Discovered Wordsmiths

Val Collins is the author of the award-winning psychological thriller GIRL TARGETED and the international bestsellers ONLY LIES REMAIN, THE SILENT SPEAK and WHERE LOYALTIES LIE (March 2022). All four books feature heroine Aoife Walsh. They are all standalone thrillers and can be read in any order.

A native of Ireland, Val began reading at the age of three and still devours books at the rate of one per week. Her favorite authors range from Philippa Gregory and Sophie Kinsella to Lee Child and Linwood Barclay.

https://valcollinsbooks.com

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Self Driven Child William Strixhud

Val, welcome to Discovered Word Smiths. How are you doing this? Great. Morning or afternoon actually.

Val: Thank you Steven. I’m very well, thank you. And this is evening

Stephen: here, . It’s evening there. Okay. It’s the afternoon for me. So all over the world. I talked to one person from Australia and they were time traveled cuz they were in the next day.

So they were Oh

Val: I almost up which way around that is.

Stephen: Yeah. Yeah. Alright, so Val why don’t, before we get started talking about your book why don’t you tell everybody a little bit about who you are, where you’re from, what you like to do, those types of. Okay, my

Val: name is Val. I’m Irish. I’ve lived in Ireland all my life.

In fact, the longest I’ve ever been outta the country is four consecutive weeks, . What do I like to do? Since I started writing, I find have far less time to do things than I used to. But I still like to go outdoors. I still like to go for walks on countryside. I love to travel, but covid put an end to that for a while.

we had really long lockdowns here, . But I’m hoping to get back to that again very soon.

Stephen: Nice. Yeah. My, my son loves Ireland. He got to visit on a school trip and he was thinking of trying to move over there, but he is not sure. He just loves the country. And when was this, when did he visit? Oh, man, it’s been three or four years now.

Yeah, four y four years ago.

Val: Oh okay. Ida is lovely. If you don’t mind the

Stephen: rain . He was happy. He got to see where they filmed some of the Star Wars movies, so he was like, oh, made his day. . Alright tell us a little bit about your book and why you wanted to write this particular.

Val: Okay, my book where Loyalty Side, that’s the fourth one in MyFi Wallace Trailer Series. So it led on, from the first one I just kinda led on from there. But why I started writing in the first place was because I was major dun for my office job and I was, it was a really bad time.

There was very little work here and I was just thinking what will I do while I’m waiting? And I thought I’ll try writing and see how that goes. because at the back of my mind I always thought someday I tried. Cause I hadn’t written since I was a child. So I just tried it and then I liked it and then I didn’t have to work for a while because I’ve been redundant.

So I decided, okay, I was going to spend the next year writing my book. So that’s what I did. So that was my first book and it just went down to my second, my third, my fourth, and my fifth would be out March .

Stephen: Oh, nice. Okay. So this is nice time getting ready for the fourth book to come out. tell us without giving things away, tell us a little bit about this book and the whole series.

Cuz being the fourth book people are probably gonna wanna know what the whole series is about, like genre and, the overall plot and what this one’s about. .

Val: Okay. So they’re psychological threaders, they’re all self-contained threads. So there’s a mystery that’s solved at the end of book. No mysteries are ever carried on at the next book, right?

So the thing about the series is the series follows the main character. Her name is Eva, and it follows Eva’s life throughout the series. So in Book one, she’s pregnant with her first child, and then book five, she has a five-year-old. Okay? So the book starts with Eva. She’s early twenties at the time, and she’s married and she’s pregnant with her first child and she takes a job in an office in Dublin, and on her second day, she finds her boss hanging from the city.

Okay. So then she goes to maternity, and when she comes back, the police have already concluded their investigation and they don’t, they’ve decided that it was murder, but they have no suspects. SOFA trained as a journalist, she always wanted to be a journalist, but that’s very hard to do with Ireland, and she couldn’t get any work.

So she gave up and she started doing office work, but now she’s a baby. She wants more control over her schedule. So she sees this as her opportunity because she has. A unique perspective on this murder. She found the victim. She now works with people who’ve known the victim for years, so she can interview them without them even realizing they’re being interviewed.

So of course, it isn’t long before somebody finds out what she’s doing and somebody tries to kill her. Now now she thinks she’s very happily married. But when somebody is trying to kill her husband doesn’t care and he seems to be turning into somebody she doesn’t recognize. So then she begins to wonder, who did she marry in the first place?

So the whole series then just follows her relationships. Through the series. Okay, so then, yeah, so then in the second book, which is called Only Eli May Uma’s, father-in-law disappeared. His name was Danny. Danny disappeared, walked outta the family home 15 years earlier and was never heard from Marcine again, and now his body turns up and it turns out that he was martyred then.

So the most obvious suspect in the police’s eyes is, Eva’s mother-in-law, but Eva doesn’t think her mother-in-law would ever have done anything like that. So she decides that she will find proof that her mother-in-law is innocent. Now, Eva’s last own parents, they died when she was 18. So she’s actually very close to her mother-in-law, who she’s always seen as a surrogate mother.

So she starts trying to prove that her mother-in-law is innocent, but the more she looks into it, the less likely that. Okay, so it’s a whole load of complicated things, right? . So then in the third book, two members and actually an entire family emerged at the home, but two of the members were victims of, or sorry, two of the victims were members of Ethan’s book club.

So Juanita investigates, she starts interviewing members of her own book club and she found, finds, loads of them have secrets and loads of them are suspects, right? And then in where loyalty. Four young people go for a walk on the cliff smore, and one of them falls off. So his three friends say it was an accident, but a stranger who saw the whole thing said, says that one of the guys Ben pushed his friend off the edge of the cliff, right?

So Ben’s family are very wealthy and they hire detectives and solicitors and everybody. To try to prove his innocence, but when they’re not getting anywhere, somebody suggests Eva to his mother and then his mother asks Eva to get involved. So that’s my fourth book. So the book will be out in March. Then

Iska is about a young couple. Their names are Nicole and Matt. Nicole and Matt on their honeymoon, they’re on a beach in Italy and Nicole falls asleep and when she wakes up, Matt’s disappeared and she never sees him. Wow. So then he starts investigating his disappearance. So that’s the book.

It’ll be out in March.

Stephen: I, I got it figured out already. It’s gotta be Aliens, .

Val: No, it’s not. I don’t do Aliens. .

Stephen: Got it. Okay. That’s more my type of book, . Val, what would you say is, like what other books out there would you say are similar to yours in case people are interested and would like to read your.

Val: Oh yeah. Anything that’s a whodunit that’s fast-paced, female-led, so say Sherry Lap Pena Kayle Slater. Anybody like that really?

Stephen: Okay. All right. And did, why did you choose psychological murder thrillers instead of something else?

Val: That’s what I read. , when I said actually, when I first started writing, I started writing an entirely different sort of book.

I decided that I’d write ye because I thought ye would be easier. It isn’t, but then Anne, wait, didn’t turn out to be Ye turned out to be much younger and I, yeah, it was not. I enjoyed it cuz it was the first thing I ever wrote. But then about course, the way through it I started thinking, no, I want to write a thrill.

So then I started writing through instead.

Stephen: See went the opposite. I started off thinking I was going to be writing some adult fantasy thriller type book and ended up find discovering I’m much more of a middle grade kid writer, and I do that really well. I

Val: did, I did my middle grade first.

Stephen: went the other way. Yeah. Is this independently published or do you have an agent publisher? No, I did. Okay. And where, do you have a website? Where can people find this book?

Val: Yeah, my website is val collins books.com.

Stephen: Okay. We’ll make sure and have a link put it. So you said it’s coming out in March.

How often are you publishing your books? There

Val: was a slide today between the first and the second book. All the others came

Stephen: out in March. Okay, so every, so it’d be something people could rely on March. It’s time for the new book. So far I

Val: can’t guarantee it’s one forever, but so

Stephen: far Good, good. What type of feedback are you getting from readers of the series?

Val: Oh, I’ve been very lucky with it. I’ve had a lot of people who’ve reviewed it and all except for the first book, I got book feature deals for it. So that meant an awful lot of people bought it. So I had like thousands of people buying it in one day and it made one, number one in all except the first one made number one in Amazon in international fillers and mysteries and a few others, a few other things like that.

Amateur sls, I think

Stephen: one of, one of the nice. And so I know a lot of people have trouble getting BookBub deals. I don’t know if probably most readers listening have heard of that. How did you get your BookBub deal? Because I know it can be difficult.

Val: I know I heard it. I never even applied the first time because I’ve heard it’s difficult and I was under the impression that if you weren’t like her cope or somebody, you might as well forget about it.

But I had a lady who was helping me with my marketing and she said to me, she didn’t start helping me to my second book, and she said to me, you should put it in for a. A book feature deal, and I got it first time I applied. And I’ve been lucky enough to have got it every book so far.

Stephen: Nice.

Nice. You an Irish mystery, female written, female led, maybe they, oh, we don’t have enough of those on here. So you’re your whole genre and everything may, be a benefit to that. I think that’s great. , but I think it’s

Val: got something to do with the time of year.

And also the first time I applied, I think it was in the middle of Covid, I can’t remember now, but I remember thinking they’re probably best people publishing and that’s why I got it. But then I got the next one, but that was actually in the middle of Covid, so I don’t really know. Maybe Covid got

Stephen: something to do with it.

So okay. Your series do you have plans for a fifth book or are you gonna start a new series, or what’s your next plans?

Val: And usually what happens is by the time I finish one book, I have an idea for the next book. And they just come to me like I’m listening news or something.

I have no idea. No, I, sorry. The fifth book is the one coming out in March. I have no idea. For the sixth. For the sixth book. So what I. I don’t know. He said I might leave it for a year because what I’ve been thinking of doing for a while is writing a time traveling thriller, and I might do that next year, unless in the meantime I’ll come up with an idea for another evening book, in which case I’ll do

Stephen: another evening book.

Nice. I like that just. Ma made me think there was a horror movie I watched with a friend called Grabbers. It’s set in Ireland and it’s aliens, squid, like creatures come, but . So I loved it because it seemed very Irish to me, at least being an outsider that. They found out the aliens were like allergic to alcohol.

So everybody got drunk at the pub to fight off the alien .

Val: I can see why you might think that was Irish .

Stephen: Yeah, I was like, I love this. This is great. Just what you said made me think of that. So that said, though, for your series, would you like to, or would you love to see it as a TV show or as a movie?

Anything .

Val: If anybody wants to make it into a TV or movie, you don’t even have to ask if you can have it . And obviously since there are five, there will be five books in March. A series would make more sense.

Stephen: So is this, I am, I apologize, I haven’t read your book yet, but do you feel it’s something that would lend itself well to an individual episodes every week or one, or the new way of doing it where it’s six or eight episodes for one story and then each season’s like a different book?

What do you think would work best? I can’t actually, Because like the, I can’t

Val: imagine it. I can’t imagine it broken down because I wrote it as one thing. I suppose you could break it down, but I wouldn’t know how to do that. To me, it would seem to make more sense to be like one book and.

Then next book. And this book. And next book.

Stephen: And I’ll made me think as murder She wrote each week was a self-contained episode, but being a full book that wouldn’t really fit. But the, I dunno if you’ve seen it, the Jack Reacher series on Amazon. Oh my God. Yeah. Fan . I became a big fan.

The show was great. I read some of his books and I’m like, these are great. They’re. The I appreciated it because the, it’s very, it keeps moving forward, very fast paced. There’s not a lot of long, lengthy anything. Not a long description, not long conversations, and the sentences I counted in almost all sentences average, like seven words, short sentences and, just so it was all, it was like a masterclass for me in writing in a different way because, Lee Child.

Yeah,

Val: I read most of his books and I never noticed that he had seven word sentences, but I remember the first time I wrote the first book of his that I read the Kiting Fields. I read that I’d never heard of him, and I think he wasn’t terribly well known at the time. I think he only had Buffalo books at.

And I went into Eason, which is a Jane Bookshop here. And at the time they were going through a phase of encouraging people to sit down and read books. And my eyesight was beginning . My eyesight was beginning to go and I found I couldn’t read without my glasses, but I hardly ever carried glasses around anymore.

So I needed a hardback book, which normally I wouldn’t buy hardback books, but I started looking around for hard back books. I’d never normally have picked him up, but he was there, he was hard back. He had big print and I had no glasses. So I sat down and I started reading him and oh my. I would, I couldn’t put that book down.

I was absolutely

Stephen: involved. Yeah I agree. And sorry if Lee ever hears about this, there are so many of his books. unfortunately, I’ve not bought one new they’re at like all the yard sales, all the book sales at the libraries. So I’ve got a almost full complete collection that I got from here.

Sorry Lee, I didn’t help you out there. Yeah, no.

Val: I’ve got almost a full collection as well. But in the early days when I first found him, I bought all these books immediately, all that were out. And then after that for a few years, I kept an eye for them. They all came out in May here, and I bought them all the first week in May, but of stopped doing that after a while.

I don’t do that anymore. I pick ’em up eventually now.

Stephen: So may seems to be thriller month if you’re looking for probably it makes sense cuz people like to grab those type of books for their summer vacation. So if it comes out in May, it’s still new. That makes a lot of sense to me.

Val: That’s true actually. Yeah. And that’s probably why I get football deals cuz well actually think my, usually mine in August. .

Stephen: Where can people find your book? Because being an Irish author I’m in the States where is, oh, everybody

Val: buy, my books are sold mostly in the States. I hardly ever sell them outside of the States, really?

So all my books are in Amazon. All of, excuse me. My voice is going all of my books in Amazon and my newest book is everywhere. So I always do it like that. I run a book wide for a year, and then I put it in Kind Unlimited, so all the others in kind unlimited, excuse me a second. I just have to drink.

Stephen: Sure.

No I find that interesting. I may wanna ask you more about that when we get to the author. We don’t wanna borrow all the readers with some author publishing discussion, so I’m gonna bring that back up. Okay. So Val, tell us again what is your website?

Val: Val collins books.com.

Stephen: Val collins books.com.

Okay let me ask you a couple other questions not specifically about your book. Who are some of your we talked a couple already, but who are some of your favorite authors and favorite? . Okay.

Val: I went through a phase, like I started reading when I was very young, so I went through phases throughout my life, like I used to read, I started off when I was a kid, I would say my kids’ books.

When I got older. I read romance and then I read family sagas, and then I did everything I did, did literature, what have you called? Classics that I was trying to think of the words I did classics. I did comedy, I did everything you could checklist, everything you could think of. And I settled on thrillers.

So now I read thrillers. And when I first started reading thrillers, I used to do my, like child, follow every single book he read. Lima Barkley. I did the same Harlan Colan. I never read all of his books cause. They didn’t all interest me, but I write an awful lot of these books. But now I don’t do that.

Now what I do is I try to read somebody I hadn’t read before. So I try to always read somebody. So I read my first David Bell book there last week. My first Karen Slaughter book, I hadn’t read her before. And everybody reads Karen Slaughter. I hadn’t read her. So I read my first Karen Slaughter book before that as well.

And then every now and again, I take breaks. I I. Tried to do Hillary Mountains, when she died what was her book? The one about. Cromwell, I can’t remember what it was called, but I tried doing that and I’m doing a Philip Gregory book at the moment, so I’ll go off occasionally in tangents, but I always go back to new thrillers

Stephen: again.

Yeah. Yeah. I have some favorites, but I’ve discovered some new authors that I now try and read a lot of, so I go back and forth. Right now I’m reading Dickens a Christmas Carol. I do that every year. , it’s, oh, it’s on my shelf right now. All right. Do you have a favorite bookstore you like to visit there in Ireland?

Where I am

Val: at the moment, we actually don’t have any bookstores, . Okay. If I was going to buy books, generally I wait until I was in Dublin and like in Dublin. The main bookstore in Ireland. S I don’t go into that often. I like, I prefer chapters or ho No Hodges or . There are two bookstores in Graft Street.

One of them closed down, the other one is still open. Whether Hovis is the one that closed down or is still open, I’m not sure, but that’s the one I go into.

Stephen: Okay. Got it. I like to. Support bookstores and libraries and that. So it’s always fun to hear where authors like to read. And then if I’m ever in the area I try and contact the author to go visit the bookstore with them and put up a video.

I’ve done that with a few in Chicago and a few around here and stuff.

Val: If you ever come here, there’s actually a bookstore in nace. I haven’t met it to it yet, but it’s beside Tescos, which is a big supermarket here, and I’ve heard great things about that. It’s a small, independent bookstore, so if you’re ever going to go anywhere, go there.

I’d say they could probably use the sport. The others are big chains. They can do fine on their own. .

Stephen: Got it. Okay, got it. All right, so Val, before we move on to talk about some author let me ask you this. If someone came up and said, Val, I heard you write some thriller books. I like thrillers. Why should I get your thriller and read it?

Okay. What did you tell ’em? Okay, so

Val: I’d say if you like who done its that are fast-paced, plot driven, and female led, then you like my

Stephen: book. Okay. There you go. I appreciate it. Thank you for sharing all that with us. Hopefully some people will hear this and be ready to go get your book in May when it comes.

Thank you very much,

Val: Steven. I appreciate it.

Joanna is back, and this time we discuss perseverance for writers. She discusses ideas she has used to help market her books and what it takes to keep writing through highs and lows.

We are going to move on and talk to some about some other stuff.

So our topic is going to be perseverance. Yes. But let’s talk a few other things first. So what type of software or services do you like to use writing your book, publishing and all that?

Joanna: Gosh, that’s a good question. Gosh, I can’t believe it. I’m just like stunned here. One thing I do differently, because I know a little bit about book design, is I actually start typing my story in the book format in Design, which is a book design program that’s a pretty

Stephen: hefty one.

Joanna: Yeah. And the reason, and I actually have word and book design. I’ve just started doing this where I will copy everything I’ve written in book design, paste it into the Word document, so I also have a backup. Okay? So if Heaven for Bed technology fails, I have a backup, right? So what I find with book design, by having the story in that layout, so you see the two pages is it’s.

it’s a trigger for me to be really extra picky when it comes to the rewrites, cuz I see it as a book. So I’m very critical compared to if I read it in a manuscript like I, I have, I don’t know, that’s just something that works for me to be really critical. I have to see it in a book and then it’s like my little inside edit editor turns on and I’m just like, and I’ll. . I’ll rip my writing apart to make it better. Yeah.

Stephen: Okay. Yeah. Alright, that is a little different procedure. Yeah. So that’s cool. Alright, so you’ve written several books. What are you doing different than what you did from the start?

Joanna: Oh, gosh, that’s another good question.

The backing it up is different, but I tend, and thank God for my editor, I tend to complicate, like I’ll get multiple because I don’t, I’m not a plotter. Okay, there you go. I’m not a plotter, but come book three and book four, I am plotting. Okay. Okay. I’m just, I just, and I think I’m going to, I’m going to convert and no longer be a Panther and plot more, and I had, oh God, Freddy Cruz, he, mm-hmm. from the greater Houston area.

Stephen: Yeah. He was just on my podcast couple weeks ago.

Joanna: He gave the best advice where he said he will plot like the first half of his novel. and then stop and just let the creativity take over. And I thought that was the best advice ever. So that’s what I’m going to do more of.

And yeah and it’s weird because with the first draft of Book four, because it takes place in Holland I’ve already started keeping it. with two story lines because I think I’m concerned about getting all the details right with the location. So I’m telling myself, okay, take what you’re doing in book four and apply it to book three as you work through the edits.

Yeah.

Stephen: Okay. Nice. All right. And what are you doing to market your book? Oh, gosh.

Joanna: I’m thankful. I’m so thankful for coming on this podcast. Yeah. I’ll do I’ll be a part of different giveaways, it, it, for example, my, I have a sister and she’s a sewist and she has her business called La Laroche Handmade, so she will do a yearly, Contest with SOIs, and so she’ll ask for donations.

So I’ll donate a book, right? I have no troubles donating a book. Okay? Yeah. So if someone needs a book, okay, , you know it, it’s if you’re in the US in Canada, if you need a book as a prize, I have no troubles doing that. I will, like I say, appear on podcasts. I have a newsletter and I’ll talk about my books again, the newsletter you can access through the website, the chase cv, art studio.net.

And I have been going to markets and I’ve been successful let markets, and for someone who is a bit of an introvert who has a hard time, I’m making small talk. I’m doing okay. right? I’m doing okay. As long as I can talk about my books, I’m okay. Great. Yeah and I had a couple of book signings, so that, that’s been pretty cool.

Yeah.

Stephen: Good. Yeah. Okay. All right, so let’s talk about our main topic, perseverance. Yeah. Which I think hopefully everybody understands how important that can be. Yeah. But what made you wanna choose perseverance as a topic to discuss?

Joanna: Just thinking of my own situation and I think of an, if I was a new author now, what advice would I want to hear?

And I’d want to hear someone’s story. And I’m going to say such as mine where I was writing for 10 years and I was having success with three short stories being published and I was submitting to book publishers and I was getting rejections. and when I stopped, it was about three years shy of 2013 when self-publishing no longer became taboo.

And it exploded. And of course I miss that boat. Okay.

Stephen: happy too.

Joanna: I totally miss that boat. I would just say, even if you think you won’t be like, I didn’t, I remember saying to my friends, no I don’t think I’ll be doing any more. And

Stephen: to go .

Joanna: Yeah. And if you need to take that break, that’s okay.

That’s really, that’s okay. And just maybe it’s not your time or it’s not the right time. Okay. And, I still wrote, but it was more. Personal training articles, so I still had my fingers into doing some writing. It just wasn’t creative. And I am, it takes me about a year and a few months to write a novel.

There are some authors out there who are incredibly fast, and they’re publishing, self-publishing a book like every two, three months. That’s not me, that’s not my process.

You take however long you need to write a book that has your name on it that you feel proud about, okay, this, there isn’t a race, this isn’t a race. And another great piece of advice I received was. , do not compare your writing journey with anyone else’s. Yes, I was

Stephen: gonna bring that up. I was gonna mention that.

Yeah. Cause, cause I think a lot of authors still, a lot of people. , they have that thought as, oh, I’m going to write a book, publish it, and I’ll retire next week. You know that it’ll be instant success. And more and more. You hear? That’s not it. It’s the ones that keep going. Keep trying.

I, listen I’ve met and I listened to the podcast called Writers Inc. has JD Barker on it. Yeah. He talks, about some of the things he’s done, Yeah. And it, perseverance. Just keep trying, just keep doing something new, something different. It’s the ones that I’ve seen I’ve gotten some author events, a conference for authors, and I’ve seen somebody who was not attending the conference have a table set up trying to sell their mystery book, and I’m looking at it.

This is a book of fiction, right? Yes. Yeah. I thought everybody’d be interested cuz I’m an author and you’re an author. I’m like, but we’re here to do author stuff. We wanna buy books on how to be an author, how to write craft and all that you’re trying to sell as a fiction book. Nobody wants that right now.

So my point is that people get these expectations. Oh, I’ll go to this author event and I’ll be super popular. Yeah, you’re one of a thousand people. Nobody, yeah. And. Yes. Perseverance. You keep trying, but sometimes you gotta make sure you’re trying things that are moving you forward the right things and you don’t know what that is.

An author table may not be the right thing. It may be, you gotta make sure you’re doing it correctly too. . Yeah. And

Joanna: up. Yeah. And I, for the longest time I was working full-time. And I remember How did that feel? Yeah. Sitting on the city bus. 45 minute drive into work and coming home, and I’d get out my writing and thank goodness I could read and write on a bus.

Like I, I didn’t get mo, I never got motion sick. So I would write on the bus. Okay. And I know I had a few people who’d be sitting beside me, looking at, at what I was riding. And I remember trying to squeeze in if I had a 45 minute or an hour lunch, I’d be grabbing my writing and I’d be writing on my lunch break, if I yeah.

So just trying to squeeze it in when I could.

Stephen: And the other thing, I notice a lot of authors they think that first book and they will spend years pushing that first book without writing a second book. And everything I keep hearing is, write your next book, write your next three books.

Yeah. One series, different series. Just get more books out there. That’s when something may click and someone will discover the right thing and other stuff will take off. It just seems like the strategy of writing one book for five years perfect. Perfecting it and then pushing that one book for the next three years is not the best strategy.

Not necessarily a book a month, but at your pace. Get more books out. And I was just talking to an author. I. and I said, honestly, I think if a new auth newer than me author, what’s the best strategy? I’d be like, write five books in the next five years. But don’t publish any of them until you’ve written all five of them, because you’ll find how much better you’ve gotten and you have a better idea of the industry and you then you can.

do however you wanna release ’em all at once. Schedule ’em out. You can schedule ’em every six months and keep your name out there. You There’s strategies and that to me that seems like if I could go back in time, that’s what I would tell myself to do. And writing each

Joanna: book is a different experience.

Yes. I think dealer’s child, That the second book

Stephen: was hard,

Joanna: right? Like the second book was hard. And I don’t know whether that’s because I had more expectations for myself and book three was a little easier and just cuz of, I think it’s knowledge I’ve gained and this book four seems.

Because of knowledge I’ve gained, and more authors I’ve met. I have an author, another author out of the US who, because it deals with espionage and that’s this field. He’s going to help me. So it’s just it’s plays into exactly what you just said.

Stephen: And that’s the thing with the perseverance.

That’s a huge keyword, I think, for just about everybody. Yeah. I I was talking to an author who’s been a full-time author for almost a decade, has written before that, and he’s questioning, he. I never broke the bestseller list. I’m not selling so many books. I’m ready to retire. Is this worth it for me?

Or what should I be doing? And he’s not giving up, not stopping, just trying to figure out what’s the best next step ne next course for him. And that’s still perseverance still going. And what I’ve discovered for me is author is not. Only title are the biggest part of my whole overall business or brand.

I work with kids on, I’m starting to, I should correct that, work with kids on storytelling for video games. So I’m helping teach kids to write and doing stories, not only short stories and books, but video games. So the books themselves are just part of what I’m doing, and that’s, yeah. Another form of persevering and, getting out there.

Creativity. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. And I know some authors that they create maps and games and all sorts of stuff for their books. Sometimes that’s where, the, their books themselves, oh, it’s not selling well, what else are you doing? Yeah. Uh, Sometimes you gotta think outside the box and We get focused.

Here’s another example. Sorry, went to a conference last year and then an article, . There’s an author talking about how she writes serial fiction. Yeah. And every year she starts in January or in July, I’m sorry. And every day. A new chapter comes out for till the end of the year, and that’s her whole thing.

And, but it’s romance and people are paying tons of money for this and she has a very good living doing it. Yeah. Suddenly everybody at the conference is going, oh, I need to do that. I need to schedule. I’m like, really? This doesn’t fit everybody. I’m like, science fiction people are not going to pay for a cereal every day.

That’s just not the thing. It’s good to go to the conferences and hear this stuff, but again, you have to evaluate it. What works for you. And I switched it up. Yeah. I’m creating a mailing list for teachers and educators and parents that they can sign up. Wow. And it’s a serial fiction story that gets emailed to them for their class.

So every week, wow. The class is getting new story. Same type of idea, but using it for my thing. But if I hadn’t gone to that conference and gotten the idea and then been able evaluate it for my thing, I wouldn’t have thought of doing that. Yeah. So that’s me persevering .

Joanna: I’m actually, you playing with this idea because I like creating art.

For the longest time, I’ve always said I’ve wanted to write a children’s. , and I’m taking a writing. It’s through Simon Fraser University. It’s called the Writer’s Studio. And we, I have to credit, so here I am. I swear all the students, they’re old enough to be my daughter. Okay. , my daughters. But I’m like, it’s okay.

It’s okay. It’s okay. So what happened was two of the students, because we’re on break, sent an email and. , do you want to, who wants to be a part of a secret scribe? So instead of a secret Santa, you put your names like in a virtual hat, and you pull a name and that person has listed, let’s say like for me, I listed skateboards, thriller bathtub braces, like five things I wanted to see in a story and.

So you pull this person’s name and you write a 250 to 500 word short story. So I participated in this and the one I received it was I needed to write about a zebra rowing to shore in a canoe and a crystal ball. And I never thought I had the story in me. and I don’t know about you, but I just, the thought of writing a short story literally gives me hives cuz I’m used to the long form, right?

So I wrote this short story and I thought, okay, I could illustrate this. This could be a short story, this could be a children’s picture book. And I think I just might go ahead and do that in 2023. That would

Stephen: be cool. Yeah. Yeah, that’d be great. Now here’s another thought though that you’ve made me think of.

I’ve run across some younger kids, pre schoolish age kindergarten age, picture books, but it’s about the history of rock and roll, and it has guns and roses in it. It has Prince, it has queen, it has all these classic rock artists done in kid. Picture book sign, it talks a little bit about the rock, and I’m thinking, wow, that’s something you wouldn’t think of because you’re, it’s oh, Barry Land and Unicorns and stuff.

But I looked at, and like I, I would buy that book for my kids. Yeah. So what we don’t have, and I’ve never seen is that same type of kids’ picture book with motorcycles and a mo a kid’s motorcycle gang or something. Not a gang, really, I can guarantee there’s parents out there that would say a motorcycle book for my kid.

Alright, . So there’s another great idea. I think that would be awesome to see something like that. That

Joanna: is a really good idea.

Stephen: Okay. And even better you get a group of these kids that are riding their bikes and they run across a mystery . Yeah, you have the younger versions of your main characters when they’re older or something like that.

Joanna: Think of Charlie Brown and Snoopy, right? Yeah. Absolutely love Sno. And they dealt with some heavy issues, yeah. Oh my gosh. You know what I’m going to be thinking about while I’m shoveling snow later.

Stephen: So I. Getting back with authors a year and a half after I talked to ’em and seeing what they’ve done, what changed, what’s different.

So I would love to make a note and contact you around Christmas time next year. And what’d you do, Joanna? What books do you have? Let lemme see it and talk about that. I’m gonna put it on my calendar when we’re done .

Joanna: I would love that. Now you’ve given me a deadline

Stephen: and I worked a deadline. There you go,

That would be awesome. And I’ll tell you, I don’t have a whole lot of kids in my life, but I would definitely buy a kid’s picture book with, about kids with motorcycles or whatever, I think that would be awesome.

Joanna: Just what you were telling me about the one with the classic rock bands.

Yeah. Which, queen, he’s a huge queen fan. Buy the book. I’d say I’m buying it for my child, if I had that. But I’d actually, I’d be buying the book for me ,

Stephen: For research. Yeah. Yes. Yes. for your book. . Yeah. Yeah. All right, Joanna. As I think we got some great ideas here for everybody.

Merry Christmas, everybody. . This will probably air after Christmas, . Yeah. So before we go tie things up, do you have any other advice for new authors that you would give them?

Joanna: Just write. Just write whether it. 30 minutes during a lunch break, whether it’s writing while on . Okay. I remember once with my kids, I did a writing challenge where I was waking up at 4:00 AM and my youngest at the time was five and she heard me tiptoe downstairs and she came down i’ll bright-eyed in her little pink pajamas and I said to her, You really need to go back to bed.

You don’t get up till six. Mommy woke up at 4:00 AM right to do this writing challenge. So she was really sweet and she did go back to bed. But uh, really just write your story. Sometimes you may feel like you have to put blinders on because you’re gonna hear about all these other authors and their success and their movie deals, and.

Just write your story and make sure you’re writing for you because you love to write. Yeah,

Stephen: agreed. Agreed. Yeah. Great. All right, Joanna, it’s been really fun talking to you this afternoon. Thank, get your shoveling done so I can do my shoveling later this week. . We’ll make sure we get through the holidays.

Thank you so much. Yes, thank you. I appreciate it.

Joanna Vander Vlugt is an author and illustrator. Her motorcycle illustrations have been purchased world-wide and her Woman Empowered motorcycle art series has been featured in on-line art and motorcycle magazines. In 2006 her short mysteries Egyptian Queen and The Parrot and Wild Mushroom Stuffing were published in the Crime Writers of Canada mystery anthologies. Her personal essay, No Beatles Reunion was published in the Dropped Threads 3: Beyond the Small Circle anthology.

The Unravelling, her debut novel, featuring the sister duo, Jade and Sage, was a Canadian Book Club Awards finalist as well as its sequel, Dealer’s Child. She is currently working on book three in the series. Joanna is proud of her podcast JCV Art Studio and the many artists and authors she’s interviewed. Joanna’s novels, art and podcast can be found at jcvartstudio.net.

jcvartstudio.net

Munro’s Books (munrobooks.com)

today on Discovered word Smiths. I wanna welcome Joanna. Joanna. How are you doing today? I’m doing

Joanna: pretty good. We’re getting some snow, so I may be out shoveling a little

Stephen: later, right? Hopefully not in the middle of the podcast. That’d be an interesting . We were talking a little bit before we got started.

Why don’t you tell everybody a little bit about yourself, where you live and some of the things you like to do besides writing. Okay.

Joanna: I live on Vancouver Island. So for the Your American audience, if you think of Seattle and I, we’ve actually, we’ve , I’m thinking of snow. We have been to Disneyland and I just remember now when we were, it was around Christmas time.

I am totally going off on a tangent here, but go for it. Okay, love it. So I remember we were driving back. Going through Oregon and there was this snowstorm and we made it through. We have a little Honda element, but anyways, back on track. So if you go north to Seattle, to Vancouver, there is a ferry you can hop on and that takes you to Vancouver Island.

And it’s the. Biggest island on the west coast. Okay. Okay. So that’s where I’m coming from.

Stephen: You, you keep saying Vancouver Island and all I can picture right now is Christmas Island. I just, it’s like somebody needs to make the whole island Christmas Island. That’s where everybody’s destination for December.

It sounds like a tourist thing to make .

Joanna: After. The pandemic. Everyone was coming to our island and I thought this island’s gonna sink. Like all of you guys go home, , right? There’s other parts of Canada to, to visit. But anyways, I was born and raised on Vancouver Island. I’m called a an island girl.

Okay. And yeah, I’ve worked in the prosecutor’s office and actually the office of the police complaint commission. Which deals with complaints. We have municipal police force, so we do have the R C M P, which everyone identifies with the red surge and all of that. But we also have, yeah. But we also have municipal police departments too.

And so if anyone had a complaint with regards to the municipal police departments, that would come to the office of the police complaint commissioner. Okay. And I’ve. Drawn upon my experience working in the prosecutor’s office as a legal assistant and police complaint commissioner’s office and writing my novels in my thriller novels.

So that’s what I like to do. And if I’m not writing, I like jogging. And I seriously, like this time of year, I am binging baking channels, baking shows.

Stephen: Yeah so you should write Cozy Mystery based on like chefs and baking, that, that type of thing. It sounds ,

Joanna: I tell you, I live in a small town now, and there have been a number of storylines that have popped into my head.

Yeah, there you

Stephen: go. . Yeah. So why did you wanna start writing? What made you wanna get down to it and write?

Joanna: Believe it or not, as a kid, I did despise reading. I found it very difficult. I was not the child that was like in group A, I was in group B and the thought of reading out loud, just, I stumbled a lot over my words and we used to have these books, they’re called.

Rupert and I believe they’re a UK book, and you had the choice cuz there were illustrations and just little one line sentences underneath each picture. Or there were the big two paragraphs at the bottom of the page and my mom would like literally say I had to read 30 minutes before I went to. . So I would try to always read the little one line sentences and then she caught on what I was doing.

Cuz parents, they do that , right? And she was like no. The two paragraphs. So it was my sister who got me hooked on the biopsy Twins, which is, it’s another UK publication. With,

Stephen: we’re dating ourselves talking about these things. Cause the 20 year olds are going, what are you guys talking about?

I’m sure .

Joanna: And it was all action. It was all action. And the Hardy Boys, I read the Hardy Boys. It was all that type of action and adventure. And once I got hooked, literally it was like that one story. Once I got hooked that you could read about action at adventure. Then I wanted to read and then I wanted to write my own stories.

So I was writing stories, I’d say from grade seven to about grade 12. Yeah. Nice. So I always like creating stories.

Stephen: So you’ve kept writing throughout your life or you put it off, or, have, are you, have you been publishing all this time or how’s that, what’s that journey been like? I

Joanna: became an adult

Stephen: That’s a horrible thing to say. Yeah.

Joanna: So I it was when I graduated from high school and I went to college to become a legal assistant. I swear that it was the economics 1 0 1 that killed every creative idea in my brain, I was working, I met my husband and we had a family and I just, I stopped writing.

Okay. I stopped writing. I used to create art as well. I just, at that time it didn’t fit into the lifestyle. I had a young family, I stopped, gosh. I stopped for a little bit, but actually I did. Now that I think about it, I started writing again when I was about 25, 20, 28, and I wrote for about 10 years, and then I was just honestly getting tired.

I remember being tired of the rejections I was getting, and I just, I stopped. and I focused on other activities I was interested in. And I got to a point where I was even telling my friends when they’d ask me, oh, Joanna, are you going to get back to your writing? And I’d be like no, I’m not. I don’t, I can’t see myself doing anymore writing, or creating any anymore art.

And it’s true. You never say never, and it was, gosh, about 20 years later, 20 years. . When my mom passed that, I dug out the book I had written in 1999 and I thought, okay, if there’s something that I think is salvageable in this manuscript, I will rewrite it and I will self-publish it. And um, it’s been a great ride.

It’s been a great journey and I am just received back from my editor the edits on book three. and this morning I had a critique session with my critique partner with regards to the first draft PGE of book four. It’s good to be back.

Stephen: Yeah. Nice. Great. Let’s talk about your books a bit. The current book is Dealer’s Child.

Yes. So give us a little bit about what that book’s about and the series overall. Don’t give things away, but tell us a little bit about it.

Joanna: So it involves two sisters. There’s one sister. It’s written in the first person point of view from Jade’s point of view, and she is a lawyer. Defense lawyer, sometimes prosecutor.

Okay. Because in Canada you can be both. It’s, you can be an ad hoc prosecutor. You need to be a criminal lawyer though. So you need to know criminal law. Alright, so when she’s not prosecuting, she is investigating. Criminal matters, usually murders. And in the first book, the unraveling, it was, she had defended her ex-husband on a murder charge, and then later she finds some that finds out that he’s been murdered.

Okay. So she’s just also trying to clear her own name, okay. To prove, and uncover his murder. And the second book Dealer’s Child, the, just the thought came to me of. , what if my heroin Jade has grown up with this idea of what her ide, you she grew up with this kind of ideal background family life and what would happen if she was to find out that during the sixties her mother was quite the.

And she finds out uncovers some family secrets, some family lies, and that ties into the murder of her father, of her father. Okay. That was fun because I remember at the time, every scene in the mother’s point of view in the sixties, I just, I wrote all the scenes in the sixties, all at.

because I wanna make sure I stayed in that point of view with the mob, and it’s listening to Jimmy Hendrix, it’s listening to some of those like stones, some great songs from that era, right? Yeah, she, Jade has to uncover some secrets about her past and it’s , it’s a bit of an emo, it’s an emotional journey, and she’s trying to uncover her father’s murder as well.

Okay. Wow. Yeah.

Stephen: Yeah. She needs to move out of the small town, it sounds . Are there any books out there that you would say are similar to your books that, so that people listening and say, oh, I like that. I’m gonna go check out Joanna’s books.

Joanna: Okay. Yeah. So when I started writing the unraveling, like I said, it was during the.

Late. I just felt, oh my God, I just felt the late 19 hundreds . It was during .

Stephen: It does seem kinda like the Wild West there, .

Joanna: It was during 1999. Okay. And at that time, John Grisham was coming up with his legal thrillers and I just thought, and David Bald Baldi. Like they were coming out with legal thrillers and I thought, hey, you.

I work in a prosecutor’s office. This is th this is what I know. Okay. It may be Canadian law, but it’s still law. People are still breaking the laws. I still have a lawyer, that’s where I see the connection. Okay. It’s with David Baldacci John Grisham, that sort of thing. And even my editor said to me when she sent back the edits, like in book three, she was saying, I like seeing Jade in the courtroom.

She goes, so that’s one thing I’m going to have as like my thumbprint with each book. There will be a few courtroom scenes, and. the puzzle and the fun for me is weaving in, let’s say a clue. She may pick up from a case she’s working on and seeing how it could, it can connect to, let’s say, whatever she’s investigating.

Yeah. Okay.

Stephen: Yeah. So kinda like Perry Mason or Matt Locke. Yeah. Yeah,

Joanna: that’s right.

Stephen: Okay. And these are self-published? Yes. Yes, they are. Do you have like a publishing house you go through or anything? Or is it all just you?

Joanna: It’s me. I use, I’ve just hired a book designer. I didn’t think of this at the time and I wish I had I was, when I self-published the unraveling, I was just thinking about, like I said, my mom had passed and I thought, okay, let’s publish this book and.

A month after I published it, I thought, okay, I got an idea for book two, and then I started writing book two. And then it’s okay I’m in I’m on this ride, I’m doing this. And so then with book three that I’m working on now with the edits, it’s called Spy Girls, and that’s. , it’s a series, right?

But they’re individual stories. You don’t have to read book one to pick up book three or book two, right? They’re,

Stephen: it’s all connected by location and character, more so than our overarching plot.

Joanna: Yeah. Yeah. So with book three coming out, I thought, okay, you gotta brand these. They have to look like they’re connected, but individual.

So I have a book designer. , who’s really good. And biggest lesson I learned is I kept telling her what I didn’t want as a book cover. I said I don’t want the female running away so we only see the back of her. I go, I’ve seen a lot of covers like that. But what she did is she found images were that were female.

that are facing the reader, and I loved them. So it’s it was, I was contradictory because I told her what I didn’t want, but, so she flipped it and I thought, yeah, so I have all, and she went to the lengths where the woman on the cover of book one, she managed to get. Another image of a woman for the cover of book two, and she photoshopped the image of the woman’s nose on book one.

So it is the woman’s nose on book two. Who does that detail? .

Stephen: Wow. That’s funny. That’s good. I love that. Yeah. Yeah. Keeper . So are these available print or just digital? Print

Joanna: eBooks they’re available. I, so they’re available on Amazon. They’re available through Cobo. I also have the eBooks listed through Drafted Digital, which is a great resource for authors.

I’ll get a draft, a digital report saying You’ve sold this book through Barnes and Noble, right? Or all these book outlets. , which I never even knew existed. So I think there’s, oh gosh there’s some, I can’t even remember the Plat, like Yeah, they’re out there , right? Yeah. Google

Stephen: Books even.

Yeah. I use drafted digital and Hoopin stuff and I like, yeah, a year and a half after I submitted a book, it said, oh, you’ve been accepted to I’m like, I forgot all about that. Yeah. And then suddenly I’m like getting these emails like, you sold this many books or rented, checked out books in hoopla and I.

Really. That’s pretty awesome. I love that. Yeah.

Joanna: Hoop loves one. Yeah. Thank you .

Stephen: Yeah. Cause it’s through your library, so I always tell people, support your libraries. Check ’em out. Yeah. If more people will go to the library, listen to an episode and say, wow, Joanna’s book sounds great, I’ll go ask for it at my library.

That’s just helping everybody helps us, helps them, helps the library, yeah. It’s a win-win for everyone. Yeah. I love that.

Joanna: Yep. Hoopla, BLO tech.

Stephen: Yeah, all of those. Scribed, I get it. Quite a few uns actually. It’s weird. I never thought that would happen, but Yeah. ,

Joanna: yeah. Yeah.

Stephen: Joanna, what type of, you’ve got a couple books out, you’ve got more coming.

What’s the feedback you’ve been getting on the ones that are out?

Joanna: The best feedback I received was a reader Facebook messaged. and I enter contests and I’ll get like dealers, child and unraveling were finalists in the Great Canadian Book Club Awards. And so I’ve been another author who I interviewed has said, I’ve always been the bridesmaid, but never the bride.

So sometimes I feel like that Okay. The best response I received was a reader messaged me on Facebook and she was, she said, Joanna, I just can’t put this book. I can’t put this book down. And she goes, I just can’t. And she goes, wait, go. This was with respect to dealer’s child. And I went, thank you.

And then I messaged her again. Can I use your comments as promotional material, right? She goes, yeah, fine. Now leave me alone. I want to read, and I thought, oh,

Stephen: That’s awesome. That’s good feedback. I love that. Yeah. Yeah. So if you had a choice, if someone asked you, Hey, we’d like your books.

We wanna make them into a movie or a TV show, which one would you pick?

Joanna: Either I would just be happy with either. And I know I just had this discussion with one of my sisters where a Canadian author, her book. Was sold for a prime, miniseries. And readers, diehard readers were commenting how I only watched the first 10 minutes and it’s not like the book it’s not going to be like the book, you’re handing your rights over to a total different medium, TV or a movie, and they are going to take this book and adapt it.

To make, a product that will be appealing on the tv, on the screen. So it’s two different mediums. Yeah.

Stephen: Yep. Okay. And you mentioned all these services where you can get your book Cobo yes. Is one of them. So do you have a website that people can go to?

Joanna: Yes. Yes. So if you really wanna support local, it is J for chiana, C for Cat, V for Victor.

Art studio. Dot net n et and I have some of my podcasts listed there. And I have like a little shop where you can buy my books. Yeah. And in the price, I include the shipping and yeah that’s where you can get the books directly from me. And I would include an art card because I do motorcycle illustration.

So you’d get, I try to give more of a personal touch when someone buys directly through

Stephen: me. Okay. Back up one sec. First of all, what’s a motorcycle illustration? What’s that mean? And does your main character ride a motorcycle or something? Yes. Oh, okay. You did not mention that. That sounds really cool. Go ahead a little bit more

Joanna: about that.

Geez, I need more coffee , less Christmas cookies and more coffee. But yeah, so like I said, as a teenager I created art. So I don’t know if you can see it behind me. Okay. Yeah. One of my motorcycle illustrations and what I use, they’re called topic markers. Okay. Yep. And I will get a photo of a motorcycle on my.

I will make enlarge that photo and I will draw that motorcycle on a 11 and a half by 14 and a half piece of paper. And I use the markers which are very vibrant color. There are approximately 300 and something markers. Yeah, I have a, I have 160 and. . It is. It is just so much fun. And my, when I was doing the rewrites for the unraveling and I was thinking about my characters, I remember I just, I looked up and I saw one of my illustrations and I thought, why don’t they ride bikes?

Because there’s a whole group mass, like just big group of. all walks of life, who enjoy riding bikes. And I thought, yeah that’s what the, my characters, Jade and Sage, they ride their mo their motorcycles when they go around the town. And I’m trying to take a little bit from. James Bond.

He may have a different car. Every movie, every book. I think Jade is working on her fourth bike right now. , right? It’s a Honda . Yeah,

Stephen: so So you gotta have a murder at a poker rally or something sometime, right? Fun. Yeah. Oh my. There you go. I do that one. I’d love to see that one.

Joanna: Yeah. A illustrated Harley’s, that’s for

Stephen: sure.

great. That would be awesome. Yeah. But I you’re on an island so you just like going circles,

Oh, okay. A couple other questions. Find out some more info about you. What are some of your favorite books and authors?

Joanna: Oh gosh. I always liked John Grisham cuz I liked the le the legal. , working in the legal field, I liked the legal background. I like thrillers. So I’d say John Grisham, Dan Brown.

Again it’s just, take me on that adventure and the, I remember being glued to reading the Da Vinci Code because it was to actually. Real images of the statues, the buildings he wrote about was really cool. And I love it when an author writes a book where you wonder, is this real or is this fiction?

And Dan Brown did that with Da Vinci Code. Okay. Yeah. Yeah those two are my main favorite. Gosh, I can’t think of any. Oh God, the name came and it went . Yeah.

Stephen: Yeah. Typically authors have a list longer than they can ever remember of books and authors that they love. So Yeah, we, you got a couple good ones, so anyone that likes those probably shares interests with you.

So should check out some of your stuff.

Joanna: Tara Moss and Sandra Brown. Those are the other, yes. .

Stephen: Okay. . Good. Now you can shovel without racking your brain. , . Do you have a favorite local bookstore you like to go to?

Joanna: See, I used to live in Victoria, which is an actual city. , you , can you?

It’s taken me a little while to adjust to the small town, but I’ve adjusted, so Victoria, you can take a, the coho ferry from Seattle. And we’ve been to Port Townsend. Victoria has Monroe Bookstore, which was started by, she was a famous Canadian author. I don’t know how much, let’s say the American audience knows of her.

It was Alice Monroe. Okay. Okay. It is a beautiful bookstore. It’s in one of those like old Like 18 hundreds type building with the beautiful moldings and the curved doorways. Okay. That is a favorite bookstore. We also had in Victoria Boland books. and again, it’s like the stained glass window.

The stained glass lamps, and it is big. Like you, you go in there and you smell books. Okay, , that’s a good spot, right? Yeah. So luckily Victoria’s only about an hour and 15 minute drive where I live now. So when I need my fix, for the city I just head down . Got it.

Stephen: Yeah. Good. Alright, so before we move on and talk author.

Yeah. If were just walking around town, somebody came up and said, Hey, I heard you wrote some books. Why should I get your books and read ’em? What would you tell them? My

Joanna: books are a thrill ride. That’s exactly what my books are. I write to thrill myself. Okay. And to surprise myself. And that’s exact.

Literally this morning with my critique, I was just working on book four. I had said to my critique partner, I go, I never thought I would write this type of an action adventure novel. And so when I initially write, I write to thrill me, to scare me, to also make myself laugh. Like I want to laugh, I want to giggle when I read as well.

And then I have to think about. . Once that first draft is done, then the polishing comes in thinking about the reader. So the reader gets the same experience. I love action scenes and those are hard to write. You give a lot. I give a lot of time to those action scenes so they’re not clunky. So the reader is just like, when my editor says to me, Geez, Joanna, I had to stop and start to reread from the beginning because yeah.

Pulled me in and I stopped editing, I was just like, okay like she got into it and I thought, yes, yeah. Nice. .

Stephen: Yeah. Okay, great. Joanna, I appreciate you sharing the book and talking to us about it today. Thank you.

Derrick didn’t set out to be a writer, he started as just a GM. We discuss the fun reasons people start to write and what it can lead to.

All right, so let’s move on. Talk a little bit of author stuff, and we have an interesting topic, which I think some people may totally understand. Before we get to that though you’ve written several books at this point. So what are some things that you have learned on your journey that you’re doing different now than you used to?

Don’t rush

Derrick: it. Don’t try to force it. If you get blocked up, go do something else and don’t push through it. You’re just gonna be beating your head against a wall. That’s probably the most obvious thing I could say, but it’s true cuz first go around my first book, catch an Odyssey I hit some pretty hard blocks and would just sit there and pound my head against the keyboard for hours trying to figure it out.

it didn’t work. And it got to a point where I pretty much gave up on the book and walked away for a couple of weeks, and yeah, it still bugged me. It’s in the back of my head, like a b and a Mason jar trying to figure itself out. But I wasn’t focused on it so hard, and when I came back to. I wrote eight chapters in two hours.

, it’s one of those things where you can’t force it. Yeah. There’s a certain point at where it’s fine to sit and fight your way through a problem, but at some point you just gotta take a break.

Stephen: Agreed. Yeah, I agreed. My, my first book, I still love the concept and the idea, but I really didn’t know what I was doing, thought I did and it’s still kinda sitting around. It’s got a few good things in it, but there’s a lot of stuff that my editor went through and I literally ripped half the book out. 35,000 words eh, okay, these are, but I kept them because the individual scenes could be reworked. At some point if I do that series, yeah, absolutely. But the general overall book, and I think the books I’ve gotten now are just way better. So people are like, oh, but haven’t you gone back to it? No, I haven’t, cuz it hasn’t really called me back, the stuff I’m doing now is just it’s so much better and it’s drawn me in and it’s good, yeah. I just not, don’t have the impetus to go

Derrick: back. I’ve even noticed that in my own work, like from the first draft, first attempt at Kere Odyssey. My work has evolved a ton to where I am now, still early in my author childhood, as it were, , but 300,000 words later, and it’s barely recogniz. So I’ve learned a lot.

I’ve grown a lot, I’ve figured out what not to do and quit doing it and ,

Stephen: right? Yeah. I’m new, pretty new also I don’t, I’m not the experienced wise writer, but yeah, I’ve been doing it for a couple years now and I’ve realized a couple things. Whenever I get people on, whatever social media or Facebook or at a conference or something in there, they’re like I’m working on my first book.

I have got a couple chapters done, but tell me about publishing. Tell me about this. And it’s No, forget all of that. Just sit and write. You need to just write and write a ton. Get a book done and don’t even go, oh, now I can publish. Write another book. Because really, if you write a couple books and you write a couple short stories, you’ll be so much better off when you finally do go into publishing them.

Yes. Than trying to rush that first one. Yes. That’s my advice I give people

Derrick: now, and don’t underestimate the power of flash fiction and writing prompt. because even in the middle of my projects, I have Facebook groups that I’m part of. I have Discord servers that I’m part of that all have a weekly prompt where you, it’s an image or 10 words or one sentence or whatever, and you have to write 500 words, a thousand words, whatever, based on that and do it.

Have an idea. Don’t do it if you don’t. But those sort of things will force you out of the box that is your current work in progress, but still keep the wheels turning, keep the juices flowing. And for me, those have been an absolutely massive help. I have. Another whole document full of these prompts that I’ve written and liked and gone, that’s a short story.

That’s a short story, right? That’s a develop, I could probably turn that into a whole book like it just because it creates ideas, and ideas are money in this business. So it’s important and yeah, I agree. The work you can do that’s out of your comfort zone, even a little bit, the better You’ll. I agree.

Stephen: And that’s both of us still being new compared to a lot of other authors out there, ,

Derrick: right? Yeah, exactly. You gotta start

Stephen: somewhere. Absolutely. And I think people get, like you said, they rush too much. They don’t rush it. You’ll be better off because what happens is they rush it and they’re in the exact same spot and boat five years down the road as they would’ve been if they would’ve just wrote and wrote and concentrated.

but they don’t see it. I didn’t see it. It’s, hindsight, so

Derrick: it’s absolutely hindsight.

Stephen: Yeah. Learn from us. Anyone listening, learn from us. , we’re new enough to be able to say this .

Derrick: Exactly. I’m the old farm mule who will fight through anything and not learn anything else. And I learn by doing.

I, you can’t tell me not to do something. I have to go do it and get hurt and figure it out myself. Don’t be me . Listen to the people who have done this before you. It’s a long line of brilliant people. And pay attention. Learn something long line so you don’t have to

Stephen: A long line of brilliant people, which may not include us.

We’re not saying we’re probably not . So Derek when you’re writing, what software and services do you like to.

Derrick: I use the I use Reed z.com. I use their editor for all of my drafting. Okay. And editing and a lot of things. Okay. I pretty much live there. I absolutely love it. I tried Scrivener, I couldn’t do it. It was too complicated for me. I’m very much a What George Martin would call a gardener. I don’t outline, I don’t plan.

So that whole three quarters of Scrivener was lost on me and Reedsy had everything else in an easy platform. Everything’s cloud-based. I can grab it from my phone, my tablet, my desktop, my laptop, whatever, whenever, and everything’s right there. So it’s super handy for me cuz I jump around a. From different machines trying to get work done and I can just pull it up anywhere and it’s there.

It formats it as you write to look like a book, so you’re not fighting with weird formatting later, and it’s great. For anybody starting out or anybody who’s on the go a lot, I highly recommend Rezi .

Stephen: I like that You’re actually the first author out of 130 episodes that has said that and recommended Rezi, and I find it also interesting that we talked earlier about programming and it, you were having trouble struggling with it.

The reason I believe I glommed onto Scribner so well is because it really spoke to my analytical programmer brain. It just made sense. People are like, oh, it took me so long to learn Scribner, and I’m like, really? I’m like, I opened it up and I was like I just did it. It made sense to me. Yeah, so no, it

Derrick: makes sense to me.

I just don’t have a use for 90% of what’s there. I have, I think five pages total. Of outline between two full length novels, and that’s handwritten in a notebook because I got stuck and needed to figure out a continuity problem. That’s a good way handwriting. I have no outlines. I have no outlines. I have a doc with a list of like names and pronunciations and like basic stuff just to keep my head straight and that’s it.

I don’t plan. . Got it. I don’t do that, so I, I don’t need the database and the wiki and all the craziness of what a lot of people need and used.

Stephen: I’ve been using a lot of the features of Scribner because I focus a lot on wanting kids to learn to write and encouraging kids to write and. Tools and information to help teachers and parents to help kids write.

. So I actually have been creating a Bible for my world so I can keep it all straight and connected. Yeah.

Derrick: Correctly. Yeah. Yeah. It’s a great tool. I’m not discounting Scrivener at all. It’s a fantastic tool. It’s just not right for me.

Stephen: Yeah. There’s the bottom line, what wo works for one person may not work for another and don’t use a tool just because your favorite author said that’s what they use.

It may not work for you. And you’ll struggle and be frustrated and it won’t be any good.

Derrick: Yeah. Everybody’s different. I have friends who write their books longhand with fountain pens in handmade leather journals, and I have friends. Wouldn’t know what to do without Scrivener. And I know people who use Microsoft Word 1997 running on a potato , Clipy.

It just, yeah, Clippy was awesome though. But bring back Clippy, .

Stephen: I’m surprised I haven’t actually

Derrick: It’s a nostalgia thing at this point. But yeah, everybody’s different. Everybody uses different tools. You go to a construction site, you’re gonna see DeWalt, Milwaukee, Nikita, everybody has a different tool that they prefer and that’s fine.

It all does the same thing. It just does it differently.

Stephen: It’s whatever you can use to get what you need. Yep. Agreed. Yep. Derek, what are you doing to market your books?

Derrick: Not. I’m gonna be brutally honest. My marketing consists of word of mouth, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, basically social media, and that’s pretty much it.

And the podcast.

Stephen: I was gonna say, does the podcast, do you think, help bring light to your books?

Derrick: For the 20 people that listen to it? Yeah. , they know about it. May, maybe we can get a. We’ve got five or six episodes at this point. So it’s nothing huge yet. We’re, we started the ball rolling late on that, but it’s still a lot of fun.

Yeah, I don’t do enough. I really don’t. It’s pretty much social media. Okay. But I also have zero budget promote anything. So . Do what you can do.

Stephen: All right. So you mentioned talking about being a reluctant author and how you really didn’t think about being an author. You hadn’t really wanted necessarily to always be an author, but you did it anyway.

So you mentioned earlier let’s repeat that. Why did you say, okay, I’ve gotta write this

Derrick: My world, my characters, my stories all started out in one place, which is the black hole in my brain that is filled by d and d. I was working on a dungeon and dragons campaign for a bunch of friends of mine.

I do a lot of home brew, make everything up myself and basically just hang it on that d and d framework to create a playable world. It got to a point where the world was awesome. The concept was awesome, but my characters were too specific to want to throw to the wolves, as it were of my players, and my plot was getting a little out of control for a campaign and have it be efficient.

It essentially outgrew and ended up being too big and too small in different ways to be a d and d campaign. So it also wouldn’t leave me alone. It got hung in the hung in my head and wouldn’t go away. And I told myself, screw it, I’m gonna write it down. I’ll write a book. Maybe I can actually finish something this time.

Cause I’m horrible about finishing big projects. Absolutely terrible.

Bye. Yeah, so I ended up with a book that was intended to be, one book was intended to sit on my shelf and nobody else’s as a trophy just to prove that I did it. I got my trophy, I put it on my shelf, and it kept bugging me because my story wasn’t finished. So I wrote another one, and another, and now what was supposed to be one book is looking like it’s gonna be a trilogy with a bunch of side branches, which we talked about.

And

what started as proving to myself that I could do something is now what about this sci-fi project? And what about this historical fantasy project? And what about this. Lit RPG project. And what about this other thing? And ooh, that’s an idea. Look, shiny .

feel like a lot of people can relate to that, whether they be artists or writers or musicians or whatever.

You, you start with one thing and end up with a hundred more and it’s both helpful and not .

Stephen: And I think that’s important for others to hear because I’ve heard other people say, oh, I’m not a writer. I couldn’t write a book. Sometimes it just takes a matter of sitting down and starting to type or scribble or whatever it is.

And you may find that it calls to you that’s the only way to describe it. When I really hit upon that story that’s really just buzzing along and clicking, it’s not so much like I’m thinking of what to write. It’s like I’m peeling. To another universe, another dimension and I’m looking in and seeing what they’re doing and I’m just writing it down.

It’s like it channels into me, and I, I think when people get that feeling, then you can’t stop ’em. .

Derrick: Yeah, I’m an extremely visual person. I have a background in art, graphic design, music. I’m very creative, artsy person, and I’m extremely visual. You say something gross in front of me, I’m gonna picture it before it’s all the way outta your mouth.

I’m that guy. So for me, when I’m writing, I’m seeing a movie in my head and I’m just doing my best to translate. That’s all it is. Which is part of why I think they would be better suited as movies, because I’ve already seen that movie and it was pretty darn good. It’s it, like that’s what it is for me.

Like you said, you’re. Peeling back the layers and explaining what’s going on. That’s about it. And it very much is a creative process and it very much is something that a lot of people don’t realize they’re capable of until they actually try to do it.

Stephen: Absolutely. Do you do you think your background with d and d helped and you, cuz you don’t have any writing training, you just started.

Derrick: Yeah. The d and d pretty much, I at this point consider my time as a dungeon master game master, whatever version of that term you prefer. It was a practice run. The thing is, I didn’t really write much of that down. I just pulled it out of my head. , which is the same thing I do to my books , right? I don’t really write it down or plan it out.

I might go, okay, we need to go here, and here in that order, and then we need to end up over here somehow. And that’s my outline. Okay, start, middle, end. I want this thing to happen. That’s a cool scene. We’ll put that in there somewhere. And that’s how I write my books.

That’s how I brain my d and d games and it. Basically a dry run, except now it doesn’t just go away at the end of the night .

Stephen: So have you been concerned about the imposter syndrome or do you feel like, oh, I’m not really a writer, I don’t know what I’m doing. Did that affect you or has you, have you gone through times when you’re just like, I can’t write cause I’m no good or anything like that?

Oh,

Derrick: Yeah. Every single day . Okay. The last two years? Yes. Every day. I think what really helped me through that the most was realizing that A, I’m not the only one. And B, the big famous authors that you look at as people who can do nothing wrong and know exactly what they’re doing, they have it too.

Absolutely. Yes. Toking had it. Lewis had it. Sanderson has it. Martin has. Everybody deals with it at some point. JK Rowling, I’m just rattling off fantasy people because that’s what I know. But everybody deals with it at some point. And it’s like writer’s block, it’s inevitable. ,

Stephen: right? And having an MFA and studying word str or sentence structure doesn’t necessarily help you write a good story.

Those are things that, no, it’ll

Derrick: probably make it.

Stephen: I agree. Writing a good story has nothing to do with grammar or spelling or anything like that. They’re they’re actually separate. That’s what editors are for. Yeah, exactly. You can learn grammar, you can learn spelling, but it’s much harder to learn to tell a good story.

Derrick: Yes, I would agree with

Stephen: that. And we see it with little kids all the time. Oh, let me tell you a story. And I was walking down the street and there was a pebble and I picked it up and then I went and I threw the pebble and it’s oh my God, where is this story going? That’s cuz they’re still learning and the they’re figuring out story. Yeah. And I think a lot of people. In their head, oh, I need to take classes. I need to be taught. What do you play? You said you play music.

Derrick: I hand it to me. I’ll make it, make noise. Okay. I grew up in the same house as a music teacher,

Stephen: okay. You probably had some lessons, but at some point, yeah. You start playing and you start making music and playing other instruments without all that behind you. Some of the best rock musicians didn’t have lessons

Derrick: necessarily. Exactly. Exactly. Now,

Stephen: if you’re a doctor, please go get trained and take classes.

Yes. As your doctor .

Derrick: If you’re new and whether you’re writing fantasy or not, I would highly recommend that you go on YouTube and watch Brandon Sanderson’s le BYU lectures. Yes, they’re free, they’re amazing. Start at the beginning and go through. It’s gonna take you a while, but yes, do it. I learned a ton.

Just from his introduction, let alone the rest of it. . And he picked him up for free hours of information. Yeah, he does. Which is an absolute service to the industry and Absolutely. I appreciate that very much. But yeah, I. Learned a ton. And it’s basically you’re auditing a college class, listening, watching those Yes.

Or listening to those. So do that. If you feel like you need lessons, go watch that. It’s free. You don’t have to go to school. It’s fine. Your computer, your phone, your tv, whatever. Good enough.

Stephen: Agreed. I love that. All right. Derek it is been really great talking to you. A good time. So before we wrap up do you have any last minute advice other than everything we’ve already talked about for some new authors?

Derrick: Just go out and tell your story whether you feel like you’re worthy or not. Just do it. I don’t remember the exact numbers. I did some digging into statistics about writers a while back, and essentially something like if you complete a book. You’re in like 2% of the world population that will ever complete a book, and that’s regardless of publishing, regardless of anyone ever reading it.

If you complete it, you’ve done something that 98% of the world will never do. If you just write it down and start it and don’t finish it, you’re in like 12%. So it’s. It’s a feeling of accomplishment, knowing that, and I’m not saying just do it to be special. I’m saying if you have a story in your head and you want to tell it, get past the imposter of going, I’m not good enough for this.

And just go tell your story. Everybody has a story. If you have one, go tell it.

Stephen: Agreed. I love that. All right, Derek, thank you for getting on tonight. For me it’s dark , so it’s been dark here, . It’s that time of year, so Oh, yeah. I wish you luck on your books and hopefully we’ll see you write some more coming soon.

Derrick: Yeah, absolutely.

Derrick wrote his book in between working in I.T. he actually didn’t want to write a book and it’s an extension of his Dungeons and Dragons playing. Like many authors, the book has turned into a series.

https://www.derrickHallAuthor.com

Books, Toys, Audio Books – Browsing Bison – Deer Lodge, Montana

Good evening, Derek. It’s an evening interview. It’s good to see you. How are you doing today? I’m doing good.

Derrick: How are you?

Stephen: I’m great. Waiting hopefully for some snow tomorrow is cause I like snow in December.

Personally, ,

Derrick: I’ve had snow for two months, .

Stephen: Oh, wow. Where are you located? I’m in Montana. Montana. Ah, yes. If you want some snow, that’s a good place to be. The frozen North . Derek before we start talking about your book, why don’t you tell everybody a little bit about you who you are and what you like to do besides writing?

Derrick: I am Derek Hall. I’m a fantasy author at this point. I think I can claim author, but. I’m just a normal guy. I’m a working photographer, it professional, outdoorsy fellow, like to hunt, fish, camp, all that good stuff. And I’m a massive nerd. I play d and d. I do all of that fun stuff, video games, movies, all of it.

So whenever I have time, I do that. ,

Stephen: What do you do for it?

Derrick: Mostly hardware and infrastructure Networks, new machines, servers, desktops, that sort of thing. Build machines, custom machines.

Stephen: Yeah. I’m a programmer. I’ve been struggling with an s SSL issue today, . Ooh.

Derrick: Oh yes, I’ve done that too.

And I’m a hardware guy. , I’m not a software. Got it. I was, Messing around with Python and some other crap last night going, I don’t know what I’m doing. .

Stephen: Oh, I love Python. That’s a great language I discovered this year. So yeah, if you’re gonna get into it, that’s a good one to get into nowadays.

Yeah.

Derrick: That’s what I heard, but it didn’t help me out much. .

Stephen: Yeah. And you like the canvas stuff. Montana’s a good state for. Oh, it’s fantastic. Yeah. Yeah. That’s I’ve not, I don’t think I’ve spent any real time in Montana. I might have driven through an edge of it somewhere. Yeah, that was love camping.

I, I’ve got a small. Wooded area with a cabin on our property, oh, awesome. Everybody tells me to run electricity to it, and I’m like, no we’re keeping it more primitive. No.

Derrick: Yeah, no. I have a stove and firewood and I go there to get away. Why do I need power? ?

Stephen: Exactly. You get it. You understand?

Derrick: Yes. I completely understand.

Stephen: We’re it guys, we do tech all day. We need some time away, .

Derrick: Yep, exactly. Exactly.

Stephen: What, with all of that going on, what made you wanna start writing? And we’re gonna get into this a bit more on the second half when we talk about select writer. So just briefly a little bit what got you into wanting to write your current book?

Derrick: I didn’t want to write the book . It’s it itself upon me. So I, like I said, I played d and at the time I was running a group. As the game master and I did a lot of home brew, basically, meaning I made up the stories and the situations and worlds and all of that stuff and I was working on an idea for a new campaign, and the idea got both too big and too small for d and d at the same time.

It was too specific to let players come in and ruin it, and I just pretty much said, screw it, I’m gonna write it down. So eight months later I ended up with a novel and. Than another. And now another, I just finished book two on Sunday, .

Stephen: Wow, great. And that’s interesting cuz that’s one of the things when I talk to parents about encouraging their kids to write and getting into writing, that’s one of the things I encourage ’em to do.

I sometimes a little nervous about it cause I’m just waiting for the parents to like, oh my gosh, D and d that’s, still that hangover. It’s, yeah, exactly.

Derrick: There’s still some of that,

Stephen: but. The story making abilities and thinking exactly, the characters and all that is a great practice.

And I even tell parents, I’m like, look, you can do d and d, you don’t have to have all the demons in it or things like that. You can leave out what you don’t like and what your kids to be a part of. Yeah, that’s fine, but you need some sort of adventure, some sort of conflict, it’s a great way of building those stories.

Derrick: Yeah, exactly. It’s a really good way to learn the fundamentals of storytelling. Yes. So you know, you need the tension, you need the buildup, you need the character arc, you need the history, the backstory, the world building, all of that. And it’s a fantastic way to get into it. And it’s a

Stephen: great practice. If later you wanna get into storytelling for video games, because of the nature d and d, it’s not linear.

So it’s another good way to absolutely. Before we start talking too much tech and d and everybody turns off, let’s talk about your books. So tell us what are the books called and tell us a little bit about them.

Derrick: I have it started with an idea for d and that turned into. What I was hoping to be a standalone novel and ended up not being a standalone novel

Now I’m hoping it’s gonna be a trilogy, but who knows? , anyone who writes knows my pain.

Stephen: My short story I was making for an event in Kent turned into a seven book series, so

yeah, I can

Derrick: relate to that.

Stephen: Yeah. So tell us about them.

Derrick: I am a very traditional fantasy reader. I like things that fall into a very traditional fantasy, vain, small party going on an adventure, fighting bad guys, saving the world, that sort of thing. Very straightforward to style fantasy. Okay? Except I don’t take 10 pages to describe a single leaf

That’s what I did. I took my I have my main character, her name is a nara, and this is a, it’s a YA fantasy young adult fantasy. So she’s in her teens and is forced out of her home and sent on this grand quest and gets tied up in all sorts of things. So that’s what I did. That is entitled Kere Odyssey.

And that is book one of what I am calling the Crimson Prophecy. . Okay, nice. And then in the process of writing that, I added a side character that outgrew his part and ended up with a prequel. So that’s out there too. That is called the Trials of Tarsis. And that’s pirates and Revenge and Lost Love and all sorts of fun things in there.

Stephen: Hey, that’s a great thing. Fantasy you can handle just about any other genres. Oh, I know.

Derrick: I love it. I love it. Yeah.

Stephen: Okay, so you mentioned talking and others , what type of, what other books out there would you say are similar to yours? Similar to your writing, similar to your style?

Derrick: Similar to my writing.

I had a friend compare it to. Oh crap, I don’t remember the guy’s name. The Dresden? No. Oh, butcher. Yeah. I had a friend compare it to Butcher very loosely. I haven’t actually read Butcher in 10 years, so I couldn’t answer to that. But I’ve a lot of people, and I would say this is probably right there’s a big influence from Christopher Paulini and his inheritance.

Okay. That’s always been a favorite of mine, so there’s an influence from that. There’s a little bit of Allison Goodman. There’s a little bit of a lot of things. Like I said, I’m a nerd. It’s packed full of references and Easter eggs and all sorts of things like that. And nice. Yeah, it’s I don’t know how to describe that.

I leave it to the readers to do that. . Okay.

Stephen: It wasn’t Paulini like a teenager when he wrote that first book. The Dragon one. Yeah. It was 15, right? That was after my time. But it’s actually, I have a copy on my shelf. I just haven’t read

Derrick: it yet. I haven’t read it in a few years. I can’t speak to how well it holds up, but I’ve enjoyed it for many.

Stephen: Okay, there’s a good recommendation, . Yeah. So what have people been saying about your books? What’s the feedback been like?

Derrick: Feedback has been limited, but good, overall good. Lots of comments on great characters, great pacing, great plot. Everything moves and flows like it should and don’t get bogged down, and the only reason I put it down is so I actually sleep before I have to go to work in the morning, that sort of thing. That means a lot to me because I didn’t set out to actually publish this. I’m more set out to get a story outta my head and proved to myself that I could. So it’s really nice to have put so much work into something and have people be enjoying it.

Stephen: Yeah, that’s great. And I think there are other writers out there similar that you just gotta get it out. So did your gaming group read the

Derrick: stories? I’ve tried to get them to read the stories and. No . I think maybe one of them has read it. .

Stephen: No, it seems to happen. I kinda, I don’t push friends and family too much because when they feel pressured

Derrick: into it.

Yeah. I try not to, I have some I have some family that have read it. I know my mom read it. My sister was talking about reading it and that sort of things. I’ve got. Long distance friends that have read it, but most of the locals are either I don’t read books or I don’t have time.

So

Stephen: Yeah. That’s a cop out, but whatever. I know. . So have you thought of reversing and turning the stories into back into a d and d module adventure?

Derrick: So one of my characters in the, that made it into the stories is actually. A direct ripoff of one of my d and d player characters that got twisted and rearranged and put back together Frankenstein’s style and put into a book just because I liked his, the concept of the character and I liked the name and I wanted to use it.

Okay. And then, I don’t know, probably six, eight months ago, a friend of mine started another d and d campaign and I don’t have to DM this time, so I get to play and guess who I pulled out of the fridge? . Nice. All right. So I pulled my book character out this time and am playing the book character in the d and d game, which is a fun full circle for me.

Nice. Okay,

Stephen: good. Now, other than d n. What would you choose? Would you rather see your stories as a movie or a TV show? Movie. Movie. Why is that? You, ma you answered that, like you’d already thought about

Derrick: it. I have I’ve thought about it extensively. I even fantasy cast the whole thing for a critique group that I meant, but yeah.

Movie I think it’s better suited to a movie. Okay. I think a TV show would drag it out too.

Stephen: That I get a lot of people saying, oh, the new TV shows is great. You get more time to tell the story and expand. But there are just some stories that need that two hour time slot and that’s all it needs.

Derrick: , it might run a little longer than that and you’d probably have to break it up by book, but yeah, still I think a movie would be better suited.

Stephen: That’s good that you realize that and not just going for what the trend is. I like that. So where can we get the book? And do you have a website?

Derrick: I do have a website. Derek Hall, author.com is my website. There’s info there on the books. The characters, I’ve got a map up there. All sorts of fun stuff to check out. And. There’s even a link to my podcast, which I don’t know if you want me plugging that in here, but

Stephen: Yeah, go ahead. Please do. Let’s go bring that up

Derrick: actually.

Okay. Yeah, so I also have a podcast. I have my own with a very good author friend of mine Christina LaFave. We do the What If South Is Up Podcast, which is a, it’s a game show version of world building. So we will randomly ask a what if question and then apply it to the worlds that we’re writing and talk about it.

So it, it’s a lot of fun. We have a great time with it. Oh, that sounds great.

Stephen: I’ll have to make sure, we’ll get links in on the show notes for any fantasy readers that wanna check out on cool podcast. Yeah, absolutely. Great. So when you’re writing these episodes, , like what are some of the what if questions?

Derrick: What if the continents were actually on the back of giant creatures? What if everyone suddenly gained the ability to fly? What if magic completely disappeared from your world? That sort of thing. And it’ll stop and make you think because your writing is, you’re creating a world and writing a story as an author from a very specific sort of, Viewpoint, you have all the information in your head, and then when you’re suddenly presented with something you didn’t plan for you, you kinda sit and scratch your head and go I don’t know.

Why don’t you answer that first ?

Stephen: Yeah. That

Derrick: that’s, yeah. It’s helped us fill out our world building and. Build on what we already had and being able to riff off of each other and talk about it with each other. Somebody will bring up a point that we didn’t think about and be like, oh yeah, actually, that kind of changes everything so I love that. It’s a really fun exercise.

Stephen: Yeah, that sounds great. For authors, have you written any short stories based on these thinkings and episodes?

Derrick: Not based on the episodes. No, I have not. I struggle to write anything short as evidenced by my one book turned into who knows how many . I managed a novella that’s about as good as it’s gonna get

Stephen: Okay, got it. Alright, so what are your plans for upcoming books?

Derrick: Upcoming? I have. What I’m hoping to be a trilogy. I just finished drafting book two. It’s gonna go through proof and edit and betas and all that fun stuff in the next couple of months. And I have a whole nother book to write. And while book two is going through betas and edits and all of that, I’m planning to do a couple more novellas or maybe a handful of short stories depending on how they turn out.

Pulling characters and expanding on them in a way that the main story won’t let me do.

Stephen: Good. Nice. So how many do you have planned right now that you’re doing

Derrick: Three main novels and probably five or six. Little side off shoots. Okay. That’s good. And that’s just in this one world, if I get beyond that, I have a spreadsheet of projects, that I’m, yeah. Who doesn’t, some point, but yeah.

Stephen: Who doesn’t have all the stuff, it’s yeah, I could be writing until Doomsday.

Yeah. . Yep. So Derek who are some of your favorite authors and books that you’ve read? You mentioned a few earlier. those your favorites or do you have.

Derrick: They’ve definitely come highly regarded. Alison Goodman’s dragon Eye Chronicles, I think it’s called. There’s two of those. Dragon Eye Chronicles, dragon Eye series.

I don’t remember exactly. It’s Dragon Eye something. There’s two of those. Aon and ay and they are amazing. I tend to read a lot of more young adult sort of stuff. Paulini is a favorite Tok. Obviously you can’t love fantasy and not like Tok on some level.

Stephen: Let me ask you, are you yay or nay on Sumerian?

I

Derrick: tolerate the Somalian .

Stephen: Okay. I couldn’t get past like page two. My, my son, that’s his favorite token book.

Derrick: I’ve read it. I’ve. Everything that has tol on the cover at some point, including the histories and the appendices and all of that, because I went a little nuts in high school. I tolerate the Samilian and the lasers erian and history of Newman are and all of that fun stuff, but I love, Lord.

Stephen: I’ve read the Lord of the Rings a couple times and it, yep. It just wasn’t the series really for me. I enjoyed the early stuff, but once I got to Return of the King I honestly can’t tell you what happened In Return of the King, I was more of a Dragon Lance guy growing

Derrick: up. Yep. Dragon Lance is good.

I’ve only found those a few years. A ton.

Stephen: They just, white pigman just came out with a new one. Yeah, that it was okay. But it’s the beginning of a trilogy, so I’m hoping it steps up a little bit. And also the inklings that Toki and CS Lewis and a few other. Yeah they got together, there was a book written called Bander Snatch about the inklings.

And I interviewed that author on an earlier episode. So if you’re interested you should go check it out. Cause she had a lot to say about her research. I’ve already been there, ,

Derrick: I saw that and went straight for it. Oh good. Yeah, no, that was a good one. I enjoyed that. That was a lot of interesting information and abrupt book purchase

But yeah.

Stephen: really cool. She printed it through Kent State University Press, which is like eight miles from me. So it was just this whole weird thing. Cause she’s from Cleveland but doesn’t live there now. So I was like, okay, this is destiny .

Derrick: I know where you live now. Yeah,

Stephen: I live by Ken.

Everybody knows that. I talk about that all the time. Alright, so do you have a favorite bookstore that you like to go to close to where you.

Derrick: I live in a tiny little town that has more inmates than normal citizens. We are home to the state prison. Well, We have more towns, . Yeah, there’s more towns.

My tiny little town has one bookstore and I don’t get in there very often, but I do love it. It’s your, definitely your small town bookstore. It’s about half used and half new and everything’s dusty and feels like you’re going. End up getting into some sort of adventure if you turn down the wrong aisle.

And I love that place. It’s great. What’s it called? Browsing bison,

Stephen: books browsing b I love that. All right. I’m gonna put a link to, that’s great too. I like to encourage people to go check out little bookstores in their travels.

Derrick: Yeah, no it’s small for sure, but it’s got that small town

Stephen: charm.

Love me and my kids. When we used to go on vacation, that was always a destination. Find a local bookstore or two. Oh yeah. And go there. So yeah. I love that. Yeah. All right. So Derek to ramp up talking about your books and we’ll move on to author stuff. Let me ask you this one last question. . If someone came up to you and said, Derek, I heard you wrote some fantasy books.

Why should I get them and read them? What would you tell ’em?

Derrick: If you enjoy fantasy with an underdog, flavor and tie ins to real world problems, you’ll probably enjoy the book. Okay? If you feel like you’re being faced with something that you can’t do or don’t know how to do or think is too much for you, you’ll probably enjoy the. .

Stephen: Okay, great. I love that. Thank you.

Sally graciously reads a couple stories from her book. If you haven’t listened to the interview, she relates other wonderful stories there also.

I Sang That is a personal journey behind the scenes into the world of music-makers who created the film scores, television music, sound recordings, commercials and concert evenings over the last sixty years. It’s about a Sally Stevens’ long singing career that began in 1960 with concert tours – Ray Conniff, Nat King Cole, and others – and later, solo work in concert with Burt Bacharach. Add to that thirty years of vocals and main titles for The Simpsons, vocals for Family Guy…vocals on hundreds of film and television scores and sound recordings, plus twenty-two years as Choral Director for the Oscars. It’s also the personal story of growing up in a “his, hers and theirs” family in the forties and fifties, and how a shy little girl became a second generation singer in the ever-evolving music business of Hollywood.

Sally’s very short list of credits:
Film Singer: Airplane!, Alien, Apocalypse Now, Caddyshack, Deadpool 2, Dr. Zhivago, The Exorcist, Elf, Forrest Gump, Grease, Mulan, The Princess Diaries, Shrek, Slap Shot, Star Trek

TV Singer : The Brady Bunch, The Carol Burnett Show, Family Guy, Happy Days, The Simpsons, True Blood, The X-Files

Music: Linda Ronstadt, Johnny Mathis, Liza Minelli, Sonny & Cher, Johnny Cash, Michael Jackson, Harry Connick Jr., Frank Sinatra

Sally Stevens is a singer/lyricist/choral director who has worked in film, television, concert, commercials and sound recording in Hollywood since 1960. She sings the main titles for The Simpsons and Family Guy and her voice can be heard on hundreds of film and television scores.  She has put together choirs for John Williams, Jerry Goldsmith, Elmer Bernstein, and many others for film scores, and was choral director for The Oscars for 22 years. In the earlier years she toured with Ray Conniff, Nat King Cole and Burt Bachrach, and she has also written lyrics for Burt Bacharach, Don Ellis, Dominic Frontiere, Dave Grusin, and others. 
 
Her short fiction, poetry and essays have been included in Mockingheart Review, The OffBeat, Raven’s Perch, Hermeneutic Chaos Literary Journal, Los Angeles Press, The Voices Project, and Between the Lines Anthology: Fairy Tales & Folklore Re-imagined.  
 
Along with singing and writing, her other passion is photography, and her black & white photographs of film composers have been included in exhibitions at the Association of Motion Picture & Television Producers headquarters in Los Angeles, and at Cite de la Musique in Paris, France.

https://hollywoodfilmchoral.com

https://www.sallystevenswriter.com

https://www.sallystevensphotographer.com

Sally, welcome to Discovered Wordsmiths. I’m very excited to talk to you today. It’s one of my other passions is music.

, and I’ve been getting back into playing more music again. So I think this will be a great discussion. I can’t wait to hear some of your achievements. And for those of everyone else joining in that has not read the press release or anything, Tell them a little bit about who you are and where you live and some of the things you like to do, which you’re not really an author, it just, you’re writing about your life.

Tell us a little bit about yourself.

Sally: Thank you. I live in Studio City, California, and I’ve worked in in the music business here in Hollywood for the last 60 years. Literally, the first film score I sang on was How the West was won in 1961. And some of the more recent ones were Deadpool two.

And nice . Yeah. I’ve never had to give a cutoff before on You Can’t Stop This Mother, ,

Stephen: that’s awesome. .

Sally: But it, it’s it’s been a wonderful journey. I’m blessed to have made it stretch this long. I think the reason it lasted so long was I started out for the first 25 years or so just singing.

I was a session, what they call a session singer, and I did solo cues. I did some solo cues in Clte and I sang the Lullaby, secretive Nim and that kind of thing. But most of my work has been Ched Coral underscoring in, back in the variety TV days, I worked on Danny Kay Variety show. I did some vocal cues for Murder She wrote, and that era.

We worked a lot in television and film scoring. And then about 25 years into that, Journey. I had a cha, I never wanted to, what they call vocal contracting. It’s like that’s when you put together a choir or a small group for a composer. And I’d never wanted to do that because I thought of it as something very political, and I thought the other contractors wouldn’t wanna hire me if I did it.

It turned out exactly the opposite. It’s really what allowed me to be active in the business this long because it gives you a closer connection with the composers, with the project. You have to shape the sound to be what the composer needs. That’s, that was a blessing too, to be, to begin that work.

And I’ve done vocal contracting, put choirs together for John Williams and Mark Shaman, Alan Sylvere. And,

Stephen: A lot of, can you say, John Williams, please? Please tell me some of the work you’ve done that he’s

Sally: composed. Oh the first thing I did with John was a film called Amistad. I don’t know if you’re, oh, wow.

It’s the I don’t, I can’t tell you the year exactly, but it was a Stephen Spielberg film. It was a brilliant film. About the story was that the journey of these people who were put on a slave ship and brought across the Atlantic, Loaded into the states here, and they were able to resist becoming that what, which they’d been brought here to become the slaves.

And there was a trial and they were able to return to their home country. It was very we, it was a wonderful project, and the reason I got to do it with John was because I had done a film for Han Zimmer called The Power of One. Ok. Which w which also involved African music, authentic African Music, and with with Amistad, it, it was.

It had to be authentic that we had someone on this, on the scoring stage to help us with the pronunciation of the words and so forth. But it also had it was John’s music, which also has a touch of the classic approach to music. So the choir was, I believe it was either 48 or 52 voices, and we worked about four or five days with those sessions.

We had, some days we had just a women’s choir, some days, a men’s choir, and then mostly it was combined and we also had a 48 voice children’s choir in that film. And it was it, there was one cue. That I went to John’s office to look at, and in those days he still used a movie Ola, which was the, there was none of this digital stuff.

And we looked at this cue, and this was a very emotional cue. There was a, on the ship, as they were coming across, wrapped in chains, was this lovely young woman who was about to be made a slave. And you could tell by the expression on her face, she was not on for this ride. And she was sitting on the edge of the ship, for the bow or whatever, the wall that goes around the deck.

And she was, and in slow motion with all these chains, she falls back into the ocean, into the water and waves and sinks down. And John had written a solo cue for that scene that shot, and he had to find the right voice. It had to have an ethnic quality, but it had to just be the right emotional voice.

So I gathered some demo tapes from singers here in la, which is part of what contractor does. And they were all wonderful, but they weren’t quite right. John listened to them all. I had to be in New York from meetings for the trustees of the after pension and health fund. So I thought while I’m here, maybe I’ll audition some of the young ladies at Julliard and that would be exciting for them.

And so we did that. But again, nothing was quite right. And then someone told me that there was a new opera director up in San Francisco and that I should reach out to him, and I did. And he told me about a young lady, Pamela Dillard. Who was on the road at that moment doing classical tours. And I contacted her.

She was in Birmingham, Alabama at the moment. And sometimes you just get this, you just know I talked to her, talking to her on the phone. I knew this was the right person, and she sent a recording and John loved it and he wrote two more solo accused for her for the film. So that was my first experience with John.

But John is the most gracious. I talk about him a bit, quite a bit in the book. He’s the most beloved, gracious, gifted man in the business, I think. And everybody who’s ever worked for him would say the same thing we had, there was one little solo cue that we had to audition a couple of boys for on a trailer that we did for one of the Harry Potter movies.

It was another kid’s. Yeah and we, I thought there were two little boys that I thought might be the right little boys, so I had them both audition, sing to the track for John, and rather than, have one of them be disappointed in front of their friends, he just said we’ll pay them both we’ll and then we’ll decide later who will use.

So I’m, that’s so typical of how he does.

Stephen: That’s nice. Yeah. So you’ve started off mostly as a singer and progressed into more of the administration work, but did you keep singing? Oh,

Sally: yeah. In order for you the, a vocal contractor is a sag after a covered job and you must be a singing, a performing part of the singer group.

And the reason that they put that into place back in the, or late fifties, I think that was added to the contract, was that there needs to be someone out there on the risers or in the room around the mic with the small group to communicate with the producer in the composer who is in the booth.

And you need somebody that’s knowledgeable about the community that’s part of the community. So the role of vocal contractors floated to the surface out of the community of singers and maybe composer, a particular composer or a particular music department would think someone was doing a really good job.

And that. That contact or relationship deepens. So that I, when I began contracting, and the first score I contracted for was a Danny Elman score. It was Beetlejuice and it was a small group. Just I think it was six or eight of us, I always forget. And then I had done also, I had done PeeWee’s, great adventure ,

Stephen: nice

Sally: and formally a wonderful singer and contractor by Ron Hicklin, who was very, we were all very much a part of the business in the wrecking crew days, if you know about the wrecking crew.

Oh yeah, he was, yeah, definitely side by side with them All from nine to, I, when I started to write this memoir, I’m getting off track. So pull me back if you need to. No, please. . But when I started to write this memoir I dived into my journals and date books that I’d kept over the years. I must have 50 of them.

And I found Paper calendar books, date books from 1965 and 69 72. And in, as I looked through those days, I had forgotten that the union covered activity in this town was so active, so busy that there would be a nine o’clock session, a 12 o’clock session, maybe a two or three o’clock session, or a five o’clock session and nine a seven to 10 session.

It went on from nine in the morning to midnight, many times, six days a week. And the, there were a lot. Nothing paid a whole lot cuz in those days, I, when I wasn’t contracting, you’d write down in the calendar book the time, the ca, capital studio two o’clock Johnny Mann contractor or whatever, but I didn’t know what the project was.

And then, but when I got my paycheck, then I’d indicate the amount that came and the date that it came. And some of those checks were $9 and 27 cents or . In those days the demos for jingles didn’t pay a lot, but the good thing was that it was all on contract. And if those jingles got used, you were paid according to how they were used, whether it was a national spot or, so the, there wasn’t there was a huge amount of activity. Of course, the pays were, the payment was less in those days, but it was the golden age I think of our

Stephen: business. I, yeah, I agree. Now the one thing you said I’m not sure I completely believe you, that really you had musicians come in for sessions at 9:00 AM that’s like an ungodly hour for a musician

Yeah. Late night 2:00 AM I could believe that , no,

Sally: we did we’ve worked at Western sometimes and often the artist, maybe if, like we did some stuff with Wayne Newton at the little studios at Western Recorders, and most of those were afternoon or evening. But a lot of the jingles were in the morning.

The orchestral things were, and the film scoring was often a nine to five day. It was an eight hour day where the orchestra and the choir or the singers worked together. Then it’s evolved more. There are still some sessions like that, but there are more sessions where the orchestra records by. By section, the rhythm and the horns and the strings and whatever.

And then the singers are brought in and they, we sing to those tracks. So it’s not all in one room like it used to be. Sometimes it is, but

Stephen: not. I was gonna say, doesn’t John Williams do that sometimes for the movies, he’ll be playing the movie and recording the score while watching it. Yes.

Sally: You’re on a big story scoring stage and also when I started in the, There was the MGM scoring stage, which is the first one I worked on, which it’s the place where Judy Garland sang over the rainbow, and that studio is now Sony. But the stage is just the same. The scoring stage is just the same.

There was mgm, there was Fox, the Fox Newman stage, which is still there in its glory, beautiful big stage. And Warner Brothers, which Clint Eastwood saved from extinction because the work had slowed down and there, so he the score there is now called the Clint Eastwood stage at Warner Brothers.

And it’s also the same big original space. And it accommodates a large orchestra. When we did the we did a I’m trying to think, we, John Williams projects, we did those vocal sessions as overdubs because the choir was so big, it was 50 52 voices, but many times we’ve done the choirs live with the orchestra.

Stephen: Nice. Nice. So you’re a musician, you’ve sang your whole life. , what was it like trying to put singing life into written life? Because that seems very oh, and by the way just the fact that you did anything with the wrecking crew is super impressive to me. I love those. So what was the it like trying to, did you wanna do like a story five version of your life from, point A to point B, or is it a collection of stories or

Sally: It’s basically first of all regarding the writing.

I, I I’ve always loved writing. I started writing when I was five years old, as soon as I knew what to do with the pen excuse. But, and I’ve also written, I had a ch in the beginning. I, can I go back to the very beginning? ? Oh yeah, please. When I was at ucla herb Alpert, Herb Alpert and Lou Oh yeah.

Lou Adler. They were partners together in a little office on Sunset Boulevard before either of them had their tremendous successes. And they were looking for young singer to sing a song that Herb Albert had written. So a manager took me to see him. I was 19 at the time, I think 20. And, um, and he thought I would be the okay person.

So he said, do you have a song for the other side of that, that in the, this is the days of single 45 records. So I went home and wrote another song and brought it back, and he liked it better than his song. So he said, write another song. And he recorded the two songs that I’d written, and that’s really what I wanted to do.

That was my dream. I wanted to be a, an artist, but I got a chance to go on the road with That song by that record by the way, got to number 10 in Connecticut, but that’s as far as it got . But I shortly thereafter had a chance to tour with Ray Keff on his first tour as an artist. And doing that, I met some of the other session singers and I met my first husband and then we ended up going on a long 47 1 nighter bus tour with Ray the next year later in that same year actually.

And I began to learn more about the session singing business. And, when you have a chance to do that it’s word of mouth. You, someone recommends you cuz you did a good job standing next to them or whatever, and it begins to open up, but it’s so competitive that if you don’t show up when you’re hired, they might find somebody else.

So that became really my focus and I was very blessed and very. Lucky to just have been at the right place at the right time in many cases. And you get to show what you do if it’s a high amdo or something, whatever it might be. Now I’ve forgotten the question. Oh, the right,

Stephen: we were going back to the beginning.

I was asking about getting the singing life onto the written

Sally: page. Over the years, I, I kept writing, I did the writing workshops and so forth cuz I loved it. But I also always wrote poems and I always wrote lyrics. And the first chance I had to write Lyric for a film was a film called On Any Sunday.

And it was the sort of the documentary about motorcycling that Steve McQueen was featured in. And that was for composer Dominic Frontier. And I did several other film projects for him. And then I had a chance to write a lyric for Dave Gren for a film called Absence of Malice. And it was just a little source cue.

It was a, it was a. Christmas song with Chil where children were singing, walking into a Catholic church and 20 years later, and he and Dave had wanted to write something that sounded kind of old English a little bit, so we did that. So about 20 years later, Dave was involved with James Taylor’s first Christmas album and he reached out to me and sits, Alec, can you write a second verse for our little Christmas song?

And so I did, cuz it had been very short in the beginning and James loved it. And it was in his first, and in some of the other versions of his Christmas album it’s a song called Who Comes This Night. And so that the writing was always a part of what I was doing, but in a very small way. It was just special moments, and when I sat down to write the memoir, it. I had written, over the years at those writer workshops, I’d done memoir workshops and poetry and fiction and essay and everything, and I’d occasionally write a chapter or two that I thought was an interesting story to tell. So I had some of those together during the pandemic.

It was a wonderful time to edit all this stuff together. And I had two, two people that were hugely helpful. One is a wonderful writer himself named Gordon Meninga. And he has, he was head of the writing studies at Collge and he also taught at the University of Iowa at Summer Shops workshops. And another one was Laura Munson, who’s a woman writer up in Montana, who’s had a couple of very successful books.

And I sent the memoir to each of them. Gordon sent me back many comments, can you expand on this or what, that kind of thing. During the pandemic though, I, it was when I had a chance to pull this all together. And coincidentally, when you do something for 55 or 60 years, it become, for me, it just becomes your life.

That my community of singers became my family. I was also very active in the the governance of my unions, screen Actress Guild and aftra, which about 10 years ago merged into SAG aftra. And so I was on boards and committees, and I was participating in the negotiations and everything. And when that begins to slow down as it does, as you have to expect that at a certain age, and there are young singers that have begun to do some contracting, and they, they have to, they’re entitled to their time.

But it was very painful because in the early days we were very considerate of one another. We didn’t talk about other jobs when we were there on the stage. But then Facebook happened, , and you get to see all these parties that you’re not invited to as that begins to happen. And it was very painful and it was helpful during the pandemic when things got shut down for six months or so, and you didn’t have to look at Facebook and see that happening.

And it gave me a period of time to adjust to what was really going on in life for me. It’s not over yet. I just worked on a wonderful project for Seth McFarland this last week. But it’s not like it was, and the first chapters of the book are from today. It’s how you feel when you realize that things are changing and you have to adapt.

And then I went back and just started with childhood and the family stuff and kind of got into, I think they’re probably 10 chapters before I’m really into the business stories. But my, both my parents and my stepfather were all singers, all also. And my, I just recently learned from on Facebook I came in contact miraculously by to this wonderful lady who, Laura.

Oh my God. This is the time of life when you can’t remember names.

Stephen: Oh, I can’t remember ’em. So it’s not just

Sally: and she’s a, I’ll think of her name in a minute, but she’s a wonderful writer. And I had posted something somebody else had said, oh, I think I know Kenny Steven’s daughter, somebody posted something about Bob Stevens, who was a session singer and someone this guy said think I know Bob’s daughter Sally.

And I posted, no I’m not Bob’s daughter. I was Kenny Steven’s daughter. And the, and this lady happened to see that she writes about the early film days the actors and singers of the thirties and forties. and she took, she wrote me a note and said, I was a huge fan of your father, Kenny Stevens.

And she started to write an article about him, and she has sent me pictures and film clips and sound clips of things I never knew he had done. Wow. It was just amazing. Wow. Anyway, that’s I knew that there was such a job as a session singer, because both my parents did it.

My mom’s sang on The Wizard of Oz and,

Stephen: nice. Nice. What type of feedback are you getting from people who have already read the book?

Sally: Wonderful kind feedback. I’m just I can’t believe it. So many friends and people in the business and some people I don’t know, have posted on Facebook. I just ordered the book or just started it, or I’m enjoying it.

It’s I’ve had very good feedback. I’m very grateful for that. I never expected it to be a widely read book. I just thought it’d be something interesting for people who wanted to get into the business or who particularly love the business. And that’s probably what it is, but it’s it’s been very warmly received.

Great.

Stephen: What I gotta ask, we, you’ve mentioned a lot of great movie composers. , what was probably your favorite thing to sing at some movie, some score or

Sally: whatever. Oh my gosh. It, I’ve sued such beautiful music where it’s hard to say which is the favorite and a lot of things come to mind.

One of the early films I did for Danny Elsman was D Edward Scissor Hands. And beautiful movie. We used a 20 voice women’s choir group and it was this beautiful I the tone that I love from the Sopranos, which is straight tone and floaty and beautiful. And so that was very special. Everything I’ve done for John has been very special.

I did a project for Mark Shaman. We did this, a couple of vocal cues from South Park, which was just fun because of the, you don’t Blame Canada and oh, I love that song. . We did that in the session. Then we did that for the Oscars. I also was a choral director for the Oscars for about 22 years, and we did an on-camera choreographed version of that south blame Canada version.

And Robin Williams was, did the solo and we were all characters behind him. But that’s another blessing in my life. Was that to work with Robin Williams. Nice. I worked on the last TV series that he did called The Crazy Ones. I love

Stephen: that show. Yeah. Yeah. It was very sad when,

Sally: heartbreaking.

Yeah. You lost him.

Stephen: Okay, so you mentioned South Park, Uhhuh . I love that because you’re talking about Amistad, which is a very deep movie. It’s not comedy or anything. No. And in South Park is just totally off the rails irreverent. But the music that Matt and Trey do in that, that their show and on that movie, and Stu, it’s amazing music.

Really. It’s very

Sally: well done. Yes, absolutely. I’ve also I haven’t worked on the series, but I have worked on, from inception of the shows, I’ve worked on The Simpsons and Family Guy and American Dad. I the main title for The Simpsons that I sing with Danny and Susie Stevens, Logan, my daughter also sang on that.

that air, that main title has been running for 33 years. And the Family Guy main title I also sang on, but I worked on the shows as the music team for Simpsons. Sadly changed about two, three years ago. So I’m not doing the vocal cues within the shows any longer. But we did all the special just the silly songs, that the Village people would sing or that, and once in a while I’d do a sound alike end title.

I do, I did a little Barbara Streisand version of people and stuff like that. And for Family Guy we do, we’ve done cues. One of them was You’ve Got aids, which was a scene in one of the episodes. But ironically, Can I tell you a story about that?

Stephen: Please. . Anyone that would wanna read your book, this is what they wanna hear.

This is what would interest them. So

Sally: please. Now some of these little stories I don’t break, go into detail with on this, on the page. It’s more general. But first of all, Seth McFarlane is one of the most amazing, also the kindest, greatest guys in the

Stephen: business. Yeah. He’s, I love his, he’s amazing.

Sally: Christmas album. Yes. He’s a wonderful singer. He values quality music. He’s insisting on still in these days, using live orchestras to score the Orville, the family guy, and oh, love that. Has some wonderful composers that do his scoring, Walter Murphy. And so anyway we did this little song for the call.

It was, we’ve got AIDS and then a few, and one of the singers on it was a dear gentleman who who was a gay man. And it was sensitive. Cue for him to do, and some, a couple of years later, one of the there was an interview show on one of the public tele or the NPR stations or something, and I just happened to listen to it cuz I’m addicted to NPR R And it was a young man telling this story about hi himself, having had aids and come through it.

But it changed the way he related to people as he met them. And he met, he had met a young man that he was very interested and wanted to know, and, but he was concerned about how to share this information, that he had aids and they were watching television one night and a rebroadcast of this episode came up and it allowed him to have the conversation with this young man.

And I when there was a request even after that time. To reuse, to reen that cue for some other project. And I had to get permission of all the singers, which were protected by sag so that they and this one young man was, he just had over the years beat himself up for being on that song.

And he didn’t wanna allow it to be used. But I was able to share that story with him. And he said, okay we’ll let I nice find, they can do whatever they want. But, it’s it becomes very personal sometimes these projects. And that, when we did South Park Mark Shaman kindly that, that couple of the days before the scoring called to tell me that there was some language in the queue that some people might be offended by.

So to be careful who I hired it with who I booked it with. And there was another episode of the Family Guy where we had a lyric that was, SAC religious in, its in its satirical way. And I knew it was. It was not gonna be something that this one singer wanted to sing. So I had, I just said you can sit out sit this one out.

And we did it without him and then he came back and we did the rest of the cues.

Stephen: I do another podcast with a friend of mine. It’s all about geeks and nerd topics and stuff, . And one of the things we discuss quite often is how comedy is a reflection of our society and it can point out the faults in our society in a way that just editorialization does not.

And absolutely, yeah, that’s some of these shows, like The Simpsons, the things they do South Park too, the things they do in it to point out the stupidity of our life and our culture sometimes.

Sally: Absolutely. Absolutely. It allows topics to be discussed and. Positions to be stated in a way that it’s not gonna offend The people who don’t particularly feel that way.

They’ll they’ll go to the humor of it, or they’ll miss the boil together, . But it does allow those, you’re absolutely right. Yeah.

Stephen: Now did you write the whole book or did you use somebody like, as a ghost

Sally: writer or anything like that? I wrote these, the book, and I didn’t want any help

Good. I like that. Yeah.

Stephen: Thank you. Okay. I’ve been dying to ask. , so did you get to do anything on any Star Wars movie? Yes. Thank. Oh, that’s awesome. I love that. . What, what can, what did

Sally: you do? I sang on a couple of them. I sang on the series, but, I gotta tell you, I’m 83.

I will be 83. Next week on Thanksgiving and thankful. Happy birthday. Thank you. And so my memory for the early projects the ones that I wasn’t contracting, I sometimes I have to look at the list of credits to remember what I did or what I

Stephen: just loved. . You have a huge list, so that’s understandable.

Regardless of age, it’s much more forgiving, being 85.

Sally: I love that. I got another story to tell you about John. I sang for his one of his earlier contractors, Janine Wagner, who was Roger Wagner’s daughter, and she did some of his earlier films. And then he’s used the Master Corral several times too.

But what was I going to just tell you? Oh my god. John Williams story. Okay. . So for the second to the most recent Star Wars film Jedi, something about the Jedi. The Last Jedi. Last Jedi, thank you. My phone rang one day and. It was John and he said, hi, baby. How many low B flats do you think we could find?

And it was like, John, and this story is in the book. It was, that was, he was talking the way he would talk to his five-year-old granddaughter. It was just, that’s what he does. He’s just he calls everybody baby. And so we did, I found 21 low B flat guys with the base in the base community here, and it, that’s pretty low register.

And what John had written for that film was not he had several cues, but most of them were this very sound, which they also used a couple of those cues in the next star Wars, the more recent one they licensed to reuse. But yeah, that I’ll never forget that. Call .

Stephen: Nice. So we were talking a little bit earlier about the Iowa Writers Conference, Uhhuh, or workshops.

Is that

Sally: the what the, there the program is the Iowa Summer Writing Festival, actually. Yes.

Stephen: That’s it. So you’ve been involved with that for a very long time. Like you said, you’ve not been a writer by career, but you’ve been involved with writing. So tell us a little bit about that and what you did with

Sally: that.

Absolutely. It, as you, and I’m sure a lot of your listeners know Iowa, the University of Iowa is legendary. They’re I had known about it and I. And I knew I couldn’t go away long enough to do a writing program, but I thought I’ll investigate the writers festival writing festival.

So I reached out to them and they asked me to send some material, which for most of those workshops you don’t have to do. But I sent it and I got accepted into the M f a poetry program accidentally , but I couldn’t stay away from town. That was that was 22 years ago, and I was very busy and you just, you couldn’t go outta town that long.

So I, I did get finally into the writing festival workshops, and those are like five day and two day workshops over, they start in June and they go through mid-July and you can choose, two or three or one or all of them. So over the years, I’ve done writing workshops that poetry, short fiction memoir, personal essay, flash fiction.

Flash fiction came into being somewhere along the way. And I did a ton of writing, but I didn’t really submit much of anything for the first 10 years. And finally at the end of one of my week workshops, this Gordon Meninga, this dear guy, said, you gotta start sending stuff off. So I did. I sent a couple of flash fiction slash prose poems.

They were just little, like couple hundred words. I sent him off that night and then was to head home the next day. And the next day I got a, an acceptance email from the place I’d sent it to, which was a journal called Hermaneutic Chaos Literary Journal. And they were based in New Zealand. I don’t know how I found it.

It was online or something, but so that, that was so fun. So I thought, oh, this is great. . And then the, I got about over the years, I’ve had about 12 little stories and poems and essays landing in various journals. But the best lecture I ever heard about writing was in the earlier days there in Iowa. They did something called the elevens every morning, which is during the week one of the instructors would come and di give a lecture, and then the workshop started in the afternoon.

And this one instructor walked into his podium with a cardboard box full of letters. And he said, if you don’t get this many rejection letters back, you haven’t even tried. So I am not somebody that was good and still am not good about submitting. And I, it really, you really have to find your reader.

I’ve learned that you have to find the publication that, that, that likes the kind of stuff you write. And in that, Project, you have to do a lot of reading. So it’s it’s and the workshops were fabulous. The workshops were wonderful. I did a few zoom over the lockdown, but it’s not the same as being in the room.

You really get the vibe of how someone feels about your writing or how they don’t feel agreed. And along that way, and I’m sure you’ve heard this from other writers too you reach a point where you have to realize that every comment in those feedbacks, it shouldn’t send you flying to the moon or into the dark cave.

You begin to trust yourself. And I have in addition to the memoir, I have another work that’s long novel. It’s about 90, 80, or 90,000 words, which is a bit long for a novella, but it’s something I literally started back in the eighties when I was seeing a, an a, a counselor who was brilliant but nutty as a fruitcake.

And he would, you’d walk into his office and he would say, ah, you’re toxic. Toxic, you gotta go walk the stairs. And so I’d cycle the two or three fours of stairs and come back in until I wasn’t toxic anymore. And one day I was writing, I wrote this silly little story, which turns out to be the beginning of the me of the novella.

And it’s about a psychiatrist and a patient, and she walks into his office and the first thing he notices is that she’s got a fresh bullet wound in her forehead. And she says, oh, it was just my husband and I taking pot shots at each other. We’ll be, he was fine when I saw him lying in the driveway. And I was trying to be sarcastic with him, but he said, if you wrote a few pages like this every week at the end of the year, you’d be cured and you’d have a book.

So , I kept writing about this lady and it’s a kind of magical realism book, but she has a lot of adventures. So that’s my next project. I gotta get that one out into the world.

Stephen: Therapist inspired stories, ?

Sally: Yes. Therapist on fire. And at the end of the book he’s he gives up his therapy and is playing accordion for parties and she’s all better.

Stephen: So do you think the creativity of singing applied to your writing? Do you feel that it’s just another avenue to express yourself? Or was it something you had to work at?

Sally: I think, I think it. I think I was very blessed. My mother was also always had wanted to be a writer. She ended up, after her singing career, she taught writing at north Hollywood High School here.

And she books were, we never had a lot of money in my household. It was a, his, hers and ours family. My mother and father were divorced. She married my stepfather. He had two children by his first marriage, and then they had three more children. So we were a family of six kids. They worked freelance with their singing and it wasn’t always good times, but the one thing I remember is that books, she, they belonged to the Book of the Month Club. They b and she was a beautiful pianist and she also played the piano at night. But she, there were books everywhere in our house and there are in my house. Some of them are hers. And I guess I just the language part of it was never a problem for me.

And I, it, was it Stephen, when I knew we were gonna have this lovely talk today I woke up for some reason thinking this morning about the fact that writers, no matter what they’re writing about, are writing about their own lives in some way. And the emotions that we feel or we understand or we don’t understand, those are the things we write about.

The experiences will translate them into another character maybe. Everything in Mrs. Billingsley was based on things that had happened to me, but I just tweaked them a little bit. And it’s interesting that, let me gr I’m gonna grab a book. Okay. The actor Jim Carey he wrote a book a couple years ago that was release.

Called memoirs and misinformation. And when I saw that, I thought, oh, damn, I’m gonna get blamed for copying Jim Carey if I ever get Mrs. Billingsley out their end of the world , because he, it’s a fun book. But it’s, and I think you was talking about the connection between music and writing, and I think that there’s a, an instinctive kind of connection between the rhythm of a sentence.

The phrasing. The and I, and one other thing that I’ve, I learned at the workshops, which is very helpful with poems or any kind of writing, is to read them out loud to yourself. Read the, read your pages. Because I, I find things when I do that, that I miss on the page. We get so used to looking at the page.

That you don’t see it anymore. You just know, oh yeah, that’s what I was talking about, blah, blah, blah. And,

Stephen: agreed. So you mentioned you’ve read a lot. What are some of your favorite books and authors? No,

Sally: I was afraid you’d ask that , because I can’t remember anything you say. I James Tate wrote is a poet, and he was the first poet I wrote that he, his book of I’ve forgotten what the title of the book is, but he wrote prose poems that were little stories almost.

And some of them were fantastic, funny, interesting satirical. And that encouraged me with my flash fiction and poet, some of my pros poems. Mostly honestly I realize I have, I love reading biographies, memoirs and autobiographies. I love reading about people. I could go look at my shelf bookshelf in the hall, but I don’t wanna leave the screen too long.

I and I, Kurt Vonnegut, I read his it was the famous book that he wrote about the the war the Fahrenheit,

Stephen: Four, that, that was Bradberry Fahrenheit 4

Sally: 51. Oh, that, that’s not the book I’m thinking of. Yeah. Anyway,

Stephen: I am,

Sally: yeah. Anyway, I love Kurt Vonnegut. I

Stephen: gosh. I’ll look it up.

I can include a link. I’m, I haven’t read a whole lot of Vate, so I’m not familiar with his work, but I know a lot of writers love his work.

Sally: Yeah. And what I was fascinated by was an article that I read about him. It might have been an excerpt from a memoir or an interview that he’d done, but it was, it came the book I’m thinking of came about through his own experiences in the war, in, in Battlefield and seeing his colleagues wounded or killed, or, and I thought, I then I began to worry about, oh my God, you gotta have really amazing experiences to write fiction, to build on that kind of stuff.

And this is embarrassing because I can’t remember anything

Stephen: No that’s not a problem. I don’t remember everything, so I’ll just, I’ll look it up. I’m sure I can. Figure out which book it was.

Sally: Yeah. But there are so many the writers. I haven’t, I haven’t read as many of the classics.

I’m sure as I should have. I’ve gotten back into Shakespeare a little bit and I took a course, Shakespeare course in college, but of course I don’t remember a lot of

Stephen: it. Did you ever sing anything for any of the Star Trek movies or TV shows?

Sally: The TV series, yeah. They, there were they used vocals as underscore a lot in those, some of those projects.

So there weren’t sos but Jerry Goldsmith was he, did he, what was his, yeah, he did the series.

Stephen: Yeah. Yeah. Cuz I interviewed Arman Shimerman who uh, did QU on DS nine. He wrote A book where he took Shakespeare’s tempest characters and put it into the history of the time period.

It’s, yeah. So I did talk to him. So it’s a connection

Sally: there. . Oh yeah. How fun. One of the musical projects I’m working on to help get accomplished as a dear friend, a Coral, a classical composer, has written three coral settings of three of Shakespeare’s sonnets. And we’re gonna record those in a few weeks with the choir here.

And that’s kinda nice. Fun. Wow.

Stephen: Nice. So do you have a website, Sally?

Sally: I do. I have several . The I have www Hollywood film Corral, C h o r a l e.com. And that’s something that again through John. I did a concert with him back in 97, I think it was. Some music from Amistad and other films at the Hollywood Bowl, and they needed the name of the choir for the program.

And I didn’t, we didn’t have a name. They were just freelance singers that I’d gathered together. So I asked John if that would be okay and he said yes, and you could, you should trademark that name because you could record under it. So I did. So we’ve been able to use that for screen credit all these years cuz the studios wanna know that you own something before they put it on the screen.

So there’s that website. Then www sally stevens writer.com and sally, www sally stevens photographer.com/film scoring H t M. Htm. Okay. And those are the writers, the workshops, the websites, none of them are really up to date cuz I’ve been focusing on other things.

The Hollywood Film Corral has a lot of information about film scores that I worked on and contracted and but it’s missing a couple of the more recent ones. And then the Sally Stevens writer, I posted a lot of, some blogs, some poems, some links to other writing that’s been published. And then the photography website is not completed.

I, but I in 19 let. It would’ve been 20 years, 27, 22 years ago on my 60th birthday, I gave myself a couple of gifts. I did a cabaret symposium workshop on the East coast. I did a photography workshop in in the Lair Valley. And I had started taking photography at Essence cuz I’d always been interested in that.

So in about 2002 or three I began doing black and white photography shots of composers on the scoring stages as they were at work. Oh, wow. And the photography website has about, I think about 30 of those with a little bit of credits about the composer. The first one I photographed was Jerry Goldsmith on the Paramount stage, which is no longer there.

And then I photographed John Williams and Steven Spielberg on the so Sony stage. Nice. And and then and over the years, Alan Sylvere, mark Shaman James Newton, Howard, James Horner just Wow. Tyler Bates, the more recent composers. So that’s the website that deals with the photographs of the composers.

Stephen: That’s awesome. Yeah. You’re naming all these composers cuz you know I watch a movie and I’m like, oh, I gotta see who was the composer.

Sally: Yeah. It’s so funny. In the olden days you, the lights were off until the credits ran. Now the lights come up, the minute the credits start and people walk out and they I can’t, I’m glued to my seat.

I have to see who the musicians contractor was and who the orchestrators were and the engineers and blah,

Stephen: blah, blah. To be fair in the older days the credits would last a minute and a half. Now they last 12 minutes

Sally: That’s true. That’s true. And the portable potties get credit and everything gets, everybody gets credit.

Stephen: Yeah. All I just gotta ask, say no but you mentioned The Simpsons. , you sang a little bit. Do you, would you sing just a line or two that you did for The Simpsons? Because my, that’s one of my son’s favorite shows. Oh

Sally: the, just the main title. The Simpsons. The Simpsons.

Stephen: Oh, it’s all, I love that. He’s gonna be tickled to hear about that. And I love all the Star Wars stuff. I appreciate you talking. We didn’t really split it up into two different episodes. We talked about your book in the d writer stuff kind of all mixed up. So a little bit different of an episode, but I think that’s great because your stories are wonderful.

I love that.

Sally: I hope I didn’t get too far off track. I not

Stephen: at. Not at all.

Caroline has a serious job and working on her author career is serious work. Which is in contrast to the fun writers achieve when writing. We discuss how authors can balance the two.

https://indestructibleauthor.com

Before we get to our topic of playfulness and seriousness do you have any favorite software or services that you like to use?

Caroline: Yeah, and this is gonna sound a little bit strange cuz I, writers love to talk. This fancy thing and that fancy thing that, you know I use one of the, one of the free Microsoft Word, knockoffs, office, Libra office, open office, maybe Open, yeah.

One of those. And that’s fine. . I also use a lot of spreadsheets, so Excel or a Sheep Knockoff a free knockoff thereof. That’s how I organize my writing, and occasionally I’ll use index cards and graph paper and so forth. And for each book as I’m writing it, I have one file that has the.

I have one file that has odds and ends, scenes that occur to me that I wanna write down, but I’m not there in the book yet. So I put them in this other file, and when I get to that point, I can cut and paste them in. I have various kinds of outlines. I don’t outline prescriptively, it’s not like I write up an outline and then follow it.

I write up outlines in order to figure out what I’m. and then I go and write something out, . So there’ll be outlines and there’s often files that include backstories for characters world building notes, all kinds of stuff like that. Research notes for what, whatever research I’m doing.

And then the Excel files.

like I might have characters names across the top years across the side and then what each character is doing it each year. So I can look across and say, okay, it’s 2000, whatever, where is everybody? And things like that, keep me organized. So it’s a lot of files on two very. Sort of normal programs.

Stephen: Got it. Okay. That sounds great. And I like that you’re using open office in Lieber. Because I work with kids and I talk to parents and recommend those. I’m like, you don’t have to pay for Microsoft or whatever. They work just fine. So they do. I like that. Yeah. So you’ve written two books.

You’re working on a third. What are some things you’ve learned that you’re doing differently?

Caroline: Between now and the first book, the importance of having an elevator speech. Okay, nice. An elevator speech. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the term. Not everybody is. It’s the way you explain what you’re doing to somebody you’ve bumped into on an elevator, so it’s like the 22nd version. The, the 22nd long version of the, and my first book doesn’t have an elevator speech. I didn’t know it was important to have one. And the thing is impossible to describe succinctly. It’s, I don’t wanna, I don’t wanna badmouth my own book. , it’s sprawling, it’s got a lot going on in it and there’s no simple way to summarize all of it.

And that made the, when I went into doing revisions and editing, that made it harder because, if I can’t explain it to somebody quick, I can’t explain it to me quick either. And it just made it a lot harder. So since. One of the first things I do say, okay what’s this? Book’s, elevator speech,

And it makes writing easier, not just, it makes marketing easier, but it makes the writing easier too. That’s a big,

Stephen: easy. Okay. And what are you doing to market

Caroline: your book? Not enough. Podcast, trekkies will recognize this phrase, darn it, I’m a writer, not a marketer.

Stephen: right?

Caroline: But, talking about it on podcasts, I’m trying to learn how to do ads on Facebook. I did a series of library. That worked pretty well. What I would love to do is I would love to hire somebody to take care of this for me. Somebody who actually knows what they’re doing and they have a brain that can, it’s just their cup of tea, their thing, they’re good at it.

I don’t have the money. So if anybody works on commission for this sort of thing, I can offer you a. Come on over. I do have a marketing assistant and he helps keep me organized and focused and he, he is wonderful. If you wanna go, if you wanna hire him, get in touch with me and I’ll send you the link to his work.

He, nice. For what he does. He is wonderful.

Stephen: Okay. All right. So our topic that we’re going have a little discussion on is playfulness and seriousness, which I and I love the fact that you’re a scientist. So people have this stereotype vision of, the serious scientists in the white lab coat or all the time, which probably doesn’t fit when you’re talking about ecology and c conservation, cuz you’re probably outside more than in a lab.

So why did you choose this? And why does it apply to authors?

Caroline: First of all, when it comes to ecology don’t picture white lab coats, picture jeans and flannel and waiter

Stephen: boots, sometimes . Yeah.

Caroline: Nice pair of sneakers. Anyway part of all of these. Writers groups on Facebook and you think that you post a question and 10 zillion people jump on and answer and I think it’s really useful. And I notice what kinds of questions keep coming up, especially from the really new writers, people who haven’t published before or haven’t published very much, and they’re just really trying to find their.

Or people wanting to figure out how to help their kids. Hey, my 10 year old daughter wants to write a book and how do I help her? And a lot of ’em get this, an important thing backwards. They’re talking about getting a literary agent for a 10 year old or trying to figure out What genre to write in based on what’s marketable or how to do formatting and stuff and, no, that’s the wrong kind of serious.

And then they don’t do the right kind of serious because these people, a lot of them, they’re not hiring editor. They’re not hiring writing teachers. They post cover images for, to get feedback on ’em. And these things were obviously put together like in Photoshop or something by

Stephen: serial killer do doing mashup work.

Caroline: Yeah, that’s the wrong kind of playful. It’s not even playful, it’s the wrong kind of, not serious.

The thing is for people who are just starting writing, and I mean everybody who’s writing actually, but especially for people just starting, it’s really important to give yourself time to be a kid. Even if you’re 67, you know the great thing about being a kid or you know about being some kids anyway, is that a lot of children.

They understand that they’re not turning out adult work. When some, when a kid, I’m gonna write a book and they get the construction paper and the stapler and, crayons, Ivanni, who does this? They know this is not gonna be on the New York Times bestseller list. They’re not looking for an agent.

They, they know this is not what adults mean when they mean writing and publishing a book, but they do their. And they’re proud of it. And they come. Aunt Caroline and Caroline, I wrote a book. You did. That’s awesome. That’s amazing. That’s so cool. And you have to do that. No matter how old you are, you have to give yourself time to play, to do the best that you possibly can and not care whether it’s good enough.

Who cares whether it’s good enough, right? It doesn’t matter. . What matters is you’re having a good time in your learning. That’s what’s important. Figure out if it’s marketable later. Figure out if you’re gonna publish it later. A lot of people write five or six books before they get around to one that’s publishable and that’s okay.

You don’t have to publish to be a writer. You just have to write. And so that’s what I mean by playfulness and then the serious side of the coin. You have to approach it like a professional. If you’re gonna be a professional. If you don’t wanna be a professional, that’s fine.

You don’t have to be. But if you wanna publish, it has to meet certain CA standards. You have to hire an editor. I don’t care if you are an editor, , you have to hire one. Exactly. Everybody is better if they have an editor other than themselves looking over. And you have to be able to not take it too personally.

You have to be able to let editors say, okay, this is not good enough. . If you’re if you take that as, I’m not good enough, you’re not gonna be a professional writer. You have to get to the point where somebody can say your book isn’t good enough. And it of hurts to hear that, but you get over that and you go, oh, thank you for telling me.

Now I can figure out how to make it better.

Stephen: Yep. And what you mentioned about kids I’m working with kids. I wanna help show that kids can write and not necessarily be published, but they get the practice in, they get the experience in. So when they’re adults, they’re like, I know I can write. It’s time to be serious about it.

And I think part of what I also try and do in my own writing is show that there’s still magic in the world and that kids. Know that magic, but we lose it as an adult and as a writer. We need to recapture that sometimes. They’re, I’m sitting here watching the snow and I’m fascinated by it.

I love the snow. That’s magical to me. And adults miss that. They just get grumpy and it’s cold and they, but look around at the world. It’s fun. I’m going to bet some of your playfulness is taking your dogs out into the leaves, the snow for a walk and things like that. Would you agree with that?

Caroline: No I would agree with that, but I would disagree with something else. Okay. Yeah, everybody says that kids have this sense of magic that adults don’t. And I remember being a kid and I remember ha, I had a sense of magic in some ways, but I was also , Way too serious about way too much and took way too many things, far too literally.

And the kids around me, oh my gosh, I was constantly being mistreated by other kids who just did not have much of a sense of much really . And, kids have a sense of magic because they don’t know any. They don’t really know what’s real and what’s not and what’s possible and what’s not. So you give them an idea like, Hey, Santa Claus and flying reindeer.

They’re like, okay, why not? It’s not any weirder than anything else I’ve been learning about the world, , right? And things are new and they’re less self-conscious. I remember one time a friend of mine and I and her baby daughter, Were we went to the mall just before Christmas and we walked into, the, this area that was all decorated for the holidays and me and the baby simultaneously said, wow.

But you get older, you grow up. And yet some people, they don’t turn into grownups. They turn into. And that’s not good. Do not do

Stephen: that. That’s my son. He’s 22 and we tell him he is a 75 year old man. .

Caroline: Yeah. I just, you don’t do that. You don’t have to do that. It’s just not fun. But you get older, that’s not the only way to grow up.

The other way to grow up. Is you learn not to take yourself in. Too seriously. Exactly. You learn that if something, see, when you’re a kid, if something goes wrong, you don’t know that it’s gonna go right later. Cause you don’t have the experience, you haven’t had time. You get to be my age.

I’ve had days that just sucked. They’re just awful. No. How can it ever get any better than this? And it. So I know that now it’ll get better. It’ll be fine. Really. You get to learn, you have choices about how you’re gonna react to things. Oh. It’s snowing. Okay, I could be upset about this cuz I have to drive in this stuff, but it’s really pretty and I can choose which one I’m gonna focus on.

I agree. And you learn about metaphor and you learn about mystery and you learn about paradox. And things that don’t make sense, but they’re actually real. And you can, and that’s where the sense of magic comes, where

Stephen: Paradox. Paradox. That’s from the Christmas special of Dr. Who, paradox. Paradox.

Sorry. Bad

Caroline: joke.

Stephen: So what are some things that you would recommend writers do to gain some playfulness?

Caroline: I dunno, there’s a, you remember the old quote? There is no way to piece pieces the way. Yeah. Like that. There’s no way to playfulness. Playfulness is the way. Okay. Hanging out with other playful people might help to get the juices going. But, just. Try it. One, one phrase that really helps me when I’m writing is, it’s okay to write badly.

It really is. You wanna fix it before you publish it, but , it’s okay to write badly. Just give yourself permission. This is gonna suck. I’m gonna write it anyway. You just, nice.

Stephen: Yeah. Agreed. All right. So to, to finish up here, Carolyn. What would be your last minute advice for new authors?

Caroline: Ask specific questions.

Okay. I Why mean?

Because generic advice that you think will apply to everybody doesn’t always. And if you’re not ready, if a piece of advice isn’t the piece that you need right now, it’s not gonna be useful anyway, even if it will be useful. . If you’re not ready to hear something, you’re not really gonna hear it. But when you’re riding along and you get stuck okay, I don’t know how to do this.

When you get stuck, that’s when you go to. An established writer or an editor or a teacher or somebody who likes to read a lot, and you say, okay, here, I’m stuck. I don’t know what to do. And they can tell you, okay, here is the next step. And you take the next step and you get unstuck and you go and that’s how you make progress.

So you don’t look for generic advice. It’s going to apply to everybody. Start writing and when you get stuck, ask somebody. You can ask me, my, my contact information is on my website. Shoot me an email. It’s

Stephen: ca carolyn’s, get outta stuck writing service. , we’ll get everybody flooding you. .

Caroline: I wouldn’t mind.

Stephen: Nice. All right. Carolyn I appreciate you thi This was a nice last minute thing. I’m glad you found the podcast and got you on. It was great, Tania, I hope your book does well. It sounds wonderful. Thank you. All right.

Caroline lines in Maryland with her husband and dogs. Her experience working with the ecology has translated into a fiction book about a world disaster and how people react it.

She is a scientist and uses her knowledge to infuse her stories with scientifically accurate information. This doesn’t mean that the books aren’t exciting – I mean if the world is ending, you want to know how to fix it? Caroline hopes her books bring awareness of what could really happen if we aren’t careful of our ways.

The Naturalist’s Notebook (thenaturalistsnotebook.com)

Visit Tom’s store – https://riverrunbookstore.com

A Very Mercy Christmas

The Pigeon will Ride the Roller Coaster

Trust

the Candy House

The Lost Metal

A World of Curiosities

Strangers to Ourselves

Under the Skin

Stephen: Hit record when we came in new. It must not have taken it. So let’s back up. I wanna hear all this again. I don’t wanna miss anything. So that was a dry run practice. Okay. It’s the night before your big speech. , I apologize. I’m glad I looked up and saw that it wasn’t recording before we got all the way through Everything.

So am I. Yeah. Once again, this is like deja vu for me. I’m welcoming Carolyn to the Discover Word Smith podcast. But I’m the only one that knows you at the moment. So let’s back up since we’re now recording. And tell everybody a little bit about you and where you live and some things you like to do.

Remember? Okay. Remember we, we talked about that, so you should know the answer.

Caroline: My memory’s not that bad. . Okay. I’m from Maryland. I’m from Delaware originally, but I live in Maryland. What behind me is not my house, it’s my father-in-law’s house. I’m staying with him this week, but he’s in Maryland too.

And I don’t know if you can see it. We’ve got this gorgeous day outside, just that’s the Miles River. Chesapeake Bay is that way. Nice. And my background, let’s see. I like to say I went to a bunch of small weird schools, mostly in New England. I have a degree in conservation biology.

I’m a serious science geek, and I’ve been. I’ve approaching writing as a professional, with that kind of attitude. Since I was maybe 12 years old, I didn’t, I didn’t start publishing until I was in my twenties, but I’ve been obsessed with writing for a very long time. nice. What I do when I’m not writing, do I do anything when I’m not writing?

I like to hike. I like to paddle. I have a couple of beagles. They’re really cute. . I like to

Stephen: cook. You like to cook? We were talking about Thanksgiving and how we were getting ready for Thanksgiving coming up. And tell us again what you said about what you think of the Thanksgiving

Caroline: holiday.

Yes, I said. In my opinion, Thanksgiving is a cooking holiday, and when you’re done cooking, you invite people over to eat the food so it doesn’t go to waste. Yep.

Stephen: Totally agree. Now I’m, I’ve got a couple new interesting recipes. I’ve been trying I like to make Aztec hot cocoa, Hey, Thanksgiving.

Which is something different. I know. Other people have, various things. I, I. When I started cooking the Turkey, it, my father wasn’t very happy because he always wanted to cook the Turkey, but to be truthful, his Turkey was always a little dry. And I thought mine was much more moist. , we’ll just leave that where it’s at

Now your book, cause you’ve got conservation background. Your book is based on that idea. Tell us why you wanted to write this book and a little bit about what the book’s about. Okay.

Caroline: There’s some things about our world that bug me. Environmental degradation, violence, bigot.

All sorts of things. And on a good day I can focus on productive and constructive ways to pursue my ideals and all of that. And on a bad day, I just wanted all to go away and we can start over. So about 10 years ago, I started basically trying to cheer myself. With a lot of daydreaming about option B, civilization’s gonna collapse, something else is gonna happen afterwards.

It’s just gonna be better. And

but I, I got uncomfortable with that because I was daydreaming about a scenario that if it actually happened, would involve a huge amount of suffering and loss and just awful stuff. Really is a way to keep myself honest. I started thinking about what it would be like to actually live through this.

Civilization collapses the thing that comes next. It’s not like Mad Max World. It’s like nice not literally a utopia, it’s believable. They’re there, but nice. A lot of things that bug me, they’re just not an issue anymore or substantially.

but what’s it like to get there? What’s it like to live through that kind of change?

Stephen: Almost a dystopian world that’s going to something better rather than just all dystopian

Caroline: I think it’s really, know, there’s a dystopian phase. Yes. . But I like to refer to this book as post-apocalyptic optimism. There you go.

Stephen: I like that. Yes.

Caroline: Yeah, so the basic setup it’s 20 years after the collapse. By the way, I, the thing that I used to make the collapse happen was a.

Global Pandemic and I published the book in summer of 2019. So then when Covid happened, that was weird. It’s all your fault,

Quite possibly. So 20 years after the collapse and there’s this young woman, Elsie she. Was a cop, but she’s retraining to be an environmental educator, which is really a growth industry, by the way, in her world, because everybody wants to know how to rebuild society and not cause all these environmental problems.

She’s in training and starts having these basically memory flashbacks of a forest. that she played in as a kid. And that’s all that she remembers of her childhood. She doesn’t even know where it was. What her childhood home was. We just, you just not know. Imagine not knowing where you’re from.

So her professional mentor, Andy, Who’s older? He was an adult when the collapse happened. He’s an ecologist, so he says, this forest that you’re remembering, it couldn’t have just grown anywhere. There are particular places where different kinds of forests can go. So we’re gonna see how much of this forest you can remember and see if we can figure out where your home was.

So then the story becomes, Kind of detective story slash road trip through post-apocalyptic New England. Okay.

Stephen: So how, what, what genre you, you mentioned dystopian optimism. Would you say people that like dystopian would like it or do you it’s something that maybe they wouldn’t? Cuz they’re all about Mad Max.

The world’s destroyed and we’re killing each. Is there a particular genre or type of person that may like this, maybe a book or something that’s similar to give people an idea?

Caroline: Yeah, group of the one group of, and I think anybody can enjoy my book, but if I have to imagine, the center of the target audience.

Yeah. Science Geeks . Okay. Yeah I’m not a huge dystopia fan, so I don’t know what people who are fans of that genre would think of this. One of the one of the reviews on my Amazon list for this book I thought it was interesting. They said, I don’t usually like dystopias, but I did like this.

Because it’s not a dystopian, I don’t understand that, that, anyway

Stephen: that’s you should use that. That’s perfect. It, like you said, dystopian optimism. So that’s something new different that, that could definitely appeal to certain types of people. Yeah.

Caroline: I think that’s great.

Actually. I discovered there actually is, and I didn’t know this when I was writing, but there is actually a teeny tiny new genre that it fits into pretty well, and that’s solar. And that’s Fiction about what a sustainable society would actually look like, because in, in my book it’s, there’s no more fossil fuels.

So the way the economy works is completely different. The way technology works is completely different. You get these weird mashups where people are getting around in ox carts and things, and there’s. A character who has a robotic exoskeleton, , ,

Stephen: I like that. Cause things like Firefly and even Star Wars have that where it’s a mash of some old tech like the carts and then new tech blasters and robots.

But it’s melded almost steam punkish a little bit almost.

Caroline: Yeah. You use what works and you stop using what doesn’t. and then you end up in this mix. It makes people go, huh? Let’s see, books that are most similar. The closest one I can think of. And it’s by no means new anymore.

Flight Behavior by Barbara King Solver. Yeah, that was about scientists, about ecologists. and the framing of that book is certain ecological problems related to climate change. But at the same time, it really gets into the personal issues that the characters are having and it uses. It uses sci, the science to develop the interpersonal themes in a way that’s similar to what I’m trying to

Stephen: do.

Okay. So if people have read that book, they might be interested in this. And I love the solar punk genre. That’s a new one. I haven’t heard of that one yet. Not that I’ve heard of all of them. . And you said the book came out in 2019. Do you have plans for a follow up or are you doing another book standalone, or what’s coming up for you?

Caroline: I’m working on a sequel. In fact the, the computer that I’m using for this interview, the sequel is actually up on another window in the sense . Okay.

You’re sharing a screen right now with the not that I could see both. That would be distracting, but , right? Yeah. The next one, oh it’s been a trip. I I set out to write, standard sequel. Okay, it’s 15 years later, what are the characters doing now?

And it didn’t work and I couldn’t make it work. And I tried for years to make it work and it didn’t work. And so then I tried this and I tried that and I tried this other thing and then I, okay, whatever. I’m going. Throw out half the book and see what’s left. Okay. Got it. And okay, now this is too short.

So what if I add this other stuff that I have kicking around? So I just put all this in here. It’s turning into a collection of novellas and short stories that are all, one of them is the, what the characters are up to 15 years later. But then there are all of these other stories that are set.

Different parts of the same world and character, a bit character in the One story will be a protagonist in the other. And it’s really coming together now. I am in I’m in revisions and fingers crossed, I hope it, I hope to come out with it sometime next. Okay,

Stephen: good. Great. Now, do you have a website and where’s your book available now?

Caroline: My book is available lots of places. Amazon, you can’t really, you can’t really get away without Amazon. It’s on my publisher’s website. My publisher, saltwater Media, they go look at their website. They have a storefront that’s on. . Every online seller that I’ve looked at has it on their list.

I can search my book and it comes up. If you’re looking for my work, by the way, the thing to do is to use my name as a search term because Other people can use titles that are similar to mine, but nobody has my name but me. I’m the only Caroline Lanis in the world. I’m not even kidding.

Use my name as a search term. My work comes up as easy as that. That’s great

Stephen: cuz when I moved to California I kept getting calls that I needed to pay for my Porsche cuz there was another Steven Schneider that had a Porsche wasn’t paying for. I’m like, here’s where I live. If you find a Porsche you can have it.

I don’t care. Come and tow it. . Oh wow.

Caroline: Yeah, I don’t I don’t have those props. I don’t have a Porsche either, but, yeah , I do have a website. It’s news from caroline.wordpress.com and I have a blog there where I talk about mostly what’s ever on my mind writing wise, but when I have news like a, a new book coming out or something I do put it on that blog and.

each of my books has his own page on the website and, that sort of thing.

Stephen: Okay, great. And if you had a choice someone came up to you, would you rather see your book turned into a movie or a TV show? Movie. Movie. Why is that? And who would play the parts you thought about that?

Caroline: I have

movie because.

I’ve watched enough movies that they influence how I think and There, there’s a movie in my head of this book, there isn’t a TV show. Oh, good. Got it. I thought about it, I daydream, okay, what if the movie producers come, what am I gonna tell ’em? I don’t think it’ll happen, I can hope. Let’s see. Who would play who? I used to think Russell Crow for Andy, but I’m leaning more towards Daniel Craig.

Nice. Okay. Although,

Who is the man who played the lead in Shan Redemption? Tim Robbins. Tim Robbins. Yeah. I don’t, I haven’t heard Hyde nor hair of him in years. I don’t even know if he’s still working, but yeah he could do it too, because Nice. Andy, is this sort of, mysterious and standoffish and weirdly capable person.

You don’t know what he’s thinking, but he can do anything. Got it. Okay. As for Elsie, I don’t know who would play her. But because it would have to be somebody young, it would have to be

it would have to be someone of color. Elsie is a black Latina. And

I don’t see enough current movies to know to know who fits in that category. These days. I’ve seen movies who have people who, where characters are similar to her, their personalities, and they can. Movie Bulworth came out like 20 years ago, 20, 25 years ago. I don’t remember the name of the woman who played the female lead.

Yeah. But she would’ve done it. Okay. Only, now she’s too way too old for the part. Yeah. Yeah.

Stephen: You gotta watch that. Okay. Let me ask you this. Carolyn what are some of your favorite books and authors that you’ve read through your.

Caroline: Oh. There’s so many. I could start listing favorite books today and not finish until next week.

Yeah, not the

Stephen: problem. What’s your top, top two or three?

Caroline: Oh, where’s it of Earth? See by Ursula Gwen. Nice. Excellent. Whenever I run into a problem when I’m writing, it’s always okay. How would La Gwen do this? Overstory, I forget the name of the author, came out a couple of years ago.

Yeah. That one doesn’t ring a bell. Oh, look it up. It’s it’s possibly the best constructed book I’ve ever read. In term, if I describe how it’s structured and what’s it about, you’d think, oh, there’s no way. That could work. That would just be too hard to write. And he pulls it off Nice.

It’s just amazing. Yeah books like that I really liked. Oh, now I’m having a brain fart. , the one writer who everybody who writes, wants to be like Ernest Hemingway. Okay. . For whom? The Bell Tolds. Oh, okay. I was cliched to Hemingway, but the thing is, my natural proclivity and what I started out doing when I first started writing was, all of these words. Just curly, cute sentences, just mellow drum and all this stuff. And I read his work and I thought, oh, okay, , just pair this down a little bit.

Worked a lot better. I don’t just read fiction though. I favorites I read this year there was a teeny little. Basically mini textbook on the physics of ocean waves. Wow. It’s just a lot of fun to read. , another one on mollusks, like all mollusks everywhere, introduction to that was awesome.

My friend Tom Wes you should read his. Not fiction, it’s, popular ecology, just, but just go read his books. You’ll be glad you did . Alright.

Stephen: Okay where you live there do you have a favorite bookstore you like to go to? Not really. Okay. Is there

Caroline: bookstores in other places though?

Stephen: Okay, what’s one of your favorite book? Pl bookstore else? ,

Caroline: the naturalist notebook on Mount Desert Island in seal Harbor. Yeah, town Seal Harbor and Mount Desert Island. Teeny little town, sneeze, you’ll miss it and yeah, it’s there. Main Street is basically one street with three buildings on one side and on there.

A restaurant that serves the best lobster roll on the island. And this bookstore, they have a location in Northwest Harbor too, but the Seal Harbor location’s better. It’s bigger and it’s, the place is run by a couple of science teachers and art teachers. And they basically got every book that they like and they put it in this old house.

And they’re. Science books ranging from children’s books to popular science to, hardcore dichotomous keys that have everything you ever wanted to know about sedges, or whatever. And art supplies and science toys and these miniature little museum type things like, a display this big and you look into it and there’s like the solar system or the human heart or time or whatever it is.

And it’s just, every time I go to Mount Desert Island, it’s a rule. I have to go to that bookstore and spend, a couple of hours just wandering around and then waste much money and and we get lobster rolls.

Stephen: Nice. Yeah, we actually went through Mountain Desert Island last time I was in Maine, so I know the area.

I’ll have to look for it next time I go. Maybe next summer we’re going. Nice. Alright, Carolyn, before we talk about some author stuff if someone said, Hey, I heard you wrote a book. Why should I get your book and read it? What would you tell ’em? Because you’ll like it. Okay. There you go. Boom. Done. , that’s your word for your advertising.

Caroline: I, there’s, if there’s a lot of cool science in it, there’s some good perspectives. I’ve had somebody say that it’s, how I talk about sustainability issues and the very real risks that we face. A global pandemic, shutting down civilization is really unlikely. It’s not gonna be that, it probably won’t be that, but something could, we are vulnerable in certain specific ways.

That part is very real and I’ve had people come up to me and say that reading my book, got them thinking about that sort of thing. Had one person say that he changed his life, which was interesting. , I hope he changed it for the better. But see,

but at the end of the day, you’re gonna, it’s a novel and you’re gonna read a novel cuz you like it. And you’re gonna this one.

Stephen: Good. Nice. Okay if anyone asks now you got your answer. . So I appreciate you sharing the book with us, telling us about it.

Rachael published her first book 10 years ago and her second book is going on sale soon. In that time, self publishing has changed dramatically. We discuss those changes and the good things that have come about with self publishing.

So let’s move on, talk some author stuff and before we get on our topic let me ask you a couple other questions.

Your books are about 10 years apart or so. , what did you learn doing the first one that you’re doing different now or you have done different with the second one?

Rachael: Oh my God, when I read the first one, now it’s so cringy. I think that , just as you grow and mature, if you’re continuing to write, hopefully you get better.

And that is the result, right? That you’re like, oh my God. . But yeah, specific things. I think I was so histrionic in my first book. Granted it was a memoir, but just, I just say things that aren’t interesting about myself. You know how younger people tend to think that they’re more interesting that they than they are , right?

You pick that, you’re like, oh God. Yeah, I. I read it and I think, oh my God, I use the word just so much. That’s, I think every writer has their , little idiosyncrasy that you’re just like, ah, why did I have to say just a thousand

Stephen: times? Just, and that I, my software will pick up that.

And I’m like, oh, I did not realize I used that 21 times in this chapter. God, I know. Yeah, I know. But, so the software is good because it’s helping me learn and get over some of those. I find them as I’m thinking ’em or typing them. I used to start a lot of sentences with i n g words and I’m like, wow, I didn’t realize I did that so much.

Don’t get that out.

Rachael: Or what’s it called when you sorry, again.

Stephen: No. When you.

Rachael: Or like switching tenses. Sometimes I pick up on that or there’s just all kinds of little things that I’m like, oh God, I can’t believe I put that out into the world, .

Stephen: And the thing is, when I was starting, I’m like, what is wrong with this sentence?

It sounds fine. And as I learned more, I wrote more, I started realizing the stumbling way the writing sounded, or I was like, wow, that does sound. But as just a reader, you don’t necessarily always notice it until it’s so much. Yeah.

Rachael: Yeah. We’re probably our own worst critics. Please let that be true.

But, or like repository writing. Like, why did I tell them that when I can show them that? Which,

Stephen: oh, that’s of the things’ I, not that I’m an old writer but I tell newer writers and kids, I work a lot with kids. Stop worrying about the craft. Start worrying about reading every book. Stop worrying about classes and courses and the next book and get, just write.

Go write and write and write. Because until you’ve written some stuff, you cannot tell how bad you are, how good you are, what needs fixed your change. You gotta have the experience of the writing for everything else to make sense and for sure. That’s my new advice. I keep telling. People who are have not written as long as I have.

How’s that?

Rachael: Yeah. Yeah. And I think reading a lot is really important too. I think the more you read, the better

Stephen: you get. Yes. What I’m finding is, as I’ve written more, as I’ve learned more about writing, as I’m reading, I’m picking up on good sentences and better sentences. And all that. So I’m learning just by the reading.

Rachael: Yeah. Yeah. Uhoh, there’s so much to know.

Stephen: Yes. Yeah. Okay. So it says you’re offline. You can still see me, right? ? Oh yeah, I can still see you. All right. Everything’s okay. So it should be okay. I love Zencaster cuz it records locally, so as long as we can still see and hear each other, it’ll upload a file. We should be okay.

Rachael: Okay, cool. I’m new to it. I’ve never used it, but I trust you. Yeah.

Stephen: All right. So speaking of the software in that, do you have any special software you like to use?

Rachael: I still write in pages, which I think is an outside program, . It’s just an Apple program.

Stephen: Okay. Any other, any special services you like to use for any part of it?

Marketing or anything?

Rachael: This time I hired a publicist, so she’s taking that over and I’m learning as I go to that Kindle Unlimited that you just told me about is totally news. Yeah, nothing comes to mind.

Stephen: Okay. No, no problem. And so you got a publicist, so you basically handed over the marketing for the most part.

Is there anything special you’re doing besides podcasts?

Rachael: I’m, she’s telling me what to do and then I’m implementing it. So there’s a lot of social media stuff and I’m gonna actually like, Walk into bookstores like I did with my last one and be like, Hey, here’s a sample of my book.

If you wanna order it, this is how you get it. I’m gonna do boots on the ground, kind of marketing .

Stephen: Okay. Did you do that with the first one?

Rachael: I did, yeah. Yeah. And then, like I said, it was 10 years ago, so it was a lot different. I think it’s a lot easier to self-publish now.

Stephen: Okay. When you did walk into bookstores, did you get a lot of good responses or was it a tough I did

Rachael: actually, yeah.

Yeah, I was in LA and there’s a lot of artists there, so it was, I’m pretty, they were pretty receptive. Nobody took a lot of books. Like people would be like, yeah, we’ll take one, copy , and we’ll, so I didn’t really make any money, but I was so excited to have it out there that I was thrilled nonetheless.

Stephen: Okay. Good. Let’s talk a bit about how things have changed and your first book, you wrote that you said about 10 years, around 2013. And I started writing a couple years after that. And even I’ve seen lots of changes. So what are some of the changes you’ve seen that you’re dealing with now compared to the first book?

Besides, like you said, the marketing boots on the ground and Yeah. Publicist. What are changes have you seen?

Rachael: First and foremost, social media, obviously that. If it did exist, then it was just barely. And I didn’t know enough about it to utilize. And also this Ingram Spark platform. Last time I just published with create Space, which was under the Amazon umbrella.

I, that probably doesn’t exist anymore.

Stephen: Pre, pre Kindle. Yeah. Yeah. Cdp. Yeah.

Rachael: and you could call them on the phone and they would help you, like they’d pick up, but you got an actual person there’d help you with anything. I went into the Apple store to have them help me format it like it was like early days.

And now With Ingram Spark, it’s available in the catalog, the same catalog that every, that Penguin and Random House and everybody else is in. So anybody can order your book just the same as they would from anyone else. So that’s exciting.

Stephen: Yes and I think on Amazon yeah, you gotta compete against everybody.

With so many books appearing from the publishing houses and from independents, and people don’t know, they don’t notice, so they really do look at, oh, that sounds interesting. Oh, that looks like a good cover. And, oh, 300 other people have read it and left reviews, and whether it’s independent or not. Of course there’s always, oh, that’s Patterson.

I know that one. Oh, that’s Stephen King. I know that one. right. Yeah. But there’s always new authors, so I think it’s in that way, it’s a good thing in helping.

Rachael: It’s like you said, it’s great and it’s overwhelming. It’s if I were to be the buyer of a book, I’m probably, leaning towards something that I’ve heard of or something that’s got like the best seller sticker on it, which.

But not everyone’s like that. Fortunately, , they are gonna look at covers and I find that people that aren’t writers, they don’t even think about self-publishing versus a traditional publisher. So that’s

Stephen: nice. Yeah and I think it’s less so now. I think maybe when independent publishing 10, 12 years ago was really starting to come out, that it was a little different.

You’re on the, your first book came out right on the big cusp when Kindle first started. So everybody was giving away free books. I remember my first Kindle. I’m like, oh my gosh, look at all the free books. Yeah, but it’s cuz they wanted you to read more. So what ended up happening for me is, oh look, I’ve got 3000 books on my Kindle that I’m never going to read.

Rachael: Yeah. Oh my God. Getting people to actually read now, like even, friends. It’s like squeezing blood from a stone sometimes.

Stephen: Yes, I agree. It’s interesting cuz I do a workshop working with kids to help teach storytelling in video games oh, fun. That’s, using that in a different way because it’s a job.

They could do a job that’s out there. It’s so new nobody really knows about it yet.

Rachael: Yeah. You could teach me that actually. There are a lot of jobs out there for that.

Stephen: Yeah, it’s gr it’s getting bigger and it’s another one you can, do with your, it’s different storytelling. It’s different way of doing it.

You don’t have the same structure and you don’t get to make all the choices, so you have to make sure it structures around the game and the player choices. Right. It’s just totally different. It’s interesting and fun. So we were mentioning also on some of the things our craft has improved or gotten better.

That’s another thing I’ve seen change is all the software that’s out there that will go through and do some editing on your, okay. Stuff. Do you use any of that?

Rachael: No, I don’t. I’ve, I work as a copywriter and have. Taught writing and all of that as well. So I feel pretty good about doing it myself, but Okay.

What sort of things does it do? Obviously catches spelling and grammar, but,

Stephen: I use pro writing aid because I liked all the things that checked and all that, but, It will, like we mentioned using just, or that it has an over overused words thing, so you hit it and it’ll say the average book for middle grade kids uses this many, that in a chapter, you used this many, so try and reduce it.

Oh Try and cut out the was mm. try and cut out. And it will check overused words. It’ll check the sos. Are you, is there a better word you could use to change? Oh, that’s cool. Sentence. It picks up passive voice. It checks sticky sentences. Like you use too many sticky words here, and it’s making it cumbersome.

Can you rewrite it? Interesting. It doesn’t, it gives you suggestions. , it doesn’t always. Fix it the way it should be or the way you want. So that’s why I’ve learned a lot is I purposefully put these words like this cuz of whatever reason. Yeah. So it picks up on it, but it’s not what I want and I skip it.

Go to the next one. Yeah. Oh. Hey, you’re right. I did start four sentences with he, he did this and he said that, it’s let me change that. And it does help out a whole lot. Making the writing sound better. . But. I don’t even know if any of it integrates with pages. I think you’re only like out of a hundred and some people, I think you’re only the second or third person that said pages is what they use for writing.

Rachael: It’s like from just using a typewriter. .

Stephen: Exactly. Yeah. I have had some people still doing it longhand. So I do get that. Yeah, they win . don’t do it. I just talk to other people that do it. .

Rachael: Yeah. No, I just like it cuz it’s familiar. Like when I write, I’m like in a flow state, I’m not like stopping to think about I just get it out and then I go back and edit and pages.

What I’ve used for so long that I don’t wanna learn something new and

Stephen: what do you do to format it? And you have somebody you, you hired to do the formatting to get the money.

Rachael: I went on fiver this time and just had a typography person do it. And they do it for so cheap, like it was like 25 bucks or something,

Stephen: right?

Yeah. Yeah. Five is another one. I. Talk to some people about you gotta be careful. That’s something else You wanna talk about differences? I don’t think fiber really existed or was that big. Oh, it definitely didn’t. No. No. And when it first started, it was, Look down upon more, it’s, it was, oh, you can’t get a good person working there.

It’s cheap, blah, blah, blah. Now you got people with whole careers earning money on fire. Yeah. So it’s

Rachael: so much of everything,

Stephen: it’s, there’s. But it’s good too for the buyer because here’s my price range. , I can try and find the best person I can and yeah, you can try out people, here’s here 25 bucks a person.

Let me try you out. Okay. You’re the one I’m gonna go with. So that’s, you’re right. That’s a benefit.

Rachael: I did try to use them for cover design as well, and I, that didn’t work out at all. I had to find someone. Actually that I worked with that I should have just done that to begin with, but for something easy like typography, that,

Stephen: that worked.

Got it. Okay. I actually, I’m a PC person, I’m a programmer. Oh, okay. So PC’s just always been my tool, but I bought a Mac Mini with Velum just to do the formatting of my books. Okay.

Rachael: Velum is a, see I’m learning so much. I’m .

Stephen: Velu is formatting books. Yes, vem is, it’s one of the older players in the market, but they’ve, kept up and improved.

And a lot of independent authors use velum for formatting because you can import your word file, or I’m sure pages export in some format that it’ll accept. Yeah. It might do pages just because it’s on Mac. Come to think. , I’m not sure, but you import it and you basically I want it to be, five by eight or six by nine size or whatever size you want.

And you can choose a couple different styles and then it just formats it all in there. And there’s

Rachael: something on my computer that does that too. I don’t know what the name of it is, but I have that too. And the, and there’s, if you, there’s different styles of if you wanna do like a graphic novel, little format for that.

I do have that. Okay.

Stephen: Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Great. Yeah. Good. Okay. Before we get done here, can you think of anything else you wanted to bring up that, oh, I’ve noticed this has changed in the last 10 years, or, this is different than when I did the first one.

Rachael: People probably read less, I think again, because of social media.

Stephen: Unfortunately,

Rachael: yeah. I’m hoping that the pendulum is gonna swing the other way and, eventually we’ll just wanna get back to the basics, but Right. Yeah.

Stephen: Let me ask you, I was think about this, you mentioned you were in tv. Have you ever thought of writing TV episodes or scripts or anything like that?

Oh, that’s what I was doing. Oh, okay. Yeah. So did you write anything that we would know? Nothing

Rachael: that I’m proud of.

We need to brag about. I did option my first screenplay this past year, so hopefully that’s going to be being made in the near future. Nice. That’s the feature film. Yeah. So that’s exciting. Beautiful. I went film that for writing, so that also helped me become a better writer across the board, I think.

Stephen: Cool. I’ll look for Rachel Bigs. Oh, hey, I know that person. Yeah.

Rachael: again. It’ll be all over my social media. You don’t have to worry about looking for anything .

Stephen: Everybody look at this. Yeah, I’d be like that too. I’d any money I’d make off of the script for a screenwriting I’d spend to rent outta theater.

Invite everybody I knew. . Yeah.

Rachael: That’s all right. I think that, Sorry, go ahead.

Stephen: No. Please

Rachael: finish. Oh I think that the arts be it music or painting or writing is a calling and a purpose that sort of, you just have to get it out there. And whether it makes money or not, it’s awesome if it makes money, but you’ve done your job if you get it out there.

In reference to renting a theater and having everybody come and see it. That’s, you’re doing what you came to

Stephen: do. That’s, rachel, before we go do you have any last minute advice that you would give to new authors?

Rachael: Go deeper. I think if you are writing something and it’s.

Resonating with people, or you are smart enough to know that it’s not very good. Go deeper. If you’re describing a wall, tell me every single thing about that wall. Keep talking about it. Like one of the exercises that I would have when I’m teaching writing is I haven’t done that for a long time, but describe brushing your.

And it has to be like three pages and go into every detail. That’s so boring because in that you can edit something that’s actually interesting, you’re gonna find something that’s you wouldn’t have found otherwise.

Stephen: It, it pushes you and you have to think about it in different ways. I, yeah I do a similar thing where I will take mostly Stephen King, just cuz I enjoy reading Stephen King, but I’ll just find a couple random paragraphs.

And then I’ll force myself to rewrite it in different ways, in different styles or different fields or, making it very like lead child where it’s very short, succinct sentences and Right. Cut out a lot of the detail or then make it more like something from the Victorian area where it’s very flashy and flourishy and for me that, push yourself.

Try different things. Do different things, and it’s easier with other people’s stuff than your own. So rewriting it like that is a lot easier for me.

Rachael: evokes such different feelings, right? When you read like a short sentence versus a long flowery one, like you’re gonna feel a totally different way as a reader yeah. People Absolut absolutely

Stephen: to manipul. Yeah. Great. All right. Rachel, I wish you luck on your book coming out or the pre-orders right before Christmas and coming out the first, so we’ll get this up. I’ll let you know and I hope things go well for you. Thank you

Rachael: so much. It was great to meet you.

Stephen: It was great to talk to you.

Thank you. Yeah. Okay.