This is Episode 13 of Write with Love.

Joanne Dannon has written 13 contemporary romances including a sexy Alex Jackson series, Christmas stories and box sets with other authors. She’s an Indie Author who project manages every aspect of her life!

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Transcript:

Sarah Williams:            G’day. I’m Sarah Williams, romance author and independent publisher at Serenade Publishing. Today I’m chatting to Joanne Dannon, successful NZ author. Thanks for joining me today, Joanne. How are you?

Joanne Dannon:           Good, thanks, Sarah. Thanks for having me on your vlog.

Sarah Williams:            No worries. So, can you just give us a little introduction, and tell us about your author journey so far?

Joanne Dannon:           Okay. So I’m Joanne Dannon. I have 13 books currently published, and a number of sets. I write mild, steamy, contemporary romance, and also, sweet romance. Sorry, I’m just wondering, there’s pop-ups coming up, and I’m not coming up on the screen.

Sarah Williams:            No, no, no.

Joanne Dannon:           Okay, sorry, [crosstalk 00:00:54].

Sarah Williams:            That’s okay.

Joanne Dannon:           Oh, my gosh, I got pop-ups coming up on the screen, sorry.

Sarah Williams:            Yeah. Yeah. That’s okay.

Joanne Dannon:           I’m indie published, as you mentioned, and I’m very open about how I became an independent or self-published, and I like to share all the mistakes that I’ve made, and share them with other authors, so they don’t make the same mistakes that I made. So I’ll start there.

Joanne Dannon:           So I started writing … Well, everybody wants to know, why you write romance? I started writing romance, because I love it, and I’ve been reading it for so many years. I wrote to some of my favorite, Mills and Boon, Australian romance writers.

Joanne Dannon:           I can’t remember off the top of my head, who they were, but one of them was Trish Murray, who’s lovely, and she recommended that I join Romance Writers of Australia. It just turned out that there was a conference at the time. It was 2007. So I went along to my first conference, and I found my trial so happy.

Joanne Dannon:           I just found these amazing authors. It was actually funny that I turned around and said hello to the person next to me, who was Rachel [Tenafly 00:02:03], Rachel Johns, so that’s how we became friends, and I just met all these amazing authors, and people whose books that I’d read, I was meeting them, and just learning my craft.

Joanne Dannon:           So I went to conferences every year after that, and did some more learning, and read every how to book, and just kept writing, and submitting. Unfortunately, all my books at that time were being rejected. I was aiming for the line that I loved the most, because I really wanted to write for Mills and Boon, which is their Presents line, on the [inaudible 00:02:34] in Australia.

Joanne Dannon:           Every book was being rejected that I was writing, and I had an epiphany, a few years after all these rejections, and I realized that I had to write something else. I was writing for the wrong line, and that’s why I was being rejected. So I wrote a book with a hero who could sing and dance, like Michael Buble, because I love him.

Joanne Dannon:           At the time, I was being mentored by Melanie Milburne, and she said to me, “No one is going to buy your book. No one wants a superstar,” and I went, “Okay,