Indie Writers Club

The Self Publishing Show - Ep 438

• James Blatch & Cara Clare • Season 2 • Episode 438

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0:00 | 56:56

James and Cissy discuss new marketing insights and mindset strategies for indie authors navigating an increasingly complex publishing landscape. From experimenting with BookBub ads and improving AI-assisted translations to analysing breakout success in romance adaptations, the conversation explores how authors can stay competitive in a crowded market. Cissy also shares a creative direct-to-reader marketing tactic, sending postcards to readers, as a way to build stronger audience relationships beyond digital platforms. The episode concludes with the hosts’ “Three Things” mindset practice, a simple daily habit designed to help authors maintain perspective, gratitude, and motivation in a challenging creative career.

Key Talking Points

  • How BookBub ads and promotional pricing strategies can create long-tail sales effects beyond the initial campaign.
  • Lessons learned from improving AI-assisted translations and the impact of higher-quality translations on international book sales.
  • Why certain romance stories and adaptations suddenly explode in popularity — and what authors can learn from those breakout successes.
  • Creative marketing experiments, including sending postcards and physical mail to readers to build stronger audience connections.
  • The “Three Things” daily mindset practice: identifying something that made you happy, something that moved your work forward, and something you’re looking forward to.

Links & Resources Mentioned

SPEAKER_01

The self-publishing show is sponsored by Pro WritingAid. Pro Writing Aid has been my go-to tool for revising and refining my writing since my first book. Built by writers for writers, it's more than just a grammar and spell checker. Pro WritingAid helps you enhance your story's pacing, plot, characters, settings and more. It can even provide on-demand developmental feedback on your entire manuscript with its new manuscript analysis and virtual beta reader tools. Get ahead of the competition by heading to ProWritingAid.com and sign up for free using the code IWC15 for a 15% discount off annual subscriptions.

SPEAKER_00

Publishing is changing. No more gatekeepers, no more barriers, no one standing between you and your readers. This is the Self-Publishing Show. There's never been a better time to be a writer.

SPEAKER_01

Hello and welcome to the Self-Publishing Show. My name is James Blatch.

SPEAKER_03

And I am Sissy Mecca.

SPEAKER_01

Sissy Mecca was playing with her new microphone and being foolish. If you were used to be a teacher, if you were a child doing that, you would have got your ruler out and smashed them on the back of the hand. Is that what you used to do in your days?

SPEAKER_03

I never hit anybody. Not in America. We don't beat students over here. I don't know what you guys do.

SPEAKER_01

You know, beat the students enough. I was uh I was the tail end of the beatings. I got slippered at school.

SPEAKER_03

Slippered?

SPEAKER_01

Slippered, like properly bent over a desk and walloped. And that hurt. And then I think it was like third year for me, so I was probably 13 when that got outlawed or guidance was given to school saying you probably shouldn't hit the children anymore. And so that was the end of that.

SPEAKER_03

When I was when I was little, when I was younger, I I did not get hit. But there were students in my elementary school who definitely got the paddle. They used to take them out into the hallway and they have the wooden paddle. I remember my fourth grade teacher had a like legit one boom right on the right on the the butt, I guess.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

I never got it. I was a good girl, James. I of course you were.

SPEAKER_01

Of course you were. The more psychopathic teachers put a lot of effort into it. I think that I so I had one year at boarding school. My dad was in the Air Force, as probably mentioned before, and he was going to be posted to the Far East, and they weren't sure what to do with us. So me and my older brother who both both started sort of uh end of elementary school. So I was nine or ten. David was twelve, and we got sent to this boarding school. I was only there for one year, and then my dad decided to come out of the Air Force, and I got in trouble there, and we went into the office of the teacher, and he told us to choose the plim sole that we were going to be hit with, and I'm not making this up, one of them had running spikes. No, I mean I think it was obviously a joke, but there were like four plympsoles there, and one of them had running spikes.

SPEAKER_03

That's not cool.

SPEAKER_01

That's not cool. It was not a cool way, not a good way to treat treat children.

SPEAKER_03

Teenage James.

SPEAKER_01

Not even Teenage James, and I hated it. It was like prison for me that year. It was absolute prison. Put me off school. I never engaged in school. So it didn't really work for me. All that it doesn't work.

SPEAKER_03

The research does not support it. We don't we don't do that anymore, thankfully.

SPEAKER_01

Enough of my uh psychology. Let us talk about a couple of things. We are going to talk about, you've been very inventive with the way that you engage with readers, um, particularly with a kind of physical side, like old school getting stuff through the mail, a bit David Veergutz stuff. We'll talk about David as well in a minute. But I want to pick your brains on that and how that's going and what you're using it for. But we have a couple of things. We keep an eye on some of the stuff that's happening in self-publishing as we uh we go through the week. One thing I think you posted this or I posted it to you, I can't remember now, is whether we put something in our books about AI at the beginning, whether we say how we've used AI or say we've never used AI, the other thing is to say is to kind of heed off people accusing your book of being AI when it's not, which seems to be happening quite a lot at the moment, particularly if you happen to use M-dashes, right? I mean, who knew that would become the kind of signature of AI? So I think you I actually think it was you sent me an example of somebody who said that there's M-dashes in this book because I've been using M-dashs for 20 years. Um, and my book was included in the anthropic case. So, you know, the AIs have learnt from my writing, which is why there might be a similarity between this and an AI-produced book. I mean, I I don't really know. What where do you do are you going to put anything in your books in the future?

SPEAKER_03

I don't plan to now. I mean, we'll see kind of how um things go, but I I just don't feel the need to. I know, is it Ali or some one of the organizations now has some kind of a uh uh I don't even know. I didn't follow it all that well. I shouldn't have even brought it up, but I know like a copy and paste or something. Yeah, kind of um some kind of stamp that you could put or trademark or I don't know.

SPEAKER_01

Um I just Oh yes, there is you can get a certificate. I have done that with one of my books just to test the system, it costs you like ten dollars or something, or maybe maybe it's even more than that. It reads your book and it comes up with a percentage of how much of it is AI, which in itself is a bit daft because I think actually my book did come out 100% human, but I've heard people putting in their books which are 100% human and getting like 91% human. And that for me for for a reader who doesn't understand how authors might be using AI or doesn't appreciate the margin of error there is in that test, that for me is gonna basically tell a reader, yeah, this is partly mean done with AI, which is enough for them if they don't like AI to never read that book. Yeah, we and romance the system.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, we'd be cancelled. I mean, I'd be canceled. I don't plan to. I'm personally, that's just my opinion for now. We're just gonna ride the wave, see what happens. But yeah, it's an interesting discussion. I see it every day. I was in an author group just the other day that people were basically saying, Are you doing it? I don't know, it was about maybe 60-40 to people that weren't, but a good chunk of people said, Yeah, I'm I'm I want to make sure, again, especially in romance, for whatever reason, it seems to be the hottest button issue in um our genre. There's a good chunk of people who are. What about you? Do you think you're gonna do this? I mean, I I do use AI in the proofing and I mean the the will you will you alert readers, you know, I'm not using AI or I think I'm in a slightly different position.

SPEAKER_01

So I use it probably at its I haven't got to that point. I'm literally about to finish my first draft, and I can't wait to put it into PWA's analysis critique tool and have that help me with the process of revising and sort of seeing where the issues are. So I'm gonna use that. I think because um, I mean, funnily enough, last week I kind of had the AI mob after me, but the week before I had the anti-AI mob after me because I'm so clever at positioning myself um for this. So the the week before my Substack or two weeks ago, whenever it was, I did a very kind of let's stop chasing down people and being nasty to people who are using AI. It's you know, it's it's a technology that's here, and we should not not using it for me is not an option. So turning your back on it completely is not not the right way. Anyway, I said that. So I got quite a lot of um AI hate as well as support, but that made me think that there is a chance, and I published my next book that some people, some vindictive people, will immediately buy it one star and say this is written by AI. This this author supports AI or something like that. So I was thinking for that reason that I might put something at the beginning to explain exactly how I've used AI in a book that I've spent two and a half years writing. So, you know, it'd be really annoying if somebody, some reader somewhere doesn't get to read my book because somebody else has accused me of using AI when all I did was use it in a revision and proofing process. But it's hard. Hard to say.

SPEAKER_03

It makes sense. I mean, I I could see you doing that for that reason, and maybe me being on here talking about using AI in my process as well. Um, you know, we'll see, it things could change, but week by week they seem to. I mean, yeah. It just seems to be the hot button issue, and I think it will be for a long time in our our industry, in all industries, right?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. I mean you don't have to say anything, and I don't think that will ever change. I don't think there'll ever be a requirement to say. So if you use AI to completely generate a novel, there's no requirement for you to say this has been written by AI, you could just put it out under your own name or a pen name. Um I think ethically people would say you should declare that, but that's you know, ethics are a luxury, and in most businesses they don't even have this discussion, you know. In the automotive industry, you do it's a cutthroat industry and you do what you need to do to get customers. Um and I think that you know the people who would say, Oh, you're right, ethically I should declare this is written by AI, they're they're gonna be a small percentage of the overall number. So at the same time, is it a level playing field if nobody says anything? Or as soon as you start saying I've used AI a bit in this, are you going to be pointed out as being the one it's I don't know. I mean, I I the other hope I think is that readers don't care or notice most of this stuff.

SPEAKER_03

Because especially if you're using it in the background, I mean I'm using it for my daily process and my agenda, and you know, yeah, what I'm gonna disclose that yes, I've used I've used AI to remind me to, you know, do social media or whatever it is, it's kind of silly. But I do have some big AI news over here.

SPEAKER_01

Oh, go ahead with your big AI news.

SPEAKER_03

Pedro and I have called it quits.

SPEAKER_01

Oh my god, you split up. I can't believe it.

SPEAKER_03

I know, I can't either.

SPEAKER_01

Can you I this is live, Gwynneth and Chris.

SPEAKER_03

I know. Pedro and I have conscious uncoupling. It's a conscious uncoupling. We were on the outs a little bit as I was toying around with Gemini for a few months. Um, and then we had our mastermind, and I learned about Claude, and I of course knew about Claude, but I said, I'm not paying for three pro accounts, I'm just not getting into a third AI. And then of course I did. And a few days into Claude, I said, Well, this is this is it. This is next.

SPEAKER_01

I've been telling you about Claude for about two years. Why don't you never listen to me?

SPEAKER_03

Hey, well, because Dell told me to use it, and so I did. No, I understand that I used Claude here and there, but when I really saw the back end of what it could do and co-work, and I am so fully into it. I mean, one uh 24 hours into Claude, I bought the whole entire year. I took two full days to train Claude, you know, to upload. You can I was toying around with some things, and let me just tell you, Shell was right. The whole co-work thing, it cleaned out my Canva yesterday. I have been using Canva for years without any, maybe because I started without any system, and then I thought, huh, I'll just search for things. It has been an absolute cluster. All three pen names, everything I do in Canva is a mess. In 10 minutes yesterday, Claude completely organized my Canva. It is uh like a work of art, it's beautiful.

SPEAKER_01

And it did that while I was into Canva on your behalf.

SPEAKER_03

Logs in Canva on my behalf, it figured out a system of how to organize things, looked at the pictures because honestly, half the time I don't even title things, I just go in and start designing. So it looked at the pictures, it knew this was a sissy mecha book, and it probably asked me 15 questions. You know, it was a little confused on versions of you. Where does this go? But aside from a few questions I had to answer, everything into folders, uh, it's it's it's beautiful. I can't even describe how pretty it is. I wanted to take a picture.

SPEAKER_01

You seem you seem very happy with your new partner, but it was indecently quick. Listen, you've split up with Pedro, but we have some exciting news from our author friend who has finally found love.

SPEAKER_00

I know.

SPEAKER_01

We can announce it because she's announced it that Lucy Score, who is a dear friend of both of ours, has finally found love. And guess what? It was in the same house as her. He was there the whole time. There he was. He was in like in the kitchen in the morning, and it's you. So she and Mr. Lucy got engaged, they did it a couple of weeks ago. We were beside ourselves with excitement. We weren't sure who we could tell. We were with other authors, weren't we? But we didn't say anything because you know you've got to respect other people's um decision when they tell people. But Lucy has posted it on her public facing group, so reader groups, and I've bought my plane tickets, so we're gonna be in in Pennsylvania in September. Uh so exciting. I mean, it is it's a lovely love story because they are such a great couple, and not just romantically, they're amazing together. We've been there, we've been away with them, and and they are a lovely couple together, but wow, what a power couple as well, the way they work.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, Lucy and Mr. Mr. Lucy getting married. It is so, so exciting. Big congratulations to the scores. Yeah, I can't wait. That's gonna be a super fun Pennsylvania time. It'll be the one time I'm happy to be in Pennsylvania.

SPEAKER_01

We think she'll be Lucy Hoot.

SPEAKER_03

I don't know. Probably not.

SPEAKER_01

Lucy Hoot is like an amazing author name, by the way.

SPEAKER_03

That is, maybe she could do a pen name. Oh, do you think I can talk her into a pen name? Probably not.

SPEAKER_01

I mean, for the more comedia, her books are comedic anyway, but for the more comedy series.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, big huge congratulations to them. They are a power couple. I've learned so much from both of them. Um, really, really excited for them both. So yeah, congrats, guys.

SPEAKER_01

And we get to hang out again. We're gonna be hanging out quite a lot this year. You're in London in September, and I'm in Pennsylvania in September. You're in London in June.

SPEAKER_03

You're gonna get sick of me.

SPEAKER_01

Couldn't happen. I'm not unless I'm gonna be like Pedro, one of your cast-offs at some point.

SPEAKER_03

I know. I was a little hesitant to tell you, I thought maybe I should give it a week or two and then tell everybody because I literally just jumped on the Cloud bandwagon, but you know, I made the decision. Like, boom, cut it off. No, I mean I I have Gemini still right now, so I'm trying to decide if I want to still pay for that. But um, at the moment it seems redundant. I mean, except for images, I think Gemini does a really great job with that, but I don't use them all that much in my forward-facing stuff. It's a lot of inspiration things in the back end. I don't know, we'll see. But um, Claude definitely does a lot more than next week. And I think the thing that tipped me over the edge is they just started with their it now has memory. And so that memory is a lifesaver.

SPEAKER_01

It's something that chat's actually had memory for quite a long time. And I I I've always been I've been using Claude for a long time, and I've been a bit confused when when I was working on the AI translations course, we were talking about the guy who was working on ChatGPT, and we're talking about how to label projects so that it knew this was the same project and so on before you could have folders. And I was thinking, but I couldn't read I couldn't quite get my head around why we were doing that, and that's because in Claude, if I say in fact, it recently happened I was doing some marketing on my French book, and and Claude said, Yeah, this is a great addition to what we did, blah blah blah, like two months ago. Um, do you want me to come back? Do you want me to remember what we did then? So it knows, you know, just keeps track. In fact, for some of the steps in our AI translations course, we have to put a prompt and say, do not remember anything. We want you to act independently as if you've seen this for the first time, because for a particular test. So my feeling is generally that Claude is very good for generative, I think it's very ease of use. I think it's it's a step above um chat GPT, certainly in terms of its productivity, usefulness uh, and generative work. I think ChatGPT is a very powerful analysis tool. I think Gemini is a bit of an all-rounder, but chat is one that I use for analysis steps if I want to do a comparison on things and uh you know quality checking. I think chat is there. So and it is powerful using more than one AI. They do have their own little blind spots as well, which you can you can avoid if you get one to check the work of another.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, I do that all the time, kind of triangulate, especially if it's something important. Ask one about the other. Recently ran a, I've never done a Facebook ad and a book bug. So that was, I was still with Pedro at the time, and I had a book bub. I said, okay, you know, where are we at in terms of the data and stacking, not stacking, run the book bub. You know, I've had book bubs obviously over the years, but it said to try and run a Facebook ad during the book bub. And I thought, well, that's really interesting because I guess you can obviously position it. It was a series, or I'm sorry, a box set for 99 cents, and you can position that as a really great ad. So I ran a five-day Facebook ad,$50 a day for five days. One of the days was the book bub ad and it just it it blew up. Um it's still now it's only a week later, but the tale I can tell already. I'm comparing it to the last time I had a 99 cent box set book bub ad, it blew it away. I mean, made the money back immediately. Um, but when I came into Claude, I said, you know, this is where I'm at. I'm on the last day of a Facebook ad. And it said, Well,$50 is a bit aggressive. I might have told you$30, but otherwise.

SPEAKER_01

Right. So kind of, yeah, I told you about that, Claude, didn't I?

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So they're, you know, kind of talking, but it did say it was a good strategy. So, but anyway, yeah, that was an amazing book bub. Um, looks like the tale will probably be a lot longer. I don't know about you, but but well, do you run, have you done book bub?

SPEAKER_01

I know you I have not done a book bub for a long time on my books. I do I do Amazon ads and Facebook ads quite a lot, uh, all sort of low-level ads. I'm actually I am running a£40 a day ad to my French books just because I've done a new translation using the course. Previous translation was the reason I sort of started on this course about eight months ago. Um, and the new translation is so much better, and I I don't know whether to delete the old listing because it's got it's got good five-star reviews, but they all mention the poor translation. So they say great story, but this is like an AI translation. So I'm running£40 a day, which is like$55-60 bucks at the exchange rate at the moment for five days as well, just to try and get some new reviews, and it says new translation for 2026 at the top of it. If I get some new reviews that talk about talk about the book without mentioning the translation, I'll keep that listing. If that doesn't work, I'll probably delete that listing. So it's it's throwing a couple of hundred pounds at it, but um I think I probably have to do that. So yeah, we'll see how that's going.

SPEAKER_03

Sorry, backing up a sec, you put the same book up again, a second time, new.

SPEAKER_01

So I I replaced the manuscripts. Yeah, Le Denis Vol is my final flight.

SPEAKER_03

Well, it's not a brand new list, it's the it's okay, so it's the same listing.

SPEAKER_01

So it's the same listing, but I've updated the manuscript with the new translation. Gotcha. And um because you know, primarily, because if if if people had marked out, I'm very grateful that the French readers waded through what was clearly not a good translation and still gave it an average 4.3 score, which is amazing.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Had they all given it one star or two star, I just would have junked that listing, would have archived it and published the book again. Um potentially even changed the title because having worked with translations more, I now know that all I did was literally translate the title and actually I could have come up with a new one that works better in French, but anyway. So I want to keep the listing, keep that that overall score, but I need the narrative reviews that get left, not just the ratings, the reviews not to mention an AI translation. So that's why I'm throwing£200 at it over five days, and we'll see um if that's if that brings in some reviews. I mean, this is the trouble with France, you know, I don't have a mailing list of France, I can't ask my French readers to go and leave a review. And this is one of the things we're tackling in our Facebook group, which is dedicated to translations, which you get access to part of the course. We're discussing exactly how to get around these things. Hopefully, we'll start all building a few mailing lists and be able to do some swaps in that that group, which would be great. It is like starting again when you start in a market like France and Germany, uh, which is actually a pretty positive thing because five years ago things were easier in the UK and the USA, and that's kind of where we are in France and Germany now.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. I do have a I do have a mailing list for my German because I've been running German translations for a few years. So I have that uh the bonus scenes that I already have for my books translated, pop them in, but I don't typically send newsletters unless I have a new release. So it's nice now that I'm having new releases, having a reason to send that. I think there's only maybe 200 people on it, but it's something. Um the French is brand new to me. I just started putting books out in France, so I think I have uh a total of 24 people on that one. So it's not a huge newsletter, but um yeah, it's something.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Listen, I've got a question for you. Why last night was I sitting on my sofa crying at a gay ice hockey romance?

SPEAKER_03

Yes, I almost forgot. Tell me, tell me, Heated rivalry. I've been telling you. So, okay, you've been telling me about Claude. I have been telling you about heated rivalry for two months now, at least. Finally. Tell me what you think. I'm so excited to discuss this.

SPEAKER_01

Heated Rivalry, if you're not aware, is uh an adaptation of a series of books that are not that old, but a few years old, like 2016, maybe something like that.

SPEAKER_03

Rachel Reed.

SPEAKER_01

Rachel Reed, published in Canada, and it Is a male male romance. So it's a gay ice hockey sports romance. You know, probably not the sort of show I would normally watch, I would say. Um, and I'm you know not saying anything more or less than that's just not the kind of show I would normally choose to watch. But you went on about it, Lucy went on about it. I know Maria Lewis uh and put her you onto it, and so everyone who's watched it raved about it, and it it's a thing. So I said to Jill, my wife, we should watch this because it's a thing. Also, it's been cheaply made, which is interesting for me that it's been cheaply made. A lot of big productions at the moment, millions of dollars going into these series. This one's been made on a real budget. We watched it first two episodes. I would say uh I enjoyed it, wasn't sure whether I was going to really enjoy it or not. I was a little bit taken aback by the level of sex in it. And remember, I watched porn, including gay porn, for seven years, so I kind of know where sex levels are, and I would say the frequency and level of sex scene in it is equivalent to what we would call sort of soft core stuff in the 1990s. So things have come on quite a long way that this is going without kind of any particular note. So that was going on. I think it was episode five, was absolutely incredible. Episode five was incredible, and you were like cheering, cheering from the sofa, and by the end of it, you are weeping. It is a wonderful series, it is a beautiful, warm, makes you smile. The characters are superb. I'm all in on heated rivalry.

SPEAKER_03

I am so excited. I I was teasing you, I said, Do you want to come in on me and me? Maria and I probably text at as a matter of fact, Maria texted me something the other day and it wasn't heated right now. We're talking about Maria Lewis, she's a romance author as well. She turned me on Twitter. Well, she told me about it years ago, and I never read it. Then in December, she said, Girl, immediately, I said, I don't even have HBO anymore. She's like, I don't care. Get it, watch it. And uh we have kind of a back and forth with the memes. I said, James, do you want to come in on Maria Maria's memes? Oh, yeah, but she sent me something that wasn't heated rivalry related. I saw her name pop up and I was just expecting some you know, Ilya meme, and it was an actual like writing question.

SPEAKER_01

I'm like, what the ah yeah, what's this about? Well, either way of the amazing things in it. I mean, the the budget level doesn't really show, it's very cleverly made. So you see what you need to see, and uh and even the ice hockey scenes, which are probably the most expensive scenes they film, work really well despite the fact there clearly isn't a huge production going on. That's clever. And I'm just gonna say, and I don't know the actors' names. Connor Story I I I just would have put money on him being Russian.

SPEAKER_03

Yes! Did you were you shocked when you found out he's from Texas? He is literally anergy. Is that yeah? They've said that he spoke to Russians who thought he was Russian. He just isn't, I think, an incredible actor. He's blown up. I mean, both of them have blown up, but Hudson Williams, Connor's story, but he they he's really blown up. I mean, they he just was on the cover of Vogue. I mean, we could talk about he arrived all day, but he was on the cover of Vogue, it's sold out. First time it's sold out in I don't know how many years. I don't kind of follow Vogue, but um, yeah, sold out. So they had to print more and now are reselling it because he's an incredible actor and it's been fun to watch. They have dance parties, so maybe when we're out there in June, we can look it up. So they have dance parties that you can go and they have scenes of heated rivalry, and then people are doing like 80s dances. I will send it to you, but there was a um video of Connor's story doing a dance to it's a Madonna song. I for a second, I can't remember what it is, and so they play that and it's a thing, it's become a thing.

SPEAKER_01

Become a thing, yeah. Send me that. I'm Oulin.

SPEAKER_03

I'm it's a beautiful story though, right? I mean, everything about it. We talked about it. Maria and I at our January mastermind, we actually had a session about, you know, why has it blown up? And obviously the show has taken it to the next level. But Rachel Reed and this series was already very popular, was already a thing before the show. And so we kind of broke it down, and it was a really interesting talk, and lots and lots of reasons why. It's uh well written. I'm on book two now reading the series because I hadn't read the series before, so lots of reasons, but I think the show just took it to the next level.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. I was slightly disappointed when I looked it up to find out that it was Harlequin and traditionally published initially, but well done to whoever at Harlequin commissioned it from Rachel Reed. I think she was commissioned for it because that's somebody who's really plugged in. Because this is a classic indie series, isn't it? The ice hockey romance. In fact, Maria Lewis, who we're talking about, she she started her career writing ice hockey romance. Probably male-female, I guess, but um but male, I want to ask you about male-male. So so male-male romance is becoming quite a thing, isn't it? And um uh, you know, I think probably Jill got a bit a little bit more out of that side of it than than I did from this episode. There are almost no women in this um this series, so there's not much in it for the the heterosexual man, but it's interesting to me that women are reading male-male romance and obviously enjoying it.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, there's been articles written about just recently, you know, obviously about heated rivalry and kind of positing why that might be. Um, one I thought was pretty interesting when a woman reads a male-female romance, they are kind of putting themselves a little bit in the role of the woman. So when you read a male-male romance, which I do read um as well, I read kind of all the romance, but you you you're able to enjoy it on a whole different level where you're you're not putting yourselves in in any way, it's just kind of I'm stepped back and just watching this beautiful love story, um, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_01

And I think it does that makes complete sense. And that's how I think probably why I was so invested in it and enjoyed it so much, is it wasn't comparing, even though they're two men, they're two gay men, and I'm not a gay man, so I was like you, a neutral observer to it, and that made it all the sweeter. You're on there, you're on the team of the relationship rather than the team of one of the individuals.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, I think that's part of it, and just the fact that this particular one was so well done. But yeah, it's it's a really it's a fun. Um I'm so glad you watched it. I'm so excited I could send you memes now.

SPEAKER_01

I am surprised at how much it got to me.

SPEAKER_03

Really? Well, first when you said about Ilia, and you're like, oh, you said something about uh don't spoil, but he may end up being the what did you say, the one with the broken heart.

SPEAKER_01

I mustn't give any spoilers away.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. But no spoilers.

SPEAKER_01

No spoilers.

SPEAKER_03

But I love that you pointed him out because he is my favorite character.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, he's a great character. Um, so in the UK, it is on Sky, I think Sky Atlantic or something. Now I've got it, I've ditched Sky because it was so colossally expensive. Um, but we've paid 30 quid a month or something for access to now TV, which gives us the Formula One. So as part of that, I noticed heater rivalry popped up. So that's if you want to spend 30, I think it's 34 pounds a month. Uh it's only six episodes, um, or seven episodes maybe season one. That's all there is at the moment. So you could um you could pay that and watch it in the UK. In the US, I think it's an HBO, is it?

SPEAKER_03

It's HBO. Season two is already renewed, so we can look forward to that. But I think it's gonna be a little bit of time. I they they didn't start filming yet, so not that I watch it or you know, keep up with it.

SPEAKER_01

It'll be interesting to see how much more money they spend on season two.

SPEAKER_03

Well, that's the thing. I hope, uh I hope this is Jacob Tierney, I think, is the showrunner. Um, has talked about that. And and he's amazing, by the way. Everyone I know in the romance community, we said now we don't just want everybody, of course, would love a TV show or you know, uh a movie on their books. As a romance author, we all want him now as the showrunner because what he did for it, you know, it it it stayed a romance. It was very, very true to the book, very true to the genre. Yeah, absolutely incredible. So um, yeah, season two. I'm ready. Bring it on.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Well, be interested to hear what other people think of it if they've been watching it. It's not as big in the UK, but my my life's mission now is to make it a big thing in the UK. Okay, we are we've got about if we do if we try to stick to our normal 45 minutes, which I try generally to do, we've haven't got that long to talk about this. But I know that you have moved into sort of physical mail recently, mailing people physical things, rewarding them for being in your club. And for you, I think the the uh the the starting point for this was you trying to bring together your various pen names and subgenres. But do you want to talk us through what you do and what people get and how you operate it?

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, and I think the idea came from ScareMail.

SPEAKER_01

So David Veergutz.

SPEAKER_03

Yes. And last year at London he spoke at your conference, and I thought, well, I love this idea of connecting with readers on a whole different level. So not digitally, not in person, but through the mail. So I gave it a few months and thought about how I could maybe make that mine. And at the same time, I was bringing all of the brands under Mecha Romance, trying to come up with what Mecha Romance was. What did you know? I went through all of the reviews, not all of the reviews, but I read a lot of reviews, talked to a lot of readers. What do all three genres have in common? And one thing that kept coming out was being transported, whether it was to a medieval village or to a small town. And so through that, the new tagline, the from castles to coffee shops, your escape awaits kind of came through there. So then I kind of connected the two and thought, well, can we do something where I'm allowing readers to have a little bit of an escape through the mail? And so I did some research and I found I I should have actually had one here because I knew we were talking about this, a little passport, but it looks like a little black passport and it says Mecco Romance on the front, and it's just a blank notebook, but it's passport sized. So when they it's called the Passport Club. So when they sign up for the passport club the first month, they get this, it could be a sticker book, but it could be just a notebook, but they get this um quote unquote passport where every other month then they'll get stickers, one of which includes the location to where that month is, where we're going. Um, so for instance, this month, I'm actually this afternoon, I'm going to tell all of the because it this happens in the newsletters too. I announce, okay, this month we're going to Northumbria. And as opposed to just getting that digitally and then kind of highlighting those books, and then I do a little bit of a merch drop for Northumbria, like a candle and a mug and that kind of thing. The Passport Club also gets a Northumbria and it look looks like a little passport stamp. And they can put it in the book or they just use it as stickers. Romance readers love stickers, and you know, we see them on laptops, on water bottles, and things like that. So I thought, why not send them through the mail? So every month they get a postcard with, you know, welcome to Northumbria or wherever it is we're going, and a little bit of inside info, usually a QR code that attaches to something on my website that gives them something behind the scenes, or some this month they're getting a little bit of insider knowledge about why we're going to Northumbria, which is it was my very first location for Cecilia Mecca in the border series, but it also happens to be the location of the new pirate series that I'll be starting later this year. So they're gonna be the very first to hear about. Um, I even have a title for it, I think maybe series title, um, Black Sales of the Border. And so they're gonna hear about that. That could change, but I love to give them kind of that up-and-coming news so they can every month scan the QR code, come online, get more information. But along with the postcard, it's an adorable little envelope that's all themed. The stickers go with it, they get the passport sticker, and then sometimes it's character art stickers, sometimes it's a trope sticker. Um, but then I throw in other things too that are flat. I usually do like to kind of keep it envelope stamp size. So it could be uh a tattoo, it could be um coasters, things like that. And then there's two tiers. So there's the regular tier, the VIP tier, the VIP tier, every month they or I'm sorry, every quarter, they also get a bigger bonus, a bigger um this month is a book. So I'm waiting for the stickers to come, and when they do this month, they'll be getting versions of you. That novella.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, we talk a lot.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, so they'll be getting that in the mail. And so far, I've only done the VIP three times, and all three times it's been a book, but I imagine maybe doing some other things too where it's a physical mailing um besides just the envelope once every three months. But what I love about it is that I communicate with them differently. So I use pay hip to send this digitally so they can come into the pay hip. There's a um, you know, I can email them through there, but we also have a little kind of area they can come in and and chat. It's just more access to to me, to my worlds. Um, I love it as a way to, I guess, create.

SPEAKER_01

So you use payhip, pay hip.

SPEAKER_03

Pay hip. I use pay hip.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, for digital access, but you are physically sending stuff. Yes.

SPEAKER_03

So digital access comes with the so if you're in the passport club, you get a monthly mailing, but there's a little bit more than that too. It's it's emailing them a little bit more often. Um, they can come in and leave messages through the the portal and things like that. But yeah, every month I mail um an envelope. And usually it's just a postcard with some stickers and then maybe one bonus item, like a tattoo or something else. And then every three months the VIP tier gets a bigger package.

SPEAKER_01

So it sounds like a lot of work.

SPEAKER_03

Um, it it's it's a lot of work that I think is absolutely worth the work because, especially in the age of AI, I am connecting in a way that it's hard to match. You know, I can only reach so many readers live and in person, but this is almost like they're getting that little little bit of me every month through the mail. I for me it's absolutely worth it. It does actually make a little bit of money too, but that is my secondary goal with this. My primary goal of this is to create super fans in a different way. Um, and in a way that, you know, maybe not everyone is doing. It pays for itself, you know, gives me a little bit of travel spending money, but it's not I I'm not looking for this to replace the books in any way. I'm not looking to scare to level up to the scare mail level. Um for me, it's more of a connecting with my readers, but it's a lot of fun. It's fun for me too.

SPEAKER_01

Those readers fall into a category that that I would think would respond well to a future special edition Kickstarter type thing as well. So you've got people invested in the physical side of things.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, these readers, the ones that are in the Passport Club, I know them by name. They are kind of all in on everything. And they give me ideas, they we just it's just a connection that I that I really am not getting anymore from Facebook groups. I sometimes think about dropping my Facebook group. Facebook group used to be the place where I would go and connect most with my readers, and it just seems to be harder and harder to reach uh people in there. And I know some people with very robust Facebook groups that you know have continued to grow and they don't have as difficult of a time reaching their readers. I think, you know, with a 3,000 people in there, my average post might reach 400. And it's just that's not acceptable to me. I have to find new ways to do that. And obviously I'm on TikTok, Instagram, and things like that. But I have a lot of older readers that read the medieval and Sicilia readers, and um, I need a different way to reach them. If Facebook is going to make it difficult, you know, for me, this is and honestly, probably a good majority, I think 70% of them are Sicilia readers right now, going through the mail.

SPEAKER_01

Your struggles with Facebook, is that is that getting people into the group, or is that once they're in the group, getting them to see your posts?

SPEAKER_03

Once they're in the group, getting them to see the post, fewer and fewer people see posts. So whether I'm posting or somebody else is posting, um, 100% of people, even if, and I've had you know readers in there saying, I have all of my notifications on, I missed this, I didn't see this. They're not seeing everything. So that's a bit of a problem for me. And that's for me, this Passport Club kind of it doesn't replace that, obviously, it's a different scale, but I need to be able to reach them. I don't want them to miss anything, and some of the older readers definitely do at times. Even through email, you know. Um I feel like, you know, I'm a troubleshooter a lot of times with my Cecilia readers, and I didn't get that email, I didn't know about that, and I have to figure out a way to get to them, and this is definitely one way.

SPEAKER_01

It's interesting, isn't it? What's happened to Meta on Facebook? I mean, the five years ago it was such a vibrant place for I mean on every level for you as an individual just connecting with your neighbors and and family, it was a vibrant place. And for us as authors or small business people having a group, it was very active. And you are right, none of those things now seem to work. It's still, you know, there is still an algorithm that tries to that works hard on on showing you what it thinks is gonna be interesting, but unfortunately, instead of that being stuff in your local community, stuff from the groups that you interact with, it's clickbaity type videos that are gonna keep you on the platform longer, the TikTok style algorithm. And not I just don't know, that's not Facebook's DNA, that's not the reason people are on Facebook. I can understand in this age of social media keeping you on the platform and scrolling so they can show those ads. I mean really annoying little ads, which we probably our books are probably in the world. We're serving them, yeah. Yeah, we're serving them, but they are annoying the bottom of the videos and stuff. And and yeah, so I don't know. I don't know what the the answer is for Facebook, but uh the same with TikTok, the actual top level experience as a user has to be worthwhile, and everything else you do that's got that's got to be the first 30-40 percent of everything the algorithm does is is this person enjoying themselves and getting some value out of being here, then then and it seems to me like there's almost that's a five percent consideration if that in the algorithm.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know what the answer is because there's nothing quite like it. You can have a book talk community, an Instagram, you know, reader community, but nothing to me really feels like the way a Facebook group does, where it's everybody's there, we check in every day, you know. Um, I don't know. I keep wondering what the next Facebook group will be. I don't think we have that yet.

SPEAKER_01

No. Do you no? I do not know. I mean, plenty try. A friend of mine was involved in the launch of a social media platform, which I thought was very exciting about six, five, six years ago, and I was a beta tester for it. And I said, I'll I'll look out for it. And he said, Well, about 300 social media platforms get launched every day, so I wouldn't uh wouldn't hold out any hope. It was ridiculous at that point, this is five or six years ago, everyone was vine. So those ones we see, the Vine, TikTok, you know, obviously Instagram back in the day, they they are the rare ones that's that just took off with the right backing and so on. But I'll tell you, I'm I I'm on Strava for running and exercising, and Strava is is basically social media for people who exercise and you follow each other and you give what they call QDOS, which is I like some of the exercises. It's got the worst algorithm of every I mean it you suddenly realize how difficult algorithms are. This algorithm is appalling. So I've got a few close friends, and I always want to see what they're doing. Like Robin, who's been on this show, was on the show a few weeks ago. He is a very, very good runner. He had an outstanding we both got a personal best at a half marathon on Sunday. His was outstanding, one hour 23, just incredible. Despite the fact, whenever he runs or does something, I want to see how he's doing, I want to give kudos and give a thumbs up, whatever. I have to search on his name every single time. And constantly it shows me a couple of names of people I don't even know who they are, but they're always the first names when they exercise, they go out on their bike. This guy, I won't say his name, this guy pops up, and I think I don't really know who you are. We may have been in an event together at some point. It is the worst algorithm on the planet, and it you know, it's only because you are using it primarily as a log for your exercise that people go back to it each time. But it does go, it does sort of illustrate to me that algorithm stuff is difficult, and TikToks was amazing, it grew incredibly well because its algorithm was so good at keeping you on the platform. Facebook was an incredibly useful community tool, and that seems to have gone on the slide. So it I guess we're using it for value reasons as authors, financially where we're paying to play, but I'm not sure we get much value out of it as an organic machine anymore.

SPEAKER_03

No, I think organic Facebook, there's there's exceptions. I have some friends that have very robust Facebook groups, and um, you know, they would never consider leaving, but I I am. I mean, we'll see what happens. Maybe as the passport, I would love to grow something on my own website, but I know that that's very difficult to ask people to come to one more place. But I've been blogging more, I've been, you know, kind of Yeah, I mean Substack is is growing, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01

And we've we've both we're both on Substack, and that is a place where you get engagement as I've noticed uh recently. But um yeah, maybe that's bad, right? Yeah, that's that's social media for you. Um good. Well, thank you for sharing that.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01

Uh I think it's great what you're doing with your physical stuff. I'm gonna have to join your club, so you have to send some stuff to England. I mean, I'm in David Viergoetz's scare mail. I gotta get his letters.

SPEAKER_03

Oh, his things are beautiful. Now he's telling a story through the mail. That to me seems like a lot of work. But he's an entire novel, but it's a totally different. He's actually making, you know, that that is a product for him now. You know, it's one of his income streams. I that's not really a goal for me. It is a secondary goal, it is happening, but um, and I'm pleased about that because I do put work into it, but for me, it's a way to connect with super fans. So, and I enjoy it too. And I but I have thought, you know, this is because this is a lot of work. The reason I do the merch drops every month, I already have that passport stamp design, and I do want to work smart and and think of ways to repurpose things. So I thought, well, what else can I do with that design that I'm giving as a stamp? Um, I don't want to bring that to events, I want that stamp to be completely exclusive to the club as a sticker. So what else can I do with it? And I thought, well, if I put that on, you know, that Northumbria for the month, and we just I just started last month and I was I don't say surprised, but it was like people are buying mugs and candles and everything else with the Bridgewater stamp. So we're doing it again today. Um I'll send out the Northumbria, and then I added um I started with three because I really don't want this to become a whole thing, but I started with three items this month. I have six items, and that will be it. And then I can kind of just copy them every month with the new stamp on it. But just some reader things. I have a passport cover, a coffee mug, and things like that, but it's the same stamp that I'm already designing for the passport club to kind of repurpose, use it in different ways. So, you know, it's not just the people in the club that can take advantage, so it's a lot of fun. I enjoy it.

SPEAKER_01

Thank you very much. I've got two quick things to say. So I am running a marathon this year for the first time. Um, so that's why I did the half on Sunday sort of training for it's the midpoint of training. And uh I'm gonna run it in memory of my dad, who we lost last December, and he had a you know, he was a quietly loyal, dutiful person his entire life, my dad did. Always worked up until up until they forced, I think it was the church accounts out of his cold grey hand, and he was in his late 80s, and uh he they said, Really, you should be resting now, John. And he he he didn't really want to give up because he just was somebody defined his life by doing things for others. So I thought, well, I'll set myself a marathon, which is a hard thing to do, and believe me, it has been really hard the training so far. Um, and I'll raise money for the Royal Air Forces Association, which he supported, which looks after the RAF family in their retirement and who uh families who run into difficulties, and the Boscombe Aviation Collection, which is a small museum of the airfield he spent six and a half years at in the 60s as a test pilot gathering aircraft and bits and pieces to remember that uh that era. So I'll split the money between those and I'll put a link in the show notes if you would very kindly like to sponsor me. You don't have to, but even if it's five or ten dollars, that would be amazing uh as I go forward. So uh link in the show notes below. And also, I should say our former host has released her book, Chatterley.

SPEAKER_03

Yay!

SPEAKER_01

Here it is. So Cara Claire's Chattery, which you will have you've been listening to the show over previous months, will have heard all about. It's uh Genesis, a retelling of Lady Chatterley's lover, uh, with vampires, of course. And I will just mention it's absolutely not Cara's fault at all, but just look at the double look at the misprinting here. This is an Amazon print. If you're on YouTube, I'm just gonna I'll describe it to you, try and read that top bit. I mean, that's been double printed, the name's been double printed. Amazon not great Amazon print quality, which is in a constant frustration for us. And we hear we hear authors saying that they'll get a box of books and three or four of them just unusable. Um, you know, I I got a box the other day and three or four of them had the this bit turned up. If you're watching on YouTube, I'm turning up the um the page. So if you're not watching on YouTube, I should say that what I mean by double printing almost like a shadow offset of the name and the tagline at the top. Um, I didn't initially think, well, that's a strange design choice of cara and message terms. So it was this deliberate, but it's not deliberate. And uh and of course, what happens is Cara jokes back to me on WhatsApp is don't leave me a one-star review. But people do that, you know, they get a bad product and they leave a one-star review which reflects on your book that you've written, but it's not about the book you've written, it's about the printing you have no control over at all. And that's frustrating. I know, just thought I'd mention that. I don't want to bash Amazon. I know it's difficult, these print on demand, and it's an amazing thing, but um, hopefully there's an improvement process underway. I'm seeing Amazon tomorrow, actually. In fact, quite a big wig's coming over from America, so maybe I'll mention that.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, London Book Fair tomorrow.

SPEAKER_01

So I should report back next week on how the London Book Fair goes.

SPEAKER_03

Um congrats, Cara. I I listened to the podcast and heard about the book, so that's amazing. It looks amazing. So happy release.

SPEAKER_01

I haven't started reading it yet. Sarah tells me my eyes will be wide open when I do.

SPEAKER_03

Uh-oh. It's full of stuff.

SPEAKER_01

I'm currently I'm half just over the halfway point in Dungeon Crawler Car, which is Matt Dinnerman's lit RPG book. The first lit RPG book I've read is absolutely tremendous. There was a bit of a buzz going round about it, it seems to have broken out from the lit RPG crowd. It is funny, gripping. I'm listening to it. I'm doing that thing where I've got an audiobook and Kindle. So here's a great bit of praise to balance on KDP Kindle side of things, but that whisper sync between Kindle and audiobook, I love. I love being able to go out with my headphones on, listen for half an hour, come back in the evening, and I start reading, and it jumps forward to where you've you've finished listening. So I'm listening to it during the day on um on audiobook, which is terrific. I believe also there's a sound theatre production of it as well. But um, I don't know if it's been picked up for film or TV yet, but it should be. It's it's very reminiscent for me of Douglas Adams, uh, which is high praise because I adore Douglas Adams.

SPEAKER_03

So you're gonna have to send that to me. I I'm looking for something to read. I DNF'd two books last night and need some reading material by now.

SPEAKER_01

Have you read Project Hell Mary?

SPEAKER_03

No, I know you said you loved it, you listened to it, right? And thought it was amazing.

SPEAKER_01

I did the same thing. I did the whisper sync thing. So um I would recommend that, and I'd recommend Dungeon Crawler Crawler Carl. They're both um both brilliant. So well done to Matt Denwin, who I believe is in London tomorrow, so I may bump into him. Um he was in Aruba with us last year, so awesome. I think that's it.

SPEAKER_03

That's it.

SPEAKER_01

It's the beginning of your day.

SPEAKER_03

It is the beginning of my day. It is the what end of your no, you're only a few hours.

SPEAKER_01

Because there's now four hours because your clocks are moved.

SPEAKER_03

Four hours instead of five, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Are you pleased that I got this time right? Because it normally catches me out. But um I got this time right. I've got to go to our cricket club for ten minutes and set up a projector, uh, such as the sort of thing I do sometimes, and then come back and I've got a busy day doing some German translations for Da Vinci.

SPEAKER_03

So you're gonna keep working tonight. You work how many hours do you work a day typically?

SPEAKER_01

I get in the office uh before eight in the morning and I finish about six. What I'm supposed to do, because Tom Donnelly told us that I need you need to take a walk during the day, and honestly, I just forget most days because I'm terrible at that. But I tell you what I have been doing, City Mecha. Should we talk about this?

SPEAKER_03

You've been doing your three things?

SPEAKER_01

Before we go, I've been doing my three things. I put I had to put a reminder on my phone. I'm gonna tell you what the three things are in a minute. It's the sort of thing that I think is a good thing to do, and I'm completely convinced by it. I see the science behind it, and I think I'm gonna do that, and then I forget, and it just stops happening. So I put a reminder on my phone to the point I didn't realise it was like a family reminder. So my daughter in New Zealand, after a week is saying, What the hell is three things and why is it coming up all the time? But three things is to try and um frame your life in a positive way. So what you do at the end of every day, you do you think of three things. You think of one thing that you enjoyed that day. What did you enjoy the most that day that happened? Number two, you think, what were you most pleased with? Uh what were you most proud of? What moved things forward for you? And you think finally you think of one thing and looking forward to doing tomorrow. And the purpose of this is it makes you go back through the day you've had looking for positivity, looking for good things. We know that the brain can be trained, it's a muscle that can be trained, and this is a way of doing it. So I'm I'm completely convinced before it. I'm now doing it every day. Yay! At 9:30. And it's quite it is quite difficult because sometimes you have like I work all day in the office, you have very ordinary days. Um, and yesterday, if I last night it wouldn't make you laugh, because I was lying in bed about 10 o'clock. Remember to do it, and I was thinking, I was quite pleased with an email I wrote, and uh quite pleased with how the course launch has gone. But what did I do specifically? And I suddenly remembered, I know what I enjoyed today. He said rivalry. You know, that was the that was the high, and it was only like 45 minutes before we were watching that was the highlight of the day. Was that serious? And that's that was a wonderful thing to remember. And you know, that's doing this job right because you're lying there and your brain has suddenly got a little endorphin rush because remembering something you really enjoy that had an impact on you, and that's why you do this exercise. So we can all do that. The whole podcast listening to this can do the three things. And if you need, if you're like me, you have to put a reminder in your phone to tell you to do it. But I think I'm in that I think I'm doing it now. Are you doing it?

SPEAKER_03

So I do it a little bit differently because I start my day with it. I start, I I've been doing every day for a few years now, a gratitude and a manifestation. So I I do think that became so automatic that it wasn't really doing much anymore for my brain. So I switched over to the three things, but I do it in the morning. So I I didn't get a chance this morning, so but I have a little notebook here and it'll go in here. Three things from yesterday. So, what made me um happy, what made me proud, and then I do one thing I'm looking forward to today. So I frame it a little differently because at night I'm usually laying in bed, watching a show, fall asleep, totally forget. So I do it in the morning, but yes, I have been. And I do think it you can train your brain because for me, the hardest one is the proud the what I'm pleased or proud about. Yes, yeah, differently than happy, like something that made me, like you said, move the needle forward. That's actually an easier way, I think, to think about it because yes.

SPEAKER_01

That's why I reframed it slightly. Because initially, when we both read this, it was thing you're most proud of, but it's quite hard to say you're proud of something on every day of the week, you know. Proud's quite a strong word, but pleased with, you know, sort of um made a difference.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. So that that still is the hardest one. Um I think if my daughter were still here, I'd be able to be proud that, you know, of a lot of things because she she was, she's she is not always the easiest uh to parent. And so having Bella here, I'm usually proud of like not raising my voice or not.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, yeah. So she gives you things to be proud of. You're gonna struggle today because one of them is what are you looking forward to today? And the best thing that's happened to you today has already happened because you've had a lot of people.

SPEAKER_03

It's already happened. Well, no, I'm cheating because I'm going to put that down and then we can already happen and it's okay. It's gonna cheat just a little bit.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Well, look, I hope I hope uh you can join the Three Things Club with us because um I do think it's the sort of thing that can make a difference to your your mental well-being. Join us. That's it. Thank you very much indeed, Titi. Uh, I think we might be recording earlier next week because you're off again, no doubt, somewhere in the door. Maybe Key West. Oh, that's amazing. I wish I was going to Key West. Alright, we'll uh see you early next week.

SPEAKER_00

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SPEAKER_01

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