Latest / WriterCon / The Child's Journey with Kelly Anne Manuel
Transcript
- 0:00This week on the writer con podcast. The one piece of advice that I
- 0:04would offer is not to ignore the seed. So I like to say,
- 0:12did a sequoia know that it was going to be a gigantic sequoia when it
- 0:16was just a baby seed? Likely not. I mean, maybe it had
- 0:22some idea, but I don't really think so. So what I like to
- 0:26say is, if you get some sort of hit, some sort of idea,
- 0:31something that might not seem important, go ahead and jot it down.
- 0:35You know, I constantly do that in my iPhone, in my notes right
- 0:40because it could be the start of something. So I say, don't ignore
- 0:45that, don't say oh, that's nothing. If you feel it and you
- 0:49get the hit and make a note, and then I like to say,
- 0:53go back and water it and see what it might grow into, maybe a
- 0:58giant sequoia. Welcome to writer Coon, a gathering place for writers to share
- 1:03their knowledge about writing and the writing world. Your hosts are William Bernhardt,
- 1:07best selling novelist and author of The Red Sneaker books on writing, and Laura
- 1:11Bernhardt, award winning author the Wantland Files book series. Hey there, writers,
- 1:17thanks for joining me and my superstar author wife, Laura and our Superstar
- 1:23sound engineer Jesse Ulrich. One of our news stories today actually relates to the
- 1:29Hugos and science fiction, and speaking of Jesse is our science fiction expert.
- 1:34And you just got back from the Star Trek cruise right I did. It
- 1:38was great, Listen, It's always great. It's imagine being on a cruise
- 1:42ship, which if you don't like cruse ships, I understand, but imagine
- 1:46everyone on that cruise ship has the same sort of central interest as you,
- 1:51and you're going to spend an entire week with those people talking about the things
- 1:55you love the most. And it's great. I love it. So you
- 1:57can talk about things sudden they understand it. Do you all greet each other
- 2:01with the vulcan if you can? I actually can't do the vulcan greeting,
- 2:07which is that I can't. Me and Zachary quinto two people who can't do
- 2:13it. From Shatner. Remember did you see Free Enterprise? They wired his
- 2:17fingers together. Yes, so we can do this. I will tell you
- 2:21in rabbinical school. To help rabbis do that, they do tape their fingers
- 2:24together until they're able to do it. That's what I've learned. So maybe
- 2:29one day for the next starter cruise, I'll tape my fingers together so I
- 2:31can actually do it very nice. Yeah I can't. I can't so,
- 2:37but yes, a lot of people do gree each other with that and love
- 2:39to cling on phrases and whatnot. I would have to study up. Okay,
- 2:45So that was a fun cruise, but much more importantly, of course,
- 2:47in April, you're joining us for the Writer cun Cruise. Yes,
- 2:52we'll have fewer actors, but I like writers better anyway. Are you looking
- 2:57forward to that one? I am. That one is certainly a little slightly
- 3:00more relaxing for me than the Star Trek Cruise, but again that I do,
- 3:07but I do get like some of them. I do get some of
- 3:08the mornings free because I'm not in the writing sessions. So but like the
- 3:14thing I like about the Star Trek Crewise especially, and this relates to the
- 3:16Writer con Cruise, is I like hearing from creatives, not necessarily actors so
- 3:21much, but the people who do the writing and the producing, the creative
- 3:23parts of it, and so spending time with people who are trying to create
- 3:27something is very energizing for me, So I agree. How about you,
- 3:30Lara, have you started packing your bag yet? I actually have? Is
- 3:36that embarrassing to admit it? Yes, I'm already. No, I'm already
- 3:42thinking about what I want to take. I'm already dreaming of the tropics and
- 3:46checking trying to decide which bathing suit I'll take and which of my Hawaiian shirts
- 3:52I want to take, and just I'm super excited to go. I can't
- 3:55wait to be on the ocean in my room with you and working with a
- 4:01great group of people. I spent I don't know, six seven hours writing
- 4:06today. I'm a little emotionally drained, but I gets very recharged when I
- 4:12am working with other authors, So I'm going to be very ready for that.
- 4:16The balcony in the room, you know, with the ocean that seems
- 4:20endless to me, that's like the best writing environment on earth. So I
- 4:27will say for one of my favorite parts of the writer con Cruise last year
- 4:30was just the last night when the ships were sailing through trying to avoid a
- 4:35thunderstorm, and you could see the thunderstorm, just the lightning from your balcony,
- 4:41and like you would hear oohs and ohs from other parts of the ship,
- 4:44and it was just It was a magical moment until you started thinking about
- 4:47what happened if a ship got struck by lightning, which then required me researching
- 4:50it. It's fine, they had lightning rods. It's okay. But it
- 4:55was beautiful to see a storm with like nothing arounding it, surrounding except you
- 4:59and the other sh If you could see it was really magical and certainly creative.
- 5:02That would be very cool. I get distracted by nature, but I
- 5:06love the nature bathing. It's very very good for me. Yeah. Well,
- 5:12our interview today is with Kelly and Manuel, a children's book author who
- 5:15has made a huge splash. So don't stop listening just because you aren't writing
- 5:20children's books, because she has done something amazing you need to hear about.
- 5:26She has written and published thirty one books at the same time in the same
- 5:31book launch. That's like one book for every day of the month. I
- 5:35guess in four different series we will talk to this remarkable writer. But first
- 5:44the news. Well, we're right back to science fiction, so Jesse jump
- 6:04in anytime. Talking about World Con and the Hugos and the huge controversy going
- 6:10on there. This is not the first time the Hugos have been controversial,
- 6:15and we'll talk about why. But this is another example of a story that
- 6:20I held back on until I actually had some information about not just what happened
- 6:26but why. You may have already seen news reports alleging that the Hugo Awards
- 6:31haven't handed out last year at the World Science Fiction Convention in Chengdu, China,
- 6:38were rigged. Just in case you don't know, there are two major
- 6:42science fiction awards. One's the Nebula, which is based which is voted on
- 6:46by members of the organization, mostly writers, and the Hugo Awards, which
- 6:51are voted on by fans, supposedly in attendance at World com this year.
- 6:57Now, most science fiction conventions are kind of of fan run and amateur,
- 7:02but as they get bigger, there are some exceptions, like the big comic
- 7:06cons you probably heard about in San Diego or in New York, and there
- 7:11are some fan convictions that kind of outgrew the scale of volunteers and the started
- 7:16chains and whatnot. But Chinese fandom, though strong, is apparently a different
- 7:24thing, and from what I've read, I get the impression that the convention
- 7:27committee didn't realize there was this thing called the World con Constitution which sets out
- 7:33rules for what they're supposed to do, nominating and voting and so forth,
- 7:41And before long they apparently attracted the attention of the local Communist Party in the
- 7:47middle of an authoritatium authoritarian clampdown that's been intensifying in China for several years,
- 7:57and perhaps the organizers. Here's what we know. First, they arbitrarily disqualified
- 8:05a couple of very popular books by authors because they thought the books might might
- 8:13offend the local Communist Party if they won, or worse, the author showed
- 8:18up and gave an acceptance speech. The most glaring oversight was by the author
- 8:24R. F. Kwang, a book called Babel. I think you've got
- 8:26a graphic for this Jesse. It's Babel on the necessity of violence and arcane
- 8:31history of the Oxford Translators Revolution. This is a best selling, highly acclaimed
- 8:39work. It's already won the Nebula Award. It's also won the Locus Award
- 8:43for Best Fantasy Novel, and that's also a major award. So first,
- 8:48problem books being disqualified for no legit reason. Second, they dragged their heels
- 8:54on releasing vote counts, which has made everything else more suspicious. And when
- 8:58they were released. After the awards were handed out, there were discrepancies in
- 9:03the vote count, which has just led to an increase in feeling amongst fans
- 9:11that this thing was basically rigged. What do you think, Jesse, you're
- 9:15expert in this field. I mean so like one of the I can't remember
- 9:18which scandal it was, but like rare, like Neil Gaiman was disqualified for
- 9:26one of these awards, and like, here's the thing. A lot of
- 9:31people live in China. Yeah, China is a world power. I get
- 9:37from a business perspective, not wanting to upset them. But again, just
- 9:41like what we're dealing here with the goblin butts, like literature and creativity should
- 9:46not be restrained. You should be allowed to criticize your government. That's one
- 9:50of my Well, if I had like a list of like five ideals,
- 9:54one of them is like, like, governments that punish people for criticizing them
- 9:58are not government you want to be living under. And we should not just
- 10:01because we're afraid to not make some money. We shouldn't be scared of upsetting
- 10:05China. We shouldn't be scared of setting anyone. I should probably have explained
- 10:09that the world gone is not always in China, it moves every year.
- 10:13Various committees and different cities actually vote or bid. It's like a bidding war,
- 10:20and China won. Go ahead. Yeah, the Olympic Olympics. That's
- 10:24exactly right. And you know, whatever else was going on with books,
- 10:30and this is what I was waiting for. It's since been relieved that been
- 10:33revealed that investment deals valued at over one billion dollars were signed of the eighty
- 10:41first World Science Fiction Convention in cheng Dao. So it was a major commercial
- 10:48enterprise for someone, although obviously not the authors who didn't win because their books
- 10:54were disqualified or How does that make you feel about these people being in jarge
- 11:01of the Hugo Awards. Not great. I just feel like they were the
- 11:07leading question, as lawyers say, in over their heads a little bit.
- 11:11I'm kind of trying to trying to be gentle about this. I absolutely agree
- 11:20with Jesse, but we are living somewhere where it's okay for us to say
- 11:26that and we can behave in a certain way. And it sounds like they
- 11:31got a little over their heads there and they probably did the best they could.
- 11:39It just feels like a bad situation all around. Well, particularly harmful
- 11:46for writers like the author of Babel, who you know, let's face it,
- 11:50Ajar would have won this except that he wasn't nominated, you know who,
- 11:56to have a Triple Award winner like that, the you know, the
- 12:00Triple Crown of science fiction, those opportunities aren't going to come very often.
- 12:05And this is just very sad. Well, and it makes us then it
- 12:11devalues the award in some way because now when we look back, will forever
- 12:18be saying, but that person should have won, that would have won.
- 12:20When you don't have a fair fight, he missed, Yes, that author
- 12:26missed out on winning. But now how does the person who did win it
- 12:31feel. I wouldn't feel good about that. I would think that I wasn't
- 12:35the rightful person. It just tarnishes the entire award. Yeah, I agree,
- 12:45Okay, News story number two. This has got a good headline.
- 12:48Reading is sexy. We're saying that for decades. Well yeah, yeah,
- 12:56me too. But sometimes I've had trouble convincing others. But now it's in
- 13:01the Guardian, so it must be true. Just yeah, you've already got
- 13:05that article up there. So about a week or so ago, the twenty
- 13:09two year old model. That's who you're looking at if you're seeing the YouTube
- 13:13version. KaiA Gerber launched her own book club called Library Science. She's also
- 13:20on the cover of British Vogue right now with her supermodel mom, who by
- 13:26the way, is Cindy Crawford. And she's describing this Library Science thing as
- 13:31quote a platform for sharing books, featuring new writers, hosting conversations with artists
- 13:37we admire, and continuing to build a community of people who are as excited
- 13:43about literature as I am. Books have always been the great love of my
- 13:48life. Reading is so sexy. Where was she when I was a teenager?
- 13:56I mean, we live in a world where we know book sales for
- 13:58young people are up, and perhaps most interestingly, it's paper sales that are
- 14:05booming, not digital. Is it possible then, that gen Z can do
- 14:09for paper books what it's already done for vinyl records, you know, not
- 14:13only bring them back, but make them. You know, last year,
- 14:16for the first time, vinyl records sold better than CDs did. And I
- 14:22should watch that. Yeah. Yeah, And Gerber's not alone. Another twenty
- 14:26eight year old model, Kindled Jenner, maybe a familiar name to some of
- 14:30you is now the unofficial face of the New litt Girls Club. When she
- 14:35was pictured on a yacht off the Cote DuJour reading a book and fyi,
- 14:41her body was covered with green posted notes. Okay, Jesse, can we
- 14:48take this seriously? And you know, I'm not dissing models at all,
- 14:54but this is not really what you expect typically fashion models to be doing.
- 15:00Why do we have people who, you know, their job is looking good
- 15:05and modeling clothes and whatnot, and now they're you know, wanting to be
- 15:09taken seriously as literary people. What do you think? Well, I think
- 15:13it's part of a larger trend that's kind of like, looking back on it
- 15:18kind of makes sense where for the generation that grew up in our sort of
- 15:24oversaturated information bomb bast constant awareness of what everyone is doing, society would would
- 15:33want to slow down and do things that are more personal and slower, like,
- 15:39for example, reading a physical book and listening to a vinyl record.
- 15:43Like, it makes sense that people would come back to a thing that is
- 15:46much more engrossing and forces you to separate yourself from the greater outside world.
- 15:52So I'm I think this is great, like buy more books, right,
- 15:58Well, and if it comes at a time and when book sales are increasing
- 16:00amongst young people, their target audience, whether they're talking about books or clothes
- 16:07or anything else, maybe this is time. I mean, maybe there's going
- 16:12to be more marketing to book readers. Wouldn't that be sweet? Laura?
- 16:18Let me ask you this. Most of these models, in fact, everyone
- 16:22I saw when I was preparing this, they're all reading books by other female
- 16:27authors. Some of them are romanticy, some are more nonfiction or on the
- 16:33literary side. Do you think that's significant? I think that works in with
- 16:41the statistics that we've seen. I think they are younger, young women,
- 16:45and I do think that romance and romanticy and women's fiction is big with that
- 16:55demographic. Romanticy especially makes sense to me. These are these are the kids
- 17:02who grew up with Harry Potter books very much enjoyed having magic and creatures and
- 17:10fantastical elements in their books. So now combining it with romance and moving into
- 17:15new adult it just makes sense. I think that's in my mind, that
- 17:21was a natural progression there. It makes sense to me that they're enjoying those
- 17:23And then, of course we've heard that the older generation seems to veer more
- 17:30towards mysteries and thrillers still, but this is this is a Colleen Hoover era
- 17:36and it makes absolute sense to me. I just like the headline, reading
- 17:41is so sexy. That should be in our t shirts at writer Con this
- 17:45year, don't you think? Keep on that reading, maybe with you know,
- 17:49a photograph of several of you know, gorgeous models reading books or something,
- 17:55or maybe just regular people, because you know, read being as sexy
- 18:00you don't have to dress for it, right, that's the good thing,
- 18:03all right, Jesse, cue up that music and let's talk to Kelly n
- 18:08Manuel. Kelly Anne, welcome to the podcast. Hello, thank you for
- 18:23having me. Oh, thank you for joining us. Okay, traditional first
- 18:26question. If you could offer writers one piece of advice, what would it
- 18:32be? Gosh, the one piece of advice that I would offer is not
- 18:38to ignore the seed. So I like to say, did a sequoia know
- 18:45that it was going to be a gigantic sequoia when it was just a baby
- 18:48seed? Nice? Likely not? I mean, maybe it had some idea,
- 18:53but I don't really think so. So what I like to say is,
- 18:57if you get some sort of hit, some sort of idea, something
- 19:03that might not seem important, go ahead and jot it down. You know,
- 19:07I constantly do that in my iPhone, in my notes, right because
- 19:11it could be the start of something. So I say, don't ignore that,
- 19:17don't say oh, that's nothing. If you feel it and you get
- 19:21the hit, make a note, and then I like to say, go
- 19:25back and water it and see what it might grow into, maybe a giant
- 19:30sequoia. Nice. Okay, tell us about this amazing book launch. You're
- 19:37doing thirty one books, children's books, but still thirty one in four different
- 19:42series. I said that, like, I don't think children's books are really
- 19:47books. All I'm saying is that they're shorter. But they are. They
- 19:51are shorter, they are, and four different series. How did this all
- 19:56happen? Well, you know, I call myself an uncom I'm an author
- 20:02because I wasn't writing at all, and I only started writing in early spring
- 20:08of twenty twenty two. So I started writing early spring and I had well,
- 20:15in fourteen days, I had twenty seven of the books ready to go.
- 20:21Twenty seven books in fourteen days. Now they all rhyme, they're all
- 20:25nursery rhymes. So I like to reference Hans Christian Anderson as somebody to give
- 20:33you an idea of how the books go. They rhyme very much like an
- 20:37inch worm or a thumbelina. And so yeah, I had twenty seven books
- 20:41in fourteen days, and I even curated all the art for all of them
- 20:47in those days. And then I had the entire thirty one within the next
- 20:51week and I just started writing then. So I said, what am I
- 20:56going to do. I've got to publish. And I did hybrid self publishing,
- 21:02so within six months of writing the books, I had all thirty one
- 21:06published in six months. Now tell me, I'm jumping in here, but
- 21:11tell me what you mean by hybrid self publishing, because people use hybrid in
- 21:17several different ways. Very fair. So I went through Balboa Press. With
- 21:22Balboa Press, you do go through content review, so you don't just get
- 21:27to publish whatever you want. They have to accept your book, so you
- 21:33know you're the thing is you're funding it, right, you're funding your book
- 21:37to be published, but they have to approve the content, so it's not
- 21:42just complete self publishing. And then they create the ISBNs and then they put
- 21:48it out through their channels to disperse the books, right, and so that's
- 21:56how that's why I did it. Really, there was no other option the
- 22:00time, or even really still, So I wrote all these books, and
- 22:04I'm like, how what do I do? How do I get these out
- 22:07into the world? And you know, I just followed my intuition. I
- 22:11did homework online. I found hay House. You know, I was always
- 22:15fascinated by Louise hay so that was sort of my lead in. And then
- 22:22of course they published out of Bloomington, Indiana, and I went to IU.
- 22:26I went to Indiana University, so I saw all these things that sort
- 22:30of hits, and I just went for it. And my first book was
- 22:34published in time to go to the ALA, to the conference in DC that
- 22:40year, and I met one of the people from the company and I said,
- 22:44look, I have thirty more. I would like some. I'd like
- 22:47to talk to you about not paying. Yeah. I don't know that they
- 22:52believed me, but I said, I have thirty more, but I'd like
- 22:57to not pay what I paid to publish one. So I tried to just
- 23:00at least negotiate a little bit of a better price point, and then by
- 23:04the I submitted all the materials in July for all the other thirty books,
- 23:10and the hardest part of that was the synopsis. Is So I spend a
- 23:14lot because children's books, to me are very important as far as what can
- 23:18a parent, caregiver, teacher, librarian, whoever's interacting with the book and
- 23:23the child. The synopsis to me is very important. So I spent a
- 23:29lot of time in July creating the synopsis his for the thirty the thirty books.
- 23:34Then everything was published in August and September, and then I turned them
- 23:41onto audio and video m hm and video. What do you mean by that?
- 23:45Vimeo? Yeah, so the book vimeo. I'm sorry, I got
- 23:49you. You can get the video book and the book you can read through
- 23:55it and the words pop up and it's it's just really cool. And you're
- 24:00even at the Golden Globes is here promoting your work? Right that, Oh
- 24:06my gosh, my PR company is just fantastic. Right, So you write
- 24:11thirty one books, but nobody knows you, nobody knows me. Right,
- 24:15So I hired the Black Chateau Enterprises and started with them about it, right,
- 24:22Yes, yes, that's how I'm getting to speak with YouTube. So
- 24:26I hired them and we started a year ago. And so this in October,
- 24:32I got an email saying, Hey, there's this gift DPA Gifting Suite
- 24:37for the pre Golden Globes is the name of the event, and we'd like
- 24:41to invite you to come if you'd like to come. I was like,
- 24:44would I like to come? So what what you do is you have to
- 24:48the book has to be approved by the lady that's in charge, and it's
- 24:52her company, the DPA Gifting Suite. So I did The Catcher Dream one
- 24:59of my books that's a boundaries, so I feel it's a very impactful book.
- 25:03So I took The Catcher Dream and I gave it to the people at
- 25:08the top of their creative game. You know, these are people who are
- 25:14in the industry, whether they're producers, whether they're buying the products to be
- 25:19on ted Lasso, whether they're the actors in like the movie Air I met
- 25:25the actor that played Michael Jordan, whether they're cast members from Jury Duty.
- 25:30So, Eddie, this was incredible And to give them the book and tell
- 25:36them about my journey. What shocked me the most was they congratulated me when
- 25:41here they are at the top of their game being nominated and they were telling
- 25:48me congratulations. I can't tell you what that did for me as an author,
- 25:52the validation that came. It's nice, very cool. Chts materials describe
- 26:00my view as an eternal optimist who is the good kind of contagious. Did
- 26:07you talk to us about that? A little bit that has to do with
- 26:10my personality. I have what I consider to be a light and a light
- 26:15energy about me, and that's what comes through in my stories. And what
- 26:23I do is I write from my inner child to children. I do not
- 26:29write as an adult to a child. And I believe that my light energy,
- 26:34my optimism, the resilience that I have gained, and the coping skills
- 26:38I've gained from fifty five years on the planet where a lot of things have
- 26:44occurred, have all kind of bundled together into making me this uncommon author with
- 26:52a very unique voice that I believe children respond to. Because of everything I've
- 26:57just said, you've also said, let's keep going on that. You've also
- 27:03said you didn't set out to write children's books, but then you happily took
- 27:07that path when it came your way. So are you saying are you saying
- 27:11you started writing books by accident or what does that mean? Exactly. That
- 27:17would be hard to do well. While that means that I did a lot
- 27:21of work on myself, and at some point early that spring of twenty twenty
- 27:26two, I started to literally hear poetry in my head. I would hear
- 27:33the poetry and I started to write the poetry. Then I realized that poetry
- 27:40was meant to be converted to nursery rhyme format for children. It was this.
- 27:48It was I call it like a Field of Dreams type of story,
- 27:52you know, where Kevin Costner's character is like getting all these ideas that are
- 27:56a little bit odd and what I would now, I would say those were
- 28:00intuitive hits. Back when that movie was made, I didn't even know what
- 28:03that was. So what happened was I just heard the poetry. I knew
- 28:11I was meant to get it in the hands of children in a nursery rhyme
- 28:15format. It literally just happened, just sort of like his character in Field
- 28:22of Dreams. And then I would get ideas and hits, and I would
- 28:26take those steps, you know, like finding a publishing company, going to
- 28:32the ala, having that meeting that happenstance meeting, and everything has just enrolled
- 28:37in that format. So no, I did not. I did not set
- 28:42out to write the books. I say that I heard some sort of collective
- 28:48childhood call and I answered it, and it drew you to the children's books.
- 28:53That's interesting. Do you think you'll move on to something for more mature
- 28:57readers or do you feel like you are in your lane and that you will
- 29:02stay there. I'm glad you asked. I'm curating my contemporary poetry collection as
- 29:08well, okay, and I have at least i'd say seventy poems that are
- 29:15pretty close I think to being ready to be published. So I'm doing both
- 29:19because what I would love so my books are a layer of support for children,
- 29:26whether to encourage outdoor play or whether to help them with grief and loss
- 29:30and endings. So what the goal would be Grow up with my poetry and
- 29:36my nursery rhymes, and then age up into my contemporary poetry, so that
- 29:40you have support from me your entire life. You kind of touched on this
- 29:47before, Kelly Anne, but I read an interview where you were talking about
- 29:52meeting the child where they are in their journey. What does that mean?
- 29:56Okay, that means that I write in a way that will the child would
- 30:00resonate on some level, no matter where they are in their learning, or
- 30:06their family life, or their situation. So, for example, I wrote
- 30:10a book called The Loss Total. I flipped titles, so I had a
- 30:15devastating fire. The fire was coined a total loss. Okay, so the
- 30:22Lost Total. It's about a visit from the Lost Total who made me feel
- 30:26empty, sad, and awful. That book is about loss and grief.
- 30:30Now, for one child, that could be losing their tee ball game,
- 30:34That could be getting a bad grade on a report card. For another child,
- 30:40that a loss could be the death of say a grandparent, or a
- 30:45divorce, or a parent going to serve in the military could feel like a
- 30:51lost total. So the book covers different layers of endings and loss. But
- 31:00whatever the child is at in their life, the book will meet them there
- 31:06and give them a layer of some port and maybe some verbiage and some self
- 31:10talk that can be helpful. I don't know if that answers your question.
- 31:15No, it does. We have a lot of aspiring writers in our audience.
- 31:22Can you tell us what a typical writing day looks like for you?
- 31:26Maybe discuss your process a little bit. Yeah, that's funny. Because I
- 31:32just write when I'm inspired. So like one of my books is called the
- 31:37Boots Rain instead of Rain Boots, and I was inspired to write that when
- 31:42I was putting on my boots to walk my dog in the rain, and
- 31:47I thought, what if the boots fell down from the sky instead of being
- 31:49on my feet? Right, And so the poem came and I'm typing it
- 31:55in the phone as I'm walking the dog. That's where I talk about not
- 31:59a ignoring the seed or the spark or the moment of inspiration, because you
- 32:04may be making coffee or folding laundry or taking a child to a doctor appointment
- 32:09and you get a hit. Note the hit. That's how I write.
- 32:15So sometimes it'll be an event, you know, like the fire was a
- 32:20total loss, and that the loss total came right, So it can be
- 32:23something I've experienced. And then some of more of my contemporary poetry can be
- 32:30tied to current events or historic events that I either see a movie about or
- 32:36read about, and I'll get a hit and I'll be like, I want
- 32:39to write a poem, you know, like aberfam, the horrible incident in
- 32:45England where there was a mine. I don't know if you're familiar with Aberfam.
- 32:51It was where a mine there was like a landslide due to a mine,
- 32:55and it devastated a town. And I got a poem for Aberfam for
- 33:01the because unfortunately there was a school at the base of that where that accident
- 33:07was, and I got a poem for that town and for the children that
- 33:14were lost. So it can be an event, it can be something historic,
- 33:17or it can be something current, and I get it, I get
- 33:21the hit and I just write. So it's it's really hard for me to
- 33:23describe really any kind of ritual because for me it's extremely spontaneous. Well,
- 33:35Kelly and I normally wrap things up by asking about what you're working on next.
- 33:39Of course you already mentioned the poetry book. What else or talk more
- 33:44about that? What's on the horizon for you? Well, gosh, I
- 33:46mean, I have so many more nursery rhymes to add to the all all
- 33:50the four series that that's that's a given. I'm working on the contemporary poetry.
- 33:55I also paint. I love to paint, so that's another creative outlet
- 34:00for me, you know. And one day I wonder, oh, could
- 34:04the painting go from hobby to gallery? So I would say, I just
- 34:07am having a creative burst and it's coming out in all kinds of ways.
- 34:15Whether it's the contemporary poetry, whether it's the children's books, whether it's the
- 34:20painting, whether it's photography. I am kind of on creative fire. Fantastic,
- 34:29Hey, thanks so much for being on the podcast. Thanks for having
- 34:32me. You guys are fantastic and I was a little intimidated by your resumes,
- 34:37so thank you for being so calm and because foll those books by,
- 34:42that's what it is. I just appreciate you having me. It's our pleasure.
- 34:47We brought a lot of sun You've brought a lot of sunshine into everybody's
- 34:52life today. Thanks so much, and talk to you again soon, I
- 34:54hope. Okay, bye by just a few parting words. Laura tell us
- 35:07more about the writer con cruise because it is not too late yet to register,
- 35:13but it will be soon. Laura, let me think, what have
- 35:16we not talked about yet? Have we talked about who else is coming with
- 35:20us? We had Lauren Smith on last week. That's true. We talked
- 35:24about Lauren. Lauren is coming and I'm super excited she's joining us. Laurel
- 35:30is going to be returning and she'll be with us. I love Laurel Thomas.
- 35:36She is a darling and she's hey. She may be soft spoken,
- 35:40but that is a powerful woman with words of wisdom to share with us.
- 35:46We are also adding this year Tamra Grantham, who will be speaking on fantasy
- 35:51and romanticy. We will have RJ. R. J. Johnson who's going
- 35:58to be there speaking about SI fiction. Else maybe Jesse Jessie will be there
- 36:07keeping things. That's the reason to come on its own right, and he's
- 36:14I've been told I'm the life of the party. That's what you told me.
- 36:16I can't. We had so much fun when we had game night last
- 36:21year and I still have Yeah, yeah, that was excellent memories, fun
- 36:28times you were riot during game night. That was also. There's some teaching
- 36:31and stuff on this thing. Yes, of course, I don't always always
- 36:37shift over to the fun stuff. Now I'll be teaching. So we'll meet
- 36:39every morning. We will have some really in depth instruction. We're going to
- 36:45base that on wherever you are in your writing, So we are going to
- 36:47ask you what do you need from us, and we're going to make sure
- 36:52that you get it. Will tailor those morning sessions to meet your needs.
- 36:55We will link you up with whoever you need to meet with. Individually,
- 37:00you'll get one on one instruction from pretty much any or all of the instructors
- 37:05and presenters who are going to be there. Catherine SAMs is coming. What
- 37:08other crews can you go on where you get to speak with an agent,
- 37:12somebody who might even consider picking up your work and representing it, or might
- 37:16be able to connect you with someone else who can. Right and just every
- 37:22single person with us on the cruise, unless they don't want to, we'll
- 37:27have a chance to speak one on one and pitch or just talk to Catherine,
- 37:30who is a very prominent agent, or any of us or me.
- 37:36Well, that's true too, you're a very prominent superstar writer. I think
- 37:42I said that at the opening, So silly, that makes it true?
- 37:45All right, everybody, thanks so much for joining us today. Until next
- 37:51time, you keep writing, and remember you cannot fail if you refuse to
- 37:55quit. See you next time. Spent by Fast the fas Dan spent