SPA Girls Podcast

This episode we talk to our very own Wendy Vella about writing Regency romance. Since 2013, Wendy has forged a very successful indie career writing historical and contemporary romance. Her Regencies have been on the Amazon’s top seller lists many times and collectively she’s sold over one million books to date.

Like many romance writers, Wendy cut her historical reading teeth on Georgette Heyer, and then discovered the wonderful worlds of Eloisa James, Stephanie Laurens, Julia Quinn and Lisa Kleypas (and many more!). Regency romance is a subgenre of varying heat levels and sensibilities – from sweet, comedy of manners novels, to the succulent, sensual Regencies that Wendy writes, through to Regency-set erotica, there are eager readers wanting these books.

So how to start? Wendy covers how she goes about researching her novels, the advantages of writing in a series and the elements that every aspiring historical romance writer needs to be aware of.

Wendy says:
-You must love the era you chose to write about. You cannot write about it if you do not, and why would you want to?
-First of all there is nothing like reading this genre to understand it. This I did, extensively before writing it. Authors I love: Julia Quinn, Eloisa James, Stephanie Laurens, Tessa Dare, Anne Gracie and so many more. Then of course I read the more traditionally accurate books by Georgette Heyer.
-I also had good research books that I found hugely helpful.
One was – What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew: From Fox Hunting to Whist-the Facts of Daily Life in Nineteenth-Century England
-I write fast, so I don’t like to stop for research, so what I do is put RESEARCH in capital letters if I need research done about something, then continue writing. Second draft I fill these gaps in.
-You can write about a fictitious character as long as the facts relating to people, and places of that era are accurate. Believe me readers will let you know if you get this wrong.
-Choose an exact time period, this will determine clothing food, setting etc, and will shape your characters as they will face different challenges to those characters in modern settings
-Don’t fill the book with historical facts, you are writing to entertain not bore your readers, unless you’re writing an encyclopedia or research book
-Remember to show and don’t tell. You may have done a lot of research but your readers don’t need to read all about it
-Try to understand the religion and attitudes of the time period. What the children’s role is etc?
-What did they talk about in those times, what were the big current events. War? Who were the important people, or discoveries being made, medical, botanical, industrial revolution. Were there disease, what about jobs?
-What were modes of transportation.
-Language, check to make sure certain words are in use, and weren’t discovered later.

Helpful Links
Wendy Vella’s Books: https://wendyvella.com/books.html
Research: https://www.amazon.com/Austen-Charles-Dickens-Whist-Nineteenth-Century-ebook/dp/B008O58KKK

Today’s episode was inspired by a comment on our podcast website www.SpaGirlsPodcast.com by listener Carron, who asked “…when you’re starting out (writing) how do you know what weaknesses to focus on? You don’t know what you don’t know. Love to hear an episode on things to work on, or things you ladies have struggled with and how you’ve gone about correcting them.“

Carron makes a really good point and we’re kinda kicking ourselves that we haven’t discussed this before. We’ve all been in “the writing game” for many, many years, and it’s good to be reminded of the questions we had right back at the beginning.

Learning writing craft is something that best comes from practice and lots of reading. Later on, when you’re ready to prepare your manuscript for publication, get some “eyes” on it – whether from a critique group, beta readers, fellow writers, genre-savvy friend – and do a preliminary self-edit. Then save up and get it professionally edited. We cover the various types of editing, but briefly:

* If your “other eyes” don’t understand quite what’s happening in the story or that it has giant plot holes, then look to get a development editor. Someone who looks at the story from the “high level”

* If they don’t understand why characters do the things they do, then go back and re-read your manuscript (after taking a break) and make sure you explain your character’s motivations clearly to the reader. Highly recommend the book Goal, Motivation and Conflict by Debra Dixon

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Shar comments: For me, I was aware of my lack of grammar and punctuation formal knowledge (child of the 70s!) purely from listening to others talk about “participles” and “oxford commas” and realising I had no idea what they were talking about. So I bought myself Strunk & White’s book, signed up for ProWriting Aid and check in to Purdue University’s online writing lab that offers free exercises to help train you. This was super helpful. It’s something I still worry about, but I’m getting there slowly feeling more grammatically confident.

Wendy’s comments: Entering contests gave me validation, as until I had achieved some success here, I didn’t believe my books were either good enough, or ready to be published.

Helpful Links:
https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/grammar/index.html

Wendy’s site with favorite writing resources: https://wendyvella.com/for-writers.html

Book: Goal, Motivation & Conflict by Debra Dixon  https://amzn.to/2Bk1RJG

Today’s episode was inspired by a comment on our podcast website www.SpaGirlsPodcast.com by listener Carron, who asked “…when you’re starting out (writing) how do you know what weaknesses to focus on? You don’t know what you don’t know. Love to hear an episode on things to work on, or things you ladies have struggled with and how you’ve gone about correcting them.“

Carron makes a really good point and we’re kinda kicking ourselves that we haven’t discussed this before. We’ve all been in “the writing game” for many, many years, and it’s good to be reminded of the questions we had right back at the beginning.

Learning writing craft is something that best comes from practice and lots of reading. Later on, when you’re ready to prepare your manuscript for publication, get some “eyes” on it – whether from a critique group, beta readers, fellow writers, genre-savvy friend – and do a preliminary self-edit. Then save up and get it professionally edited. We cover the various types of editing, but briefly:

* If your “other eyes” don’t understand quite what’s happening in the story or that it has giant plot holes, then look to get a development editor. Someone who looks at the story from the “high level”

* If they don’t understand why characters do the things they do, then go back and re-read your manuscript (after taking a break) and make sure you explain your character’s motivations clearly to the reader. Highly recommend the book Goal, Motivation and Conflict by Debra Dixon

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Shar comments: For me, I was aware of my lack of grammar and punctuation formal knowledge (child of the 70s!) purely from listening to others talk about “participles” and “oxford commas” and realising I had no idea what they were talking about. So I bought myself Strunk & White’s book, signed up for ProWriting Aid and check in to Purdue University’s online writing lab that offers free exercises to help train you. This was super helpful. It’s something I still worry about, but I’m getting there slowly feeling more grammatically confident.

Wendy’s comments: Entering contests gave me validation, as until I had achieved some success here, I didn’t believe my books were either good enough, or ready to be published.

Helpful Links:
https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/grammar/index.html

Wendy’s site with favorite writing resources: https://wendyvella.com/for-writers.html

Book: Goal, Motivation & Conflict by Debra Dixon  https://amzn.to/2Bk1RJG

The delightful Dan Wood joined us in the SPA today to talk about the Indie

If you’ve been wondering about putting your books on Draft2Digital and want

Shar Barratt – For me, Dan really impressed with how author-centric D2D are in their operations and their future developments. On a personal note as a non-vellum owner, their free formatting tools are most appreciated!

Trudi Jaye – I like Dan Wood’s thoughtful, measured style, and the values that Draft2Digital has as a company – their mission is to listen to authors and try to solve the problems that have come up in our industry, and I think they do a fantastic job of this. I was really interested to learn more about the Universal Book Links, which I hadn’t realised were a free part of their service as well. I felt like I knew a little bit about Draft2Digital, but it was amazing how many new aspects to their services that I discovered today!

Wendy Vella – For me, what I took out of this interview is that D2D are all about the author. They won’t partner up with anybody until they are sure it will benefit their authors. Everything from loading your books, to the how-to manual, is simple and easy to navigate. D2D is really becoming a one stop shop for authors!

Universal Book Links
When you publish your book through Draft2Digital, you get a UBL automatically generated for you. You can build and manage your UBLs, including customizing them and tracking the clicks they get, just by logging in at Books2Read.com.

NEW: now you can add your facebook pixel to universal book links. More here: https://www.draft2digital.com/…/use-your-facebook-pixel-on…/

Schedule your price promotions with D2d: https://www.draft2digital.com/blog/schedule-price-changes-and-promos-with-draft2digital/

www.draft2digital.com

We are delighted to welcome romance author, Serenity Woods, to the SPA today. Serenity lives in the sub-tropical Northland of New Zealand. She is a USA Today bestselling author of contemporary romance and has been published since 2011 and self-published since 2013.
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Serenity is incredibly business savvy and prolific. To date, she’s published 65 books across many different romance series, and she is a USA Today bestselling author, reaching #53 on the USA Today bestseller list with her Three Wise Men Box Set. Also, writing as Freya Robertson, she won the NZ Sir Julius Vogel Sci-Fi/Fantasy Award for Best Novel for her debut, Heartwood.

Serenity shares her self-publishing journey with us – the highs and the lows – from her modest start with a publishing a novella, to her success selling wide.  She also very honestly talks about her decision making behind moving to Amazon exclusively and the strategies for maximizing KU sales. 

We were so inspired by Serenity’s persistence, smarts and courage and promise this is an episode you’ll want to listen to more than once. Because it’s PACKED with so much information for you, we kept recording for an hour (and could have continued, but we’ll have Serenity back on the podcast again for sure 😉 ) 

Links:

Serenity Woods’ website: https://www.serenitywoodsromance.com/

KDP Rocket /Kindlepreneur: (see Dave Chesson’s free videos for AMS ads) https://kindlepreneur.com/book-marketing-101/

SPA Girls Podcast website: http://www.selfpublishingauthorspodcast.com/

Are you motivated or disillusioned by all the “end of year earnings” screenshots some authors post? For some of us, it’s incredibly inspiring; others find it a distraction or even a bit depressing! There is no “right” answer – the trick is understanding yourself and this week we talk about the things you CAN control and why you should feel super positive about that!

We also discuss Melissa Storm’s Litring Reader Survey which shows some very encouraging reader buying behaviour that can help your sales without you having to spend a fortune on advertising.

We put our thinking caps on and came up with our Top Ten Things that a self publisher needs to be (in the SPA Girls’ opinion 😉 )

Notes & Links

Litring Reader Survey: https://dl.bookfunnel.com/3mv5gisv8m
https://www.litring.com/

Keen

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