Matty Dalrymple on Keeping Your Focus on the Writing Artwork

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Wish I'd Known Then: a Podcast for Self Published Indie Writers

Matty Dalrymple on Keeping Your Focus on the Writing

July 26, 2023 • Sara Rosett and Jami Albright • Episode 177

0:00 | 53:34

Episode 177 / Podcaster and mystery/ suspense author Matty Dalrymple joins us to talk about what she’s learned about how she’s learned to focus on writing her novels. We also chat about the benefits of writing short stories and podcasting for authors.

Author website: https://www.mattydalrymple.com/

https://www.theindyauthor.com/

💜 🎙 Become a supporter of the podcast! We can’t wait to give you a shoutout in a future episode. https://wishidknownforwriters.com/support

Podcast Interview With Maddie Dalrymple

Speaker 1 0:06

Welcome to the Wish I'd Known Then podcast , where we focus on how authors found success , looking at strategies that have taken them to the top of the bestseller charts , as well as what they've learned from their mistakes , because being an indie author is more than knowing the latest marketing trend . It's about being innovative and creative and learning from your mistakes .

Speaker 2 0:26

Welcome to Wish I'd Known Then . Podcast . I'm Sarah Rosette .

Speaker 3 0:29

And I'm Jamie Albright and this week on the show we have Maddie Dalrymple Yep , we do , and Maddie is a podcaster and she's the host of the indie author podcast and , yeah , I wanted to make sure I got that right and it was a great interview . It was super fun . She's just like sounds like she's got it together . Yeah .

Speaker 2 0:50

I thought it was intimidating . In the interview you said you're very level headed and she's very like calm and orderly . I have a feeling like her way she does things is very like she's into processes and management Systematic . So we talked a little at the end .

Speaker 2 1:11

But , yeah , but she would talk to her about short story writing and she had a lot of good advice , like when you're getting started , how to focus on the things that are important . Yep , yeah , really good , so that's coming up , yeah , so , oh , and thanks to our sponsor this time yeah , Book Vault .

Speaker 3 1:29

We're so appreciative . Thank you so much for sponsoring us . We love you .

Speaker 2 1:33

Yep , we do and we're using . I'm using book vault all the time now for my store and stuff , but this week they want to let us switch on that . They partnered with Book Funnel to allow you to fulfill IE books and ebooks and print all from your book vault plugin . So that is going to be pretty cool . I haven't tried that out yet , but I'm interested to get in there and see how that works .

Speaker 3 1:56

Yeah , that's awesome . Yeah , see , I mean that's what I say about them . They listen to authors . They really they really want to know what we think and then they make adjustments accordingly . And you know , I mean we had them on the podcast and they are so great , so we should be sure and put that in . I mean that's so good yeah , so what's ?

Speaker 2 2:23

been going on with you . Well , I am back from CozyCon and it was really really good it was in St Paul , I'm so jealous . Yeah , I know , it was in St Paul and Becquistline put it together and it was about 30 , maybe 35 authors .

Speaker 3 2:40

Oh my gosh , that sounds great .

Speaker 2 2:42

Yeah , it was really good and I think that the future of conferencing is going to be these like smaller kind of boutique conferences . It's really what we did . We all sat around tables and we would have times when we would have a group discussion where , like , we didn't have a stage , we didn't do anything , but we , like we'd have everybody could contribute to the discussion , whatever we're talking about the topic , and then other times we would just discuss around our table , like we would all say , okay , go talk about these things and then come back and we'll talk about what you talked about . And it was really good and we all moved every day and sat at a new table , so we got to know new people and it was just really really good . That's great . Thumbs up . Definitely recommend it . That's awesome yeah .

Speaker 2 3:30

What about you ? What have you been doing ?

Speaker 3 3:33

I'm home the last week of swimming lessons . Mama's getting old , I'm going to tell you right now . Actually , and I had my 60th birthday last Sunday . Yes , on Saturday , my daughter and husband threw me a surprise party and I was surprised it was mostly because I told them I didn't want a party , but it was the perfect party . It was exactly if I was planning a party . It was exactly the kind of party that I would want very low key . I know that's hard to believe , but where you get to talk to a lot of people and there aren't a ton of people there . And it was awesome . It was awesome . If you want to see pictures , my daughter's an event planner and she really went above beyond . Yeah , it was great , yeah .

Speaker 2 4:26

It was great .

Speaker 3 4:27

Yeah , anyway , they're on my Jamie Albright Facebook and , I guess , instagram too . Yeah , so , but yeah , that's it . But I am embarking on something new Only in August . I'm probably being premature , but I want to say it because you need me . I got to say it to make it real . Yeah , excuse me , I'm going to do a series . It will be on YouTube .

Speaker 3 4:58

I'm pretty sure I might also make it a podcast , but I'm not sure . But it's I'm not sure of the name , like I'm so not sure about anything except the concept , which is Jamie Albright's coming back . And so it will be my journey , the good , the bad , the ugly , the hopefully successful journey of me beginning riding again , riding my demons , you know , and that's fantastic , I'm really doing it . Just anyone think it's just completely self-indulgent , because I feel like I'm not the only one . Well , I know I'm not the only one .

Speaker 3 5:44

I've heard from enough people to know that if they're not dealing with grief , they're dealing with something else and they're struggling , and I think right now a lot of people are struggling , and so I'm hoping it will help . And you know , I'm on the Enneagram , I'm a two , which is the helper , and this is kind of the format that I love doing this stuff publicly , showing my butt publicly , as my mother would say sometimes . So , anyway , stay tuned for that and I will let you know . I mean , I have it , like I said , I don't have like a title , but it will probably be something about Jamie Albright's not dead , or Getting real with Jamie or something like that . Yeah , yeah , yeah yeah .

Speaker 3 6:39

If you have any ideas , send them , but that is going to happen . And then also , we hit a thousand followers in our Facebook group and I mean , I'm just so excited about that . That just makes my day . So thank you , guys . We love you in the Facebook group and we're so happy you're there . So yeah , that's what's going on . We're just , we're just rolling along over here , so yeah , yeah , wow , that's great .

Speaker 2 7:10

I'm excited about your whole new plan . I think it'll be really good .

Speaker 3 7:15

We'll see , we'll see . But yeah , it probably won't be until August because well , I know it won't be until August , but a lot of stuff going on still through the end of July and then yeah , yeah , but you'll .

Speaker 2 7:31

You'll announce it here , right ? Oh yeah , I'll announce it here .

Speaker 3 7:34

I'd love it if people you know wherever I it , wherever I land , if people would follow me . I'm probably going to start as separate tick tock account , just for that , just for this , and we can talk about it over there too .

Speaker 2 7:50

So yeah , Awesome , that sounds great , that's a charm . Yeah , okay . Well , I guess we should also say we don't have any new supporters this week , but thanks to everyone who's supporting us and continuing to support us , we really appreciate it .

Speaker 3 8:03

We do . We talk about that in this interview .

Speaker 2 8:05

Yeah , how much it means to us . So thank you so much , and if you're interested in supporting , you can go to wishadknownforwriterscom , slash support and sign up there and we will probably do a supporter thing , probably in August . Yeah , and I think that's why it's just been a little insane .

Speaker 3 8:23

Great yeah . Oh and last yeah , last week I was talking about my consulting service and I gave the wrong . I gave the wrong link . It's Jamie Albrightcom , backslash author services . But if you just go to my website , it's up there you can get Jamie Albrightcom and , as a reminder , I give a $25 discount to podcast listeners . So let me know .

Speaker 2 8:49

So check it out , okay . Well , I guess that's all of our updates and things that are going on in links , so we should get on with the podcast . Yep , all right , here's Maddie . Well , this week we are really happy to talk with Maddie Dalrymple . Hi , maddie , how are you ? I'm doing great , thank you . How are you doing ?

Speaker 3 9:08

We're great and we're happy you're here and we're excited to talk to you . So , sarah Rita Baio , let everybody know who she is .

Speaker 2 9:18

All right . So Maddie Dimple is the author of the Lizzie Ballard thrillers and the Anna .

Speaker 3 9:22

Tinner .

Speaker 2 9:22

Hang on .

Speaker 3 9:23

What you said Dimple , you said Maddie Dimple .

Speaker 2 9:28

Yeah , sorry , I'm so worried about , like , the names of the thrillers and everything . I was focused on that . Okay , we do edit this , so it'll be fun . So I'll wait for just a second to start over . Maddie Dalrymple is the author of the Lizzie Ballard thrillers and the Anna Kinner Suspense Knoffles and the Anna Kinner Suspense Shorts . Maddie also writes , speaks and consults on the writing craft and the publishing voyage , and she shares what she's learned on the Indie Author podcast . Lots of people are probably familiar with you already , but I hope so .

Speaker 5 9:58

I hope so . That would be so fun .

Speaker 3 10:00

Yeah , well , tell us how you got into writing .

Speaker 5 10:05

Well , I think , unlike a lot of my writer colleagues , it wasn't necessarily that . You know , the first item I picked up as an infant was a pencil . I think that I got into writing by reading and read a lot in the genres that I write in now , which were mystery , suspense , thriller kind of things . But I think that the other sort of unusual thing I had that led me toward writing is that my father was a writer . He was a short fiction writer and he got a lot of stories published in like some pretty big platforms back in the 50s like Colliers and Cosmopolitan , and then he decided he was having good success with short fiction , he decided to try novels , and I think it was just a short fiction guy , he was not a novel guy . He never got a novel published and he at the time didn't have the indie publishing option . But it was always one of those things where becoming a writer was clearly , you know , a goal that he was happy that I had . No , that's great .

Speaker 2 11:05

That is awesome . It's great we don't talk to many people whose parents were writers . No that's very cool , yeah , so what is your definition of success ?

Speaker 5 11:15

Oh , this was such a hard question . The other ones were all like oh yeah , I have an answer for that . But this should be an easy one . But I , when I was thinking about what I wanted to say , I didn't want it to be really sort of numerically focused

Defining Success and Avoiding Writing Mistakes

Speaker 5 11:29

. So I don't think that if a person defines success is like I'm netting three figure I mean , I'm netting six figures in my author career , or I'm you know all my reviews on Amazon or 4.8 or higher , or whatever those goals are I don't think that works very well , because then if you achieve those things , then what ?

Speaker 5 11:49

Now you've achieved success and you don't have anywhere to go , and so I like something that's a little more malleable over time , and as I thought about it , I realized that success for me is being in a situation where I can put my creative work out into the world , and then the reception it receives from my audience enables me to continue doing the creative work . And so , of course , the obvious answer there is financial , you know , being able to make enough for my writing that I can continue writing . But I think it's also other things , like you know , the creative energy one gets by interacting with the people who are working with your work or the . You know the emotional boost you get when you get a good review . So just that sort of reciprocity between me as a creator and the people that I'm sharing my work with , I would say is how I define success .

Speaker 3 12:40

I love that . That's great . Also , if you're if you're like relying on reviews and and even money , those things are out of your control , like you can't really control those things . So having six , having measurements of success there are things that are internal and things you can control is so much healthier I think .

Speaker 5 13:04

Yeah , says the person who's done the other , so you know we've all done the other , but I was starting to come up with like a more inspirational and a recommendable definition of success , rather than , maybe , what I fall into sometimes .

Speaker 3 13:16

Yeah , yeah . What do you wish you'd known about writing in craft when you first started ?

Speaker 5 13:23

So the thing that I wish I had known is that is not to dive into the details right away .

Speaker 5 13:28

So I actually wrote an article about this for Writers Digest called Creating your Story Frame , which is available now for download at my website , the Indie Author , and what I found was in my early books I spent tons and tons of time , you know , and Keneer goes to a abandoned home in Philadelphia , and then there would be like days and days and hundreds and hundreds of words describing the creepy house that she goes to .

Speaker 5 13:56

And if I look back on all of the words that I had to throw away because then in like in past three or four or seven or wherever I was in the revision process I would say you know what ? It really shouldn't be an abandoned house in Philadelphia , it should really be an empty store in , you know , box County or whatever . But so those things aren't important to understand where your story is going . So in the one of the aspects of framing up a story , my idea is you just say Anne goes to an abandoned house in Philadelphia , or maybe Anne just goes to an abandoned house somewhere you don't even know where it is yet and you make sure that that makes sense before you invest all the time and effort and painful words in fleshing out details that might not survive till the end .

Speaker 3 14:44

Oh , that's such a great idea Like I hadn't really considered .

Speaker 5 14:51

Yeah , I started doing that with I think after Anne can your book five , because I've spoken about this on other podcasts that that is the book that I threw away the most words on because I had to make even after my editor saw it . I had to make maybe I shouldn't say even after , but after my editor saw it . I had to rip and tear a lot and and I realized a lot of it was because I had invested all this time in things that in the end didn't serve the story .

Speaker 5 15:18

So making sure all the components serve the story first is a good and time saving procedure . Yeah .

Speaker 3 15:26

Don't you think that that's ? That is a mistake a lot of new writers make . I mean , even if it's not , like they don't know where the story is going and don't know later that that won't be important . I think a lot of new writers , they want to give all those juicy details that really don't benefit the story . They just , you know , feel good to write in a lot of ways .

Speaker 5 15:53

And I think that , especially early on , and especially if you're not relying on the books you're producing to pay the rent , then there's no harm in that . I mean , there's no harm in spending that time describing the creepy , haunted house , knowing , or the abandoned house , knowing that you might not use it . If you recognize that , and then , more importantly , if when you're revising your book , you realize you might have to kill your darlings and get rid of that great thing you wrote and and maybe sort of buffer the pain a little bit by maybe using it somewhere else , like you're not going to use it in this story , but you might be able to use it in this story and having the little extras pile at the side that you can draw on when you need that . And yeah , for writers early in their career , I'd say whatever gets you right and go ahead and do that . That's right .

Speaker 2 16:40

Yes , I think that's true .

Speaker 3 16:43

And you can always use that for bonus material or something like that .

Speaker 2 16:47

Yeah , yeah , yeah . As somebody who loves rabbit holes , I totally sympathize because , you know , and a lot of times I'll find something in that research that will spawn something else , some connection that I need . But a lot of times it's just wow , I learned some really cool stuff today and that will never go in the story , but oh well .

Speaker 5 17:05

Well , fun counts too , I mean you have to understand whether it's supporting like a business goal or not , but the rabbit holes I go down , like I got really fascinated with mid-journey and so I do use it sometimes for like social media posts . But I just approach it saying I'm going to spend two hours on this this evening and I'm kind of doing this in place of watching a movie or in place of reading a book . It's like a hobby for me . It's not something that I'm trying to justify because it's going to sell another book .

Speaker 2 17:33

Right , yeah , that's really smart , yeah . So , speaking of marketing and using things for marketing or not , what about marketing ? What do you wish you'd known about ? That ?

Speaker 5 17:43

Well , I really like dividing marketing and promotion . I got this from Orna Ross at the Alliance of Independent Authors and their definition is that marketing is those ongoing things that you do all the time , the foundational things that I think Orna describes it as like the hand you extend to your audience , your desired audience , where it's promotion , or those time bound things like sales .

Marketing Writing in Career

Speaker 5 18:06

From a marketing point of view , something I did at the beginning that I think I did right at the beginning is with all those components of marketing , like my website , my email list and things like that . I really approached it as if I had an audience of thousands , even though I had an audience of four . If you start your email , outset with hi , mom , it's me , I'm writing my first deal . Here's a surprise when you have a bigger following , someone is going to find that email and it's going to be embarrassing . So act like you're writing for a big audience . It's not like you have to pretend . You don't have to lie in your email and say , hi , thousands of fans . But approach it in a professional way , and I do believe I did that Like right from the start . I treated all those things as if I had an audience of thousands .

Speaker 5 18:55

And then on the promotion front , what I not only wish I had known earlier , but have to keep reminding myself all the time is that promotion should not be my top priority , and I have a quarterly plan . In each quarter I have sort of a little phrase that is my theme for that quarter , and a couple of quarters ago the phrase I came up with was nobody's waiting anxiously for my next social media post . Readers are waiting anxiously for my next novel . Allocate time accordingly . And that's been my quarterly catchphrase every quarter since , because it is still something I need to remind myself of and it's so easy to get sucked into . I'm going to make another ad , or now I'm going to apply for a bubub or whatever , and I just think you can't do that . You always have to realize that the writing is the most important thing .

Speaker 2 19:48

Right . That's so true and so hard to do because and I think , like when you're working on a novel , you know it's such a long process and by doing something short and fast , like social media or an ad , you get that little whoa , I accomplished something today . But in reality , in the long term , is it going to last as long as your novel , when you finally get it finished ? Maybe not .

Speaker 5 20:11

Yeah , and I think that's especially true for newer writers , because you know , a piece of advice that I heard that I heard but never internalized is , if you have one book , you probably shouldn't be spending a ton of time promoting it . If that's like the book you know , you've now written the book of your heart and you're done , then sure like , do what you want to do to get it out there , recognizing that you're not going to be paying the bills with it , most probably . But if you see more books in your future , then go ahead and write those books Right , and not spending too much time , because it's going to be a lot easier to sell your books when you have two or three or four , however , than when you have one .

Speaker 2 20:47

Right , yeah , read through is amazing .

Speaker 5 20:51

Yeah , and just knowing it gives you like social proof too , so that if I go on to you know , when I'm on my retailer looking for a book and I see someone only has one , I might still read their book , but if I see that they have a catalog behind them I might never get to the rest of the catalog . But it gives me the proof that , oh , here's somebody who's serious about this , here's someone who's , you know , got this through enough to have more than one . So it can help in a lot of ways , right , I think that's true .

Speaker 3 21:22

What assumptions did you make at the beginning of your writing career and , looking back , did they turn out to be right or wrong ?

Speaker 5 21:30

I don't know . I think that that assumption that every book on its own would be saleable , that assumption that I had one book and now I was going to , take whatever out of it is something that was an assumption I had early on , I think , the idea that the writing process was going to get a ton easier .

Speaker 5 21:56

I think it has gotten some easier because I have developed these approaches like framing up my story before I dive into the details . Those kind of mechanical things have made it a bit more easier . But it's always , writing is never painful for me . I always feel bad for people who suffer through their writing . I wouldn't do it if I was suffering through it . It's not like I'm driven like an addict to write , but I'm hating every minute of it . But it's hard work . It's hard work and you have to understand that .

Speaker 3 22:26

Yeah , I think you're right . I think , as you go along , some things become easier just because you figure out processes and you figure out things that make writing , the act of sitting down to write , better and easier and more convenient , whatever , but it also gets harder because you know more , I think , knowing more , knowing I don't know , but for me that's been the thing like . In the beginning I was just like , oh , it's so fun , and then you know , and it was fun , and it still is fun , but it's different kind of fun now , because I do know there are things that I need to , there are beats I need to hit , there are expectations I need to meet , and that , to me , makes it a little bit harder for me personally . Yeah , so I love that . I love that answer , though , because I think that it's super , super good for somebody who's been doing this for a while to say that how long have you been writing ? I'm going to ask that earlier .

Speaker 5 23:37

I started my first book in 2011 .

Speaker 3 23:40

Okay , so for a while I published it in 2013 .

Speaker 5 23:43

Yeah , so I have now nine out Ten years , ten years out , yeah , yeah , coming up on December 6th , that's going to be my 10th anniversary of the publication of my first book . How exciting , that's great .

Speaker 2 23:55

That's great .

Importance of Writing and Exit Strategy

Speaker 2 23:56

Well , we've already talked about a lot of things that you wish you'd known and stuff like that , but is there ? Can you narrow it down to maybe what the most important lesson is that you've learned ?

Speaker 5 24:09

It's sort of a theme that time spent writing is always going to pay you back one way or the other .

Speaker 3 24:14

Oh , I love that .

Speaker 5 24:15

You know it might pay you back financially . It pays . It can pay you back creatively , it can pay you back emotionally . So I think that you know authors are always hearing about all the things they need to do to promote . I know , you know I need to be off their podcast . I try to hit a balance between promotion and the publishing craft and the writing craft and publishing voyages , I like to say , but it's very easy to slip into . You know , I look back over five or six episodes and I was like , oh , I haven't done a writing craft one for a while because I've . You know , I myself have been sucked into the siren call of learning how to market books . But I think , always pulling yourself back to the writing while you're doing it , are you enjoying it ? If you're not enjoying it , is this really for you ? Asking those kind of questions is important .

Speaker 3 25:06

Yeah , and it is a muscle and , as someone who has an exercise that muscle in a while , because of just personal stuff that's gone on , it's a little nervy , like I remember I had . You know , if you've ever broken a bone and you start to try to use it again , you're you favor it , you're you're nervous about using it , and that's how I'm feeling , as I'm now getting ready to start writing again , like it's it's nerve wracking to think can I do this again ? You know , and so it . That's one of the benefits of continuing writing . You don't have that . You know you're continuously using that muscle and those mechanics and that makes it not easier but more functional .

Speaker 5 25:52

Maybe . Yeah , well , exercising the writing muscle ? Absolutely yeah , just like you're saying if you , if you've been out of commission and you have to get back to it , it's like going back . Not that I'm a runner , but I imagine it's like going back to running If you've been running for a while .

Speaker 2 26:07

None of us are runners . No we totally feel that .

Speaker 3 26:11

I always say if you see me running , you better run too , cause sometimes chasing us and if I'm faster than you , it's getting you first , which is doubtful . But yeah , well , what's the biggest change you've had to make in like your thinking ? Because it sounds like , honestly , it sounds like you're pretty level headed all along , but have you had to make any big changes in your thinking as far as published writing and publishing , Well , I do think that the that the level headedness kind of plays out in this , and that is that .

Speaker 5 26:45

you know , you often hear authors being cautioned against the shiny object syndrome and oh , you know , like a book about ads .

Speaker 5 26:52

Now I'm going after that Facebook ads . So I'm going out oh , I hear this other I better be blocking . No , I should be doing this other thing . And they're jumping from thing to thing and never get traction .

Speaker 5 27:00

And I think I have the opposite problem , that I tend to stick with something longer than I should , thinking that , oh , you know , like the next day or the next day is when it's going to really start paying off . And so I think it's important to go into these things , thinking through in some sense , like what is going to be your exit trigger , like I'm going to give this a try for a month , or I'm going to give this a try for a week or a quarter or whatever period of time makes sense for what you're doing , and then , if it's not paying off , I'm going to stop doing it . Because I look back and I see like a Facebook ads is a good example for me . I was having great success in 2021 with Facebook ads . 2022 , nothing , and it never came back and I just stopped doing it .

Speaker 5 27:43

And I just recently found a Facebook ads course that I'm really liking . I really like the philosophy behind it and I'm trying this new approach and I'm going into it , thinking , okay , I'm going to give this a try for like the rest of the year , right , I'm going to give the year . It's not paying off , then I'm going to stop . Do you want to share that ? Which one ? That is ? Yeah , it's Matthew Holmes Facebook ads course .

Speaker 5 28:08

We've heard about him . Yeah , it's really great because and what I love about it and this makes I've never heard anyone else say this , but it makes so much sense to me . You know , a lot of his recommendation is based on the idea that you don't , you don't bother trying to target interests , because Facebook knows better than you , and so his focus is on ad creative , the images and the text you're using and providing . You know a geographic focus , like us , and gender maybe and age maybe , and then just let Facebook do the rest . And it takes Facebook a little while to Bear that and it's sea legs , yeah , but once it does , then it knows better than you , oh no , who's going to be interested , and that just made a ton of sense to me and it also enables me to focus on the things that I really enjoy , which are making the ads .

Speaker 5 28:59

I love doing the images and coming up with a text and I hated doing the targeting . So , yeah , I have just started that . So I can't really speak . I've already gotten a little sales bump , but I can't really speak with a lot of experience under my belt . But , yeah , matthew Holmes Facebook course is something I'm really enjoying .

Speaker 3 29:18

That's great . So when you make your your images to use Canva these , yeah . Yeah .

Speaker 5 29:24

Yeah , that's a key tool of my marketing efforts . Yeah .

Speaker 2 29:28

Yeah , yeah , that's good to know . We'll put a link in to the Facebook group for that if anyone's interested in that . But yeah , I think going back to the having an exit strategy is so important . I was just talking to some writer friends about this recently and I think I'm very loyal to like everything I'm doing . I feel bad if I look at a quit anything and I thought I need to implement that . If this doesn't work , then I'm going to cut this off . There's no need to keep doing things that aren't working just because I started them two years ago or whatever , which is really smart philosophy to have .

Speaker 3 30:04

Oh , just because they used to work Right . I mean , if it stops working doesn't mean it's coming back . Yeah , so knowing that , yeah , yeah , yeah .

Speaker 5 30:16

If you were against it , like oh , yesterday my Facebook ads stopped performing , I'm going to stop Facebook . You know there's , it's the spectrum and you have to figure out for each thing you're doing , like where on that spectrum it makes sense to put your exit strategy .

Speaker 2 30:27

Yeah , you have to give things a chance . Yeah , yeah . Well , if you , we have a lot of new authors who listen . So it's you know , people are always curious , like if you were starting over today , what would you do differently than when you ? Would you change anything ?

Speaker 5 30:42

Yeah , I think that this answer is sort of informed by the fact that I just interviewed Sasha Black about the anatomy of a bestseller and one of the things that she talked about was the idea of writing to the center of your genre . I'm not sure I'm using right terminology , but you know , if you're writing supernatural suspense , if you want , if your goal is to sell books , then write to the center of the supernatural suspense genre tropes and conventions . And this is something that theoretically I wish I would have done , but I in reality I don't think I could have for my first book , I don't think anyone maybe can for their first book . But even if you can't do it , it's useful to keep it in mind and the challenge that I've always experienced with my Ankineer suspense novels is that they're supernatural

Marketing Challenges and Short Stories

Speaker 5 31:29

suspense .

Speaker 5 31:29

Ankineer is a woman who can sense spirits and she has a business that's like a consulting business based on this ability and I have always approached it in a very business-like way . So , except for the fact that Anne is talking to dead people , it's totally natural . You know , there are no dragons , there are no demons . There are . You know , when she has an engagement run by her brother , it has a contract and she has clients . You know it's as if she's like an accountant , except she's . Her business is to go into places and see if they're haunted no-transcript .

Speaker 5 32:03

I've always struggled a little bit because I think that they're not like paranormal enough for people who like the deeply , deeply spooky kind of paranormal and they're also , I think , on the surface , off-putting to people who don't like paranormal . And I have a ton of happy reviews on the retail site saying I usually don't read this kind of book but I really enjoyed it . And getting over that hump of you know who am I marketing to ? Who's my target audience ? Who am I going to satisfy ? Who am I going to disappoint ?

Speaker 5 32:40

I think that theoretically again , if I've been writing that first book in thought , you know what , I'm going to make this a little more woo-woo or whatever . I'm going to make it a little more whatever those other tropes that the other books are writing Like , even I don't read those books , I don't read the ones that are very kind of extremely paranormal , and so I don't even have a good sense of what those tropes are and I don't think I could insert them at this point . That would be too weird . But if you say like you know what I want to write a cozy mystery and you know what . Read a bunch of cozy mysteries and understand what the tropes are so that you can decide if they're right for you or not .

Speaker 2 33:21

Yeah , I listened to that interview with Sasha Black and it was so good , so I'll link to that too in the show notes . But yeah , the idea of figuring out , I think , like a lot of us , our first books are just a little off , like off center , you know , like they're not quite hitting and it makes it really hard to sell them . So , yeah , I think that's a really good bit of advice .

Speaker 5 33:44

Yeah , yeah , the other thing I'm thinking of acting on is I've always thought of the Ankineer books as kind of my flagship series because it was my first , but I'm thinking maybe I should , and so one of the conversations I had with Sasha is that if you can point people to your most genre center series , then they might really like that and they might move on to other things and say , ok , well , this is like not exactly what I was expecting , but I'm willing to . Right , and I think I was . The Ballard thrillers are much more center genre and so I'm thinking maybe I should lean more heavily into promoting those and hoping they lead people to the Ankineer books rather than vice versa .

Speaker 2 34:21

Right , I was really smart .

Speaker 3 34:25

I agree . Well , speaking of Ankineer , you have a series of short stories . Now are they tell us about those ? Let's just tell us about them because I'm not . I'm not really familiar with how you promote me , how you put those together , and you put them all together or they do they come out one at a time . How does that work ?

Speaker 5 34:48

Yeah , I have . So they started out because I had written to Ankineer books and then I had this idea for another story . But it was not a story that lent itself to an Ankineer book , it was a story about a woman who had another sort of extraordinary ability . The tagline from my books is what happens when an extraordinary ability transforms an ordinary life , and so Anne's is being able to talk with dead people and Lizzie's is something else , but I don't want to say what it is because it would be a little bit of a spoiler . So it didn't really make sense to use a story I did in the end books , and so I started writing the first Lizzie Ballard book , which was Rock Paper Scissors , and thinking it was a standalone . And then I got to the end of that and I was saying to the Anne fans just wait , hold on , I'm just doing this one other book and then I'll be back . And then it turned out the Lizzie thing was a trilogy . So I wanted to give the Anne fans something to tie them over , and so I got back to Anne and so I started writing the short stories and it lends itself really nicely to Anne's world because I describe she has this kind of consulting business , and so each short story can either be a consulting engagement that doesn't really lend itself to an off-length treatment , or she just stumbles into a circumstance that involves communicating with dead people , and so I put these out on all the retail platforms for 99 cents , and I have I think I have seven for sale now , and then I retain one for as a reader magnet , and in fact the latest one I just wrote I'm very excited about this is the current reader magnet is that my friend Jean Gorman , another Philadelphia area author , has a series called the Adam Kaminsky Mysteries .

Speaker 5 36:34

Adam Kaminsky it's a Philadelphia police detective , and in my first Ann Kineer book , not yet knowing about Jean Gorman's Adam Kaminsky series , I gave Anne a former boyfriend named Dan Kaminsky . And then , when I read Jane's books and I got to know Jane through our local sisters in crime chapter , I was like we have to write a story for Dan's mates , her ex-boyfriend's cousin , adam , and so we finally did that . We did , we co-wrote a short story called Blood of the Wicked , where Adam reluctantly involves Anne and a Casey having trouble cracking in a historic house in Philadelphia . That's great and so , yeah , what I've been doing is having one short story as my reader magnet . And then when I have a new short story , I make that story available for sale on all the retail platforms and then I , you know , put the new one up as the reader magnet . And then when I have 12 , I'm going to do a year of Kineer and I'm going to have one story set in each month of the year .

Speaker 3 37:37

So that will be a collection of shorts . Yeah , that's very , very smart yeah .

Speaker 5 37:43

And then you say oh , I'm sorry . They're like four to six thousand words .

Speaker 3 37:48

Oh , okay , so not bad at all .

Speaker 2 37:50

Yeah , and I'm curious like I know that like writing a short story , a mystery short story , is hard because I've done it and it's really hard to do like the whole mystery , find the clues and everything and get it into that little compact short story . So how do you do yours ? Do you have like a complete mystery ? Do you have like a just a day in the life ?

Speaker 5 38:17

They're more suspense oriented . So this is this is the other issue I've come up with against with the end care books that they started out as suspense . You know right away who done it . The murder happens on the page . The suspense is the murderers trajectory and and trajectory or intersecting and what's going to happen when that and they encounter each other . The shorts are mainly suspense .

Speaker 5 38:41

I think that there's blood of the wicked is sort of mystery , but , as you're saying , not a full mystery like now we're dropping red herrings , now we're dropping clues , that kind of thing . So it is more , more suspense , what's going to happen . And a couple of them are not even suspense . Some of them are more than yeti .

Speaker 5 39:02

There's one where Anne goes to a , the church that she went to as a child , because somebody wants her to see if her husband is there and and kind of , and tries to mediate a conversation between the dead husband and the wife , but the wife is too freaked out and runs away .

Speaker 5 39:23

So Anne has this , this very sweet interaction with the dead husband , and that's not at all a mystery . It's just kind of an exploration of this relationship that you between the husband and the wife that you think is going in one direction . And then he has this conversation and she realizes it's very different than what she she expected . And there was another one that I wrote for an anthology that the theme of the anthology was the bad guy wins and profanity is encouraged . And so I , like my sweet you know in the church non traditional Easter story there's a lot of swearing in this one and so it was basically a funny setup my husband's in a band . I decided I take advantage of that and I wrote this one where the band gets the band gets together for one last gig , except the drummer's dead and how , and deals with the fall out of that .

Speaker 3 40:24

And they just sound like they're a lot of fun , so they're super fun idea yeah .

Speaker 2 40:28

I love that , so it gives you a nice break .

Speaker 5 40:30

It sounds like between like it is a fun palette cleanser . Yeah , yeah .

The Benefits and Challenges of Podcasting

Speaker 2 40:36

Well , we also want to talk to you about podcasting , because you have a very successful podcast for indie authors , so is there anything you wish you know about podcasting ? Now , looking back , since you've been doing it a while , what do you think ?

Speaker 5 40:51

Well , I'd love to hear answers from you guys on this too , because there's nothing more fun to me than having met a podcast conversations with other podcasters . I would say that the thing that I wish I had learned early on was to start simple , because when I first started the indie author podcast not when I first started it , but when I got really serious with it I left my corporate job in 2019 . I went on a regular bi weekly schedule in 2020 with the podcast and then 2021 . I was putting out weekly episodes and I was like doing a transcript . The transcript is the best example I would spend . Well , actually there are two examples .

Speaker 5 41:28

One is I would do very fussy editing of the of the interview , which took like a day I was probably putting in . I was probably putting in eight hours just on editing and transcript editing for an episode , which was unsustainable , and so eventually I just thought I just can't do this anymore . Not only is it taking me a lot of time , but people have other transcript options like the closed caption . Automated closed caption on YouTube is pretty good . I think it's a gets better . This idea of an individual having to do a lot of manual editing . I wasn't typing out the transcript . I use a program called the script , which created the transcript automatically , but it needed a lot of editing . I just think that that's becoming less and less necessary and I just couldn't do it anyway .

Speaker 5 42:21

So I actually I used to post the transcript on my website and one day I just , instead of the transcript , I put a note saying basically explaining what I just said . I said , but if you're looking for the transcript , I'd be curious to know that . That would be good information for me to have . So please drop me an email at this address and let me know if you've come to look for the transcript and you're disappointed . It's not here . I heard from one person . So that would have been good information to have , like a year earlier . Yes , so I would much , much rather have done it without the transcript and then later added the transcript or whatever the other extras were later , rather than having to dial something back . So start simple . Actually , with pretty much anything in the podcasting or author space , I would say start simple as a good , a good tip . But how about you guys like what ? What would your perspective on that question be ?

Speaker 3 43:14

You can go first there .

Speaker 2 43:16

Oh , I think I think we over complicated things , yeah , to begin with , and we were . I was so nervous I can't even remember a lot of the stuff that I was worried about now . But yeah , I think that starting simple is good . I think that we should have . We've just now started asking for support , saying you know , like if you've received value , would you like to support the podcast ? I think we should have started that sooner . I think we waited a long time for that and I don't know that we had to . You know , I think that would have been a good thing to do sooner .

Speaker 5 43:52

Yeah , that's kind of a good lesson also that never undervalue the never undervalued what you're providing to people .

Speaker 3 43:59

Right , right .

Speaker 5 44:00

Yeah , which I think is easy for authors to do .

Speaker 3 44:03

Yeah , I was going to say the supporter thing . I think that we , I mean we were fortunate because we had talked to some people about podcasting , you know , and stuff , before Becca in particular , and so she had sort of helped us avoid some of the you know things that we could have done poorly and didn't do poorly , thankfully . But yeah , I mean I always tell people that too , just start simple , like you don't need this whole big setup . Just you got a computer and a , you know you're plugging mic and just start there and then you can . You know , as you see , you have a need for something else added , but there's a lot we haven't added because we haven't needed it .

Speaker 3 44:48

And you know , I think a lot of people keep telling us we need to get on YouTube . You know we need to . I mean , the podcast is on YouTube , but our faces aren't on YouTube and we don't want to do that and so we're just not doing that . I mean , you know . So that may be something we regret later , but we don't want to have to get ready every day , every time we do a podcast and have the whole setup . So , yeah , but I'm so glad we did it . I mean , you know , however , we did it and I'm sure you feel the same way . Yeah , it's just such an amazing connection with the community . I love that so much and it's great to know that people have found value in it and it's super validating and certainly it's helped sustain me and it encouraged me and all the stuff over the last year and a half year that you know of the stuff I've been going through , so I'm super grateful .

Speaker 2 45:57

Yeah . So , maddie , I'm curious what's your favorite thing about podcasting for authors ?

Speaker 5 46:04

Well , for me it is sort of community building and you know , from a selfish point of view , I always say that people can always tell when I'm struggling with it at any point in my author career , based on the subjects that I'm doing . People like I'm really fed up with my email newsletter , that I call up some email newsletter expert and say , hey , can you talk to me for 45 minutes ? Yeah , and it's also just super fun . You know , I've been able to talk with people that I would never have been able to talk with otherwise , and a recent two fiction examples to the conversations I've had on the craft side that are among my favorite is that this is yours to go . And I interviewed Ben Winters , who's one of my favorite authors . He's wrote Underground Airlines and the Last Policeman and Golden State , and I asked him if he would be on the podcast and he came on and it was fantastic and I just thought , oh my God , it was kind of like if you were at a writer's conference and you saw Ben Winters in the bar and you chatted with him for 45 minutes . It was just so much fun .

S by JJ Abrams and Automation Benefits

Speaker 5 47:13

And then , more recently I read this book I love , called S , by JJ Abrams . Jj Abrams and Doug Dorst and it was fantastic and I won't go into too much detail , but it was a physical book that it was almost like a I don't know . It wasn't like anything else I'd ever read . It was a physical book in a slip case that looked like a book from the 1950s and it was like a very 50s sort of I guess like a memoir almost , and but in it were like postcards and writing in the margins . And so there was this story that was going on in this book called the Ship of Theseus .

Speaker 5 47:56

There were the notes that were written in the margins by two people who were trying to figure out a mystery and communicating in this library book by writing notes . And there was even my favorite one was this napkin that it was like actually a napkin that folded out and it had a pen drawn map on it and I just thought that was the most fun books . That's right . And I got to interview Doug Dorst on the podcast and talk about that , and being able to read a book and then talk to the person who wrote it and say like tell me all about it was so much fun . So I just think that the big payoff for me has been being able to have these conversations with these fantastic people and being able to share that out with my fellow authors and hopefully help them out in that way . Yeah .

Speaker 5 48:43

Yeah , that sounds fascinating .

Speaker 3 48:45

That is fascinating . I love that People are so clever yeah .

Speaker 5 48:50

Especially if you have JJ Abrams behind you . He was like I could never have done this if it hadn't had JJ Abrams' name on it , because it was like yeah , JJ , you wanna do that , Sure , whatever .

Speaker 3 49:00

I will do that Exactly . Well , this has been so fun . Tell us what you think . The best thing you've done to set yourself up for success has been Well , this is gonna be .

Speaker 5 49:14

I'm gonna have gone from like the very sort of oh , at the beginning too , very , very tactical , and this is gonna sound a little bit like opposite , from the start , simple . But one thing that I found is , the more I can automate and proceduralize things , the better , and the podcast is a great example . So I used to . Whenever I would schedule a guest , we would have this thread of like I can do it on Monday at 10 , can you do it ? And I know I can't do it on Monday , I could do it on Tuesday at three . Oh , I didn't realize you were New Zealand . Never mind , let's start over again . And so I finally got Calendly , which is to change my life , especially because all the information that I used to have to go and look for myself I can now ask for as part of somebody signing up to the interview . So , like , what social media sites do you want me to reference ? What website do you want me to reference ? Please send me your bio , send me a link to your headshot , all those things that you need as part of a podcast production . I can just get that way . It's all in one place .

Speaker 5 50:14

That has saved me a ton of time , and I've also found that because I'm I spent several decades as a project manager , so I document everything , and the fact that I've done that has enabled me to offload some of the work that I used to do to my assistant . So , as an example , she now does all the price changes . So if I have a promotion , we have this whole humongous spreadsheet of here's . When the price has to change , here are all the things that each of us has to do during the promotion . This is when the price has to go back to normal and it's great because she can take that on and if something happens and she's not able to take it on , then I can easily pick it up and it's all documented there . So I think when your author career gets to a certain point , then finding those places where you can make the investment in , like currently , but see that it's gonna pay you back in time and aggravation savings that has been that has really helped me focus on the writing , which is the most important thing .

Speaker 3 51:12

Right . I will say , though , if we get somebody , like we're gonna interview someone who lives in Hong Kong and I mean , it's still an ordeal because Sarah and I can't do the time thing , and oh , the time sounds , don't ?

Speaker 5 51:26

tell me Calendly , I'm just saying Calendly .

Speaker 3 51:30

Well , we do have Calendly , but then we're like wait if she sounds , it's just .

Speaker 5 51:36

Yeah , you might have to like open up special slots for that particular . I see where it comes from , yeah .

Speaker 3 51:41

So anyway , but yeah , you're right , that does . That solves a lot of problems right there , cause then they can do it on the , and we blocked off when we are available , and so then there's no question . Yeah , so that's great , that's a great .

Speaker 5 51:55

And I think that anything that like more generally for people who aren't scheduling guest interviews , then I think anything you can do where the rote parts are very proceduralized so that every time , like if you run a Facebook ad and then you go back in six months and you don't really remember it , you don't wanna have to start over again . You just wanna be able to open up a little checklist and say , oh , I see that I have to do this in the campaign and this and the ad set and this and the ad . Yeah , don't spend brain cells on that kind of stuff , right ?

Speaker 2 52:24

right , yeah , save your brain cells for , like , creative content creation , exactly . Yeah , well , this has been great and it's been really good to talk to you . Where can people find out more about you and your books and your podcast ?

Speaker 5 52:37

Well , if they want to find out my fiction books , they can go to mattydowlruplecom , and that's matty with a Y M-A-T-T-Y . And if they want to find out more about my nonfiction platform , the Indie Author , they can go to theindieauthorcom , and that's Indie with a Y I-N-D-Y . And from there they can also get to all my social media platforms . Awesome .

Speaker 3 52:57

That's great . Well , it's awesome having you here . We appreciate it . That was fun and we yeah , we're just so glad you came and everybody check out our podcast and we want to thank our sponsor , bookfaltapp , and you can check out bookfalt at wishidonthemforwriterscom backslashbookfalt .

Speaker 2 53:21

Right , yeah , perfect . So thanks to Matty for being here today and thanks for listening . Thanks to Alexa Larberg for editing and producing the podcast and Adria Wiggins for joining the admin . See everybody next week .

Speaker 4 53:34

Bye . Thanks for listening to the Wish I'd Known Then podcast . We hope this episode inspired you , empowered you and made you laugh a little bit too . If you loved it , tell your friends about it and , if you feel so inclined , leave us a review . We look forward to being with you again next week .