#29: How To Write Romantasy Exceedingly Well - J.M. McGregor

Ever fancied writing a bestselling Romantasy novel, but you're not sure how?

In this episode, Australian Romantasy author J.M. McGregor gives the lowdown on how she wrote her debut novel, 'Ash and Tide', together with some important tips on how to place your work in local bookshops, utilize beta readers, and use 'show not tell' on a more consistent basis.

Perfect for lovers of Fantasy, Romance, and creators everywhere.

You can find out more about the author’s life and work here: 

www.jmmcgregor.com

https://a.co/d/07CxIR30

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to another episode of What the Haze. I am your host, Hayes Wolfenden, author of the Young Adult Jack Strong series of books. And I'm here with the author, JM McGregor, who is the author of the Ash and Tide novel that you can buy right now on Amazon. So welcome, Jude. Thank you for coming on my podcast.

SPEAKER_02 0:23

Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_00 0:25

Yeah, no problem. Can you tell me a little bit, first of all, about Ash and Tide and you know what it's about, what are the main characters like, that kind of thing?

SPEAKER_02 0:34

So Ash and Tide is dark romantic novel that heavily digs into the psychology behind characters and why they do certain things and how traumas and life can ex like they can develop a character, so making a huge character arc sort of thing. It starts with a girl who's completely recreated her entire life. She had no memory from the age of 10 and she doesn't know why. And the city Aqualus that she found herself in and she was taken in and found herself a guardian, burnt down because the king invaded it. And after that, during that fire, her true love, her teenage crush, died in the flames. So she left and ran because she is a weaver. We have a magic system in this book where it's elemental and their magic is called their weave. And depending where they are, it's what element they are. And she is a fire weaver, and to use your weave, it's illegal. So anyone that's hunt that's bound to use their weave is hunted down and taken to be in the King's Guard, which is the King's Army, technically. So she leaves and runs, and she found finds another new identity, and she starts a bookshop, and that's where we find her at the beginning of this book. And it all turns chaotic when Dalen, the person she thought had died, shows up and it just one thing leads to another, and she finds herself being taken off and abducted into the King's Guard, pretty much. And her life falls down because she realizes the people that she trusts were lying to her the entire time. So it's just her journey of psychologically how you deal with that and what the damage is at the end.

SPEAKER_00 2:41

Right. Sounds interesting. Yeah, I have I've just downloaded it. I started reading it this morning actually. So I'm just getting introduced to the characters and you you mentioned weaving. I'm just just reading about that stuff. Thank you for that little bit of an explanation. It helps me reading as well. I don't want spoilers. I mean, I think it's good to have a bit of a background. So but so far I like it, and though I've only read quite 10 or 20 pages, something like that. I was gonna ask as well, what made you want to write this book? Like what was the inspiration behind this book?

SPEAKER_02 3:14

I don't even know. I I actually I wrote when I was in high school, I wrote four novels. Right, wow. And I'd write them, it wasn't this story, but I'd write as soon as I got home from school up until midnight, I'd print out all the pages and I'd take them into school. And my friends would all read them, what I'd written the night before in a group. It was like, you know, pass the parcel with these pages. And then I had something quite traumatic happen to me, and it's I wasn't able to read a novel or write a book for 13 years. I had the massivest, like the biggest writer's block, and it was so frustrating. And then it was the start of last year, maybe just before, I started to just sort of feel the inkling that I could. So I started reading novels again and I devoured them. And then I started developing this plan around oh February for Ash and Tide. And you know, I made a pin board out of brown paper and I taped all my ideas onto the wall and everything. And then I sat down and wrote, and it just it just came out of me. Like honestly, these characters they wrote themselves. I just saw it in my head and wrote it down, and it it was two months. I wrote it in two months, start to end, and then edited it and got it out. So it just yeah. I don't know where it came from, it just happened. And just seeing the different characters in life and what causes people to act a certain way, and that there's always there's something underneath every action that other people do to you, sort of thing.

SPEAKER_00 5:18

Yeah, I get that motivation. Yeah, I I totally get that.

SPEAKER_01 5:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:21

I was gonna ask you as well. Like you mentioned you had a 13-year break for you know, from writing and and reading. Do you think that 13 years do you think that helped you with this book? What what do you think about that? Did that break help at all?

SPEAKER_02 5:37

I think I was definitely collecting a lot of baggage to expel. It was I think it helped me in a way to value it. Like we don't value our gifts as much as we should when we can just easily do it. So when people are just like, oh yeah, I I I'm guilty of this, I'll be like, oh yeah, I wrote a book like it was nothing. But I know deep down when I look at Ash and Tide, even though it's super hard being an indie author and just having to feel like try and push it to actually get it in front of people, I'm never like, oh, you know, this isn't worth it. I I could give it away for free, and I'd still think it was worth it because it was a part of me I didn't have for so long that I needed. So yeah, I think it did help me value it more, if that's completely.

SPEAKER_00 6:38

I yeah, the reason you asked the question was I had a similar break. I wrote a lot when I was at primary school. And then as I moved into secondary school, so probably about like what, seven or eight years, stopped reading books, stopped writing. There was no traumatic reason, it was just that the education system didn't seem to value that and promote that amongst young people. Now, obviously I'm older now, I don't know if that's still the case, though I suspect it is. I feel a lot of secondary schools in the UK they tend to promote like English literature and not necessarily English reading. I I think that when kids are in school, I think they should be encouraged to read what they want to read. I don't really believe in you should be forced to read certain culturally important texts. I mean, I get it, I mean you know, everybody loves Shakespeare, but I think it's kind of hard for 13, 14-year-old boys to fall in love with reading through Shakespeare. They want to read books that they can connect with. And so I I I do completely, you know, sympathize with what you went through because I think a lot of people go through that, to be honest. And then I like what you said as well about you know, when you write a book, it's valuable. It's not it's not like going to the shop and buying a cotton of milk. And I have had it before. I don't know if you've had it. I've heard people say to me sometimes, like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I know someone that's written a book. Oh, I know I know somebody that's written this. Like it is going to the shop for a bottle of milk, and that annoys me. And you you're good, so you're completely right. Writing a book, having a dream, putting it down onto the page and editing it as well and going back. Yeah, I think it's fantastic, to be honest. But you know, well well, don't you?

SPEAKER_02 8:33

It's probably a lot to do with ADHD, but having the hyperfixation is like an absolute power. Like to be able to hyper focus on something so hard that it ends up 155,000 words and in book form and online available is like it takes a determination determination that there's nothing else like it. So um yeah. But I think with especially here, I've noticed with the education system, my son and daughter, they are pretty much allowed to read whatever they like they like, but they haven't hit high school yet. My eldest is about to hit high school next year. And yes, my daughter's bringing home chapter books, or she's allowed to read chapter books from home in in class. So I think it's changing. And I found with uni too, especially with the creative writing aspect, they we can write what we want within certain genres. And I think I think it is changing. They've talked about it there too, that you know, back in the day, creative writing wasn't a thing at university, it was English or well, English and philosophy. That was it.

SPEAKER_00 9:57

Yeah, when I was in school, it tended to be creative writing tended to be like write a newspaper article or a magazine. It didn't tend to go much beyond that.

SPEAKER_02 10:08

When I was eleven, I think we'd been starting once upon a time.

SPEAKER_00 10:12

Yeah, stuff like that. Yeah, you know, and and it can it can switch off a lot of young people from from reading, and I think it's hard to write from reading. And like I say, I think they've got to go more down the creative route because I I'm a big believer in creative writing, it's not just about you know writing in English. When you get into creativity, you might go and become a computer app developer, but that creativity makes you think about how to develop the app in a creative way. That's what I think. I was gonna ask you another question as well about you mentioned about your planning. That's very interesting. You said you you were planning, was it like you you were writing ideas down on pieces of paper and sticking them on the wall?

SPEAKER_02 10:59

I started out with the magic system. I had a whole spider graph of the magic system. Like, you know, what would the fire weavers be able to do? Because there's different different powers. It's not like they all can wield fire. Like one can say melt metal, whereas another one can disperse flames out of them, and another one can turn items into, you know, lava or things like that. So it was working out what powers you could have within certain weaves. And yeah, I worked out the world first, and then I worked out the characters, which honestly, they all changed very they changed within the story itself, and then with the developmental edit, I fine-tuned it all. And I think I got a quarter of the way through, and I wrote one of the end scenes and then worked my way to that. So I had an end point, well, almost endpoint. Yeah, it was it was a lot of sleepless nights with three kids and work. And I also started uni at the same time because I just I saw the the degree that I'd always wanted to do come up, and I'd been tossing up between going further with nursing or doing naturopathy, and I saw that the creative writing, and I was like, that one, that's I want that. Yeah, it was very busy.

SPEAKER_00 12:39

I can imagine when I was finishing this book. But getting it finished in two months, first draft, that's fantastic. You won't find many writers that could do it that quick, you know. Maybe if they're a full-time writer, I get it, but certainly because I wanna I was gonna say part-time writers. We're not part-time writers, we're full-time writers, but we've got this full-time job, and you've got three kids. Wow.

SPEAKER_02 13:02

I've got one kid, and yeah, I was at school too. When I was writing, it uh I was seeing scenes in my head, and I'd go home and write them. That's so it's either I get them out or they haunt me.

SPEAKER_01 13:23

Sure.

SPEAKER_02 13:25

Yeah, but I loved it. It was like the floodgates opened, and I just suddenly felt like myself again.

SPEAKER_00 13:32

So yeah, good for you. Yeah, I I remember when I wrote my first book, Jack Strong and the Red Giant, I think I felt pretty similar to you. I had to get it out. It was just like I had to just I've got to write the book right now. I was doing a master's degree in creative writing at the time, but it was in poetry. So it wasn't really to do with young adult fiction or fiction of any kind. And I just knew no, I have to write it now. Whereas now I have ideas in my head and I I'm happy to write them down in a notebook or you and or keep them in my head, and I know I can pick it out anytime. But back then, no, I knew I had to write it down because if I didn't, I might not have done, or it would have changed completely as a result. So yeah, good for you. Same kind of thing, I think.

SPEAKER_02 14:20

I think when you write your first I was just I was terrified of just wake up one day and not be able to write again. And now I'm I think I'm pretty trusting in myself that I can now, I can put it away for a few weeks and come back to it now, which is good, it's a relief. Yes, fantastic. The worst thing in the world would have been getting it back and then suddenly not be able to access it again.

SPEAKER_00 14:45

So is Ash and Tide, is it part of a series? Is there a sequel coming?

SPEAKER_02 14:49

Yes, there is. So I've got Shadowbound Ember, which I hope to get out in November, but if it's not ready, I'm gonna push it out a few months because I'm not going to kill myself getting it out this time. My thing with Ash and Tide is I set the date, which was December 13th, and there was no way I could fathom not getting it out then. So I pushed it. But this time it's gonna be a little bit more, you know, it's gotta be right.

SPEAKER_00 15:21

Yeah, totally agree. I yeah, I published my first book, Jack Strong Too Early.

SPEAKER_02 15:25

Yeah. I wouldn't say it was too early. It's just I I probably injured my health getting it out by at that time. I probably should have like had a bit of self-care, but it is what it is, and I'm I'm happy that it how it went.

SPEAKER_00 15:47

Yeah, you mentioned self-care. I do recommend to people to or other authors, because I I can feel myself burning out when I'm writing or editing. It's okay sometimes to take a break. Might just be a day or two. I I don't think it should take too long of a break. It might just be go on holiday, you get sick. That's your body's way of saying, hey, you're doing it too much. And you like you said, you've got work, you're studying, you're married, you've got three kids. It it's a lot of work. You're looking after kids, it it's a part-time job or a full-time job, but it it it there's a lot there, you know.

SPEAKER_02 16:24

Yeah. I've got to give credit to ADHD though. I think that's what drives me.

SPEAKER_00 16:28

Yeah. I was gonna ask you as well. Um, you mentioned about you had the outline, you had the plan for the book. You you changed the characters changed when you were writing the book. Why did they change? What did it just not work out? What what kind of happened there?

SPEAKER_02 16:42

Trying to think about how to do this without spoilers. So I had this the main male character, he was meant to be the one she was meant to end up with.

SPEAKER_01 16:55

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 16:56

But that changed. So he went from someone that I was going to have as perfect for her into someone not so perfect, if that's try and keep it vague. Um and I think Emma or Raya, she emma's her name that she invented herself, and she's actually Raya. I think she she ended up so much stronger than my notes. I think a lot of just feminine rage just went into her, you know, uh a lot of frustration and just strength and having to just keep it together, which as a mother, you have to keep it together for your kids, no matter what's going on in the world or in your own personal life, you have to keep it together. And I think in her, she expressed everything that you know we push down within us, and we don't let it show, and we don't really have any way of actually expressing it other than writing about it or talking about it. But we don't talk about it because we don't want to be perceived a certain way or to look selfish or angry or anything, so we just don't. So I think she was able to expel a lot of that pent-up annoyance that I had gathered. And a lot of no annoyance from not being able to write because I didn't actually realize that my writer's block was because of trauma until it had broken and I was writing Raya. I I was just like, why can't you do this? Like you used to do it so easily. What is wrong with you? And then it was only when I was writing Raya that I realized that this was because of that sort of thing, and connected the dots and went, you know, that's why. It wasn't because of me, it was because my mind had shut down a certain part of me and gone, no, you're not ready to express how you actually feel. You you aren't ready, and it was protecting me. So I think that's what drove these characters to change because uh when I was planning, I wasn't I hadn't realized. I hadn't realized what I wanted to say yet. And once I was in their heads, that's when it came out, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_00 19:42

Yeah. Yeah, totally. I mean, it sounds like writing the book for you has really helped you reflect on obviously some of the issues you had, obviously the the writer's block, then also the trauma that you went through. So in in that sense, it's kind of like a form of therapy. Would would that be accurate?

SPEAKER_02 20:03

Yeah. And you know, there's actually studies now coming out that say reading is a form of therapy, especially with the dark romantic, because if someone's actually gone through certain things that are in the book, they then start to relate to those traumas as what the characters went through, not themselves. So it's sort of a way of offloading your trauma onto other things. So it's not the first first thought it's was about it it happened to you, it happened to the character in the book.

SPEAKER_00 20:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:35

Which is pretty incredible.

SPEAKER_00 20:36

Yeah, it kind of ties in with what I was saying earlier about like young kids, especially teenage kids. I think they should be encouraged to explore their own reading journey because they'll meet characters that they can relate to. There's no point reading about people that they won't relate to. I'm a big believer in kids who've just got to get into reading. So that later in life or in the hour age, reading's a a way of life, not just hobby, because as you know, these days, you know, smartphones, they're ubiquitous, they're everywhere. Never mind computers, never mind TVs, you know, and social media in general. Yeah, social media, and I I I like the idea that even if they have all those things, they still have maybe it's just 20 minutes, maybe it's just 20 minutes a day where they sit down and read about things that they want to read about. I mean, that's what I think.

SPEAKER_02 21:33

You know I started my kids listening to audiobooks oh, it's years ago now. So they listen to audiobooks when they're going to sleep, which is something I did when I was a kid. And my son, he he's got AD PhD and he's really struggled. He was a COVID kid, so his first year of school was in lockdown. So there was a point in time. During that time, that he was at home learning with an iPad, and I had no idea. I'm not a teacher. We were just following a curriculum, and you know, that was when he was learning to read. So he struggled with reading, and then the ADHD as a boy wouldn't have helped. So he loves his audiobooks because he can get the book world without having the struggle of reading because he's he's getting there. He's doing really, really well now. But for a while, you know, it was a job. It was like him going to work and struggling over something that should have been a hobby. But my daughter, she absolutely loves books. So she's always reading. She especially loves the dragon books now. So I can see I'm gonna have someone to very much bongo the books with eventually when she's old enough to read certain books.

SPEAKER_00 22:59

Yeah, that's fantastic. My kid loves dragons as well. I was gonna say about audiobooks. It's something I've not been able to get into personally. I tried again recently. I'm gonna listen to The Hobbit because I've read The Hobbit five or six times, don't really need to read it again. And I put it on, it was just something I found on YouTube, and within a minute I switched it off because for me the tone and the pace was all wrong. I said, no, no, that's in my mind, that's not what I hear. So I switched it off. But I do listen to podcasts. Obviously, I'm doing a podcast now, so that's maybe my audiobook. But then I've got another thing where I only read on Kindles. I think it's because I live in China, and before this I lived in Korea, and I'm always traveling, and it is kind of hard. It's hard to actually get paper books here in English, so that is a big issue. But even if I could, it's the carrying them around. If I go back to live in the UK full-time, maybe things will change. I don't know. I quite like at the moment, like you get a lot of books published in the UK. I'm not sure about Australia, where when they're like paperbacks, especially, they have such nice covers, especially like children's books and young adult books. And I do, and I find myself recently, I kind of miss that actually. I kind of miss holding the book, looking at it, and imagining what the book is about based upon the cover. But when you get a kinder book, sure, there's like a black and white picture, but it it's it's pretty useless. You don't really I don't really look at it to be honest. I tend to skip past that. Even maps can be hard to kind of really, you know, get involved with, to be honest, I'd say. I was gonna sorry, carry on.

SPEAKER_02 24:52

I'm finding here uh I have a problem with buying books, but um they all have sprayed edges now and they're just so pretty. And I'm actually looking at how I can make my own sprayed edges at home. So they'll be the ones that I sell from my website. So because I need another hobby. Yeah. So that's what I'm my project is at the moment is testing sprayed edges.

SPEAKER_00 25:18

Yeah, that it's that's an aspect of like the indie publishing scene that I think can be really good, really creative, creating like your own paperbacks or your own unique paperbacks. But again, it's never for me, I'm I just have my books mostly on Kindle, but I'm wanting to move into like you know publishing, whether it's hardback or or softback, and trying to get them into you know libraries and bookshops. I was gonna ask you something as well about your book pricing, because yesterday, you know, to prepare for this interview, I was like, okay, you know, I'll have a look for you know Jeremy Gregor's book, I'll go to Amazon, I'll download a sample. Because normally what I do is for new books, I download a sample first, check the quality. But your book for me in the UK, its price is just 77 pence. And I was like, wow, bargain. Don't bought it straight away. So I wanted to congratulate. Yep, hook me in straight away. Hook me in straight away. I have to say, because to me, 77 pence, I'm like, well, that's it's not nothing, it's it's a little more than nothing. And you know, I was gonna ask you then what was your like thoughts in your book pricing there?

SPEAKER_02 26:34

I just want people to read it, and I think once the first chapters are read, well, even what I've heard, the first first chapter, it then speaks for itself. So at this point, I think I think a lot of the time from my perception, indie authors go into this and go, Oh, I've put all this work into it. I'm going, it has to be this much because I need to get this much out of it. But also you've got to think you're going in and you're untested. You don't have reviews behind you. If someone's spending all that money on you, they're literally just taking a chance on you. And there's a lot of not so good indie books out there that have let people down. And people are struggling now. So I think in the beginning, we need to swallow our pride of it and go, I just want people to read my work and it will speak for itself, word will spread, people will buy it, and then once you've actually proved yourself, then maybe you can put the price up a few dollars. But then also, there's been plenty of books that have spread by word of mouth, got extremely popular, and publishers have noticed. And it is much better to have a publisher chasing you than you chasing a publisher.

SPEAKER_01 27:57

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 27:58

So that's my thinking behind that. And I just want people to read my book. I just I want to share it. It's not about the money for me at this point. It's about I did a thing. Look at it, sort of thing. Yeah, like if it went viral, that would be amazing. But it doesn't have to go viral for me to be proud of it, and I don't need the money to be proud of it either. So at the moment I'm just thriving off people messaging me and saying, Oh, you know, this what happened in it and talking to me about it.

SPEAKER_00 28:37

Yeah, it's fantastic.

SPEAKER_02 28:39

Yeah, yeah. I love I love talking about it as people are reading it. Honestly, it's the best thing ever.

SPEAKER_00 28:45

Hey, fantastic. Yeah, I mean, your point about I I really like what you said, by the way, about you know, the pricing and it's all about the reviews or about the people talking to you. Um because I'm in a quandary. So when I when I published my books at first, I published them for probably the same 99 pence, 99 cents. But then recently I put them up to I think 290,£2.99, just so I can get a bit more money when people do buy them.

SPEAKER_01 29:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:18

Um, but also I wanted to be able to get, because it's an Amazon, a greater share of the royalty, 75% versus 33. And I wanted to be able to do like price, which gone price promotions of 99 pence, but I'm not saying I'm right. I'm not saying I'm right because you're making me think about what is the best idea.

SPEAKER_02 29:42

See, I took mine off Kindle Unlimited for a bit. I did three months on there, and then I took it off because you can't take it off before the three months are up. But I noticed that I had at least 11 people I know read it on Kindle Unlimited, and my book is 504 pages long, right?

SPEAKER_01 30:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 30:03

And it only showed 254 pages had been read. I knew people had read it, 11 people had read it. But what Kindle does is they go by how long you took to read the page, and if it's not within a certain amount, which isn't it's very, very set, that's when you get paid. But if someone's a fast reader, which a lot of us are, or a slower reader, they don't gauge it and they don't pay you and they don't count it as page red. So I actually had a bit of a tantrum about it and took it off. But then I only put it back on on Kindle last week because I thought about it and I was like, you know what? I just want it in front of people at the moment. And yeah, I I actually did a a few questions on Reddit asking how many people actually had Kindle Unlimited, and it was so many people. So I gathered it was probably better for me at the moment to have it cheap to buy and also on Kindle Unlimited. I also tried Ingram Sparks and had it on eBook on there because you can't have it as an ebook elsewhere if you've got it on Kindle Unlimited, because Amazon will delete your account entirely. And I actually bought it on Ingram myself, like on one of the web pages. And that was two months ago, three months ago, and it still hasn't come up there as a sale. So I was kind of like, you know, what's the point? I will just put it on there and see what happens. And also you kind of have when you have another book coming out, or when when you have other books, you have the first one for free, and then you have like in a good business structure the books afterwards, that's when you start to, you know, pay night pay three dollars or something to have the next books.

SPEAKER_00 32:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 32:15

So that's my plan. I'm I'm just winging it, honestly. It's trial and error.

SPEAKER_00 32:20

Yeah, I mean, recently I did like a free promotion for my first two out of five Jack Strong books. And yeah, a bunch of people, you know, download the first two for free. But then like four, I think it was four or five people bought books three, four, and five. And I was like, whoa. Because that's the first time I'd done that price promotion, and I do plan to do it again.

SPEAKER_02 32:43

Um out the hook.

SPEAKER_00 32:45

Yeah, it totally. I mean, yeah, it's worthwhile to try something, it doesn't work, but fine. Try something else. I didn't know that about Kinder Limited though. Um, because I can be a slow reader, actually. Probably I I'm very rarely what I would say fast, but I do like to, if I read a good, you know, a good page or a good passage, I like to stop and I like to reread it, underline it, read it, especially if it's like I like to underline like really good similes and metaphors, for example, and underline it and read it to myself a few times, that kind of thing. Great philosophy, for example. I forget, there's one of one of the passages in your book, I can't remember which one it was now. I have underlined it already.

SPEAKER_02 33:28

Yeah. So should make sure that you're you have to have your settings on I think public for the author the pe people to actually see it. Yeah, I'd love to see that.

SPEAKER_00 33:39

Yeah, I I think the problem is, I think with Amazon, I think you need a minimum of three people to have underlined something for it to show up. Because when I read on Kindle and I read quite a bit, the minimum number of highlighters I've ever seen is three. So I've never seen one or two. So I've always supposed it's three. But I agree, I would love if somebody's read my books, even if it was just like one person highlighting. I would love to see that. And it's like it's an aspect of you know book reviewing and gauging how successful a book is actually is the underlinings. And so when I read books and I've seen some books that you know traditionally published, they don't really have many people underlining them. That's not necessarily a good sign. So that's when I kind of know or like kind of want to tell the author, hey, I think maybe you need to think about this a little bit.

SPEAKER_02 34:39

I know a lot of a lot of accounts start out as private, so you can't actually see what they've underlined as well.

SPEAKER_01 34:45

Right, okay.

SPEAKER_02 34:46

My friend is like that. He's like, Oh yeah, I've underlined all these parts. I'm like, is your account public?

SPEAKER_00 34:54

That's a good point.

SPEAKER_02 34:54

Yeah, yeah. Because he thought it just happened, sort of thing.

SPEAKER_00 34:59

Yeah, me too. I'll have to check my account.

SPEAKER_02 35:02

Yeah, yeah. I only found all this out because I it was so hard to actually get a flowable document to have it the book work on Kindle so you could actually make the font bigger and smaller and change the font for them. That was a nightmare. I actually only worked that out properly, I think two months after publishing. I was just like, you're just gonna have to deal with it being size 12 until I work this out.

SPEAKER_00 35:34

Um, it could be really difficult.

SPEAKER_02 35:36

Yeah, yeah, especially learning it all because I formatted formatted it all myself. All the art I drew myself and uploaded into the computer, and I changed the colour. That was the only thing I edited on the computer with everything, and I set it all up in Illustrator and learnt how to do the formatting with Adobe InDesign, which is what they use at the pub in publishers, in the publishing houses. So I actually taught myself all of that with this because I wanted it to look a certain way. Yeah, I'll show you. I've got a book here. But see how I've got the the pages set out in the book? Yeah. That was all like I got a feather in there. But it was it's a it's hard to understand Adobe in the best of times because there's no labels on their little buttons. Um so it was a lot of googling.

SPEAKER_00 36:40

Yeah, I use a bit of Adobe at at school, but it can be can be difficult. Uh I was gonna uh kind of move on to the next topic I want to talk about. I I believe that you you've been able to place your books into bookshops in Australia, is that right?

SPEAKER_02 36:56

Certain bookshops, only the ones that actually my husband went on his work break and asked a few of them if my like my what can my wife's book be here? And he took a book in and showed them. He completely did it as a surprise. And they said yes, because a lot of bookshops will do a deal under consignment, so you give them three books, and then when they sell, you have an agreement of how much you get and how much they get, which most of them it's 40%, so you've got to price it so you at least get some after your print costs. But a lot of it is just asking that. And on TikTok, there's been quite a few bookshops that are opening that are indie bookshops, especially, especially around Australia, and they'll put posts up saying, Oh, you know, what books should we have in our shop or contact us if you want to have your book in our shop. And I have, and I've got a few in Queensland that have picked it up, so which has been good. And with that, I just sent it via Amazon. So, you know, I paid my price and I just uh invoiced them first. For those ones, they went by consignment. That was lucky.

SPEAKER_00 38:12

It sounds fantastic. I mean, I I've talked to another couple of authors, you know, like yourself, and I think it's amazing what you're doing. It it's you know, it it's a great, great way to do indie publishing. It's something that I'm looking into, I'm moving towards. I just want to make some last-minute adjustments to my Jack Strong series, and then yeah, that's something I want to do. So, you know, gotta take you well played. I think you know, you're the vanguard, I'd say, of the indie publishing scene because it's a way to sell books, it's a way to, I think, get our books into the marketplace, get it in actual bookshop. And you know what? Even if somebody doesn't say buy you know a buck, there's still plenty of people, you know, walk through, have a look at it, flip through it. Sometimes that's all I want, to be honest. All I want, really.

SPEAKER_02 39:05

I was it's quite lucky. We we've got Dimmix here. That's probably what's your big store in England called? It's probably equivalent. Yeah, it's the equivalent to Waterstones in England. And they have an email address that you can email them about your book and everything, but they get so many emails, and the difference was actually going in and speaking to them. So my book's actually in Dimmix in the Adelaide CBD, which is it's huge. Like just seeing your book in major bookshop is incredible, and that that bookshop's just absolutely stunning. It's got all the architecture and everything. And I was very, very excited when my my book is placed like right above Sarah J Mass. So, you know, it was extreme made. Yeah. So that's the stuff that money can't buy.

SPEAKER_00 40:04

Yeah, I totally agree. Totally agreed. When you're putting your books into these bookshops, are you have you been able to do any like book fairs or book signings or you know, after events, anything like that?

SPEAKER_02 40:17

Not yet, but I have plans to do it, but I'm I'm quite shy. Uh and it's on the cards. I have my I know my local library will take my book and I just got to go in and actually talk to them and they'll probably organise a book signing. But also with a book signing, you've got to you usually have books there for people to buy, and it's the buying the books beforehand sort of thing. Yeah. So I'm sort of I was meant to go to Scotland for study this year, but then I've had to postpone it because of the war in the Middle East. So like I was saving for that and not really putting my money into the book as much. But now that that's postponed, I'll be looking more into doing some signings and actually getting out there. And conquering this terror of talking to people.

SPEAKER_00 41:21

Nothing wrong with that. I think I think do you know what I always think about things like this. If you're afraid of something, in this case, it's you know, talking to people, if you remember there's lots of other people around the world that feel exactly the same. And whenever I think about that, I suddenly don't feel as you know absurdly unique. You know, you know, it's it's always because it's normal, because it's normal, you know. But I can imagine it must be quite intimidating. I've not done it, I've not done it. But as we're talking now, it's something I'm thinking about. I do want to try a few more ways to not so much sell the book, but get the book out there. I think that's a better way of phrasing it and just talking to people about it.

SPEAKER_02 42:05

And it especially being a teenage book, I think young readers, they still like they're less likely to have a Kindle. So I know my kids, they love, they're just they love holding a book still, which I absolutely love about them. So it'll probably be a lot more lucrative as a paperback, too, within the younger audience. But I do know that this year a lot of the publishers are actually really, really looking into this a your age group that you're writing for, especially the male-led stories, the boy-led stories. They're really looking into that because there's there's a lack of it.

SPEAKER_00 42:52

So yeah, yeah. Come on then. I'm here. I've been here for a long time. Um we'll just see what happens. I'm just gonna keep putting out my book and hopefully get it into the right avenues. One thing I was gonna say is yeah, I'm gonna the city I'm living in there is called Chengdu, which is it's a big city in China, but it's not it's not really international, I'm pretty sure, at most sure. 99.9% sure there's no like foreign you know bookstore here. But the next city I'm going to is called Guangzhou, which is near Hong Kong. So there might be so it might be something at an avenue I can potentially, you know, go down and just send an email and see what happens, or maybe do a book event. We'll we'll just see. The problem with China is it's getting books here. That's been the problem for some time. And that would be my issue. I wouldn't mind paying for twenty bucks off Amazon and sending them here, but I'm pretty sure they'll get stopped at customs. It sounds like it's like, you know, twenty kilos of cocaine or something. Not like young adult literature, which is absurd. It is absurd. But that's but that's the reality I live in, you know.

SPEAKER_02 44:08

It's absolutely because a lot of the books, like not through Amazon, but a lot of there are indie I've because I've looked everywhere because I wanted to get a sprayed edge on my books. And there are book a lot of them are printed in China. So I wonder if you could actually approach the the factories that actually print them over there.

SPEAKER_00 44:32

Yeah, true. I'd have to I'll have to look into that. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 44:35

Google is your friend.

SPEAKER_00 44:37

Yes. Google. No, you can you know I use what's called a VPN, you know, to get around stuff like that. Or I'm in my school now and they have a VPN. That's what we have to use. Yeah. I was gonna ask you as well. I know you're you're studying at the moment, you're studying creative writing and nursing. That's right, correct?

SPEAKER_02 44:56

Um no, I'm doing an English major and creative writing major. I I studied to be a nurse during COVID. So I'm I am a nurse, but that doesn't not fulfill me creatively. I need the balance of both.

SPEAKER_00 45:13

Yeah, I can I can totally totally imagine that, totally understand that. How is your like how is the the the university, how is studying English, how is that helping your writing?

SPEAKER_02 45:23

Um I think it's helping my writing in very subtle ways that I don't realise until later when I read what I've written. We I'm doing a class where we're exploring all the genres at the moment. So we we've gone through romance and horror and sci-fi and fantasy and all that, and we're just looking at the the sales and things like that, you know, and it's so interesting realizing, for example, romance. It's for so long it's been laughable, sort of push to the side topic in publishing. But actually, for over 50 years, it's been 50% of their income. And they've just gone, oh yeah, you know, let's not talk about romance. But now because it's become so out in the open and with you know dark romantic, romantic, dark romance, all of that, like no one's scared to go ride the bus reading one of these taboo novels anymore, especially in Australia. Like we read what we want and we are proud of it. I think things like that, learning about the industry, listening to actually we have actual authors come in. We had Lev Grossman come in last year, and just listening to his processing and being able to ask him whatever questions we want. And you know, the biggest thing was, you know, always put, you know, he said or she said, and trust try and get your writing to depict how the character feels without actually saying it. You know, because we're we we can be guilty of going, oh, she exclaimed, when actually the dialogue should be expressing that she exclaimed without saying she exclaimed, you know. I think that was the biggest change I felt last year in my first semester was treating the audience with respect to actually be able to understand how someone's feeling. And that was new to me because in high school, they're like, oh, use the expression words. You what how did he say this? You know, and I think that was wrong. It's we need to trust ourselves to actually depict what we mean without naming it, if that makes sense. Yeah, yeah, totally. I think that was the biggest thing. And I learned that as I was editing Ash and Tide, so I noticed it because I was pulling out all these expression words and putting she said, or not putting anything at all, just putting the dialogue. You know, it's little things like that that I think as as hobby authors, we don't actually pick up on the books we're reading, but a lot of it that's how they actually do it. We because in our head, we're going, oh yeah, that character exclaimed that, so we don't notice that the authors put she said because we've gone, yep, they're saying it in this way.

SPEAKER_00 48:33

Yeah, I think Stephen King said the same thing about he said, she said. I I mo I mostly agree with that. I think for example, the first Harry Potter book quite famously has everything. But I think as the books were you know progressed in the series, she does tend to dial that back a bit. I I'm a big fan of mostly he said, she said, I don't mind shouted.

SPEAKER_02 48:59

Um, maybe whispered.

SPEAKER_00 49:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 49:03

I think what they're talking about is when it's just continuous. But also JK Rowling, she wasn't a professional writer to start with either, and she would have got her edits back and learnt from what she'd done. And she might have gone in the beginning, no, this is how I wrote it and this is how I want it. But then as the edits came back from each book, she might have realized that there was a reason why they were saying, you know, tone it down a little bit, let the audience have some freedom with it, you know. Yeah, totally agree. Yeah. But the way they explained it in class was you need to give your audience the benefit of the doubt of having intelligence, because they do. They're very intelligent, and they should be treated as such.

SPEAKER_00 49:54

Yeah, I totally agree. Yeah. Another one is adverbs, you know. I I I mean, first of all, I do believe adverbs are important during the English language for a reason, but you will everybody will have some adverbs in their novel, but yeah, not all the time. I've just been re-editing one of my books and I've caught a few unnecessary adverbs. I'm like, nope, don't need that. Yeah, it's it I think it's interesting that about you know when you're studying, you know, writing at a university, especially getting if you get famous writers coming in. Wow. I did mine online, like yeah, I did it, we didn't get that at all. But we had we had the writers that were doing of course, they were they were famous poets in their own right. So there was that. I mean, one of the things that I found was I was doing poetry in the main and it improved my poetry writing. No end. My tutor at the time was called Michael Simmons, like Simmons or Simmons Roberts, and he said he recommended to use the pen like a lens and just get used to using it as a camera. And that's something that I've always stuck with. And I I've read some novels recently that I've not really liked. And I'm not saying that they're bad, I'm just saying I didn't really like them. But I think sometimes they could have done a better job of that using the pen of a lens and treat the reader with respect, place them at the scene, but give the reader time to kind of look around for want of a better word, one of a better phrase, and just look around and go, Oh, this is what I feel, this is what I should feel like, or this is what the main character feels like. That's why I should care about what happens to this main character.

SPEAKER_02 51:36

Yeah. And just show them, not tell them, I think. Yeah. Because you can tell a lot a lot from how a character acts. And you'll find my Ash and Tide is very much full of metaphors. And you know, there's I still have people re-reading that are just like, oh, I didn't pick that up. What like there's Easter eggs through it. Um I think the best books are when you can reread them and go, Hey, that connects to that. That's why she did that, and I didn't see that the first time. Sort of thing. Or oh, you know, the character didn't see that either. That's why she's surprised now, but we could have seen it if we'd paid more attention.

SPEAKER_01 52:30

Um, totally agree.

SPEAKER_02 52:32

I love doing that.

SPEAKER_01 52:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 52:35

And uh another big thing with uni is one of my one of the main lecturers there is Sean Williams, and he wrote some of the Star Wars books. Okay. So I went to him last year, I'm like, who's your editor? And he was so kind and was talking to me, and he's like, even my books have mistakes. He's like, go through it and go through it and get someone else to look over it. It doesn't have to be an actual editor, get a reader to look over it. And, you know, if it gets to a point where you're happy with it, put it out. Because as an Indie author, you can go back and edit it at any time. It takes a day for it to upload, even hours to re-upload, and you can just go back and back and back and perfect it over time. So that's what I did, and that made me feel so much better because it's true. And as he said, his books go through five editors and there's still errors in it.

SPEAKER_01 53:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 53:37

Because I was panicking. I was like, you know, I'll need to find an editor, but they're so expensive, especially when you're doing this, isn't your main gig. This is a passion. Um and such a you can be so unlucky with editors. You can get someone that presents as what you want, but then when you get the finished product back, it's not. And they've still done their job, but it's just not how you you envisioned it. So I have my friend Brandon, he helped me go through it, the plot outline, the I've forgotten what the name of the edit is now. Developmental edit. He helped me with that. And he was the person that I was ringing up and going, I've had this idea, or read this scene, like hours after I'd written it, and just bouncing off ideas. And I'd find that when I spoke to him about, oh, and then she's gonna do this and then that and that and that. My plot for the book and like the arcs and everything was just so more much vivid. That it was so vivid in my mind after talking to someone about it who was enthusiastic about it. And I'm just so grateful I had him to talk to and then read it through over and over. I reckon he's read it about 30 times at least. And then I think he's done some in his own time just because he's he really loves it. There's a character in there that's very much based off him, who's a gypsy character, and with the persona of Captain Jack Sparrow, and you'll know him when you get to him. But that's Brandon, who's actually real life, and I called the character Brandon and everything.

SPEAKER_00 55:29

Okay, fantastic. I look forward to reading that.

SPEAKER_02 55:32

He's my sidekick.

SPEAKER_00 55:36

Okay, dude, I think we can end things there, okay? Yeah. On that note, I think that sounds really positive. I'm looking forward to later when I go back home in the taxi. I'm gonna read the book some more and wanna read it a bit more tonight as well. Uh so just say to everybody, please go out and get Jude's buck, J.M. McGregor's buck, Ash and Tight. It's available now on Amazon. Like I said at the start of the podcast, it's cheap. You got no excuse. It's 77 pence. What is that in America? Probably something like that, 77 cents or or a dollar or something. It's it's it's nothing really, but it is something, I would say, to the offer. So thank you so much, Jude. It's been an absolute dream listening to your talk, to be honest.

SPEAKER_02 56:22

Thank you. It's lovely to talk to you too after seeing you so much and listening to your podcast. It's been great to be on.

SPEAKER_00 56:30

Yeah, fantastic. Okay, I'll I'll stay in touch. Okay, bye bye now. See ya. See you later.