Overview

JP is back to talk about author communities. He credits finding the right community as being the reason he decided to work on his author career.

We met in J Thorn's "The Author Success Mastermind" group. JP thinks author community has helped him grow and be successful as an author.

YouTube

https://youtu.be/fcJge_6WHr4

Transcript

[00:00:46] Stephen: time for some author talk, which we've already done a little bit of.

Oh, let's back up. Yeah, I wasn't paying enough attention. What are some of your favorite books and authors? [00:01:00]

[00:01:01] JP: Okay. So some of my favorite books and authors, I love Neil Gaiman so much. I'm pretty much anything he writes. I'm willing to just immediately buy and read and listen to, especially if it's an audio book.

And especially if he read them like ocean at the end of the lane, that kind of weird winsy is my jam. I really try to emulate that. I have a short story. That is currently with Jeff, or you might hear it on the dialect doctor by the time this comes out. It's a fun exploration until weird and whimsy of death, because there's strange thing you might have here with death, darkness and government agencies.

But yes. So

maybe I'll put that there. I grew up also on a Tamar up here. So the circle of magic series a that's another one that like that changed a lot for the, my perspective on like how I want to write and what I want to write in the future. And then Garth nix as well for young adult, his keys to the kingdom series is a really good one.

I'm going to, I'm going to leave it there. [00:02:00] Otherwise I will keep rambling

[00:02:02] Stephen: bookstore.

[00:02:05] JP: So I have a bookstore that is like within walking distance of my house called toda hall, but they mostly do used books, but it is a three-story madness. It's just, if you imagine, like, Harry Potter, but in the real world, I'm pretty sure that it would be this building because the walls are from Florida ceiling, their books of every which way and wonder, and they have different rooms in the basement that some are more sketchy than others, where they just have various different books.

So that is a really fun place to go to and explore. I found some really cool old. Epic fantasy ones in there. And there's also a local shop. They're not primarily focused on books, but they do host like local authors called culture shock that I also want to recommend because they're really good. Both of these are Rockford based.

[00:02:57] Stephen: Toad hall definitely sounds like. [00:03:00] Exploring, and you're not that far away. So maybe sometime wife and I would take a jaunt over there and meet you up at it. That'd be cool. That'd be fun. Okay. So now let's go on to author stuff. We covered that, then I forgot. So you've been writing for a couple years. But you're still just starting leads to six books every month or anything like that.

So you still got your first one, but you do have some things done. And you said before that you went to APOC and learned. I like people. I like it helps me. It's my thing. And because of that, you're, you've got a coauthor and everything you were just talking about was coauthor at sea. So obviously you learn something about yourself.

Tell us a little bit about what that was like, everybody wants to write, but then you're like,