One-Drink Book Club

The One-Drink Book Club is an informal, (almost) weekly series in which fellow author Emma Lee Jayne joins me and our other creative friends to talk about the life, business, and art of writing and making books … for the duration of one Friday-afternoon drink.

Here’s what we talked about in this episode:

* It’s back to school time! We now have quiet times in which to write, though the chaos continues.

* Emma bemoaned the “moving target” of the business of writing, while I declared again how I refuse to spread the word through social media. It’s always a challenge, people!

* I asked Bill how he discovers new books, resulting in a discussion about word-of-mouth discovery versus algorithmic recommendations served up by the likes of Amazon.

* At its root, writing is about delivering an emotional experience for the reader. We talked a bit about how those emotional-experience needs vary from reader to reader.

* I asked Emma if her writing style has changed over time. Her answer was interesting, involving a “hobbling” of her voice that happened when she was writing for Harlequin.

* Bill ended things by asking which series or book we’d most like to be remembered for. You’ll have to listen to find out which books we chose!

The One-Drink Book Club is an informal, (almost) weekly series in which fellow author Emma Lee Jayne joins me and our other creative friends to talk about the life, business, and art of writing and making books … for the duration of one Friday-afternoon drink.

Here’s what we talked about in this episode:

* I kicked us off by asking Bill’s thoughts, as a reader, on generating interest in my previous books as if they were new ones. There’s just “something” about new books that’s hard to move over to old books, even if readers may never have heard of the older books. I want to know how to re-introduce my not-this-year releases to readers who might love them … but who might be bogged down in the miasma of “this is old, so why bother?”

* We then talked about how to write branching-narrative books, of which the old Choose Your Own Adventure books were a prime example. Emma talked about her experience writing that kind of books for an app called Zory, which uses a “vines” instead of “tree branches” style of branching — more like a video game than a book.

* We then talked about how impossible it is to write short stories. WE NEED MORE WORDS THAN THAT, PEOPLE!

The One-Drink Book Club is an informal, (almost) weekly series in which fellow author Emma Lee Jayne joins me and our other creative friends to talk about the life, business, and art of writing and making books … for the duration of one Friday-afternoon drink.

Here’s what we talked about in this episode:

* We were light on crew today, having only me and Bill in attendance. It’s okay, though; we improvised and proved that WE DON’T NEED NOBODY NOHOW.

* We began by talking about the function of characters in pacing and exposition: When do you add a character to a scene as “spice” and when are they unnecessary?

* Bill then asked about how I handle converging storylines, which I flipped into a discussion about flashbacks and how their order matters, scene-to-scene, even though the two storylines are happening at different times.

* We then talked some about BAD GUYS. Which are truly evil, which are just misunderstood, and which are evil … but still able to be understood (if not forgiven)?

* … which led me to talk some about how I love writing because it lets me explore psychology. I just love figuring out why people are the way they are, and trying to understand their actions (even if said actions are inexplicable to me).

* We ended by talking about endings that feel rushed, and a tangential discussion about “many epilogues and endings” versus a slow progression toward a single ending.

The One-Drink Book Club is an informal, (almost) weekly series in which fellow author Emma Lee Jayne joins me and our other creative friends to talk about the life, business, and art of writing and making books … for the duration of one Friday-afternoon drink.

Here’s what we talked about in this episode:

* When is a story or a story world complete? Robert asked about Firefly, Stargate, and my Vampire Maurice side series, but we expanded it into a larger discussion of how and when to create more stories in an existing world … and when creating those additional stories can actually be disruptive in a Schrödinger sort of way.

* Bill mentioned “A Quiet Place But with Farts.” Which I think is autobiographical.

* We discussed genre stories as a way to tell real human stories, because who would want to watch the humans stories without extra cool stuff going on?

* I told a way-back story about humor as a trojan horse.

* In closing, we talked about storytellers saving their suspension of disbelief for when it truly matters in order to fully satisfy and not annoy readers: Emma’s example of a “library owner” reference totally disrupting a story that was otherwise full of all sorts of unbelievable stuff. (You have to get most things right if you want us to believe the single unbelievable thing that’s the centerpiece of the story!)

The One-Drink Book Club is an informal, (almost) weekly series in which fellow author Emma Lee Jayne joins me and our other creative friends to talk about the life, business, and art of writing and making books … for the duration of one Friday-afternoon drink.

Here’s what we talked about in this episode:

* We have reader questions! Robert asked for Emma’s take on the romance in the show Firefly, as well as what we thought about out-of-order narratives. If you also have questions for this, just reply to this notification (or email me at [email protected]) and ask!

* I talked about my philosophy on reading order: Read my books in the order I wrote them. This led to a further discussion about lore in series, and how it always screws me up even though readers like it.

* We chatted about “method acting in writing” - getting into the skin of a character.

* What about writing in the voices of varied characters? Or writing as them? What’s the right use of vernacular and accent without being confusing or distracting for the readers?

* Emma proposed “Newtonian physics of writing.” (You’ll just have to listen to understand.)

* We closed by discussing the difficult need to “get the opening right from the very start.”

The One-Drink Book Club is an informal, (almost) weekly series in which fellow author Emma Lee Jayne joins me and our other creative friends to talk about the life, business, and art of writing and making books … for the duration of one Friday-afternoon drink.

Here’s what we talked about in this episode:

* Today was just me and Emma again, doing a very unconventional “coffee hour recording” at 11am instead of our usual end-of-Friday because this was the only time that we (but not our readers, unfortunately) were able to record at all. We apologize for our lack of alcohol.

* Instead of hitting many topics, we stayed pretty story-geeky today and talked about the pacing and purpose and payoffs of three-act structure, as well as the need for a story to “breathe.” It’s something we both feel intuitively as we write (though Emma’s workflow is different from mine) more than plan meticulously and rigorously in advance.

* This entire discussion was gold to us, and we both really like talking about it … but we’re not sure if you, the listeners, like it or not. So please do let us know — you can leave a comment on this post at johnnybtruant.substack.com, or you can just email me (see below).

* In addition to contacting me with feedback and questions at [email protected], Emma encouraged listeners to follow up with her at EmmaLeeJayne.com

The One-Drink Book Club is an informal, (almost) weekly series in which fellow author Emma Lee Jayne joins me and our other creative friends to talk about the life, business, and art of writing and making books … for the duration of one Friday-afternoon drink.

Here’s what we talked about in this episode:

* Today was just me and Emma, so we got really book-geeky and “inside baseball” in the absence of our readers, Bill and Mike.

* Emma is currently screening narrators for a romance, introducing the “duet” form of audiobook that I’d never heard about.

* We talked about audiobooks in general, the challenges unique to them, and how I’m trying to shake things up with a primo narrator I’ve worked with before.

* How can we reach more non-US, non-Amazon readers? We love our USA Amazon readers, but there’s a big, wide world out there of hungry English-speaking readers we haven’t yet been able to put our books in front of.

* We talked a bit about some bullshit that Draft2Digital (a publishing aggregator service I use) does in terms of not allowing young adult categories to intermingle with adult categories. When forced to choose “for kids” or “for adults” but not both for series like Unicorn Western and The Dream Engine, what should I do? It’s a total Sophie’s choice.

The One-Drink Book Club is an informal, (almost) weekly series in which fellow author Emma Lee Jayne joins me and our other creative friends to talk about the life, business, and art of writing and making books … for the duration of one Friday-afternoon drink.

Here’s what we talked about in this episode:

* Bill asked how we describe scenes in our books that we find difficult to explain, which led to me (Johnny) telling a spooky story about Heidelberg, Germany. Trust me; there’s a logical connection there.

* Then, reveling in the freedom-of-speech that comes with the ODBC’s migration to a not-necessarily-safe-for-work podcast feed of its own, Bill got all up in Emma’s business by asking if her sex life and her books’ sex scenes overlap at all. Things got uncomfortable for everyone. But also hilarious.

* We circled back to the “writing what you don’t know well” thing after that, and I told a story about flowers. (Again; you’ll have to trust me that there’s a logical connection there.)

* I talked a bit about the whole “Fat Vampire vs. the Reginald the Vampire TV show” question: Does having something adapted change how I write? I reframed the question in terms of “creative playing off of one another” instead of conforming to a new medium.

* I asked Emma how her quest to recondition and re-release her Harlequin books is going. We chatted a bit about what happens when you re-release books into the huge Wild West of Amazon …

* … which became a discussion about reader behavior vs. the behaviors that we, as writers, want to try to nudge people toward. As part of it, I shared some insights gleaned from a recent reader survey … and Bill weighed in as our resident reader, giving the whole discussion a bit more “reader-centered context.”

The One-Drink Book Club is an informal, (almost) weekly series in which fellow author Emma Lee Jayne joins me and our other creative friends to talk about the life, business, and art of writing and making books … for the duration of one Friday-afternoon drink.

Here’s what we talked about in this episode:

* To open things up, we talked about how the ODBC now has a brand-new home on its own unique feed — no longer tied to the Art of Noticing podcast. Now we can be crude. But actually, we can be more REAL.

* Bill asked us which of our books would convert nicely into video games, on the heels of Fallout. Shockingly, we both had candidates in mind.

* I told some stories about my new “marketing” angle, which should be in quotes because it doesn’t feel like marketing at all. It’s just communicating with humans … and finding our ideal readers.

* Emma read a piece from an online column about the new preciousness of real things in an AI-led, increasingly digital world … and we theorized what it means for us as authors, our readers, our connections, and the value of our books.

* Most of the remainder of the episode was us talking about a different way of seeing ourselves as authors: as true connectors, as those willing and eager to connect with real people not just as fans but as humans … and about NOT ignoring most of the globe’s readers in the way almost all American authors tend to do.

The One-Drink Book Club is an informal, (almost) weekly series in which fellow author Emma Lee Jayne joins me and our other creative friends to talk about the life, business, and art of writing and making books … for the duration of one Friday-afternoon drink.

Here’s what we talked about in this episode:

* I talked about how I go through “seasons of focus” as a writer, wherein sometimes I’m writing feverishly and other times I’m just trying to run the business and get things done. This led us into a whole discussion about where writers spend their time … and how complicated being an “independent authorpreneur” really is.

* Emma talked a bit about print-on-demand and how far it’s come since the old days. More importantly, this led us into a chat about how bookstores buy lots of printed books and then destroy (or expensively return) them when they don’t sell.

* We talked some about whether gatekeepers are bad (because they decide who gets to publish and who doesn’t) or whether you could call the same function “curation” sometimes, and maybe that’s good because otherwise, there’s too much noise out there to find the “signal” of good books. (I won’t even browse Amazon for books. It’s a personal recommendation (curation) or nothing.)

* What’s the role of AI these days — not in writing books, but in how Amazon and others are now making rules around it?

* We talked about the perniciousness of typos, and how Bill thinks there’s a lot more now than there used to be in published books. (I think we Indies are to blame for that.)

* Emma talked about an embarrassing experience narrating her own books, including the sex scenes.

* We ended by talking a bit about Reginald the Vampire (the SyFy show based on my Fat Vampire books) and how Season Two is debuting this coming Wednesday!