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Writing From the Heart with Rick Ludwig · WriterCon

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This week on the writer KHN podcast. I think it's always to be to
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write your heart right, from your heart, right, what you really believe.
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If you start trying to write, what do you think somebody's gonna like,
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or the way you think you should write, it's going to come off
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that way. You got to be honest. Just be honest and write from
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your heart. Welcome to writer khn, a gathering place for writers to share
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their knowledge about writing and the writing world. Your hosts are William Bernhardt,
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best selling novelist and author of the Red Sneaker books on writing, and Renee
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Gutteridge, best selling author of over thirty novels and screenplays. Hey, they're
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writers. Exciting times here in the writer khon world. We're only a few
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days away from the start of the summer writing retreat in Branson, and of
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course only about six weeks away from writer kN itself. Our annual conference were
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when over two hundred people from the writing world to send on Oklahoma City to
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share what they know and boost one another's careers. Renee, you usually handled
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the pitch sessions and the private consultations. Sometimes I think people who would benefit
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from this shy away because it sounds scary or intimidating. I don't know,
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how would you describe the typical writer con pitch experience. Well, I mean,
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I'll be honest, it's always terrifying to send from somebody in picture story.
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I'm just gonna be honest. But I will tell you that once people
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get in there and they do it, that breaks the ice for people typically
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and they're able to keep doing it. So you got to have the courage
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to step in there. That one time. I one time drug a guy
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by his elbow into he was standing in the corner and he couldn't and I
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said, sir, don't miss this opportunity. Look at all these folks just
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sitting here. And he came out and he was like, I'm so glad
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I did it, and went well, you know. So it's more of
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the intimidation factor of getting getting in there and doing it. But you'll never
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be sorry that you did it. It's a it's a good practice and you're
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going to meet some great people. Okay, Jesse. I'm always trying to
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think of some way to surprise you. All right, hy Man, So
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you're gonna record a special live edition of the podcast A Writer Con. But
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you know all three of our headliners have already or are about to appear on
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the podcast. So how shall we pick the interview guests for the Live Writer
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Con edition. M I almost think like somehow we should like save it for
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the the reader KHN and just like pull some people who show up for that
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the podcast. Are you a panther or a planner? Yeah, like I
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don't even know what that means. It'd be great or no golden ticket like
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Willie Walk. Yes, let's just do that. I'll see if we're gonna
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have that put in the swag bag. I love it all right. Today
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is with James Richard meaning Rick on his book Covers Ludwig, who spent forty
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years in the academic healthcare pharmaceutical disciplines before becoming a published fiction writer. He
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has since published several books, and his most recent just came out this week.
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It's called Voice of the Victim, the second novel in his Maui mystery
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series, coming after the first book, Eyes of the Beholder. We'll talk
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to Rick right after the news segment, and a brief word from our friends
3:32
at Draft to Digital. Hi. This is Kevin Thumbinson with Draft to Digital.
3:46
E Books are amazing, but there's just something about having your book in
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draft to digital dot com. Okay, first news story of the day,
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The USA Today Bestseller List is back baby. For some of you have been
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listening to this for a while, you will remember in December of last year
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when USA Today announced that its best seller list was going to be discontinued.
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Was the word they use? I mean this was a fixture fixture in the
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book industry for at least thirty years and was generally considered to be the most
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scientifically accurate of the various bookseller bestseller list. Well, they're bringing it back,
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but with a twist. It has a marketing partnership with the independent bookstore
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community, and the most prominent by links will go to Bookshop, which,
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as we've mentioned before, is an online retailer that benefits indie bookstores. Also,
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they've announced that the USA Today List is now combined in a more guess
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what the word's going to be a more automated manner. Prior to the list
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relaunch relaunch, an editor manually compiled the list, but there have been layoffs,
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and USA Today has made the process a data collection. I'm going to
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assume more automated so less work is needed by the editors to produce each week's
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list of one hundred and fifty best selling tie titles. Because it's the only
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bestseller list that combined sales of all formats. They don't care whether it's print
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or ebook. They don't care if it was, you know, a romance,
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or somebody considers it literary or whatever it is. It's just or a
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hardcover paper. Here are the one hundred and fifty best selling titles period,
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which is why, as I said, it's sometimes considered the most scientific.
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It is purely sales driven. It doesn't prioritize one thing over another. Okay,
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Renee, what do you think about this and particular the idea that they're
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getting more input from indie bookstores. I think it's great, right, like
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am I I don't know? Yeah? How how dare you not a controversial?
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This is controversial or not? I don't know if I'm saying something controversial,
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but I do support indie bookstores, so I yeah, right, Renee,
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why don't you support any bookstores more? What to say, Yeah,
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it seems good. It seems good on the surface. Although somebody's gonna figure
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out how to, you know, jack up this system. But anyway,
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for now seems pure. Preferably with one of my books. Yeah, and
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listens of viewers, listeners, let's get Bail's book on the top of the
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US Today. However you need to do it, figure it out a campaign.
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Actually, one of our our top speakers at Ryder Khan, who's already
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been on the podcast, Susan Meisner, a friend of yours, is a
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major. Yeah. I mean she's probably on all the best seller lists,
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but I know she's done extremely well on the USA Today list, and I
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think it's for the reason I just said, it is the most sales drig
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and or accurate count. I do remember, Jesse, though, that you
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did not have much sympathy. A few weeks ago, for James Patterson was
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complaining that his most recent book had made the New York Times list, and
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The New York explained that's because their list is quote curated, meaning apparently we
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went we don't want riff raff like you on our list. The USA Today
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list is not curated, though, so that probably means James Patterson will be
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on it a lot. Are you happy about this development? I'm happy for
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the yeah, conglomeration of ghostwriters that he has hired to write all of his
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books. I'm happy for them, for the James Harrison book farm that he
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runs. I'm glad they will all continue to have jobs. Oh that's very
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generous. Okay, news story number two AI. You're afraid it was just
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gonna be college students using AI to write their papers. No, publishers are
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now using it. The people you would think would be most opposed to the
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very idea. But publishing houses are now using generative AI, and of course
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literary agents are scrambling to stop it. Pengwin random House, the largest publisher
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in the English speaking world, is now using generative AI. They mentioned they
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admitted at a recent conference to support marketing efforts, and particularly someone mentioned to
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generate books summaries. Critics, of course, say there's risk and ball because
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the AI tools will potentially generate misinformation. Random House replied that they'll always have
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a human around somewhere who a human book did. They say it that way
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because that concerns me, someone who can review the AI generated material. But
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they say, even with that, it's still a timesaver. Agents. Of
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course, they're trying to ensure author contracts encompass all these potential eventualities of AI
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technology, which I think is going to be pretty difficult. N A.
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This reminds me a lot of how the world changed overnight about two thousand and
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nine. I think when ebooks started to sell, well, they'd existed before.
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There was a clause in my contracts, but it was trivial. Nobody
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paid any attention to it because nobody bought ebooks until suddenly they did, and
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contracts either didn't cover them or didn't cover them well because their agents hadn't paid
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much attention to those clauses until it was too late. Do you think this
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will be any different? I remember that very well, and I remember thinking,
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you books would never take off. Thankfully my agent was on top of
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it at the time. I think this is gonna be a real mess.
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I gotta tell you. I think it's gonna be a real mess, and
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I think the potential for problems will almost be endless in how AI is going
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to affect writing, publishing, editing. Uh my goodness, it's it's I
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hope we get this under control. I'm I am not a conspiracy theorist panicker
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typically, but I have to tell you I think it's gonna be a real
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mess. It already is the writer's strike. I mean, the whole writing
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industry has come to a halt, like the actors stillers will be next,
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and so it's I never in my life would have imagined we'd be dealing with
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this stuff. So anyway, I mean, hats off to agents who are
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trying to protect our clients. But at this point, I think we've barely
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scraped the surface on what aid and how can you put in a contract clause
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to prevent something nobody's even thought of you? Right, absolutely, And there's
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very few ways to verify whether it's something's been done with AI or not.
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So there's gonna have to be a technology that figures that out. I mean
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that it's somebody's gotta step in. I don't know who, but somebody's got
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to step in and stop all this for right now, because we don't have
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a figured out. We've released a weapon and we're like, well, I
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guess we'll see what it does. And how many, ironically, how many
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movies told us this was happening to happen so we didn't listen. Yes,
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they also told us the pandemic was coming. Why do we also told me
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I'd be driving a flying car. That's true, Yeah, lies from the
12:00
truth. The transporter want the car. If we had the replicator, we
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would have so many of you, so many less problems problems. Hey,
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Jesse, you've said before that you're not really planning to write a book,
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but you think you could with the help of generative AI. So I should
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tell you. As a podcast producer, I have there's there's there's ten of
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them now. But there are like multiple services out there that will use AI
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to help you, not with the editing, but like with all of the
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marketing materials and the show notes and the titles and whatnot. And there was
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there is a service I use that actually does an incredible job of coming up
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with great titles and great show notes. Big problem is it does horrible with
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names right, and it's and it is terrible with references to other say,
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artists or whatever. And so even with this great tool that saves me a
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whole bunch of time. I still have to read and review it and make
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sure it's not throwing them weird words or weird names, or spelling someone's name
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wrong. Well, that's probably what the editor at USA Today does, don't
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you think, proven hoad the list before it. So it's me AI is
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a tool, just like so many other tools, and it's about how much
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you should use it versus, you know, whether it's be allowed to be
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used or not. So all right, Jesse, queue up the music.
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Let's talk to Rick Ludwig. Rick Ludwig, welcome back to the podcast.
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It's a pleasure. I enjoyed it last time, and I know I'll enjoy
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it this time. Well, you know what the first question is going to
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be. If you can offer writers one piece of advice, what would it
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be you not going to another line of work that you can't do that?
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No, I My real advice, I think is always to be to write
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your heart right, from your heart right, what you really believe. If
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you start trying to write what you think somebody's gonna like or the way you
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think you should write, it's going to come off that way. You gotta
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be honest, just be honest and write from your heart. Yeah, I
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agree. All right, congratulations are an order. You've just had a new
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book released, Voice of the Bigoted. Tell us about that. Well.
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Voice of the Victim is the second second chronologically, the second book in the
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Maui in Mystory series. And I wrote these books initially when I lived on
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Maui for about ten years. I lived on Maui and it's an absolute perfect
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place to write a book. You know that because you've been there many times.
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I know. But I've started writing, and I was smart enough to
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go take a class from a guy named Bernhardt, learned how to actually mean
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he says, make people understand what I was writing. And the first book
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is called Eyes of the Beholder, and it is what introduces the characters.
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Introduces Keony Boyd, who is a sergeant of detectives with the Maori Police Department.
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And it is a very high percentage Hawaiian. Now I've only met two
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people who were one hundred percent Hawaiian and all my time on Mallory, but
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he's pretty pretty high up there in the nineties percent Hawaiian. And he is
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a wonderful detective, very big guy. He's he's six foot what is he
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six foot three per seven I think, and one hundred and seventy five pounds,
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and he's a big guy. And I always see I actually always see
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Dwayne Johnson when I'm picturing key one because but even though he's saw Moen and
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Kei is al bayan Uh, they do have a lot in common and the
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way they look. But in the first book, Kony meets the woman who
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ends up becoming his wife. A lot of things happen, but the main
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driver of the story is a fellow by the name f sam Loftus who has
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had problem. Okay, everything is backwards for him, right his left,
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left, his right. He thinks his sister in laws his wife his wife's
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his sister in law, and it causes some difficulties. And the first difficulty
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it causes he drives on the wrong side of the road and crashes into Kioi's
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new sports cars. So that sets up the characters. Okay, in this
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book, now Keione and Julie are married and they're going off on their honeymoon,
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which is going to be a cruise of the Greek Islands. Not bad.
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I think they have a good choice in that. And the detective bureau
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is down a couple of detectives. Based on the last story, Everyone's going
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to have something to do here, right, what may be astonishing, Renee?
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Did you know this? This guy spent most of his adult life in
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the healthcare sector, right and pharmacy. Wolson, You wrote technical articles but
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not fiction, right, Yeah, I never wrote fiction. I wrote you
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confess now if those academic articles were really, yeah, they they were.
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They were pretty dry. Um. The hardest thing I had to learn.
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And you know this was from more in one of your classes, when oh,
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Greg greg Field right said yeah, he he read one of the first
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things I ever wrote, and he said to me, you know, Rick,
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in fiction, you know sometimes we use contractions. Don't use contracts and
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good scientific right, it's not allowed. So that helped me a great deal.
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That was it. That was a good bit of advice. But I
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love the stories. I think they are real mysteries, and I think they
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are solvable mysteries, which I always get annoyed when I can't. I love
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mysteries, read them all my life, but I get really pissed off at
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they leave a key bit of evidence, key clue and don't tell me.
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Is the wonderful a Christie used to do all the time. But that's okay.
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So I always try a zero in on what's most unique or what I
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haven't seen before in how many of these, like one hundred and thirty episodes
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of this podcast, But anyway I can come up with two. You and
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your wife, Christy have been married. Is it forty two years? Yeah,
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it'll be forty three years. And when we at the conference, we're
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going to be celebrating our anniversary there. And you still play golf once a
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week at least once a week twice when we can. Yeah, oh that
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together. We only play with the play golf with each other. And my
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second unique factoid is your daughter also writes fiction. And guess what she's also
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been on this podcasts back. Yes, yeah, how did she get started
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writing? Well, she's written from the day I guess the first time she
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was able to pick up a pencil. She's always been writing. She started
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out the first stories that she wrote were very horror oriented. Uh, and
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then she got more into fantasy, and that's what she's been publishing, are
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the fantasy stories. Uh. And there I mean, I try to learn
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from her all the time because she she gets to your heart very very well,
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and she describes things enormously well. Now that doesn't mean I'm terrible.
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I'm just saying she's very good. She also, yeah, she's wonderful.
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And she's published two books so far and she's working on third one. The
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first one is called Oh Gosh, I'm looking over at blood Fire Arena,
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blood Fall Arena, blood Fall Arena, and the second one is called Blood
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Embers. See, I get a little help here, a few cards right
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now. Actually, she's going out to get her book to make sure she
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told me the right title. That's us. Well, he remembered all those
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details about his body's got cart. I couldn't know much about the book I'm
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writing right now. I have no cards. She's honestly doing du Sudoku well
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while I'm while just watching me. So that's that's not helping me at all.
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She just know. Yeah, go ahead. Oh sorry, Rick,
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I didn't mean to cut you off, but I wanted to ask you a
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question. So you've covered a little bit at the beginning what you thought was
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your worst writing advice that you've been given. And as you know, most
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of our listeners are a writer, so share with us the best piece of
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writing advice that you've been given the best piece of advice. And it's going
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to sound very familiar to Bill, but it's never give up. And I
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think with these stories it's especially true because I the first two books I wrote
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and self published under different titles, and they were quite different stories actually,
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although they had common features. And I got the opportunity when Babylon Books agreed
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to publish my third book, and they did. I was very very happy
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about that, which was called Pelle's Fire. I talked to Bill about it
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and I said, you know, it'd be nice if you had the all
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three books were in Babylon, because they'd be consistent and all that. And
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he said, well, you know, why don't you rewrite them, But
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they have to have a new title, new out of the News. Everything
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has to be new, and I thought I was quite frightened by that,
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but it was the best best thing that I've ever done, was the chance
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to go back and take a story he thought was done and completely rewrite it
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and graded now knowing what the other two books are going to do, knowing
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what the full series is, going back and writing the first book with that
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in mind was amazing. It was like a Stephen Covey thing, you know,
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begin with the end in mind kind of thing. And I wrote a
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very different book, and the second book it was extremely different because in the
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second book before it was just the one story. It wasn't the Keoni took
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off one on the cruise, and then we didn't hear from him again until
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near the end of the book, and we didn't know what he was doing.
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And the third book was all about what happened on the cruise, and
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I had to write all his flashbacks, which I know is one of your
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favorite things, Bill and Worlds to have flashbacks. That's so when I got
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to start to when I got to rewrite it, I said, okay,
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they come up. They happened at the same time. Why don't I write
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them at the same time. And it was the best and worst decision I've
22:47
ever made. My fife has when you're trying to keep two time zones together,
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you end up with something like this that has the time and date in
22:56
each place. But I'm doing the story in chronological order, so it's three
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you know, it's one kind it's five thirty am for them, and it's
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you know, all two thirty am and MAUI and so we're going back and
23:11
forth with that, but I mean, I believe it's all right. I
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think that last proof thing I said to you, I found one date and
23:18
time that was wrong. Still, but I mean I had to do spreadsheets
23:23
and the whole business on that to make it all work out. But you
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know, I am a scientist, so I shouldn't know how to do that.
23:30
But it has been about a lot of years. But it did work
23:33
out, and I really liked the books much much better now that those two
23:37
stories are growing on in parallel because unknown to me, there are some scenes
23:42
in each separate story that relate to each other, and I had no idea
23:48
they did until I put them together in the same book. So that,
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to me, that was a great experience, if enormously frightening. It worked
23:56
out very well, and now the third book has space for other stuff,
24:00
so I was able to put in a whole other storyline in the third book
24:04
because I didn't have to go back and do all those flashbacks to the cruise
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ship, you know. So I think it was it was great. So
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I am very grateful and will continue to be. And I did change the
24:15
name of the third book from Fires of Pale to know from Pale's Fires to
24:21
Fires of Pale. So it does have a new title now it completely different.
24:25
Yeah, yeah, completely. I don't think anybody will pick up on
24:29
that at all, you know, would be good. Yeah, so,
24:33
Rick Kennon, I'm just I'm just guessing here. But we always talk about
24:37
pants or a planner. Yeah, you're a planner. Well I knew you're
24:41
gonna ask that because and I would say I start out as a plantzer because
24:49
I always I always write. I always write my first and last chapter first.
24:56
I write the beginning and the end of the story first. That's the
24:57
Stephen Covey thing again, you know, with the end in mind, and
25:00
they always change over the course of writing this story. And then, as
25:04
because of Bill's advice, I write the first draft without stopping. I write
25:08
straight through from that first chapter to the last chapter, doing no editing,
25:14
and I don't have an idea of where I'm going, honestly, So it
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is I mean I have an idea because I know where it ends, and
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I have, but I kind of put myself in the middle as I'm writing.
25:25
I think I'm a little little pancer, little planner. But when I'm
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editing I'm absolutely a planner, and I go through this is the this,
25:33
this tone. Here is the contiguous timeline for the Maui Mysteries, right starting
25:41
back in nineteen hundred, which of course the stories start in two thousand and
25:45
thirteen, so you know, but yeah, I hope that after the screen
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again this is yes, yeah, there it is. That's wow, that's
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that's and it is personality disorder screaming that well, you know, you know,
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And in my first book, the guy was OCD, and and I
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was kind of feeding up myself because I'm pretty OCD but not not clinically OCD,
26:15
but I'm closed and uh yeah I do. I do have to do
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that, and that's why I you know, I had it for other folks.
26:23
I try to help them out. I'm a beta reader that it goes
26:29
crazy, you know. I give them I find every type of and everything.
26:33
And I love doing that because I just feel like it's anything I can
26:38
do to make someone's story come across easier or be clearer. I'm doing them
26:45
a favor. And most of them take it that way to say they're very
26:48
good about it, and they put up with my my tediousness. But I
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think you already touched on this, But what's next? What are you working
26:59
on? Well? Book three is done, rewrite a Book three is done,
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and I've sent it off to my beta readers, six of them that
27:06
I'm using I have. I have ten of them, but I use six
27:10
for every book, and I use six because I expect five of them to
27:14
actually do it, you know, So I like to have five different points
27:18
of view, but they're all writers. They're all authors. And then in
27:21
addition to that, at a certain point, I will send one to a
27:23
voracious reader that I that I respect, who isn't a writer and get a
27:30
different perspective than from the writers. I have two alpha readers, by the
27:34
way, that I get to see it before anybody. One of them is
27:37
sitting over there, and that's Jenny, and the other one is my wife,
27:41
Christy. And Jenny's a writer, and Christie's a reader. She's she's
27:45
coming to readers work for the way. She's looking very forward to. One
27:51
of her favorite authors is Lisa Gardner. So no wonder I was interested in
27:56
your They know it's very good. I liked your Like now you can tell
27:59
her you been on the same podcast as Lisa Gardner. It really is.
28:04
And she she loves loves her writing, and but she's she is someone who
28:08
reads a lot of books. She reads more books in the course of the
28:11
years than I do. Um and she very quickly will decide if she's not
28:18
going to finish it, whereas I always give myself a hundred pages, you
28:21
know thing, But she'll get five pages in and say, terrible writing.
28:29
I'm in our camp. I gotta wrap this up. But thank you so
28:33
much for being on the podcast. Oh it's absolutely my Pleasure's great to see
28:37
you. A get ride and I will see at the word of Front too.
28:41
I hope, I hope we'll come. Okay, we'll see you.
28:44
Then take care of just a few parting words. Renee, you've got an
28:55
announcement, I think. Yeah. We want to let people know about that
28:59
webinar. Webinar that's that we're offering on. So if you're new to conferences
29:04
or you just need a refresher on how the best prep for conference, we've
29:11
got you covered. And it's free. So if you'll go to writing momentum
29:15
dot com you'll see a link. It will give you all the instructions you
29:18
need. It's prerecorded so you can watch it at anytime. You also get
29:22
a PDF that you can download with extra information, so check it out.
29:29
All right, fantastic and I, of course am predictably going to mention Writer
29:33
khn our annual writers conference. You heard Rick Ludwig talk about how important getting
29:41
feedback from writers has been to his writing career. He also talked about why
29:45
he comes back to writer Khon every year and Andy, He's totally right,
29:51
That's why we have the retreats, that's why we have the cruises. But
29:53
I wanted to point out that even at this big annual conference, we still
29:57
have lots of private it or small group or one on one opportunities like the
30:03
pitch sessions Renee talked about earlier, and they also offer private consultations with the
30:10
faculty member of your choice and manuscript reviews. You can schedule one on one
30:15
time with a lot of different knowledgeable people. You didn't even have lunch with
30:18
our guests of honor Taskelee and Lisa Gardner. That, plus, you know,
30:25
sixty days, sixty speakers doing three days of classes and some of the
30:30
best people in the world should give you and more than enough reason to consider
30:36
joining their Writer com this year. September one through four in Oklahoma City.
30:40
For more information, please visit our website, which is Writercon dot com.
30:47
Until next time, Hey you writers, keep writing, and I remember you
30:52
cannot fail if you're refused to quit. See you next time. And then it