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The Write It Scared Podcast
A podcast to help fiction writers work through self-doubt and learn the craft of writing a novel.
The Write It Scared Podcast
The Magic of Writing Cozy Mysteries with Iris Applewood
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Don’t believe you’re cut out to be a writer? Think again.
Cozy mystery author Iris Applewood talks about how personal challenges and a whole lot of curiosity shaped her path to writing cozy mysteries and what she’s learned about the genre.
We explore the creation of her magical town, Serenity Falls, how community is a character, and discuss what to do when your “whodunit” isn’t so clear.
It’s a grounded, encouraging conversation about following your heart and finding joy in the mystery of creating novels.
Timestamps:
01:23 Meet Iris Applewood
02:44 Draft It Scared announcement
04:13 Iris’s writing journey
13:04 Writing process + challenges
17:57 Community as a character
19:36 Storytelling challenges
19:56 Internal narratives
20:34 First manuscript struggles
24:56 Plotting vs. pantsing
26:55 Building a routine
27:47 Turning real-life into a story
31:05 Creative vulnerability
To connect with Iris and read her books, please visit her website: https://irisapplewood.com/
Have a comment or idea about the show? Send me a direct text! Love to hear from you.
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Email: Stacy@writeitscared.co
https://www.writeitscared.co/wis
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Done is better than perfect. We learn through our mistakes. We learn through pushing ourselves past what we're capable of doing. Like you can't find your limit unless you surpass it, unless you exceed it, and then back up. And so growth comes from messing up.
SPEAKER_00Welcome to the Write It Scared podcast. I'm your host, Stacey Fraser, a formerly repressed creative soul, turned fiction writer, story editor, and author accelerator certified fiction book coach. At Write It Scared, we tell the truth about why writing a novel is so hard by acknowledging that most writers grapple with two stories. The one they want to put on the page to the best of their ability, and the often subconscious internal story that prevents them from doing it. This show is designed to help you identify and rewrite the internal narrative holding you back while you discover and write the story you want to tell and learn all the tools to help you do that successfully. Join me each week for a new episode where we'll talk about writing to deepen our understanding of the craft and of ourselves as writers. Writing a novel is an inside job that we do not do alone. Welcome to Red It's Scared. I'm glad you're here. Let's dive in. Hey writer, welcome back to the Red It Scared Podcast. I'm your host, Stacey Fraser. Today we're talking about a very special place: Serenity Falls, where small town charm, a hint of magic, and a lot of mystery collide. My next guest is author Iris Applewood, who is a former research analyst, turned perfumery owner, turned cozy mystery author. Iris shares how she never really saw herself as a real writer, but a spiritual autobiography class cracked something open for her, and now she has two books out in the world. Today we're digging into how a writer can use real life to seed their fiction, as she did with her perfume shop, which is complete with a so-called murder basement. And how that inspired her setting for Serenity Falls. Plus, we talk about the craft of the cozy mystery, how community is a character, how to use intrigue over ick in these stories, and how to plot with an analytical backbone as well as what to do when you haven't nailed down the culprit by the second or maybe even third draft in these type of Who Done It stories. So if you've ever thought about shifting gears and doing something different, ever wondered if you're allowed to follow a story that delights you, or if your real life can be used to fuel your fiction, I think you will like this conversation. I'm going to give you Iris' bio in just a moment, but before I do, I want to drop in a quick reminder that enrollment for Draft It Scared, my small group book coaching program for novelists who are in the story development and drafting stages, is now open and spots are filling up. Draft It Scared is designed to help you move from overwhelm and second guessing to real consistent progress on your book. You'll get weekly accountability, editorial feedback, a structured learning environment, private and group coaching, as well as the kind of story development support that actually keeps you writing, plus a community of writers who get it and who will support you. We have a lot of fun and we get a lot done. Sessions are going to start in mid-January, so if you are interested, just head over to write itscared.co forward slash draft it scared to learn more and apply. Okay, here's Iris' bio. Iris Applewood is your friendly neighborhood cozy romance and mystery author, cooking up worlds of wonder from her quaint home in southern Indiana. She has always believed that the boundaries between the mundane and the magical are just waiting to be blurred. In her spare time, you'll find her tinkering in the kitchen where she channels her creativity into cooking delightful dishes and creating perfumes that could almost pass for potions. Iris has two novels in her Serenity Falls series out in the world. The first is Keepers of Lost Love, and the second, which was published in July of 2025, is a fragrance of forgotten truths. Hi, Iris. Thank you so much for coming on the Write It Scared podcast. I'm so happy to have you here and talk about your lovely books and talk about writing about cozy mystery and all the things. Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here. Why don't you share a bit about your journey to becoming a writer and published author with our listeners? Because it sounds like it was kind of a circuitous route.
SPEAKER_01It was very circuit circuitous. Whatever. What are words? It's fine. You know, I did write fiction as a kid, you know, I just for fun. And it never occurred to me that writers were real people. And so I never thought that I could become a writer. I thought of writers as something similar to, you know, like leprechauns. I considered them unicorns. Yeah, I totally get where you're coming from. So, you know, I have multiple careers before this, but what really got me back into writing was when I was getting my certification for spiritual direction. And I took this class over COVID on spiritual autobiographies. And I and it's not fiction, right? You're writing your own story, but I you write it kind of like fiction. And that sort of reminded me that I do enjoy that aspect of writing. At the time, I wrote a lot, but it was technical, scientific stuff. I was a research analyst, and this was very different. So when COVID was over, I started joining some groups, some writers' groups. I had an idea for a story that came to me in a dream. It was inspired by when the Japanese Demon Stone cracked. And that story is still unpublished. It's a YA fantasy that I spent two years working on before putting it aside and writing the cozy romance, my first novel, Keeper of Lost Loves, as a palette cleanser because I was starting to get really frustrated with my first manuscript.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's completely understandable. I do the same. I write like dark, icky thrillers, and then I have romance on the side because I unbalanced. All right. So you put the YA manuscript aside, and then you were writing the cozy romance with a side of mystery. Yes. How did that go?
SPEAKER_01It went well, it went smoothly. I was able to start and finish the book and revise and edit it. And I took a class from Sarah Cannon on self-publishing to help me through that process, which was very useful. And I managed to get it out and publish. It was really exciting. The only hard part in that book was, you know, there's two kissing scenes. And I had I I felt a little awkward writing them, though. So that was it was fun and different. Like even in the cozy, you know, like it's not gonna get real spicy, but it was like my first kiss as a writer.
SPEAKER_00Oh, yeah. Yeah, I can totally see that. So, what did you do to kind of work your way through that? Did you just head down and do it?
SPEAKER_01Or yeah, kind of just and I I did I pulled a lot from thinking about, you know, first kisses and stuff because this was the protagonist's first kiss with her love interest, and so you know, getting trying to get back and remember what that was like.
SPEAKER_00So you've always dabbled in writing, but it kind of took a catalyst to make you see that it was something you really wanted to explore. Yes. Yeah, absolutely. I think that happens for a lot of us. Like there's some little trigger that goes, hmm. You know, I think that this is a worthwhile pursuit just because I want it. Not because anybody else is holding judgment, but because I want it. So and so spiritual autobiography, that sounds like what it was for you.
SPEAKER_01That yes, absolutely. That was the catalyst that got me thinking about writing again. And so when I got the idea for the story, because I would get ideas for stories fairly frequently, but when this one came, I was like, you know what? I think I could write it. Maybe I could write it. Let's let's do this. And you did. Yes.
SPEAKER_00And you did, and you have written many more. That is awesome. That is awesome. So you recently put out a new novel, The Fragrance of Forgotten Truths. And is this part of I think it has the same setting as the as the other book, right? Serenity Falls. So tell us about this book. What's it about? What do you want readers to know about it?
SPEAKER_01So yeah, this is set also set in Serenity Falls. I have fallen in love with that little town. Like, is it is it a fictional town or is it a real place? Oh, I I've designed it quite a bit on where I live. There is an elderberry shop in my downtown. I run a perfumery downtown, and so which has what the protagonist refers to as a murder basement in it. We've got one of those. We've found shoes in it.
SPEAKER_00Like it's amazing inspiration.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and there's a walking bridge that's featured pretty heavily, and Serenity Falls and Fragrance of Forgotten Truths. It becomes a key location in the text. And my town doesn't have a walking bridge, but two towns over, we do have one that used to be an old railway bridge, and they renovated it to make it a walking bridge. They have lights, colored lights that change colors, and they play classical music to deter criminals from hanging around. So yeah, I mean, I pull quite a bit from where I live for Serenity Falls. But that came, I mean, the whole idea came to me. I own a perfumery, that's my day job now, and I've had it for 14 years. But on its 13th anniversary, we opened up a storefront, an actual physical place where people can come and mix up their own fragrances and blend custom perfumes. And so I'm in this down little, I mean, I always feel like I'm in a Hallmark movie when I'm downtown and I have my own little shop, my perfumery, the elderberry shop, is right down the street from me. And, you know, it's like, what if there were because cozy mysteries often have this craft or food element to it? And what if there were a perfumer and our perfumers were like just a little bit magic?
SPEAKER_00So tell us the what the novel is about. We understand where we are, we understand some of the elements. So what's the meat? What's the hook?
SPEAKER_01Anna Atar, after losing her research job, comes back home to Serenity Falls, a place she fled right after high school in order to distance herself from a place that had this idea about her family being witchy and weird, and she never fit in. And she was she's an analytical scientific type person. So she comes back home, she moves in with her sister temporarily. Her grandmother has recently been hospitalized with dementia, and her mom died a year ago. So the novel kicks off when they visit their grand with a little memory perfume they make, not really thinking it'll work. And Grant has a lucid moment and asks if anyone ever found who killed their mom. Oh, okay. I love it.
SPEAKER_00So that kicks off your mystery. That kicks off the mystery, yeah. And there's a romantic element to this as well, right?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's more love story than romance because she doesn't end up with anybody at the end. Fair. Over the series, I still haven't decided who Anna's gonna end up with. She kind of has two love interests in this story, although she doesn't recognize that the other guy actually has feelings for her until the very end of the book. Hopefully the reader catches on to it. So I it does that mean there's more books planned for it. There are. I'm already working on the next book in this series, actually. It's gonna be a time slip book. The town's gonna be slipping into 1926, and she has to find out why.
SPEAKER_00Amazing. So much fun. So tell us about your writing process. What's it like for you to go from concept or ideation to a draft that you're that's polished and ready? What does that look like? Very analytical. Oh, tell me more. You are speaking my language.
SPEAKER_01I'd actually really hit my stride as a writer when I joined Fictionary. It's this online community and a software that the software allows you to quantify your book. You input all the data for every scene and it can give you graphs and charts and spreadsheets. And yeah, my little research analyst heart fell in love with that. And so, whenever I want to sit down and write a book, I actually sit down and I go through and I map out, you know, who's the protagonist, what's their story goal, what are the stakes, what's going to happen at each of the plot points. It's very systematic.
SPEAKER_00Got it. So sounds very much like you love the plotting aspect of it and love doing. I do love the plotting aspect. Cool. What do you find is like the most difficult thing to make work in these kind of stories?
SPEAKER_01Well, in the mystery, in fragrance of forgotten truths, the hardest part for me was as much plotting as I did. I actually didn't have a clear idea of who did it. Oh, isn't that terrible when you don't know?
SPEAKER_02It really is.
SPEAKER_01I just kept riding forward. Like, I know where she's gonna figure it out. You know, I know how it's gonna happen. I just don't know who did it. And when I first started writing, I kind of had an idea in my head about who I wanted to be the villain. And that person, it ended up not working out. So I got stuck uh like you know, three quarters into the book when you really started to, you know, get to where like she needs to figure it out because I needed to figure it out. And all my outlining didn't help me with that. So once I did finally figure it out, I had to go back in and like revise and add, you know, drop in the clues and the red herrings and everything and make sure it seemed like I knew all along.
SPEAKER_00What was the process like of figuring that piece out? What did it feel like and how did you finally break through? Conversations.
SPEAKER_01You know, I would I'd journal about it, I'd meditate on it, I'd go for walks and just let things churn, do things, you know, and let the let it kind of marinate in the back of my brain. And when I felt like it had marinated long enough, I would sit down with my writing buddies and just talk it out. Like I have two friends that we alpha read each other's books chapter by chapter. And so they had read everything that I had written up till then, minus of course the clue plants that I put in later. And so I would we would just talk about who who do you think did it, you know, and I'm having the conversation just like I didn't write the book. Like I don't know, I think it might be this person, you know.
SPEAKER_00That's fantastic. And I have to tell you, just giving me so much hope. Because I am right there. I am exactly in that place where I'm digging into the last third of the novel, and I had believed I knew who did it and why. And then I changed my mind because I thought that that wasn't gonna work. But I think I changed my mind for the wrong reasons, and now I'm reconsidering just like but I think it's the plot under the plot that is one of the hardest things for me. And I think that's true of a lot of other writers too. So, do you read a lot of this genre? Is it something that you're drawn to?
SPEAKER_01You know, funnily enough, not so much. I love mysteries. A lot of the cozy mysteries I read, I I struggle to get into. I love to watch cozy mysteries, you know, like uh Only Murders in the Building, The Thursday Murder Club, which I know started as a book, but I wasn't I didn't finish that book, but I loved the show and so you know, clue, that whole vibe.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, absolutely. I absolutely I kind of I feel a bit similar. I think cozy mysteries are they're so different because they're escapist for a different reason. It's like you don't want to feel yucky when you read them, you don't want your pulse to be pounding in a way of like I don't know, fear, but it's more intrigue. It's more intrigue and charm that always captures me. And it sounds like your book has just all of those cool elements. I mean, you have a dash of magic, you have this beautiful setting, you have uh kind of a tight-knit cast of characters. So one of the questions that I'm always interested in is it has to do with equilibrium. And you know, in the beginning of this story, our our characters are typically off balance for some reason, or they are rapidly thrown off balance. And I think in a cozy, I don't know what you think, but I was thinking about it today, and I was thinking a cozy mystery, it seems like it's not just the protagonist that is thrown off balance, but it's their community that is thrown off balance too. And usually by the end, when there's resolution, like that community comes back into an equilibrium. It might be a new one, but it's maybe different. But there's just this thread of still togetherness, maybe, or that things are just okay again. Does that make sense to you?
SPEAKER_01No, that makes perfect sense because I think like in a cozy mystery, the community is a a character. And just like any character in a novel, it has to have its own growth arc.
SPEAKER_00That is such a good point. That is such a good point, which also, you know, one of the things about mystery is that you have to have a list of people who could potentially have done the bad thing, right? For there to be an investigation, for there to be red herrings, for there to be clues to draw your character further along. So when you think about it like that, and the community is be is one of those characters, hmm, oh, that opens up a lot of new questions. And how many ways can you rupture the community? And then another thing to think about is how do you stitch it all back together? So lots of opportunities for misunderstanding. What a cool it's a very cool genre. So we're gonna transition here, kind of we got off on to craft, which I'm such a junkie for, but I love it. But the heart of the podcast is dedicated to telling the truth about why creating stories can be so hard. And one of my beliefs is it's because we have this unhelpful tape that runs in our head, you know, this internal narrative that says things to us that, like, it's not worth the time. This is a pipe dream, it's never really gonna happen. And there's a million variations of those voices. So, but I think when we talk about them, when we normalize them, when we get it out in front of us and see it for what it is, then we can work through it. So that's the point in the heart. So, in that light, would you be willing to share about a time when the creative process has gotten really hard or crunchy for you? And where you came to a point where you were like, Man, I'm not sure. Is this the right thing for me to be doing?
SPEAKER_01Like, ah well, I mean, I think that first unpublished manuscript is a really good example of that because I ignored a lot of the advice that I'd heard early on. I was I was going to writers' groups right away, pretty much, local ones where we would like share each other's writing and give feedback on like a scene at a time or something. And studying online, you know, just absorbing all everything I could learn about writing. And a lot of the tips they give you, things like, you know, when you're first starting, stick to one point of view character or stick to one timeline. I didn't do either of those things. Me, me neither. Yeah. And and then uh, you know, two years later, I'm looking at my novel, I'm like, you know what? This really needs to be one timeline, and actually I think one point of view character too.
SPEAKER_00Oh that's funny. It's just because I think we think in epic. I think we can think in epic terms, you know, and that's beautiful. I remember my first the the first story I tried to write. There was gonna be seven point it was
SPEAKER_01Game of throw comes from our insecurities in a way. I mean, everything about it sounds like you're overreaching because you have too high of an expectation of yourself, but I think we do it out of a rooted insecurity. Like our first story needs to be epic and maybe you know to push through because just something simple that we make it won't be good enough, or you know, it'll be focused too much on our writing style or something like that. We need lots of shiny, shiny things to distract people.
SPEAKER_00I know for myself, I just didn't understand how books were made. I just didn't understand how stories were put together. I didn't understand that it was a layering process. I just had this idea that writers just put words down in order. It worked. That is that is not what happens. That is not what happened. So this first book, you realize that you had maybe taken some wrong turns with it, maybe not necessarily wrong turns, but perhaps turns that you needed to make just for your own learning and perspective. But how did it make you feel two years in you're sitting with a manuscript that you now might have to take apart? Oh, it was just disheartening, daunting.
SPEAKER_01And yeah, like that I couldn't, I couldn't do it. I was still too close to it. I was still too attached to the story that I'd written, the characters that I'd written, and it just felt like too much. And so that's when I set it aside and wrote, you know, keep up lost loves instead, something completely and totally different.
SPEAKER_00It doesn't sound like it deterred you from writing altogether. No, no. What would you say you learned from that process of writing that first book and then moving on to something different? What did it teach you?
SPEAKER_01It taught me a lot about the joy of discovery writing and the that I am a plotter.
SPEAKER_00I think you can be both, you know, you can be both. You can be find a happy medium in there. Yeah. I know like sometimes if I if I plot too much, I get a little bored. But if I don't plot enough, then I lose my way completely. Sometimes I have to stop and replot halfway through the book a lot, often several times. Right, right. So it's a mess. It's a messy process. It really is. Did you discover, write, or pants your first novel versus the other two?
SPEAKER_01Um, the first novel, yeah, very much so. I had a world in my head, and then I figured out a character to plop into that world, and then I just started writing and seeing what happened.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's it is fun to do it that way. I I started that way too. I think a lot of us do. For me, it was like about it was funny what you said that you ignored advice. I heard the word formula and like story, you know, story structure and formula, and I just internally cringed because I had followed formulas my whole life. Thank you very, very much. I was not interested in doing so. I just did, but it's like, oh, I've come to learn. Okay, there's a foundation, it's like scaffolding, it's how you build a build the building, and every building can have a complete and separate blueprint. That's totally fine, but it has to have a strong foundation, or it's not gonna work. So that's what I've picked up for the years, you know, yeah, just that whole difference.
SPEAKER_01Like, just because every building, and there's always exceptions, but just because every building has a foundation, a floor, four walls, and a roof, and windows and a door doesn't mean that they're all the same.
SPEAKER_00That's a beautiful analogy. I love that. And we're I mean, and then we're talking commercial fiction here, right? When it comes to commercial fiction, there's a door, there's a window, there's a back door. You can know there might be a basement, there might be a second floor, but it is a structure with walls, and you can be inside it and not get rained on.
SPEAKER_01And you're gonna lead the reader through the front door to start your book. If you want to be a little zany, you might try to get them to climb in the window, but you gotta give them a reason to want to.
SPEAKER_00Oh, I love that.
SPEAKER_01That's that's that's great.
SPEAKER_00That is awesome. Okay, so you're a busy person, you run a business, you write as well. How do you protect your writing time?
SPEAKER_01I write first thing in the morning. I have, well, I'm in actually my special writing chair. And so my computer, I always make sure my computer is plugged in by my writing chair at the end of the day so that when I get up, I come downstairs, I have my coffee, breakfast, do my morning stretches. But as soon as I'm downstairs and I brush my teeth and febby cat and everything, I'm in my writing chair. And I write that way, whatever else happens during the day, at least that happened.
SPEAKER_02Gotcha.
SPEAKER_00So it sounds like it's very routine. It's great to build up habits around our writing. And even if we get off track, we can pick them back up. You know, something I forgot to ask you, this second book, The Fragrance of Forgotten Truths, was that you had mentioned in our email exchange that writing that novel was a way to process some uncomfortable things that you were going through in your own life. And because you did that, it actually maybe changed the book or informed the book in a deeper way. Did you share a bit about that? Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So the right before I had started started writing Fragrance of Forgotten Truths, somewhere during Keeper of Lost Loves, I lost my job as a research analyst. It wasn't a job that I wanted to lose. So it was very like surprising and abrupt and you know, soul crushing when that happened. And it took me a while to find my footing after that and decide what I wanted to do. But I had a lot of anger about it, especially towards my old boss. And I I wrote it all into my novel. And actually, that's part of why I had such a hard time figuring out who did it at the end. Because I was like, my boss is gonna be the killer, I'm gonna like set it up, and you know, this character, and and then, you know, so Anna is the protagonist and Amelia's her sister. They're they are me and my sister in a lot of ways. You know, Anna lost her research job, went back home, opened a perfumery, you know, like I did those things too. I opened my perfumery up after, you know, losing my about a year or two later. I it took me a while to get my footing. But I was using that story to sort of process all of that, all of those feelings, and give Anna her happy ending.
SPEAKER_00What do you think spun up through all of that for yourself and for the book? Like the theme, the lesson that the character takes today.
SPEAKER_01Anna learns to embrace her authentic self. And even though the town, you know, has this idea about her family, they're right. So her issue wasn't really with the rumors, she just had to learn how to become her more creative to tap into that creative, more intuitive side of herself that she had always been resisting. And she and the town learn a lot of lessons about the motives behind people's actions.
SPEAKER_00We probably should stop talking about that because I think it will unravel the rest of the plot. I can feel it. Yeah, I feel like I'm then like I can't say anymore. But I love that. And thank you for sharing how you know our real life experience can will often, you know, we can use that. You know, they say, write what you know. Well, I don't know anything about a perfumery, right? You do, which is cool, but I I definitely know what it's like to not be comfortable in my own skin and worried about how the world perceives me. Yeah, you know, and so that is a universal experience that a lot of folks can anchor into, and that's why we come to care about the characters, is because we see ourselves within them. So, and I think that is the that's what makes writing scary to me. Because that's the piece that's fucking vulnerable right there when part of my heart and my soul and my lived experience and my wounds and my pain seep onto the page, and I can't help it. I mean, when I'm in when I'm in the throw of it, you know, when I email it over to a beta reader, I have the fleeting thought of what the hell was I thinking. You know what I mean? But I think like, oh shit, I need that back. Yeah. But I think that's what part of what makes writing really hard. It is and it's it's also what makes it so beautiful. Right. And so I look at all the books on the you have on your shelves and all the books I have on my shelves, and I think about all the courage that it took for those people to put one per one word in one word down and then another, and maybe delete those words and put more words down. But they're putting a piece of themselves out there, and I think that's beautiful. So there's just a couple more questions that I have for you before we wrap up. What do you think is the best piece of writing or creative advice that you've ever received?
SPEAKER_01Done is better than perfect, probably. I'm the little bit of a perfectionist myself, and I'll go through and tweak and tweak and perfect. And we learn through our mistakes. We learn through pushing ourselves past what we're capable of doing. Like you can't find your limit unless you surpass it, unless you exceed it and then back up. And so growth comes from messing up. That was beautiful.
SPEAKER_00That's gonna be your audiogram right there. That's gonna be the hook. All right, and what is your wish for your fellow writers out there working on their first novel? If you could look back in time and have the opportunity to maybe talk to yourself at some point along your journey when you were younger, what would you say? What encouragement, what wish would you like to impart? Writers are real people.
SPEAKER_01You too can be a writer. But also to enjoy the process. You know, it's fun to sit and daydream about when your first novel is finally gonna come out and how it's gonna go and everything. But that first that first manuscript is something special, even if it's not good, even if it never sees the light of day, it's still something special, and you gotta enjoy that process and not always be angsting over how other people are gonna perceive it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, but yeah, you have to learn to write for you. It's a weird duality for most of us. I mean, we're writing books because we want other people to read them, but we have to write for us and what we like first. Yeah. So before we wrap up, are there any new projects that you're working on that you'd like to share about? And then obviously, where can listeners find you and find your books?
SPEAKER_01So the project I'm working on right now is a continuation of Fragrance of Forgotten Truths. It's so it's gonna be Anna and Amelia again. But this time early on, the inciting incident in this one is that they are walking past the elderberry shop and there's a cave in. And in the basement of the elderberry shop, there they find an old speakeasy with a skeleton and a perfume bottle inside.
SPEAKER_00Yummy. That sounds like so much fun. So, with planning this series, have you had to think about like high level what the hell's wrong with this town? Or what has you know, what's what's the what is the master skeleton in the closet kind of thing?
SPEAKER_01I have. I have actually done a little bit of brainstorming about the town itself and what's going on with it, and you know, there's the stories are all more magical realism than fantasy. The magic is subtle in Fragrance of Forgotten Truths. It gets a little less than subtle near the climax, but that's you know, a burst of something. And so, to what extent does the town know what's going on? Where's the magic coming from? Is the town special, or is it in an entire like alternate Midwest where there's just magic?
SPEAKER_00Oh my gosh, I have so many vibes. I have so many vibes. I have vibes of like the what is that show ever after? Oh, yeah, you know what I mean? It's this town, you can see it, but once you're in it, it's like a whole different dimension. I have vibes of practical magic, I have like all the vibes, all the juicy, fun, fall yummy vibes. Now I'll need the only thing I need now is a Americano and a pumpkin scone. Yes, yes, very cool. Well, I look forward to to seeing more of your books out in the world. And where can listeners find you?
SPEAKER_01They can find me, and my website is irisapolid.com. I'm on Facebook and Instagram. I don't post on there nearly as often as I should, though. They can find me on my website, they can find my books anywhere. I'm published wide. So just about anywhere you can get a book, even any book, mine is there. Awesome.
SPEAKER_00Well, thank you so much for your time today for coming on the podcast and sharing, you know, pieces of your vulnerable truths about the writing process, about your writing process and the writing life. And I think a lot of people are gonna resonate with what you said. I know I certainly did. So thank you again. Thank you so much. It's been really good talking to you. Thank you for listening to the Write It Scared podcast. If you enjoyed today's show, please make sure to hit the follow button so you never miss an episode. And please leave a review. Reviews help other writers like you find the voices and messages they need to hear to continue to write their stories. Let's lift each other up. Remember, you can be scared and still be unstoppable. I'll see you next week.
