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You Asked, We Answered—A Reader and Writer Grab Bag · Reality Writes

0:05
Ellie Alexander: Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to another episode of Reality Rights.
0:10
Ellie Alexander: I am author Ellie Alexander, and this is the podcast where we talk about all things bookish, writer-ish, and try to give you a behind-the-scenes take on the writing life, and I am here with the tech guide.
0:21
Tech Guy: Hello, hello.
0:22
Tech Guy: Uh, we are back after many travels um the past few weeks.
0:29
Ellie Alexander: Yeah, we've had a busy summer, and um, I thought it was ending, and then no, there's still more to come, but that's okay.
0:35
Ellie Alexander: I decided that it would be fun to sort of um do a reader grab bag of questions because anytime I've been gone for a chunk of time, I always have a lot of email, which I love.
0:49
Ellie Alexander: Thank you, darlings, for reaching out to me.
0:51
Ellie Alexander: But uh, there are some questions that come up more frequently than others.
0:55
Ellie Alexander: And so we thought it'd be fun to sort of compile some of those.
0:58
Ellie Alexander: It's totally random.
1:00
Ellie Alexander: Um, but these are questions that I not only have answered this week in getting caught up on messages and DMs, but also get asked pretty often.
1:10
Tech Guy: Yeah, and they're from both readers and writers too.
1:14
Tech Guy: Uh that is something that, you know, you cover both realms, I guess.
1:19
Tech Guy: So you get questions from a lot of people.
1:21
Tech Guy: And it's nice to be able to have a format like this where we can share them because you do get asked the same questions a lot.
1:27
Tech Guy: And so it's great to be able to then give these answers out in a broader um, you know, format that more people can hear uh the answers to and and hopefully gain some knowledge.
1:40
Ellie Alexander: That's right.
1:41
Ellie Alexander: That's what we're here to do.
1:42
Ellie Alexander: We're lending you book knowledge, one reality rights episode at a time.
1:48
Tech Guy: Totally.
1:49
Tech Guy: All right.
1:50
Tech Guy: Uh, do you want to dive right in?
1:52
Tech Guy: Sure.
1:52
Tech Guy: Let's do it.
1:53
Tech Guy: Okay.
1:54
Tech Guy: Uh I'm going to go down the list of questions that we've grabbed over the past couple of weeks, starting with can you share your top tips on how to query agents in the age of AI?
2:06
Tech Guy: Ooh, this is a good one.
2:08
Ellie Alexander: This is such a good one.
2:10
Ellie Alexander: Um, and this has come up a lot because, well, I think, you know, I get asked often about the querying process and how to go about finding an agent.
2:17
Ellie Alexander: And in our Mystery Series master class that we've put together, that there's a whole segment on finding an agent and going through the query process and writing a book proposal, all those things.
2:29
Ellie Alexander: But things have shifted a lot in the last few years as we have entered the age of AI in book publishing.
2:36
Ellie Alexander: And let me tell you, darlings, if you are out there, it's a slog right now because we've talked a lot on this podcast about how inundated authors are getting with these ridiculous bots sending these glowing messages about Ellie, we would love to have you featured in our book club.
2:56
Ellie Alexander: Or, you know, it can be the other thing too, like, oh, I've discovered your writing and I'd love to offer you a publishing contract.
3:01
Ellie Alexander: None of this is real.
3:02
Ellie Alexander: It's all fake, it's all AI.
3:04
Ellie Alexander: But what that has done, it has really flooded the marketplace with a lot of junk.
3:10
Ellie Alexander: Um, and it's depressing, honestly.
3:12
Ellie Alexander: Agents are getting inundated with queries that are bots and then are also just clearly written by AI.
3:21
Ellie Alexander: So I one of my really early recommendations, and we and we'll do a deeper dive into this, but I think you should follow active agents.
3:29
Ellie Alexander: And someone who I think is doing a really great job, especially online and in social media, is Agent uh Carly Waters.
3:38
Ellie Alexander: She's all over on Instagram and she shares really great, valuable information.
3:44
Ellie Alexander: Um, and she just did a really lengthy post about this specifically and what it's like to be on the agent side and be on the receiving end of getting just nonstop AI slop.
3:56
Tech Guy: Yeah.
3:56
Tech Guy: And I would go a step further and say that writers out there, prospective writers and even agents, if there are any agents listening to reality rights, educate yourselves on AI.
4:10
Tech Guy: Like understand what it is and learn to recognize the telltale signs.
4:15
Tech Guy: Um in fact, if you'd like to hear an episode of Reality Rights on that very subject, click that send us a message link in the show notes and let me know because I can spot an AI generated message in an instant.
4:27
Tech Guy: Uh we get them all the time via your website.
4:31
Tech Guy: Um, what stands out?
4:33
Tech Guy: What drew me in?
4:35
Tech Guy: What, you know, it's all this just like there are the all these key catchphrases that AI uses.
4:41
Tech Guy: And these LLMs cannot help themselves.
4:43
Tech Guy: They include those phrases in every single, every single uh query that they send to you.
4:51
Tech Guy: And so we're setting up filters to catch that stuff.
4:54
Tech Guy: And it would be good, I think it would be a great idea for writers and agents to educate themselves on that and learn how to spot that and filter it out.
5:06
Tech Guy: It'll just save you a lot of grief, a lot of time, a lot of frustration down the road.
5:11
Ellie Alexander: And on the agent side of the business, like it's impossible then to keep up because if you are having to, you know, weed through all of these submissions that aren't legit or that are writers, and I'm gonna use this loosely in this, it's gonna be hard potentially for some of you, darlings.
5:26
Ellie Alexander: But and and actually, I think we have a question about this that we could either just dovetail on now or we'll loop back to at the end of this episode about AI and writing.
5:34
Ellie Alexander: And, you know, Carly is a perfect example.
5:36
Ellie Alexander: She's like, I I don't know why you want to work with me if you're using a large language model to generate your story.
5:42
Ellie Alexander: I'm not the agent for you.
5:43
Ellie Alexander: Um, so uh going back to though the original question.
5:47
Ellie Alexander: So, first of all, yes, be proactive, follow these agents, pay attention to what they're asking for.
5:54
Ellie Alexander: You want to put in the work, you want to do the research into making sure you're finding an agent that's a good match for your project.
6:00
Ellie Alexander: You don't want to just slam a thousand agents that, you know, might not be even interested or someone who represents mysteries.
6:10
Ellie Alexander: I think that's one of the number one fails that a lot of new writers have when they're entering this space is not doing their due diligence because there are lots and lots of agents.
6:21
Ellie Alexander: Many of them only represent niche markets or do nonfiction.
6:25
Ellie Alexander: So you're just wasting your time and theirs.
6:28
Ellie Alexander: So that's number one.
6:29
Ellie Alexander: Number two would be make sure that your query stands out.
6:34
Ellie Alexander: You want your voice to shine.
6:36
Ellie Alexander: You want to be your authentic self on the page.
6:39
Ellie Alexander: And that in the age of AI right now is what is going to make your query stand out because it's not going to be exactly what you're talking about.
6:46
Ellie Alexander: This just like cloying ridiculous language that you're like, delete, I know immediately.
6:50
Ellie Alexander: That's that's a bot.
6:52
Tech Guy: Yeah, and stand out, but also operate within the parameters of the agent specifications for a query.
7:00
Tech Guy: So if you're going after a specific agent, make sure that you go to their website, you go to their social media accounts, and you understand how they would like to receive a query and follow those instructions because if you don't, you have failed step one.
7:14
Tech Guy: You had one job, and that was to follow the instructions.
7:17
Tech Guy: Yeah and you didn't do it.
7:19
Tech Guy: So definitely follow the instructions, learn about the agent, and then follow everything else that Ellie just said.
7:27
Tech Guy: It is no surprise that you wanted to go out of order on these questions, but in this case, I think you were correct in wanting to hit this next question uh because we're on the topic already.
7:39
Tech Guy: Um, so unless you have anything else on querying agents, we can move on to number two.
7:45
Ellie Alexander: Uh, the last just little tip I would say on querying agents is there are also all kinds of opportunities to meet agents in real life.
7:52
Ellie Alexander: If you attend writers' conferences, workshops, conventions.
7:56
Ellie Alexander: Some agents are hosting query sessions online where you get to have like a five-minute pitch with a bunch of other aspiring writers on a Zoom call.
8:04
Ellie Alexander: So there are there are other ways that you can connect with agents.
8:07
Ellie Alexander: Again, to dovetail on your point, you want to make sure that you're following the parameters.
8:12
Ellie Alexander: So, you know, if you're at a conference, and we've we've talked about this a lot with Ashland Mystery Fest, you're not gonna follow an agent into the bathroom and try to pitch them or bring them your manuscript when they're working with other authors.
8:23
Ellie Alexander: But agents often will share where they're gonna be and how you can appropriately query them in person.
8:32
Tech Guy: Sounds great.
8:33
Tech Guy: You want to jump to the next question about AI and writing?
8:36
Tech Guy: Sure.
8:36
Tech Guy: Yeah.
8:37
Tech Guy: So this person wrote in and they I think we've talked about this before, but it's it is a subject that is going to have a never-ending dialogue until something gives.
8:50
Tech Guy: And that's what are your thoughts on AI and writing?
8:53
Tech Guy: So I'm I'm presuming that this person is trying to ask maybe for your blessing to use AI for writing.
9:01
Tech Guy: Maybe not.
9:01
Tech Guy: Maybe they're asking because they're not using AI and they see other people doing it.
9:06
Tech Guy: And so they want to know your thoughts on it.
9:09
Ellie Alexander: Yeah.
9:09
Ellie Alexander: I mean, it's hard to know out of context, right?
9:12
Ellie Alexander: But I have really strong feelings about this.
9:14
Ellie Alexander: And I am of the camp and always will be that when it comes to writing and creating, I am fully humanizing that part of the creative process.
9:25
Ellie Alexander: There is no part of me that uses AI for any of my writing, circling back to what I just said about voice.
9:31
Ellie Alexander: The way that we develop our writing voice is by writing and practicing and telling a story and having it bomb and then going back and going, all right, what did I learn from that?
9:43
Ellie Alexander: How do I fix it?
9:44
Ellie Alexander: How do I make my writing stronger?
9:46
Ellie Alexander: I've had a few aspiring writers who have reached out to me through my coaching and mystery series masterclass, and they are fully wanting to use large language models to develop their books, which, you know, that's a choice that you're making.
10:02
Ellie Alexander: I am not the right coach or person for you in that circumstance because I feel so strongly that the way that we grow as creatives and the way that we put creative energy out in the world is to create that art ourselves.
10:16
Ellie Alexander: There's no replicating it for me.
10:18
Ellie Alexander: And for me, the creative process is where I throw up.
10:22
Ellie Alexander: Like that's the entire reason I write.
10:25
Ellie Alexander: And I can rattle off a thousand examples, but if I am writing about Jules and the Bake Shop and Lance, those characters are so much a part of who I am that I forget that they aren't real.
10:37
Ellie Alexander: I don't need AI to create that for me.
10:40
Ellie Alexander: I create that here in my office in my own little head.
10:42
Ellie Alexander: And it's such a joy and escape for me to step into these fictional worlds.
10:48
Ellie Alexander: I have as much discovery as I'm writing a book that hopefully you darlings get when you read that book.
10:54
Ellie Alexander: And even though, you know, if we're talking about mystery specifically, there's a formula that you follow.
11:00
Ellie Alexander: And I follow that formula, you know, I am sort of a machine.
11:04
Ellie Alexander: I I write really fast and I write often.
11:07
Ellie Alexander: And I think I write well.
11:08
Ellie Alexander: I don't like to um put myself up there in the category of like, you know, incredible literary fiction.
11:14
Ellie Alexander: But I feel like over the years I've learned to tell a really good story, and that's important to me.
11:20
Ellie Alexander: But I wouldn't be able to have these interesting discoveries, even within that formula, if something else was generating that for me.
11:29
Ellie Alexander: It's just magic every time when I know where I'm going with a story.
11:33
Ellie Alexander: And then partway through my word count for the day, something else takes hold and we're going on a completely different direction.
11:40
Tech Guy: Like, yeah, human creativity rocks.
11:43
Ellie Alexander: It does.
11:45
Tech Guy: For me personally, I have enjoyed people trying to use LLMs to write books because there have been some spectacular failures.
11:54
Tech Guy: Spectacular failures, like super embarrassing authors leaving prompts in the book, in the final printed copy of the book with paragraphs that end a chapter, like this works because you know, which is a tell for those that don't use AI, it's a telltale sign of an LLM answering you your question or your prompt.
12:17
Tech Guy: Uh, just classic.
12:19
Tech Guy: So yeah, I I can I can definitely resonate with that.
12:23
Tech Guy: And I can 100% back up the fact that your characters are real to you.
12:29
Tech Guy: I can't even count the number of times we have been in Ashland where you've said, oh, let's go down to Tort for a coffee.
12:36
Tech Guy: And I'm like, what?
12:37
Tech Guy: No.
12:38
Tech Guy: I mean, yeah, we want to go to mix, like the real life place that you've modeled after Tort.
12:43
Tech Guy: Yeah, okay.
12:44
Tech Guy: Yeah.
12:44
Ellie Alexander: Nope.
12:45
Ellie Alexander: Tort.
12:46
Ellie Alexander: No, and I mean, even with writing, you know, close to 50 mysteries at this point in time.
12:50
Ellie Alexander: No, the caveat here is I've been writing for two decades.
12:54
Ellie Alexander: I've been published for 15 years, and we've done an episode on this as well, which is that, you know, I have built muscle memory over time.
13:01
Ellie Alexander: And that's what I would encourage new writers to do is just keep practicing.
13:04
Ellie Alexander: I would rather read a really crappy story that you have written yourself than something that you're generating from a large language model.
13:11
Ellie Alexander: I mean, I also have this other baseline, which is that all of my previous work was stolen to train these large language models.
13:20
Ellie Alexander: So there's a whole other can of worms that I feel really strongly and passionate about.
13:24
Ellie Alexander: But I just was at the final, final stage of copy edits for the next bake shop mystery.
13:31
Ellie Alexander: And this means that I have touched the book multiple times.
13:34
Ellie Alexander: This means that now my editor has gone through and done a first pass, and now we are at copy edit.
13:39
Ellie Alexander: So this is usually where we're just kind of fine-tuning the book and making sure the grammar's right and catching any like major timeline errors or that sort of thing.
13:48
Ellie Alexander: And as I was working my way through copy edits last week, I had another aha moment.
13:53
Ellie Alexander: There had been this little thread about a subplot with one of the suspects that I had closed and I felt, I felt good about.
14:02
Ellie Alexander: Like it was okay, but it wasn't great.
14:04
Ellie Alexander: But this book, you know, I wrote, I don't know, nine months ago and it's been through all these other rounds of copy edits.
14:10
Ellie Alexander: And as I was reading it through this last time, I had this new moment of like, oh, wait a minute.
14:16
Ellie Alexander: No, I know what had been missing the whole time, but I needed to step away from it.
14:21
Ellie Alexander: I needed fresh eyes.
14:22
Ellie Alexander: I needed all of those things that I talk extensively about when I'm working with new writers.
14:26
Ellie Alexander: So I don't think there's any way that you replicate that experience of getting your hands like deep in the creative process with AI.
14:34
Ellie Alexander: I just don't.
14:35
Tech Guy: You're probably right.
14:36
Tech Guy: I mean, the the other thing, I guess, that I've always wondered is you still have to learn.
14:43
Tech Guy: If you are going to use AI, you need to learn how to use it, right?
14:47
Tech Guy: There's a right way, there's a wrong way.
14:48
Tech Guy: And and there are beginners and there are experts, just like writing.
14:53
Tech Guy: So if you want to be a writer, I would say spend the time learning how to write.
14:57
Tech Guy: Don't spend the time learning how to learn AI to write.
15:01
Tech Guy: Like just, you know, spend the time learning how to write.
15:04
Tech Guy: Like I said, human creativity rocks.
15:06
Tech Guy: In fact, I'm gonna make a sticker of that.
15:08
Ellie Alexander: Ooh, yeah, I want that sticker.
15:09
Ellie Alexander: I I want that.
15:10
Ellie Alexander: I like I would wear that around.
15:12
Ellie Alexander: I feel like I am I'm not coming off my soapbox on this one, starlings.
15:16
Ellie Alexander: There's no, there's no point.
15:18
Ellie Alexander: And I, you know, I feel grateful that I was writing long before this was even an issue because and what I think is funny now.
15:25
Ellie Alexander: Well, there are two things that I think are funny now uh that I appreciate.
15:28
Ellie Alexander: The first being anytime I get email from somebody pointing out my grammatical errors, I'll be like, yep, that's right.
15:36
Ellie Alexander: Cause I wrote it.
15:38
Ellie Alexander: Um, so there's that.
15:39
Ellie Alexander: And then the second thing is voice.
15:41
Ellie Alexander: And I it, I know voice and writing seems like this mythical thing and it's hard to pin down.
15:47
Ellie Alexander: But when you pick up one of my books, I want you to know that you're reading an Ellie Alexander book.
15:52
Ellie Alexander: And I think I have a distinct style.
15:54
Ellie Alexander: And sometimes over the course of the last 15 years, and I'm sure it will happen again in my future publishing years, I get frustrated with my own self because I'm like, oh, you know, if you read my Meg Reed series and then you read my Jewels series, or you even read one of my cozy rom-coms, like there's a through line, which is my voice.
16:14
Ellie Alexander: And so I think in the past I've been disappointed by that.
16:18
Ellie Alexander: Like, oh, I wish, I wish I could totally change how my voice sounds or how I write for something else.
16:24
Ellie Alexander: And now I'm so grateful to be like, oh no, like you know that's me.
16:28
Ellie Alexander: You know that's my writing.
16:29
Ellie Alexander: You know, I'm gonna do a real deep look into food for a chunk of time and then come back to something else.
16:35
Ellie Alexander: So yeah, I think to your point, spend that time developing your voice, like figuring out your style.
16:41
Ellie Alexander: And that is gonna pay off long term because if you're just using a large language model, your writing is gonna sound like everyone else's, even if then subjectively you think it's better, which is what I hear a lot from new writers.
16:55
Ellie Alexander: It's like, oh, but my writing sounds better when I put it in to this large language model.
16:59
Ellie Alexander: No, but then it doesn't sound like you, it sounds like everything else.
17:03
Ellie Alexander: This does need to be a whole episode, right?
17:05
Tech Guy: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
17:06
Tech Guy: It does need to be a whole episode for sure.
17:08
Tech Guy: For sure.
17:09
Tech Guy: Okay.
17:09
Tech Guy: Okay.
17:10
Ellie Alexander: I'll stop.
17:11
Tech Guy: Yeah, that so we we did a couple of writer-related questions.
17:15
Tech Guy: I'm gonna I'm gonna like it's time to give the readers some love.
17:18
Tech Guy: Uh, so we're gonna jump into a couple of reader or questions from readers at this point.
17:24
Tech Guy: Uh, we're going to start with this person wrote in and said, Why are some of your books not in audio or available on Kobo?
17:34
Tech Guy: Um, for the darlings out there who don't know, Kobo is an e-reader competitor to Kindle.
17:41
Tech Guy: So the uh Kobo is the format that uh or the device that uh all the independent bookstores can offer ebooks on.
17:50
Tech Guy: And uh, so this person is asking, why are some of your books not in audio or available on Kobo?
17:57
Ellie Alexander: Right.
17:58
Ellie Alexander: And that is all a publishing question or a pub, the publishing side of the business, I should say.
18:04
Ellie Alexander: The way that series sales work, this is to talk about audio first.
18:09
Ellie Alexander: There are there are a handful of my books that are not available right now on audio, namely the Meg Reed series and a few of the Sloan Krause series, the Sloans that we have published.
18:20
Ellie Alexander: And the reason for this is contractual.
18:23
Ellie Alexander: So the publishing house still owns the rights to the audio for those series.
18:29
Ellie Alexander: And until I get those rights back, I cannot produce the audio because that's how publishing contracts work.
18:36
Ellie Alexander: They sell the audio, any other foreign translation rights and any sort of screen rights separately.
18:43
Ellie Alexander: And so you as the author don't really have any control over that.
18:46
Ellie Alexander: So I always want them to be too.
18:49
Ellie Alexander: It's not just you readers, it's me too.
18:51
Ellie Alexander: Um, so that's that piece of the question.
18:53
Ellie Alexander: And then that's also true in terms of formatting.
18:56
Ellie Alexander: So it's based on my publishing house.
18:59
Ellie Alexander: So my publishing house for the secret bookcase and novel detective series, they're in the UK.
19:05
Ellie Alexander: They have different relationships.
19:06
Ellie Alexander: They put those books on KU first.
19:09
Ellie Alexander: And so if something's on KU exclusively, it can't be in other formats, basically.
19:14
Ellie Alexander: And so at some point in time, they will then take it off KU and it will go into Kobo and Nook and be available in other on other devices.
19:23
Ellie Alexander: I don't know how you say that.
19:25
Tech Guy: Yeah.
19:25
Tech Guy: No, that's that that's exactly right.
19:27
Tech Guy: And this is one of those things that is the difference between being traditionally published and being indie published, you know, the except for the last one that you said, because the the Kindle Unlimited piece is kind of a that's a blocker for anyone that puts their books on Kindle Unlimited.
19:44
Tech Guy: That is a stipulation from Amazon that if you are on Kindle Unlimited, you cannot offer the ebook version of your books on other formats.
19:52
Tech Guy: So it's a competitive thing, and it's just one of the many, many things that authors deal with in the world of publishing.
20:00
Ellie Alexander: Right.
20:01
Ellie Alexander: And that really you as the author, unless you're indie publishing, don't have control over.
20:04
Ellie Alexander: And to your point, if you then want to go to KU, which there are some great pros.
20:08
Ellie Alexander: There's exposure, you get new readers.
20:10
Ellie Alexander: Um, and then, you know, on the con side, of course, I want my books to be available to everyone in every way, shape, and form.
20:16
Ellie Alexander: So yeah.
20:17
Tech Guy: Yeah.
20:18
Tech Guy: And also just one point of clarification when you were talking about your publisher and selling um the audio rights, that is to another publisher who specializes in audiobooks.
20:30
Tech Guy: So that is one of the things that can sometimes delay the audiobook version of a book, is that it's not the publisher that's putting out the e-book and print versions of the book that is producing the audiobook.
20:43
Tech Guy: That does happen sometimes, but for the most part, it's a different publisher altogether.
20:48
Tech Guy: And so there are business dealings that have to happen on the back end and rights transfers and all of that stuff that needs to happen for an audiobook format to be released.
20:59
Tech Guy: And it takes time sometimes.
21:01
Ellie Alexander: It takes time.
21:02
Ellie Alexander: And sometimes those rights don't get sold until after a book is published and an audio book publisher takes notice and is like, oh, hey, we think we can, you know, tag on here.
21:10
Ellie Alexander: So yeah.
21:11
Tech Guy: Yeah.
21:12
Ellie Alexander: It's complicated.
21:13
Tech Guy: Oh, right.
21:14
Tech Guy: Yeah, it is.
21:14
Tech Guy: I mean, it really is.
21:16
Tech Guy: The the business of publishing seems very simple until you actually get involved in it, and then you realize it's not at all.
21:23
Tech Guy: Not so much.
21:24
Tech Guy: Let's stick with the a similar theme, I guess, which is uh another person wrote in and asked, why isn't Trouble is Brewing available in print anywhere?
21:35
Tech Guy: So, first, why don't you let the darlings know what is the book Trouble is Brewing, and then talk about why it's not available in print?
21:43
Ellie Alexander: Well, and what's so interesting about this, when we got back from this last vacation, I had 17 different messages about trouble is brewing.
21:51
Ellie Alexander: So I'm like, did it get posted somewhere?
21:53
Ellie Alexander: Like, why all of a sudden?
21:54
Ellie Alexander: Like it will be so weird.
21:55
Ellie Alexander: Like no one will ask me about that for a year, and then boom, all of a sudden it's in the zeitgeun.
22:00
Ellie Alexander: Or the universe is like, hey, treble's growing.
22:02
Tech Guy: And it's been out for a while.
22:03
Tech Guy: Yeah, it's been out for a while.
22:05
Ellie Alexander: Yeah, a long time.
22:06
Ellie Alexander: It is just a little short that I wrote really to introduce the Sloan Krause mysteries.
22:11
Ellie Alexander: My editor at the time was like, hey, wouldn't it be fun?
22:14
Ellie Alexander: Because she was doing both the Bake Shop and Sloan Krause.
22:17
Ellie Alexander: Wouldn't it be fun if we had like a little meetup with Jules and Sloan as a way to introduce Sloan as a new character?
22:23
Ellie Alexander: So this is a very, very short ebook.
22:25
Ellie Alexander: I don't remember how many pages it is.
22:27
Ellie Alexander: It's only ebook.
22:28
Ellie Alexander: It probably was 30 pages, maybe 50 at most.
22:31
Ellie Alexander: So it's never been in print.
22:33
Ellie Alexander: It never will be in print because it's tiny.
22:36
Ellie Alexander: There's not even a body, darlings.
22:38
Ellie Alexander: They solve a missing keg.
22:39
Ellie Alexander: Like it is so scooby-doo.
22:41
Ellie Alexander: Like I loved it.
22:42
Ellie Alexander: It was really fun to write.
22:43
Ellie Alexander: But Sloane comes to Ashland to um do a beer fest.
22:48
Ellie Alexander: And she and Jules meet up and of course have an instant friendship.
22:51
Ellie Alexander: And then they have to solve what happened to this missing keg.
22:54
Ellie Alexander: So um it was, it's really fun to write, but that's the only purpose for that book was just to be a launcher, a little promo teaser for the Sloan Krause mysteries.
23:06
Ellie Alexander: So for all 17 of you, I think I have responded to everyone.
23:09
Ellie Alexander: But in case you're out there wondering, that's why you're not missing it.
23:12
Ellie Alexander: And it's so sweet.
23:13
Ellie Alexander: Like I love it because readers will try to sleuth it out.
23:15
Ellie Alexander: They'll be like, Ellie, I've read all of these and where is it and how does it fall?
23:19
Ellie Alexander: Like that, that totally makes my heart happy.
23:20
Ellie Alexander: It's very sweet.
23:21
Ellie Alexander: But um, you're not gonna find it in print, is the short answer.
23:25
Tech Guy: Hey, missing kegs is serious business, people.
23:28
Tech Guy: So just let's let's let's let's make it let's be clear about that.
23:33
Tech Guy: This is like, I mean, I would put that above murder, honestly, in terms of having to solve a mystery.
23:39
Tech Guy: Do people have to read Trouble is Brewing to jump in and start the Sloan Krauss mystery?
23:45
Ellie Alexander: No, no, not at all.
23:46
Ellie Alexander: No, no, no.
23:47
Ellie Alexander: It's just it it literally was just kind of a whim, like a lark for fun.
23:51
Tech Guy: Yeah, yeah.
23:52
Tech Guy: And and to be clear, I knew the answer to that.
23:55
Tech Guy: I just wanted to ask.
23:56
Ellie Alexander: Yeah, no, I appreciate that.
23:58
Tech Guy: One thing I will say though is that this is the same uh reasoning behind you did write three or have written, I should say, three to this point, three shorts that fit within the Sloan Krause mystery series order.
24:15
Tech Guy: And those weren't printed individually, but we did put them together in a compilation called the First Poor P-O-U-R.
24:25
Tech Guy: Um, and that book is available for print uh and ebook right now.
24:30
Tech Guy: So that is the way that we were able to do that though, because for the same reasons that Trouble is Brewing is in in print format, we could not offer print versions of the individual shorts because they're just they're they're short.
24:45
Ellie Alexander: They're short.
24:45
Ellie Alexander: They're too short.
24:46
Ellie Alexander: Yeah, it'd be a terrible experience for you as a reader too, because it's like, oh, I just spent the same amount on this book that's 75 pages, you know.
24:54
Ellie Alexander: Yeah.
24:54
Ellie Alexander: But then once I wrote three, we were able to put them in a compilation, and that's a legit book.
25:00
Ellie Alexander: Like that's 300 pages with recipe with recipes.
25:04
Tech Guy: Oh, interesting, nice segue because the next question has to do with recipes.
25:10
Tech Guy: And you get this all the time.
25:12
Tech Guy: And I the, you know, another person wrote in while we were gone, and I figured this was a great one to add to the list because there are some important reasons for this.
25:21
Tech Guy: But how do I find the recipes from your books online?
25:26
Ellie Alexander: Oh, yeah.
25:28
Ellie Alexander: Well, you don't.
25:30
Ellie Alexander: Um that's the short answer.
25:32
Ellie Alexander: Not from all the books.
25:33
Ellie Alexander: There's not like there's not one segment of like, here are all the recipes.
25:37
Ellie Alexander: Uh, we over the years have published a lot of recipes.
25:40
Ellie Alexander: We've shared, we used to do tort test kitchens.
25:42
Ellie Alexander: Actually, all summer long, I have been baking a recipe from every book in the bake shop mystery series leading up to the pumpkin vice cafe at the end of September.
25:51
Ellie Alexander: So that's been fun.
25:52
Ellie Alexander: And all of the recipes that I'm baking for that project are new recipes that I've never shared before, too.
25:57
Ellie Alexander: So that's fun.
25:58
Ellie Alexander: So if you happened to have, you know, like missed out on that, you can go back and um catch up on my social media and YouTube channel.
26:06
Ellie Alexander: But A, I mean, we would need an entire website just for that because it's so many recipes over the years.
26:13
Ellie Alexander: And B, then it's copyrighted material because these are all in the books.
26:17
Ellie Alexander: So there's that issue too.
26:20
Tech Guy: Well, and it's good, they're they're a bonus of owning the book too.
26:24
Tech Guy: Right.
26:24
Tech Guy: Or go or checking the book out from the library or whatever.
26:27
Tech Guy: They're they're meant to be a reader bonus.
26:29
Tech Guy: But the one thing I will say, I haven't even told you this, but I'm so this is a this is a reality rights exclusive right here.
26:37
Ellie Alexander: Breaking news, okay.
26:39
Tech Guy: Uh but I have a day job right now that uh one day will be just working in the LA Alexander writing empire.
26:49
Tech Guy: Um, when I am able to find the time, uh I do have on my ever-growing to-do list a plan to create a recipe section of the website that's just dedicated to all of the recipes that you have baked, cooked, and shared over the years.
27:11
Tech Guy: This will not uh solve the uh issue that this particular person was asking.
27:17
Tech Guy: This isn't going to include all the recipes from your books, but it is going to be a compilation of everything that you have shared.
27:24
Tech Guy: And you have shared some of them, but you but for the most part, these are going to be, and at this point, we're talking hundreds of recipes that that you have shared over the years, uh countless cookies and pies and holiday bakes, and you name it.
27:40
Tech Guy: Um anyway, I have a grand plan to create an Ellie Alexander recipe compilation online.
27:48
Ellie Alexander: I love it.
27:48
Tech Guy: Now I I know that is going to generate the obvious follow-up question is will there be a cookbook that's released with this?
27:57
Tech Guy: And we've talked about this several times.
27:59
Tech Guy: Maybe like someday, it is something that's that you and I both want to do, but there it has to be done right, and that's gonna take time and money, and neither of which we necessarily have at this point.
28:12
Ellie Alexander: So that's right.
28:13
Ellie Alexander: Well, and just the last thing to add about the recipes that I have shared over the years, a lot of them are recipes that don't make the final cut in the book, which is kind of fun because I always have more recipes to share because Jules is baking even Sloan in that series, you know, and like I talked about, for better or for worse, that is my voice at this point in time.
28:32
Ellie Alexander: Food and my writing are woven together tightly.
28:35
Ellie Alexander: So I will go through a manuscript and decide, okay, what are the final six or seven that are gonna be in the back of the book?
28:41
Ellie Alexander: But then I usually have two, three, four.
28:42
Ellie Alexander: So over the years, I've shared a lot of those, which is just also fun bonus content because maybe you read about Jules Baking that, but you never actually saw that recipe.
28:51
Tech Guy: That's awesome.
28:52
Tech Guy: All right, we're gonna switch gears here because we got a couple of questions from readers about you and your reading and writing habits.
29:01
Tech Guy: So we're gonna we're gonna start off with are you a fan of Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle?
29:09
Tech Guy: You seem to know a lot about them in your novel detective series.
29:14
Ellie Alexander: Um, spoiler alert, yes, yes, I am.
29:17
Ellie Alexander: I'm a huge fan.
29:18
Ellie Alexander: I read both, like I read all of Agatha Christie's books.
29:20
Ellie Alexander: Well, I read every single Agatha Christie book that my library had in stock the summer I was 12 or 13, I don't remember.
29:27
Ellie Alexander: Um, and that really sent me down a Christie trail.
29:29
Ellie Alexander: And then I didn't really read Sherlock until later.
29:32
Ellie Alexander: I think the first Sherlock, I think I read a study in Scarlet in high school.
29:37
Ellie Alexander: And then I really got hooked on Sherlock.
29:39
Ellie Alexander: But I also am just so fascinated myself by writing process and their personal stories.
29:46
Ellie Alexander: So I have read every single biography that I can get my hands on about either of them.
29:51
Ellie Alexander: I listened to podcasts.
29:52
Ellie Alexander: I've been listening to this podcast about Arthur Conan Doyle lately.
29:56
Ellie Alexander: Um, and it's so fascinating how much it stays the same with change.
30:03
Ellie Alexander: So, you know, all those Sherlock novels were initially short stories published in the Strand magazine.
30:09
Ellie Alexander: Um, and I find that fascinating given kind of where we're at right now with readers and attention spans, and we're kind of going back to that idea.
30:18
Ellie Alexander: Like there are lots of platforms now where writers are publishing kind of this serial, you know, a chapter at a time kind of thing, which is really a nod back to that.
30:29
Ellie Alexander: Or like the Hound of the Baskervilles, he had killed Sherlock off because he was so frustrated by having to write this detective again and again and again.
30:40
Ellie Alexander: Um, but then he brought him back, and that also was published in The Strand, and the Strand went into like seven printings.
30:48
Ellie Alexander: He wrote The Hound of the Baskervilles in a month.
30:50
Ellie Alexander: So I'm kind of like, yeah, I write a first draft in in a month too.
30:53
Ellie Alexander: So I love all those parallels.
30:55
Ellie Alexander: And then also just, you know, like the interesting things that he did with that character.
31:00
Ellie Alexander: Like Sherlock can smell something and know the exact type of tobacco, but he didn't know that the stars revolved around the sun or like the planets did.
31:11
Ellie Alexander: Like, so anyway, yeah, I I love any lore.
31:14
Ellie Alexander: The same is true for Agatha Christie.
31:16
Ellie Alexander: We did, I think we talked about this on a previous podcast where, you know, she was one of the first women to go surfing in Hawaii.
31:22
Ellie Alexander: And you don't think about that because we see her as this very like matronly person near the latter end of her career, but she had this very like vivacious traveling life before that.
31:32
Ellie Alexander: Yes.
31:33
Tech Guy: Yeah, that's interesting.
31:34
Tech Guy: It it is funny because whenever I think of Agatha Christie, I always think of like a Miss Marple personality.
31:43
Tech Guy: You always think of like somebody famous, you always think of them as just being that age that they when they gained fame or notoriety and never that they had a life, a whole life all before any of that happened.
31:58
Tech Guy: It's it's kind of wild.
32:00
Ellie Alexander: A whole life that clearly informed their writing, you know.
32:03
Ellie Alexander: And I think that that that kind of circles back to our whole thing about AI.
32:07
Ellie Alexander: Like you can see these threads of how their personal experiences, like she went on a dig site with her second husband in Egypt.
32:16
Ellie Alexander: And here we go.
32:17
Ellie Alexander: Then we get the death on the Nile, or Arthur Conan Doyle.
32:20
Ellie Alexander: He was he was a trained doctor.
32:23
Ellie Alexander: He wasn't a very good doctor, it sounds like.
32:25
Ellie Alexander: And then he was a spiritualist.
32:27
Ellie Alexander: He believed in fairies.
32:29
Ellie Alexander: Like he has this whole other ethereal side to him, which gets woven into the spiritualism of the time.
32:35
Ellie Alexander: And yeah.
32:36
Tech Guy: All right.
32:37
Tech Guy: One more.
32:38
Tech Guy: And I save the best for last.
32:39
Tech Guy: This will this is this will be of interest, I think, to both writers and readers.
32:44
Tech Guy: Um, somebody wrote in and asked, Do you have any weird writing quirks, rituals, etc.?
32:51
Ellie Alexander: Oh, this is a good one.
32:54
Ellie Alexander: You know, I think this might speak to like my little OCD-iness or I don't know what it is, but I can't have anything on me physically when I'm writing.
33:06
Ellie Alexander: Like I don't write with my ring on, I don't write with bracelets or jewelry.
33:10
Ellie Alexander: Like, I I don't write, I don't get dressed up to write.
33:15
Ellie Alexander: I write in comfortable clothes.
33:16
Ellie Alexander: I could not write in pajamas, though.
33:18
Ellie Alexander: Like I have to get dressed to write, but that would usually be like a glorified version of pajamas, which would be like yoga pants and a comfy sweatshirt.
33:27
Ellie Alexander: Um, so that's kind of random.
33:29
Ellie Alexander: Um, and then I I would say my biggest quirk is that I physically need to be in my office to write.
33:38
Ellie Alexander: That would always be my preferred method of writing right here where you see me.
33:43
Ellie Alexander: This is where I write 95% of my books.
33:48
Ellie Alexander: Um, sometimes it works out that uh we're traveling and I have to write in other places, but that's really not my favorite.
33:55
Ellie Alexander: I like to, I like to get out in the world and research and pay attention to people if I'm like working on a new plot or trying to develop characters.
34:02
Ellie Alexander: But when it comes to the daily word count, like I am here in my office, I have the same playlist that I listened to.
34:09
Ellie Alexander: In fact, the other night we were driving somewhere and my jewels playlist came on and I was like, oh my gosh, I can't, I can't listen to this.
34:15
Ellie Alexander: Like, what's happening?
34:16
Ellie Alexander: Because my brain wants to then start writing jewels because I hear that I don't even I don't even know what that music is because I'm barely listening to it, but it's just in cellularly in my body now.
34:28
Ellie Alexander: Um yeah, that's about it.
34:32
Tech Guy: Yeah, it was funny.
34:33
Tech Guy: We were just in the car going somewhere a few days ago, and a weird playlist started playing because you had looked up how to get there on your phone.
34:44
Tech Guy: So you had your car connected to or your phone connected to the car.
34:48
Tech Guy: And all of a sudden you were like, Oh, this is my slide playlist for whatever whatever series.
34:55
Tech Guy: You're like, I can't listen to this right now because I'm not writing.
34:58
Ellie Alexander: No.
34:59
Ellie Alexander: Turn it off.
35:00
Ellie Alexander: What are we doing?
35:01
Tech Guy: Yeah, because it puts you it puts you in that frame of mind, and you just, you know, yeah, and and you didn't want to be in that frame of mind because I think we were going to see sound of music.
35:10
Tech Guy: That was it.
35:10
Ellie Alexander: That's right.
35:11
Ellie Alexander: We were going to see sound of music.
35:12
Ellie Alexander: And I uh I didn't want to be in, I mean, I usually want to be at tort with but with Jules, but not at that point in time.
35:18
Ellie Alexander: Yeah.
35:19
Ellie Alexander: Uh sometimes I'll light a candle.
35:21
Ellie Alexander: I always get out and exercise before I start writing.
35:24
Ellie Alexander: Um, and I have kind of my regimented time that I like to write, which is usually sometime between 8:39 and 2 o'clock Monday through Friday.
35:33
Ellie Alexander: That's about it.
35:34
Tech Guy: It's a good thing you know somebody who makes candles.
35:37
Ellie Alexander: It is a good thing I know somebody who makes candles.
35:39
Ellie Alexander: Uh, I always have a notebook next to me because I don't make any changes as I go.
35:43
Ellie Alexander: I just keep going with the story.
35:45
Ellie Alexander: Um it's not super exciting.
35:47
Ellie Alexander: I don't wear a special cape.
35:50
Ellie Alexander: I could.
35:50
Ellie Alexander: I could try.
35:51
Tech Guy: That was that was that was a good, that was a solid list of writing quirks and rituals.
35:57
Tech Guy: So I think people will be happy about that.
35:59
Tech Guy: All right.
36:00
Tech Guy: Well, that brings us to the end of the list of the latest batch of questions that we received.
36:06
Tech Guy: If you, darlings, have a question that you want to know the answer to, please let us know in the comments or drop us a line by clicking that send us a message link in the show notes.
36:17
Tech Guy: And we would be happy to answer your questions.
36:20
Ellie Alexander: All right, on that note, till next time.
36:22
Tech Guy: Until next time.