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WriterCon Preview with Keynote Speaker Tosca Lee · WriterCon

• 0:00
  This week on the writer KHN podcast. Well, my number one rule of
• 0:04
  writing is always to write as though no one will ever read it. Welcome
• 0:08
  to writer Khan, a gathering place for writers to share their knowledge about writing
• 0:12
  and the writing world. Your hosts are William Bernhardt, best selling novelist and
• 0:17
  author of the Red Sneaker books on writing, and Renee Gutteridge, best selling
• 0:21
  author of over thirty novels and screenplays. Hello writers. Hey, we're continuing
• 0:27
  our run up to writer khn, our annual writer's conference in Oklahoma City every
• 0:33
  Labor Day weekend. So it's less than two months to go before the conference
• 0:38
  and I'm starting to get seriously excited about it. Renee, what's your favorite
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  part of writer KHN. We'll have a lot, and I think you've passed
• 0:48
  me a few times, but I have a different answer every time. But
• 0:51
  this is one thing that I thought about that I love is when I see
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  a writer come out of an agent meeting or a pitch or some thing and
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  their face is just lit up and they you know, sometimes I'm a complete
• 1:04
  stranger, but I happen to be standing there and they're just like, it
• 1:07
  was such a good meeting, and they like my stuff. That's so fun.
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  Um. We see a lot of that at Writer Khon, and it's
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  just I remember that feeling and I love seeing people have those victories and those
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  wins. So yeah, those are that's very fun. That's terrific, Jesse.
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  There are a lot of things I could ask you about Writer Khan,
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  but instead I am going to cut to the question I know is uppermost in
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  our listeners' minds? Will you be performing at Karaoke Night this year? M
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  Here's the thing. I'm not against doing it. It's just I can't tell
• 1:42
  Michelle that I'm doing it because then she'll be nervous about me doing it,
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  So I'll just go do it. She's in she's in the introvert camp of
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  no karaoke. Um, yeah, I have no problem singing horrible? Is
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  that why you don't come? Rene? I thought it was just me.
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  No, I can't do it myself, and I also can't watch people do
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  it. That's how introverted I am. So yeah, that's yeah. You
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  feel the pain or I feel all of it. I feel every emotion,
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  so it's not worth it emotionally for me. That's why I've also never done
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  stand up because not because I am scared of it, which I am,
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  but the fact that like it would make my introverted partner incredibly nervous knowing that
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  I'm going to do it how to do it. Yeah, she'd be nervous
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  for you. Yes, yeah, I'd be fine. I mean, I
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  know you're gonna bomb at least once. It's what every comedian's ever told me.
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  So I've never been a stand up comic either, but I think that's
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  because I wouldn't be funny. Okay. Our interview today is with Tasca Lee,
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  the award winning New York Times best selling author of many novels like The
• 2:51
  Line Between. She's written several Biblical based novels like The Legend of Sheba.
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  She wrote the Books of Mortal series with another New York Times bestselling author,
• 3:02
  Ted Decker, and most recently, she's written a historical World War Two based
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  novel, The Long March Home. She's the recipient of two international book awards,
• 3:15
  killer Nashville's Silver Falcion and the ECPA Book of the Year. In addition
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  to the New York Times Bestseller List, her books have appeared on the Indie
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  Bound Bestseller List and the Library Journal's Best of list and many others. We
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  will talk to TUSCA after the news segment, and a brief word from our
• 3:37
  friends at draft to Digital. Hi, this is Kevin Thompson with Draft to
• 3:55
  Digital. E books are amazing, but there's just some think about having your
• 4:00
  book in print. That's why we built d to d print. We take
• 4:04
  care of you with three layout templates and formatting, and we can convert your
• 4:09
  e book cover into a full wraparound print cover automatically. Come check out d
• 4:14
  d print and all the cool tools we've built for you. Find out more
• 4:18
  at draft to digital dot com. All right, three quick updates and then
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  two new big stories and Renee. You'll be happy to hear that none of
• 4:32
  the updates involve any author murderers or anything like that. What's happening to the
• 4:40
  world? Okay, but we have covered the sad upward trend in book bands
• 4:46
  in the past year. Well, the Biden administration has now appointed someone in
• 4:49
  the Department of Education to organize responses to book bands at the state level.
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  On a related something that's not really related. I guess everything on this show
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  is related in a sense, but maybe I'm getting too metaphysical now. Anyway,
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  We've talked a lot about AI. We've covered the near panic going on
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  now about chat, GPT and other AI programs that collate scraped information in a
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  way that resembles actual writing. Not that I have a position on this or
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  anything. Amazon has announced that it is now including on its book sales pages
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  AI generated summaries of customer reviews. Like in case you don't have time to
• 5:33
  read all those one to five star reviews, the AI will just generate a
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  summary you think, will that help sell the book? I mean, if
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  I could pick and choose, maybe, but that's scary. Oh well.
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  And the third item, Kindle Preneur, which many of you will know,
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  is a popular program used by indie and other publishers to rate keywords to help
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  promote books. Now they've added a new AIE tool to its book description generator
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  to help you come up with the keywords that you can use and you're advertising
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  and whatnot. I think all this talk about a high is not going away
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  anytime soon. But here's the first big news story, major breaking news since
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  our last podcast. Simon and Schuster still for sale and there's now a third
• 6:30
  bidder in the running. Simon and Schuster has been on the market for a
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  while. Some of you will recall that there was an attempt by a Penguin
• 6:40
  Random House to purchase the company, but the Justice Department put that down,
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  saying that it would be monopolist. Monopolistic, okay. According to the Wall
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  Street Journal, there is a new bidder guy named Richard Hurwitz who does this
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  sort of thing. He's an investor, but he has got backing from an
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  ABU Bobby sovereign wealth manager, and it will join HarperCollins, another one of
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  the big five publishing houses, and a private equity fund called kk R,
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  which has been in the news a lot for other reasons. And they're all
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  going to come around. Apparently they've passed the first round of bidding and the
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  second round of bidding will be held any day now. Renee, the Justice
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  Department already said that Random House couldn't buy this company. Why is it possible
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  that HarperCollins can buy this company? Well, Bill, you couldn't have picked
• 7:39
  a more appropriate question for me, because it is my area of expertise.
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  So I think the legalities, I can like speak for most of us and
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  say, like I have no idea what I mean. I'm granted HarperCollins is
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  smaller, but still we've been talking for years about the so called Big five,
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  and if there's a merger between any of them, it's going to be
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  a very big member of the Big four afterwards, isn't it. I love,
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  I love Renees just does not care about this story at all, but
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  Bill and I care immensely deeply at I know I love it. Yes,
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  yes it's wrong. Like no, if if Penguin Random House can buy him,
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  Harpercolls cam buy them either, you wouldn't think. Yeah, private equity
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  fund bidding and and but that seems I mean, that's how Burns and Noble
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  got published, right, That was another equity fund who bought it and then
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  hired James dunt to come over from England and try and whip him into shape.
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  And it looks like the same thing as sort of happening now. But
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  I I don't think it makes any sense. Is it HarperCollins and a private
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  equity firm or is those two separate bids, like four different parties involved,
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  all pooling money together. But Harper Collins is an actual publisher, that would
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  be you know, they're part of the Australian News Corps Rupert, Murdock and
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  all that. So it would be acquiring Simon and Schuster, which is as
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  we speak, the only member of the Big Five that's actually American owned.
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  That would end of course, if this goes through. You know, yeah,
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  something I never thought I would say on a podcast, maybe the private
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  equity firm should buy it. Not something I would normally say about anything else,
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  but in this case, like, competition is good, and in a
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  shrinking market, you don't want less competition, you want more. Yeah.
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  So, of course, the history not that I'm any business finance expert,
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  but I think the history of private equity funds buying something is not. Then
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  they fire a lot of people, and then they sell off as many assets
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  as they can and try and make it somehow more streamlined, and then they
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  sell it for a profit. Right, that's normally how it goes. And
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  that's that. Like we have a problem with like retirement homes all being bought
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  by private equity firms and them, you know, cheaping out on that.
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  Normally not great. But the Barnes and Noble story is a positive private equity
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  thing where someone sees the profit in it, and you would hope again,
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  I think Simon Schuster just stay in business as Simon and Schuster. I don't
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  know why they're so gung ho about selling. It's either no one can buy
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  them or no one's being allowed to buy them. Well, I think the
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  answer is they're ultimately owned by Paramount Global and paramounts level. Even a very
• 10:33
  successful publishing company is chump change compared to what they're making from. I think
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  the original idea was that there was going to be some symbiotic relationship between books
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  and movies that just never actually panned out. I still think we should buy
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  it. Okay, I'll sell my comic books, you sell your Star Trek
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  stuff. And I think, what is it three billion or something? Yeah,
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  okay, we only need two points more billion dollars this Yeah, yeah,
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  I am not. You guys don't think I have anything to bring Okay,
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  all right, well no, if you would be, you can be
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  our private equity member. What are you going to sell? Okay? Let
• 11:16
  me let me think about that. I'll get back to you, okay.
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  Second news story Elizabeth Gilbert, who I know many people will remember from E
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  Prey love her. She has pulled basically pulled from release her forthcoming now Forthcoming.
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  It was actually scheduled for twenty twenty four. But the thing is,
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  it's said in Siberia, it's called The Snow Forest, and it was going
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  to come out in February. The cover had been revealed on National TV.
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  They were taking pre orders, and then the one star good Reads reviews started
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  to bombard the website. Why since most of these people could have even read
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  the book at that point. It's because the novel is set in Siberia,
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  and some Ukrainian readers were alleging the novel romanticizes Russia, even though as I
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  mentioned, they have not read the book. And the book, by the
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  way, is set in in the nineteen thirties and focuses on a family finding
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  refuge from the Soviet government, you know, post revolution, and where it's
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  not where good things happen in Russia, Like, you can't romanticize literally their
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  prison area. Yeah, doctor Shivago sort of did. That's true anyway,
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  So Elizabeth Gilter posted to social she just you know, she's got enough clout
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  to pull a book and just said it is not the time for this book
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  to be published, and reorders are going to be refunded. And the publisher
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  has made no comment, but a lot of others did. Pen America said
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  the decision was well intentioned but regrettable, and asked the author to reconci Meanwhile,
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  a statement from the author's guild said, quote it's a personal choice.
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  End quote end quote. We respect her decision. End quote. Okay,
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  Renee, can I go to you. I do have an you think should
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  she unfold the book? Well, I you know, I respect your decision
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  as well, but I will say that I've been following some of the news
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  on these good read reviews that are trashing novels before they're even out, um
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  and as a real tragedy, and I hope that this trend doesn't continue because
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  it's absolutely devastating for an author m to come up against something like this before
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  the book is ever out and read. Um, you know, they're this
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  Elizabeth Gilbert thing. You know, it's a it's a kind of a different
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  beast in what it's dealing with. But at the same time, I think
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  there, I think we're going to see more of this, and I hope
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  that authors will stand up and publishers especially will stand up to this and not
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  let all of that influence Well, yeah, I think jes see what bothers
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  me most is the thinking that you know, both the author and the publisher
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  only discovered this wasn't the right time for a book set in Russia after basically
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  the book was review bombed on good Reads. What does this say about the
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  power of the internet, do you think? I mean, this is how
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  movies a lot where like I remember, like when Captain Marvel came out,
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  it was a review bombed before it ever came out, and I remember Ron
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  Tomatoes had to change their review policy to not allow reviews before until like a
• 14:48
  week before the thing comes out. When they're like screening star and whatnot.
• 14:52
  Good Reach should have a similar policy. You can't review a book that's not
• 14:54
  out yet. Yeah, that sounds like good Reads of course is owned by
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  Amazon, so they would probably if you like, his reviews were promoting sales
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  of pre orders. If Amazon can make it so that they can take review
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  tex that someone wrote and clean it up via AI, they also have the
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  ability to set a timeline on when reviews are allowed on good Reads so they
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  can figure it out. I think that sounds good to me. All right,
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  Jesse, queue up the music. Let's talk to Tusca Lee. Tusca
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  Lee Thank you so much for being on the podcast. Thank you so much
• 15:41
  for having me. All Right, we have a traditional first question here.
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  If you could offer writers one piece of advice, what would it be.
• 15:52
  Well, my number one rule of writing is always to write as though no
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  one will ever read it. And that might sound contradictory since many of us
• 16:00
  are trying to get published, our our works produced in some way, but
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  I find that that's the best way to take the pressure off, and so
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  I always say to write as though you're in your closet with your favorite notebook
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  at night with a flashlight, writing secret stuff, and that's how the good
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  stuff happens. Yeah. I think there's a lot of wisdom there. Hey,
• 16:22
  congratulations on your continued success. Am I correct in believing that The Long
• 16:29
  March Home is your most recent release? Yes, this book right, so
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  embarrassing. Yep, that's number twelve, okay, and you co authored that
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  with Marcus Brotherton. Am I right, Yes, that's right. Tell us
• 16:44
  about that book. It's kind of a change of pace, right it is.
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  So my other books have been ancient historical or thrillers or suspense or dystopian,
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  so this is a change of pace for me. It's a World War
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  two novel set in the Philippines, and it's about three best friends who are
• 17:02
  stationed there in nineteen forty one, right before Pearl Harbor is bombed, and
• 17:07
  within ten hours of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the Philippines is also bombed
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  and plunged into war. And this war lasts until April of nineteen forty two.
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  And so this is a story about a chapter of World War two history
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  that for some is not widely known. And it's about the Baton Death March
• 17:23
  and the nearly four years of Pow life for those who had survived to that
• 17:30
  point. And so once you survived the march, which was sixty miles and
• 17:34
  six days out of the Baton Peninsula to the Pow camp, it's just the
• 17:40
  beginning of almost four years of terrible hardship. So it's a survival story and
• 17:45
  a story of friendship and brotherhood. Sounds fantastic, it really does. I
• 17:51
  was reading a little bit about it, and that is actually a point of
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  history that I'm not very familiar with. So I'm eager to a novel for
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  Okay, so you've collaborated with Marcus Brotherton on this. Interestingly one question I
• 18:07
  get a lot is how do you how do you do collaborations? Because writing
• 18:14
  is very solitary, and so can you tell us a little bit about your
• 18:18
  collaboration journey and what your strategies might be. Well, this is my second
• 18:23
  collaboration. So I've also written a trilogy with Ted Decker, and that was
• 18:30
  five hundred Years in the Future Dystopian trilogy, and so that process was actually
• 18:34
  very different than this process. And I also get asked that question all the
• 18:38
  time, how do two writers write together? Because it is a very solitary
• 18:44
  thing, and of course, even when you write with somebody, you have
• 18:45
  your solitary moments. But in my collaboration with Ted Decker, we brainstormed everything
• 18:52
  from the ground up. But in this particular instance, Marcus, who I
• 18:57
  knew before and who I had endorsed his other his previous novel before, though
• 19:04
  he's best known for his World War Two nonfiction, he reached out to me
• 19:10
  in twenty seventeen and said, Hey, I've got this back burner project I'm
• 19:12
  working on about the Baton Death March. He'd been working on it for seven
• 19:18
  years, off and on between projects, and he said, would you like
• 19:22
  to join me? In the story. And honestly, I was not familiar
• 19:26
  with this this part of World War two history myself, so he had to
• 19:29
  kind of catch me up to speed. And when I heard it, when
• 19:33
  he told me more, I said, this sounds like a really important story
• 19:36
  to share. Count me in. And so I added five years to the
• 19:40
  process. But this was a very different process because, and I think this
• 19:44
  is actually quite rare. Marcus essentially handed me his earlier drafts and said,
• 19:49
  here, you go, do with it what you will, and be as
• 19:53
  free as you can be. And so and that's great because that takes me
• 19:57
  back to writing secret stuff again, and writing as though no one will ever
• 20:00
  read it, right, And so I added five years of pulling, you
• 20:06
  know, this manuscript apart and seeing where I felt that I could add value
• 20:10
  and add more to the story, and and of course spending time researching all
• 20:14
  this as well. And so twelve years total to create this book. And
• 20:18
  at the end, of course, we're passing the manuscript back and forth,
• 20:22
  and we've we've got our moments of you know, I really don't want to
• 20:26
  take this out. Here's a non negotiable for me, and we honor those
• 20:30
  non negotiables and they're not long lists, and we're both pretty easy to get
• 20:33
  along with. So um, you know, I worked out really well.
• 20:37
  That is a terrific story. And we've done a bunch of interviews, but
• 20:41
  I've never heard a story like that. I think it's so rare for an
• 20:48
  author to say, here you go, take my baby. You know.
• 20:55
  Well, while we're talking about collaboration, let me also did you admire that
• 21:00
  segue? Let me also thank you for attending writer Con this year. Yeah,
• 21:03
  I'm so excited, but it's true, I know how busy you are,
• 21:07
  but I know this is also not your first ever conference. What is
• 21:12
  your favorite part of these gatherings of writers. Yeah, it's it's the camaraderie.
• 21:19
  And I always at the start anytime I'm keynoting or anything like that.
• 21:25
  My first reminder to those who are in attendance is always to take advantage of
• 21:30
  this time. So many of us are introverts, right, so you know
• 21:34
  it's a little uncomfortable sometimes, but to take advantage of this time to meet
• 21:38
  people who will take that journey with you. Because having been on this journey
• 21:44
  now myself for decades, I can look back and say that there are people
• 21:49
  I've known now for many, many years who who have become friends for that
• 21:56
  journey. And I think that's of course you want to learn more about AFT.
• 22:00
  Of course you want to be encouraged and inspired and all those things,
• 22:03
  and you will be. But when you leave with those those friendships that will
• 22:07
  take you all the way through, I think that is the big value.
• 22:11
  Yeah, me too, All right, I was preparing for this interview,
• 22:17
  right, So I went to your website today and read what there was to
• 22:21
  read. No, I just wonder have you ever in your entire life given
• 22:26
  an interview where somebody didn't bring up former Missus Nebraska? Well? Yeah,
• 22:33
  yeah, there's a few where they don't bring it up, but I didst
• 22:40
  Well, you used to model, right? That came after the Yeah,
• 22:44
  so I did the pageant thing, and it's because somebody said you should try
• 22:48
  this, and I was like, okay, So that's literally how it happened.
• 22:52
  I didn't grow up doing it. Somebody said go try it, and
• 22:55
  I did. And then the modeling thing happened because I had made friends who
• 23:00
  were doing this through the pageant stuff, and they said, you know,
• 23:03
  there's so many younger models, teenage models, but they're turning away adult you
• 23:07
  know, mature models, because I mean they're turning away work because they don't
• 23:11
  have enough of the adult models to do this commercial work. And I said,
• 23:15
  while, heck, if they're turning people away out, they'll sign myself
• 23:18
  up. And and you know, it's been a lot of fun. And
• 23:22
  um, I've modeled everything from soup, the party goods. I've literally modeled
• 23:30
  soup before that's weird, but um food company, well and it's onward holding
• 23:38
  the soup and they've made the soup beautiful, right and it's it's all perfect.
• 23:45
  Yeah, I've modeled the soup. So and I'm like, it's really
• 23:52
  fun. I mean, modeling is not all what you think of when you
• 23:56
  think of modeling. It's it's often you know, often supplies or you know,
• 24:03
  home things or whatever. So but it's a lot of fun. You
• 24:07
  see, now we're up to two stories Landmark episode. It was set up
• 24:17
  so perfect too. She's like, I've modeled everything and I was gonna,
• 24:19
  you know, think like sportswear, and she went with soup and so that
• 24:23
  was amazing. Yep, soup all right, Well okay, so um,
• 24:30
  so you've clearly had many interesting journeys. But in writing in particular. You
• 24:37
  um are one of the most prolific genre writers that I know. UM,
• 24:41
  And you know, I'm a genre writer myself, and so I know it
• 24:45
  could be difficult, but you blow me out of the water on your genres
• 24:48
  um because they're so vast. So you've done contemporary thrillers, you've done biblical
• 24:53
  figures, um, now you're doing a mainstream historical novel, which you know,
• 25:00
  historical novels. That's a whole beast in and of itself, as you
• 25:03
  said on the research. So, my goodness, is anybody telling you,
• 25:11
  especially early in your career, did you have agents publisher just be like,
• 25:15
  hey, could you stick with one and go with it? Or what was
• 25:19
  the journey like there? Yeah, well, at the beginning, you know,
• 25:22
  you do one. I wrote a novel about a fallen angel, and
• 25:26
  then I wrote a novel about Eve, and so I was kind of going
• 25:30
  down this trajectory. I wrote about Judas Iscariot, I wrote about the Queen
• 25:33
  of Shiba, and then I was like, you know, I think I'd
• 25:36
  like to write a thriller because you know what, I love hamburgers and I
• 25:41
  love sushi, but I don't want to eat one of those every single day
• 25:42
  for the rest of my life, you know, I want to And I
• 25:45
  don't want to read the same books every single day either, and I don't
• 25:48
  want to write the same stories. And this drives agents crazy. So yeah,
• 25:52
  my agent was like, you know, we can maybe do two categories,
• 25:57
  but you kind of need to stick to two or less and so and
• 26:03
  that's kind of hard. But I think these days anymore, you know,
• 26:07
  genres overlap so much. So some of my thrillers are slightly supernatural or slightly
• 26:12
  historical or you know. And so for me, I can see the overlap,
• 26:17
  even if even if the agents can't. But here's the thing. You
• 26:22
  pay for it. You pay for these books that you write, and you're
• 26:25
  paying in chunks of your life, right so, which is a limited supply
• 26:30
  of what you've got to offer. So I'm you're paying this out, and
• 26:33
  so it's got to be a story you love, and it's got to be
• 26:34
  a story that's worth a chunk of your life. And then when it's out,
• 26:38
  you're signing it, you're answering questions, and you're you're talking about it
• 26:41
  with fans. You may have just discovered that book even though you wrote it
• 26:45
  twenty years ago. And so you're married to it for the rest of your
• 26:48
  life too, So you gotta love it. M that's such a good,
• 26:53
  good answer to that. I love it. That's such good advice. So
• 26:57
  now, perversely, I'm going to ask you what's the worst piece of advice
• 27:04
  writing related that you've ever received. Oh gosh, well, there's two.
• 27:10
  One is write what you know, which there would be nothing written by me,
• 27:15
  a lot left out, wouldn't there. It'd be like, you know,
• 27:18
  how to yeah, how to fit into a pageant dress? Or you
• 27:22
  know what I mean, like seriously, or you know where the best burger
• 27:25
  in Chicago Hairy Airport is? You know, because I used to travel a
• 27:27
  lot from my job, you know, there would not be any of the
• 27:30
  stuff I've written. So that's you know, that's quite limiting. And you
• 27:36
  don't take the journey if you are only you know, if you're not discovering
• 27:40
  new things along the way, right. And the other one is and I
• 27:44
  know there's a lot of writers who would disagree with me on this, but
• 27:45
  the other one is right, every single day. Well, I don't write
• 27:51
  every single day. Some days I just don't. And in between projects,
• 27:55
  I don't write every single day, And I know they say writers write every
• 27:59
  single day, but by that definition, I'm not a writer, so I
• 28:03
  think you are. I'll stack twelve published books up against that. Done very
• 28:10
  very well. Okay, let's flip it over. Looking back, what's the
• 28:14
  best piece of advice or something you learned along the way that really helped?
• 28:21
  So you know, you both know how this industry can turn on a dime
• 28:27
  and can often be very discouraging at times, especially if you've been in situations
• 28:33
  like I have, where your imprint got shut down or there's no marketing budget
• 28:38
  or you know whatever, So things can become really tough sometimes. And also
• 28:44
  the writing itself is tough, right, and there are days when it doesn't
• 28:47
  come out very very quickly, you don't hit that flow. Whatever. The
• 28:52
  best advice I've ever had came from my husband, and it was a day
• 28:55
  I was really discouraged and I was moping around, and he said, why
• 28:59
  don't you just go up to your office and have some fun? And I
• 29:02
  was like, what can't have fun? This is this is a job,
• 29:06
  this is my life work, blah blah blah. And you know what,
• 29:08
  he was absolutely right, because if you're having fun and you know, it
• 29:14
  comes down to paying out chunks of your life again for that story. And
• 29:17
  also, if you're having fun, you're gonna write a great story. You
• 29:21
  just are. Absolutely, that's so good. So okay, so we've established
• 29:26
  you don't write every day, and now with that later a task. So
• 29:36
  what when you do right? And probably I would imagine like you're looking by
• 29:41
  project by project these days. So what does your writing day look like?
• 29:48
  How how do you organize it? What do you do, How do you
• 29:51
  have a favorite drink? Do you have a favorite time? What does Tasca's
• 29:56
  writing day look like? Yeah, it's changed. You know, seven years
• 30:00
  ago I married a single father of four. So up to that point,
• 30:06
  I was writing in the wee hours two o'clock, three o'clock, four in
• 30:08
  the morning. And these days I can't do that like I used to.
• 30:15
  I'm tired. So you know, I've had I've had to really reevaluate.
• 30:22
  And you know, one thing I always tell other writers is honor the way
• 30:25
  you work best. However that is for you and it may change. So
• 30:29
  for me, I try to do my work in the morning because I know
• 30:33
  that there's going to come a point when my brain is just going to kind
• 30:37
  of shut down. So these days, it's the morning. I don't have
• 30:41
  a lot of structure. I've never been a very structured, routine person.
• 30:45
  But when I'm in it, I try to keep some velocity going with the
• 30:49
  project because if I take a day away, it's hard to get back.
• 30:53
  If I take two days away, it's just disastrous. So I really try
• 30:57
  to stay in the flow of the story, and I try to you know,
• 31:02
  it's really slow for me at the beginning. I might eat out one
• 31:03
  hundred words the first day, or you know, maybe hundred and fifty on
• 31:07
  a good day. You know, towards the end, it's it can be
• 31:11
  thousands, you know, in a day, but you're rolling by that point,
• 31:15
  and so I just try to keep that momentum going. And you know,
• 31:18
  towards the end, I quit washing my hair and I quit bathing because
• 31:22
  you know, it's like you're getting towards the end, and I don't answer
• 31:26
  emails and I just let everything go. But that's kind of just been the
• 31:30
  way I've done it. So is it you know, is it neat and
• 31:34
  tidy? No? Yeah? Yeah, I like what you said that you
• 31:40
  almost have to get warmed up. You know, you're you're just starting and
• 31:42
  you just kind of get back into that flow. And I'm slow. I'm
• 31:48
  slow at the beginning, and I will write a lot of words later on,
• 31:52
  but it is slow and I and it is very messy, and I
• 31:55
  have to say I don't like messy. I don't like seeing my first dress
• 31:59
  like that, but it's something I've just come to accept that it's going to
• 32:02
  be ugly when it comes out, and I'll fix it later. Well,
• 32:08
  are you a pancer or a planner? And I'm also kind of interested to
• 32:15
  know how this affected this current novel, this historical novel that you wrote.
• 32:22
  So what are you traditionally and then did that change with this novel? I
• 32:28
  am a planner, so I do need an outline. And I did something
• 32:31
  terrible with my tenth novel, which was the line between and I thought that
• 32:38
  I've written enough of these that it's inherent now and I don't need to outline,
• 32:44
  and I have achieved pancerdom, and so I went into it without an
• 32:49
  outline, and it was a mess, and my editorial letter was a mess,
• 32:53
  and I had to pull all the wires out of the whole thing.
• 32:57
  It delayed publication by a whole season, and then I had a shorter amount
• 33:00
  of time to do the sequel, which was a single light, and my
• 33:04
  confidence took this big hit, which was probably the worst thing of all,
• 33:07
  because you need to you know, you need to write out of a place
• 33:09
  of confidence, and so I have a planner. So when I got the
• 33:15
  Long March ho manuscript that Marcus had done, knowing what I know, and
• 33:21
  once again it comes down to honoring how you work best. So you have
• 33:24
  to know yourself and then you have to honor that. And I knew that,
• 33:28
  and I should have stuck with it. But anyway, so when I
• 33:30
  got Marcus's draft, I started pulling it apart into pieces. I'm a big
• 33:36
  believer in you know, standard three act structure, started kind of lining things
• 33:42
  up against the three act structure and seeing, you know, where do I
• 33:45
  feel like we could use a little more of something, or you know here
• 33:49
  or there. And also one thing that was really important to me that I
• 33:52
  added in and I planned for it too, was the dual timeline, because
• 33:58
  this is a war story, and every now and then we need a reprieve
• 34:00
  from the war. So we go back in time to the childhood of these
• 34:04
  three best friends as they're coming of age and it's a simpler time, and
• 34:07
  there's all these funny antics and things, and we needed that. So I
• 34:12
  try to be a little more methodical. I leave room for things to happen,
• 34:15
  because you can plan all you want, but when your boots on the
• 34:17
  ground, you're going to run into stuff, right, So I try to
• 34:21
  leave room for a little mystery. But I am a planner all right.
• 34:25
  Now. I think this is a fair question, since you profess to not
• 34:30
  write every day, but are you working on anything right now? What's next
• 34:35
  in theory? Yes? So I should say too that if I'm not writing
• 34:40
  physically that there's still stuff. You know, you guys, it's going on
• 34:45
  back there. So I've been working on a medieval thriller about the European witch
• 34:52
  hunts, so still historical, but just a little earlier now. And yeah,
• 34:59
  should be fun. Wow. Yeah, Costco, thanks so much for
• 35:05
  being on the podcast. Oh thanks for having me. It's a real pleasure.
• 35:07
  Thanks for your hard questions. We're just here to make life more difficult.
• 35:15
  They're gone and I'll take pictures with it, remember that. All right?
• 35:27
  Great? Thank you. Just a few parting words, Renee, do
• 35:30
  you have any announcements? I do, actually, um, we have created
• 35:37
  a free webinar for folks who want to take a conference prep course. So
• 35:45
  this is for anybody who has never been to a conference, or has just
• 35:47
  been to one or two, or just wants a refresher course on what to
• 35:52
  do to best prepare for a conference. It's loaded with a ton of information
• 35:58
  and you also get a free PDF download with even more information. So if
• 36:02
  you'll visit writing momentum dot com, there will be a link there and some
• 36:08
  information on how to join. It's prerecorded and you can watch it any timy
• 36:14
  fantastic. This is all, of course, part of the run up to
• 36:17
  writer khn our large group conference that's September one through four, Labor Day weekend,
• 36:23
  Oklahoma City. More than sixty presenters like Tasca Lee and just as successful
• 36:30
  and intelligent as she was. And we have contests and chances for critique,
• 36:37
  consultation classes and just fun stuff like the open mic and the evening round tables
• 36:43
  and karaoke night. I'm going to get Jesse in there somehow. I'll do
• 36:47
  it. Listen to wait and see. As long as you're okay with some
• 36:51
  tenacious D songs, I will happily do some arca there you got it.
• 36:54
  It's on tape now, all right. For more information, please visit our
• 37:00
  website, which is writercon dot com. Until next time, keep writing and
• 37:06
  remember cannot fail if you refuse to quit. See you next time.