Write Away

Notes Ghost Talkers by Mary Robinette Kowal https://amzn.to/2ZmBLCE Jeremy’s Author site www.remyflagg.com Children of Nostradamus www.childrenofnostradamus.com Superhero Fiction www.superhero-fiction.com Geekorama https://superherofiction.podbean.com/ I use affiliate links on this site and may earn a commission from purchases.

Jeremy Flagg

Crys: Welcome, Jeremy Flagg. I’d like to introduce Jeremy real quick. He is the author of the Fhildren of Nostradamus dystopian science fiction series and suburban zombie young adult humor series, taking his love of pop culture and comic books. He focuses on fast paced action packed novels with complex characters and contemporary themes.

Jeremy spends most of his free time at his desk reading snarky books, and when he gets a moment away from writing, he watches too much Netflix and Hulu and reads too many comic books. Jeremy, a Maine native, resides in Clinton, Massachusetts, and can be found in local coffee shops pounding away at the keyboard.

Except now we’re stuck in our houses, but that’s okay. There’s still a lot of coffee there.

Jeremy: There’s still plenty of the coffee. Other than that, not much has changed lately.

Crys: Maybe an extra bit of Netflix and Hulu.

Jeremy: Hulu is getting a workout right now.

Crys: This is a bit different interview than my last three have been.

My last three guests have all kind of achieved the full time writing life. But you are on the path right now, not necessarily to full time writing, but to more of a free life in general. so why don’t you talk about where you’re at right now?

Jeremy: I’ve been publishing since 2006 and when I started, I had a lot of angst about my day job at the time. I work as a high school teacher and I couldn’t kill the kids in my classroom, so I made them zombies in a book. I found a mildly constructive way to deal with this problem. And when I published it, it was really just, I’m just going to publish it. My mom wants to buy a copy, no big deal. And all of a sudden they started to sell and I realized strangers were buying my book, and this was not ever part of the plan. I just enjoyed writing for the sake of writing, and at that point I realized, Oh. People are interested in some of the stuff I have to say.

The second book happened, and then the third book, and at this point I was participating in NaNoWriMo and it was just a good way to get out and meet other people and to be doing some sort of activity and really forcing yourself to write more. And ultimately I wound up working with a publisher and getting the first two books in my superhero series published. It was with a romance publisher, and I don’t write romance at all. They were looking to branch out into science fiction, but that’s not where their strengths were. So ultimately, I became the entire division of science fiction. Last year I, got my rights back and I decided to republish my superhero series.

Everything’s under my name now. I can exert full, crazy control over what I want to do. And that’s been kind of my goal at the moment. Superhero fiction is a kind of a hard sell because our fan base are comic book readers, and just because people like comic books doesn’t mean that they’re going to like superhero novels, just like comic book fans don’t necessarily watch the movies or the superhero movie fans don’t read the comics. It’s kind of a medium specific things.

That’s been a little bit of a struggle, but I’m expanding my world and my superhero books now take place in a universe. And the series I’m working on right now is actually more urban fantasy, but it ties into the superhero theme overall.

I’m working on my third series, and this is the second in my superhero universe. The ride’s been kind of crazy at this point. It’s been fun. It’s been.

Notes Malorie’s website https://www.aeon14.com/ Help! My Facebook Ads Suck https://amzn.to/2WLhB28 How Wearing Leggings Changed My Life https://amzn.to/3dDjLrm Reader Response questions: http://maryrobinettekowal.com/journal/how-and-why-i-use-online-alpha-readers-while-writing-novels/ Reader Response guideline: https://lachristensen.wordpress.com/2012/02/24/alpha-reading/

Intro

A friend recently asked me to read over a first draft for them. I’m always struck with anxiety and vulnerability in these situations. When someone invites you in to respond to their work, especially in an early, nascent stage, they’re placing a massive amount of trust on your shoulders. I might overthink it a little, but I feel very strongly about what kinds of responses ought to be given when you’re not a paid editor. Well, even as a paid editor, but that’s a whole other thing.

I almost always ask what kind of response the author is looking for. Because if they’re asking, “Does this make sense? Do my ideas connect well?” And my response is, “Your prose is clunky,” that’s neither helpful nor kind. If I don’t ask, I will tell the author what kind of response I am willing to give, which is always a reader response. I will do my best to recreate my reader experience for you. That kind of response isn’t very vulnerable for me. I state upfront that it’s just opinion, and they are willing to take it or leave it. I note things that are awesome, that bore me (I get distracted from the story or put it down), that confuse me, or that I don’t believe. I’ll link to a guide on that in the shownotes.

But the kind of response my friend asked me for was the deeper kind. I was worried about inadvertently stomping on the raw emotions that my friend was trying to convey in their piece or that I would discourage them from continuing. I couldn’t control how my words would be perceived.

That’s a raw spot for me right now. Anyone who has gone through a breakup knows that at the end, it’s nearly impossible for you to get your partner to understand what you mean. I have wrestled with being misunderstood a lot recently. I was so tempted to give a quick and kind of generic response because I was afraid of challenging my friend and pushing them and being perceived as bossy, trying to push their words in a direction they didn’t intend, or any number of interpretations I couldn’t anticipate.

Thankfully, I know this friend has some really tough skin, and that emboldened me to practice digging into my realness and vulnerability and say the things I was scared to say. They said thank you, and I may never know how my response was interpreted. I felt a little exhausted by all the mental hoops my brain put me through, trying to craft my simple but true response, but confident that I didn’t hold back, while using my words kindly and strongly. Vulnerability is a skill, and like all skills it has to be practiced.

Vulnerability is going to be a bit of a theme today. I’ve watched Malorie Cooper practice vulnerability very publicly over the last year as she’s come to understand herself as trans and share her story online. It was a wonderful talk and I hope you enjoy it.

Interview

Crys: I am happy to welcome my friend Malorie Cooper to the podcast. Malorie is also known as MD Cooper and is really known in indie circles for the book Help, My Facebook Ads Suck, and most of her books are in the Aeon 14 world, which is mostly sci-fi, but as she has said multiple times, you can write just about any genre in an 14, and she’s built it that way to satisfy her creative needs, correct?

Malorie: I did, yeah. Thanks for having me on.

Crys: Absolutely. I’m excited. I told you before we started that I wanted to read this quote from your book, which I didn’t know existed until you mentioned it. yesterday. The book that you wrote as Malorie Cooper is called How leggings Changed My Life. And I highlighted this quote because I thought it was so good for...

Notes: https://www.rachelamphlett.com/ Real Artists Don’t Starve by Jeff Goins https://amzn.to/2xBWozb None the Wiser, book 1 of the new series Rachel mentions https://amzn.to/2YzGX5C Nick Adams’ sci-fi series https://amzn.to/2YBrKAR Dean Wesley Smith & Kristine Katherine Rusch’s workshops https://wmgworkshops.com/

Intro

Welcome to Episode Three of the Write Away podcast. I’m your host, Crys Cain, and I am recording this May the 5th. This week in my writing progress, it was really consistent, which is something that I have been missing a lot for quite a while. I averaged between about 2000-2400 words every day without having to like sit at the keyboard and drag it out of myself.

I utilized a lot of sprints, which have kind of been my savior, both in getting the words down and enforcing me to get away from my really janky desk system that I really can’t change until I can travel and go to places that sell decent desk chairs and stuff. But with the combo of the sprints and getting up and laying around in my bed in between sprints, I’m actually doing pretty well on both points of progress, health and words.

I actually did so well on the cozy mystery that I ran out of plot. I’m not— with romance, I know the genre well enough I’m able to plot it from start to finish before I sit down and even think about starting to write the actual prose. As I’ve been getting into other genres, I find that I actually get overwhelmed because they’re not as tight in their expectations as romance.

There’s a book called Romancing the Beat by Gwen Hayes that’s actually a really good pattern for romances of what the reader expects on their emotional journey. And a lot of people don’t like the formulaicness of romance, but there’s a certain pattern that readers expect. not in the actual “things that happen,” but in the emotional responses they have, and that book covers it really well.

But when you get into almost any other genre, the emotional expectation is not nearly as strict. And so I kind of get an a choice paralysis, a choice overload. And what I’ve been doing is only plotting a few scenes ahead of time to limit my fear of plotting the wrong things or just feeling like I have to know where everything is going when I’m still in the learning process of these individuals genres.

And I don’t know if I’ll ever be a full plotter-outer with space opera, or just science fiction in general, because there are so many paths. But maybe I’ll get to a point of comfort where I’m like, okay, I know the kind of stories I like to tell in this genre-slash-setting, and so I feel really comfortable in knowing where I want to take this whole story.

But as it is, I tend to plot just a few, like, five scenes ahead. And I ran out of plot. So I switched projects for a little bit while I tried to get into a super creative mindset. I need more of a deep-thinking mindset when I’m plotting and I was just exhausted over the weekend. I switched to a different project that was already plotted out and had a lot of fun putting words down on that.

And then yesterday I was he able to get into the project. I had to move some scenes around because I’d gotten to that point where I’m like, “Oh, something is wrong.” Not just I’ve run out of plot, but also something is wrong and I don’t know where to go from here because the wrong thing will affect everything from here.

I know a lot of people will say, just write your crappy first draft and continue. I agree with that to a certain extent, but when I know something is super wrong, I have to fix it. So I did that, and really, all it was is that I had to take the last scene I’d written and move it about three scenes previous, and then adjust things to follow from that. And then boom, problem solved. I was able to move forward. So that was quite exciting.

Other than the writing, I’m a big learner and one of the things I’ll probably ...

This week I sit down with J Thorn and discuss his many project, building habits, and the author life.

You can find full show notes and transcripts on our website at http://www.writeawaypodcast.com

Links:

*Atomic Habits by James Clear - https://amzn.to/3eVanRo

*Three Story Method by J. Thorn and Zach Bohannon - https://amzn.to/3cWgYt8

*The Career Author - https://thecareerauthor.com/

*The Writers Well - http://thewriterswell.org/

*The Author Life - https://theauthorlife.com/

*Writers, Ink- https://writersinkpodcast.com/

These contain affiliate links

Intro

In my weekly update, I’m making good progress with a cozy mystery, which I’m extremely excited about. I’ve been spending loads of time researching herbal magic as my character is a green witch—I was going to say entirely too much time, but I don’t think that’s true. It does slow my writing down a little, but it’s enjoyable and it doesn’t stop my writing and it adds to the story.

Yesterday felt like a particularly slow day. I’d taken a few days off and that back to the computer that first day is always a little more difficult. I was writing in 20 minutes sprints with some friends when I normally do 10 minute sprints. And then with the research, I was getting lower word counts than normal for me. But at the end of the day, I was surprised to find that I had just under 2000 words with about two hours, a little less than, of butt in chair, hands on keyboard time. All I needed was 88 more words to hit 2000, but I’m not a night person and it was past nine o’clock in the evening, which meant I was an absolute pumpkin.

I want to move on to the interview, with my dear friend J Thorn, but I wanted to note that J mentions a couple of upcoming projects. We recorded this a few months ago and those projects, an amazing podcast called Writers, Ink with JD Barker and his book on story craft with his partner Zach Bohannon, which is called Three Story Method, both of which are live now.

Interview 

Crys: I would like to welcome my dear friend and mentor, J. Thorn, to the podcast today. 

J: Great, Crys. How are you?

Crys: Pretty good. For those of you who aren’t familiar with J., he is the author of many post-apocalyptic novels and podcasts as well. 

J: That’s true, yeah. 

Crys: With three that you’re currently doing every week. 

J: Yes. And one more on the way. Fairly soon. 

Crys: Ooh, exciting. Currently, it’s The Career Author, The Writers Well, and The Author Life. The Author Life is also connected to your blog and your mastermind, which I am a happy member of. 

J: Yes. 

Crys: With your partner, Zach Bohannon. You’ve got a book on craft and everything story called Three Story Method that will be out in this coming year.

J: Yeah, it’s a lot of fun. I love creating stuff. 

Crys: You have been in the writing life for quite a while now. 

J: Yeah. Depending on when you start the clock. I started dabbling in my first long form writing in around 2007, 2008 and published, I think, around 2009 was the first thing I self published.

Crys: So a decade in. 

J: Yes. 

Crys: So when you published your first book, where were you in your life? 

J: Ah, let’s see. 10 years ago, so I had a, I had a day job. I was in education, have a wife, two kids, a mortgage. My kids would have been about seven and five or six and four about that time, so they were still demanding quite a bit of attention.

They’re teenagers now, so they require a different kind of attention, but not the kind that makes me have to sit on the floor with them and play, which I miss, but I don’t have to do that anymore. And I was, you know, being an educator. I think it’s not like having a bank teller’s job or it’s not like clocking in and clocking out in shift work in that you take a lot of work home with you,

Hello friends! Welcome to Write Away Podcast.

You can find full show notes and transcripts on our website at http://www.writeawaypodcast.com

Links:

https://ko-fi.com/cryscain

Hello, friends! I’m your host, Crys Cain, coming to you from beautiful Costa Rica. I don’t mention that to make you jealous. I actually need to apologize for the birds. I’m recording this early in the morning so that I can avoid traffic sounds, but the birds are loud pretty much all day. If I wait until night, I run into frog noises. Hopefully the ambiance will be pleasant rather than annoying.

Okay! I’ve been planning this podcast for a while and I originally wanted to focus on non-traditional measurements of success, particularly in publishing. I’m a six-figure author, though all my books are under super secret pen names, and I’ve followed the book-a-month or more model for almost three years. Earning a lot of money is great, I’m not going to lie, but it turns into a rat race. There’s always a push to write more, more, more, publish faster. And I hit a point where that just became bullshit. Sorry, you’re going to hear me swear a lot. I have the mouth of a sailor, though I’m learning to tone it down as my three year old has become a parrot.

But success isn’t what’s on everyone’s minds right now. It’s definitely not what’s on mine. COVID-19 is turning our world into a pre-apocalyptic backstory and I’m separating from my husband of eleven years. 

Writing is hard right now. Publishing is unsteady. But I still have to put food on the table and pay my rent. And this won’t be the last time that adversity strikes. Not for me, and not for you. Every challenge we face is an opportunity to reevaluate and shift our mindset. Whether it’s a break up, the death of a loved one, job loss, a new baby, health issues or a global calamity (all things I personally have faced in the last three years), they each force a shift in how we look at our lives. I encourage you to look at these challenges as opportunities instead of setbacks.

I still want to talk about success, but the root of even that idea is that I want to talk about freedom. The freedom that escaping into our writing provides our minds. The freedom that earning $500 a month from your writing gives your family. The freedom that making a full time living from your creative endeavors gives you from worry, stress, and the sense that your best life is still waiting for you.

In light of the global crisis, where many of us have been forced to change how we live our lives, a lot of people are re-examining values they’ve taken for granted. Does your job really matter if it means you might catch a disease that kills you or those dear to you? How many different meals can you make out of the same five ingredients to avoid going to the store? How much stuff do you really need to buy? (And seriously, folks, we don’t need that much toilet paper. Look up DIY bidets. Or order one on Amazon.) 

That might sound silly, but those are all expressions of freedom. You don’t need to be locked into anyone’s idea of necessary. You don’t need toilet paper. You don’t need to make a completely different dinner every night. And you don’t need that job that sucks the life out of you.

And let me take a moment to recognize those people who are continuing to put themselves at risk to fulfil necessary functions. The healthcare workers, the sanitation works, the grocery store workers, firefighters, cops, janitors, and thousands of others I’m probably not aware of. They are fighting the current situation on a level I can only imagine.

It may seem a bit woo woo or cliche to suggest that one of the best ways you can thank them for their sacrifice is to make the most of this time for yourself, but I’m going to say it anyway. And if you’re listening to this months or years from now, which is March 2020, and you’re going through a completely different hard time,