeah. That one doesn’t ring a bell. Oh, look it up. It’s it’s possibly the best constructed book I’ve ever read. In term, if I describe how it’s structured and what’s it about, you’d think, oh, there’s no way. That could work. That would just be too hard to write. And he pulls it off Nice.

It’s just amazing. Yeah books like that I really liked. Oh, now I’m having a brain fart. , the one writer who everybody who writes, wants to be like Ernest Hemingway. Okay. . For whom? The Bell Tolds. Oh, okay. I was cliched to Hemingway, but the thing is, my natural proclivity and what I started out doing when I first started writing was, all of these words. Just curly, cute sentences, just mellow drum and all this stuff. And I read his work and I thought, oh, okay, , just pair this down a little bit.

Worked a lot better. I don’t just read fiction though. I favorites I read this year there was a teeny little. Basically mini textbook on the physics of ocean waves. Wow. It’s just a lot of fun to read. , another one on mollusks, like all mollusks everywhere, introduction to that was awesome.

My friend Tom Wes you should read his. Not fiction, it’s, popular ecology, just, but just go read his books. You’ll be glad you did . Alright.

Stephen: Okay where you live there do you have a favorite bookstore you like to go to? Not really. Okay. Is there

Caroline: bookstores in other places though?

Stephen: Okay, what’s one of your favorite book? Pl bookstore else? ,

Caroline: the naturalist notebook on Mount Desert Island in seal Harbor. Yeah, town Seal Harbor and Mount Desert Island. Teeny little town, sneeze, you’ll miss it and yeah, it’s there. Main Street is basically one street with three buildings on one side and on there.

A restaurant that serves the best lobster roll on the island. And this bookstore, they have a location in Northwest Harbor too, but the Seal Harbor location’s better. It’s bigger and it’s, the place is run by a couple of science teachers and art teachers. And they basically got every book that they like and they put it in this old house.

And they’re. Science books ranging from children’s books to popular science to, hardcore dichotomous keys that have everything you ever wanted to know about sedges, or whatever. And art supplies and science toys and these miniature little museum type things like, a display this big and you look into it and there’s like the solar system or the human heart or time or whatever it is.

And it’s just, every time I go to Mount Desert Island, it’s a rule. I have to go to that bookstore and spend, a couple of hours just wandering around and then waste much money and and we get lobster rolls.

Stephen: Nice. Yeah, we actually went through Mountain Desert Island last time I was in Maine, so I know the area.

I’ll have to look for it next time I go. Maybe next summer we’re going. Nice. Alright, Carolyn, before we talk about some author stuff if someone said, Hey, I heard you wrote a book. Why should I get your book and read it? What would you tell ’em? Because you’ll like it. Okay. There you go. Boom. Done. , that’s your word for your advertising.

Caroline: I, there’s, if there’s a lot of cool science in it, there’s some good perspectives. I’ve had somebody say that it’s, how I talk about sustainability issues and the very real risks that we face. A global pandemic, shutting down civilization is really unlikely. It’s not gonna be that, it probably won’t be that, but something could, we are vulnerable in certain specific ways.

That part is very real and I’ve had people come up to me and say that reading my book, got them thinking about that sort of thing. Had one person say that he changed his life, which was interesting. , I hope he changed it for the better. But see,

but at the end of the day, you’re gonna, it’s a novel and you’re gonna read a novel cuz you like it. And you’re gonna this one.

Stephen: Good. Nice. Okay if anyone asks now you got your answer. . So I appreciate you sharing the book with us, telling us about it.

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OverviewRachael published her first book 10 years ago and her second book is going on sale soon. In that time, self publishing has changed dramatically. We discuss those changes and the good things that have come about with self publishing.

Her Bookhttps://www.amazon.com/I-was-like-November-ebook/dp/B0B9L2T4Y6?crid=2IX70VAQ5X2UG&keywords=and+I+was+like+november&qid=1670419857&sprefix=and+i+was+like+novembe%2Caps%2C84&sr=8-1&linkCode=li2&tag=discoveredwordsmiths-20&linkId=de5839618229eb9b09e59216cbfddf5c&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_ilYouTubehttps://youtu.be/cHRwOCTotjgTranscriptSo let’s move on, talk some author stuff and before we get on our topic let me ask you a couple other questions.

Your books are about 10 years apart or so. , what did you learn doing the first one that you’re doing different now or you have done different with the second one?

Rachael: Oh my God, when I read the first one, now it’s so cringy. I think that , just as you grow and mature, if you’re continuing to write, hopefully you get better.

And that is the result, right? That you’re like, oh my God. . But yeah, specific things. I think I was so histrionic in my first book. Granted it was a memoir, but just, I just say things that aren’t interesting about myself. You know how younger people tend to think that they’re more interesting that they than they are , right?

You pick that, you’re like, oh God. Yeah, I. I read it and I think, oh my God, I use the word just so much. That’s, I think every writer has their , little idiosyncrasy that you’re just like, ah, why did I have to say just a thousand

Stephen: times? Just, and that I, my software will pick up that.

And I’m like, oh, I did not realize I used that 21 times in this chapter. God, I know. Yeah, I know. But, so the software is good because it’s helping me learn and get over some of those. I find them as I’m thinking ’em or typing them. I used to start a lot of sentences with i n g words and I’m like, wow, I didn’t realize I did that so much.

Don’t get that out.

Rachael: Or what’s it called when you sorry, again.

Stephen: No. When you.

Rachael: Or like switching tenses. Sometimes I pick up on that or there’s just all kinds of little things that I’m like, oh God, I can’t believe I put that out into the world, .

Stephen: And the thing is, when I was starting, I’m like, what is wrong with this sentence?

It sounds fine. And as I learned more, I wrote more, I started realizing the stumbling way the writing sounded, or I was like, wow, that does sound. But as just a reader, you don’t necessarily always notice it until it’s so much. Yeah.

Rachael: Yeah. We’re probably our own worst critics. Please let that be true.

But, or like repository writing. Like, why did I tell them that when I can show them that? Which,

Stephen: oh, that’s of the things’ I, not that I’m an old writer but I tell newer writers and kids, I work a lot with kids. Stop worrying about the craft. Start worrying about reading every book. Stop worrying about classes and courses and the next book and get, just write.

Go write and write and write. Because until you’ve written some stuff, you cannot tell how bad you are, how good you are, what needs fixed your change. You gotta have the experience of the writing for everything else to make sense and for sure. That’s my new advice. I keep telling. People who are have not written as long as I have.

How’s that?

Rachael: Yeah. Yeah. And I think reading a lot is really important too. I think the more you read, the better

Stephen: you get. Yes. What I’m finding is, as I’ve written more, as I’ve learned more about writing, as I’m reading, I’m picking up on good sentences and better sentences. And all that. So I’m learning just by the reading.

Rachael: Yeah. Yeah. Uhoh, there’s so much to know.

Stephen: Yes. Yeah. Okay. So it says you’re offline. You can still see me, right? ? Oh yeah, I can still see you. All right. Everything’s okay. So it should be okay. I love Zencaster cuz it records locally, so as long as we can still see and hear each other, it’ll upload a file. We should be okay.

Rachael: Okay, cool. I’m new to it. I’ve never used it, but I trust you. Yeah.

Stephen: All right. So speaking of the software in that, do you have any special software you like to use?

Rachael: I still write in pages, which I think is an outside program, . It’s just an Apple program.

Stephen: Okay. Any other, any special services you like to use for any part of it?

Marketing or anything?

Rachael: This time I hired a publicist, so she’s taking that over and I’m learning as I go to that Kindle Unlimited that you just told me about is totally news. Yeah, nothing comes to mind.

Stephen: Okay. No, no problem. And so you got a publicist, so you basically handed over the marketing for the most part.

Is there anything special you’re doing besides podcasts?

Rachael: I’m, she’s telling me what to do and then I’m implementing it. So there’s a lot of social media stuff and I’m gonna actually like, Walk into bookstores like I did with my last one and be like, Hey, here’s a sample of my book.

If you wanna order it, this is how you get it. I’m gonna do boots on the ground, kind of marketing .

Stephen: Okay. Did you do that with the first one?

Rachael: I did, yeah. Yeah. And then, like I said, it was 10 years ago, so it was a lot different. I think it’s a lot easier to self-publish now.

Stephen: Okay. When you did walk into bookstores, did you get a lot of good responses or was it a tough I did

Rachael: actually, yeah.

Yeah, I was in LA and there’s a lot of artists there, so it was, I’m pretty, they were pretty receptive. Nobody took a lot of books. Like people would be like, yeah, we’ll take one, copy , and we’ll, so I didn’t really make any money, but I was so excited to have it out there that I was thrilled nonetheless.

Stephen: Okay. Good. Let’s talk a bit about how things have changed and your first book, you wrote that you said about 10 years, around 2013. And I started writing a couple years after that. And even I’ve seen lots of changes. So what are some of the changes you’ve seen that you’re dealing with now compared to the first book?

Besides, like you said, the marketing boots on the ground and Yeah. Publicist. What are changes have you seen?

Rachael: First and foremost, social media, obviously that. If it did exist, then it was just barely. And I didn’t know enough about it to utilize. And also this Ingram Spark platform. Last time I just published with create Space, which was under the Amazon umbrella.

I, that probably doesn’t exist anymore.

Stephen: Pre, pre Kindle. Yeah. Yeah. Cdp. Yeah.

Rachael: and you could call them on the phone and they would help you, like they’d pick up, but you got an actual person there’d help you with anything. I went into the Apple store to have them help me format it like it was like early days.

And now With Ingram Spark, it’s available in the catalog, the same catalog that every, that Penguin and Random House and everybody else is in. So anybody can order your book just the same as they would from anyone else. So that’s exciting.

Stephen: Yes and I think on Amazon yeah, you gotta compete against everybody.

With so many books appearing from the publishing houses and from independents, and people don’t know, they don’t notice, so they really do look at, oh, that sounds interesting. Oh, that looks like a good cover. And, oh, 300 other people have read it and left reviews, and whether it’s independent or not. Of course there’s always, oh, that’s Patterson.

I know that one. Oh, that’s Stephen King. I know that one. right. Yeah. But there’s always new authors, so I think it’s in that way, it’s a good thing in helping.

Rachael: It’s like you said, it’s great and it’s overwhelming. It’s if I were to be the buyer of a book, I’m probably, leaning towards something that I’ve heard of or something that’s got like the best seller sticker on it, which.

But not everyone’s like that. Fortunately, , they are gonna look at covers and I find that people that aren’t writers, they don’t even think about self-publishing versus a traditional publisher. So that’s

Stephen: nice. Yeah and I think it’s less so now. I think maybe when independent publishing 10, 12 years ago was really starting to come out, that it was a little different.

You’re on the, your first book came out right on the big cusp when Kindle first started. So everybody was giving away free books. I remember my first Kindle. I’m like, oh my gosh, look at all the free books. Yeah, but it’s cuz they wanted you to read more. So what ended up happening for me is, oh look, I’ve got 3000 books on my Kindle that I’m never going to read.

Rachael: Yeah. Oh my God. Getting people to actually read now, like even, friends. It’s like squeezing blood from a stone sometimes.

Stephen: Yes, I agree. It’s interesting cuz I do a workshop working with kids to help teach storytelling in video games oh, fun. That’s, using that in a different way because it’s a job.

They could do a job that’s out there. It’s so new nobody really knows about it yet.

Rachael: Yeah. You could teach me that actually. There are a lot of jobs out there for that.

Stephen: Yeah, it’s gr it’s getting bigger and it’s another one you can, do with your, it’s different storytelling. It’s different way of doing it.

You don’t have the same structure and you don’t get to make all the choices, so you have to make sure it structures around the game and the player choices. Right. It’s just totally different. It’s interesting and fun. So we were mentioning also on some of the things our craft has improved or gotten better.

That’s another thing I’ve seen change is all the software that’s out there that will go through and do some editing on your, okay. Stuff. Do you use any of that?

Rachael: No, I don’t. I’ve, I work as a copywriter and have. Taught writing and all of that as well. So I feel pretty good about doing it myself, but Okay.

What sort of things does it do? Obviously catches spelling and grammar, but,

Stephen: I use pro writing aid because I liked all the things that checked and all that, but, It will, like we mentioned using just, or that it has an over overused words thing, so you hit it and it’ll say the average book for middle grade kids uses this many, that in a chapter, you used this many, so try and reduce it.

Oh Try and cut out the was mm. try and cut out. And it will check overused words. It’ll check the sos. Are you, is there a better word you could use to change? Oh, that’s cool. Sentence. It picks up passive voice. It checks sticky sentences. Like you use too many sticky words here, and it’s making it cumbersome.

Can you rewrite it? Interesting. It doesn’t, it gives you suggestions. , it doesn’t always. Fix it the way it should be or the way you want. So that’s why I’ve learned a lot is I purposefully put these words like this cuz of whatever reason. Yeah. So it picks up on it, but it’s not what I want and I skip it.

Go to the next one. Yeah. Oh. Hey, you’re right. I did start four sentences with he, he did this and he said that, it’s let me change that. And it does help out a whole lot. Making the writing sound better. . But. I don’t even know if any of it integrates with pages. I think you’re only like out of a hundred and some people, I think you’re only the second or third person that said pages is what they use for writing.

Rachael: It’s like from just using a typewriter. .

Stephen: Exactly. Yeah. I have had some people still doing it longhand. So I do get that. Yeah, they win . don’t do it. I just talk to other people that do it. .

Rachael: Yeah. No, I just like it cuz it’s familiar. Like when I write, I’m like in a flow state, I’m not like stopping to think about I just get it out and then I go back and edit and pages.

What I’ve used for so long that I don’t wanna learn something new and

Stephen: what do you do to format it? And you have somebody you, you hired to do the formatting to get the money.

Rachael: I went on fiver this time and just had a typography person do it. And they do it for so cheap, like it was like 25 bucks or something,

Stephen: right?

Yeah. Yeah. Five is another one. I. Talk to some people about you gotta be careful. That’s something else You wanna talk about differences? I don’t think fiber really existed or was that big. Oh, it definitely didn’t. No. No. And when it first started, it was, Look down upon more, it’s, it was, oh, you can’t get a good person working there.

It’s cheap, blah, blah, blah. Now you got people with whole careers earning money on fire. Yeah. So it’s

Rachael: so much of everything,

Stephen: it’s, there’s. But it’s good too for the buyer because here’s my price range. , I can try and find the best person I can and yeah, you can try out people, here’s here 25 bucks a person.

Let me try you out. Okay. You’re the one I’m gonna go with. So that’s, you’re right. That’s a benefit.

Rachael: I did try to use them for cover design as well, and I, that didn’t work out at all. I had to find someone. Actually that I worked with that I should have just done that to begin with, but for something easy like typography, that,

Stephen: that worked.

Got it. Okay. I actually, I’m a PC person, I’m a programmer. Oh, okay. So PC’s just always been my tool, but I bought a Mac Mini with Velum just to do the formatting of my books. Okay.

Rachael: Velum is a, see I’m learning so much. I’m .

Stephen: Velu is formatting books. Yes, vem is, it’s one of the older players in the market, but they’ve, kept up and improved.

And a lot of independent authors use velum for formatting because you can import your word file, or I’m sure pages export in some format that it’ll accept. Yeah. It might do pages just because it’s on Mac. Come to think. , I’m not sure, but you import it and you basically I want it to be, five by eight or six by nine size or whatever size you want.

And you can choose a couple different styles and then it just formats it all in there. And there’s

Rachael: something on my computer that does that too. I don’t know what the name of it is, but I have that too. And the, and there’s, if you, there’s different styles of if you wanna do like a graphic novel, little format for that.

I do have that. Okay.

Stephen: Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Great. Yeah. Good. Okay. Before we get done here, can you think of anything else you wanted to bring up that, oh, I’ve noticed this has changed in the last 10 years, or, this is different than when I did the first one.

Rachael: People probably read less, I think again, because of social media.

Stephen: Unfortunately,

Rachael: yeah. I’m hoping that the pendulum is gonna swing the other way and, eventually we’ll just wanna get back to the basics, but Right. Yeah.

Stephen: Let me ask you, I was think about this, you mentioned you were in tv. Have you ever thought of writing TV episodes or scripts or anything like that?

Oh, that’s what I was doing. Oh, okay. Yeah. So did you write anything that we would know? Nothing

Rachael: that I’m proud of.

We need to brag about. I did option my first screenplay this past year, so hopefully that’s going to be being made in the near future. Nice. That’s the feature film. Yeah. So that’s exciting. Beautiful. I went film that for writing, so that also helped me become a better writer across the board, I think.

Stephen: Cool. I’ll look for Rachel Bigs. Oh, hey, I know that person. Yeah.

Rachael: again. It’ll be all over my social media. You don’t have to worry about looking for anything .

Stephen: Everybody look at this. Yeah, I’d be like that too. I’d any money I’d make off of the script for a screenwriting I’d spend to rent outta theater.

Invite everybody I knew. . Yeah.

Rachael: That’s all right. I think that, Sorry, go ahead.

Stephen: No. Please

Rachael: finish. Oh I think that the arts be it music or painting or writing is a calling and a purpose that sort of, you just have to get it out there. And whether it makes money or not, it’s awesome if it makes money, but you’ve done your job if you get it out there.

In reference to renting a theater and having everybody come and see it. That’s, you’re doing what you came to

Stephen: do. That’s, rachel, before we go do you have any last minute advice that you would give to new authors?

Rachael: Go deeper. I think if you are writing something and it’s.

Resonating with people, or you are smart enough to know that it’s not very good. Go deeper. If you’re describing a wall, tell me every single thing about that wall. Keep talking about it. Like one of the exercises that I would have when I’m teaching writing is I haven’t done that for a long time, but describe brushing your.

And it has to be like three pages and go into every detail. That’s so boring because in that you can edit something that’s actually interesting, you’re gonna find something that’s you wouldn’t have found otherwise.

Stephen: It, it pushes you and you have to think about it in different ways. I, yeah I do a similar thing where I will take mostly Stephen King, just cuz I enjoy reading Stephen King, but I’ll just find a couple random paragraphs.

And then I’ll force myself to rewrite it in different ways, in different styles or different fields or, making it very like lead child where it’s very short, succinct sentences and Right. Cut out a lot of the detail or then make it more like something from the Victorian area where it’s very flashy and flourishy and for me that, push yourself.

Try different things. Do different things, and it’s easier with other people’s stuff than your own. So rewriting it like that is a lot easier for me.

Rachael: evokes such different feelings, right? When you read like a short sentence versus a long flowery one, like you’re gonna feel a totally different way as a reader yeah. People Absolut absolutely

Stephen: to manipul. Yeah. Great. All right. Rachel, I wish you luck on your book coming out or the pre-orders right before Christmas and coming out the first, so we’ll get this up. I’ll let you know and I hope things go well for you. Thank you

Rachael: so much. It was great to meet you.

Stephen: It was great to talk to you.

Thank you. Yeah. Okay.

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OverviewIn a world where hyper-positivity, Rachael Biggs’ And I Was Like November offers a glimpse of the other side, while navigating themes of isolation and longing.

These are stories of what happens to the women that didn’t get their happy ending—the ones who don’t believe the cliches about family being everything and who know that live-laugh-love isn’t the cure all. Taboo topics that embrace a gritty reality include transactional sex, romantic obsession, maternal disdain and teenaged drug dealing are linked by the need to survive in the midst of questionable sanity and deep loneliness.

Rachael Biggs is an author, screenwriter, copywriter and journalist. She studied creative writing at UBC, UCLA, and with masters of the craft Syd Field and Robert McKee. In 2016 she earned a screenwriting diploma from Vancouver Film School with a focus on television.

Her memoir Yearning for Nothings and Nobodies debuted to critical acclaim and was adapted for the screen as Behind the Eight Ball.

She is a frequent contributor to print and on-line publications and her short fiction appears regularly in literary magazines including Door is a Jar, Angel City Review and Charge Magazine.

Websitehttps://rachaelbiggs.com

Her Bookhttps://www.amazon.com/I-was-like-November-ebook/dp/B0B9L2T4Y6?crid=2IX70VAQ5X2UG&keywords=and+I+was+like+november&qid=1670419857&sprefix=and+i+was+like+novembe%2Caps%2C84&sr=8-1&linkCode=li2&tag=discoveredwordsmiths-20&linkId=de5839618229eb9b09e59216cbfddf5c&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_ilFavoriteshttps://www.amazon.com/Half-Asleep-Frog-Pajamas-Novel-ebook/dp/B000FBFNY2?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1670427282&sr=8-5&linkCode=li2&tag=discoveredwordsmiths-20&linkId=31268dbcd094460a1d53036dc45663d8&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_ilVancouver’s Legendary Independent Bookstore | New, Used & Out-of-Print Books | Pulpfiction Books (pulpfictionbooksvancouver.com)

YouTubeTranscriptRachel, welcome to the discovered Wordsmith today.

How are you doing? I’m good, thank you. Thank you for having. That’s great to have you. I can’t wait to hear about your book, but before we do that, let’s find out a little bit about you. So tell us some things about you where you live, some of the things you like to do besides writing.

Rachael: Okay. I’ve just actually moved from Los Angeles to Vancouver Canada, whereas the, which is where I’m from originally.

And what do I do besides writing? I have a puppy, a year and a half year old puppy. So I go to a lot of dog parks and dog meetups and walking of the dog. Yeah, I like to be outside. I I ski, I hike, swim, all those usual things. Nice.

Stephen: So what type of puppy did.

Rachael: He’s a long haired dash hound. He’s, oh.

With his friend right now. Cause I needed him to be quiet. or it to be quiet, got it. Just got a text that he’s crying for me oh God.

Stephen: We were chatting just a minute before this started. This is your second book. Tell us a little bit about it and why you wanted to write this.

Rachael: It’s a book of short fiction and it started out I read Stephen King’s book on writing.

If anyone hasn’t read that, I really recommend it. It’s so excellent. Yes. And he, I had self-published a book, a memoir in 2013 called Yearning for Nothings and Nobody’s, and it while critically acclaimed didn’t get much traction, it didn’t sell very well. So I was looking for ways to get published traditionally.

And I happened upon that book and he talked about writing short stories and, submitting to literary magazine. So I had never heard of that before. I guess it was in my brain somewhere, but that just, made it a reality. Thank you, Stephen King. So I started writing short stories and I had written a couple previously mostly as like outlines for bigger things.

Cause I do movies and novel type stuff as well. Yeah, I started writing short stories and I, my goal was to publish. Of them within a year and within I think it was about six months, I’d publish 10 of them. So then I had a body of short stories and then it just went from there.

I’m like, oh, I could have this as an anthology and yeah, open that

Stephen: world. Nice. So when you say you had ’em published, where did you get them all published?

Rachael: Different literary magazines. I don’t know if anyone knows about this website. It’s called Duotrope and they, it’s an excellent website. Do you know about it?

Yeah, I’ve heard of it. Yeah, it’s really cool. It’s you can search by genre and word length and everything. For publications that are accepting queries. So that’s how I did that. And what was the question, ?

Stephen: Oh, I was just curious about where they were all published. So it’s different

Rachael: places.

The first one was Dalhousie Review and then there’s 12 other ones from all around the country. And I think there’s one in Australia as well. In Canada.

Stephen: Yeah. So you wrote the short stories all separate, not necessarily intending to be a book? No. And got ’em out. What have people been saying about them?

I’m jumping around in the questions, but this is a little different than most people I talk to cause you’ve gotten stories out and feedback on them. So what have you been hearing about the different stories?

Rachael: It is a theme and I’m not a good pitcher of myself, but the theme is loosely, women in peril and like bad girl themes.

So yeah, so I’ve submitted to I was about to say adult magazines, but that sounds pornographic. It’s not like that , but yeah, I It’s your, yeah, it’s your publication. The quote that I actually have on the cover from Alo Magazine calls it a beautifully written bummer. So I think that’s sort of summarizes.

It’s like themes of loneliness and longing and, transactional sex hit and runs. Fantasies of inflicting violence on your grandmother, stuff like that.

Stephen: Wow. So why did you choose to write a bunch of stories about that? When you say dance and distress, I think of the white knight, coming into the yeah.

Not quite , right? Doesn’t sound like that. Why a bunch of stories centered around that type of a theme or that type of something that’s a little different than what I normally.

Rachael: I wouldn’t say it was intentional, it was just what flowed out of me. They’re very raw, honest.

Some of them are essay essays, so I’ll let people decide which ones they think are true . But yeah, kinda came out.

Stephen: So the overall theme, the style, the story and all that, is there any books out there that are similar that if people go, oh, I like that other book this sounds interesting. I might read that.

Rachael: Yeah. In the vein of the Glass Castle or White Oleander um, catcher and the Rye. Even there’s some mental illness themes. As well. Okay. Interesting. From a perspective. Yeah. .

Stephen: Okay. Yeah. And it’s just coming out, is that correct? It

Rachael: pre-sales are December 15th, 2022, and then it hit sells January 31st, 2023.

Stephen: Okay. Okay. So it is just, by the time the episode’s out, they’ll be able to order it Nice. Just in time.

Rachael: Just in time for our holidays if they need a light holiday. Or if you’re gonna see your family and you need something relatable. .

Stephen: Now this is your second book. How is it similar or different to your first book?

Rachael: The first one was a memoir. And that took me a really long time. It took about two years to write and edit and, get to final. Publication. This one came out a lot. It was a lot more in the flow. I wrote it mostly during Covid, so I had a lot of time and oh, hi Kitty .

Stephen: Yeah, I got a visitor

Rachael: just popped up behind your shoulder there.

Yeah, so it felt easier and also, but I’ve been writing a lot longer now. I think that’s part of it as well.

Stephen: So your first book being a memoir and this being a collection of short stories, do you feel it’s the same type of reader or different reader, different types of readers?

Rachael: Yeah, probably the same kind of reader I would say.

It’s similar style. This is maybe no it’s similar. I was gonna say, this one might be a bit edgier. Not a lot .

Stephen: Okay. All right. Yeah. Now here’s a weird question for this. Are there any maybe not the whole book, but any of the stories that you think would make a good movie or TV show?

Rachael: Probably. I’m always amazed at what they can adapt into TV and movies now. But yeah, there’s definitely. Visual element to them. I’ve been told, I’ve even been told that they can read like horror. So speaking of Stephen King, a lot of his stuff has been made into movies, obviously. So yeah, that wouldn’t surprise me.

Stephen: Okay. That’s funny you say that cuz I do a horror podcast with a friend and Oh, you do? This month I’ve been watching Christmas horror movies to get ready for Christmas movies, transitioning. Oh, I

Rachael: didn’t know that. That was a genre.

Stephen: It’s barely a genre. Most of them are really bad . But

Rachael: yeah, there’s a lot of Hallmark movies that could be considered horror, in my

Stephen: opinion.

Depend on your viewpoint. Definitely

So where do you have a website and where can they find the book?

Rachael: Yeah, it’s my website is rachel bigs.com and Rachel is r a c h a e l. I have to clarify that because I’m sure like your name, , it’s constantly misspelled.

Stephen: I name my daughter Megan, m a e g a n. So that’s little different spelled with the ae, like you, yeah.

Rachael: Sentenced to a lifetime of correcting people. But I do that extra a, so I do correct people. So yeah, it’s rachel bigs.com and then my Instagram is rachel underscore bigs underscore author. Twitter is at Big Z Bigs. I’m not very good about keeping up with my Twitter, but my Instagram, I’m pretty on it.

And then the book will be available. Sorry, did I cut you off?

Stephen: No, go ahead, please.

Rachael: It will be on Amazon, obviously, and in the Ingram Spark catalog. Or I guess it’s just called the Ingram Catalog. And then hopefully in, in bookstores. We’re still working on that, Barnes and Noble and some local stores, but that will be all over my social media.

Nice. Will not

Stephen: be shy about. And you mentioned Amazon. Are you going in Kindle Unlimited with this?

Rachael: I don’t know. I Ingram Spark is who I’m publishing with, and then I guess that falls under the umbrella of them. I’m not super clear on

Stephen: that yet. Okay. No, that’s fine. I was just curious because I know Kindle Unlimited.

More popular with certain types of books and genres. So I was just curious as to if that was looked at that you think your book would be good in Kindle Unlimited or not? Can you tell me about that? What Sure. So Kindle Unlimited, a lot of people don’t like it because it’s you get kinda locked in for three months.

If you get on Kind Unlimited, it’s a subscription service. I don’t know if they, I think it’s in the Canada now. I know definitely the States and a few other. . So for $10 a month, I can read as many books and Kindle Unlimited as I want. I don’t own them. It’s not really checking out the library, it’s a subscription.

If I cancel Kindle Limited, I can’t read the books anymore. And I know a lot of authors put their books in there, but it fits very well with things like Romance, where you’ll get readers that read 20 books in a week, go through and read, everything. And that’s authors make money from it. But when you’re in Kind Unlimited, you can’t publish it else.

So I was just curious cause you mentioned Amazon, but you didn’t mention like Cobo or anything like that. So I was curious.

Rachael: So that might be something that you like put your book on? Maybe not initially, but a year in or something when you want to do a little push maybe.

Stephen: Yeah. I’ve heard all sorts of things.

I know some people that put it in Kindle Unlimited when they start and nowhere else, and then after three or six months they put it, they leave it on Amazon, just not in Kindle Unlimited. Then they put it elsewhere and I know others that offer it here. And then, like you said later, they pull it off elsewhere and put it in Kindle Unlimit.

So yeah, various strategies.

Rachael: There’s so much to know now. As I said I published, self-published 10 years ago versus now. There’s just, it’s a wealth of information out there.

Stephen: We’re gonna talk about that for the second half. So for all the authors listening, that’s gonna be our topic of discussion for the second half.

And do you have plans for a third book? Cause it sounds, we had a long time between it didn’t sound like it

Rachael: wasn’t my intention to wait 10 years, but life just happened. I was working in TV and that sort of took over my life for a but yes I do, I have, I’m actually, I have.

It’s memoir slash educational with regard to cancer and like holistic treatments to cancer. I lost my dad in 2015 and it was really difficult to navigate all of the treatments and, everything’s happening so fast and you’re so emotional. So it’s a memoir slash informational book.

Which I have no idea if it will find , a place in the world, but I’m writing it regardless. Okay,

Stephen: nice. So totally different from the first two books. You seem to keep doing something a little different each time.

Rachael: Yeah, it’s not completely different in that it’s a memoir and my first book was, About my mother.

She was she was schizophrenic and a drug addict, and it’s our lives intertwined. So this one will be about my dad and our life together. So there’s a little bit of similarity, but yeah, that there is the interesting educational component as well.

Stephen: Oh, that’s interesting. I like that. Yeah. Ok so let’s go off your book for a minute.

Do you have any favorite books and authors that you like to read?

Rachael: Yeah, it’s hard to choose, just one, but some of my favorites. I really like Donna Tart. Who, the Gold Finch, obviously. And secret History, which I liked as much as the Gold Finch. I love Tom Robbins. He’s such a freaky. Do you know Tom Robbins?

Stephen: I’ve heard the name. I haven’t read

Rachael: anything. He, his, probably his most famous one was They made it into a movie with Umma Thurman cowgirls. Is it even half asleep in frog Pajamas is my favorite. And then it’s the cowgirls one. She’s got the giant thumb. Do you

Stephen: remember that? Yeah. I Not ready to bell.

Sorry

Rachael: you haven’t read it, but yeah. Tom Robbins I like Kaku. Yeah, I’m always reading like different like spiritual kundalini kind of books as well. I tend to have a novel, some kind of self-help spiritual book and then some kind of educational book on the go.

Stephen: Do you like to read a paper or do you just read Kindle paper?

Yeah.

I

Rachael: do that myself every time I move, but , I do like a good old fashioned paper.

Stephen: Yeah it gets to be a little overwhelming. I’m discovering more and more digital, it’s easier to carry around, like you said. Yeah,

Rachael: I have a Kindle, but I just, I never even remember that I have it, I’m just like, wow.

And I keep buying books. Oh my God. Just get a, use your Kindle. But anyways, .

Stephen: Okay. So when you are buying your books, do you have a favorite local bookstore you like to go to? I do.

Rachael: It’s called Pulp Fiction here in Vancouver. Yeah, it’s a great store. They have new and used books and yeah, I could just spend hours in there, but every city has a favorite bookstore for me.

Portland has some great ones. LA has a really great one. Actually they have a few great ones downtown, but there’s one on the the Venice Boardwalk called Small. It’s a small world books or just small world books. So yeah, I find them wherever

Stephen: I. Yeah, me and my kids, when we went on vacation, we used to look for bookstores everywhere.

Rachael: Where are you anyway? What city are you in?

Stephen: I’m in Ohio Northeast Ohio. Right by Kent State. Everybody, Kent State from the shooting, so unfortunately that’s, yeah.

Rachael: Yeah. Unfortunate. Yeah, I, Ohio makes me think of Dave Chappelle. He lives.

Stephen: Yes. He lives down in Yellow Springs, down southern Ohio. Been through there, haven’t seen him, but it’s a cool little hippie town.

Rachael: Yeah. Yeah. That’s all I think of when with Ohio, .

Stephen: Yeah. Yeah. You’re not the only one than very much yeah. That’s outdated. I don’t wanna say forgotten, but it’s, different generation at this point, yeah. Alright, so before we talk some author stuff and move. Rachel if someone came up to you and said, Hey, I heard you wrote another book.

Why should I get your book and read it? What would you tell ’em? Ooh, .

Rachael: I would probably run nervously in the other direction. I’m so bad at self-promotion, but , let me give it a shot. It’s it’s very honest and raw and I feel like we live in this world. Everything is presented as being so glossy and unreal.

And this is the opposite of that. So if you want to feel like real connection with characters and people and you’re tired of, fake then I think this is probably a good read.

Stephen: Nice. Great. All right. I wish you best of luck. I hope the presales go well over the Christmas thank holidays.

Thank you. It goes on presale the day before my birthday, so Oh, I’m all for that . That’s a good, yeah. There you go. I’m bestowing good os upon you. Thank you. You’re welcome.

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OverviewFreddy is back to talk about his writing process. We discuss how author’s need to be proud of their writing and to do everything they can to get it to their readers.

His Bookhttps://www.amazon.com/Allow-Me-Ruin-Your-Christmas/dp/B0BLFT2LYV?crid=3BE70IVW57DXX&keywords=allow+me+to+ruin+your+christmas&qid=1670070425&sprefix=allow+me+to+ruin+your+christmas%2Caps%2C84&sr=8-1&linkCode=li2&tag=discoveredwordsmiths-20&linkId=02a11fe70e3fd91e8cc76ecccd23e29b&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_ilYouTubehttps://youtu.be/zWNFxKv55T4TranscriptAll right, so let’s move on to some author stuff. And we have an interesting topic today owning it which we’ll get to in just a moment. Before we do, let me. You’ve written several books and you’re talking about doing a remix, and we just talked a little bit about things you’ve learned from an editor.

So what are some things you’re doing different with your writing now than when you first started?

Freddy: What I like to do is change up the writing experience for me so that I don’t get bored, because I think the problem with any creative is being able to sit down. When. The creativity doesn’t seem to flow as easily as it does on some days.

So my way of battling that, that inevitable board, inevitable boredom, is to create a different experience. For example, the first book was written, third person Omni. The second book was written, first person present. The third book allow me to Ruin Your Christmas was written. First person present.

From two different characters perspective, so alternating chapters. We got Beck at the college, kid writing, first person telling the story, first person. Then we got Lex telling the story, first person alternating chapters. So it’s just something to keep me engaged and I feel like. If I’m engaged in the story and I’m excited to write even when I’m not feeling my best at four 30 in the morning or wherever, whatever time that I can, I’m still, I’ve got something that can keep me somewhat engaged as opposed to just trying to vomit the words out.

Stephen: Got it. Okay. And what software and services do you like to.

Freddy: I write with a Mac, so it’s pages. I keep the spell check and everything on, but when I’m done drafting well, and let me back up. My second and third book, and from here on out I write Long hand. I wrote the first book.

On my machine. But when I found out that Chuck Pollick writes long hand I just, I’m like my favorite authors are writing longhand. I better start writing longhand. And let me tell you, it does something to you. It really draws you in. And I’m sure there are a lot of authors out there who write on a keyboard and they feel the same way.

I just feel like there’s something about going from brain to. To hand to fingers to moving the pen on the paper. There’s just, there’s something that you just can’t get from typing on a keyboard, and I don’t, I’ve, I don’t, I’ve never written a nonfiction kind of narrative article or anything long hand, so I don’t know if it’s the same, but for fiction.

Long hand it is. So all of that to say from long hand to transcribing to to my Mac with the pages program, and then from pages I. I use this program called Auto cri. So auto like automatic, and then cri, like critic. So auto cri dot com. And it’s a great service. You can, I think there’s a free, there’s a free version, but I have the paid version so that I can get all of the feedback and it breaks everything down for you and pie charts.

And then it shows you little bar graphs. Your sentences. So here, Stephen’s got a whole bunch of short, a whole bunch of short paragraphs, and then a really long paragraph, or too many short paragraphs, too many long paragraphs. Here in chapter seven, Stephen has too many of these kinds of words. And so yeah it breaks everything down by, by word count.

Showing versus telling strong language. It’s. It is. And then, oh, and then you can compare your writing to, so let’s say Steven, let’s say you write women’s fiction. You can compare yourself to someone who writes women’s fiction. You can compare yourself to someone who writes.

You can compare yourself to individual authors Lee Child, Stephen King. Yeah, so it’s a great piece of software. They’re not paying me to say this. I’m a part of their Facebook group. I pay to use the service. So as a client, I can tell you that this is one of those few things that I will just, I will brag all day long about, about this particular service.

They’re very few things that I will brag about and talk incessantly about. This is one.

Stephen: Nice. You’re not just a client, you’re the president. Those

Freddy: size Spurling from the hair club for men.

Stephen: Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Freddy: So guys our age, remember that. Exactly.

Stephen: Yeah. All the kids just went home . How are you marketing this besides doing podcasts?

Yeah, your book.

Freddy: I. Yeah, absolutely. I’m doing the podcasts, but I’m also advertise, I’m, right now I’m doing kind of a, I’m in the, a part of an AB testing to see if BookBub is gonna do better than Instagram. I have a feeling BookBub is gonna work better, but I don’t want to, I. I’m gonna wait for the results.

I’m also, because the book is set in Houston, I am in the process actually the ad is out now. There is a company called Running Boards, and so it’s Digital Mobile Billboards on a Truck. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so I’ve got a two, two month program of advertising where it’s a graphic of the book pointing to the url ruin my christmas.com.

And yeah, so we’ll see if that gets any traction. I figure Instagram and Facebook, I don’t know if it’s and I will seed. I don’t necessarily know the ins and outs of advertising on social media, so maybe it’s something I’m doing wrong or that I have done wrong. But it just hasn’t worked, so I figure why not.

The book is here in Houston. We got this company here in Houston. It’s. It’s worth a, it’s worth a shot. And I’m not dropping thousands of dollars on advertising because I, I’m, as an indie, I don’t have, and I’m also trying to make money and not, blow away a whole bunch of, so it was, it made the most sense from a perspective of trying to go big and bold and different as opposed to simply social.

Stephen: I agree. We’ve got a small local theater and there we don’t have many movie theaters really close. So it was nice when this one opened and all the ads before the com movie are local.

They’re nothing that’s national or, whatever. They’re all small, local companies. And I asked one of the guys, cause I went to his shop and I said, Hey, I saw this, tell me about it. And it’s like $450 for three months and it’s every movie, every showing in that theater for three months.

I’m like, wow, that’s, it’s a small town. I understand that when, but even if there’s 20, 30 people in that theater doing that for three months, that’s a lot of local people to get to. And that’s big when it’s local compared. Everywhere.

Freddy: Exactly. And I think you have to find, you have to be willing to diversify what you’re doing because sometimes at the end of the day, you don’t wanna be beholden to the social media overlords and the algorithms and right.

There are authors who are bigger than the two of us who have the backing who. The tens of thousands of dollars to spend on social media. And then we get buried. We get buried not just on, on the big ones, but we also get buried on Amazon and on book Bob and on whatever. So it’s, it, I think it for indies, I think it behooves us.

I love that word. It behooves us to explore other more viable options if you’ve got absolutely a movie theater. And that’s a captive audience too. That’s a great idea, man.

Stephen: Yeah, I was like, man, four 50 bucks. Funny thing is also our local fair, you can set up a booth, a table yeah. In the merchant building.

And I was with somebody else that works for a mattress place and we went to check it out and they were like, oh yeah, for a small 10 foot it would be like 7 85. And I’m like, oh, is that per day? They’re like, no, that’s for. For a week with our county fair that gets 45,000, 50,000 people through there in a week.

That’s, I like, that’s pennies per person, yeah. So I was like, oh, that’s pretty cheap even for me to think about, to

Freddy: do. Yeah. You got, you Really, I think and this goes back to being an Indian and owning the entire process, because you can write the book and that’s just the. That is just the beginning.

There is no, you will build it and they will come. You’ve gotta let people know that you are out there, that your book is ready, and this is the best book that they’re gonna ever read in their entire life. And so you put your blood, sweat, and tears. Some people take five years to write their first manuscript and finally get it out to market whether it’s indie or traditionally published and.

It is incumbent upon the creator of the story to let people know that it is there. And there’s nothing wrong with advertising. I think, and I come from the terrestrial radio world where I worked for more than 25 years, and so commercials, it was like yeah, we run 30, 30 ads per hour, but how else are we supposed to get paid?

And how else are these brands supposed to get? Their products and services noticed, you have to advertise. So as a creator, there’s nothing wrong with putting yourself out there, whether it’s going to fair or putting an ad on a movie theater. There are ways to go about it without doing it.

The slimy kind of snake oil salesman way.

Stephen: And if you really wrote a good book, you put your time and effort into it and improved the product, you have something good. Like for me, it’s middle grade kids. I’m doing them a disservice if I don’t get my book to them. I think it’s a great book. I think they’d enjoy it.

I hope it sparks their imagination, but if they don’t know about it to read it, then I have failed. And it’s a different mindset. And you mentioned owning it, which is owning the outcome, good or bad. That’s our topic for today. What made you wanna discuss that topic and choose that as a topic for our discussion?

Freddy: I’m doing this for selfish reasons because I am. This is my first year going out on my own. As I said, I worked in terrestrial radio for more than 25 years. And as a non it’s all about owning the outcome, good, bad, or indifferent. And as a storyteller, as a media company owner, as a podcaster, as a blogger, as a dad, as a husband we have to own what we do.

And we’re not gonna get it right all the time. And we have, we just have to own it. Don’t dwell on, don’t dwell on it. Don’t dwell on what somebody else could have done to help. At the end of the day, it all comes down to you. Or in my case, it all comes down to me. And so by doing that, I have empowered myself to try.

Do the best that I can given the circumstances, and let the dice fall where they may. This particular book might not sell 50 copies. And guess what? There was probably something I could have done. To make it better. Yes, I’m advertising, yes, I’m making the podcast rounds. Yes, I’ve I’ve done what I can in trying to communicate with my social media following, but at the end of the day, if I only sell 27 books, that’s on me.

That’s not on the reader, that’s on me for not taking the extra step or 10 steps or 100 steps. And so I think there, there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of power in that, in knowing that it’s not it’s not some outside force some greedy billionaire holding his thumb down on my success.

It’s me, right? It begins and end.

Stephen: With me. Agreed. And like I agree with what you said, that when you think about it, owning the outcome could be several different things. Yeah. In this case it’s, Hey, I wrote this book. I spent the time and effort, it’s up to me to make it work. Not just put it out and say, oh writing books doesn’t work, or, oh, I’m a terrible author, because there’s a lot of bad books out there that have sold a lot just because they marketed it.

They got out there and there’s people that sell things all the time that aren’t worth buying just because they’re, they can talk and they have charisma. Yeah. And the other part of it is this is something you did. There’s a lot of authors that get afraid to talk to people about it.

Yeah it’s not that good, but no, you wrote this book. It’s the best you could do at this moment. Giving every circumstance, around. So yeah, own it. I be proud of it. I wrote this book there, there’s several aspects of the whole topic.

Freddy: Yeah, absolutely. And one of the things that.

1. My friend has been such a transformational year and it has taken me on a rollercoaster of emotions trying to figure out what my place in this world is. And I will say, and I’m, I started to delve off. I will say though, here we go. Okay. So I don’t know if you wanna pick up at post or we’re just gonna leave it like that.

I will say that.

Now I forgot what I was gonna say again. So what happens when you Transformational year? Yeah, transformational. It’s a transformational year and so what I, where I think I went wrong in my previous career was not treating my gifts, was not persuading people to see my gifts that I have. In such a way that I am the gift.

So you have to have a certain degree of hubris. And I hate saying that because it has a very bad connotation. But you do have to exert that alpha male or alpha female or alpha, whatever, energy. If you’re going to, if you’re going to succeed, you have. You have to put that energy out into the world because just like you said, you can have somebody that you’re talking to on a podcast, and if they don’t believe in the product, what makes me think that?

Suzanne Smith, who wrote this cozy mystery, who doesn’t believe in her book, and I’m listening to her talking to Steve, what makes me wanna go and buy that, right? I’m not gonna wanna buy that. Oh it’s just a little book. No, I wrote a cozy mystery and guess. It rivals anything that’s on the New York Times bestseller list and here’s why.

Absolutely. And absolutely, it’s a fine line to walk because hubris leads to very bad things. But you’ve gotta have just a little, just like when you’re cooking with salt and pepper and garlic, it’s a little dash of it. and it makes the meal just as that certain kind of, so you have a little bit of hubris, you sell your gifts, but with the mentality that you are the gift.

And so that’s where I went wrong in my previous career, was not convincing people in a way that, Hey, look, yo, I am. I am the gift. There are people, just like you said, who are far more inferior to what you do, what I do, and what you have done and what I’ve done. And yet they know cuz they’ve got the silver tongue that, and they schmooze the right people and they’ve got the agents and they’ve got the backing that they’re far more successful than.

But bull crap, we flip the narrative and we take control. And it all goes back to owning it because no one’s gonna care about what you do more than you. And I think the, absolutely. Yeah. And I think that the I think that the sooner a creator of any sort, it could be an author, it could be a blogger, it could be a vlogger, it could be a poet, it could be a musician or whatever.

It could be an a white collar office worker for God’s sakes. The sooner they realize that nobody cares about their work as much as they do things get.

Stephen: And it’s not pride and ego. That’s the difference. You can be proud of something without being prideful. With that thing. Yeah, you can be proud of the product and like I said, if I wrote this book cuz I want middle graders to spark their imagination and think about my, I a lot of what I.

Is the general theme is there’s magic in the world all around us. You just have to find it and discover it and that , and I didn’t intend that to happen. It just seems to be, that’s how I think in my life and I think kids, Need to use their imaginations more and just do things because it’s fun and that’s what my books and stories tend to be.

So I have to own that. And if I want parents and teachers and the kids to read my books, I’ve got to get it to them. I’ve gotta show it to ’em. I’ve gotta do something. And if not, then you know, I’m doing them a disservice. It’s a mindset shift to owning it. And again, it’s not an ego thing. You can tell.

That’s like you said, smarmy, salesman. Yeah. That’s the ego and coming out.

Freddy: Yeah. And kids, man, kids are so much more smarter than we give them credit for. Yeah. They will pick up if Steven’s not completely sure that his new book is gonna hit, they will pick up on that energy and they’ll be like, yeah, forget this.

I’ll just read Harry Potter again. .

Stephen: Yeah. And that’s actually what spurred my book. There’s a Harry Potter Fest over at Kent, and I didn’t have a wizard magic type book. So I wrote a short story to set on my author table, and then I realized, oh, this could be better. And that idea of a short story has turned into what’s going to be possibly seven books now.

, oh. That’s yeah, how that all started. So that’s great, man. Yeah. I’m working on, I’m, I’ve got book two written. I’m finishing things up. I got idea for three and four with vague plans for beyond that. But that, that’s the goal. I want kids to understand that they can be imaginative throughout their life.

They can write by starting now, and by the time they’re 1820, they’ll be much further ahead. I see so many authors. That are, 40 getting started and they have, they, I can’t write, I can never do this. Whereas if they started when they were 15, by the time they’re 40, they’d have masterpieces. Yeah.

That’s

Freddy: my philosophy. No, absolutely. And with you targeting the middle school demographic, this, it seems like maybe that’s about the age where. The luster of imagination starts to, to wear off. And so by you telling these kids and sharing these stories with ’em, it’s helping them realize that, hey, you know what, there is wonder out in the world and you know what?

School might be boring or life might be boring, or, things might not go wrong, but the world is huge. It’s a, it’s an incredible place to be and Yeah.

Stephen: And you said, okay, something you said about your book that you like to challenge yourself and do something a little different. And this one’s second person perspective, so owning it, another, this is another thing.

You chose to do it this way. You could have written it in third person, first person. You could have done a happy romantic Christmas instead of a going bad type of, you chose these things. These, this is the story that you wanted to get. Like you said, it could flop totally. You could do everything, all the podcasts, all the marketing, pay for all the ads, and it could still flop Totally.

That’s part of owning it too. That doesn’t mean you are a bad writer. Doesn’t mean you’re a bad person, doesn’t mean your book sucks. It might be the wrong audience, the wrong time. Maybe you just need to tweak and improve one thing. That’s what the next book’s for improve. Next time get better. Learn from the things you made mistakes on.

I see a lot of authors that, they still have that thought, Hey, I wrote this book over the last weekend. I put it out and nobody bought it by day one. So I’m a failure. No, you. Again, going back to the owning it, there’s more to it than just putting words down and throwing it out there.

Freddy: Absolutely. And just to give you an idea, Edgar and Poe, in his entire lifetime didn’t make but around $200 off of his writing. And if he only knew his legacy, he’s got, he’s required reading in schools. He has got entire literary societies named after him awards named after him. So just because you don’t sell a hundred thousand copies of your ebook over the course of a month does not mean that it’s not gonna make an impact in some way, shape, or form.

Because somewhere over the past hundred and something years, there was somebody. Who read one of his books that might not have been The Raven who read one of his books or poems or whatever. Or maybe it was the Raven who the Hell knows. But there was somebody somewhere down the road back then who saw something and was like, ha, this is incredible.

I gotta show, I gotta show Steven and then Steven’s whoa, this is incredible. You know what? I have a friend who’s the dean of a college, I’m gonna show her, and the dean of the college is wait a minute, I’ve got friends. I’ve gotta show this to my book club. And the book club, it’s just a, you never know.

Humans are, Complicated and fun and interesting, and you just never know what can happen if your book gets into just one reader’s hands.

Stephen: Exactly, and you gotta get, you gotta find those readers, so you gotta keep trying. I, what you just said made me think some of the initial reviews, when Star Wars came out in 77, the critics, they didn’t like it.

They panned it, they thought it was stupid and Oh yeah, I guess they were wrong on that one. Yeah, a little bit. And think of it this way, there’s 7 billion people on this planet. Yeah. If you had a hundred thousand fans. And they all bought your book every year. Now you’re making enough money to live on by writing one book a year to just those and a hundred thousand people is nothing compared to the whole planet.

So it’s getting out there and finding those people and that’s, you know what you gotta do after you write the book. And again, another part of owning it is taking the time to write and learn your craft and write a good book and it improve each time you write a book. That’s part of owning it too, not just throwing something together and thinking.

Three year olds, five year olds, that tell you a story. Wow. That was great. I love that story that you just made up. That made no sense whatsoever. Every parent does it. They’re like Uhhuh, I loved it. Great. I have no idea what they just said, but we’re gonna tell ’em that. But when you’re an adult, you gotta suck it up a little bit and actually make a good story. You can’t just throw anything out and expect everyone to praise you.

Freddy: Exactly. Exactly. And that doesn’t mean you have to go to school or take a college class or whatever. Just read a couple of craft books, Stephen King and Chuck Pollick and oh, now I’m spacing on the Kurt v.

Kurt Vts. Kurt V. Either reader is incredible. And it’s a dense book. It’s huge. It’s huge. And it’s chock full of so much wisdom from. That it’s almost like if you were to just spend a week reading that book, you would get so much more knowledge and be a, you’d be so much, you would be an improved writer in more ways than one.

Stephen: The other one I’ve come across is by Jeff Strand. He independent, he writes comedy horror. He’s written 50 books, and his 50th one was basically a memoir writer book, encouragement, inspiration thing. But a sarcastic viewpoint. And I interviewed him and talked to him. I love his books and I didn’t realize that it was just the last, like five books that he had quit his job and was writing full time.

So he kept going until he got to that point. So he is got a lot of good things to say. So yeah. Those other three books you mentioned? I’ve read ’em all. I’ve read his so good books for authors, keep going.

Freddy: Yeah, absolutely. And read craft books from outside of your genre too.

Like I’ve got one Jennifer Probst is a fantastic romance writer. I’ve only read a little handful of her work, but I have read her, her writing craft book. Oh, and I forget right naked. Is the book I know catchy title, but Right. For, because listen, humans we are the relationships that we have many are romantic.

And so you have to be able to, whether you’re writing horror or mystery or even middle grade, there, there are, there, there is love, there are components of love. In every story that we write or in most stories I assume. But yeah, there, there are things that you can take away from.

From any kind of craft book in what she recommends. It’s interesting. What she recommends is that if you are a writer of what do they call it? The erotica, like the raunchy stuff, if you’re, yeah, if you write the raunchy stuff, Read Sweet read Sweet Romance, and if you write Sweet Romance, read erotica.

So basically it’s learn that ying yang aspect where you’re learning from something completely outta your wheelhouse. Yeah it’s great. It’s great advice.

Stephen: I, I did something similar. I read a reacher book by Lee Child and I’m not a big thriller action reader and, but Id heard him on an interview, actually, his brother, cuz he is taken over.

And so I picked up a book, you can find them at every yard sale for 50 cents. They’re all over the place. And I read it and I was just blown away. The writing is so precise and the sentences are short and say what they need to say without flowery anything. And the story moves without putting in tokens, 50 pages of descriptions and, so it is a totally different style.

So it was like, No matter what style I wrote, somebody out there will enjoy it for the genre and style I have. That’s, what everybody needs to remember.

Freddy: And that’s how you find your voice too, because no one author is going to take away the same the same advice from anyone or two or three or four authors who write craft books.

Stephen: Absolutely. A hundred percent. All right. Freddy, I know you need to get going. And I’ve got stuff to do today. It’s been a wonderful talk. I’ve enjoyed myself immensely. Thank you. So before we sign off, do you have any last minute advice you would give to new authors?

Freddy: To new authors? Just write the damn book.

Right? There you go. Even when you don’t feel like a, get in the chair and write the damn. Write it right. Make time. Make time.

Stephen: I would add to that the craft books don’t make nearly as much sense unless you’ve written some stuff beforehand. If you’ve never written and you’re trying to pull it all in, just by reading a craft book, you won’t absorb anything.

It won’t make sense. But if you’ve written some stuff, no matter how poorly. Reading those books makes a lot more sense and you improve a lot more that way. So that’s my new advice I’ve been telling people and

Freddy: that’s why you should just write the book . Yeah, absolutely. Agree to the craft books .

Stephen: Yep. All right man.

Thank you. I’ll talk to you later.

Freddy: Yeah, really appreciate it. Hey Steven.

Yeah.

View Details

OverviewHe just discovered why his dad died. Now ‘tis the season for a rampage of revenge…
“If you like your festive stories dark and twisted, Freddy Cruz has a gem for you. Allow Me to Ruin Your Christmas is packed full of secrets, lies and diabolical characters you’ll love to hate.” _ Adam Hamdy, bestselling author of The Other Side of Night.
Beckett needs his eyes bleached. Catching his mom and his favorite pod-caster doing things that will get them on Santa’s naked and naughty list is enough to turn his stomach. And after he agrees to officially meet the new boyfriend, his slightly nauseous Yuletide cheer devolves into rage when he learns the guy was involved in his father’s death.
Driven by the need for vengeance, the incensed son sets out to stuff the home-wrecking grinch’s stocking with burning coal—by going after the los-er’s wife and daughter. But as Beckett’s gore-trimmed plan descends into chaos, another ghastly secret could send him into murderous overdrive.
Is he about to unwrap a no-holds-barred retribution spree?
Allow Me to Ruin Your Christmas is a perfectly gruesome revenge thriller. If you like characters pushed over the edge, dark acts, and family drama, then you’ll love Freddy Cruz’s bloodstained holiday treat.

His Bookhttps://www.amazon.com/Allow-Me-Ruin-Your-Christmas/dp/B0BLFT2LYV?crid=3BE70IVW57DXX&keywords=allow+me+to+ruin+your+christmas&qid=1670070425&sprefix=allow+me+to+ruin+your+christmas%2Caps%2C84&sr=8-1&linkCode=li2&tag=discoveredwordsmiths-20&linkId=02a11fe70e3fd91e8cc76ecccd23e29b&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_ilWebsitehttps://www.freddycruzcreativeworks.com/

https://ruinmychristmas.com

Favoriteshttps://www.amazon.com/You-Novel-Lifetime-Caroline-Kepnes-ebook/dp/B00IGVH9LI?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1670070613&sr=8-1&linkCode=li2&tag=discoveredwordsmiths-20&linkId=726fefcd7c93a08588be1c34ac0bc8ea&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_ilMurder By The Book | These Stories Are Killer (murderbooks.com)

YouTubehttps://youtu.be/u7BYHZqoNnkTranscriptSo Freddy, welcome. Good morning. Welcome to Discovered Wordsmith. How are you today?

Freddy: Wonderful. Thank you

Stephen: so much for the invite. Yeah, it’s good to have you here. I can’t wait to find out about this book. It’s perfect timing for the time of year, . Yeah, it’s, no, please go ahead. Oh no. You go ahead. I was just gonna say, tell us a little bit about yourself where you live, some of the things you like to do besides writing.

Freddy: Yeah, absolutely. I am in the greater Houston area, technically Richmond, which is about a half an hour outside of downtown Houston. I am an entrepreneur who owns a media company that centers around storytelling and helping brands and individuals share their stories with the world. So it, writing books and doing podcasts and helping with podcast production is, it’s really all intertwined.

Stephen: I agree. I like that cuz I’ve heard a lot more about nonfiction, writing it in a story style and companies telling their story through their brand and all that. And it kinda sparked me, my idea of working with kids, not just on writing books and stories, but stories and video games and how they can, get into the video game industry by writing instead of having to code.

Everyone thinks you got a code and there’s so much more to it.

Freddy: Yeah, absolutely. In video games, The best video games, at least in my humble opinion, is are the games that are story based. We got, I don’t know how old you are. I’m 47, so I grew up with Atari 2,600 Snooze. Yeah.

And, but Nintendo 64, man, we got Metro, we got Legend of Zel. Frogger was fun, but I where’s the story in that You get splat hit by a truck. But

Stephen: those, but it still fun several seasons of a cartoon, so if they created something

Freddy: there. Yeah, absolutely. But yeah, no, it’s like that journey that you go on and it gets you it gets you sucked in, then next thing you know, it summer’s over and it’s time to go back to school.

Stephen: So yeah, I, I’m, I, same age and I agree with you some of those. A lot of people now complain about, oh, that game sucks because the graphics weren’t that great. I grew up on a Commodore in a Atari. If the game was fun, that was all it mattered, the graphics? Yeah. But it’s so funny now you got so many independents doing eight bit graphic video games after everyone was saying, oh, we need better graphics.

And not always true. Not in the video game world.

Freddy: So yeah, everything old is new again, .

Stephen: Exactly. Except us, right? ? Yeah. Oh

Freddy: God. Don’t remind.

Stephen: All right you live in Houston, so you haven’t been getting the cold weather like we have up here, .

Freddy: Yeah. No, absolutely. And we live three years in Minneapolis, so we know all about cold and so yes.

Okay. Yeah, so the cold weather up there, it’s much like the heat down here where you could be native and you just don’t get used to. But I will say when we lived up north there was a threshold and it wasn’t free. The technically freezing mark, it was 20 degrees at some point when it, when the weather was, when it got up to 20.

All right. I can go outside with a dog and we can go play and that was it. But if it wasn’t the teens or lower, forget it.

Stephen: Yeah. And the wind and all that. Definitely. Yeah. Okay. Your book we’re gonna talk about is Allow me to Ruin Your Christmas, and it’s a great time of year for that which title is very intriguing.

Tell us a little bit about this book and why you wanted to.

Freddy: Yeah, first first and foremost, I gotta tell you because I love the story. I was talking to Tweet t Sutherland during season one of my episode of my podcast rather. And And she was asking because every now and then I’ll pull my last question because it’s Freddy’s huge Ask podcast.

It’s an interview form. So the last question, every now and then I’ll say, Hey, so this is Freddy. See Ask podcast. What would you like to ask me? And so I asked tw that question and she asked me what I was working on. And so I told her about the book. It’s it’s a thriller. It’s set in Houston around the holiday season.

Oh, what’s it called? And I told her that I wasn. Sure about the title yet, and I had a couple of working titles, like he Ruined My Christmas and then I forget what the other working title was, and then I just, for some reason it just came out and then I’m thinking, maybe allow me to Ruin Your Christmas.

And she started laughing. She thought that was funny. And so I’m like, okay, here’s a best selling author who likes the title. And so she just basically affirmed what it.

Stephen: Absolutely. That’s great. Yeah. It’s a fiction book. What is it? Is it you’re ruining all the kids by telling them about Santa Claus?

Tell us a little bit about the story without giving it all away. Yeah, sure.

Freddy: Coincidentally, it but not really has to do with Santa, but rather two unsavory individuals. One is college aged the other is middle aged. And so the college. Discovers the older guy in a very compromising position at home with his mom.

And so it’s, it just all goes downhill from chapter one. He discovers that they’re having an affair. He’s married, and then he discovers that this guy had something to do with the death of his. And so from that plot point which is just a few chapters in, so this isn’t really giving anything away from that plot point, it just all goes downhill for both of ’em.

So

Stephen: it’s not a like Christmas horror slasher movie is my first thought reading that title. ? Yeah.

Freddy: Yeah. It, I don’t wanna say it’s not slasher because. There is some death. Okay. And I’ll leave it at that. Okay. But yeah, thing, things go south really bad for both individuals.

Stephen: I, I love that because I like to watch a lot of horror movies leading up to Halloween.

And I like to watch a lot of good Christmas movies in December, but November was this. So I compromised and I watched Christmas horror movies in December, so it’s like that transition in. Yeah. So this sounds like it’d be like a great movie. So let me ask you that. If someone asked you, would you like to see this turned into a movie or a TV show?

Freddy: I certainly wouldn’t turn down either offer, but I feel like a series would prolong the success of the franchise. Yeah. I. For some reason, I don’t know that this particular book would work in a series format. My first novel is probably out of my three, is probably the only one that will work, that would work in a series format.

The other two including this one would be more apropo for a movie. But, what do I know? I don’t produce film or tv. So I could be totally off base here, .

Stephen: So what does, like genre, do you classify this in? Is it an action, is it thriller? What do you think it.

Freddy: It’s labeled.

When you look under Amazon, it’s labeled as a mystery and a thriller. Okay. Yeah. Right with a holiday theme. Yeah. A twist of, I don’t wanna say just because people die, that it’s horror, but people die and there’s some ruthless, there’s some ruthlessness in the book.

Okay. And so that’s why I’m not really sure that it I’m, I tend to think that it does delve into horror. I’m just not so sure that just because people die, yeah. Because people can die in a comedy.

Stephen: We, we, yeah. We, it seems like books nowadays are really getting away from that strict classification and you get lots of little bits here and there.

think Netflix system of just using tags is much better to, oh, I like gritty and horror and I, so I like this, yeah. I think that would be good. So can you think are there any books out there that are of similar for people that have said, oh, I’ve read that sounds like I’d like Freddy’s book.

Freddy: I don’t know that there’s a, a particular comp. I will say though, that if you, so my favorite authors are Chuck Pollick, the Mastermind behind Fight Club. I love Carolyn Kipp the author of the U series. So those are my two favorite writers. And so if anyone likes that kind of style, the gritty, dark humor very strange kind of fiction, transgressive creepy fiction, then you will like this.

Stephen: Okay. All right. Now, I’ve heard of Chuck I haven’t heard of Carolyn. What’s that series like? I’ll put some links, Freddy’s favorites in the show notes. Yeah.

Freddy: The u yeah, the U Series follows someone who is a who’s a serial killer. He ends up being a serial killer, but the u the U in the U series, he is talking, it’s written in the second person, so he’s talking to his victim.

Soon to be victim. And the second person, so you’re reading it and it’s like he’s reading the book to you, like he’s narrating to you. Wow. So it’s Hey, you came into the bookshop and look at you wearing this. Oh yeah. You are doing this. Oh, you’re gonna be doing that. Yeah. And the the narrative that the style is just on point.

On point. Yeah. And a Netflix series, so anybody listen. May have seen the Netflix series and not realized that it’s based on a book. I do prefer the audio book over both Netflix and the actual, pages. Just because Santino Fontana is one hell of an audio audio book narrator. He is just flawless.

Stephen: Nice. Yeah I’ve had a couple audio books I prefer over the written book and partly because of the narrator they just nailed it

Freddy: what’s your favorite audio book?

Stephen: I’ve got two of them and they’re one’s good, what I normally read, but the other one’s a little off. My favorite two are the odd Thomas books which I can’t remember the narrator at the moment, but he just nailed the tone of the book and the.

The voice of the main character, so well that I just, I’ve listened to it multiple times. And then the other is way off what I normally listen to, but it’s the silky Stackhouse books that the True Blood TV show was based on. For some reason her voice talking is just, Way fits the, again, the tone of the whole book.

And I listen to that whole series and I normally would not pick up like a Paranormal Romance book, but it really works

Freddy: for me. . Okay. It’s called the Soki What? Soki

Stephen: Stackhouse Mystery Novels. It’s the, how do you spell that? How do you spell that? Soki, S O K I E. And Stackhouse S T a C K House.

Freddy: Huh? I’m writing it down for people that are not watching, I’m writing it down. All right, cool. Yeah. . All right.

Stephen: Yeah. If you’ve ever watched True Blood, it’s the books that, those, that TV show was on. It’s Southern Romance Vampires.

Freddy: Interesting. Yeah. You ever been to oh gosh, now I’m spacing on the name.

It’s outside. It’s about an hour outside of Atlanta where they did the other Vampire series. The Vampire Diaries.

Stephen: Oh no, but I’ve heard you can go and visit. Yeah.

Freddy: Yeah. And they film one of the one of the Halloween movies there. And there another classic movie. It’s a really cool, quaint kind of country town.

It’s a long drive, like well over an hour. It’s not quite two hours. But yeah, it’s it’s interesting. It’s a nice little town. You go and you. Fresh, homemade hand turned ice cream, and the food’s really good. And see where the slashes were. Yeah, just going. Yeah. And then there’s a map.

There’s a map of of all the houses where the where the vampire, where the quote unquote vampires lived in the, from the Vampire Diaries. And this was right, right before Covid started to get real serious. It was March 2020. And my family and I we had gone. And and here we’re just, it’s me, my wife, and two teenage girls who are hooked on Vampire Diaries.

And and we’re walking through this neighborhood and standing in front of homes, taking pictures of people’s houses. And I’m like, y’all. This is embarrassing . And normally teenagers are embarrassed by their parents. But hear me being the dad, I’m like just cross my arms, my hand over my face.

Nobody noticed me. Nobody noticed me. But yeah. Yeah, that’s something you can do.

Stephen: I was in New Orleans last year and I went around cuz there’s been multiple movies shot there. I went to the square where the one James Bond was. I looked up N C I S, new Orleans, the different spots. And it’s hilarious because they have this.

Place they go in to go to their headquarters and it’s marked, and you can go to it and it’s a somebody’s garage. There’s nothing in there that they really walk into. They just film the outside parts, then go somewhere else to film the rest of it. It’s hilarious.

Freddy: Yeah, it’s incredible what they make it look like.

Stephen: Yeah. Yeah. It fools you. But I got a picture there, so I’m like, Ooh, . For this book people that have read it, what have, what’s the feedback?

Freddy: The book is, I don’t know, at the, I don’t, we’re recording on November 10th, so I’m not sure when the episode will be out, but it’s only been out for a few days.

I’ve got a couple of reviewers who says it’s a haunting and chilling revenge thriller. There’s a gentleman who was recently on my podcast who. Was gracious enough to blurb it and he was like, the, these characters are diabolical and you’ll love to hate them. And yeah, it’s so far so good.

My beta readers seem to like it, and it was just, it was interesting. It was a different, it was a different writing experience for me because I have never written from the first person. I’ve never written first person present with two characters in alternating chapters. And so it was a neat format for me to to explore.

And like I said, it, things go very badly for both individuals and in the book’s, darkest moments. It was strange. What kind of took over as I was writing it and then like the feeling. It like I’m writing these scenes and it felt like I actually did something. Oh, wow.

Like I wrote the, I only wrote them, but it felt like I was actually engaged in the physical moment and

Stephen: in your mind kinda took over your body and made it feel like it had done what it

Freddy: had. Yeah. Yeah. And I hate. I hate to sound like that kind of author. Oh, my characters made me do it. But no, that’s a real, it’s a real thing.

And there was one particular day where it was during the, one of the most conflict written passages of the book. And I had written two chapters, so obviously it’s alternating first person present, so it was one character did this one thing in one chapter to the guy, and then the guy who had it done to him is writing it as, so he’s narrating as it’s happening to him and it, I had to step outside and I couldn’t write for a couple of days because it really messed with my head.

Does that

Stephen: make sense? That’s intense. Yeah, that’s intense. Cuz you’re the one writing it. You get that people reading books that like, wow, that, if you, it’s almost it I liked quantum physics and I always say, maybe there’s something coming in from another world. You’re just channeling what’s there.

Maybe you have an ultra ego that did experience it and you connected .

Freddy: Yeah. And it makes you, it really makes you wonder.

Stephen: Yeah. Yeah. Let me ask you this, Freddy, is your house haunted?

Freddy: No, not that I know of. The do will. Oh, , that’s my dog, .

Stephen: I was in here, I’m like, why didn’t see somebody come in?

Just check .

Freddy: Yeah. My kid my younger daughter will tell you that when she was a little girl, she would have dreams about a little girl in her room.

Stephen: And I’ve talked to some other kids and people with the same type of thing.

Freddy: Yeah. And as a teenager I’ll tell her, yeah what better you than me kid?

Yeah. Yeah. I never tell her. I never tell the eight year old version of her that . But as a teenager,

Stephen: Now you can pick on, I just said that to a friend. We’ve, all our kids are above 20 and we were saying, playing a game and said something. It’s man, isn’t it great when the kids grow up big enough that you can like, be mean to ’em, and not get in trouble?

Cause they’re adults. Yeah.

Freddy: Scar them for

Stephen: life. Yeah. Yeah. So is your book self-published or do you have a publisher?

Freddy: It is indie published through Tuscany Bay Books.

Stephen: Okay. Is that your own or is Somebo some other publishing? Yeah,

Freddy: it’s somebody else’s press it’s Richard Pellis Press out of California.

Stephen: Oh nice. Okay, great. And we talked about the TV show. Do you have a website?

Freddy: I do. You can go to, for anybody interested in allow me to Ruin Your Christmas. The website is ruin my Christmas dot.

Stephen: Nice. So do you get a different website for each of your books?

Freddy: No, this is just a what do they call it?

A, a, it’s just a rebranded link that redirects to my website.

Stephen: Okay. Oh, I like that. Yeah. Okay. That’s an idea for, yeah, there’s

Freddy: a technical term. Yeah, there’s a technical term for it and I forget,

Stephen: Redirect.

Freddy: Yeah, redirect. Something like that. Yeah. Redirected website.

Stephen: So what are your plans for your next book now that this one’s out?

Freddy: Yeah. I’ve had a couple of ideas of what I’d like to write for my next fiction book, but I’m at a point where I think with 2024 coming up, I know next year’s 2023, but the five year anniversary of my first book is gonna be in 2024. And I feel like it behooves me to do a sort of remix of my first novel and with a new cover with expanded beginnings, middles and endings, and I was wrestling around with maybe an idea of, Maybe journal entries from one or two of the characters.

Maybe a short story or novella, like a prequel or a sequel or both. I don’t know what that, I don’t know what the five year anniversary remix would be. Other than it’s going to have new artwork and it’s going to be kick ass because I feel like since since 2018 writing my my.

Manuscript. I feel like I’ve learned a lot as far as storytelling and plotting and character development. So much so that with my third novel I didn’t work with the, with a developmental editor. I plotted it out and allowed myself a little bit of grace to let the characters tell me what to do.

But I I did work with a copy editor and proof reader. For reference. But I did not do, I did not use a developmental editor for the first two books I did. And I feel like I learned a lot through each, through working with each of these women. And it was like, it was almost like going to to a writing school.

When When you get a really good developmental editor, that’s what it’s like because they don’t cherry pick. For instance, the. With the second book she literally told me, you lost me as a reader. Wow. And I don’t know if it’s because I’m self-loathing, but I welcome one of my friends who does public speaking training.

He calls it hot and cold feedback. So hot being positive, cold, being negative. I love cold feedback. I just do, I think that’s where a lot of growth happens. Because if someone is just gonna be, Hey, Steven, great job. And then the one time you actually do something that is not right, your whole world comes crumbling down,

Stephen: So I, I totally agree. Same thing. I learned a lot from my editor and grew a lot from that. And I, I’ve had people. Let read my stuff. Oh yeah, that was great. I’m like, that doesn’t help me. I can’t get better. I would rather people tell me, this is what’s not good, what I don’t like before I release it, and then it flops and I don’t make any money and nobody else reads it.

And you know you want all of those things. That’s why you’re writing it, know? yeah. And they don’t understand. I’m. You’re not attacking me personally. You’re helping me improve because I can’t see my own flaws. I want that and ask that. Now, if somebody’s being a troll and just starts attacking you personally, it’s ignore them.

They’re not helping you either. .

Freddy: Yeah. I feel like that’s why I feel like that’s why in order to write fiction, I think you should be at least 30 or at least 30. That way you’re, you’ve got the emotional maturity. That’s what they claim. Yeah. That’s what they claim. But no, I think it it, it takes a certain set of, I think you have to have a level of thick skin because if you’re younger, you’re still discovering yourself.

And it could be to get that kind of brutally honest. Can really stifle your growth and make you not want to ever write again.

Stephen: Yeah. Agreed. Let me ask, do you have any favorite bookstores you like to go to?

Freddy: You know what I do? There’s one in Southwest Houston called Murder by the Book, and the website is murder books.com.

That. Don’t let the name fool you. They sell all kinds of books, but I just love this place. It’s a nice little shop. And they host authors from all walks of life, from all genres. They go in during covid, they were doing a lot of the virtual signing virtual event. But they hosted me for, from my first book, but they’ve had Brad Thor, they’ve had Ruth.

We in February, January or February, I forget. I’m gonna, I’m gonna host a live q and a tentatively speaking with Brad Taylor. So Nice. Yeah. It’s just a, it’s a fun place. It’s a fun place. They got a they’ve. A space for for q and a events. So you can squeeze about maybe 30 people into the little space.

And you got the table with the chairs and the mics and yeah it’s a fun, it’s a fun spot for uh, for anyone who wants to learn about their favorite writer.

Stephen: Good. I’ll put a link to their website. I like to, help bookstores out some too, if we can do that’s great. All right.

Before we move on to the second half and talk some author stuff for everybody listening if they said, Hey, Freddy, what’s this horror Christmas book about this murder Christmases, why should I get this and read this? What would you tell ’em?

Freddy: I would tell them that if they are tired of the feel good Christmas movie specials on tv, and they just need something different, this is a book for.

If you are tired of characters that just always do the right thing no matter what. This is the book for you. We’ve got perfectly flawed individuals doing terrible things, and they have no idea that they’re doing terrible things because they think that they’re doing them for all the right reasons.

They don’t see their flaws. And I think that’s what makes for a great story, is perfectly imperfect. People doing crazy, insane things, and they have, they’re totally self.

Stephen: Great. All right. Freddy I appreciate you talking to us and sharing your book with us. I wish you luck and we should have this episode out before Christmas so everyone can get the book and read it to get in that Christmas spirit.

Thank you.

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Overview

With horror, theme can be even more important than other genres and you can get a theme that you didn't expect. Shannon has developed her own way of finding her theme, and we discuss that in this episode.

Her Book

https://www.amazon.com/Prisoners-Stewartville-Shannon-Felton/dp/1957537310?keywords=the+prisoners+of+stewartville&qid=1669400707&sprefix=prisoner+of+stewar%2Caps%2C102&sr=8-1&linkCode=li2&tag=discoveredwordsmiths-20&linkId=19233c51de9a29eba766a07f6d4a1d5e&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_il

YouTube

Transcript

Okay, so let's move on and talk author stuff, and I think this is a great, uh, discussion, uh, on theme because we're recording this in October and October's a big team month with all the Halloween and horror stuff.

So, uh, before we get onto that, let me ask you a couple hard questions. You're working on your second book, you wrote this first one. What are some things you've learned writing that first one that you're doing different with the second one?

Shannon: Definitely don't worry about the first draft. That's a really hard one to get, um, okay with.

But don't worry about the first draft. Just write it all out. When that muse comes calling, listen, sit down just right. Don't worry about anything else. Um, The what readers liked. It was good to see what readers liked from my first book, and then knowing, okay, I can do this more in my second book and add it in there.

She. I don't have a good answer for this one.

Stephen: No, that's, that's fine. And uh, I mean, you've only written one book, so there's probably still a lot of things you're learning.

Shannon: Uh, yeah, I just don't, I'm still kind of feeling lost in the weeds a little bit . And

Stephen: that's perfect too because, you know, the focus of the podcast is new authors.

Not someone who has, you know, New York Times bestsellers, I'm not gonna talk to Patterson. You know? Yeah. Talking to new authors and a lot of times new authors feel like, oh man, everybody else has it all together and know what they're doing. And that's not true. Just about every author I talk with, you know, is, is the same way.

It's like, man, Like you said, the second book's hard. Oh my gosh. You know, it's not the easiest thing in the world just cause I, no. Yeah, and you

Shannon: think it's, you think you'll get that first one published and it'll just be easy and you'll be confident and you're like, oh, I'm really a writer now. And no, that's, that doesn't make everything go away.

It's still work and it's still difficult. Yes.

Stephen: Yeah, absolutely. Um, so what, uh, when you're writing, what software and services do you use? Do you have anything special that you really.

Shannon: I just use Google Docs. Okay. Um, sometimes I might pop it into Grammarly and just make sure I'm doing okay there. There's a fun little, um, website Hemingway edits.

Oh gosh, I don't remember that. But it's based on Hemingway's writing. You just pop something in there, it'll tell you too many ad verbs or shorten your sentences. It's just fun to. Um,

Stephen: to use and I use pro writing aid help, like you said, learning more, uh, you know, tells me what I did wrong and why, and it helps me improve.

I use it, you know, as alerting tool, not just editing. So, yeah, grammar is similar in that. Yeah. Um, So what are you doing? Uh, you said this came out two years ago, and I think that's a great thing too, because a lot of people think, oh, I gotta get my book out and it's gotta rise in top and I've got 30 days and Oh, I'm not a best seller and I'm done.

And but you, here you are two years later, you're still working on it. So what are some of the things you're doing to market it and what results are you seeing?

Shannon: I'm using Facebook. Getting the word out there and that's going well. I really like the environment of Facebook. It's very friendly and support.

I'm on Twitter,

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Overview

Stewartville. A town living in the shadow of the prisons that drive its economy. Haunted by the ghosts of its past. Cursed by the dark secrets hidden beneath. A town so entwined with the prisons waiting outside the city limits that it’s impossible to imagine one without the other, or to ever imagine escaping either. When a teenage boy digs into the history of the town, he discovers a tunnel system beneath Stewartville, passageways filled with dark secrets. Secrets leading not to freedom, but to unrelenting terror. Stewartville. Where the convicts aren’t the only prisoners.

Her Book

https://www.amazon.com/Prisoners-Stewartville-Shannon-Felton/dp/1957537310?keywords=the+prisoners+of+stewartville&qid=1669400707&sprefix=prisoner+of+stewar%2Caps%2C102&sr=8-1&linkCode=li2&tag=discoveredwordsmiths-20&linkId=19233c51de9a29eba766a07f6d4a1d5e&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_il

Favorites

https://www.amazon.com/Beloved-Vintage-International-Toni-Morrison-ebook/dp/B000TWUTYG?keywords=beloved+toni+morrison&qid=1669400982&sprefix=beloved+toni%2Caps%2C87&sr=8-1&linkCode=li2&tag=discoveredwordsmiths-20&linkId=7872ae69c351d7fa24d2513211753895&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_il

YouTube

Transcript

Well, today I'm discover wordsmith. I want to, uh, welcome Shannon Felt. And Shannon, how are you today? Hi,

Shannon: I'm good. Hi everyone. Thank you for having me here.

Stephen: All right. Well, Shannon, uh, before we get started talking about your book, let's find out a little bit about you. So tell us, uh, where you live and some of the things you like to do besides right.

Shannon: I live in Phoenix, Arizona, kind of right outside Phoenix. So you're not

Stephen: getting the cold weather I'm getting today. ?

Shannon: No. Where are you at?

Stephen: Uh, I am in northeast Ohio and it's actually snowing in parts of the area.

Shannon: Oh, you're so lucky. I love snow. I do too. Yes, I agree. Oh, it's beautiful. You wake up and it's a winter wonderland and the world is

Stephen: transformed.

Absolutely. But I've been to Phoenix and besides, you know, killing you when it's hot, it's, it's beautiful in its own way there too. So yeah,

Shannon: it can be. We're moving soon to Georgia, so end of the year. Well, you won't get excited about that there either,

Stephen: and maybe so. I'm sorry, what else do you like to do?

What are some things.

Shannon: Um, I do all kinds of stuff. I'm always finding something new to do. Right now I'm learning to play chess. I went through a bread making phase. We had fresh bread like every day. My family loved it. Um, just kind of anything, you know, I get bored kind of easily. I like to change things up.

Okay.

Stephen: Yeah. So why did you wanna start?

Shannon: I've always wanted to be a writer. I've always loved to read, and creating a world and losing yourself in the book is just the best feeling, and I wanna do that for myself and for other people. Um, And as a kid, we'd get these assignments, like write a short story, a short paragraph, and I'd fill out the whole page, flip it over, fill out the whole back of the page, just go way beyond the assignment.

Right. Um, so yeah, I guess that's why . Okay. Nice.

Stephen: And, um, so the, the book we're gonna be talking about is called The Prisoner of Stewartville. Yes. Um, so why did you wanna write this book and tell us a little bit about.

Shannon: Well, when I was 12, my mom started working with the federal prison system here in Phoenix, and they had this company Picnic Day, and I'll never forget this, it was at the facility and we're like roasting hot dogs and playing tag and 20 yards away.

There's prisoners walking around the gate and I'm 12 and I'm thinking, oh my gosh, what did they do and why are we here with them? And just kind of that weirdness, the two worlds colliding, really stuck with. And then when I was 14, we moved to a small town where prisons were more a way of life.

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Overview

Matt has been a professional writer for over 40 years. One of the hardest aspects of writing is the beginning - both the beginning of the book but also starting a book.

His Book

https://www.amazon.com/Emirs-Falcon-Matt-Hughes-ebook/dp/B0BC4MPGD6?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1668717297&sr=8-1&linkCode=li2&tag=discoveredwordsmiths-20&linkId=41bf8e6aabddb0e0a1defec9fe4e8eeb&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_il

YouTube

Transcript

Let's move on and talk some author stuff. And we have a really good topic today. A lot of authors want to talk about finishing your book and that we're going to talk about beginnings.

Before we do that, though, you have been writing for a long time, so what are some things and, and even your fiction, you've been writing for quite a while. What are some things that you've learned through that time that you're doing different with your writing than you used to?

Matt: I was always pretty good right from the beginning.

I, I sold my first short story that I ever wrote in 1982. And I've sold virtually everything I've written since. I had a knack for it. That's, and it certainly didn't hurt that I spent decades writing speeches that is writing for the voice and bringing across charact. To audiences who sit there saying, why am I listening to this guy?

It's cause I can make you listen. But I know some things, and I think I knew them pretty early on. One thing, as I said before it's always about conflict ERs have to contend against each other and their circumstances. One thing that I find most obvious when I give advice or teach or do critiquing or editing for people who are trying to learn how to do this business is that you have to do a really good opening.

And recently I looked at a few pages of someone I know. Who asked me to have a look at what he was doing. And it started with a guy getting up in the morning and going in the kitchen and having coffee and talking to his mother. And then his friend showed up and they talked a little and absolutely nothing happened.

They all got along very well with each other and it was here's the thing. The real problem, and it's got nothing really to do with literary considerations. It has to do with how the market works, the industry agents and editors are the gatekeepers now. Used to be, you could write a thing and send it in to a publisher and there would be somebody there who would read it or read some of it and decide whether or not it was worth looking at.

They were called slush readers, and Slush was the stuff that came in, as they would say over the transom. All of that ended decades ago. The corporations took over the independent publishers and turned them into profit centers. And one of the things that makes profit is to cut costs. So they got rid of all those slush readers, assistant editors, and they pushed the job of winnowing, triaging.

They pushed that down onto the agents. The agents responded. They said, We're no longer gonna take 10%, we'll take 15%. Cuz now we have to do all this extra stuff. And that happened. So there's a story that a famous, very powerful New York agent tells at writers conferences. He says that they they get 800 queries a month.

Seven to hundred to 810% of which they send a note saying, send us the synopsis and the first chapter. And then once a month, usually on a Friday afternoon, they gather only agents gather around a big table in the conference room and they have this stack of 70 or 81st chapters and they start to pass them around.

And what they're doing is deciding. Am I gonna read this on my own time on the weekend? Cuz nobody ever has time to read. They're always so busy marketing, reviewing contracts, looking at manuscripts for people. They already represent the idea of reading something new and seeing maybe we'll represent this person that's done on their own time largely.

So say there's six agents sitting around a table and down comes the first chapter and a guy looks...

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Overview

The Emir’s Falcon, an exciting new young adult tale of outdoor adventure by award-winning Canadian author Matt (Matthew) Hughes, is now available in print, ebook, and audiobook editions from Saskatchewan publisher Shadowpaw Press Premiere.“The novella evolved out of a real event that happened when I was an aide to Canada's Minister of the Environment,” Matt Hughes explains. “The government decided to give a peregrine falcon to a Persian Gulf emir. I wondered how the teenage volunteers who worked with the birds at the breeding facility would react. Almost forty years later, I stopped wondering and made a story out of it.”

Matt (Matthew) Hughes writes fantasy, space opera, and crime fiction. He has sold twenty-four novels to publishers large and small in the UK, US, and Canada, as well as nearly 100 works of short fiction to professional markets. His latest novels are A God in Chains (Dying Earth fantasy) from Edge Publishing and What the Wind Brings (magical realism/historical novel) from Pulp Literature Press. He has won the Endeavour and Arthur Ellis Awards and has been shortlisted for the Aurora, Nebula, Philip K. Dick, Endeavour (twice), A.E. Van Vogt, Neffy, and Derringer Awards. He has been inducted into the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Association's Hall of Fame.

His Book

https://www.amazon.com/Emirs-Falcon-Matt-Hughes-ebook/dp/B0BC4MPGD6?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1668717297&sr=8-1&linkCode=li2&tag=discoveredwordsmiths-20&linkId=41bf8e6aabddb0e0a1defec9fe4e8eeb&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_il

Website

https://matthewhughes.org

Favorites

YouTube

https://youtu.be/EdjbaI5V4FI

Transcript

I'm recording, so we're all good.

Matt: Okay. All right. What would you like to know? Matt, what would I like to know? Welcome to Discovered Wordsmith. First thing I'd really like to know is a little bit about you and where you live. Some of the things you like to do besides writing.

Okay. I have been a professional writer all my life.

I think I got my first paycheck in 1971. Okay. As a reporter covering municipal councils for a daily in, in Vancouver, and I went into weekly papers, was an editor of a couple of small weeklies, and then a guy who just won election as a member of parliament in Canada. Said, would you like to come to Ottawa and Ghost write my column for the local press in the writing?

And I eventually said, yes. I tossed the coin after a week of not being able to make up my mind and off I went to Ottawa and I became the MP assistant. And I was writing his column and helping people with their pension problems and immigration problems, all of that stuff that MP's assistants do.

Been there about six weeks and he came into the office and said I'm seconding the speech from the throne debate, which is a big deal. It's where at the beginning of a new par. The government sets out its whole agenda and then there's a debate and they always have a couple of maiden mps do the the seconding and the moving and seconding.

And they picked him. So I had to write a speech. He said, write me a speech. So I wrote a speech, one draft. He loved it. He went out and gave it, it killed. And next thing I know cause of that speech, he's getting all these request. For come and speak to this group and that group cuz he's a great speaker cuz he is got a great speech writer.

And next thing I know I'm being headhunted by minister's offices and I end up a speech writer to the Minister of Justice. Nice. And later on I went to the Minister of Environment and I did four years in Ottawa as a speech writer. And then I came back to Vancouver and I freelanced for corporate speech writing for almost 30 years.

And then what I'd always wanted to do was to write fiction. Originally science fiction, then I thought crime fiction was more my thing. And I started doing that towards the end of the freelancing. And then finally I said, this is what I want to do.

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Overview

Ken reads a selection from his book, Hero Haters.

His Book

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Overview

Ken recently attended a great convention and we discuss why authors should attend conventions and conferences. There are things that an author should do before going to one and there are things you should be aware of while attending. We discuss all of this and Ken gives us some information about the police writer's academy.

https://writerspoliceacademy.com

His Book

https://www.amazon.com/Hero-Haters-Ken-MacQueen-ebook/dp/B0B6T12613?crid=1FSSNMCC0HXNJ&keywords=hero+haters+ken+mcqueen&qid=1668109710&sprefix=hero+haters+ken+mcqueen%2Caps%2C93&sr=8-1-fkmr1&linkCode=li2&tag=discoveredwordsmiths-20&linkId=55dcadc6127b3688d4a32bc47e54a828&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_il

YouTube

Transcript

Okay, so let's talk some author stuff and we're gonna talk about conferences and going to conferences, which you just went to one recently, which. I find interesting because it's in a different country which I haven't been to.

I've been to Canada, but not a conference up there, is what I mean. All right. But before we do that let me ask you a couple other questions. So you have been writing for a very long time. And you've done journalism and now you're doing fiction. So what are some things that you've learned through the years that you're doing differently now than you would've.

Ken: Certainly the technology would be key. When I started, I didn't even have a cell phone. They weren't available. I had a pager, which was a bit of a pain in the butt at times. But and then there was a whole business of filing a story. It used to be I remember the first semi computer that I could take on the road was about the size of a big briefcase.

It had a capital gray tube. And you pretty much had to coat it in Vaseline to get it under the seat on an airplane. And it was a very delicate operation. Then you had to use acoustic couplers to stick it on a phone behind

Stephen: modem. Oh my gosh.

Ken: It was a real, it was a real challenge so that the technology became ridiculously easy.

Now, I remember I went to the museum in Washington DC. The news museum there, and they had one of these satellite trucks with the antenna that went out and so forth, and the TV reporters would be reporting from there. And I realize now my little phone has all that technology in this

That satellite truck, I'm sure cost a half a million dollars back in the day. Yeah, that, that part was definitely different. The actual hunting and gathering of quotes and the reporting, of course, it was made much easier with with the cell phones and so forth. But when I look back at some of the things I covered before, before I had that technology, I know earthquake in San Francisco or a murder on the Mexican border or the Exxon Valdese Oil spill.

Those were all things that I covered with pretty primitive technology and no cell

Stephen: phones. Wow. So do you feel if you would've done fiction writing back then that you would've enjoyed it or been as successful? Or do you feel that now that you've gone through your years of journalism, you can relax more with the fiction and it comes across?

Just how do you feel about that

Ken: after? Oh I agree that I think I can relax now, for one thing I've this may surprise you that fiction writing doesn't come with a dental plan or a pension .

Stephen: So yes, if nobody understood that fact, ,

Ken: imagine my surprise. But no, I, so that's why I wanted to make sure I was financially secure for before I turned to fiction, because as you.

It's not always the ticket to I, I feel I've written an 80,000 word lottery ticket, but who knows what the odds are of ever cashing in on that. But yeah. Anyway I felt that I needed the security of not having to wrestle with, Where the next paycheck would come from. So that until the kids were grown, that my two sons and they left home, and my wife and I retired, then we figured, okay, now we can relax and breathe and use a different part of our brains. ...

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Overview

Before turning to fiction, Ken MacQueen spent 15 years as Vancouver bureau chief for Maclean’s, Canada’s newsmagazine, winning multiple National Magazine Awards and nominations. He travelled the world writing features and breaking news for the magazine, and previously for two national news agencies. He has written extensively on crime, politics, disasters, both natural and man-made—and, being Canadian, on the shifting fortunes of Queen Elizabeth II and her clan. All of this is potential fodder for future fiction, though the Queen as action hero seems unlikely. MacQueen covered nine Olympic Games and drew the athletic prowess of Jake Ockham, his protagonist, from tracking elite rowers in training and on podiums in Athens, Beijing and London. Hero Haters, set in the Pacific Northwest and rural Pennsylvania, is his debut thriller. He and his wife divide their time between North Vancouver and British Columbia’s Sunshine Coast.

Ken also wanted to pass along the link for the writer's police academy.

https://writerspoliceacademy.com

His Book

https://www.amazon.com/Hero-Haters-Ken-MacQueen-ebook/dp/B0B6T12613?crid=1FSSNMCC0HXNJ&keywords=hero+haters+ken+mcqueen&qid=1668109710&sprefix=hero+haters+ken+mcqueen%2Caps%2C93&sr=8-1-fkmr1&linkCode=li2&tag=discoveredwordsmiths-20&linkId=55dcadc6127b3688d4a32bc47e54a828&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_il

Website

https://kenmcqueen.com

Favorites

https://www.amazon.com/Black-Echo-Harry-Bosch-Novel/dp/1538744392?content-id=amzn1.sym.ade86e8d-7bdc-4da1-98f0-8d190b9cccc9%3Aamzn1.sym.ade86e8d-7bdc-4da1-98f0-8d190b9cccc9&crid=JNY2IWNJA3SO&cv_ct_cx=harry+bosch&keywords=harry+bosch&pd_rd_i=1538744392&pd_rd_r=add8a516-17fb-4ba0-81f9-9f319d0a9e20&pd_rd_w=jLISA&pd_rd_wg=s6jDT&pf_rd_p=ade86e8d-7bdc-4da1-98f0-8d190b9cccc9&pf_rd_r=PZTHZDY0FXATWNQDG0BP&qid=1668111136&sprefix=harry+bosch%2Caps%2C113&sr=1-2-11334d15-63a8-47c9-9cec-5dae8c8a1491&linkCode=li2&tag=discoveredwordsmiths-20&linkId=9dbaee66f3e9590cb95919380b53bb20&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_il

YouTube

Transcript

Alright, so Hero Haters is the book and we'll talk about conferences for the second half, the author half.

Stephen: All right. And I like to keep things casual, so if we go off on a tangent a little bit, that's. Great with that. All right, so finally, after a few mishaps with technology I wanna welcome Ken McQueen to discovered wordsmiths today. Ken, how are you

Ken: doing? I'm doing great. Just had my book launched last night I might be a little fuzzy, but uh, I'm doing well.

Stephen: Good. Great. We'll get into the book, we'll talk about that. Before we do tell us a little bit about yourself. Some things you like, where you live, and some things you like to do outside of writing.

Ken: Ah, live in North Vancouver, British Columbia. I'm looking out over Barard Inlet right now, watching some freighters go by.

And what we like to do here is here and on the coastal part of. British Columbia as walk along the Pacific do some kayaking when we're not, when I'm not writing, and just enjoying the moderate temperatures of British Columbia after years of living in Ottawa where it was extreme

Stephen: Got it. Yeah. I'm in Ohio, which has very frequently changing weather right below Lake Erie. Yes. And today it's very mild and nice, but we're supposed to get rain tonight. We'll see.

Ken: So do you get the lake effect snow come winter, spring?

Stephen: Not so much. I'm just a little south of that. Lucky you.

Yeah. If I go north a little bit. But it's really cool in the winter sometimes when it gets, like the last couple years really cold, you go up to Lake Erie and you see all the frozen waves and the piers are all frozen over and it's really cool looking. It is. It looks pretty

Ken: freaky actually.

Yes. Otherworldly,

Stephen: yes. Inspiration for some story . Yeah, exactly. All right. Ken, why, tell us why you wanted to start writing.

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Overview

Roger discusses a problem many authors face - starting strong but not finishing. Or not knowing how to finish. We talk about tactics that can be used to help finish your book.

His Book

https://www.amazon.com/First-Last-Year-Roger-Leslie-ebook/dp/B0BHTXRV44?crid=J4Y4OLGR3MJT&keywords=roger+leslie+first+last+year&qid=1666104882&qu=eyJxc2MiOiIwLjkzIiwicXNhIjoiMC4wMCIsInFzcCI6IjAuMDAifQ%3D%3D&sprefix=roger+leslie+first+last+yea%2Caps%2C88&sr=8-2&linkCode=li2&tag=discoveredwordsmiths-20&linkId=b2c48bbc6e3ff712ba091cfb942ddb7e&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_il

YouTube

https://youtu.be/xV1thq3mppU

Transcript

So before we get onto our topic of discussion let me move my notes a little bit. What have you learned that you're doing different now about writing publishing than when you first started? Not necessarily clear back in eighth grade, but your books now.

Roger: The more I write, the more I trust my own instincts to just begin the process and watch it unfold.

When I wrote my first, I set a goal to write my first novel before I graduated from high school. And I when I'm focused and when I have a goal, I am driven. And so I used to race home from school every day. By that time, my parents had bought me a little portable electric type. And I had it on the floor in my bedroom.

And I would sit crosslegged and I would put the paper in the roller. And I was typing. And I was 17 years old at the time. And I remember one day my conscious mind was looking down at my fingers on the keys. And the keys seemed to be moving and my fingers and the keys were, seemed to be moving on their.

And it frightened me a little bit cause I was only 17 and I wasn't, didn't know much about the creative process and I thought, is this a form of, I was really

Stephen: concerned, very much is a form of madness.

Roger: My, this symbolizes the crux of the creative process. So what I've learned and what I allow myself to do more and more is to get my conscious mind out of the way, to clear my conscious mind as much as I possibly can, cuz that's where my editor resides.

The editor in me, resides in my conscious mind and let the, that spiritual and creative energy flow so that when I'm working on my first draft, things just move and low and behold. Things that I couldn't have figured out or necessarily worked out in an outline. They worked themselves out in that first draft.

Not that the first draft is ready for publication by any means. There are several revisions that need to happen, but you don't have anything to edit and revise until you've got that draft. So the most important lesson I learned that I'd like to share with your listeners is in the creative process, Let it flow.

Open up and let it.

Stephen: And that's a difficult state. You have to write a lot, do a lot of sitting down and doing it before you get into that flow. And athletes talk about that. I know doctors, brain, surgeons and stuff will talk about it. They get into that state of just un, their consciousness almost just goes by itself.

You can. It's hard to describe unless you've experienced it. Yeah.

Roger: And it takes experience and it interesting that you bring up the idea of athletes because one of the analogies that I use with the people that I, when I teach my writing courses or when I coach my, is I say your creative muscles are like your physical muscles.

When you first start exercising, you really have to motivate yourself to go to the. And you're just learning how to use the equipment and it hurts afterwards because you're not used to using those muscles. But if you do it consistently, then your muscles get attuned to what you're doing and they get stronger and they get better, even better.

They start hungering to do that on a consistent basis. So if you work out on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, then I can guarantee after a few. Thursday night, your muscles your system is getting ramped up because it knows you...

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Overview

Dr. Roger Leslie is a scholar in the fields of success and education. Through major literary houses, medium and small presses, and his own publishing house, Leslie has published fiction and nonfiction books in multiple genres: historical fiction, inspirational self-help, spirituality, writing and publishing, movie reference, teaching and librarianship, biography, history, and memoir.Leslie has won numerous national awards including ForeWord Book of the Year, The Ben Franklin Award, and Writer’s Digest’s #1 Inspirational Book of the Year. At its inaugural event, Leslie received the Houston Literary Award for his body of work.Leslie is in demand as a teacher, coach, and keynote speaker. He leads FLY (First Last Year) courses based on his blockbuster memoir, My First Last Year. He draws from decades as an author, editor, and publisher to coach writers in groups and individually. He is also a sought-after speaker for his lively, entertaining keynotes relating award-winning movies to any topic or group.

His Book

https://www.amazon.com/First-Last-Year-Roger-Leslie-ebook/dp/B0BHTXRV44?crid=J4Y4OLGR3MJT&keywords=roger+leslie+first+last+year&qid=1666104882&qu=eyJxc2MiOiIwLjkzIiwicXNhIjoiMC4wMCIsInFzcCI6IjAuMDAifQ%3D%3D&sprefix=roger+leslie+first+last+yea%2Caps%2C88&sr=8-2&linkCode=li2&tag=discoveredwordsmiths-20&linkId=b2c48bbc6e3ff712ba091cfb942ddb7e&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_il

Website

https://rogerleslie.com

Favorites

https://www.amazon.com/Member-Wedding-Carson-McCullers-ebook/dp/B003JTHWG4?crid=2BSKWVKNXCV00&keywords=carson+mccall+member+of+the+wedding&qid=1666105363&qu=eyJxc2MiOiIwLjAxIiwicXNhIjoiMC4wMCIsInFzcCI6IjAuMDAifQ%3D%3D&sprefix=carson+mccall+member+of+the+weddin%2Caps%2C81&sr=8-1&linkCode=li2&tag=discoveredwordsmiths-20&linkId=33cd36f1b518c4ac82566207d309d33d&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_il

Copperfield's Books | Serving Spring/Klein, Texas for over 30 years. Family owned and operated 7 days a week. (copperfieldsbooks.net)

YouTube

https://youtu.be/fFT6MFfmeks

Transcript

Roger, welcome to Discovered Wordsmiths. Again, this is kinda a back to the Future Groundhogs Day scenario.

For those of you listening, we got halfway through our. And I forgot to hit record. So all on me. Roger has been doing wonderful. And he can't strangle me Roger, welcome to Discovery Word Smith. How are you doing today? Nice, Steven.

Roger: I'm doing great. Thanks for having him. Yes at least we didn't get through a whole hour and find out, hey we didn't record anything.

Stephen: In my defense, this is on new setup, so I'll go with that. Roger again. Tell everybody a little bit about yourself, where you live and some of the things you like to do besides writing.

Roger: I live in the Houston area and I am passionate about writing and I teach writing. I'm a writing coach.

I am an editor. I'm a publisher of other people's books. That's all the businessy stuff that I do besides writing my own. And for my own personal edification, I love spending time with my dog and my family. I love old classic movies and I love anything that deals with spiritual growth. So anything that I can learn more about how life works and how I can work better with as life as it unfolds, I'm all.

Stephen: Nice. Nice. we talked in the unrecorded part about classic horror movies and watching those, cuz it's almost Halloween. And so we'll just summarize and say we talked about classic horror movies, , which is one of my favorites. So Roger, tell everybody why you wanted to start writing it.

It was a great story. I've heard it. Let's tell everybody else for once what .

Roger: When I was 13 years old, I just had the inspiration that I was gonna be a writer. I had no prior experience or skills that told me I had what it took to be a writer. I loved reading and I loved television and movies. So I appreciated great writing.

But I didn't know if I had the skill to do it,

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Overview

We have a great discussion about how to keep on writing. Many authors find it difficult to move on to the second book and Diane has some advice to help with that.

Since we write for kids, we include some discussion about working with kids and getting their imaginations going to write some great stories.

Her Book

https://www.amazon.com/Little-Girl-Diann-Floyd-Boehm-ebook/dp/B019HNFW26?qid=1665528993&refinements=p_27%3ADiAnn+Floyd+Boehm&s=books&sr=1-8&text=DiAnn+Floyd+Boehm&linkCode=li2&tag=discoveredwordsmiths-20&linkId=9f78b8ffbe3a2a18a2bbf21f3a635144&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_il

YouTube

Transcript

Stephen: All right, so let's talk author stuff. Now we're gonna talk about, the work part of it, not just the fun reading part. Okay. Before we get onto our topic, which I think is a great topic what are some things that you've learned that with your writing that you're doing different now than you did at the beginning?

[00:26:25] Diane: That's a, that's really a good question. Before I didn't really give a lot of thought to things. I just sat down and started writing, which is good. And I would just write anywhere, which is fine. It works with a lot of authors, but I find like I've really been studying this craft, learning from other authors, joined author groups, and in this I decided I needed to.

Have a room that was just a holy space for inspiration to come. And actually you're sitting in the room right now. Over to the right is a desk that I have, and that's where I just have a little meditation and. Just start riding and see what happens. And that didn't happen before. Other things I do is I have I really resonate to smell and so forth.

I love oils and things, and I'll get the ones like, Oh, I really need to have this kind of thought. And so maybe I'll inhale some really lovely perfume that has a lot of wood in it and so forth. See where my mind takes me. Depending on, like, when I was writing the Rise book, I was in some chapters that I really needed to listen to music from the 1920s and that, I think that's what one of the major differences is setting the environment and maybe the mood for that particular book.

A message that I wanna get across. Sorry for being so longwinded.

[00:27:50] Stephen: No, that's great. That's I, the whole purpose of the podcast initially was to help authors who are getting started and, aren't USA Today bestsellers, because we hear a lot about the authors. Break out and start doing good and then everyone hears about 'em.

So the whole purpose to start with was focusing on authors that are getting discovered that need to get out there, that no one ever talks to. And I expanded with the second half here for the author part because I realized a lot of authors to these podcasts and they hear about, they hear authors on the podcast talking about their book.

But then they also look at how that person's so successful and I'll never be like that, et cetera. So I added the second author part partly to show, hey, we're all in the same boat. I've had authors their laundry dings in the middle of talking to 'em, because authors think, Oh, every other author but me is working.

Fulltime in a nice office and blah blah. And that's not the case. They like to hear from authors. It makes 'em feel, Hey I'm just like them. And that was the whole focus here of this podcast. So You're fine. Yeah. Your stories are great. They, it comes across really well and they love that.

So thank

[00:29:03] Diane: you. It's wonderful what you're doing and what I've discovered about authors compared to some of the other things I've done in my life professionally is that, Authors are kind to each other, and authors love to help one another, and it's not a competition. It's okay, share ideas.

And you're not like, Oh, I share my idea, you're gonna steal it. And it's no. It's just, let's go explore. And I just love that energy.

[00:29:32] Stephen: Yeah. I agree.

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Overview

Diann Floyd Boehm is an award-winning international author. Diann writes children's books and young adult books. In addition, Diann writes books to inspire kids to be kind, like themselves, and to "Embrace Imagination”. Diann's Story Garden YouTube Channel gives children the opportunity to hear different children authors read their stories.Diann is the co-host with Dr. Jacalyn on USAGLOBALTV.Diann continues to be involved in various humanitarian projects with multiple organizations.Diann was born to parents of George and Mabel Floyd in Tulsa, Oklahoma, but grew up in Texas with five brothers. She has traveled extensively to many parts of the world and has lived in the Philippines and Dubai.

Her Book

https://www.amazon.com/Little-Girl-Diann-Floyd-Boehm-ebook/dp/B019HNFW26?qid=1665528993&refinements=p_27%3ADiAnn+Floyd+Boehm&s=books&sr=1-8&text=DiAnn+Floyd+Boehm&linkCode=li2&tag=discoveredwordsmiths-20&linkId=9f78b8ffbe3a2a18a2bbf21f3a635144&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_il

Website

Home - Diann Floyd Boehm

Favorites

https://www.amazon.com/Little-Mouse-Ripe-Strawberry-Hungry/dp/035836261X?crid=3D6GQV8SSH7PJ&keywords=the+big+fat+strawberry&qid=1665532115&qu=eyJxc2MiOiIxLjAxIiwicXNhIjoiMC4wMCIsInFzcCI6IjAuMDAifQ%3D%3D&s=books&sprefix=the+big+fat+strawberry%2Cstripbooks%2C112&sr=1-7&linkCode=li2&tag=discoveredwordsmiths-20&linkId=18bb602a98af524be14c36ffd4004fc9&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_il

Bookstore | Black Pearl Books | Austin

YouTube

Transcript

Today on Discovered Wordsmiths, I want to welcome Diane Bo. Diane, how are you doing today?

[00:01:22] Diane: Great. I'm so happy to be here. Thank you very much.

[00:01:24] Stephen: For me, I live in Ohio and it looks like it's about the storm. So we may get some lightning and thunder in the middle of our conversation, but tell us where do you live and a little bit about you and what you like to do besides.

[00:01:36] Diane: Sure. So I live in Austin, Texas, and can you please send some of that rain to us? , We would deeply appreciate it, , but uh,

[00:01:44] Stephen: actually the second Austin Texas author I've talked to today. Oh, really? . Yeah. That's interesting. All right, go ahead. I'm sorry.

[00:01:51] Diane: Yeah no, it's okay. I just had to throw the rain out there.

So yes. I'm from Austin, but I was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma. And my parents, we moved here when I was about 18 months. And so I consider myself a T girl, even though by the rules of Texans, you're not a true Texan unless you were born on the land.