Jami on the Two Authors Podcast

321 / Sara and I are on a summer break, so we’re sharing guest episodes we did on other podcasts. This week, it’s my discussion with Doug and Nick on the Two Authors’ Podcast

💙 Become a supporter of the podcast https://wishidknownforwriters.com/support or https://wishidknownthenpodcast.substack.com/subscribe

• Access to backlist of exclusive supporter episodes
• Shoutout on a future episode

⚡Links:

• Two Authors’ Podcast: https://pod.link/1671876768

Transcript

0:04

Hey everybody. Jamie and I are on a summer break. We're taking June off, but we don't want to leave you with nothing to listen to. So we are re-airing some of our episodes that we have done as guests. This week is Jamie on the Two Authors Podcast with Nick and Doug. This episode, Guest is a romantic comedy writer, indie publishing consultant, a podcast host, and she's a professional podcast. Yeah, not any of this crap. She actually does a real one. And she's a lovely lady. It's Jamie Albright, everyone. Welcome to the show, Jamie. How are you doing today? I am great. How are you guys? Doing great. Thank you for seeing you. Absolutely. So tell us a little bit about your career right now, how you got to where you are. So well, I actually didn't start writing until I was 50. I started You don't look 50 first. I was gonna say, so that's in five years' time. You're a time travel. Actually, I was really more like 47 when I started writing. I was gonna write a book for my best friend for her birthday. But I'd never written before. I'd always made up stories, but I have terrible grammar, so I never wrote anything down. But then I thought, well, Jennifer doesn't care if I have bad grammar, and we were reading buddies, so she would think it's funny. So I started writing a book and pretty quickly wrote myself in a corner. But so I told her, like, I was gonna write you a book for your birthday, but I don't know how, so there. And uh she's like, oh no, now you have to. So we loosely plotted what is my first book now, and I really I read a lot, but I did not know how to write. So I actually bought writing romance for dummies, and it was surprisingly good. I mean, you know, knowing what I know now, that's a pretty good book if you need a place to start. But I wrote on it for a while, had about 30,000 words, and then my computer crashed, and I was like, Well, I'm not a writer, you know, it's sad, but I loved it. Did you lose it all? You lost a lot. I lost everything on the computer. That hurts, that hurts so bad. But you know, I just went on with my life, and then I turned 50, and I was having dinner with my family, and I said, I think the only thing I regret in 50 years is not finishing that book. And of course, they were like, Well, you should just finish it. And I'm like, No, I'm not starting again. That was too hard. And a few months later, my daughter came in and said, Mom, I think your book is on this flash drive that I just found in my drawer. And it was 20,000 notes of the 50,000 words that I had, I had forgotten I'd saved it, but I'd saved it. So I was like, Well, it's now or never. And I joined RWA and I started going to a critique group, which there are a lot of things that are said about critique groups, but I will say I was so, so fortunate. I mean, they were great people who were really good writers, and they taught me to write in six months. I mean, it was a mess. I didn't really know anything. I knew I didn't know anything, and that helped me, I think, because I went and I mean, like they got me for everything. I'd get hit for run-on sentences, then I get hit for sentence fragments. The week they did the week when I thought I'd fix the run-on sentences, but then I had sentence fragments, I did cry, but I waited until I got in the car. But yeah, I mean, it was embarrassing. But they kept saying, but this is a good story. I want to know what happens next. So, and I kept fixing what they were correcting, like you know, deep POV and stuff like that. So, six months after I started that critique group, I won my first contest with that book. Um it was a romance writers of America contest, and it was just the first, I don't know how many pages, but some number of pages. And it was the final judge was the editor of a small press, and he wanted the book. And I was like, Well, I'm still, you know, putting the final touches on it. The truth was, those pages were about the only thing I had that was worth reading. And but thank God, because I would have given him that book instead of self-publishing. And so I just continued on. I put out a book under a different name with my critique partners, just a little novella, but we put it out, and you know, we're like, okay, who's gonna read our book? And then, of course, no one does, uh, because we just threw it up there, and that began my journey of how do you find readers? Like, how do you get visibility on Amazon or wherever? And I started listening to podcasts. Someone told me about the Sell More Book Show podcast, which I started listening to, but they were talking about the SPP guys, the self-publishing podcast guys. At that time, that was 2000, the end of 2015, they were doing crazy things like writing a book from conception to publication in a month. At the time, nobody else really was doing that, or or if they were, it wasn't common knowledge, it wasn't common practice. And they were gonna have a conference in Austin, and I lived in I live in Houston, and so it's just two and a half hours away. I used to live in Austin, so I had people I could stay with. And I told my husband, I said, I think I should go to this, and he was like, That's great. Like, that's $500. Where are we where are you gonna get that $500? Like, it's okay to it's fine, but we're we gotta come up with $500. And it was right before Christmas, and I had two kids in college, and I was like, You're right, I probably should just wait until the book comes out. So we went to Christmas, came home, I had an email from them saying who was gonna be at this conference, the Smarter Artists Summit was what it was called, and Julia Kent was gonna be there. I'd never heard of Julia, but she wrote romantic comedy, which is what I write. And it was just my sign from God that I was supposed to go to this thing. So I returned all my Christmas presents. I got a mileage check. There was a mileage check waiting for me when I got home from my family's house at Christmas, and so that's how I paid for the conference, and it was the best $500 I've ever spent in my whole life because I was gonna put that book out, and they really encouraged me to wait. They wait, they took they encouraged me to wait till I had three books. Well, I don't write fast, so I had one and a half, but they also encouraged me to learn the business, and I did. So I spent a year just learning the business. I didn't really have the money, you know, that I needed even at that time to get a good cavern and good editing. So that gave me time to figure something out. I sold plasma to pay for my edits and the other expenses because at that then by the time I was about to put the book out, my daughter had gotten engaged. So now we're paying for college and a wedding. And so I did that, and then then I put it out right before the second Smarter Artist Summit, which was April of 2017, is when I put the first book out. And because of everything that I had learned in that year, you know, I had learned about building an email list. I built the email list beforehand, so I had 1,200 people on my list before the book came out, and that book did incredibly well and continued to do incredibly well. Like it stayed in the top 5,000. Well, it launched to 1300 and then it stayed in the top 5,000 for, I don't know, more than a year. And the other books just launched better than each one of that. Yeah, I mean, it really that first series just was a huge success. And it really kind of put my name out there for people, and and that was in 2017, and so I'm still still chugging along. That was a good time to uh be getting into it too. That was right kind of at the tail of uh it was the table of the gold rush, yeah. Yeah. But I I haven't put a book out in two years, this month, two years this month, but that's my sister passed away last year, and so but she was sick. Like at the beginning of last year, I knew that things were not good, and it was just I couldn't write. And then for the last six months of her life, stayed with her and was with her every day, except for just a few. And that's only because of Indy Publishing that I was able to do that. So I'm so grateful because I was still making money during that time, which was great, but I'm about to start writing again, so I'm feeling feeling good about that. Yeah. So you actually you can truly say you put blood, sweat, and tears into that photo. I have. I have sold the blood. I've sweat and I've cried a lot. So uh so I gotta ask you this. So I I read on your website, your tagline is sexy swoony, pee your pants funny. I about pee my pants when I read that, I gotta tell you. That is brilliant. That is the best tagline ever. So I was gonna ask you what a reader should expect from your books, but that kind of sums it up, doesn't it? It really does, yeah. So that's my brand right there. Sexy swoony, pee your pants funny. So in what measures? So I would have said before TikTok, I would have said my books were like a three on the chili pepper scale, you know, one to five. But after TikTok, mine are probably not a three. They're less than a three. But I mean, they're still the bride's books are still sexy. I mean, they they have sex on the page, but my second series, my small town royalty series, are probably a little hotter than those, a little spicier. And then funny, I mean, they're just all funny, they're just funny. I mean, I'm funny. I mean, or I think you're I think you're funny. I think you're funny. Now you have uh I know you have a daughter. How many kids do you have? I have three. I have a son, and then I have two daughters, yeah. And then I have six grandkids. Oh my gosh. Now, how old are the grandkids? Because that's an even better ten, five, five, four, three, three. Okay, so that problem's coming down down the road here. But you've got three kids, and you write these sex scenes. Do your kids read your books? No, they don't. They don't really have they ever? No. Well, I think that the youngest one, she hasn't read it, but one of her friends read it and told her about read her some of the things that were in my book. And then she came in and told me I was nasty, which is ridiculous because I'm not. That's funny. That's a good praise for her, too. Like, you know, if my kids came in and said, Hey, you're you're being dirty. I'm like, Yeah, yeah. I just I'm just picturing that. Like your daughter's walking in and go, I just read your book. Yeah. No, they haven't read them. Um, my mother reads them and she loves them. And this is what she said. We were on a cruise, she and I, and uh, I was in the pool and she was sitting on the side reading one of my books. It was the one that had just come out, and somebody said, What's your mom reading? And I said, Well, it's one of my books. I'm a you know, I'm a writer. And so we got to talking about it. And my mom from across the pool yells, It's so good. You should read all of them. But I'll tell you right now, she's put everything in there I've ever heard of, if you know what I mean. But, you know, again, on the chili pepper scale, according to TikTok, not not too steamy, but I think they're steamy enough. Quick question for you about steaminess. I'm curious because my books probably if if there's a steamy scale, they they were like a half. So, how do you how do you go about writing sex on the page like that? So that you know, your mom's like, hey, that's awesome. I think the key is finding your readers because there's such a broad spectrum of readers. There are readers that would read my book and be really disappointed. There are also readers that would read my book and be scandalized. So you kind of have to find your reader. And I'm really fortunate that I know, I think because I was older, maybe, I had honed in on who my reader was before I started writing or before I published, not before I started writing. So I know what they like, you know, I know who that reader is and I know what they like. Also, I write what I'm comfortable writing. And as I've written more sex, I'm a little more comfortable writing sex. In the beginning, I was not super comfortable, and it's still the last thing I write. It's still, you know, I'll send it to my editor and say, you know, sex scene, and that's all that's there. There's no sex scene. It's one of the last things I write. If I could write the kind of books I want to write without sex, I might do that, but I know the genre expectations, I know the reader expectations, and I don't want to disappoint them. So I try to do it as best I can, you know. Well, by yourselves, I think it's going okay. Yeah, you're doing great. Thank you. Keep it up. I was gonna say sex scenes for with all of my readers for me would be there. I would disappoint everybody. They'd be like, it's sex with Doug. That was it? Yeah, that was it. That was it. It's a very quick scene. It's very fast. We're done over. I I sometimes I just I just end it in the middle of the paragraph and don't even finish the paragraph on this before. Okay. Moving on, so you're a busy lady. So you've got obviously you're going to get back to writing here. You've had a lot of family commitments, but family is a big part of what you do. You do consulting and you're podcasting. How do you balance all of that? How do you do you plan your weeks? Do you set a balance of all that stuff, or does it just all roll on? It's it's roll on. I mean, I'm a seat-of-mypants person from beginning to end. I wish, you know, I see people with these quarterly calendars, and I'm like, oh my gosh, that I get imposter syndrome when I see those things because I don't do that. It might be. Who has those? I don't know anybody that has those. Do you, Doug? I only know one person that has those. And Nick's a little anal. He has lots of those. I want. I'm not. I'm not either. I'm the opposite of that, and it drives Nick up a fall. Sometimes I'm like, hey, Sarah, do we have a podcast today? Like, I haven't even looked at the calendar, but I have gotten better about looking at the calendar before I reach out to her. She doesn't get mad, but I I'm embarrassed. So have tried to get better at that. I always say about our podcast that the only reason I can do it is because I have a podcast wife. Sarah is amazing, and she really enjoys the back-end stuff of the podcast, and I'm more a front-end person, so it worked out for us, but I just make it work, you know. I mean, this year has been weird because I haven't been writing, so I've had a lot of time, but in the past, yeah, we were I would have to schedule my writing around recording because it usually before, because after recording, because we try to do ours is in the afternoons too, and I'm out of that headspace once I do a podcast. I like that term, your podcast wife. I think I think now it's Doug as my podcast wife. Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean the good-looking one and the one that's not organized. So I guess that works out both. Although my wife actually is organized. She is. She is. She has to be to be married to me, otherwise, we would never get anywhere on time. Yeah. So yeah, you you were just at Nink with us. So that was my what kind of takeaways did you get from there? What did you what did you what was your big mine were more the mental health stuff, you know, just finding joy in writing again. And I will tell you, and I tell anybody who'll listen, is that comparison really has or did steal the joy from me because I wanted, you know, I was doing super well, especially with when you consider how many books I put out and how I was putting them out like nine months to a year apart, but keeping my income consistent through that with ads and stuff. I started looking around at people around me. And I remember at Nink in 2019 telling Damon, you know, if I could just be happy with how I did things and not try to do what everybody else did, I would be super content. But I just couldn't let that go, you know, looking at other people, thinking I needed to do this or that. And it really stole the joy and it really kind of sucked some of the momentum out of me. So at Nink this year, I really am, you know, because I haven't written, you know, for a while, I I am trying to come back at this from a a be a healthier point of view, you know, a healthier mindset and just doing my thing. It's a great, great community, isn't it, with the writers? There is so that's one of the things that I've been turning a couple of times now. And I get something from the presentations for sure, but I get just as much from the uh talking with people outside of the presentations, meeting new authors, and that uh camaraderie and what have you. And it's really strong, I think. I think that how that just getting that that camaraderie helps us with that comparison, you know, worry about comparing each other because it's a struggle when you you have that imposter syndrome. We all do where you're like, I can't believe I get to do this, first of all. That's that's kind of great. But then why am I not doing it as well as as Mick Harvey? I mean, he has that cool accent, and I have a nice southern accent, which isn't right, we know we compare those all the time. So but no, it really is. I think it does help us because we do see like that we're all out there, we're all we all struggle with the same thing. And I think that goes with any any real industry you're in, whether it's writing or you know, if we were working at McDonald's, we'd probably have the same issues. We get emails a lot. We get emails for the podcast, but also just from my writing, you know, for my readers, about that I'm real, you know, because I just tell what's going on. I have no filter. I'm an overshare from way back, and there's no 60 years old, I'm not gonna stop now. And so uh, but I think that's helped a lot of people because most people only talk about the good things. Most people only talk about the successes and not necessarily the struggles. And even for my readers, you know, there have been instances in my life that I have actually put into my books that are hard, they're not good things. And I've learned from them. And if they can help somebody else, then that's great. Let's touch on one thing that I know is incredibly obviously you lost your your sister, but you also lost your nephew through uh a very sad set of circumstances. And I know that's something that's very important to you to talk about a little bit. Can you share with us what uh took place? So my book, Homecoming King, is about it's he's a football player, and the uh initial thought when I was gonna started writing it was he was gonna be a recovering addict. Well, I got a little bit into it and realized, you know, addiction's not funny. So I changed it. He was injured and trying to stay off of medic, you know, opioids and stuff like that. Because I mean, besides opioids being an epidemic in our country, they're a huge epidemic in professional sports and probably collegiate sports as well. But uh, you know, because in professional sports, if you don't play, you don't get paid, and uh somebody else will take your spot, and you know, all this stuff. So that was the thought of that book. Well, uh, just as I'd started that book, uh, my nephew died from uh an overdose. Uh it was uh Xanax laced with fentanyl. And he was a casual user, you know, it was he had a good job, he was uh productive, he was, you know, he was 33 years old, he was uh doing well, casual user, and took a fentanyl-laced Xanax, which I have written about on my website the story, but I don't think I put the fentanyl in there because at the time my sister didn't really want didn't really want that out there because he was one of the first fentanyl deaths in Dallas, we found out. And so it has become more prevalent. She's spoken about it. We're now we're we're speaking more openly about it. And then also my cousin, who played for the NFL for 10 years, became addicted to opioids. And he's been clean for 14 years, but I mean it was awful. It was just awful. And with my nephew, we didn't really say anything, you know. I mean, we w we didn't want to upset him, we didn't want to alienate him. We didn't wanna we just thought we could love him out of it and the fact is we couldn't. We need we should have said something. All of us should have said more and we didn't. And unfortunately he took one pill and it was laced with fentanyl and he died. Yeah. That's devastating. It was devastating, yeah. Yeah. Now there's a helpline that you promote is enough. Yeah, on my website, you can go to my website and it's under something personal. And it is a website that my cousin was working with at the time. And you can call that number. And if you need help or need somebody to talk to, or just if you're a family member and need help knowing how to deal with this, you can you can call. It's so important. It affects everybody. There's there's I mean, it it's amazing. Pretty much you talk to anybody and they will have some connection in some way to someone who's gone through some something like that. So we'll put the uh put the link in the show notes so that people see it. All right, so let's lighten it up. You have a Portuguese translation. I do have a Portuguese translation. Why on earth, out of all the translations in the whole world, do you are you big in Brazil? What's the deal? I'm not big in Brazil, but I'm okay in Brazil. They reached out to me and I was like, sure, I'll I'll do a Portuguese print translation. And and the the uh the contract was pretty good after I think it's seven years, I get I get it back. Gotcha. I get the translation back, and so it was a pretty good deal. I don't really have any other translations because I don't really want to go with another publisher. I mean that'd be fine, but I know the benefits of doing it myself, but also see an organized before in our conversation. I gotten myself together enough to do it, and then what's happened over the last year? I haven't done anything, so yeah. It's a lot more work to do too. I've I've done mine in German, and one, I don't speak German, so how do you know that it's even right? You could have it proofread a hundred times, and I I I can't tell. So yeah, so it is it's a challenge. We both did German translations about the same time for some of our books, and it definitely is uh it's not as easy as it would seem. No, people make it sound like it's easy, it's not easy. That's not easy, no. It really was. I thought it'd be oh, it's to find somebody to do it, and then I'm like, man, no, it's really not because you're starting over in a whole nother country, so it's like having one or two books out here. It was yeah, it's I mean I mean, it's not just that, it's ad poppy, it's blurb. I mean, it's everything. You've got to do it all. I have a lot of colloquialisms in my books, and I'm just not sure Useless's tits on a boarhog is gonna translate good. Any German listeners out there who can translate useless as tits on a boarhog for us, we would uh like that. We'd like to have that. Yeah, that's that's been my thing. I'm just like, I'm just not sure small town Texas is gonna be a real draw in the Brazil books. One one review was I translated, you know, it was in Portuguese, so I translated it, and it said in the beginning of Run Rock Running from a Rockstar, she's a small town Sunday school teacher, and she wakes up naked and spooning with the baddest rock star in the business, and they're married. And so she runs, but she can't find her underwear, and they're he calls them sensible, so granny panties, you know. Oh, nice, yeah. So, but in the review it said the panties of the granny is in the translation. That's awesome. The panties of the granny. It's uh but he he finds her underwear and she's written her name in them because she wore them to the church retreat and didn't want to lose them. And he follows her back to fixes, and that's that's a very southern thing, too, right there. Like I have a feeling, I have a feeling Nick doesn't get that at all. Like we go to the church retreat, you don't want to lose your I think we just hit sexy, swoony, and pee your pen's funny, right? In the same way. In one scene, right there. One scene, that's what you get. That's that's what you get, yeah. Yeah. Cool. So you're you're back in the saddle, you're gonna be writing again. Have you set a can a target or you when you might have something out, or are you trying to go about it relaxed? On one hand, if I know I have a deadline, I will procrastinate to that deadline. And yeah, right, right, right. But it also makes me, it kind of makes me shut down a little bit. But I'm gonna write a book that is a little off brand. I mean, it'll still be funny. I say that it's if steel magnolias and terms of endearment had a baby and then let that baby watch a lot of Dukes of Hazard, that's what this book would do. That's a visual right there. It is, it's a good pitch. I just saw Bet Midler in a red car flying through the air over a bridge. Yeah, so I'm gonna work on that one, but it I don't I have no timeline for that one. And like I it's just something I'm gonna work on. It's it's a little personal and it's gonna be emotional. It'll be a little sad, but it will be funny. It will still be funny and it'll still have a good ending, and and then I have a rom-com that I had started before I stopped writing, you know. Really, I I think I stopped writing in March of last year, because by March we knew some things were not good, and uh it just derailed me. I mean, I don't know. I people who can write like people who wrote 10 books in 2020, I am so jealous of those people because uh that's how they cope with hard things. I do not cope with hard things that way. I just sort of sit and stare off into space or try to go into action to fix things, you know, and that's what I did with my sister, you know. I just was really trying to help in any way I could, and that didn't leave any time for writing. But as I've said a million times, I do not regret one word that I didn't write in 2022. Well, that's good to hear, and I'm sure your fans cannot wait for you to put something out, but no pressure. They've been great. I will say, my readers have been so awesome, and that's awesome. All right, Doug, get out the wheel. We have our wheel. Yeah, that's right. The wheel. So have our wheel, and so let me no one actually believes it exists until you see it yet. Well, here we go. Oh, here we go. Oh, he just wrecked it. He broke it again. He just wrecked it. Oh, that was you know we're doing audio, just smacking it against the mic. Okay. What was the worst job you've ever had? I did medical records in a hospital one summer during college. Oh my gosh. I really thought I would slip my wrist before the summer was over. It was the worst, worst job. It was so boring. Were you filing all those files with the little color codes on the side of them? Those things? I was filing them. We had to enter them in the computer, we weren't allowed to talk. It was oh my gosh, it was awful. It was awful toxic. It was it was just toxic. You know, those people, those women had been there a long time and they hated each other, and then they hated. I mean, it was just uh oh, it was the worst. So it comes in like it was bad. I mean, it's not very sexy, but that was the worst job I ever had. Well, if it's sexy, it wouldn't be the worst job you ever had. I didn't I never did that. So much for coming on and joining us. This has been a real pleasure. This has been fun. Good luck with the writing coming up, and I'm sure you're gonna slay it, and uh it'll be another bestseller. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Jamie Albright. That was lovely. Isn't she a super lady? And gosh, what she's been through the last couple of years. My gosh, powerful stuff. Brilliant. I she was awesome. I like she's just very powerful, very inspiring, really. So all right. So what have you been up to, Dougie Doug? Oh, wow, since I've seen you. All of two weeks ago. All of two weeks ago, yeah, not much. Well, I did start a refresher course for my scuba diving. Good man. Yeah. I got certified when I was 10 years old, way back in 1984. And I in fact, I still have the junior certification card that says junior certification. That's pretty cool. So I never updated it because I always just kept diving and just never updated it. So then we really hadn't dove much in the last 10 years, so I kind of need a refresher, and they're like, that's not gonna work. So I put Ashley and my two oldest kids are kind of doing the class with us. So they're taking the class to get certified, yeah. So nice. Not machine, sir. What have you been up to? I had my uh dive event this past weekend, which was really cool. I was nervous, I didn't tell you, going into it. You don't know what to expect, right? But the weather was good, the diving conditions were great. Comport public divers, Ashley there and her crew really did an outstanding job. We made it. Oh my god, we made it to all the wrecks. I've got so many pictures that haven't gone through. I've got videos I haven't gone through yet, I haven't had time to. But it was superb, great conditions, got to all the wrecks, everyone had a superb time. Big, big thank you to the uh to sponsors, Shearwater and Cayman Spirits. Very happy people went away with bottles of seven fathoms rum. I saw that too. A Shearwater dive computer, which are they are killer dive computers. Someone won one of those. We had a bunch of other uh swag art. My friends at Reef Smart, uh, some dive books and uh and cards. We put these swag bags together. I think I mentioned the last show, a dust dust jacket book of Recks of Key Largo, which was really fun to have. Please remember to subscribe to the show through the platform you listen to. Give us a five-star review if you would. Please, yes. And also don't forget, check out the show notes for links that we talked about with Jamie here and about the uh the website that she does for with her cousin and also her books as well. But check out our social media and anything else that we have that we've talked about, we will usually throw in there some links and stuff. So maybe Nick will throw a picture of him on the wreck from underwater. Yeah, well, you follow me on Facebook, I'll get some videos up there of some of the underwater stuff. So, but until then, be cool to each other. Fair winds and following the seas. You've been listening to the Two Authors Chat Show with Nicholas Harvey and Douglas Pratt.