Telling Stories from History 📚 Heather B. Moore on Writing and The Paper Daughters of Chinatown

How does a bestselling author turn history into unforgettable novels?

In this fascinating episode of A LITERAL JOURNEY, I sit down with USA Today bestselling author Heather B. Moore—a PROLIFIC, inspirational writer whose work spans several genres.

Heather shares the story behind her writing career: from her lifelong love of reading, to her discovery that yes, even people from UTAH can become authors (!!!), and her subsequent journey of building a catalog of more than 90 publications. We also talk about "the war of art," the discipline required to write consistently, the ups and downs of researching historical fiction, and the challenge of bringing real (sometimes emotionally heavy) stories to print.

Along the way we talk about several of Heather’s books, including: "The Paper Daughters of Chinatown," a powerful story about a mission home that rescued trafficked Chinese girls in 19th-century San Francisco, as well as her recent novel "Julia," a novel about famed Julia Child and her surprising wartime service with the OSS.

Whether you’re a reader, writer, parent, teacher, or someone who just loves a good historical story, I hope this episode encourages you to open a book (or pick up a pen) and embark on your own literal journey.

About HEATHER B. MOORE:

Heather B. Moore is a USA Today bestselling author of more than ninety publications. Heather writes primarily historical and #herstory fiction about the humanity and heroism of the everyday person. Publishing in a breadth of genres, Heather dives into the hearts and souls of her characters, meshing her love of research with her love of storytelling.

Her ancient era historicals and thrillers are written under pen name H.B. Moore. She writes historical women's fiction, romance and inspirational non-fiction under Heather B. Moore, and . . . speculative fiction under Jane Redd. This can all be confusing, so her kids just call her Mom. Heather attended Cairo American College in Egypt and the Anglican School of Jerusalem in Israel. Despite failing her high school AP English exam, Heather persevered and earned a Bachelor of Science degree from Brigham Young University in something other than English.

💻 VISIT Heather B. Moore's official website: https://hbmoore.com/

📖 READ The Paper Daughters of Chinatown: https://amzn.to/4rs4sHF

📚 CHECK OUT Heather B. Moore's other books: https://amzn.to/4ssehpG

🎧 LISTEN to more episodes of A LITERAL JOURNEY: https://aliteraljourney.buzzsprout.com/

🎥 WATCH more episodes of A LITERAL JOURNEY: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRTQ34vyf-9NkrTcSH0KEwXPOhdVqZRVZ

Don’t forget to like, share, and subscribe to A LITERAL JOURNEY for more exclusive author interviews, book recommendations, and thoughtful conversations about the stories that shape us. 📖✨

#HeatherBMoore #HistoricalFiction #AuthorInterview #WritingAdvice #WritersCommunity #BookPodcast #AuthorLife #WritersJourney  #PaperDaughtersOfChinatown

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Yeah, and you had actually put this um question on your FAQ on your on your website and just advice for writers. And I loved what you had included. You included a little quote from Stephen Pressfield. Quote, most of us have two lives, the life we live and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands resistance.

SPEAKER_00 0:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 0:22

And why did that quote stand out to you?

SPEAKER_00 0:25

Because so that book I would recognize, I like it really changed my mindset of writing and completing a book and setting goals because he talks about how resistance, um, which can be fear, it could be anxiety, it could be a spouse that like is not supporting you in your writing, it could be a critical parent. I mean, there's so many, so many things, so many forms of resistance. But if you understand what what resistance is in your life and you see it for what it is, then you can find a way to overcome it or work through it.

SPEAKER_02 1:21

And today I really do have a fantastic author of many, many great stories. Heather B. Moore is a USA Today best-selling author of more than 90 publications. Is that true? Is 90? Yes. Nice. Wow. Okay, well, that's I maybe have four. That's great. Okay. Heather writes primarily historical and her story fiction about the humanity and heroism of the everyday person. Publishing in a breadth of genres, Heather dives into the hearts and souls of her characters, meshing her love of research with her love of storytelling. Her ancient era historicals and thrillers are written under the pen name H. B. Moore. She writes historical women's fiction, romance, and inspirational nonfiction under Heather B. Moore. That's the Heather that I'm interviewing today. And speculative fiction under Jane Redd. This can all be confusing, so her kids just call her mom. I like that. Heather attended Cairo American College in Egypt and the Anglican School of Jerusalem in Israel. Despite failing her high school AP English English exam, Heather persevered and earned a Bachelor of Science degree from Brigham Young University in something other than English. What was that degree in, if I could ask?

SPEAKER_00 2:36

So I majored in fashion merchandising and I got a business management minor.

SPEAKER_02 2:41

Wonderful. Wonderful. Yeah. And then now it's storytelling. That's great. But it's no wonder there's a breadth of genres there. It's got a lot of experience. Well, thank you so much, Heather, for for agreeing to be on this. It's a it's an absolute honor to have you here.

SPEAKER_00 2:55

Well, thanks so much, Seth. I'm excited that you invited me. Thanks.

SPEAKER_02 2:59

So uh I read your bio, but but give our listeners a bit of background on yourself. What is your story and what got you into storytelling?

SPEAKER_00 3:08

I would say since I was a little kid starting to read at age six or seven, I just have loved reading and I read as much as I could. In fact, I remember as maybe 11 or 12 year old going to the Orm Library, a group in Orm, Utah, and checking out the maximum number, which is 12 books. So I check out 12 books, and of course I didn't read them all, but that I would just love any genre. I was reading everything from the babysitter club type books to Nancy Drew to Tom Clancy. Of course, that was all like over my head, but I read it in a late.

SPEAKER_02 3:46

And and then what got you into uh writing stories?

SPEAKER_00 3:49

So I didn't really even think about writing stories um until I was around 30 years old, which kind of sounds strange. But my neighbor had lent me a couple books by local Utah authors, and I thought, oh, people in Utah write books. And I was, of course, very naive. And in my mind, I thought people in New York or LA or England wrote books, but not people in Utah. And so it just kind of was interesting to me. And I was asked by my grandma, who was 85 at the time, to help her with her personal history, and she had told my mom, um, I'll write my personal history if Heather can help me, because she's a good writer. Not that I was writing stories, but just over the years, wherever I lived in California and Hawaii and different places, I would write her letters. So she just thought, because I did that, I was a good writer. So I did help her. And while I was helping her, I kind of just had a short story idea of a woman that grew up in my grandma's era, like was a young married mother during World War II. And so I thought, what if I write a short story and submit to magazines? Because back then magazines would publish short fiction. And that's what I started doing, and it just got longer and longer and longer. And I think at one point I thought, I think I've written a book. This is like 300 pages, I don't know what to do with it. And but it just started, and of course, as a long story of I finally got published years later and more books, more manuscripts later. But it got me into that rhythm of just realizing I really loved to write when it wasn't homework and it was really fun to write fiction.

SPEAKER_02 5:30

Yeah, yeah. That's and and for me, it was a similar story. There was a there was a guy, um Ed Ed Pinneger, Ed J. Pinnegar, he was an author, but he he assigned me a project at school um at a semester I was doing abroad, and and ever since then it was just yeah, it was a writing project, and for some reason, just that invitation really opened doors uh in my mind. Like, I could do this, I could do this, and people read it. I'd have no idea. Um so describe uh what was your what was your first book or first major publication where you're like wow, like seeing it go from what you were creating to something that is in print.

SPEAKER_00 6:13

So I had written um a historical kind of ghost story, and I had written a mystery, like a contemporary kidnapping mystery. And I had um anyway, so those are turned down like crazy or similar everywhere. And so I was looking at more closely at the Utah marketplace, and I had a couple people in my critique group that were publishing with Covenant Communications, and I thought, okay, I'm gonna write a book specifically for covenant communications. So I looked around and like what is not being written right now. So I decided to write scripture fiction. And long story short, it actually ended up getting turned down. But then I called them, I said, Can I just come in and talk to you about my marketing plan? And this was kind of nudged by my husband, who's who's a sales guy by profession. He's like, You got to go in there and sell it. I'm like, no, authors don't do that. We're introverts, we're happy to just email. And anyway, so I did go in, I shared with them a marketing plan, and they changed their mind. So it was kind of crazy. But that started my official publication, and I still write for Covenant, and it's been uh 20. I think this is it's over 20 years, like 21 years, 22 years. My first book came out in 1994. Or wait, no, sorry, 2004.

SPEAKER_02 7:38

2004, yeah. Wow, wow. Uh and that must have been a very compelling marketing plan. Like what was the what was the I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 7:47

I just I think that um I think because at first when I was in there in the meeting, you know how someone's like really nice to you and you don't know them and you don't know are they a nice person or are they just thinking I'm just gritting my teeth and getting through this meeting? So I wasn't really sure how to read the meeting with them the managing director or the managing editor. Um and they took it back to committee and maybe they just felt like I was willing to go out and kind of hit the pavement and you know, proverbally knock on doors. And and I felt like my my book was it was the start of a series, and that's a little tricky to sell. A lot of times publishers just want you to do a download and see how the sales go before they commit to a series. Um, but I did have to write that next book pretty quickly because when I started book doing book signings, and this was, you know, like I said, back in 2004, is is Covenant used to set you up to do book signings a couple, maybe two or three every Saturday for like four to six weeks. And so I was going between Stigal Book and Desert Book, and I actually had a nursing baby. So my husband had the kids loaded in the van and would drop me off and then pick me up and I'd feed the baby in between. And so definitely was a lot of work for my young family at that time. And um, and I remember people saying, Oh, this is a series. I'm like, Yeah, yeah. Um, when's when is the next book come out? And I said, Oh, next year in the fall, probably. And then I thought I should probably ask my publisher. So this is like September, middle of September. And so I remember emailing my publisher and saying, When do I need to turn the next manuscript? In my mind, I was just thinking, I'll turn it in like March or April, and I do need to start getting writing it. And they told me December 1st. And I was just kind of in a panic because since this was historical fiction, it was, you know, obviously there's a lot of research involved. So, but I had remembered, and this is kind of my my pitch to read, read a lot, read a lot of genres. I had read several years before a memoir by Mary Higgins Clark, and she she's passed away now, but she was a very well-known international best-selling mystery writer. But she wrote a memoir about how she became widowed when she had little kids, and her dream was to become a published author, but she had to go to work. So she would write from four to seven in the morning, get her kids up, off to school and daycare, and then she would go work full-time. And I just in my mind I thought, well, if Mary can do it, I can do it. So that's what I did for about probably about two months, is I wrote from four to seven in the morning. And that's how I got that second book done. So it taught me don't put yourself into that situation ever again.

SPEAKER_02 10:39

That's good. That's good. So with uh a lot of authors that I interview, it's typically fiction, just solid fiction. There's no if there's any research involved, it's just research for context. Like yeah, if they they pick a they pick a time period, they want to know a little bit about it, but they don't need to know actual facts about what is happening. Um, but your writing and a lot of your writing is historical based, like his like research, like actual true stories. Um, so how do you approach that? Because I typically ask authors, are you a pantser? Are you a plotter? Like by the seat of your pants, you're writing this book, are you plotting it out? But yours, a lot of your writing has to be very factual, historical.

SPEAKER_00 11:25

There's kind of an in-between called a plantcer. And I think I'm a plancer because I don't always know where the scene's gonna go or or what maybe the characteristics of a character will be, and it kind of develops as I'm writing, and then that means I have to keep going back and and adjusting scenes over and over, but that's kind of how it works for me. But like you said, with a historical framework, there is you're definitely hitting markers and you're definitely setting your story within parameters that you know, maybe the the culture or the government or you know, what women's rights were, you know, do women even own property? And so you definitely have that framework that kind of creates kind of a very, very loose plot outline.

SPEAKER_02 12:09

Yeah. And so then when you are when you pick a story, um, you know, how long, how much research are you putting in? Um what's the the writing to research ratio?

SPEAKER_00 12:21

So this is a kind of the tricky thing, is once you get a publisher, which is wonderful, but then all of a sudden now you have deadlines. So then you have to like figure out, okay, I have six months or I have eight months to write this book, and that's gonna include research. And then that also has to include time where you can send it to readers outside beta readers to give you feedback. So I try to um structure my time where I can spend maybe four to six weeks just in research. And this would probably so I really I just go on Amazon, I go on eBay, I try to find biographies, I might find anything on the person I'm gonna write about. So most of my historical novels are based on real people. Um and then obviously you want to research the setting and the era. And so once I kind of because I've told myself you don't have to be the historian to write a historical novel, because if you are a historian, then you know you could spend five years on just one book. Um, but I am the storyteller, but I want enough there so that it it will feel like you are in in the story yourself as a reader. Um, and then after like I've written I maybe read a couple biographies and I found other books, and this is a little bit sacrilegious, but when I buy the book, and I I like to have the audio, the Kindle, and the hardcover if possible. And so the hardcover paperback, I'll actually annotate. So I'm underlining, I'm starring parts that I think, oh, this would make a great scene. I'm writing in you know, words at the top, like this character, this man has brown eyes. And then after I've annotated all the books I've I'm using for research, I then type up all those notes so that I can find them. Um, so for instance, when I wrote a book about Queen Victoria and I was describing her husband, Prince Albert, um I had multiple sources that described him. And so when I was ready to write the scene where I'm introducing him, is and obviously there's photographs and paintings and all that stuff, but it was more like like what I don't know, because most of these photographs you find or paintings, well, paintings are color, but you always you can't always tell their eye color. So I was able to like describe him by just going to my Google Doc and searching um Prince Albert and finding all the places I had written his, you know, reference his description. So um, so doing that, like after, and so once I kind of do the research after about a month or so, then I have to say, okay, what is my word count and how how um how long will this first draft take me? And usually with historicals, I start out doing a thousand words a day, five days a week. And then after a couple of weeks, I can start going a little bit faster, maybe 2,000 words a day. But as you're starting to write, you realize, oh, I need to look this up or I need to go get this book. So it's very slow in the beginning, and then it can kind of speed up. And then if I feel like, okay, I've been working on this now for two and a half months straight, and I feel like I'm hitting against my deadline too close. So then I'll increase that to 3,000 words a day. But I try not to do that because that that can be very labor intensive and your brain can only handle so much.

SPEAKER_02 15:38

Right, right. And the problem I love history so much, like the problem is you could go in with one story, and then you're doing all this research, and you're like, there's like 30 different stories in here that are just as interesting as the one I'm working on. Um, one of your standout novels, um, just looking at your catalog, is actually like I showed you at the beginning, I the paper daughters of Chinatown. Uh, give our listeners a bit of a I would say an elevator pitch on the story, what it's about, and what drew you to this particular story.

SPEAKER_00 16:17

So, as you may know in publishing, when you are working with a publisher, you pitch book ideas before you write it. Um, and that's not, I mean, sometimes you write the book and then submit. But in this case, I have pitched several story ideas to Shadow Mountain, which was which was my publisher, and they're like, hmm, ho hum. So it was actually Lisa Mingham and Heidi Gordon, they brought up writing about this woman named Donaldina Cameron. And I had no idea who she was, but Shadow Mountain had previously put out a book called Frontier Grit and is by Marian Monson, and it was women of kind of the Wild West and women that had contributed to society and Donaldina. I call her Dolly in the book just because it's a tongue twister. So but Dolly Cameron was, yeah, was a chapter in her book. And so they said, Well, what do you think about this person? And so I just Googled her, I read on Wikipedia, you know, the a few paragraphs there. And in my mind, I thought, well, whatever I do, I'm gonna have to research the book anyway. So is so I don't really need to be picky because I mean I love historical stuff, and so I love research, I love writing historical, so I know I'm gonna enjoy writing this book. But I had no idea what I was getting into. So I in fact, I remember my agent saying to me, Are you sure you want to write this book? And I said, Oh, yeah, it'll be great. You know, I'm excited. But as I was going through the research, because there are some of the women that so I'll just preface the story is there is a mission home in San Francisco ran by the Presbyterian Church, and it's still there. There's actually another one also ran by the Methodist Church. And the reason it was set up is because all these um young Chinese girls, this was like in the 1880s, were being human trafficked into San Francisco. And um politically, the the US Congress had passed what is called the Chinese Exclusion Act, and that was in 1882, which prevented Chinese from immigrating to America because everyone was worried that they were taking over all the jobs, um, such as, I mean, we, you know, I mean, they built the railroad and they did the gold mines and all that kind of stuff. And so, and so they would only let um Chinese into the country after that if they already had a job, or a woman if she had like a marriage contract. Um, but since there were so many men in the country and there's very few women, and the men could only marry in their own race, they could only marry Chinese and they couldn't marry outside their race. And so this presented a terrible opportunity for they call them like the tong or high binders to set up brothels to service the Chinese men and the white man. But but the way they got these women into the country is they had to bring them in under false names and false paperwork and say, oh yeah, she has a job, or oh yeah, she she's you know, going she is she's getting married. Um, so that's why it's called paper daughters, is is they were supposedly daughters on paper, but they were false papers, and they also traffic boys into. But um so this mission home in San Francisco, it pro it was a refuge center, and they they taught the girls English, they taught them skills that they can then go out and provide for themselves. And so it really was a place where they could bring in these girls that were willing to leave the life that they had been trafficked into. Um, but back then there was no child protective services. So these women just kind of said, we have to do something about you know our our city in San Francisco. And this is actually happening all up and down the West Coast. So if you go um into Seattle and Portland, there's a lot of history there of this happening as well. Um, and so the story is this woman named Dolly Cameron, she she's 25, she's unmarried, which and she had been married and oh not sorry, she had been engaged and that had fallen apart. So, of course, this is Victorian time frame when if you're not married by 25, you're considered a spinster. And what do you what do we do with you? So she arrives at the mission home because she's gonna teach a sewing class, and her contract is for one year, and she just ends up just bonding with these girls and treating them like her own daughters and her own sister, and and the director of the mission home sees this quality in Dolly and she asks her, Do you want and the director of the mission home? She actually has a lot of health problems and wants to retire. And so Dolly ends up eventually taking over. And from the time that Dolly is is there and kind of her tenure is they have over 3,000 girls that she brought into the center and helped them get educated. And um, so so as I was writing this, I was reading all these terrible memoirs of all these terrible experiences from these girls. And I thought, how do I make this a book that will be carried in Desert Book? And people want to read, and it's not too depressing and too dark. And so I just really tried to focus on on. I mean, Dolly is a main character in the book, and and how she just um it's kind of a spiritual journey for Dolly as well. She she was religious, she was spiritual, she did use prayer to get answers, and she definitely was a student of the scriptures. And I remember asking Shadow Mountain, you know, can I quote scriptures? Can I have her pray in this book? Because Shadow Mountain is is a national imprint and it's not necessarily. Religiously based, even though it is owned by Desert Book. And they're like, Oh yeah, I mean it's part of our character, go for it. And so it became kind of a story of hope and a story of how to how to help the lesser person around us because we can't all dedicate ourselves to that type of missionary work, maybe how Dolly did. Um, but I remember just this was just a few years ago. I was reading through the Beatitudes, and I just it just really struck me. Every single Beatitude that was um preached by the savior is what Dolly had had basically developed in her life. It was really neat. Wow.

SPEAKER_02 22:43

Wow, that's amazing. And and so did you uh interview anybody that was directly involved or a descendant? I mean, in because it had been a while ago, but you know, give you a close situation.

SPEAKER_00 22:55

So I so this book came out in 2020. I was working on it in 2019, and of course, this is all before the COVID shutdown. So I was able to go to San Francisco, I toured the mission home, um, I talked to the director there, and and they have like all the records. I was able to look through some of the records. Um, and there are so some of the ladies that work there, they had written memoirs, so I was able to access those. But I I did not interview any of the descendants from the Chinese um women or girls, but there is a book, and I'm trying to remember what it's called. Um it's by Julia Silas, and it's it's nonfiction, and it's very interesting. She it's a book about the whole history of the mission home from when it very first started and then all the stuff that went on. And so that was an excellent resource. I actually found it when I was almost done with the book, but I read it and I, you know, went through and I kind of maybe tweaked some of the historical things I had in there to make it more accurate. Um, but there's just a lot of really interesting um people that have reached out to me since this book. Um, some of them are um like they like they're just they're not maybe direct descendants. I do have one man, he actually wrote wrote another book about the Methodist home, and his wife's grandmother had been in the Methodist home. So I've had just kind of partial connections there. The interesting thing is that I've done book clubs like via Zoom around the San Francisco area, and they're like, it's not it's not taught in any of our schools or history classes, and so I think that's a little bit sad that it's not taught, but I think it was 1998 or something, but they have a they have a small street in Chinatown that is named Donaldina Cameron Alley or something, so it's kind of cool.

SPEAKER_02 24:49

So talk about the I mean you had written it and then you published it, it's obviously done very well. So talk about the reaction. Uh were you surprised by how well it did?

SPEAKER_00 25:01

Well, I was the part that surprised me is that when I turned in the manuscript, I was working with um Heidi Gordon was the first person to read it. And she had some feedback for me. She wanted me to develop a couple things, and but she didn't say there's two scenes in there. I thought, okay, she's gonna like want these out because they're they're scenes, they're not graphic, but we know what's going on. And you know, it's they're just they're just sad, you know, sad what these girls went through. And so I was really proud that this book was carried in Desert Book. Um, and I would have people come up and tell me, I I don't think I can read this book. I'm like, that's fine. There's a lot of books, you can read my other books, you don't need to read that book. But then they'd come up maybe three or four months later said, I read the book. And it was really hard to read, but I'm really happy I read it. Um, but but just kind of bringing up, you know, how how it has the cells have been great. Um, but I think it's because it's just it's a really good discussion book and and it also connects our our past with our with our present because there's it's still going on today. We still have human trafficking, we still have these terrible blight on our society. Um, but I remember when I was working with a marketing director at Shadow Mountain, it was um Troy Butcher and Kelly Hanson, and they had printed out like I think 200 or 250 arcs, which are advanced reader copies, but there was no bookseller conventions going on. They're all closed down. You couldn't do anything, you know, in person. And so we kind of came up with a plan to say, well, well, let's just do a big book club giveaway and we'll have anyone that's in a book club can enter. And if they win, we'll send each book club that wins like five arcs. And so I just kind of went on the book club circuit um online. And one advantage that did did come out of the COVID lockdown was that everybody learned how to use Zoom or Google Meet or all these streaming art streaming services. And so I was suddenly able to do book club in Wisconsin and Tennessee and Florida, and I just I just tell my husband, okay, I'm gonna do a book club in Minnesota tonight. He's like, okay.

SPEAKER_02 27:20

And you didn't, and you didn't you didn't have to leave home in order to do that. Yeah. You just live at home. Yeah, yeah. I there was another author I interviewed, and she was devastated because of COVID. She had written a book, she was so excited to get it out there, but for the same reasons you mentioned, it opened up a completely different yeah, uh ability where she wasn't limited by geography. She could be talking to everybody. Yeah, it was a dip just depend on how you look at the situation. It's a two-edged sword. Yeah, yeah. So just going back to writing in general, um, what has been this is a two-part question. What has been the most challenging part of writing for you? And then what has been the most rewarding part of writing?

SPEAKER_00 28:04

Um, I think there's probably a lot of challenging things. I think just in general, the writing process can be challenging because you're really putting, you're really making yourself vulnerable by writing a book and creating something, and then expecting people to buy and love something that just you made up in your head, basically. And so it feels a little bit self-serving that way. Um, and also marketing also feels a little odd too, because it you're just talking about yourself and talking about your book and hoping people are gonna love it and spend money on you. Um, so you have kind of that whole kind of weird gray area about writing, and then just the personal side of whether you're writing in the morning or at night, you're trying to write around, you know, a kid's schedule or your own work schedule and just staying with it. Because when you start, when you type chapter one, like, oh my gosh, this is like this can be a two-month journey or it could be a two-year journey, and you have no idea what it's gonna be like on the other side of it. And so it's really a huge, huge leap of faith to start a book and to obviously finish a book. Yeah, I know there's a lot. That's that's like an hour question.

SPEAKER_02 29:18

I and and you use the right words, journey is what what I was, you know, I'm thinking about that. I mean, it's you type chapter one, and there's always it could go a million different ways. Um, so what so then I guess is that in tandem with the most rewarding part of writing a book is it could go a million different ways, and you could be pleasantly surprised by where it where it ends up.

SPEAKER_00 29:41

Yeah, and and I think there's definitely rewards, you know, having you see your cover, and you're like, oh my gosh, this is so fun, or just getting that contract. Do you have a publishing team excited to work with you? Um, I think mostly because there are so many ups and downs and so many things that you don't have control over. Um, the most, most rewarding part about the writing journey is the people you meet. And the and I would say I have so many close friends that are also authors. And as a reader, I'm kind of an an author fan already. And now you can say, Oh, I know her, or we just had lunch together, or we hang out at a conference. And and it's really you create this kind of tribe where where they understand what it's like to get rejected, or to have a day where you can't write anything, or to have that terrible review come in. Um, because you know, your family's great, but they don't they don't want to hear about every little tiny up and down that you have, but you can like vent to your friends, and it's and it's a wonderful community.

SPEAKER_02 30:43

Yeah, I would say that that's true. I've for years I wanted to do this podcast. I wanted to talk to authors. Um, and it, you know, there's it's it's a small community. That's what you you you're like, well, it's not gonna appeal to a mass audience, but I have just enjoyed the conversation so much because I'm like, oh, I didn't realize other people felt this way. Like, yeah, when you're writing something, I'm like, oh, so I'm not just a because I I not doesn't everybody doesn't just sit in the car and write stories in their head, you know, like okay, and then this character's gonna do that.

SPEAKER_00 31:16

You miss an exit because you just thought about like a thing, yes, exactly, exactly.

SPEAKER_02 31:21

And so it's been extremely rewarding. Like, oh, I'm not the only one. And yeah, we are a lot of us are really like introverted, and but then you you're saying, you mean you're saying these names, people in the marketing team, Lisa Magnum. I mean, I'm like, oh yeah, I know her. I remember when she gave a presentation to my college class, and these are all good people, and it is a wonderful community just to be a part of that. And there are pros and cons to self-publishing, and there's pros and cons to publishing with a um with a publishing company, but I would say the most rewarding thing about publishing with a publishing company is um is just being part of a network, being part of a team. Um, and they're all helping, they're all rooting for you, and they're there for you. I love that. I love that aspect of it. Um so when when you have a creative block, um, people call it writer's block, how do you personally overcome a writer's block?

SPEAKER_00 32:18

So some things help me. And I don't know if I've ever had a true writer's block that it's lasted an extended period of time, but I have I found myself, I've written myself into a corner and I don't know how to get out of it. Um, sometimes it means I have to go back and maybe start reading from the beginning, or I can like throw out some questions to like, you know, a group of friends, writer friends, and say, hey, you know, what do you guys think? And so just brainstorming with someone else might help. Another thing that helps me like when I sit down to write, because especially days when I feel like I am pantsing more than anything, um, is I'll have like a music playlist. And I actually, so I had one with Paper Daughters of Chinatown, and it just put me into kind of I had like slow moving kind of orchestra music, kind of like yeah, so it's like the uplifting, but it's also a little bit somber. And so as soon as I put that playlist on, I felt like I was back in my in the character's point of view, and so that really and I don't always write to music, but and I'm not really listening to the lyrics, it's just the mood of the music. Um and but also it helps me just when I sit down to write, and sometimes I'm like like I'm just I'm putting it off, putting it off for whatever reason. And I mean, there's always a lot of reasons to put off. And so, but if I read what I wrote, you know, maybe the day before or the previous chapter, it gets me back into the story and gets, and for some reason it gets the ideas now starting. Where sometimes if I'm not looking at my my manuscript, I'm not even thinking about it. But as I'm reading what I wrote the day before, I'm kind of correcting and tweaking, and then the next ideas start coming, and then it's not as as bad as I or as hard as I thought it might be writing that day.

SPEAKER_02 34:06

Do you know music is the I cannot write without music? Like so music without words. Um, and there'll be a mute, a mood. So for this scene, yeah, there's a mood, and it has to kind of match that tempo that, and then if I need a little bit, because I write fiction, if I need a little bit more um energy, the mood changes. That's funny. I think you're the only one so far I've interviewed that's mentioned music, so that's great. That's another thing I'm not weird about. That's good. That's good. There's somebody in the community. Um, what's a particularly difficult experience that you've had, like a specific one, not a general, but a difficult experience you've had in completing a book um or getting published, and and how did you overcome that challenge?

SPEAKER_00 34:53

Um, so I've surprised, surprise, I've had lots of books turned down. Um, one experience I was publishing with Thomas and Mercer, which is an Amazon imprint that is so Amazon you can self-publish, but they also have traditional imprints. And so I had um three books out in a thriller series with them, and I was writing book four, and I had turned it in, and this and I had turned it in, it was in August of whatever year it was. And if you know anything about like agents, especially agents in New York, like August is kind of the dead month. They this is when they take their vacations, and and so there's some emails that had come in to my agent at the time, and she was like out of the country, like out of really out of town. And so I didn't get those emails until she got back. And basically the email was we're gonna wait to accept book four to be determined on the sales of book three. And like my book three was coming out early September, and so I was thinking, oh, if I would have known that, I would have probably just gone all out on my marketing plan. I probably would put some money into it. I probably would have just told all my friends, everyone I could think of, hey, help me promote this book and I'll somehow return the favor. Um, and so of course I tried to like ramp up stuff, but that third book, it sold just under 2,000 copies the first week, which sounds amazing, but for the publisher, it wasn't what they were hoping for. So I did not get that fourth book contract. And anyway, you know, it's fine. I ended up self-publishing, and it's it kind of gave me an opportunity to have more pricing control over that book, and that way it kind of attracts more people, more readers to the rest of the books in the series. But that was pretty rough.

SPEAKER_02 36:44

That's always the challenge with a series and a publisher because you could have a lot of ideas, and then they're like, We're we're not really interested in the other ideas, and yeah, that's always the the rub. And then um I I do like self-publishing for that, because if you have a vision for where you want to go with the series and nobody else sees that vision, then you have that option available. I do like that for that reason. But um, what's been like a very uh rewarding experience that you had, like uh like something a reader shared with you, maybe maybe a little bit more specifically from one of the books that they've they've read.

SPEAKER_00 37:22

Well, okay, so just very recently I have a book out on Elizabeth and Zacharias's historical biblical novel. And I this is just an Instagram post by a reviewer, and she and it was so heartfelt. She really just shared kind of her deep spiritual feelings about what she experienced when reading this story, and it made me feel like very teary-eyed. And it just, I don't know, it just really meant a lot to me because this is another book that has gone through kind of a a publishing up and down. I ended up self-publishing, which is totally fine, but it was a little bit of a rocky road for this book, and so it just made me feel kind of validated that yeah, I did believe in the book enough to self-publish it, even though it wasn't traditionally published, and it's now really touched the heart of this specific reader.

SPEAKER_02 38:13

Wonderful. And then you have you have a book that's come out recently with Shadow Mountain called Julia. It's about Julia Child.

SPEAKER_00 38:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 38:22

Um, could you uh tell tell me about that? How did that one come about? And what was the what was the inspiration to do that?

SPEAKER_00 38:29

So that was another um brainstorming meeting with my publisher, and so I had actually done two World War II novels, one set in Indonesia and one set in America about the women aviators, the wasp. And so we were kind of staying in that same kind of genre for a little bit. And I think it was Lisa Ming and when she said, Well, you know, Julia Child, she was she served in the war for the OSS, which is um kind of like the CIA today. So it's a precursor to the CIA. What?

SPEAKER_02 39:02

Is it true, really?

SPEAKER_00 39:03

Yeah, so I'm like, oh, I didn't know that. I mean, maybe I read it, but I've forgotten it. And I mean, everyone knows Julia Child is a French chef um from the 60s and 70s, and I mean, she had a very long career into the 80s and 90s, and so so I thought, oh, well, that's cool. I mean, I'd be interested in writing a story that maybe hasn't really been told. And I get very, I mean, I read a lot of World War II fiction or stories, and I get very intimidated for for um you know things that happen in Europe because there's so much, there's so many books already out there, and I don't want to be kind of reinventing the wheel. So I was excited about it. And as I started researching it though, I thought, well, everyone's gonna want to know how she became this famous cook show hostess. And so the book actually spans 20 years of her life because it took her almost 10 years to get her cookbook published from when she first started working on it with her two French Parisian co-authors. Um, and I was so glad. So part one is when Julia Child, when World War II um, well, actually it's when Pearl Harbor happens and the US enters the war officially, and Julia Child tries to apply to volunteer for the waves or the whack. And she gets turned down by both because she's too tall. She was six foot two.

unknown 40:28

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 40:30

They turned down women over six feet. And I don't know if it was like a uniform issue or I don't know. But so then she so she actually was quite wealthy. Well, grew up in a wealthy family. She lived in Pasadena, so she travels to Washington, DC and just starts knocking on doors and applying for jobs, and she gets uh ends up getting hired by the OSS. And her boss is Bill Donovan, which is this huge decorated World War I veteran. Um, and he's the one that that's working closely with our president of the United States to get this intelligence, secret intelligence operation off the ground. And Julia ends up in India because she's like, I've never traveled the world, and she wants to go on lots of adventure, and she's like in her 30s, so she's I think 33 at the time. So she gets assigned to India, and so this huge ship with 3,000 soldiers and sailors, and nine women arrive at India because they're all there to like help with the war effort. And the OSS agent in India is like, I don't know what to do with women. We we're we don't have women serving here, and so she gets transferred to Ceylon, which is now Sri Lanka, and that's where she meets a man. He's 5'9, so to her, he's short, he's balding, and he's old because he's 10 years older than her, and she just has no interest in him. He's kind of he's very artsy and he likes he likes to paint and he's a photographer. And Julia, like she golfs and she plays tennis and basketball, and she's a total tomboy, anyway. This man she falls in love with, and that's who she is married to for the rest of her life, Paul Child. So they have kind of a sweet, slow, very slow burned love story. They end up in Paris on assignment after the war, and she tries French food for the first time, and she absolutely just falls in love with it. And that starts her journey of wanting to learn how to cook French food. And um, anyway, so very interesting woman. She's very much a larger than life, very fun, very passionate personality.

SPEAKER_02 42:36

What would you say to someone who is struggling to either finish their book or get it published? Um, how would you encourage them to keep moving forward?

SPEAKER_00 42:47

Um, so like if you're struggling to finish your book, like I think it it so I can just speak from my own experience. It helps me to set word count goals. So whether I do 500 words a day, three days a week, or whatever it is, and then I write it down at the bottom of my manuscript. And some people will have like a writing journal, you know, maybe they use stickers or they use um some sort of reward system. You know, I can buy that book I wanted, you know, at the end of the week, or I could watch the show I've been putting off forever. And so kind of just however you can you can kind of trick your brain into sitting down and seeing those, that, those words in increase. Um, I do have some friends that they'll have like an accountability partner. And so the end of every day, um like the beginning of the day, they say, okay, I'm gonna edit 10 pages today, or I'm gonna write a thousand words today. And the end of the day, you report it. And whether or not you do it, it gives you that accountability, that feeling like someone else, I'm reporting to someone else. And it helped me a lot in my early career to have a critique group because there are days, there's every Wednesday night for years and years, and and sometimes Wednesday afternoon, I'm like, I gotta. Write something, have critique tonight. And so it just kept me, it kept me motivated. And you're surrounding yourself with other people that are also being supportive of you.

SPEAKER_02 44:10

Yeah. And you had actually put this um question on your FAQ on your on your website and just advice for writers. And I loved what you had included. You included a little quote from Stephen Pressfield. Um, so when I was looking for your bio, I saw the FAQ, I just went down. Uh that quote is amazing. So Stephen Pressfield in his book The Art of War wrote, quote, most of us have two lives, the life we live and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands resistance.

SPEAKER_03 44:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 44:42

Um, and why did that quote stand out to you?

SPEAKER_00 44:46

Because so that book I would recognize, I like it really changed my mindset of writing and completing a book and setting goals because he talks about how resistance, um, which can be fear, it can be anxiety, it could be a spouse that like is not supporting you in your writing, it could be a critical parent. I mean, there's so many, so many things, so many forms of resistance. But if you understand what what resistance is in your life and you see it for what it is, then you can find a way to overcome it or work through it. Um so, and and I think like you brought up the self-publishing side, and self-publishing is is a wonderful tool right now. I mean, 15 years ago, it was very expensive, expensive to self-publish. Um, but I would would encourage if you do decide to self-publish, just to do it in a professional manner. You know, if you're not a cover designer, hire a cover designer. And we all need editors, no matter how many books we've written. Um and I and I just encourage people, I say, you know, follow your dreams, shoot for the stars, but set also a timeline. Like if you're gonna, if you're gonna try to find an agent for your book, maybe do, you know, go to conferences, submit, submit, submit for six months. And then if you don't have an agent or or you don't feel like you've gotten kind of past the barriers, then look at publishers that you don't need to use an agent. And then maybe that's your next six months. And then if you don't get a publisher, then look into self-publishing. But you have to learn self-publishing as a business. It is definitely a business. And there, and and if you do it, I mean, there's so many ways to do it, but if you take it seriously and you and you do it professionally, then it can it's not gonna hurt your career in the long run. Because I still self-publish. I mean, I mentioned I just recently self-published my book on Elizabeth, mother of John the Baptist, and and I don't think any reader knows that it's technically self-published.

SPEAKER_02 46:48

Yeah, there's definitely a uh a way to do it where you're doing it professionally uh and you're doing the best that you can that you know how to do, but you're involving other people. So always involving other people is a good thing because in the end, yeah, you want another person to be reading your book, and the best way to appeal to that audience is to have lots of different eyeballs and give you feedback and help you see the story from a different angle. Um, the final question that I have for you is uh it's it's has to do with why I named this podcast a literal journey. Um, I named this podcast that because you know, life can be considered a literal journey. And along the way, we we believe different stories, different narratives about our life and the world around us. And I think the best way for people to conduct their lives is to find great stories and then live those out because no matter what happens, we end up living out the story that we believe about ourselves. And so uh as people read your stories, what is it that you hope they they come away with? What's the story that you hope they come away with?

SPEAKER_00 47:54

I would say the story I hope they come away with is to find hope and maybe inspiration or motivation or a second chance in just an ordinary person's life. And so that's why it's important in stories to not to show the the hero part of of your character, but how much it works, how much work it takes to get there and how even when you've accomplished something big, like you kind of have I don't is this is very strange. And if you've ever read The Alchemist by Paul Coelho, he talks about this in his introduction, about how our personal, he calls it our personal legend, which um is similar to what you're saying about about the journey of a writer, is um is sometimes even when we get what we have fought so hard for, like we forget those sleepless nights or you know, the times that we, you know, we had to give up something to get our writing done, um, is that we will actually denounce it and we'll put ourselves down and say, Oh, I love, I love your book. It was so amazing, Heather is so great. Oh, it's okay, you know. Um it's hard to like take praise too. Like, like we just denounce our own hard work. Um so I think that that if someone could read my book and come away maybe with a new thought or a new interest, or even just feeling like, okay, you know, I feel like it was time well spent, then you know, that's that's as much as I could ever hope for. And that's what I look for in my own reading too, is is to learn and grow and be a better person by the time I turn that last page.