Latest / Show, don't Tell Writing with Suzy Vadori / 31. Sustaining a Career in KidLit with Janet Fox

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31. Sustaining a Career in KidLit with Janet Fox · Show, don't Tell Writing with Suzy Vadori

• 0:07
  Welcome to Show Don't Tell Writing with me, Suzy Vadori, where I teach you the tried and true secrets to writing fiction, nonfiction, that are going to wow your readers broken down step by step.
• 0:18
  We're going to explore writing techniques.
• 0:21
  I'm going to show you a glimpse behind the scenes of successful writers careers that you wouldn't have access to otherwise.
• 0:27
  And I'm also going to coach writers live on their pages so that you can learn and transform your own storytelling.
• 0:33
  I'm Suzy Vadori.
• 0:33
  Whether you're just starting out, you're drafting your first book, you're editing, or you're currently rewriting that book, or maybe even your tenth book, this show's gonna help you unlock the writing skills that you didn't even know you needed, but you definitely do.
• 0:48
  I'm so looking forward to helping you get your amazing ideas from your mind onto your pages in an exciting way for both you and your readers so that you can achieve your wildest writing dreams.
• 1:00
  And you're going to also have some fun doing it.
• 1:02
  Let's dive in.
• 1:05
  It's my extreme pleasure to sit down with Janet Fox this week on the show.
• 1:09
  Don't tell writing podcast where I was dying for her to share with you all what it's really like to be a career author.
• 1:17
  Janet has published 13 books in her 25 year writing career with seven major publishers under the names Janet Fox, Janet S Fox and J S Fox.
• 1:29
  What I love, love, love about Janet's kidlit career is that she has been able to span age groups and genres.
• 1:36
  She's written children's books, books for middle grade, as well as young adults.
• 1:40
  She's crossed genres from non fiction to historical fiction to mystery, contemporary, sci fi.
• 1:46
  Her latest book, The Mystery of Mystic Mountain, has been shortlisted for a major award, Best Juvenile with the Mystery Writers of America.
• 1:56
  This combination of achievements is incredibly rare in the industry, but that doesn't surprise me, because it's Janet.
• 2:04
  She is such a light, a positive force, so generous with her time and energy to help other writers.
• 2:11
  If you're trying to break into the kidlit space, check out her membership and course program, Fox's Den, which goes deep.
• 2:19
  When she and I planned this episode, knowing that we were going to get to sit down together to record it, I asked her to share a behind the scenes glimpse into what her life as a creative, And sustaining success over the years has been like, which has always been my vision for this podcast to give you access to info you're not going to find anywhere else.
• 2:40
  And boy, did she deliver in this episode, I feel so blessed to call Janet a friend, and I hope you all have as much fun listening to our conversation as I had diving deep with her on all the things.
• 2:55
  So I am over the moon today.
• 2:58
  I'm sitting here with Janet Fox and we are going to talk about being a middle grade children's YA writer and the long game and this fantastic career that she has, that she's still doing.
• 3:13
  And I just wanted to congratulate you, Janet, we've been talking about this, right?
• 3:17
  Thank you, Susie.
• 3:18
  Yeah, and because you just have been shortlisted for the Mystery Writers of America Best Juvenile for Mystery of Mystic Mountain.
• 3:27
  Was that a surprise?
• 3:28
  A total and complete over the moon, knock my socks off surprise.
• 3:32
  Yeah, exactly.
• 3:34
  And what does it mean to you?
• 3:36
  Like, what in this Industry.
• 3:38
  We, we like to do a lot of behind the scenes stuff on the show.
• 3:41
  Don't tell podcast.
• 3:42
  And so what are these awards even mean to you?
• 3:45
  Oh, they mean so much.
• 3:48
  First of all, it's always validation and it's validation from peers and people.
• 3:53
  I don't know people I, I have, you know, very little connection with in everyday life.
• 4:00
  So they're, they're people, they're judges that are anonymous to me.
• 4:05
  And especially for the mystery writers of America, which Until recently, I was not a member of this.
• 4:11
  Oh, well, aren't you glad you joined then?
• 4:13
  Yes! So I just joined, and, and because of this award, even though I write, everything I write has some sort of mystery element in it, this was, this was a lovely surprise.
• 4:22
  Yeah, and, and you just mentioned that the judges are anonymous, and one of the really, I find the most difficult thing about writing in middle grade and children's, Is that the judges are adults and so your kids, I mean, kids love your books and then you have to also make them accessible for the people who are reviewing and judging and knowing.
• 4:41
  And so that's, that's tricky too.
• 4:44
  Do you find that?
• 4:45
  Yeah, no, I have judged a few contests.
• 4:47
  I've won some things before, so I'm familiar with the whole process of both being a participant in this.
• 4:53
  And in the judging end of it, and as an adult judging middle grade or YA in the cases that I've, I've been on a panel of judges, it's always a conversation with the other judges, and it's always coming at it from how does this best serve the reading community, whether that's a middle grade or young adult or whatever it is that you're looking at, and usually it's a huge stack of books.
• 5:18
  So to find myself in, in this finalist position is really pretty exciting.
• 5:23
  Oh, amazing.
• 5:24
  Amazing.
• 5:24
  Okay.
• 5:25
  So first things first, and then I want to dive into your extensive repertoire.
• 5:30
  But what are some of the, I mean, you've got books that are, that span children's like picture books and then middle grade and YA.
• 5:38
  And you have published in lots of different genres, historical, specific, contemporary, nonfiction within that because YA and middle grade.
• 5:47
  I mean, aren't necessarily a genre per se.
• 5:50
  They're, they're like a category, an age category.
• 5:53
  Can you maybe just go through for our listeners, because this is one of the questions that I answer all the time.
• 5:58
  Sure.
• 5:59
  What makes a book children's versus middle grade versus white?
• 6:04
  So picture books are more like poetry with very lean text, very few words, and it's a collaboration.
• 6:15
  I'm just the writer.
• 6:18
  And it's a collaboration between what I write and what the illustrator brings to the work, and I have to keep that in mind, meaning that a lot of what you write in a picture book is very spare.
• 6:30
  It's very, it isn't committing to one way of looking at an idea.
• 6:35
  Middle grade, of course, is that middle span of 8 to 12 year olds in middle school.
• 6:43
  Who love especially fantasy , but they, they just love to read.
• 6:49
  They're, they're probably the, well ya are also avid readers and ya is at 12 and up through until 18 readership.
• 6:58
  So I.
• 6:59
  And I just, I just love appealing to all those audiences.
• 7:02
  I mean, I think middle grade is my favorite sweet spot, but I really love.
• 7:07
  And how did this all come about?
• 7:09
  It's not that usual for a writer to be able to span all of those genres.
• 7:16
  You know, it's not necessarily what.
• 7:17
  We always recommend either as a writer, like what are the challenges or how did that all come about?
• 7:23
  Like, how do you choose what you're going to write next?
• 7:25
  I go with my heart every time.
• 7:30
  If I have an idea for a story, And I can't sort of make it feel like, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 7:38
  I got to write this.
• 7:39
  It's not going to work.
• 7:40
  I have never been able to force myself to write anything that I didn't want to write.
• 7:45
  So I have always had a sort of backlog of ideas, this idea and that idea and another idea.
• 7:54
  And 1 will float to the surface, and it won't leave me alone.
• 7:57
  And I just have to work on that.
• 7:59
  I don't care what the age, you know, audience range is.
• 8:03
  I don't care what the genre is.
• 8:04
  I don't care if it's science fiction.
• 8:06
  I don't care if it's contemporary fiction.
• 8:08
  If that idea resonates, that's where I go.
• 8:11
  That's where I want to go.
• 8:12
  And I'll tell you a little story around that if I may.
• 8:14
  Absolutely.
• 8:15
  Please.
• 8:16
  My favorite book of, of the ones that I've ever written is Carry Me Home.
• 8:20
  It's contemporary middle grade.
• 8:22
  It's about a pair of sisters who are living in their car and this happens on page one.
• 8:27
  So it's no surprise dad has gone missing.
• 8:30
  So they're alone and they're trying to hide the fact that they're alone because they're afraid that they'll be separated by foster care.
• 8:38
  So, I had the idea for this book by listening to an audio, a radio show where the father was describing his family living in a car, three kids, two working parents working two jobs.
• 8:52
  And I just began to think, what's it like for a 12 year old girl?
• 8:56
  Living in a car, unable to do homework easily, unable to bathe easily, having to eat in a car with her family.
• 9:06
  And what's it even worse, I said it in Montana in the winter, which is, as your listeners may know, is a very cold place.
• 9:14
  It took me five years to write one word of that book, and I knew I wanted to write it for five years.
• 9:22
  So I just kept it in the back of my mind, stewing, stewing, stewing.
• 9:26
  And one morning I woke up, I literally woke up staring at the ceiling saying, I know just how to write this book.
• 9:34
  And it was the fastest book I ever wrote.
• 9:38
  I wrote it in one month and went through almost no edits, which is still surprising and because that's not the usual way of things.
• 9:47
  And it's my favorite book.
• 9:49
  And I think letting it live in my subconscious.
• 9:53
  All that time was really important.
• 9:55
  You were working on it that whole time.
• 9:57
  And I think, you know, it's one thing that, especially if you're listening and writing your first book, we talk about word count and how quickly are we doing it?
• 10:05
  There's all these metrics that we're trying to measure.
• 10:08
  Right.
• 10:09
  But give yourself credit for that thinking time because yeah, you can't.
• 10:12
  I mean, is that the only book that you've ever written in a month?
• 10:16
  I would imagine.
• 10:17
  It is the only book I've ever written in a month.
• 10:19
  And maybe the only one that you will again.
• 10:21
  Okay.
• 10:21
  So actually I didn't, I didn't say this, so let's back up a little bit.
• 10:24
  You have 12 books currently published and one that you've written that is coming out next year, is that right?
• 10:31
  Yeah, that's right.
• 10:31
  And how many years does that span?
• 10:34
  Um, my first book was published in 1990, roughly.
• 10:41
  I'm putting her on the stalker! 1997 we think.
• 10:44
  Yes, yes, we're pretty sure it's 1997 because it came out in a, in a newly revised edition in 2017.
• 10:51
  So that would be about right.
• 10:51
  I mean, if you could write a book every single month, then there'd be a lot more books.
• 10:56
  Yeah, it doesn't happen.
• 10:57
  Doesn't happen.
• 10:58
  No.
• 10:58
  And most of those are traditionally published.
• 11:01
  And so how does, I mean, this is the like behind the scenes stuff that is hard for people to figure out, but.
• 11:07
  How does it go?
• 11:08
  Like, okay, Janet's like, this is the book I want to write.
• 11:11
  How does that go from what you decide?
• 11:14
  And how does that go through the process to getting publisher when you are as established as you are?
• 11:20
  That's a great question.
• 11:21
  I have an agent and she's actually my second agent.
• 11:24
  That's not uncommon in the industry for writers to have an agent, then leave that agent, have a new agent.
• 11:31
  She's my second agent.
• 11:32
  I love her to pieces.
• 11:33
  She's wonderful.
• 11:35
  She's an editor at heart.
• 11:36
  So the first thing I do is if I come up with an idea that I know I want to write, I fly it by her just as a concept because I want to get her take on what she thinks the industry is doing.
• 11:49
  That's important.
• 11:50
  I have to pay attention to the publishing industry, what people are reading, what editors want to to acquire, maybe what houses are open to an idea like mine.
• 12:03
  So I don't even, I don't even really usually go anywhere with a story unless I fly it by her.
• 12:09
  And she just, she's never said, Oh, don't do that.
• 12:12
  But she's sometimes said, Well, I'm not so sure.
• 12:15
  Which will, you know, help.
• 12:17
  Which means, which means I'm not sure if this book has a home.
• 12:21
  That's right.
• 12:21
  Yeah.
• 12:22
  That's right.
• 12:23
  So, so, but she's my first reader.
• 12:25
  She's, she's the one after my critique partners, which is a very important step in the process.
• 12:31
  But she, she reads everything and she gives comments and she'll tell me honestly, whether it's a go or no go, and then she'll find the right place to send it.
• 12:40
  So, and she doesn't mind what I approach her with.
• 12:43
  I have in her, in her inbox right now is, is another picture book, a proposal for an adult craft book, a full manuscript for an upper YA, Romanticy, Romanticy, yeah.
• 13:00
  And so.
• 13:01
  You know, I, I just fly those things by her and she'll come back and say whether it's a, whether it's something she wants to, to pitch or not.
• 13:08
  Do you have one of those that you hope is, you don't have to share with us, which one you hope she picks, but do you play favorites with those ideas or the memes there?
• 13:19
  I mean, I'm going to do the craft book no matter what, and she's already agreed to that because I, I gave her, that's something that is sold on proposal, nonfiction.
• 13:32
  And actually my very, very, very first book is a nonfiction book for middle graders.
• 13:38
  And that was before I had an agent and I had this idea, my son is dyslexic.
• 13:44
  And so at the time I was trying to help him learn how to navigate middle grade school.
• 13:50
  And I had this idea for a book that I did not see on the shelves.
• 13:54
  So I researched how to write a book proposal.
• 13:57
  And I did it on my own and I sold it to the first publishing house that I sent the post to.
• 14:01
  And so that was my first book.
• 14:03
  So I know how to write a proposal.
• 14:05
  I know how to do that.
• 14:06
  And I sent her a proposal for this new craft book that I want to write.
• 14:09
  And she said, it's great.
• 14:10
  It's great.
• 14:11
  She's put it on the back burner for reasons I can't.
• 14:13
  Say quite yet, but it's, it's definitely a sellable project.
• 14:18
  So the other two, we'll see what she says.
• 14:19
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 14:21
  And I just love that.
• 14:22
  And for the actual fiction books, then you complete the whole book, and then you pitch it to publishing houses that way.
• 14:30
  Submit it to Polish.
• 14:30
  It's actually different.
• 14:32
  Almost every time at this point in my career, I know I have an editor at Simon Schuster that I've worked with twice.
• 14:39
  And in the second, the second book, which is the Mystery of Mystic Mountain, which has just been nominated for this award, I actually pitched the idea to her with like a five to 10 page summary of what I thought the book was, was going to be about.
• 14:56
  And she liked it enough to say, yeah, go ahead and write it.
• 14:58
  And, and then we assumed because she said, yes, go ahead and write it.
• 15:02
  And she sent a contract, but then it's pretty much a fait accompli unless I really look it up.
• 15:09
  Yeah, that's what I was asking because I thought you were saying, but yeah, sometimes when you become established, then yes, you can, you can either write on, I mean, it's kind of a proposal.
• 15:17
  It's not a formal proposal the way that nonfiction is.
• 15:21
  Sometimes they'll ask for 50 pages or something or, but yeah, exactly.
• 15:25
  Yeah.
• 15:25
  And I'm at that, I'm at that stage now.
• 15:27
  That's awesome.
• 15:28
  Yeah.
• 15:28
  And I noticed too, because one of the things that I talk about a lot with writers is pen names or writing under different names or how difficult it can be.
• 15:40
  And you know, you've managed to leap over all of these different genres, right?
• 15:44
  But if you were to write an erotic book, perhaps that wouldn't work, right?
• 15:49
  But to write everything under.
• 15:52
  And I just was going to ask you because you do have the one speculative.
• 15:56
  Fiction that is written under J.
• 15:58
  S.
• 15:58
  Fox and is, was there a reason for that or is that just, yeah, yeah, it's an upper YA with a little more spice and so I'm using that same pseudonym, if you will, or, you know, other name for the book that I just sent to, to Aaron, my, my agent, because it too is a little spicy and, and may even, the romanticy, What?
• 16:24
  And may even push into the adult market and because I write for very little kids with picture books and middle graders.
• 16:33
  I, I really feel like that's an important distinction to make.
• 16:36
  Yeah, you don't want parents or kids going to the library shelf and saying, Oh, Janet Fox, I'd love that for a book and pick that one up.
• 16:44
  It's a bold choice because it's still you.
• 16:46
  Yeah.
• 16:47
  So you don't have to change your marketing and, and.
• 16:51
  All of those things they can live on the same website and they can sort of still be yeah, Janet.
• 16:55
  Yeah.
• 16:56
  Right.
• 16:56
  Yeah.
• 16:56
  Because I think one thing that a lot of writers don't realize is when you go, I'm going to talk about promoting these books next, but when, when you go to promote these books, if you've got the pseudonym and you thought that you were going to hide behind it or not.
• 17:11
  be yourself.
• 17:12
  Yeah.
• 17:12
  It becomes very difficult, especially if you've got more than one name out there.
• 17:16
  How do you, how do you show up in the world?
• 17:18
  Yeah.
• 17:19
  Yeah.
• 17:19
  Well, I just want to be sure that I'm not, as you said, treading into those waters where younger readers than are appropriate to read that, that material would, would be able to find it as easily as, you know, Absolutely.
• 17:34
  And the older readers don't want to read it.
• 17:35
  Yeah.
• 17:36
  So, I mean, 1997, I'm doing some math here, I'm like, this is not a math day for me.
• 17:41
  28 years between your first book published and today, I mean, the publishing landscape is changing so much.
• 17:49
  Is there something that you want to share with the listeners that you've found has changed the most?
• 17:56
  Yeah, I mean, it's, it's harder today.
• 18:00
  I feel like I got into the publishing world, but just the right time.
• 18:06
  And so I, I feel like, you know, my, I got my foot in the door.
• 18:11
  I have, I had an agent after I published the first book.
• 18:14
  And by the way, I'm now thinking it was 2007.
• 18:17
  Can we do something?
• 18:20
  It's not, it's not.
• 18:24
  But I have to go back and look at, you know, that's an interesting thing to forget.
• 18:28
  Yeah, no, hey, it's fine.
• 18:30
  It feels like you've been doing it for a long time.
• 18:33
  But it is, it's nevertheless, the landscape has changed a lot.
• 18:37
  Things have gotten a lot more complicated.
• 18:39
  It's harder to get a book published.
• 18:41
  The advent of audio books, of eBooks, of the whole self publishing landscape.
• 18:49
  Now, hybrid books, that has changed everything for writers, for editors, for publishing houses.
• 18:57
  So and for readers, too, by the way, you have access to so much more now than that much choice.
• 19:04
  So much choice that it can be overwhelming and harder for an author to break in.
• 19:10
  And harder for an author to be found by an agent or an editor or land in a big five house.
• 19:17
  But that is not to discourage anyone from writing because actually I think writers have more opportunities today than ever.
• 19:26
  And if your quality is there, if you write a quality book and you polish it and you know that it's good and you've And if you've had feedback on it that it's good, it will find its readers.
• 19:39
  And that's the key, is not to just assume that your first draft is a perfect draft, because it isn't.
• 19:45
  No, it isn't.
• 19:45
  There are some real and true things that you need to learn so that the reader can understand that immense vision that you have.
• 19:52
  But yes.
• 19:54
  Once it's ready, once it's ready, then there are opportunities, many more opportunities than I had when I first started.
• 20:02
  When I first started, it was paper submissions in a brown envelope with an SASE self address stamped envelope to send back that paper submission with a lovely little square of paper saying, thank you, but no, thank you.
• 20:16
  Yeah.
• 20:16
  And now it's all digital.
• 20:18
  Everything is digital, all submissions are digital, and almost all of them go through agents.
• 20:23
  Not all, but almost all.
• 20:25
  And so it's a very different landscape.
• 20:27
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 20:28
  Okay, so, so writing as a career is not something that everybody's able to make that leap.
• 20:36
  And we talk a lot on this podcast, and, and the listeners are always looking for advice on writing the book.
• 20:43
  And I think There are so many other pieces to being a writer and author and making it into your career than just writing the book.
• 20:51
  So other than writing, what else is it that you, Janet, are juggling as a writer?
• 20:58
  I love to teach, as you know, Susie.
• 21:02
  Me too.
• 21:03
  Yeah.
• 21:04
  And, and I, I just really enjoy seeing a writer get that, have that aha moment of, Oh, Oh, if I do that, it's going to make it so much better.
• 21:16
  Now I understand.
• 21:18
  And so I, I really actually, I get off on that.
• 21:22
  So that's why I'm writing the craft book.
• 21:24
  That's why I have courses up on my course platform.
• 21:28
  That's why I do very limited coaching for writers, kidlet writers.
• 21:33
  And it's something I just, I just enjoy enormously because I've accumulated a lot of information over many, many years of studying.
• 21:42
  Absolutely.
• 21:43
  What about promoting your books?
• 21:44
  Like, how does that work when you're with a large publishing house?
• 21:48
  Because I think there's this misconception out there that they do everything for you.
• 21:52
  And I wish you could see her rolled up right now, dear listener.
• 21:56
  But yeah, like, I just.
• 21:58
  You know, that's a question I would love for you to share a little bit with our listeners about what that looks like in terms of what you have to do to promote your own books.
• 22:07
  Yeah, well it's changed, that's changed a lot too since I started.
• 22:11
  By and large, big publishing houses, big publishing houses have a, have a sort of stratum in, in what they'll promote or not promote.
• 22:20
  And I've had one book be a lead title, which is where they give it a bigger marketing budget and they promote and they send out all sorts of fun stuff to influencers and librarians and they send me to places so that I can appear in public and They make sure my book gets a lot of press and posters and all the fun stuff.
• 22:44
  That happened once.
• 22:45
  It's actually there.
• 22:46
  I was going to say that's not the norm.
• 22:47
  That is not the norm out of their team.
• 22:49
  Although the next book that's coming out next year, they promised it a lead title status, which is exciting.
• 22:55
  So.
• 22:56
  And after that, if you don't know what they're going to give you, except that there is this in the industry, they always send out a cheat sheet when your book is coming out and the publicity and marketing people put together this cheat sheet and they tell you what they're going to do.
• 23:12
  And I've now had enough of them that I've looked at them and I say, Oh, it's just a carbon copy of the last one.
• 23:19
  Yeah, right.
• 23:19
  And do they, do they feel empty?
• 23:23
  Like in terms of what?
• 23:23
  Yes.
• 23:24
  They feel like they're generated and they're like, well, none of that's going to be.
• 23:27
  No.
• 23:28
  So when the rubber hits the road.
• 23:30
  What do you have to do to supplement it or do you, how does that work?
• 23:34
  It's, it's, it's really difficult because social media for, for a while, social media was, was a pretty good place to get the word out about books, but really isn't anymore.
• 23:42
  It's just a month.
• 23:44
  Exactly.
• 23:44
  Yeah.
• 23:45
  And beyond that, I've used, I've used a few people over the years, marketing people on my own with my own money.
• 23:55
  Putting money in that direction.
• 23:56
  And that's helped occasionally to get the word out.
• 23:59
  Like, uh, like PR?
• 24:01
  Yeah, yeah.
• 24:02
  Private firms that do this for authors.
• 24:05
  And it can be very expensive.
• 24:06
  I don't do the sort of You have to be careful.
• 24:09
  It's the, it's the, and I also, I also use PR and, but it's one thing that I talk with a lot about with writers because, yeah, you could be paying a stipend every month.
• 24:18
  Right.
• 24:19
  Whether you get stuff or not.
• 24:21
  Or you could be, you know, like, I love working with PR agencies that are willing to, okay, if you offer you something and if you take it, you pay for it, those types of things.
• 24:31
  I mean, it's, it's hard to find.
• 24:32
  It is hard to find and it's hard to know whether you get a return on your investment at all.
• 24:37
  Yeah, it's not a one to one.
• 24:39
  It's not a one to one.
• 24:40
  You, it's, it's very hard to gauge whether there isn't a good ROI.
• 24:44
  So again, and, and really, Publishing companies don't have that marketing budget.
• 24:50
  They don't have any personnel anymore.
• 24:53
  So the other thing that I do is I do, I do a lot of school visits when I can, and I do try to visit bookstores to sort of do it myself to, you know, be in front of people and let them know.
• 25:06
  We were just in a bookstore down the street this afternoon.
• 25:09
  Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
• 25:11
  And we've been having some chitchats over here about school visits and the changing landscape of school visits.
• 25:17
  Because post pandemic, even schools don't have the budget to bring authors out the way that they once did.
• 25:23
  It's true.
• 25:24
  Yeah, I have a, I have a booking agent that I've had for quite a while.
• 25:29
  She's very good about getting me into, and, and also conferences, teacher conferences, and the kinds of, school, you know, statewide conferences that are, that feature kids coming in to listen to authors.
• 25:41
  Those are the things that can be most successful in terms of just raising the level of recognition for a book.
• 25:48
  Well, and for those of us who love to teach, there's, there's a lot in it.
• 25:52
  Yes.
• 25:52
  Like it's super fun and it's, it's sort of, but it's one of those things, it's not just about writing the book.
• 25:59
  There's all these other balls in the air to juggle when you.
• 26:04
  Choose writing as your career.
• 26:06
  I actually love that part, but I think it's something that not everybody's always prepared for no, it's true Yeah, yeah, I do love that part too.
• 26:13
  Yeah, so what's you know, what are you gonna tackle next you've said, you know You've got these ideas.
• 26:18
  Is there something that you really think that is just your next thing?
• 26:23
  Well, I have a few ideas and You don't have to share them all.
• 26:29
  In my insomniac nights here, here, here's sort of a short list.
• 26:34
  This book that's coming out next year is a nonfiction biography of Rosalind Franklin, who is an English biochemist who should have won the Nobel Prize for discovering the structure of DNA, but she didn't.
• 26:47
  And so it's a huge.
• 26:50
  Like huge thing to discover, right?
• 26:52
  Yeah.
• 26:53
  And it's, it's a story of a time of misogyny and and a lot of it's a wonderful, wonderful complex story of human nature.
• 27:04
  And as we were finishing, we're finishing this up now, we're in edits now.
• 27:08
  And I'm the co author with my partner, who is an incredible researcher, and I just, I kind of sprinkle the fairy dust down at the end.
• 27:18
  But I wrote her the other day and said, you know, I saw this thing about Hedy Lamarr.
• 27:24
  What do you know about her?
• 27:25
  Because she was a brilliant woman and also a gorgeous actress.
• 27:30
  And that's such a A different, this is such an extreme set of differences and fascinating women.
• 27:38
  So, you know, that's a possibility.
• 27:40
  And then I have, I'm mulling over an idea for a sequel for my middle grade series that's a, that's a speculative fiction series.
• 27:48
  And so I've just sort of letting that percolate.
• 27:51
  Listening to you is so inspiring, Janet.
• 27:54
  Just all the things, right?
• 27:55
  Like all the things, all the time.
• 27:58
  You're just a ball of energy.
• 27:59
  I love it.
• 28:00
  That's what's right.
• 28:01
  If you want to share, I'm just like, I'm sitting here like fangirling.
• 28:05
  Oh, you're sweet.
• 28:06
  Well, I'm, I'm hoping that my, my middle grade Carry Me Home about the homeless girls might see the light of day in some other format.
• 28:15
  Oh, I'm excited.
• 28:16
  I'm excited about that.
• 28:17
  I would love to see any of these on the screen or the, you know, do you have audio books for most of your I do.
• 28:24
  I have, I have audio books for her.
• 28:26
  I think all of them now, except the most recent, because it usually takes a few months before they, they bring out the audio book.
• 28:32
  Yeah.
• 28:32
  Yeah.
• 28:32
  Amazing.
• 28:33
  Amazing.
• 28:34
  Yeah.
• 28:35
  So what advice do you have for those listeners that are hoping to pursue a career in traditional publishing and specifically in children's, but in general, in traditional publishing, what do you have for them?
• 28:51
  Well, I, I would say the first thing is to decide who your audience is, because you can't really write a children's book unless you understand that audience and whether you, whether you want to write for the youngest ones.
• 29:03
  A picture book crowd, or an intermediate crowd that reads chapter books, like Jeff Kinney books.
• 29:12
  Whether you want to write a true middle grade book, which is the next step up, or whether you want to write young adult books, they're all very, very different in structure and form.
• 29:22
  And you need to know, yeah, that's the age that I would like to write for.
• 29:28
  That's the first thing.
• 29:28
  And then, you know, whatever it is that's in your heart that you need to tell the world, I, I really feel that it's most important to understand that you are coming from a place, uh, whatever it is that you're passionate about.
• 29:44
  And to find that and then put that into story in whatever form you can make it.
• 29:50
  And for whatever audience is appropriate for it.
• 29:53
  I think is, is a key to, to having a successful writing career.
• 29:58
  Yeah.
• 29:59
  Thank you.
• 30:00
  Yeah.
• 30:00
  Great, great, great thoughts.
• 30:02
  Here's some fun questions I like to ask every author that comes on here.
• 30:07
  How long did it take you to write your first book?
• 30:09
  You shared with us that you wrote this, that one book in one month, but you were thinking about it for five years, so not really, right?
• 30:15
  Right.
• 30:16
  But your first book, how long did that take?
• 30:17
  Well, would you like the nonfiction, middle grade?
• 30:21
  Either one.
• 30:22
  Okay.
• 30:22
  So the nonfiction middle grade self help that only took me about three weeks to write, because I was helping my son for so many years, I had collected all this material.
• 30:35
  And so I had it all.
• 30:36
  And I realized there's nothing else out there.
• 30:38
  That's a middle grade book.
• 30:39
  It isn't.
• 30:39
  So how long is like, is that like a hundred pages?
• 30:42
  Yeah, really, really short because it's a, it's nonfiction.
• 30:46
  And by the way.
• 30:47
  It's in eight languages now, just came out in China, and over 100, 000 copies.
• 30:53
  It's been, it's been around.
• 30:54
  You say, she shrugged her shoulders.
• 30:56
  Yeah, it's got about 100, 000 copies in print.
• 30:59
  I just love that.
• 31:00
  Okay, so, so maybe that's not the best example.
• 31:04
  How long did it take you to write your first fiction novel?
• 31:09
  Well, or picture about.
• 31:10
  Yeah.
• 31:10
  No, it was a novel.
• 31:11
  It was a, it was a, a novel called Faithful and it's Historical Ya and it's set in Yellowstone in 1904 because um, that's where near where we live.
• 31:23
  And I love the area and I was, you know, enchanted by the idea of historical.
• 31:29
  And my mom passed away and I wanted to write a story about a girl who lost her mother.
• 31:37
  And so that came right from the heart.
• 31:40
  And it took me, it took me about a year to write a first draft, which was terrible.
• 31:47
  And I sent it out and got rejections.
• 31:49
  And then I got one nice rejection from the person who is my current agent.
• 31:53
  And she gave me some actual pointers in her rejection letter, which was a first.
• 31:58
  And I took them to heart and six months later, I had revised according to those suggestions and I found my first agent at a critique.
• 32:09
  So, and then we worked on that book for another six to eight months before she sent it out.
• 32:17
  This is much more typical than the three week or one month.
• 32:20
  So if you're struggling with your first book, I mean, everybody's different.
• 32:24
  Everybody's different.
• 32:25
  Every book is different and it takes a long time.
• 32:27
  So it was, it was probably a total of three years from the idea to when it finally saw the light of day.
• 32:35
  Yeah.
• 32:35
  Awesome.
• 32:36
  Thank you for sharing that.
• 32:38
  What would you say was your first big break that happened for you where you were like, Alright, I'm doing it.
• 32:44
  This is it.
• 32:45
  I'm here.
• 32:46
  It was probably that letter from Aaron.
• 32:49
  Because she saw something in my writing.
• 32:51
  The rejection letter?
• 32:52
  The rejection letter.
• 32:53
  Love that.
• 32:53
  And, and then, because I took it to heart, and I took those, that, her notes, which were very sparse.
• 33:00
  Do you remember anything that you could share?
• 33:03
  That was, what was the big advice?
• 33:04
  It was just, it was just, you need to read these three books, and analyze what the character is doing in these three books.
• 33:11
  And I, okay.
• 33:13
  So it wasn't, they were fairly specific, but you know, it was a one page letter.
• 33:18
  Awesome.
• 33:18
  It was nothing.
• 33:19
  And, but then a couple of months later, I had an opportunity to have a critique with what I thought wasn't going to be an editor.
• 33:27
  And at the At the conference, she announced that she was becoming an agent and I went, Oh no, cause I thought that was a bad thing at the time, which it wasn't.
• 33:36
  And I had this critique and I sat down at the table and I'd had critiques before and they were all painful.
• 33:45
  And I sat down at the table and she reached across, she said, I want this book.
• 33:49
  And I went, Holy cow.
• 33:52
  Yeah, this could be it.
• 33:55
  And then she said, How soon can you get the whole novel to me?
• 33:59
  And I was still working on this revision.
• 34:01
  And I said, how soon do you want it?
• 34:04
  She said, well, I'm moving into my new office in December.
• 34:07
  This was October.
• 34:09
  Can you have it to me?
• 34:10
  Before I move into my new office, I said, shh.
• 34:13
  And um, I almost couldn't get it done.
• 34:15
  So I called my friend Kathy , who's a Newberry winning, um, author, and I said, Kathy, what do I do?
• 34:22
  And she said, you just write it as much as you can get it as far as you can take it, as far as you can take it.
• 34:28
  And three days after she's in her office, give her enough time to unpack her bags.
• 34:32
  Three days after she's in her office, you send her what you have and tell her the rest will be in her inbox in January.
• 34:40
  Because you don't want to wait.
• 34:41
  This is an opportunity.
• 34:42
  Yeah.
• 34:43
  And that's not always the case.
• 34:44
  And you already had published books?
• 34:46
  I just had the one.
• 34:48
  Okay.
• 34:48
  Just the one nonfiction.
• 34:49
  Yeah.
• 34:50
  So I did have a track record.
• 34:51
  And I had a couple of short stories in magazines and that kind of thing.
• 34:54
  But I did exactly what Kathy advised me to do.
• 34:58
  And the day before Christmas, I got the phone call from Alyssa saying she would like to take me on as a client.
• 35:04
  So even before the book was finished, did you finish it in January?
• 35:09
  I did finish it in January.
• 35:11
  It was a very busy Christmas break.
• 35:12
  Very busy break.
• 35:14
  Okay.
• 35:15
  What is your best advice for new writers starting out on writing, on the process, on whatever it is that you want to share?
• 35:23
  If you were to do it again, right now?
• 35:27
  I think I had a very good path in that I sought out help early.
• 35:34
  I didn't try to do it all by myself.
• 35:37
  It was really important to me to connect with other writers.
• 35:40
  And to connect in particular with people who knew a lot more about writing than I knew, like Kathy, and it just happened that we lived in the same town.
• 35:48
  It just happened that we became friends.
• 35:49
  And so she was my, she's a true mentor to me.
• 35:53
  And I think finding those mentors is really important.
• 35:56
  Finding those writers who will support you.
• 36:00
  As you will support them and then writing and writing and reading and reading and writing and reading and writing, those are the things that will get you off into a career in writing.
• 36:14
  Amazing.
• 36:15
  Amazing.
• 36:15
  And, and you also have programs for writers.
• 36:18
  Do you want to tell us a little bit about that?
• 36:20
  Sure.
• 36:20
  I have a number of courses up online that you can do on your own.
• 36:25
  They're short.
• 36:26
  Some of them are very short.
• 36:27
  Some of them are longer.
• 36:28
  And specific to KIDLIT.
• 36:30
  Specific to KIDLIT.
• 36:31
  Although I have one program that is a kind of an introduction to writing that anybody could use and anybody could apply to any.
• 36:39
  Writing it all for any audience and I do have a small group, but it's very small and it's very select, but I also have a That program of courses that I provide, that small group is also available as a do it yourself.
• 36:53
  So, yeah, number.
• 36:55
  Awesome.
• 36:55
  And where can listeners find you?
• 36:57
  Your books, your programs, and we'll put it all in the show notes, but let us know where we find.
• 37:01
  All right, so the easiest place is my my website, which is janet s fox.com.
• 37:08
  So Janet with an S in the middle.
• 37:10
  fox.com and that's it.
• 37:12
  Awesome.
• 37:13
  Thank you so much for being on the show today.
• 37:15
  Thank you for having me, Susie.
• 37:16
  It's been fun.
• 37:25
  Thanks for tuning in to Show Don't Tell Writing with me, Susie Vadori.
• 37:28
  I'll be continuing to bring you the straight goods for that book you're writing or planning to write.
• 37:33
  Please consider subscribing to this podcast and leaving a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever else you're listening.
• 37:40
  Also visit suzybedorey.
• 37:42
  com forward slash newsletter to hop on my weekly inspired writing newsletter list where you'll stay inspired and be the first to know about upcoming training, events, and writing courses that happen in my community.
• 37:55
  If you're feeling brave, check the show notes and send us a page of your writing that isn't quite where you want it to be yet for our show to tell page review experts.
• 38:04
  Remember, that book and your writing is going to open doors that you haven't even thought of yet.
• 38:10
  And I can't wait to help you make it the absolute best.
• 38:14
  If you're feeling called to write that book, keep going and I'm going to be right here cheering you on.
• 38:20
  See you again next week.