Episode 18: A Time to Thrill – Conversation with Aime Austin – featuring Jenny Gardiner

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to a time to thrill. I'm your host, Amy Austin. In a few minutes, I'm gonna have the pleasure of speaking with Jenny Gardner. Oh, Jenny. So, okay, two things about Jenny a, you totally have to go check out her instagram. She's the Jenny Gardener. And the best thing about her instagram is this dog she has. She has a lab. I would call it a white lab. Maybe it's a golden. I'll ask her. Named Pippa. And this is, frankly, the cutest dog ever. And she has this way of capturing the dog's facial expressions that makes me laugh almost every day. And the interesting thing is that she adopted one of the dogs, and her daughter, I believe, adopted a sibling. And sometimes they play together, and it's just more dog hilarity. I have no idea. I'm normally not a pet Instagram person, but for something about the way that Jennie frames Pippa, that makes me smile all the time. So I would totally check that out. The other thing about Jennie is, so I met her, I don't know, let's say some years ago. Oh. In one of two ways. Either at a writing conference in San Francisco or in the alternative, we were part of this women's fiction blog, which I can't think of the name of. It's defunct, so. But it was a blog of women fiction writers, and we took turns writing blogs monthly, I think on a certain theme. And then we also put out an anthology, which is still up. It's free, and I'll include it in the show notes. So we had this blog in anthology. And so either I met her through that, or I met her at San Francisco, or I don't know which came first, though. Maybe the blog came first. I'd have to think about it. What was super interesting is, so we were in San Francisco for, let's say, a weekend or a long weekend, maybe probably a Thursday through Sunday type conference, and she's gone one day, and I'm like, where'd you go? And she's like, I went on a bike tour. I'm like, you went on a bike tour of San Francisco? Which, San Francisco is really small, but also really hilly. And she's like, yeah, you know, I take a bike tour in every city that I go to, and I was like, that's a super interesting idea, because, a, I love biking, and b, I love traveling. And before that, I don't know if I'd ever taken a bike tour. I'd have to think about it. But once she said that, I have done nothing but take bike tours in every city I've gone to, and they all have them. They're so interesting. I went through a bike tour of, like, Munich, Krakow, Poland, Paris, Versailles, Amsterdam. Oh, Athens, Greece, like, so all these places. Because of her, I started arranging bike tours, and my son, who's eleven, they used to give you a basket or something, but now he is old enough to ride his own bike. And it's super fun in a super different way to see cities. And it's just, you know, you get a little bit of exercise, you get to see the sights on a vehicle that's not a car, so you're not whizzing. Not a bus, because I hate tour buses, but also not on foot. So it's like, certainly a perfect hybrid. And if you do it with somebody else, then you don't have to spend all your time worrying about locking the bikes or where to put the bikes or whatever. It's all taken care of. Somebody delivers you a bike and they take it away at the end of the day. So it has become this pure joy in my life, and she has changed my life in that one way so dramatically. And so every time I take a bike tour, I send her a picture. The last, obviously, was 2019. And I look, Jenny is probably not sitting at home going, yay, more pictures of Amy's bike tours with her kid. But I remain forever grateful for changing the way I travel. So that's Jenny she will talk about. Hopefully I will ask her about her publishing journey because it's interesting. She writes women's fiction, which is maybe, I don't know. Sometimes I want to say romance is my first love, but I really do love women's fiction. But she also writes romance, and I am interested in that change or diversion in her career because she sort of ended publishing a different way than I did. I don't know. I guess we all have different paths, but we can certainly talk about with Jenny. So with no further ado, let's do it. Let's do this talk with best selling author Jenny Gardner. Hi, and welcome to a time to thrill. This is your host, Amy Austin. This month, I have the pleasure of speaking with Jenny Gardner. Hi, Jenny. [00:05:18] Speaker B: Hi. How are you? [00:05:20] Speaker A: I'm mostly good. How are you? [00:05:23] Speaker B: I'm well. I mean, yeah, this whole, like, coming out of pandemic thing is kind of weirding me out. So I've become like, kind of a walrus on the sofa this year, you know? So all of a sudden, going back into humanities, it's getting. It's taking some getting used to, for sure. [00:05:39] Speaker A: So don't do what I do. I overdid it this weekend, and I don't recommend it. I try to pack three activities in a day because I was so excited, but it was too much. I was just exhausted. On Sunday, I saw, actually, I don't know if you know, there's another name, Tamri Atherton. And I was like, well, let me go have lunch with Tamri. And then Maggie Mar had a party for her daughter's high school graduation this weekend, but that was at night. So by, like, midnight when I got home, I was like, oh, no, I went too far. [00:06:13] Speaker B: The whole gang there. And isn't Tamri, like, moving permanently to England or Scotland or something? [00:06:18] Speaker A: She is. So she's been in Scotland. She just flew back for a few weeks for some family stuff, and I wanted to see her because I don't think that I'm gonna have free entry into the UK this year. Gotcha. That's touch and go, so it would be easier, obviously, if I saw her there. So she was here for a week or two. She'll be back. And I was like, I'll see you here. And then maybe in Europe, but I don't know. I'm leaving next week, so. [00:06:44] Speaker B: So good. Yeah. My next door neighbor's daughter got married this weekend, and she was really good friends with my son, so my son and his girlfriend came in. My daughters couldn't make it, but Friday night was like the drop in thing, you know, people do on Friday night when they come in a wedding. [00:07:00] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:07:00] Speaker B: And I was kind of like, that's, like, my first indoor crowd thing I did. And I stepped foot in there, and it was, like, loud and crowded and no masks and, like, people. And I'm, like, the most outgoing person I know. And all of a sudden, I've kind of, like, cowered for a second, like, can I handle this? You know? I mean, I got used to it pretty quickly, but. So we had that Friday, we had the wedding Saturday, and then their brunch Sunday. So I'm the same thing. Like, by the end of that, I was like, I need a nap. [00:07:28] Speaker A: I know. So much. So. And I really. So I got to, like, hug all these people and I. People in person I haven't seen in a long time or even at a distance. Cause I think Maggie and I sat in her backyard and I waved at her children in husband. But I really miss it, and I'm glad I did it. But clearly I could do one event, a weekend for a little bit before I just dive into trying to go out all the time. [00:07:54] Speaker B: Yeah, I think we gotta warm up to this real world thing. [00:07:57] Speaker A: Absolutely. So I have a ton of questions for you, but first, okay, what breed is your dog? [00:08:04] Speaker B: She's a Labrador. She's a white lab. [00:08:07] Speaker A: Okay. That's what I thought I was like. I would just call it a white lab, but maybe I figured there's some other term. I don't know. And then what is the relationship of your dog to the other two dogs? Are they siblings? [00:08:17] Speaker B: I want my dog sitched down. Yes. Well, my daughters. My middle daughter lived in Australia for a while, and she always wanted a dog. Our labrador, that we'd had passed away while she was there and her first school coming home from Australia a couple years ago, she wanted a dog. So I went on this crazy hunt looking for a Labrador breeder for her, and I was at a UVA basketball game with my friend, and she said, oh, you're looking for a lab. Check out this one. And she showed me this picture on Instagram of her daughter's friend's lab, and it was just this beautiful white lab. I'm like, that's what we want. So my older daughter comes back, we organized this whole thing, and she's lined up for this lab. And then my younger daughter, who knew she was gonna be going to medical school, eventually decided that she needed to get a dog. Kind of. It was impulsive, because she wanted this dog to be trained and everything by the time she started med school, and she said, you know what? Our last dog was sassy. She said, I have a sassy sized hole in my heart. So our girls were living with us at the time. Kendall's boyfriend from Australia was here, and all of a sudden, they got these two puppies. So we had a house full with the two puppies. And of course, I was like, I want a dog. And my husband was like, no, no. We just lost our dogs. And so finally, the same breeder had another litter two years later. And that's. So my dog, Pippa is half sisters with Kendall and Jillian's dogs. [00:09:40] Speaker A: Ah. [00:09:41] Speaker B: They are like the little BFF's. They have a great time together. And my dog is like the wild party animal. And if she could wear a lampshade, she would. And so she's just always ready to go, go, go. And they're like, can we now? [00:09:55] Speaker A: But I feel like, Pippa, I'm gonna say this. Cause I spend way too much time on Instagram. Looking at your dog and all the dogs, I feel that Pippa has much more nuanced facial expressions than her half siblings. I swear to God, she cracks me. [00:10:12] Speaker B: Up right before I got on with you. She goes to the front door, and she's just. It's great that she's embarked. I love that. But when she wants to go out, she'll go, oh. And so I, like, believed her that she had to go to the bathroom, so I go to take her out, and I decided, just in case, to put her on the leash. And sure enough, my next door neighbor's daughter, who just got married, was just packing up her car and her two dogs, who my dog loves, and all of a sudden, she just tried to take off with me attached to her. [00:10:42] Speaker A: Leash, you know, and she didn't want. [00:10:43] Speaker B: To go to the bathroom. She just wanted to go party. [00:10:47] Speaker A: Can I say this? Oh. So I'm at the physical therapist this morning because I have shoulder issues. And now that you say this, I'm starting to wonder if being jerked by dogs who see squirrels or lizards or other dogs may have something to do with the shoulder thing. Because they keep asking me about an injury, and I'm like, no, I don't know. It just hurts. But you just. You may have just identified the mysterious source of my. [00:11:08] Speaker B: I'm a diagnostician, and I didn't know. [00:11:10] Speaker A: It, but I know that jerk. And it's always, well, it's always, well, for me, it's always sudden because. [00:11:16] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. [00:11:17] Speaker A: I'm always. [00:11:18] Speaker B: And usually it's pretty good. Except if there's, like, something like that there, you know? Right? Like, sorry, your arm does not matter to me. It's an extension of my need. [00:11:29] Speaker A: That's so funny. So she wanted to go socialize. It's like, well, if I just stand here and make noise, she'll take me out, and then I can do what I really want. [00:11:38] Speaker B: Well, it was funny. Cause on Saturday afternoon, they were doing some pictures before the wedding out front, and I had taken pip out to the front to go to the bathroom, and I saw the groom standing on the porch, and he said, yeah, Katie's coming out in a second. So I was gonna kind of wait out there, but I thought that felt a little stalkerish, so I didn't, and I came inside, and then pip sat at the door and just stared outside watching them. It was hysterical. He was like, totally. Remember, like, does your watch bewitched? Gladys rabbit's like, the nosy neighbor, you know? Totally pip. She's like, you know, zoning in on them, watching their every move while they're doing their wedding pictures? [00:12:14] Speaker A: No. So I actually had one dog who's deceased, maybe. Oh, God. Ten years at this point. But his name was Jake. And the best thing. Okay, the worst thing is that he barked all the time, but he was arrested. Who knows? But the best thing is that he had a bark for everything. So he would bark like he had a different bark for everything. Let me say this. So at some point, somebody was sitting at my house, and he barks, and I go, oh, it's FedEx. Like, are you kidding me? And I'm like, no, I'm not. He's got a FedEx bark a ups. Bark a post. You know, the post guy bark. And then the one for cars that are. That had the same engine as my ex husband's car. And so. But there was only a few. But because he had a sports car at that time. And so it would either be him or one of two other people. Cause I lived on a dead end street, and both houses, actually, where that dog lived. We're both on dead end streets. And so it was like, oh, it's either him or. Yeah, or Sean, this other attorney who lived across the street. I'm like, so it's Sean or my ex. And then I'd look out, and it would be one of the two. [00:13:14] Speaker B: That's so funny. You know, our. One of our rescue dog, we. Our last. We had two dogs at the same time. A lab and a rescue dog. And the rescue dog was also a mad barker. Oh, my gosh. She barked all the time. She barked at, like, a breeze, you know? [00:13:29] Speaker A: Yeah, no, we had one of those. And so when we rescued him, he was, you know, quite grateful and quiet. And then, you know, they come out of their shell, I don't know, two, three weeks. They're like, oh, by the way, this is my personal. [00:13:40] Speaker B: I'm actually a demon seed. You just didn't know it. Sorry. [00:13:44] Speaker A: But they. Dogs always humor me, because whenever I adopt them, they're so quiet, and I'm like, so how long is it gonna take before I know who you are? And then they're like, all right, well, now that I'm comfortable, let me just lay it all out. [00:13:55] Speaker B: You had it totally wrong. And that's how bridge was. We were not gonna get a dog. Our dog had passed away, and, you know, we just weren't gonna get a dog for a while. We just built a house, and we'd gone to the plow and hearth outlet, which is like a houseware kind of store. And they're having this big closeout set or like a yemenite fall sale. And we were looking for a fireplace. Green, in our new house, right? And we had company coming that night. We were in a hurry. It was a big, long drive. And we pull up there, and they have, like, the Greene county rescue League with a bunch of puppies. And so we're like, you kids stay with the puppies. We'll go look for a screen. So they just kept coming and badgering us that they wanted to take home this, like, precious little, tiny puppy with blue eyes. And I was like, no, no, no. My husband came first. And the funny thing is, we'd all said the next time we got a dog, it would be Bridget. And I came over to look at this puppy. Obligatory look, I wasn't going to get a puppy. And this woman was with her daughter, and she goes, Bridget. [00:14:53] Speaker A: And I was like, oh, no. [00:14:56] Speaker B: And so I, like, clutched that dog. I was like, she's ours. So we brought her home, and she was so passive, so docile, so chill. And it was only because she'd had, like, bad parasites. And as soon as they got rid of that, she was a wild dog. We called her the pickup truck dog living in the minivan van world because. Because she was, like, a wild beast and ran away all the time. She was a funny girl. [00:15:21] Speaker A: No, they're interesting. I've had many dogs. Well, no, I'm at the age where I've had many dogs over my lifetime, and who knows what the future holds dog wise? So I have a ton of questions for you. What? Okay, so I met you. Well, I have two main questions. One, you know, I'm forever grateful for the whole bike tour thing. Cause it changed how I travel. [00:15:43] Speaker B: I know. That's so good. [00:15:45] Speaker A: Forever. And I was saying in the intro, I am sure that you're not like, hey, look, she's on a bike tour in Munich. And I'm like, I'm gonna send you a picture every time I go, because it just. [00:15:54] Speaker B: Way to see the world. I love it so much. [00:15:56] Speaker A: It is. And I don't know why I didn't think of it before. I swear, I have done it before, and it didn't stick for reasons I can't imagine, because I go biking almost every day, like, in my real life. And so I don't know why it didn't translate. But as soon as you said that, I was like, oh. And so, like, you know, I subsequently have done it, like, a couple times in France. I've done it in England, Amsterdam, which is obviously easy. But, like, krakow and then Munich. And then even Athens, which is like biking through LA. So I don't know if I ever recommend that, but it was interesting nonetheless. [00:16:29] Speaker B: A little tricky sometimes. [00:16:31] Speaker A: Yeah. Not my favorite. [00:16:34] Speaker B: We went to that conference in San Francisco that one time, right? And I stayed an extra day or two, and I did San Francisco. I did a bike tour, which is really fun. And I thought it was going to be all steep hills, but, yeah, there's these great ways around it all in San Francisco, which was nice because I'm not a fan of hills. [00:16:49] Speaker A: I wondered about that because that's one of the reasons why I wouldn't do it. So I have a friend. Well, she left to move to Alameda after she had twins, but she lived in San Francisco for 20 years. Like, when we all graduated, she moved there instead of moving somewhere else, and she was biking all the time. She lived in the Marina district, but those hills, and I don't mind hills. Like, if it's a longer trip, but not to go out casually, like, that's not the height of fun. So when you said San Francisco, I was like, yeah, I don't know. Like, do you bike around the financial district or the war? [00:17:20] Speaker B: But it, like, it minimizes a ton of the hills when you're driving, when you're riding through San Francisco, because, trust me, I otherwise would never, ever, ever do it. [00:17:30] Speaker A: So I'll add that to the list when I. When, I don't know, the next time I. I don't know, go somewhere so it feels distant. So how did you start publishing? [00:17:41] Speaker B: So I was like, well, I was young. God, that's hard to believe. I was young back then, but I had three little kids, and I was kind of, like, bogged down in the fog of motherhood for a while, you know? So you're just not getting anything as much done in your brain. And the kids had gotten a little older and independent, and, I mean, you know, for years, I just read, like, a page in People magazine before I passed out at night. And then I started reading again. And every time I was reading a book, I think I could write better than this. And then it just kind of was this weird little thing. I was talking to somebody. I don't know if it was, like, with a group of friends. We were out with friends, and we were talking about this one guy we knew who was just, like, really kind of uptight and just not a really fun guy. I would never want to be married to him, right? And I said, God, he'd be, like, sleeping with word cleaver, like, you remember? You know? [00:18:36] Speaker A: Yes. [00:18:37] Speaker B: And then I was like, wow, that'd be a really good book title. And so then I just decided to make a book that fit the title. And that's how I kind of started. It was just. I took this, you know, I just took this woman who had, like. It was like a coming of middle age novel, you know? And so it was a woman who had kind of thought she married mister, right? And then wakes up one day with five kids, and she's married to mister always, right? And I, you know, I just kind of based it on this kind. The concept of that guy. But it was kind of just like this amalgamation of, you know, you know how you sit around with a bunch of women drinking wine and people are bitching about their partners. [00:19:14] Speaker A: Yes. [00:19:15] Speaker B: And you just kind of throw all those things in the mix, and that's what came out, you know? [00:19:20] Speaker A: Wow, that's so interesting. I always. I think now I just call it, like, the hubris of new writers, because the only way that we ever get there is we read books, we go, okay, I could do better than this. And then you sit. You sit down to do it, and you go, well, this is harder than I thought. [00:19:34] Speaker B: Who do you think you are? And then you think you can sell it. [00:19:38] Speaker A: No, I know, exactly. But it's just without that hubris, I don't know if anything would ever get. But it's just that. And I only had it once where I was like, oh, I could. I could. And then I sat down, and it took. It was so much harder than I ever thought it was. I don't know. [00:19:55] Speaker B: Exactly. [00:19:55] Speaker A: Oh, my God, it took. We're not gonna discuss the number of years it took to finish one book that I had to rewrite, like, eight times because it was just a mess. But it got better. But it was just that first it's the hubris. And then I was, like, dogged. I was like, well, I can do it, you know, and I just wouldn't give up. [00:20:12] Speaker B: Look at you now. [00:20:13] Speaker A: Right? I know, but it was just. It's. Well, it's hubris. Probably. Post determination, maybe. Yeah. [00:20:20] Speaker B: I mean, then you get dug in. Exactly. I'm not going to screw this up. [00:20:24] Speaker A: Or even when I finished the first book, I was like, oh, well, if I can write one, I can write the second one. The second one will be better. We can have a whole conversation about that. [00:20:31] Speaker B: But with so many authors, like, the best sellers and their next book is awful, you know? So it's definitely a challenge. [00:20:40] Speaker A: It is. It is. But I wrote the first, first two or three books before I had a publishing contract. So there was no pressure. It was just me. And then I sold book two and book three, and then book one lingered a long time, but it's available now, so. But it was a. That was. That was a slog. Thank you. [00:20:58] Speaker B: Self publishing. [00:20:59] Speaker A: I know. Exactly. I had an agent for that book for years. I'm sure everybody in New York has rejected that book, but. But it's actually my bestseller, so I'm good with it. [00:21:09] Speaker B: That's awesome. [00:21:11] Speaker A: I'm good. It all worked out in the end. So one of the things I wanted to know is I like, so I have a love. Okay. I read. I'll read almost any genre, maybe not fantasy and science fiction on a regular basis. I've read both, but it's not my thing. But everything else I'll pretty much read. But my two biggest loves, I think, are romance and women's fiction. And they may be split equally, but what, do you still go back and forth or. No. [00:21:40] Speaker B: You know, I used to be only women's fiction, and then I kind of call it the trauma, drama, and angst thing. I got really tired of it, you know, like, it just felt like women's fiction got super Oprah fied and it just got so much more gloomy. And so I kind of diverted away from that, which is when I kind of got into more reading, like, rom coms. I. I'll read a lot of different things, but I'm like you. I won't do fantasy. That just doesn't do it for me or Sci-Fi or anything. You know, I like good suspense as long as it's not, like, graphically violent. I don't like that. [00:22:18] Speaker A: Yeah. No, no. [00:22:20] Speaker B: And I also, you know what? I don't like dystopian fiction because, like, to me, reading and writing, frankly, is escapist. So I don't want to go to the end of the dismal world where everything sucks. You know what I mean? I can just turn on the news for that. So, yeah, I kind of definitely. I haven't really picked up much women's fiction in a long time. I'll pick up other things, you know, and this is going to sound super weird, but in the midst of the pandemic, when I was wide awake at 03:00 a.m. every morning, I had finished, I had read a bunch of novels that I really liked, and then I was out of a book at three in the morning, and I was on my Kindle and I didn't want to turn it really brighten because I didn't want to wake my husband up. And so I couldn't find another book to read without, like, doing that. But I knew I, one of my three book series had been a book, bub, like, the day before, and I had downloaded it because I hadn't downloaded it before, right? And so I just clicked on it, thinking, man, I'll fall asleep in a couple minutes. I'll be good. And I hadn't read any of my books before. I mean, after I wrote them, right? And so I started reading it, and I was like, I really like this. This is good. So I read my, all of my books over the past several years. [00:23:36] Speaker A: Oh, wow. [00:23:36] Speaker B: And I was really happy to say that I like them all because I literally, they're out of my brain the minute I'm done writing the book stories or characters or anything about them. And so, yeah, I kind of gorged my own books, which sounds really weird, doesn't it? [00:23:54] Speaker A: No, it's interesting. It's actually. It's super interesting because I always intend to reread them. And sometimes I'm looking in a series when I'm doing series work, sometimes I have to flip through them and I will get, well, get sidetracked. Everything sidetracks me. But one of the things, actually, I did during the pandemic, I didn't read all my books is I did. I was having a thought about first lines. Maybe I was reading an article. Maybe somebody had said something about the first line of every book. So I got out a huge piece of paper, keep, like, one of those, like, 18 by 24 pads, and I can put stuff on the wall. And I wrote out the first line of every book I've ever written. And, okay, I'm gonna be honest, only three of them are good. But I know it's not my strength. I realized that when I wrote them all out. I was like, oh, okay, well, it's not the best times and worst of times. I mean, you know? I know. [00:24:41] Speaker B: So it was a dark and stormy night, right? [00:24:44] Speaker A: And those are some. Two of my favorite first lines. So I was just like, okay, but one of the first lines I wrote is a book about sex trafficking. Son of a. Happy topic. But it's one. But it's one of my favorite books of my own. Like, it's just because the character is so clearly speaking and rings so true for me. But that's so interesting that you read your own books. Because I don't. Well, I don't. I guess I have all the time in the world, I haven't done it. But now, having done it, oh, I have so many questions. Do you have, like, a sense of the progression of your writing in terms of either craft or a theme or some sort of other evolution? [00:25:24] Speaker B: It was at first because I started reading what I downloaded, which was one of my book bub deals. And so it wasn't in sequence of what I'd written in the order of how I've written my novels. But after that, I kind of went back and started going in order. And it was, I thought it was informative to see how. How my writing fine tuned more than I thought it had, how I was happy that I wasn't more redundant because I was afraid I would have been. I didn't have as many cliches as I worried about. [00:26:04] Speaker A: That's great. [00:26:04] Speaker B: I can get cliche driven. I mean, I'm as a journalism major and, you know, you kind of. You come up being, I was tv news. So if you watch tv news, it's just one cliche after the other. That's every intro on a tv news program. Right. [00:26:19] Speaker A: Right. [00:26:19] Speaker B: It's painful but true. So some. That's a bad habit to shake, for me, to be honest. But I really like smart writing and smart ass writing. And so I held quite true to that in all of my stuff. So I laughed out loud, which made me laugh, that I laughed at my. It's kind of weird, right? But it was reassuring to me. And one of really, the overriding theme is, I mean, I've written a lot of books. I've published, I don't know, almost 40 books, and yet you can get, I don't know if demoralize is the right word. And so it gave me some kind of a boost of self confidence again in my writing because I was starting to just kind of feel like a little in the trenches with it and not as enthusiastic about it and stuff like that. And when I read those, I was kind of like, well, I'm ready to read my next book, but I haven't written it. [00:27:19] Speaker A: So. [00:27:20] Speaker B: Got cracking, you know? So that was good. [00:27:22] Speaker A: No. So sometimes, I'm gonna be honest, I call it my journeyman job, because some days it just feels like, well, let me just get up and, like, you know, make the donuts or bake the bread or whatever it is. It's like, well, let me just do this thing, and then tomorrow I'll do more of this thing until the end. Yep. And in the pandemic, well, I didn't finish any books in 2020, I started three and finished. And I finished two of those this year. Wrote an extra one because I get sidetracked. And then I'm really. Well, I've taken a hiatus. Gonna be honest, but I'm going to finish the other one this year. I was just thinking about it yesterday, and I was like, I should open that again. [00:28:00] Speaker B: But the hiatus thing was all self care, so that's good. All good. [00:28:04] Speaker A: Yeah. But it was interesting. One of the distractions was having a child at home during zoom. So he is a little. A little bit of an extrovert. A lot of an extrovert. So rather than be in his room, say, with. With the door closed, which I've heard other children do, or even with headphones, he's just got, like, zoom, like, full on volume with, like, lots of, like, you know, ten and eleven year old kids talking all day. [00:28:26] Speaker B: Oh, my gosh. That was perfect for you. Right? [00:28:29] Speaker A: I know. [00:28:30] Speaker B: Cause they like middle grade fiction. [00:28:32] Speaker A: Oh, my God. If I hear anybody say, that's sus. One more time, I swear to God. [00:28:38] Speaker B: To the tweens. Yes. [00:28:41] Speaker A: Like, all these things. I was like, is this, like, slang? I was like, this is slang. I don't even know. Just so many different phrases. And then my son makes fun of me, but with that, I wasn't able to have the quiet concentration that I obviously require for writing. And it took me. I have noise canceling headphones, but the little chord is kind of short. And so it took me till halfway through the pandemic where I realized I could buy wireless headphones. And I was like, wow, this took, like, way too long to figure out, like, how to do it. And then things got better. But you are one of the few authors I know who went from women's fiction to romance, because usually the transition is the other way. [00:29:21] Speaker B: Right, exactly. In fact, when I first got into writing, I met this woman. I guess I read her novel, and I sent her an email and just said, hey, I really liked your book. And we became friends, and she would kind of give me. She kind of took me under her wing a little bit, and she was like, well, you know, you are going to need to prepare yourself, because you're probably going to get thrown in the pink ghetto, which I didn't know what she was talking about. And she was, like, publishing houses, like, to throw women into romance until they think they're ready to put them in women's fiction. And I was, like, writing women's fiction. And so it was kind of funny because I didn't come up reading romance or anything like that, and it just wasn't in my repertoire. And I guess then I guess chick lit was coming into its own for twelve days. And so I read chick lit until that died a quick death. And at that point, you know, I did just start to get tired of women's fiction. And then I was really early into indie publishing, publishing my own books online. And I have the voice that is very strong. And oftentimes you have an editor that either likes it or doesn't like it. [00:30:35] Speaker A: Yes. [00:30:35] Speaker B: And especially a lot of editors were like, you know, right out of Vassar or whatever, and they just weren't, you know, mine's like kind of smart alecky voice and stuff, and they weren't getting me. And so I was kind of tired of dealing with, you know, submissions to editors who didn't get my voice. And I also had had, why? I guess by then I'd had my second book published with a publishing house, and I. I got orphaned. My editor left in the middle of it all, which is heartbreaking. And I got tired of the many vagaries of publishing house publishing, which was why I then switched over to indie. And what was selling really well was romance. And I was like, I can do that, which is how I got into publishing. I can do that. I can write that. So I just kind of started writing that and I started thinking, like, what are the movies I like? I always like romantic comedies. I like Nora Ephron stories. I let you know what I mean. And so it was a really easy segue for me. And, you know, it was romantic comedy series in particular that I just started getting into. And my first one that I did was I was really interested in just doing like a riff on roman holiday. So my series, it's raining men came from that. The first book from that was, I think, is that my series? God, I forget the names of everything. Something in the air. H E I R. Right. So it was basically, you know, I created a fictional european royal principality or whatever, and had a prince come to America and end up having to escape his, his fate that he didn't want, you know. [00:32:14] Speaker A: Right. [00:32:14] Speaker B: And so that was a fun series to write. And that was a good challenge because I had to just really go to a whole different zone to write that because, I mean, I didn't have the whole royal thing. I had to do a lot of research. It was, you know, this world with people with money and fashion and, you know, all that kind of stuff. So I had to do a lot of research on that. Which was funny because, you know, once you start doing that online, they start feeding you ads for all that stuff. [00:32:43] Speaker A: Yes. [00:32:45] Speaker B: For like, you know, expensive jewelry and the best real estate in the world and, you know, luxury yachts and it. Totally wrong. [00:32:53] Speaker A: That's so hilarious. [00:32:55] Speaker B: But, yeah, so, I mean, it was, it was a fun digression for me, but I also have this little part of me that kind of wants to write something meatier, which is what I'm also working on. So. [00:33:07] Speaker A: So then the question is what? Okay, if you. So if you didn't grow up reading romance. What? Well, not how, because, I don't know. I grew up reading romance. I don't have a good way to figure it out the other way. How did you learn to write romance? Because it's fairly, it's fairly. It's a fairly structured type of writing. [00:33:25] Speaker B: Yeah. And guess what? I didn't do that very well because at first I wasn't even, because, you know, I didn't realize that you kind of basically went chapter to chapter point of view. And so I was doing like, head hopping, which I was then told was like, you can't head hop, which is funny because you read books where people are head hopping all the time. [00:33:43] Speaker A: Yes. [00:33:43] Speaker B: You know, and for, if listeners don't know what that is, it's just basically changing point of view in the middle of a paragraph or whatever. And that can be confusing to readers, but it can work, too, you know? So I had to kind of just find my way as I did it. And also, like, writing snappy dialogue was a little bit tricky. My narrative fiction I had, but the dialogue bit I had to work with. But I definitely got that because, you know, again, I laughed a lot at my stuff. So that was good. Maybe I was just really bored. It was a pandemic. So, yeah, I think it was just that. And I think really just watching romantic comedy movies informed that storytelling, too. [00:34:29] Speaker A: Was that a favorite movie genre? [00:34:32] Speaker B: Oh, completely. Yeah, exactly. I mean, I am not that person who goes to see slasher blood anything. I just like, you know, I'm so happy Netflix has so many rom coms. [00:34:43] Speaker A: Now that, that, exactly. That is very true. They have a huge cache of them. So what? Well, okay, you were just talking about the change of women's fiction, and I think I hear what you're saying. So I have been reading less of it, but I'm not sure. How can I say this? Okay. There's a book by this author named, I want to say, Robin Lee called. Oh, I can see the title. It's like something about you or something. I'd have to think of the title. And it was really popular a year ago, or maybe during the pandemic, but I'd read it before, which was sort of like the older, the way women's fiction was in the eighties and nineties. When I read it was like, basically a woman with a problem, but not cancer. Or. [00:35:29] Speaker B: That's the thing. It's now got to be like some horrible disease or whatever. I don't want that. Yeah. [00:35:34] Speaker A: No. So I do miss those and. But part of me wonders if they still exist. So I get ads because, you know, obviously it's the same with the yachts. I don't get yacht ads, but I do get a lot of women's fiction emails and things like that. And every time I read the description, well, adirondack chairs. I don't. I can't with the Adirondack chairs, but. [00:35:53] Speaker B: Exactly. And we have painted toenails on the beach. [00:35:59] Speaker A: You know, there's fireflies in a jar, whatever. So. [00:36:01] Speaker B: Yes, the rain boots in front of the colorful house. [00:36:05] Speaker A: Yes. So I. So, I mean, I know. Look, I know because I'm, like, clicking on it, but it always starts with. With so and so died. And the heroine is gonna go back to this small town, a lot of them coastal towns, which is maybe why they had round, like, chairs. And then she's gonna find the true meaning of home, the true meaning of family, the true meaning of love, or the true meaning of whatever the fourth thing is. And. Okay, so I wanna read less of that, but I wonder if the other books still exist and are just not advertised. And I had this conversation with Kilby Blades as well, who writes women's fiction, obviously, but she can't write, you know, enough books to feed all of us. And I'm just. I don't know if those other books still exist because I do like the angsty thing. Even if there's a. There's a little bit of romance. That's great. But I do like those women's. Women have, like, an internal journey that doesn't have to do with, like, death. [00:36:57] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. That doesn't have people dying, doesn't have, you know, child with cancer. Yeah. Or know some, like, violent thing that happened to them. [00:37:04] Speaker A: Right. [00:37:05] Speaker B: Yeah, totally. I don't know. You know, it's. I think I just stopped looking, to be honest. [00:37:09] Speaker A: Well, that's what I'm wondering too, because I wonder whether was I overd saturated with the rain boots and the Adirondack chairs such that I just. I just stopped looking because it just. I kept, like, clicking and clicking and clicking or whatever it is. And then you're like, okay, well, it's ten of these. I need to walk away. [00:37:23] Speaker B: And you know what? Like, on bookbub. I mean, I subscribe to bookbub. Who doesn't, right? And when I get my daily feed, you know, I'll see the women's fiction that's being offered there. And I'm like, does this differentiate from anything else that I've already read like this? And, you know, oftentimes, it just doesn't compel me enough to do it, you know? [00:37:42] Speaker A: No. [00:37:43] Speaker B: In my Kindle. But I haven't picked them up. [00:37:45] Speaker A: Neither have I. But now I miss it so much that now I think I want to go look for it to see whether or not those other books still exist, because I do like that kind of story. I think maybe even more than I like romance. [00:38:00] Speaker B: Okay, then you're gonna have to pick up sleeping with ward Cleaver, girl. [00:38:05] Speaker A: It's on my list now. I mean, I have a long flight. [00:38:11] Speaker B: And listen to me. Now that I think about this, I reread all of my rom coms, but I have not reread my women's fiction novels. And I probably have, I don't know, six or seven of them, and I haven't reread them yet. Isn't that funny? I stopped with the rom coms. I guess I like escapism a lot. I don't know. Go figure. I have to get to them and see. I will say this. When I got my rights back to ward Cleaver, and I had to kind of go through it again before I published it. I had to def that book a lot. So much f bomb in there. I couldn't believe it myself, quite frankly. But even for that, for women's fiction, that was very. It didn't follow the rules at all, which was why it was hard to get a publishing deal from that book. [00:39:02] Speaker A: But ultimately, they did. I mean, you did sell it. [00:39:05] Speaker B: Well, what happened with it is I won a national fiction contest. And the prize was that. And weirdly enough, because, again, I never even read romance. It was a context sponsored by Dorchester Publishing, which was the last of two independent publishing houses in New York City at the time, and Romantic Times magazine, which I didn't even know about. And so it was really, truly a marketing contest. Contest. But it was pitched as a fiction contest. And, you know, you submitted to the publishing house, and they chose the finalists. And interesting. The editor was a male and that's who picked my book. And that didn't really kind of surprise me, actually, because I grew up in a house with three brothers, so I think that informs my writing voice a lot. And so it was kind of, huh. Yeah. That makes sense that a guy would probably like my writing voice. You know, I don't know if that makes sense or not. But anyhow, with that novel, the end of my first chapter is, like, leading up to, you know, it's a Sunday night. Life is just bogging her down. She's got all these kids. She's tired, her stress. Her husband's checked out, and it's Sunday night because he, like, wants to get laid. And she's dealing with all the hassles of, you know, kids and bedtime and everything. And then at the end of the chapter, she just calls him the fucker, which is not romance. Right. [00:40:34] Speaker A: Right. [00:40:35] Speaker B: It was co sponsored by Romantic Times. They wanted to slot it as romance. [00:40:40] Speaker A: Wow. [00:40:40] Speaker B: So it was. It was an interesting dilemma because I won the contest, really, because it was a marketing contest. Each month you had to submit a sample chapter and then people voted on it. But the goal was to get as many people voting as possible. And I was really good at getting that out to as many people to vote. Right. And so I'd like to say that it was my book that won, but I really think it was my efforts to get people to vote for my book that won. And so I went to. What's the big book conference that they used to have in New York City every year? [00:41:13] Speaker A: Oh, yes. Wow. [00:41:15] Speaker B: Yes. Anyhow, I went to that, and the guy who was the sales guy, the national sales guy for Dorchester, looked at me, he said, I don't know what I'm supposed to do with your book. I wish I hadn't won. Oh, gosh. So sweet. Thank you. But it was kind of, you know, because publishing houses are very, you know, they've got their system down. [00:41:39] Speaker A: They do. [00:41:41] Speaker B: They don't know what to do with it, you know? [00:41:42] Speaker A: Oh, and that's the. And that's. Well, I think that is really what gave birth to a lot of self publishing because there were so many stories. I remember this when I was reading a lot of ton of romance that were category romance when I was 13, 1415. And I was like, well, I like these. But every so often they would publish one that was different. And I was like, okay, I want more of this. But by the time they published the writer's second or third book, they had, like, whip the writer into line. You know what I'm saying? [00:42:09] Speaker B: Yeah, totally. [00:42:10] Speaker A: And I'm like, oh, but you bought her. You bought this person's book with unique voice, but now you want her to sound like everyone else. [00:42:16] Speaker B: I'm going to change you. Yeah. I mean, they do it with music, too, don't they? Yeah, Kelly or whatever. So. Yeah, exactly. You have to do this, and that's it. [00:42:24] Speaker A: And I found that to be somewhat disappointing. So self publishing, at least, has expanded that, because there's so many of the kinds of stories that I always wanted to read that are now. That are now available. And I was. And I'm like, well, thank goodness, you know, for that. But did you start self publishing in 2013 or earlier than that? [00:42:42] Speaker B: Yeah, I started really early. I don't know, 20 1011. I was kind of like. It was frustrating because. So my first novel was with Dorchester, and when the economy died in whatever, that was 2008. [00:42:57] Speaker A: Right. [00:42:58] Speaker B: Dorchester went under. [00:42:59] Speaker A: It did. [00:42:59] Speaker B: I remember that money that I never saw. [00:43:02] Speaker A: Right. [00:43:02] Speaker B: And my agent, I had just sold a memoir with my agent to a publishing house, and that was. Things were getting really bad in publishing then. Everything was really kind of tenuous. And then my agent, I mean, my editor quit the business altogether in the middle of my book. And so I was just frustrated. And my literary agency launched its own imprint, and I was like, this is really a great idea. I'm going to go ahead and put a book with them, because it was a book my agent had been chopping, and it wasn't going anywhere because publishing was upside down at that point, right. And it would have worked out, but my agency just wasn't ready and hadn't done it well, and they just didn't do what they needed to do to get it going. So all of a sudden, I just was like, all right, okay. In three years, I've got, like, these three books flapping in the wind. This is not okay. And at that point, you know, I was really early with a Kindle, and to me, this was like a game changer, to have all your books in one tiny device like that. And, you know, I was like, it just needs competition. And then the iPad came out, right? And so I knew things were gonna go differently fast. And it's funny, I had been at RWA the year. I don't know when. It was 2009, 2008, something like that. And they. Every year at RWA, which is, like, the romance writers of America, which was, like, the conference for most women writers, they would have a panel with, like, industry professionals, and then the audience was women who basically were desperate for publishing deals. [00:44:34] Speaker A: Yes. [00:44:35] Speaker B: So they would, you know, basically kind of suck up to them. Right. So they would ask these questions of the industry people, and somebody said, well, what about self publishing? And they're like, oh, 20 years from now, maybe, but not now. [00:44:50] Speaker A: Oh, my gosh. [00:44:51] Speaker B: Very next year, everything had changed because so many romance writers who had been kind of the bread and butter of publishing, but they weren't, you know, they were the ones that were just kind of cranking things out, whereas they weren't like the, you know, John Grisham's of publishing. Right, right. Publishing put all their money on the John Grisham's and didn't want to deal with any of the mid list authors. And so all these romance authors got their rights back to their books and started publishing themselves. And most of them were smart, savvy women who knew what to do and knew how to market and everything and changed the game overnight. And so the next year at that conference, it was so funny, because every year, women would just suck up to these people on the panel, and all of a sudden, it was like, what have you done for me lately? And it was a really empowering moment to see that, because all of a sudden, so many writers woke up. And especially, you know, for years, women writers have always been secondary to men. You've got men who can write like, what's kind of termed dick lit, which is like chick lit only for guys. You know, it's a slacker guy who's unable to commit, who has a lousy job and just floats around. And they would get paid five times what a woman would get paid for a chiclet novel, you know, and get much more muscle with the publishing house behind it. And so all of a sudden, to see these women just, like, take the power and do it themselves was great. And by then, and there was one other guy who was a very, very. He'd just done a lot of things in publishing over the years, and he had stood up on a panel and he said, you know, if you're not doing indie publishing right now, the train's gonna run you overdose. And it was super early in it. And so at that point, I was already, you know, getting it all together and getting my books in that way. And for me, it was really just a decision of putting it in my control more than you could have with New York publishing houses, because everything's out of your control, whether it's your, you know, your cover or your title or your, you know, sometimes even your name. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I was just over that. And at the time, the buyer for Barnes and Noble decided everything about, you know, whether your book was going to come out xy time or whether the COVID was going to be blue or red or, you know, all kinds of things. And I was just kind of over it, you know? So at that point, for me, it made a lot of sense to do it. And I was glad I got in early. It was because it got much more complicated. So the funny thing is, now I'm kind of like, maybe I should go back to New York houses because, you know, being your own publishing house is a lot and I don't love that either. And it's gotten more complicated. [00:47:31] Speaker A: No. So there's so many issues. I mean, but I remember. I remember those conferences I went to a couple, and then I had a baby. So then, then I don't know what. There's a couple years that got lost in there. But I do remember that I, after my first, my first RWA conference, I want to say was like 2006, seven, something like that. Whatever they do, it's San Francisco, I think. And I had no kid then. And I remember that feeling that I was being. I was paying $600 or whatever it was for the privilege of being offered up to the publisher. And I felt like a lamb led to slaughter because there was so much smooching. I can't say that word right now, of those editors. And I still know them all by name because it was like they were like rock stars at this place. And there's like 2000 women and like 20 rock stars, you know, and sort of, you know, hoping that you get to that party or that dinner. And that was such a. It was my first conference like that. And it was startling. And I was like, okay, but if I want this, this is what I'm gonna have to do. But that's about the time when a lot of the authors I know who, especially those writing category romance, we're topping out at 5000 a book. So they were getting whatever that would be the advance, especially for a couple of the Harlequin lines. And they knew that they were not gonna get any more dollars after that. And that's not a lot, given the effort it takes to write a book. [00:48:52] Speaker B: Not at all. [00:48:53] Speaker A: And it was really starting to be limited to that. And so people I know were, especially people who are living on it, were cranky. Well, I have to do ten or whatever it is to pay this mortgage or pay for my kids to go to college or whatever the thing is. And that was an interesting time. And then it changed right after that, especially with the Harlequin lawsuit. There were all these things that were sort of fomenting publishing with ways to not pay authors, and then authors got out from under it. But it was so I'll never understand. I have friends still, I think, who work in New York publishing, but I went to one of those schools in the east coast where a lot of people went into publishing. So when I first graduated from college, they were like so into supporting these poets and these guys. But the money that was keeping the lights on was all these women writing these mid list books, you know, 100%. [00:49:40] Speaker B: And then they dumped them all. [00:49:41] Speaker A: They did. [00:49:42] Speaker B: And then they had the best revenge, like, see ya, see ya, bucks, goodbye. [00:49:48] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:49:48] Speaker B: And that was kind of the beauty and the not beauty of Amazon was that I used to watch the Amazon folks at conferences, you know, starting from around 2006 when I would go to them, and they were just a different breed. They were very buttoned up and honest to God, even like the one guy, his jeans would be like, ironed, you know, and they were very, very corporate and business like and, but hungry. And you could just really get that sense. And I knew that things were happening there. But publishing was dismissing Amazon constantly. Like Amazon, whatever. And at the time they were this infinitesimally small percentage of sales of books, right. And then all of a sudden when the Kindle came along and Amazon did what they do, which is make books a loss leader, so they offered a authors, you know, 75% royalty versus, you know, the royalty we were getting for books with a publishing house was between like four and 7%. [00:50:46] Speaker A: I know the six, you know. Yeah, I remember it. [00:50:48] Speaker B: Yeah, of course I'll take 75%. You know, ultimately, I was saying this all along like a, don't put your eggs in one basket because they're using us and we will be cast aside one day too. [00:51:01] Speaker A: Right. [00:51:02] Speaker B: Which certainly happened to, but, you know, milk it dry as much as you can and use it however you can to try to advance your business, you know. [00:51:11] Speaker A: So, no, it was, it was a super, it's been a, it's, it has been an interesting, like, decade plus. Like, it's just been, I don't know. I don't know. Like, I watched it. I mean, I was, you know, participated in it. So it was just interesting to see how that went along. What so and so I do know a few authors. Well, I know a lot of authors, but I know a few who are having that sense where they want to move back to traditional publishing. But I'll ask you this because this is something we talk about all the time. Backlist management is like no joke. So what publishing houses often did is they just didn't do it. So I mean they would keep your rights and then if your 15th book or fifth book or whatever it was became successful, then they would recover and you know, redistribute your old books. But basically they let them languish, you know, and that's it is what it was. And there was no ebook so it, you know, they remaindered it or pulped it or whatever. But what is I guess one of the things that and my author friends and I are talking about that's becoming sort of daunting is the backlist management. So I was just talking grace, an author about this and we're talking about like recovering all the titles or dealing with distribution, which is the thing I was telling you about before we started recording, like dealing with distribution issues. And those kinds of things are taking up more and more time because having like, I don't know, when I started, you know, I had like 2345 books and that was utterly manageable. But now, you know, I have 25 and they're like in audio or in, you know, paper and all these things or in bundles or whatever, whatever the stuff, you know, it is and that's it becomes a lot more to manage and I'm spending, I and a lot of others, even with assistants and things like that are spending a lot more time managing the backlist or translations or whatever. Then you have as you know, there's only 24 hours a day, then more than time you can dedicate to the front list. [00:53:09] Speaker B: Well and that's like me failing to manage the backlist well you know, which I should be doing better than I am and like now I'm like, I have have, you know, I think maybe 40, 39 books but I think about doing audio on them but I haven't because that's a lot of money to outlay for that. Is it worth doing? You know, most of my books sell in digital, not in print. I don't do a lot of print sales. So would that be the same with audio, you know, and same with translations? It's, I should be doing that and I'm not, which is kind of why I'm like maybe I should get someone else to do it for me, right? [00:53:39] Speaker A: Yes. And so, yes, so that's one of the things I don't know. So the last publishing contract I signed, I want to say the royalty percentage was 25, maybe 40, maybe it got up that high, I'd have to think about it. Well yeah, but that was like 20, it was probably 2012 or 2013. And at that point they were having difficulty, you know, that 5006% was being hard. And I think by then the Harlequin lawsuit had been decided and it was clear that people were spending a lot of ways to figure out how not to pay you, so. But those were ebook only, I think the last contract and even then it was, it was not advantageous. I don't, I don't have that contract anymore. [00:54:23] Speaker B: That's the thing about it is it never truly will be. You know, that's, I always say if I went back to New York houses, I would only do it if I knew that they were guaranteeing their marketing muscle behind it, because they can do that if they choose to, right. They just don't, you know, usually. So I always kind of liken it to a, one of those giant fishing trawlers in the middle of the ocean where they cast out like a hundred mile net where they're looking for big tuna and they collect all this other fish that just die in the process, you know, and I don't want to be that little dead fish in the net, you know, I want to be the tuna. So how do you do that? Right, right. [00:55:01] Speaker A: Because I've been the dead fish and it's not great. [00:55:03] Speaker B: I know, right. [00:55:03] Speaker A: You know, you're in these offices, groups with the same publisher in printer, editor, whatever, there was a lot of those. And you're like, well Joe got, you know, front page of whatever that all these things are gone now, like RT magazine or something. And I got like a little mention, you know, in the quarter of something else. And I understand like I'm not, I forgot no one anything. And it's just a fundamentally unfair system. But some of the authors I know who are going high hybrid are hoping that, and this is like right now, not five years ago, are hoping that with the, whatever marketing the publisher does, that they can then amplify it with their own self published items, which makes good sense, right. But that's a certain level of savvy and a certain level of management, because when I was last with a publisher, you know, you'd have a slot for the publication and they would move it up and move it back, as it were, because I was not important enough to get this big sweat to get the September release to be frankenous. [00:56:00] Speaker B: Exactly. [00:56:01] Speaker A: So then it was a little bit more difficult. But I'm looking now to see if authors are going to be able to use that going forward, because publishers, I don't want to say they've stopped publishing romance, but they really got out of the business. But they do need something. They do need bread and butter beyond celebrity books as far as well. [00:56:20] Speaker B: And that was the other thing, too. So when my memoir came out and my editor was kind of like the it girl in New York at the time, I mean, she was. She was like the editor. And to lose her killed me, because when you lose your editor, you lose your advocate in a publishing house. And all of a sudden, the editor took me over, was like, who are you? [00:56:41] Speaker A: I got one of those emails was awful. [00:56:44] Speaker B: Right around the same time that my book came out. Shortly thereafter, Snooki's came out, same imprint. And, you know, the publicist in the house was delightful, but she wasn't tasked with doing a ton of stuff for me while they were sending Snooki all over the planet on a, you know, on a book tour. And I get it. My book wasn't Snooki's. And Snooki had, you know, that hideous tv show and all that kind of stuff. But to me, that's just emblematic of the Kim Kardashianization of America, which. Which is like a dagger to the heart to me, you know? But it made me, it just drove home to me that, you know, Gwyneth Paltrow can get a book deal for a cookbook, even though she, like, very publicly was proud to say that she basically didn't eat for years, right? She was, like, on a macrobiotic diet and ate, like, sprouts, right? And yet she got a cookbook deal simply because she has a platform, right? Keith Richards, a drug addiction stoner, simply because he's famous, got a kids book deal. Like, I really just don't want my kid reading a book written by Keith Richards, even though he's perfectly entertaining. If I go to his concert, you know. [00:58:01] Speaker A: Right. [00:58:02] Speaker B: Madonna, who had the coffee table book on s and m, gets a kids book deal. That kind of stuff was just, like, sticking in my craw too much. And I was like, all right, you know, me and traditional publishing are not going to see eye to eye. That stuff bugs me that it's 100% platform driven to the point that it's irrational. But apparently that's what the population is asking for. [00:58:28] Speaker A: Maybe. I don't know. They're paying a lot of huge advances and not. Those things are not always paying out. So I'm not sure. I don't know if that's sustainable. I don't know, of the whole Instagram mommy blogger. And I don't mean it in a derogatory way, but I don't know if that whole thing can. Is sustainable, because if you go to the. Well, I haven't been a bookstore in quite a long time, but I think they're back open. But if you go, it's just like, you know, Instagram person about, you know, whatever, influencing, and then she's gonna write about parenting, and, I don't know, it doesn't feel substantive. [00:59:01] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. [00:59:04] Speaker A: It is. [00:59:04] Speaker B: It's. It's so one dimensional. Yeah, I agree. And, you know, I mean, part of it was just that over the years, publishing houses just became one cog in the wheel of a gigantic corporation. [00:59:17] Speaker A: Yeah. Huge media. Yeah. Conglomerate, exactly. [00:59:19] Speaker B: So. Yes. But there's this little part of me who, from when I got into publishing early, and kind of the people that were the people I got in at the same time with, who I kind of view as, like, kind of my class, you know, like, you people you're in high school with or whatever, you know, I've kind of watched some of them, you know, getting that huge book deal and then the movie deal, and I'm like, I want that. Damn it. So they have to suck it up, right? [00:59:45] Speaker A: Well, yes, because in order to get a, you would have to do b. It's a. It's a debate I have not often with myself, but I was talking to another author about it. We were talking about some other authors, movie deal or whatever, and I was like. She was like, do you want that? I'm like, I don't know if I want that, but if I do, then I need to. I would need to hustle for it. You know what I mean? Like, it's. I don't think the fairies are going to, you know, fall out of the skyd and, you know, pluck me out of obscurity. But it's just one of those things I do think about as my writing matures, because I think my writing is better now and would be. I'm a better storyteller than I used to be, for sure. [01:00:20] Speaker B: Yeah, me too. I agree. I agree. [01:00:22] Speaker A: So what are you writing now? [01:00:26] Speaker B: So that's a good question. When I was in the real thick of it, I was cranking out seven books a year of rom coms because you basically had to feed the machine constantly to keep, you know, your readers or they'd go on to somebody else, you know, I kind of tapered that back, and then, like, with the pandemic like, I had a book due with my editor, like, the week everything just shut down, and I just couldn't even go there, so that got delayed. I did one other book last year, and I've got a book that I need to. The good news is I write fast. I have a book due to my editor in August, and I need to get cracking on that. But I have a memoir that I've been playing around with, although memoirs are really hard to sell without a huge platform, so that may end up being self published. And I have a couple of commercial fiction novels that I have started and stopped and started and stopped and started and stopped. Ten times that I have sworn that I'm going to get cracking onto. So I've got a whole lot of this and that. You know, I started this business not focusing on one genre. And one time I was at RWA, and I was talking to a writer who was also just kind of lamenting publishing. And, you know, she looked at me and she said, your problem is that you aren't focused on one thing. [01:01:47] Speaker A: Nope, you're not in Elaine. [01:01:48] Speaker B: I was writing all kinds of things. I was just writing what I wanted to write. And she said, you need to pick something, and I stick with it. So I watched her make a million bucks in a year. I was like, shit, she's right. And anyhow, so, yeah, so I did. I did had to. I did focus for a while, but I also just kind of really want to expand what I've been working on and just get a little bit more creative. So I think that's beating that right now. [01:02:17] Speaker A: So what was the, let me say, the thrust of your first memo. [01:02:23] Speaker B: The first memoir was kind of just its own thing. That could never be anything more than that. It was. So my brother in law lived in Africa in the late eighties and early nineties, and in 1990, he brought parrots home for the family. And so my book was called Parrothood, a memoir of caring for a vengeful parrot who's determined to kill me. And it was about. So my brother in law brought us a parrot for Christmas who was like the demon seed, and we had a new baby and this very needy, sad bird that had been, like, taken out of a tree in Africa and hated humans and needed way more care than my newborn baby did, you know, and just kind of over the years about what it meant to integrate her into my life and my family and everything. So that's what that book was about. The title had to change, speaking of the vagaries of publishing, because some nutty woman decided that she owned the word parenthood. [01:03:33] Speaker A: Oh, God. This always happens in publishing, I hate to say it. [01:03:36] Speaker B: And my book was announced on publishers marketplace, and it went out on, like, a listserv to every library in the country. And this woman went on this, like, mission to destroy my book before it was published by going to every library in the country and threatening to have their website shut down. [01:03:59] Speaker A: Oh, my gosh. [01:04:00] Speaker B: My book out because she owned the word parenthood. Now, you can't own a word. You know, you can own Kleenex, but you can't own a word. You know, the name Kleenex, a branded word like that. But the thing is, is, you know, libraries didn't have lawyers, and they didn't have the ability to fight this crackpot, right? And it happened to be the same time that the publishing world had collapsed on itself. [01:04:28] Speaker A: Right. [01:04:29] Speaker B: And so my publishing house normally would have had, like, an army of lawyers, like, stepping on her like a bug, but all of a sudden, they were like, ooh, budgets are cut everywhere. We're not doing this stuff. And so that was kind of, like, the beginning of the crushing of this book, which was kind of heartbreaking. And so we had to change the title of it in the middle of all that. And my original title for it was bite me anyhow, but couldn't do that because Walmart wouldn't allow bite me because that was too suggestive. [01:05:02] Speaker A: Yeah, Walmart has a lot of influence back then. Yeah, yeah. [01:05:05] Speaker B: And then we ultimately ended up with the name winging it. But when I got my rights back on that book, I did change it back to bite me because it was kind of the most fitting title anyhow, you know? [01:05:16] Speaker A: And what. So if you were to write. If you were, well, what would the new memoir be about? Because that, you know, you're right. That bird is a very. That's a very specific. That's very specific. [01:05:26] Speaker B: But this memoir is. I like. I'm reluctant to talk much about it, to be honest. And I have a great title, but I can't tell it to you because I don't like to put anything out there too soon. But this. I kind of had this pretty whacked out upbringing, and it included when my parents were going through a deeply bitter divorce. My dad threatened to call my mom at my wedding, and my mom had many, many, many issues, and she was kind of like a frontier professional woman who was front of the line of the epidemic of, what am I saying? Legal narcotics. [01:06:14] Speaker A: Right. [01:06:16] Speaker B: So it kind of has to do with all that. It kind of ties it all together. But it's funny. It's actually a funny memoir. It's funny, but it's also poignant. But, you know, so I can't not write smart ass, you know, that's my thing. [01:06:33] Speaker A: So, but, so, okay, so if you, do you foresee in the future confining yourself to one lane? I guess. [01:06:46] Speaker B: I don't think so because, I mean, I know that the common thinking in publishing is you've got to do that. And like, for instance, what I'm doing and what you're doing generally, you know, they say that your readers don't migrate over to your other. [01:07:00] Speaker A: Right. [01:07:00] Speaker B: Like, so I have another series that I've kind of dabbled with, too, that would be more like mystery, possibly kind of cozy mystery. And they say like, a romance reader is generally not going to hop over to cozy. And the same goes, like, women's fiction readers don't go to romance generally, although romance readers are much more open to going, like, to women going the other way. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So, you know, it goes against good sense to do that, especially if you get a strong enough readership and that kind of stuff to, to then start writing what they aren't going to read. But I also don't want to not write something because of that, you know? Right. I want to write what I want to write ultimately, in addition to writing what makes sense for me to write. [01:07:45] Speaker A: Right. [01:07:46] Speaker B: So do you think that too? [01:07:48] Speaker A: Yeah, no, so I, well, okay, so I used to alternate between writing either romance or women's fiction and then writing legal thrillers going back and forth. And that made me happy. What ultimately, you know, Sky Warren, I think it's a point, she and I had a conversation a few years ago where she was like, but what sells better? And I was like, well, I think it's x. And she's like, do you have numbers for that? And I was like, no, you know, so I actually went back. This is a very painful exercise and not something I recommend for anybody, but I went back ten years and I used like tracker box or something and put in all the, you know, the royalty reports and looked to see what was the best selling. And it wasn't what I thought at all. Like, I was way off. Yeah. And so, so the legal thrillers sell better. So one of the things I think I want to do going forward is to try to focus on that. But, and also getting divorced made me not so, like, hot in the romance department right now anyway. [01:08:50] Speaker B: Yeah. Right. [01:08:50] Speaker A: So I think at least for the next. Well, no, I'm going to finish the romance right now. But after that, because I like the story. I like this. I like the heroine a lot. And so I would like to do her story justice. But after that, I think I'm gonna try writing three legal thrillers in a row. And I wrote two in a row, and it wasn't so bad. I thought I couldn't tolerate it, but it wasn't so bad. And then after that, I'm going to assess, because then that sort of, I will have written, like, I think, 14 legal thrillers, which will probably be about even to the romance. And then I want to. Then it'll be like, maybe next year, 2022, and the divorce will be behind me more than a couple weeks, and I'll have, like, better sense of, like, what I want to do going forward. But it's hard because I really, really enjoy writing the women's fiction, but it doesn't sell as well. And I think my heroines at least. Okay, the feedback that I get is that my heroine's a little too damaged and people don't like them, and I haven't. So the people who like the books love them and people who hate them, hate them. But it's a huge split. I mean, that's. It's, you know, it's pretty. It's a wide gulf. So not pleasing? It's not generally pleasing, you know, and there's books, obviously, on the top charts in Amazon that are quite generally pleasing to people. [01:10:03] Speaker B: Yeah, but, you know, I mean, I know I'm not good at doing generally pleasing. I think that maybe that's a problem. [01:10:09] Speaker A: Well, generally pleasing, I think, earns more money. And that's where I. So if I please myself, oh, I'm just thrilled. Like I'm like a pig in heaven. I'm like, I'm all happy. I'm like, is she difficult? Yes. Is her upbringing awful? Yes. Is she hard to love? She is, but I'm rooting for her. You may not be, but I am. So staying in one lane, I do find difficult, and I'm going to reassess it in a year or so. And who knows? Maybe then I'll have figured out some magical formula of what I really want to do going forward, storytelling wise. But for now, that's what I'm going to do. But I do. I find it hard, but the conventional wisdom, and look, I have a lot of very successful author friends who have written, like, 25 of the same kind of book. And if I had done that, marketing would be easier. Like, a lot of things. I'm not unclear. I can see it. Like, I can see it easier. Be like, what do you write? Well, I write dark romance or I write new adult or I write whatever it is, shifter romance or paranormal or whatever that is, or historical. And they're all this kind of book. And my readers are always going to be pleased because they know what they're going to get. [01:11:17] Speaker B: Yeah. Because it's so niche and so specific. Yeah, exactly. I'm not even niche enough for that. [01:11:24] Speaker A: No. And so my readers, I just looked at my emails, there were like three of them. I love this. I hate this. Why? This is not the same as the other thing or, you know, and they're very vocal. So. So I guess that's good. But I don't. I don't get those emails that my other friends get, which is, we love you. What's next? [01:11:45] Speaker B: I know. Like, and also just like that, they'll just fall on their sword for you. You know, that's a. I know. That's. How do we get that? I'd like to know. [01:11:58] Speaker A: I don't. So I have superfans because those people write often as well, and so I know them and they seem consistently to like it, but it's clearly a certain kind of person. And so I either need to reach more of that. Certain kind of people. Let go of the idea that I'm going to be universally loved. It's not. I'm not holding tight to that. Or in the alternative of make my peace with the storytelling I do and the money that results from it and just keep doing that. But that's a. Those are choices that I'm gonna have to, like, meditate on because all the books I'm reading now, self help, and, like, the answer to everything is, well, if you just meditate on it, you'll figure it out. [01:12:35] Speaker B: There you go. Exactly. [01:12:37] Speaker A: So that's my plan. [01:12:38] Speaker B: I'm just gonna say some affirmations and it's all gonna work out. [01:12:40] Speaker A: Exactly. If I could just do that enough, and I tried it yesterday, but I'm. [01:12:44] Speaker B: Not consistent, so I'm super inconsistent on that. I know. I need to meditate every day and I don't do that. I need to. I need to do a lot of things I don't do. [01:12:52] Speaker A: I know. So I'm working on all that. So what is it that you hope for your storytelling future? I mean, bigger than the books that you're writing now, but what is the bigger story that you think you want to tell going forward? [01:13:06] Speaker B: Um, that's a really good question. I mean, I ultimately, I love if I am telling stories that help people feel good one way or the other, you know? I mean, that's the great email that you get for somebody who's been through, you know, troubles or trauma or whatever, and that, you know, your book gave them some comfort. I think that's such an amazing thing, and it's a gift that we can do that. You know, for me personally, I really want to write something that's like a big book in a capital b big book, you know, and that that does end up with a film deal. So that's kind of my goal. Wish me luck on that. Right? [01:13:50] Speaker A: Yes. Fingers crossed. Fingers crossed. [01:13:54] Speaker B: I mean, it comes back to that. I can do that, you know, who have done that. And my books are as good as theirs. And, you know, we all know there's an element of fairy dust in this business, you know, timing. So. But making it so that you're there if the timing works, you know what I mean? I guess. [01:14:14] Speaker A: And I do think about that. So sometimes, like, the last couple weeks, and I haven't written much of anything, and I think, well, but if you want things to happen, you have to continue to produce the art. [01:14:23] Speaker B: Yes, exactly. And that's, like, past year. Thank you very much. Yeah, totally. So, yeah, I'm with you on that. I'm trying to. I'm trying to light that match under my behind again. [01:14:35] Speaker A: So I want to thank you so much for doing this today. And I want to ask you to continue to post pictures of Pippa because it delights me on the table. [01:14:45] Speaker B: Thank you. Really bad about it lately, and I've got so many, I just haven't gotten around to it. So I'll get Pippa on there. She's right next to me right now being cute and adorable and sleeping and. [01:14:54] Speaker A: How old is she? Is it four? Two. God, it's only been two years. Wow. Okay. [01:14:59] Speaker B: She's a good girl. She's a sweet dog. She's just got a great personality. I found her during the pandemic. I discovered that there's people who meet up at this field not far from here, and it was a little problematic during the pandemic when you were staying distance from people, because as soon as people have their hands in their pockets, she assumes they're pulling a cookie. She would, like, go right up on them and jump at them. I'm like, you can't do that. So we were working on that. I mean, she got the canine good citizen. She did the whole class. So she knows better. But then when she goes up with all these dogs, she's like a pack mentality instead of, like, good behavior mentality. So, yeah, so I'm trying to, like, I'm trying to get her, reel her back in a little bit on that, because everybody does not have cookies in their pocket, and that's not cool to jump on people. [01:15:50] Speaker A: No. So the last dog I had, I really had to, actually. So I didn't have a problem because people, what people would do is they'd go, oh. And, you know, with that, like, super high voice, the dog's like, what? And I. And then he would jump on people. And at some point, somebody was just like, it's okay. They're like, I call this dog over. Like, I can't be. I can't be upset over this dog's, like, enthusiasm. So it mostly. It has mostly worked out because people who are like, oh, look at your dog, are usually ready for what's coming. But I would have appreciated if he had jumped on less people, because with the trainer and everything, it's perfect. And we got the front door working and all of that, but the high pitched, you know, might have a treat. [01:16:35] Speaker B: Crazy. And she'll do that with the people next door. They have little kids, and she'll just go careening over there. And, you know, these kids are so sweet, but they're little, and, you know, they. And I think they still kind of confuse Pippa and Rosie and Millie, her older sister, you know, so Rosie's not going to topple them, but Pippa will. So they stand there trusting that Rosie's not going to do, but it's Pip, you know? [01:16:59] Speaker A: Right. [01:17:00] Speaker B: Knock them down. Not good. [01:17:02] Speaker A: Yeah. But anyway, dogs are delightful. They're so delightful. And it's been. They have brought much joy to many people during the pandemic. So my hats are off to them. [01:17:13] Speaker B: Oh, isn't that so true? I'm so glad we had a pip for this because she was my girl. I'll say one last thing, though. That was a bit of a problem, is we had this steep hill to go to our backyard, which is flat, and then the woods abut it. [01:17:26] Speaker A: Right, right. [01:17:27] Speaker B: And so when she was little, she was like, woods, yay, me. So I had to, I talked to the trainer, and she's like, well, you should just get a really long lead. That way you can, like, you know, catch the lead before she goes off into the woods. And so this was early in the pandemic, and she. And it was a hundred foot lead, right. So, like, the webbing that, like Alicia's made of. [01:17:49] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:17:50] Speaker B: So Pip had gone out and gone to the bathroom in the little yard. So I go out there and I stopped to pick it up and the ball was right there and I threw it. Well, Pippa took off and the lead whipped around my ankles and I got like, I don't know what degree burns they would be. Third degree burns in the back of my ankles that were so, so, so raw. But I could. I. No one was going to hospitals or doctors, right? So I had this, like, major wound from like that. So, you know, she was great during the pandemic, except for that little injury problem. I still have, like, scars that just like, these lash marks across the back of my ankles. It was fun. [01:18:36] Speaker A: No, I can't say anything. I did that also, that lead thing. Apparently we all got the same advice, except I remember mine. It was blue cotton and it would drag through the grass before the dog got to the woods and it would be wet. So then once I put the dog in the car, because sometimes we would drive to these huge parks and do that whole thing with the lead. I had this huge, soggy, wet, muddy, like dozens and dozens of feet of, like, webbing that I had to, like, pop in my trunk and that would get all crusty the next time I had to go out. [01:19:06] Speaker B: I know, because they do get stinky. Yes, yes. Now, I took her out in the back because it's so hot in the daytime. I've been taking her out in the backyard in the morning and she goes up on the hill, which is like, it's steep and I don't want to be trucking up there. And she eats grass, and it's like, fine, eat grass. But the thing is, is then at four in the morning, she wakes up throwing it off. [01:19:25] Speaker A: Exactly. [01:19:27] Speaker B: And so I was like, trying to get her down off the hill today and she wouldn't do it. So I'm like, I gotta break out that long lead again. But I have PTSD from it now, so I don't know. [01:19:37] Speaker A: I don't know. The long lead is what. Actually, that was the thing. Plus treat training that finally got the dog to come to me from that problem. Like, because she would. She would be out and doing her own thing and I'd call her and she'd be like, I don't know. [01:19:50] Speaker B: Yeah, right? Yeah. I could be here or there. [01:19:53] Speaker A: I know. What do you got? Because what do you got that's worth coming back for me? So. Gosh. But with that, I'll see. Thank you so much. Again for agreeing to talk. [01:20:12] Speaker B: Well, it was fun talking and catching up. It's been a long time. [01:20:15] Speaker A: Well, good. [01:20:15] Speaker B: Well, safe travels for you. I can't wait to hear how things are. Keep me posted. [01:20:19] Speaker A: I will send you a picture of my child on a bike. [01:20:22] Speaker B: I do. I want to see. [01:20:24] Speaker A: No doubt. But thank you so much. [01:20:27] Speaker B: Okay, good talking to you. See ya. [01:20:28] Speaker A: Bye. This has been a time to thrill with me, your host, author, Amy Austin. If you enjoyed it, I hope youll share rate and review on Apple Podcasts. It will help others to find and listen to my conversations with brilliant creators. Also, please hit the subscribe button on your podcast app. In addition to hosting this podcast, Im also the author of the Casey Court series of legal thrillers. Theyre available wherever books are sold, youre looking library, and also an audiobook. You can follow me on Instagram at thrillerpod, find me on Facebook acquirt series or a time to thrill. Thanks for listening and I'll be back with you soon with more great conversations.