Discovered Wordsmiths

Charles is a professor and works with young adults on writing. We have a great discussion about helping the next generation learn to write and what is important in that process.

This isn’t just about learning to spell or diagram a sentence. We discuss exercises and learning about editing.

So let’s move on to some or stuff. And like I said, I’ve got a very exciting topic. I wanna discuss with you cuz it affects me in what I’m trying to do similar things.

But before we talk about that, you’ve written several books. So what are some things that you’ve learned over that time that you’re doing different than you did from the beginning? I’ve had such good practice in terms of two different forms. One is. Working collaboratively in the theater where you’re working together to create something.

Charles: So that’s an odd comparison because here you are, as a writer for the most part it’s often a very, as lonely is just you and that damn keyboard there and right. And the glowing screen unless you . And there are certain things that I learned in terms of collaboration, in terms of developing in, in fiction, especially seen work and characters and so on.

But the other experience I had of course, was developing this educational material. And even though that’s a far it’s a long distance from this kind of fiction some of the disciplines are very important. As far as I can see the thing that I learned the most had to do with making decisions often intuitive decision about whether or not I was going to write an outline the way you would say for a film script or whether I was just going to plunge into.

Material and see what, where I came out. and those are two very different approaches. Yes. Yes. But I have learned over the years that in some cases it’s better to just jump in and see what happens. And in other cases it’s better to lay it out. Or even if you don’t start by laying it out, coming to a point in your writing where you say, oh man, I better stop a minute.

I don’t know where I am. I don’t know where I’ve been. I don’t know where I’m going. Yep. Charles, so when you’re writing, are there any software or services that you like to use particularly or different.

I’m pretty simple guy when it comes to that. I write I write it depends if I’m writing a film script, which I have not been doing much of lately then then oh, what’s the name of that film script program?

There’s a script program that, that really is very beautifully said.

Stephen: Yeah, I’ve heard of it. I can’t think of the top of my head. But for the most part, I just write in Microsoft word. Okay. I just sit there and I that’s what I’m I’ve dealt with Microsoft word I’ve been writing on Microsoft word now.

Charles: I wish they’d stopped putting bells and whistles on it. cause I don’t need them. I’m just most part I’m just writing but yeah that, that’s it for me is the simplest vehicle that will support my efforts without getting into a lot of fooling around and codes and every, everything just gimme something I can go left to right left to right.

Get it out there. Besides doing podcasts, what else are you doing to market your book? The social media stuff is very important. I’ve got it out to some reviewers through this publicist who’s always, it’s always helpful to have to have some reviews that come Somewhat qualified people.

I haven’t hit the front page of the book section in the New York times yet, but yes, but there are awful lot of people out there doing doing very smart work looking at books and stories and you’re doing part of that too. So part of, for example, part of my publicity will be whatever we come up with here on on your show today.

That, and then,

Stephen: yeah, I was gonna say, so let’s talk about some of that. So you’ve part of your career, life has been working with and inspiring young writers. Tell us a little bit about how you got into that and what exactly do you mean that you do to help inspire new writers?

Charles: I think there’s.

Third two situations that I’m used to one is writers who are there because they just that’s what they wanna do. They wanna they wanna learn how to write. And then of course, you’ve got a captive audience sometimes. So you’ve whether they wanna write or not is the real challenge because I’ve literally had students, especially over the past few years when social media has taken over so completely.

And they’re like, look, I can get ideas across with a, with my just crappy shorthand. Why are you teaching? Why are you telling me all these things that I need to know about style and why? And so the truth is that part of it is. Learn the craft it’s like being a musician you can’t, unless you play scales, unless you can play scales.

There’s not much you can do you can get up and sit there and smash away at a guitar or a trumpet or some torture, some instrument, you turn into a torture machine or you’ve got to learn the craft. So then the challenge becomes well, how do you teach in the craft?

I think that the most critical the thing that I try to get across very early on is writing has a purpose. You have things in your life, you have experiences in your life. Let’s find a way for you to write about your lives. Let’s find a way for you to write about how life is impacting you, how life is affecting you.

What, who are you in the world and finding ways that are you don’t ask somebody to write a gigantic novel right off the bat. You ask them okay. Let’s like, for example, I will start a class with two or three short exercises. One of them will be okay. Get ready either.

Put your fingers on the keyboard or put your hand on a pen. You’ve got a piece of paper. Okay. Now, when I say go. You’re gonna start writing and you’re not gonna stop writing until I say stop. And when I say you’re not gonna stop you’re not gonna think you’re not gonna edit. You’re not gonna say no, that was all wrong.

You’re not gonna do any of that. You’re just going to write and everybody goes, what the, so then I say, okay, nevermind the, what? The let’s just do it. so they that they let, hopefully I’ve defined it and gotten the idea across clearly enough. So they just lack their crazy mind role their monkey chatter, mind role.

So they’ve first, so that’s great because then they’re saying, okay nobody was killed here. I finished look at what I wrote and I finished it and nobody said, you’re wrong and that’s terrible and you gotta die. Then we move on and I would say to them, okay now we’re gonna write with some purpose.

So now you’ve done this free writing. Here’s an assignment for you. You are going to go with a friend to a museum, an art museum, and you are going to look at the latest exhibit of say, van go paintings or whatever they whatever’s there. So you and your friend are going to go, but here’s the deal.

Your friend is blind. So it’s your job. To describe this painting to your friend. So then they get 15 minutes or something to, and I put a painting up on a wall up on the, I like that PowerPoint, shoot it up there, a painting, something crazy. I wouldn’t some you can use almost any painting and say, okay, now remember you are now going to tell your blind friend what this painting is about.

So then they have a purpose. So then they see, oh, look, what’s falling into place here. I’m trying to tell what the colors are, what the background is, what the, what, the, what the objects or the characters or the animals or whatever. Are doing and what kind of impression it’s giving me as

Stephen: I look at it.

I like that exercise. I just, so you know, I may steal that on my website, I’ve got absolutely exercises that call imagination inspiration. And I might put that one up and steal that. So let me ask you, you said you worked for a nonprofit that created materials and stuff. What type of materials were you creating?

And I assume these would be for schools. Oh, you know what, the comment first I do, like what you were talking about, because one of the things I see is. Especially in schools and not blaming them and not all schools, but they talk about, we’re gonna teach the kids writing, but they focus on only the craft and the sentence structure and proper use.

And there’s a whole other side to writing that you have to get the story out. You have to be creative regardless of punctuation, regardless of spelling you want. That’s the part that I think gets missed in schools

Charles: Often, I think I agree with you and the trick really is to say, okay, let’s have, so now you’ve had some fun usually on say this particular exercise I told you about the painting students will say, Hey, that was fun, man.

It was great. And they’re proud to read them. And some of them are funny. Some of them are quite beautiful and so on and they got resolved. But then of course, That’s the time when you say, okay, now let’s see how you said this. And is there any way that you could say it in a, I tend to work towards simplicity in terms of I’m not gonna teach a grammar, but I’m gonna teach you to write straightforward straightforwardly, and I’m also going to teach you and this, I use, I’d be glad to send this to you.

It’s I say often to my upper level classes these are university students in their second or third year, fourth year, I say, okay, now you’re going to be your own editor. That’s rough. So rather than having some teacher that you’re writing for. You are going to be your own editor.

And then I break that down into three different jobs that an editor has. And in those different jobs, you’ve got conceptual organizational editing, right? The big sort of big picture or organizing. Then you have an editor who’s looking at what’s called line editing, which is syntax and and style and clarity.

And then all the way down at the bottom is you are your own copy editor. And so you do this with material that they’ve drafted. So you say, okay, now we’re gonna look at this from the overall editor’s point of view. Now we’re gonna look at it from the line editors. Could you have said this more simply this line.

Why you’ve got a run on sentence here. What’s a run on sentence. Why does it detract from the clarity of what you’re trying to say? How can we choose

Stephen: that? These kinda nice. I like that.

Charles: I try to drag, I try to bring it drag it along beneath the purpose of say a good writing prompt where they get something on the.

Stephen: And I like that. Cause that’s my thinking too. Cause the kids get a lot of craft and grammar and spelling. They don’t need that. They get that. But the problem is that becomes the focus of the writing. So I’ve seen a lot of adults that they start writing and you read it and you’re like, okay, where’s the story.

You’ve got a rambling narrative here. That’s no interesting story. That’s no conflict. That’s no real protagonist or antagonist. There’s nothing that makes it a story. And I could share less what the grammar is. If I’m not interested in the story, I think kids need

Charles: that. And then once you get a story there, then you can say how can we now?

How can we really make this work? So it’s moving beautifully. That’s

Stephen: And that’s, I.

Charles: You can’t, they have a a framework, a context in which sort

Stephen: and they’ve got experience. Yeah. Yeah. Because I see again, trying to teach adults or kids, something before they have experience in that this was something I learned clear back in boy Scouts that you have, ’em do something and see what they do know and get the experience.

So when you’re talking about it and teaching it, they get it better. Cuz they’re like, oh, if I wanna light a fire, I need to build it this way and use this material. And that, now that makes sense. That’s why my fire didn’t light. Yeah. And the same with stories, it’s very difficult to teach somebody how to write a short story if they’ve never written a short story.

So with kids, they’re more open, just get ’em out there. And now we can talk about editing, like you said,

Charles: right. And then and it goes all the way back to that very first exercise, which is. Don’t stop because when you stop, that’s you thinking about what you’re writing about? I don’t want nobody is I say this often in my classes, nobody will be killed you’re in a safe place here.

right.

Stephen: So you worked when you worked for the nonprofit, what were some of the materials you were creating to assist in this?

Charles: We, the, this stuff was very specific supplemental material. In other words, it wasn’t huge textbooks, but it was social studies and law related education, which sounds dry as hell, but social studies.

So us tackling us and world history, depending on what grade the most state public school systems have a set of standards where if you’re teaching American history, you gotta hit. In the seventh grade, you gotta hit these numbers and this is what we’re. So you’re keeping in mind that, but you, this material was a lot of it was short, almost like news articles on American history or world history, current events in which not only are you writing, this is why it was such a good exercise as a writer, but you are also creating a basis for students to have a civil conversation about a topic do video games, create violence. So first of all, you gotta, you wanna write something, but you wanna write something that has to do with that topic and gives both sides of the idea and then channels its way down to a procedure in which you get them to explore what they’ve just read.

So it is very challenging writing because even though it’s maybe at a, it’s even harder, because you’ve got very limited space you have to really be careful what vocabularies you’re using. And of course it has to be in some way balanced. It has to, in some ways, say on one hand we have.

This point of view about this issue. On the other hand, we have that point of view about that issue. So right there, a lot of that. And then just being the clarity the exercise and clarity was, and it can get very complex. Law related education is about constitutional law and the tension between what the constitution says and what the world is all about, which we’ve seen a lot of lately.

That was the other kind of writing was, had to do with taking up issues. For example, they would be now taking up issues about gun control or or women’s right. To choose know, reproductive freedom. So

Stephen: on. Yeah the episode that I just am putting live this week had to do with someone who wrote, it’s a fiction story, but in the first chapter, her protagonist has an abortion and she wrote this two years ago and it just so happened.

She’s releasing it now and it’s very timely. So it’s a, we had a good talk about that. The history thing we talked about earlier you learn from fiction if it’s written right and good and fits and all that. Yeah. Uh, You mentioned video games, which I found interesting too, because one of the things I’m working on is doing a workshop for kids on writing for video games, writing story, and writing narrative for video games, because we’re getting more of that.

It’s getting bigger and it’s a form of entertainment that needs good story writing. It’s not your typical beginning, middle end. It doesn’t fall the same arc. So it’s an interesting new way for kids to write. Could be of interest to them, plus it could lead some to programming or other skills and video games are huge in our country right now.

Yeah. Yeah,

Charles: no, I th I think you’re, I think that’s very right. And what the other dimension to video games in terms of story, is that you’re not necessarily dealing with a linear start. In other words, you have options in terms of developing video games where you could be going in, you could be hitting a crossroads and a whole other story would branch out.

So there’s a lot of there’s just tremendous. Now, sometimes all of those possibilities can drive you crazy but certainly video games is great. And a lot of, I feel like a lot of. Of what we’re seeing on coming up on, on Netflix and some of these other channels has to do with kind of stories that, that really can’t be told in the simple beginning, middle and end a different

Stephen: thing, right?

Yeah. Charles, do you know, or have, or recommend or something for teachers or parents, or even just kids, any materials that are out there, some books or training courses or anything else like that to, that they wanna get into writing. They just don’t know where to start

Charles: For kids it’s I’ve had, let’s see if I’ve got all of them up here.

I’ve got a million of them. This one dry though, it may be. This is this is the beginning and end of everything in terms of style, as it says, it’s about style. It’s not about story. I also used in my class for a long time. This is a,

this is a big thing and I wouldn’t say it’s something for the students to necessarily know about, but have you come across the writer’s journey? I’ve got

Stephen: that exact copy. I’ve got that same cover and yeah, I’ve got that one too

Charles: as well. You should it is, it goes to the heart of what makes up story in terms of our collective.

Consciousness our collected this is basically Joseph Campbell, the sort of the myth, mythological historian, all of his work, boiled down into a storytelling. Yes.

Stephen: And one of, one of the other things I do is encourage teachers, parents, kids to write fan fiction because it’s a world.

They know they don’t have to think about the world and the world building and so much. And the characters, it’s a good way to get started writing. And again, once you have that experience of writing, you’ve got some writing under your belt, the grammar and other stuff makes a lot more sense and is easier.

Sure. And I think too many schools and teachers, and it’s not their fault. They have a curriculum, they have to do common core and all that jazz, but I. To really encourage good writers and we start ’em early in school. Fan fiction is a great way to do it.

Charles: Yeah, no that, once again, that’s kind the part of the theme you and I have been talking about here is get some stuff on the page and then we’ll look at let’s not out about oh, that’s wrong.

Oh, that’s wrong. Oh let’s get something down there and have a good time with that. And then see what what we can do to make it stronger, clearer, more impactful all the good stuff that comes with style, yeah,

Stephen: absolutely. All so Charles, we’ve had a great discussion and you’re going read a chapter from your book here in a moment, but we do, before we do that, do you have any last minute device for new authors or young authors?

Charles: I think again, I don’t wanna qualify it too much for basically my, my fundamental suggestion for new authors and young authors is right about what’s important to you, what and it can seem trivial to somebody else. It doesn’t matter if you can convince us that it’s important to you, then you’ve told us you’ve succeeded yeah.

About the things in your life that are important, that impact your life. The things that that you feel either are unjust and need changing or things that you love about your life. And write about them as, as fully and clearly as you can even if it’s the time you had a, you went swimming with some friends and you went over a waterfall or who knows what the and right, right from there first.

And then from there, you start looking at what other people might think is important and so on, but first got

Stephen: it. Great. Charles, great. I appreciate that. Good advice. Thanks for chatting with me today. We’ve had a great discussion about your book and writing in general. Absolutely.

Charles Degelman is an award-winning author, performer, and producer living in Los Angeles. After graduating Harvard, Degelman left academia to become an antiwar activist, political theater artist, musician, communard, carpenter, hard-rock miner, and itinerant gypsy trucker. When the dust settled, he returned to his first love, writing. A Bowl Full of Nails, set in the rural counterculture of the 1970s, collected a Bronze Medal from the 2015 Independent Publishers Book Awards and Gates of Eden, set during the anti-war movement of the 1960s, won an Independent Publishers book award. Degelman’s screenplay Fifty-Second Street garnered an award from the Diane Thomas Competition, sponsored by UCLA/Dreamworks. A second screenplay, The Red Car, reached finalist status in Francis Ford Coppola’s American Zoetrope Screenplay Contest. In addition, Degelman has written and produced documentary and educational films for TNT, Churchill Films, Pyramid Films, and Philips Interactive Media. He co-founded Indecent Exposure, a Los Angeles-based theater company dedicated to creating original, high-quality, socially relevant work for the stage. Degelman is on the faculty of California State University where he teaches writing in the Communication Studies Department.

https://www.charlesdegelman.org/

https://www.skylightbooks.com/contact-skylight

Today on discovered wordsmith, I want to welcome Charles deman. Charles, how are you doing today?

I think I’m

Charles: doing pretty well. Uh, The sky is blue out here in Los Angeles and LA threatens to be hot, but so far it just looks lovely and blue and I’m up and around and happy to be here.

Stephen: Nice. I live in Northeast, Ohio, and it’s been rainy the last couple days today. It’s not that humid.

It’s not hot. It’s beautiful. Gorgeous

Charles: day. Yeah. We’re yeah, I know. You’ve had some tough weather there. You’ve had some odd weather happening there we have.

Stephen: Yeah. Yeah. We all. We know you live in LA but before we start talking about your book and your trilogy, tell everybody a little bit about yourself and some of the things you like to do besides writing.

Sure.

Charles: Actually a lot of the things that I like to do inform my writing and I’ve always felt that was a a kind of a treasure that I carry with me, which is that in my artistic life however that Motley, they, that may be, and I you had said something earlier before the interview began about people’s other lives and the way they all work.

I, I was fortunate. As a kid to become both a a folk musician and an actor as and actually began later on to, to carry on as a, as both a full-time actor. And this book rocked in time that we’ll be talking about actually takes place in a theater company. The background I have is there, I’ve also been from one time and another as a starving artist in a wayward a wayward Bohemian, I’ve been a carpenter.

I enjoy working with my hands and have actually been able to scuttle by being a carpenter from time to time. And and then I’ve been an educator, which has been wonderful, but certainly in terms of the artistic work or the work, the craft of being a writer I feel very fortunate to have had this fairly deep background in music and in performance of music and in and in theater.

And then some of that has gone across to my writing. I also for a long time I’ve worked in a Both arts commissions in San Francisco and down here doing theater in Los Angeles. But I also then decided to go back to grad school because I wanted to teach at university level.

And nice before that I had been I worked, I had a real office job by God. ,

Stephen: I’m sorry.

Charles: exactly. I went in every day and, but it was a very, I was terrific job. I was working for a small nonprofit that we designed and published educational material and history, us history, world history. And that was terrific.

A lot of social studies work, a lot of curriculum design, a lot of actual procedures and a lot of of informational essays. And that was a terrific training ground for me. I basically I made a living nice salary and I learned all aspects one way or another of both writing and design and development, but also publishing I got a chance to really get my hands on that.

So I’ve been lucky that way, that I’ve been able to set out and find various either jobs or artistic adventures, all of which seem to lead in this sort of weird, mysterious way toward what I now do as Predominantly, I’m not a, an active musician. I’m a writer. That’s nice.

Stephen: And I must say you you mentioned wayward Bohemian.

I think that would be the, a great name for a band. And you said you played folk music wayward, Bohemian obviously sounds folk music, but man, can you imagine a heavy metal band with the tight, with the name of wayward Bohemian? It just I think that would be a wonderful thing.

Charles: Great. I also was in, especially in San Francisco, I played a lot of jazz.

I gotta, oh yeah.

Stephen: I missed that now. Sometimes I, I did that when I was in school and I don’t listen to a whole lot, but every now and then I’ll put it on and I’m like, yeah, I of miss this now that I’m getting older. More so than I did younger. Yeah.

Charles: It’s not it’s hard to find a little bit harder to find these days.

It’s there. Yeah. It’s there, but. It is a little bit less of what’s going on in the world than it was say 50 years ago. It’s anyway, it’s a background that I, that is also part of my artistic work and find it precious to have had those experiences

Stephen: agreed. Agreed. And your experience that with education and teaching and that we’re gonna talk a bit more, that type of thing for the second half for authors.

So there’s a preview. But why I know musician and actor and teacher, why did you wanna start writing novels and fiction?

Charles: I had started actually as a teenager and I was one of those kids who sat around reading Robert Lewis Stevenson and mark Twain. And fortunately my parents were both literal wayward, Bohemians yeah, not quite but close enough so that I could, they could could appreciate some of my madness as having to do with folk music and all the other things that I’ve done, but also during my earlier years.

And we’ll talk about this with the trilogy. I was an, a, an activist. I was an anti-war activist during the Vietnam era and I’ve continued to be an activist but most particularly my, my real mission in life is to create writing now but certainly theater as well that speaks to the times reflects some of the conflicts and contradictions that are, that our lives go through as history drags us in its wake.

Stephen: So well, to, to that point, I live eight minutes away from Kent state and they still have a sculpture on Kent state with a bullet hole in it. When I saw that the first time I was like, wow, that the sculptures here with that bullet hole, and it’s still there to this day with the bullet hole so it’s, that’s weighty.

Charles: That is very interesting because that was of course in, in the experience of sort of university based student protest, that was a very pivotal and traumatic event. That that happened in 1970 is some of you folks may know where the national guard actually there’s some talk about whether they went out of control or whether they were ordered to open fire on these kids who were protesting the war.

And as you’ll see later also protesting the use of the university as a laboratory for developing weapons which to many of us at the time felt like I don’t. My university doing that. I didn’t pay tuition to have you guys develop napalm to, to drop in Vietnam. So

Stephen: definitely interesting times not to say that the last 10 to 20 years, haven’t been interesting times in and of themselves.

Charles: God, no, this this is a very, that would be a very long conversation for us to be comparing what’s going on now with what had been going on in the sixties. Lot of similarities, but a whole lot of differences, obviously. Definitely. So before we do delve in the history, because we’re old guys let’s talk about your book which is the last part of a trilogy the resistance trilogy and the book is called rocked in time.

Stephen: So tell us a bit about that.

Charles: I’ve got. Copy here. It looks like it’s backwards to me, I suppose it is to, I think

Stephen: it’ll flip around when I do the video. Gotcha.

Charles: Genius there. Rock time has a subtitle of confessions of a radical theater artist. So this particular novel, the third of the three in the resistance trilogy is set in a theater company.

And this is where we play with the interface between fiction and real life. So we, the the novel itself and the narrator are part of this company he gets brought into he auditions for and gets brought into this. This rag tag theater company that in the late 1960s actually existed.

So yes, it’s a novel and yes, there are many fictional characters, but there are also an interlay with historical characters as well, including some black Panthers, but and some other interesting folks. But it’s really the story of this company evolving and moving out into from its home in San Francisco, moving out on the road to do a tour of these campuses that had been set.

Earlier so that there’s, we’re basically the story. The first half of the story is set on the road. There’s a mythological for you on the road in America, in late 1960s. With this dinner company going from campus to campus, where they have been expected, invited by a political organization, student political organization that really existed called students for a democratic society.

Now, you and I know about the students for a democratic society, but for those who don’t it, it was, and still is, it doesn’t exist this in this way, but at the time it was the largest student organization in. And they organized around economic issues and they organized around the political issues of the time, such as the war and racism and the big part of what I tackle in rock time sexism.

And so a lot of what goes on in Rockton time in this theater company is the contradiction in the characters between them being considering themselves to be very left wing, very righteous about their political and ethical motivations. But women were still second class citizens. And that was of course much truer in the late sixties than soon thereafter we saw women striking out to, to have their voices heard as feminists.

But this is right on the cusp of that that rock in time takes place. So there are quite a few interactions there about women not taking any crap from the from the supposed radical leaders of the of the left wing. So there’s a lot of character stuff going on there, but it’s it was very exciting to write because it really did allow me to go across the country from one university to another, in my own fictional world here.

Where we had set up these performances that were part of big demonstrations. So I’ll probably read a little bit about that as it goes on. Yeah. And it just then takes looks at what it’s like to be in a small theater company that is creating its own material. This is a company that wasn’t taking from Shakespeare.

It was it was writing its own material. So it was it was an original endeavor of very innovative nature. So you wrote a book about a theater company that’s writing play essentially, that’s very meta that’s right.

That’s right. We, I, yeah, that’s right.

Let

Stephen: ask this kind of a double question. What other authors out there are similar to your style that someone may say, oh, I like that author. I’ll read Charles. And then also your book, what other books out there might be similar to that book? That people would say, oh, that sounds interesting.

Charles: Good, good question. I have a very hard time coming up with favorite authors and so on. But people who I think wrote articulately in, in in historical settings like this who I like would include let’s see. Oh dear. A man named John Nichols. Who wrote several novels in the seventies and eighties set during this period.

He wrote about he wrote about the, the revolutionary movements that were going on strangely enough in New Mexico. And and with people who were moving back to the land and with people who were interacting with with the local folks who grown up there. So John Nichols is one wow.

it’s a, it’s it I really am not strong on taking models now, strangely. During the time I wrote this I did, I was reading very avidly. I was reading Doris Lessing. Doris Lessing is a British novelist who who wrote in the in the fifties and sixties, but she wrote about she wrote about the political movements in great Britain after world war II.

And so there was a great deal of very animated interaction in her book, the golden notebook okay. That had to do with what might what might sound, oh God, we’re gonna listen to a political argument. Oh God. But he had that gift of turning these ideas and these struggles.

Into dynamic animated interactions often quite sexy because that was certainly a part of our time it was sex drugs and RO rock and roll, but rock and roll other stuff too. So

Stephen: right. So why did you choose, why did you choose to write a fiction book based on this time period and the conflicts instead of something else like sci-fi or whatever why this particular subject matter for your book?

Charles: I, because because I’d had such an intense experience myself in doing this kind of. That I wanted to try to capture that not by remembering exactly who said what to whom or how all how all of that the numbers of people came, who came and went. I’m still in touch with many people I worked with in that theater.

But I would have to say that I really needed the distance of creating characters. So I’m not me as the narrator. I’m slightly different person. Although it’s done in the first person And many of the characters, although they approximate real life characters that I had these experiences with are not because it just gives you the freedom to.

To move dramatically through a work and keep it rolling. Regardless of there’s always this old question about writing was I is it’s not really about what really happened. so right. It

Stephen: it’s, yeah. It’s to give you that feel and it’s to have a good narrative.

Also, it’s gotta be an interesting story. But the narrative has to lie on the page. It can’t be so often when I’m in say workshops with kids or even with contemporaries they would say about a time, oh, it wasn’t really like that. That’s not the point. The point is how is the story?

Charles: What is the world you have created on the page and how does that world make sense and how does it move? It’s not about what really happened, but it’s in the, it’s in the ballpark.

Stephen: Exactly. So in the, you got that, you’ve had couple books out on the trilogy. What’s the feedback from readers been like?

Charles: They people are very appreciative of it goes two ways, actually, I’ll say and I’ll try to be brief about this, but one, one. Clump of readers people who take the time, which we all appreciate when people will take the time, say on Amazon to write a review or on good reads to write a review, because they’re in a certain way more important than any critics review it’s what people are seeing in your book, right?

Or just folks who are reading this stuff, not trying to get it in print but, and so there’s one, one group of people who talks about this period and says, thank goodness for you bringing some of this back to me or. Saying, thank goodness. I never really knew what happened then I was too young.

I didn’t really know what was going on, but I’ve always been curious. And somehow you, Charles deman have managed to give me a sense of what was going on in these worlds of resistance of the resistance movements in those days. So there’s those that bunch. And then there’s a bunch that says, ah, you guys didn’t do anything.

Oh, you did just sit her out and smoke dope and get laid part. And it’s just not true. There was a tremendous amount of activity and people either are going, nah, that didn’t happen like that. Or they are saying, thank you very much for. Either reminding me or showing me something that I didn’t have the chance to experience.

Stephen: And I love that you said that’s pretty powerful to me and understanding about your book because when I read Harry turtle, Dove’s guns of the south it’s about the civil war. And if the south got machine guns and what would happen. It’s like a history version of a Michael Criton book where what’s in there the history facts are what’s there, but then he makes it a narrative and changes it.

Yeah. And I learned, and he really tried to explore different thinking of people on the whole civil war, on both sides and good, bad, and more than just the slavery point of it. And I learned more about the civil war reading that book than I did in school. School was what numbers were so I love books like that.

That can bring that out. Very good. So you should be very proud of that. I think that’s wonderful.

Charles: That’s, that, that is you make a good point there that oftentimes the vehicle of say a fiction vehicle that has some compelling plot to, it can bring a tremendous amount of information along with it that you’re not even like having to memorize the dates but you’re learning, and that’s to say everything in like that book that Lee said, that’s exactly what he said. No, I understand that you gotta weigh that a little bit, but it’s like the Michael Creighton Jurassic park they talked about the blood from the Amber at the time, that was a theory.

Stephen: They thought they really could get DNA from the blood in mosquitoes caught in Amber. Great. But it came to be not true, but at the time it, it was a cutting edge theory. And I love that about his books too.

Charles: So yeah. Yeah. That was an interesting moment. I remember that. Yeah. But yeah for example, gates have Eden.

It, again, it’s fiction and none of the characters are real, but I draw from there the, a couple of kids who are college students, who you see them coming of age and starting to understand, wait a minute, what’s going on out here. This is in the early and mid sixties what’s going on out here and you’ve got, so you’ve got people who were middle class college students.

You have people who were a couple of characters or just working class folks who were drafted into the war and came back with a different kind of education than I left with in terms of their abilities to understand what was going. That created that war and they are become characters.

There’s a there are a couple of feisty young women in here who are, there’s a black couple who are involved in the civil rights movement along with a lot of white people as well. But it’s a very broad scope, but I’m trying to bring all these elements in to say this. These are the people who came together from very many different directions to put up the resistance that we recognize as either the fight for civil rights or the anti-war movement in during the Vietnam

Stephen: era.

And that’s important. I love that. Charles, your series, if you had a choice, would you rather see it as a couple movies or as a TV show? And I say TV, but streaming more, more so than TV.

Charles: It’s a fun topic to deal with because there’s so much material out there that people are needing so much material it’s I’ll take I’m in.

So I see some of this did I’d say there’s one, one of these books of all full of nails is set in a little mountain town in Colorado. So that would make a really good film just from the fact that what happens is after the protagonist sort of has to leave California has to get outta town.

He ends up in, in in a little crazy little mountain town in Colorado, and that would make a great little feature film it would be. Just practically speaking. Okay. We got one site, all we have to worry about we’re not right. The larger ones I think rock in time would make an interesting episodic say six, a six episode piece where you’re watching this company come together, go across the country and then recover.

right from

Stephen: these, I think you’re right on that. That would, it definitely would not work as well in a two hour movie.

Charles: No it, some of this is just thank goodness for this new streaming format yeah. In the popularity, because you really. Tackle what normally are such difficult projects to try to get war and peace into a movie.

Oh

Stephen: man. Oh, geez.

Charles: so how do you do that?

Stephen: They did ass foundation. So that one hat’s off. Yeah, definitely. Do you have a website and where can listeners find your book?

Charles: It’s all the usual suspects have it. The new, the, these two have been out for a while. So they’re at Amazon.

They’re at Powells they’re they’re at bookshop Barnes and noble they’re around, they aren’t necessarily on the shelf. But you can always order them. Amazon of course is sadly the principle place. I do have a site of my own quite simply Charles deman, one word. And again, I can looks like that back backwards charles deman.org. OK.

Stephen: I’ll make sure have a link in the show notes, right? Yeah.

Charles: Cause I’m there. And then I’m, I’ve been working lately with a with a publicist I’ve never worked with a publicist before, or I have a couple of times, and hasn’t, it’s been not as fruitful, but I am being taught social media.

got it’s. Yes, you I’m sure. It, it is a whole new world. And so I’m getting out more on social media with these all three of these books now. And but the most recent one, and this one rock in time that we’ve been talking about is coming out September 13th. So nice. You can reorder it now, but it won’t come to you for a while.

Stephen: I think that’s the same day. I’m actually releasing my book one in my middle grade fantasy. Yeah. So we’ll have to call each other out and see how things go. Absolutely.

Charles: Yeah. Yeah. Great. Congratulations. Yeah.

Stephen: Charles, what’s your plans for your next book? Oh, dear.

Charles: I’m not sure I’m still recovering from from finishing this lap.

I literally yesterday but in the final Post you’re probably familiar and some of your listeners may be familiar with the difference between an arc, an advanced reading copy that goes out. And then the book itself that goes out, the advanced reading copy goes out a few months ahead of time for for reviewers to take a look at, see if they wanna review interviewers such as yourself.

So on. . But in between that time, I also had a wonderful copy editor go through the book and she found all kinds of horrifying glitches and things in the advanced reading copy. So I just literally yesterday finished going through and integrating all of her changes into the manuscript. Very wow.

That’s the other part? Young readers should know this is hard work. You guys .

Stephen: Yeah, it can be, but it’s enjoyable. Just like playing music, everything. Yeah,

Charles: exactly. That’s I sat here working on this script yesterday and had some music on it’s just great.

Stephen: Nice. So we were talking some of books earlier.

Do you have any long time favorite authors or favorite books of

Charles: your own. I do, but again, I’m so terrible at thinking about this, but I would say pivotal to my writing. I would say and I was introduced to him very early on by my father. Mark Twain, Sam Clements. I love Twain the intelligence and the humor and one thing that I’ve always been fascinated with mark Twain about is mark Twain is a celebrated liar.

He sees lying as like the stuff of fiction come on. It is right, you’re lying all the time. At least you’re being honest about it. Right. Yeah. And he’s a good case study because we know of him and think he’s wonderful, but he still at times had to go on a book tour to promote a book. So he’d have enough money that he wouldn’t be bankrupt so

yep.

It this is not instant hit time. And it’s, there have been, there are times when wonderful things can happen. But for the most part, he like pretty much everybody who is actually seriously writing is working hard to make ends meet. It’s not always that lucrative a profession.

Stephen: And so Charles, where do you live? Do you have a favorite bookstore you like to go to?

Charles: I do. There are a couple around here, but my favorite I live in in basically in Hollywood but a little bit east of us is skylight books, which is in a neighborhood called silver lake which is still part of the larger sort of Hollywood world.

And it’s been skylight books has been around for a long time. They made it through the COVID disaster Bravo for them for doing that along with a number of other bookstores. But I like them. They’re very community oriented. They’re very much about bringing in authors to speak of an evening.

And now that COVID has died down somewhat, they’re back to doing that. So you can crowd in there and somebody will read, and then we’ll have a discussion, very similar to what we’re doing right now. And and sign books and so on. And it’s just a it’s it’s emphasis and why I think it’s important.

And is representative of a large number of books towards these days that aren’t part of a chain is that they are connecting themselves to the community in many ways as they can. Yeah. I love that. And it’s.

Stephen: Oh, I’m sorry. I was just gonna say so before we move on to talking about author stuff, which I’m very excited on our topic of working with kids if somebody came up to you and said, Hey, Charles, I heard you wrote a book.

Why should I get your book and read it? What would you tell?

Charles: Have a good time

entertainment then there you there, right?

Stephen: yeah. Very good. All well. Charles, thank you for sharing the book. I appreciate it. And I hope awesome readers and listeners find it exciting and fun to read.

Charles: I, one to add one post to that, the thing that I think is most valuable to me is when somebody says, oh, I loved your book and I didn’t wanna leave it.

I didn’t wanna leave. In other words, they’re saying I have created, you have created a world. And I like your world and I wanna stay in it. And that, to me agree, just that feeling sometimes you get with the book, it’s oh man, let me get back into that world. Let me climb back in there. Yes. Yes.

That’s our favorite. Yeah. Yeah. It’s to me, that’s oh, thank you. That’s wonderful. I just feel like that’s what I’m trying to do.

Stephen: Good. Great. All right.

Lisa is back and talking about time constraints. As a mother, she had limited time to write because of all her other duties and responsibilities. Even if you aren’t a writer, we all face time constraints and it affects how much time we can write.

so let’s talk some author stuff. So you’ve written a couple books. So what are some things that you are doing different now that you’ve learned from when you first started?

Lisa: I think every time you start something new, it should be better. And if it’s not, you should stop. I think every time, like for instance, when I wrote my first novel, it was terrible and I knew it was terrible and I knew it wasn’t gonna do anything with it. I just needed to show that I could write something longer to myself that I could write something longer than a 15 page short story.

I published a lot of short stories back in the day, and I loved that medium, but I was like, can I sustain an ITOR for 200 plus pages? So I set myself a task to do that, and I did it and it was awful, but it was done and it was big or then a short story. And then I threw it away and I was okay with that.

And then I started another book and this one was much, much better. And that got me my first agent. And it also was shortlisted for a big price. Now it didn’t sell, so shit happens. But then I. Worked on another book. And I just think you, you, if you don’t learn about craft and about pace and about beauty and about what works every time you start writing something, you shouldn’t be writing, you should mean that’s fine.

Nobody needs to be a writer. But to think that you are somebody the other day on writing, Twitter said what should I do with my should I edit my book that I just finished? Or should I give it to somebody else? I said, first of all, you need to put it away for a month, just put it away.

And then you need to pick it up in a month and you need to edit yourself and maybe rewrite the whole thing. And then you need to put it away again. And then you need to do that one or two more times, and then you need to pay somebody to edit it. If you’re gonna try and publish yourself. But if not still, maybe get beta readers or something.

To think that people are just going to dash off a book and that’s it. It doesn’t need any editing. It doesn’t need rewriting. It doesn’t need somebody to say what’s going on here. Do you, are you sure you wanna do this? It’s preposterous to me, right? But so you need to see writing as a process.

You need to see it not as like I’m gonna write a bestseller and be famous, but I’m good to write the best book I can and then I’m gonna make it better and then I’m gonna make it better and then I’m gonna make it better. And then it’s gonna be the best book it can. I thought this book was done and it was accepted.

And then when I worked with editor at the press, I thought, damn, wow. The changes were not huge at all, but every question he asked me needed to be answered and it, it became then a very good book, nice, which I needed somebody else to help me with. And as a former editor, I got it. You have to be open to that, but you, if you’re not, then

Stephen: yeah, it working with an editor is definitely a learning process.

And I’ve learned a lot about my writing and better writing doing so, but you have to be open to it. I know some authors that wrote that literally spent like four and a half years writing the first novel and finished it and was done, ready to publish. No, and I was even told by somebody, no, I’m not gonna send it to an editor cuz I don’t think they’d understand what I’m trying to do.

If an editor’s not going to understand, how do you think an audience is going to understand exactly.

Lisa: Exactly. And I, yeah, exactly. And I just there, there are some obvious examples of some very famous edit or writers who are no longer edited and you can tell but. Mostly you need one and you need somebody to just read it like a reader and say, I don’t know if I get what you’re doing here, or I think I need a little more juice, or I think you’ve already said this, or now you’ve said it twice.

And I think you only need to say it once. And never mind copy editing that happens later, which is also extremely important, not just for typos and mistakes, but for grammar, weirdnesses that you might have done or for misplaced modifiers or all sorts of things that, that as a writer, you really don’t want in your book.

You want it to be as perfect as possible. So yeah, you have to be absolutely amenable to a critical eye because not everybody, even if it’s published, not everybody’s gonna like it. Publishers weekly, didn’t have very nice things to say about this book, which devastated me. They said it was, let’s see half cooked which I was just devastated by.

But every other review has been fabulous. So I just, I can’t let that get to me, which you need to realize that every every novel is subjective. Even the can people are so arguable, should Fitzgerald, Hemingway be in the cannon and da. So if you can’t convince an editor of what you’re doing exactly how do you reach anybody else?

Stephen: Don’t right. And there’s a truth right there for anyone, no matter what you’re writing, you gotta write for the right audience. You didn’t get a as favorable publisher’s journal review as you would’ve liked, but. There’s multiple people that do those reviews. So your book may just be the wrong book for that person.

That’s the unfortunate thing about those

Lisa: reviews. It is. And I think it probably was, and I there’s nothing to do about it. Because that reaction has been a one off. Yeah. So it’s okay.

Stephen: And they may have been having a bad day or they may have just read something that just put ’em in a bad mood and moved on to your book.

And it There’s so many things, but yeah I talk, I write middle grade fiction and you may say Harper Lee is an amazing writer and everybody should read her book and it’s a great book, but you go talk to most fifth graders. They like, oh my God, that book sucks so bad.

so which one is it? It’s your point of view, I guess I I think Harper and I think te Berg is way overrated. It’s been living on this lofty cloud for a very long time. It was a nice book, but whoa, when people say it’s their favorite book they ever read, I’m just like, I don’t think so.

Lisa: More things, it’s a good book, which she’s become this lion S for this one book, essentially. And oh, did, she’s no longer with this, but God, what I think about it’s

Stephen: becoming more dated, unfortunately, with some of the way the world has. Moved on as Steven King would say . Yeah. I mean it, David is okay if it’s still profound, but in this sense I I guess people like the way the whole way that he came to the ATCU Finch came the defense of black people, but there’s a lot of other stuff being written about.

Lisa: And by minorities that is spectacular.

Stephen: That’s one of the points can teach you so much more. Yeah. One of my new favorite authors is Jeff strand. He writes kind of comedy horror, and I just really love the stuff. It’s not for everybody. And a lot of people don’t like it, but he has written a couple middle grade books and he’s gotten comments from teachers saying, oh, thank God.

He’s I cannot get kids to read books. And my thought is, that’s cuz you’re giving ’em books that they don’t care about and they don’t wanna. Yeah, but they pick up these middle grade books by him and they’re funny, they get engaged and they’re like, give us more. And the teachers are like, we love your books because they get the kids to read.

And that’s one of my things is I think sometimes we push things like to kill a Mockingbird on kids before they want to read it or they can enjoy it for what it is. Absolutely. We’re just gonna force this on you. And it’s no, we’re wonder they don’t wanna read. Cause it’s a bad experience. And I’m not again, not saying it’s a bad book.

No, no fluid for certain people at certain times necessarily.

Lisa: Yeah, no. My, when I was my daughter was younger in, in middle school and early high school, she loved Ellen Hopkins. I don’t know if you know who she is. She’s very famous. Ye okay. And her books are almost always written in poetry and they’re fat, fat, and she was addicted to them.

And I. Since I don’t get it, but this woman’s very famous and very successful and you love them. That’s great. She’s now on the band books list, Ellen, which is fascinating. And I’m like, okay, I get that. Because her books are tough, but they’re important. And then my daughter goes in my bookshelf and she pulls down the great Gaby and she pulls down as I lie dying and she pulls down all these classics and she starts reading those and I never had a worry that she would stop.

But, and Hopkins wasn’t who I wanted to read, but I got, I understood why she was speaking to grace. And and that made sense to him. My, my son is addicted to Harry Potter books and he would, he was a very fast reader and he would read Read them in hours, he would do a marathon.

It was crazy. So we were, I guess he was a teenager. Most of ’em had either come out or he’d finished them. And we were on a trip and I was reading American gods by Neil Gayman, which is loves that book. Oh man. One of the best novels ever written brilliant. I’ve read it three times, which I never do.

And I finished the book and I turned around to my son and I handed it to him and I said, read this and he’s and because he trusts me and we have a good relat, he said, okay. And he was blown away, but I just knew that it would have an impact on him too, but because both of my kids grew up reading, seeing their father and I read reading was never.

Onerous. It was joyful. Yeah. And I didn’t care what they read. I didn’t tell them they couldn’t read the I they couldn’t see our rated movies, but I didn’t care what they read. That didn’t bother me books, cuz I read completely inappropriate stuff. Very young . But yeah, that got him. He was nice.

He is a huge, no gamut fan and has been but yeah I think you need to meet people where they’re at and then they’ll get farther along.

Stephen: I, I think some of the books on the list for the kids are only there because that’s what has always been there. It worked for parents and grandparents and I’m not again, not saying they’re bad books, just not maybe the right books are appropriate books for the kids in 2022 or that they’re better books than others.

I think so of the times those lists should be reevaluated.

Lisa: Oh yeah, no I do too. I’m always curious about the hundred books you should have read. I’m like. Okay. Really? Why tell me why I should have read this particular book because it’s old. We all have there’s a, an author named David lodge, who I think is now deceased, but I was living in England and I read all his books and he’s very clever and funny.

He reads about academia in a very satirical way at, I can’t remember the name of the game, but he writes about a game where all these English professors go to parties and they try to beat out the other people with a famous book that they’ve never read and like Uliss and Don Quixote. And it’s so fabulous.

It’s just great. You hear these people who live in words and write and do all this stuff, and they have this parlor game, they play at dinner parties, which is, I haven’t read something that everyone says they’ve read and that, and sometimes I’ve been making up that. I read this for years, so that’s fun, I think.

And Anyway, my book is your listy. I’ve never read your listy. And I’ve read the

Stephen: graphic novel, what I’ve read the graphic novel that, that somebody did. So

Lisa: I three times and then gave up.

Stephen: Yeah. All right. Lisa, when you write what software and services do you like and do you use

Lisa: I’m very old fashioned.

I use word. Okay. I used it from the beginning. It is unwieldy and often infuriating, but I figured out things like, so when I first started, everything went in one file. Now I each chapter, each revisions, a different file and stuff. So I’ve learned ways to work with them, but I’m very simple. I work on a PC usually a desktop.

I have a laptop. What I’m talking to you on? I don’t worry about. Anything, except the words, when I start, I just start writing and I don’t even know if that’s gonna be the beginning or it’s gonna be the middle or the end. And when I cut things, I save them and maybe I’ll use them again, or maybe I’ll use them for something else.

Use them somewhere else. Yeah. Yes, exactly. I also, I’m very old fashioned and that when I finish, what I think is a book, I print it out or an essay. I always print it because that’s where I got my start was reading and editing manuscripts that I typed or somebody else type. Nice. So I can see things better that way.

So I wait I use up some paper, but I really think I need to see what it looks like on the page because that’s how it’s gonna present itself. So I do that, but other than I’m pretty old school, I just write, save print, and keep on going nothing fancy.

Stephen: Okay. So besides doing podcasts and going to the Montana book festival, what else are you doing to market your book and get it out there?

Lisa: I’ve hired a publicist to help me, but I don’t, I’m not, I don’t know and I don’t, I have my website, which is a really good platform if it would drive people too, if I could drive people to it, it’s it says everything about me that’s necessary. It links to a lot of my writing. It’s ways to buy about the books that I’ve been in.

I’ve been in a lot of anthology fiction and nonfiction. So my work’s out there. I don’t probably not enough, but I had some illness for a while and I lost, as I said, the publicist at the press left. And so I lost my momentum what can you do? It’s, there’s always this buzz at the beginning.

It’s like a new relationship, right? At first kiss, the first time you had sex, it’s whoa. And then things are less exotic perhaps, but never thought of it like that, but I think that’s true, but anyway, so that’s the way it is know, your book they send you boxes and your book arrives and you open them up.

And the first time you do a reading and you first time you sign a book or sell a book, it’s all very heady, but it’s not something that sustains itself unless you are a bestselling author. And that, then it just says about itself. You don’t have to do anything really we have to work a lot harder.

Stephen: Okay. We’ve been talking a lot, but that wasn’t actually our topic of choice. We were going to talk about managing your time, especially at, with having a family and getting books and stuff written. So you’ve got a couple kids you said, pardon me? They’re grown. Yes. Yeah. Grown. So what have you done?

What did you do when you were having to raise kids and your mother and married husband and all the things that go with that and writing books, how do you schedule all that manage your time?

Lisa: When I’ve first started writing books and having babies, my parents were not sick, so that was okay.

That wasn’t until later when my daughter was a little bit older and my son too, but when my children were babies, I just I decided that they’re five year and a half years apart. So I, they were each like an only child in a sense, but I just had to be incredibly disciplined when they, after the first couple of months where you nap when they nap and you get things done.

I decided I was gonna use that time to work. And I did. and it was not easy, but if I had an hour or two and when they started going to play school for whatever time I would work, then I would work after my husband got home and could look at after the kids. I went to my first writing colony or artist colony when my son was 18 months old, which was hard.

I had never left him, but my mother-in-law came and stayed and helped my then husband take care of him, but I went for two weeks and I, it was the first time I’d been seen as a writer by a bunch of other people who were writers and painters and musicians and composers. My only identity was there was my work there and that’s when things started to really.

Take off. And so I did so much work during that two weeks that I could then edit it and rework it. And I had a momentum going and I really think that changed my life. It was the Virginia center for the creative arts, which is still a very fantastic calling. I’ve been many times, but that chunk of time, two weeks, I didn’t have to take care of family cook, clean shop, anything was profound.

And so I tried to recreate as much of those moments as I could, which is hard. But every time I went, there was a, I got a jump start on a project or several projects. And I used to say, you could do six months worth of writing in a week or two at some place like that because you had nothing else in your head.

Everything was, I didn’t even want myself to think about my kids until nighttime when I would call home and. This was back before the days of the internet and cell phones. And so you really had no way of being in touch with people. So you were now you have to enforce it when you go to these places and not take your phone and turn off.

Social media and the internet and stuff. But I think it’s hard, really hard for women to find the time to work on their writing or art or whatever it is they do, especially if they’re raising kids and, or also have a day job. So the only thing I can tell you was that you have such how much do you want it?

How much do you want

Stephen: this there? Yes. Agreed. And not arguing it, but it’s not just women. Cuz I was a single dad for a large part of my kids growing up. Yeah. Again, and I had luckily had support from my mother. So their grandparents. And having a job and the kids, so yeah. It’s how bad do you want it?

And you, I always hear people like I just don’t have the time, like really, because I had a job and I had two kids and I was writing. So it’s how bad do you want? It is what it really comes down to. I

Lisa: remember when I had or maybe I was pregnant with my daughter who’s my second child and a woman was at my house for dinner.

She was not invited the back. She looked at and she goes, oh when you have your second baby, your house, won’t be this clean. And I looked at her and I said, why? And she said, she looked at me and I said, I like a clean house. It’s important to me. I’ll clean my ass. I’ll read a newspaper.

He’ll probably say, oh, how do you have time to read the news every morning? I take the time. You take time for what’s important to you. People would also say, oh, you read, when do you read? Sometimes I read 11 o’clock at night after my husband’s asleep and the kids have been in bed for a while.

I read for an hour because that’s my quiet time. I will read that because reading is really important to me. So yes, of course there’s people who have very few resources and it’s very difficult, but there are so many writers out there writing through unspeakable trials. Yeah. Buying so hard writing in war zones, writing in abuse, situations in poverty that it’s how bad do you really want this?

And even what if you found half an hour a day and you wrote 500 words, it would add up. It

Stephen: adds up. I think a large and this is my observation opinion is we sometimes get distracted by the unimportant things and that, but sometimes it’s a mindset also. So yeah we get distracted by what’s everyone doing on Facebook?

What are these 10 cool videos that lead to 10 more and all that. But it’s also the mindset that I’ve had a rough day in dealing with the work and the kids and the husband and the dog and whatever else becomes difficult. I’m relaxing and finding some enjoyment, watching these videos, and that’s where the alert comes in, whereas, oh, writing’s going to be work and a job.

So you avoid it. Whereas I enjoyed my writing. It helped me relax. And I was able to change my mindset that it’s I’m not enjoying these videos as much as I would enjoy writing right now. And I think that helped me a lot. Find it. Yeah. If you see it as a desire, not a chore you need to see what you’re doing as something you wanna be doing.

Lisa: If you don’t wanna be doing don’t do it. You don’t wanna doing it. I Nobody needs your book unless you need your book. If you, and if you want a glass of wine at night and not, and to watch some good television and you don’t wanna write that night and do that, don’t beat yourself up, but it’s kinda being on a diet.

So say you have a chocolate bar. That’s not the end of the world. It’s the end of that diet that day, or that’s the end of your being good nutritionally. But it doesn’t mean you can’t start and not have a chocolate bar the next day, right? You each day is a new day and some days. You go great guns and everything works and happy things happen.

And it’s also hard to write. I think for every writer I know right now, or the past five years, because of politics because of catastrophes and apocalypses and climate change in war and the overthrow of the government and everything you can think of it’s at people felt the same thing after nine 11, they felt paralyzed.

Yeah. Because they’re like, what can I contribute after this horror? But you have to separate yourself out and say, my contribution is not to this it’s different. It’s smaller, it’s specific. And some people are doing great. Like Emily St. John Mande. She is a great apocalyptic writer. She’s amazing.

And she’s been she wrote station 11, Before the pandemic and it was ed also a great television show by the way. but not everybody has to be writing apocalyptic fiction just because we’re in an apocalypse, you don’t have to. So you just have to decide what’s more important and don’t let yourself get derailed, cuz it is easy to get drilled.

It’s get you, you get drilled by having a baby by getting married, by losing a spouse by getting divorced, by losing income. A million by being ill, a million different things that we look at Laura Hilderbrand who wrote a seed biscuit. I mean she’s chronic fatigue. She’s been in bed for years, 30 years.

Wow. And she’s written a astonishing books. So on all kinds of prizes. When I think about that, I think why should I complain? I This woman’s writing through fear, pain, exhaustion and doing beautiful work. So there’s just all kinds of ways to do it.

Stephen: What do, so do you think as a woman, mother and we were bringing up this topic, do you think women are discouraged from doing something like writing, doing something for themselves and bringing these things out?

Because they’re supposed to be a mother they’re supposed to take care

Lisa: of the kids, not if that’s so true anymore. I think it was true, which is why Virginia Wolf for what she did an independent income and a room of one’s own. I do think it’s important. If you can carve out a space in your house may not be a room, but someplace where you can go and and work.

Or maybe it’s just a time when the house is empty and quiet, but I think it is hard. I think, especially her, for single women who have no support, emotional support or physical support to write and work and raise kids. I. Wanted children very badly. I made a conscious effort and desire to have them.

I wanted to raise them myself. Not that I had the means for a nanny, but I really wanted to be able to raise them. So I accepted that we’d live off one paycheck for a while. And and I think raising children com informed my work for the better, in a billion ways. And I still think my children are the best things I’ve ever done.

I They’re amazing people. So I can’t imagine myself as a, I think if I hadn’t had children, I wouldn’t be a very good writer, but that’s me both having to get out of your and take care of somebody else before you, and also having for me in this case to budget your time in an increments, because you had duties as a mother at a wife, Helped me be disciplined, but also I think just helped my work.

It became more compassionate, more interesting. So I think it’s hard. Yes. But I think, right now with what’s happened with Roe it’s oh, it’s way complicated. So yeah, it might discourage women who would’ve had more freedom and can’t have it because they can’t have control over their bodies, but we gotta get that back.

So as long as women can help author their fate, I think they’re okay. But if it becomes completely taken from them, then I don’t know.

Stephen: Yeah. I’m a guy, so I can’t say no women have all the same. My experience. I see that’s what’s available, but I don’t know if everybody. Supports it and recognizes it.

I think there’s probably plenty of women that still think, oh, I could never do that because people will think I’m a bad mother or something. I think that thinking is starting to go away a bit.

Lisa: And right. Maybe there’s a lot of women who voted for Donald Trump too, so

Stephen: There’s a whole nother discussion so

Lisa: I think you can defeat your own

Stephen: self man or woman though.

I think you need some support, just like you need support taking care of kids. You need support. If you’re going to do writing, you need a neighbor, a mother a husband, wife you need that acknowledgement that yes. You can do this and you should get some time to do this.

Lisa: You do, but if you don’t get it, you need to take it.

My very first journalism job. I was, it was cubicles. I was at Boston magazine and I said to my. Boss a woman. I said, so what time do I get lunch? And she said, you don’t get lunch. You take it. And I thought, whoa. So that was like, that was a huge light bulb moment for me. Yeah. Okay. I get it. My husband at the time, he’s an owner.

My husband was marginally supportive, but mostly because I kept everything else up the dinners the entertaining, the house the children’s activities, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Okay. You wanna write fine as long as it doesn’t interfere with all this other stuff. And my parents were not very supported cuz they wanted me to make money, but children of the depression, all that.

But for me, going off to a colony was really important. But also I have, I had in at the beginning writers, groups, people where I would sit and talk to my work that would read my work and vice versa. But you really nobody’s gonna hand it to you. They’re not right. Nobody says, oh honey, you go do this.

No, I don’t care what your sexual orientation is. Nothing. No, it’s not gonna happen. If you really want some time, you’re gonna just have to grab it. And it has to be grabbed out of wherever. You can find it. If it means box Mac and cheese for dinner that night, that’s what it means. It’s you, but you have to take it and you also have to be okay with taking it.

And

Stephen: can’t be stuff. Those are the stories we always hear about we don’t hear about I was a mother, but my husband took the kids at night and my mother watched them during the day and I had hours and all the, and we had nannies coming in. You don’t hear those stories as being inspirational.

It’s the, I was a single, struggling mother with three kids and I would get up early, I’d stay up late. I would write while I’m stirring the Mac and cheese and stuff. Those are the stories we hear about. So take some comfort in that, that it, like you said, take the time it’s yours and push through it if that’s what you really want, because those are the inspirational stories that people want to hear.

Lisa: Yeah. Easy is not interesting. Is it true? There you

Stephen: go. All right. Lisa, this has been a really great discussion. On several topics, it seems. But before we go, do you have any last minute advice that you would give to new authors that are listening?

Lisa: Don’t give up. I wrote my first novel, 30 years ago, don’t give up this one, took me a dozen years off and on certainly not full time.

But I put it away, went back as my mother grew more and more ill. I added things in and pulled other things out. And then the novel ends with the death. So I always tell people when I read here’s a spoiler alert, one of the main characters is already dead. But yeah, just I could have and during the lockdown I really wasn’t doing a lot of, we didn’t really have a lockdown, but during the time when I was at home a lot for months and months because I have issues that I worried would be terrible if I got sick, I still do.

But I was having a hard time doing new stuff because it was a, it was such a scary thing I didn’t. And it’s always how I imagine the world ending, not with a bang, but a whimper. It’s like couple of dead here. Couple of, not like captain trips and Stephen King, but right. Slowly.

So it was profoundly anxiety inducing. And I said, I’m not gonna do any new work right now. I said, I’m gonna go revisit this book and see what I wanna do with this. I think two years before that, I, it had been a long list of very prestigious contest and I thought, okay, so I know this is gonna go. So I went back through it again yet again, and then I started sending it out to the, getting ready, getting to send it out to the small presses.

And

a year from when I was accepted, it appeared not with, of course she wanted hard work, but so that was my kind of quarantine baby. I just said I’m gonna use what I do have, and I’m gonna see if I can get that out there. And. As I said, it’s the book I needed to write. I wanted to write. It’s perfect.

To me, it’s exactly what I wanted to do, but I could have just said, AF it’s not gonna happen. You can get I got agents saying yes, send me more. No, yes, blah, blah, blah. This went on for a couple of years back and forth. One agent said cut, 10,000 words. And I said, you’ve gotta be out of your mind.

This was about five years ago and I put it away and then I picked it up again and I said, Ooh, he’s right. I do need to cut 10,000 words. So that made it a better book. So now I can do something new or not, but yeah, it’s just, don’t give up. If you believe in your stuff, don’t give up. If you, if it’s causing you S and depression, then do give it up.

But if you still care about your work and you still care about other people reading it and you still care about what you have to say or what you think you have to say, then. Keep going. Who says you have to be a novelist in your twenties or a published almost in your thirties or forties? There’s a lot of people publishing, the first novels after 50 now, and it’s become poets. Writers does a whole issue on it every year. It’s not even odd anymore. So keep going. It’s your life, figure it out

Stephen: how you want. Great. All right. Lisa, thank you very much for being on and talking to us today. I appreci luck on your book.

I

Lisa: appreciate the time to talk about this. Thank you. And a good question. Thank

Stephen: you.

Lisa Solod has been writing since the age of eight and publishing since the age of seventeen. Her award-winning short fiction and essays have been published in dozens of literary journals and anthologies and has appeared in literary journals, anthologies, magazines and online, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Lilith, The Boston Globe, The Boston Herald. Her essay “Black Boots for the End of the World” was a Notable essay in Best American Essays 2012. Four of her novels have been shortlisted for  major fiction prizes and many of her short stories have been contest finalists.

With pained honesty tempered by well-exercised empathy, Lisa Solod’s debut novel Shivah: A Novel from Memory connects deeply to the challenges of family and faith, and the potential for growth and peace.
 
Constructed in seven parts to mimic the seven days of shivah, the Jewish period of mourning wherein the mourners enter the home of the bereaved and sit and pray with them, Shivah is an exploration of difficult family relationships, of mental health, and of negotiating selfhood in the face of adversity.

I have Lisa Sok. Who’s gonna talk to us about her nav. Shva Lisa, how you doing today? I’m okay. Thank you. Yeah, doing good.

I’ve got rainy weather. Where are you at? What do you have? I’m

Lisa: in Savannah. So it’s it’s hot, but it’s sunny until we have almost a shower every day, but nice right now.

Stephen: It’s gorgeous. Nice. I actually paradise. I, I. There was supposed to be a writer retreat in Savannah this year. That didn’t happen.

Some someone up here that runs those. So it would’ve been nice to go visit. I haven’t been down to that area for quite a while.

Lisa: It’s gorgeous. It is.

Stephen: Yeah. Lisa, before we talk about your book tell us a little bit about you and your background and some of the things you like to do.

Lisa: I I majored in something offbeat in college, I majored in semiotics, which was a hip linguistics thing many years ago.

But what it let me do was read and write, which was the two things I wanted to do more than anything. And so I did those and I’ve always been a reader. And so it was really fun for me to be in school and be able to discuss books with other people and professors, and also to do, to parse them in ways that I wasn’t familiar with.

That was great. I think I always knew I would write I always, but I wasn’t quite sure what I would write at any given time. I’ve always written fiction. But first thing I did when I got out of college was I worked as a magazine editor and writer. And so that was great, right? It was a not only did I make a living, but it also taught me a lot about deadlines and editing versus writing, write writing versus editing how to craft something for another writer that sounded like them, but was better.

So now I’ve heard,

Stephen: I’ve heard from a lot of other authors that did some journalism, did some magazines and articles and nonfiction and all that, that even though they write fiction, now, the skills you learned doing the newspaper, the journal, whatever really applied and helped you with the writing is you find that to be very true.

Lisa: Absolutely. Because anything you publish and anything you work on is something that you’re proud of and you’ve finished and that can only improve all of your writing. I don’t think I, I still write essays. I still do some non-fiction. I don’t think they’re mutually exclusive at all. Anything that, that makes you a better writer, which includes reading which is always a fun discussion with people is a good thing.

Absolutely. OK. It’s kinda hard. Sometimes when I was freelancing years ago doing lots and lots of newspaper work and book reviews, it was very hard fit to then. Do my own fiction writing later in the day, because I was done. But it’s actually a good challenge to present to yourself, okay.

Stephen: So sorry. I interrupted your flow. Tell us some of the other things you like to do there a little bit more about your background.

Lisa: I I’ve been in politics for a long time. I’ve worked poles and knocked on doors and done all sorts of volunteer work for democratic candidates. I raised two kids.

I’ve traveled wild and lived in two other countries. Wow. Let’s see. I’ve taken care of even though not full-time two aging parents yeah I garden, I cook, I’m a very good cook and I love flowers and plants and herbs and vegetables. So I do that. Nice about it.

Stephen: all right. So you said you’ve written and always wanted to write and you have done it for a long time.

What made you finally wanna start writing this book?

Lisa: Oh this book is based on truth and that’s why I call it novel for memory it’s. It’s got real stuff in it, but then I I use fiction to discuss it, to analyze it, to decode it in a way that I don’t think I could have if I did it as a memoir.

And I’ve never seen anything written quite like this about Alzheimer’s, I’ve seen interesting pop books. There’s been a memoir or two, but this, I wanted it to to really. Talk about the concept of memory, what it means when you lose it, what you forget, what you don’t forget, what that means to the people that you’re connected to in this case, it’s a mother and a daughter as the primary characters.

And when the daughter realizes the mother has Alzheimer’s, she then has to let go of their former relationship and let go of ever getting to a different place together. And so what she chooses to do is instead create out of reality and desire a past and a present for her mother. So it has to with memory and just watching my mother die slowly of Alzheimer’s was extraordinarily profound.

She was very difficult, extremely beautiful, extremely smart. Mentally ill and an alcoholic. It was an interesting experience growing up with her, but when I saw her lose herself and not even realize she had lost herself, it was go smacking and it made me rethink everything. Especially my relationship with her, but also what it means to be a person and what it means to be alive.

And so the, I wrote a bunch of nonfiction things, essays that I published about or struggle over the years, but I really felt like I had to do a whole bigger work about. About memory and relationships. And so that’s what I tackled over 12

Stephen: years. And I was gonna ask about that, cuz you’ve got a non-fiction background.

So you did both, you wrote some non-fiction about wor apparent losing themselves. Dealing with the, all of that. So you got that out. So you went into different direction and wrote some fiction. Do you think that was not only therapeutic for you, but do you think the message you were trying to get across came out better as fiction or would help other people or I, cuz it’s an interesting choice to do that.

Do you did both essentially?

Lisa: I, this is not my first novel. I have written other novels. I had agents, I won contest, but I couldn’t get ’em published. It’s a long story. So I’ve always been attached to the novel. I’ve been writing them for many years. I really didn’t start doing a lot of essay work until the early two thousands.

But I found that I really had a, I was good. I had a feel for it and it worked. So I did that for a while and really put fiction on the back burner, but I just couldn’t figure out a way to tackle this subject in long form as a memoir. And also I felt like it wasn’t as interesting.

I’m sure people would disagree with me, but I didn’t feel like my particular point of view was interesting enough or different enough. And that’s why I expanded it out with science and physics and religion and faith and everything that has to do with Losing your memory and having a relationship and things of that nature.

So I I just felt like with fiction, I could be freer. I could create characters, I could get rid of characters. I could combine characters. I didn’t want to talk about this man or that man or this person. And I do discuss my sisters and I wanted to respect them. So I fictionalized them and not in, in a way that would make it easier for them to read perhaps, although I don’t know where that they have.

Stephen: nice. Okay. So you mentioned you couldn’t get agents, so this is independently published.

Lisa: I, I, during the pandemic, I decided to stop looking for agents and I started submitting to small presses. Now the book had already won, had already been long listed for a novel price and shortlisted for a novel price.

So I knew it was really good and I knew it was close. And so I started looking at independent presses, small presses, and I submitted it to jaded IBUs press in California, and they loved it. And that’s where I went. They published a lot of women’s writing and I appreciated their viewpoint. I knew it wasn’t a big five, but I was okay with that.

And they did an amazing job. It they’re great editors and I it’s a beautiful book, so I’m very pleased with that.

Stephen: Nice. Okay. And is it already out or is it coming out?

Lisa: It is, it came

Stephen: out in June. Okay. Yeah, I thought it was really close when I was talking to D see here. Can you see, there you go.

Now what’s the title mean?

Lisa: Shva is the week long period of boarding that Jews do when somebody dies. Okay. And there’s all these rituals, which are explained in the book. So each day of the week, you you do all the things that all the same time, but I did a conceit of dividing the novel into seven sections each with a certain aspect of mourning.

Shiv is essentially mourning the person that is lost. and so that’s that’s the larger context. It’s a, it’s not morning for a week in this case, it’s morning for a lifetime. So I divided up in two sections which

The first one is called the heart wrenching pain of grief and loss. And then the second is the ceremony of the washing of the hands. And so I use these things symbolically. The third one is the condolence meal. So I use that to talk about how feeding someone and a TA inviting someone to your table in the Jewish religion is a sacred act.

And then I discuss. What that was like in the family and the book. And was it a sacred act? It was not, it was a eating was an act of fraught with symbolism and sadness. So I use each of the ideas of what you’re supposed to be doing when you mourn with people in shva to talk about the relationship of the mother and the daughter and the mother’s life as to how it fits in.

Does that

Stephen: make sense? Yeah. Nice. That’s a good framework to start with and use and gives it an interesting twist for a lot of readers. I’m sure. Cuz I didn’t grow up Jewish. I don’t have a one that’s Jewish in my family, so it’s always, I enjoy learning about other religions, other cultures, other ways people do things.

So I, I think that’s a good way of

Lisa: doing it. I do think long and hard about it. I thought is this gonna put some people off but it is what it is. It’s mourning. And this is what this book is about. It’s in a way it’s how to mourn and why to mourn and what happens and what are you mourning?

Who are you mourning? Are you mourning your yourself, your relationship with this person? Are you mourning them? And I it’s about grief and I think that, I don’t know. I think it’s important to talk about grief.

Stephen: It is, even though we tend to avoid it, we

Lisa: do. Yeah, we absolutely do. And I think when when you have a time a dozen, 15 years of watching someone die, it’s a very different experience than losing somebody quickly or knowing that they have something that’s gonna carry them off in a year or two.

Alzheimer’s dementia can last. A very long time and it goes through different stages where the person is somewhat more there and then not there. And I try to take the reader through the loss of the mother in all these ways,

Stephen: in a way it’s an extended loss and you lose the person way before their body is gone.

Absolutely. And I that’s way harder. Cause you’re in a constant state of mourn and

Lisa: grief. You are, you absolutely are. You, my mother and I used to have a very difficult relationship, but every time I used to fly up to see her four or five more times a year she insisted on staying in new England when she got sick.

But every time I would say goodbye to her, I would cry. And I would say what is going on here? But it was each time. It was like a little deaf and I didn’t know who she’d be when I saw her next. I didn’t know when she would stop realizing who I was. When she would stop recognizing you. And then eventually you stop walking, you stop speaking.

And so each time the disease progresses, you lose another piece of that person. And so you have to mourn over at, over and over. I think X every time you lose a another piece. Yes. So I think a lot of people in our generation will get this because no matter what your faith is or none where a lot of us are dealing with seriously ill parents.

And also having to think about how we want our own death to look like. This has made me really think about what I would do where this to happen to me. I’ve talked to both of my children about my plans. Something, my mother did not do we, my sisters and I had to create a plan for her because she had not.

And we didn’t know what she wanted, so we just did the best we could. But once you watched something like this, my first reaction was I never ever want my children to see me. Like I’m seeing my mother. I never want that. Because as I said, she was beautiful and smart and funny and very wicked in ways, but all that went.

And I, I think if she had bit on the outside looking and seeing she is very vain what she looked like, how she presented herself on those letter. I think she would’ve been horrified. I know she would’ve been horrified. And so I’ve been, I have pictures around my house that are of her. Much younger when she was beautiful when she was vibrant and alive, because I don’t want that picture of her sitting in a wheelchair, comatose, practically dressed in someone else’s clothes to be the last way I think of her.

It’s too. It’s unbearable. It really is. It

Stephen: It’s the same old enjoy life. It’s short. You don’t know when don’t let so many thing smell the roses, right? And that the old standby.

Lisa: It is. But I do think that everybody needs to think about their exit. If you don’t think about your exit, you leave that to other people who may not be able to do what you want.

Because it’s too hard. When you love somebody, you don’t want them to die. I As much as my mother was sick and I thought it would be a blessing if she went, when she finally went, it was horrifying. I was. It was crazy. I was with her for he for 10 days in hospice and watching her die.

And yet it still was traumatic. And I think until you do that you don’t realize how it’s gonna hit you. And so you just have to think about what you wanna put your own family through. Yeah,

Stephen: exactly. So the book’s been out for a couple months when we’re recording this. What’s the feedback from readers been like

Lisa: it’s been really good so far.

I the pub the publicity by the press, wasn’t everything I wanted and that’s down to me should have hired somebody, which I finally did, but it’s not gotten as widespread cover as I’d wished, which happens when you publish with a small press, as opposed to a big five. But I am gonna go to the Montana book festival in September.

They’ve invited me to be a reader, so that’s gonna be fun. Because I’ve never been to Montana, but the people who’ve read it have been really moved by it, strangers and and friends. So that’s been great. I don’t, I, I don’t know what the people who I haven’t liked it feel, but can’t worry about that anyway.

Okay. But no, I think it’s been pretty positive. Okay. It’s the book I wanted to write. I wrote the book I wanted to write and you really can’t and it was accepted for publication and published by a nice press. You really can’t do much better than that. When you think about it, it’s I wasn’t aiming for the best seller list.

It’s not that kind of book, but but it’s exactly what I wanted to do, which is a big deal, especially when you’re my age. It’s oh, okay. This is a nice treat at the end. Nice. Okay. So if you had a choice, Lisa, would you rather see your book as a movie or a TV show? Oh,

that’s interesting. I actually I, you’re not gonna be with her.

I really hadn’t thought about it. I don’t know, personally, I’m really, I used to be a big fan of movies, so I go two or three times a month for years and my husband and I would go, and then the pandemic happened and we haven’t been to a film. I don’t love watching films on television, but I love the good television that’s out.

It is amazing

Stephen: nowadays. Yeah. It’s oh my God.

Lisa: Good. So different than when I was younger. Just astonishing TV. I don’t know whether this has enough meat to make it a long series, but I think you could probably do it and do the British TV, which is what, like two to four

Stephen: hours.

Yeah. You got episode

Lisa: thing. Yeah. So I, whatever, it’s hard. It’s a very, it’s a very thinky novel. I’m very. Consumed by language. Each word is crucial to me. I’m not a, I’m not plot driven, I’m character driven and word driven. And so sometimes I think that doesn’t translate very well to the screen.

So I don’t know, they say the worst books make the best films. And vice versa. So I don’t know. I don’t know something like the gold, which was so brilliant. The movie was not. So you have to just think, could they do it right? I don’t know. Yeah. It seems like TV shows are getting it right.

Stephen: A lot better than most movies.

Lisa: I think they do cause well, because they have a longer time. What happens with film is that a big book of squished down and you miss right? You miss a lot of it unless they just take a piece. Of it. And really, I think it’s not even movies versus TV shows. I think it’s streaming shows that’s yes.

Stephen: Something newer really is what it’s coming down to. Where can we get your book? And do you have

Lisa: a website? I do a website. It’s just my name. Lisa sola.com. It’s got links on there. I, you can get it at, you can order it at any bookstore. You can get it from bookshop, which only sells to Indi from independent bookstores, you can get it on Amazon.

You can get the Kindle version, which I actually like Kindle versions. And you can get it barn and noble for book or no. So anywhere. In Savannah you can get it at the book lady bookstore. I did a reading when it first came out at my synagogue and the woman who owns the book, lady sold the books there which was great.

Great. But I’m doing another program at the J a in October. Where I’ll also be reading and then I’m gonna be at the Montana book festival. So it will be sold there. So we’ll see. But you can get it anywhere you want. It you decide, you wanna support Jeff Bezos, you can go online and order today and you’ll get it tomorrow yep. And that is crazy. I’ve ordered stuff at four 30 and had a 10 o’clock the next morning and that’s,

and we’ve got, we’ve gotten very spoiled. Yes, we do no longer know how to delay ratification, which I don’t think is a very good thing. I agree.

Stephen: That’s a whole nother discussion.

Lisa: it is. But yes, it’s.

And I know of course with Kindle I very often, especially books, like I’m a, I love thrillers and mysteries, not true crime but people like Jane Casey and Tyler, French and Lee child. And so with anywhere Michael Conley. That’s my sort of fun, fun stuff. Whenever one of those comes out, I just immediately go and get it on kids.

I preorder it. And so someday when I’m sitting, reading, it pops up, oh your book is here. And I like that. It’s really fun. I know it’s maybe not the best thing in the world I am somebody said where what would you prefer? How would you prefer me to buy your book? I said, I don’t care.

Just buy it. I don’t, I have no preference. You could borrow your friends. I don’t care. But just buy it and read it and let me know what you

Stephen: think. So are you working on, or do you have plans for your next book?

Lisa: I am working on yes. A book which is a retailing of a children’s fairytale.

I’m not gonna go into too much detail other than that familiar fairytale. And I’m also working on an essay which I’m very excited about. I hope I can pull it off. It’s very ambitious, but So we’ll see what happens with that, but yeah, I’m always, and I keep like writers, I write ideas on my phone.

I have an idea notebook. So I’m usually thinking of something to write.

Stephen: Got it. Put it that way. Okay. So let me ask a couple other questions about you. What are some of your favorite books and authors?

Lisa: As I told you, I’m very interested in words. You probably figure out who it was, but I, I think Philip Roth is a genius, was a genius.

His sentences have never not made me stop and go, oh my God. So his writing is beautiful. I love early influences where Margaret drab, who’s a British author and Nita Brookner, who’s also British. Their work was very pivotal in my education as a writer and a feminist. I love their work. I think Anita Brookner novels were tight and spare and absolutely perfect.

And I don’t think she has big enough readership. She did win the Booker for wonderful her books. But so really, yeah. I like domestic fiction if you wanna call it that. So you’ve got Margaret Atwood before she went sci-fi although I don’t dislike the Handmaid’s tale, but an Tyler, I really I like that, but I also like muscular intellectual fiction, too.

Maryanne Wiggins who has just published a new book despite a stroke. But her John dollar’s one of the best novels I’ve ever read in my life. I think she’s brilliant. She was married to salmon roti for a while when he was I had to go into hide because of the fatwa. And so she published John Doar during that period and it sank like a stone basically, because she was also in hiding with him.

And I think this’s just a really interesting story. It’s an amazing book, but yeah, I like and I like the usuals, I like Fitzgerald and marque and so forth. I’m just E Wharton, but I’m a voracious re reader. I read very quickly and I usually have two or three things going and mostly fiction I will admit.

But I’m always finding new writers. I really like buying debut authors, not just because I am one, but because I think I wanna see what’s going on. I wanna see what they’re doing. So that’s fun. I have always supported fiction by women, especially, but for first time published, Authors, but for me, it’s a lot about the language.

It really is. It’s a lot about the words. So when somebody says to me, this is a beautiful book that makes me very happy because I think it is too. And I spent years making sure that it was a beautiful book. Nice. So that’s nice to be recognized for that, but

Stephen: nice. Okay. All right. So before we talk about some author stuff, if you’re at the book festival and somebody’s looking at your book and they say, so why should I buy your book and read it?

What would you tell ’em?

Oh man, maybe this is something good to think about before you get there.

Lisa: Huh? Wow. Yes, absolutely. I don’t know. I would think I would tell them that it’s I did have I have had people tell me it’s unputdownable, I’m not sure if that’s true because it’s, it is rather sad, but I think it’s compelling. I think that’s the word I would use. I think it’s a compelling book about an important or several important subjects. Mother-daughter relationships, illness, death.

And I think that I think you learn something, there’s a lot of information in it. Let’s put it

Stephen: that way. Nice. There you go. So if that helps you at the Montana book festival, that’s

Lisa: great. Oh yeah, that’s good.

Stephen: I I really hope someone does that, that they come up to you now and say, so why should I get this and read this?

And you’re like, oh man, I’m so glad I thought of it. I really,

Lisa: or what are the people will say? That’s a very good question, but anyway, no, I it’s you always, it’s really hard. I think. I long for the days of. The old school writers who just wrote their book, sent them off and then didn’t have to go on speaking tours and do interviews and get on Twitter and sell their books.

And I it’s exhausting and you just, you don’t wanna push people away, but you want people to read you and there’s so many books published every year. And why do people need this? Why do people do your book? I don’t know. Do they? They probably don’t. But but I still want them to read it.

It’s it’s, there’s just, and then of course people are self-publishing, which is a whole other bag of tricks. So there’s just a lot of stuff out there. And how do you choose what to read? That’s very individual.

Stephen: Yeah, very much all right. So I appreciate you sharing all that. The book sounds great.

I really wish you the best of luck on it. You should read it. I, you oughta see my to read pile every week I’m talking to new authors and just about every book sounds amazing to me. And then I got the stuff I’ve normally had that I’m interested in reading and right. I go visit a bookstore.

I’m like, oh, that looks, oh, I didn’t know. They wrote the, and then it’s wow, okay. Let’s add to this list.

Lisa: no, I’m. Yeah. I can’t in every place we travel, my husband and I go into bookstores. We love used bookstores too. And we’re always like, why are we buying books and vacation, but we do. We always do.

Yeah.

Randi-Lee is back talking about mental health and authors. Too many authors suffer from getting burnt out, which can be a different problem that is manifested in burn out.

In her book, Embracing Me, Randi-Lee discusses how we can lead a happier life, and these lessons are applied to authors to avoid times when they aren’t writing.

So let’s move on to some author things. But before we limb we, what are some things that you’re doing now that you’ve learned and you’re doing different than when you first started?

Randi-Lee: Great question. Let’s think I definitely plot more. Than I used to. I’m really a fly by the seat of your pants kind of person. So I’ve been plotting a little more, I wouldn’t say as tenuous as some people I know, but I, more than I did. And just, I think the more you do something, the better you get at it.

So my first book was published in 2017. So five, five years have passed. I’ve definitely gotten better at writing in general. Effect, anything you do, you get better at it, the more you do it. Creating the covers for the books, just having a vision of what I want for them. And knowing how to market them.

That’s the hardest part about being an author. You can be an excellent author, but if you don’t know how to sell your book, don’t matter,

Stephen: nobody’s reading it. Besides podcast, what are you doing to market?

Randi-Lee: So I do have my own newsletter that goes out. I’m on TikTok. I am on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram.

I have a publicist. So hopefully as these real life speaking events and actual book signings start to happen again I’ll be able to get some of those. Before COVID hit, I did have one book signing at our local bookstore. And covered, shut it down. Hopefully as all those things start going back again, I’ll be able to get into all of that stuff again and really push.

Stephen: Okay. And when you’re writing, what software and services do you like to use?

Randi-Lee: I just use Microsoft word. Very okay. Simple. I know some people have all sorts of different things, but I have a paper and pen and I’ve got the computer. Yeah, pretty simple. If I’m doing a kid’s book and I need like pictures and stuff, I do have some different drawing software, cuz I’ve done some of the pictures for.

Kids’ books. So I’ve got what’s it called? Creta I think it’s called it’s pretty,

Stephen: pretty good. Okay. All right. When we were talking about what topic authors would be interested in, you suggested talking about how to not get burnt out and that’s probably. Important thing if you also suffer from depression because they can feed themselves and make both of them worse and faster and yep.

All of that. What are some things you’ve experienced with burnout and what are you doing? What do you do to help get past it or not get burnout?

Randi-Lee: Yeah. Burnout can happen randomly too. So you could think that, okay, this is going good. And then. It’s really, it can be an accumulation of lots of things.

So especially a lot of us rider, we work from home, what’s at home, our kids, our spouses, our dirty house, our pets. So it can be an accumulation where it’s oh my goodness, I can’t do this because I can see this mess over there, which is why I’m now up here. Cuz I can’t see any other maths. So that’s one of the things is take.

Out of the mess space and put yourself into a workspace. When you have a designated work area, you’re less likely to let all of the regular household life things pile on top of what you already need to do for work. Cuz writing is fun, but it is still work, right? As well take breaks because if you’re writing and writing, sometimes I’m like I just gotta get 10,000 words done today or whatever.

I don’t say that to myself anymore. I time myself, I say, okay, let’s write for 20 minutes, which usually works 20 minutes and then I’m into it. And then an hour goes by and I’m like, okay, I’m done now. But if I give myself a smaller expectations of 20 minutes, if I am struggling, if I am having writers block, then I’m like, okay, I’ve gotten 20 minutes of words down.

Good. I’m not going to stress myself out anymore. But once I get into the zone, I’m good to go. So setting yourself some nice blocks, which then also give you breaks. Get up. We are not meant to sit down for hours on end. We are meant to get up to such a dredge to get some fresh air. I’ve positioned my desk so I can look straight out this window and I see my beautiful garden.

So I don’t know how I’ll feel in the winter and see snow. But right now I see my beautiful garden. so just little things make a big

Stephen: difference. And I also think I found for myself a large part of it is mindset. If you look at writing as another chore or another job, it’s much harder to sit down and wanna do it for another hour after the day job and dinner and the dogs and the kids and homework and soccer practice, and the washer blew up.

After all that, you’re like, oh, I got more chores and work to do. But to me, a lot of times the writing. Is my fun time is my relaxation. And I start looking forward to it more. And then when I’m stuck because I’m mowing, but the mower broke now I have to spend an extra hour fixing the mower and I’m like, oh, I’m losing that time.

Yeah. So instead of coming in and I’m just gonna sit down and watch some TV or I’m go sit down and read or go to sleep. It’s man, I just gotta relax. I’m gonna write some. And it changes your perspective. That as what you’re doing.

Randi-Lee: Yeah. That’s huge as well. Especially the first draft.

I find it’s easier with the first draft because after that, then that it’s second draft in editing and that’s not nearly as fun but sometimes

Stephen: Actually like editing to be even more fun. Now I used to dread it. I hate it but I think it was another mindset shift in my head. I would send stuff and have my editor look at it and come back.

Like the first thing I did, it was like 20 pages of notes and all these sections. Holy moly. Yeah. Oh, that was the first thing I wrote. And it was no idea at all. And that really got me going. I suck, man, why am I doing this? Blah, blah. But I let it sit for a while and I said, okay, let me read what she says and learn from that because I can get something of it.

So I started reading, going, oh, that’s a great suggestion, and now it’s gonna be better. And my first drafts. I are very rough at times, but then I look at the editing as where the quote unquote, real writing comes in and that’s where I try and get better language and better crafted sentences. Okay.

In all the good stuff. So yeah,

Randi-Lee: I can get behind you on that. Okay. I can get behind you on that, cuz like my first one is you it’s like the bones, the structure is there. I just need to get the idea from my brain onto paper. Then my second draft is where my real writing comes in. I don’t call that editing.

So maybe that’s what, so that second draft is where yeah it’s where all the real writing comes in. The emotion the fun part of it. It’s when I have to read it the fourth, fifth, sixth time to just really make sure I didn’t miss nothing.

Stephen: That is boring. And, but then you also gotta watch yourself cuz some I know people who have been working on like the same book for four, five years and it’s at some point you’ve changed and edited things.

It’s like somebody who gets 30 plastic surgeries, it’s no longer helping.

Randi-Lee: Yeah, just either, either say it’s done or throw it in the trash and there’s no saving

Stephen: it one or the other. Yes. Yeah. Yes. And that’s the other thing I do too, is it sounds the opposite of what you should do, but I have several projects like you do going on at once.

And sometimes if I get burnt out it looks like writer’s book. Oh, I don’t know what’s right. But I’m really burn, but sometimes it’s that project. And if I move to a different project and right there, it’s fresh and new and different voices in my head and so it helps get level burnout. Yeah.

Randi-Lee: Yeah. And that’s just, it, that was the other thing I was gonna say is switching it up. Makes a huge difference. So I’ve got those two books on the go, but they’re both non-fiction so they’re both heavy. So in between all doing all that, I’ll write a kid’s. Because it’s fun. It’s easy.

Some of them, I draw pictures for some of them. I get other artists to draw pictures for them, depending on the style I’m going for. Or I’ll do like I’ve done self-care journals and they’re just, they’re quick and easy. And they make me feel accomplished because, okay. So I threw together some affirmations made them look all, pretty, put them together, made a pretty cover it’s done, and it takes a lot less time than writing a whole novel.

I feel accomplished, then I can go back to my other book.

Stephen: Yes I do that a lot. Yeah. And another thing I’d say is to continue to write, cause I’ve known that too, where people get burnt out and they stop. And then it’s much harder to keep going and get going again. And if you’re suffering from depression that doesn’t help, it makes you feel worse.

Ugh.

Randi-Lee: I know I’ve had that happen to me. I’ve been like, I just can’t walk up the stairs to my compute. What the, what’s the point? I don’t want to. It suck anyways, I’m not doing it. And then I go, oh, I have to get this done. Why didn’t I spend my time doing that? I’m such a bad author cause I’m not doing it.

And it’s just, it’s this vicious cycle. Yes. Once I get up here and I sit down and I put my music on, cuz I always listen to music. When I write I got my music on I’m typing away and I’m like, I feel good. Now. I like this.

Stephen: I go back to some of the stuff you mentioned, Stephen King. I’m going to assume you’ve read on writing by him, which I think just about everybody recommends for everybody else.

Oh, no, you haven’t. I hope I have. I don’t. You should maybe I have back in the day and I

storm. I well, I would recommend it again then I hear it thrown around very often that just about everybody has recommended on writing by Steven King. And it was one of the early ones that helped me get going.

Partly because like you, I liked Steven King. And I think you’ll enjoy the style because the first half is almost a memoir or biography. And then the second half is like Stephen King’s thoughts and rules on grammar and writing and craft. So you have read that. Okay. Either way,

Randi-Lee: if I have, it’s been like 10, 10 or more years ago, but it might be worth reading.

Stephen: And then there’s another book by Jeff strand. He’s an independent writer. He kinda writes horror comedy kinda like adult goosebumps. love that stuff for his 50th book. He wrote a a, how to book a look back on the writing career craft that he’s done. And it’s very irreverent.

But between those two if I do feel a little burnout or I feel that slog to try and get to it, I’ll pick one of those up and just read a little bit of it, cuz it re-energizes me quite often. Yeah. Or listen to podcasts with Joanna or Jay thorn listen to him a lot. He’s got a lot of podcasts.

So those help me. Feel re-energized

Randi-Lee: nice. Yeah. Podcasts are awesome. I love listening to podcasts when I like walk my dogs. Cuz music’s great, but I listen to music all the time. So sometimes I switch it up. Do some podcasts.

Stephen: Yes, absolutely. And actually I, I get stuck listening to a lot of podcasts and I have to stop and go find some music sometimes because I’m like, man, I haven’t listened to music in 10 days.

That’s

Randi-Lee: so funny. Yeah, no, I’m the opposite. I’ll be like, wait, when was the last time I listened to that podcast? I think I’ve missed some

Stephen: episodes. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. You get, you start getting frantic about it. It’s okay. I gotta listen to these 20 episodes before next week or the other ones will come out and then I’ll be behind and I know.

Randi-Lee: It’s like it’s TV show. You have to stay up to date.

Stephen: Even if you realize I’ve gotten through episodes and I’m like, who the heck was that guest? And what were they talking about? I have no idea. Cause I’ve heard so many, I start tuning some of ’em out, which isn’t, but that told me it’s okay, I don’t have to bit frantic about every episode, exactly. Yeah. But podcasts are so good for learning. It’s like free learning. If you go find the ones you like the ones that work for you, like your podcast That you do. Tell us a little bit about that. So if anybody listening yeah.

Randi-Lee: Would like to do so it’s called the write or die show. So write, like you’re writing something w R I T write to or die show and I interview other authors and we talk about mental health.

So again, it’s that personal perspective. I have had some authors that are also like, they have their doctorate in psychology and stuff. But for the most part, they’re. Regular people, maybe a bit eccentric. I think all authors are eccentric. But they’re just regular people and they’re sharing their story of whatever mental health that they’re dealing with.

So I’ve had people, depression, anxiety that they’re the top yesterday released episode of was eating disorders. We’ve had schizophrenia, bipolar, borderline personality O C D. So a ton of different things that we talk about on the show, all from that personal perspective, because my theory is the worst part is feeling like you’re by yourself.

So if we can talk about it and make sure nobody feels alone, then hopefully we’re helping. And everybody has their own kind of coping strategies. Yeah. We all, their journaling is a real popular one, but everybody does it a little bit differently. Yoga’s a huge one, but again, everybody can do it a little bit differently.

So by everyone sharing their different coping strategies, people might be able to pick out something that works for them.

Stephen: Nice. Okay. Yeah. All right. Randy this has been great. I’ve enjoyed talking to you about all of this. I’m going to have to go check out some of your mental health episodes on yeah.

Borderline personality. That’s something I’ve been dealing with in my family personally. So I think that’s great. Yeah, that’d something we should sit down and talk about separate off of this. Yeah.

Randi-Lee: Sounds

Stephen: good. So before we go, though, do you have any last minute advice that you would give new authors?

Randi-Lee: That’s always the advice I go with is right. And I say that it sounds so simple, but I say that because the more you write, the better you get, if you keep in mind the advice of just right then even when you don’t feel like. Okay. I have to write just because I have to write doesn’t mean you have to publish everything you write.

I’m not saying everything you writes, gonna be good and you should publish it, but the more you practice something, the better you get.

Stephen: Yes. And if I could tag team off of that, if you are feeling burnt out or depressed, reach out to a writer, friend, join a community. So you have people to talk to and say, Hey, I’m feeling you know, down.

I haven’t written. I need to and talk to somebody. That’s always huge. And I’ve rarely. An author that would say, I just don’t have time to talk to you. I’m not gonna help you. so right. No,

Randi-Lee: I’ve talked to a lot of them too. And we all say, Hey, call me, shoot an

Stephen: email. Yeah, I’m around. I don’t think reaching out to Patterson or Steven King that they’re gonna take the time to talk to every author that reaches out.

That’s not, we’re

Randi-Lee: talking indie authors. I think we’re talking indie authors.

Stephen: Find a local group find a good online group with people you can chat with

Randi-Lee: yeah. Yeah. Wouldn’t you mean cool though. If they did answer

Stephen: Yeah, I’m sure they do to, to some degree at certain times certain circumstances. I’m sure they have people that work for them that do it.

Yeah. Yeah. Actually I know somebody who joined some author or celebrity’s Twitter. And they said, and I know it’s not coming from them directly. I know a lot of it’s fed to a million and half people and whatever, but every time I get one, it’s got my name there. It feels like they’re talking to me. It’s true.

Randi-Lee: I know. Yeah. It makes a

Stephen: difference. Yeah. Randy, I appreciate you taking some time chatting with us today. I wish you luck on your book and I appreciate all the advice you were giving us. Thank you.

Randi-Lee: Thanks for having me. I had lots of fun.

Randi-Lee was born and raised in Ontario, Canada and from a young age she had a passion for helping others. She attended Niagara College and graduated at the top of her class from Community and Justice Services, after completing her placement at a recovery house for alcohol and drug addictions. Post-graduation she worked at a Native Friendship Centre for two and a half years while pursuing a university education in psychology. Randi-Lee continued working in social services for another four years as an employment counselor until she left to pursue her other passions.
Randi-Lee is an author and outspoken advocate for mental health sharing her true story with honesty. From the age of 14 she struggled with depressive thoughts. There were times in her life that she wasn’t sure how she would continue. Depression continues to be a battle in her life but she is glad that she continues to live. She has spoken at events that promote wellness and compassionately shares her experiences with her own mental health. In 2021 she started a YouTube channel, Write or Die Show, to spread awareness about various mental health issues and to end the stigma associated with mental health.
Growing up she never felt that she fit in, being the last to understand jokes and confused about many emotions that she saw on others. In 2021 she finally had answers to the questions about herself that had been nagging at her. She was diagnosed with moderate Autism.
Another of Randi-Lee’s passions is kickboxing, which she has been doing for about 10 years. She was a Canadian National Champion in kickboxing in 2015, competed at the World’s kickboxing tournament later that year and in 2016 competed at the Pan-Am games where she received silver in her division. In
2020 she was chosen as one of the coaches for the Ontario Winter Games where she inspired and coached young athletes.
Randi is a mom to two, her youngest child has autism and grandma to one. Randi encourages and supports her youngest child’s entrepreneurial spirit as he follows his dream of being an artist. When she can she incorporates his art into her stories.

So today, discover wordsmiths. I’ve got Randy Lee, Randy, how are, do you like Randy or Randy Lee?

Randi-Lee: I don’t have a preference. I just don’t wanna miss dinner.

Stephen: Got it. I understand that. So before we talk about your book tell us a little bit about you, where you live and some of the things you like to do outside of writing.

Randi-Lee: There’s things outside of writing. My name is Randy, like you said, I live in Canada, close to the Buffalo border.

Winter is not forever here. Don’t worry. I’m I like to say I’m the most Southern part of Canada ,

Stephen: which is fun. Yeah. I was actually in a meeting with some people and the weirdest part was I’m in Ohio, which is up by the great lakes in the states. And I was still the Southern most person on the whole meeting.

And I thought that was pretty interesting.

Randi-Lee: that’s good. Yep. And outside of writing I like swimming. I like hanging out with my pets. I got three dogs, four cats. I got a kid, I got a step kid. I got a BA a grand baby. I got a husband too. Nice. And yeah, just doing random stuff is fun.

Stephen: Busy. It sounds. That’s

Randi-Lee: what people tell me, Anna, but I’m like, I don’t know. It’s my life.

Stephen: yeah, there you go. All right. So with all of that going on, why did you wanna start writing?

Randi-Lee: I’ve always been a writer. Even when I was little, I would write, I’d write a newspaper for my household and I’m talking little, I’m talking like seven, eight years old where the only person that would read it would be my mom, cuz they forced her

It was like, what’s going on in the house today. What’s being made for dinner. What movie did I just watch? Here’s my review. So I’ve always written and so it was just a matter of turning that passion into an actual job.

Stephen: Okay, nice. Are you a full-time writer now? Or are you a part-time writer? You do something I wish I,

Randi-Lee: OK.

No kidding. So I write part-time and I podcast, I have my own YouTube channel writer or die show, and I’m gonna be making more so between writing and YouTube podcast, that’s what I want my full-time job to be. But it’s not yet. So we still have a office job outside of the house.

Stephen: Part-time.

Got it. Okay. All right. So the book we’re gonna be talking about is called embracing me. And I see you’ve got several books on the shelf in the back there. So tell us about this one, what it’s about without giving everything away.

Randi-Lee: Okay. So yeah, it’s called embracing me. And it’s called that because the book is about mental health.

So I’ve had depression since I was like 14 years old was the first time that I can recall actually experiencing it. And it took me a long time to accept the fact that I wasn’t perfect, that I had depression, that it was just a part of my life. It didn’t have to rule me. But I had to. Give it a type of respect in a way I had to be like, yeah, it’s there.

I have to watch out cuz it can creep up at any time, but it doesn’t actually stop me from doing my life. And so in that way, that’s how embracing me. I embraced all parts of who I am. That’s how it came to be. So it’s. My memoir, but more than that, so it’s not just my story. I give practical tips for people who are reading it.

There are Pieces of research that I’ve done in there to back up. If I say, Hey, therapy’s good for you. I back it up with some research . And then at the end of the book, there’s worksheets where you can actually implement what I’m seeing in the chapter right away. So I’ll give an example so that people can understand the first chapter is write a letter to yourself.

So in that chapter, I explained how that can be helpful. I give my own example. I write a letter to my own younger. And then in the back of the book, there’s a worksheet where you can have that blank page and get to it. There’s no excuses unless you don’t have a pen on you. I guess that’s an excuse, but there’s no excuses it’s right there

Stephen: for you.

Nice. It’s got the activities to help push people a little bit that more than just read, unlike a lot of self-help type books, which are rah, rah, and read this, you give them actual action plan. Yes. Okay. And are these things you’ve done yourself to help out with that?

Randi-Lee: Yeah. So there are things that I have found super helpful.

Like I said, the write a letter to yourself, there’s things about journaling there’s medication therapy self care.

Stephen: Do you include in there about finding music that you enjoy and uplifts you in, including that as part of.

Randi-Lee: Trying to remember if I have it in this book or not. It is in a book that I’m currently writing.

okay. So that’s one it’s important, right? Yeah. When I’ve had, when I was going through a divorce, I was hitting some depression and stress and all that. I found that I made a playlist of all my favorite music and it helped when I was really feeling down, bring me out of it. So I’m a big proponent yeah.

Stephen: Of using music myself.

Randi-Lee: Yes. Oh, music is so helpful. And I can’t remember every little thing that I wrote in the book. But if I didn’t write that in the book, it is super helpful. And I know it’s in an upcoming book that I’m writing cuz I’m currently in the process of it. So I remember perfect writing certain

Stephen: songs that, that was gonna be one of my questions is, are you, we’re going to do some sort of sequel to this or something to go with it.

Randi-Lee: Not necessarily a sequel, I wouldn’t call it a sequel, but I am always writing more things. So right now I actually have two books that I’m writing. So the one I’m coauthoring with someone, and that’s the one where I do mention music is really helpful for mental health. So that is that one’s about mental health and the Bible.

And not that I’m. Super like I’m not a priest or anything, but like I’m a Christian. So I, there was this person in my business group, a videographer. He was like, oh, I always wanted to write a book about this. And I said, I would love to write a book about this. And so we’re collaborating on that. So that we talk about music in that book and he just got me back his edit edits.

So now I have to actually do my edits and send it back to him. But while he was doing his edits, I started my own book, my own next book. And so he has to wait until I finish this one, cuz one, one thing at a time right now. And so I’m writing about my brother’s death last year. He died by a drug overdose.

And so I’m trying to put that into words of. How a family member feels when they go. So it’s a little bit different take on addiction, cuz most addiction books are and not to say they’re bad. They’re amazing. I’ve read some really great ones, but they’re the person with addiction is writing them.

So they have a bit of a different message to send. I’m sending the message to the family members of the person.

Stephen: Okay. Interesting. So your writing style. Is there any books out there you would say are similar to the way you write or how you handle the situations. This is for anybody that’s listening that says, oh, I’ve read that other book.

And I liked it. So I’m gonna Randy Lees, or I might wanna try Randy Lees also

Randi-Lee: What’s funny is you’re with a first person in all of the many podcasts I’ve guessed on, which is a lot you’re the first person to ever ask me that. And OK, so now I have to actually stop and think I’m gonna say Mel Robbins, her books.

Cause it’s very conversational style. I write the way I talk in nonfiction books. Now I’ve written some other books and they’re written it a little bit different style, but the nonfiction, like we’re talking about today, they’re written like we’re sitting down having a cup of tea together and I’m just telling you how it is.

Stephen: Nice. And I hear a lot more of that with nonfiction nowadays. That seems to be the trend going that direct. A bit more rather than stale. And it’s I’ll be fair that it’s a little bit of an unfair question for a nonfiction book. It’s much easier for fiction writers, too. But it’s interesting sometimes because people don’t usually pick up just like one nonfiction, self help type book in whatever niche it happens to be it’s usually multiple or across the years, different niches and stuff.

That’s interesting. And so you said you wrote this based on your own battle with depression and things. Do you think you would’ve written this, if you hadn’t been dealing with that yourself? I would like to think I still would’ve written it, but I definitely would’ve had to have been written in a different way because this is all from a personal perspective.

Randi-Lee: And like I said, I do some research in there just to throw some stats and stuff at people, but really it’s very personal. So without having lived through it, it wouldn’t be the same book

Stephen: and that probably makes it way better. It’s not just the research or clinical. I think that’s exactly an important aspect of something like this.

Randi-Lee: Exactly. It’s a, you’re not by yourself. I’ve been there too. Been there, done that, don’t

Stephen: wanna go back right. Someone reading, it can feel you understand, and you get it, which probably makes it help very helpful, especially for something like depression. Okay. So is this traditionally published or indie published?

Indie

Randi-Lee: published. So I have my own publishing company. I call it RB writing. And yeah, I published it through that. I figured. Two things. One, because I have depression traditional publishing, you often get a lot of nos first and I wasn’t sure if I could handle that. And number two is that when you’re traditionally published, a lot of times, they give you certain ideas.

They want you to incorporate or exclude from your book. And this is my story and my message, and nobody can tell. What is my story? What is my message? So I didn’t want anybody’s anybody else’s fingers in there.

Stephen: Got it. It’s been out, what are people saying? What type of feedback are you getting from people?

Randi-Lee: Really good feedback. A lot of people are saying that they always felt so alone and now they don’t that it’s, they. The way I describe it being a conversation. That’s the feedback that I got. That’s how I stole that from the people who were reading it. They’re like, I felt like I was sitting down with a cup of teeth with you and I’m like, I like that.

I’m taking it. Yeah, that’s

Stephen: all from them. Nice. Nice. Okay. When I talked to fiction authors, I normally ask them if they would like to see their book as a movie or TV show, which doesn’t quite work in this case, but let ask you this. Sure. Are you about doing any

Randi-Lee: soap opera? Seriously?

Stephen: So let me ask this. So have you thought about doing any courses or do you do any speaking? Based around the book on this topic?

Randi-Lee: I have done some speaking COVID shut that down. So I’m trying to find other speaking opportunities right now. They’re mostly podcasts. But I have done there was an event a few years ago for it was a charity event.

We were raising money for housing, for adults that have autism, that needed support. And so I was able to speak there. I spoke at another mental. Fair. That was happening. So there’s been a few and I’d love to

Stephen: get more. Got it. Okay. So where can people get the book? And do you have a website?

Randi-Lee: Yes. So you can get the book on Amazon. And audible, this is my first and only so far audible book, which I’m so excited about. I do wanna turn all of my books into audio but it’s very time consuming, so it’ll get there. But yeah, and I narrate it myself because who better to narrate their own story than themselves.

Right. Yeah. And then my website is RB writing.ca. And then you can also find out all the other books and stuff that I’ve got on there.

Stephen: Nice. Okay. So let me ask you this. As a writer and someone who probably reads a lot, do you have any favorite books or authors that you enjoy yourself?

Randi-Lee: So the first author that I actually started reading and liking with Steven King, cuz I love all things horror. So he got me into reading and then I got into Ted Decker. I really like she Kenyon. I like. Actually I do book reviews as well, so there’s a ton of awesome indie authors out there that I’ve been learning about now.

So Peter top side, I really liked his trilogy. I was bugging him. When are you gonna write your next book? it’s cool when you know the author too, right? I just, it just finished another really good. It was a fantasy book queen of magic. I don’t remember who wrote it off the top of my head, but if you look up queen of magic on my blog, then you’ll be able to find it.

That was a really cool fantasy book. Again. The one thing I hate about fantasy books is that it’s never one book there’s always more

Stephen: next one. Yeah. So when did you start reading Steven King?

Randi-Lee: I would’ve been. 1213, something like that.

Stephen: Yeah. I find that a lot.

Randi-Lee: yes. Yeah. He is really good with that teen audience, I think cuz his stories are captivating, imaginative, but really easy to read overall.

Stephen: Yeah. When I was 10 I got some Stephen King, but we didn’t have a total young adult type section. There wasn’t quite as much middle grade and it wasn’t even really divided out as middle grade so much. Ah, yep. Let’s come over the years. So I, I went from picture books to Stephen King, so yeah, pretty much.

Yeah. Randy, where you live, do you have a favorite bookstore you like to go to

Randi-Lee: I wish I could say yes, because I think those smaller bookshops are awesome, but really where I live, we have a Kohl’s which is basically just a small chapters. And amazon okay. But you, again, what I love about Amazon is that’s where most indie books are.

You’re you often don’t find those smaller new authors at the bookstores yet. They don’t get to the bookstores often until they’re bigger names. I like Amazon because then I can small find the smaller authors and the smaller publishers.

Stephen: Nice. Okay. So before we move on talks about some author stuff and how to deal with burnout if someone came up to you and said they’ve had some depression and there’s a lot of books out there.

Why should I get your book and read your book? What would you tell them?

Randi-Lee: There’s worksheets . You said ITing you mean’s homework. That’s right. Beginning of the episodes. A lot of times you pick up the self-help book and you read it, you go, okay. That’s great. You put on yourself. You never look at it.

You never do anything with it. Technically I guess, yes it’s self-help but I don’t. I hope that I don’t feel like I’m, I don’t like those self-help books. I like, this is what you need to do. So that’s not the vibe that I’m trying to give off. I’m trying to give off the vibe of you are not alone. I’m here.

I get it. I am in the same pit as you are. Or at least I was at some points. So here feel not alone and here try some things that worked for me. And I hope that they work for you too. So I think the

Stephen: vibe is different. It’s something to work on to move forward. You don’t feel like you’re just floundering.

I like exactly. Okay, great. I appreciate that. And the book sounds great. I wish you luck on it. Hope more people listen to this and it could help some people. I hope so.

Kristina Rienzi, M.A., C.P.C., is a bestselling author who has dedicated her life through psychology, coaching, leadership and writing to inspire and empower others. Her debut novel Choosing Evil was an Amazon Bestseller. Among Us, her latest novel is on Audible’s ACX University and Editor’s Select Pick. Kristina also holds an ELI-MP, SPHR, SHRM-SCP, and CiHS. She lives at the Jersey Shore with her husband and daughter.

Today on discovery wordsmiths, I have Christina and Christina. It is a wonderful warm day. Welcome to you. How are you doing?

I’m

Kristina: doing great. Thank you so much for having me. I’m excited to be here.

Stephen: Great. Now, before we get started talking about your book, let’s find out a little bit about you.

So tell us some things where you live and some things you like to do besides writing.

Kristina: Yeah, that’s a great question. I live at the Jersey shore, which a lot of people are familiar with from the show, which isn’t where I live, but I still live at the Jersey shore. I live by the beach. It’s absolutely beautiful here.

I love it. I was born and raised in Hoboken, New Jersey, where Frank Sinatra from, if anybody knows who he is I might have heard of him. I have heard of him, right? Yeah. Many young folks, maybe not have to look ’em up or ask their grandparents. But aging myself, but yes. So New Jersey is my home.

A lot of my fiction stories revolve around the Jersey shore. I love it here. And my favorite thing to do besides and read and spend time with my family is to go to the beach. I love to be by the water, whether I’m at the beach or at a river or a lake or anywhere with water, I. Brings me peace and calmness.

And I just love to, to do that. So nice. That’s great. My favorite thing to do the coast.

Stephen: So do they actually film the show there? Yes.

Kristina: Okay. They do and it’s different parts. There are different counties that have the ocean. The east coast is a big, is big in New Jersey and there’s a lot of people here.

And so yes, they do. They filmed it in several of the towns and they’re all wonderful towns and I’ve been to all of them and a no issue. But where I live is a little more suburbia, a little more local, a little quieter, which suits me and my personality. But a lot of people love. The high life down there with all the partying and the things that go on and that’s brings a summer crowd for sure, which we love that living here, we have a lot of people that are tourists that come in from New York or Pennsylvania or other states to visit.

And that’s really great for our economy and just for the hustle and bustle of New Jersey. It’s wonderful. But where I live is a little quieter. It’s a little more of a local area.

Stephen: Nice. Okay. So why did you want to start writing and what made you finally actually sit down to.

Kristina: That’s a great question. I’ve been writing all of my life in some capacity and fiction has always been a passion of mine.

I love stories. I love reading stories and telling stories. And as a young child, as many children begin with their love of reading and writing. When you know, many people, I should say, adults begin with their love of reading and writing when they’re young. I would write short stories. I would write these little stories and they actually were on the darker side, which is what I ended up writing in fiction were thrillers, but I always loved like the Nancy drew and the Hardy boys and all those kind of stuff I watched like Scooby, do you know, like the mystery scary stuff was always my thing.

So about, oh my gosh. Now it’s probably it’s over 10 years ago at this point, but I. Just had this bug to write again we go through life, we go to school, we get a job and it just fell to the wayside. It wasn’t a priority for me, but because I was commuting a lot, I was listening to books, more fiction, and I thought, let me get back to my fiction.

So about 10, 12 years ago, or so I decided, you know what, let me just start from scratch. I don’t really know how to write professionally. I haven’t done this in a million years. I joined a writer’s group. That was the best thing I ever did of profe. A lot of people were professional writers, some were.

Playing around in creativity with their creativity, but they just helped me along. We did a critique group every week we would write a 1500 words and people would critique and talk. And so it was of cutthroat because I wasn’t I hadn’t been doing this in a long time. So I was like getting feedback, real feedback as a writer that can be.

Very difficult to digest sometimes cuz it’s real feedback. But it was wonderful. It actually took me to push me, to take some classes and then go on to write a novel and that’s spearheaded my passion again for writing fiction.

Stephen: Nice. And do you still work with that group?

Go to that same group?

Kristina: I haven’t been to that group in a long time. I’ve morphed the group to me was like a starting point and everyone in the group kind of said, find your genre and pursue that. And I didn’t know when I first started out what my genre was, I liked reading everything. So it turned out I was writing more of the suspense, thriller genre.

Subsequently joined some groups there. I ended up becoming president of sisters in crime, New Jersey, which is a spinoff of mystery writers of America. And that is for crime writers. So yeah, I found my niche. I found my group, I found my people and I just started going to those meetings and being involved that way.

And of course I still took classes I still did all that kind of stuff. Cuz I, I feel like you’re always honing your craft no matter what you’re writing. You’re always learning. So yeah, it just evolved from there, which was

Stephen: natural. Nice. Yeah. In my mind if you live in Jersey with all the mob connections, Sinatra and everything, joining a group called sisters in crime, I don’t I don’t know about that sounds almost like sons of anarchy.

Like it’s gonna be a TV show.

Kristina: Yeah. We did kill people, but it was in our book. That’s the joke with authors, right? You don’t look through their search history.

No what was really cool about that group and with COVID, everything changed, right? There’s more stuff you’re doing virtually and so forth, but we had awesome guest speakers.

We would have the police department come talk to us. We had crime scene investigators. We had all of these amazing people come to teach us about real life flu thing and crime fighting and different things that happen so that when we’re writing, it’s more realistic and it is just very cool

Stephen: experience.

So your book, five happy choices. Tell us a little bit about that. What’s the, I’m going to guess what the genre is, but tell us a little bit about the book and what

Kristina: it’s about. Sure. That is not a thriller it’s nonfiction. And I made the leap and we can talk about that later, but yes. My background, my educational professional background is in psychology.

It’s in leadership, it’s in coaching, it’s in all of those things. So I decided with COVID and everything that came upon with that, and a lot of mental health struggles people were having, including myself. I decided, you know what, why don’t I take my education and experience and do something in the self-help genre I can write.

So let me just learn how to. Nonfiction. So that’s what I did. So what I did was I took, actually took a couple of classes in the science of wellbeing. The science of wellbeing is actually the science behind happiness. Happiness is not just a feeling. Happiness is a section of positive psychology.

It’s a spin off a positive psychology, which is about. Going through life productively, feeling good and living a productive, healthy, happy life. So I did a little bit of studies on that. I took a certificate and happiness studies and I decided, let me take the top things that resonated with me, the things that science has proven help people feel better.

And let me just dense those into a. For people. And this was really about COVID and everything we all have been through. And me feeling like I needed to contribute in some way to that use those skills for writing and help people. So five happy choices is proven in science backed by research.

And these are five things I have chosen to share that really. Help people feel good. And the more you practice these things and their actions, you can take, it’s not just some data and information. It’s, these are actions you can actually take that will help you feel good and will, if you do them more and it leads to a happier life.

And this is over time. And actually I’m in school right now for my CD, which is is a doctorate degree in psychology and I’m focusing on health and. Psychology and psychological wellbeing equals happiness. It’s their, they go hand in hand, we call it happiness and we say happy and people know what happy is, but it really is about psychological wellbeing, which is about feeling good and living well.

And what does that look like? And that doesn’t look like by the way, being happy all the time, that looks like dealing with things and choosing to make choices to push yourself.

Stephen: Nice. Okay. So you totally went in a different direction and we’re gonna talk about that on the second half for out there is writing fiction and non-fiction.

So what did you find for yourself different about doing the research, writing a fiction book, as opposed to doing research and writing a non-fiction what’d you find differences

Kristina: there? Completely different fiction was always a passion of mine, but a challenge for me because storytelling is its own craft.

It’s got ITSs own set of rules. And there’s never a time when you are at the top. Meaning even somebody like a Stephen King is going to get better with time in his writing, because the more you learn your life experience. So you’re always one uping yourself. Like the minute you get to a level of writing, you’re one uping that, and there’s so much to learn.

It’s almost like an infinite amount of information to learn, to be an excellent fiction writer. Nonfic. Was actually a little bit easier for me because I am a student by nature. I’m a lifelong learner. I love school. I love learning. I loved sharing what I learned. So for me, the research was research.

It was scholarly research. It was academic, it was clinical. It were things that made sense to me. And what helped me though, translate that into something people can read. Is that I have the fiction background and it’s conversational. And you take that conversational voice of a fiction writer and you put that onto the data and information of non-fiction.

That’s how the two come together, because otherwise who’s gonna read know, you’re not gonna read a book. That’s all scholarly articles and journal. Nobody I have to do that for school, but nobody wants to do that when they pick up a book. So I had to figure out how to translate it. So it was very different.

It was actually more comforting for me because I feel like I have the data, the science, the information I felt confident. About what I was putting on paper. Whereas in fiction for me, there was always a level of doubt and insecurity is this good enough? Did I hit right? Are the readers gonna like it with nonfiction?

Yes, you do have that. Cuz you are putting a product out there that people are going to read, but I knew the information I was sharing was accurate and I was comfortable in it and it just, it helped me to have that level of confidence that I’m giving information. That’s gonna be useful to someone. Nice.

Stephen: OK. So that. We’ll expand on that a little more for the author talk. I like that a lot. What would you say for the nonfiction wise? What other books out there are similar to yours in, in tone, in what you’re writing about that type of thing. Do you

Kristina: have any. Yeah, that’s a great question. One of my very good friends who I is a dear friend, and I love her so much.

She has a book called coffee, self talk, and she has a whole line of books. Her name is Kristen helm stutter. And it’s all about self talk and it’s all about positive affirmations, but on the surface it looks like, okay there are these affirmations. I say every day when I’m drinking my coffee, which is the truth it’s a few minutes a day to drink your coffee and say these affirmations.

But what I love about what Kristen does is she goes into the science behind. What self-talk is how it, it helps your mindset, how it is based in neuroscience, how it can push you forward and you feel good and you feel happy. So I would say absolutely. We’re it is written differently with a different, the same goal in mind, but I feel like coffee self-talk is an awesome example of how to go from.

Not feeling good to feeling good, really simple way. And that’s what this is all about. Just doing something very simple. I also love one of my mentors who she doesn’t know me, but I know her cuz I follow her, but she has been a mentor to me by following her and reading her books as Mel Robbins, I find her to be.

She ju she’s not only empowering in the information she shares, but she shares things that are actionable. And that’s what I want her to do. It’s actions you take, and they’re based in neuroscience, they’re based in cognitive development. They’re based in psychology. They’re based in things that a, that people have done research on that work.

It’s not just her saying, Hey, do this. Yes, it worked for her, but here’s why, so I like to find people who are writing books, that it doesn’t have to all be based in journal articles. I don’t mean it that way. Cuz I think if you have something to share, you share it, whether whatever your research methodology is, but I love things that are simple.

They’re backed with science and scientific data, and they’re just easy to implement and they make sense and you don’t want anything too complicated. You don’t have to go, oh, I have this issue now, what do I do? And you start overthinking that you really want it to be about simplicity and you wanna be able to implement these things without having to think too much about it.

And that’s where I got my inspiration from, was to come up with something that was simple.

Stephen: Okay. When someone picks up your book, do you recommend that they sit and read it straight through or did you try and get it? So they would stop, pause and take the actions and read pieces as they need it.

Kristina: Absolutely. Second part of the latter, for sure. So in my book, I go through each chapter, goes through one of the choices, this my experience with them, the science behind it, but at the end of every chapter, there are actions to take. And so you can do that. You can read the whole thing and then go back and take the actions or pause and take actions, but it asks questions.

So that, and these questions are based on, I’m also a certified professional coach. I spent a year in coach training and I used the questions we would ask in like a coaching session or when I’m coaching someone for you to be thoughtful about what things mean to you and what you would like to do about those things.

And so all of the questions are there’s a section at the end of each book that talks about what you’re gonna ask yourself. What action you’re gonna take. And then there’s an affirmation which always just ties everything together so that you’re making these choices, cuz these choices lead to.

That’s what I wanted to connect. I wanted to connect the choice with happiness because they’re connected. They’re connected in science. So for me, that’s what that was. And then I also I made an accompanying journal because I felt like these are all great to, to note down, but that if somebody wants to practice this really practicing, it is what makes it a habit.

And it becomes second nature. And I think if. There’s so many theories on what creates a habit. Is it 21 days? Is it 60 days? Whatever I did a month, I just said 30 days 30 days every day, if you wanna fill this little sheet out and you wanna take a little, there are easy actions to take.

If you do this and you practice it, it becomes a habit. And you really don’t have to think about it. You just, it becomes part of who you are and how you move through life. And it helps. It’s helped me. And that’s why I shared.

Stephen: Okay. Great. And is your book traditionally published or did you self-publish it?

Kristina: So for this book, I self-published it under my publishing company, I have some of my thrillers that are traditionally published and then I’ve self-published as well. So I’ve done all of the different. Ways of publishing, but for this, I felt like it was important for me to take me to handle everything the way that I wanted to handle it.

I wanted to complete control over it. And I wanted to just share it in the way that I wanted to share it. I didn’t wanna have any limitations and I absolutely love the publishing industry in all its forms. But I did learn from having books with a publisher, that there are limitations that you have and things you can decide and not to sign it on.

And quite honestly, this book was so personal to me that I felt like I needed to be in complete.

Stephen: Nice project. And maybe we could talk even a little bit about that on the second half for authors, cause I’d be interested for some comments. So have you had people reading it and what’s the feedback been?

Kristina: So I’ve gotten great feedback. I have had a lot of personal stories come to me about how the book has helped them, which is really what I was trying to do. know, If I can help one person and people just feel like they never thought about. What happiness meant to them, what it looked like for them.

And they never really knew what to do to feel good. And the things that you think go out and buy a new. Item new tech, new something is what makes you feel it’s instant gratification. That’s not really what makes you happy, making more money that doesn’t make you happy. There’s science behind all of this.

There are things that make you happy. And if there’s simple things and I think it was just the eye opening wow, these are really easy, simple things to do. And I never really thought about what happiness meant to me and what it looked like for. And practicing it. Like it never, I never knew it was something you could practice and get better at it’s either you feel good or you don’t feel good and you leave it to external.

In other words, what happens to me makes me happy or. No your happiness comes from within and these are choices. And I don’t mean to simplify it and say, you can choose happiness, cuz guess what? There are days where I am not happy and I’m not gonna be, even though I wanna be it’s, but it’s so being aware of your emotions, honoring your negative emotions and all of that, that you make a choice.

And these are choices you have and it’s in your control. So yes, I’ve gotten a lot of great feedback. I’ve had people just tell me that they are parts of groups, business groups, and, or companies and things like that, where they would really wanna share this with their teams. And that makes me feel good, cuz I feel like if I can help people function better.

I If you think about it, you’re at work in whatever you do, you’re working more than you do anything else. And your mental health at work is critical. And that is one of the areas I’ve been studying in school is mental health in in your work and how it affects everything. So I do feel like.

I’ve gotten a really positive response. And it’s really about just the awareness that you can be happy in a simple, easy way in day to day moments. And that it’s doable. This is achievable for people and it’s something complicated about it.

Stephen: Nice. Great. Okay. And where can we get the book?

Or bookstores or where is it available?

Kristina: It’s available, wherever books are sold, it’s wide. So it’s everywhere Amazon Barnes and noble Cobo, all those places. It’s available in ebook, it’s available in print. I do have the journal is only available in print, obviously, which makes sense.

It’s audio is come, is actually out for happy choices. Five happy choices I did in audio because I had such a great experience with audio books as a fiction author. And I felt like I really wanted it to be out in audio because for me listening to non-fiction, I listen to it over and over again sometimes just so I can get it ingrained in my brain.

And if I need a boost, I listen to it again. It is on audible five happy choices, and I have a amazing narrator. Leslie Howard. I decided I didn’t wanna narrate it myself. I am. A narrator. I’m not an actor, that’s not my area of expertise. And I really wanted somebody who was skilled in narrating self-help personal development.

Yeah, it’s also available on audio for everybody who loves audio. Nice and needs to hear it instead of read it.

Stephen: Okay. And what’s your plans for your next book? Is it gonna be nonfiction or you going back to your fiction roots?

Kristina: I think I’m gonna continue with a non-fiction for now. I have a book drafted that I’m editing.

And I’m going to see where it takes me and just having being in school for psychology right now and learning everything I’m learning. I wanna be wanna take pieces of that and translate that into more content. I absolutely will not. Let go of fiction. I have, of course, every fiction author will tell you they have a few books on their computer, right?

There was a book that was on my computer that I’ve been going back to, and it’s just sitting there because I got sidetracked with this. And then this was like pulling me. But absolutely I will also do fiction. And just right now, I wanna get out the couple of, I have one or two or more ideas I wanna get rolling with so that there is a connection and there’s some more content for people who are looking for that.

I need that right now. Mental health is really, I.

Stephen: Especially now. Yeah, absolutely agree. And it’s been a bigger issue these last couple years. It seems. And it’s, I think that’s a good thing overall for everybody.

Kristina: Definitely. Absolutely.

Stephen: Okay. Do you have a website.

Kristina: Yes. So it’s my name, Christina hanzi.com.

Everything is there all my fiction, all my non-fiction my newsletter. I do have an email list, which I send up about once a month, unless I have something special to, to say. And I’ll either do a little story and inspirational information or share something I learned in school about mental health and happiness.

And I’ll also just pop a video. Sometimes instead of writing, I’ll do a little video of just a catch up on what’s going on and something that can help people. So it’s really all about helping people. So anybody who’s on my email list, you’re gonna get a lot of information about how to feel good, how to feel better.

How to get out of that slump and whatever I’m learning in school, that’s backed in science. That’s I can translate very easily for you. I will do. It’s all about sharing information. If I’m learning it, I wanna share it. And that’s what it’s all about. So if you go to my website, you will get all that kind of information, any podcast or anything I’ve been on, any information I’ve shared is there for you, but for sure whatever I’m working on currently is also there.

And I’d love to connect with people. I love to hear their stories.

Stephen: Nice. Okay, great. Let me ask you a couple other questions about you. What are some of your favorite books that you’ve read or authors that you like to.

Kristina: I have so many, I can’t even think. So I know it’s oh, alright. I mentioned some of my non-fiction people nonfiction, a couple of more, I love bene brown.

I love Gabriel Bernstein and all their books. I tend to follow authors in everything that they write. on one of those I will read anything, but on the fiction side, I tried. And of course I love Stephen King. He is he was always my favorite all my life forever and ever, but more modernly.

I love Lisa Gardner, Karen slaughter, any the psychological thriller and thriller authors are my favorite. I also love completely different Jodi PECO. She writes more women’s fiction, but it’s more controversial. That she takes from all different sides, which I love. I love how she delicately handles things that are difficult to discuss.

And she does it in fiction in a way that is respectful to all parties. And I do, I love reading her, so yeah, those are my go-tos that I’m always picking up. I also love Lisa Unger. All the Lisas. There’s a lot of Lisa’s Lisa Jackson. , there’s a lot of thriller Lisa others, but I love them. And anyone who really can keep a page turning.

And tell a good story and thriller. I will read anything, but I love my thrillers, especially my psychological thrillers. They’re my.

Stephen: Nice and being summer and living close to a beach you got a lot of beach reads to take it. Take care

Kristina: of. Absolutely. There’s so much. And I do a lot also of, we talked about audio a little bit.

I love audio books for the beach too, because sometimes it’s just wanna just relax and I just pop my little. My earphones in and I’m listening to a story and I just, I think audio is just, I’m so glad that audio has developed over time because years ago we didn’t have audio books. We had the library books and you already go to the bookstore and I love audio.

Cause I think it opens up a whole new area for people to listen while busy or driving or doing something else. Yeah, absolutely. And where you live, do you have a favorite bookstore that you like to go to?

So there are so many little bookstores that I love. There’s one in Belmar, New Jersey. And I love there.

There’s a little one in Belmar new. Oh my gosh. I can’t even remember the name cause I haven’t been there. They were like shut down during COVID for a while, but I can’t remember the names. Isn’t that terrible. Like my mind is gone, but but I love the little bookstores, any independently owned bookstore is where I like to go.

I’ve been, I love Barnes and noble too, and I will absolutely go to Barnes and noble. But I love it when I can find a little bookstore that is in a little shore town on the beach. Cuz I feel like those are the ones where you really get to know the owners and you get to know you just get to see the, when you go there.

It’s like all the locals. I don’t know. I feel, I like the Fe that homey feeling of just. Being in that little beach town, that little shore town. And we have a lot of those around, but yeah, with COVID a lot of things either closed down or temporarily shut down. So a lot of stuff you’re doing online now. So if things are changing, they’re coming back around, they’re opening up again.

But for a while, everything was just closed. So it was a little depressing.

Stephen: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. All right. So before we move on to author stuff tell everybody, if someone came up to you, like you were on the beach and they said, Hey, I heard you wrote a book. Why should I read your book? And you wanted to tell ’em quickly, so you could get back to your relaxing.

What would you tell

Kristina: them? I would tell them for five happy choices, the reason you should read it is because it’s five simple things. You can do actions you can take in everyday moments to feel good and feel better and who doesn’t wanna feel. Perfect. They’re just easy. It’s easy.

Stephen: Okay. Great.

Christina, thank you for sharing that. I love it. We’ll put some links in the show notes for everybody that would love to go here. Read your book or even listen to it on audio. Thank you. Thank you.

Kristina has written both fiction and non-fiction. This is more than most authors, so we have a great discussion on what it’s like to write both – how they’re different and what to expect.

Let’s do some author talk. So before we get onto our topic You’ve been writing for a while and you wrote fiction and now some nonfiction.

So what are some things that you have learned that you’re doing differently than when you started?

Kristina: Okay when I started out writing fiction, I was very much by the book. Everything was, I would take a class and I would follow the rules and it was holding me back. And what I’ve learned to do is trust myself.

And now, although I will still outline cuz so for a thriller, it would be plotting, right? Plotting a little bit outlining, but for nonfiction, you really have to have everything figured out. You can’t just go by the wayside BEC just go in circles and write in a circle because you’re never gonna get the point across.

It’s a little bit more structured and needs to be. So I’ve taken what I’ve learned from plotting. Thrillers and what works for me and my voice and translating that into non-fiction by doing something very similar, completely different content, but I really need to make sure that my book is outlined before I even write a word because it for non-fiction, it’s a very specific message you’re sending and you wanna make sure that somebody’s getting out of it.

What you intend. And so it just going through that process and writing thrillers, I had to translate that over to nonfiction and just having exercised that for so many years was really helpful. Also the casual conversation. Writing in a casual way, like I’m speaking to the reader very helpful, and non-fiction, it’s easy to get bogged down in science and data and facts.

And I think you’ve gotta be able to translate that. So like anybody who’s reading it will understand. And so that was so helpful for me. And just being, just learning all of those things about writing and the art of writing and the craft of writing. It works. What, no matter what you’re writing, it works. You’re obviously not doing character development in a nonfiction book, but you’re still telling a story. There’s an element of storytelling. A lot of my nonfiction is telling my story and why this is important and what I learned and how it can be translated for the reader. So there were a lot of things that kind of actually did work from just years of training and editing and taking classes and fiction.

Stephen: Nice. Yeah. Something, we could talk a little bit more about in a bit. But the skills you learned in one translated to help with the other, and you even mentioned your non-fiction trying to do it in a narrative fashion. And I think that’s a not trend necessarily, but I think more non-fiction is doing that nowadays.

It’s not so cut dried business. Like they’re making it in the story, making it accessible for people. I think that’s a big thing that’s changing in the non-fiction. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. So what software and services do you use?

Kristina: So I use velum. I also use Scrivener. I have. So a Scrivener is really where I was using writing my fiction.

So I still do a little bit in there, but I really have trans vem is really the product that will produce the book. But I also like writing in there because I feel like it gives me a visual. I’m very visual with things. So I need to see what my cover’s gonna look like. That motivates me. I wanna see the chapters.

I wanna see what they’re gonna look like. And that just it’s almost as if when I plot it out and I put everything in vem because it is showing you what the book’s gonna look. The book is already written, even though I haven’t written it yet, I have my chapters. It gives it pushes me forward.

It’s already done, so you have to finish it. It’s just a psychological thing. A trick. I play on myself to get through it, but absolutely velum. I love, I always, Scrivener will always be my tried and true writer software. I do work with people. People make people that make this book, world thing happen.

I have an author assistant who helps me. Everything from my website to proofing my book, to getting it up on the platforms. I also work with an editor of course, and it a little bit different for non-fiction, but I have an editor who has written. Technical nonfiction who writes thrillers also, who understands me.

And you get, you have to have somebody who gets you also because a lot of editing is asking questions. What are you trying to say? What where is this going? I think you need more information. Like you want the editor to ask the right questions, not just edit it for line edits. So I have somebody who knows me, so sh we can have conversations and she can push me. And I never feel like. Defensive. I just, I wanna get the product out the way that it needs to get out. And then of course, and I do work with a public relations person, because I’m really terrible at promoting.

And I think when you’re an author, you need to know your strengths and weaknesses. I know what my strengths and weaknesses are. And one of my weaknesses is. Promoting my stuff. And I know that’s more of a skill. Like you just, you there’s, there are things you can learn to do, but for me, it’s just, I’m not good at it.

I’m not good at that. And I need to push myself to do that. So I have somebody who helps me with that, but it is its a team effort.

Stephen: And so that’s a smart thing. People always say don’t skip an editor find an editor, somebody that can edit your story. And same with marketing.

If you’re not good at you, don’t enjoy it. If you hire somebody that can help with that, it takes the burden off of you.

Kristina: Yeah, and I’m not good. And you know what it is. I would like it. I don’t mind it. I really don’t. I like connecting with readers, but I never know if what I’m doing is worth doing are people paying attention?

What should I be sharing and not sharing and I’m getting there. But I think because I was I’m so like many authors concerned about the product I’m putting together and selling, but just tell people that you have a product. And what the value is. And yes, and also with audio books, hiring an audio narrator, audiobook, narrator.

That’s not what I do. And I’m very good about Hey, this is your expertise, not mine. I trust you. I value what you’re trained in, do your job. And I’m here to support it. Like vice versa. I’m writing the book you have to help me with getting that message out. So yeah, it is important. I think we do try to take it all on.

And I think when people hear the word self-publishing or indie publishing, they think, oh my God, I would do everything. The truth is everything’s gonna fall on you anyway, if your book’s gonna be successful. But at the end of the day, as an indie author, you have control over who those people are, whereas with a publisher, and we can talk about this separately.

I know we wanted to touch on this. It’s a little bit different, but at the end of the day, you’re not doing everything yourself, there’s a team of people,

Stephen: So besides doing podcasts, what are some of the other marketing things you’re doing?

Kristina: So I have my email list. I do, I am on social media on Facebook and Instagram and I try to post pretty regularly.

I will do podcasts. I will also do presentations. I’ve done workshops. I wanna do a little bit, I wanna do more of those because those are really fun. And now that it’s COVID is on its way out. I hope, or at least things are opening up more. In person has been great to connect with people, but I absolutely have no problem doing things online.

Just trying to connect with people on the message of my book and as many people as I can get to, to talk with about that I’ve also done, I’ve submitted my books for awards and actually five happy choices, one a book award which was great. And things like just getting the word out is more, I think, than just Emailing or sending stuff out on social media, it’s connecting with people about your message and people who need to hear it or wanna hear it.

That’s how word of mouth spreads. That’s how things happen. And I think that’s not something you can control. And I know people always say, at least in the book world oh this book was so great because word of mouth and you can’t really control that. You have some control over what you put out there, but it’s not that one thing that hits the right spot in the market and for people and takes off.

It could be anything there’s a little bit of luck involved and it isn’t. And I wanna say this to authors who are listening. It is very frustrating. I understand cuz I’m an author also to try to control the end of that process. Like you wrote the book, you put it out there now you are trying to control sales.

It’s very hard because you cannot control sales. You actually can’t control anything that happens after you put the book out there. All you can do is show. Give your tell everybody what your message is, what your book is about and hope for the best, do the best that you can with what you have.

But what, however, the world is gonna accept your story is how it’s gonna be. And they may accept a story that you didn’t think was that great. Or you were thinking this isn’t the one I thought was gonna be so big and be a hit. And so you just have to trust in your ability and what you’re doing and put the best product out there and make sure you tell people about it in a way that is genuine and authentic.

And whatever happens from that point is out of your.

Stephen: And you mentioned that you’re doing the non-fiction book self-published, but you’ve worked with a publisher and you just kinda hinted at differences in what you’re. So what are some of those differences? Why did you wanna do this? Self-published and what control are you finding different or what things do you wish that you had more help with, that you used to have?

What, some of those differences before we go into fiction nonfiction part.

Kristina: Yeah, sure. That’s a great question. And everyone has their D own experience, right? So the first book that I published, the first book I wrote my debut novel, choosing evil was the first book that went to a publisher. I didn’t know any better.

And I say this in a way there’s nothing wrong with self-publishing, but I didn’t even think of self-publishing. I’m like I have to get a publisher. And I was following in the footsteps of all of my traditionally published friends. And I did a lot of different things but what worked for me for this book was a Twitter pitch.

I did a Twitter pitch, I got a bunch of requests and then I had a publisher pick up choosing evil and it’s sequel breaking evil. And it was a wonderful experience. I didn’t know any better meaning. I just did what I thought I was supposed to be doing. And I got lucky that somebody wanted my book and paid me for it.

And all of those kinds of things. But this was also when self-publishing had just started getting big. And I didn’t realize all of the benefits that could come from that. And by the way, I have several friends who are ridiculously successful more than traditionally published with self-published books.

So there’s, you can do it anyway, right? There’s no right or wrong. It was a great experience. I loved my editor. I loved the people I worked with. They were very supportive. They were very helpful, but I had very little under my control. There were things I had to give up control of and I was totally fine with that.

Cuz again, I. Asked I didn’t know any better. I hadn’t had any other experience. This was my experience. And while I was with the publisher and I did two books with them, I went out on my own with novella learning shadows, and I decided to go under a group of self-published authors and we did a multier novel.

So in other words, a multi standalone series. So every book was its own book, but it was part of a bigger. Series. So the series was just the location and the characters, and you could cross pollinate characters, but it was all different stories. I wrote thrillers. A lot of them wrote romance. That experience was so much fun for me because I got back to do the cover I wanted to do.

I was able to do a lot with the story that my publisher wanted me to do different things with my story. Like they wanted it to be in a different genre than I had written. And so it was just a little bit more controlling and what, as a new author, I was gonna go with the flow I’m gonna do what you tell me to do.

Cause I wanna sell books. Yeah. And I didn’t, and there was nothing wrong with any of it. They didn’t do anything wrong. It was all good. But I think having had the experience of indie publishing and I am a planner, I’m a driven person. I like to control the things that I have a responsibility.

What bothered me, and this is me and nothing against I, I would definitely do the traditional route again in the future, but what bothered me was that my name is on this cover and I have like very little control over the book. The cover. Would it look like the edits? If there was an error things like imprint, anything.

I had very little control over and there were some things that I was happy with and some things I wasn’t happy with. So with there’s more responsibility with indie publishing, cuz it’s all you, but I have more control over it and I have multiple people looking at it. And so I take full responsibility.

If something isn’t perfect or something happens, but I had a say in it. And that is what I wanted. Again, I wouldn’t turn it down. It’s just for this, at this point in my life where I wanted to do what I wanted to do and experiment creatively. I could write in any genre I wanted, like I was writing in thriller, but I write science fiction, paranormal.

I write domestic psychological thrillers, domestic thrillers, like I’m writing all these different genres. That’s not fitting under your typical brand with a traditional publisher. So it just was easier for me to indie publish and I got my rights back and I indie published those two books.

Stephen: Nice. Okay. For our topic we were to talk fiction versus nonfiction, and I think it’s interesting because I know a lot of authors just stick with writing non or writing fiction or non-fiction and what I seem to see is when they write fiction, it’s several books, a series, several series, that type of thing.

Non-fiction, it’s one, two or three book. It’s a limited number of books, but if they cross a lot of times, authors get the thought in their head. I’m an author. I write fiction. I’m going to write a non-fiction book about how to. And they stick with that type of topic, but you went something completely different mental health issues, helping people be happy.

So why make the choice to go non-fiction first of all when you’ve been successful with fiction and why choose the mental health and something like that, as opposed to the million other things you could have. That’s

Kristina: a great question, cuz I do, I have seen, I don’t know if you agree, but I have seen a lot of fiction authors venture out into non-fiction not and in the writing, but I’ve also seen some touch on other things.

They’ve had experiences with PTSD or anxiety, things like that. Which is interesting to me, they usually partner with somebody who’s got the background, but so yeah, that’s a great question. I didn’t, I don’t feel and I’m gonna be very honest about this. I don’t feel like I’m. Expert on writing in any way, shape or form.

I have my way of writing. I like to write it’s great. That’s not my calling or expertise. Like I, wouldn’t not that I wouldn’t teach help somebody with that, but I feel like where I Excel, where I’m educated, where I have experience is on the psychology side is on the mental health side. And so writing thrillers was a passion of mine.

I love it. It’s so exciting, but I had a lot to learn and I learned from all of these people. I feel like whatever you’re gonna write in non-fiction, at least for me is what you’re driven. To do in life. What you’re calling is what you’re good at, what you’re educated in. Like you have something to offer.

So for me, it was this. I had something to offer that I wasn’t sharing. I have I’m going for my doctorate in psychology. I have my master’s in psychology. I have a certified professional coaching certification. I have a certificate in happiness studies, which again, took me all year long to get these aren’t little things I did online in like a class.

I go in all in, I love this stuff. This is like all happening behind the scenes. As I’m writing my thrillers. And my experience in work I have, I’m not gonna say how many years it’ll age me, but a lot of decades, a few decades of experience in leadership, in behavior, in performance, in all of these things.

So I have all of this stuff that no one’s getting from me. And by the way, any friend who calls me is called me about that stuff, I need help with this. What do I do about that? I’m coaching people. I’m helping them with employment things. I’m not sharing it with. So I thought, you know what? This is crazy for me not to share.

I want to share what I’ve learned and what my experience is. And by the way, I’ve also struggled with anxiety. I have panic attacks that’s a real thing. I had a really difficult time dealing with grief. When my mom died with COVID, I went into a panic. I’ve had my own experiences. I could be educated in everything in the world, but guess what?

I’m human. Things are gonna happen. And I have had these experiences, so I thought, why not take my writing? Training my writing voice, my writing platform and use it for good versus evil. No, but I’m writing thrill or evil, you know what I mean? And I say that as a joke, but it’s true. It’s like, why not use my powers for good.

And yeah, I’ve really wanted to just share what I’ve learned and what I have to offer. And that was what I had a lot of other writers have writing. Experience to share. And that just wasn’t my place. I didn’t feel like that was where I fit. I feel like I fit here. And so I went with that. I trusted my gut and I said, this is where I’m gonna, I’m just gonna go out and limb.

It was a big jump. It was uncomfortable for me because it wasn’t my comfort zone. I hadn’t done anything like this before, but I knew every the material, like it’s very comfortable for me to talk about to live. I live my life like this learning, working on myself, all that. Experiencing things and figuring them out.

That’s just my whole life. I lived this way. So it was very natural for me to write this and very comfortable in that sense, but sharing it was difficult. Because I hadn’t ever shared anything. And you would go through it. We talk about imposter syndrome all the time. I had major imposter syndrome with nonfiction.

Who am I to write this? Who am I, everyone look at me. Like you have seven degrees in psychology. What do you mean? Who are you? But it’s real. Who am I? Like, why should I be writing about happiness? Why I’m not a BNE brown or whoever that and they’re established people in the marketplace with their books, but it doesn’t matter.

You’ve gotta. Come from a place of authenticity and passion and drive. And if you’re of service and you wanna help people, you gotta get your story and information out. You’re sharing information who what’s so bad about that. I feel like that’s

Stephen: I? Yes, absolutely. And I love that you’re using your training putting it into this format, but it sounds like the book isn’t So dry and textbook that you, we talked about this, you wanted to put it into more of a narrative.

Do you think that is helping make it more successful than it would’ve been? Or do you think that people look at it as, eh, it’s not real book or real self-help or anything like that? What’s your thoughts, feelings on that type of thinking?

Kristina: I don’t know. I, and this is my personal opinion, cuz I’ve only, this is my first.

I wanted, it was very important for me to get something out that was short, simple and simple. I absolutely put references in there for different studies that were done. And just a little bit, I didn’t wanna go heavy with that because I thought this isn’t a journal article. I do think it resonated with people cause I spoke to them.

It was I don’t, I write in the third person. And thrillers. Okay. This is first person, obviously it’s actually second person, cuz I’m saying you it’s second person. And I’m talking about my story. So it is more conversational. It is if you pick this up, I’m talking to you, I’m like I’m talking to you right now.

I feel like what I would not what I would do differently for this, cuz this was meant to be a very. Quick and easy guide that you don’t have to spend hours divulging into. You can just go and find it go, okay, this makes sense. Here’s a story that I can relate to. Okay. Let’s move on. That’s what I wanted it to be.

But I do think in the future, my goal, and especially being in school now and learning is to still do that conversational talk, but put a little bit more backing to. That is based in even more science and data and examples. I just didn’t wanna weigh it down. This was a five happy choices. It’s a, it’s called the simple way to a happier life.

I didn’t wanna make it the complicated way to a happier life. I don’t want any book I write to be boring, but I think. Depending on the topic, you’re gonna have a heavier content behind it. This was something for me to, that was easy and quick to do the Journal’s even bigger than that, because it’s all a workbook.

But yeah, I think some people are no, one’s, you can’t please, everybody. Some people are gonna say, oh it’s not enough science. Other people are gonna say it’s it’s just the right amount of science or it’s too conversational. I. To read a journal article those kinds of things.

And everybody it’s, if it’s not for somebody, they shouldn’t buy it. I really, I don’t I feel very strongly that this book is gonna. Be a book that speaks to you or doesn’t and if it speaks to you, that’s great. If you buy it I hope that it helps you, but I don’t want anybody I want whoever buys it to be getting something out of it, like the whole point was to help you.

If you read it , if you don’t think it’s gonna help you, then I don’t then that’s not something that I would want you to spend your money on, cuz you work hard for your money. I don’t care if it’s a dollar or $10, like everybody works really hard for their money. Spend it on things that are going to make your life better.

And if you feel like my book is one of those things, awesome. I’m happy that you picked it up. But that’s how I feel. I feel like it’s gonna go to people who need it. It’s gonna go to people who are looking for something to help them. And that’s really my goal in writing. I could break thrillers forever.

And that was fine for me. Just like you. I chose to do this for a different reason. It wasn’t a be, and it never should be in my mind about making money. It’s about sharing your gift with the world. This is what I believe truly in my heart and how I live my life. My part of my gift is writing, but part of my gift is connecting with people and understanding people and having empathy and helping them.

I’ve always been a helper. And so I feel like that was my goal. If it sells one copy, great. If it sells a million awesome. But at the end of the day, I’m so happy, truly and blessed that I finished it and got it out there. That was my goal. Nice.

Stephen: Did you find writing this easier or harder than writing your fiction?

For me, because why do you

Kristina: think it was easier for me? Because it wa so all my life, I have already been doing this. This is what I’ve been writing. I’ve been writing nonfiction forever, whether it’s at work or in school or writing a blog post I could write a blog post in a minute.

Like it’s oh, this topic pick a topic done. And it’s powerful because that’s comfortable for me, thrillers and writing fictions. Isn’t so easy for me. I have to, I struggle with that. I always say. I’m a C student, really working hard to be an a in thriller, I think in non-fiction. And not that they’re not good.

I don’t mean it that way. Like my books are terrible or anything, but I mean that it’s, I work really hard to get them there. It’s not my second nature storytelling is, but getting it just perfectly on the page, I’m like an overthinker I overanalyze everything cuz of the psychology and so I can’t get outta my own way.

We know what that’s but with nonfiction, it was just, it was almost. I’m having a conversation with you, and this is the message and that message just came out so easily on paper. And of course I had to do the work and back it with science and make sure it made sense and everything tied together.

But it’s very easy for me to write, like if I had to write a blog post for somebody, or I had to write some, an article like that comes out nothing so simple, but to write a short story, It takes, I love it. And I really love when I’m done with it and how much I am grateful for, but it takes a little bit more effort on my part.

That’s just my skill level and being honest.

Stephen: And that’s good because I think a lot of people that start fiction and moving the non-fiction think the opposite that the fiction starts coming easy, cuz they’ve done it and they, their mindset is that. But and you said you’ve got a couple degrees in you’re working on your PhD.

So obviously you’re a professional in your field. Which I think is wonderful to know that you’re writing some books like this. Are you going to continue. What in the fiction world, we get series. So in the non-fiction you’ve got this beginning of a series. Are you gonna continue with the same type of book in the happiness, mental health?

Are you thinking of doing other types of

Kristina: non-fiction? I’m gonna stick with this. I think it’s gonna be it, everything nowadays is branding. And what is your tagline? All that. And I, you think about this stuff all the time, right? But honestly, happiness is a bigger, there’s a bigger picture to happiness.

It’s called psychological wellbeing. That’s what really five happy choices is about. I’m not gonna go out there and say five psychological wellbeing choices, right? That no. One’s reading that. We’re not picking that up, but I think behind the scenes, It’s all about psychological wellbeing. It’s all about health and wellness, psychology, which is what I’m going to school for which all ties together.

And I think everything I write will be based on that. It’ll be based on getting you from point a to point B in that you’re gonna feel good and you’re gonna live a a life that is good. A living well feeling good. Happiness is a feeling we can’t be happy all the time, but living a happy life.

Living what they call the good life. That’s what it’s like. It, it’s referred to as the good life. It’s really about just moving through life in a way that feels good and enjoying your life. And that isn’t always, doesn’t always mean you’re happy all the time, but yes it’ll be around psychological wellbeing cuz that’s where my education is.

That’s what I believe in. I believe that we are all searching for a happy life or to live a happy her life or to be happy. And how do we get there is through. These things that we can do and actions we can take for our psychological wellbeing to be balanced. And that is part of mental health, for sure.

It’s one of the pieces of mental health and happily, there are things we can do to affect that. It’s something we can change. It’s something we can take action on. And I think when people hear that they want, they feel hope because I think it is very easy, especially with COVID and everything.

We’ve all. And not just COVID everything we’ve been through in the last, let’s say five years. There’s just been a lot of turmoil out. And it’s very easy. And especially if you’re someone who’s sensitive energetically to what’s going on and you watch the news and you get upset or you just there’s, you go on Facebook and people are arguing.

There’s so much of that heaviness in the world. And a lot of it is for good reason, but it still can weigh on us mentally. I think we need a way out. And we don’t want to spend three years. Therapy’s amazing and everybody who needs it should go and I highly recommend it, but we want something we can use while we’re going to therapy.

We can use in our everyday moments because your therapist isn’t there 24 7, right? Your coach isn’t there 24 7, your family and friends, they don’t always want or have the emotional capacity to give to you what you need. So I think we have to learn to give to ourselves. And to figure out what we need and take those steps.

And so I will absolutely, I long-winded answer to your question. I think it’s important for me. If I’m writing non-fiction to stick with what I know and share what I know, that’s my contribution that’s my niche where I’ll go with it.

Stephen: Nice. Great. Or I love that. Your book sounds great.

And I hope, wish you the best luck in it. And I hope some people listening will go pick it up. That’s the whole idea. Introduce people to new books and authors. So before we go, do you have any last minute advice you would give to a new author? That’s saying, Hey I don’t know what to do. Can you gimme some advice?

Help me?

Kristina: Yeah. You know what? This is like advice for life, but it’s advice for writers and what’s always helped me when I struggled with, what do I write? How do I write? What do I do? It’s first of all, if you wanna write something, just write it. Don’t worry about it. Do not worry about how good it is.

It doesn’t matter. You’re gonna write it down and you’re gonna fix it later. Get if you’re writing fiction, get that story out. And the story you pick to write is the one that gets you so excited. Like it, it just, you feel it in your gut. This is, I wanna write this story. That’s the one you focus on and just write it down, just get it out.

It’s gonna be garbage. Because everything’s garbage. The first draft, very few people write an amazing first draft. Just get it out. You fix it later. Editors will help you fix it, get that story out. And if you’re writing, non-fiction no matter what degrees you have and you don’t have to have any at all.

That’s not a requirement, whatever you’re writing about. Share your knowledge, share what share it with the world and do it from a place of authenticity and a place of something that you have a passion for whatever that is. That’s my recommendation, it’s don’t let anything hold you back.

If you have something to say, if you have a story to tell, or you have information to share, just do. You can clean it up later, but get it on paper because that’s the hardest part is holding ourselves back and not putting something on paper because we’re afraid of what are people gonna think? I will tell you this right now.

It’s not your job to control what people think and how your books received. It is your job to share your gift with the world and put it out there and whatever it does. If it’s a number one New York times bestseller. Awesome. If it sells no copies, that’s okay, too. You did your job. You shared your.

So don’t not share your gift, cuz you’re afraid of the outcome. We have no control over the outcome. All we have control over is whether we write it or we don’t. So write it.

Stephen: Wonderful. I love that. Thank you. I appreciate it. All right, Christina. Thank you for being on. It’s been wonderful talking with you and I hope some authors picked up some things about non-fiction moving from fiction.

So I appreciate you being on. Thank you.

Kristina: Thank you so much. It was a pleasure to be here. I appreciate it. Great.

We catch up with KS Barton as she talks about her Norse Family Saga. Since we last talked, she has released several books, including starting a new series.

And she still gets time to read and recommends Madeline Miller’s Song of Achilles.

I wanna welcome Kim Barton back to discovered wordsmiths. Kim, it’s been a while since we’ve talked whether on the podcast or in a group or something.

So how have you been,

K.S.: I’ve been good. It has been a long time. I think. I think it was actually before the pandemic. probably, yeah. So it’s been a hundred years.

Stephen: Yeah. Yeah. We we’ve sent messages back and forth in Jay’s group a bit. Yeah. Yeah. Refresh everybody. Last we talked, it’s been a while.

Tell us about what books you were working on and how those have gone since we talked to you.

K.S.: Yeah. I’ve done a lot since we talked last, I had just released my first book. And then in 2021, I released the second two books in that trilogy, so that Trilogy’s all done and out. And then in this past April of 2022, I released my fourth book, which is the first book in a two book little series.

Stephen: Oh, nice. Okay. Yeah. So you’ve gotten quite a few out. You haven’t been rest. No,

K.S.: no. Yeah. I had the first three the trilogy was done. It was all written when I released the first book. So I was able to I had stockpiled them and then released them. Okay. Pretty

Stephen: quickly. So how was that series doing?

What’s the feedback? What are you doing to keep it alive and marketing that what are you doing with that whole series considering you’re working on other stuff now?

K.S.: Yeah the series is called the Norse family saga series and it’s actually going really well. I’ve gotten some nice feedback for it and it’s.

A lot of people say about indie publishing. It’s a marathon, not a sprint. It’s not tearing out of the gate, but ’em slowly but surely building up an audience and getting some sales and reviews and yeah, I’ve gotten some nice reviews, some nice feedback about it.

So that’s gone really well. Yeah, mostly what we’re focusing on is I say we, because my partner, my, my husband is also my business partner. So he helps me with a lot of that kind of stuff is we do those those email promotions, like fussy librarian, e-reader news we put out those to find some readers that way.

Stephen: Okay. So you released the three books a little bit apart not years or anything. Did you find that the sales of book one kept jumping, growing as you released books? Two and three? You

K.S.: know, I’m not really sure because I think I only waited about three months in between each book. Okay.

And so it was and and since I was an unknown writer anyway, , I think those those nine months or whatever I didn’t really see it, but I do see an uptick every time I release. Every time we do one of those promotions, it does better. And when I release the book, April.

I did see like some of some must be people going back and reading the original trilogy,

Stephen: Okay. So the new book, you they’re feeding each other a bit. It sounds like which is what I always hear happens.

K.S.: Yeah, they’re connected because the book I published in April, which is called Raven marked, it is about a secondary character in my original trilogy.

I just really liked this character and I wanted to know more about him. And so I wrote a short story and then that short story became more than that. nice. Nice. Yeah, they’re connected there. There’s not one’s not a prequel or comes after. They’re just they’re just connected by that world.

And by that family,

Stephen: okay. And when you were working on the original trilogy, did you have plans to do this secondary character or did that just come about as you were writing the first trilogy? He just popped up in the middle of the second book in the trilogy. I forget who it was. We called them mushroom characters.

K.S.: cause he just pop up and you’re not expecting them and yeah, no, just in the middle of that, my second book, he he just walked into. The feast hall was a Viking story. So he just walked in and I

Stephen: went from there. Nice. So are there plans for a whole trilogy on this? Did you say? I have two

K.S.: books.

Okay. For his series? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. The second book will be coming out in, I’m not sure exactly when, maybe around

Stephen: November. And you said you’re doing things like free Booksy and promotions like that. And they’re going well. Are you doing anything else, marketing wise, any other ideas that you’re working on?

K.S.: No. , I’m trying to build up my newsletter I’m sure that’s something you hear from everybody. It’s like I’m working on work building up my newsletter. So I’ve been working on that, doing some promotions. I think I have a promotion coming. Next week, I think it is. Yeah. And I put things at the put a call to action at the end of my books to join the newsletter and it’s on all my social media.

I’m not on social media that much, but I do have that like on all my pages if you wanna know more if, and get a free story, join my newsletter.

Stephen: Nice. Do you now I lost train of my thought do you see that more people signing up with each of the promotions, do they stay on and do you think that the newsletter is helping discover for them to discover all your books and get the whole series?

K.S.: I think so. Yeah. Every time I do a promotion, either, either one, that’s trying to like deliberately trying to build my newsletter list or one that. One of those email promotions to buy the book. I do get new subscribers and of course, like anything people leave for whatever reason and that’s okay.

But yeah it does help.

Stephen: Okay. So you’ve got this side character you’re working on and it’s the north setting is, are you gonna stay in that universe or are you going to do something else after this?

K.S.: I wrote, I’m just now finishing a novel that kind of takes place in that world.

It’s basically the same world only. This one is fantasy. This one is about, so one of my characters, he, his father told him stories about how they were descended from the elves. and I just decided to kinda run with that little story just for fun and tell the point of view from the female elf who saved this member of his family.

And it just turned into a, just a little fun novella. Other than that, I started also so outside that’s inside that world, outside of that world I started working on a historical fantasy with Aries. As part as the main characters and then some of the other gods and other supernatural beings from Norse mythology, it’s still gonna be Norse mythology and Vikings, that kind of stuff.

But this one will just be completely fantasy.

Stephen: Okay. So you got a lot going on, you’ve been busy with all that. Yeah. And do you think now that the whole COVID pandemic seems to be lightning a little bit, for the most part we’re getting still back and forth a bit. Do you think that’s helping your writing and do you think it’s helping your sales of the book or do you think that COVID actually made things.

Oh

K.S.: In terms of writing it, I like a lot of people, I really struggled in 2020 for a lot of different reasons. Some not just I know a lot of people were saying, oh we’re writers, we stay at home. Anyway, we write from home. We’re used to it and I’m pretty introverted, but it’s not the same as out of work for a little while and those kinds of things 2020 was a pretty 20, 21.

I was pretty productive. I got a lot of writing done the second book and the one that’s supposed to come out in like November or so I did nano Remo for that because I needed something to I think that was in 2020 nano Remo of 2020. I was like, I need to do something. That’s just gonna jumpstart my writing and that book came out of that.

You know what, writing’s just, it’s not a steady progress. It’s, there’s lots of peaks and valleys sometimes I’ll just be riding like crazy and things are going easily. And then sometimes I feel like I’m walking through a swamp and my feet just keep getting stuck. And every step is hard and slow and just a drag.

It’s never. All one thing.

Stephen: right. Yeah. Especially if you are. I bet king and Patterson, they might have a little different viewpoint, but when you’ve written dozens of books and every one of ’em is an instant seller to millions, it’s a totally different perspective than trying to have a life and family and get some writing done.

Yeah, definitely. So it, the NaNoWriMo you did is that the only one you’ve done.

K.S.: No, I think I’ve done it four times. Okay. The first couple I didn’t have any kind of a plan. I didn’t know what I was doing. And so those didn’t go well, I ended up just I got so far behind in my daily word count.

I just quit after about, I don’t know, maybe 10 days, but I did, I won one other time. Like I think it was 2018 or so. And. So I’d done that. And then, so I was more prepared for this one. I had an idea of what I was gonna do and I was ready to sit down and crank out those 1600 words every day.

And so it worked well

Stephen: and that’s, I’ve heard that a lot the most successful people with NaNoWriMo, cuz I’ve not actually done it are the ones that plan prepare, outline, have things together. And then they do all the writing pretty much. And just worry about that. The story’s ready to go. It’s the most successful from what I’ve heard.

Have you thought about doing it again now that you got some other thoughts and new series and all that?

K.S.: I might every year’s different every year. I think about it it’s always in the the writing consciousness or come around September or so people start talking about it and thinking about it.

And last year I decided not to do it for various reasons, and it’s always in the option for me because. When I can get on that role, it’s really fun. And it’s nice to get I had, I think I’ve, it got 55,000 words done that, that particular nano Remo that last time I did it.

And that’s a nice feeling. Yeah. So it’s always an option.

Stephen: I, I think the best part of nano Remo, and this is outside observation is it helps motivate, helps push you a little bit. You have a goal, it’s a short term, you wanna hit it. And I. For some people I’m not saying everybody, but I think some people that’s a good way to get started.

Okay. For one month, I’m gonna really focus on this. I’ve got a goal of doing this and it’s the same thing. I talk to parents and teachers about, you gotta get the kids some level of confidence and excitement about what they’re doing. If they feel they’re not going to write well, And they’re worried about that, then they’re not going the right, but if they just get it done, they’re like, wow, that was easy and better than I thought that encouragement of in their own self helps push more than anything most parents and teachers could probably do.

Yeah,

K.S.: that’s true. there is something to be said for just finishing something, even if it’s not that great. I know a lot of writers we tend to do that. I just heard something recently and I think maybe it was I forget who it was. It’s something about the 80 20, like once you’re 80% done with your manuscript the next 20%, you’re probably just gonna mess it up or it’s time to send it on to someone else.

and I can feel that cuz you just, those last, that last 20%, you can just fuss with it and fiddle with it and just keep messing with it and going back and over and Ugh until you just, yeah, either you drive yourself crazy or you change too much of it or you lose. What was special or something like that?

Stephen: Absolutely. I found that with my own stuff. I know if I just write and get through it, I can go back to edit and worry about story more than but I also have seen personally over the last couple years that. Growth in what I’ve learned. The second book in my fantasy series that I’m getting ready to release, I was like, okay, it’s mostly done.

I need to go expand a little bit and blah, blah, blah. And then the one day I was just thinking about it, I’m like, oh, wait, This is even better. Oh, wait, this is, and it wasn’t worried about the sentences. It wasn’t worried about the grammar. It was the overall story and making it much more epic.

It was like, oh, this is so much more exciting to read. And I’m like, okay. I just have to rewrite the whole thing. That’s not a problem but it was not so much fusing with it here and there and here and there, it was a total this is not the story. This is what the story needs to be.

And I think you have to reach a certain level to appreciate. That with yourself and understand that.

K.S.: Yeah. Yeah. There’s that whole thing about a work of art is never finished, simply abandoned. That’s one of my favorite I have to remember that it’s like at a certain point, you should have to let that thing go

Stephen: yeah.

Yeah. I, when I was thinking about the second book and oh, this’ll be great and I’ll rewrite this and blah, blah, blah. And I. Man. Is there some better stuff I should do at the first book? I’m like no. Don’t do that stuff. Keep rewriting that forever.

K.S.: Yeah. I’ve done that before and I think oh wait, those books are already published and out.

I am there’s, I’m not messing with them anymore. Unless there’s like something like some really bad error or something I had done. I might fix it, but if I have to just put that in my head, like those are gone, they’re gone. They’re. They’re my little people who are out in the world.

and I’m not gonna you’re bad.

Stephen: Yeah. You’re a librarian, correct?

K.S.: I’m not technically a librarian. I work in a library. Okay. All right. My my actual title is I’m a library program instructor. So I do like different things at the library, like homework, help and reading help, and those kinds of things.

Okay.

Stephen: So now that the pandemic’s lifting, do you see people coming back to the library? Do you see like people that were getting books during the pandemic remembered? Hey, I like the library. I like visiting that. Do you see more people coming to the library like that?

K.S.: Oh yeah. Yeah. We had people we only closed for, I think.

For the first three months of the pandemic. And then we opened like where we, people could come to the door to like, if they needed to make copies or if they wanted to pick up their they wanted to reserve books and then pick ’em up and we’d take ’em out to their car for them and stuff like that.

So we were, we’d been open for a long time, just minimally for a long time. But then yeah. Oh, people came back into the library. Oh, I’m so happy. You’re here we’re so we missed the library people came in with their kids and to get them library cards and yeah, we had a, and we have a really neighborhood focused branch where I work.

And so a lot of the community was really happy when we were open. Cuz we also, I also work in a place. Has a lot of underserved people. So a lot of people use our internet. They use our computers, our copy machine, our fax machine those kinds of things too. And honestly, now a lot of people come into the library to get out of the heat, yeah. I’ve heard that there’s some places like saying, Hey, we’ve got 37 libraries around the city. Go visit. Get out of the heat. Yeah,

yeah. It’s we realized, I think the community realized when we were shut down for a while, and then we were just open minimally. Now how essential the public library really is in the C.

Stephen: Thank Ben Franklin for his forward thinking. . Yeah. We’re a part of Jay’s community. Ha since we’ve talked last, besides Jay’s commute, are there any other new uh, Communities or groups or events you’ve been to, or any classes you’ve discovered or anything like that would be something to pass on to others.

K.S.: I did for a few months. I did. I don’t know if you’ve another past story grid, certified editor, Ann, Holly, and Rachel arm. Ramirez. I know they used to do like the editor round table podcast and they are. And they work with Sue Campbell. She’s a marketing person and they have a group called happily ever author , which I think is a really catchy thing.

And it’s a paid membership group and I was in there for a while and I learned a ton. They have this holistic three prong approach to it with marketing and writing your story and your mindset. And it was a really great, it was a really great. Community.

Stephen: Okay. We’ll put a link to that for others.

Okay. That may be listening, looking for something. That’d be great. All right. Kim it sounds like things are going well for you. I think that’s great. Do you have any for readers or writers, any words of wisdom, words of advice you’d like to pass on?

K.S.: oh my, yeah I would. Just when I was talking about the peaks and valleys a little bit ago, I would say to just remember that it’s, sometimes it can be hard and that having a community of other writers will save you will help you.

I don’t care if they’re online, if they’re in your com if you see them in person or both I’ve in our. The author life, community group that you and I belong to. I’ve made a couple of close friends and now we talk outside of the group and it’s just, it’s, it just helps inspire me.

It just helps me when things aren’t going easily. It’s just so nice to have some people who are there. Your family, it can often be no, not everybody has a supportive family, but even if you have a supportive family, Unless they know what it’s like to try to write. they don’t quite know what it’s like to write, especially something as long as a novel or a series.

So it’s yeah. Build a community.

Stephen: So I’m gonna back up a second. Have you read anything in lately that you would love to recommend any good books? This is so weird because reading, I’m struggling to read lately. It’s like I pick up a book and I go Ugh. I don’t know what’s happening to me.

K.S.: But I did on a recommendation. I listened to the audio book of Madeline Miller’s the song of Achilles and I loved it and I loved the narrator too. He did a fantastic job. So I guess that was the most recent book that I. Wanted to like, I’d have to stop myself from listening to it because I needed to go to work or whatever.

Yeah, that was a

Stephen: last, okay. I just love, yeah, it’s funny you say that, cuz I’ve been, not struggling so much to read, but. Struggling to find something that I’m enjoying. Yeah. I don’t know if it’s that. Now that I’ve delved deeply into story structure and sentences and grammar and all that, it gets hard to read something without your brain editing and analyzing, or I don’t know if that’s it or I just have so many things going on that I’m always think.

Hey, shouldn’t you be doing something else besides reading

K.S.: but reading is so important. It’s like one of the most important things as writers that we can do. I know

Stephen: it’s not like I don’t have a stack of books to read,

K.S.: right? Yeah. My, my two B red pile gets pretty or my physical one and the one on my Kindle just gets out of hand.

Maybe that’s part of it. Sometimes it’s there’s too many choices.

Stephen: Very much so could be I go to bookstores or sometimes the flea marketing yard sale, and I pick up books and I have a stack and every now and then I’ll get adventurous and I’ll say, okay, this is the order, the books I’m gonna read next.

So I don’t have to think about, just take top one. Then I got all these books on my Kindle and I get new ones all the time and add it to it. and then, you know what I do I check something outta the library and read that and it’s yeah, what am I doing? I

K.S.: know. And I like to support indie authors too.

So I buy lots of people’s books and then I start to read ’em and then like yesterday I was at working at the library and I happened to see this book on the shelf and I grabbed it and I’m like, that looks interesting. So I checked it out. It’s I have a million books in my Kindle that I need to read.

And. That’s one of the problems of working in a library.

Stephen: I bet. Yeah. It’s if you work at the pizza place, you’re always eating pizza. You work at the library. You’re always reading, checking out books or wanting to at least. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Are you still playing drums? I see ’em in the background. Not too much now.

Not as much as the reading even,

K.S.: huh? Yeah. Yeah. Not as much as I, I sh I’d

Stephen: I understand my son and I he’s buying an electric set. And so we are converting the living room into a music room, music and media, cuz we’ve got our TV and video games in there, but we’re setting up the drums. We’re gonna set.

I got piano in there. We’re getting fixed up, putting my keyboard up. I gotta stand the guitars were already in there with amps and stuff. We’re trying to get back into playing a little bit more.

K.S.: Nice. That’s great. Yeah. If my son still lived at home, I might play with him cuz he plays bass and guitar and all kinds of things, but he’s out.

I’m an empty nester.

Stephen: Yeah, I’m trying to learn some guitar. I got an acoustic I’m struggling with it. It’s probably the hardest instrument I’ve tried to learn to.

K.S.: It is hard. I struggled with the guitar too. I gave it up and I played bass for he was teaching me bass for a little while and I liked that better.

It was easier. the not being able to bang on a drum. I just banging on a drum is just best.

Stephen: Yeah. And I miss piano playing. That’s why I want to get my piano fixed up. I used to play piano some, and it’s just nice. Cuz you can sit down and play everything play a whole song. You. That’s true.

Cool. All right, Kim. I’m gonna let you go. We’ll move on with our day. I appreciate you getting back on catching us up as to what’s going on and I’ll probably see you online in the community. All right. Thanks for having

K.S.: me back. Thanks. All right, bye.