The Creative Penn Podcast For Writers

How do you write about the most painful experiences of your life without being overwhelmed by them? How can timed writing and a braided story help you untangle your hardest stories? With Nicole Walker.

In the intro, Self-Publishing Pop Up Books [Self-Publishing with ALLi]; New in KU [BookBub]; The solar sail theory of indie publishing [ProductiveIndieFictionWriter]; Bones of the Deep; Selfie Awards Shortlist 2026.

This episode is sponsored by Publisher Rocket, which will help you get your book in front of more Amazon readers so you can spend less time marketing and more time writing. I use Publisher Rocket for researching book titles, categories, and keywords — for new books and for updating my backlist. Check it out at www.PublisherRocket.com

This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn

Nicole Walker is a nonfiction author, essayist, poet, and editor, as well as a creative writing teacher. Her latest book is Writing the Hard Stuff: Turning Difficult Subjects into Meaningful Prose.

You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.

Show Notes

Why writing helps us understand “the puzzles of the universe” — and when to trust that intuition

The braided essay: alternating between trauma and an everyday obsession to unlock the hard stuff

How two-minute timed writing lets you go deep and then safely step back

Rooting pain in the body, using the senses, scene, and dialogue instead of words like “trauma”

Truth in memoir, big T versus little t, and the emerging genre of speculative nonfiction

What actually sells books: pairing up on book tour and getting readers back out into the world

You can find Nicole and NikWalk.com.

Transcript of the interview with Nicole Walker

Jo: Nicole Walker is a nonfiction author, essayist, poet, and editor, as well as a creative writing teacher. Her latest book is Writing the Hard Stuff: Turning Difficult Subjects into Meaningful Prose. So welcome to the show, Nicole.

Nicole: Hi, Joanna. It's so nice to be here.

Jo: I've lots to talk about, but first up—

Tell us a bit more about you and your journey into writing and publishing.

Nicole: I was always a writer. As all writers say, I've been writing since I was five. I kept little journals and things like that, and I was on the high school literary magazine.

I was an English major in college, but that was always tempered with some serious commitment to the sciences, to English literature, to German, to Spanish.

I had a wide variety of interests, but there was always something that tugged at me about writing that made me feel like, this is where I feel most at home. This is the way I like to understand the puzzles of the universe. This is how I make sense of the world—through writing.

So even though I got my BA in English at Reed College in Portland, Oregon, I stuck around Portland for a few years because I loved it. I worked for various non-profits, and that was great.

At some point I said, “I really want to take this seriously.” So I went ahead and applied to graduate school, and ended up in the University of Utah's PhD programme, where I stayed for eight very lovely years.

I always recommend to my own students: never graduate. Stay in graduate school forever, because it's such a beautiful place where people support your writing. You have professors who support it, but more importantly, you have your cohort.

To this day, I have so many great friends. You make a lot of friends if you stick around for eight years.

That sort of community-building is, I think, the other part of why I became a writer. Writing by myself is obviously a lonely business, and there's a lot of internal struggle that happens with that.

I have found a literary community, both at the University of Utah and then growing from there, serving as president of the NonfictioNOW Conference, teaching my own graduate students, serving as the series editor for Crux, the imprint at the University of Georgia Press.

I feel like my world has expanded because of my writing. So that's been a true gift.

Jo: Oh, I love that.

I love that you said you understand the puzzles of the universe through writing, and that this tugged at you. Could talk about that a bit more?

Because a lot of listeners, I think, sometimes mistrust that feeling. They think, “Oh, maybe I shouldn't necessarily lean into that intuition.” It feels like you leaned very strongly into an intuition that this was the way.

Nicole: Yes, and this book in particular, Writing the Hard Stuff, takes that to heart. I think about writing the hard stuff as writing all kinds of tricky things—things that are really hard to communicate.

The book begins revolving around personal trauma. Things that happened in my childhood, as well as difficult subjects that happen to us when we're growing up.

It also includes things like environmental issues and political issues: things that are really hard to talk about, that are philosophically difficult to express, that can be controversial, and that you can put people off by talking about.

One of the goals of the book—one of my own philosophies—is that by looking deeply into the knotted ball of string that is a kind of trauma or a kind of difficulty, and beginning to pull those strings out, that's where you start to not only make meaning out of what happened to you, or what this particular problem is, but those strings themselves become connections.

I talk about Donna Haraway's book Staying with the Trouble. It's primarily about how we can overcome our political differences regarding climate change, and one of her examples is to change the way we think about narrative.

In Western thought, we often think there's a beginning, a middle, and an end, and she brings up the Navajo game that we all know as cat's cradle.

So if you think of that ball of knots—your trauma, your difficult subject—you start pulling out the strings, and then you start playing with it. With cat's cradle, you make one design with your hands, and then a friend pulls it around and turns it into another design.

To me, that's how reading and writing work. We share, and we build on each other's ideas, but we're always connected by those strings.

So if you have this difficult subject and you're shying away from it, you're losing, I think, some of the opportunity to make connections and to make sense of what that nest of string sitting in your stomach actually is.

Jo: I love that metaphor. I think it's brilliant. I've never heard it described that way, and I think it's fantastic. What's interesting is that some people don't have a mind's eye—I know several listeners who don't.

So while in my mind I'm picturing the ball of string and then the cat's cradle, some people won't be able to do that, which is also fascinating in terms of how people's brains work.

In terms of how you'd recommend people think about it: this ball of string that we want to turn into a design like a cat's cradle is a total mess. So where do we even start?

How do we know where to start pulling on the threads?

Because it might just feel like it's out of control.

Nicole: Oh, I deeply appreciate both the idea that some people don't have that mind's eye, or just think differently. We all have different ways of imagining what we call our trauma, this nest of problems, this ball of string.

Of course a metaphor does oversimplify in some ways. I say, “Well, you just take one of the ends of the string and start pulling.” But practically, what does that really mean to do? There are a couple of things I suggest in the book and offer at workshops. One is an exercise I call writing the braided essay.

I ask the writer to sit down and think about a scene that was difficult in their life—something that had a lot of tension, that they're really still struggling with, that they don't love thinking about. I'm going to ask them to go there for just a couple of minutes.

Then there's the other side of the braided essay: I ask them to think about something completely different, completely off-topic.

Perhaps a walk they took in the aspen grove, or what they were making for dinner last night, or perhaps they're deeply invested in the networks of the blood in the human body—anything they're fascinated and obsessed with.

I say, “Okay, I want you to write about your difficult subject for two minutes, but then I'm going to give you a break, and you're going to pop over and talk about how you spent all day weeding your garden, and yet there are still weeds.”

Then I'm going to ask people to go back and talk about their difficult subject, and then go back and talk about their obsession with weeds. They write about each of these things for two minutes.

What happens—which I think is a pretty compelling experiment, from my point of view and from theirs—is that they write back and forth, and they're able to take a break from the hard thing. They're also tempted to go back to it once they've had that break in their research.

The other thing that happens—and, you know, every book in nonfiction has to have a colon, so of course it's called Writing the Hard Stuff: Turning Difficult Subjects into Meaningful Prose—is that by going back and forth, you'll see the connections these writers make.

They make connections with word choice, with verbs, with colours and different kinds of imagery. They start to make meaning between those two ideas. What happens to the writer then—and to me, when I'm doing it—is that I now have something that is constructed.

So it's not just this knot in my stomach. It's not just my interest in research. Now I've put these things together, and then I get to play. We get to the cat's cradle part of the metaphor, where I really start thinking about craft issues.

Why did I happen to bring these two ideas together? What might they have in common? What does it mean that I'm telling the story of my parents' divorce and my personal trauma, and in the research part I'm talking about weeds? Well, maybe I felt in the weeds.

You come up with some sort of overarching understanding of why you chose that research story, and it lets you go deeper into that personal trauma, now with some of the techniques of craft, which I think help shield you from some of the trauma and pain of that original hard story.

Jo: Again, I really love that idea.

Do you also think the timed writing actually helps people go deep and then withdraw a bit, which psychologically may help them write about these difficult subjects?

People are like, “I need to sit down for two hours and write about this deeply traumatic thing,” which of course feels like it's going to be too hard. So perhaps that two-minute process actually releases people from that.

Nicole: Oh, absolutely. What a great way to think about it. It is prohibitive to sit down and think, “Okay, I'm going to go into the worst thing that ever happened to me and sit with it for two hours.”

Going back and forth, you create energy and tension. But also, nobody wants to sit with something by themselves for two hours. If you think of research as your companion—”I'm coming in there with you, buddy”—you have something to rely on, this other side of the story, and it gives you that space.

The timed writing, the two minutes, two minutes, two minutes, also reminds you that you don't have to write for two hours straight any day. I have a goal where I write 500 words a day, which is mostly true, unless I'm really in the weeds.

We'll use two metaphors today: we'll use string, and now we'll be using weeds. But when I'm really in the weeds teaching, or going around the country talking about books, I really do write 500 words a day. I often try not to write too much more, because sometimes it loses freshness, and it can be overwhelming.

So I really appreciate you saying that having that timed writing is important, but also that having that balance of deep emotional investigation with this more cerebral, informational crutch can really help you get into the subject and go deeper.

Jo: Yes, and perhaps it anchors the writing in something concrete. Because with memoir particularly—having also written one—it can be too easy to lean on big words like “pain” or “trauma,” but that's actually meaningless in a book.

So why is it so important to be specific and concrete in our writing in order to convey these bigger topics?

Nicole: I think we know our own trauma. We know how it feels in our bodies, and we've been living with it for a long time. So it's pretty hard to communicate it to others. Why does it matter to other people?

Of course it matters to you, but how are you going to convey the breadth of that trouble with words that aren't rooted in the physical world?

The nice thing about rooting things in the physical world is that every one of us has a body. We have different bodies, but we share that in common. So it's the old trope of using your senses first. What did it feel like?

If you can't think of what part of your body it particularly hurts in, you have the availability of metaphor to describe how that might have felt. You have the opportunity to create scene.

This is particularly difficult for memoir writers, I think, because we imagine it's the fiction folks who have to use dialogue, who have to have a setting, who have to put their bodies in a place.

Thatt's one of my mantras when I teach: we need to be able to see where you are. We need to see what is physically happening, how the interactions work.

Dialogue, I think, is one of the best ways to literally get your body on the page—and to get your other characters, or subjects, on the page—because to speak, you have to have a body.

Once you start having dialogue, you can picture the way the speaker's face moves, the way they cross their legs. You can even picture the colour of the paint behind them, or the kind of chair they're sitting in. So dialogue is one of the first ways you can say, “All right, I must have a scene here.”

I can't go on just telling people, “It was so traumatic. I suffered so much. It was terrible. I felt so much pain.” You can say that sometimes, that's totally fair, but you have to pair it with that physical, concrete imagery, so other people can begin to understand what it felt like for you in your body, so they can feel it in their body.

Jo: Interesting that you bring up dialogue because one of the issues with memoir is—I've had people compare it to truth with a small “t” and truth with a big “T.” So you're telling some kind of big truth about your life.

If you're writing dialogue about something that actually happened to you, in memory, it's very unlikely that it actually happened in that way, so it's not necessarily small-“t” true. So on a practical note, what are your thoughts and tips on truth.

How do we tell our own story even if others don't see it that way?

Nicole: This is a subject I'm deeply invested in right now. When I first started teaching creative nonfiction, it was at the height of the John D'Agata and David Shields questions. What is truth? Big T, little t? What am I obligated to do as a creative nonfiction writer?

I had a great friend, Angie Truong, who came to teach one of my classes, and she said, “Nonfiction is a pretty big spectrum. You have journalism on one end, and then you have the lyric essay on the other end.”

You imagine the lyric essay is full of metaphors and things like that, so you can approach truth. You're saying, “This is what it felt like. This is what it seemed like.”

Check out my newest favourite thing. It's called speculative nonfiction, and I use a little bit of this in my book How to Plant a Billion Trees, which Writing the Hard Stuff is somewhat based on.

I wrote them in tandem, which was a very strange and interesting and fun thing to do. But in How to Plant a Billion Trees I use this thing called speculative nonfiction, which goes even further along the spectrum, past the lyric essay, to this opportunity to use language like “perhaps,” “maybe,” “I imagined.”

So I have sections in my book where I can't remember the dialogue exactly, but I know that the dialogue in some sense matters—that what might have been said will do much more to convey what was happening than my exposition over the matter.

By using those turns of phrase, you're alerting your reader: “Dear reader, this definitely is not exactly what happened, but this is how I recall it.”

Then you're being not only honest to the story and honest to your reader, but you're also conveying the feeling and the mood of the event—that other kind of truth that memoir is really trying to get at. It was like this for me, which is why I think this way now.

It's a fledgling genre. I just read a book by Laraine Herring called A Constellation of Ghosts: A Speculative Memoir with Ravens. It's brilliant. It's an amazing book that pairs her actual colonoscopy and discovery of colon cancer with the story of her dad, who has passed already and comes back as a raven and helps her through it.

So you're pulling on some of the tools of fiction, which creative nonfiction already has been doing. But it does so in this bright and, I feel, incredibly ethical way.

You're alerting your reader, “My dad is not really a raven.” But you're also saying, “Oh my gosh, I sensed he was with me. I sensed every time a raven approached that I had somebody's hand on my shoulder.”

That, to me, has been a lot of fun—a much more imaginative way of creating some of those scenes than doing something like, “Well, I don't remember the dialogue.” Or, even worse—and we know people have been unethical in their approach—recreating the dialogue as if they'd had a tape recorder with them when they were 17 years old.

Jo: Mm.

Nicole: So I offer that as an option to your listeners, as something to experiment with. Allow yourself to have that imaginative opportunity to show the reader what it might have been like.

Jo: I love that. It's interesting, you talk there about the spectrum of nonfiction, which is ridiculously big, as is fiction. Obviously these are very big. But I wonder if we do get hemmed in by genre.

I love the idea of a speculative memoir. I'm going to have to go read that book because I can't even imagine what that really means. I feel hemmed in by my expectations of a memoir.

But then, from a business and marketing perspective—because we're all trying to sell our books—

Do we risk not meeting the expectations of a reader of a genre that way?

Nicole: Right. One of the good and bad things about my literary career is that I've spanned a lot of genres. My PhD is actually in poetry. Nobody expects the full truth from poetry.

One of my poetry professors once said she wrote this really sad poem about her father's death, and the audience was moved, and then her real father stood up and said, “Good job, daughter.” And someone in the audience was just shocked: “You just read a poem about your dead dad, and here he is!”

We have absolute expectations of genre, and expectations of truth, in everything we read. If you label it fiction, you're kind of off the hook—even though, of course, fiction uses so many elements of nonfiction: so much research, so much information, so much personal memory to create those fantastic landscapes.

So when I think about how one sells one's memoir, I do think you also have to acknowledge what you expect your audience to be. With Laraine Herring's A Constellation of Ghosts, by putting “colon, a speculative memoir,” you're alerting your reader to that possibility.

And because it's a pretty far-out way of thinking right now, it probably does curtail some of the sales.

On the other hand, think of memoirs that are written for celebrities, and how many of them are ghostwritten—or written with other people, where the ghostwriter's not even part of the thing—but it comes across as the most legit of all memoirs, because it's a celebrity and we know them.

We associate their lives with their story, and their story must therefore be true. So I think, with all levels of creative nonfiction, it's incumbent upon the writer to suggest right off the bat what kind of nonfiction they're reading.

Are they reading journalism? Are they reading lyric essays? Are they reading speculative nonfiction?

I think a lot, too—as an editor for a literary series for nonfiction books—about what I look for in memoir. It's something that takes the personal story and connects it into the larger conversation.

Even if the larger conversation is directly about what the main subject is about, to me it's still about the crux of the matter. Why does your story make an impact on the world in this bigger way? How do you let the world inform your story? How does your past and your trauma, or your difficulties, connect to a larger world?

Jo: Mm.

Nicole: To me, that's something some memoirs are capable of doing. Some memoirs are truly invested only in that personal story, which I think is totally legitimate too, because I love learning how people think. I love understanding. This is just how my brain works.

But in terms of sales? I don't know. Again, as the series editor and as the seller of my own books, I think you can't determine it in advance.

So you should probably write what you want to write, what feels right to you, using as many craft techniques as you can hone. But the market, to me, feels very non-negotiable. You never know exactly how things are going to turn out.

So I deeply believe: write the best, most well-crafted book you can, and I do think your readers will find you.

Jo: We'll come back to marketing in a minute, but just returning to your own writing practice. I've got your book page up in front of me, and you've written all kinds of things: your essays, your memoirs, some fiction, and some poetry, as you mentioned.

So I wondered: when you're researching something, or you've got a feeling about wanting to write, how do you choose the type of book you turn it into—or a poem, or an essay? Or do you pitch it as some kind of external work, or turn it into a workshop?

How do you turn an idea into what it will eventually be?

Nicole: I love that question because it's somewhat of a mystery to me, but I think I'm getting close to understanding. It really is in those first few words, that first sentence, that I think, “Okay, I know which direction this is going.”

For example, the other day I woke up in the morning and thought, “All right, I'm writing this poem about how man took over for God, and that's how the planet ended up being such a mess.”

So I started writing it, and it was pretty lyrical at the beginning. But then I started making full sentences, and explaining things a little bit more, and I thought, “Okay, this is not a poem. It's going to be an essay.”

When I start writing fiction, I pull on something a little further, a little more distant from my experience, and then I pull it back into something more character-driven. For example, in a novel I'm writing, I begin with this whole story about McDonald's and ravens, and then I pull it back into the character.

If I were to diagram the sentences between a poem, the nonfiction, and the fiction, I think I'd see fundamental differences between the three.

Jo: Do you work on multiple projects at the same time, or once you commit to something, is that what you finish?

Personally, I have lots of little things happening, and then a moment comes and I commit to a book, and I won't stop until I've finished that book—the rest will have to wait. It's that decision moment. How does it work for you?

Nicole: My process is pretty similar to yours. I have a number of ongoing projects, percolating here and there. Some days I'll think, “All right, today feels like a fiction day.” But for the most part, you're absolutely right.

There's a bunch of little things I'm writing, or things I'm dabbling in, but once there's a critical mass—which I'd say is around 20,000 words or something—I'm all in, and I've got to focus on this project.

Even though I think I can do whatever multitasking, really it's important to try to maintain some sort of through-line in whatever project I'm working on. If I do that with too many projects, I lose that through-line.

I also worry sometimes that the projects start to sound too similar. So say I'm writing a nonfiction collection and a novel—if I go back and forth every other day, those sentence differences I'm talking about might start to collapse, and they become too similar. Then what the heck would I be writing? I don't even know.

Jo: It's interesting because you span academic publishing and, I guess, trade publishing—whatever you want to call it—where more non-academics read books. I'm just finishing up a master's myself at the moment, and writing academic stuff is completely different to writing my other books.

So when you're deciding on these books, are you aiming for a specific publication market—as in, you want an academic publisher, or you want a trade publisher?

How do you think about publishing in the process?

Nicole: As much as I once really wanted to find some ground as a scholarly and academic writer—and I really do love to write reviews of other people's books, and Writing the Hard Stuff is a textbook that relies tremendously on so many other people's books.

That is really important to me because that goes back to how one both creates and thanks one's community for creating the literary world we live in—I feel like there's a smaller audience for that sort of academic writing. But it's something we should do.

As generous as you are here, for example, reaching out to other people about other people's books is probably the kindest thing you can do. So I hope to continue to take time to do that and make it part of my repertoire.

It's not as fun, I'd say, as the imaginative elements of writing creative nonfiction, or fiction, or poetry. That's when I really love to groove and get into that mode of, “Oh, the words are coming. Oh, I never thought about it that way.”

With academic writing, I feel I sometimes write in a slightly more stilted voice. My friend Ander Monson, who teaches at the University of Arizona, has done a really great job of writing—whether it's his personal essays or his critical essays—where he maintains the same voice.

He doesn't move into that super-formal academic speak. He'll literally say things like, “You know,” or, “That's a banger of a sentence,” in the middle of an academic essay, and I really admire him for that.

I feel like maybe if academic writing were more receptive to people writing in their unique voices, then maybe more people would read it.

Jo: Yes. One of the pieces of feedback on one of my earlier essays in my master's year was around my sentence structure—that it would be far more appropriate in a novel than in an academic essay. I was saying to my husband, “I can't believe this, but I'm just going to have to change my style.” It's very interesting.

We're almost out of time, and I also wanted to ask you: you have a recent blog post on how to try to get your forthcoming book attention in 4,231 simple steps, which made me laugh.

We all find book marketing a challenge, so what have you found works best for you?

I should tell the listeners—there are not 4,000 steps in your blog post. Although I think people would want them.

Nicole: Exactly. I stopped at 72, but I can go on. That was sort of the pre-publishing process. There have been so many great things that have happened, but a lot of them have been driven by me.

I have a publicist, but he works on a lot of other books, and I have a marketing person at Bloomsbury. They have to juggle a lot. The only person who is really, really, really committed to your book is you.

So I've written companion essays. I haven't had any luck publishing them, which hasn't been true in the past, so I wonder what's going on there. I'll write something for the Huffington Post or Newsweek that's tangentially related to my book.

I also might just write too much in essay voice instead of popular-magazine voice. As we were just talking about, academic voice versus novelistic voice. So that might be part of the problem too. Reaching out to people who might invite me onto podcasts has been really rewarding, and very, very kind.

I think the best thing I did was to put myself on book tour and to pair myself with someone in that community.

I've gone on book tour before by myself, and there have been occasions where there were two to three people in the audience, which can be really disheartening.

The problem wasn't so much the bookstore's fault or my book's fault—it's just that if you go to a bookstore in a town where nobody knows you, they're not going to put a lot of effort into making the date happen, unless you're super famous.

So what I did was find somebody in a community—a friend of mine—who would go with me and be part of the conversation. Even if their book was a couple of years old, we'd still go and have a conversation about each of our books.

This has worked tremendously well. People will come to see their friend, and then they'll be introduced to you, and they'll ask you questions and buy your book. You create new connections and new friends thanks to that friend and that place. So that's my number one recommendation for how to get the word out in the world.

I also did all the social media stuff. It doesn't work as well as it used to. It's kind of a strange time. But because of my suggestion about going to bookstores with people you know… I think we're coming out of our COVID time, where we got so used to doing everything on our computers and just staying in our electronic universe.

People are hungry to get out. So one thing I want to do, and haven't done yet, is throw a big party.

Go to weird places where you don't even do readings—you just offer people snacks and a glass of wine and say, “Hey, here's a book if you want to buy it.” To have these more informal gatherings that bring people together because I do think there's a hankering for people to get out into the world again.

Jo: And just on that—you've got these two books coming at the same time: How to Plant a Billion Trees, which is the memoir, and Writing the Hard Stuff, the how-to book for writers.

When you do these events, are you choosing one or the other depending on the audience? Or are you selling both at the same time?

Because they're obviously very different.

Nicole: Yes, I'm definitely selling both at the same time. Although I probably push How to Plant a Billion Trees first, because most of the people I'm pairing with are also writers of nonfiction or memoir.

The other thing is, I can talk about How to Plant a Billion Trees, and if people have a really deep question about, “Well, how did you write this section?” I can say, “Well, if you refer to this book, Writing the Hard Stuff, you'll see.” So it's an easier segue.

I think people aren't used to going to book events for craft books. But in the interview world—where people are reviewing books or interviewing me—Writing the Hard Stuff has definitely been the primary book I've been approached to speak about because people really do want techniques.

So it depends on the context as to which book gets the spotlight, but it's been really fun to be able to talk about both in tandem.

I don't know if they're competing against each other or supporting each other. That's my hope, that people think, “Oh, I read this one book, I might as well read the other one.” But that's asking a lot of people, to buy two books, so I try not to overstate that hope.

Jo: They are very different, and I love the idea of doing that. Absolutely.

So where can people find you and your books online?

Nicole: You can find me at my Substack, which is substack.nikwalk.com—N-I-K-W-A-L-K. Or my website, which is the same: nikwalk.com. I might just start going as Nik Walk in the world, so people can find me more easily.

I also really love to support Bloomsbury. They have really good deals, especially on the audiobook for How to Plant a Billion Trees, and they also have good deals if you buy both books, you get free shipping.

So Bloomsbury is probably the number one place to get the books, but of course they're also available on Bookshop.org and Amazon.com, and on Amazon in the UK as well.

Jo: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Nicole. That was great.

Nicole: Oh, it was so fun to talk with you, Joanna. Thank you again so much for this opportunity.
The post Writing The Hard Stuff: Turning Difficult Subjects Into Meaningful Prose With Nicole Walker first appeared on The Creative Penn.

What if the real secret to a lasting writing career isn't talent or luck, but learning to thrive in the mess? Why are in-person events worthwhile even if the maths doesn't add up? How do you protect your creativity when the machines never sleep and the community is at one another's throats? With Mark Leslie Lefebvre

In the intro, Has AI Already Killed Non-Fiction [Tim Ferriss]; 9 ways that AI would disrupt authors and the publishing industry over the next decade; Pivoting towards The Transformation Economy; and Who do you serve?

This podcast is sponsored by Kobo Writing Life, which helps authors self-publish and reach readers in global markets through the Kobo eco-system. You can also subscribe to the Kobo Writing Life podcast for interviews with successful indie authors.

This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn

Mark Leslie Lefebvre is the author of horror and paranormal fiction, as well as non-fiction travel and books for authors. He's also an editor, professional speaker, and the Director of Business Development at Draft2Digital. His latest book is Stark Realities: Stacked Up Lessons Every Writer Needs to Know About the Business of Writing and Publishing.

You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.

Show Notes

Why print and in-person events are making a comeback for indie authors

The case for (and against) licensing your voice clone through ElevenLabs

Why we keep selling books in person when the numbers rarely add up

Measuring success by creative satisfaction rather than money

Being honest about author earnings and the fear of being truly seen

Managing stress, divisiveness, and the noise around AI

You can find Mark at MarkLeslie.ca.

Transcript of the interview with Mark Leslie Lefebvre

Jo: Mark Leslie Lefebvre is the author of horror and paranormal fiction, as well as non-fiction travel and books for authors. He's also an editor, professional speaker, and the Director of Business Development at Draft2Digital.

His latest book is Stark Realities: Stacked Up Lessons Every Writer Needs to Know About the Business of Writing and Publishing. Welcome back to the show, Mark.

Mark: Oh, hey, Jo. It's always an awesome time chatting with you.

Jo: You've been on the show lots of times over the years, but the last time was in September 2024, when we talked about selling books in person. So give us a bit of an update.

What does your writing and publishing business look like at the moment? How do you manage it alongside the day job and everything else you do?

Mark: Oh my God. Well, sleep is—no rest for the wicked, maybe. I'll sleep when I'm dead.

It's so funny, it was just this last weekend in Waterloo. I was at Waterloo Book Fest, and somebody came up to my table—another author from one of the other tables—and said, “I heard you on the The Creative Penn Podcast. And then when you mentioned something about Waterloo, I said, ‘He can't be from Waterloo.' And then when you mentioned the skeleton, I said, ‘I know where he lives.'”

Jo: That's scary.

Mark: So I love the fact that there are so many of your listeners all over the world, and that's usually how people know me. No matter what else I've done, it's like, “Oh, you've been on Joanna Penn's podcast.” I'll say, “Yes, I have.”

You know what's really funny? The last time I was on the podcast, we were talking about A Book in Hand, which I was supposed to release that year.

Jo: Yes.

Mark: I just added another 5,000 words to it this morning.

Jo: Wait, it's still not published?

Mark: No, and it's so funny. I actually have the first 60,000 words of it with an editor right now, and I told her I'd get her the rest of it, which I thought would be another 20,000 words, by the end of June. But I think it's going to hit 100,000.

Here's the weird thing that happened with this. This is trying to accumulate my life of book selling, as well as doubling down on doing in-person events in the last several years.

I thought I was going to have the book done in 2024. I ran into some issues where I didn't back it up properly. It was an old version, and I accidentally overwrote the only version I had.

Jo: So, for everyone listening, Mark—how many decades have you been an author and a publisher?

How come you're still missing deadlines and still not backing up your work properly?

Mark: Yes, this is a lesson: no matter how long you've been doing something, you can still make boneheaded errors. So if you, dear listener, have made mistakes, just know that this old guy who's been doing this since the mid-'80s still makes mistakes like that. Don't beat yourself up. I probably did something worse.

Anyway, that book I thought was going to be maybe 40, 45,000 words, it's going to be bigger than Wide for the Win—close to 100,000 words.

Here's a really important lesson I learned in that, Jo. I thought the book would be something. It became something else. Through my own experiences of doing more in-person events, book signings, and library event.

Also in talking to awesome folks like Johnny B. Truant, Katie Cross, Todd Fahnestock, and so many other authors I know, and seeing what Ben Wolf is up to, and a whole bunch of different people who are doing in-person events.

In creating case studies for how they interact specifically with a bookstore or library, or how they do in-person selling—I really think the book wasn't ready then. It's like the recipe wasn't ready. I still needed to play with some things.

I do sincerely have faith, since I got it into the editorial process, that this will be the year the book actually gets released.

Jo: As you said, there are some really good lessons there around sometimes the book not being quite ready. I'd bought an early version from the StoryBundle, which is how I got this book as well, actually.

Mark: Yes.

Jo: That's another tip for people—storybundle.com. You can go and find some great bundles there.

I was also thinking, as you were talking, that maybe one of the reasons this book about in-person events has got so big is because that's a real trend in the community. It feels like indies, we've moved…

Back in the day, I said, “I'm not doing print. No way.” This was the early days of digital, because print was really hard back then. So I was like, “Oh, and we've got all the advantages doing digital, so I'm just going to focus on that.”

It feels like the pendulum has swung, perhaps even more with the ease of mass production of digital with AI.

The focus on print and in person is getting stronger and stronger. Do you think that's happening?

Mark: Oh, yes, 100%. I did print in 2004. It was really hard back then, so that's gotten easier. I think there are a few reasons.

One of the reasons is, yes, digital made it so much easier for indie authors to get out there and break into the community. But the reality is that print books still outsell e-books in general—overall—despite the fact that indie authors can make six and seven figures a year from selling e-books alone on a single platform.

So print has never really gone away. It was just never something indie authors attended to. They were in a different business than traditional publishers were in.

And second, obviously I've got these gorgeous books that you've created on Kickstarter, because I like the beautiful books. I've never stopped buying print books. I actually buy more print books. I read more because of audiobooks and e-books, but I buy more print books, especially when I can get a nice signed copy.

Then the other reason comes back, again, to your advice—something I've been following for the longest time, and you've long been saying.

I do repeat this, and I try my best to offer attribution to you every time I use it: to double down on your humanity, particularly in this age of digital generation and the ability for even non-writers to leverage tools to create content.

I think it's so much more important for me, as a creative who will never be able to catch up with the machines, to exploit my humanity.

I mean, we both have digital voices of ourselves, right? There's a digital Mark Leslie Lefebvre voice that people can use, and I'm making money off it because people are able to license it through ElevenLabs.

But when I'm there in person, so far the holograms aren't good enough to fool people. I think I'm not just selling a book to somebody; I want to create an experience where, “Oh, I'm talking to the author, and we're signing a book together, and we're taking a selfie together.”

For me, there's that tactile experience that's really enriching. And it may not be something that lines my pockets as easily, because the investment is more significant.

For every $10 I make, it costs me six or seven dollars, as opposed to an e-book, where the cost is amortised in the most beautiful way over millions of copies.

Jo: There are a few things there. First of all, let's talk about that ElevenLabs voice licensing, because, as you say, I also have a voice clone. Bones of the Deep, the latest book, that's my voice clone.

I haven't gone with the licensing, partly because you don't have control over what someone can do with it. So, for example, someone could create Nazi content, or content that I might not agree with, in my voice.

So how have you got over that? Because part of me really does want to license my voice, and the other part doesn't.

Mark: This is a great question, Jo, and I'm glad you asked it. It's the same reason I don't worry about people stealing my books—adding DRM onto my e-books and things like that.

I may as well make some money off it, because let's be honest: you and I, our voices are out there. Thousands of hours of our voices, right? In your podcast, my podcast, in various interviews we've done over the years.

The technology exists for someone to make a copy of my voice themselves anyway. The tools exist. They can do it easily, so why not do it myself and at least make money? I'm actually getting money deposited into my account. Not a lot—maybe $30, $18, something like that every week.

Again, I've taken a lot of my non-fiction books that I haven't had the time to record myself, as I like to do, and I can at least load those to ElevenLabs and make my voice the default voice.

But wouldn't it be great to be able to listen to my book in your voice? It would sound so much better. Because you can do that. When you listen to a book on that platform, you can choose my voice if you'd rather hear it in my voice, or you can choose Burt Reynolds' voice, or some other folks who've licensed theirs.

Again, for me, the whole concept of wide publishing has always been important. It's another small revenue stream that's adding to my numerous revenue streams.

So I guess that's how I've justified just licensing the voice. If someone's going to do something with my voice that I can't control, they can do it regardless of whether or not I put it out there myself.

Jo: I agree with you. That could happen, and neither of us is famous enough that it's likely to happen anyway. I do quite like the idea of people using our voices, say, for other books for authors, because that would make sense—that's where we fit in the niche. I will rethink that, because I think it's interesting.

I wanted to come back to print books. You said sometimes there are easier ways to line your pockets, and I think that's funny. So, getting into the book, this leapt out at me quite near the beginning:

Why do we keep doing this when the maths almost never adds up?

Mark: Oh, I have a perfect example of that from an event I did a couple of weekends ago in Burlington, Ontario. I think it was a $60 table fee. It was a new event. I believe I made $90 or $95 in sales.

So even after the costs of printing and all that stuff, I really didn't make money. I made my table back, which is always a good thing.

There were a few encounters I had with people who were really excited to find my Canadian Werewolf series of books, and just so thrilled to get started. Among the four of them, they bought one copy, but they were going to pass it amongst each other.

You know what? Okay, they bought a single copy, and I was like, “Well, the e-book is permanently free online. You don't even have to buy a copy”—which is anti-selling. I just want them to read the book and enjoy it.

But if they read it and pass it along and start talking about it, they could become readers for a long time. It's an eight-book series, with the ninth book coming out later this year.

There was another encounter I had that day. A woman and her teenage daughter came in, and they were looking at my traditionally published books that I buy at a reduced price from a local bookstore and resell.

They were looking at these true ghost story books I had, and they were pointing: “Do you have that one?” “Yes, I have this one, I have that one.” And the mother's like, “Well, she collects all your books, and she wants to make sure she has them.”

We had this conversation, and she was so excited to meet me in person and to get a signed copy of the book. That experience was such a vanity moment for me as an author. We're lonely. I'm a big loser. Nobody's buying my books. We're always down on ourselves.

So that investment of time and energy, in order to get that little pat on the back or that feeling of, “Wow, I really connected with someone who likes my stuff”—those moments are really precious. They're difficult to explain if you only look at the world in a financial way.

I guess I'm fortunate enough that I do have enough income from numerous streams, including the consulting I do part-time, that it's okay if not every bookish endeavour leads to more money in my pocket at the end of the day.

I can still have these authentic connections with people, which I think is one of the reasons I'm a storyteller. Yes, it's the stories I have to tell, but it's also putting the story into somebody else's hands and eyes and heart and mind.

Jo: You're very giving like that. You have that sense about you, whereas I'm just a curmudgeon in the corner.

Mark: That is not true.

Jo: It is, generally. I don't do events like you do for readers.

Mark: But that's because it takes a lot out of you.

Jo: Yes, but that doesn't matter. Why do I write? I write for me.

Mark: Ah, very good.

Jo: At the end of the day—just being entirely selfish about this—when people say, “Oh, if you won the lottery, what would you do?” I'm like, “Well, I'd do pretty much what I'm doing now.”

Mark: Yes, I'd just do the same. Of course, I'd write more books.

Jo: I'd write more books. So this is where I'm trying to get to for people as well: measuring success in a different way. You were talking about measuring success by how that girl loved your books, and how you feel when someone says they love your books.

With Bones of the Deep, this thriller I've just done, I feel like I had the benefit of that book before anyone even read it.

As soon as it was finished, I made a nice proof copy from BookVault, and I held it in my hand and said, “I made this. I'm proud of the story, I wrote the story, and it's outside my head now.” I feel like I'm creatively satisfied in that moment.

Then, of course, the Kickstarter was great, and I love that the books are going out around the world, but—

I think the happiest I felt was that moment of finishing—that creative satisfaction of holding the book in my hand. You know what I mean?

Mark: 100%, Jo. I cannot agree with you enough. I love so many aspects of writing. Yes, the connection with people is amazing. But I often say this when I'm doing my one-on-one consulting with authors: focus on the projects that mean the most to you, those passion projects.

The process of writing, and the painful rewriting and editing and all the things you go through—when you finish that book, like you said, you hold it in your hands and it is a thing of beauty. It's a huge achievement. You've won.

Whether or not you sell a single copy, you've won by doing it. Everything else is gravy: the sales, the money in your pocket or not, the reviews, positive or not, the people who say, “Oh my God, Bones of the Deep, thank you for writing this book. I'm so glad you introduced this into the world and into my life.”

Anything beyond the creation itself, which is a pure joy—I love it so much. It's just why I get up at 5:30 every morning and write for hours before the rest of my day begins. I try to get stuff done before the rest of the world wakes up.

I want to get the writing done first, when I have the most energy to give myself to the page. Then the rest of the day is kind of gravy for me too.

Jo: You talk there about giving yourself to the page, but in Stark Realities—

You talk about the fear of truly being seen. What do you mean by that, and how do you manage that feeling?

Mark: For anyone who has written anything—fiction, non-fiction, memoir in particular, since it's a bit more closely tied to reality—it's exposing yourself to the world.

I'll never forget an interview I did with Canadian science fiction author Julie E. Czerneda, who, before being a fiction writer, was writing biology textbooks, but her real passion was science fiction and fiction.

When her first novel came out, she said, “It's like standing naked on the front lawn.” When you release a book, even a novel, people look at it and they're going to judge you and rate you.

I remember early on, Jo—we knew each other through Twitter, I think, where we initially met, and then interacted with and finally met in person at London Book Fair. I think you and I have a very similar reaction.

When people know us as positive and upbeat and out there helping authors in the community, and then they read our fiction, they go, “Well, Jo, you burned a nun alive on page one.” Or, “Mark, what kind of… they're drinking from the skulls of dead people? What the heck is going on with you two?”

We are exposing parts of ourselves in our fiction and non-fiction. That's a fear I embrace, but also never get over, if that makes any sense. I write scary stories because I'm a big chicken. So maybe the entire process is just cheap therapy for me. Or not cheap, because it's an expensive pastime, isn't it?

Jo: It certainly can be, but I agree. I struggle with fear of judgment still. I think it's also because we do this in public, which comes back to the financial side of things. We do a lot of this in public, and then people judge us on our author businesses too.

You could look at Bones of the Deep, which was just on Kickstarter, and compare my Kickstarter to another author's Kickstarter for a fiction book, and judge one or the other person based on numbers.

I feel like this is because you and I have done so much in public—for me, almost 20 years, and for you, like 40 years or whatever. Maybe 30 years. You look that old.

Mark: Listen there, dearie. Get off my lawn.

Jo: Yes, get off my lawn—with those skeletons you have on your lawn.

Mark: Yes. They're no longer in my closet.

Jo: They're not in your closet.

I wonder if that also plays a part of it—the pros and cons of doing this business in public.

Mark: Yes, that is a part of it. One thing I try to be very clear about, because there's so much FOMO and so much out there about people thinking that everyone else is making a million dollars from their books and “I'm the only loser who's not”—I try to be clear that I have never made more than a mid-five figures as an author from my author earnings, ever. I haven't yet hit six figures.

One of the reasons I try to be transparent in sharing that is I don't want people to think that everyone else is a six- and seven-figure success story, and they're the only one who's only made $100 last year on their books.

The reality is, 90 to 99% of the people who are writing and publishing are not going to earn a significant amount of money.

I realise I'm also very, very lucky that I've earned this much, and it's taken a long time.

I just shared this in a Substack post I posted yesterday: it was 10 years of rejections before I got $5 for my first short story that was published in '92. It wasn't until 2001 that I finally made pro rate, six cents US a word, for a short story that, ironically, Julie Czerneda bought from me back in the day.

For me, I've been lucky that it's always been a long, slow slog. It's been a marathon, and I've never instantly sprinted across any dramatic finish line. I've had some really phenomenal moments—doing a book signing in a Costco, walking into Walmart and seeing my books there.

Even last night at the Burlington Public Library, going, “Wow, they have eight of my books here—four of my self-published books and four of my traditionally published books, in two different sections.” I was like, “That's kind of cool.”

So I've had these amazing moments as a writer, but I've never had the blockbuster—the Brandon Sanderson, or even the Dungeon Crawler Carl, Matt Dinniman, kind of moments.

I still think I've had a very fortunate and lucky journey. Even if I wasn't making the money I'm making, I'd still be writing, and I'm sure you would be too.

Jo: Oh, yes, for sure.

I actually think the thing most of us would probably let go is the marketing.

If we won the lottery, we'd carry on with all the creative stuff, the writing, the community stuff, and we'd just literally do no marketing at all.

Mark: Well, yes, of course. Or potentially say, “Oh, here, ad agency, here's some money. You just run it, whatever. Let me know if it works or not. I don't care.”

Jo: That's a much better idea.

Mark: At least I've got the extra disposable income, so I may as well, because I'm helping the world when my books are out there. I know my books will help people.

I really honestly think that as storytellers—whether it's fiction or non-fiction, we're still storytellers—what we do in writing and podcasting and all the things we do, the re-sharing on social media, is really helping connect people.

I think that is one of the most profound things we can do as writers. And I mean that the writing, in and of itself, is a reward.

Jo: Like you said, we met on Twitter when Twitter was what it was back in the day. I do very, very little social media now. But you just mentioned your Substack, and you also have your podcast, Stark Reflections. So how are you balancing what you put on each?

I only do this podcast now. I don't even blog. I write books, obviously, and then I do the podcast.

So what are you doing differently on Substack to the podcast, and what part do they play in income and marketing?

Mark: Great question. I realise most people have never heard of me, or read or listened to the things I put out into the world. And I've been a longtime fan of “reduce, reuse, recycle my IP.”

My podcast is not as long-running as yours, but I'm in my ninth year, and I've not missed a single Friday in the full eight years, or eight and a half by now, that I've been doing this.

Every week I reflect on what I learned from an interview, or I'll reflect on something you've posted and say, “This episode is not an interview, but Jo said this last week, and I'm going to talk about it.”

The podcast itself takes a lot of work. I still do all of it myself, and I know I probably shouldn't, but I like doing it, so it's one of those tasks I enjoy. I also have reflections that aren't going to come out vocally but might come out in writing.

Sometimes in the morning I'm not in the mood to write the novel or the non-fiction book I'm writing, but I'm writing some tangent. I just let the creative monster go.

I find that re-sharing… I might have reflected on something for a couple of minutes at the end of an interview, but I really want to expand upon it, so I write the Substack article. I try to reuse some of that content.

Someone's going to enjoy seeing it on a short video clip I share on YouTube, or whatever the platform is. Someone else is going to listen to it on a podcast, wherever they listen to podcasts, and someone else is going to want to read it.

It could be the same information, just shared in a slightly different way, to potentially get it out to other people. So for me, it's part of that wide publishing mentality. I'm trying not to completely duplicate the work, although I am duplicating some of it.

I'll give you an example. Hey, Canadian listeners—if you have not registered for Public Lending Right in Canada, please put something in your calendar for February 2027, because the deadline's over. It was May 1st of 2026. Put it in your calendar for next year.

I even had somebody at this writers' event I was at this last weekend say, “You mentioned something in a presentation you did for the Canadian Authors Association about Public Lending Right, and thank you, because now I get thousands of dollars a year from this.” So just look up Public Lending Right.

I've been saying stuff about Public Lending Right for at least 10 years now. Every time I get my beautiful multi-four-figure cheque from them in February every year, I post on social media and remind authors to check it out. I know it exists in the UK, and it exists in 36 countries in the world—just not the US.

Jo: Not the US.

Mark: They don't have a programme like this, probably because the big publishers—and probably one of the authors' associations—think that libraries are cannibalising book sales, which is not true. It's been proven time and time again, and that lobbying has prevented it from happening.

Whereas here in Canada, the Canada Council for the Arts and the Writers' Union of Canada worked hard to make this happen.

Anyway, I talk about something like Public Lending Right and I feel like I must have said this so much that people are sick of it, but every single time I mention it, someone goes, “Oh my God, thanks for saying that. I never heard it.”

That's a good reminder, especially for folks like you and me. We know the basics. We know what an ISBN is. We know KDP Select means you can't put the e-book on any other retailer, or even sell it on your own website.

We know all these things, but it's hard for us to remember that there are folks coming to this for the very first time who've never heard it, even though we feel like, “Oh my God, I've said this till I'm blue in the face.”

I think I got that from retail. When I worked in retail, I recognised that somebody's going to come in and ask for “that blue book that Reese Witherspoon was talking about,” or Oprah was talking about, or whatever. And you do your darn best to help them figure it out rather than mock them.

I try to take the same approach when people ask me those questions, because I'm trying to remember what it was like when I honestly did not know the answer, and having someone take the time to help me. I've been very, very lucky that I've had a lot of people take the time to help me.

I'll never forget—God rest her soul—Nancy Kilpatrick, a horror writer here from Canada who passed away a few years ago. She gave me a blurb for my very first book in 2004 because she'd acquired one of my short stories for an anthology she'd edited.

I was trying to call my short story collection an anthology, and she very kindly took me aside and said, “It's not an anthology if it's a single author. An anthology is a…”

Jo: I didn't know that until, like, last year. I got that wrong as well. There are lots of words like that.

I want to circle back, because you didn't really answer earlier about the time management. You just mentioned YouTube, on top of Substack and all the things you do.

You also have a day job at Draft2Digital—it's part-time, right? You also do part-time at the university, teaching publishing, right?

You do all kinds of things. How do you manage your time with all of that?

Mark: Well, I mismanage my time more than I manage it, Jo. That's the God's honest truth. Fortunately, most of the things I have that aren't scheduled—like, scheduled to do this lecture at this time, or scheduled to have this meeting at this particular time with Draft2Digital—most of my work is very flexible.

I do not work a regular 9:00 to 5:00, Monday to Friday. Well, I never did. I always worked way more. But I have a very flexible schedule. Every single day is a work day, and every single day is a play day for me. So I'm very, very lucky.

I do schedule in the very important things, particularly where somebody else is reliant upon me—meetings and connections and stuff like that. Then I make the time first thing in the morning to get the writing done. Everything else is not as important, and it's part of… I guess it's part of playing.

You know, like the social media sharing. I don't look at social media as marketing. I just look at it as another way to connect with people, with other creatives, and with readers potentially, all six people who read my stuff.

I probably could do a better job of managing my time. I've tried several times over the years to adapt processes to make it better, but I consistently default back to what I do, and so far I guess I've been getting away with it.

So I was like, “Do I want to waste more time trying to come up with a process, or do I just want to roll with it?” Because so far I haven't killed myself doing it, and I've been enjoying the journey. So, if it ain't broke…

Jo: I think that's the point, if it doesn't feel like it's broken. Having known you for a long time now, and we work together—obviously we co-wrote The Relaxed Author—you do work very, very differently to me. You definitely are a little bit more chaotic. I'm chaotic in some ways too.

Mark: Oh, you're very generous. “A little bit chaotic.” Thanks. That was generous, Jo.

Jo: You're chaotic in your work practices and scheduling and all that, which I couldn't cope with very well. Even though I feel like a part of my brain is very chaotic—the creative side, I guess, can be quite chaotic—I think I'm actually quite controlling and very scheduled in my work practices.

As you say, for someone else on the outside, it might feel to me like you have too many balls in the air. But if you don't feel that, then that's the way of working that works for you. So this is another important thing, isn't it?

You can't adapt to what other people say your life should look like. It's what feels good to you.

Mark: Oh, for sure. One thing I know about my procrastination tendency is that panic and fear motivate me. So, a deadline—”I have to get this into a publisher by this date, I have to get this manuscript to an editor by that date”—I'm motivated by fear. And I'm afraid of everything, so I guess I'm always motivated.

Jo: But I also know that when you hear the word “deadline”—and I know a lot of people who do this—the deadline means you get it in on the deadline, or the day before the deadline. To me, a deadline means I have it ready a month earlier.

Mark: I love that. I've done that a few times and shocked myself. I actually had a pre-order up—with the audiobook, the print, and the e-book—a month in advance, and I didn't know what to do with myself. I was like, “Well, what am I going to do now in the next month?”

Jo: Work on the next thing.

Mark: But I'm so used to working on it up to the last second that I was kind of like, “What do I do?” That actually caught me by surprise, and I honestly felt weird. I was like, “I've never felt this before.”

I'm really lucky. I know you have a very supportive and amazing partner, and so do I. My partner, scarily enough, is maybe a bigger procrastinator than me, so she never gives me a hard time.

She supports me, and I do the same thing with her own work. I'm up all night with her at the last minute so we can get something turned in. So, fortunately, we really understand one another, and we don't give each other a hard time. We just go, “Well, got away with it again. I guess I'm not going to change my ways.”

Jo: We made it. And again, that's the point. You and I could stand up in front of people, both hold up the last book we wrote, and say, “We made this,” and our processes are completely different. Our brains are completely different.

We come from different countries. There are lots of things that are different, and yet we both made a book.

So hopefully that encourages people. You don't have to do anything that we're telling you, or anyone else tells you. But if you want to be an author, at some point you have to produce a book.

Mark: Exactly. As Brian in the classic Monty Python film gets them to say: “Yes, we are all different.” Embrace that difference. I think that's such a powerful reminder that there is no one process for getting anything done.

Jo: Given that we co-wrote The Relaxed Author back in 2021—and we did that because we had another show, and we were talking, and we said, “Oh, everyone's stressed and the anxiety levels are really high, and we think there's a better path”—we co-wrote that book, which I think is still a very good book. Definitely people should get it.

Interestingly, I think the stress and anxiety might actually be higher now than it was.

So what do you think the main stresses are in the community now?

You also see a lot with Draft2Digital, I guess, as well.

Mark: Oh, for sure. Honestly, Jo, I'm so glad we wrote that book, because I actually pick it up every once in a while to remind myself of the things we tried to help others with. Again, it's therapy for me as well, so I'm so glad we did it.

I think we're 10, if not 100, times more stressed. The world events and things going on, the divisiveness—not just in the world in general, in politics and everything else, but the divisiveness in the author community.

The witch-hunting that happens, people trying to tear down other authors either because they're successful, or because, “Oh my God, you dared use a new technology.” All of these things are happening, and everyone's at one another's throats.

I need to pick that book up and reread it. I'm a lot more stressed than I was. I'm just getting over shingles, which is…

Jo: Oh. Which is actually related to stress as well, isn't it?

Mark: It is, yes. I was in LA for Writers of the Future—I'm a judge for that science fiction and fantasy conference.

I went right from LA, like a week in LA, which was a phenomenal experience getting to mentor the winners. And I mean, come on, it's a free trip to Hollywood, hanging out with Kevin Anderson, having beers and stuff like that.

Then I came back to the Toronto Indie Author Conference, run by Tao Wong, here in Toronto. I went right from the airport—didn't even go home—straight to the hotel, because I kicked into another conference.

We did a display on how to set up an in-person booth, so I ended up having to hand-bomb boxes, blocks down the street from where I was parked.

My chest was really sore when I got home on the Monday, and I thought it was because I hadn't used these muscles, because I'm not in the best shape. Then I took my shirt off and went, “Oh, there's a rash there.”

Liz goes, “You have shingles.” Because the pain in my chest, which I thought was the muscle, was actually underneath. I'm one of those lucky people that it's taken the full five weeks, and I'm still in pain even afterwards.

So, again, public notice: if you're an older person like me, and there's a vaccine available for shingles, you may want to consider it.

Jo: Yep, get it.

Mark: Oh my God, it hurts. But, yes, the stress, I think, is higher—even though I didn't know I was feeling it. It was happy stress, right?

I was stressed out because I'm there in Hollywood, helping people and doing some good things, and then I'm doing the same thing, interacting with some amazing authors at the Toronto Indie Author Conference. I didn't feel anxious stress. I was happy stress. Is that a thing?

Jo: I think possibly… your physical body masks stress, physical stress, because you enjoy all of that stuff. Whereas someone like me, I'll feel it quicker and withdraw.

Although I say that, back probably a decade ago, Jonathan would say to me, “You're going too fast, and you're going to hit the wall. And when you hit the wall, it's not going to be fun.” And I did hit the wall.

Then, probably in 2021—I mean, that was when I just started going into menopause, and obviously we had the pandemic, and I wrote Pilgrimage, and I was doing all those walks, which I think really helped me. I learned a lot about maybe stopping that before it happened.

Becca Syme obviously talks a lot about this too. But I find it interesting with you, because I think you're so positively happy with these events you do that it might mask your physical symptoms in a different way. That's really hard to watch out for.

I'll give a tip to you and everyone else listening: schedule the calendar, and look at your calendar and go, “I can't go back-to-back-to-back. I have to put in some rest days.”

Mark: Well, thank you. You know, Jo, you and Becca Syme are two of my best unpaid therapists. I appreciate that.

Jo: You just don't listen, Mark.

Mark: Or sometimes I do.

Jo: Just coming back to the community, and the divisiveness there is primarily over AI at the moment, I think that's one of the biggest things. And the arbitrary lines as to what you're allowed to use it for and what you're not allowed to use it for, which is just kind of crazy.

Obviously, you know I've opted out of that whole discussion now.

How do you think we can move through this [divisiveness over AI], move on?

We remember when it was trad versus indie, and then it was wide versus KU. So this will pass—it's just hard, when you're in it, to know when it might pass.

Mark: Yes. I think the more generic advice—for whatever may come, whatever has come—is: why are you doing this? Why are you a writer? Heads down, focus on what gives you pleasure, and do that, because everything else is noise. All the marketing tactics and strategies, and all the people yelling at one another.

Write your books. Do the things that motivate you. Do the things that give you that intrinsic reward.

It's hard to ignore. I get it, it is hard to ignore. I have difficulty ignoring the haters and the yelling and the screaming that happens, but I do my best.

Like this morning, when I was in the throes of my manuscript and I looked up and went, “Oh my God, I've got to shower. I'm going to be talking to Jo soon, I should comb my hair”—which I have none of. Because I was so in my book that everything else melted away.

That, for me as a storyteller, as a writer, is one of the most beautiful places to be.

Jo: I think you're absolutely right. I have a little thing that pops up in my calendar sometimes which says, “If you're feeling all of these things, just go create something.” The moment you refocus on creation—whatever that means to you—things change. It changes the energy. That, or go for a walk. That's my other tip.

Mark: Outside. And I have to say, Jo, Pilgrimage is still one of the most profound and powerful books you've written, and you've written a lot of amazing ones.

Jo: Oh, you're very sweet.

Mark: That one really resonates, not just for me, but with Liz. Because one of the things we often do when we get stressed is go for a walk, ideally in nature. The vitamin N. I think there's something really profound in that, and it really helps me a lot.

And again, sometimes going for a walk listening to your podcast, or an audiobook, or sometimes just attending to the environment.

A tip I picked up years ago from Brooklyn author Denis Hamill was: go for a walk with your character. Listen to what they see. What do they comment on? How do they approach this environment that you've seen a million times? How do they see it? What do they notice that you don't notice?

That's such an incredible experience of creativity—when you're not writing, but writing. That really helps me a lot.

Jo: Oh, nice one. Okay, so your latest book is Stark Realities, but you have so many more.

Where can people find you and your books and your podcast online?

Mark: Jo, you can find everything you want to know about me—and stuff you don't want to know about me—over at MarkLeslie.ca. It links to all the other places from there.

Jo: Brilliant. Thanks again for your time, Mark. That was great.

Mark: Thanks so much, Jo. Bye-bye.

The post Creative Satisfaction, In Person Print Book Sales, And Author Mindset With Mark Leslie Lefebvre first appeared on The Creative Penn.

How can horror writing help readers — and writers — work through psychological trauma? Why does cross-genre fiction take longer to find an audience, but pay off in the long run? Is running a direct sales store actually worth the inventory, postage, and learning curve? And how can SubStack work for fiction authors? With psychotherapist and award-winning author P.D. Alleva.

In the intro, thoughts on why in-person conferences are still worth it, even when they are a challenge for sensitive introverts! and tips for making the best of conferences [Self-Publishing Show].

Today's show is sponsored by Draft2Digital, self-publishing with support, where you can get free formatting, free distribution to multiple stores, and a host of other benefits. Just go to www.draft2digital.com to get started.

This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn

P.D. Alleva is the award-winning author of horror, sci-fi, thrillers, and fantasy books. He's also a psychotherapist.

You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.

Show Notes

Why horror puts the human condition on display better than any other genre

Emotional trauma as the silent psychological killer most people overlook

The pros and challenges of cross-genre writing and finding your audience

Practical lessons from running a direct store, including integration and signed-copy fulfilment

How a 3 a.m. writing routine keeps the writing separate from the marketing and admin

Serialising fiction on Substack, multiple newsletters, and avoiding paid subscriber promotions

Why Facebook groups, TikTok Lives, and the three-to-one rule are working right now

You can find P.D. at PDAlleva.com or on Substack.

Transcript of the interview with P.D. Alleva

Jo: P.D. Alleva is the award-winning author of horror, sci-fi, thrillers, and fantasy books. He's also a psychotherapist. So welcome, Paul.

PD: Thank you very much. Thank you for having me. This is a great opportunity. I love doing interviews, and I love talking to great people.

Jo: Oh, good. Well, first up—

Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and being an indie author.

PD: So I've been writing since I was a kid, at least second grade and more than likely even before that. I've always had that creative itch.

Getting into indie author publishing, I published my first book in 2011. At the time I was also operating my own business, which took up about 24 hours of my time every single day.

Then I kind of got through that and sold that in 2016, and I'm like, you know what? The time has come. I'd always written books, poetry, short stories, but never really did anything with them because I just didn't have the time. So in 2017, that's when I really came out and said, all right, the time is now.

Indie publishing was doing great. The one good thing I do love about Amazon is they allowed us to come out there and start showing our craft to people. So in 2017, I just started—let's do this. Let's write full time. Let's put books out there. Let's be creative. Let's really get those juices flowing.

Plus, I was getting a little bit old, and I was like, now is definitely the time to do this. Since then I've been publishing consistently, and most of my books are horror books, but I dabble.

I have a sci-fi series, and I'm starting to get into psychological thrillers too. I've got a new psychological thriller that'll be published in early 2027 called Girl on a Mission. For the most part, I'm definitely into the horror genre—books, short stories, all that good fun stuff.

Jo: Right, so a couple of follow-ups. You said you're a bit old. Can you give us what decade you're in at least?

PD: Well, I'm 51, so born in 1971.

Jo: Oh, there you go. Same age as me.

PD: All right, good. See that? So we're going head-to-head there.

Jo: I don't think that's old at all. Also, you mentioned you sold your business in 2016.

So what was your business before?

Because I think business experience is so important.

PD: Agreed 100%. So I'm a psychotherapist, and I had owned a treatment centre for mental health and addiction. That was started in 2011, and in 2016 is when it sold. Since then, my wife and I started a private practice. So I still, even to this day—well, about a year and a half ago is when I stopped.

I specialise in trauma, PTSD, and addiction. Trauma mostly. Most of my caseload has always been trauma, PTSD, sexual abuse, psychological abuse, war-type trauma. I was doing that mostly individually since 2016 in private practice, and I'll still go into treatment centres and see patients there too, specifically for trauma.

About a year and a half ago is when I started wanting to do writing 100% full time. I thought about becoming a professor, maybe going to college, but then I wasn't sure if I wanted to get into that full time, as far as a caseload and school and everything like that.

So I decided to just do group therapy, group facilitation, and I've been doing that consistently since then. It may be 15 hours a week. I do love to give back, and to me, it's more what I teach.

I specialise in neuro-linguistic programming, bilateral stimulation or EMDR, hypnotherapy, science of mind concepts, psychopharmacology, biological bases of behaviour—which is pretty much how your brain works—ancient wisdom, quantum physics.

I do this in a drug addiction treatment centre mostly, also mental health. And of course, just living an addictive lifestyle is traumatic, too, in and of itself. So pretty much I'm teaching them. Behaviour modification is a big part of what I'm teaching during that time.

You'll see that, too, if you read my books. There's two things you can figure out from my books. You can figure out how to murder people and get away with it, and two, you can figure out how to overcome trauma as well.

The whole “murder people and get away with it” comes from my upbringing. I have a very sorted past, let's put it that way. My upbringing was very different than what most people grow up in.

Jo: Oh, can you give us any more than that? Now everyone's like, “Oh.”

PD: “What's going on with this guy, right?” So I grew up, let's say, quote unquote, “in an Italian New York family.”

Jo: Okay. All right.

PD: That might give people ideas, right?

Jo: That's going to give people a lot of ideas.

PD: If you've ever seen the movie Goodfellas, I kind of grew up in that atmosphere, and with even some of those people too. My family had connections to those people in that movie, which I find very funny. If you watch that movie with me, you get a very different perspective on what's going on in the movie.

Jo: Wow. So you're an interesting guy with an interesting background, with a very interesting backstory job as well.

Some people are like, “Well, of course he's writing horror because horror is just awful and full of slasher gore and all that.” I often have to say to people who don't read horror, “Look, it's not like that.” Maybe some of it is, sure. But most of it isn't.

Could you talk about how reading and writing horror can also be psychologically healthy? How do these worlds intertwine for you?

PD: Well, sure. It 100% can be healthy. Especially over the last few years, there's a trend going on out there right now where people are taking their trauma and putting it into a creative process through poems, short stories, and even novels.

They're taking their trauma and giving it a face, like a monster, where people are overcoming that monster within the creative process.

I always say that horror is the genre that puts on display, better than any other genre out there, the human condition. Why is that?

When people are in a terrifying situation, you really see who they are. You get to the heart of the matter of who that person is by putting them in these horrific but undefinable situations where it's like, what are they going to come out as?

That real true personality needs to come out, and that courage comes out. That's huge in horror, and I think horror gets such a bad name.

Now, I know there's the extreme horror and the splatterpunk, and that has its kind of role too in what I'm saying, but that's where horror is getting its bad reputation out there with the over-the-top type of gore.

For the most part, that's a small part of the horror genre. It's a subgenre for a reason. It has its readership, and that's fine. Nothing wrong with it. I read it all the time. I find a lot of joy in it, a lot of excitement.

However, for the most part, any horror novel that is not completely with the gore and stuff like splatterpunk can be seen as a psychological thriller, and a lot of psychological thrillers can be seen as a horror novel.

Look at books like The Silence of the Lambs, Red Dragon. That's horrific as well, but if you read the novel, it's in there. It just gets that bad rap right now, and it's not all gore.

Most horror novels that I read today are psychological horror. It's tame on the gore, and the psychological aspect is there. I always see that psychological aspect—it's like psychological trauma.

Most people, even in my industry, when people are out there and you mention trauma, PTSD, they're thinking about sexual abuse, physical abuse, or war-type trauma.

The silent psychological one—I once wrote an article called “Emotional Trauma: The Silent Psychological Killer.” The one that's out there is the psychological trauma, the emotional trauma that is widespread.

Most people go through that, and it could even be from parent to child, and most people don't understand that that's a traumatic experience. It's like a distortion of reality that you're experiencing that then creates a belief system in your brain, and you're constantly acting out that belief system.

That's where the psychological component of horror really comes out. People breaking through that psychological belief system that was created through a traumatic experience by reaching courage and coming out through a horrific situation.

Jo: Yes, it really annoys me, because with romance, of course people understand that romance is a huge genre. Something like a small town sweet romance is a world away from the bully romantasy, dark, or mafia. Mafia romance is a really big thing with very dark themes.

I'm like, well, how can you understand that romance is a huge genre with all these different subgenres, and not think that horror or thriller or fantasy or sci-fi all have so many different subgenres within them?

I personally read a lot of supernatural horror, but rarely the slasher gore kind of stuff. So I'm really glad you said that, and hopefully more people will open up a bit more.

I did also want to ask you about what you write. You write all these different things. You write standalone—I mean, often horror is standalone—but you also have some series. How do you balance it?

What are the benefits of cross-genre writing, but also the challenges of it?

PD: Okay. So obviously I love cross-genre writing. To me, I use fantasy to explain the supernatural elements. I blend mostly a tad of fantasy to help explain the supernatural components in my supernatural novels.

When I write sci-fi, specifically sci-fi, that has the fantasy element in it too, but there's also a tad of horror in there as well.

It's just who I am. When I grew up, I had a lot of different influences. I had Star Wars on one side, and then I'm watching B-rated '80s slasher films on the other side. Those two mixes just kind of followed me throughout my life, and that's why I like putting them into my novels.

As I tell my patients, don't limit yourself. Never limit yourself. If you're just limiting yourself to one genre, you're missing out on so much more that's out there. So I love the blend of mixing genres. It just gets my goat each and every time.

It is a challenge though. I remember when I first started getting into indie publishing, I was never big into Facebook and social media up until I started becoming an indie author.

Before that, with my type of upbringing, you don't advertise yourself. You don't advertise where you're going. That's a big no-no. So I always had this aversion to social media.

I'll tell you a funny story. It was the late 2000s, probably 2006. I was a full-time single father at that time, and I was living in Florida. My family—brothers and sisters-in-law—were living in New York, and my sister-in-law said, “Get a Facebook account so we can see pictures of the kids.”

I said, “Oh.” I didn't want to do it, but I said, “Okay,” so I did it. And I'm thinking, looking at this Facebook thing, “How do I put pictures on here?” So I figured out how to put pictures in folders.

Then I phone called her, and I'm like, “Okay, so they're on there.” And they're like, “Well, where are they?” I'm like, “I put them in these folders. You can go and look at them.” She's like, “No, you've got to post them.”

That to me was like, “I'm not posting pictures of my kids.” That was a big no-no. It didn't click.

When I got on there finally in 2016, 2017, I'm like, “Okay, so I need to figure out social media. As an indie author, I need to be on there, so I need to get through this aversion and get on there.”

I started noticing how people are so particular with their genres. If they're reading a romance, it had to be very specific with that exact type of romance, and if you deviated from it, they're not going to like it. So that was the challenge.

I was like, “All right, number one, I'm not going to dilute myself” and say, “All right, take things out of my writing or out of my novel just so I could cater to a certain type of audience.” I'm like, “I'm not going to do that.”

I know with me, myself, as a reader, I'll read everything. I don't limit myself to a specific genre. I'll read psychological thrillers. I'll read romance. I've been doing that all my life.

So I'm like, if there's a person like me out there—and look at this, I just met like four other people who also read cross genres—then I know that there's at least another 30,000 people, and I know that at least then there's 300,000, then there's three million people out there.

So just write the books that you're writing and find your audience. Now, that takes longer. So you've got to chip away. Chip away. You're going to find readers here and there, and then that reader kind of tells a few people about you, and then you've got a few more readers.

Then you keep going, and you go on these Facebook groups, and you do a whole bunch of different things, and then you gather a few more readers. Then they're telling some friends, and then you've got more. The process takes a lot longer, yes, 100% agreed, but I would say be true to yourself and you can never go wrong.

Jo: Yes, I agree. I write cross-genre as well, and I've browsed your collection. Golem was the one I was like, “Ooh, yes, I like that one.” I haven't read it yet, it's on my list.

I think when you're cross-genre, my people come to my store as well, and it's like, “Okay, I'm interested in lots of things, but this is the one by this author that I'm interested in.” Whereas with other authors who only write one type of thing, then I might not like any of their stuff.

So I think there are definitely pros and cons and different ways into our world.

I also wanted to ask you about the differences in business. Obviously you ran this treatment centre and there were physical humans on all sides, and now you've got a business as an author.

So what have you learned in business from what you used to do and what you do now?

PD: Okay. You're right. The treatment centre industry is very different from what I'm doing now, but it's still people.

Treat those people right, have integrity. If you say you're going to do something, follow through with it. My word is my bond type of thing. That definitely has fed into the writing and publishing industry that I'm in now in a huge way. Just connecting with people is, to me, the biggest part of it.

I mean, treatment centres, you've got to connect with people. When I would market the treatment centre, where would I go? I would go to hospitals, residential facilities, detoxes, and talk to them about my programme and why they should be referring clients there.

It's the same thing here. Why should you be reading my books? You get there through interviews like what I'm doing here with you. Other podcasts. You get there by doing Facebook Lives, TikTok.

I haven't started TikTok Lives yet, but I actually love that platform. I'm falling in love with it. IG Lives, anything like that where you're talking to people and you're making a connection with those people.

Through that, I've gathered so many different types of readers who are like, “Yes, I'll give this book a shot.” And then they read it and they're like, “Hey, this is really good, and I'm going to read another book.”

With my books, I have very different books. Golem is my psychological horror novel. It's my slow-burn psychological horror novel, heavily inspired by Frankenstein and the Pygmalion myth. It's my first true horror book that I published.

Then there's Jigglyspot and the Zero Intellect, which is inspired by B-rated '80s horror movies and the old grindhouse movies of the '70s, and it's mind manipulation. It's just wild and bizarre. And then The Sleepy Hollow Incident is my Gothic tale—it's like a dark romance mixed in with Gothic horror.

So I always try to put something for everyone that's out there. To me, when I'm writing, it's got to be about depth, psychological depth. I always refer to my books to be like peeling layers off a Texas-sized onion. The more you read, the more in-depth you get into not only the characters, but the story.

It's just something that comes out of me. It's part of me. That's the way I always have to do it. I always have to put that depth in there. To me, that's good storytelling.

When I grew up, I read a lot of classic literature. Yes, Edgar Allan Poe, but also Dante's Inferno, Milton's Paradise Lost, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, the Brontë sisters. Keep going. Ray Bradbury, Ayn Rand, Daphne du Maurier, Shirley Jackson. Those to me are my books that I absolutely love.

So there's a sweet science in today's fast-paced, social media type of world in marrying the depth of the old classic literature and the entertainment value that is required today for being an author. There's that sweet science behind it, and I love just hitting that nail on the head every time.

Jo: So did you ever pitch traditional publishing, or have you thought about going that way?

Because I also find that a lot of horror actually sits very close to literary. Like, I read a lot more literary horror than I do in some of the other genres.

PD: Correct. So in the beginning, yes. Not in a long time. I maybe went to a couple of indie publishers, but as far as traditional, the Big Five publishers, I have an aversion to them for a big reason. I know people who have worked in that industry that have told me some pretty bad horror stories about those places.

So I haven't sent anything to that type of place in a very, very long time. Maybe close to 20 years.

Indie publishers, the small presses, yes, here and there, but even then, I'm always moving at a fast pace. So if I've got a book and I'm sending it out as a query letter, by the time that query letter is even read, I'm almost done publishing.

I love that aspect of it. The control of my story, where I know where this character's going. And listen, I've got my beta readers, I've got my ARC readers. They're there to tell me, “Hey, maybe you should change this or change that.” Whether I take that advice or not, of course my editor too, is really up to me.

I always put out the book that I know is the one I want to read. And to me, I haven't gone wrong in doing so. I know with traditional publishing, you sometimes get too many thoughts in the pot there. Let's put it that way.

Jo: Okay, so coming back to being indie then. You mentioned Amazon earlier, but you have a store where you sell direct. Many authors are doing this now, but it can be a challenge.

So what have you found are the pros and cons of your direct store? What's working? Any lessons there?

PD: Okay. So I use a place called Big Cartel. They're the platform where the books are on. They're hosting my website, PDAlleva.com.

The big challenge was actually just starting it. It was so overwhelming. How do I put this on there? At the time, I've got all these books, so how do I present them?

I'm even going to be doing another revamp with it too, because I want better pictures—taking pictures of the books, stuff like that, instead of just having the covers on there. I also have a lot of shirts that I'm selling.

So I think the biggest challenge is just getting on there and starting it. Then of course, you've got to learn a whole new platform, and the mechanics, and how people are going to be downloading, and how that's done on an e-book versus a print version of the book.

So it's a huge learning curve that you've really got to put your focus on and give it time.

What most people like in indie publishing is signed copies. It's a huge part of indie publishing, selling those signed copies. People love a signed copy, and that's primarily what my website is for. You can order signed copies from me.

I also use a place called IngramSpark, and they're more like a distributor. They're used by everyone. They've been around for a very long time. Traditional publishing uses them too, and they're just distributing your novel.

I'd say about a year ago, maybe two years ago, they started where you can sell your books on discount through them as well. So I have that on my website too, where you're just clicking on the book and you're pretty much going directly to their site and you're buying paperbacks and hardbacks at a discount. That's going well too.

For the most part, people are definitely coming to my site because they want the signed copies. A good thing with indie publishing is limited editions, first print copies, special editions. That type of stuff really just takes off. People love to see that, especially in the indie community.

You can sell them too. I go to a few different book conventions during the year, and the limited editions are there. Like I said, people love the signed copies. They love being a part of that and getting that signed copy. They treasure it, just like I treasure my books too.

I'm not referring to my books that I've written, but books that I have as well. I love my e-reader, don't get me wrong, but I still prefer the physical copy—the paperback, and even more so than the paperback, the hardback. So people love those signed copies, and that's why I created the website, to sell on there for them.

Jo: Yes, I mean, we're getting to a point now though where I think some people are questioning the pros and cons of it. For example, you doing the signed copies—I don't do that from my Shopify store because I don't want to hold stock and I don't want to deal with postage.

So I only do it when I do a Kickstarter. I've just finished one recently, Bones of the Deep, and I'm going up to the printer, and I'm going to sign a couple of hundred copies and then they do the postage.

That's the only way I'm willing to do it because of the pain of getting books to your house, signing them, getting them in the post.

So how do you manage that practically?

PD: Okay, so the inventory's there. I don't go and sign everything right away. I just keep the inventory. Once somebody buys the book, then I'll pull out the book, log it and all that good fun stuff, sign it, and then ship it out immediately.

Here in my country, we get discounts at the United States Post Office because they're books. So they pass that shipping cost over to the reader too, so it's a little bit cheaper for shipping.

I'll just take books once or twice a week over to the United States Postal Service and ship those books out. I don't sign them until I actually get that order.

Jo: How many do you have in your house? It's the holding stock of all the backlist that is the problem.

PD: Ooh, gotcha. All right. That's why I have a two-car garage. But here's the thing, I won't order 500 at a time. I'll order 20 at a time.

Jo: Okay. Right.

PD: When I see that inventory's getting low, I'll order another 20 at a time.

Jo: And you get those from IngramSpark?

PD: Correct. When the new one comes out, maybe at that time I'm just selling those, bringing those to conventions that I go to. Or maybe doing a sale on those books at that time to get rid of the inventory so it's not sitting around anymore.

Jo: I think that's so important. Then like you mentioned, you do T-shirts or shirts. That is also really hard because of sizing.

So is that all print on demand?

PD: Yes. So I don't really hold the stock on the shirts. When I get an order, whatever the size is at that time, I go directly to the place and order it. I use a place called Sublimation Station that's here in Orlando. They do great all-over print T-shirts. They're fantastic. I just did one for The Sleepy Hollow Incident.

So The Sleepy Hollow Incident is one long story, and it's broken up into four books. Each book has its own. The covers are fantastic. I use a lady named Cherie Foxley. She's a phenomenal cover designer.

So the shirts are, like, book one is on the front of one shirt with book two on the back, and then the second shirt is book three on the cover and book four on the back.

However, I can customise those. I just did a giveaway in my Facebook group and I let people know I could customise them, and she wanted book one and book four, so I just got that and sent it out to her.

Now, if people go ahead and order that on the website, I can just order it right away from them, boom, and that place will get it shipped right then and there.

Jo: Right, so they do the shipping. These are all sort of practical things that people need to answer because I feel like sometimes it's like, “Oh, yes, having a direct store is great,” but there's actually quite a lot of work that goes into it, isn't there?

PD: There is. There's a lot of work. You're pretty much opening almost like your own brick-and-mortar store at that point. You just don't have walk-in traffic coming in—your traffic is all coming online. So there is a lot to it, but it's worth it.

If you're a self-published author or even a small indie press, it's good to have. Because like I said, people love the signed copies.

Jo: When you say it's worth it, is it worth it financially or just because you like to serve the customers in that way?

PD: Both.

Jo: Right. So it is financially worth it for you?

PD: Yes.

Jo: I was talking to a friend of mine and saying, are you valuing your time in terms of things like taking the books to the post office and stuff like that?

Do you find it eats into your writing at all, or do you just manage it all separately?

PD: No, I manage it separately. So I'm an early morning riser. I get up at 3:00 in the morning, and that's when I write my books or do editing or brainstorming.

I'm about to write a new novella now called The Adam and Eve Story, which is actually based on a little-known CIA shelved book from the 1990s called The Adam and Eve Story as well. So I've been brainstorming that, and I was doing that this morning.

I get up at 3:00 a.m. and I do my writing, and by the time the kids are up and by the time the wife is up, it's like 8:00 a.m. is rolling around and I'm pretty much done at that point.

Then I have my days. Tuesday I'm completely working from home and I do my thing in the morning, and then the rest of the day is marketing, fulfilling orders, stuff like that.

On the days when I'm going to do group facilitation, I'll of course still get up at 3:00 o'clock in the morning, and then I'll plan out the day. I've got an hour between this group and I can go ahead and do that, and I'm already there so it's not a problem. The post office is right around the corner.

You kind of figure out all the logistics for yourself. There are some days, like on Monday, I don't facilitate groups until the afternoon, so I've got the whole morning to work on marketing and do other things, and fulfilment. Then of course Saturday's a big day for that too.

Jo: Oh, that's good. I feel like people always need to know how to balance their time, but it sounds like you manage, because at 3:00 a.m., as you say, there's not much else to do other than write.

You mentioned marketing, and you have a Substack, pdsalternativefiction.substack.com.

Talk about that and serialising fiction and how Substack works.

Because I feel like a load of people are jumping in but might not necessarily know how it works, especially for fiction.

PD: Correct. It is becoming quite popular out there. I think the one before that was Patreon, and Patreon is pretty big for that too, kind of the same thing.

I wanted to start something and just get the work out there. I was very interested when Amazon came out a few years ago with what was called Vella.

They kind of started that. I was like, “This is kind of cool.” Couple chapters at a time. I'm writing the books anyway, so why don't we kick this off and see how it goes—a type of experiment.

I had a lot of fun doing it. I started on October 4th, 2024. I've done four novels so far. One is still going, which is Volume 3 of my Dark Veil serie— that's a sci-fi series.

I wrote three other novels. The Hypnotist, which is a thriller, heavy on the sci-fi and a tad of horror in there too. And then I wrote Girl on a Mission, which is my psychological thriller, and then Cat Fight, which is a horror novel—all within that time.

I think I finished all three of those novels in January, and then the first week of February they were all pretty much done. Now what I'm doing is, I went paid recently on the Substack. It's like everything else that's out there—chip away, chip away.

I fell into that hole where they say, “Hey, we can promote you and get people to sign up for your newsletter.” And I'll be honest with you, don't do it. It's not worth it.

You spend money, and what happens is they're what I refer to as dead leads. They don't click. You wind up shuffling them off after three to six months, because they're just not clicking. Everybody gets a star rating, so you know—are they clicking, are they staying on, are they not?

So I got rid of pretty much all of those people, and I'll never do that again. It's got to be done organically. That's why when you read my books, especially the new books, towards the end it'll say, “Sign up for my newsletter.”

I do more with that newsletter too. If you're on the free tier, every month I do a monthly newsletter, which is just me talking about updates, things going on in the publishing industry, things going on with me.

My daughter puts together a weekly Horror and Sci-Fi Chronicles newsletter, which gives what's going on in new releases in the industry—sci-fi, horror, books, movies, television. She does deep dives into industry tropes, historical tidbits, and a weekly quiz.

I also do a monthly Terrors and Tales newsletter. I started this last year, and it was a quarterly newsletter. It's other authors who are new, upcoming, never been published before, looking to get published.

It's a chance for them to be on the newsletter where they have a flash fiction story or poem or even a short story that I publish for them. It's called the Terrors and Tales newsletter.

What happened is I would put out calls for submissions. And a place called Duotrope—I don't even know who these people are, but all of a sudden I got an email from them stating, “Hey, we found that you're looking for submissions, and we posted your link. We hope you don't mind.”

I'm like, “No, of course I don't mind.”

I got so many submissions from that one link. I'm like, “Okay.” Do I really want to deny people? I'm not like that. I want to help promote other authors. I know what it's like when you're new and upcoming, no matter what age you are, to say, “Hey, here's a platform for you to see your stuff in print.”

Obviously, I read through them just to make sure they're up to a certain standard, but for the most part, if you submit, you're getting in there.

With Duotrope, I'm like, I have enough here to put out one a month. So in May 2026, the first one goes out, and then I'll have one each month until December, and then who knows? In 2027 I might go back to quarterly. I might get enough submissions to just keep it going once a month.

So that's the Terrors and Tales newsletter, and it usually comes out towards the end of the month—the last two weeks. I have nothing to do with it in terms of content. None of my stories are on there. None of my poems are on there. None of my flash fiction.

It's all other authors, just for them to see their name in print, see their work in print, share it with their friends, and put something on their resume, and to encourage people to keep reading and keep the craft going.

Jo: When you say in print, you don't mean in physical print?

PD: Oh, I mean in the newsletter. I'm sorry.

Jo: I think that's important, or you're going to get a lot more submissions, and you will need to do publishing contracts and all that kind of thing.

I think that's the difficult thing with a Substack newsletter approach—it's difficult to know where to categorise it. Is it marketing? Is it publishing? It's all of these things, I suppose. A bit like this podcast, it's all kinds of things.

In terms of Substack actually making money on its own or leading to book sales that make money, do you think it does serve that purpose?

PD: I think I've gotten more book sales through it, and also ARC readers who are enjoying the books and giving reviews.

As far as the paid tiers, that's kind of a little bit slow, and that's where I'm saying chip away at it. Keep it up there. Keep it going. Over time, you're going to build that type of audience where it's going to be like, “Hey, this is financially feasible for me to continue to do this.” That's the response that I'm getting out there.

Jo: Yes. Before, you mentioned you were doing Facebook Lives and you're looking at TikTok, but—

Is anything else working for you in book marketing?

If people have a few books and they're like, “What is working for book marketing right now?”—what do you recommend?

PD: Okay. For me, the thing that has made the most sense is making sure the reader knows the book is out there through some sort of social media. I've had really good success on TikTok since the beginning of this year especially.

I started it about a year ago, year and a half ago, but then my father got sick and passed away, and it was a new venture and I put it off to the side. I really got the flavour going at the beginning of this year. February, March of this year.

It seems to be going really well, and I've noticed an uptick in sales from just getting the videos out there and getting it in front of people's eyes.

There's an event I'm going to in August called ShiverCon, which is a pretty big event. After that event, I'm going to look to see what type of inventory I have left over from the event, and I'm going to start doing TikTok Lives. I'm very comfortable being on camera. So I'm like, “Yeah, that seems like a good way to go.”

I know there's a few other horror authors who are doing it and having good success with TikTok Lives as well. A guy named Jason Davis is doing really well with TikTok Lives, and a few other authors too.

I'm like, “Yes, I could definitely do that.” I want to get up to a certain number of people, and I want these events. I'm going to one in July, and then ShiverCon in August. Once those are done, I'm going to have more time to do the TikTok Lives.

As far as Facebook is concerned, what I've had really great success with on Facebook is being in the groups and meeting other authors. That's not always about my book per se, but whatever books I'm reading, I'm posting my reviews about those books in those groups and meeting readers.

Then obviously, they always say the three-to-one rule. Post about three different books and then post about your own book, whether you're doing a sale or a new release or a re-release or whatever.

I've found success through that just by interacting with readers. When they post a book, I'll comment, “Hey, I've read that book,” or, “Hey, that book looks really cool. I like the review.” Commenting on it so you start these relationships with people who are out there in these Facebook groups.

I've recently started my own Facebook reader group. I kind of go with the same thing. Last night, we did a live reading for another author. I like other authors to be on there. I always like to think, what does the reader need? What do I want to see as a reader?

I would love to hear live readings from authors. So I kind of learn about them, learn about the book, and get a live reading. To me, that's a good way to go. So I started that recently, and it seems to be going well.

I've got a new folk horror coming out soon, and I put out a call for ARC readers and got a fantastic response from that.

That kind of drives the sales anyway, because when you get those reviews, then people see it gives credibility to the book, and then other people see it, and then they're buying it too. So that comes from the groups.

There's so many wheels to spin in this industry as an indie author when you're doing this, especially when you're doing 99% of it on your own. You've got to get out there. No one's going to know your book exists if you don't get out there and tell somebody about it.

Jo: Brilliant. Well, tell us—

Where can people find you and your books online?

PD: All right. Perfect. So obviously I'm on Amazon like everyone. Most of my books are worldwide, so you'll find them in Barnes & Noble as well. And of course, if you want the signed copies or discount print books, I always lead people straight to my website, PDAlleva.com.

Then, of course, if you go to my Substack, you'll get all the updates, and you'll get all the links to purchase or find out where they are on Amazon and Barnes & Noble and things like that too.

Jo: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Paul. That was great.

PD: Thank you very much for having me. It was great chatting with you.

The post Writing Cross-Genre, Selling Direct, And Serialising On SubStack With P.D. Alleva first appeared on The Creative Penn.

Have you ever lost the joy in your creative work — that sense of fun you had when you were starting out, before the admin and the algorithms drained it away? How do mid-career creatives get it back, and what can a four-year-old teach us about play? Austin Kleon talks about productive procrastination, silly rituals, the case for paper reference books in an AI world, and how his newsletter went from a marketing cost to the day job that keeps the lights on.

In the intro, Does social media still sell books? [Self-Publishing with ALLi]; Trial by algorithm [The Bookseller]; Publishing’s AI Hypocrisy Problem [The New Publishing Standard]; ALLi AI survey for authors; Brave New Bookshelf Podcast, and Pics from signing at BookVault.

Today's show is sponsored by ProWritingAid, writing and editing software that goes way beyond just grammar and typo checking. With its detailed reports on how to improve your writing and integration with writing software, ProWritingAid will help you improve your book before you send it to an editor, agent or publisher. Check it out for free or get 15% off the premium edition at www.ProWritingAid.com/joanna

This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn

Austin Kleon is the New York Times and international bestselling author of nonfiction books, including Steal Like an Artist, Show Your Work!, and Keep Going, as well as an artist, professional speaker, and poet. His latest book is Don't Call It Art: 10 Ways to Create Like a Kid Again.

You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.

Show Notes

Why Austin wrote Don't Call It Art now, and what his kids taught him about creative joy

Productive procrastination, silly rituals, and treating writing like Lego

Comedy as a philosophical position, and giving yourself permission to be bad in private

Sharing process in the algorithm era, and why your whole life is the process

Bibliomancy, paper reference books, and what AI can't give you that a dictionary can

Style, the Taco Bell distinctiveness rule, and how Austin's newsletter became his day job

You can find Austin at AustinKleon.com.

Transcript of the interview with Austin Kleon

Jo: Austin Kleon is the New York Times and international bestselling author of nonfiction books, including Steal Like an Artist, Show Your Work!, and Keep Going, as well as an artist, professional speaker, and poet. His latest book is Don't Call It Art: 10 Ways to Create Like a Kid Again. So welcome back to the show, Austin.

Austin: Thank you for having me back. It's nice to talk to you again.

Jo: You were on the show in March 2020, and at the time, your book was Keep Going, which was prescient considering the pandemic and politics. So I wondered, why this book, Don't Call It Art, now?

Was this something you see in the creative community or your own life that made you want to write this book?

Austin: Keep Going is a book about what happens when the world goes crazy around you and you're still trying to do your creative work. This is a book about what happens when inside has bottomed out.

Keep Going is a book about the world bottoming out, and you're worried that your own creative work is going to bottom out too. How do you keep pushing through and keep making stuff?

This book, to me, is about what happens when you bottom out inside—when you've lost that love and feeling for the thing that you wanted to do, and you're just not connecting with it in the way that you used to or the way that you want to.

How do you get back? How do you return to that sense of joy and wonder and fun that we have when we're starting out? And for me, it was being around my little kids that taught me how to tap into that.

My kids were natural—they didn't have any creative hangups. I would spend all day talking to people who had creative hangups, and then I'd get back in the house, and I'd just be around these beings who didn't have any of them.

It was really instructive. I felt like, if I could bottle the energy of my kids when they were about four years old and try to put it in a book, I think it could really help a lot of the people that I run into, and the people with the kinds of problems I hear from.

Jo: You mentioned bottoming out. How do people know when they've hit that point?

Austin: You just don't want to do it anymore. You're kind of like, “This just isn't giving me back what it used to.”

When we start with our creative work, that's the thing that juices us. We come away from it feeling full up. I think you hit a certain point where you start to feel drained after it. Or maybe you don't feel drained by the thing itself that you're doing—maybe it's all the stuff around it, which is more often the case.

For example, if you're a mid-career writer like me, who's been publishing books for 16 years now, I still really like writing. I still really like drawing. I still really like cutting and pasting and putting things together.

It's the admin around the work—the emails, the meetings, the running-a-business part of it—that's super draining for me, and that stuff can start to bleed over into the creative work.

So it's really important for me to make sure that I'm having some playtime, some R&D, some research and development time, to make sure it's not just all business. When you take the thing that you love and you turn it into the thing that you make a living from, you can really run into a lot of problems.

Jo: I'm at 20 years, so I know exactly what you're saying, and a lot of listeners are the same. We love writing books, but it's all the stuff that goes around it.

So for those of us who do this for money as well as passion, what are some practical ways to have more fun with our creativity?

Austin: Something I learned from my kids is that you really are your most creative when you're supposed to be doing something else. So one of the things I use a lot in the studio is productive procrastination. Whatever I'm supposed to be working on, I start another little project, and that's my little naughty fun time.

When I first come into the studio, I try to do something that I'm not supposed to be doing—something that I won't have much to show for. That could be making one of my blackout poems. That could be making a collage in my notebook. It could also be sitting here.

I have a bass in the studio now, so I can practise my bass guitar. Sometimes I'll do that for the first 15 minutes just to get in that headspace of, “Hey, what's it like to do something just for yourself? Just because you want to do it?”

The juice that you get from that little naughty “I'm going to do what I'm not supposed to be doing right now” thing, that carries into the rest of the day. It's like a nice start to things.

Jo: Do you think that play could be something different to what we make our money with?

For me, writing novels and stories is great fun in one way, but it's also what I then publish and make money on. So writing stories is more serious, I guess, than playing with Lego or something.

Austin: Right. So the trick is, how can you make writing your stories like playing with Lego? That's kind of been my whole career. I hate staring at Microsoft Word and that blinking cursor, taunting you like, “Come on, what have you got?”

A lot of my creative life has been about trying to make it more playful, trying to make it feel more like a game. That's how I came up with my blackout poems. I take an article from The New York Times and I black it out until it only has a few words left behind.

It sort of looks like if the CIA did haiku, for some people listening. That was one little exercise.

Then weirdly, that side thing that I thought was just play, just fun—that turned into my first book. So then it's, okay, what else can I mess around with and play with?

I do a lot of collage work in the studio, and I rarely actually use that for any of the books. Sometimes I use it for my newsletter to illustrate the newsletter. But it's always about trying to figure out, how can I make writing a game? How can I make it more playful?

There are different things that I do to make it feel more playful. One of them's really stupid. I really believe in silly rituals because I think silliness is really powerful. People talk about their daily rituals—Mason Currey has that great book, Daily Rituals: How Artists Work.

When I was reading that book, I realised it was really the silly stuff that I really liked. There was, I think it was Balzac counting out coffee beans or something before he got to write. Or Steinbeck sharpening 12 pencils or something goofy like that.

So one of the things I like to do before I write is that I have these cigarette pencils. They're pencils that look like cigarettes in the studio. I put one in my mouth before I start writing, and I pretend to be some old '40s writer on a typewriter.

I like doing goofy stuff in the studio because I think when you do goofy stuff—stuff that you'd be embarrassed if anyone else saw it—it gets you in that playful state.

Jo: It's interesting. In your book, you have a section that says, “Don't take things too seriously.” For many of us, we write memoir for example, and that is very close to us. It's like the deepest expression of what we want to say in the world. It feels very serious.

So how can we hold things more lightly and not take things so seriously?

Austin: For me, comedy is actually a philosophical position. What I mean by that is, I think a lot of people set out with a tragic model of creative work.

They think, “Oh, I have this special gift,” or, “I have this thing that I really need to do, and I need to put it out into the world, and I need to make the world look more like I want it to look.”

They have this idea that, “Through blood and sweat and tears, I'm going to see this thing through, and I'm going to push it into the world, and I'm going to have my way.”

I think there's another way of working where it's more like, “I'm just a normal person trying to play with my environment, and take my experiences and put them into something interesting. So I'm going to play and use my wits, and we're going to see what we come up with.” Those really are two modes of life.

The pandemic taught me that it was really when we were keeping our sense of humour, when we were having a laugh and keeping our egos in check around the house and just acknowledging how goofy we all were and how ridiculous the situation was, that seemed to be when we were really thriving.

Versus, “Well, we're in this tough situation. We've got to make it into what we want it to be.” That felt really bad. But when we cruised along and we were just improvisational, when we went at things with a kind of lightness, that worked.

There's a great Italo Calvino essay about lightness in Six Memos for the Next Millennium. Lightness is really underrated. Even when we're going about heavy work, having a sense of lightness and play with it just makes the work better.

That's a philosophical position of mine. I aspire to comedy. I aspire to a comic outlook on life. I'm just a creature with a body who's going to die, and I'm fundamentally ridiculous. Life is pretty absurd. You just make the best of it.

Jo: There's certainly some truth there. Staying on a similar theme, you have a chapter in the book on permission to be bad.

Many of the listeners also have your book Show Your Work, and it shaped many of us into sharing our work in progress. It feels quite dangerous now, in a world where judgment is much louder than it maybe was when you wrote Show Your Work.

So tell us a bit about permission to be bad versus should we keep some of this private?

Austin: Permission to be bad is about the making part of things. It's the private part. It's permission to be bad when you're in private, when you're actually doing the work.

Show Your Work is a book about what you do after you've done the work, or while you're doing the work. It was never about putting up a webcam and running a 24/7 feed. It was more like, hey, what are the ways that I can connect with the kind of audience I can build while I'm making the work itself?

So the way I see permission to be bad is, you really have to give yourself permission when you're not sharing, when you're off screen, to really be as bad as you want to be. It doesn't necessarily mean quality-wise.

I think it also means letting yourself write stuff that you would never say on social media. Letting yourself read stuff that you wouldn't admit you were reading on social media. Letting yourself listen to stuff. Letting yourself really be that unfiltered, unhinged, private person that you want to be.

Then when it comes to sharing, you put some time in between that input time, that making time, and the sharing time, and then you share what you think is going to be useful or helpful or interesting to other people.

Jo: I think you wrote that book before TikTok, and how fast people are moving.

Do you think people need to slow down a bit in what they share, maybe?

Austin: I don't know. I obviously had a lot more faith in social media back then. I use all the principles from Show Your Work in my newsletter.

Newsletters are very much the new kind of great thing. They're doing a lot of the work that social media used to do, in that you're still able to have this direct connection with the people that you're trying to reach.

The big problem with social media now is that it's all algorithmically tuned, where the people that are following you don't see the stuff that you're doing most of the time.

What you have to do now, if you want the people who are following you to see your stuff on social media, is you have to make stuff that the algorithm likes. That's a whole different thing.

As far as the Show Your Work principle—which is share your process as much as your product—that carries over to any platform. In my newsletter every Friday, I share a list of 10 things that were going on behind the scenes here.

It might have been what I was watching on TV, what I listened to, a new pen I was trying out, or something like that. The Friday newsletter is almost always process stuff.

When I talk about process, my definition is actually very broad. For a lot of people, it's drafting, editing, whatever. For me, the process is the whole life. The process is almost everything except the finished thing.

A writer's life is 24/7. My friends who have real jobs really are like, “What do you do all day?” And I'm like, “Well, what do you mean?” They're like, “Well, I see you out on your bike ride.”

I'm like, “Yes, when you see me out on a bike ride, I'm thinking through something half the time.” If I'm watching TV, I'm thinking, “Hey, would this be good in the newsletter?”

I'm never off. My whole life—everything is copy, as Nora Ephron said. That's part of the job. It's very hard to turn off. So I see the whole life as process, and the question becomes, what little bits and pieces of that life and that process can you share with people while you're making the things that you hope to sell them later?

Right now, I'm in a cycle where I'm selling this book, but all these people have showed up because I've shared my process every week for the past seven years since I put out a book.

Jo: It's funny you say that. I was at the dentist yesterday, and—

My dentist literally asked me, “So where do you get all your ideas?”

This is a common question for all of us, right? And it just becomes so hard to explain that to people who don't walk around in the world just constantly getting ideas.

Austin: I can't believe I'm going to tell this story. I was getting my vasectomy after my second kid, and I was talking to this doctor just before the operation.

He said, “So what do you do for a living?” I said, “I'm a writer.” He said, “Oh, that must be cool. You get to use your brain.” And I said, “That's everything that you want your doctor to say.” I was going to say, “Please use your brain,” before he's about to cut into you.

He said, “Oh, no, no. What I mean is, I know what I'm going to do every day for the next 10 years.” He knew exactly what his day was going to look like. He said, “You have to use your brain. You've got to figure out new stuff.” I was like, “Oh, that's really interesting.”

That's the trade-off, right? He's got the job security. He knows what he's going to do. Every writer has a moment where they have to talk to a normal person about what you do.

Jo: I was going to say, I'm married to one.

Austin: Now, my wife, on the other hand, grew up the daughter of a writer, so she knows exactly what it's like. Nothing ever phases her. She's totally used to it.

She's used to me staring off into space, completely checking out of a conversation. She's used to me using lines on her that I'm going to put in a piece later. She's used to the whole rigmarole. It's very handy. I've been very lucky in that sense.

Jo: Coming back to the book, you talk about your use of bibliomancy for inspiration.

Since we're talking about that, tell us about it. I think all the book people listening will be happy.

Austin: I'm a person who still keeps a dictionary nearby—a paper dictionary. I keep a big old American Heritage. It's just a big, thick book.

When I really don't have any ideas, I will turn at random to the dictionary, close my eyes, stick my finger down the page, open my eyes, and just see what I come up with. Sometimes just that act will give me an idea.

I also do that with books. I'll go around the studio, pick up a book, flip to a random page, and just see what it says there, or read an old piece of marginalia that I've left in a book. I believe deeply in the power of bibliomancy, and I think it's a case for paper books.

I'm one of those people that still really believes in reference books. I've started collecting more and more of them. I have an old, big dictionary that's always open on my desk, and I look up words.

I learned from John McPhee, the writer, that you should look up words that you think you know. That was the first time I'd ever heard anyone say that. So I look up words that I think I know.

Instead of reaching for a thesaurus when I need a different word, I actually just look up the definition of the word that I already have. That's another McPhee tip.

The other thing that happened that I thought was really interesting is, I got a Roget's for the first time—a thesaurus. I don't think most people know what an actual thesaurus is.

Most people think of a thesaurus as a synonym finder, and that's not actually what a thesaurus is at all. A thesaurus is more like an encyclopaedia, weirdly. You look up things based on big concepts, and then it gives you a bunch of words to look up later. It's a very strange thing. It's not what most people think it is.

I have a couple of editions of Roget's in here. I like the really old Roget's from the 1900s because they actually have opposing ideas facing each other on the page. Do you have an old-school Roget's? Have you ever looked through one?

Jo: I don't have one now, but I certainly grew up with them. I was literally just thinking, I wonder if there are ones for Americans and ones for British people, because so often we say different things and mean different things.

I always hear Americans say, “Oh, that's a doozy,” or something, and it means the complete opposite thing here.

Austin: Like if you say “fanny pack” over there. That means something very different than it means here, right? Chips or fries, that kind of stuff. So I wonder if there are different ones for different cultural references.

Jo: I don't know.

Austin: As people, with ChatGPT and all these LLMs and stuff, people are like, “Why would you ever pick up a paper reference book?” And I'm like, “I actually like the friction.”

I like having to move in space and go over to my dictionary. I like flipping the pages. I like having to scan a page for the word I'm looking for, because—

This marvellous thing happens when you're looking for the word, where you bump into all these other words.

If you're a word nerd, you get to start thinking about the root of the word—oh, why is this word next to this word? Well, it's because they share the same root. Then you're going down all these fun rabbit holes.

The thing that I'm trying to do as a writer and a creative person is, I'm trying to get to the thing that I didn't know I was looking for.

The thing that people misunderstand about AI, I think personally, is that it's a great tool if you know what you're looking for.

If you're like, “Find me this thing. I want exactly this. I want to see a picture of a dog wearing a king's costume,” or some crap like that, then it can spit that picture out for you. Or, “I want to know what happened on this day,” and whatever. It can do that.

But that's not actually what I'm doing most of the time when I'm writing or making something. I start with an idea, but what really happens—the magic of writing and the magic of making stuff in general—is when you discover something that you didn't even know you were headed for. That's the real magic for me.

Sometimes I have an idea and I want to articulate it for people, but more often than not, there's something that bothers me or something that I want to talk about, and I sit down and write, and I figure out what it is that I actually have to say and what I actually think.

Every writer really knows this, and that's why the dictionary, stuff like that, those are ways of training you to get in that discovery mode. “Well, let me—oh, I bumped into this. I went looking for this one thing and then I ran into this other thing.”

That's why I love the library. I don't know what system you use over there, but you look for one book in the Dewey Decimal System over here, and then, okay, here's all these other weird books next to it. Then you end up with three other books other than the one that you were looking for. That's the magic.

To me, that's the magic of creative work, discovering what you didn't know you were looking for.

That was particularly important for me when I was writing this book because we discovered that my wife has a condition called aphantasia. It's very rare in the population, about 2 to 3% of people. There's probably some people listening to this right now who are like, “What is this? Tell me.”

Jo: Aphantasia actually more common in the creative industries.

Austin: Yes. What it is, is that you don't see—when I say close your eyes and picture an apple, you don't actually see the apple in your head. You can think about an apple and the qualities of an apple, but you don't actually see it.

Some people, and it's a matter of degree—some people like me, I can close my eyes, I can tell you what the apple looks like, I can tell you what colour it is, I can tell you where the shading is. Someone like my wife doesn't see the apple. She can tell you what an apple is.

It's really interesting because she has a degree in architecture, which is known as a very visual field. But the thing you discover about aphantasia is, it doesn't keep people from becoming artists. In fact, it's the opposite.

Someone like Ed Catmull, who co-founded Pixar, writes about it in his book, and so many of the great animators at Pixar are actually aphantasics. The reason is that they learned that they had to draw in order to see things.

When you don't have a picture in your head of what you want something to look like, things appear in the drawing, and you find things that you couldn't even picture.

A lot of writers actually are aphantasics. John Green discovered recently that he has aphantasia. It turns out that it's a superpower for writers, because if you don't have a picture in your head, then you don't have to translate that picture into words. A lot of writers talk about thinking in radio, like they have a constant narrator.

My wife—she's probably going to kill me for talking about her this much—when she describes it to me, she's like, “Oh, it's like a radio in my head. I'm constantly hearing a voice, and it's a narrator.”

I was like, “Holy shit, that would be really helpful to me.” I don't have anything like that in my head. I read Mrs Dalloway for the first time, and I gave it to her and I said, “You've got to read this book. I think this must be what it's like in your head.” And she said, “Oh my God, it is.”

Part of the thing that I took away from that experience—this is a long-winded way of getting here—is that I take a lot of inspiration from people with this condition.

Most of the people I know in the arts or the creative fields, they set out with this grand vision, and then they start working on the thing and it's nothing like what they had in their head, and they get really depressed: “This isn't what I had in mind.”

Whereas if you set out without a picture in your head, and you just start manipulating things and you see what appears, that's more of the comic mode I was talking about earlier.

What would happen if we just sat down with our materials and we started playing and we saw what appeared on the page? What if we started typing and saw what appeared, and then we played with that?

That's the kind of joy. That's more like how kids operate. Kids are better at that. They're better at reacting to what's actually in front of them, instead of having these grandiose visions about what they're trying to achieve.

Jo: Just coming back on the longevity of a creative career. Your books are very distinctive. You have a very distinctive visual style, your handwriting and the way the books are done.

I wondered if another part of the ennui, perhaps, or the draining of the later career is that we get trapped into doing something that feels like it looks the same. Or we have a voice, and we're happy in that voice, but sometimes we want to do something completely different.

For authors, we have different names. I write under two different names, and that helps. But equally—

How do you define author voice, and do you ever feel like doing something completely different to your normal style?

Austin: Style, in a lot of ways, is self-plagiarism. Style is the repeated things that we notice in people's work. Hitchcock talked about this in films. Wes Anderson is someone like that—Wes Anderson has a style. I'm sure that he gets really sick of it too sometimes, but you also can't help it in some ways.

I thought a lot about this because people worry about style so much. A lot of the time, what we call style is what Adrian Tomine one time said: “Style is just the distance between what's in my head and what comes out of my hand.” I really like that definition.

With this book, I was trying to think, “Okay, if I do another book in this series, how can I push things a little bit?” And then I was reading this article about Taco Bell. You guys have Taco Bell over there, don't you? Do you have Taco Bell?

Jo: No.

Austin: So Taco Bell, for people who don't know, is this American Mexican chain, and they have tacos and burritos and stuff like that. They're well known for making these really insane… it's so American, this company. They make a taco with a Doritos as a shell. Doritos are crisps, I guess.

Jo: Yes, we have Doritos.

Austin: Okay. I spent time in England, I just don't remember if I ate Doritos when I was in England. Anyway, I was reading this article about Taco Bell. It was really funny. They have an innovation kitchen at Taco Bell, and they have a rule about new products.

The rule is called the distinctiveness rule, and the rule is: you can change the flavour or you can change the taste, or you can change the form, but you can't change both at the same time.

I got really obsessed with this concept because I thought, “Well, this could be kind of interesting.” If you're someone who's had success and you're known for something, this presents an interesting thing. You could do a complete break and do something completely new, or you could try the distinctiveness rule.

Okay, well, what if I play with this idea of taste versus form? What if I change the taste and keep the form?

So the idea for Don't Call It Art was, what if I do another one of these books, but the taste is more like if my kids made it? It had the texture of kids' art, it had lots of scribbles in it, it was loose and messy. That was kind of the idea.

The actual book ended up being more like the other books. It ended up looking like an Austin Kleon book, because I just can't help that.

The thing you said about having multiple names that you write under, that's kind of what I do with the newsletter. I think of the newsletter as very different from the books. The newsletter is this twice-weekly thing where I can be a little bit more of myself.

In the books, I'm this very helpful, happy version of myself. It's me, but it's me on my best day. I'm really helpful and interesting for you. The newsletter is still a highlight reel in a sense, but it's a little bit more of my weird everything-I'm-into. It's more of the unclipped version of me.

The newsletter becomes a place where I can do a lot of the weird stuff that's much different from the books. I have these little projects going all the time.

Sometimes I'll make a bunch of prints and put them online. Sometimes I'll make a bunch of zines on a topic I haven't covered in the book. Sometimes I'll do a mixtape.

As someone who's interested in a lot of different forms and genres and just different modes of output, having something like a newsletter has been really creatively fruitful for me.

It's kept me from getting too bottomed out with the books because the books do a certain thing for the reader, and as much as I'd love to do a book that was radically different, I also think I've been given a real gift with the form of my books, in that I kind of own the way that they feel and look.

There aren't a lot of books that look like those books and feel like those books, and so I like playing with that form. It would be hard to get rid of it now.

The pseudonym for me is kind of like the newsletter in a sense. The newsletter is a little bit more of where I get to be wild and wacky. Then the books are a little bit more of a chiselled thing.

Jo: The books are perfect examples of the form, as you say, but it's interesting about the newsletter. You mentioned at the beginning that we can be drained by the admin around the work.

For many people listening, a newsletter becomes admin. So how does the newsletter fit into your business? The books are traditionally published, they're very professional.

How do you have your independent side, and how does all of that work together in your business?

Austin: Thank you for asking that question. I run the whole show at the newsletter. The newsletter is just me, and then my wife edits it, and no one else is involved.

I don't have an assistant. I don't have a team. It is just me, and that's why I love it. I control everything. I pick who gets in there. I pick everything. I love that.

I grew up watching David Letterman over here, and Letterman had a nightly show, and I always thought that was killer. I thought, “Man, what a fun job. You have a show every night where you have a new guest, and you have all these wacky things going on.” It was like a variety show.

I always thought that would be really fun, so the newsletter is my version of that. I started the newsletter in 2013, and it was just a Friday newsletter. It quickly became a list of 10 things I thought were worth sharing.

I had a friend, Hugh MacLeod, who was like, “Hey, I have a newsletter. It's bigger than any conference you've ever gone to.” He was talking about South by Southwest here in Austin. He's like, “I have a newsletter now, and it's bigger than South by Southwest.”

Jo: Oh, I remember him.

Austin: He would say, “Every time I have a new print, I put it out, and there's a button, and then they buy it.” He was like, “You've got to get it. This newsletter thing is killer.” This was in 2011 or something.

Jo: Yes, I still have his books. Blogging in Your Underwear or something.

Austin: Totally. So Hugh's a whole different story, but I was just like, “Oh, I should really get a newsletter.” Letterman always had a top 10 list on his show. I just always thought a 10 list was really fun. And of course the books are lists of 10 too.

So it just worked to have a weekly list of 10. It felt good, and it felt like an infinitely repeatable format. What I'm looking for as a creative person is an infinitely repeatable format that can go on and on and on and be new every time. So the list of 10 is something that people know the form of.

It goes back to the Taco Bell thing. They know the form, but they're not sure what's going to go inside. They know it's going to be a burrito, but they don't know what's going to be in the burrito, and that's the exciting part.

The newsletter, business-wise, was always a marketing cost for about the first eight years of its existence. I paid MailChimp to send it out.

Then in about 2021, when I hadn't done a book for a while, my agent said, “You know, you should really think about doing a paid tier of your newsletter.” And this is to his credit, because he doesn't make anything off the newsletter. He said, “There's this thing called Substack now that makes that really easy.”

So we moved to Substack in 2021 in October, and I started doing a Tuesday edition of the newsletter that was just for paid people. That grew enough that it's gone from a marketing cost to something that's almost—it's not quite as much as I make on my books, but it's close. And to be candid, my books sell pretty well.

So suddenly the newsletter has become this really healthy income stream. The newsletter to me is actually the day job now. The newsletter is what really keeps the lights on.

It's also the perfect mix. It's the day job, it's the thing that keeps income coming in on a regular basis, but it's also the thing I like to do the most.

I'm not like a traditional writer who likes to just get lost in their book and take years and years and go away. I'm someone who loves to be doing a lot of different things. The newsletter is a perfect format for me. I'm talking myself into not quitting, actually. It's funny.

It's gone from this thing that was a marketing cost to now it's a significant part of our income. That journey—such a bad word, journey—that trip has been very interesting. It's been really cool. But I'm also just lucky. I've been really lucky, and I think part of my thing is, I'm always just trying not to squander my luck.

Jo: Well, the book is fantastic, and I know people are going to love it. And the newsletter, of course. So tell us—

Where can people find you and your books and newsletter online?

Austin: The easiest thing to do is to just go to AustinKleon.com, and that has links to everything—the books, the newsletter.

I do actually keep an old-school blog still. I'm one of the few people that still maintains their blog and keeps it up to date. I'm hedging my bets because I think in the end everything will come back to a self-hosted website. I think in the end everyone's going to just go back to their little websites, or at least I hope so.

Jo: Well, that was great, Austin. Thanks so much.

Austin: Oh, thank you.

The post Don’t Call It Art: Rediscovering Creative Joy With Austin Kleon first appeared on The Creative Penn.

How do you write when your heart is broken? How do you go back into the publishing business after years away, knowing it's a very different industry to the one you left? With Jami Albright.

In the intro, InAudio is now distributing audiobooks to BookShop.org;
The Feedback Loop that Makes Better Writers [Author Nation Podcast]; Bones of the Deep on Goodreads.

This episode is sponsored by Publisher Rocket, which will help you get your book in front of more Amazon readers so you can spend less time marketing and more time writing. I use Publisher Rocket for researching book titles, categories, and keywords — for new books and for updating my backlist. Check it out at www.PublisherRocket.com

This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn

Jami Albright is the bestselling author of the Brides on the Run romances and the co-host of the Wish I'd Known Then Podcast. Today we're talking about her new novel, The Summer That Changed Us.

You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.

Show Notes

How Jami started writing fiction at 47 and waited a year before publishing her first book

Why she fictionalised her sister's terminal cancer story rather than writing a memoir

The difference between writing as therapy and writing for the reader

Reactivating an email newsletter after almost two years of silence

Going wide with a standalone women's fiction novel after years in KU and rom-com

Letting go of the frantic hustle of indie publishing and redefining what success looks like

You can find Jami at JamiAlbright.com.

Transcript of the interview with Jami Albright

Jo: Jami Albright is the bestselling author of the Brides on the Run romances and the co-host of the Wish I'd Known Then Podcast. Today we're talking about her new novel, The Summer That Changed Us. So, welcome to the show, Jami.

Jami: Thank you, Joanna. I've made it. This is my first time on The Creative Penn, so I can retire tomorrow.

Jo: And we were saying before the show, I really thought you had been on the show before, because over the years we've connected a lot. We met over a decade ago, didn't we? At the Smarter Artist Summit. I was like, “I'm sure you've been on the show,” and you haven't. So, yes, welcome.

Jami: Thank you. You've been on our show, though. We did an interview with you a few years ago.

Jo: Yes. Well, anyway, for anyone who doesn't follow your show—

Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and publishing.

Jami: Okay. So I am the co-host of the Wish I'd Known Then Podcast for Writers. Sara Rosett and I have been doing that podcast since January 2020. Little did we know what was coming, and it really saved me, just mentally, being able to talk to people every week.

I never wrote a word of fiction until I was 47. I'd never really written anything. I have really bad grammar. I tell a lot of stories, and I would make up stories, but I'd never write them down because of the grammar thing.

But my reading buddy had her birthday coming up in about three months, and I thought, “You know what? I'm going to write Jennifer a book for her birthday. She doesn't care if I have bad grammar.” I just thought it would be on brand. It was so hard. I wrote myself into a corner very fast.

When I told her, she said, “Well, now you have to.” So I got Writing a Romance Novel for Dummies, I read that, and I started writing what is now Running from a Rock Star. But then my computer crashed and I lost it, and I was like, “Well, I'm not a writer.” So that was fine.

Then I turned 50, and I told my family, “I think the only thing I regret is not finishing that book.” Of course they were like, “Well, you need to just do it again.” I was like, “No, I had 30,000 words.”

A few weeks later my daughter came in and said, “Mom, I found this flash drive in my car. I think it has your book on it.” And it was 20,000 of the 30,000 words. So I was like, “Well, it's now or never.”

So I joined Romance Writers of America and got involved in a critique group, and they absolutely kicked my butt for a good six months. I think every week they were surprised I came back, because it was so brutal. I knew I didn't know anything, and they taught me to write.

Six months after I joined that first critique group, I won my first contest with the first 10 pages of that book. Then I just continued on. Three years later, I published Rock Star.

I was going to publish it two years later, but I went to the Smarter Artist Summit, where I met you. I was advised by Julia Cant and Sean Platt and some other people to wait—preferably to have more books written. I had the second book written when the first one came out, but it still needed to be edited.

So I waited a year, learned this business, and sold plasma to pay for my edits because I was poor. It was the best decision I ever made. Going to that conference, first of all, was the best $500 I've ever spent, and waiting that year really helped me learn this business.

When I published the book, I had an email list of 1,200 people before the book ever came out. None of those things would have been set up had I published right after the Smarter Artist Summit, which is what I'd thought I would do, in the summer.

So waiting gave me time to get everything set up so that when I published that book, it really took off from day one.

I had 1,200 people on that newsletter list who wanted that book, because I had done a preview promo. Instead of putting out the whole book, I think I put out four chapters, and then people signed up. I don't know that that works anymore.

Jo: I was going to say that. We should say to people, what was that, around 2016?

Jami: 2017. Things have changed.

Jo: Yes, things have changed, and I think this is so important. I had a question about this, and what they were implying was things that, like you said, we learned a decade ago. Things have changed.

We'll come back to how you're doing it now, but just in terms of finishing off how you got started—those books did really well, didn't they? You had a couple of years there.

How many books did you do? How did that go?

Because you did have real success.

Jami: Yes. From 2017 until really the beginning of 2021, if you look at my sales graph and my income, it just increased, increased, increased. 2019 was my very best year, but 2020 was only slightly lower as far as book sales and income.

I only put out a book a year after the second book. The second book came out about six months after the first one, and after that it was about every nine months to a year that I put a book out. Everyone said you can't make money doing that, but I did.

I think those books are very tropey. They're very hooky. That helped. I also think the timing of those books was really good. Rom-com was really coming up, and my rom-com is pretty wacky, but it's also really emotional too.

If I get any critiques about them it's usually that “this book was way more emotional than I expected, and I was looking for something a little lighter.”

They're just really wacky. They're rom-coms. Wacky circumstances. Small town, so there's all these small-town people. I just think it was a good time to release those. Those were good years. I miss those years.

Jo: It's a good lesson, because it's not always up and to the right, is it? We're going to come back and revisit that.

So then the pandemic hit, and on a more personal level, over the last few years, you've had a deeply difficult time that has led to The Summer That Changed Us, your latest book.

So talk a bit about what's happened, why this book, and also why fictionalise it rather than write a memoir?

I had that question.

Jami: Okay. So 2021, my income was dropping, but it was still okay. I was still making more than enough that—thank God I don't have to make all the money in our household—but there was a level that I wanted to.

At the end of 2021, my sister, who was the fourth of five sisters, had lived with cancer—non-smoker's lung cancer—for 10 years. She had the kind that, if you had a certain mutation, there were medications that worked amazingly well. Until they didn't, and then they put you on another class of that medication.

So for 10 years, that's what she did. She missed work maybe three times in 10 years. People who met her never knew she had cancer unless they knew us. She just never acted like she had cancer. We would have to say, “Remember, you have cancer.”

At the end of 2021, they ran out of that class of drugs. There were some being tested, but none had been approved. When she was diagnosed, she was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer. You don't survive very long having stage four lung cancer with no medication.

So I saw the writing on the wall pretty much at the end of 2021, but of course I was very hopeful that they could do something. By May of 2022, it was clear things were not going well. In July of 2022, she got a six-to-twelve-week diagnosis.

She just went in one day thinking she was about to get radiation, not knowing anything, and they were like, “No, we can't do radiation, and you should get your affairs in order because you have six to twelve weeks to live.”

Jo: Oh.

Jami: People who've been through it know this feeling. It's like being hit by a wrecking ball. It just knocks everything off your axis. Your whole world implodes into this one moment, this person that you love.

I live four hours away from my family. They all still live in the same small town. I was in Dallas at my daughter's at the time, and they live about 30 miles outside of Dallas. So I went to my mom's, and I stayed there.

I was there for almost six months, if you count the time I was back and forth, because she was not doing great but she was still okay. She had always rallied and come back.

But once she got the diagnosis, I stayed. She would go home, but she would come back to my mom's during the day, because her husband worked. She was a teacher, so she was off during the summer. I was just there, and we all just took care of her.

When she decided to go on hospice, she wanted to be at my mom's. She didn't want to be at home—they lived out in the country. She wanted to be at my mom's, so we set her up in the living room.

We're redneck country people. We bring our crazy people in, our sick people, just out for everybody to see. She was just in the middle of the living room in her hospital bed, and the world just revolved around that hospital bed.

Once that happened, once I knew at the end of 2021 that things were not going to go well—I really did not believe she would die. But she died a month after she went on hospice in October of 2022.

That whole year, I was useless. I could not write. I couldn't think of anything to write. I write funny. How do you write funny when your heart's broken? I couldn't do it.

After she died, I knew it would take a while. I knew it would maybe even be a year. But as the weeks turned into months and the months turned into years, I haven't written—except for her obituary—I've not written a word since she died until I started writing this book a year ago. I started it on April 19th.

Jo: I mean, the stories of grief—there seems to be no way of escaping whatever it ends up being. You didn't choose your response. Your deep grief was just there, and you couldn't write. I feel like sometimes people just try and force it. It sounds like that's what you needed, and you have done that.

So what then gave you the impetus to finally write—and to choose fiction?

Jami: I didn't write memoir. I did think about doing a memoir, but I don't read memoir, and I don't know how to write it.

I was already behind the eight ball, trying to write a book at all because it had been forever. I don't need to learn how to write something completely different. Plus, it just felt too close to write the memoir.

I had been in Mexico City with my daughter, who has an event planning company, and we were there scouting locations for one of her events. Janet Margot lives in Mexico City, so I reached out, and we had dinner.

We were talking, and she had had two big losses about the same time that my sister passed away. So we were talking about how difficult it is afterwards, just getting your head back into a space of being creative at all.

She said, “You really should write this book. You should tell this story. It hits everything: middle-aged women dealing with middle-age things. You've got your parents that you were dealing with, and then your sister. You should write this story.”

I said, “No, thank you. I lived it. I don't want to write it.” But it just wouldn't go away. I couldn't figure out how I would tell it. Whose point of view? I couldn't do it from the dying sister's point of view because I didn't think I could be authentic.

I was afraid to tell it from multiple POVs because the book has a lot of characters in it. My family is gigantic—my immediate family, my sisters, husbands, nieces and nephews, my kids, my mom and dad—there are 35 of us. Almost all of those are in and out of my mom's house all the time. So I knew I couldn't do multiple point of view.

One day, I was driving home to my mom's house, and it just hit me. The whole story laid out in front of me, and that's what I did. The first draft was pretty much just a retelling of what happened to us. I added some fictional elements, but I just wanted to get the story out. It was hard.

I started Adderall on April 19th of 2025—I know that, because that's the day I started this book. I do call this the book that Adderall wrote, because I could sit and focus for three or four hours, which I'd never really been able to do.

I would come to Starbucks and I would sit and write this book, and I would cry sitting in Starbucks, like a crazy person. People would walk by and slide a napkin onto the table and just keep walking, because I'm sitting there crying like crazy.

I was so superstitious, and things were working so well, that I was afraid not to come and write at Starbucks. Staying at home, I think, would have been really hard. I would maybe have sunk into a depression had I done this at home. So I just wrote the whole book at Starbucks.

After I wrote the first draft, I went back in and made it more fictional. But a lot of the book—especially her stuff—is a lot of what happened. She was just crazy. I tell a story in the book that, this is the absolute truth, this happened.

She was in college, and she had convinced my younger sister to go to a honky-tonk club because they were having a Miss Honky-Tonk contest. Before she could get up on stage to compete as Miss Honky-Tonk, she got in a fight with some girl, and the girl hit her in the head with a bottle and split her head open. She was bleeding.

My youngest sister was like, “We've got to go to the ER.” And she just refused, because there was a $300 cash prize for winning, and she needed it to make rent. So she borrowed a towel from the bartender, wrapped it around her head, competed with that bloody towel on her head, and won that stupid contest.

That story in and of itself was my sister. Everything about her is in that story. So a lot of the stories in there happened to her in one way or another. What happens to June in the book happened to my sister.

Jo: This is interesting, because the same thing memoir writers face is something perhaps you face: how much of the writing is therapy and how much is for the reader?

You said you sat there crying. Absolutely, writing for therapy is very important—but when you come to edit, there might be things that your therapy side of you is like, “That's so important to me.”

How do you kill your darlings when you're editing your sister's life?

Jami: That was hard. I had to take out a lot of what was in the first draft, mostly the stories. Once she came home on hospice, it was just a steady stream of people coming in, and everybody had a story about her.

What I found in editing was that Hope, the main character, was mostly a spectator in those scenes instead of being actively part of them. So I had to take those out, because they didn't serve the purpose of the book.

I committed early on to: while I wanted to tell the story, I did not want it to be self-indulgent. I did not want it to be a therapy session that I sold to people as a story. Because of that, I think that really helped. I really did think about that as I was revising.

I sent it to a developmental editor, and I don't know how great she was, but she gave me some really good advice about a couple of things.

One was, “There's just not enough conflict in this book. You say that Hope and the father have this really contentious relationship, yet we don't see it. There's a little bit of it here and there, but you're not really digging into that.”

It's hard, because while the rest of the world doesn't know, my family knows that this is a lot of our story. I just had to let that go and not worry about what my family thought.

They had all given me permission. I'd sort of said, “I want to do this. Are you guys okay with that?” I talked to her husband, and everybody was okay with me doing it. But I couldn't worry about what they were going to think.

I would repeat to myself: if they want to tell this story, they can write their own book. I'm writing what I saw and telling a fictionalised story that will hopefully honour her, but also help other people feel like they're being seen, and also be entertaining. If you're going to write a book, it needs to be somewhat entertaining.

Jo: I don't think you can help yourself. You're funny.

Jami: Yes. The book is really funny. I tell people that and they're like, “Hmm, really?” And I'm like, “It is really funny.” But it's also really sad.

Jo: Well, I think that's the truth—to defend myself. There is a lot of humour in grief. There is death and dying, and it's a human condition.

Jami: It is a human condition, yep.

Jo: There's comedy in all of the human condition. That's just the way it is, right?

I heard you mention on an interview, I can't remember where it was, that you feel very connected to this book, and you're worried that people judging it or giving it a bad review might feel like an insult to your sister.

How are you dealing with these kinds of fears about how to separate ourselves from our books?

Jami: I've been in therapy—like, literal therapy—for that, because I felt like that would be hard. So far, I've only gotten a few reviews back. They've all been good reviews. I haven't had anyone say they hate it.

I just have had to separate myself. It's not personal. Reviews are never personal. People not liking your book is never personal.

That's just a mindset. I've had to change my mind about that. Knowing that's a pitfall I could fall into, I really keep it top of mind. My family knows that's an issue, so they know they have to pull me out of that hole if I drop in. So that's really how I've handled it so far. We'll see.

Jo: Maybe it's time as well. You're almost back to the “book is your baby” situation. As the years pass, the book almost becomes separate, doesn't it? How you feel about your first bride book is probably like, “It's not even me anymore.”

Jami: Right. I learned early that your book isn't really your baby. Once you publish it, it's your product. So that has never been very hard for me. I still hate bad reviews, and I take them personally like everybody else does, if I let myself.

But ultimately, this is a book that I'm putting out for entertainment. Yes, it's very personal. Yes, it means a lot to me. But if people don't like it, it isn't because they don't like my dead sister. They just don't like my writing.

Jo: It's tough, but it's good to talk about, because this is something many people feel. My memoir Pilgrimage—it's not the same at all—but I was just so scared of judgment. The fear of judgment. What people would think of me. That's kind of different, but—

It's this question of how it'll land.

The reality is, not many people read these books anyway.

Jami: Well, I have worried about how it would land, but mostly I worry about how it would land with the people I love. My mom read it last week. I was there while she was reading it. That was no fun. She laughed, but it was devastating to her.

She's like, “It's great, and I hate it.” Because it is so raw and real to her still—well, to all of us. That's where I worry, how it's going to land with them. But again, I've had to let that go. I had to let it go during the writing, because if I worried about that, then I would not have told an honest story.

That was another thing—I didn't want it to be self-indulgent, and I wanted it to be honest. As honest as I could make it, even to the point of making people uncomfortable.

There's a line. Once you cross it, there's no getting you back after that. So I walked that line really carefully, because I did want it to be honest about how I felt, how other people I know who've been through something like this feel.

Also, just relationships. Because when you're in a big family like my sisters and I—we adore each other, but we can also go toe-to-toe real fast. It can get ugly, because we know each other really well. We're also a little bit redneck, so we don't pull any punches.

Your sisters are always the most honest people in your life. I wanted that to be true in this book too—both sides of that story.

Jo: Let's circle back to the business stuff and some of the things we talked about, because obviously this has been a really difficult time. There was no way to deal with it in any other way, but your business has changed. You had these great few years, good sales, and then you had other priorities.

So how are you rebooting the business? Lots of people end up taking a few years out for whatever reason.

How are you rebooting the business to try and sell some books?

Jami: To be honest, I have the remnants of a business. I have tried over the last four years to run some ads to get the Bride's books going, but here's something that's very interesting, and if somebody can tell me why this happened, I would love to hear it.

These books that have sold so many books—I mean, so many books—I could not give them away. It didn't matter what I did. I changed covers, I changed blurbs, I put them on sale, I took them off sale, I ran ads. Ads wouldn't really move the needle.

I know that at a certain point, when you haven't published and your books get pushed down in the algorithm, that is an uphill battle. But it was almost like, one day they just fell off, and once they started falling, I could not get them back. I just couldn't.

So that I didn't make myself crazy—because also during this time, I was just trying to keep my head above water—when I would deal with my books or go into my dashboard, I would feel horrible. I was already feeling horrible, so I didn't need to feel more horrible. So I just sort of let them go after a certain point.

I've now started running some Facebook ads. I have one Facebook ad that's working really well, knock on wood, right now for my first Bride's book. The problem is, this book and my Bride's books are different. The voice and the tone are the same, but they're really different in a lot of ways. They're the same in a lot of ways.

This book doesn't have any sex; the other books don't have anybody dying. But some of the things are really similar. So I may have some crossover.

For whatever reason, this ad is working. My book one is ranked better than it's been ranked in forever—really good. I'm not spending a ton of money to do it. So I don't know what changed. I don't know if I'll ever know.

I've revised my newsletter, and that's worked well. I still have around a 35 to 40% open rate on a newsletter that I didn't send out for almost two years. I was sending it out, but then I kind of stopped, and then I started again.

Jo: I was going to ask you about that, because I often get people emailing me. They're like, “I have a really old newsletter from several years ago. I haven't emailed them for years.”

So what did you say in that first email? Like, “Hey, I'm back”?

Jami: I mean, I'm just like, “Remember me?” It really was kind of like that. Just, “I'm back. You guys know life has happened. I'm sure you understand. If you're still here, thank you so much. I have been writing. I have this book that I think some of you will really love.”

That's really how it was. From the first email, even that first email had a higher open rate. I think it was close to 45%. I had not sent out a newsletter in two years literally.

Jo: People were like, “What happened?”

Jami: They're like, “Oh, she didn't die. That was her sister, not her.” But I've just been really fortunate. They've been really encouraging. Every time I send one out, I get really encouraging emails back. So I've sent out about the book.

The majority of my readers are KU readers because my books are in KU. But this book is going wide. One of the things I'm doing because I have been a little concerned about… Janet Margot does a lot of Amazon ads stuff and she knows a lot about Amazon.

We've talked a lot about whether I should use my real name, my pen name, or come up with another name. Should I worry about my readers buying the book and messing up my Also Boughts?

All of those things, because my readers are romance readers. Some of them read women's fiction, but for the most part, they're romance readers.

I've decided to stick with Jami Albright and not worry about it. There are just things you can't control, so I've had to hold everything with a really open hand with this book.

I am offering the book on my website. I'm selling it at $7.99—I chose a high price point, because I just feel like, to sit with the other books that I want it to sit with, I need that price point.

So I'm offering it on my website, starting at the end of this week, for $5. If they're KU readers and they don't buy books, but they want the book, they can get it for $5 on my website, which I think is reasonable.

Jo: Mm. Absolutely.

Jami: If that's too much for them, I understand and I get it. Time, things are hard right now, and if they can't do that, it's going to be in libraries, so they can request it at their library. But right now that's the plan.

Hopefully that helps with the Also Boughts a little bit too. Even though, again, I just can't worry about those things. As a gift to my readers, I want to do this for them as well—give them a discount.

Jo: And obviously this is a standalone, right? This is not—

Jami: Yes, it is.

Jo: Again, a bit like memoir, all the book marketing we talk about in fiction is “write a series.” It's much easier. So it is difficult to market a standalone in general. And this is something that happened, so it is a standalone situation.

So do you feel like you're back in terms of writing? Have you got plans for more books, or is this a business for you going forward?

Do you feel like you want to re-enter this whole world?

Jami: I do. I have an idea for a book similar to this one—not in the same kind of genre, I mean, of women's fiction, kind of midlife fiction stuff. I have an idea.

I had nothing for months and months and months, and a couple of months ago, this idea kind of came to me. I was like, “Oh, that's not bad.” So I'm mulling it over—I do a lot of mulling—and that's the next book I think I will write.

I don't know that I'll write rom-coms again. Not because I don't love them. I do, and I love my rom-coms. But I'm just different. You do not go through something like this and come out on the other side the same.

I don't know that I could carry an entire rom-com through without it being even more emotional than mine are now. So for right now, I'm going to write another one of these kinds of books where it's got a lot of emotion, family dynamic, tension and dynamics.

Jo: That's great. I do feel like once you've written the book that was waiting—your sister's book—then more things arrive, and it's great to hear that that is arriving for you.

And of course, we change. One of the nice things about writing for the long term and building more of a name brand is that you change, and your readers either follow you or they don't, but it's your life.

So I think that's a good reason to have one pen name. I obviously have two, but my fiction pen name I've written all kinds of genres under.

Why else would we keep doing this? I don't want to write the same book over and over again.

Jami: Right. Believe me, I've had to eat a lot of crow over the last four years, and it's tasty with ketchup.

I have decided that a lot of the stuff I said is true: about you write in one genre, you give the people exactly what they want, and you give it to them over and over again. I believe all of that. I still believe those things. It's just that I don't know that I'm capable of doing that right now.

Also, I'm older. I am about doing the things that bring me joy and are not a drudgery. I want to say this, because I miss the success. I miss who I thought I was during that time. I miss the recognition. I'll freely admit it.

I miss being the person doing the thing that everybody said couldn't be done. “You can't make money with one book a year.” Well, watch me. And I did. I miss that.

What I don't miss, and I've had to be really, really honest with myself, which has been difficult—I don't miss the anxiety that came with that. There was a lot of franticness. I think that if you are in a lot of groups, you see that franticness.

I've had to step back, like I've had to step back, and then go back into these groups, you hear authors and see authors, and there's just this frantic sense that we're losing everything, and we have to hold on so tight to everything.

I was like that. I checked my ads constantly. I checked my dashboard constantly. My mom used to say, “This should be fun.” I'm like, “Mom, it's a business. It's not fun.” But I recognise that I loved that so much that I held onto it so tight. I don't want to go back to that. I don't have the energy for that.

Since this all happened, I've gained four more grandchildren than I had. I have six grandchildren now. I want to spend time with them. I want to spend time with my adult children. I want to spend time with my mom and dad.

So I can't be frantic about my sales—are they going up, are they dropping?—and give emotionally to the people I love in my life.

If the last four years have taught me anything, it is that the one thing you can never get back is time. You can never get it back, and that is so important to me right now.

With this book—and one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you when we were talking about when I would do it—I wanted to do it before it came out, because I've already won.

Writing this book, writing a book that honours the bravest person I've ever known and doing the second-hardest thing that I've ever had to do, is the win. That's the win. Whatever happens with this book afterwards is just what happens with this book afterwards.

It doesn't change who I am, and you told me that when we were in Vegas two years ago. That conversation really changed a lot for me, because you said, “You are a successful author.”

I was still trying to come up with a plan to be a successful author again, and you were like, “You are a successful author. You've had success. That makes you a successful author. You don't have to chase that.”

That changed so much of my thinking. If I could leave listeners with anything, it is that we need to recognise the things we can't control and just deal with the things we can control.

That's kind of how my sister lived. She could not control her cancer, but she could control how she responded to it and how she went forward.

I think a lot of times, when bad things happen, we want to make sense of them. We want a reason for them. And a lot of times there's just no reason. There's no reason my sister died. There's no reason she left two kids and a husband devastated and a family that just has a giant hole in it. There's no reason for that.

What defines us is not figuring out why that happened. It's what we do with that going forward. I think that's important for me to remember when I start getting caught up in all the franticness of this business.

Jo: Yes. Or not, as the case may be. You can just let the book be what it is. And I do feel like these deeper books, they're more slow burn. You wrote books that ran, ran like the bride. Now we're not running like the bride.

Jami: I'm tired. I don't run unless a wild animal's chasing me.

Jo: Exactly. Look, we're out of time, but just tell people, if they haven't listened, a bit about your podcast, Wish I'd Known Then with Sara Rosett.

Tell people what they can find over on that podcast and why you're still doing it.

You've been doing it throughout the whole time. While not writing, you've still been podcasting.

Jami: It absolutely saved my life. It's kept me in this business. While I haven't been publishing, I still know what's going on. I know about direct sales, I know about what's happening behind the scenes, with Facebook ads. I've kept in touch with those things because of our podcast.

It's an interview podcast like yours, but we talk to people about what they wish they'd known about indie publishing. Most people have some certain thing that they've been working on or doing, and we talk to them a little bit about that too.

We ask the same questions every week to every guest, and it's so interesting how different the answers are, and yet how similar they are.

I think that helps when you're going through it and you're like, “God, I must be the only one feeling this way.” But you tune into a podcast, and you hear week after week, “Oh, no, there are other people feeling the same way I'm feeling, or struggling with the same things I'm struggling with.”

Hopefully we give people things to shoot for and to aspire to. We have some amazing guests. They've all been really gracious and really honest. I don't know if it's the questions, or just because Sara and I are our style, but they're really honest with us when they answer the questions.

Jo: It's a great show. I recommend it a lot.

Jami: Thank you.

Jo: Where can people find you and your books online?

Jami: You can find me at JamiAlbright.com—that's J-A-M-I-Albright.com. I'm on all the socials as Jami Albright Author. My books are on Amazon right now, but this book is actually now on all the retailers. So that's where you can find me.

Jo: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Jami. That was great.

Jami: It was an honour. Thank you so much.
The post Writing Through Grief And Rebooting an Indie Author Business With Jami Albright first appeared on The Creative Penn.