Ep 130: When Fiction Meets AI with Lori Gold

Author Lori Gold is pulling back the curtain on publishing, in both this interview and her newest novel, Romantic Friction. 

INSIDE THE EPISODE

• Yet another reason bestseller lists aren’t what you think (I didn't know this until I read her book!)
• A great tip for handing reviews without spiraling (or swearing off Goodreads forever)
• What AI is doing to authors' voices, and why it should concern all of us
• How writing happens even when you're not writing
• How Lori studies the bones of books she loves to make her own writing even stronger

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Chapters

• 1:18 Welcome and Book Introduction
• 8:19 From Goldstein to Gold: Author Rebranding
• 15:42 Parentheses and Breaking the Fourth Wall
• 24:12 Handling Reviews as a Published Author
• 32:58 The Writing Process and Thinking Time
• 37:50 AI and Author Authenticity Debate
• 45:34 Behind the Scenes of Publishing Success

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:42

Hi everybody and welcome back. I told Lori that this is my first time back on this platform in quite some time, so we may have some hiccups, I don't know. We're just going to go with it. But I'm delighted to be here today with Lori Gold, whose author, romantic Friction came out in May yes, may 6th. Okay, so you saw my. Did you see my story this morning? I did, thank you, I'm in love, so I have a lot of.

Speaker 1: 1:11

You know, we don't typically talk about the book itself, because I love to ask questions. People can read the book and they should read the book. I think I'm at the point where I'm not giving anything away. They're at the.

Speaker 1: 1:23

Sophie and her three or four sort of author friends are at this panel event, and Hartley West, who I heard read last night, is based on one of your good friends who said I've never been in one of your books and so you said you're going to be in it and you're going to be the villain, exactly. Wow, she's kind of like this villain that you feel kind of bad for, but now I'm at this point where I think I don't know if I want to feel bad, for I think she may be smarter than she's with her little cardigan, anyway. So they're at this event where Hartley has just stood up and dropped this enormous bombshell and no one's really sure how to handle it, and I love it because I can totally see it playing out. So if people want to read it and they should they can read it. But I like to talk about things that they can't get from reading the book. Your previous books you wrote under Lori Goldstein, right, all right, well, that's your given name.

Speaker 1: 2:25

Yes, okay my married name but, yes, your married name which, by the way, my maiden name is goldstone yeah, and you grew up on the south, south jersey, right, yeah, yeah and I grew up in delaware, so I spent many a summer at the Jersey Shore. But what? Why did you change it from Goldstein to gold when you wrote this one?

Speaker 2: 2:48

So really a couple of more business oriented decisions. My first four novels were young adult novels and they were under Laurie Goldstein. And then I wrote an adult historical called Love Theodosia, about the daughter of Aaron Burr whose name is Theodosia Burr, and in that one she was 19, true to the age of she was when the book is set in 1800. And we wanted to make sure it was distinguished as an adult book and not another young adult book, obviously because the age was younger, you know. We wanted to make that clear. So I added my middle name to that one and it's Laurie Ann Goldstein, which I should grab it because it's a lot of letters on the cover of a book. Laurie Ann Goldstein takes up a lot of room and so aesthetically when I looked at it I said that's just a lot of, it's a mouthful and it's a lot of letters and you want your name to get bigger and bigger on a book cover, not smaller and smaller.

Speaker 2: 3:37

So when I had a couple of years between that one and Romantic Friction coming out and Romantic Friction is book club fiction, it's kind of contemporary fiction and that's where I see my career going so I just talked about it with my agent. Should I go back to Laurie Goldstein, Because it's been a little bit since I did the young adult novels. This one shouldn't be thought of as a young adult novel. And then we said you know what? Let's just kind of do a rebrand, reboot, boot like you're going to be a book club fiction author. Let's make it distinct from what you've done before. So it was just a truncation of Goldstein. You know, all my social media is still Goldstein. My website is still Goldstein. Like I'm not changing any of that. But for the purposes of, you know, writing this book and promoting it, it's more gold.

Speaker 1: 4:15

It just made sense to do it that way. Yeah, no, I love it. You do something in this, so I'm glad to hear personally as a reader, I'm glad to hear that you, this is the genre you see yourself in. This is the thing I could feel. How much fun I'm assuming you had writing this while I'm reading it and you do something that I think is so fun. And I'm going to say what it is.

Speaker 1: 4:37

I think for a long time I thought this was like not allowed, and I've seen not many at all, but a few other women authors specifically do this, and I got excited because it almost, I feel like it gave me permission. You kind of broke this fourth wall thing where right, where some you're you're, and you do it with a lot of parentheses, which I also want to thank you for. I have a friend who I won't actually I will name him. It's my dear friend, drew Linsalata. So, drew, if you're watching or listening, I'm calling you out.

Speaker 1: 5:12

When Drew read my most recent book, he was one of my beta readers. It's not fiction, it's nonfiction. He was like you use so many parentheses, I think is that like an ADHD, like you're trying? He did. He's a therapist, so he went and did some research, okay, and he was like I think it's like a thing where you and I'm paraphrasing, I'm not going to quote him on this, but it's like the thoughts in your head you put in parentheses and I said, yeah, like doesn't that make sense? I want the reader to know this is sort of like an aside, but you, it's great.

Speaker 2: 5:52

Although I will. I appreciate you saying that because there was like a couple of early reviews on NetGalley that were like I don't like the parentheses, so I'm glad you like them.

Speaker 1: 6:01

Well, what do you do with those? While we're on that topic, like, when you get those early, does that make you? How do you handle those?

Speaker 2: 6:08

You know. So it's taken a while. This is my sixth published book and in the beginning reviews are so hard to take whether they're reader reviews or industry and you're so nervous and I've gotten to a place where I don't read that many reviews, but I do read some of the early ones, because I feel like the early ones are people who have sought it out, like on NetGalley. They're booksellers, they're librarians, they're really big bookstagrammers, they're people who love books and I feel like I can glean some things from them what they love and what they don't love.

Speaker 2: 6:37

And sometimes, you know, sometimes you see something you're like, oh, okay, that's not resonating, that I'm doing. Maybe I can think about that for the next one. But I have a cutoff point where I'm like, okay, I don't look anymore, because then it's out in the world and there's so many readers and I've gotten enough feedback that I'm like, okay, that worked and that didn't. And some of it I might agree with and some of it I might not. But I just feel like it's part of my education as a writer to expose myself to it to a certain degree and then kind of let it go, be its own thing.

Speaker 1: 7:04

Is that something that you feel like you've gotten more adept at as you've gone on as an author is kind of learning. Okay, what works for me, what works for Lori, when I'm reading reviews? Because when you're first getting started, I think which is the vast majority of my audience, not all of it, but it's like is this normal? Am I doing this? See the air quotes, right, right. And what I continue to feel more strongly is you're figuring out how you navigate it. What's changing the most for you?

Speaker 2: 7:38

You know, I think just kind of confidence and trusting myself, like in that example I just gave, just saying like I don't need to read them all, like I don't need to either put myself through that or I have enough and I can distance myself from those reviews. But it's that trust and confidence across the board. I teach writing as well. I teach creative writing and I lead some writing retreats and I work with a lot of students who are working on their first novel and I say exactly what you just said you are figuring out how to do this and you should get advice from other people, because what I do isn't the same as what you do and what someone else might do. Expose yourself to the different ways to write, the different ways to approach all aspects of writing, and then you have to try them out. It's the only way to know what works for you and what doesn't, because you just don't know. And students will ask me that like how do I make a decision, say plot wise, that this is the right direction? And I say I think about it, I brainstorm all of the possible solutions or possible ways the story could go and I pick the one that feels right. And they say but how do you know it's right? And I said I don't. But that's the decision I've made and I trust myself, based on the other novels that I've written, that I know what I'm doing enough that I can kind of follow where my instincts go.

Speaker 2: 9:41

But I've had six published books and I think and a seventh will come out next year from HarperCollins, and I have four others that I've written that haven't sold. So that's 12 novels. That's a lot of experience to say like now I can trust myself with the decisions I make surrounding my writing. But it's 12 novels to kind of do that. And you know it's hard as new writers to feel like I've finished this one and then write another and then figure some things out. But that's the only way it really is. The only way is to keep writing and developing that confidence that you need as a writer.

Speaker 1: 10:13

With the four that didn't sell? Were they successive, like one after the other, or were they interspersed amidst the six Interspersed?

Speaker 2: 10:24

Okay, a couple on early on, and then a couple actually two in the middle of two of my first two, then the next two didn't sell, and then I had two that sold and then another that hasn't sold, so kind of like sporadically in there.

Speaker 1: 10:38

So how do you feel? I was talking last week with Jane Hamilton from the Book of Ruth and she, I want to say, admitted, but it's not like it was a big secret. I was just so. I'm so grateful when people are willing to say, look, I've had these things have gone nowhere. I mean I, elizabeth, have 2000 copies of my third book under my steps, like I would not have thought that would have happened after the first two did as well as they did, which is also subjective, but because everything that I've done so far is self-published. When I talked to Jane, she said I have so many drafts in boxes that never saw the light of day. And a question I had for her that I want to ask you as well is how do you decide when to say this is like I'm going to put this to bed, like I'm not, we're going to move?

Speaker 2: 11:26

on now.

Speaker 2: 11:27

Well, I think like the most practical answer because I have an agent. I'm not self-publishing, I have an agent so I tried to. We tried to sell them. She tried to sell them on my behalf and couldn't. So you run out of editors at some point. What houses do I want to be with? Have we kind of gone through the people I feel like would be a good mix for this? You kind of run out at some point with the places you want to be, and so you know I wouldn't turn to self-publishing. Those Two of them were young adult books.

Speaker 2: 11:53

Young adult is not a great market for self-publishing, you know. It's just it's not where that age group finds their books. So it wasn't really an option to do that with those. And one of them that didn't sell is a middle grade, so kind of the same area is not really one that lends itself to self-publishing. So if I had a adult book that didn't sell, would I consider it. I don't know, I'd have to see, like where I was in the landscape, what other ideas I had. But I guess you know the practical answer is if you run out of places to go to for an editor, you put it aside. But you know. That's not to say that I there's one of them, I think about that. I feel like, with some tweaking, could become an adult novel and some of the same concepts would be there, kind of the same foundation of the plot. But there are things I would do that I could now see doing it as an adult book and it's on my list to do so.

Speaker 2: 12:37

You know, is something always dead? When do you know it's dead? I guess if you're trying to push the same book without any significant changes and you're just forcing it and the market isn't receptive to it, you have to let it go. But if you, years later this is many years later I'm thinking about this book that I was like well, I feel like I can approach it in a new way Then I think it's worth giving a try.

Speaker 2: 12:59

I mean, it's already your material, you've already put in the time. You know there's a fine line between like, just like it's time to move on to something else and don't keep hanging on. But I think if you have that creative spark and you can see a significant way to kind of retool it and perhaps there is a market for it now because, frankly, things change, you know, like all of a sudden, vampire books are big again. Well, what? What if somebody didn't buy it five years ago? But maybe they would now like yeah. But I would always say to writers if they have books in those categories that have been put aside and they're rethinking, you know doing something else with it. Take a pass or two, or 10 through it, because you become a better writer as years go on.

Speaker 2: 13:38

It's not like you want to take that exact same book that you wrote five years ago and just throw it out and try to sell it again. Go through it, make it better, use all the skills you've learned as a writer, and then you know, see if we see what can happen with it.

Speaker 1: 13:50

So I think, if I wanted to start a controversy as as insane as the one that Hartley and Sophie are about to be embroiled in, I think, in the next chapter of Romantic Friction, I would ask a large room full of people, which is the best approach? A large room full of people, which is the best approach, traditional or self, or somewhere in between, a hybrid? Yeah, it's a dangerous, dangerous question and I'm completely agnostic as a, as an author, as a book coach, as in everything. I'm completely. It's whatever works for you. For you, what I'm hearing is that you prefer the traditional approach whenever possible. And so what is it about that? That you that pulls you in that direction each time?

Speaker 2: 14:34

So right now I feel like the self-published market is so competitive and you have to know so much about how to do it and do it well. That's not to say that I, as a I market myself for my books right now. Yes, the Harper Collins does some, but it still falls on most of us authors, whether we're traditionally published or self-published, to do a lot of that behind the scenes of marketing your book and getting it out there yourself. But there's even a stronger degree that I think you have to know and understand the marketplace for self-publishing and I think a lot of people say I'm just going to dive into it without doing that homework and really educating yourself on it, and they don't wind up having success in it because you have to understand how to do it. You have to understand what genres work well. You have to know how do I release books, how quickly do I release them in succession, how do I price them.

Speaker 2: 15:21

There's so much of an education around self-publishing and because I've come from the traditional publishing world, I feel confident in what I know and the other is so much that I'd have to learn. I'm open to it at some point, but at this point, while I'm still in the traditional publishing world. I'm taking advantage of the things I've learned so far before I shift gears and I think for the right book, I could very easily see doing it. But it has to be the right book and the right genre and all of that. And it's a multifaceted decision. It's not just like, oh, self-published or traditionally published. You have to understand the behind the scenes of both of them to figure out what's best and what's best for this particular book.

Speaker 1: 15:58

And I love that you said that what's best for this particular book, because we're seeing more and more hybrid authors, which is different from a hybrid publisher, where the author is published in different modalities and via different publishing models. Okay, switching gears a little bit, you did something and I'm curious if you did this on purpose. And if you did, it's brilliant, and if you didn't, it's brilliant. So when I saw the cover for Romantic Friction, I thought this looks a lot like romantic fiction by Romantic comedy. Thank you, I knew I was getting that right. I knew it. I've Curtis Sittenfeld, which I had just read a few months ago and devoured it and loved it. And so then I thought to myself okay, given the plot of romantic friction and I wonder if that was intentional, in the same way that Seth Godin's book, the, I wrote it down, so I wouldn't. This is marketing. His book is titled this is Marketing. Like, really, the cover took on the subtle art of not giving a fuck by Mark Manson.

Speaker 2: 17:07

Was that in your head? It wasn't an intentional, I mean it was. We knew about it, right. So they came up with the cover. This was there are two versions. We knew it was going to be blocky text. We wanted to, you know, make it be, you know, not an image or anything, as as romantic comedy is as well. That was one of the comps we looked at. There's another book called. I Hope this Finds you Well.

Speaker 2: 17:29

Those were the things we were playing with and when they came up with the two different blocky covers blocky text covers sorry, I should say everybody kind of preferred this one. I was fine with either. So you kind of go with what the team likes. So they liked this version of the cover.

Speaker 2: 17:41

We had a list of like 50 titles, because this wasn't the original title. This is the one they chose. And so when they first gave the first cover, it was these colors the pink and the yellow. And they said what do you think? And I said I really like it. And they said well, we really like it too, but it looks so much like romantic comedy. So I think we want to do something else. And I said fine, you know whatever you want. I understand.

Speaker 2: 18:02

You know it's a few years in between. You know it's not the worst thing to lean into it, as you're saying, but we also don't want to feel like we're copying it, right? So we went through about three and a half months of every color combination you could think of. At one point it was like red, blue and yellow, and I was like now it's Superman, where are we going with this? And so eventually, of course, after all these months, the team comes back and says you know what? I think we're going to go with the original colors. So we wound back to the pink. I think it's so great.

Speaker 1: 18:31

And I just want to be so clear, like I think it's so great and, given the topic of the book how it's an author who was intentionally but not intentionally but I haven't gotten far enough yet to really know put the bow on how intentional it was it makes sense, like from a marketing angle, I loved it. And the other thing you did I want to ask you about so often in fiction, chapters are numbers they don't have, they're not words, and yours are words. And so this crazy thing happened. When I read chapter one which is titled about the author. Am I the only one? I feel like you know exactly what I'm going to say. So I was like, okay, I'm going to learn about Lori. So I'm reading through and I'm reading and I'm like, damn, this is a really long about the author section. This is really long. And then I started highlighting things for this, for our conversation Cause.

Speaker 1: 19:28

I was thinking man, Lori and I are so the same. I mean, I can even pull them up Like she likes this and she doesn't like this, and the more the further along I went. I thought, wait, this isn't this. First of all, why would it be at the beginning? I mean, I'm not we can all do different things with our books but like, why would she put this at the beginning? And then I came to understand what was going on, which was that's just the title of the chapter. Yeah, replicating the narrative arc of a book by, not not in full Right, but like the only chapter title you didn't have that was on my mind, was pet the dog, whatever, but you have something about like wagging the tail or something so like at what point did that brilliance strike?

Speaker 2: 20:25

That wasn't original. Well, I love chapter titles. I've done it in previous books.

Speaker 1: 20:29

Really Okay.

Speaker 2: 20:31

So I particularly I gravitate towards that. I like that. This book is supposed to be a funny book. It's a satire and I really wanted to lean into it. So we were actually in revision maybe the second revision with my editor and I said I'm putting in chapter titles. What do you think of that?

Speaker 1: 20:47

And my editor said I love it.

Speaker 2: 20:48

I love chapter titles, so I went through and I did it and it was because it's so much about writing, it's about being a romance author and so leaning into either there, you know, there's a chapter at the end called surprising but inevitable like you know all of these kind of like tropes about writing and it's final climax yeah, yeah, what an opportunity to kind of just like be even a little bit more meta with the book, and so that's where they came from, but I love them and I'm hearing that people love them.

Speaker 1: 22:33

I felt like it was really unique and really well done. When I'm editing sometimes and I'm working with nonfiction, it's air quote easy. It's not easy to come up with the best title for a chapter, but it's easier because it's like what's the chapter about? When I'm working with authors who have written fiction or even memoir and they want to come up, they have chapter titles. That's actually where I feel like we get off course, cause they want the chapter to be about what the chapter title is, but then you read the chapter and you're like wait, this doesn't match up. So I often encourage, especially first-time authors, to use numbers, not words. But I'm I. When P. If people are watching this and they're like why does Liz look so incredibly distracted? It's because I'm pulling up the book because which means I did mine after I wrote it.

Speaker 2: 23:26

It wasn't the as you said, it wasn't like the chapter title didn't lead the chapter. It was like this was the chapter and then I had to come up with a phrase that summarized the chapter versus the other way around. So I made sure that they matched and that might be a good way to do. It is like write it without it and then come in and find the clever or interesting, you know kind of words to summarize what the chapter is about.

Speaker 1: 23:59

Well, and one thing, as I've said, people are so sick of me saying this, but I'm working on my first novel. I don't know what makes me think I could do this, but I'm using chapter titles, not because I think they'll stay, but because they help remind me of what the hell is happening in this chapter. Sure, like. This is the chapter where it's like the friends episodes. This is the one where these are the. This is the chapter where this happens.

Speaker 2: 24:24

Right.

Speaker 1: 24:25

Okay, can I. Do you have anything else to say about that, or can I?

Speaker 2: 24:28

No, no, go for it.

Speaker 1: 24:30

Okay, I always feel bad if someone's like I hit that point. You can always interrupt me, lori. So this in the chapter titled A Crime of Passion, can I read a line? Is that OK? Sure, yeah. So you have this kind of like a little paragraph, but three hours and one time change. Later I've abandoned. Pick me my animal shelter, meet cute, where a funny, loving man boy stand up comedian and a disciplined Boston ballet dancer clash over the Labrador poodle, german shepherd mutt. They both want to adopt and return to my safe space. So this for context. I think you're on a plane and it's like this is where you kind of spend your time, or this is where the character spends her time, cause she's an author dreaming up her next, and then she moves on to something completely different which is like otherworldly and whatever. Is that how you do?

Speaker 2: 25:19

it. I think you know. So.

Speaker 2: 25:20

I had a friend very early on in the writing world who said one of her quotes when people gave advice. When people asked her for advice for writing, she said she writes while standing up and she types while sitting down. And I loved it because I think writers, especially newer writers, don't give as much, don't pay as much attention, don't see how valid it is to just think. You have to think Half of writing is being in your head, thinking about what you want to do, letting your mind go everywhere, that a story could go, everywhere that a character could go, and that time that you put in before you start writing anything down, before you start writing typing. Certainly typing scenes is so important and we don't give enough credit to how important that is as part of writing.

Speaker 2: 26:05

And so I'll do it. You know I'll. Sometimes I'll just sit at my desk and do it, but you know I'll go for walks or if I'm on a plane or a train ride, like that is my time to just be in my head, to be thinking about. This is a story I want to be working on. Or I'll say this is where I just left off writing the last scene for what I'm working on right now. What am I doing? The next couple scenes, and I just think without kind of that computer in front of me so just letting me and that's part of writing.

Speaker 1: 26:31

Yeah, I don't think people see that, as a lot of times, especially first-time authors, think I'm only writing when my butt's in the chair and I'm typing and I think, I think, like I don't know what percentage it would be, but it's definitely more than 50% of the writing is done when you're not actually writing, right?

Speaker 2: 26:51

Exactly, yeah, yeah, and you know, I think like that is one of the things I really just try to drill into my students as much as possible Like think before you act, like think before you write it down. Also, because I think people, once you spend the time and you've written it and it's in word form and you're maybe wordsmithing it and you're trying to get the words to be the way you want them, you're more reluctant to make changes. Once it's actually in a word file or a scrivener, there's something about it being there that you're like well, it has to be there because I wrote it and it's hard to cut and it's hard to change and it's hard to kind of scrap things.

Speaker 2: 27:24

So do some of that like revision in your head before you actually start writing.

Speaker 1: 27:29

That's a really good point, because one thing that I hear, and you probably do too, is but that's 10,000 words. You is, but I, that's 10,000 words. You're telling me I have to cut that and being able to see that as a win, like removing is adding, it's kind of this weird trick we have to play on ourselves. That, you know, is um what? Just out of curiosity, where do you write in in what software?

Speaker 2: 27:53

I just make stuff word. I'm, you know, don't do anything else fancy. I do all of this pre-thinking in a notebook, so I always do it by hand. I have a notebook yeah, I have a notebook here that I'm using for revising but I just pick something and I just kind of start randomly writing things about you know, my characters and about the book. I always start with a notebook. I have a notebook for every book I've written and that's where I do most of my character development, most of my plotting, and I just write like what if? Questions, what if they did this?

Speaker 1: 28:29

It's like the best way into a story, so that's always how I start. Yes, that has become something that I'm so fond of doing is asking the what if? And it's I'm like well, what if? She because I don't know why, lori, and tell me what it does for you, it makes me feel like it's just a well, what if? Okay, you know what it reminds me of? I'm a big doomsday person. So if I go to the grocery store, it's like well, what if they don't have a Haagen-Dazs on sale? Well, what if there's no parking and it's 125 degrees out, what if? And so someone many years ago I don't remember who I should, cause I should give this person a lot of credit taught me to say what if Haagen-Dazs is only 50 cents? What if there's no one in the parking lot? What?

Speaker 1: 29:13

if, switching the what if to something good, flipping it to more positive, like yes yes, and so I thought I do that with the writing because it doesn't make me. It makes me feel like I'm being curious, not like a perfectionist, which I can be.

Speaker 2: 29:31

Yeah, yeah. And I think part of that what if that I do, and I also encourage especially new writers to do is think of a book, movie, tv show you know well and you really like and you admire, because sometimes I'll say, okay, where do I start with these characters? You need a starting place. So I'll go to Game of Thrones, which is one of my favorite television shows, and books and I'll say, like I diverge, I just can't, I can't.

Speaker 1: 29:56

I feel like I've got to get into it, but continue.

Speaker 2: 30:00

So well, I think it has tremendous character arcs. Like the where they start and the growth that they have is some of the best character arcs that I've seen in entertainment. I truly do believe that the way these characters change is something that writers can really really learn from.

Speaker 1: 30:15

All right. So I think it's very important for that to me.

Speaker 2: 30:18

But I'll say, okay, so this character is a Jon Snow type. What does that mean? He's like a savior, he wants to like he cares about other people, puts other people before himself, will make the hard decisions in order for other people, versus somebody who's like you know, I only care about me and myself and my ambition. And so, you know, I pull from these characters from these other existing shows where I know the archetypes really well, and say, okay, this person is going to start out as a Jon Snow-ish character, but of course they're going to change and they're going to evolve. But it's like a starting point. It's somewhere in this whole world where you could pick character traits out of anything. You have a million things to choose from. How do I narrow it down?

Speaker 2: 30:55

So I often will start with those what if? What if they have this kind of trait from this character? What if they have this kind of trait from that character? And it's like the merging of it all and kind of going over and over and again and you finally come up with your own unique character. But it's at least a starting place, right? And that's what I think is super helpful about those what if? Questions. So what if they had this kind of backstory, like this character, but different. What if I merged this kind of backstory? What if I merged this piece that's from my own backstory? And all of a sudden you're asking many more, because some people say I don't even know the what if? Questions to ask. So I try to give them examples of how do you pull them. Where are you pulling it from? Pulling it from something you know from your personal life another show, another book and just then start riffing on it?

Speaker 1: 31:36

Okay. So, following that thread, the premise, which is not giving anything away of romantic friction, is that this new author, hartley West, has essentially and this is a massive topic in the space right now essentially used AI to write her book based on. So, for anybody who's used ChatGPT or any other AI, we know that you can say write this in the voice of so-and-so Do you ever use or how do you feel about, what's your opinion? There's no right or wrong answer here. Using AI to help you with those what-if questions, to help drive your curiosity, certainly not to write anything but or to write something Like what's your feeling on that?

Speaker 2: 32:18

write anything but, or to write something like what's your feeling on that? So I, you know the the write something is easier question because, you know, I don't know how many people know the depth of it, but these AI, large language models, are only able to write in the style of. You know, hartley West is writing in the style of Sophie Wilde, who's a bestselling romanticist author.

Speaker 2: 32:32

So you're she's only able to do that in these programs because these programs used existing real books without permission, without compensation Whether it's copyright infringement is currently in the basis of many lawsuits that are going on right now. But the bottom line is they're only able to even approach writing the way a human can because they're basing it off of all of us humans. My books have all been part of the ones that were trained to that AI was trained upon. My books have all been part of the ones that were trained to that AI was trained upon. So it's just hard to like advocate for anybody using it when you feel like if I didn't do all the work I put in and all these thousands and thousands of other authors put in, you couldn't write this, yeah.

Speaker 2: 33:09

So I think many people don't understand that that's kind of what, why, what's going on behind the scenes and why a lot of creative people are upset about it. On top of the idea of like no one wants to lose their job, right, like no one wants to be replaced, you know whether you're working at a factory or you're doing creative work, but when you get to the creative work and people using it just to write. It's hard for me to kind of feel like that's quote, unquote, okay, at least right now. You know it's not what our industry is doing, it's not what readers seem to want yet. But, as I always say when I talk about this, it will be the marketplace that will eventually decide if that's quote, unquote, okay or not, twists or what if questions or those kinds of things.

Speaker 2: 33:58

It's tricky because you still want the core of what you're doing to come from human intention, but say you don't have a critique partner, you can't afford to take a class Like does it serve some purpose? I don't know how I feel about it yet. I'm still kind of on the fence to be on. To be completely honest, my gut, my knee jerk reaction is say don't use it for anything. I'm trying to be a little bit practical for the people who don't have access to, you know, a critique partner or a writer or someone that they they can brainstorm with. I just still worry that it's going to, you know, is all of our work going to become one amalgamation of the same thing?

Speaker 2: 34:31

You know, and I know people already say like there's only seven stories in the world or whatever. But you know, do you lose? If you rely on it too much and it replaces your own sense of originality, are you getting the best product you as an individual could create? And if you rely on it too much, if does it become a slippery slope? And so you know, that's kind of my most honest answer right now.

Speaker 1: 34:53

And I I support it. You know, what I'm about to say is kind of like a thought that's developing as I'm saying it. So I'm going to have to ask for forgiveness later if I totally botch this. But there are two thoughts that I have. One is that we often suggest certainly people who have been writing a long time will often say that one of their they read that's like getting their MFA to a degree. I mean, I'm, that's loose. You know, they read constantly to get new ideas about how to do things. And they read their favorite authors and not to copy or even mimic them, but to get ideas and to understand. Not to get ideas to understand things like character arc and such. And perhaps one of the differences is that those people are out buying those books in order to do that. So the author is being compensated. The publishing house, if there is one, is being compensated.

Speaker 1: 35:46

One thing that I have discovered because I have, admittedly not for my books, but for social media content to get ideas for things. I've used it because my brain is just exhausted and then I make everything, to the best of my ability, sound like me. I rewrite everything. There are certain words and phrases I would never use. What's interesting is that, as an editor now, I more than once have had a manuscript come to me that I have very kindly said to the author send this back to me when you didn't just write it with AI, because I can tell Interesting the more we can see, you know, like tells, lines or ways. Series of three. Everything's a series of three. The em dash is everywhere. You know those are markers of AI generated content and the more you use AI and I've noticed this even in coming up with ideas for social media content the more it spits back the same exact stuff Because, to your point, which is accurate, it's only using what's available to it, what it's been trained on.

Speaker 2: 37:00

Yeah, yeah, and I think you know and I think why do you want to be a writer as well? I think that's part of it. Do you want to be a writer? Because you want your unique take on this type of story, this type of character. You know you want your own thoughts out there, and so if you're using AI for it, it's no longer your thoughts, it's like emerging of lots of other people's thoughts. So, you know, to me it gets to the core of like, why bother writing a book? You know, what are you hoping to achieve? What's your goal? What's what's fueling you to do this? Um, and and those are just individual questions that for you know all of us to be asking Which- is a whole separate conversation, right Like it's and it's different.

Speaker 1: 37:35

I think I'm what I'm learning and I have I have been learning and noticing is that it's very different in the fiction space versus the nonfiction space. Sure, yeah, which again, maybe we'll do another one on on that, because you help authors write, like we'll dive deeper into that. So two more questions. The first one is one thing I was thinking as I was reading up to where I am now and I'm wondering if you realize this or now realize it is that this book is actually a great read. Well, for all the obvious reasons, but also because if you're new to the author space and you want to see how it it's not all this caddy, of course I've met some incredible people who have become my friends and I find that it's a very supportive community and like it's kind of an education this book in what this is like, from the definitions of plotting and pantsing, I was like she nailed it.

Speaker 1: 38:33

That's it for me. All the way to how people, how the agents and the editors and everybody handles like, oh my God, we have a media crisis. This is not good. Did you realize that when you were writing it?

Speaker 2: 38:49

Yeah, that was part of the inspiration.

Speaker 1: 38:51

Really.

Speaker 2: 38:52

The book is about a bestselling author who discovers another author has used AI to write in her style and she bands together with her fellow authors, as you said, to take her down any way they can, which will include committing a felony. So if I'm going to, you haven't gotten there yet. So if I'm going to show the effect of AI on the job of being an author on the world of publishing, you have to understand what that is, because there's no way to kind of tell that story of how an AI author would change things and upend things and the risks to an author without understanding how publishing works. My inspiration for this was twofold. I've been writing fiction for 10 years. My first book came out in 2015.

Speaker 2: 39:36

I know a lot about how the publishing world works and all of this stuff that you know is rolling around in my head of things like well, how does something become a New York Times bestseller One? Yeah, you have a well-written book, sure, but there's a lot of marketing stuff that's behind the scenes. Publishers pick books that they're going to support and they're going to put ad dollars behind and they're going to push to get reviews and it's going to be in the billboard in Times Square. We all don't get that. Those are the things that are basically, as I say, in the book, preordained upon acquisition. You know where you're slotted.

Speaker 2: 40:01

Most authors don't understand that. They don't realize that, and there's a lot of disappointment that comes when you have all of these hopes and all of these dreams and you're very upended by not understanding that there really was nothing you could have done and you feel like it's your fault if your book doesn't do well and you don't understand that there's this machine that's either behind you or not really behind you and there's very little you can do as an individual author to match what a publisher could do when they decide these are the books that are going to be successful, and I talk to my students about this. I'm a transparent person. I'm a transparent instructor. I think knowledge is power and the more you know, then you know the areas where you can ask for things and where you have an expectation that this could happen, and the more you understand how it works, the more you can figure out how do I have a successful career? So part of me was absolutely this could have been a nonfiction book about. This is what goes on behind the scenes of publishing.

Speaker 2: 40:54

But, I wanted to tackle it in this way that if you love books and you kind of love these behind the scenes inside baseball kind of stuff, you're going to get such a kick out of it. Everything is true. There's not a made up anecdote in it. It either happened to me or somebody I know. But once I figured out the AI part of the premise, it made the rest of it work, because if it was just an inside publishing book without that, then what is it? Is it gossip, is it complaining, you know? And so I wanted, I needed a premise that would allow for that to make sense together, and that's the AI component gave me that, so I was able to merge these two things and come up with the premise for the story.

Speaker 1: 41:31

Well, you know what I learned, but it was purposeful going in. And I love it. You know what I learned? That I didn't know about traditional publishing, Because you know, but I didn't even know this from my friends who are traditionally published and they probably know it's just never come up in conversation. You can't hit the New York Times bestseller list if enough books haven't been printed.

Speaker 2: 41:56

Like you have. There's this line in the book.

Speaker 1: 41:57

even if Oprah and Ellen and all these other people Taylor Swift, yes talk about it and everyone goes and buy it, you still can't hit the list because not enough books were printed to be able to sell in that week to hit.

Speaker 2: 42:09

I never. It makes perfect sense. I think many people don't know that. I think that was something I found out along the way, and most people don't even know that. They think like if I do well enough, it'll hit the New York Times bestseller list, for probably none.

Speaker 1: 42:21

So is that why pre-orders? Is that another reason why pre-orders are so big? Because they help drive the run. They can be helpful, but it can be so huge to make that bump.

Speaker 2: 42:29

But yes, pre-orders are helpful in that way because if the publisher sees you know, so it takes, you know, usually a minimum of 10,000 books sold in a single week to hit the New York Times bestseller list, a part of the list, depending on lots of factors. But if you got pre-orders for 2,000 and the book has yet to go through its printing yet they know okay, well, we've got 2,000 pre-orders, we better print enough and it's a sign that maybe with some support it could get somewhere.

Speaker 2: 42:56

But, if you have 10 pre-orders, it's not going to change their print run, but yes, that is why pre-orders can be helpful, because it makes the publisher literally just print more copies of the book to put out in the world.

Speaker 1: 43:06

I really love learning. When I'm just reading for fun, I really love learning. So last question I always ask is what are you reading now or what have you read recently that you really love?

Speaker 2: 43:19

So I just finished Onyx Storm, the third in the Rebecca Yarns series. Okay, I really try to read widely. I try to read in my genre, outside my genre. I try to keep up on what's popular and what's doing really well because I feel like I learned from that and I learned what marketing people are looking for, why they got behind this book versus another book. So I really try to read both bigger books and smaller books. My next book I'm saving for vacation the Taylor Jenkins read Atmospheres because I love her but, I'm saving it because I don't want to like.

Speaker 2: 43:53

I want to read it in like a two-day burst. I don't want to like read it three minutes at night as I'm falling asleep, so uh, but that's, it, just came out right came out, yeah, like a week ago or so, like a week ago or something.

Speaker 2: 44:04

Okay, yeah, that one's being really talked about yeah, but I love her, you know, and I think, like finding the authors you love, that you want to read, like, like exactly you said, if, like you read, I read and I die. I read it for fun and then I'll read it again to dissect it. But I love her stuff and Leon Moriarty and like that's, those are my kind of go-to of like what do I want to write, like in this book club fiction space, and I'll read and reread those books and say like, okay, what are her plot points, what did she do to support them, what are the character arcs? And I'll go through and I'll, you know, write notes in the margins because I think that you I feel like you're people are so worried about copying, you're never going to copy it, Like it's just, it's not going to, it's not copying, it's learning, it's like a textbook.

Speaker 1: 44:50

You're using. I love that. You're what I call. My friend, julie Granger, posted something with all these notes written in the margin of a book and she's like, are you also a book desecrator? And I'm like, oh my God, this is a thing now we're a book desecrator, because I am absolutely a book desecrator, so I love that you are too. I think it's fun when you buy used books and the person who had it before you can see all their notes in the margin. But that's fun that you go back and so you read it for fun and then you go back and you make it a study, right, exactly. What a great idea.

Speaker 2: 45:16

Yeah, no, it is great because and people, you know whether you're a new writer and you don't believe me when I teach it. I say like go to the book you're reading right now, put a sticky at what's 25%, 50%, 75%, guarantee. Within a couple of pages of that marker like plot points have happened and people like think I'm crazy when I say at 10% of the books, this should happen, and they think I'm nuts. And then they go back and do it with every book they're reading and they see it and they're like, okay, you're right. I was like yes, books are written to a formula. It's not a bad thing.

Speaker 1: 45:44

You just need to learn the formula. Isn't that helpful? Yep, exactly. Well, thank you so so much for joining in. I can't wait to finish this thing. I will put all of your links in the episode notes, and let's do another one sometime.

Speaker 2: 45:59

Absolutely Thanks for having me. This is fantastic.