Getting Started with Janci Patterson

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[SPEAKER_03]: Welcome to another episode of Molling It Over with Brandon Moll and we are without Brandon Moll again, but we do have Shelley Brown.
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[SPEAKER_03]: You are here, and Chad Morris.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Yep, back again.
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[SPEAKER_03]: And we are joined with a first timer, Jansie Patterson, welcome to the show.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.
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[SPEAKER_03]: We're excited to have you here today.
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[SPEAKER_03]: I'm excited to be here.
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[SPEAKER_03]: I think we're gonna put a lot of pressure on you today.
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[SPEAKER_03]: I hope you're ready for that.
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[SPEAKER_03]: That's a good intro.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Just get ready for the press.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Is that what I signed up for?
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[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, yeah, the three of us are going to sit back and just listen to your tail that you're going to spin for us and no, but we do want to get to know you a little bit and and just so our listeners are where what we're going to do is is we're going to do probably three episodes with Jancy today and then release them's inner cut with some episodes we've recorded with Brandon and and so be prepared I think you'll get like three months of Jancy which is fantastic.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, should be more.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, should be more.
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[SPEAKER_02]: It'll be enough.
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[SPEAKER_02]: We'll start with three.
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[SPEAKER_03]: We'll start with three.
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[SPEAKER_02]: It'll be a taste.
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[SPEAKER_03]: So, Jansie, tell us a little bit about just getting started in your writing career.
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[SPEAKER_03]: How how did you get started and where did you get kind of that initial like bug to like jump into writing and become an author?
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[SPEAKER_00]: So when I was a freshman in college, I had a whole list of things I might want to major in and I was taking classes in a bunch of different things trying to decide and I was crossing things off that list and I was going to UC Santa Cruz, which is a great school.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's beautiful.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's kind of a party school and everyone else is out drinking and I don't drink.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So I was real bored and I started writing a novel because I was bored and meanwhile I crossed everything off of that list of things I might want to major in and I finished my first book.
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[SPEAKER_00]: My freshman year and I decided that's what I wanted to do.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Was it on the list?
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[SPEAKER_03]: And so did you end up majoring in writing then or?
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[SPEAKER_00]: I did.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I majored in English.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I came out to BYU in Utah and majored in writing.
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[SPEAKER_03]: And then, oh, sorry.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I was kind of hoping you were going to say, and so I just decided, I'm not doing college.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I'm just right now.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I'm just going to be that's what I should have done.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I like that.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I could drink, but no, I'm going to write a book and say so much more productive.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And if that's you, that that's inspirational, guys.
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[SPEAKER_01]: That's inspirational.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
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[SPEAKER_03]: So are you a California kid then?
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[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I am.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I'm from the Bay Area.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I say, what part Santa Clara?
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[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, I'm from East Bay, like ghetto.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It's cool.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Which part?
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[SPEAKER_01]: From Anyok?
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[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, okay.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Nice.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, well, I mean, if we're going to brag about being from California, San Diego.
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[SPEAKER_03]: So that's, that's where.
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[SPEAKER_03]: And then there's Chad, and then there's me.
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[SPEAKER_03]: from Utah.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Nothing wrong with that.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Nothing wrong with that.
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[SPEAKER_03]: So you transferred to BYU.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Why BYU did they have a better writing program or?
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[SPEAKER_03]: Honestly, because- Or better no drinking rules.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Some of my friends from high school were going to be where you and they talked me into applying.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And then I felt really good about it.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So I did it.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Santa Cruz had a really serious housing crisis, which is like ironic.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Now that I'm in Utah with a housing crisis, but you know, 20 years later it's not my problem.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Yes.
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[SPEAKER_03]: So.
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[SPEAKER_03]: So tell me about that first novel.
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[SPEAKER_03]: I'm going to ask the same thing.
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[SPEAKER_00]: This book is never seen the light of day.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's not any good.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It was about a couple of kids.
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[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of people write like portal fantasies for their first book.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I wrote about these high school kids who get stuck through this portal and there's dragons and there's wizards and there's it was a little bit of a mashup of like dealing with dragons and like I don't know other fantasy novels I had read at the time.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't terribly original, but it was really fun.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I had so much fun.
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[SPEAKER_02]: You know what?
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[SPEAKER_02]: I love that.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Early derivative work is what we all write like like that's why a lot a lot of writers start in that fan fan art fan writing kind of thing It's just I think that's that's any artist.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I think we start derivative and that's okay Yeah, well and speaking of that.
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[SPEAKER_01]: We're having a good time.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It's a good time.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Who were some of your What books were you reading what kind of got you into that fantasy?
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[SPEAKER_00]: Um, I mean, I said dealing with dragons, but for just a lady, I loved, I was a big, um, Tamara Pierce fan.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I was, I mean, in the, in the 90s, when I was a teenager, there weren't, like, a ton of, like, fantasy novels with really strong female protagonists, not, it wasn't like it is now.
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[SPEAKER_00]: YA wasn't what it actually existed, but it wasn't as strong as it is now, and so I really loved those stories, though, and that's what I wanted to write.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Alright, I'm going to check you on this.
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[SPEAKER_03]: How much dungeons and dragons are played in the 90s?
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[SPEAKER_00]: So I did not play Dungeons & Dragons until I was in college in 2004.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
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[SPEAKER_00]: That's when I got into D&D.
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[SPEAKER_03]: That's for that acceptable.
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[SPEAKER_03]: I'll accept that answer.
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[SPEAKER_03]: I'll accept that answer.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I played a lot of it since then.
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[SPEAKER_03]: And when's the last time you've played Dungeons & Dragons?
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[SPEAKER_00]: Uh, I was in a, we did the Cosmere RPG at Jordan Khan just a couple weeks ago.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
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[SPEAKER_03]: So, well, yeah, you passed.
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[SPEAKER_03]: You passed.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Wow.
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[SPEAKER_03]: We can continue for the rest of these.
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[SPEAKER_00]: my D&D credit.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I've had it actually.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's actually iron kingdoms.
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[SPEAKER_00]: We played weekly for 20 years.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Nice.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yeah, I started to think that was pretty exciting.
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[SPEAKER_00]: We ended last year.
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[SPEAKER_03]: And do you play or DM or both both?
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[SPEAKER_03]: Yep.
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[SPEAKER_03]: What do you prefer?
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[SPEAKER_00]: I like them both.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I can't DM always or I get real burned out.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's like adding another novel to my life, right?
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[SPEAKER_00]: And so I have to I have to do it in spurts like I'll DM for a year and then take a couple of years off and then do it again, so.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Very cool, very cool.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Well, let's get back to novel writing.
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[SPEAKER_03]: You wrote this first novel.
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[SPEAKER_03]: It wasn't any good.
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[SPEAKER_03]: How did you know it wasn't any good?
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[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But good.
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[SPEAKER_00]: That's important.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I, I sent it around and things, um, I, and I started writing another one, right?
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[SPEAKER_00]: The big thing that that book taught me was when I finished it, there was nothing like the high of having written a book, right?
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[SPEAKER_00]: Like, and I've never, like, I've been chasing that ever since, right?
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[SPEAKER_00]: The, like, just the feeling of, I wrote all whole novel and I just loved that feeling and I love finishing books.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's my favorite.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I love it.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Being done.
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[SPEAKER_02]: There are so many people who want to be authors and so few who actually finish a book and the idea that you finish one It was fun and then you completed it and love that feeling.
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[SPEAKER_02]: That's a great start.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, so so you didn't know it wasn't any good But it doesn't mean anything Any good things about it.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, sure.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's not something I'm going to go back and revamp in public.
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[SPEAKER_03]: She's just too positive.
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[SPEAKER_03]: We want to jump into the negative.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It's only because I was just thinking this was probably a really fun story.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It was fun for me.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Well, and I had a friend who we were we were in high school together and we were talking over a well-instant messager And she was going to college at UC Davis and she I told her I was writing the book and she wanted to read it So I sent her the first chapter and she liked it and then I wrote it on their chapter and she read that one and she liked it And I named a character after her and I had that constant feedback of like somebody who was enjoying the story And I think she was legitimately enjoying it like the early watchpad
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[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, before that was fine.
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[SPEAKER_03]: So what I'm trying to get to with the negative stuff is at some point, this did not get published.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
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[SPEAKER_03]: And so, so, when did you, how did you face that reality?
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[SPEAKER_03]: Were you sending this manuscript out or were you like, nah, the more I read it, the more I can tell, or I'm just ready for a bigger, better, experience or,
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[SPEAKER_00]: I was sending the book out.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Back in the day, you had to print it, and you could only send a one publisher at a time, and you had to send it through this nail mail all right.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and so you had to send it through the snail mail, and it would sit, and I can't even imagine what these stacks must have looked like in the publisher's offices of all of these manuscripts, just like piled up, and maybe a year later they would get back to you.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So it was a long slow process.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So by the time, I realized that like, I was getting the door shut in my face in publishing, it was so slow that I'd written several more books by then.
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[SPEAKER_03]: So part of it was just like, hey, there's nothing to do with this book.
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[SPEAKER_03]: It is out with the publishers.
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[SPEAKER_03]: I'm not going to wait for it to get published before I start my next book.
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[SPEAKER_03]: I'm going to go into book two.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
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[SPEAKER_03]: All right, tell me about book two.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Also not published.
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[SPEAKER_00]: This one was not a portal fantasy, but it was a fantasy novel about a girl who could like, I'm trying to remember what her magical power was It was something to do with fire and maybe telling the future and Those two go together great.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I don't remember there were some sky eels I think I don't know I don't target me to remember, but it was a it was a secondary world fantasy
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[SPEAKER_03]: Would you consider both of these books?
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[SPEAKER_03]: What category was it young and all fancy young and all fancy?
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[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, so book two nothing book three book three and are you a BYU at this point?
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[SPEAKER_03]: How old are you at book three?
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[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, yeah Probably I'm like a sophomore junior.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, I'm in there.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I think I was doing about one book a year
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[SPEAKER_02]: it's impressive while in school.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, that's all wasn't as fun as writing books.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So book three is published.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's called Everything's Fine and it's a jump to contemporary young adult and I it's about a girl which it starts at her best friend's funeral and her best friend has committed suicide and she goes in her room and she steals her journal.
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[SPEAKER_00]: because she doesn't want anybody to know the things that her best friend had written down about her.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, interesting.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And so it's about her secrets that she's keeping, and then also the secret she realizes her best friend was keeping and what happened to her best friend.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I love that.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, that's great.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Why this switch to the contemporary over fantasy?
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[SPEAKER_00]: I think I just, I don't know, God, board.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I like to jump around.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's just a thing I do.
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[SPEAKER_00]: To reach.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It sounds like you read wide, too.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, pretty wide.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and especially then, like, within YA, I was reading all over the place.
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[SPEAKER_03]: So, uh, I know today you cannot submit to a publisher without an agent.
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[SPEAKER_03]: That wasn't the case.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Not at all, not at all, not at all.
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[SPEAKER_03]: So you tell me about who you submitted to.
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[SPEAKER_03]: I assume you didn't have an agent at this point.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I did not.
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[SPEAKER_03]: At this point.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So I was sending, I don't remember, but I was sending to the New York publishing houses.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And like once I had three books, now I could send three places at once.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Where are you finding the information to send these?
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[SPEAKER_00]: I'm trying to remember, oh, oh, there was a book.
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[SPEAKER_02]: There was a book that was going to happen.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Publishers Marketplace, so when it was called, and they published a new one every year.
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[SPEAKER_03]: There's like a phone book for, uh, for potential authors.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Now that you're saying that I remember.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Now it's online, but I would get to go to the library and I would get the latest version.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It was like one of the reference copies you couldn't check it out, but I would go.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I would write down all the information for the next several submissions.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And then I would send them.
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[SPEAKER_00]: That's what I would do.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I forgot in about that.
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[SPEAKER_03]: So I missed the publisher.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Who was it that you published with?
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[SPEAKER_00]: Um, oh, so that one.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So I didn't publish it then.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, okay.
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[SPEAKER_00]: That's not even that was not my first book that I sold.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's been since I have felt Yeah, we're jumping ahead.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, so third book will get back to you.
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[SPEAKER_03]: We'll get back to the third book.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Okay.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Come back around to that.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Uh, so that one you're at this point in the timeline.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
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[SPEAKER_03]: You're just submitting this off.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Are you still submitting the first book or you dealt with that.
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[SPEAKER_03]: You're just
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[SPEAKER_00]: I can't remember.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I submitted it for a while, though, because like I said, you took six months to submit to one publisher before you would get a form rejection back and then print it off and send it back.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Next time we need you to bring your diaries.
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[SPEAKER_03]: So you can look up the dates and make sure we have the stories.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I probably can look it up on my phone.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I have a spreadsheet.
11:02.308 --> 11:04.129
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, this is so organized.
11:04.149 --> 11:05.289
[SPEAKER_03]: Let's go to ADHD.
11:05.989 --> 11:26.219
[SPEAKER_02]: Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait
11:26.359 --> 11:31.302
[SPEAKER_02]: And not necessarily don't do book two in the same series, right?
11:31.402 --> 11:36.125
[SPEAKER_02]: Just move on to another book and keep writing even when it's such a slow game.
11:36.425 --> 11:39.307
[SPEAKER_02]: It's just so smart to move on to your next project.
11:39.447 --> 11:42.829
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, the internet made it a little faster, but not like a lot.
11:43.009 --> 11:43.950
[SPEAKER_00]: It's still 10 years.
11:44.530 --> 11:44.870
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
11:45.410 --> 11:50.191
[SPEAKER_03]: And Chad, I think that's great advice for young authors to be hearing because it's hard.
11:50.531 --> 11:53.832
[SPEAKER_03]: It's hard because especially in your first couple of books, you put so much into it.
11:54.392 --> 11:55.612
[SPEAKER_03]: You fall in love with this.
11:55.913 --> 12:03.434
[SPEAKER_03]: You fall in love not just with your book, but within this idea of a career writing and doing what you really, really enjoy doing.
12:04.034 --> 12:06.555
[SPEAKER_03]: And all of a sudden, you have to put
12:07.355 --> 12:10.997
[SPEAKER_03]: all this work, you have to like, it's almost like, I've talked a brand before.
12:11.017 --> 12:13.818
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, your books are kind of like your kids in some way, right?
12:14.238 --> 12:17.259
[SPEAKER_03]: Where and to be like, hey, I'm moving on from kid number one.
12:17.279 --> 12:19.220
[SPEAKER_03]: They didn't do much for me.
12:19.240 --> 12:20.160
[SPEAKER_03]: They didn't the world.
12:20.180 --> 12:22.621
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm going to focus on on that next one.
12:22.721 --> 12:24.222
[SPEAKER_03]: I think there can be some difficulty in it.
12:24.282 --> 12:25.903
[SPEAKER_03]: So yeah, there is some wisdom.
12:26.003 --> 12:34.166
[SPEAKER_03]: Once you've got that first book done, you need to move on to just under the second one while you're submitting and sending out the first.
12:34.946 --> 12:41.588
[SPEAKER_00]: One thing about that advice, it's really good advice like don't necessarily write book number two But I hear from a lot of people at conferences.
12:41.608 --> 12:51.790
[SPEAKER_00]: They'll be like, I mean, I know I'm not supposed to but I just really want to write the sequel And if that's you here's the thing I will say for that I know a lot of people a lot of authors who have written eight first books, right?
12:52.030 --> 13:03.813
[SPEAKER_00]: And they sell one and they're so excited and they sell the series and now they have to write the sequel and the publisher gives them nine months to do it And they die Yeah, they have never written a sequel and so now they have to not only write the sequel under a crunch
13:04.633 --> 13:26.701
[SPEAKER_01]: but they have to learn to write a sequel under that crunch and so if you need to write book to go ahead and write it and just chalk it up to you're building some songs that will so you'll later say yeah just write book to if you if you feel that if that's the fun like you were saying like book your your book one that you were writing like if if that's that fun and you're getting your hours in and you're learning and you're writing and you're
13:27.141 --> 13:28.765
[SPEAKER_01]: you're just growing as an author.
13:29.045 --> 13:33.716
[SPEAKER_01]: It's worth it even even you have to acknowledge it may never see the light of day.
13:33.736 --> 13:34.738
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, sure.
13:34.878 --> 13:36.181
[SPEAKER_01]: No, it's for you for fun.
13:36.221 --> 13:36.402
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
13:36.997 --> 13:42.702
[SPEAKER_03]: There's also other advantages, and we can look at Lord of the Rings and Star Wars as some examples.
13:43.242 --> 13:44.743
[SPEAKER_03]: And Lord of the Rings cheated a little bit.
13:46.004 --> 13:51.869
[SPEAKER_03]: But the things, and I'm talking about the movies, the thing they did right, was filming them all at once.
13:52.429 --> 13:57.153
[SPEAKER_03]: And having a script that was all three scripts were locked.
13:57.573 --> 14:14.727
[SPEAKER_03]: before they started this process now they're they're going off a source material so they that's how they treated the new the beginning from the end but you look at the the sequel series for Star Wars and the fact I can't comprehend that they did not have all three scripts written
14:15.488 --> 14:31.158
[SPEAKER_03]: before they shot the first one, when they had 20 years to write these three scripts, right, a coherent story that works together so that you're setting up something and you're not discovering after things have been released.
14:31.538 --> 14:35.340
[SPEAKER_03]: So that's another reason that possibly you can write another one in the series.
14:35.360 --> 14:37.742
[SPEAKER_03]: So you actually know the beginning from the end a little bit.
14:37.942 --> 14:38.782
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, good point.
14:39.603 --> 14:41.604
[SPEAKER_03]: But it's not the best move for...
14:41.944 --> 14:44.546
[SPEAKER_03]: It's not the best move for like career-wise, yeah.
14:44.928 --> 14:46.409
[SPEAKER_00]: Publishing is not about efficiency though.
14:46.530 --> 14:46.730
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
14:46.910 --> 14:47.711
[SPEAKER_00]: Learn that real quick.
14:48.211 --> 14:54.837
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, I think we're on to book for 14 minutes in almost 15 minutes in we're on book for and by the way, I don't know that.
14:55.538 --> 14:56.799
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, how many books do you written?
14:56.819 --> 14:58.761
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's like part 40 or something.
14:58.841 --> 15:00.002
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm working on book 65.
15:00.182 --> 15:02.124
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, so we're going to.
15:02.144 --> 15:03.145
[SPEAKER_03]: We're going to do it.
15:03.225 --> 15:04.386
[SPEAKER_03]: This is about getting started.
15:04.507 --> 15:06.348
[SPEAKER_03]: We're going to book for rapid fire.
15:06.408 --> 15:07.970
[SPEAKER_03]: No, where are we with a book for.
15:08.270 --> 15:30.135
[SPEAKER_00]: Look for it, it was another YA fantasy, it was about princess and her sister was supposed to inherit this thing that meant that she would rule forever and had like like rule for their generation and instead the magical power gets passed on to her and suddenly people are trying to murder her sister so that she can be on the throne and she loves her sister so she's trying to save her sister.
15:30.155 --> 15:30.415
[SPEAKER_01]: I know
15:30.655 --> 15:57.181
[SPEAKER_00]: also not published that one i think was pretty good and the issue as i never wrote another book that's quite on genre with it because it's like a fairy tale thing and so i never really had anything to follow it with so i never went back to fix it up i would need to go back and revise it and it's like right it's not what i do so but you feel like this one compared to the first one is worth revising yeah if i were going to write more in that genre i would absolutely go back and revise that okay for some good stuff to do spoiler that's not your genre okay
16:00.298 --> 16:04.180
[SPEAKER_00]: What even is book five if it's a dad we can move to six.
16:04.360 --> 16:19.369
[SPEAKER_00]: I know book five is the one that so I I said I was writing about a book a year, so now I'm in grad school so book a year so you're like 72 years old right now I was writing a book a year for a while Look at there.
16:19.409 --> 16:19.870
[SPEAKER_00]: Look at there.
16:20.390 --> 16:23.452
[SPEAKER_00]: So You're the oldest guest we've had on the show
16:24.147 --> 16:27.290
[SPEAKER_00]: So this was the one that was my master's thesis, and I will revise this one.
16:27.350 --> 16:30.512
[SPEAKER_00]: It is still not, it also not published, but actually do have an active plan.
16:31.713 --> 16:33.235
[SPEAKER_02]: You have an MFA.
16:33.335 --> 16:34.035
[SPEAKER_00]: It's an M.A.
16:34.496 --> 16:37.959
[SPEAKER_00]: I graduated the months before they made it an M.A.
16:38.419 --> 16:41.942
[SPEAKER_02]: I guess we should explain what is an M.A.
16:42.625 --> 16:45.786
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's a Master's of Arts in Creative Writing.
16:45.926 --> 16:49.848
[SPEAKER_00]: And then there's also an MFA, which is a Master's of Fine Arts.
16:49.948 --> 16:52.229
[SPEAKER_00]: And the difference is an MA is not a terminal degree.
16:52.249 --> 16:52.809
[SPEAKER_00]: You're not done.
16:52.829 --> 16:55.330
[SPEAKER_00]: You can go on to get a PhD and an MFA is a terminal degree.
16:55.370 --> 16:58.011
[SPEAKER_00]: The program might be just the same program, but I got an MA.
16:58.211 --> 16:58.911
[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't really matter.
16:58.931 --> 17:00.572
[SPEAKER_03]: But you can go on to get another degree now.
17:00.752 --> 17:01.212
[SPEAKER_00]: I could.
17:01.492 --> 17:01.872
[SPEAKER_00]: I won't.
17:02.012 --> 17:02.472
[SPEAKER_00]: But I could.
17:02.492 --> 17:04.053
[SPEAKER_03]: But you could, so you get the F.
17:04.373 --> 17:11.976
[SPEAKER_00]: No, I did the master's degree because I wanted to be qualified to teach adjunct writing, like college writing, like freshman writing, because that's my backup career.
17:12.316 --> 17:14.477
[SPEAKER_00]: So, but not a terminal degree.
17:14.957 --> 17:17.618
[SPEAKER_03]: It sounds like an illness by going into that.
17:17.638 --> 17:18.959
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean a PhD is an illness.
17:18.999 --> 17:19.499
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, right?
17:22.300 --> 17:24.962
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, okay, and you have not been diagnosed with a PhD.
17:25.122 --> 17:27.764
[SPEAKER_00]: I have not been diagnosed with a PhD.
17:27.784 --> 17:28.064
[SPEAKER_03]: We will.
17:28.084 --> 17:28.485
[SPEAKER_03]: Let's go.
17:28.625 --> 17:29.025
[SPEAKER_03]: Let's hope.
17:29.626 --> 17:31.147
[SPEAKER_03]: All right, let's go.
17:31.287 --> 17:32.067
[SPEAKER_03]: I think we're on books.
17:32.508 --> 17:34.029
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's where I think it really excited.
17:34.049 --> 17:34.289
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
17:35.110 --> 17:36.831
[SPEAKER_00]: So my sixth book.
17:37.512 --> 17:37.952
[SPEAKER_00]: I wrote it.
17:38.212 --> 17:39.813
[SPEAKER_00]: So I've done this book that was my thesis.
17:40.174 --> 17:50.061
[SPEAKER_00]: It was about people who were, they were, the society was taking people who were mentally ill and giving them their negative memories to help everybody else be more productive.
17:50.101 --> 17:51.202
[SPEAKER_00]: It was like a dystopia.
17:52.343 --> 17:55.104
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, and I had just slogged through this thing.
17:55.144 --> 17:58.487
[SPEAKER_00]: I'd turned it in for my thesis, and I was so done with this book.
17:58.567 --> 18:01.709
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, sometimes when you finish books, you think, oh, that was so fun.
18:01.749 --> 18:03.530
[SPEAKER_00]: And sometimes you just hate them by the end.
18:03.890 --> 18:04.591
[SPEAKER_00]: And this was one of the...
18:04.611 --> 18:05.111
[SPEAKER_03]: Same with kids.
18:05.291 --> 18:06.492
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
18:06.552 --> 18:06.692
[SPEAKER_03]: Jays.
18:06.752 --> 18:07.232
[SPEAKER_03]: Jays.
18:07.393 --> 18:07.833
[SPEAKER_03]: Jays.
18:07.913 --> 18:08.433
[SPEAKER_03]: Jays.
18:08.493 --> 18:09.034
[SPEAKER_00]: Jays.
18:09.114 --> 18:10.455
[SPEAKER_00]: Jays.
18:10.475 --> 18:10.595
[SPEAKER_03]: Jays.
18:10.615 --> 18:10.915
[SPEAKER_03]: Jays.
18:10.935 --> 18:11.115
[SPEAKER_01]: Jays.
18:11.235 --> 18:11.515
[SPEAKER_01]: Jays.
18:11.535 --> 18:11.635
[SPEAKER_01]: Jays.
18:11.655 --> 18:11.836
[SPEAKER_01]: Jays.
18:11.856 --> 18:11.956
[SPEAKER_01]: Jays.
18:11.976 --> 18:12.176
[SPEAKER_01]: Jays.
18:12.196 --> 18:12.296
[SPEAKER_01]: Jays.
18:14.097 --> 18:20.703
[SPEAKER_00]: So I decided I was going to write a whole book between when I turned it in and when my thesis committee gave me that book back and I had to deal with it.
18:20.843 --> 18:21.084
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
18:21.504 --> 18:23.806
[SPEAKER_03]: And so I... And how much time is that generally?
18:23.906 --> 18:24.767
[SPEAKER_00]: About four weeks.
18:25.187 --> 18:26.829
[SPEAKER_00]: You're going to write four book in four weeks.
18:26.889 --> 18:27.269
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah.
18:27.349 --> 18:30.132
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I gave myself this, this was a, this book was so complicated.
18:30.152 --> 18:31.693
[SPEAKER_00]: The one I had just finished, I was so done.
18:32.094 --> 18:34.156
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I decided I was going to write a road trip book.
18:34.656 --> 18:44.681
[SPEAKER_00]: But a girl who her father is a bounty hunter and she's on the road with him because I had just learned about bounty hunting and how that works in the legal system And I thought that was so interesting and so I was like where do I put a teenager in it?
18:44.741 --> 18:48.983
[SPEAKER_00]: So she is on the road with her bounty hunter father and she develops a crush on the guy that he's chasing.
18:49.243 --> 18:49.583
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh nice
18:49.923 --> 18:51.363
[SPEAKER_00]: criminal, okay?
18:51.564 --> 18:55.325
[SPEAKER_00]: And so it was three characters and a truck and a road trip.
18:55.385 --> 18:56.565
[SPEAKER_00]: It was so simple.
18:56.685 --> 18:58.126
[SPEAKER_00]: And I did, I wrote the whole thing in the four weeks.
18:58.166 --> 18:58.686
[SPEAKER_00]: I finished it.
18:58.726 --> 18:59.886
[SPEAKER_00]: They gave me my stuff back.
19:00.406 --> 19:03.207
[SPEAKER_00]: And that was, ironically, that's not the books I slogged over.
19:03.227 --> 19:04.228
[SPEAKER_00]: No, that's the one I sold.
19:04.288 --> 19:05.408
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the one.
19:05.828 --> 19:06.708
[SPEAKER_03]: That is it.
19:07.389 --> 19:07.869
[SPEAKER_03]: Simple.
19:07.909 --> 19:08.909
[SPEAKER_03]: Keep it simple, stupid.
19:09.569 --> 19:11.570
[SPEAKER_03]: So that one gets published.
19:11.910 --> 19:14.111
[SPEAKER_03]: Let's let's zero on on the road trip.
19:14.131 --> 19:14.931
[SPEAKER_03]: What was that one called again?
19:15.611 --> 19:39.808
[SPEAKER_03]: the original title was chasing the skip is whether it was published under I retitled it skipped because that had issues skipped yeah skipped all right and skipped is that reference to a character or is that just uh so it's that's what they call the people they're chasing uh oh they're skipping the house okay yeah gotcha gotcha so um that one you wrote that one you wrote a fast and you sent it out who do you send it to?
19:40.493 --> 19:52.568
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't remember but I do remember I submitted it to the Utah Arts Council contest and I won for our best young adult novel that year and there was an agent who had just signed This early 2000s late 90s
19:55.405 --> 20:01.387
[SPEAKER_00]: 2005, probably around there, and so might have been 2006.
20:01.707 --> 20:08.949
[SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, so this agent had just signed someone who had won in a previous year, and this agent was very smart.
20:08.989 --> 20:10.609
[SPEAKER_00]: She was like, oh, this is a good contest.
20:10.749 --> 20:11.970
[SPEAKER_00]: I like this author who won this.
20:12.310 --> 20:16.431
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to go call up the people who won it, who have won since, right?
20:16.711 --> 20:20.712
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I got this email, this cold email from this agent saying, hey, I'd like to look at your work.
20:21.332 --> 20:22.572
[SPEAKER_00]: I saw that you won this contest.
20:22.612 --> 20:23.433
[SPEAKER_00]: Can I look at this book?
20:23.473 --> 20:24.733
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, uh, yeah.
20:25.735 --> 20:29.340
[SPEAKER_00]: And she signed me, so all of that submitting I did came to nothing.
20:29.380 --> 20:30.781
[SPEAKER_00]: Double.
20:30.821 --> 20:31.182
[SPEAKER_00]: Double.
20:31.763 --> 20:32.143
[SPEAKER_03]: Wow.
20:32.263 --> 20:34.606
[SPEAKER_03]: And you were solicited by an agent.
20:34.706 --> 20:35.086
[SPEAKER_00]: I was.
20:35.247 --> 20:36.789
[SPEAKER_03]: It could you go on the other way around.
20:37.269 --> 20:40.793
[SPEAKER_00]: But like the contest submission, like if I hadn't done that, I never would have.
20:41.054 --> 20:41.354
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
20:41.374 --> 20:42.215
[SPEAKER_00]: That opportunity.
20:42.295 --> 20:42.495
[SPEAKER_00]: Same.
20:42.535 --> 20:43.156
[SPEAKER_00]: That's awesome.
20:43.176 --> 20:43.496
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
20:43.597 --> 20:44.357
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it.
20:45.959 --> 20:54.150
[SPEAKER_01]: But being able to write in one month like that, but for those four weeks is because you wrote all those pre-100 percent, yeah, I knew what I was doing.
20:54.170 --> 21:01.760
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't even outline it early, like by the time I did that I could outline the whole thing and be ready to just throw it down, but when I was early in my career I didn't know how to do that yet
21:02.146 --> 21:21.716
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, I think one thing we've never really talked about on this podcast is Contest and the importance of contest just kind of talk us like nuts and bolts of what it was you know 20 years ago versus what contest are today and and just your thoughts on I mean obviously they were important to your career but yeah it's what walk me through contest a little bit.
21:21.856 --> 21:32.300
[SPEAKER_00]: I think the most important thing is just to make sure they're legit because there's a lot of like, contests with like high entry fees and they're not like going to get you anywhere they're just trying to get money from people who are giving it.
21:32.580 --> 21:35.242
[SPEAKER_03]: What type of fee is, what is?
21:35.502 --> 21:42.244
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, if they're charging you hundreds of dollars to send your book and then they're like paying a couple thousand dollars in prize money, like this is just a racket, right?
21:42.304 --> 21:43.465
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not an actual contest.
21:43.745 --> 21:46.670
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I would say when you're looking at contests, you probably want to look locally.
21:47.031 --> 21:53.702
[SPEAKER_00]: Your state probably has an arts council type thing, and they probably have literary contests and things, and that's going to be legitimate.
21:54.123 --> 21:56.046
[SPEAKER_00]: Random things you go on the internet maybe not.
21:56.677 --> 22:05.485
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, so you want to make sure that whatever you're submitting to is legit and they're not just fleeting authors for money speaking of fleeting authors for money Um, do you think we all get over it?
22:05.505 --> 22:06.006
[SPEAKER_03]: We all get over it.
22:06.086 --> 22:06.766
[SPEAKER_03]: Podcast.
22:06.786 --> 22:11.471
[SPEAKER_02]: Do you think we should start a, a, a, a protest?
22:12.772 --> 22:13.993
[SPEAKER_02]: How much do we do?
22:14.013 --> 22:15.634
[SPEAKER_02]: Just a few hundred dollars per entry.
22:16.335 --> 22:18.197
[SPEAKER_03]: But if you win, you'll get a hundred of it back.
22:18.837 --> 22:22.464
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean there may be legitimate contests with entry fees too.
22:22.484 --> 22:25.669
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't mean to take everything with entry fee is not legitimate But you just want to be careful.
22:25.750 --> 22:27.052
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, that was my question.
22:27.493 --> 22:29.696
[SPEAKER_03]: So so there are free contests
22:30.421 --> 22:35.665
[SPEAKER_00]: I actually don't know now, if like what that looks like, what the landscape looks like, that's fair, that's fair.
22:36.266 --> 22:46.334
[SPEAKER_00]: I think a lot of the ones that are run by like state municipality type things are free or very low entry fee because they're not, they're being funded by the like Arts Council.
22:46.354 --> 22:51.259
[SPEAKER_03]: So if you're talking like under 50 bucks, you're probably sure if it's probably not, it's probably not a racket.
22:51.279 --> 22:55.142
[SPEAKER_00]: They're doing it for the love of the game, not for... Google it and make sure it's not a scam.
22:55.362 --> 22:58.945
[SPEAKER_00]: Right, make sure that like legitimate sources are citing this is something that it's okay to do.
22:59.150 --> 23:05.111
[SPEAKER_03]: And then on the flip side, how many of the three of you have ever been judges in a and any sort of writing contest before?
23:05.752 --> 23:06.272
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, of course.
23:06.672 --> 23:07.152
[SPEAKER_03]: Of course.
23:07.812 --> 23:09.433
[SPEAKER_03]: You say that and the other two are silent.
23:09.553 --> 23:10.653
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I'm sure you have.
23:10.793 --> 23:12.953
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't think I have because it sounds like so much work.
23:13.213 --> 23:15.894
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I have time to talk about going to do a full manuscript.
23:15.914 --> 23:17.495
[SPEAKER_01]: I've actually told them plenty of times.
23:17.555 --> 23:18.415
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm like, I'm a chap.
23:18.435 --> 23:19.335
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm your chapter girl.
23:19.535 --> 23:20.876
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, give me first chapter.
23:20.896 --> 23:21.897
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, yeah, okay.
23:21.917 --> 23:26.741
[SPEAKER_00]: I've done a ton of critiquing, like, but I don't think I've ever judged anything.
23:27.061 --> 23:27.842
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, I've never off.
23:27.862 --> 23:28.682
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I'm similar.
23:28.843 --> 23:29.043
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
23:29.103 --> 23:30.544
[SPEAKER_02]: It just takes so much time.
23:30.704 --> 23:35.628
[SPEAKER_03]: I've done film festival judging, but I've never done, I've never done book judging.
23:35.768 --> 23:38.790
[SPEAKER_02]: Because even if you first chapter, I mean, how many first chapters do you have?
23:38.811 --> 23:43.154
[SPEAKER_01]: You know what, in general, I usually get between 8 and 15 tops.
23:43.774 --> 23:45.396
[SPEAKER_03]: So 8 to 15.
23:45.616 --> 23:46.777
[SPEAKER_03]: That's like reading a whole book.
23:47.057 --> 24:05.263
[SPEAKER_01]: It is a shorter book yeah, or like and sometimes I'll be like I'll be your paragraph First of all, I contest first line count first line contest is a thing I will guard my time though And so I'm never I'm never volunteering for anything over a chapter
24:06.173 --> 24:08.155
[SPEAKER_00]: I just realized I totally messed that story up.
24:08.555 --> 24:09.796
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, that's right.
24:09.956 --> 24:10.597
[SPEAKER_03]: We love lies.
24:10.977 --> 24:17.702
[SPEAKER_00]: One that won the contest, it was that same time that I had written that one in the, in the, in the, in the four weeks.
24:18.103 --> 24:20.264
[SPEAKER_00]: But it was actually book three that won the contest.
24:21.125 --> 24:22.886
[SPEAKER_00]: And that wasn't the one that that agent sent out.
24:22.926 --> 24:25.889
[SPEAKER_00]: That was actually my thesis one was the one that that agent sent out.
24:26.069 --> 24:26.990
[SPEAKER_00]: And it didn't sell.
24:28.373 --> 24:38.607
[SPEAKER_00]: This is where I get a little complicated, and now I didn't sell, and then I parted ways with that agent, and then I signed with my agent that I have now, and then he sent out Book 6 and then Book 6 sold.
24:38.828 --> 24:45.016
[SPEAKER_03]: So everything I said was true, that there was, but the order, other than the order and the facts, it was all true.
24:45.717 --> 24:48.659
[SPEAKER_00]: But we're way more events in there than that, but that's true.
24:48.719 --> 24:49.760
[SPEAKER_02]: It was the first book.
24:49.960 --> 24:50.501
[SPEAKER_00]: It was the first book.
24:50.561 --> 24:51.702
[SPEAKER_00]: It was the first book.
24:51.762 --> 24:52.522
[SPEAKER_00]: It was the same time.
24:52.562 --> 24:56.545
[SPEAKER_03]: So you did have an agent approach you.
24:56.586 --> 24:58.587
[SPEAKER_03]: You went to that agent for a short amount of time.
24:58.787 --> 25:00.248
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I was with her for about a year.
25:00.449 --> 25:03.491
[SPEAKER_03]: What kind of tell us to give us the tea?
25:03.531 --> 25:04.211
[SPEAKER_03]: What was the breakup?
25:04.231 --> 25:04.392
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
25:04.752 --> 25:06.733
[SPEAKER_00]: So she sent out.
25:06.753 --> 25:08.215
[SPEAKER_00]: She didn't have other authors.
25:08.235 --> 25:09.876
[SPEAKER_03]: She didn't have other authors.
25:09.936 --> 25:10.596
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, obviously, right.
25:10.616 --> 25:11.997
[SPEAKER_00]: No agent can make it all one author.
25:12.158 --> 25:12.878
[SPEAKER_00]: It would be not good.
25:14.179 --> 25:19.902
[SPEAKER_00]: So, she sent out my book and it didn't sell, and she was really gunned shy after that, and she wanted me to be writing things.
25:20.062 --> 25:27.827
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, she didn't feel like the things I was writing were things that she was confident with sell, and she didn't want to send out another book and have it not sell, which is a legitimate concern.
25:28.347 --> 25:33.871
[SPEAKER_00]: But I wasn't writing things that she wanted to send out, and so what is she doing being my agent, right?
25:34.151 --> 25:38.153
[SPEAKER_00]: And so it was really, she wasn't about agent, I think she's a great agent for somebody else, it just didn't work out.
25:38.213 --> 25:40.755
[SPEAKER_03]: But there's there's content alignment issues.
25:40.775 --> 25:42.577
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes, that was the thing.
25:42.657 --> 25:49.083
[SPEAKER_03]: So what genre was she wanting to push and what were you writing it or was it not even the genre?
25:49.143 --> 25:50.644
[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't even really the genre.
25:50.704 --> 25:59.973
[SPEAKER_00]: It was more just that she was really concerned about it really bothered her to have sent out my book and had it not sell and she really wanted to make sure that the next one was going to sell.
26:00.013 --> 26:02.295
[SPEAKER_00]: So she wanted me to write like the right thing.
26:02.955 --> 26:10.060
[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't know that there that exists this like guarantee but I certainly wasn't very good at chasing it It just was my good alignment for me.
26:10.540 --> 26:27.330
[SPEAKER_00]: So and and where do you feel like your agent was Giving you too many notes then and or anything like that or no I'm happy to take notes and I feel like her notes in my book were great But it's one thing to take notes on a book that's already written and it's another thing to be told This isn't the right book right something else.
26:27.470 --> 26:31.773
[SPEAKER_00]: No, this isn't the right book either right something else No, this isn't you know again to sort of be judged on like
26:32.573 --> 26:34.897
[SPEAKER_00]: ideas that I haven't even had a chance to develop yet.
26:34.997 --> 26:36.138
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
26:36.238 --> 26:37.100
[SPEAKER_00]: Much harder for me.
26:37.360 --> 26:40.464
[SPEAKER_00]: And some people can, like, that's fine for them, but it just didn't work out.
26:40.524 --> 26:43.609
[SPEAKER_03]: So, so you realize you've got a problem with the agents, not going to work.
26:44.150 --> 26:47.895
[SPEAKER_03]: And then you started looking for another agent at that point and how did that process go?
26:48.015 --> 26:48.956
[SPEAKER_00]: So, um,
26:49.617 --> 26:50.097
[SPEAKER_00]: earlier.
26:50.117 --> 26:52.919
[SPEAKER_00]: This was all there was a lot of things happened earlier.
26:52.939 --> 26:56.441
[SPEAKER_00]: I had taken a writing class from Brandon Sanderson.
26:56.521 --> 26:58.563
[SPEAKER_00]: He was a graduate student at the time.
26:58.583 --> 26:59.603
[SPEAKER_00]: It was the first time he taught it.
26:59.883 --> 27:01.024
[SPEAKER_00]: Alantris wasn't even out yet.
27:01.765 --> 27:02.685
[SPEAKER_00]: So nobody knew who he was.
27:02.705 --> 27:03.946
[SPEAKER_00]: They were like 12 of us in that class.
27:04.726 --> 27:08.309
[SPEAKER_00]: But he was, um, we're shadowing this may be poor.
27:08.369 --> 27:09.629
[SPEAKER_02]: This may be important later.
27:10.630 --> 27:27.469
[SPEAKER_00]: So we also had classes together, I took a graduate level class when I was a senior and so we had some classes together and I started doing critique group with him and he, when I lost my agent said, hey can I call up my agent and tell him that he wants you.
27:27.889 --> 27:30.971
[SPEAKER_00]: And I had submitted to him before, and so he knew who I was.
27:31.091 --> 27:36.595
[SPEAKER_00]: He had seen my work before, and I had decided when I split with my agent, that was just really demoralizing, right?
27:36.615 --> 27:38.957
[SPEAKER_00]: To have worked for so long, and then be like, this just isn't working.
27:39.598 --> 27:46.883
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I was really discouraged, and so I decided I just needed to break, and I, if an opportunity fell in my lap, I'd take it, but I wasn't going to query for a little while.
27:46.963 --> 27:48.044
[SPEAKER_00]: I just needed to breathe.
27:49.084 --> 27:57.768
[SPEAKER_00]: And then Brandon made that phone call and I decided he did in fact want to sign me and so it was only like six weeks So that was out of an agent, but through no work of my own.
27:58.028 --> 28:10.014
[SPEAKER_00]: I was gonna write and this was Brandon's current agent then that Yeah, so Brandon's main agent is Joshua Bilmas and this is Joshua's like second in command Okay, gotcha, who was handling Brandon's YA stuff.
28:10.334 --> 28:11.514
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, very cool.
28:11.794 --> 28:17.877
[SPEAKER_03]: So so this new agent Tell me about your experience with them and and and what they did for your career
28:18.212 --> 28:23.054
[SPEAKER_00]: So the thing that I value the most about Eddie is he does not tell me what to write.
28:23.094 --> 28:25.795
[SPEAKER_00]: Whatever I am writing, he's going to do his very best to sell it.
28:26.195 --> 28:28.676
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's been a lot of books that he has sent out that have not sold.
28:28.956 --> 28:30.617
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's kind of the trade-off, right?
28:30.697 --> 28:38.960
[SPEAKER_00]: Like if I want somebody who's going to be absolutely certain that they're going to be able to sell my work, they are going to sell it since stuff out as much as somebody who is willing to just take a shot on whatever I'm working on.
28:39.281 --> 28:42.622
[SPEAKER_00]: And that, like I like being on the side that I'm on and so it works out for me.
28:43.802 --> 28:45.063
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I'm really grateful for him.
28:45.363 --> 28:49.845
[SPEAKER_01]: I would love to hear from him, like, like, what things he was like, I had no idea.
28:50.005 --> 28:52.146
[SPEAKER_01]: And we sold it, you know, like, right?
28:52.927 --> 28:57.769
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, because I don't think you could, I think forecasting is I think there's a skill to the market.
28:58.388 --> 29:04.234
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, but I think forecasting isn't necessarily, you don't know what's going to be the next column now.
29:04.735 --> 29:09.119
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, well, sometimes bad relationships tell you what you want in a relationship, right?
29:09.659 --> 29:15.205
[SPEAKER_03]: And, and it seems like that happened with with your two agents where where the, the one thing,
29:15.725 --> 29:42.137
[SPEAKER_03]: And I wonder now, if that thing you probably so much about Eddie, is so important to you, not because it's really important to you, but because you had a bad experience where you went, oh my goodness, like, that is my number one thing, where if that never happened you, if that would even be on your radar of, of, maybe, I don't know, like a lot of agents, like my first agent, I really do think she was a really good agent for somebody else.
29:44.418 --> 29:58.319
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like a lot more agents are on that side because you don't want to be sending things out lots of things out from an author and have their like perceived value go down and that's the flip side is I have had a lot of books rejected in New York a lot and but to me
29:59.460 --> 30:03.222
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm willing to take that to have the creative freedom to write the projects that I care about.
30:03.322 --> 30:04.002
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
30:04.202 --> 30:05.943
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm willing to take that risk and that's okay.
30:06.163 --> 30:08.925
[SPEAKER_00]: For somebody else, that might not be ideal for them.
30:09.505 --> 30:13.887
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I feel like it's more just like figuring out who I am and what I need.
30:14.067 --> 30:15.488
[SPEAKER_00]: And that comes with benefits and drawbacks.
30:15.508 --> 30:16.268
[SPEAKER_00]: It's going to be the same for me.
30:16.288 --> 30:21.111
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and it's useful for anybody out there who's listening, who wants an agent, right?
30:21.191 --> 30:24.172
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a crazy process to be setting your stuff in.
30:24.192 --> 30:25.773
[SPEAKER_02]: And then hopefully they like the first book.
30:26.373 --> 30:43.960
[SPEAKER_02]: Then often you'll have a call and then we like what questions do you have right and this gives you some ideas of some of the questions you could ask like what's your process like when I write the second book, you know, is this something we want to chat about or can I just write whatever I want and depends on your style with what's going to fit the best for you.
30:44.427 --> 31:04.947
[SPEAKER_00]: It's kind of like you always have that opportunity to ask questions and you don't know what to ask until you've been through it And so I actually signed with a third agent for a little while because I was collaborating on a romantic comedy series with a friend And we wanted somebody who specialized in that genre, which my agent didn't and so we with his permission we created that and we signed with a different agent
31:05.487 --> 31:14.558
[SPEAKER_00]: and I had so many questions for her, oh my gosh, I don't think she was a little nervous of how much interviewing I was doing because I knew exactly what I wanted to ask at the point I had been around the block.
31:15.879 --> 31:18.182
[SPEAKER_03]: So tell me, what is Eddie specialize in?
31:19.844 --> 31:24.049
[SPEAKER_03]: What does he sell well and what type of things like romantic or romance
31:24.309 --> 31:32.280
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, he does a lot of job rocky in general they do a lot of science fiction and fantasy and then he handles a lot of the YA.
31:33.001 --> 31:38.969
[SPEAKER_00]: There he's I think they have somebody else doing her fantasy now a job rocky, but he does he does a lot of that awesome.
31:39.490 --> 31:41.430
[SPEAKER_03]: Well tell me a little bit about your genre.
31:41.470 --> 31:44.851
[SPEAKER_03]: What do you write in, what's kind of your home?
31:45.171 --> 31:46.352
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, genre.
31:46.392 --> 31:47.652
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I jump around a lot.
31:47.912 --> 31:48.592
[SPEAKER_00]: So, okay.
31:48.652 --> 31:56.274
[SPEAKER_00]: So, after I sold that first one in contemporary YA, I did a bunch of indie publishing, so I have some contemporary YA indie books.
31:56.394 --> 31:58.955
[SPEAKER_00]: I also have some young adult science fiction.
31:59.595 --> 32:08.057
[SPEAKER_00]: Then I started collaborating, so I published a rom-com series, an adult rom-com series, and an adult epic fantasy.
32:08.517 --> 32:15.619
[SPEAKER_00]: trilogy and some more YA fantasy and then now I'm mostly writing in adult science fiction.
32:16.259 --> 32:16.539
[SPEAKER_03]: Awesome.
32:16.859 --> 32:31.583
[SPEAKER_03]: Now that seems unusual to me because I know a lot of publishers and a lot of agents like to cage their authors and tell them, hey this is your genre, this is this is how we know how to sell you.
32:31.863 --> 32:32.884
[SPEAKER_01]: You can't.
32:32.904 --> 32:33.444
[SPEAKER_01]: You can't.
32:33.864 --> 32:34.784
[SPEAKER_03]: That's what I'm working on.
32:34.924 --> 32:35.384
[SPEAKER_03]: Most of us.
32:35.684 --> 32:35.925
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
32:35.945 --> 32:37.165
[SPEAKER_03]: You can't read a book in four weeks.
32:37.665 --> 32:40.447
[SPEAKER_01]: I was just about to say, I think it's because she's so prolific.
32:40.467 --> 32:41.849
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you think that's part of it, Jens?
32:42.009 --> 32:42.789
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that's part of it.
32:42.849 --> 32:51.477
[SPEAKER_00]: Also, I think the reason you don't see people doing it as much as because it's not a good idea, right?
32:51.497 --> 32:53.118
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, it's not a good idea.
32:53.558 --> 32:55.920
[SPEAKER_00]: But I just, I get bored.
32:56.481 --> 32:59.103
[SPEAKER_00]: I get bored of doing the same thing and I need to do something different.
32:59.163 --> 33:00.284
[SPEAKER_00]: It's similar, like,
33:01.204 --> 33:09.587
[SPEAKER_00]: Brandon Sanderson is kind of famous for writing these like accidental books and he does that as like palette cleansers in between and jumping genres is my version of that.
33:09.687 --> 33:12.868
[SPEAKER_00]: He has succeeded in this genre and so he kind of is boxed in, right?
33:12.888 --> 33:17.950
[SPEAKER_00]: Like he can't just go do something totally different that appeals to a totally different audience without losing the audience that he has.
33:18.190 --> 33:25.693
[SPEAKER_00]: And so he just writes these like wacky side ideas constantly and that's how he copes with that the like boxed in feeling if I have to do this one thing all the time.
33:26.353 --> 33:31.016
[SPEAKER_00]: But I've never had that curse of people who are demanding to read my work.
33:32.777 --> 33:36.959
[SPEAKER_00]: And I feel like if I'm not wildly succeeding at something, why am I committed to it?
33:37.499 --> 33:45.763
[SPEAKER_00]: So I feel like I have the freedom to jump genre until something really takes off and I have this audience that is hungry for the content and then I'll have to find some other way to entertain yourself.
33:45.863 --> 33:47.124
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm giving more things to you.
33:47.344 --> 33:52.347
[SPEAKER_02]: You're saying you would brand an art going to do a romantic comedy together here soon, right?
33:52.447 --> 33:53.968
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, that would be hilarious.
33:55.208 --> 34:06.035
[SPEAKER_03]: It's interesting because it's not just authors that deal with this, like a lot of art like Garth Brooks and his like career, I don't know what he changed his name to for his rock career.
34:06.716 --> 34:16.041
[SPEAKER_03]: But he had that that stint in that and I know I mean going back to authors Stephen King had his Richard Bachman years and in that kind of stuff.
34:16.642 --> 34:18.523
[SPEAKER_03]: What was J.K. Rowling's other one?
34:19.044 --> 34:20.885
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, Richard Galbrith is that.
34:20.905 --> 34:21.165
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
34:21.305 --> 34:22.106
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
34:22.126 --> 34:22.446
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
34:22.486 --> 34:24.427
[SPEAKER_02]: Middle mystery.
34:24.507 --> 34:24.867
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
34:24.907 --> 34:26.227
[SPEAKER_00]: He was like several of them.
34:26.248 --> 34:28.709
[SPEAKER_00]: It was like military mystery type stuff.
34:28.749 --> 34:29.589
[SPEAKER_00]: And then it got leaked.
34:29.649 --> 34:30.510
[SPEAKER_00]: But it was hard.
34:30.550 --> 34:30.710
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
34:31.030 --> 34:31.750
[SPEAKER_00]: I felt bad for her.
34:32.070 --> 34:32.330
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
34:32.911 --> 34:33.111
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
34:33.691 --> 34:36.973
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, so let's let's talk about your career now.
34:37.013 --> 34:37.873
[SPEAKER_03]: What do you.
34:38.473 --> 34:39.794
[SPEAKER_03]: So we're jumping.
34:40.114 --> 34:41.656
[SPEAKER_01]: Can I ask an in-between question?
34:41.676 --> 34:42.697
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, absolutely can.
34:43.118 --> 34:44.139
[SPEAKER_01]: What are you?
34:44.520 --> 34:49.806
[SPEAKER_01]: So you did Indie, publishing, you did traditional Indie.
34:50.836 --> 34:53.858
[SPEAKER_01]: traditional, with Indy in there, I'm assuming.
34:53.998 --> 34:54.218
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
34:54.518 --> 34:54.838
[SPEAKER_01]: What?
34:54.998 --> 35:01.322
[SPEAKER_01]: Talk to us for just a second about what those look like, like the differences in your career and what you are.
35:01.502 --> 35:05.944
[SPEAKER_03]: And your answer will be 15 years outdated, is that right?
35:06.365 --> 35:07.205
[SPEAKER_03]: Is that what we're talking about?
35:07.225 --> 35:08.726
[SPEAKER_03]: Or we're talking up now.
35:08.886 --> 35:09.426
[SPEAKER_03]: Ten years.
35:09.506 --> 35:10.167
[SPEAKER_03]: Ten years.
35:10.347 --> 35:10.567
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
35:10.627 --> 35:12.128
[SPEAKER_03]: And no things are changing so fast.
35:12.148 --> 35:12.828
[SPEAKER_00]: It's so hard changing.
35:13.008 --> 35:14.689
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I've been in the publishing.
35:14.809 --> 35:15.149
[SPEAKER_00]: I haven't.
35:15.289 --> 35:17.191
[SPEAKER_00]: It's been about two years since my last one.
35:17.231 --> 35:17.611
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
35:17.631 --> 35:18.551
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm still in it.
35:19.992 --> 35:28.318
[SPEAKER_00]: So people get really attached to their camp like India traditional and they treat them like their sports teams.
35:28.718 --> 35:31.901
[SPEAKER_00]: I've always felt like I'm going to get on the train that's leaving the station.
35:32.081 --> 35:33.842
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to go where the opportunities are.
35:34.162 --> 35:37.705
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I wasn't, after my first book, we had a really hard time selling book too.
35:37.745 --> 35:42.408
[SPEAKER_00]: What they don't tell you is that as an unknown, you have limited list potential.
35:42.849 --> 35:48.433
[SPEAKER_00]: And once a book comes out and then my publisher didn't promote it very much, which happens a lot.
35:49.033 --> 35:56.759
[SPEAKER_00]: And so it's the sales numbers were very low because that's what happens when a book is not marketed and now I had kind of this black mark to my name and nobody wanted my books.
35:57.320 --> 36:05.686
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I had had several books go out in New York and I just could not drum up the creative energy to write another book to die in New York and so I had to do something else.
36:06.047 --> 36:09.469
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I started indie publishing because it was like I can see a future here.
36:10.550 --> 36:13.093
[SPEAKER_00]: And so it wasn't even about they're not being a future in New York.
36:13.113 --> 36:15.475
[SPEAKER_00]: It was about making myself believe in it again.
36:16.055 --> 36:18.437
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I did that for a while for that reason.
36:18.798 --> 36:26.104
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we would still send out Book 1 of a series in New York, but I wouldn't just take a note as like a note forever anymore.
36:26.164 --> 36:27.706
[SPEAKER_00]: I would take it and be like, okay, they don't want it.
36:27.986 --> 36:31.209
[SPEAKER_00]: It'd give it a year, send it around, if it got rejected everywhere, then I do it myself.
36:31.649 --> 36:39.012
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, so if you got published by a publisher great and if it didn't then you're you're going to be doing the the indie publishing Just so that I could move forward.
36:39.052 --> 36:50.416
[SPEAKER_03]: I feel like I was yeah for Wayne dead manuscripts and and Jance what is like that What is what is indie publishing look like for you what what like I assume it's just a lot more work on your end
36:50.736 --> 36:59.122
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it's a lot of work to traditionally publish too, and so I actually find it's about the same amount of work because like I said, the publisher doesn't necessarily market you.
36:59.262 --> 37:01.924
[SPEAKER_00]: They might, but really you have to do a lot of your own marketing.
37:02.685 --> 37:08.009
[SPEAKER_00]: And so the things that are a little easier with a publisher is that they'll do the layout for you.
37:08.369 --> 37:10.550
[SPEAKER_00]: They will pay for the editing, those things.
37:11.151 --> 37:13.332
[SPEAKER_00]: But you can pay for the layout too.
37:13.573 --> 37:16.355
[SPEAKER_01]: You can pay for somebody to do your layout to do your cover.
37:16.975 --> 37:21.977
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, as long as you're willing to pay for it, and you believe in your work that it will, that money will come back to you.
37:22.157 --> 37:27.339
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, but yeah, I find there actually about the same amount of work, and about the same amount of difficult.
37:27.419 --> 37:31.441
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I always tell people, you know, people say, like, should I do indie, should I do traditional, and I always say, what do you want?
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[SPEAKER_00]: What do you want to do?
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[SPEAKER_00]: Like, you might as well do what you want, because they're both hard, and they're both a lot of work.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, one thing I love about what you're saying though is like one, we started with the idea that you wrote because it's fun, right?
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[SPEAKER_02]: And you love the idea of finishing a book.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And then as you go through your career, your finding ways to keep fun alive.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Well, that's fun or that success because it's an industry where there's lots of doors that get closed all the time.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And it's really important to find reasons why you like to do it and to ways to succeed with what you're doing.
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[SPEAKER_02]: So it's really cool that you found these ways.
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[SPEAKER_03]: And did you have a time after college where you had to get a job that wasn't writing or has this been your career?
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[SPEAKER_03]: So it's a get-go.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's been my career, but it hasn't always made money.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So my husband paints gaming miniatures.
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[SPEAKER_00]: That's what he does for a living.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And so we graduate.
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[SPEAKER_00]: What a duo.
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[SPEAKER_03]: So you guys are just rolling them a day.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So when we were in college, I was teaching freshman writing as a grad instructor.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And so I paid the bills while he was starting his business.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And then his business paid our bills for a number of bunch of years while I was not making money writing.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So I didn't have another career, but I was just working for free.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And then eventually my career started doing better and was taking a pay paying more of the bills.
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[SPEAKER_03]: nice.
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[SPEAKER_03]: And then what about paying for like covers and that kind of stuff?
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[SPEAKER_03]: What was that like you doing the indie stuff?
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[SPEAKER_00]: So when I first any published I did not have money to pay for covers, but I had a friend who was a graphic designer who was excited to do them for me and so I paid her royalties.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So she got a cut of the books and I did the same thing with editing on my first few.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Um, when I later on, um, I have, I did start paying a cover designer, um, for like our rom-com series, we paid a cover designer, um, and then I also learned how to do my own.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So I've done some of my own.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I always say like you have, you have three options, right?
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[SPEAKER_00]: You can learn to be a professional, you can, uh, pay a professional or you can look on professional, right?
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[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And so I did a little bit of a, a mix of the pay a professional and then become a professional, um, learning how to do it myself.
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[SPEAKER_03]: very cool.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, cool, cool, cool.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Um, so talk about your your your your biggest success.
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[SPEAKER_03]: But what's been kind of your your number one book.
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[SPEAKER_03]: When did that come out and just how how that kind of changed the path of your career?
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[SPEAKER_00]: I remember my biggest success is definitely my collaborations with Brandon Simpson.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Well, spoiler.
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[SPEAKER_03]: That is the whole topic of our next episode, and you know what?
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[SPEAKER_03]: Well, you know what?
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[SPEAKER_03]: We're at that point Right now I think I think we are.
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[SPEAKER_03]: I think that was our our warning.
40:19.839 --> 40:21.321
[SPEAKER_03]: So if you want to hear
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[SPEAKER_03]: If you want to hear in, and for you listeners, that's going to be a month away, but it is going to be worth the wait for sure.
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[SPEAKER_03]: So as we wrap things up real quick, let's just talk about what the three of you guys have coming up that you guys want to promote and talk about, Jansie, do you have anything that's coming out soon that we should be aware of?
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[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, so in September, I have Blightfall coming out, which is my first book in the Riftweeg Tradi.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I'm excited.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I'm in the, it's a follow up to the Skyward series, so.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Very cool.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Very cool.
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[SPEAKER_03]: And that comes out one.
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[SPEAKER_00]: September 1st.
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[SPEAKER_03]: September 1st.
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[SPEAKER_03]: And if, uh, and if people wanted to follow you, where do they follow you?
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[SPEAKER_00]: I'm on Instagram and I'm on TikTok.
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[UNKNOWN]: Those are the best places.
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[SPEAKER_02]: You put down a lot of good content.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
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[SPEAKER_02]: So it's really fun to follow Jansie.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Very, very cool.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Shelley, what are you having coming up?
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[SPEAKER_01]: I don't have things coming up.
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[SPEAKER_01]: You what?
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[SPEAKER_03]: You gave up?
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[SPEAKER_01]: I did all my things.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Aren't you judging any contest or anything?
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[SPEAKER_02]: We have another middle grade book coming out.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And we don't have a date on it.
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[SPEAKER_02]: We don't have a date.
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[SPEAKER_02]: That's the tricky part.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And it's all secret.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
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[SPEAKER_03]: I remember last time we talked, you guys were saying that it was all kind of top secret.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And still, we were about to sign the contract, but we're actually turning in the book like in a month.
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[SPEAKER_03]: It's out of order.
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[SPEAKER_03]: It's out of order.
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[SPEAKER_02]: It's a little... We did a little agent change and stuff in between.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Oh.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Was your previous agent outlining you right?
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[SPEAKER_03]: What you wanted to write?
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[SPEAKER_03]: It was a chance.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, great.
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[SPEAKER_02]: No, totally different story.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Our agent just got another job in publishing and decided not to be an agent anymore.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, but that's for the new it's saying people get orphaned.
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[SPEAKER_00]: That's fair.
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[SPEAKER_03]: So you guys are orphaned for a little bit.
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[SPEAKER_03]: How long were you guys in between agents?
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[SPEAKER_01]: No, we we turned it around like in a month.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, nice.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So we're doing an episode on that because I want to hear this.
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[SPEAKER_03]: No, Jancy, you are the guest.
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[SPEAKER_03]: All right.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Well, we're going to wrap that up.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Thanks for joining us on another episode of mulling it over this time with out brand and mull.