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Mystery & Thrills with Matty Dalyrimple · WriterCon

0:00
Speaker 1: This week on the writer Con podcast.
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Speaker 2: You never need to say I'm just working on my
0:05
Speaker 2: first book. You never need to say I'm just writing
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Speaker 2: genre fiction.
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Speaker 1: Welcome to writer Con, a gathering place for writers to
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Speaker 1: share their knowledge about writing and the writing world. Your
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Speaker 1: hosts are William Bernhardt, best selling novelist and author of
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Speaker 1: the Red Sneaker books on writing, and Laura Bernhardt, award
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Speaker 1: winning author of the want lnd Files book series.
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Speaker 3: Thank you, Jesse Ulrich, and Hey they're writers. Thank you
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Speaker 3: for joining us. As this podcast is being released, we
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Speaker 3: have just completed the writer Con Retreat, so all eyes
0:50
Speaker 3: are now focused on the big event, the writer Con
0:53
Speaker 3: Annual conference in Oklahoma City August thirtieth through September two,
1:00
Speaker 3: Labor Day weekend. It is the best time to be
1:02
Speaker 3: in Oklahoma City, not that there's a bad time, and
1:05
Speaker 3: particularly a good time to be at the Renaissance Waterford,
1:10
Speaker 3: which is a gorgeous hotel Jesse, which is going to
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Speaker 3: be more popular this year. The swimming pool or the
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Speaker 3: hot tub.
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Speaker 1: Well since last year. Since last year the hot tub
1:20
Speaker 1: was actually working. It was very exciting for me. But
1:24
Speaker 1: I the pool was pretty popular, and you know.
1:26
Speaker 4: It's a one hundred degrees out.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, yes, yes, but then the hot tub's kind of
1:31
Speaker 1: hidden and I'm not going to tell anyone where it is, so.
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Speaker 3: Keep it, keep this. Yeah, this year it will be
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Speaker 3: more like one hundred and fifteen pounds.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's gonna it's gonnare ease. It's gonna be hot.
1:42
Speaker 1: And one of the reasons the hot tub won't be
1:43
Speaker 1: popular is because of that temperature. So it's another reason
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Speaker 1: I enjoy. I enjoy going in it.
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Speaker 3: So you might have it to yourself this year. Yes,
1:50
Speaker 3: I should mention that in addition to wet entertainment. Well also,
1:56
Speaker 3: well we have other entertainment. We have Karaoke night that's
1:59
Speaker 3: my and a writer con Jeopardy. I'm adding the match
2:05
Speaker 3: game this year. Just really I don't know, that's a
2:10
Speaker 3: different vibe from Jeopardy if.
2:11
Speaker 4: You want to know, if you know what I mean.
2:14
Speaker 3: But I just got to say there is some actual
2:17
Speaker 3: education taking place.
2:19
Speaker 1: We've got more than it is also the speakers.
2:21
Speaker 3: And three keynotes and more than ninety sessions, thirteen contest categories,
2:27
Speaker 3: bunch of agents and publishers, more than a does, and
2:31
Speaker 3: taking pitches. So if you're interested in taking your writing
2:34
Speaker 3: to the next level. This is the place to be, Okay.
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Speaker 3: Our interview today is with Maddy Dalrymple, who writes both
2:43
Speaker 3: short stories and novels for two different crime series, the
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Speaker 3: n Kinnear suspense novels and short stories and the Lizzie
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Speaker 3: Ballard Thrillers. We will talk to her about her fascinating
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Speaker 3: body of work. But first news. It has often been
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Speaker 3: said that the book business is impossible to understand. Of course,
3:22
Speaker 3: I think people in Hollywood say more or less the
3:24
Speaker 3: same thing, but it's always been true in the book world.
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Speaker 4: You may remember Jesse.
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Speaker 3: Just last week we were talking about how print sales
3:32
Speaker 3: appeared to be better than expected, perhaps in part because
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Speaker 3: young people gen Z, the people who brought back vinyl,
3:40
Speaker 3: are now trying to bring back print books. Except now
3:44
Speaker 3: we've got a news story indicating that the book talk demographic,
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Speaker 3: primarily gen Z, is also spiking sales of kindle devices.
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Speaker 3: In other words, those little handheld things like Jesse's got
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Speaker 3: up on the screen right now that you use to
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Speaker 3: read ebooks. So I don't know what to think at
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Speaker 3: this point. But according to an Amazon vice president who
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Speaker 3: spoke to the Wall Street Journal links in the show notes,
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Speaker 3: sales of the most recent Kindle device have grown in
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Speaker 3: the double digit percentages for both of the past two years,
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Speaker 3: with people under forty five representing the fastest increasing part
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Speaker 3: of the customer market. Something like sixty percent of the
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Speaker 3: sales growth derives from those people who have never purchased
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Speaker 3: a Kindle device before, which suggests that they are indeed young,
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Speaker 3: even younger than forty five. And this article also mentioned
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Speaker 3: that digital book checkouts from libraries you know you can
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Speaker 3: do that you can alreadys came from the library. Those
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Speaker 3: have grown seventy five percent since twenty twenty nine. And
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Speaker 3: did you know this, Jesse. Amazon users can now connect
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Speaker 3: Kindle account their Amazon Ebook account with Libby Libby that
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Speaker 3: is the most popular library checkout app. It's the one
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Speaker 3: owned by Overdrive.
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Speaker 4: Who is I use Libby?
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Speaker 1: Libby's great?
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Speaker 4: You really?
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Speaker 3: Do you use it to find books or observe books?
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Speaker 1: Yeah so normally if so, if I'm thinking about starting
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Speaker 1: like a new series or whatever, I will see if
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Speaker 1: the book is available on Libby before before buying it
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Speaker 1: because I'd rather check it out from my library. And
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Speaker 1: a lot of times for our listeners. If you are
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Speaker 1: also a fan of book a series, you know books
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Speaker 1: that are series a lot of times, like the first
5:40
Speaker 1: book will have like a long hold on it, but
5:42
Speaker 1: books two, three, and four won't. So like you buy
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Speaker 1: the first one and then you can check out the
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Speaker 1: other ones as you go.
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Speaker 4: So sweet.
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Speaker 3: I will admit that when I was preparing for this,
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Speaker 3: I thought Libby and I downloaded it and tried to
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Speaker 3: get in, and then I found that my library card
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Speaker 3: had expired.
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Speaker 1: You do have to have an active libraries to.
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Speaker 3: Make a trip before I get to use it.
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Speaker 1: So I have a question for you. But because I didn't,
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Speaker 1: I didn't get a chance to read this article. So
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Speaker 1: I have Kindle sales never sort of matched up to
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Speaker 1: ebook sales meanly, like there was a small, a small
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Speaker 1: group of kindle owners who were reading a massive load
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Speaker 1: of ebooks, and now like more people are actually Like
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Speaker 1: I guess I always thought those I thought the two
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Speaker 1: things would be kind of not even because you I
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Speaker 1: kin to last for a couple of years, but I
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Speaker 1: assume people would people who are ebook readers would keep
6:35
Speaker 1: buying kindles every couple of years as they you know, and.
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Speaker 4: I'm sure many do.
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Speaker 3: But there are other places to read ebooks speaking for
6:42
Speaker 3: that's true. That's true, as you know, I'm an Apple guy,
6:45
Speaker 3: so I you know, I'll buy it from Amazon because
6:49
Speaker 3: that's where it's cheapest.
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Speaker 4: But I'll read.
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Speaker 3: It on the Kindle app on my iPad, not on
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Speaker 3: an actual Kindle device. And I suspect I'm not the only.
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Speaker 1: One now, and there are also some other companies that
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Speaker 1: make really good ebook readers. Cobo has a really nice
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Speaker 1: one I've always wanted to buy. I'm just I'm stuck
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Speaker 1: in the Amazon A walled garden for now.
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Speaker 3: So but yeah, well, the first iPod pad broke out.
7:17
Speaker 3: I always bought books from Apple because they looked prettier.
7:21
Speaker 3: You know, they worked on the iPad and they did
7:23
Speaker 3: that rule thing where you scroll the pages and you
7:26
Speaker 3: can see the page ends. I mean, it's all a
7:29
Speaker 3: digital illusion, but still it was so cool. But at
7:33
Speaker 3: some point there were like twice the cost of books
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Speaker 3: on Amazon.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, so yeah, come on, Yeah, last time I read
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Speaker 1: a book on iPad, it was before they had iPads
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Speaker 1: that were like a reasonable size and weight, so it
7:43
Speaker 1: was not a pleasant experience. But I imagine you've bought like
7:46
Speaker 1: a small iPad now it would be very nice to
7:48
Speaker 1: read on.
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Speaker 3: You can, although I just got one that's actually larger.
7:52
Speaker 4: I'm going a long direction, and.
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Speaker 3: No, it's not because my eyesight is fading. It's because
7:58
Speaker 3: my daughter Katie scanned all my piano sheet music into
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Speaker 3: files and so now I can carry it with me
8:05
Speaker 3: everywhere I go on the iPad. But I wanted to
8:09
Speaker 3: be I wanted to be at least sheet music size. Yeah,
8:12
Speaker 3: it got the larger one.
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Speaker 1: Sure, all right.
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Speaker 3: News story number two is about AI guides because it
8:18
Speaker 3: wouldn't be the Writer Podcast if we didn't talk about
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Speaker 3: AI and Amazon. It probably wouldn't be any news story
8:26
Speaker 3: at this point any if you didn't mention AI. But
8:30
Speaker 3: this one's different because for about a year now there
8:34
Speaker 3: are two philosophy professors.
8:39
Speaker 4: You thought it was.
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Speaker 3: Going to be computer people, but no, these professors have
8:43
Speaker 3: been trying to enlist prominent authors and intellectuals with an
8:49
Speaker 3: unusual idea. They've been asking these famed thinkers if, in
8:54
Speaker 3: exchange for a fee, they wouldn't mind turning themselves into
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Speaker 3: AI chap boughts. Basically we're talking about. The professors are
9:03
Speaker 3: John Keig and Clancy Martin. In twenty twenty, CAGs started
9:08
Speaker 3: with a different partner to create a publishing company called
9:11
Speaker 3: Rebind Publishing. You can visit their website. The idea was
9:15
Speaker 3: that the imprint would pair a world class expert with
9:19
Speaker 3: a classic work. Classic work meaning in the public domain
9:23
Speaker 3: anything published before nineteen twenty eight, so they don't have
9:26
Speaker 3: to pay for pay authors or anything like that. They
9:30
Speaker 3: just get the public domain book and get some expert
9:34
Speaker 3: to talk about it. For instance, their superstar is Depak Chopra.
9:40
Speaker 3: Am I saying that, right, Deepak Chopra, and he's going
9:45
Speaker 3: to be their expert on Buddhism and Buddhist Texas texts,
9:50
Speaker 3: and you can see that on their website. They also
9:52
Speaker 3: say they have many other less famous people. They say
9:56
Speaker 3: Margaret Atwood is going to do a Tale of Two Cities,
10:00
Speaker 3: but that's not on their website yet. They do have
10:03
Speaker 3: I was impressed by this. They've got John Banvil, a
10:06
Speaker 3: very well known Irish novelist who's doing Dubliners the James
10:11
Speaker 3: Joyce Short Story collection, and they actually flew to Dublin
10:15
Speaker 3: so that they could record him both video and audio,
10:20
Speaker 3: talking about this book. And they're pretty excited about this.
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Speaker 3: They think it's the here's a quote, it's one of
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Speaker 3: the great artistic opportunities of our time end quote.
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Speaker 4: And they're even going to.
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Speaker 3: Do some themselves. So what do you think, Jesse, does
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Speaker 3: this sound exciting or kind of appalling?
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Speaker 1: I think this is a great idea, Like this is
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Speaker 1: this is using AI for a good thing, where like
10:47
Speaker 1: you get an expert to like because you know, listen
10:51
Speaker 1: these classic texts, there's you can you can estimate and
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Speaker 1: guess I would say at least fifty percent of any
11:01
Speaker 1: question someone would ask about that classical work, right, And
11:05
Speaker 1: so you can build that into this already, And I mean,
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Speaker 1: I'd be curious to see how well it works. But
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Speaker 1: I love the idea of you know, again, for every
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Speaker 1: high schooler who had to read Heart of Darkness, it'd
11:15
Speaker 1: be great to ask an AI expert a question about
11:19
Speaker 1: what the hell you just read.
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Speaker 3: So, yes, I haven't admitted I was impressed when I
11:24
Speaker 3: went to their website. And if you see that little
11:27
Speaker 3: green box in the right corner that says, you know,
11:30
Speaker 3: click to get on our weight list.
11:31
Speaker 4: You did that.
11:32
Speaker 3: And I am now five thousand, seven hundred and forty
11:35
Speaker 3: two on their weight list. So it might be a
11:38
Speaker 3: while before I can say more, but I too thought.
11:41
Speaker 3: I thought look in the corner, Pride and prejudice. I
11:43
Speaker 3: read that once a year anyway, probably, so how nice
11:46
Speaker 3: to have somebody explain to me what it means. Finally,
11:50
Speaker 3: apparently they've they're spending an enormous amount of time with
11:54
Speaker 3: these people basically trying to anticipate every question anybody might ask.
11:59
Speaker 3: I mean, they never will, but if they get close enough,
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Speaker 3: the AI can adapt and you'll hear Marcot Atwood or
12:05
Speaker 3: whoever answering your questions.
12:08
Speaker 4: Not all the way.
12:09
Speaker 3: Through the book, but they have videos that you can
12:12
Speaker 3: just watch before you read it or anytime. And then
12:15
Speaker 3: there are designated points in the text apparently where you
12:18
Speaker 3: can pause and ask questions at the chatbot and try
12:21
Speaker 3: to get them. And I mean it's it's like taking
12:25
Speaker 3: English Lit without actually the souition.
12:28
Speaker 1: Or yes, yeah, rebind if you're if you're listening, and
12:31
Speaker 1: I hope somehow you know through Google SEO sometimes people
12:35
Speaker 1: find our podcast when we talk about them. Get get
12:37
Speaker 1: armand Shimmerman to do a little AI chap out for Shakespeare.
12:41
Speaker 1: He's a great Shakespeare scholar and he would I bet
12:43
Speaker 1: he would love it.
12:44
Speaker 3: So wouldn't that be fun?
12:47
Speaker 1: Yeah? I just signed up for the beta list. I'm
12:49
Speaker 1: number five four eight eight.
12:51
Speaker 3: Well you're oh, I must have transposed digits. But or
12:54
Speaker 3: maybe they just like you better.
12:56
Speaker 1: Maybe no.
12:57
Speaker 3: Okay, So here's the tough question that I not give
13:00
Speaker 3: you any chance to prepare for.
13:02
Speaker 4: But that's the way I like to roll with you.
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Speaker 3: So, if you could choose any possible combination other than
13:09
Speaker 3: the one you just said with Armine Shimmerman, what famous
13:13
Speaker 3: person would you like to chat AI style with?
13:18
Speaker 4: About?
13:19
Speaker 3: What person?
13:20
Speaker 4: What book?
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Speaker 1: Okay? Hold on, I think I have the book what's called? Okay? Yeah,
13:29
Speaker 1: who's the person for this?
13:32
Speaker 3: I mean, while you think I'll just say I tried
13:34
Speaker 3: to I couldn't even think of a very good I mean,
13:37
Speaker 3: you know you're not going to talk with Voltaire about
13:40
Speaker 3: can't eat. I assume anybody who's passed they're not gonna,
13:44
Speaker 3: I mean, talk to Emily Dickinson about her own poetry.
13:48
Speaker 3: Wouldn't that be a whot? But you know we can't
13:52
Speaker 3: record her voice.
13:53
Speaker 1: But so, okay, So this is very this is very
13:56
Speaker 1: specific and very off uh brand for me. It's gonna
14:01
Speaker 1: be weird for some of our listeners. But there's a
14:03
Speaker 1: so the book. The book is William Faulkner's at La
14:06
Speaker 1: Dying Okay, which I read in high school and I'm
14:09
Speaker 1: still very confused by, and I would like the AI
14:12
Speaker 1: chatbot to be. There's a comedian whose name is Trey Crowder.
14:15
Speaker 1: He goes by like the name. He's the liberal Redneck.
14:20
Speaker 1: He speaks with a very deep like Alabama accent, but
14:23
Speaker 1: his his politics are much more left leaning, and he's
14:26
Speaker 1: always sort of explaining, you know, living in a red
14:30
Speaker 1: state to people. And I would love his take to
14:33
Speaker 1: help me understand William Faulkner's Asla Dying, Oh There you go.
14:37
Speaker 3: Good, or The Sound and the Fury, which always uses
14:41
Speaker 3: yes because there's more than one character named Quentin, and
14:44
Speaker 3: he never tells you when he switches from one to
14:47
Speaker 3: the other AI chap or maybe that just removes all
14:51
Speaker 3: the mystery.
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Speaker 4: I don't know.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean the chatbot could also lie to you too,
14:55
Speaker 1: so right.
14:56
Speaker 3: I mean, he's just it is just offering an opinion. No,
14:59
Speaker 3: it's shouldn't be Emily Dickinson talking about her own. It
15:02
Speaker 3: should be like Billy Collins this day, Emily Dickinson's poetry.
15:06
Speaker 4: I would pay for that.
15:07
Speaker 1: Actually, or Taylor Swift talking about Emily Dickinson's poetry.
15:10
Speaker 3: Right, Patti Smith because she named the album.
15:15
Speaker 4: Yeah.
15:16
Speaker 3: I wonder if anybody's told Patti Smith Patti Smith is
15:19
Speaker 3: on my wall of albums, which we may go right
15:22
Speaker 3: now I get.
15:23
Speaker 1: Here, our longtime viewers will know, all right.
15:30
Speaker 3: Uh, just to be different, Jesse, why don't we talk
15:32
Speaker 3: to a living author speaking with her own voice about
15:37
Speaker 3: a book she wrote. Let's talk to Mattie Dalrymple. Mattie Dalrymple,
15:49
Speaker 3: welcome to the podcast.
15:51
Speaker 2: Thank you is lovely to be here.
15:53
Speaker 4: All right.
15:54
Speaker 3: One traditional first question. If you could offer writers one
15:58
Speaker 3: piece of advice, what would be.
16:02
Speaker 2: Well, this is going to be interesting because I got
16:04
Speaker 2: to hear the very end of your conversation with as
16:07
Speaker 2: Eloisa James, and you guys kind of covered what is
16:12
Speaker 2: often my piece of advice that I offer, which is
16:14
Speaker 2: never to say just and I think that that applies
16:18
Speaker 2: to every part of a writer's career. You never need
16:24
Speaker 2: to say I'm just working on my first book. You
16:26
Speaker 2: never need to say I'm just writing genre fiction. Once
16:32
Speaker 2: you start publishing, you never need to say I just
16:35
Speaker 2: had X number of people in my Facebook group, because
16:40
Speaker 2: you know, I've heard people say I just have fifty
16:43
Speaker 2: thousand people on Facebook and like dude.
16:49
Speaker 5: Doing very well.
16:50
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then I've heard people say very proudly that
16:54
Speaker 2: they have fifty people following them on Facebook, and that
16:56
Speaker 2: second one is the way to go. It's so easy
17:00
Speaker 2: to det a great one's own, artistic, easy business, somebody
17:07
Speaker 2: you can.
17:08
Speaker 3: Compare yourself with unflatteringly, right, So.
17:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, yes, and then uster syndrome is real.
17:15
Speaker 5: Yeah.
17:16
Speaker 2: I think part of it is modesty, but especially if
17:20
Speaker 2: you are an indie published authors I am, then you
17:22
Speaker 2: have a responsibility to approach this as a business. And
17:26
Speaker 2: McDonald's isn't saying I just sold, however many billions of hamburgers,
17:31
Speaker 2: and neither should people say I just indie published. Like
17:34
Speaker 2: that's the one that sets my teeth onage. The most
17:37
Speaker 2: hearing people say I'm going to pursue a traditional deal
17:41
Speaker 2: and if I don't get it, I'm just going to
17:43
Speaker 2: self published. Oh that's so wrong for something like.
17:47
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, Yeah, make your choice already. All right, Uh,
17:53
Speaker 3: you've got at least two different series that I know of,
17:56
Speaker 3: So tell us about that end caneer. Am I saying
17:59
Speaker 3: that right?
17:59
Speaker 4: And you are?
18:01
Speaker 2: Yeah? So I was also interested to find out a
18:04
Speaker 2: little bit about what Laura is writing because then Caner
18:07
Speaker 2: series is also supernatural suspense, as I think you're right, excellent,
18:11
Speaker 2: and it is about a woman who has the ability
18:14
Speaker 2: to communicate with the dead, and she has a consulting
18:17
Speaker 2: business based on that ability that is run by her brother,
18:21
Speaker 2: and it is all handled in a very businesslike way.
18:23
Speaker 2: She has clients, she has a website, she signs contracts,
18:27
Speaker 2: she does engagements, you know, just like she was a
18:30
Speaker 2: I don't know, an architect.
18:31
Speaker 5: I'm going to have to grab it. Yes, it sounds
18:34
Speaker 5: it sounds very We have some things that kind of
18:37
Speaker 5: overlap the Yeah, some similarities there.
18:41
Speaker 2: Well, for the for of those who are watching the
18:43
Speaker 2: cover of the most can book be with the Dead,
18:46
Speaker 2: And oh, you're also talking about Shakespeare. So all the
18:50
Speaker 2: books in the An Caneer series are based on Shakespeare quotes.
18:54
Speaker 2: So the verse is the sense of death, the sense
18:57
Speaker 2: of reckoning, the falcon and the owl, ernest free or foe,
19:01
Speaker 2: a serpent's tooth, and be with the dead. So all
19:03
Speaker 2: of those have a Shakespeare quote behind them that is
19:07
Speaker 2: appropriate for the theme of the story. So there are
19:12
Speaker 2: now six books in the An Caneer series and I'm
19:15
Speaker 2: now taking a little break from me and canar and
19:17
Speaker 2: focusing on my other series, which is Lizzie Valary thriller.
19:20
Speaker 3: Lizzy Right, yeah, how do they differ?
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Speaker 2: So the common theme in my fiction is what happens
19:27
Speaker 2: when an extraordinary ability transforms an ordinary life, and so obviously,
19:31
Speaker 2: for an her extraordinary ability is her ability to communicate
19:34
Speaker 2: with the dead. I had this idea for a different
19:38
Speaker 2: extraordinary ability that didn't really work in the an Cannear world,
19:42
Speaker 2: in part because I really like books where just one
19:45
Speaker 2: thing is tweaked. I don't necessarily like it when it
19:48
Speaker 2: gets weirder and weirder. I feel like everything is normal
19:51
Speaker 2: except one thing is tweaked, and so I didn't want
19:54
Speaker 2: to just insert the second extraordinary ability. But the first
19:57
Speaker 2: book is sort of about Lizzy and Lizzie, who's very
20:01
Speaker 2: young at the beginning of the first book, and her
20:02
Speaker 2: parents learning what this special ability is. But I always say,
20:06
Speaker 2: if you like Stephen King's fire Starter, okay, I'll kind
20:09
Speaker 2: of think of it in those terms. And it is
20:13
Speaker 2: much more thriller esque than the end series, which is
20:16
Speaker 2: mystery and suspense, and so it's basically about how Lizzie
20:21
Speaker 2: and her allies are going to or not avoid the
20:26
Speaker 2: clutches of the primary bad guy, Louise Mortensen, who is
20:29
Speaker 2: the person who is responsible for Lizzie's ability, and the
20:33
Speaker 2: most recent book in that series is called Scarecard. And
20:37
Speaker 2: just as the Lizzie books have a theme or all
20:40
Speaker 2: that the nd Caineer titles have the theme of Shakespeare quotes,
20:44
Speaker 2: the Lizzie books all have the theme of The first
20:48
Speaker 2: three are based on children's games rock, Paper, scissors, Snakes
20:52
Speaker 2: and Ladders, and the Iron Ring, and then the second
20:54
Speaker 2: three are based on poker terms, Scarecard being.
20:57
Speaker 3: A poker term. You are so read with your visual aids.
21:01
Speaker 3: I'm impressed. I just feel sorry for the people listening
21:05
Speaker 3: to this on the audio.
21:06
Speaker 4: You're missing out.
21:07
Speaker 3: Go find the YouTube came Please.
21:09
Speaker 5: Do you seem to favor Philadelphia as a setting. There
21:15
Speaker 5: is there a reason for that, are you? What's the
21:18
Speaker 5: tie there?
21:19
Speaker 2: Well, I live right outside Philadelphia. I live in Chester County,
21:21
Speaker 2: which is just to the west of Philadelphia, so it's
21:23
Speaker 2: the area I know the most. When I was working
21:26
Speaker 2: on the first and Caner book, it was actually originally
21:29
Speaker 2: set in San Francisco. At the time, my sister lived
21:32
Speaker 2: in the San Francisco area. I was going out there
21:35
Speaker 2: a lot to visit her and I pictured this one
21:37
Speaker 2: climactic scene taking place at one of those beautiful Victorian
21:40
Speaker 2: homes and I love tho. Yeah, and then she moved.
21:45
Speaker 2: I stopped visiting San Francisco so much. But I really thought,
21:48
Speaker 2: you know, I really want to write about a place
21:50
Speaker 2: that I know very well. And I've lived in one
21:53
Speaker 2: place or another in southeastern Pennsylvania since I was in
21:57
Speaker 2: the fourth grade, so I know it pretty well. And
21:59
Speaker 2: then I especially Lochester County, so many of the stories
22:02
Speaker 2: are center Donchester County.
22:04
Speaker 5: Nice. Am I right that you've also written a book
22:07
Speaker 5: on podcasting for authors?
22:09
Speaker 4: Yes?
22:10
Speaker 2: I have two Timesloo.
22:12
Speaker 1: Yeah.
22:13
Speaker 2: Well, I love talking podcasting with fellow podcasters, and I
22:18
Speaker 2: have a podcast called the Indi Author Podcast just coming
22:21
Speaker 2: up in two hundred and fifty episodes, and it's all
22:24
Speaker 2: about the writing craft and the publishing voyage because I
22:26
Speaker 2: love the nautical metaphor for writing and publishing. There's no
22:30
Speaker 2: aspect of writing and publishing that I can't come up
22:32
Speaker 2: with a good nautical metaphor for. And so the Indie
22:39
Speaker 2: Author Podcast was actually I jumped into my other nonfiction book,
22:45
Speaker 2: which is called Taking a Short Attack. I can describe
22:48
Speaker 2: that a little more later. But podcasting for authors is
22:51
Speaker 2: based on my experience with the Indi Author podcast and
22:55
Speaker 2: how podcasting is for people who want to get word
22:58
Speaker 2: out about their books. One of the best practices. We're
23:01
Speaker 2: deciding the approach to take and testing the waters because
23:06
Speaker 2: as you guys know, it's a time investment in a
23:09
Speaker 2: money investment and usually a labor of love, usually not
23:12
Speaker 2: a money making a venture for most podcasters. And so
23:16
Speaker 2: I asked some questions early in the book, helping people
23:19
Speaker 2: understand if this is right for them or not, and
23:20
Speaker 2: then go from that very strategic view through to the
23:23
Speaker 2: most tactical you know, how do you make sure your
23:26
Speaker 2: sound quality is good kind of consideration. So that's podcasting
23:29
Speaker 2: for authors.
23:29
Speaker 4: It's very helpful, it sounds invaluable.
23:32
Speaker 3: And you've also written I believe about writing short fiction,
23:36
Speaker 3: short stories and whatnot, which really interests me. What are
23:40
Speaker 3: the differences between long forms a novel and a short story.
23:44
Speaker 2: Well, I always have to offer the caveat that. My
23:47
Speaker 2: other nonfiction book, which is called Taking the Short Tack,
23:49
Speaker 2: that is the one that's based on an audical metaphor,
23:52
Speaker 2: because a short tack is the maneuver a sailor would
23:56
Speaker 2: use if they're navigating in a narrow waterway, And so
23:59
Speaker 2: that whole idea of constricted space, you know, works in
24:05
Speaker 2: many ways that we can delve into if appropriate. But
24:08
Speaker 2: it's focused basically on what do you do with the
24:11
Speaker 2: story once you have it? So it's the subtitle is
24:13
Speaker 2: creating income and connecting with readers using short fiction. So
24:16
Speaker 2: less on the craft side and more on the publishing side.
24:22
Speaker 2: But I co wrote that with Mark Lesley Lefay of
24:25
Speaker 2: Stark Reflections on Writing and Publishing, podcast fame, and many
24:29
Speaker 2: other things. And Mark had a lot of experience, a
24:32
Speaker 2: lot of success in the traditional short fiction market, so
24:35
Speaker 2: he was able to bring a perspective on that. I
24:38
Speaker 2: indie published my An Kinner suspense shorts via the retail platforms,
24:44
Speaker 2: so I was able to bring the indie perspective. But
24:47
Speaker 2: there are just lots of good business and creative things
24:49
Speaker 2: that writers can do with short fiction that you know,
24:51
Speaker 2: some of which are quite obvious, but some of which
24:53
Speaker 2: are a little more out of the box.
24:56
Speaker 3: Now, when you say you indie published them, are you
24:58
Speaker 3: saying you uploaded and offered them as individual short stories
25:04
Speaker 3: or as an anthology? No, individual like, I don't know,
25:07
Speaker 3: ninety nine cents of story something like that.
25:09
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's so now we're kind of in the middle
25:12
Speaker 2: of twenty twenty four. Until the end of twenty twenty three,
25:15
Speaker 2: I was selling them for ninety nine cents. At the
25:17
Speaker 2: beginning of this year, I put the price up to
25:19
Speaker 2: a dollar ninety nine. So those are all each stories.
25:22
Speaker 2: Each story, which is about i'd say four to six
25:25
Speaker 2: thousand words, is available individually, and then when I have
25:30
Speaker 2: twelve of them, I'm going to put them out as
25:31
Speaker 2: a collection called A Year of Canear, Year of Van Cane,
25:36
Speaker 2: and there there's going to be a story set in
25:38
Speaker 2: each month. So I think I'm up to like eight now,
25:42
Speaker 2: so I still have a few more stories to write
25:43
Speaker 2: to fill out the full collection. But me, yeah, it's
25:48
Speaker 2: been it's been been very profitable for me. The last
25:50
Speaker 2: time I checked, I had earned over six hundred dollars
25:53
Speaker 2: from the sale of the shorts, which I believe is
25:58
Speaker 2: a lot more than I probably would have gotten a
26:00
Speaker 2: I had been fortunate enough to traditionally place them.
26:05
Speaker 3: It's a short story, I mean, you might have sold
26:07
Speaker 3: it to a periodical. But yeah, I think you're doing better. Yeah,
26:13
Speaker 3: you're on.
26:14
Speaker 2: I believe I am too. And then the other point
26:17
Speaker 2: I like to make about indie publishing and short fiction
26:20
Speaker 2: is that I got what I believe was invaluable perspective
26:25
Speaker 2: on placement of almost anything, but it applies especially well
26:31
Speaker 2: to short fiction. That for three years I've judged the
26:34
Speaker 2: Writer's Short short fiction contests, and my job is one
26:39
Speaker 2: of many well, one of several judges was to look
26:43
Speaker 2: at a pool of short stories fifteen hundred words max.
26:48
Speaker 2: And I got about five hundred of them, and then
26:52
Speaker 2: I had to pick my top twenty and rank them
26:55
Speaker 2: in order. And so the first year I did it,
26:58
Speaker 2: I opened up the first story, I read it. I
27:00
Speaker 2: don't know, you know, it could be okay. I guess
27:02
Speaker 2: it's a little editing, and so I put it in
27:04
Speaker 2: the maybe pile. And I opened the second story and
27:06
Speaker 2: I said, well, that's that's a little better. Yeah, I
27:09
Speaker 2: can see that. Put that in the maybe pile. I
27:11
Speaker 2: have to say that by the time I got to fifty,
27:13
Speaker 2: I had already found twenty fantastic short stories that I
27:19
Speaker 2: would be happy to put my name on, as you know,
27:21
Speaker 2: recommending these for consideration for the final group of judges.
27:25
Speaker 2: And it was a very visceral example to me of
27:32
Speaker 2: excellent writing is the price of admission. It's not what,
27:35
Speaker 2: it's not what guarantees you a place at the table.
27:38
Speaker 2: And so people, by the time I got to like
27:41
Speaker 2: entry two hundred, all I was doing was looking for
27:43
Speaker 2: a reason to put it in the notepile, because yeah,
27:47
Speaker 2: all I was looking for was that is this better
27:49
Speaker 2: than the twenty wonderful, wonderful stories I've already found. And
27:53
Speaker 2: so I think a lot of people say, oh, well,
27:55
Speaker 2: you know, my story is so good, I'm sure I'm
27:56
Speaker 2: going to get a place for it. And I was like, no,
27:59
Speaker 2: the chances are against you, because I had seven hundreds.
28:04
Speaker 2: Over the three years, the number of stories I had
28:07
Speaker 2: to read ranged from about five hundred to about seven hundred.
28:09
Speaker 2: And I'm not the only judge, and there's only one
28:12
Speaker 2: person who's going to get their story picked. Is the
28:15
Speaker 2: I feel like the odds are just so bad. But
28:19
Speaker 2: the happy part about that is people don't have to
28:22
Speaker 2: worry that their lack of acceptance for that kind of thing,
28:24
Speaker 2: their lack of winning the place, is a reflection of
28:27
Speaker 2: their writing skill. It's not. It's all sorts of other things,
28:32
Speaker 2: but it's not necessarily a pert skill.
28:34
Speaker 3: And I'm going to jump in right now because you
28:36
Speaker 3: brought up indie publishing, and I think there are a
28:38
Speaker 3: lot of people listening who would like to know more,
28:41
Speaker 3: like what have you found that works or what have
28:45
Speaker 3: you found that does not work that you would like
28:48
Speaker 3: to share with people?
28:50
Speaker 2: Well over many years, so I published my first book
28:54
Speaker 2: in twenty thirteen. When I was finishing my first book,
28:57
Speaker 2: I spoke with friends I had who are toditionally published
29:00
Speaker 2: and said, you know what attracts you about traditional publishing?
29:02
Speaker 2: And they told me, no, it's like that doesn't really
29:04
Speaker 2: sound that good to me. And so I, you know,
29:07
Speaker 2: indie publishing was a choice I made, not a path
29:10
Speaker 2: I was forced into. But so over the past eleven years,
29:15
Speaker 2: I've obviously thought about this a lot, especially having a
29:17
Speaker 2: podcast called the India Author Podcast. And the way I
29:20
Speaker 2: sort of encapsulated is traditional publishing off first two things.
29:23
Speaker 2: One is it offers the A and B of publishing,
29:26
Speaker 2: the A being access. So could I get my books
29:30
Speaker 2: into a Barnes and Noble in my neighborhood? Probably if
29:34
Speaker 2: I spend enough time on it, is it likely my
29:37
Speaker 2: books are going to show up in a Barnes and
29:39
Speaker 2: Noble in Oklahoma. No, no, it is not. You're just
29:41
Speaker 2: not going to be able to walk into a Barns
29:43
Speaker 2: and Noble and see my any published books. So there
29:46
Speaker 2: are platforms that traditional publishers can access that indie authors
29:50
Speaker 2: have a much more difficult time accessing, although that difference
29:53
Speaker 2: is becoming less and less over time, I believe, because
29:56
Speaker 2: all the online platforms are basically available to Andy's. And
29:59
Speaker 2: the second is bragging rights. And I kind of say
30:01
Speaker 2: that as a joke, but there are good professional reasons,
30:05
Speaker 2: like resume building, that somebody might want bragging rights because
30:09
Speaker 2: it is it is would be cooler to say that
30:11
Speaker 2: my books are published by Hisshet than to say they're
30:13
Speaker 2: published by William Kingsfield. Publishers cooler for the person I'm
30:17
Speaker 2: talking to, you know, it's equally cool for me. But
30:20
Speaker 2: you don't get oohs and odds when I say who
30:22
Speaker 2: my publisher is. So that's the aim to be accessing
30:25
Speaker 2: bragging rights. But the seas of indie publishing are first
30:29
Speaker 2: of all creativity in the sense that you don't have
30:34
Speaker 2: to be creative on someone else's schedule. You know. I
30:36
Speaker 2: speak to friends who were on contract with large publishers,
30:39
Speaker 2: and they owe them two, three four books a year,
30:43
Speaker 2: and they've got to be writing those books whether they're
30:47
Speaker 2: feeling it or not. And fortunately, if I'm working on
30:51
Speaker 2: a novel and I'm stuck or I'm just getting fed
30:54
Speaker 2: up with it, I can just switch to nonfiction, or
30:56
Speaker 2: i can switch to a short story. I you know,
30:58
Speaker 2: I can push by a publication date back a month. Control.
31:05
Speaker 2: I'm never going to have cover I hate, uh, And
31:08
Speaker 2: I think control is probably one of the leagest reason
31:10
Speaker 2: unless you choose to go with it, not unless you
31:12
Speaker 2: choose to go with it. Yeah, I used to say
31:15
Speaker 2: I'm always gonna have a cover I love, and I
31:17
Speaker 2: don't think that's true because I've made choices about my
31:20
Speaker 2: covers that I was like personally, they weren't my favorite,
31:23
Speaker 2: but I felt like they were the right choice business wise.
31:26
Speaker 2: But I'm probably never going to have a cover I
31:28
Speaker 2: hate right care in the sense that I don't think
31:32
Speaker 2: any traditional publisher gives the same care to a backlist
31:35
Speaker 2: as an India author does. I'm still promoting my first,
31:38
Speaker 2: my first and series books more heavily than any other book.
31:40
Speaker 2: I don't think this traditional publisher would do that. You
31:42
Speaker 2: get that spike during the launch and then they're on
31:45
Speaker 2: to other things. Chronology is when I added recently, chronology
31:51
Speaker 2: being you here. I was just at a largely traditionally
31:55
Speaker 2: publishing focused conference and I heard so many stories about
31:59
Speaker 2: people are saying, oh, yeah, I just signed my contract,
32:01
Speaker 2: it's going to be out in twenty twenty six. I'm like,
32:03
Speaker 2: twenty twenty six. That just hurts my heart to think
32:06
Speaker 2: of somebody waiting two years to have their book get
32:10
Speaker 2: to the hands of readers. So chronology, you know, how
32:14
Speaker 2: long do you have to wait for the next step?
32:16
Speaker 2: It could be months or years if you go with
32:18
Speaker 2: a traditional publisher and then cash because recent surveys that
32:25
Speaker 2: have been run by both the Alliance of Independent Authors
32:29
Speaker 2: who I work for, but also traditionally published outlets like
32:33
Speaker 2: the Author's Guild have shown that in general, as an average,
32:38
Speaker 2: indie authors are making more money than traditionally published authors.
32:40
Speaker 2: Now there's probably you know, they're the multimillionaire traditionally published
32:44
Speaker 2: authors who are skewing the course the self, but you know,
32:48
Speaker 2: as a whole, indie authors are doing better financially. So
32:54
Speaker 2: that's my couple of minted overview of why I continue
32:58
Speaker 2: to choose Indy for my own books.
33:01
Speaker 5: Excellent.
33:02
Speaker 2: I like that.
33:03
Speaker 5: So you just actively from the beginning knew that Indie
33:06
Speaker 5: appealed to you more and made a very firm choice
33:10
Speaker 5: that that was the way you were going to go.
33:11
Speaker 2: I like that. Yeah, I did, because I had this
33:16
Speaker 2: podcast that, despite the fact that it's called The Indie Author,
33:18
Speaker 2: it actually addresses topics that are an issue to authors
33:21
Speaker 2: regardless of their choice in publishing route. And at one
33:26
Speaker 2: point I did write a standalone and I thought it
33:29
Speaker 2: would be cool to be able to talk about these
33:31
Speaker 2: things from an inside perspective of both Indian who publishing.
33:35
Speaker 2: So I made some attempts to like pitch it at
33:38
Speaker 2: conferences and things like that, youre just so soul killing.
33:41
Speaker 2: I just hated the whole process, and I finally just said, like,
33:45
Speaker 2: this is not even worth as an experiment, and again,
33:50
Speaker 2: you know, what are the chances that I'm going to
33:51
Speaker 2: get one of these very very few slots, very small?
33:54
Speaker 5: I love it. This is a great example of choosing
33:57
Speaker 5: the right thing for you, and I love that you
33:59
Speaker 5: found exactly the right path for you. What does your
34:02
Speaker 5: typical writing day look like? What's your process like?
34:06
Speaker 2: Well, the other thing I was interested in hearing in
34:09
Speaker 2: Elwys's conversation, is I also have a twenty five minute
34:13
Speaker 2: daily writing sprint on Zoo Really, my fellow authors, Yeah,
34:16
Speaker 2: maybe this is just a new thing that I just had.
34:19
Speaker 3: That's why we do a podcast, so we want new things.
34:23
Speaker 2: Well, I heard about other people doing this a couple
34:25
Speaker 2: of years ago, and I was like, really, that sounds
34:26
Speaker 2: goofy because I think, just as she described, I get
34:30
Speaker 2: on a zoom. It's actually not soon, but like Zoom
34:34
Speaker 2: with a couple of writer friends, we set a timer
34:37
Speaker 2: a week, right, for twenty five minutes, We take a break,
34:40
Speaker 2: and then we set the timer again. We do that
34:41
Speaker 2: for three times, so about an hour and a half.
34:43
Speaker 3: Even if you're cooking with gas and you're in the
34:45
Speaker 3: middle of a sentence, you would stop at the I mean,
34:49
Speaker 3: I feel like I write in like two hour bursts.
34:52
Speaker 4: You know.
34:52
Speaker 3: I looked up suddenly and where'd the time go. But
34:55
Speaker 3: if somebody came in and told me I had to
34:58
Speaker 3: stop when I was in the middle of a thought,
35:00
Speaker 3: I'd get angry.
35:01
Speaker 2: I think, well, you don't have to if people are
35:04
Speaker 2: rolling along. I don't know if I've ever had one
35:05
Speaker 2: of the people Uh, they're usually only maybe two three
35:09
Speaker 2: other people on these, and if someone is saying I'm
35:12
Speaker 2: really rolling along, you know, I'm going to skip the break,
35:14
Speaker 2: that would be perfectly fine. But we kind of take
35:16
Speaker 2: the temperature at the breaks, like I say, has everybody doing,
35:19
Speaker 2: And if someone says like, oh, I'm really going strong,
35:22
Speaker 2: then usually the breaks are like ten seconds long because
35:25
Speaker 2: we get Okay, well let's let's keep going. So we
35:28
Speaker 2: try to factor that in and then every once in
35:30
Speaker 2: a while someone goes like, oh, I'm so stuck. Can
35:32
Speaker 2: somebody you know, can somebody suggest whatever? And then we
35:36
Speaker 2: have a little conversation. But yeah, I totally see what
35:40
Speaker 2: you're saying. You're what you're saying about it along.
35:43
Speaker 5: To brainstorm, if you if you find that you or
35:47
Speaker 5: bounce some ideas off of you're of two minds of something,
35:50
Speaker 5: you can kind of take the temperature on both and
35:52
Speaker 5: see what appeals to people. Okay, it's interesting, I'm gonna
35:56
Speaker 5: I'm gonna.
35:57
Speaker 3: Sit with that a little while.
35:59
Speaker 5: It's seeming like a very new and unsettling idea. But
36:03
Speaker 5: like pil said, I it's been such.
36:05
Speaker 3: A loan there anything a try once.
36:08
Speaker 5: But yeah, if it could help it could help. We
36:10
Speaker 5: sometimes when we go for walks when we have things,
36:12
Speaker 5: we'll bounce ideas off of each other and usually by
36:16
Speaker 5: the end of the walk we're like, Okay, figured it out.
36:18
Speaker 5: I know what to do now, so I can see
36:20
Speaker 5: the appeal.
36:22
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think that the key is finding a
36:24
Speaker 2: group of people who have the same goals as you.
36:26
Speaker 2: So I'm really explicit that the goal is generally not
36:31
Speaker 2: like socializing, right, and so I've attracted a circle circle
36:36
Speaker 2: of people who are looking for that. Our brakes are
36:38
Speaker 2: very short and usually businesslike, and we really rarely do that.
36:42
Speaker 2: Can I talk about this brainstorming question? Then there are
36:45
Speaker 2: other groups I belong to more informally that are very
36:48
Speaker 2: explicitly socialization, socializing and brainstorming. So you know, you want
36:53
Speaker 2: to make sure you're looking for a group that is
36:55
Speaker 2: offering what you think is going to be most appealing
36:57
Speaker 2: to you.
36:58
Speaker 3: Well, this has been fascinating. We need to get you back.
37:01
Speaker 3: Maybe we can do a swap with your podcast or something. Yeah, absolutely,
37:04
Speaker 3: I gotta I gotta ring the curtain on this one.
37:07
Speaker 3: One last question, what are you working on next?
37:10
Speaker 2: Well, I'm working on the fifth Lucie Dollar thriller. So
37:14
Speaker 2: that should be out later this year. And I'm also
37:18
Speaker 2: working on a book that will be out later this summer,
37:21
Speaker 2: a nonfiction book on becoming an author speaker. So yeah,
37:26
Speaker 2: I'm looking forward to that and having an opportunity to
37:28
Speaker 2: talk about that other people.
37:30
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's great.
37:31
Speaker 3: Very well, Thank you so much for being on the podcast.
37:34
Speaker 4: Appreciate it.
37:35
Speaker 2: Thank you for the invitation. This is talking.
37:49
Speaker 3: Just a few parting words. Remember writer Con Conferences August
37:53
Speaker 3: thirty to September two. Keynote speakers include USA no New
38:00
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38:15
Speaker 3: you'll ever meet. She's keynoting. One night, We've got Kimberly Leming,
38:20
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38:28
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38:32
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38:37
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38:39
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39:12
Speaker 3: but you'll find them both on substack just search for
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Speaker 3: writer Con. Okay, until next.
39:18
Speaker 4: Time, keep writing.
39:21
Speaker 3: Remember you cannot fail if you refuse to quit.
39:26
Speaker 4: All right, see you next time.