Discovered Wordsmiths

Emily included a legal abortion in her story that she wrote several years ago. Little did she know that when she released that book, legal abortions would be in jeopardy and controversy would surround her story.

We discuss how world event affect writing and how to handle it as a writer.

Okay, so let’s move on. Talk author stuff, put on your author hat. All when you first thought about this book and started writing to now, you’re getting ready to publish and working on another book. What are some things that you’ve learned that you’re doing different with this next book or you’ve done different with your writing?

Emily: Wow. The whole thing with your first book is a learning curve. Every single step of the way from the writing of the book to editing the book, to waiting your way through all of the people who are offering you, paid services, editors, proof, readers, all you know deciding whose input you trust and having them read and speak honestly to you about your book.

Certainly I’ve learned how the sausage is made with the book publishing industry. So I think, gosh, given all those lessons, I’m a big believer that things unfold the way they’re supposed to. So would it have been nice for someone, a traditional publisher to pick up my book two days after Beth my agent put it out on submission and.

Telling me, they’ve got it in hand and they’re gonna take care of it, I guess that would be partially great. But then I wouldn’t know so much of what I know now, and I’ve seen all of the things to consider and how long a book needs to be or short a book needs to be economical. And of course getting feedback from people and talking to people about books, you’d get a better idea for what resonates with readers.

I describe it like childbirth and pregnancy. My, my second novel is coming along so much, quickly, more quickly and easily than the first one. And I think that’s partially because anything you learn while doing. So I learned how to write a book while writing a book and the. I think I’ve learned to trust myself more.

And I know my go-to people who I will ask for their feedback when the first good draft is ready and I won’t sweat oh, should I hire this person? Or should I send it to that person? And and I’ve now developed this wonderful relationship with my agent, so I can give her my second book and really trust her feedback on it.

Yeah, it’s just, I’ve just learned how to trust the process, know that I can figure it out that it’s a industry and one that I think is in a lot of flu. But yeah and I think I’ve, I think the main lesson I’ve taken away is that. I would advise anyone who’s thinking of writing a book to write what they are really called to write.

Cause we can all think of, okay, what would be the most palatable and the most like universally saleable type plot and characters. And for me, I don’t think that would bring me much satisfaction. And I imagine it’s the same for most authors. So I think that’s my best lesson is I stuck with this story, even though I ran up against a bit of a roadblock with the abortion and I’m really glad I did.

Stephen: Nice. Okay. And when you’re writing what software or services do you use that you find really helpful or maybe that’s different than a lot of authors.

Emily: I think I’m probably different in that I’m a Luddite. I tell people to consider me like 117 years old when it comes to technology. So I use good old Microsoft work and I know people who use pages and who use all kinds of functions and can like clip out chapters or portions and put ’em on a clipboard.

I just write the thing in word and save it a lot and send it, email it to myself constantly. And that’s about

Stephen: it. Okay. And I know your book’s just coming out in a couple weeks when we’re recording this, it’ll be out by the time the episode goes live So what are you doing to market the book besides podcasts?

Emily: I have a fantastic publicist Deborah Brusso, who is holding my hand through this new experience and it’s become, and so she’s doing all the things the podcast and looking for appearances because of the target audience of the book. And I think just who it organically speaks to. We’re looking at colleges and universities and there is a Jewish theme that run to the book by accident.

I’m not very religious, but after I finished it, I was like, okay, that’s definitely a part of this. Connecting with the Jewish arts community has been a big part of the publicity and I’m, I am. Trying. I have a really fabulous also handholding intern, Mary Shannon Thompson, who is helping me with social media.

I did not have an Instagram account before I became an author. So I’m just doing all the things, but really it’s very, grassrootsy anyone with a book club or an audience who I think might be, get a charge out of a discussion about the book I am. I have Southwest miles will travel. I’ve got my zoom account and yeah, just looking to engage in discussion with groups, wherever they pop up.

Nice.

Stephen: Okay. All right. So let’s let’s look at our discussion and it’s very timely. Your book unintentionally. So totally you mentioned in the first half that your book starts off with the protagonist having an abortion and it didn’t strike you as odd. It was just part of life and it was a choice.

So why did you let me ask this first, why did you want the book to start with that? To show the character and set the tone and the mood? Why choose that event?

Emily: I know that I should have a deep philosophical answer to that question, but that is just what came out of me. And I think that’s my, that’s the real honest answer.

And probably because that’s one of the experiences from my twenties early thirties that I after processing it and I had was in, in a state. Was not particularly restrictive at the time. I had the support of my doctorate, the support of my family. I had the support of friends. It wasn’t controversial.

I got to go to a real hospital to, to do it. I didn’t have to drive out of state to find a clinic with protestors who would be standing outside. And I think after sitting with it for a while, I realized that I still carried some shame about it. And what’s been so interesting is once I finally, and I think that writing about it, yeah.

It just helped me process some of the emotions about it and helped me talk about it. And what’s been so interesting and I think a little nod from the universe that maybe I was on the right track opening the book that way is that so many of the women I have. Opened up to and shared this about myself or shared the book with I can’t, I really it’s.

It’s like over 10 people who’ve said to me, I haven’t told anyone, but I’ve had an abortion or I’ve had two abortions or a couple older women in my life who I really look up to work with have told me about their abortions before Roe, before they were legal. Yeah it just came to me and it was probably because that was the thing that I needed to process first, personally, and the feelings that I wanted to represent.

And I really wanted to. Normalize the conversation around abortion with this book, that was a huge goal. So why not just get it out there? And I really also didn’t want a reader to be surprised. So think they were getting a beach read, like romance novel. And putting it right out there, a reader who opens the book in a bookstore and flips to the first couple pages, they’re not gonna be surprised and angry at me.

They’re gonna know what they’re getting into. From the author standpoint we learn and talk about how we want the opening scene, the opening chapter, to be something that captures people and pulls ’em in sure for one reason or another, it doesn’t always have to be a big action scene or a dead body.

Stephen: There’s something that will talk to people in your situation. And not only that, but it’s really, to me speaks to the whole mood of the book 31st year and other calamities, it opens with this poor single girl getting an abortion and setting just the tone of the book. It gets set right there that people know, oh, I can empathize with this girl.

I know what she’s going through. And it sounds like life goes downhill from there. What goes on. So I think it was a perfect choice. It sounds it captured all of that and spoke to the people that would be interested in reading that book.

Emily: I hope so. It just as a writer yourself, you have to go with what feels most authentic and that felt something about that felt very essential to Zoe and essential to what I was trying to say.

Yeah it’s definitely an attention grabber for

Stephen: sure. So like you said, when you wrote that. It was years ago, Roe versus Wade was still existing in legal and you had support and people that were in support of that, which I’m sure you could have easily found some people that weren’t, but that wasn’t what you were trying to do on the point.

And you also mentioned that you were surprised that more books didn’t include things like this in them. So you weren’t trying to put it in there to be controversial or to bring up a topic. No, but now that we’ve had what happened, Roe versus Wade be overturned suddenly your book’s coming out right now.

That totally changes everything. So the people that I’ve been reading it, what have they been saying giving you feedback or how are you feeling about the book now in that first chapter? I,

Emily: again, this book has taken way longer to get out into the world than I would have hoped if you’d asked me in 2011 when I started writing it.

But. Again, things I think shake out for a reason. And the timing seems to be kismet where I think people might be a little more open and more curious. And now when they read that for a scene and when they read the whole book and see, because a lot of it is Zoe’s processing and recovery from this loss that she’s had, they see, oh, what if this was hard enough?

What if she hadn’t been able to do this legally? What if she had lived in the south? Wow. So it’s been, I’ve had some people who read the book early on and the people who my. Awesome. Author friends. Who’ve read several iterations of this book and probably never wanna hear the words my 31st year and other calamities ever again, come back to me and say, I cannot believe the timing of this because no, I did not think you would be controversial.

I, I knew the statistics. I knew how common this was. So I think when people read it, now they will be particularly aware of the war on women’s bodies. I think they would’ve been aware on it a bit before. And how there’s this urge to control? I think this feminine energy that’s coming up this wave.

And I think they would’ve seen that in Zoe, but now. That right has been rolled back, which is really putting my lawyer hat on for a minute. Really shocking because Supreme court decisions, for the most part, I think this is the first one that has taken away a fundamental right.

That people have relied upon for decades. I think when there’s a big decision, it that really shakes things up and gets attention. It’s usually giving people rights like gay marriage, for example. It’s

Stephen: also seems to be affected now with this.

Emily: Yes. It’s also interconnected. The targeting of trans folks and gay marriage.

And now we’re talking about contraception where you’re like, what? mean, This is the thing now. And and sodomy laws. That. When I was in law school in the early two thousands, that was considered like old news. We talked about those cases. Yeah, the moment in time seems to be really interesting.

And I hope people will take away in this time that abortion is yeah. A regular part of a woman’s life. And even in perfect circumstances, really hard. And so making it harder and maybe making it so that a woman can’t have children anymore, if she tries to get an abortion and it’s not done correctly or that she could die as a result.

Yeah. I hope the book gives people appropriate pause and a kick in the pants about how grave the situation is.

Stephen: Yeah. And. Quick aside. I hope the people making these laws and changing the laws and trying to control it. I hope they don’t look at the animal kingdom cuz man, there’s so many animals that would be arrested and in trouble.

Cause I’ve so many documentaries and things, they talk about all the stuff that humans are arguing about and the animals, they just do it all depending on the species and all that. So let me ask you this though. Have you thought about if you were writing it now, would you still include that scene knowing that there’s probably people out there that wanna attack you or that you could get bad reviews, you could get banned or get bad publicity and stuff because of this.

Have you thought of, if you would do it different or have you thought of even rewriting that beginning before it comes out?

Emily: No. I’ve never wavered and again, I wrote this book in Texas and so there are. All of those concerns, even before the Supreme court did what it did were all there.

It’s not like I was writing this in, I don’t know, Portland or somewhere in the, it’s a good

Stephen: thing you got Michigan to go to.

Emily: But I had to just come to terms with that and I think that’s, so that’s where stories I think are really important and powerful. I did not think that this book would be like an act of civil disobedience in any way, but it I’m fine with it being one because it’s important to reality.

And another quick lawyer aside that I think about a lot these days are, is that justice Harry Blackman, who left this earth a long time ago, who wrote the majority opinion in Roe versus Wade. Was from Minnesota. And my understanding from my constitutional law professor at least, was that he went to the Mayo clinic, which I think has maybe the deepest, best medical history library in the country or in the world, one of the best.

And once he realized that women have been having abortions at the same rates, literally since the beginning of recorded time, he figured if women are going to do this, which of course we are, if men had something growing in their body that could that was going to be very hard to get out of their body and then would change the trajectory of their lives forever.

They would wanna do some, they would wanna have control over that too. So he thought, okay, this is something that happens. It happens no matter what. So we may as well make it safe and legal and yeah it, at some point in our lives, we just have to be brave and say what we need to say.

Stephen: And I totally agree and love you saying that thinking of your possible sequel.

That could be a totally different sequel now that this has changed with her her reaction to what’s happening in the world and, or and maybe she’s older and has a daughter, and now how it affects her daughter compared to her. Really not trying to be political, but it really could bring that out.

I’m interested to see what happens when the book comes out. Yeah.

Emily: Me too, the whole thing’s been a total adventure and I’m very glad I made a charitable partnership with this book before we thought Roe was seriously on the line. And it’s with an organization called 73 forward, which is the reproductive justice branch of the national council of Jewish women.

And they’re an awesome organization. They are 100% dedicated to making reproductive care available, safe, legal for all. And a portion of my book proceeds are going to them and it’s just a motivator to sell more books because they need the support. And I would love to hand them a big bat check if I

Stephen: can.

Okay. So 73 Fort worth, you said we’ll make sure and put links in

Emily: 73 forward. So forward. Okay. 73 for that was the year Roe versus Wade was. And this is all on my website. It’s on the back of my book jacket, but 73, 19 73 is when Roe was decided. And then the forward is. Taking it forward and committing to it.

Okay.

Stephen: Yeah. Nice, good. I’ll make sure and put a link in the show notes for that.

Emily: Thank you. Thank that’ll be

Stephen: great. And we always talk about a lot of the authors, my day job or the job. I talked to a lot of authors that I’m 70. I retired and I wrote my book. That type of thing. Here’s the job I did.

I do find it very chisme like that you are a lawyer and you wrote this book. That’s now almost very controversial, who knows how that could play in and affect things because you have a totally different viewpoint. Of this, because when you started the book, it was legal. Now it’s not legal and who knows, maybe people will say, you shouldn’t even have that in your book and try and get it pooled and banned.

And maybe the stores will react with, oh, we don’t wanna cause problems. And cause you know, but then as a lawyer you could go, wait, you can’t pull my book for that. And you could fight that. I it’s just the ramifications. It just strikes me as very interesting that you weren’t like a veterinarian or something.

Emily: I I think it has added to my heartbreak because I actually did an internship at the Supreme court, which for any legal Eagles out there is very different than a clerkship. That’s really hard to get. I did not clerk at the Supreme court, but I did do an internship in 1999 and I got to go to arguments every day.

Which was. Just phenomenal. And I got to watch one of my all time idols, Ruth Bader Ginsburg work from the bench and I had and then the, she was a professor at the time at Harvard law school when I was a student. And then she was a Dean, Elena Kagan. Who’s now justice Kagan. I watched her confirmation hearings when I was home with a fresh hatched baby, just out of the hospital.

I had such a reverence for the Supreme court to me, from what I knew from being a lawyer really seem to be just set apart from the other two branches of government and. And there was something sacred about the Supreme court. And now with Brett Kavanaugh being a Supreme court justice and Amy co Comey Barrett.

And I almost just said a bad nickname that we had for her. I’m glad I didn’t. I just and his the logic he tried to use in that opinion, it’s I think it’s gonna take so long to repair. I’m not sure it’ll happen in my lifetime to repair their reputation and what they’ve done to tarnish their legacy, but I’m really not worried about any legal ramifications to me or to the.

It’s fine to write about abortion. It’s still legal to get an abortion in a lot of places. And so I’m not worried about that. I think the real significant connection for me having been a lawyer is it just, yeah, it adds to my heartbreak, cuz not only am my heart broken for all people who can become pregnant, but I’m just heartbroken for our country because whether you were a Supreme court follower or not, it really played a sacred role in our government and our society in reflecting our values back to us.

And boy I don’t see an easy way back from this one.

Stephen: Yeah. It’s definitely go take a while for our country to get back on its the right rails. In my opinion,

Emily: I agree with you. Yeah. So

Stephen: you mentioned also that you’re marketing, you’re targeting your demographic like college students.

Cause that’s the perfect age that’s being affected by this Roe versus Wade. Just starting to think about family and life or possibly didn’t mean to things happen in college and stuff and I could see how that would be on their mind a lot right now both the the young men and women not just the women, hopefully and how that could be.

This book could be something that, that they could latch onto and understand or empathize and that, so from the author marketing standpoint, that sounds like again, perfect timing to be pushing this book for that demographic.

Emily: Yeah I would love to connect more with that demographic. That’s the young men and women are the ones who give me hope.

Some of the older of us, I really wonder , but they’re the ones who give me hope. And I hope that they yeah, that something resonates with the abortion piece, but also just when I was that age, when I was in college, I really thought that if you make good choices and you follow the trail that society has prescribed for you.

That all will be well. And of course, now that I’m middle aged, I realize we’re in control of so little life throws so many things at us that we could never anticipate. And I want to say to those women, especially you might get out of college and you might find that things are really confusing and that you’re told a lot of things that you’ve internalized about what you need to do to be happy.

But there, happiness looks a lot of different ways for different women and some choose not to have children and some choose you can choose any number of life paths. And I hope that if they find themselves in some chaos, which I think most women do during that time of life, somehow, whether it’s personally professionally in the dating world, that’s a whole, that’s a whole mess that they might forgive themselves for it.

And just allow, just know that they’re gonna get through it and that they’ll be okay. So that’s a connection I’m I love

Stephen: making and that’s great, cuz that’s one of the things stories can do is reach out and connect with people. And it made me think when you were saying that back when Roe versus Wade first came into being, it was like at the end of the hippie movement and the hippie movement helped get that passed and get that in.

Yeah. And there were lots of protest songs for the war and the way the government was and all sorts of things we need that again. We need the modern generation and the hippie movement and the protest songs and the book, the story kind of fits with that. It’s not just the music we can reach our audience and people and make statements without necessarily meaning to even through stories.

And so that’s a power that authors have.

Emily: I think that’s really well said. Yeah. And I hope that people who are listening and maybe debating taking a shot at writing their first book or whatever piece they wanna write about something that really matters to them. I hope they go ahead and do it, cuz it is a mode of action.

Stephen: Yeah, totally. Yeah. And especially in college writing classes, they really push you to write a short story in that, based on your emotions and make it powerful and really bring that out. And I’m sure this is bringing up a lot of emotions for the kids. Whether it’s a girl that had an abortion already or.

Possibly is thinking of one, or maybe I don’t even want a chance getting pregnant because I don’t wanna be in that situation that could three different ways of thinking that could affect stories and think that what that’s going to do as they get into their thirties and forties and right. Stories very much affecting their thinking.

Yeah.

Emily: The fear piece is huge. And I’ve always said this is my book is categorized as women’s fiction, but man, if you are especially if you’re a heterosexual male who wants to heterosexual women, there’s a lot of great tips in here. for what to do and not to do. And of course there’s no way that, that this all falls on women.

The law is about women’s bodies. But. I really hope that men take on the sphere and understand how serious the ramifications are for them. Especially as a mom of two boys.

Stephen: Yes. Isn’t there some talk and a part of this that they’re talking about, that if a man gets someone pregnant and they can’t, that they’re gonna be responsible for that kid for the until the kid’s 18, I think that’s what should happen?

that should be what happens.

Emily: Yeah. But there’s there’s of course there’s no anyone who I have a couple friends who’ve had to try to get child support out of dads. Who’ve skipped it’s. It’s not men really are just not held to any sort of responsibility and especially not. With their bodies.

Every single time embryo is created, there was a male involved and the consequence the it’s just completely skewed and it’s not right.

Stephen: I totally agree. I think men should be held, I will say I’ve had a different experience when I got divorced from my first wife, my kid’s mother.

that basically I won’t go into it. I can tell you there’s sometime if we ever meet we’ll sit down and we can talk. That sounds great. Yeah. You probably understand this, but when I talked to my lawyer, they really almost were saying, look, you’re the guy. So you just let her take the kids, you pay her money and then we’ll just move on.

And that’s really the thinking that they had. So I don’t disagree with your statement at all, but in the situation where we had already been married and the kids were older, that changes that they screw the guy in that case. And I’m like, that’s not right. Either the mother should be just as responsible, not just handed everything.

And in my particular case, that’s what she wanted. She wanted to live off of what I was paying her to take care of the kids. So there, there are cases and I’m not not saying that’s across the board or everybody’s experience at all. But that’s not fair either. , there’s not at all parts that need more

Emily: fair and it’s all tied together.

It’s all this paternalistic viewpoint. And so your experience came out of paternalism and patriarchy gone wrong, just like yes, a woman who’s abandoned. So it’s all so connected. And yeah. So men have plenty of reasons to wanna smash the patriarchy with women.

Stephen: Absolutely. And I’ve actually thought of writing a fiction book based on real events about my experience.

I, we should consult, I should get, ask some questions of you. If I do decide to do that, we can make, ’em like a companion piece women and men’s side, do we should do a book tour or something together if I do that.

Emily: That would, I would love to talk let me know whenever I love talking about stories, especially at their, in their infancy.

So absolutely ring me up. That would

Stephen: be cool. Yeah. Great. All right. Emily we’ve had a wonderful discussion. I think it’s very timely and I hope a lot of people listen to it. And it brings up questions and discussions outside of this podcast. It’s important beyond stories and authors, but we’re affected by all of it.

So I, I love the discussion. It’s been great before we go. Do you have any advice for new authors that you would give them?

Emily: My I’m stick with what I said earlier, that you should write the story that is wanting to burst out of you. It’s the one you’re trying to ignore and tell is inconvenient and it would be much cleaner if you just stick to your day job.

But if you’re thinking of writing, write that story that is really authentic and important to you because that’s the one that needs to get told whether big publishing thinks it’s right or not. I don’t think there’s any point unless you really tell the story that you need to

Stephen: tell. Nice. Great.

Thank you. And that, I love that. How you said that, because that’s another, what we were just saying, the protest songs, all that’s a power of Indy authors that it’s probably harder to ban us because if you’re through random house and they wanna ban the book and give random house problems, random house will just pull it and be done.

Whereas Indy authors. Sure. Amazon might drop it, but you can still go on Barnes and noble and apple. You can sell it from your website. You can do author tables. It’s much, much harder to stop the independent voice nowadays.

Emily: It’s it? It’s definitely, yeah. It’s definitely more fluid and nimble if you’re an indie author, but.

If I can say a quick word about band books please. Texas again my new home state is at the forefront of that. And I don’t know if I can swear on this podcast, but F that I Brazos bookstore. That’s so wonderful. I went and bought, I think a dozen beautiful band, middle grade books that had either queer themes or race themes.

And I just went and dropped ’em off, donated them to our local public middle school librarian was thrilled to have them. So to new writers who cares if your book is gonna be banned, that means there’s something in it. That’s important. That means you’re on the right track. And there are plenty of people everywhere who wanna hear what you have to say.

And there are ways to get it. To get it to people. My book opens with an abortion, but you know what, I’m printing it liberally. It’s available in paper bag, it’s available. It’s going to have an audio book. That’s I think just being the editing is being finalized. Now there’s an ebook. And whether this is traditionally published, whether new authors traditionally published or Iny published, get your story out there, make it happen.

Don’t worry about the rest.

Stephen: Nice. Great. I love that. And thank you for that. So there we go. Alright Emily, I’ll let you go. I gotta get going myself. Thanks again for a great talk. I can’t wait until this goes live.

Emily: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. It was lovely meeting

Stephen: you. Oh, nice meeting you too.

When Emily Wolf penned My Thirty-First Year (And Other Calamities), she didn’t know she’d be living in the epicenter (Houston) of the current abortion debate. But there she is, preparing to release a book that leads with an abortion that anchors how the protagonist, Zoe, is able to live her life. It is a story for women of all ages, normalizing abortion without minimizing it, and weaving in all the other things that impact dreams: divorce (then dating), family and friends, and  faith. The city of Chicago (Emily’s hometown) and the band U2 are colorful backdrops to her story.

Zoe Greene is approaching her 30th birthday not with celebrations in mind, but by recovering from an abortion, planning a divorce, negotiating family drama, and later, reentering the modern dating pool. Using humor and unfiltered truth (and Zoe’s favorite rock band, U2), Houston-based author Emily Wolf’s debut, My Thirty-First Year (And Other Calamities), illuminates the realities of womanhood, and connects to them through shared challenges, resilience, and hope.
Emily is an ardent feminist, U2 fan, and native Chicagoan. A graduate of Harvard Law School, Emily now lives in Houston with her husband, children, and dogs. She volunteers with Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast and with her synagogue’s Board of Trustees and Social Justice Core Team. Emily has published several essays in the Houston Chronicle and on emilyvwolf.medium.com

https://emilyvwolf.medium.com

https://www.brazosbookstore.com/

Stephen: All right. Today on discovered wordsmith, I have Emily Wolf. Emily. Welcome. How are you doing today? Hi, thanks

Emily: so much for having me. I am doing really well.

Thank you.

Stephen: Good. So tell us a little bit about yourself. Some things you do outside of writing and maybe like where you live, that type of thing.

Emily: Sure. I feel like the first caveat for anything with a video component is that I am. In my forties with braces so that’s something I’m unfortunately doing right now.

That’s kinda

Stephen: new too you never saw that back in the eighties, nineties. Yeah.

Emily: Yeah. It’s a whole shebang. I gotta tell you. So it’s pretty humbling, but it’s supposed to make me healthier help my sinuses ears, airway, whole business. So my kids think it’s hilarious and I’m trying to also find the hilarity in it.

So

Stephen: you need to put on like Bobby socks and a poodle skirt and tell ’em you’re going to a prom dance and stuff. And. Bug him

Emily: yeah, I might I might get some strange looks if I did that, but yeah, I should totally have more fun with them about this. And I FaceTimed with my brother yesterday and he said he lives in Los Angeles and I’m in Michigan right now.

And he said, oh, I always forget you have braces now. But anyway, besides adult braces, I I have a day job that I’m very lucky to have doing writing for a children’s hospital in Texas. I’ve lived in Houston for over 13 years, which I can’t believe I was born and raised in Chicago and thought that I was going to live my whole life and die happily in Chicago, eating deep dish and hot dogs and all that good stuff.

And then life, as it does, threw me a curve ball and introduced me to my husband who. Lives in Houston and needs to be in Houston for work. So our deal that we struck is I get to spend a nice chunk and my boss is also very accommodating, a nice chunk of the Houston summer by lake Michigan, where it is 30 degrees cooler right now, I think.

Wow.

Stephen: Nice. Yeah. That’s pretty cool. I love how you say that you got this deal. like, all right you want me here? This is the, this is what we’re doing. Give me the night, make the blood

Emily: I cuz I, I moved down. I had never experienced a Houston summer before and I really don’t think there are words for it.

If you’re a Yankee like me and the first summer I went to Josh, my husband and said, I just think my body’s gonna implode. I don’t think it’s made for this. so we have a nice thing going and I’m really grateful. And let’s see any, the other thing about me, like so many writers, I am a recovering lawyer.

That was my my first career. Yeah.

Stephen: I get a lot of author or a lot of musicians and a lot of it guys not quite as many lawyers, but you’re not the first I have had a couple.

Emily: Yeah. Yeah. I bet you have there, there are a lot of us out

Stephen: there recovery and I love that you need a t-shirt you have to have a club.

Emily: I should, there should be some kind of like steps or rules or something to help with the decompression after that. Yep. I have that.

Stephen: All right. So what are a few hobbies or whatever that you like to do outside of writing?

Emily: My favorite thing in the whole world is to swim in lake Michigan, which I did this morning.

Yes. Which is why my hair is in its natural state. There is something about fresh water and swimming for me, that is just my ultimate favorite. So whenever I can do that, if it’s a river in Texas, if it’s lake Michigan preferably that’s my favorite thing. And I love to swim with people and friends and my kids and husband and all that good stuff.

Nice. And I always, I’m a pet person. I always need to have pets and I’ve got two dogs right now. I walk, I love to just take walks with them. And this kind of makes me cringe because I feel like everyone says it, but yoga has been very helpful to me during the pandemic. And it’s something that now with technology I can do in my pajama pants, in the comfort and privacy of my own.

And so that has made it more accessible. And of course I love to read. I that’s. My happy spot is nestled in bed a little early with a good book.

Stephen: Nice. Yoga is another thing that has changed perception from the eighties, nineties to now definitely much more accepting more people doing it and all sorts of stuff not the, it doesn’t get made fun of in the movies like it used to that’s indicator.

Emily: I know. I think it still gets made fun of enough though. And I, so I I’m like a closeted Yogi, but I do love it.

Stephen: I hear it’s. So many people are finding so much benefit from it for strength building, but flexibility, mindset all that. It’s hard to argue when you got so many people saying how great it is true.

Emily: And it’s been around for a couple thousand years. So there’s something to that as well. There must be.

Stephen: Let’s talk a little bit about your book. It’s called my 31st year and other calamities. Yeah. So what made you start writing?

Emily: I think that I like money lawyers was, I still am, but I’m less but was after college really risk averse.

And I thought about getting my master’s in creative writing. But a much clearer path to financial independence, shall we say through law school? I went to law school. I practiced law. I think that really informed my writing. I did a lot of writing legal writing, but once I came through what a very good friend of mine calls the gong show of my twenties and early thirties and and I had a little space from that.

I didn’t see that type of experience, like the real messy stuff reflected. I read a ton of fiction, a ton of women’s fiction, and I didn’t see it reflected as honestly as I would’ve liked to read about during that time in my life. So a story just landed in my head. And it happened to be at a time in my life where I had the support and I could make the transition to trying to reduce it to writing.

And that was that was back in 2011. So I had a six month old and I thought, oh and no childcare. And I was doing contract legal work at the time. And I thought, oh, I’ll write in my spare time. And so that was a great exercise in patients and determination, I think because I had a second child and moved homes and so many women was in charge of keeping our household going and dealing with our then geriatric dog.

Our pug. And so it, it took a long time and there were many breaks, but I just felt this drive to get this story down. So I eventually did.

Stephen: Okay. Is this a memoir or is it a totally fiction story or is it kind of fiction based on things that really happen? Tell us a little bit about that.

Emily: It is fiction.

It I wish my life were as interesting as as Zoe my protagonist life, but I think probably as all fiction is it’s, so it’s not a memoir definitely fiction, but I tried to make it authentic and that it represented a lot of feelings that I had, and it opens with a safe and legal abortion, which when I wrote it in 2011, seemed.

Not really like a controversial thing. I am very open about the fact that I benefited from a safe and legal abortion. So there are certain experiences dating, internet dating. I did all that. My friends did all that, and I really tried to capture the feelings around those experiences and events. And I found that to be a very confusing time of life.

When society tells women everything’s supposed to fall into place and click and just stay there and everything’s supposed to be unfold perfectly and neatly. That was not my experience. So those feelings I wanted to reflect in the book, but I also wanted it to be really fun to read.

So there’s plenty of humor in there. And I think that time in life for many women, As traumatic as it can be and messy as it can be. There is a lot of humor in the absurdity of it. So I tried to capture that

Stephen: as well. Nice. Okay. And we are gonna talk more about how the political landscape and that with Roe versus Wade has affected the book.

Like you said, it was legal then now it’s really not. And that changes perceptions of the book. So we’ll talk about that in the second. Yeah. And you mentioned humor and OB it’s obvious from the title, you chose a great title where you put and other calamities, without that it, it really missed something.

So tell us a little bit about what’s what goes on in the book for the protagonist and why you had other calamities .

Emily: Absolutely. And thank you for championing the title. Cuz I had a couple people involved in the books publishing, who said it’s too long and I had to really fight for the title.

So I’m glad that it struck the right note with you. Yeah. But the book is about my protagonist is Zoe green and she is a type, a successful, hardworking young woman. And she thinks that she has an independent, modern mind. She is gone to law school. But she has planned her life so meticulously and is under the impression as she’s about to turn 30, she is, she’s married to her high school, sweetheart.

She has the apartment in Chicago. She’s always wanted that’s something else. I’ll just pause really quick. I love Chicago. It’s my hometown. And so I knew that was gonna have a place in the book. So she thinks that she has set everything up. She’s got her job at the law firm. Everything’s exactly how it’s supposed to be.

And without giving too much away, her life gets flipped upside down right on the Eve of her 30th birthday. And she finds herself on the brink of divorce, which she could never have imagined. She aborts what she had thought was a wanted pregnancy and. All of a sudden is living outside the bounds of what society had prescribed for her and what she thought she needed to be happy.

She thought that her eggs would dry up at 11:59 PM before the day before the night, before her 30th birthday, she thought that to be happy. She needed to have a partner. She needed to be settled. She needed to be on her way to motherhood. And in this traditional line of work and that gets turned up upside down and the book is about how she deals with that.

And I think the Calamus part is that instead of being able to step back and say, okay, which would be a very tall order, but instead of being able to step back and say, okay, my life. Isn’t what I thought it was going to be. But I have these wonderful friends who are a huge part of the book. I have I’m in my favorite city.

I have a great job. Maybe I can pause and let thing, let the game come to me is my dad would say, she thinks, Nope, I have to get back on Jack. And I have to just Ram everything back into place. So she is on the internet, dealing with the cesspool of dating drama and tries to, yeah, just tries to piece her life back together and put it back the way it was.

And I think it’s about her journey of accepting that life can take you all different directions. And sometimes those are actually those. Twists and turns that you weren’t expecting are actually gifts. Nice. Okay.

Stephen: Yeah. So what are there any other books out there that you would say mine’s similar to that for people who are interested I like this type what’s yours like

Emily: To my I, to my knowledge and my agent’s knowledge, I believe that mine is the only book, the only novel in which the protagonist has an abortion.

That really shocked me. I assumed that given that between a quarter and a third of American women have abortions in their lifetime, that certainly that would’ve been represented in fiction. So apparently that makes my novel pretty unique. But someone, an author I really emulate and wish more Americans knew about is, and I it’s weird cuz I started reading her after I had a full draft of my novel finished, but I just, she resonates with me so much.

I think the tone is similar to Catlin Moran. And I don’t know if you know her. I don’t, she is English and everyone should know her. I swear. I wanna find her a great talent agent in the us and get her over here. She writes, she does have a couple novels that I love, but that, that do the same thing and that they look at some heavy topics and kind of revolve around the female experience, but, and she doesn’t shy away from any of it.

But it’s hilarious. And it’s funny. And she finds the absurdity unit. So I would think Catlin Moran her how to build a girl. That might be one some people say they see some Jennifer Wiener in my book, which is a compliment. I think I take it as one anyway. So yeah, the it’s the feminist fiction writers, I think who with some humor, this is not a serious book.

It deals with serious topics, but it’s not a serious book who if people like that kind of thing, some of the comedians who’ve written books, and I know those are more memoirs, but like Amy Schumer, Chelsea handler. There’s some of that vibe in my book, I think. Okay.

Stephen: Nice. Thanks. A lot of people that helps ’em figure out.

Oh yeah. That sounds like something I’d like and so what’s the feedback been from people that have read your book?

Emily: It’s been so interesting. That’s actually a pretty loaded question. There have been some people who just reject won’t even read it because they hear in the book world, even in the progressive book world who hear that the protagonist has an abortion.

And so they’re done, they’re not gonna read it and that’s fine. And then luckily, happily the people I trust who’ve read it. And some strangers from whom I got book blurbs, I think that they, the adjectives they use are different. Funny. And all of them have appreciated, which makes me feel so good that the book deals with it has some gravitas in the topics, but is funny.

Like actually makes them laugh. And that makes me feel great because I have read some fiction that I is important. The topics are so important, but it just feels so devastating to read that I prefer fiction that makes me think, but is also joyful. And I’ve gotten some of some feedback that indicates that I may have come close to reaching that goal or reached that goal.

Stephen: Nice, good. That’s always good to get that validation and to, for people to enjoy it. That’s why we do it. It’s every now and then you hear about a musician who says, oh yeah, I’ve played guitar for 40 years, but always in my basement music needs to be heard books need to be read.

So yeah.

Emily: I love that. Yes. Experienced right. Experienced outside the creator’s own head or basement as it may be.

Stephen: The garage attic, whatever that is. Yeah. So is this traditionally published or indie published?

Emily: This is indie published. Okay. I. I, I don’t know if it’s right to say, but I, at this point, I think it’s fine.

I have a wonderful literary agent, so supportive, smart, experienced, and she told me that she thought the book would sell very quickly to traditional publishers. And I remember I was in Michigan. She told me to keep my cell phone on me the day she put it out on submission. I think it’s gonna go quick.

And it did not. And it was because of the abortion. And apparently, usually in fiction, first of all, we just don’t see a lot of that in women’s fiction. But if we do it’s like a side character whose life is going down the toilet or. It’s the protagonist, but she decides at the last minute not to have the abortion, like I’m dating myself, but like Miranda and sex in the city, she had her abortion scheduled and she decided not to go through with it and had her baby Brady.

And it was the best thing that ever happened to her. And then usually the abortions we read about are in memoirs. And often by famous people, who’ve had some distant, like Glorias Dyna. We can read about her abortion that she wrote a few decades after it happened. And so yeah, so my agent said, look, you can put this book in a drawer and wait until the world is ready for it until the market’s ready for it.

I should say. And write something else. My second book that’s in the works is, has nothing controversial in it. And then we can try to sell this book later. And I’m usually a real rule follower. And usually I would say, okay, I’m gonna do what my agent suggests, but there is something in me that made me so angry about that because there’s women, this is part of women’s lives.

It has been forever. Since the beginning of recorded time literally women have been having abortions, whether they’re safe and legal or not. And so I thought I really could have used a book like this and I bet there are other people out there who could use a book like this. So I decided to go for it with she writes press and here we are.

Stephen: So have you noticed in the last month or so any change in your sales or the feedback you’re getting based on what’s happened in the world, in our country? It’s gonna be very interesting. So the book doesn’t actually drop until August 2nd, so we’re a couple weeks before, but the conversation around it, I think has changed a little bit.

Emily: When my publicist has scheduled appearances, they’re, it’s very interesting, cuz some spaces are still, I think in shock and they wanna see how their customer base would react to having me come talk for example, and others have been very eager and said, oh my gosh, this book now is incredibly timely and relevant.

And so they’ve hopped on it and I think it’s opened up some doors for me to engage with readers that I’m really excited about that. Maybe I would’ve gotten before, but certainly peaks more interest now. Yeah.

Stephen: I try and get authors on for a second interview at some point. See how things are going.

What’s up. I think you’d be perfect in about a year to come back. Great. Talk about it. Yeah, that would be fun. I’ll make, I’ll even make a note because who knows what’s gonna be happening with all of this in the next two or three months in the most year. So that would be awesome. We’ll make a note.

We’ll plan on it for next summer or

Emily: spring. I love that. Oh, I hope we’re in a better place. I hope we’re in a better place. Yeah, that’d be great.

Stephen: Outside of all the political stuff going on affecting your story, if you had a choice and you mentioned sex in the city and I was gonna bring that up would you choose to have this book made into a movie or a TV show?

Emily: Oh, that’s such a, that’s also like a more complicated question than it was 10 years ago, because now they’re so fluid. I’ve always seen this book in my head on screen. And in fact, there have been moments where while I was drafting it, where I would you too, my favorite band is a central character in the book.

Nice. Zoe’s diary is not just like dear diary. It’s written to the band or members of the band and works in some song lyrics. It’s how she processes her emotions and her feelings. And so I would be out walking with my. Then iPod. I don’t think they make those anymore when I was drafting this don’t think, I don’t think so.

And I would hear a U2 song and I would think I would like see the scene in my book unfold on screen. So I’ve always seen it as a movie, but what they’re doing with streaming series these days, those are very cinematic too. Gosh, if I had to pick, I think I gotta go with movie, but Netflix is free to call me

Stephen: oh yeah.

And like you said, it’s changed so much authors all make it a movie cuz it’s big and that’s where you make the money and stuff and TV is not as good, but that’s not true. The streaming shows are doing fantastic and some are doing better than some movies. And they can explore character more.

I. I, I, again, I haven’t read your book, but based on what I’ve looked at with it and talked to you about, this really sounds like one of those things that could be a movie for the book story, but it could be a TV show with other adventures happening like sex in the city where there’s so much more to explore with this character and the life and things.

So I could see it as both even,

Emily: oh, wouldn’t that be dreamy? That would be so wonderful. And the musical component. I love your, see your Motley crew t-shirt and so I know you feel this, but music is a really important part of her emotional journey in processing. And so there could be a great musical element and to a, something on screen.

And I think readers will be happy with where they leave Zoe at the end of the book, but also. Yes, like sex in the city. There’s so much more to see from her and her development that, yeah. It could go a million different directions.

Stephen: Yeah. And this is actually Motley crew, Joan jet poison, and Def Leppard, the stadium to, I just went to it the other night.

Emily: Oh my gosh. That sounds incredible. Joan jet. I don’t know if it gets any better than Joan jet.

Stephen: So you mentioned you too. And actually I play bass and Adam Clayton was one of my early influences. So yeah, he’s, he plays simple bass, simple lines, but their music is simple. It builds through the song, but that’s what makes it so powerful.

And he doesn’t try and overstep what the song is and, but he definitely a accompanies it. So he was definitely an early influence, even though a lot of bass were like, oh, he plays simple lines. I’m not linked in him, but come on. If you’re the rhythm section, He’s got that perfected and fits the song very well.

And that’s a lesson in itself and a lot of musicians, early musicians, young kids miss that. So he was definitely an influence of mine

Emily: Oh, that is too cool. Yeah. I, the adjective that comes to mind for him and also you talk about the rhythm section for Larry Mullen Jr. Their drummer is I just find both of them they’re playing so elegant.

Yes. There’s something about how it is. They know exactly what their part is that will elevate the whole, the song is a whole, that’s a great first influence. Yeah. Influence.

Stephen: You mentioned iPods too. Cuz right now on my iPod, I have most of Def leopard’s catalog I’ve been listening to and most of you two’s catalog.

It’s just those happen to be the two I’m into right now. So interesting. I

Emily: love that. Yes. You YouTube fans unite. Absolutely.

Stephen: Yes. Yeah. Okay. So tell us where we can find your book. And do you have a website?

Emily: I do have a website. You can find my book. All of the online places, books are sold. It’s traditionally distributed.

You can go. I personally love indie bookstores. You can go to your indie bookstore and any indie bookstore can order it for you really easily. So my website is really simple. It’s Emily Wolf. So it just spelled like the animal E M I L Y w O L. books.com.

Stephen: Nice. Okay. And do you, have you mentioned how it ends, would you consider doing a sequel to this book?

I would,

Emily: I’ve thought about that so much. I have, I think it’s really gonna depend on the readers and I think writing is so much more interesting if you have some reciprocity with your readers and some connection and feedback, and I could certainly, I would have a great time dreaming up the next chapter for Zoe green and if readers wanna see it, I would love to deliver on that.

So for sure I could see a sequel.

Stephen: Yeah. OK. All right. Let me ask you a couple other questions outside of your book. You mentioned a couple authors earlier that your book is similar. Are those your favorite authors or if not, what are your like favorite authors and some of your favorite books?

Emily: Of course, there are so many I this is a question I’ve really tried to prepare for, but it’s so hard.

It’s if I had 50 children like picking a few favorites, but cat Moran again is right up there. She is the one I will, pre-order a hardback from her where as most authors I can wait for paperback. But she is. Yeah. So she’s my hard cover author. And Sheila heady. I love her work.

There are just so many I do love Jennifer Wiener and I actually, as, as skillful as her books are, I really enjoy her essay writing that she’s done. I think those are really powerful and I really admire her that she can. We’ve a full and complete and rich novel. And also just write a really kick ass, absolutely timely essay.

That’s easy for readers to consume in five, 10 minutes. Nice. And I, my first favorite book was a tale of two cities. I read all of Jane Austin in college and I love I know I’m leaving so many people out I’m reading. Oh my gosh, I’m reading the funniest book right now. Just sad and hilarious and all of it at the same time by Samantha Herby who grew up near where I grew up in Evanston, Illinois.

So yeah luckily I’m finding books that are my favorites all the time.

Stephen: Beautiful love that. So you’ve got Houston and you’ve got Michigan. Do you have a favorite bookstore you like to go to in those areas?

Emily: So I, in Houston, my favorite bookstore is Brazos bookstore, B R a Z O S. They are just, they’re just awesome.

They are so supportive of Houston writers and are the manager of the store, mark Haber. He writes himself and they know every single book. It’s one of those stores you walk in and you’re like, my kid is this age and he’s into this. And they just, oh yeah, they walk you straight to the right book for your kid and for you.

And it’s accessible enough to browse. It’s not there are books everywhere where you just get overwhelmed, or I do that sometimes anyway, like in a big bookstore where I’ll just spin in a circle cause there are so many so Brazos is my favorite in Houston. Blue Willow bookshop in Houston is also outstanding.

They just happen to be a little farther from my house. Where I am in Michigan, there are no bookstores close by. We’re out in the boonies a little bit. And in Chicago what a great book city there’s women in children first, there’s the 57th street bookstore.

There’s on abridged. I. Go on and on. I don’t get to spend as much time in Chicago anymore as I would like, but there that’s a book. Lover is paradise too. There’s a thriving indie bookstore community. And nice. I love to browse through any of those and more whenever I can.

Stephen: Nice. Okay. All right.

So before we move on to our author discussion, which should be a fairly intense discussion if somebody came up to you and said, Emily, I heard about your book tell me why I should get your book and read it. What would you tell them? I would

Emily: tell them that if it’s a woman or someone with a woman in a special woman in their lives, I would say get it because I think it’s very, I think women can see themselves in this book and more than that, feel some community.

And maybe let go of some shame or confusion or hurt from that very confusing gong show period. And it’s for anyone who can heal through laughter.

Stephen: Okay, great. I love that. Thank you very much for sharing all that. The book sounds exciting. I wish you luck when it finally gets released and we’ll plan on talking in about a year or so and see how things are going.

That’d be awesome.

Emily: Sounds wonderful. Great. I’ll look forward to it.

Bill has written stories that reference real people. This is a hot topic for many authors. We discuss the best way to use real people and whether you should or not.

All right, so let’s talk some other stuff and we have an interesting topic that we’ve not. Discussed with anyone before. So before we get into that, let me ask you you’ve been writing most of your life.

What are some things you’ve learned that you’re doing different now than when you first got started or? When, not necessarily when you’re doing the journalism, but when you were writing books and stuff, cuz that’s two different writings. So what have you learned? What are you doing different from when you first started?

[00:22:10] Bill: Yeah I’m gonna have to say that the stuff I’ve learned a lot, we talked about Dave’s group, but there’s also another group that meets on the west side that Mudcat who you had on as well as part of where we critique each other’s work. And he’s a great writer by the way, he’d be another one of my favorites.

But just learning how to I tend to throw out too much stuff and they’re teaching me and just as I go, I’m learning. Put all this stuff in the first draft and then tighten it up and cut it out and make put in. What’s most important in there. I am learning also how bad an editor, personal editor I am.

I have a guy who’s helped me a great deal on that. And then I’ve also recently purchased in software that I hope will help with that as well.

[00:22:55] Stephen: What’s

[00:22:55] Bill: the software, it just typos. I can write five sentences and. Five typos in there and not see

[00:23:01] Stephen: them myself. That, that’s pretty good though.

I know some authors where there’s more than five, so what’s the software you’re using?

[00:23:07] Bill: I write in Scrivener. Okay. But I picked up one called boy, what is it called? Pro quality or writer? Gimme a second. I can actually, it should be it’s on my computer. Pro writer aid. I think it is

[00:23:21] Stephen: pro writing aid.

[00:23:22] Bill: Yeah. Yeah. It’s. It’s like an AI software. Yeah. And I don’t take everything it’s it suggests, but it helps me with the commas and the punctuation. The thing I seem to do a lot is double words. Okay. Probably when I’m writing and then rewriting and deleting and stuff. And I just don’t see the double word.

It’s so far in the short time I’ve been using, it’s been helping me a lot on that. So I also use that and I’ve been using it to learn and hopefully getting better. It doesn’t seem like I still go, man, how many MIS not mistakes, but how many things do I need to look at? Whether they need change or not every time.

[00:23:58] Stephen: But it’s not always the same things that I used to do. So it is a good learning tool. If you use it as such, you can’t just blanket it except everything.

[00:24:07] Bill: So yeah, my, my old editor back in one of the papers used to put a list of all the words I commonly misspelled in front of my typewriter.

Nice. I learned all those and then she’d replace ’em and I’d have new one.

[00:24:18] Stephen: Yeah. And I talked to teachers and parents and kids. In school they do a little bit of writing, but they really focus on the grammar, the structure, the spelling. And I’m sorry, that’s not for writing necessarily your biggest focus. You lose the story, you lose the flow of the feel of the voice.

And all of those things can be corrected with a couple button presses now, so that I understand it’s school and that kids need to learn that. I think the kids should learn grammar and all that, but. It doesn’t mean you can’t write and write a good story. They’re separate things. Okay. So your book, what are you doing to market it?

I know it’s on Amazon.

[00:24:59] Bill: So far I’m trying to learn this because this is, I work for a marketing company. I work with a bunch of marketers. You’d think I’d know how to do this better. But I am not personally a great marketer. I’m not personally very good on social media per se. So I’m learning and I’m just I’m, that’s another part of publishing.

This book is to just take the time and figure out what’s gonna work. So primarily I’m doing the Amazon ads. I’m hoping this reaches at least a couple people. And I’ve been exploring some other options. Some of the newsletters that Mudcat was suggest. That are recommendations to people where you can plug your own book in.

[00:25:39] Stephen: As well. Nice. Yeah. Okay. And I’d

[00:25:41] Bill: like to do some in-person stuff too. Now that we’re

[00:25:44] Stephen: allowed to yes. I’d like to get into more of that in the area too. Maybe we’ll run into each other at the same event. That’d be cool. or hold the same event together. Yeah. I thought of that too. It’s if you can’t find one, then just create one that’s you know, the next thing I know enough authors in the area between Dave’s group and other people I’ve talked to we could probably coordinate and do our own thing.

Something just even if, just for the little bit of press or whatever okay. So our discussion today, an interesting topic is using real people and mentioning real people, which also could be corporations and products and stuff in your book. So let’s start off. What have you done in your books and why did you choose this as a good topic to.

[00:26:30] Bill: It’s a good topic to discuss because I don’t know whether I’ve really messed up or not. And there’s really only one that I go back and forth. It’s a public figure. I wrote a book. I wrote a story literally with the newly elected president. This was written before the election in 2016 of the newly elected Hillary Clinton, having a poker game with a devil, the devil was.

Said you owe me now. , we’re gonna, we’re gonna play poker. And it’s not anti Hillary Clinton story. I just use her cuz she’s a fascinating figure in my mind. She’s a very strong person. I like any politician and I’ve known a lot of politicians because I was a, for so long. They have to make deals with the devil in the not quite so literal format.

And I did I guess I speculated a little bit about whether she really liked the life that she’s chosen or not, or maybe she would’ve chosen something different and it’s called heart’s desire. And in it, the devil is able to give her heart’s desire. And as in all devil stories when the devil gives you something, no matter, even if it’s something you want desperately, it’s not always what you expect it to be.

I don’t wanna offend her, but I can’t think of any way to write that story without her being the main character. It sounds your former president also shows up in a not particularly flattering light.

[00:27:55] Stephen: But it sounds a little bit of political editorial, which is covered under fair use and protection along with like weird Al parities and the the comedy and stuff there are uses not just, you’re not saying she did make a deal with the devil.

You’re not saying she is the devil that’s where the libel slander stuff starts coming in.

[00:28:16] Bill: And I have some some background in media law just because of what I did. So I figured legally I’m probably. Okay.

[00:28:23] Stephen: Yeah but she could probably afford much more expensive lawyers for a lot longer.

So it may not matter whether you actually win. This is true. It may not be a good situation, but I don’t. Interestingly enough

[00:28:35] Bill: And like I say, I don’t consider it a, an anti Hillary story. I’m really not anti or. Anybody, I didn’t vote for either of them in that particular election. But the strongest reaction I’ve gotten is from a Hillary supporter, really of somebody who was like I don’t like this.

I don’t think this was right. You portrayed her the way she’s portrayed in the media type of thing, which I guess I did because that’s where I got all my information.

[00:29:03] Stephen: So as a a journalist, you go and you talk to people, you interview ’em and you put their words directly out in print.

But usually don’t, you have to get like a permission on that, that they say, yes I give you permission to reprint this and that, or use my name and things is that

[00:29:22] Bill: I think it depends on the story, whether they’re newsworthy or not. I used to do a personality profile. That was one of the fun things.

That I used to do. This is primarily New Mexico, but other places as well, people are perfectly willing to sit down and agree and tell you their whole life story. Good, and bad. And I never felt like there was any they might tell you, I really don’t want you to publish this particular thing.

And I’d be discrete if I, as long as I could be. And if it’s a new story I have pretty much. Full ability to say whatever they say, as long as there’s nothing being given to me specifically off the record. It’s more journalistic ethics than legal protection, if it’s a public figure in the middle of a public.

[00:30:05] Stephen: Then so for journalism, if you’re doing a piece maybe you’re at a thing someone’s talking Whether another journalist is interviewing ’em and you’re just there, whatever, if they how would this work? If they say something that could be libelist against somebody else or a slanderous?

I know one’s in print, one’s spoken. I always get ’em confused. But if they say something about another political party and it could be slanderous, and then you print that, what they said, is there any repercussions on you for that? Or could there.

[00:30:37] Bill: I don’t think so. Yeah. You always quote who said it and specifically, I didn’t say this is what this person said.

[00:30:46] Stephen: Okay.

[00:30:47] Bill: And I think that’s part of the story. If they’re lying about somebody else that’s a real story, but they, what if they came back on you and said, that’s not what I said or something that you changed what they said,

who goes to the editor and the. Plea our cases and explain why. And they may or may not print a retraction. I don’t think I ever had a retraction for that. Okay. Anything like that. So I don’t know that ever

[00:31:11] Stephen: came up. Just curious, just my head think of situations but in fiction that’s totally made up by you.

So you’ve got all the responsibility and being fiction it’s it is made up, but you still can’t. You gotta watch what you say about people. Same as in movies if you’re talking about Ford, but you’re talking about the Mustang and then what a piece of crap it is, blah, blah, blah.

You could get in trouble for using the actual products and names without permission. Have you done anything like that? Or have you like said, you know what, I should get permission to use this my book or anything?

[00:31:47] Bill: Not for that kind of thing. There were a couple. There are two music permission things.

There’s one song that I quoted that I specifically asked for permission to use that. Okay. And was given permission. And another one that I figured David Bowie would never let me do that. So I changed it to a different song.

[00:32:07] Stephen: So the one you got permission for, how did you go about doing. I

[00:32:12] Bill: emailed them.

They’re still active. It was a, it’s a group called October project and they created a song called Mary, my lovely, which is just gorgeous song. I’ve actually met the singer of this song, Mary fall a few times. But I actually asked permission of the people who wrote the song, cuz I, the quoting lyrics.

And I do understand that can be an issue when you’re publishing fiction. You just. Over a certain point. You just can’t use people’s stuff. I use a 4, 4, 4 lines in that song. But I basically emailed them and got the answer back. I figure that’s enough.

[00:32:51] Stephen: So do you know if it was, let’s say the grateful dead or something like that, how you would go about getting permissions for that?

Cause I, I don’t think Emailing them direct. You’d get an

[00:33:01] Bill: answer. Interesting enough. The last story in my book actually involves emailing the dead. Okay. wow. and I guess that you could take that either literally or figuratively in this particular case. I would assume you’d have to go to the, whoever owns the rights and I, I don’t know.

You’d have to research that. OK. All right. I probably wouldn’t use that this particular song inspired this story. I thought I kept thinking, this is such a beautiful song. I I love the music. It creates this whole atmosphere. I wonder what the story behind this atmosphere is. It scared me how dark that went.

When I started writing it really, it’s a good story.

[00:33:39] Stephen: And I think today’s world it maybe even easier sometimes to get ahold of people they have websites with contacts and yeah, it might, if it’s a bigger name that might go to a. A PR firm or contact assistant or something. I get that, but a lot of bands, especially ones that are on the comeback used to be big in the seventies, eighties disappeared.

And now they’re like on some, but it’s smaller. They’re not the limelight. Sometimes it is easier to get ahold of them with uh, so this was a band that was

[00:34:12] Bill: around for a couple years and they really hit the big time and then they, something happened. I don’t know. They broke up and I, I figured they, they don’t, they wouldn’t mind having a little more publicity about their stuff, cause I’m sure.

[00:34:25] Stephen: And to me, I would say I would love to include these lyrics, but also then on my website, put a link to Spotify for people to listen to it. So it’s I’m giving you a little bonus there. Yeah. The bargaining.

[00:34:39] Bill: Anybody who helps me? I figure I’m gonna put a link in there for them.

Nice.

[00:34:44] Stephen: Okay, good. That there’s the advice for authors, it doesn’t hurt to do whatever, to help help others out. Okay. There,

[00:34:52] Bill: there’s another story in the book. Okay. I mentioned in the first segment this, it’s the tomb of Gustav gime. He was an orient painter in France.

There’s not a lot really written about him. At least if you search the internet, there may be some scare book or something. It’s the most beautiful tomb I’ve ever seen. And it was done by a friend of his and both my daughter and I were both really entranced with that. And I wrote the story kind of building a story around his life based on the few little facts I could find about him.

So I’ve created this whole person and this whole adventure that never existed. And I’m afraid I’m doing to him what the movie am did to CEL which is take a person who is a real person. Who’s a real creative, wonderful person and create this strange myth about him. And I think probably a lot of people think that Amadeus is based convict.

And I don’t believe as far as I know it is at. Truly my story is not, but there aren’t a lot of facts to,

[00:35:58] Stephen: so how that story? So how do you handle that? Cause you said it was 16th century or somewhere in there? No he was 19th

century. Okay. Okay. So

[00:36:10] Bill: it’s been a while. What I do for several of these stories were the ones where I think it could be confusing and it’s probably not enough, but I had an author’s note at the end of.

Heart’s desire. I have an author’s note saying this is political parody. It’s not really meant to represent the real Hillary Clinton. And this one I mentioned, okay, here’s I’ve taken bits and pieces of this man’s life. It is not a true biography of this person. I don’t know enough about him to do that.

I’ve seen his work. His work is all over the internet. You can look it up. And the work of the guy who created the tomb is there as.

[00:36:46] Stephen: Okay. And that I, I think that’s covers it. I’ve never checked with a lawyer. But it being that old, it might be different if it was like the Kennedy’s here in America where the family is still around and and some of the.

Direct relations are. But I think it also is how, and this is stupid, but it’s how big are they, if it’s a TMZ level you’ve probably got more to worry about, but a French pay. I

[00:37:16] Bill: also know more about em and I know whether literally this is from the life, the end of the life in the Wikipedia page.

Okay. You couldn’t find a whole lot more about him. He was. He went back to his wife after having an affair and died in, in the BOM of his family, if you will. But there’s not a lot more about that. Nobody knows exactly why, what happened in that.

[00:37:41] Stephen: Like you said there’s unauthorized biographies, which are not approved that come out.

[00:37:49] Bill: I wouldn’t have problem doing that. This is, but this isn’t even a biography. I make no

[00:37:54] Stephen: pretenses the story, but this is anything

[00:37:56] Bill: other than a story that I made out that I think is a pretty good story. Of course I’m who am I to judge When I, and it, I did do a lot of research about the he used to go to Algeria.

Okay. And I did a fair bit of research about the French occupation of Algeria, the very brutal vicious occupation and a lot of that plays into this story as well. And that’s, that is based on fact, even though the actual incidents are completely out of whole cloth.

[00:38:24] Stephen: Yeah. When I Harry turtle does writes alternative.

History and uses real people in it. And then I talked to Armen Shimerman and he wrote about Shakespeare when he was young, but used some fantasy Shakespeare characters in the story, but based on real events. So I would say any author wanting to do that, if you’re concerned, find a lawyer that knows and talk with a lawyer that knows for sure.

If you’re concerned I. I would just guess there’s not gonna be anybody bothering to . Oh my gosh. You wrote about my second. Great. Yeah.

[00:39:03] Bill: So yeah, I’m not worried legally about it. I there’s a part of me that just thinks, just wanna make sure everybody knows. This is just

[00:39:10] Stephen: a story.

A

[00:39:11] Bill: fiction. Yeah. And let, lemme talk real briefly about the other two stories. The two stories that make. My, my time travel historical stories. Boy years ago, I watched this movie called queen Jane and it started this really beautiful young actress turns out to be Helen and bottom Carter.

But I, I didn’t know her then. And Carrie El was from the princess bride, both fantastic. Her and I was just entranced by her. And then 30, 40 years later now, as I’m writing. This story, I’m writing a story about somebody a time traveler who’s entranced with lady Jane Gray. He’s a little obsessed with her.

And so the first story is him going back, meeting her through multiple times in the life. And then the second story is when he tries to take her back to his time and things go terribly. Aw. As they often do. But that’s writing about a real historical character. I did do as much research as I could, and there’s not a lot of stuff.

That’s really sure about her. They don’t even know what year she was born in. There’s one painting, which is a copy of a painting they think might have been a painting her. So I took a lot of leeway in this. I literally joined the tutor. Just to be able to ask questions and find some more resources.

So there’s a society that, that loves the tutors in England.

[00:40:30] Stephen: Nice. And I think. What we were also mentioning is the amount of research trying to find as much as possible. Cause that’s part of it too, is that if somebody gets offended and says you wrote that. And so was like this and you can’t prove it either way.

And you said this is fiction. So I think any lawyer would probably say, there’s really not a case here. It’s not libelist. It’s a fiction piece about someone 200 years old or whatever. So yeah,

[00:40:59] Bill: this is the one was in the 15, 1500. So yeah, a little pulled back and they changed dynasties in England.

So I’m not really worried about the queen. And

[00:41:11] Stephen: what was the last one I thought you said you had two, I’m sorry.

[00:41:16] Bill: There’s two stories in that series. The one where he meet her and then the second story. The novels where they try to come back. And that’s a really interesting story because I try to interweave.

What I think of is her worldview of the time with a modern worldview, cuz I gotta get ’em together so they can do other stories later on. Got it. It’s a really, it’s a cool universe. I think in that I can take it pretty much anywhere I want.

[00:41:44] Stephen: So why did you choose to find real people to write some fiction stories about rather than just make something up, but with a totally fictional character?

[00:41:54] Bill: Cause lady Jane’s story was so interesting. She literally queen for nine days in England, she’s called the nine days queen. She was executed a year or so later after like 17th. Wow. It’s just a, it is a really fun, interesting story. She’s supposedly quite a character of her in her own. I just, I don’t think I could make that up.

I I, a time travel story has to be about real times I can’t imagine a time travel story going back to okay. So yeah, the future they come back to is completely different, but that’s. Yeah, actually me by some of that, but it’s based on, I

had to figure out how to make that future happen based on him taking her.

And bringing her to the future and keeping her from being executed. Okay. It’s just interesting.

Comes to the alternate

[00:42:39] Stephen: history. Got it. Yeah. Me and my son were talking about time travel the other day and I said, oh, I’d like to write a fan fiction piece where Sam from quantum leap jumps into Marty from back to the future.

That just sounded corny to me. Like how would that be? Yeah alright bill, I appreciate you talking today. Before we get going, do you have any last minute advice for any new authors out there?

[00:43:05] Bill: Same thing that gets passed around in Dave’s group all the time, finish the

[00:43:08] Stephen: damn thing there.

Here you go. Finish it.

[00:43:11] Bill: You gotta expect one thing I’ve read in it. I think it’s true. Your first draft is always crap. At least it’s it needs a lot of work, so just get it down, get it done. And then you can go back. The editing is as much fun as the writing sometimes because you see things and you change things and you can then tighten it all up and make it really work the way you want to.

So write it down first and then get back to working on it and work it until you, you got what you.

[00:43:42] Stephen: And honestly I’ve found for myself editing is the best part. It’s where I get most writing done. The first part is actually harder for me just getting that first draft written and not editing myself, not changing things that I wanna get it out and have the story.

Cuz then it’s much easier for me to fine tune it to a better story. Yeah.

[00:44:06] Bill: I’m not an outliner per. I usually know the beginning, the middle and the end of the story. And then I just have to find my way through the various scenes that I’ve imagined. So a lot of times it’s that first writing is just to find a way to get from point a to point B to point C to, to the point Z.

And then you can tighten it up and make sure it all works. Cuz the first stuff you write may not fit the last stuff. You’re right. You have to change. Certainly happening in the book I’m writing now.

[00:44:35] Stephen: yeah. I find that a lot myself. All right. Bill, I appreciate you taking some time today and talking to us, appreciate your,

[00:44:41] Bill: your bringing me on this has been

[00:44:43] Stephen: fun.

Great. All right. You have a wonderful day. Enjoy the weather. It’s nice today. Yeah, definitely.

Bill and I met at a writer group – Finish, Polish, Publish – in Cleveland. He has written most of his life, but has had a web development career.

Bill talks about his book and working with his daughter. We discuss the group also.

Finish, Polish, Publish

All right, bill. Welcome to today’s. Discovered wordsmith.

Good to have you on how you doing. I’m doing great.

[00:00:25] Bill: It’s a pleasure to be here. I’ve been listening to your podcast and really enjoying them. Oh, thanks. Great. I’m glad. Pretty

[00:00:30] Stephen: inspirational. Oh, that was the whole idea. That’s what I wanted to get out of it. I hope, and now you’re up in the Cleveland area, so we’re not too far apart.

So you’ve enjoying the weather today. Oh, definitely.

[00:00:41] Bill: Sure, sure. Beats last few days.

[00:00:43] Stephen: Yes. I was just gonna say it’s a lot nicer today. I got the window open, just a little. Last couple I had to close mine cuz there were trucks going by, so oh yeah. Yeah. That’s always a problem, but all right I know you a little bit.

We’re in one of the same groups in Cleveland, we meet once a month with Dave van horn published Polish repeat or no published Polish. Something I keep getting them confused, publish, polishing, get the damn thing done. Yeah. That’s basically it. Yeah. But why don’t you tell everybody a little bit about you some of the hobbies and things you like to do in your life other than writing.

[00:01:18] Bill: Okay. I’m all born and raised in Cleveland area. Moved away for quite a while. Never expected to come back, came back due to family matters, met my wife. Pretty much stayed. In my spare time there’s a few things that I like to do. I like everybody else you have on your podcast.

I like to hike, but I also like to kayak a lot. Nice. And more, more just recreationally than going crazy. I have a daughter who’s a sea kayaker trains in sea. Kay. I don’t do that. Quite to that level. The other kind of interesting thing I do is I’ve been a photographer for a lot of years.

Slipped into this weird little niche of stereo photography. Oh, cool. So I’m doing primarily stereo stills. I belong to local group national group as part of a national group. And it’s a lot of fun. It’s harder than regular. Photography cuz you have two cameras that are always not going off at the same time.

And two, two ways for things to go wrong, at least every time. I ha one of my daughters is an artist. In fact will talk about her when we get into the meat of things. But we do painting parties. That’s kind of part of the way we’ve paid her way through Cleveland Institute of. Wow. So we do a lot of painting parties.

My wife is the MC I’m the photographer. And they’re just a blast to do. We do ’em on the kind of the valley scene railroad among other places, as well as the people’s homes and clubs. Oh, cool. We always say, if you can paint, if you can paint a picture on a moving train, you can do it anywhere.

[00:02:56] Stephen: And my stuff normally looks like it was painted on a moving train. So side fit right in . It, it actually improves a little bit with a couple glasses of wine, so

[00:03:04] Bill: That’s another one of our famous things the more wine you drink, the better

[00:03:07] Stephen: you’re painting. Yeah. And it looks better even if it doesn’t really look better.

exactly. All right. Why did you wanna start writing?

[00:03:18] Bill: Oh boy, I’ve written all my life. I did actually grow up in a, kind of a challenging household and writing at that time was just my way of dealing. The issues that I had to face, I don’t wanna go into a lot of details there. But I started writing and actually I liked a lot of stuff and I went to my teachers and here’s the stuff I do.

And I got a lot of criticism back then and, or good critiques rather. It’s a better way of putting it. I did try to continue writing fiction in college. There’s a few pieces there that I’m afraid that if I ever do actually get famous, they’re gonna come back to haunt me. Somebody will bring out this one.

I submitted to a contest and I’ll be just terminally embarrassed about it. Part of what I did is I think I figured I had to start writing politically. I had to have a message in my stories. And I do have messages in my stories but when you write it directly like that, they come out to be crap basically.

So didn’t do a lot. But what I did do is I ended up in my, between my third and fourth year, I went to university of Virginia. So we don’t have seniors and juniors. So between the third and fourth year I started working for the school paper and discovered I really loved it. I became a writer and photographer.

Primarily a writer for that. And I continued doing that through the end of the year. And I ended up working as a reporter or again, a reporter photographer for about 10 years after I got out of school. And that was, yeah, the best times in my life. Those that was so much such a fun job to do.

Didn’t pay well. And when I did meet my wife we thought we started talking. getting married and all that stuff. And it’s like now I can’t survive on $10,000 a year. But I I mostly worked for smaller papers. I did work for the I did some stringing for the beacon journal.

Some of my best work was actually done in New Mexico. I worked for this Coreen chief. It’s this weird, bizarre, beautiful little town in the middle of New Mexico in central New Mexico, right out to the rear grand. Full of just fantastic characters. And I worked there for a couple years and I, that was some of the best work I did.

I worked around here as well and a little bit in DC after I graduated from college. Nice.

[00:05:32] Stephen: Okay. Go ahead. I was gonna say I’ve heard multiple authors not the younger ones the more experienced authors that they started with doing some journalism, some newspapers and magazines or things, which is not as easy for the younger ones.

They can’t help that, but it seems to be a good, even if you wanna write fiction, it seems to be a good jumping off point to get you writing, to get you practicing. Definitely that.

[00:05:58] Bill: And also the, just the people you meet and the things and the things you do. Yeah. I don’t know that I’ve included a lot of it in any of my writing so far.

Specific things, but just the whole genre of people and the kinds of people I met, influenced me. I think for me, the lesson to pass on to the younger writers is you wanna write that world class USA today bestselling novel. You wanna compete with Stephen King and Patterson and Rowling and all those, but sometimes.

[00:06:28] Stephen: That’s not the first thing you do. You have to do other things that actually contribute and help you to get to that point. And it’s not always a direct straight path. I think everybody kind, I think forgets that sometimes. Just kinda the lesson to pass on, so we’re gonna talk about, oh, sorry, go ahead.

Let

[00:06:46] Bill: me just I’ll finish just real quickly. Yeah. I’ve written even through most of my adult life Some I liked it, but I never quite got into it. I you’re raising a family and working as a web developer, web designer a graphic designer, although things taken off a lot of your time.

So I, I didn’t spend a lot of time writing until I got, until my kids were grown. And like I said, one of my daughters is an artist. She’s the one who actually came to me and said, Hey let’s do writing prompt. Let’s create a monthly prompt. I’ll paint a picture or I’ll do something already.

And you write a story about it. And that’s where actually a lot of the stories in this book came from nice. But she’s the one who got me back into it and I discovered I really missed it and I really loved it.

[00:07:36] Stephen: So writing has been a part of your life, but it hasn’t been a full time focus for all of your.

[00:07:42] Bill: But I, it’s going to be my next career when I can finally, when I can finally retire from what I’m doing. Nice.

[00:07:48] Stephen: Okay. The book we’re gonna talk about is songs of a befuddled muse. Tell us a bit about that book.

[00:07:56] Bill: Okay. It’s book of 13 12 short stories and one, no Villa. As I say, a lot of them came from the writing prompts per se, but it’s not like they’re stupid.

Writing prompt stories like you get in a high school classroom. I, it just became a jumping point. Okay. Here’s an interesting thought. Let’s take this somewhere completely different than nobody would ever imagine. And then we started getting a whole lot more creative and less specific about the prompts.

It turns out I was the one who, who wrote more than she painted because she was in the middle of art school and trying to graduate . So it’s 13 stories. It’s a benefit and a problem. It doesn’t really fit into any genre per se. There’s some sci-fi stories in there. The two stories that are part of the same series the one story, and then the Nobel after it.

And I hope to be a future series or time travel stories. Some of them are one of my favorites is a clown Noar story. A circus clown. Who’s also a PI and he has to solve the murder of his

[00:08:58] Stephen: friend and mentor. Does he wear the nose while he is investigating? don’t give it away.

That’s have to be that way. Yeah.

[00:09:07] Bill: You’ll find it out, but it just takes it and puts it in and he’s very serious about what he does. His job is to make the kids laugh and the bad guys. No it’s okay. And that was, that’s such a fun story to write, and there’s a ghost story in there.

There’s a few other types of paranormal type stories and some that are, I’m almost unclassifiable. Okay. They’re not really para paranormal. They’re just whatever came to my mind at the time. And that it’s a benefit in that. I love the stories and I think it’s a really FA fascinating, interesting book.

It makes it a little harder to sell because I can’t find all the keywords I need on On Amazon

[00:09:51] Stephen: yet. Yeah. I was going to ask about that, cuz it seems multiple genres. So do you have intentions to write books in a specific genre? Or do you wanna write whole stories, books in all these multiple genres?

Yes.

[00:10:04] Bill: No the book I’m working on now is something that, and it is, like I said I was, I’ve been writing all my life. I started this probably. Dunno 10, 15 years ago. I love the story. It’s an interesting, but it is it crosses its own genre. I don’t know. I don’t know how much I should give away.

It’s it is a written in the style of a fantasy and epic fantasy, another world type fantasy. But there’s no real fantasy per se. Okay. The wizards are all face .

[00:10:34] Stephen: Okay.

[00:10:35] Bill: And. They’ve created this world. That is just very strange.

[00:10:41] Stephen: And that’s coming up. Do you have any time frame when you might?

[00:10:45] Bill: I hope to get the first one done.

Oh, I don’t know. 20, 23 sometime. And I’m pretty sure it’s gonna take at least one more to finish the story possibly to okay. All right. We’ve got 50, 60,000 words in it already. Fair number, which would have to be removed at some.

[00:11:04] Stephen: So the songs of a befuddle muse multiple genres, multiple stories, and written of from prompts with you and your daughter, do you think prompts

[00:11:14] Bill: But again I, I.

I don’t wanna say it’s just I had a prompt that I had to do a prompt up. It became things. Okay. Let’s, I’d create the prompt. One of ’em was based off a statue that my daughter and I both loved when we were in, in Paris.

[00:11:32] Stephen: Okay. So do you think you like you’ve liked writing, do you think without doing that, you would’ve still gotten back into writing and pushed yourself to get books?

[00:11:43] Bill: I think I would’ve, but this just pushed me into. And it just became fun. I’ll tell you I’ll mention one thing. When I was a reporter, I loved the reporting and I loved when the article was done, but I hated the writing it was a really painful process. Especially back in those days when it was all on type.

Now I love writing. I just, I really enjoy the time that I can spend doing it. It’s not enough time that I could spend doing it, but. I really like doing it and I enjoy coming up with these characters.

[00:12:16] Stephen: Okay. The book, the stories, would you say there’s some other books or authors out there that are similar.

So anyone listening that likes those others would say, oh yeah, I might like that.

[00:12:28] Bill: I want to be Ted Chang when I grow up. Okay. Yeah. He’s the guy who wrote the story that became the movie arrival. Yeah, that’s from a book called stories of your life and it is a jaw droppingly, fantastic book in my mind.

It’s the kind of thing that, again, he’s, he crosses genres in there as well. Now there’s one about I, if I remember correctly ancient Babylon and in the newer book, there’s another about the ancient Arab world which is a time travel story. So apparently he likes that and I like time travel too.

So that I like that idea. I take a little, I love Ray Bradberry, he’s done a lot of stuff where, again it’s sci-fi and fantasy and just weird fiction and speculative fiction. All in the same book. And that’s what I grew up on. And I even take a little bit from Arthur C. Clark, cuz a couple of the stories in this book are just short, funny stories just for one or two gag slash points.

And then some of them are much longer pieces, so it’s a mixture of all those things. And I’d like to pull all of that in. Okay. Yeah. All right. If I can compare myself to greats, Ray Bradbury, Ted Chang Arthur, C Clark among others, then you’re happy. yeah. If I get put in that, that that genre or that, that company.

[00:13:50] Stephen: Got it. And so the book is independently published, correct? It’s independently published. Yes. And we’ve both gotten some help from Dave getting things by, let’s just a shout out to the group. Again, I’ll put links in the show notes. What type of feedback are you getting from readers?

[00:14:05] Bill: I’ve got five review or let’s see, six stars or six sets of stars and five reviews.

All of them. You. Four four fives and one four. Okay. I’ve given it to a lot of people. I’m getting a lot of reviews. People saying how much they liked it, including people who’ve passed it on to other friends. And then they report back to me that their friends like it. So people who do read it do like it it’s just, it’s got interesting characters.

It goes in a whole bunch of different fun directions,

[00:14:38] Stephen: but now they just aren’t enough of them out there yet. Got it. We talked a bit about the different genres. Have you had any feedback on someone saying I really liked the sci-fi stuff and not the paranormal or anything along those lines.

Nobody’s

[00:14:51] Bill: given me anything quite that specific.

[00:14:53] Stephen: That’s good. They’ll

[00:14:54] Bill: name the stories that they like. But they’re not saying you shouldn’t have concluded this kind of story

[00:15:00] Stephen: in there. And that’s typical people usually like a couple in a couple less in there. So yeah.

That’s typical. If you had a choice now, this is a interesting mix of genres. But let’s say your next book, which is one story. If you had a choice to take a story, one of your stories, would you rather ha turn it into a movie or a TV show? I wouldn’t refuse either. Okay. But that’s a good answer.

[00:15:27] Bill: I, I was thinking about that in terms of this book most of them would make a TV show. But the one pair of stories could actually become a movie. Heck if the next book goes really well the whole like five seasons, like the game of Thrones, I’d be really happy with that.

Yeah. Yeah.

[00:15:45] Stephen: And you don’t even have to finish the series before the TV show runs out. Obviously

[00:15:49] Bill: I don’t think he’s ever gonna finish the series, unfortunately, cuz. I loved those books long before it was popular to love those books that I’ve been reading George R. Martin for a long

[00:15:58] Stephen: time. If he never gets to finish on Brandon, Sanderson can step in and finish those too.

So I’m sure you wouldn’t mind . Where is your book available?

[00:16:08] Bill: It’s available on on Amazon right now. OK. It’s available as print on demand. And I was a little surprised. I thought most people would buy the Kindle version. Because I’m a fairly big Kindle reader. But it’s available is a more people bought the print on demand than the Kindle version it’s available for Kindle and is available for Kindle unlimited.

Okay. And one of the things I did I don’t know that it’s paid off or not, but I, each of the stories is available separately as a Kindle book or a Kindle. Okay. And I did that mostly as a way of trying to find some way of advertising them and getting

[00:16:46] Stephen: different genres. So in, in any given month how many of those individual stories are people getting as opposed to the whole book?

Okay. So not necessarily working.

[00:16:58] Bill: It may be working and the people see that, and then they say I the whole book is $2 more. Let me just do that or I can get it all on Kindle unlimited. So

[00:17:06] Stephen: Which is actually yeah the point . Yeah. The whole point was to just be able to, okay.

[00:17:12] Bill: Time travel stores, I can put in time, travel time, travel, romance, time, travel historical alternate history, things like that.

[00:17:21] Stephen: And you’re in Kindle unlimited. Do you get page views and reads through that? Pretty good. And do you have any plans once it’s out of there putting it wide or you just go keep it unlimited?

Sorry. I’m not sure why I would wanna make that choice unless I can make a lot more money selling them with if, cause I think if it’s in Kindle unlimited, I have a, is it, is that where unlimited in. The

price? No, if you’re kind to unlimited and people could check it out using kind, you’re not allowed to go elsewhere.

So I was just wondering if your page views start, oh yeah. Diminishing. If you go out to Barnes and noble or apple or anything

[00:18:02] Bill: right now, I want readers this whole book. I’m not planning on making a lot of money on this book, which is fortunate that I didn’t plan for that. So far Really, I want to develop a readership people who were looking for the next book.

Okay. I’ll do whatever it takes to get more people to read. Okay, good. At the moment I don’t, Amazon’s responsible for what? 75? 80%. Yeah. Huge. I do wanna make whether I record it or whether somebody else records it, I really would love to make an audio.

[00:18:36] Stephen: Okay, that’d be cool to hear if that affects your other sales or anything too.

That’d be good. So do you have a website?

[00:18:44] Bill: There is befuddled muse.com is a website for the book cone corral.com is my personal one. And they’ll lead you to a couple other photographic sites and so forth that I have.

[00:18:55] Stephen: Okay. Some of your other interests, interwoven.

[00:19:00] Bill: A little bit. Okay. The Beuse is about this book and it has my bio and my daughter’s bio.

Now we talked a little bit about her. One of the things I wanted to mention if you’ll see on the back of this model, and I know that the people are listening, can’t see what I’m showing, but there’s tattoos. My daughter among other things is tattoo artists. Nice. And each of the individual books has just one tattoo on her that represents that story.

And then the start of every chapter has one of her tattoos, one of her drawings. So not only did she play a part in getting me started on this, she played a part in making this a really beautiful visual.

[00:19:41] Stephen: And this will go up on YouTube so people can take a look at it. And anyone listening that hasn’t seen it on YouTube it’s over there, links it, links on.

If

[00:19:50] Bill: they go see the book in Amazon hint, bunch, nudge, win quick. You’ll see

[00:19:54] Stephen: the tattoos there. We’ll have links too. So you mentioned Arthur, C Clark and Asimov, and those guys do you have any other favorite books and authors?

[00:20:04] Bill: Are you familiar with Mary do or Russell from the Cleveland area?

[00:20:08] Stephen: I am not also

[00:20:08] Bill: She’s written, what’s probably one of my most favorite books ever. It’s called the Sparrow. Okay. And then children of God was the second book in that series. And then she’s written. Those were our first two books and they’re sci-fi the other books are no they tend to be a little bit like mine and they go and slightly mixed different genres beautiful, wonderful writer. Yeah, I’m sure there, it’s almost whoever I’m reading now is my favorite writer. But yeah, I could come up with a lot Martin is fantastic as well.

[00:20:42] Stephen: All right. And up in Cleveland, I know most of the bookstores, but do you have a favorite bookstore that you like to go to?

[00:20:48] Bill: I’m I this is embarrassing for me because I have in the past loved bookstores back in the old days before Amazon I had a number of bookstores in different places that I lived, that I would I was a regular Dennison there, but there aren’t any that I know of here in, in Soland. I go to borders sometimes, but mostly I probably buy my, my, myself, I buy from Amazon and I love audible.

Yeah. I’m a huge audio book listener.

[00:21:16] Stephen: Okay, good. All right. Before we finish up the first half year with your book and move on to author stuff if somebody came saw you on the street or whatever, and said, so why should I get your book and read it? What would you tell him?

[00:21:30] Bill: It’s fun.

It’s interesting. It’s got some really cool stories in it. You’ll enjoy it. Okay.

[00:21:37] Stephen: Nice, great bill. Thanks for uh, sharing all that. It’s my pleasure.

Jocie and Stephen discuss the problem of Amazon book returns. Their policy hurts authors. What are the alternatives and possible solutions? We have several and some related issues that we discuss.

let’s talk some author stuff and we have a good topic coming up about people returning books to Amazon. But before we get to that you said you’ve written about 20 books. So what are you doing now in your writing? That’s different than when you first started?

[00:30:18] Jocie: I hope, I think I’m better giving a little more depth and backstory coming from a world of writing nonfiction and I’ve written for newspapers and things like that.

So you’re pretty much to the point who walk when, where, why, and you get the story done, you get the story out same way with magazine articles. And so I think that was reflected in some of my early fiction works. I was pretty much to the point and people are like but why, and so now I will stop and say the blue dress, the blonde girl, and do a little more description, depth of character where before it was like she just said this, you just make it up as you go.

I don’t care why dress she’s got. So I think, and I hope that I’ve gotten better at doing that. I’ve really worked hard to try to get better at doing that.

[00:31:05] Stephen: Okay, great. for your writing, what software and services do you Right now, I just use pages that came with the Mac or word that’s on my HP and pretty much that’s it.

[00:31:16] Jocie: And then I just back up on an external hard drive. That’s it? I’m pretty easy. Pretty simple.

[00:31:22] Stephen: Okay. So let me ask this, you use pages on Mac and word on, do you, if you start a manuscript in word on your HP laptop, do you continue to write it only there? Or do you transfer it somehow between the two?

I have

[00:31:38] Jocie: transferred done it in like a rich text format and transferred between the two. But if I started on one, I tend to keep it on that one because keep it simple. okay. It’s just easy. And then the if I go somewhere I write on a iPad, honestly, I am an old school girl, 90% of the time I have a spiral bound notebook and my notes will go in it.

I have it. Separated and file foldered indexed, so to speak. And I have, I love back to school season. I ha . I have a myriad of notebooks that each one of my books is in. And so I started writing when my kids were in school and if I was waiting for them at band practice or at a sports practice or in the the moth car line, if there were days that I did that, I would be sitting there writing in the notebook and I still do that.

[00:32:31] Stephen: Nice. Okay. So you go all the way from analog up to digital.

[00:32:37] Jocie: Yes. Hey, when I was a kid in high school, this is how they taught me to type. Okay.

[00:32:43] Stephen: Yeah. That was one of the first things when I started doing it. And I sent my manuscript to the, my editor. She said, why do you have two spaces after your sentence?

That’s what I was taught. No, not anymore. That is

[00:32:56] Jocie: hard habit to break. Yeah. I’ve even had to go back through and do a find and search and take that space up. Make sure there’s no extra spaces in there. Yeah

[00:33:04] Stephen: It’s difficult. But the good thing is I learned typing and I can still type fairly well and just, and I’ve actually tried dictation and I just can’t get my thoughts and keep the story going by talking it.

But if I’m sitting here, I can just keep typing and typing and pretty much keep up with my.

[00:33:25] Jocie: Yes, I’ve tried. I have a recorder and I used to use it going back and forth to work. The thought would hit my head and then I would like, I think the worst thing is it’s like this. I would listen to myself.

I went it’s and it’s difficult to listen to myself. Because you see all the mistakes, you make all the ums and the hums and et cetera, and you really work to try not to do that, but it’s difficult not to do that. Yeah. And I’m with you and, or I would just hear road noise and it would block out any other things that I would say back to a notebook and I only did it at red lights, honestly, officer

[00:34:02] Stephen: I know I had a trouble with the dictation, partly because it’d be like, quote. And then what I said was comma quote, next line that type of thing, it really broke the flow. And I don’t know why. I didn’t think about this. I heard somebody on a podcast say I don’t even bother with that.

I just speak and keep talking. Like I’m telling the story and I worry, put all that in later. And I’m like duh, why didn’t I think of that?

[00:34:26] Jocie: Yeah, I would do that

[00:34:27] Stephen: too. And what you said about the ums and things like that, I use a software called script, which will take out those type of words and it gets rough sometimes when you’re doing audio or video, but if you’re just using it for the text, it takes out those words.

And then you got a more clean script to work from to add everything else in. So there’s a thought I haven’t even tried that yet, but thinking about it. Yeah. So I need to, I don’t drive as much as I used to, so I need to go out and take walks to to get into the flow of talking

[00:35:03] Jocie: yes, that’s what I do.

I wa walk every day and And it sounds impressive. It’s not that impressive. I don’t walk that far, but we do have a new puppy, which is a border Collie, which requires frequent walking. So it’s made me get up and walk more, not just in the morning, but at night and doing that. And if I’m alone walking her, I’m okay.

I can use a recorder if my husband or someone joins me, I’m like, I feel like an idiot talking about a story with a walking partner. So that kind of eliminates that. But walking does clear your head and give you some thoughts. Of course, I have almost 10 acres to mow. So when I do grass is when I get my best thoughts.

Yeah.

[00:35:44] Stephen: I, we’ve only got four and a half acres, but I’m mowing. I got all the noise and I’m thinking of things and I’m like, oh my gosh, I gotta stop and write this down or I’ll forget it done and done mowing. We had a border Collie lovely dogs. She was great. She loved belly rubs. That was the first thing she’d always just roll over.

[00:36:03] Jocie: It’s the first one we’ve had. We’ve always had rescues and we’ve always had pound puppies. And this one was a friend of my daughter’s had a litter and it’s a dog that I’ve always been in love with and wanted. And when I grew up a neighbor raised them and I fell in love with them. So when I had an opportunity to grab this little girl then we got her.

Aw. And we had the little, he was. We don’t know, mom was a Jack Russell. Dad was a hit and run and we had him for 15 years. So it took us about four years to be able to bring another fur ball into our lives. Yeah. Yeah. We lost our border col last year. And our boxers getting up there too.

[00:36:42] Stephen: So I’m fearing that day you know how that goes

[00:36:46] Jocie: oh, I do. I do. They become such a part of your family and it’s difficult.

[00:36:51] Stephen: Yeah, Jack Russell is probably my favorite dog though. They’re I just love those

[00:36:56] Jocie: dogs. He was a character. Josie how are you marketing your books?

Lately I haven’t been doing a whole lot.

The best marketing I’ve done is probably through Mickey at creative edge. I hired him as the publicity and media and marketing, and he’s gotten me a lot of opportunities. I wouldn’t have gotten otherwise. I’ve tried Facebook ads and different things. Probably my best promotion is my newsletter because people sign up for it.

They absolutely wanna hear from you. I can do my sales in it. I can do chapters and new reads and upcoming works because quite often, even on Facebook, Twitter, any of those, you can get clamped down if you’re not a bigger name or I’ve had authors who said nothing of relevance and have been suspended for a time.

So my newsletter is the one way I think is my best marketing tool, okay, great. So you brought up a good discussion topic people returning books, and there’s several different aspects of this, that affect authors. So why did that come to your mind as something to talk about? Has it happened to you.

It hasn’t happened to me. It’s happened to some friends who are much bigger selling authors than I am. And I also write for readers entertainment, which is a blog that focuses on books and book news, publishing news, things like that. So it came up as a topic and an article that I’m working on. And by asking some author friends about this it can get some very heated reaction.

And apparently it began from what I’ve gathered and researched so far on TikTok and some younger, I don’t know if it was younger people, they’re making a blanket statement. People on TikTok had said, Hey, why you can go buy this book, read it and send it back. And Amazon will give you your money back so you can read a book for free.

And what happened was anybody that gets a book and we’ve all done it, even me as a voracious reader, you get three pages in and go this isn’t quite what I thought it was. That’s okay. Somebody should be right entitled to send that back. But if you’ve read the entire book and one author literally has a series of 12 books, somewhat people have read all 12 of her books and sent all 12 of them back.

If you’re reading 12 books, you apparently like the book.

[00:39:28] Stephen: Yeah. And like the series. And I don’t understand the attitude because if you like the author, you like the book. But they’re not making money. They’re gonna stop writing. And people then complain you’re not writing anymore.

You should be writing more. Yet the same people that are sending these books back. If you said, Hey, I want you to spend 30 or 40 hours doing work for me for free. They’d be like, are you crazy?

[00:39:54] Jocie: It’s I laugh. My husband has his own shop. He’s a an ASC master mechanic and works on big trucks and farm equipment and road equipment.

And I often laugh and look at people and say can you see somebody telling my husband if my truck runs good for six months, I’ll come back and pay. Go to the grocery store. If I like these bagels, I’ll come back in a week and pay you for them. But they seem, and it’s not just authors.

There was the music industry and the movies, anybody, I think that’s creative, photographers, artists, they all a similar dilemma. For some reason, people think we should give our creative work away for free. Yeah. And authors and actors and musicians, they give away a lot. We’ve all donated books for charity and books for fundraisers and books to libraries.

So we are already giving away quite a bit of work for free for the greater good or whatever, or to help someone in need. And I think this got me because it’s become viral. Millions and millions of books are being sent back and Amazon as one of the biggest book, sellers is really not addressing the issue they are.

Instead of, and clarifying that says you have 30 days to send this book back, or I know that their computer geeks and their Loga rhythms know if Jane over here gets a 12 book series and sends all 12 backs that there’s something wrong with that.

[00:41:27] Stephen: I think that I. Also just to mention, this was a big problem with the audio books on audible for quite a while people were doing it.

So same thing, but personally, I think there should be some limits placed on it. If you get a book physical and you’ve had it X amount of time, two weeks or something, then no, you’re not getting your money back. That, that gets rid of that 30 day return policy and right. And I know there are some other issues dealing with it, but if someone gets a book and reads it in two days and then once their money back, there’s a problem with that.

But I understand maybe they really didn’t like it. Okay, fine. You get your money back. But then if you get book two and book three, no, you’re not getting your money back anymore. Cause obviously you’re scamming it now or it is you can only return. Two books in a 30 day period, or some sort of limits to help with that to try and balance it out.

That’s my thoughts.

[00:42:32] Jocie: And the thing is too, a couple of the authors that I have interviewed have said they’ve had so many books returned, cuz there’s an open end on that you could have bought the book five years ago and still return it. But they’re actually having to pay Amazon. Yeah. And I don’t think people realize if you like an author and you’re, we are reading 12 of his or her books, you obviously like that author.

So why wouldn’t you support them? And here’s the thing from my librarian self, there are many services that libraries have like overdrive, which you cannot only get it in digital format, audio format and print format. And the author will still get. So you can go to the library, talk to the library and say, Hey, I want Jane’s book on Uber mysteries.

And they will order that book for you. And you can get it. And multi you don’t even actually have to go to the library. You can sit here, do it on your computer and download the digital copy. And when you do that, the author still gets paid and you’re getting a book for free. So win-win right. And

[00:43:31] Stephen: now you don’t get to keep it.

You get to read it. But if you’re sending it back anyway, what the matter,

[00:43:36] Jocie: right. And the library will delete it from your digital device at the end of 14 days or whatever period that particular library system has set up. And you can, Hey, if you didn’t get and I’ve done it, I’ve forgot about it.

Or didn’t get an opportunity to read it and went back and checked it back out, which multiple checkouts, help libraries get more funding. So there you go. We’re just keep winning

[00:43:57] Stephen: here. And the digital books, it’s even easier to tell how much of it they’ve read if they have, if they’ve been on a page, if every page is read and they’ve been on every page for about a minute then they’ve really read it.

They’re not just flipping it and yeah, no you used it. You’re done. If I buy a pair of underwear and I wear it for a week, I’m not taking it back to the store. It’s already increased and folded

[00:44:24] Jocie: and and there’s so many obstacles against authors and any creative people. Like I said, musicians, actors, photographers, artists.

There’s so many strikes against them to make a living doing that, that this just adds to the fire and it’s, it makes me very angry, not just for me. I’m working at other stuff and have other income, but there’s you want to make an income from what you love to do and where your passion is.

And I, my first thing is all of these people that are sending stuff back, how would you like it if I just came in and took pieces outta your paycheck? Exactly. And I know a friend of mine was just lamenting the fact that he’ll buy a used book on Amazon. Now, obviously if I have 10 books up and people have bought a lot of ’em and they’re reselling them used, I’m not getting any of that, which there are some things that are gonna be changing.

[00:45:15] Stephen: That there’s a whole different story.

[00:45:17] Jocie: Yeah. Honestly, I, my books, I found on eBay and they want $460 for it and I’m like,

[00:45:24] Stephen: wow. Yeah. Wow. Which I laughed so hard on that one. I’m like, really? Yeah. I just wanna put in the comments y’all can go over here to Amazon and get it for 2

99.

Right. But his thing was that he’s been getting books that they say they’re like new or new condition and all that. And he gets it and he says that they’re bet increased and dog geared and pieces, chunks, and missing pages. And they’re just like, they’ve been run through the ringer and he’s they’re nowhere near new.

And I think that could hurt some. Now I know a lot of independent authors don’t have people buying and then reselling it and they have 800 used books for sale under their titles. But when if someone reads a book and then sends it back, Amazon, isn’t going to sell it for new again. And if they do sell it used the author’s not getting any of that.

So the author’s lost all the money from it and Amazon’s still reselling it. Or somebody is for

[00:46:24] Jocie: a, and Amazon’s seller yeah. Fulfilled by Amazon type thing or on eBay or Spotify feed different things like that, that Spottify, or however that is Shopify. So they sell him on many different venues and the authors out again.

And like I said, they do it with, even with music. What’s his name that wrote happy said something that he lost, like 17 million because people shared. And he didn’t get paid for any of them. Wow. And that’s a lot of money to lose. For me, I might lose $17, but that’s not 17 million.

And I made the number I’m quoting is not an accurate number but in the millions.

[00:47:03] Stephen: Wow. Wow. And there are ways for Amazon to check this. We’ve heard a lot of stories of an author messing up somewhere or accidentally through some thing that’s not even their fault get banned or blocked or whatever, by Amazon, the Amazon’s I don’t wanna talk to you about it.

You get these readers that will get a book and they haven’t paid for a book for months. They read 30 books a month and they haven’t paid anything for any of ’em. Yeah. And the thing is there won’t be 30 books to read soon because authors have to earn in a living. So if you keep turning them, you’re gonna be completely outta books or out of music, out of movies, out of all those entertainment, things that you enjoy, because people are gonna have to go find a job somewhere else to earn a

living.

And you said they pointed toward the younger crowd cuz younger crowd is more on TikTok doing the videos than that. Yes. And yes, they’re wrong for doing it, but look at what they’ve grown up with. Hey, I wanna watch any movie that’s ever been made since 1940. Click a button.

There it is. Hey, I got it. It didn’t cost me anything. Hey, I wanna listen to any song, any album I want. Boom, boom. Hey, there it is. I can listen to it. So for them to say I paid three hold dollars for this book that I read one time they’re not programmed that way and it’s wrong. They should have been taught, but you, I can at least understand why they think it’s okay.

Oh, I can

[00:48:31] Jocie: I very much can. I’m the mother of millennials and they take a beating and my kids mine are all firefighter, first responders. Been in the military. So you, I don’t wanna make a blanket statement on any generation. But yeah, the kids today, they’re just used to instant gratification.

I’m always laughing about that. The other day. You can, if you don’t live out in the boonies like me, you can literally, within two hours, get an order from Amazon and growing up if it said seven to 10 days and we got it on day seven, I was doing a happy dance. Exactly. So yeah,

[00:49:03] Stephen: four to six weeks was common.

You four, you have to send in a check in an envelope.

Two months later. So if you order something at the end of the school year, you’re probably not getting it till the beginning of the next school

[00:49:16] Jocie: year. Yeah, no, absolutely not. Unless you went to the post offs and got a money order, because that was like cash and hope someone open the envelope and it is they’ve raised in this world of instant gratification, instant click can get whatever they want.

And it’s a wonderful thing. I love the technology myself. Obviously where I’m using it right now. But I don’t think sometimes some of the younger people have a concept of people who create these things, be it, the computer, the books, the music, they need to earn a living. I will kids, they wanna be this influencer online and I’m like, man, that’s amazing to make a living, being an influencer.

I’m in fact jealous. And I’ve seen some of these people they can do two or three streams of income, know exactly what they’re doing and I’m going, would you come here and teach that to me? But I, as they still get paid for their time of creating content, their content creators. Oh. And I don’t think they realize that when they take that content from somebody else that they’re not getting paid.

[00:50:20] Stephen: And again, not making a blanket statement, not pointing just at the younger crowd millennials, but quite often I’ve seen people that have no problem piloting movies or copying music or any of these type of things. Then their neighbor asked ’em Hey, can you come do this? Yeah, that’ll be 20 bucks.

It you have that mindset of everything I do should be paid for, but someone else I should just get for free. There’s some entitlement to that also. And I don’t know where that mindset comes from. Cause I’m not like

[00:50:56] Jocie: most of it comes from parents. Because even when my children were younger, there were many parents around them that wouldn’t tell, allow them to work while they were in high school and things that are building blocks to becoming a self-sufficient adult and to understanding finance and things like that, that come from working that, that little job part-time in high school.

I think it teaches you quite a bit. Oh yeah. A lot of them were like I had to work and I don’t want my kids to have to work. And I understand that too. We’ve all had those moments where you want to make the world better for your kids than it was for you. And I think sometimes it’s hard to draw the line as to where it’s better and where you’re letting it

[00:51:38] Stephen: take control.

Yes. Define better because better isn’t making them feel like they should just be handed everything right. That they need to be. Cause I know my son when he was younger, we went to some good music concerts and he loved him and had a great time. And then he got a little older outta school, had a first job pays a little bit.

And I took him to a concert or two in that. Then one came up and the tickets were more expensive, like 75 bucks. And he’s oh, can we go? I’m like, yeah, sure. He’s oh, let’s get tickets, blah, blah. I’m like, okay, there’s 75 a piece. He’s okay. And I’m like, you owe me 75 bucks.

He’s oh, I’m not paying 75 bucks for that concert. That’s funny how that changes. Isn’t it?

[00:52:22] Jocie: Yeah. Yeah. It is. It

[00:52:24] Stephen: is and with people returning books and stuff, it’s an argument for putting your stuff in kind unlimited or script or scribed or whatever that is, these services that people get it and read it and you get so many pennies or overdrive and stuff.

That’s a good argument for putting it in that stuff. I know some people say, oh, I would never put it in Kindle unlimited because they don’t allow me to put it anywhere else. What good is it putting it somewhere else? If you’re not making any money.

[00:52:53] Jocie: Honestly you I’ve had it on apple books and Cobo and different things like that.

And I’ve never sold any of them except via Amazon, a few on Barnes and Nobles, but nothing in comparison. The only thing I can say with that, and I have three of my books in Kindle unlimited is if you’re like me, you have a two B red pile. And so if people get Kindle unlimited and they stack up 10 books and yours doesn’t get read right away, you don’t get paid.

They’ve bought it, but until they open it and they go through those pages, you don’t get paid. And so as it has it disadvantages and disadvantages like anything, and I have a couple on there cuz they are exclusive to Amazon. But the pay rate on those is, is not real great either.

[00:53:40] Stephen: Right?

Yeah. You gotta get a lot of page reads and I know.

[00:53:46] Jocie: It makes me realize why way back in the old days, Leonardo DaVinci and all of them had patrons. I need a patron.

[00:53:53] Stephen: well that’s yeah. That’s exactly a friend. And I talk about Patreon. That’s exactly what that was really designed for. The deci paying the,

[00:54:03] Jocie: and several authors.

A lot of authors actually have gone to Patreon. There is a thing on Amazon called Vela, which is a series. They you do a serial book series, but. In doing that, it’s very expensive to the reader. It’s like a 99, a dollar 99 per chapter. Yeah. And the author really doesn’t get mud like 79 cents or something out of it.

So many authors have taken to Amazon and say, Hey, you pay me $5 a month and I will get you six or seven chapters versus a dollar 99 per chapter through Amazon. I,

[00:54:41] Stephen: and I’ve toed a little bit with Vela myself, but I don’t think I’m gonna stay with it too much. I’m gonna pull my stuff because I write middle grade, okay. No parents are sending their kids develop and teachers and parents aren’t using Vela. Yeah. I have other avenues, my own website newsletter, like you said, that’s better way of getting that stuff out. Yes. So I was playing with it, but I don’t think I’m gonna stay with it.

[00:55:06] Jocie: Yeah. I’ve looked at it, talked to some other authors who have done it, and most of them I think are pulling out of it.

There’s a, there’s several that have done well. But they’re also bigger names and they write, I think science fiction, I think science fiction is one that does well as a series. And not that it’s a single chapter, but it is chunks of the book as it goes. But I would venture to say 60 to 70% of authors, I know are going to Patreon and telling their authors, you can get extra content, we can do a serial book and it will cost you a third of the price that it will on Amazon.

And I get more money as the author. So because of, except for a nominal fee to have the platform carry you on Patreon, you get all of that money yourself. So that enables you I said, the more money that you make, and it’s not like I’m Steven King and I’m gonna make millions. But if you’re in that 50 to a hundred thousand dollars reign of income, then you have the time to put out more material and make happy readers, all right. There we go. People returning books. We don’t agree with it. End the story.

I can’t say I, I don’t agree. It’s great. I’ve gotten a book I’ve returned to, because I didn’t like it, it wasn’t what I bargained for, but I didn’t read the whole book and nor did I buy 12 books in the series and read them all before I decided to return them.

So

[00:56:25] Stephen: there, there’s definitely a line. And honestly, I’ve gotten some books that I didn’t like, but right. For me a lot of times I bought that three years ago and now I don’t like it. So I end up passing them on to someone else, a present.

[00:56:39] Jocie: I donated them to the library. I donate them to we have a senior citizen center.

I donated books there. So they they’re still getting usage there going on, but it’s not something that, and I honestly have not returned much. It had to really be something shockingly different from what I thought it was for me to return it.

[00:56:59] Stephen: I even bought a duplicate a couple times just because it was something I was like, oh, that’s out.

Let me grab it. Forgot I got it. Cause I hadn’t read it yet. And later I’m like, oh, that’s on sale. I needed that book. Grab it again. I’m like, oh look, I got two .

[00:57:15] Jocie: And I think too to go on that point, most authors, especially Indy authors. If you’re with the publisher, your books are going to be priced higher because you have so many other people that are taking a chunk of that money.

But if you’re an indie author, most I would venture to saying 90% of indie authors. Their books are between 2 99 and 4 99. And that’s less than a gallon of gas. Or a Starbucks coffee. So I’m not sure why you’re arguing over getting it for free when you’re getting it for in comparison to other things pennies.

[00:57:49] Stephen: Yeah. Yeah. I’ve you do a price comparison. Video games are a pretty good deal because even though they’re 60 bucks, a lot of them are like 30 hours of play and replayability that type of thing. Yeah. So that’s a pretty good deal. A movie. If you go to the theater 15 bucks or so, plus and you get two hours.

Yeah.

[00:58:10] Jocie: It heavens if you take kids or a date and you get popcorn you’re talking some money there. I laugh. I said the port kids today that go on a date, they have to go Dutch. Because by the time you take a girl out for a burger and fries and a movie that’s some chunk of change

[00:58:25] Stephen: there.

A $50 night minimum yeah. All right. Joie, before we go, I appreciate talking to you. It’s been a really good discussion. Hopefully some other people will have some thoughts too. What would you give, what would be your advice to new authors?

[00:58:43] Jocie: Right? Period. That’s it write and don’t sit there and tell me, I don’t have time.

You can write at 11, between 11, 11 30, when you’re sitting in bed you can ride in the car, waiting on your kids. You can ride on your lunch hour. You can ride on the back. I’ve read on the back porch, Rob snapping, green beans. And the more you write the better you do nobody’s unless you’re graced buy the universe, nobody comes into writing, doing it all that.

It takes some time. If you read some of even Steven King’s early works, compared to later works, you can see the progression of his language skills and his depth of character skills. And the more you write, the better you get. And I have many authors who have told me and they do, they write to market.

Because this is hot, that’s hot. The other is hot don’t because what’s hot now is not gonna be hot in six months. The story you need to write. Got it. Great. Thank you. All right. Joie, I’m glad we’re able to keep connected. Get through the interview. It all went good. I will let you know when it goes live and I appreciate chatting with you.

Thank you very much. Thanks for your patience with this. I appreciate it. And it’s been a lot of fun. Yeah,

[00:59:52] Stephen: thanks. Great. I’ll talk to you later. Have a good day. All

[00:59:55] Jocie: Thank you. Bye bye.

Jocie worked at several jobs before landing her ideal one as a librarian, a perfect segue to becoming an author.

With a soft spot for U.S. Veterans, she chaired her local Veteran’s Oral History Project, and her work with the program lead to her speaking before the project committee at the U.S. Library of Congress. She has won several awards for her non-fiction writing on a multitude of subjects.

Her fiction writing has received the Author / Ambassador at Library Journal Self-e Authors, Winner Queen of the West Reader Favorite Award, Amazon Bestseller – Historical, Double finalist in the Next Generation Indie Book Awards in the Mystery and Humorous Categories, and her novel Baer Truth received 4.5 stars from RT Book Reviews.

Writing romantic comedy and humorous cozy fiction, Jocie can find humor in most everything. She lives in the Midwest on Dust Bunny Farm with her family and Diesel the Wonder Dog. When not writing, she grows ArnoldSwartzaWeeds in her garden and camps whenever the opportunity presents itself.

https://www.jociemckade.com/

https://www.facebook.com/MulberryStBooks

So Josie, welcome to the discover word Smith. How you doing today?

[00:02:43] Jocie: I’m doing great. Thank you very much. Have electricity, have air conditioning, have coffee. I’m

[00:02:48] Stephen: happy. We’re connected. Little inside joke for us,

right. Okay. So before we get started talking about your book tell us a little bit about who you are, what you like to do, where you live, that type of thing.

[00:03:03] Jocie: Sure. I’m Josie McCabe. I live in the Midwest USA, which is the Buckeye state go by tent state. that far I’m west Iowa, but I’m more Cincinnati, but I have been riding pretty much.

I first started 17 actually, and I’ve been riding on and off ever since. So most of the time I’ve written nonfiction for magazines, advertising, publications PR packages, that type of thing. And then I was librarian for almost 20 years. So pretty much all of my life has been centered around books. Some form another we have a huge garden. I love to garden. And when I don’t do that, we have a little RV and we’ve managed to hit 48 outta 50 states. Wow. NICE’s great.

[00:03:54] Stephen: Yeah. So I’m gonna, you didn’t drive the RV to Hawaii?

[00:03:59] Jocie: Nope. Nope. We swam

[00:04:01] Stephen: Canoe. . Down by where you live, have you been to the dollar book swap?

[00:04:08] Jocie: I have not. Oh, okay. They’ve got two different sales here, but that’s one. I’ve not been

[00:04:13] Stephen: to it. It actually is grown from a Amazon book depository warehouse. So the first time my son and I went, we thought we were go get shot at like a cocaine drug bust or something. It’s really scary looking

[00:04:30] Jocie: is it in Cincinnati

[00:04:32] Stephen: than it’s closer to Dayton?

I think, but it’s a little bit in between. See,

[00:04:37] Jocie: I don’t know that one. I know Amazon has a fulfillment facility and Louisville or Lexington maybe. Yeah. Louisville. But no’s Lexington and they have one in Wilmington, Ohio, which is actually an error, but I didn’t know they had any other one around dating.

[00:04:56] Stephen: Yeah. Yeah. You should go check it out. It, it doesn’t have the new books so much as some old stuff. Oh, that’s.

So you were a librarian, you said you’ve been around books your whole life. Yeah. So writing just came naturally to you, or was there a reason you wanted to start writing?

[00:05:13] Jocie: Stories came naturally. I was the kid that could make up the best story in the world to get out of trouble being an Irish background gift of GA and storytelling.

And most of my family being from the south, they could tell a Whopper too. So it was in the DNA, but at the same time, my mother was a voracious reader, always a veracious reader. And so there were always books in the house and she would read aloud to me and got me started on storytelling.

And when I was a kid, basically, I lived at the library. Other kids got out, got into trouble, went into sports, whatever I was at the library sneaking between the shelves. And at that time, unlike today, you had to have parental permission to go from the children’s side of the library, into the adult side of the library.

And I would crawl between the shelves in order to go to the, of the library and read Warren peace, cuz I was that child. So

[00:06:13] Stephen: so it just came naturally. You’ve always involved. It did.

[00:06:19] Jocie: And it was good escape. There were some tumultuous times when I was younger and libraries saved my life.

So I owe my, I owe a lot of what I am to books.

[00:06:29] Stephen: Got it. Nice. All right. So tell us about your book.

[00:06:32] Jocie: I’ve written almost 20 books. The series that I’m working on now, which seems to be my most popular is a cozy mystery series. It is the Mason Dixon series. The first book is the line is drawn and it began I’m my family’s token Yankee

All of my family is from the Southern us. And my mother used to tease me as a child that I could go from the south to the north, just with the snap with accent or with words it’s a buggy in the south. That’s a grocery card up here and I always laugh that I can go from you guys to y’all in the same sentence without giving a beat.

So I thought it would be fun. What if there were actually two sisters, a Northern sister and a Southern one who didn’t know that each other existed. And that’s where the story kind of took off. Nice. Okay.

[00:07:27] Stephen: So are all your books cozy mysteries?

[00:07:31] Jocie: No, they’re not. I actually have I can’t figure out what I wanna be when I grow up.

I have a romantic comedy series called the three bears, Staten Wyoming. That was actually my first series. And that was published by a regular, legitimate publisher. I got the rights back later and it’s still one of my best selling series. But. When I write it, it just turned into a mystery versus a romantic comedy.

There is the romance element and it is funny, but there’s a mystery in each book. And I thought this really isn’t a romance. It’s a mystery with romance in it. So and then I have a historical set, an ancient room, and then I have a little series of tea reading mystery. So it’s of, it’s still a mystery and it’s still a cozy mystery, but it does have just to touch a paranormal to it maybe the good witch on hallmark, that kind of okay.

Of element.

[00:08:27] Stephen: Okay. Yeah. I like that. You said, so the line is drawn. What’s that would you say is similar to another book series or something on TV or whatever.

[00:08:35] Jocie: I don’t know that it’s similar to too much. Obviously it has elements of being a coy mystery and a detective type novel, but the girls in it were separated at birth and, or shortly after they didn’t know the other existed, then they’re actually twins. One is from Boston, Massachusetts, and the other one from Huntsville, Alabama.

So there’s quite a disparity there between the two of them. The, this premise starts out that they were called to Washington DC about each one of their parents. One was raised by the father one by the mother died on the same day. And so they end up getting this notice to go to Washington about settling their estate, which kind of blows their mind cuz neither of their parents have an estate.

And when they get there, that’s when they discover each other. And the gentleman that’s about to tell them everything about their past and what they wanna know is suddenly assassinated in front of them. An agent gets them out into a safe house that their parents have set up for them in Virginia Beach.

And once they get there as the plot unwinds, they discover as they’re getting drunker and drunker over margaritas, that, you know what, we’re pretty good at detective stuff and blah, blah, blah. So they think if they started detective agency, they’ll be able to search for secrets about their parents without really raising red flags.

That, that isn’t the case. . And of course, every time they get a little bit closer to the truth about their parents and what happened, a dead body literally falls into their life and they try to solve that mystery as they go. So each book is complete in and of itself in that it has a murder or two and they solve it.

But there’s always an ending open end where they’re trying to find the truth about their

[00:10:25] Stephen: parents. Nice. Okay. It almost sounds like the adult cozy mystery version of a parent trap

[00:10:32] Jocie: Maybe it could be yeah. Something similar to that. Huh? Because my daughter, when she was like 10 made me watch it 478 times maybe that’s

[00:10:42] Stephen: And here’s my Jessica Fletcher, little muse Funko pop oh my girl.

[00:10:49] Jocie: Yeah.

[00:10:49] Stephen: Okay. And she’s not standing up now. write cozy mysteries. Is that what you normally like to read? Or did you just fall into how how’d you get to choose cozy mystery?

[00:11:01] Jocie: Actually my reading. I’m every guy’s favorite girlfriend, because I love thrillers. I’m the Jason born Jack car, Brad DNCE Flynn reader.

And I, I love those books. It’s this little part of me. He goes, yeah, it could be that bad. And the other part of me goes really, are you kidding? You and my mother would get along really well.

how I love those and I’m the one it goes somewhere with my husband and they’ll be talking about weapons.

And all of a sudden I know about this Russian gun and my husband’s like, how do you know? I’m like Jack car but actually, and I don’t, if I’m writing mystery, I don’t read it. I don’t want it to cloud what I’m reading, but I did grow up with the Nancy grew, the Hardy boys, all of those kind of books that I’m sure had a, had an influence.

[00:11:52] Stephen: Yeah. Nice. I loved Hardy boy growing up had tons of them. Yeah. So you mentioned one of your earlier books was more traditionally published and I take it. These now are independent. So do you try and do traditionally or you’re just independent now or I’m pretty

[00:12:10] Jocie: much totally ending now. I did go the traditional path and I found that I was still doing all of the work, basically as far as doing any of the marketing and all of that.

So why not just do it on my own and get more of the royalties as I go and. Also, I was rejected quite a bit because my books don’t fit into a particular genre. As I said, my romance books are not truly romance. They’re more mystery and they’re not romantic suspense. There’s not a big, yes.

The couple goes together and ends up writing off into the sunset, but they’re solving this unexpected mystery as they go. So it doesn’t fit like a Harlequin. It’s not, it doesn’t fit into their parameters and some of the mysteries don’t because they’re too humorous. Most people, if they read a mystery they don’t find humor in dead bodies.

I do. So I’m referring, you don’t wanna take anywhere where you need to be in polite society. So did you like the TV show castle?

I love castle. Yes.

[00:13:24] Stephen: You were saying all that. That was one of my favorite.

[00:13:27] Jocie: And I’m a huge fan of star Trek. I’m a Treky from

[00:13:30] Stephen: way back. Oh, me too. Oh I got to interview Armen Shimerman who played quirk a couple episodes ago.

Yeah. Oh, wow. That’s awesome. Yeah,

[00:13:39] Jocie: he was a great actor. Really? Very

[00:13:41] Stephen: underrated. Yes. He was a great man. He was stuck in Kansas city cuz he was under COVID watch. He was doing a play, but he was had stuck in his room. So he is I’m really bored and have nothing to do. You just wanna talk for a while?

So I got to talk to him for an hour after the podcast, I mean I like dang

[00:14:00] Jocie: well often on that one, people always go, oh, what’s your favorite character, which is kinda like asking about your favorite child, but. Always my engineers were the favorite. I’m like, seriously, the, that the enterprise would not have run without the engineers.

You could eliminate the captain and all of them, if ones were Scotty and O’Brien and all those Jordy, they would’ve made situations, but I have to say my favorite character of all of them would be curing their Reese. Oh, OK. BS nine. She was tough. She was re she never lost her faith.

And even in spite of a lot of obstacles that were thrown at that character, and she was one tough lady character. And think about it. She’s S facing down the Robb with a 40 year old chip. So I’m like, yeah that’s my favorite character. Nice. If I grow up, I be like,

[00:14:54] Stephen: off topic a little bit.

We’re on another track, but I gotta, out of all the new star Trek shows, what do you like in those.

[00:15:04] Jocie: Honestly, I haven’t seen any of those. I’ve been so busy with their things and I don’t have paramount plus, so that’s, and as I said, the rural area on a farm, I’m lucky to get Netflix on occasion.

[00:15:16] Stephen: they have one that’s Christopher pike and the enterprise before Kirk, and I’ve really been wanting to watch it. And I just haven’t had the time to even watch it.

[00:15:26] Jocie: yeah, I think that would be interesting. I’d like to see how they do it, the movies, I can’t see I’m all that thrilled with, because they went so far from the actual story plot that I was annoyed.

So because there was a lot they could have worked with without changing some of the storyline,

[00:15:43] Stephen: but man, if you ever get to watch star Trek discovery, drop me an email and let me know what you think, because it’s way off of the rails. I’m still trying. So for your books, let’s get back on topic of what we should be talking about.

You get me stuck on all the sci-fi stuff. what’s the feedback from readers with your books?

[00:16:05] Jocie: I’ve had very good feedback. I’ve had great reviews, just not a whole lot of ’em. I’m one of those people who I could market someone else’s books with a plumber. I’m great at marketing someone else.

I’m terrible at marketing myself. I feel like I’ll date myself here, herb Tark. The used car salesman who trying to market myself. It’s very difficult for me to do that. That’s probably, if I can do it without actually conversing with people, I’m better. If I can just do it on paper but the feedback I’ve gotten has been great.

They like the premise of the story. In fact, pretty much every one of my readers, I have a personal reader group line McKay’s Mavericks, and they wanna see it made into a movie or a TV series. Cause I think it really fun as a TV series. Spielberg, if you’re listening, I am a,

[00:16:57] Stephen: so what would you prefer? Do you like a movie or TV show better?

[00:17:01] Jocie: Probably TV show, because I think people invest in characters in a TV show. You come back week to week. It’s almost like having a a Sunday family dinner, so to speak because you, you go each week and you build upon this character. You build relationships, you watch them do that throughout the series.

And I think that’s why I like writing a series. And as an author, even though my books are standalone, if you start with the first one, you see how the relationship has built over time. And I think that’s why people like series. That’s why people like TV shows

[00:17:37] Stephen: And I’ve been finding it interesting because you five years ago and before, just about everybody was like, oh, I want a movie.

I want a movie. I want a movie, but things have changed so much. And there’s so many good shows and people are realizing they, they can get more character into a show, more story, and really dive into some of these books better. And the books translate much better into an, a TV show, an eight episode, 10 episode show.

And it’s changed the world’s totally changed from just five years ago. And before I think more people are saying in TV nowadays.

[00:18:13] Jocie: yeah. I think a movie a lot of times is like you read the book, you see the movie and of course there’s two different formats. I’ve done some script writing too, and it’s a very different format, but you only get a peripheral part of the story and.

When you write a script, based off the book, you have to just get certain points because you’d have to have an eight hour movie in order to do most books. Whereas with TV, you can do that eight hour movie and one hour increments, right? So you can build on those characters, you can get more depth of story.

[00:18:47] Stephen: Yes. I just watched a Reacher on Amazon and I’d never read a Reacher book, but I was like, this is a great series. Nice action. But a good storyline, good characters. It is.

[00:18:59] Jocie: So yeah, they do well with Reacher in giving you that little snippet of backstory so that you understand where that character’s emotion comes from.

And the gentleman, I can’t think of his name, but the gentleman that plays Reacher oh yeah. He was a green arrow on the Smallville TV show back 20 years ago. Yes. He put on 40 pounds and beefed up a lot. Yeah. Go. I know go look. I was 20 years yeah. Go look it up. You see him back then. He is this skinny little dude, and then you see him on return.

[00:19:34] Stephen: He is really beef. So I was like, wow, I’ve read

[00:19:38] Jocie: your books and not taking anything away from Tom cruise, but he is not the character when you see Jack Reacher in your head, and this young man is yeah, he

[00:19:49] Stephen: is who as Reacher. I honestly like the Amazon TV show better than both of the movies.

So I did too. Yeah, I did too. They were really good. And I had never read a Reacher book until after I watched the Amazon series. Yeah. Really,

[00:20:05] Jocie: as I said, I’m the thriller reader. Yeah. And now I’m watching Jack Carist

[00:20:11] Stephen: so. Oh, okay. I haven’t seen that.

[00:20:14] Jocie: Very good. Very it’s you almost have to wait a week between them because it comes at you so hard and fast.

So yeah. Most of people like me don’t but yeah, I had to wait a few days between I’m up to like episode four or five and it’s like sugar overload, so to speak, if you have to take it in small

[00:20:34] Stephen: towns personally, I prefer to do that anyway. I don’t like to binge anything. I watch, so no, I like

[00:20:40] Jocie: to yeah.

Carry it out a little bit and enjoy. Yeah.

[00:20:43] Stephen: Yep. So Josie your book, all your books, where can we find those? I assume on Amazon, but is there anywhere else we can find that?

[00:20:51] Jocie: Yeah, I have ’em on other formats and honestly never sold any other than when I go to book signing. And I sell a lot of hard copies at book signings, but I never sold in any format except Amazon.

So they’re pretty much exclusively on Amazon. I do have a few on Barnes and Nobles. But most, almost all of them are. In fact, all of them are on Amazon, but there are a few, I think the bear series and and Mason Dixon are both on Barnes and Nobles.

[00:21:21] Stephen: Okay. All right. And do you have a website?

[00:21:25] Jocie: I do.

It’s Josie mckay.com and Josie, my Josie spelled a little weird it’s J O C I E, which means I get. Porn and French for some reason. On my

spam

[00:21:36] Jocie: account wow. Okay. But it’s Joseph

[00:21:40] Stephen: mcca.com. I will make sure we have the website, correct. On the show notes. We don’t wanna be sending people to the wrong place and really get the wrong idea about your writing.

[00:21:50] Jocie: me and my, it comes to me in my spam folder and you always get spam, rude and crude spam here and there. But suddenly once I started using Josie, which is actually my grandmother’s name is Jocelyn. And so she spelled it with a C for Josie. And and when I did that, then it’s I got we’re coming in my spam filter from France.

Although on the plus side, I can say some pretty dirty curse words in French now that they never taught me in high

[00:22:17] Stephen: school. , that’s always a positive side. There’s gotta be a good side. I

[00:22:23] Jocie: may not use them in the right context What’s your plans for your next book?

I am currently working on Mason Dixon five, and I also have a tea leaf reader, mystery it’s out there, and there are a series of short stories.

And so I should have one of those by the end of this year as well. So hopefully by September, I’ll have the next Mason Dixon and by December I’ll have the Nextt lead mystery. Nice. Okay.

[00:22:48] Stephen: So off of your book for a little bit what are some of your favorite books and authors that you like to read?

[00:22:56] Jocie: I have a list I have a lot I read a lot of nonfiction, as I said in my real world job, I write for many blogs and magazines.

So I do a lot of nonfiction reading. But I am in I love Vince Flynn, Brador James Rawlins, Jack Carr. I read. And then I read, I do read first just fun, which would be like Kate London, she reads a wonderful little romance series. Sandra Brown love Janet Ivanovic. And there’s a few, probably lesser knowns that I enjoy reading.

Christine, Raymond, which writes, she writes mysteries and she’s not a very big name, but she writes some lovely books. I enjoy Kim foster writes a series is burglars the premise of hers. And I think it’s a three book series is the main character is a cat burglar. And she works for an agency of cat burglars, and she’s dating an FBI agent.

So it, it makes for some fun and interesting moments. Nice. And it’s got a lot of humor in it. My thrillers I love to read thrillers, but if I read other genres, I like to have a little bit of humor at them.

[00:24:09] Stephen: Okay. So if you had to name one book as your favorite book of all time, what would that be?

sorry. Of all time,

[00:24:18] Jocie: if I’m going on emotion and something that has evoked a lot of emotion, it would have to be made. The education of little tree to kill a Mockingbird 1984 those kind of books, just for their depth of character depth of story, because though they really can evoke a lot of emotion. Yeah.

Okay. One

[00:24:45] Stephen: game one. I like authors, cuz I get a lot of authors that are like, oh, I like thrillers. Writing them and reading them, but then you get some that are like I write humor, but I read historical texts and so it’s really interesting to see what different things people read BA compared to what they’re writing

[00:25:06] Jocie: it is.

It very much is. It’s like right now, I’ve just, I got an order from Amazon and I have a book on canning a book on a permaculture, a book on no-till farming. And I’m like, I’m yeah, I’ll just leave it there.

[00:25:20] Stephen: yeah. I always listen to the podcast. They’re like you should get people coming that buy books in similar.

So you’re also bots and I’m like, man, you ought. See my also bots. I’ve got every genre that you know, that I’ve got and read. And I was reading Dean Kos and Isaac Asamov at the same time, going back and forth. Yes, I’m the one that I’m sure is on some alphabet agency watch list. I no doubt about it.

[00:25:48] Jocie: because of material I read. Yeah. There’s a couple I’ve gotten from other authors. One of them, and right now it’s an ebook. So I don’t have it in front of me, but it was how to kill somebody and keep them dead. And it was a an ex or ex-police officer and he was talking about in the movies.

You see somebody shoot somebody and they’re

Jesse, you froze up.

Oh, you still there?

Hello?

Jesse you back.

Oh,

[00:26:16] Stephen: You there. I kinda hear something.

[00:26:18] Jocie: No sound.

[00:26:20] Stephen: There we go. I hear you.

[00:26:23] Jocie: Hey video.

[00:26:25] Stephen: Yay.

[00:26:26] Jocie: I have no idea. Everything just went, poof that

[00:26:29] Stephen: yeah, you froze.

[00:26:31] Jocie: Uhoh

are we off? Nope.

[00:26:35] Stephen: You came back for a second. There you are you

[00:26:37] Jocie: there?

Hello?

[00:26:40] Stephen: Hello? Here you, there you are.

[00:26:43] Jocie: Okay.

[00:26:44] Stephen: Are we back? I think so.

[00:26:47] Jocie: okay. Cause you’re not moving fine. Okay. Slowly a little delayed, but you there.

[00:26:53] Stephen: Okay, good.

[00:26:54] Jocie: I’ve got two backup internets here and I’m sorry.

[00:27:00] Stephen: It’s okay. Good. I’m glad we got back on. We had been talking about books and authors.

Next question I was gonna ask is, do you have a favorite bookstore close to where you live?

[00:27:09] Jocie: Oh, hello,

there

[00:27:11] Stephen: you there. I’m here.

[00:27:13] Jocie: Are you there? Yes.

Yeah, it keeps cutting out.

[00:27:16] Stephen: I see you move a little bit every now and then

[00:27:19] Jocie: I’m not hearing you.

[00:27:21] Stephen: Joie you still

[00:27:22] Jocie: there.

Oh, okay. I saw you. I can hear you.

[00:27:26] Stephen: I saw you mute and you came back a little bit. Yeah, I was

[00:27:30] Jocie: trying to see if that’s cuz it looked like it had been marked out, but no, it was

[00:27:37] Stephen: okay. Let’s. Seems back on, maybe

[00:27:41] Jocie: okay. I’m so sorry. And some trouble with living in a rural area. This is what I deal with all the time.

People say, oh, I have 25 megs and it’s so slow and I’m cursing them under my breath, but

[00:27:53] Stephen: yeah. Yeah. I live in a rural area. Yeah. I live in a rural area too. We don’t get really great most of the time. No, they, the guy even said the whole road is fiber, but they won’t do fiber from the road to the house is just the old copper lines.

So you’re limited to speeds and I’m like, that’s so ridiculous.

[00:28:15] Jocie: Yes. So yes it is. Is yes. All right. Yeah, we can’t get Cape on mean I can get dish, but anyhow, let’s I’m I apologize. No,

[00:28:25] Stephen: that’s okay. We’ll try again. What I was asking where you live, do you have a favorite bookstore that you like to go to.

[00:28:31] Jocie: I did. We had one, it was books and company, but it’s no longer there. There is one in Lebanon, on mul it’s Mulberry street books. And I enjoy going there. It’s a small privately owned family owned bookstore. And I do enjoy

[00:28:45] Stephen: that. I think I’ve been to that one actually one time. Yeah, it’s really cute.

[00:28:48] Jocie: It’s downtown Lebanon. Lebanon’s kind of a little historical town and you can still get burgers and fries at the ice cream shop and then go to the bookstore. So that’s a fun Saturday for nerds like me.

nice.

[00:29:00] Stephen: I like that. All right. So before we move on to author stuff if you ran into somebody and they said Josie, why should I buy your book?

What would you tell ’em?

[00:29:11] Jocie: Because you want in today’s world, you might need to laugh because they will make you laugh. And it’s just pure 100% escapism. I’m not making a point, a political moment, a grandstand it’s just absolute humor. And that’s it just. Escapism. Okay. And I’m just, I’m so thrilled when somebody takes their hard earned money and buy a book.

I just, even if it’s just one, I’m like somebody bought one of my books, they actually thought it was worth spending money on. And it it’s still a thrill. It never gets old, okay. Great. Josie, I appreciate you sharing all that with, about your books with us. And I wish you luck on it.

Thank you very much. And thank you for hosting me today. And I’m sorry about all the weird complications

[00:29:56] Stephen: That’s part of a if we were all Stephen King, we’d have better internet and computers and stuff,

JP is back to talk about her experience with hiring book services, especially an editor. We discuss things new authors should know and think about and how that may change as you become more experienced.

All righty. Which I have author questions, but let’s go back to earlier. What we, what you were talking. Which, what was that now?

I forget it was Paning.

[00:19:46] JP: That was Paning 1 0 1. Yes. You’d take a scene. I, like I say, I didn’t ever anticipate I would be a full-time author, so I hadn’t gone the traditional route in terms of learning the craft. I have since taken tons of courses on writing. But at the time I thought I’ll never have an idea big enough for books.

So it just didn’t occur to me to do that. So starting with one scene in hindsight was absolutely the way to go. And I would actually, that’s what I recommend to people who are in that stage where they wanna write, but they don’t know if they can do it, or they don’t know if they’ve got a good enough idea, because I could not believe how the ideas came to me after I had that one little nugget in place and that nugget didn’t even end up in the final book.

Bits and pieces of it did, but not that final nugget. So that’s definitely a good way to start writing. And it’s a pastor way. And I did pants that first book entirely. I pants part of the second book, I pants less of the third book. The more I got into the series, the more I needed to depend on an outline.

And now I outline, I wouldn’t say extensively, but I do know where the story starts. I know where it ends. And I know most of the major scenes in between. OK. Most of the major ones, I there’s still room to Go off and explore a little bit, but but much more structured now.

[00:21:20] Stephen: Okay. Several things with all of that.

First of all, I totally agree. I love the fact that you just sat down and started writing and you didn’t, weren’t worried about a book and even a story. It was just a scene. And I think that type of thinking takes off all the pressure and I, a lot of times, myself, a lot of the author friends, I have. It’s that internal pressure of, oh my God, I gotta get a story.

I gotta make it good. I gotta do the right sentences. Take all that away and just write something. It just keeps going. I think that’s sometimes our own biggest hurdle is that that’s there you go. How to start, just write a scene, do that.

[00:22:01] JP: Yeah. Most of us have a scene in us.

[00:22:03] Stephen: yes.

Yes. And now you, that you also said that now you’re doing a lot more outlining. And this current book, you said it was won several awards. Do you think your writing has improved because you’re outlining or that you improved because you started outlining. Does that make sense?

[00:22:21] JP: Yeah, it does. I don’t think the outlining has anything to do with the awards.

I think that people have different ways of organizing their thoughts in writing. Whereas my strength might be the way I do it now. It took me a while to get to the point where I am at now, where I do it. So I think that in the end it’s just good writing. It’s good storytelling and it’s good writing in the end.

So I don’t really think it’s the outlining for me. It’s how I function best to tell a story. Now it wasn’t during the first book, but I think that all authors are individuals and they will find their own path.

[00:23:02] Stephen: Okay. Alright. So with your writing, what services, what software, that type of thing do you use?

[00:23:10] JP: I use word. Okay. It’s the only thing I’ve ever used. I do have Scrivener. It’s a very old version, but I couldn’t figure it out. And I was too anxious to write. So I didn’t wanna spend the time figuring out the software when I knew words. So I just stuck with word and I actually format myself as well. And I used word to format the books.

So a word is my go to, for sure. I use other services for the publishing part of.

[00:23:40] Stephen: Okay. And you’re on your second series, your seventh book. What are some things you’ve learned that you’re doing different besides the pantsing versus outlining? Is there anything else that you’re, you’ve learned that you’re you’ve changed since you started?

[00:23:56] JP: Yes. , I’ve changed so much. I wanna mention first, before we go any further, the one thing I haven’t changed and I would so highly recommend it is if you can afford to have an editor. Get an editor. I have learned more from my editors and even my proofread than I have learned from all my grammar and writing combined.

So that nice. My first thing I, and I try different editors too, so that I can learn more . The other thing that I’ve learned is how important reviews. When you’re launching a book I encourage people to try to get as many reviews as they possibly can write out the gate. It is important. It does give your book higher visibility.

And I use reserve review services. I use two of them. I use one that’s called book sprout, and I use another one called hidden gems. Those are the two I use right now. So definitely do that. And The other thing that I do is I use a company called book funnel and book funnel allows me to send my book to our creators, the advanced reader, copy readers and not worry about whether they can load it up on their particular platform that they’re using.

And it’s also how I gift books to people. And it is also how I distribute the books that the short stories I give away on my newsletter. Sign up.

[00:25:32] Stephen: Yeah. Book funnels pretty easy and can do quite a few things for what you know it is. I like book, funnel myself, used it a couple different ways.

They have audio now that they offer that’s right. And they’ve used.

[00:25:49] JP: Pardon me? They’re reasonably priced too.

[00:25:51] Stephen: Yes. Yeah, absolutely. So this kinda leads right into our main topic today. And that’s a problem. I think a lot of authors have and that’s, we can’t necessarily do it all and we shouldn’t do it all.

We should hire out. You mentioned an editor. I know somebody that wrote a book spent four and a half years researching and writing this long book and. Said I’m not going to give it to an editor because I don’t think the editor would get what I’m doing and they would just wanna change too many things.

And the book wasn’t really super. So you said an editor. Did you always plan to have an editor or did that, was that something that you like realized afterwards when you started using one? I was very lucky. My husband’s brother, my brother-in-law Is retired now, but he was an editor at a newspaper.

[00:26:50] JP: And I gave him the book first. It took every ounce of courage. I had to give it to him and he came back and he said, you need an editor. And I hadn’t even occurred to me. And so that started me on the path of using an editor. So I had an editor from the very get go, but it wasn’t like I thought of it myself.

It was him mentioning it to me. So thank goodness he did because every single book. When I first get the editor’s comments back, I usually curse and I go, oh, they don’t know what they’re talking about. And I throw it in a drawer. And then a couple days later I pull it out and it’s oh yeah. Okay. I knew that.

I knew that needed fixed and oh, wow. That’s a really good idea. Oh geez. I wish ID thought of that. And then you end up with a book that is so much better.

[00:27:38] Stephen: I absolutely agree. And I agree. I’ve learned a lot from a couple different editors. My first book had no plan, no real thought didn’t really even have an, a whole story.

It put some things in there as I went along. And then when it came back from the editor, it was like 20 pages of notes. And at first I was. Oh, my gosh, they’re ripping me apart. It was either this editor’s stupid. And then it was like maybe I just really suck. But I calmed down and put it aside.

And when I put it back out and read it with a more critical eye, I’m like, yeah, everything that the editor pointed out were those areas that I was unsure of, or that I really wasn’t comfortable with, but, oh, I’m gonna do this. And. Yeah, I agree. And I ended up like ripping half the book out and it literally cut it in half with what was left.

Yeah. So I’ve learned a lot from editors. I don’t always agree and I don’t make every single change that they want occasionally, but I think over time, my writing has grown and I can make that choice a little better. And I don’t just off the cuff. Oh, I’m not gonna do that. It sometimes there really is a good reason to make the change.

Yeah,

[00:28:53] JP: I agree. And I think that the more you write and the more you go through that process, the more you the quicker you can make those decisions. Like now when I get the edit back, I know which ones resonate, which ones I’m gonna go with. And the ones that I know I’m not gonna go with it’s instant.

I just say, that’s not the character that wasn’t like, that’s not right, but all the rest of it, I take everything. Yeah. And yet I did learn which I didn’t know when I first started and I do now. I can’t remember at what point I finally twigged to it, but I was using a substantive editor, so I was getting big ideas back the overall arching ideas like this character, isn’t doing enough or.

The scene isn’t doing an offer. You can probably cut this chapter, start the story here rather than where you started it. So that stuff I was getting, but what I wasn’t getting was the copy edit. I did the proofread and the substantive edit, but the copy edit in between I wasn’t doing and granted it’s extra money.

I didn’t have extra money to spend on it anyway, but now I do. And I am more aware as I’m writing of the things, the copy editor points out, like when I’ve repeated the same word in a paragraph or within two or three paragraphs. My strengths, my weaknesses in writing and sentence structure.

So that’s strengthened me as well is copy editing. I think that’s another important thing. It’s an extra step. If you can afford to do it, I would recommend you do.

[00:30:26] Stephen: Okay there you go. And what are some other things that you. Could do on your own, but you feel it’s easier and better to use somebody else.

What are like your cover? Did you do those

[00:30:39] JP: yourself? No, that was one thing I learned when I was starting off there weren’t a lot of prefab covers at that point, or I wasn’t aware of them if there were, and the cover designers wanted a lot of money. So it was either you did it yourself or you paid a lot of money for custom cover.

And so I hired a graphic designer. To do the series originally, I think I had four books in the series with a different cover and realized that the cover wasn’t doing me any favors, it was beautiful, but it wasn’t a book cover the book cover designers, know what they’re doing, they know what the font should look like.

They know the treatment on the front. And they know how to get the attention of people who read your genre. So that was one thing I learned. And I now have a cover designer that I work really well with and we do, we’ve done all the covers. Including blood mark. And the other thing that I can’t stress enough that I have benefited from enormously is finally getting myself a publicist and that’s because in order to get.

Word of your book out, you have to spend time finding the best places to either talk to other, like a podcaster like yourself, for example, or other vlogs or other authors that you can do newsletter swaps with and share. and getting press coverage in the newspapers, local newspapers and such, and I was bad at it.

I hated doing it. And I wasn’t confident in my ability to present my ideas or even the synopsis of the books. And so I hired Mickey of creative edge publicity, and he has taken me from not being able to. Speak very well at all about my books to being quite confident and enjoying talking about them and enjoying talking about the writing craft.

And he has found lots of opportunities and he I’ve put them all on my website and you can flip through them. And it’s just rolling down pages now of all of the opportunities that he has found for me that I’ve been able to take advantage of. So if you don’t like doing that part of the job, definitely get yourself a public.

[00:33:01] Stephen: Got yeah, absolutely. Totally agree. So you got a publicist, you have a cover designer, you have an editor. Is there any other service that a lot of authors may do themselves that you would recommend? They don’t?

[00:33:18] JP: The review service is the one that is you can ask all of your friends and relatives and all of their friends and relatives to, to write reviews for you.

A you’re not supposed to be putting reviews on there that are written by anybody that is not at arm’s length from you. You won’t know enough people, you won’t know enough people. So if you can get on book sprout or hidden gems and set up a time slot where you will provide your free review copies.

To get reviews on all of the retailer book Bob good reads Amazon Cobo nook, as many reviews out there as possible. So that’s another resource that I use. What else can I say for resources that I have farmed out?

[00:34:08] Stephen: Do you think that your sales. Are helped by using all these different services and professionals, or maybe not.

Obviously you wouldn’t be doing it if it wasn’t helping. But did you actually, as you added these, did you see the sales go up? Did you see interest go up?

[00:34:27] JP: I’ve seen the sales go up since my collaboration with Mickey, for sure. The sales have gone up with the exposure. There’s no question about that.

But the other thing that has happened is when I was first starting out, of course, you’re trying to do it all yourself and it is exhausting and overwhelming to the point where sometimes I used to sit back and say, I just, I can’t do this anymore. It’s too much keeping up Twitter, keeping up Facebook, keeping up.

The social part of it. And then the writing part, like the writing seemed to fall off and that’s the most important part. And I ended up having 20 minutes in the morning where I could write, cause the rest of the day was completely absorbed and everything else. So having a few things like this in place gives me more time to write and it takes the load off.

And I say Mickey in particular, because that was my biggest load at that point in. Trajectory in my career was trying to get that exposure. And it was just so frustrating cuz I didn’t wanna do it. And when I did it, I felt Ugh I at different points, if you find yourself overwhelmed, I would suggest you take a look at what you’re doing and see if you can farm any of it out.

Any of it like right now I would like to farm out the social part of it, or at least one or two of the platforms, cuz I wanna stay on the platforms, but doing it once a day is becoming problematic. I guess I’m ready to maybe take a look myself and see what else is it that I can farm out and do.

And the more books you can sell, the more you can afford to farm out this stuff. And it’s like that vicious circle I was just gonna say that it’s kinda a, you’re caught in that vicious circle. You start farming things out to write more, and then you have more books. You have to farm more things out, then you, so it’s you get caught, but that’s a good problem to have.

[00:36:15] Stephen: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:36:17] JP: I also wanna say just in, I just don’t want there to be any misconceptions. There’s no getting rich in this game. I don’t really think unless you’re Victoria Avard or Ann, Charles, there’s no huge financial payoff. It’s just an awful lot of hard work and you really gotta love writing to, to be in this.

[00:36:40] Stephen: And so do you have any services that you have used maybe not by name, but anything you’ve done or used that, that didn’t work out, that you changed or got rid

[00:36:51] JP: of? I don’t do Facebook ads anymore. I tried very hard and I just couldn’t get them to work. So Facebook is. Not something that I’m on and I enjoy the conversations I have with people on there, but I don’t do advertising on there anymore.

So that’s one that didn’t pan out. Other words? No, the more yeah, I couldn’t say that there was one that I am not using anymore that I started to use.

[00:37:24] Stephen: All right. And before we sign off on our author section and you’ve got a chapter you wanna read do you have any last minute advice for new authors?

Yeah.

[00:37:36] JP: Other than that one scene start with one scene. The one thing that I would say is that a lot of times you get in your head that you’re in competition with other author. And I just can’t say enough how that is not true. You aren’t in competition. The people who are authors are the people that are gonna lend you a hand and pull you up and you and tune are gonna turn around and pull someone up else behind you.

So when you have the opportunity to share other authors work or recommend their works. You should take that opportunity again, that’s not a competition. People read more than one book and they read more than one genre. So I, as much, and as often as I can, I recommend books that I’ve enjoyed. I will give those authors a hand up and then pay it forward.

[00:38:19] Stephen: Nice. Great. All right. JP, I appreciate talking about your book, talking about the author stuff. So everybody listen up for part three, cuz we’re gonna have a little chapter read.

[00:38:31] JP: Okay. I’ll get right into it then. So this is blood mark. It’s the story of Jane Walker and the marks that have formed her life.

And this is August 8th. This is the first chapter.

Jane Walker might have been the only person in Vancouver, not afraid to be in a downtown alley at half past midnight shadows, clung to fishers and corners, morphing into nightmare shapes as she. A warm breeze, stirred the scent to brought in garbage, along with her gag reflex rescuing Sadie was getting old.

One of these nights Sadie’s unique way of punishing herself would be the death of them both and maybe Jane’s bike Jane Park next to Ethan’s fat boy in the hopes his reputation would spill over and protect her cherished Honda to 500. But the caged bulb above the back door worried her, it bled a weak circle of light that pulled near the bike.

It was a toss up, whether it would draw attention or act as a deterrent. She said a prayer for the ladder and removed her helmet, a slamming door, punctuated, a heated argument drifting down from a nearby apartment. She raped her long hair forward to hide the worst of the birthmark on her face and walked around the corner.

Bypassing the drags, a RipTide’s nightly cue, a bouncer. She knew manned the door, his steady gay slid sideways at her approach. Booze from the lineup he held at bay, prompted him to inhale, emphasizing the girth of his chest. He flexed bicep larger than her thighs tipped his chin and let her path. She nodded her thanks and stepped inside a cocktail of perfume and stale, sweat assaulted her pumping music reverberated in her chest.

As she scanned the bar for Ethan Bryce and found him pouring shots, a seasoned bartend. He worked the room like a ringside bookie at an illegal fight, smiling with one eye and watching for trouble with the other. Thanks for calling. Jane said pressing into the bar. Where is she? Ethan held or gaze a moment longer than necessary.

Then swiped his head to the lap. Jane followed his line of sight to the dance floor where her roommate swayed out of step with the. Sadie had gone with tasteful tonight wearing her L B D as she called her little black dress. Her client must have been a high roller. Unlike the Reed up jock strap.

Now keeping Sadie upright with a hand on her ass and a sure bet. Smile on his face. Jane stro through the dancers and stopped short of her Sadie. She shouted over the music. Sadie lifted her head from jock straps shoulder and struggled to focus. NA. She blew it. A stray blonde curl. Jane winced at the nickname.

Sadie rarely used in public. Her jock strap asked. Sure. Tim meet narc hands with us. Sadie reached for Jane. Her mascara had SMUD leaving charcoal shadows under her eyes. It’s what, two lines of Coke and a few too many vodka chasers look like Jane shook, her hand, took her hand. Let’s go home. She’s with me tonight, honey.

Jock strap said tugging Sadie’s arm away from Jane. She looked down to Sadie with a smarmy smile. He looked down to Sadie with a smarmy smile. Aren’t you baby? Sadie squinted up at him. When she looked back at Jane Sparks of awareness surfaced, she pushed against his chest. I gotta go gotta go. He said, dragging her back.

Stay with me, baby. We’re having fun. Aren’t we. How about to bring her back tomorrow. Jane said, when she’s not wasted, Sadie stumbled as jock strap twisted to put himself between the two women. I’ve made an investment here. Charming Jane thought recoiling from a stale bill, ear, spittle. She was quick in a fight and had the advantage of being sober.

But jock strap had a hundred pounds on her and a hard on with a destination. She knew Ethan wouldn’t tolerate her, pulling a knife in rip tide. So she’d have to dissuade jock straps some other way. She looked to the floor. Mercedes she’d expose her marks. Only Mercedes an eye full of ugly often gave her a split second advantage.

He was already wobbling. Shouldn’t be too hard to knock him on his ass. She shifted the grip on her helmet and widened her stance during drawing a calming. Then in one swift motion, she swung the curtain of hair away from her face. She’s going home. Jane said pressing upward into jock straps, personal space to ensure he got a good look at the thick blood red birthmark that slashed an angle from her forehead to her temple.

It looked like the work of a medieval battle, a acts. He shrunk back with a familiar snarl of revulsion. Already prime. Jane was ready to launch when a firm hand landed on her shoulder, halting her everything. All right here. Ethan asked squeezing harder than he needed to. Jane felt a pinch of resentment as his interference, jock straps, gaze darted to the figure standing behind Jane Ethan wasn’t big, but his reputation was, he didn’t cross him unless you had generous sick leave benefits, shock straps, nostrils, flared.

He pinched his. Neither men moved long seconds later, jock strap, haltered, and blew out a deflating breath, his bravado, and sure bet. Attitude faded along with his hopes of getting laid. He released Sadie with a little shove go on. Then he said, take out the trash. He stalked away and called over his shoulder.

And it’s Tom not fucking Tim. Yeah. Jane mumble, not fucking Tom. With the shake of her head, Jane settled her hair back into place. She wrapped a steady arm around Sadie’s shoulder and turned her around, bumping into Ethan who stood in their path. You okay? He said that his expression was a warning. She’d forced his hand and he didn’t like that.

Yeah. Watch my ride. I’ll come by in the morning to pick her up. Jimmy will keep an eye on her. Ethan said before he swaggered back to the bar. Ethan’s faith in the stubble faced panhandler who hung around the bar was a mystery to Jane. She opened Sadie purse and fished out her keys. Rick new chapter, Rick Atkins kept his back to the dance floor and gazed at Sadie reflection in the mirror behind the bar.

Not that Sadie would recognize him in glasses, in a full beard, but Lance had served him well to this point. He wouldn’t tempt fate when he was so close to his end. He watched the woman who called herself Jane flasher markings, like a Blowfish in the face of a predator shark who groped at Sadie. Jane had no inkling of the damage.

She was capable of inflicting, but not for long ripped down his beer and slinked out the door. And that’s it.

[00:45:42] Stephen: I turned my mic off. So any noises wouldn’t interrupt and bother. Great. I usually put that as a I do an B and a C episode. So C is the chapter read. So I’ll put that as a C nice. I, that gets some people interested and they wanna pick up the rest of it. That’s good. Me too. Great. All well, JP, I appreciate you taking some time.

I’ll let you know when this goes live. It’ll be probably close to the end of July, I believe. Terrific. The schedule.

[00:46:09] JP: Thanks so much for having me, Steven really appreciate it.

[00:46:11] Stephen: Yeah. I appreciate you being.

JP (Jo-Anne) MCLEAN writes urban fantasy and supernatural thrillers which have received accolades from the Global Awards, the Chanticleer Book Awards, Wishing Shelf Book Awards, the Whistler Independent Book Awards, and the Victoria Writers Society. Reviewers call her books addictive, smart, and fun. Her work includes endorsements from award-winning and best-selling authors, E.E. Holmes, Jennifer Manuel, Elinor Florence, Jennifer Anne Gordon, and Eileen Cook. JP is a graduate of the University of British Columbia’s Sauder School of Business. She is a certified scuba diver, an avid gardener, and a voracious reader. Raised in Toronto, Ontario, JP lived in various parts of North America before settling on Denman Island on Canada’s west coast, where she now lives with her husband. When she’s not writing, you’ll find her cooking dishes that look nothing like the recipe photos or arguing with weeds in the garden.

https://abraxasbooks.tumblr.com/

I wanna welcome you to discover wordsmith on this wonderful summer day, at least where I’m at. How are things with you?

[00:00:12] JP: We’re perfect sunshine today, and it’s not been a sunny summer so far. Are we calling it January? It’s so cold and wet in the Northwest.

So yes, lovely to have the.

[00:00:22] Stephen: So where exactly are you located?

[00:00:24] JP: I’m on the small island called Deon island, which is off the west coast of British Columbia and Canada. Nice. It’s kinda between Vancouver island and the mainland.

[00:00:34] Stephen: Okay. Wow. Nice. How big is small?

[00:00:38] JP: Small is we have 1300 people. It’s about 20 square miles 50 square kilometers.

So it’s pretty small.

[00:00:46] Stephen: Wow. Yeah. OK. We’re very fast. I live in a small town. We don’t even have a post office here in the states. We have more cows in our town, so

[00:00:56] JP: Then you know exactly what it’s like. Yeah,

[00:00:58] Stephen: exactly. Yep. Yep. Before we get started talking about your book tell everybody a little bit more about yourself.

What are some hobbies and things you like to do besides writing?

[00:01:08] JP: Oh, thanks. Yeah. Of course writing takes up most of my time, but when I’m not writing, I love garden. I have quite a few flower gardens. I used to have a much bigger vegetable garden, but writing took over that part of my life.

I don’t do quite as many vegetables anymore or the preserving and canning that I used to do. And I also love cooking, which is partly why we had the garden in the first place. So nice. And right now I’ve got a nice pork shoulder on, that’s gonna be taco time later when I put it in the oven and crisp it up.

Oh, wow. Those are the things I love doing the most probably.

[00:01:44] Stephen: Nice. All right. What’s your favorite food to cook?

[00:01:49] JP: Oh, always savory, usually meats. My husband does the baking. So if there’s anything sweet to be had, he will be making the sweet thing. Usually not me. But yeah, a roasts, mostly I love doing all kinds of roasts and salmon.

Of course, there’s lots of salmon here. Any kind of garlicy salmon would be my favorites

[00:02:08] Stephen: to make. All right. If I ever get up that way, I’ll definitely stop by. We’ll have to have a good salmon dinner, cuz that sounds wonderful. Okay. When did you start writing and why did you wanna start writing?

[00:02:22] JP: I started writing. It was a very specific time in my life because I had worked gave up my work career to travel with my husband for a few years. Cuz I thought I may as well take advantage of that while I could. And then we were, we just come off of three years in Tucson, Arizona when we were back on our wet coast and it was the very first winter we were back, which was 20 11, 20 11.

I. Yeah, 2011. And I was sitting in the living room. The rain was ting down sideways, hitting the windows and the wind was howling and hockey was on TV. And I thought to myself, oh no, , how am I gonna spend this winter, this first winter back? And I had been reading a lot of fantasy novels, the Vampire type J awards Laurel K Hamilton kind of books, and was thoroughly enjoying the escapism of those books.

And so I decided I would try to write a scene, just one scene. Cause I thought it would be, I always have these dreams flying dreams and I always thought we were right on the oceans. So I thought it’ll be such fun to just jump off the deck and fly down the coast. And so I spent probably. A month writing that one scene and that scene just kept growing and growing until it turned into a book.

And I remember my husband would look over at me, say, what are you doing? and I didn’t wanna say anything, cuz it was embarrassed at first it was such fun and I was so observed in it, but anyway, it turned into a book and I then had it evaluated and they said, yeah, you’ve got a good idea here.

And then I had it edited. And the rest is history. That’s now seven books and I’m on my second series that has two books.

[00:04:12] Stephen: Nice. Wow. So it all started with one scene. We’re gonna have to come back to that on the author half and talk about some author stuff with that. Cuz I think some people need to hear some more about that.

That was your first series. You said you’re on your second series now, which includes a blood mark. Tell us a little bit about that series of

[00:04:32] JP: that book. Okay. Blood mark is a. Story about a young woman who is born with a very obvious birthmark or she thinks it’s a birthmark, it’s a red chain that is wrapped around her body, including her face.

And so she’s grown up with this and it’s been something she gets bullied about. So she’s thrilled at 25 years of age, when this mark starts to disappear, she’s absolutely. Until she finds out that, that mark, isn’t a birthmark, it’s a blood mark and it’s protecting her. And once it’s gone, she will lose that protection.

So she’s in a race against time to find out what she’s being protected from or who.

[00:05:14] Stephen: How does she find out that it’s protecting her?

[00:05:17] JP: She makes a trip. She, her, she works in a flower delivery or a nursery called positively plants. And she’s making a flower delivery out to a professor at a university here in BC their set in BC.

And she drops her glove and she has a mark on the back of her hand. And the professor notices the mark and recognizes it.

[00:05:39] Stephen: Okay. The, this series she’s gonna be the main character and the whole point. So with blood mark. Okay. I don’t wanna give anything away. Is this book one of the series?

[00:05:52] JP: It is book one, but like all of my books they’re standalone.

So you don’t, there’s no cliff hangers at the end. I don’t like cliff hangers okay. You can read book one and be completely happy with it. Book two will be coming out this fall sometime I haven’t gotten exact date yet, but it’s written and it’s just being edited right now.

[00:06:08] Stephen: Okay. How big of a series is this likely to be?

[00:06:11] JP: Probably three. I envision three. Okay. I’ve already got the third one started in terms of outlining and so yeah, it will definitely be three. I don’t know if it will go to four. I don’t anticipate it will go to four at this point, but I thought the first series I wrote was just gonna be one and it ended up being seven.

My mouth,

[00:06:29] Stephen: not that good. I’ve heard the, that from lots of people. Yeah. I thought of one book and now I’m at nine or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. So why did you choose the fiction genre with vampires in dark fantasy in that was there obvious choice or was it just that’s what I

[00:06:49] JP: like?

Oh, it was completely obvious choice. I don’t there aren’t vampires in my books just to clarify. They don’t. They’re set in the contemporary times and they ha there’s more magic than than the vampire part of it. So no vampires, no. Wear wolfs, but magic people who can fly and people who can do powerful things that, that kind of thing.

And the reason I write it is because I love it. If I find a book like that, it just absorbs me for some reason. It always has way back from when I was watching, be witched as a kid. I just always liked that idea that there’s magic in the world.

[00:07:26] Stephen: So does your character wiggle their nose at all?

no. And for the younger readers or younger listeners that have no idea what we’re talking about, go watch, be witched yes. An old callback.

[00:07:41] JP: My, I remember as kids there are four of us in our family and the three girls and one boy, and he wanted to watch star Trek. And so it was a fight. Every time we got to watch TV about whether it was gonna be witch or star Trek.

[00:07:53] Stephen: The good news is now they’re both on syndicated repeats in some on demand somewhere. so true. What type of feedback have you been getting from readers on your

[00:08:07] JP: books? The feedback from readers on the first series, especially not so much this one, but the first series is why isn’t this a movie?

I’m not, I kid you not nice. And I know that all, a lot of authors would like their books to be made into movies, but consistently I get readers coming back and telling me that about that first series the gift legacy series. The first book is secret sky in that one. And this one, the blood mark books, the reader feedback is it’s really astounding me because it’s won eight awards, eight awards really.

[00:08:44] Stephen: It has, what awards have you won? It’s

[00:08:47] JP: won the global book award, the Eric Hoffer award, the wishing shelf book award. It’s still in contention for the Seba, the Chan clear award for paranormal fiction. It’s won a gold Titan award, a reader. Favorite. I’m gonna be forgetting something important. I know, cuz I can’t come off top of my head, what they all are, but I’ve just been really imp really surprised and pleased.

It’s a nice pat on the bat.

[00:09:17] Stephen: Yeah, that sounds like wonderful feedback. Did you win different awards as you were still writing the other books or did that all come at one time? How did that happen and work? It’s part of a, something that I did with this book that I didn’t do with the first series.

[00:09:34] JP: When I was writing the first series I did apply submitted the book for an award with the Whistler independent book award people. And it got honorable mention. That was a nice big boost. And then I had a short story that one honorable mention with the Victoria writer’s society. I wasn’t really promoting more than the first book in the series.

And that book now is getting a little bit older. So when I put out this book, the first new book of a brand new series, I decided I was gonna submit it to a bunch of contests in the hopes that it would get one or two so that I could use that to the same advantage that I used the Whistler. Award when I got, when I had the first book and it just blew up I got way more than I thought I was gonna get.

So so nice. It was a strategy paid off. I’m tickled with it and I will use that strategy again.

[00:10:29] Stephen: Nice. Great. And you got these awards. I know. I hear a lot of times that people say awards don’t help. Do you think that helped people discover and feel confident in getting your book

[00:10:40] JP: to read it? Absolutely.

Absolutely. I think it does. It gives you something to talk about. And it’s a little bit of proof. It’s a little bit of they talk about the social proof and how important it is. Like the same thing with reviews. If you have a book with no reviews and no. Person saying it’s a good read and it’s sitting beside somebody that’s got a a bunch of awards then you’re probably gonna pick the one.

That’s got a bunch of awards if it was a toss up between the two. So it’s definitely worthwhile. And it there’s another bonus in that, is it really does give your. Confidence a boost, which is so important, especially when you’re starting out. And you’re iffy about whether or not this was a brand new book and a brand new character.

And I had changed my writing. I was doing first person before, and this is third person and I was using one point of view before, and this is three points of view. So I know that I can do it now. I feel confident that I can do this different kind of writing as well. So yeah it was definitely worth.

[00:11:40] Stephen: Nice. Okay. And you mentioned people said, why isn’t this a movie yet? If you had the choice, would you want it to be a movie or would you rather choose it to be a TV show?

[00:11:52] JP: Oh, I guess I kinda like the idea of a Netflix series, so that, that would I don’t think I’d want a never ending show, but I think the series based on the book would be fun.

Yeah, that

[00:12:07] Stephen: would be good. Okay. And if you. Into a movie. This is a something I haven’t asked others. So if it got turned into a movie, who would you like to see play the main character? Oh man. Yeah. I’m

[00:12:19] JP: throwing that one at you. Yeah. I I’m terrible for actresses and actors. I don’t know them.

So I, not sure. Okay.

[00:12:30] Stephen: No, that’s not a big deal. Sorry through that one for you on a, we should be reading more than watching movies anyway. So we’ll go with that, this movie, that

[00:12:40] JP: movie you should watch.

[00:12:42] Stephen: So have you done anything do an author table is set up and meet people that whatever some festival fair event or something to get your book Have you done anything like that?

[00:12:57] JP: Lots of that, yes. Okay. I did prior to COVID I did a lot more of it during COVID not so much, but yes I do. Every time there is an opportunity for me to be at a festival. I will go and be there and have a table. And I also have a table at the Saturday market here on our island because we’re a tourist island.

And during long weekends, if I set up on long weekends, I’ll always sell books. I’ll always talk to people take my card, they go back and I can see downloads happening as a result of it. So yeah,

[00:13:28] Stephen: I, I do. Nice. Okay, good. And where can we find your book?

[00:13:35] JP: I’m wide so you can find it everywhere.

And if you wanna know, if you want links to those places, you can go through my website, JP McLean, author.com. It’s on Amazon. It’s on Cobo. It’s on no app Barnes and noble chapters. Pretty much anywhere if it’s not, you can always order it because it’s available wide and it’s through Ingram spark, which is a very big distributor of.

[00:14:00] Stephen: Okay. Great. And you said your website was JP McClean, author.com? Yes. Yes it’s. Okay. Do you have any type of newsletter to keep people updated when the books are

[00:14:12] JP: coming out? I do. As a matter of fact One of the, one of the perks to joining my newsletter is the very first I give them short stories.

So the very first short story they get is Boone park, which is the one that won the honorable mention at the Victoria writer society. And I think now I have six or seven short stories on there. And only one of those short stories is available for purchase. The rest of them are only available through my website.

If you draw my email list. So draw my email.

[00:14:44] Stephen: So there we go. So everyone listening, interested in this type of book, go check it out and get some free stories with that.

[00:14:52] JP: And I’m in the newsletter. I always talk about the books. I’m reading too, just in case. I often find people if they’re interested in the fantasy genre, then that’s what I read.

So anything supernatural, even thriller stuff. Sometimes I like Terry Hayes, I read a little while ago, just loved his book. And so I Send I put links to it in my newsletter, just in case you’re interested in checking out other books,

[00:15:16] Stephen: which leads right to my next question. What are some of your favorite books and authors that you’ve read now throughout your whole life?

Like your top ones? Oh

[00:15:25] JP: gosh. Someone else just asked me that question this morning. It’s really hard to pick a top one. I’ll pick a bunch of top ones cuz I read an awful lot. So if I wanna read a thriller book, Terry Hayes loved his. Book oh, Lee child. Lovely. Put me on the spot names.

Sorry. that’s okay. I’ve recently read Victoria AARD if you’re, if you like the high fantasy or more high fantasy, she’s got an imagination, like no other, I’ve never seen so many magical things put into characters as she puts in. And she’s really funny too. If you see her on Twitter and Instagram, she’s hilarious.

She’s also gorgeous. The other woman I’m reading right now hilarious is Anne Charles Deadwood series,

[00:16:15] Stephen: highly re that I talked to Anne and I’ve started listening to the audio book actually.

[00:16:21] JP: Yeah. Oh, it’s funny. She is a funny lady, man. she? Her kids are hilarious in the book. And the other one, another book that’s very much like mine actually is a woman whose name is Annette Marie.

And she write the first book that I read was three mags and a margarita, and she sets it in Vancouver in current time. Just happens to have a bar in it, just like there’s a bar in blood bark. Hers, her books are very similar to mine and very good. Really enjoy them. EE Holmes books are good too.

I really enjoy her. Her gateway series books.

[00:16:59] Stephen: Okay. And who was that, that you mentioned that books are similar to yours?

[00:17:03] JP: Annette’s Marie.

[00:17:05] Stephen: Okay. That’s her name? Cause I like to mention that Hey, if you like this check this out it helps draw people into some of these books.

Cause that’s, as From being a, an independent author in today’s huge market world people, it’s hard to get people to know you. So it helps a lot when you can say, Hey, if you like this, I’m very similar type thing. Yeah. AB

[00:17:32] JP: absolutely. Yeah. Great.

[00:17:34] Stephen: And. Please. Tell me on your little island, do you have a bookstore?

[00:17:39] JP: We do. We have a fabulous bookstore. What’s it called? It’s called a Braus a, B R a X, a S. That’s a great name. Yeah. And they have very recently opened up a cafe in the back of their bookstore. And they have sold more books, more paper books of mine than pretty much anyone else. Nice. Like I said, it’s a big tourist.

The Northern Gulf islands are big tourist spots. So in the summertime I have to go there all the time and restock my books. They’re very good about making sure all the local authors are represented in their store.

[00:18:15] Stephen: That’s great. I love that. I’m gonna put a link in the show notes to them. I like letting people know, Hey, if you’re in this area check out this bookstore.

[00:18:24] JP: Yeah, they’re fantastic. Couldn’t say high enough praise for them.

[00:18:29] Stephen: Great. All right. And before we move on to some author stuff, if when you’re at your author table or talking to somebody and they say why should I get your book? What would you tell ’em?

[00:18:42] JP: They’re unique that is you’ve never read anything like them before.

All books are unique, but the idea that there is the secret society of people who can fly. or that this person with a blood mark and it’s disappearing and she can, she has these dreams where she travels to the past, but she doesn’t realize that’s what’s happening. And she accidentally changes things.

So these are really unique, interesting books. It’s escapism, it’s pure escapism. It’s just a whole bunch of fun. And the reader reviews are the proof. They all say there are lots of funds. Great. Nice. I love that. JP, thanks for sharing about your book. And I appreciate you taking some time to tell us about it.

[00:19:26] Stephen: I hope lots of people listen to the episode and check out your book. Oh, good. Thanks for having me. It’s been fun. Yeah, it’s been good.

Creating a graphic novel involved working with others, so we discuss working with collaborators. Many authors are looking into collaborating and this is great information.

[00:00:47] Stephen: Well, let’s talk some other. okay. When, when you first started writing at 19, what are some things that you’ve

[00:00:54] Chris: learned? I really wrote poetry at 19. I didn’t really start writing until I was probably like maybe 30. Okay.

[00:01:00] Stephen: So when, what are some things you’ve learned over the years that you’re doing different now than you di used to do?

Don’t

[00:01:07] Chris: give up and keep writing.

[00:01:09] Stephen: Oh, did you give up at some point? Quit? Yes. Plenty of times. OK. All right. Um,

[00:01:15] Chris: and one of the two documentaries I’m working on, right? I haven’t, I haven’t done anything with it for a little while because I’m kind of waiting on interviews to be recorded. Cause I’m transcribing interviews to be written, you know, for the book, excuse me.

So that is just a matter of me getting a hold of some of the people to be like, all right, let’s sit down. Like we are with you and me and tell me your life story and I’ll write it out.

[00:01:38] Stephen: Got what’s the, what’s the documentary about,

[00:01:43] Chris: again, they’re not getting published yet, so I don’t wanna get into it too well, too much.

Okay. So no. Yeah, just the, uh, the publisher is like, Hey, we’re gonna be sending over some press material and an NDA. You need to sign coming up. So I was like, all right, maybe I’ll stop talking about this for

[00:01:56] Stephen: a little bit. Nice. Okay. So when you’re writing, what software and services do you use?

[00:02:03] Chris: Oh, just word, nothing special.

Okay.

[00:02:06] Stephen: And since it’s a graphic novel, do you have any software between you and the artists that you use?

[00:02:12] Chris: No, that’s all on them. I just tell ’em what it is. I want it to look like and then make the changes before they go permanent to, to it. I mean, some people using computers, so it’s easy to erase and some they need to know before they go to in.

Okay. So,

[00:02:24] Stephen: all right. And besides, and I’ve

[00:02:26] Chris: gotten into arguments, I’ve gotten into arguments with Ken hunt about like how I wanted to look and he had to explain to me why it can’t look the way it is, but it’s all fine. Okay.

[00:02:35] Stephen: So besides getting on podcasts and getting your book in some local stores, what else are you doing to market the book?

[00:02:42] Chris: That’s kind of it other than calling stores and like sending ’em in emails or going to, oh, ed conventions festivals. I have a convention I’m coming up that Saturday. I don’t remember the name of it, but it’s being put on by a zombie hideouts, a conflict store in Springfield. Nice. OK. But I don’t, I just don’t remember the name of it off the top of my head, but I’m gonna be there as a guest all day.

Nice.

[00:03:04] Stephen: Good. Okay. Well, let’s talk a little bit about collaborators because doing a graphic novel, a comic book definitely is a multi person endeavor, and you have to work with artists, which is different. Whereas a lot of authors working with collaborators, it’s another author, so right. What’s that like to work with the artists?

What, what role do you do and how do you work together?

[00:03:27] Chris: It could be very difficult, but in the end, it’s just a matter of making sure that it gets drawn the way you want it and the way they think they can draw it.

[00:03:35] Stephen: Okay. What issues do you have in happen to come up with doing something that’s also graphic,

[00:03:43] Chris: trying to explain how it is in my head versus how they’re gonna draw it and explain to me that it’s just not, it’s just not gonna be able to be drawn that way, or that’s a little beyond the scope of their.

Ken, Hunt’s an amazing artist, but he’s explained to me a couple times about how a couple things don’t quite work the way I’m describing him. So he had to change it. And what he did was perfectly fine, so, okay. Just angles, body language angles, the way the body is, the way the body moves.

[00:04:09] Stephen: So when you’re writing for a graphic novel, it that’s different than writing a novel itself.

How do you do that? To get it to the, I mean, is it broken up like a screenplay or what do you do?

[00:04:23] Chris: Yeah. You have to describe every panel and then make sure that they caught your notes on what what’s happening in the panel. Before they move on to the next one, the woman walks into a bar. She puts the money down the bar’s got like people behind her X, Y, and Z person.

And this is how she’s dressed. And oh, this person’s looking at her suggestively, you know, close up on his eyes. then we have a shock moment of her getting, you know, inappropriately touched or whatever, and his arm being broken, you know, and then she’s leaving, you know, like fury lines above her, but he already knows what the main character will look like.

And I just kind of leave it up to his interpretation of like, what do the two barflies look like? Kind of draw it. However you think draw, like you think the looks. Okay.

[00:05:03] Stephen: And have you ever changed part of the story based on what’s being drawn?

[00:05:08] Chris: Yes. I’ve had to do that multiple times. It happens all the time.

[00:05:10] Stephen: Oh, okay. So how, what, what changed? What made you change something

[00:05:14] Chris: off the top of my head? I don’t remember, but there were, but that happens all the time in comics. Okay. Because the artist is gonna interpret it one way and it might not be the exact way you, you wanted it. So you might have to change the dialogue to reflect what’s going on.

[00:05:27] Stephen: And the, uh, short story collection coming out this fall. Is that also graphic or is it just stories?

[00:05:33] Chris: It’s a, it’s a short story collection with a bunch of pictures in it by various artists.

[00:05:37] Stephen: Okay. So not so much of a comic book feel as illustrated? No, unfortunately not. Okay. what, what other plans do you have for the next, do you have a whole different series plan at some point right now?

Just

[00:05:52] Chris: that, just, just that short story collection. If I start thinking too far ahead of be honest. Then I’m not gonna have the ability to focus on just the one project right now. So, and the hard cover coming out, which is gonna be an in compilation of all the covers we’ve had. Plus an unprinted comic book that I did years ago.

That’s the same thing as the graphic novel. It’s 22 pages of a comic book. It’s the story. It never got printed. So it’s gonna be put into the hard cover. OK, great.

[00:06:21] Stephen: Well, Chris, we talked about the. If you talk to a reader, what you would tell them to buy your book? What, what advice would you have for other authors out there?

Especially somebody wanting to get into comic books,

[00:06:35] Chris: make sure you have money. Okay. Cause you’re not, unless you can draw it yourself. You gotta make damn sure you’ve got money.

[00:06:43] Stephen: What, what, what do they, what to be aware of? What do they need? The money for

[00:06:48] Chris: pay the artist. Okay.

[00:06:51] Stephen: Okay. All right. Yeah.

[00:06:53] Chris: That’s the biggest thing you gotta pay.

You gotta, unless you can draw, you need money to pay the artist. You’re not gonna find an artist. That’s gonna do it for free, right? Yep. At all. It just, it’s just not gonna happen. It’s blunt, but that’s just the truth. And people are like, oh, well, you know, I can draw. And I’ve seen people draw garbage, you know, I mean a few comical groups or whatever, and it’s like, people are trying and then they’re not.

And I’m like, it’s just really kind of. Anyone can make a comic book. You just gotta make sure, you know, what you’re, you know, getting yourself into when it comes to the art. You know, if you could draw it great, you know, draw it, write it yourself. Otherwise just know that you gotta pay an artist and it’s not gonna be cheap.

[00:07:34] Stephen: Right. Okay. Great. Well, Chris, I, uh, look forward to reading the book. Like I said, I love the Dracula and I love JD Barker’s prequel. So I look forward to seeing what your gender swapping switch on. The whole story is. I appreciate you getting on today, even though you didn’t feel good.

[00:07:53] Chris: Yeah. I don’t know what I have.

I think it’s just a cold, so hopefully it’ll pass. yeah. You

[00:07:57] Stephen: got a radio show tonight?

[00:07:59] Chris: No. Okay. I’m not doing anything when I get off with you, I’m pretty much gonna go eat and then probably go to bed. All right.

[00:08:03] Stephen: All right. Well, Chris, thank you for taking some time and talking with me. I appreciate it.

[00:08:07] Chris: Thank you so much, like your star wars poster in the background.

Oh, thank you. Yeah,

[00:08:11] Stephen: we hold. Yeah. I, I had a green screen up and I broke the tab holding it, so I gotta get it back up. Oh. But I can’t use green screen with Zencaster anyway, so,

[00:08:21] Chris: oh, gotcha. Oh, is that what this is? This is okay. I was, I’m not familiar with this program. Yeah.

Chris Denmead hosts a midnight horror themed radio show The Dr. Chris
Radio of Horror show in Worcester MA. The show has been broadcasting
on 91.3 FM from the WCUW building since Oct, 2007 It Airs Sunday
night at 10pm. He recently published Vlada a Dracula Tale, a Graphic
Novella and Audio Book and Tie in Prequel Comic Book with artist Ken
Hunt. He gender swaps the cast of Dracula. He lives in Framingham MA.
He has one son and his Black Cat. When he is not writing books on the
most unusual filmmakers in New England, he is watching Godzilla
movies with his son or playing video games. He is an avid comic book
collector.

That’s Entertainment – https://www.thatse.com/

[00:00:47] Stephen: Hello, welcome to episode one 15 of discovered word Smiths. Today. I have Chris DME on and Chris has done something fun and unique. He took the Bram Stoker classic of Dracula and rewrote it with gender, swapping all the roles and he turned it into a graphic novel. So I was really interested in this, cuz I love vampire stories.

I’ve been involved in a vampire anthology, which should be coming out this October. And um, they’re, they’re just one of my favorite reads. Uh, I’ve enjoyed reading Dracula and uh, the sequel and prequel that Daker has done with JD Barker and uh, others. So. It was a, a fun talk. Uh, it was nice to hear about this and if you’re interested in graphic novels, if you like vampires, this would be a good one to give a try.

So here’s Chris. Well, Chris, welcome to discovered word Smith. You said you’re feeling a little under the weather today. Sorry about that. Hope. Hope you get better here. It’s June. So before we talk about your book, tell us a little bit about yourself, where you live, what you like to do outside of writing, hobbies, that type of.

[00:01:57] Chris: I live in Massachusetts in the Middlesex county area. I’ve been a writer for probably a DEC, you know, over a decade, including poetry as well. And at least going back to when I was like 19 now. And I’ve also been a, uh, the host of a radio show in Worcester mass for the last 15

[00:02:15] Stephen: years. Wow. Nice. What’s the radio show about

[00:02:20] Chris: called radio horror?

[00:02:22] Stephen: What, what, what, what do you do on it? What’s it.

[00:02:25] Chris: It’s called radio of horror. It’s a horror thing. And radio show directors, actors, writers, musicians, come on the show. We interview them. Okay, cool. Plus playing music as well. Cause it is a, a broadcasting show on the dial. All right.

[00:02:39] Stephen: And do you have any special hobbies or anything you do outside of your writing and podcast in that

[00:02:45] Chris: that’s taken up so much of my time.

I mean, I ride my motorcycle. No, sir, that’s really a hobby. I guess some people consider to be a hobby and I’m a avid comic book collector. Who’s your

[00:02:55] Stephen: favorite comic book series? That’s

[00:02:59] Chris: I don’t know if I have a favorite series. Things have like been up and down and crazy in the comic book industry, but Spidermans, I’ll just say Spiderman is my favorite comic book character.

So

[00:03:06] Stephen: I agree. I love Spiderman. He’s been my favorite forever. My son works at a comic store, so I hear

[00:03:11] Chris: all the new, I don’t have one specific book. That’s my favorite, I guess I did. But again, it’s been ebb and flow. So I would just say Spider-Man when people ask me that.

[00:03:19] Stephen: All right. So you said you’ve been writing since 19.

What made you wanna start writing? Excuse me.

[00:03:27] Chris: I just, I guess probably like creative freedom. Okay. And you said I don’t have a really great answer for that question when I get asked it, you know, I don’t, I don’t have an answer for it. Okay.

[00:03:39] Stephen: All right. You just,

[00:03:40] Chris: I’m just right to write. I don’t have any reason why I’m doing it.

I don’t have any like clear agenda with bladder. It’s just the agenda to get the book done. And then do like the spinoffs and the expansion stuff that we’re working on. But otherwise I don’t have a, like a writer’s agenda, you know, I’m just writing because it’s freedom.

[00:03:55] Stephen: Okay. Yeah. And that’s what a lot of writers, the reason they do it, the creativity, the freedom.

So I take it you’re independently published, correct?

[00:04:04] Chris: Yes. I have a couple things that are with publishers that are gonna be coming out, but I don’t wanna get into what they are cause they’re not out. But I, majority of my stuff is independently published, but the two things that are coming I’m pretty excited about.

So they’re, uh, it’s a, what I will say. It’s a publishing company that publishes a lot of like behind the scene history of media. They’re not a fiction publishing company.

[00:04:27] Stephen: Okay. All right. So tell us about your book. It’s a vampire book, which I love vampire stories. So very interested.

[00:04:35] Chris: Yes. Did you get a chance to read it?

[00:04:37] Stephen: Oh, um, unfortunately with a busy work in family life, I don’t really get to read all the books for the interview. So I have not yet, but it’s on my list.

[00:04:48] Chris: We, uh, called Vlada a Dracula tale. We gender swap the cast of Dracula. Oh, nice.

[00:04:55] Stephen: Okay. Tell, tell us a little bit about the, the book without giving away all the plot.

[00:05:00] Chris: It’s the plot is 125 years old. I mean, it’s, it’s the same kind of Dracula story you are fulfillment familiar with, but we just take the characters and gender swap ’em and then add a few little tweaks to the story here and there. But the story beats of the original novel are still in there.

[00:05:16] Stephen: Okay. And why did you choose to write a vampire book and gender swap everybody?

[00:05:22] Chris: Cause nobody had done it before. And you that’s, that’s honestly the reason why nobody had done it before and I liked Dracula. Cool. I object upon myself to do

[00:05:33] Stephen: it. Have you seen the prequel and the sequel that Daker Stoker had put out?

[00:05:40] Chris: Yes I’m. I’m I’m I’m friends with him. He’s been on my show

[00:05:43] Stephen: before. Oh, nice.

Yeah. I, I talked to him at our writer’s conference. I was at cool. Yes. And he’s a very nice guy. JD Barker too. Who helped write the pre.

[00:05:53] Chris: Yes. I have his book. I have their books right here next to me in my vampire library. Yeah. I wanted to

[00:05:57] Stephen: go to horror Fest, hoping to get both their signatures on my book, but I wasn’t able to make it maybe next year.

So the book is the book already out?

[00:06:07] Chris: Yeah, it

came

[00:06:07] Stephen: out two years ago. Okay. And you said you’ve got some plans for

[00:06:11] Chris: it came out, sorry. It was Kickstarter two years ago. It came out last year, so, okay. It’s still pretty new. Okay, cool. And, and, and then there’s comic book tie-ins and audio books. That we did in a short film, and then there’s a short story collection coming this fall.

[00:06:25] Stephen: Nice. And, and how well received has the book been feedback from readers, especially other vampire book readers.

[00:06:33] Chris: For the most part, it’s been pretty positive with just the exception of a couple people needing to remind me that. Camilla came first and Elizabeth bathy and I was just like, okay, I don’t care.

I don’t know what the point is of making that comment. I don’t understand if you’re just like needing to be heard and trolling my post because I don’t care. It just seems like that’s the worst thing that people will say is like, oh, well, Dracula, just to rip off a Camilla and so on and so forth. It’s like when people see Elvira get posted about something, they wanna like, just swoop right in about vampire and be like, oh, Avira just ripped off vampire.

Oh, vampire is so popular, but Elvira’s been around for 42 years or whatever. And, and, and merchandise galore. What are you doing? Right. I just don’t like the trolling comments is the only thing I’ve ever had to worry about. And I. I’ve been told not to engage by my artist and sometimes I do. And sometimes I don’t.

Okay.

[00:07:24] Stephen: Did, you said you talked to Daker on your radio show. Did he get a chance to read your book

[00:07:29] Chris: 10 years ago? So I don’t remember a lot about it. ah, got it. OK. That was a long time ago. He came on the show, but I’ve run into him a few times, so, and we’re friends on Facebook. Nice,

[00:07:37] Stephen: nice. Yeah, he’s a good guy.

So if you had a choice, would you rather see this turned into a movie or a TV show?

[00:07:47] Chris: I mean it could go either or, but I would definitely, I would definitely make sure that I took a hit on whatever it is. The payment to the author would be. So I can have some creative control.

[00:08:00] Stephen: Okay. I know a lot of people are interested nowadays in the streaming services, Netflix and stuff, putting it on there.

I know Hugh Howey’s Netflix

[00:08:09] Chris: has got aula thing coming on their channel. They’re not gonna touch me.

[00:08:12] Stephen: well, others have it, but I know Hugh Howey’s doing a series I forget for who. So there’s a lot more interest nowadays for that type of thing.

[00:08:20] Chris: Yeah. There’s a Dracula series from BBC that’s on Netflix and then there’s cult of Dracula by rich Davis.

That’s gonna be on Netflix. Definitely would have to be somebody else. Okay.

[00:08:31] Stephen: If you had a choice Disney

[00:08:32] Chris: call Disney calls and says, we’re gonna make this next Disney princess, we’re gonna golf. I’ll be like, sure. Got

[00:08:37] Stephen: it. Okay. Um, and now tell us, uh,

[00:08:40] Chris: I sold myself to Disney for my creation to wipe out all my debt and help my son.

Yes, I did. Um, tell

[00:08:46] Stephen: us, uh, where we can find your book. What services is it available on? And do you have a.

[00:08:52] Chris: I don’t have a website, but it’s on, excuse me. It’s on Etsy, Amazon and Facebook marketplace. Plus there’s a lot of stores in the, uh, new England area that carry it. You can go to your local comic store and ask them to carry it.

And they’ll usually, you know, get ahold of me. I’ve had stores get ahold of me asking, can we get copies of that book? You know, what’s our comic book store fee. It’s cuz it’s a graphic pros novel more than a comic book. And, but there are comic books that are tied into it as well, so.

[00:09:17] Stephen: Okay. And you said a lot of local stores are carrying.

[00:09:21] Chris: Local to me in Massachusetts, local to my artist, Ken hunt, he’s the illustrator for the entire thing. Plus the, the, the second comic book that we did, plus he and I are working on the hard cover right now. So he lives down in the Maryland, Pennsylvania, DC area, Virginia. So there’s a lot of stores down there that carry it.

And then a lot of stores up here in Massachusetts and a couple, you know, in the other states like Rhode Island and New Hampshire that Carrie it as well. But if you have a hard time trying to get it at those, you know, any stores. Silver, moon comics, vamp, fangs, and Salem. Those are the two biggest ones I would go to.

Okay. Magic box LA Harrison comics. That’s entertainment. That’s entertainment, Wooster. They carry it. Okay. But, uh, I would, uh, also again, go to Amazon or Etsy. All right.

[00:10:03] Stephen: And you said you have a connected, short story collection coming out this fall?

[00:10:08] Chris: Yeah, we have a lot of people working on it, like six short stories connected together by various writers and artists.

Um, they’re they’re. The short story collection will be like maybe six, excuse me. Six to eight pages per short story.

[00:10:23] Stephen: Oh, nice. Okay. So Chris, let me ask this for you personally. Oh, wait, I also had another question. You said you have it up on Etsy. Why’d you choose to put it on, on Etsy? That’s unique. There’s

[00:10:35] Chris: a lot of books on Etsy.

Okay. Yeah. I mean, there’s a lot of people selling. You know what you’d find on like Amazon or eBay for used books on Etsy. But excuse me, there’s a lot of creative own products on Etsy. So it’s a good place to go to. And since it’s a very secure site, I’ve never heard of them having any kind of, you know, bad reputation for, you know, security issues with their site.

So, and it’s on Facebook marketplace is a place people sell too, but it’s very difficult. Thankfully it’s also on Amazon digitally and as the book itself, And then the hard cover will be on Amazon soon, too.

[00:11:09] Stephen: Okay. Are you finding, uh, good success on Etsy? More

[00:11:13] Chris: or less here and there? James Deval just ordered a couple copies of my book.

Oh, do you know who that is? No, I

[00:11:19] Stephen: don’t even recognize the name. Sorry.

[00:11:21] Chris: He was Frank. The, he was Frank the rabbit in, uh, Donny Darco.

[00:11:24] Stephen: Oh, cool. Wow. Nice. He should have them sign one. Get it sent back to you.

[00:11:32] Chris: Yeah, we, he just came on my show. So I just, I’m sorry. I just interviewed him. So it’s sitting in the can right now.

I took the night off last night for my show because of just how I was feeling. Oh, okay.

[00:11:41] Stephen: So lemme ask you, Chris, what are some of your favorite books and authors

[00:11:45] Chris: I’ll name one just in particular. That’d be, let’s see if I can pull it out. There’d be John belays, all of the illustrations in this and by illustrations, I just mean the front and back cover and the inside front piece are all done by Edward.

Go. And John belay is I’ve always said is my favorite haw author of all time. He was, uh, he lived here in Massachusetts. His, all his books are written in post world war II, new England. You know, Gloria lived in Massachusetts. Um, belays died in 1991 and Gloria of course died in 2000. So, but, uh, I love all of, I have most of John Bo’s novels.

So. Okay, good. And the house with the Cocken walls was a movie that was turned. That was a Hollywood movie based on one of his books a few years ago. Yeah.

[00:12:27] Stephen: I remember the movie.

[00:12:28] Chris: Okay. Yeah. That’s one of that’s the John Belairs

[00:12:30] Stephen: novel. Nice. Did you like the movie

[00:12:32] Chris: based on the book I did. For the most part, I wish it would’ve been darker, but I understand why they had to go as light as they did.

It’s just funny that Eli Roth was the director of it and he couldn’t go as dark as he probably could with it. So, but they obviously needed to appeal the kids and stuff. You know, there was no Harry Potter prequels out quite, you know, they. Lightening up the box office quite yet. So those are great novels that Hollywood should look into to making every one of them into a movie.

Cause they’re, they’re great. And the artwork by gory is amazing, but in terms of like comic book writers for other, you know, people I inspire to be Jack Dallas catch em, do you know who that was? No, I don’t recognize that one. You wrote the girl next door along with a dozen other horror and thriller novels.

He died in 20. 18 of cancer, but he was a, uh, big guiding force in my life. He’d probably been my most Rere on the show, but he, third round of cancer unfortunately did him in, but, uh, he was a New York times bestselling author. That was pretty well regarded by a lot of people. And I like Stephen King course, too.

Tim Seely. He’s a comic book writer. I do a podcast about one of his comics and he did a cover for me, TRALA, very parody, cover of two Dracula. Two Dracula was a Marvel comic book series that blade came from,

[00:13:43] Stephen: right? Yeah. Yeah. Comic bookstore. My son works out. They’ve got a couple key issues up on the wall.

[00:13:50] Chris: That one that’s yeah, probably the biggest key issue is probably tumor Dracula. Number 10. It’s the first appearance of blade blade. Yeah. And it’s gone up a lot in value because the, the hype, the movie is slowly building up. Right. Yep.

[00:14:01] Stephen: Okay. And you mentioned a couple stores that your book is carried at, besides carrying your book.

Do you have a comic or bookstore that you like to frequent?

[00:14:10] Chris: Yeah. That’s entertainment. The hall of comics. That’s entertainment in Worcester. Excuse me. The hollow comics in Southborough bedrock comics in, in NAIC, silver moon comics in Salem, as well as Harrison comics. And then of course there are stores that carry my book that are not comic book stores, like BAS is a vampire boutique go clothing store.

Oh,

[00:14:32] Stephen: cool. Nice. All right. So before we move on to some author stuff, tell everybody if they, you know, ran India on the street or so. What you would tell them if they said, well, why should I get your book and

[00:14:45] Chris: read it? Well, I need to find out what they’re into first. I mean, I know my book is not for everybody, so I definitely would wanna find out what they’re into.

Cause if you’re not into vampires, you’re not gonna touch my book. Right.

[00:14:54] Stephen: Okay. So those that are, what would you tell ’em

[00:14:57] Chris: it’s a unique take on a old classic. That’s why you should get it. It’s not the same old spoonfed story. Okay.

[00:15:04] Stephen: All right. All right. Well, Chris, thank you for telling us about the book. I love vampire stuff, so it sounds really.