The Water Women with Bonnie Blaylock

Bonnie is the author of the award-winning Light to the Hills (Lake Union, 2022), historical fiction set in 1930’s Eastern Kentucky, and The Water Women (Lake Union, March 2026). She holds a M.A. in creative writing from the University of Tennessee. 

In a different life, After working for the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in environmental research, translating science into articles and papers for the Department of Energy, she spent the next two decades helping run a small-animal veterinary hospital with her husband while raising their two children, beekeeping, and traveling extensively.

She’s the co-host of the Just Ask Your Mom Podcast. 

Her next novel, The Lookout, is slated to be released in 2027.

Her personal essays can be found on bonnieblaylock.com. She can be found on IG @blayblon

Buy Water Women here. 

I’m Samantha Perkins and this is Why You Write That?!?!?  This podcast is for anyone who wonders what authors were thinking when they shared that really detailed secret or their most embarrassing moment.  For writers, future writers, readers, and those who love words Join me as I interview authors and writers to uncover the truth behind why they share all the of those cringey details and what it feels like to air it all! So press play and get ready to hear the story behind the words

Thank  you so much for listening! Please support the author by buying their books, attending their events, and liking and following them on social media.  If you liked this episode help please share with a friend and leave a review! 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Hey Bonnie, thank you so much for coming onto the podcast. I can't wait to talk about your book. I'm really excited.

SPEAKER_01 0:10

Thank you so much for having me. It's so great to be here today.

SPEAKER_00 0:12

Yeah, so I'm gonna read your bio and introduce you to our listeners, and then we'll get started and talk about your book. So, Bonnie is the author of the award-winning Light to the Hills, historical fiction set in 1930s Eastern Kentucky and The Water Women. She holds an MA in creative writing from the University of Tennessee. In a different life, after working for the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Environmental Research, translating science into articles and papers for the Department of Energy, she spent the next two decades helping run a small animal veterinary hospital with her husband while raising their two children, beekeeping, and traveling extensively. She's the co-host of the Just Ask Your Mom podcast. And her next novel, The Lookout, is slated to be released in 2027. So I can't wait to talk about all of these things. And I always like to let our listeners know that people are like, wow, a lot of authors. And I'm like, I do know a lot of authors. But you and I actually met because you are the co-host of Just Ask Your Mom Podcast. And you reached out to me and asked me once my book came out to be a guest on your podcast.

SPEAKER_01 1:18

I did. I thought your subject was so timely. Um, that was when you did, was it joyful?

SPEAKER_00 1:24

No, it was alcohol free, living alcohol-free.

SPEAKER_01 1:28

Yes, free. And I thought, wow, what a timely subject. And I know so many young moms who are struggling with that or who just don't even want to talk about it, but it's just sort of under the surface. And I thought it was a fantastic and very encouraging, very well done topic to just explore. And you did such a great job with it and have had such great success with it since. I'm just I'm really proud of you. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 1:50

So glad to know you. Yeah, thank you. And likewise, and when I saw that you're I had stayed in touch with you over the years on social media, and when I saw that your latest book came out, the The Water Women, I was really excited to talk to you about it. So please tell us. I'm only halfway through the book, so definitely don't give me any spoilers here. But do tell us. I'm just so intrigued. I tried to have a guest from lots of different like genres on the podcast. And I think you're my first historical fiction guest. So tell us how that like genre interested you and then a little bit about The Water Woman.

unknown 2:26

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 2:27

I love all genres. I read in all of them, but I love it in particular when I learn something new when I'm reading. And gosh, there's so many untold stories that I just read. And I my thought is why did I never learn about this in history class or in school? I spent a lot of time in school and I never heard this story before. I like to write what I like to read. So that's where I landed on historical fiction. And The Water Women in particular is three generations of women in Sardinia, Italy, which is an island off the west coast of Italy. I've never been there. And it's actually based on a true story of mothers and daughters who are passing down this ancient skill of weaving byssus, which is this weird little obscure fiber that comes out of a mollusk that grows in the sea. And it when they weave it and do this whole process to it, it kind of turns into this precious, unique fabric. And it turns gold in the sun. So they they give it as a gift to the world and it's not supposed to be sold. And this is just tracing their lineage for over three generations and kind of what happens to it. What happens if there's nobody left to carry on? And what happens if that's not what you're interested in? Kind of exploring what the kind of things that we put on our children, the expectations and burdens or blessings that we put on our children is kind of where I was going with it. But also, it was just the coolest little tidbit of historical information I found. And I thought that would make a cool story.

SPEAKER_00 3:51

Yeah. Yeah, that's so interesting. Cause it it I'd never thought of historical fiction as a genre that I like to read. And I was reading actually a lot of Kristen Hannah books, Hannah books, and someone once said to me, and I'm like, oh my God, I love this book. Did you read it? And I passed it along. And someone said, Yeah, I love reading historical fiction. And I was like, that's not historical fiction, you know? And the person was like, Yeah, you know, because in my mind, I was like, historical fiction is like bibliographies, or like, I don't know what I thought it was.

SPEAKER_01 4:23

I thought it was just like reading about John Adams. Yeah, some exactly presently, you know, dry.

SPEAKER_00 4:28

Yeah, something, you know, that was a story that uh bored me to death when I was in school, you know. And and so since I realized that, I'm like, I love this, you know, information. And I love what you said too about just this information that you don't have, you know, because you didn't learn about this in school and all these amazing things that are actually true, uh, and then taking it and turning it into a story. And so I guess how do you even know that the visus exists to begin with? Is this something that you came across one day and you and you were like, oh, that's interesting?

SPEAKER_01 5:00

Yes, it was a complete rabbit hole, which is usually how these things happen. This happened with both my books, actually, all three of them that I've done so far. I'll just run across a tidbit or a photograph or something and think, huh, well, I've never heard about that. And then then you're down the rabbit hole. And the more I read, the more I'm like, no way, that too. And you're just kind of, yeah, it takes a couple of months of deciding is this is there enough here to make a story from? Because with historical fiction, I guess there are true stories, like you said, like a bibliography. And then there's the truth of a story, which is more like what I write. So I have enough information that's true that I have to, and I have to base it on, okay, in 1910, these world events were actually happening. So you have to, you have to give that some credence. But then you can write the truth of a story because this character's just made up. So I can make her do whatever I want in the context of that historical setting or with this historical um event that actually happened. So it's kind of a you have to be sure about your research and what you're doing because readers of historical fiction are generally really particular. And if you get something wrong, like I don't know, the type of shirt someone would have worn in 1915, they're gonna write you about it.

SPEAKER_00 6:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:15

Because you're supposed to have known that. You can't have a telephone or whatever when there weren't telephones, that kind of thing. But then you get some leeway with uh some of the other character development. So it's kind of fun, it's kind of a fun balance.

SPEAKER_00 6:27

Yeah, that that is so interesting to me. I guess most of what I've well, my book was memoir, and a lot of the women that I work with are writing memoirs, and I also do ghostwriting, and those are also true stories. And I really thought for so long I'll never be able to write fiction. But just lately, the this idea of like, huh, I can write fiction because it's not, I'm not just coming up with something completely out of space. I can use some sort of context. And I see how historical fiction could be something that could draw you back into creating fiction. Like it's a it's a point of reference of a story that you could tell. And I really think that's cool because yeah, I can, yes, it's about this bus and and this period of time, but it's also about family and women and relationships and hardship and all of the things that we all experience.

SPEAKER_01 7:21

Exactly. Yeah, I love that's my favorite part of it, is the universal part that everyone will get. So you're reading along, not even really realizing that you're learning something new or that you're in a completely different geography than you've ever known before, because you're so interested in the mothers and the daughters, or the the love story that's in there, or whatever it is that's going on. So um, yeah, the hardship, the grief, whatever you're working through. Everyone's done that. So even though I've never lived in 1910, I do know about grief. I do know about mothers and daughters, I do know about that. So you are writing what you know in that sense.

SPEAKER_00 7:53

Yeah. And then later, when you're sitting with your family in your living room and Jeopardy comes on and they ask a question about the VISA, you can be like, oh wait, I know something about this. That's right. Mic drop. I got that one. I know it's that it's such a cool way to like be engaged with the book and I love it. So congratulations. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 8:13

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 8:14

I'd really like to know like what your writing process is like and how how much time you spend in research versus how much time, you know, just what does that look like when you're having to make sure that those facts are correct? And does that drain you?

SPEAKER_01 8:30

No, it stalls me sometimes because I do a lot of research on the front end. So if I know it's going to be in Sardinia, for example, which this one was, and I've never been to Sardinia, I have to put myself there. So I'll read for this one, DH Lawrence wrote a book, uh, The Sea in Sardinia, and it was historical. So I read that one. Anything I can read about Italian like history, things like that, I'll read that just so I feel like I'm there in the setting. And then I've got my own story to plot, my own beats that you have to hit through the story where you're going, what characters you want to do. I'll be typing along with a skeleton of where I am and what's going on in history. And there's always like 10 Google tabs open at all times because I'm like, oh, I'll hit a I'll hit something. Oh, well, there's going to be a tree that they're going to sit under. Well, I don't know if this kind of tree was there at this at this time. So I've got to jump off Google about a tree or Google about um the musical instrument or whatever it is that comes to mind in my head. So I'm constantly jumping off the train, checking facts. So I'm trying to get 2,000, 2500 words a day if I'm a really good girl, which I'm usually not. And yeah, that'll derail you. So what I think is going to take me three hours takes me more like five because I've had to hop off so many times to just check silly facts. And even with all of that, each one of them, copy editors, will still find things like actually, they're so good. This is not true or this wasn't there at this time. And I've got to go back and correct this particular bird, for example. I I could have sworn it was in Italy at that time, but it wasn't. So I had to change my bird, stuff like that.

SPEAKER_00 10:09

Yeah, I imagine because uh what I I try to explain to people, I think they have this concept that you have this writing project, you know what you're gonna write about, and you just go and sit in front of your computer and it and it just all flows so easily. And it's not like that. It's so clunky for me. It's so like flow for 30 minutes, and then yeah, something comes up, and then that thing takes three hours to work around. And then you maybe get flow for another 30 minutes, but by then it's probably time to move on with your life and do the other things that you have to do as a as a human, your non-writer, your non-writer self. And so I'm glad I think that's you know, you just helped to normalize that as part of the process that it's not just yes.

SPEAKER_01 10:51

No, it's always going off the rails and it's never what you expect. If it was that easy where it was just sit down and flow every morning, everyone would do it. It's not, it's you it's hard to write, it's awesome to have written. Yeah, so great and so true. So that's what I think we think. Oh, yeah, I'll write a book because you want to have written it. But I mean, if something crazy, like 1% of people who start a project will actually finish it. So really all you have to do is show up. Just show up consistently and get your word count in. And before you know it, you're at 90,000 or 100,000 words. Yeah. And in 90 days, say if you're consistent. And that's what it takes. And so many people just don't have the consistency or the um discipline, me included, to sit there for as long as it takes to get the words on the page.

SPEAKER_00 11:42

That's right. Or I think a lot of times they will do anything but get the words on the page. You know, I'm always saying that, like, and I'm guilty of this as well, that I always say, like, you don't need the perfect desk to write a book. And so they're like, I need to just get my space all set up. And once that space is set up perfectly, then I'll be able to write these. But the truth is it's so hard. And when we say 2,000 words, I don't know if that sounds like few or a lot to people, but it is a lot. It's a lot.

SPEAKER_01 12:10

Yeah. I mean, that's 10 or 10 or 12, maybe 15 pages. That's a lot.

SPEAKER_00 12:15

It is, yes. And so I think that the the it is very daunting and that people really underestimate how much effort goes into that, how long you do have to sit still actually writing, not thinking about your writing, not researching your writing, not Googling how how to make your closet into a she she office or whatever.

unknown 12:35

Right.

SPEAKER_00 12:35

It's just literally writing. And some of that writing is gonna be really bad, you know, at first.

SPEAKER_01 12:40

Oh, totally. Yes, yes. And that's to be expected. And just be gentle with yourself and know that this is just the first draft, like Anne Lamotte says, just get your crappy first draft down and then go back and deal with it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 2500 is a lot. Sometimes I don't get that, sometimes it's 500. I try to do like a scene, a moment in time. Sometimes that's a chapter. My chapters are fairly short, I would say. And I always want to end at an exciting place. So um I want to know what's gonna happen next. I'm interested so that the next day when I come back and sit down, I'm like, oh, oh, that's right. I'm at the end of this thing, and this next thing is gonna happen, and then I'm excited to continue on with the story. If I'm bored at the end of the day, I'm not gonna want to pick it up. Neither is my reader. So yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:26

I love that. And that's a great way to incentivize yourself and to set yourself back up for the next time you sit down at your page. Yeah. Um, okay, so let's shift gears just a minute and tell me about this whole publishing process. How, how did this work out for you? And how did you know, like, okay, I'm gonna, after reading your bio, I'm gonna move on to the next thing and write books. In addition to traveling and raising a family and working in my family business, what was that like?

SPEAKER_01 13:57

Oh gosh. Well, we, I mean, I lived a whole life before I started writing. So that's another, I think, um, encouragement is that it's never too late. Yeah, you can totally reinvent yourself and do the thing you were afraid to try or didn't know you really wanted to do in your 50s. I'm in my mid-50s and I did it. And I think sometimes it takes a while to gather your thoughts and your experiences and figure out that you actually have something worth saying. Um, and that only comes with life experience sometimes. So yeah, I had run a business, um, done technical writing, raised my family, traveled extensively, and all of that goes into my fiction, all of it. And I think once my first child left for college, I actually had a whole fraction of my brain back to me. And I wasn't thinking of everybody else's schedule and everybody else's stuff. I had some space for me. And um, that's when I first started. Actually, do you remember back when um, of course you do, the Sandy Hook um incident, the school shooting? I woke up in the middle of the night and had to write an essay about that. It just was the worst thing ever. And that started my blog process back in the day. And I realized, okay, like I can actually put coherent thoughts into a personal essay and people will respond to it. And so from there, it was tiny baby steps of I'm gonna write a little personal essay and I'm gonna submit it, which is super scary, to different platforms on Medium or just online, scary mommy, stuff like that. I was doing kind of parenting things at the time. And some of them got picked up and some of them did pretty well, which is chicken soup for the soul. Like you can submit stuff there and actually get real money for it. It's not gonna pay all your bills, but some. So those little tiny bits of encouragement, little breadcrumbs led me along the way to when my second child left and I had a whole half of my brain functioning then. Uh, I thought, I'm gonna try this because if not now, when? And I'm gonna be mad if I get to the end of my life. And I never did try the thing that I wanted to do because fear is not the boss of me. I did. And I wrote a thriller, actually. It was like a Dan Brown sort of thriller, and it has not seen the light of day, but it was a really good practice exercise in um pacing and conversation, character development, all these things. It was a little bit of history, a little bit of science. And I had to learn how to query. I had to learn how to find an agent, I had to learn that, which is a huge, huge learning curve. I knew nothing about the publishing industry. Went to a couple conferences, met some people. This probably took a total of all the querying and all of that, it was probably two years. So, meanwhile, while I'm doing that, I kind of put that on the side of my desk and another idea came up for my first historical fiction, and I started writing on that. Because while you're submitting one thing, it really helps to get your mind on something else and a new project. So then I started submitting that one. And that probably took another eight months to a year. It's a long time because agents and editors are busy people and they get thousands of things. So it was a long time before I finally found an agent who actually lives in Nashville and who was a UT graduate. And she immediately connected to that story that was Light to the Hills, which is an Appalachian story. And the editors that she submitted it to after that, we actually connected to another UT graduate who picked it up. So we were all team go big orange. Yeah. And yeah, from there it went on. And then they had the option to pick the next book and the one after that. And so far they have. That's not necessarily always going to be the case, but um fingers crossed, yeah, things are going very well. But it took, it was a span of probably five years before any of that really hit. And the whole time I'm writing and submitting and getting many, many rejections and many, many just crickets in the universe. So you just have a lot of persistence and thick skin.

SPEAKER_00 17:59

Yeah, that's thank you for sharing that story because I well, first of all, I'm gonna guide my clients to this particular episode because I'm trying to, it's such a hard thing when someone finishes their book and they're like, oh my gosh, you know, I've just literally accomplished the greatest thing I've ever done in my life. I have written a book. And yes, it is like standing ovation, you know, like you deserve the biggest applause for doing something so incredible. But also, this is the beginning of your journey, not the end of it. Yes. And, you know, um, it's just like so overwhelming and so daunting. And a lot of times I just see the faces of the people I'm talking with just like go dark, you know, they go from like this huge smile to this really sad look on their face. And I just try to provide so much education about being patient. And I always say, you know, you will do this, you know, as long as you stick with it, you know, this is up to you to just stick with it. And I've started taking pictures of all my rejections and just like saving them on my phone to like kind of normalize it for people, like because they don't see that part of the all of the rejections or the, like you said, the five years. And when you say to someone, five after they've just spent maybe two years writing this book. I know. And I mean, yeah, it's just like, are you kidding me? Like, I want to give up right now. And so I guess you know, you just kind of first of all, five years isn't that long of a time, but it is, you know. And so I think I just try to encourage people that like you just stick with it, you keep going. And sometimes it's 30 rejections, sometimes it's 60 rejections. And I I like to think of like what you said about the UT connection there, you know. I read something somewhere, maybe it was, I can't remember. I'll have to definitely put it in the show notes when I can figure out who to give credit to. But it was something about how like it had something to do with like what the agent ate for lunch that day. Like the story had something like about spaghetti and the agent was eating spaghetti. And so they were like, Oh, I connect to this.

SPEAKER_01 19:54

So they're it's so subjective. That's the thing too. You have to realize publishing or publishing houses are picking up things two years in advance. So while um World War II, for example, might be really popular right now. Somebody somewhere in the all-knowing realm and universe of publishing has decided in two years, World War II is not gonna be a thing anymore. It's gonna be vampires. And but you don't know that. And their lists that they have. We need so many historical fictions, so many romances, so many whatever. Um, and they need to be in these kind of genres. It's very much timing and luck of the draw and what's gonna connect, what they think is gonna connect. It may have nothing whatsoever to do with how good you are or how great your story is. It's just that, yeah, Romanian unicorns are not the thing right now. And so they're not gonna pick that up. But maybe five years from now they will. It's just it's so subjective that you can just lose your mind if you're trying to figure out some mysterious algorithm.

SPEAKER_00 20:58

Yeah. And I think I love your strategy of like knowing when to just kill off one of your books, you knowing when to pursue another one, knowing when and keeping writing throughout that whole process. You know, I I think it's like, I think about the fashion industry, kind of like what you said. Like, you know, if I'm working on skinny jeans, apparently are no longer in. So if I'm working on this pair of skinny jeans when they're all the other people know that white lane jeans are the new thing, no matter how perfectly detailed and made my skinny jeans are, they're not what the fashion industry is looking for in this moment. And so you're right, like some of this is about like trends and sales and running their company, not about a person's specific writing.

SPEAKER_01 21:38

That's right. And like the person eating spaghetti. It's just who you connect with on a specific day who might just get your story. So I think all of that said though, what I'm not saying is don't write to the industry. You still have to write your story that only you can write in your particular way. You don't just say, Oh, they're looking for. Fill in the blank. And that's therefore that's what I'm going to write. Because it won't really be you. It's not going to be your authentic thing that only you can say. And that at the end of the day is what connects them. Even if World War II is over and done with, if you wrote that amazing World War II saga that's unlike anything else, they'll still pick it up. Yep.

SPEAKER_00 22:21

So that's great advice. And so true. And I do think that authors might try to sometimes write to what they think the trends are going to be. And those are just going to fall flat. That's definitely not, you know, every every agent's going to be able to see, every good agent at least will be able to see through that right away. And those are only going to get rejected anyway. So it's yeah, it's such a great, such a great um piece of advice. Cause yeah, just showing up. It's just like with the writing thing. You know, you were able to show up and write every day and put the words on the page. Now you do the same, you know, send, you know, for me, it's like, how many queries do I want to send out each month and break that down by week? And, you know, you just kind of check that off and then you go about your day. You don't wonder and check your. I mean, at first I would check my email 50 times a day, you know. And now I just whatever, you know, when I get that like last week I got a rejection and my kids, you know, pick up line for school and I'm just like, whatever. Screen, you know, I took a screenshot and moved on. You know, I don't feel like I did the first few times I got rejected. And that's, I think, another thing. You just do grow some resilience to that. You know, you don't take it as personally when you put yourself out there.

SPEAKER_01 23:26

Right. Yeah. Gosh, so many writers don't take this whole this is half the journey into account. And it's it's sales. And nobody likes sales. Nobody likes to put your that's cold calling, basically, which is the worst ever. I've always said I never am gonna do sales. I would, that would be the last thing I want to do. And here I am, basically it's doing sales, selling myself. And then after it's published, you have a whole nother road of now. We got to do the promo and now we got to do the social media posts and all that stuff, which no writer I know loves that part. We're kind of isolated, introverted folks who are happy with our little keyboards, and we don't care if we talk to another human, but we have to anyway.

SPEAKER_00 24:05

So yeah, yeah. Just like I said right before this podcast, I've been writing all day. I literally haven't spoken a word to anyone else. And so I, you know, it's like, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:13

And you're perfectly happy that way.

SPEAKER_00 24:14

Yeah, who wants to go out into public? Let's just do switch gears a little bit. Like, how has the promotion of this book been for you? First of all, I want to say the cover really drew me in. It's so beautiful. Um, I I don't, it just I like all the colors, I love the all the imagery. So, did you have a lot of say so in that? Does is that what you had in mind as you were writing?

SPEAKER_01 24:36

Yeah, this is my books were published with Lake Union, and they are so good about I get to sort of say, here's what I have in mind for a cover, colors and uh different themes from the book or whatever. And then their artsy people come up with a couple of different versions of things, and I get to tweak or say, How about this or this instead or whatever? So we kind of collaborate with that. Uh yeah, the graphic design folks are amazing. I have none of that. I have no visual any skill whatsoever. So I did have a say in a little bit of that, and that was fun. The promo has been, I mean, the publisher will do some parts of it. They do some standard subbing to um reviewers, they do some some subbing to contests, that kind of thing. Um they'll do Amazon, uh, you know, if you like this book, you'll also like this one, that kind of thing, or they'll run different sales and things like that. It's not like I they're not paying for book tours and all that stuff. If you're a first time author or just a second time author, you're not gonna get on the Today show, probably. Um I had to I had to lower my expectations. Yeah. Um, so any of the things that I've done, parents' or book clubs, or all of that is my own beating the bushes or making myself available or saying, sure, I'll come uh, you know, I'll come be on a podcast, or I'll come to your book club, or I'll come to your library and do a reading or something like that. And all of that is just little eating the elephant one bite at a time, I guess. You're just meeting the next reader. And, you know, who knows? That's how books that's how most of the books that I read are the ones that I read is word of mouth. Some friend has told another friend and and so on and so on, which I think is more powerful than any kind of ad that you're paying for. I don't I don't pay for I don't want to pay for a lot of advertising and stuff. That's just my policy. Yeah. I don't I just think I shouldn't have to, I guess. So I don't pay for a lot of things, which means I'm gonna a lot of times show up for a book fest or some kind of obscure thing. And you know, you might have three people come. Yeah. And I've got to say that's okay. I'm good with three people. I met three people today, you know, and I might have sold one book to the three people that I met, and that's okay. It's that's not what it's about. And if it is, then you're probably in the wrong, the wrong career.

SPEAKER_00 26:53

So I love what you're saying, and I think that I think we really underestimate the power of one or two or three people, you know, when it comes to reading, because um, I said this on a recent podcast, but it's worth re-ressaying that I think there's been some research on how people find out about books, and still the number one way is through word of mouth. You get referred a book from a friend. And I mean, I have a list right now of probably 50 books on my phone. And every time I'm I'm having lunch or coffee or I meet a group of people, they're like, Oh, have you read such and such? And I just add it to my list, you know? Yep. And so, yeah, it's like when you do these. Well, first of all, people always ask me, Well, what about the book book tour? Who pays for that? And I'm like, You do, you know, yay, congratulations. Yeah, you know, you've been awarded your own, you know, book tour, and you can't, you know, I have a an author friend who she picked a lot of places around the the United States and she decided to promote these things and go, and it was really worth it and valid to her. And, you know, some people don't go on a book tour, you have to decide what's gonna work for you. But I I do think that, you know, we think like, oh, we're gonna get on the today show, and all of the people watching the today show are gonna buy my book. Even if you get on the today show, maybe you do sell a lot of books if you're catching the right audience at the right time. But, you know, even a lot of, you know, I have a pretty good amount of followers on Instagram, and uh not every single one of them have bought a book, you know. I'd say maybe 10% of them have bought my book, you know, and so it's like funny you say that.

SPEAKER_01 28:20

Yeah, a friend of mine had written a book of poetry and he said that exact thing. He was so disappointed because there were um, you know, I've got 2,000 followers on Facebook, and yet I've only sold, you know, this many books. I'm like, did you think all of your followers were gonna buy? No, that's not how it works. That's not how it works.

SPEAKER_00 28:39

Yeah, and I think that like first of all, books are not like TV shows or social media or a blog post, even or an article. You know, for first of all, you're already diminished by the amount of people that are gonna purchase or want to buy because you're first now only focused on readers, you know, who buys books to start with. And a lot of people don't, you know, a lot of people do, but a lot of people don't. And so yeah, I think that's where it's like, no. And when when I help people work through vulnerability, when they're like, oh, if I write this in my book, then everyone's gonna know that I'm like, you know, such and such, that I've gotten a divorce. And I'm like, first of all, everyone is not gonna read your book, you know. And so it's really helping break that down and you know, understanding who your market is. And really, for me, and it sounds like what you've done has been like focusing on one person at a time, you know, like if you like my book and you read it. I mean, I literally just told someone about your book yesterday. She was like, I'm really into re reading historical fiction. I was like, I've got one, I'm almost finished with, and I'm gonna, you know, pass it along to you. And you know, she'll pass it along or tell a friend, and then that just is how you sell your next book and your next book and your next book. It's a slow you have to be patient throughout this entire process.

SPEAKER_01 29:48

Oh, yeah, yeah, definitely. I you know who James Clear is, the guy who wrote Atomic Cabots? Yes, yeah. He I heard him on a podcast once. I thought it was such a a great approach, I guess, to book marketing. When he wrote that book, he wasn't selling any. And it's like one of the most all-time best sellers, right, of the world right now. But and he was trying to come up with some out-of-the-box way to market this book. So he landed on getting it in the hands of one CrossFit influencer. And because when you're a CrossFit influencer, what do you talk about? Who talks about CrossFit more than CrossFit people? You can't get them to stop talking about it. And they're interested in habits. They want to know how to do habits and get their um, you know, disciplined. They're very disciplined. So once he did that, it just took off. That's all he needed was, and so with each of my books, I've thought about that. Like, okay, so what's outside the box? I'm talking about Italy. So maybe I maybe I sub it to Italian travel magazines or Italian cooking magazines or whatever, stuff like that. Lonely planet, stuff, travel, travel bloggers. I've had a couple reviews from travel bloggers that were kind of unexpected. Just it's not just people who like historical fiction. You've got to, especially with memoir, which I think that would be such a um expansive platform. We, you know, people who can say me too. I've been through that too, which might be a lot of outside the box kind of marketing opportunities.

SPEAKER_00 31:20

Absolutely. That's that's great advice. And I love that about um James Clear. I was thinking my husband was telling me a story about how a professional football player, I think last season, was reading a book on the sidelines during a big game. And suddenly that author went from being a nobody to, you know, being because people loved this, you know. Yeah, you know, and it is like that would be, you know, that's a great pie in the sky. And you really, every author hopes and wishes that that happens. But also, I um I had for my book, I there was someone that I knew that um had a lot of Instagram followers and was really esteemed in the genre of the book that I wrote. And I had really, I decided I would love for her to help me promote my book. So I'm gonna start like really loving on her and all of her things too. And so like when she um had something to say, I commented about it, or if she had something that she wanted me to buy, I bought it, or if she had something that she not because I was only waiting for her to reciprocate, but because I truly was interested in what she was saying. And then when the time came, I was invested in her and I asked her to invest back in me, and she did. And she posted about my book on Instagram, and that day I sold quite a few books. And so, you know, it is so helpful to think about those types of things. But I, you know, I think of doing it from such a from a place of like what really adds value to both of your lives and how does that interest you both, you know? And and so all great tips for listeners who are probably right now have pushed pods and think that their writing life is over. Oh no, no, it's never over, yeah. Yeah, it's never over. Yeah. And I I really think I guess just to help switch gears a little, if you're um with the water women, like when you finished it and before you sent it off to people, I mean, tell me about how you felt just having finished that and written it and what you learned through the process. And really, like, did you resolve any things within your own personal life having been a part of this book? You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_01 33:27

Yes, I did. This one was different. It took me a lot longer than my first one to write because it was so personal, because there were so many things in it that I think that's probably why I was writing it is mothers and daughters, and I I'd lost my own mom when I was young. I was just sorting I'm at the age where I'm sort of peeling the onion, I guess is what you'd say. So a lot of that went into the book and it took me longer than it should have, probably. And I didn't show it to anyone, including my husband, before I sent it to my agent because it was that uh I was so unsure about it. Like I I think it means something, but I'm just not sure. So here you go, see what you think. And yeah, it was it was a harder one to submit, but anyway, I worked through it, I guess, and I did it and it's done well. So it must have hit some nerve somewhere. Yeah. Anyway.

SPEAKER_00 34:15

And I I think at the end of writing, what I want people to know is that like maybe you it is this isn't the book that gets the agent or that gets the person, but it will writing something that you feel called to write will transform something within you and you will learn from it and you will gain from it, and it's never a waste. I just can't say that enough. Like if you're called to write something and you do this, like it's just so worth it. And I feel like culturally we're like, unless we can monopolize and make a bunch of money off of this side hustle or this thing we're doing, then it's not worth it. And it just so is, you know, no matter what.

SPEAKER_01 34:52

That's such oh, that's such a good word. Yeah. Yeah. You're learning something about it. You're you are accomplishing something that, like I said, a fraction of the population has been able to do. So that alone, like you did that. Celebrate it. But yes, it should tell you something about yourself and it uh reveals something about yourself and uh it records your story, which is important. It says it mattered in some way. And even if only a handful of other people connect to it, that is enough. I feel like that is enough. You have to figure out maybe what your enough is before you get this ball rolling. And for me, uh I went the traditional publishing route because I just wanted to try and see if I could do it. A lot of people don't do that, they'll self-publish, or there's there's a lot of other avenues to do, which are equally legitimate and fine. If you find you're hitting a brick wall in one area, do it in another area. But it's definitely worth doing and trying and keeping with. And gosh, no, it's not a waste. I think it's I think we're put, we're all probably in some way put on the earth to create. And having done that is quite an act of humanity. And I I just applaud, you know, you should applaud yourself if you've done that. And and that's all.

SPEAKER_00 36:04

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 36:05

And it never sees anything. That's enough.

SPEAKER_00 36:07

Yes, absolutely. And you just really can't underestimate, um, underestimate that. And, you know, even just not only, especially if you're writing a memoir, and it sounds like fiction too, you know, you will heal parts of yourself, but even more so, like doing something that hard and finishing, it really does kind of raise your level of confidence for other things. Like if some, you know, you get a work project that comes across your desk, you're like, I can do this, you know, I wrote a book, or I can handle this hard parenting moment because I literally was parenting and writing a book. I mean, like you just be you find yourself at like a new threshold, I guess, of how you can handle what you can handle.

SPEAKER_01 36:47

Oh, absolutely. Yeah, definitely. It says something about yourself. I have a um a rule. I can't I really don't like it when people say they are an aspiring writer. Because if you write, to me, you are a writer. You're already doing it, you're a writer. And I don't know what what kind of um accolade or affirmation or permission you are seeking, but you are already a writer. And I think when you say that, just like what you just said, when you say that out loud, I was at a I was going through the lineup hobby lobby years ago with a little octopus, and I was writing a short story about an octopus, and I the lady's like, Oh, what's that for? And I said, Oh, it's a it's a prop for my story because I'm a writer. And that's the first time I had said it out loud, and I it was a shock to my system. And I'm like, oh no, here we go. I've got to, I've got a pony up now to this. I've just said it out loud. But it did change my perspective. Like, I am a writer, therefore I will write and I will do this thing. You I you put that up on your keyboard or a post-it or something on your mirror that you already are.

SPEAKER_00 37:50

Yeah, I totally agree. And it really does change your perspective when you do start to like lean into that. I teach a little women's writing group, and that's the very first thing we we go over. Is like if you're here because you are a writer, not because you want to become a writer or because you're thinking about being a writer, you are a writer and you showed up here as one today. And like, you know, here's your, like you said, kind of here's your permission slip. So go out in the world and take on this persona because once you do, you do start taking it a little bit more seriously. You know, I mean, I think that's how you going back to what we talked about in the beginning, that is how you show up for those all those words, even though they some of them you hate, you know, and you're not sure how you're ever gonna get passive. But when you call yourself a writer, it takes up that space and claims the right to, you know, take the time that it takes to do something.

SPEAKER_01 38:37

Yeah. It matters what we say to ourselves, definitely. And you fill in that blank. I'm a person who gets things done. I'm a person who writes my words, I'm a person who like that. Absolutely. Yeah, say those things to yourself and you will be those things. Yep.

SPEAKER_00 38:52

Um, this has been a great conversation, and I'm really excited for all of the listeners to hear this and just hopefully feel really both educated because I what I try to do mostly is talk to people about this process so that they understand it. Because I think not knowing is what a lot of times people aren't writing because they're researching all this, you know, how do I figure this out? How am I going to get an agent instead of using that time to actually write? You know, they spend all their free time. Write the thing first. Yeah, exactly. And so I do like to provide this education, but also hopefully feel inspired and to know that like this takes time, you know, that someone even as you know successful as your book is, you know, you didn't just show up and this wasn't your first thing, and you know, it it took time to get here. Um, but it is beautiful. I am loving the story. I'm loving all the things that I'm learning, both about Italy and about just this time period, but also as a mom, as a daughter, I am feeling connected. So you've definitely helped change my perspective on um historical fiction a little bit as well. And I need to go back and read your other, your first book, which I haven't read yet. And I grew up in eastern Kentucky, so I'm interested in the Appalachia part of that. So I can't wait. Is there anything that you want to promote or that you have coming up that readers can't find you? Or is there anything, if anybody's listening who lives in Tennessee, that you're going to be doing anytime soon?

SPEAKER_01 40:16

Well, I'm in Middle Tennessee, so there's going to be a couple of book signings up in uh Murfreesboro and Brentwood, which is kind of Franklin, Nashville area. So if you're in the area, come see me. Um, one of those is May 23rd, and I don't think we've set the other one yet, but they both should be in May. You can follow me on social media at Blaybon on Instagram, and yeah, I'll be posting stuff there. And then otherwise, I'm I love to come to book clubs, they're my favorite. So I'm happy to zoom in, or if you're close enough, I might even just make an appearance uh just because I love to talk books and it doesn't hurt my feelings if you don't like mine. Everybody's writing is not everybody's cup of tea, and that's okay. Um, I'm happy to answer questions and all that stuff too. So yeah.

SPEAKER_00 40:57

Yeah, I think that's a really fun way to engage with your readers is to join to do book clubs. So um if you when you not if you, but when you read her book, definitely do a little book club with it and then invite her to come because I I think that's such a fun thing when I don't think so many of these book clubs know that they could actually reach out to a lot of the authors who would show up, you know, via Zoom or whatever. I mean, so definitely think about that. And I will link your Instagram and your website so that people can find you and also some links to the different places that they can buy the book.

SPEAKER_01 41:30

Awesome. Well, it's so good to talk to you again, Samantha.

SPEAKER_00 41:33

Thanks for having me on. Thank you so much.