Hi everyone, and thank you for tuning in to another episode of the We Make Books Podcast - A podcast about writing, publishing, and everything in between!

This week, we’re talking about a special state of being: The Debut Author. Who are these mysterious creatures, caught between a new chapter of their lives and the rest of their careers? What do the fates and their futures have in store for them?  And how the heck do you kill all of this time waiting for your book to be released??  Being a debut author is uncharted waters for most, how exactly do you navigate this? We talk about all of these things, yell about cookies, and Kaelyn nearly dies of shock after Rekka makes a sports analogy mid-episode.

We Make Books is hosted by Rekka Jay and Kaelyn Considine; Rekka is a published author and Kaelyn is an editor and together they are going to take you through what goes into getting a book out of your head, on to paper, in to the hands of a publisher, and finally on to book store shelves.

We Make Books is a podcast for writer and publishers, by writers and publishers and we want to hear from our listeners! Hit us up on our social media, linked below, and send us your questions, comments, concerns, and your thoughts on Amazon’s upcoming Lord of the Rings Series.

We hope you enjoy We Make Books!

 

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Rekka:00:00   Welcome back to, we make books, a podcast about writing, publishing and everything in between. I'm Rekka Jay. I write science fiction and fantasy as RJ Theodore.

Kaelyn:00:08   And I'm Kaelyn Considine. I am the acquisitions editor for Parvus Press. And today we're talking about debut authors, uh, which Rekka still is one.

Rekka:00:19   Technically.

Kaelyn:00:20   As of when this is being released. But yeah, not for much longer now for much longer than two weeks.

Kaelyn:00:26   I will no longer be a debut author and we'll have to hang up that hat. So this episode was inspired. Well, we already had the idea to do an episode on being a debut author because I've seen it come up a lot and since we agreed that we would do that, it came up a few more times. Um, @ka_doore - K.A. Door, who is the author of the Perfect Assassin, did a tweet thread about the handbook that needs to be written for debut authors.

Kaelyn:00:54   Someone should handle that.

Kaelyn:00:55   Yes. And um, Kai did offer that. If anyone would like to pay her to take two weeks off of work, she would happily write that handbook. And so some of our topic points were taken right out of that. And then Melissa Caru, author of The Tethered Mage @MelissaCaru also sort of talked about what an odd sensation it is to be a debut author. So those were two that I wanted to just shout out and thank for, um, you know, just kind of guiding our conversation a little bit. And also, you know, like say, hey, we see you. You know, cause as you'll hear in this episode, sometimes you're just like, what am I doing? Who, who am I now that I have a book deal and, and what am I getting into.

Kaelyn:01:40   It's both an identity and existential crisis.

Rekka:01:43   And it's a big to do list as well. So, um, we talk about the tasks that you need to accomplish, the things your publisher will be doing. How would it talk to your publisher and your agent during this time when you feel like maybe they're just busy and they don't have time for you because they're supposed to be doing something and you shouldn't be bothering them. Stuff like that. And then also like how to feel and how not to feel and how to distract yourself from your feelings.

Kaelyn:02:04   Yeah. So, um, we hope you enjoyed the episode and by the way, stick around through the end of it because we have some news announcement type thing and then also we have a giveaway the end of the episode. Um, so, uh, stick around. Take a listen there and um, we hope that you enjoy Episode 11: Debut Authors

Kaelyn:02:32   We don't have the