Marissa chats with Ally Carter about her new middle grade novel - WINTERBORNE HOME FOR MAYHEM AND MYSTERY - and her guide for young writers - DEAR ALLY, HOW DO YOU WRITE A BOOK? - as well as how the young adult market has changed over the past fifteen years and what that might have meant for Ally's debut series; some tips for writing heists and action sequences (hint: the simple solution is often the best solution); some of the challenges unique to middle grade fiction, including getting the adults out of the way and solving the transportation conundrum; and the joy that comes from having one or two side projects in the works that are just for you.
Books discussed in this episode can be purchased from your local independent bookstore or buy them online from the Happy Writer bookshop.org store (that benefits indie bookstores) at https://bookshop.org/shop/marissameyer
Find out more and follow The Happy Writer on social media: https://www.marissameyer.com/podcast/
Marissa chats with Ally Carter about her new middle grade novel - WINTERBORNE HOME FOR MAYHEM AND MYSTERY - and her guide for young writers - DEAR ALLY, HOW DO YOU WRITE A BOOK? - as well as how the young adult market has changed over the past fifteen years and what that might have meant for Ally's debut series; some tips for writing heists and action sequences (hint: the simple solution is often the best solution); some of the challenges unique to middle grade fiction, including getting the adults out of the way and solving the transportation conundrum; and the joy that comes from having one or two side projects in the works that are just for you.
Books discussed in this episode can be purchased from your local independent bookstore or buy them online from the Happy Writer bookshop.org store (that benefits indie bookstores) at https://bookshop.org/shop/marissameyer
Find out more and follow The Happy Writer on social media: https://www.marissameyer.com/podcast/
[inaudible]
Speaker 2:Copywriter. This is a podcast that aims to bring readers, more books, to enjoy and to help authors find more joy in their writing. I'm your host, Marissa Meyer. Thanks for joining me. One thing that is making me happy this week is I finished the second draft of gilded. I'm so excited. Of course, anything, any milestone on any book is just like a huge relief and it always comes with a caveat. I always have to tell people like it's not really done. I still have bunch of holes and things that I need to write and revise and edit and research and blah, blah, blah. It feels like things are never actually done. But nevertheless, I finished, I got to the last chapter, I typed the words the end, and you guys know I'm a big fan of celebrating all of those accomplishments. So I got to spend yesterday out on the porch in sunny weather for once reading a book and having a glass of wine and it was delightful. Uh, and now of course I'm back to work because the deadline is still living, but I'm super, super happy. And of course I am so happy to be talking to today's guest. She's the author of a whole bunch of books for readers of all ages, including the young adult series, high society, Gallagher girls and embassy row. The standalone novel. If I save you first, the middle grade novel Winterbourne home for vengeance and Valor and even a nonfiction writing guide for young writers. Dear Allie, how do you write a book? Her newest middle grade Winterbourne home for mayhem and mystery came out earlier this month on March 2nd now please. Welcome Allie Carter.
Speaker 3:Hi Marissa. Hello. I am so happy
Speaker 2:To have you on this show today.
Speaker 3:I am so happy to be here. Congratulations on finishing the draft. That that's very, very huge. Thank you.
Speaker 2:I know, I know. I never know how much to, like I finished it, but not really, but it's still sort of done, but there's still work to do. And you know, it's that weird balancing act,
Speaker 3:But it's so weird. And like all of, I think writer, friends and family must be so confused by that because we'll be like, I'm like, great. I'm like, what are you doing? I'm working on the book.
Speaker 2:I still need to do the next draft and the next draft and then copy it. It's and then proofreading on and on and on
Speaker 3:The book is really only finished like once and even then not so much. It is, it is a hard part of our business.
Speaker 2:Yeah. When the editor finally rips it out of your hands and says, you're cut off, you're done. You can't make any more changes.
Speaker 3:Exactly.
Speaker 2:Uh, well, congratulations to you on your newest book coming out. I, it so much, thank you. Why don't we start with you telling listeners about Winterbourne home for may hem and mystery, uh,
Speaker 3:That it w it was the CQL to Winterbourne home preventions and Valor. And, uh, I, you know, I've been a Y a author now for more than a decade. My first a book came out in 2006, and I was talking with a friend about that book and basically how much the Y a market has changed through the years. And he actually told me, you realize if you were to submit, I'd tell you, I love you, but then I'd have to kill you. Um, today it would probably get rejected and you'd need to rewrite it as middle grade and resubmit it because the age of the Y audience has just kind of crept older and older and older and older. And so that's what got me kind of thinking about writing the middle grade. And I, you know, didn't really have any great middle-grade ideas at the time, but I started thinking about it and thinking about, okay, I want to do another big pass. I wanted to do another big group of kids who live together and I didn't, but I didn't want to do a boarding school books. I had already done that. And I felt like whatever I did in a boarding school kind of world, I would just get 5,000 letters that say, why don't you, why didn't you just write another Gallagher girls book? So I wanted to do something kind of different. And I thought, well, another place that a bunch of kids can live together is an orphanage. But of course, I didn't want to ride a regular orphanage. I wanted to write a kind of weird, interesting, you know, unique, high concept orphanage. And so, um, I was actually watching Batman begins and there's that part where Bruce Wayne goes away for 10 years and everybody thinks he's dead. And then he comes back and he tells everybody, Hey, I'm Bruce Wayne, I'm back. And then he assumes a secret identity to fight crime. And I always thought, why did you tell everybody you're back, Bruce, you had a secret identity, your secret identity was dead guys. Like you were set on the secret identity fret. And, and so I thought, okay, well, and also what happened to Wayne Manor while he was gotten with Alfred, just like, you know, rattling around in there all by himself for 10 years. And so I thought, okay, I need a really interesting location for an orphanage. What if you have a billionaire who's been missing for 10 years and while he was gone, they turned the house into an orphanage. And so when he comes back, he does not recognize the place because it's not his home anymore. It's it's these, these kids have taken over. And what if he, when he comes back, he doesn't tell anybody he's back. And so he's living in the basement, he's sharpening his sword. He's looking for vengeance of the people who killed his family. And the only people who realize he's back are the, are the pesky kids who live there. And so I I've always really loved, um, reluctant mentor is, is one of my favorite. So like in the entire Marvel cinematic universe, my favorite relationship was the Tony stark, Peter Parker relationship of me too. And so that's what I wanted to do. You know, I wanted to do this kind of, you know, crotchety God who just really wants to do his thing. And there are these pesky kids who worm their way into his heart and that's how they become a family. So that that's really the setup and the, the whole, the whole shebang about the whole world and everything. And so, um, vengeance and Valor is book one may have a mystery, his book too. I don't know if you had the same experience, but I always find it really hard to talk about sequels because in order to do that, I just have to spoil book one.
Speaker 2:No, I know exactly what you mean, and we don't want to spoil anything. I actually thought that I was reading book one, um, and didn't really it about 15 pages into Winterbourne home for mayhem and mystery. I was like, wait, this is clearly the second book. Um, and I, so I have read book two and I loved it, but I'm really excited to go back and read one. Well, thank you. I hadn't talked to him,
Speaker 3:Anybody who has, who, who has read book two without the benefit of, of reading book one verse. So the fact that you were able to make it all make sense and enjoy it anyway, it makes me,
Speaker 2:Yeah. You can figure things out. And it's, I mean, like I said, it 10, 15 pages in you're like, okay, clearly I've missed something. There's all of these, there's a story here. Um, and I really am excited to go back and see how these characters came together. Cause I love Gabriel so much. And I, yeah, so I'm, I'm really excited to go back and read book one, but I do not feel like it distracted from how much I enjoyed book two. And I just got to say, I love how your brain works. And listening to you talk about all of the little influences and inspirations that came together to create this world. I just love it. I can see the path to how this book originated and how it came to be what it is. And I think that's super fun.
Speaker 3:Oh, thank you. It's always crazy to me, like back in the day, when you would have like blog reviews and stuff, and I, as a general rule, I never sought out those types of things, but every now and then one comes across your path and you read it and you see something. And it was always so funny to me when people would be like, well, clearly this was influenced by X, Y, and Z and, and almost never were they right?
Speaker 2:You know, it always be like, well, this is, this is clear
Speaker 3:Her homage to, you know, something that I'm like, I have never heard of that before, but it is, it is, you know, what would happen if Battlestar Galactica happened in the middle East?
Speaker 2:No, that is so true. I think lot of my readers picked up on my influence of sailor moon and the lunar Chronicles. Like that was pretty obvious to people who were fans of sailor moon, but then there were all I know exactly what you're talking about. Cause there was like a K-pop band or is a K-pop band with a, one of the singer's name is Kai. And people were convinced that he was the inspiration for Prince. And I was like, no, but I can absolutely see where you're getting that from.
Speaker 3:Yes. They get really hung up on, on names and eye color and stuff that I kind of, don't always put a lot of thought into. And I realize in hindsight, Oh, I should have thought more about that because readers are going to read so much into it. Yeah.
Speaker 2:You don't know though. You don't know what things the readers are going to pick up on it. You truly don't. Yeah. Yeah. So I, one of the things that I love about your books is that there is, you know, in both your middle grades now, um, and also in your ya's is that there is this recurring theme of extremely intelligent young people getting themselves in over their heads constantly and having to use all of their wits and all of their resourcefulness to figure things out. And I just love it. I love all of the suspense. All of the obstacles, your books are like candy for me. You are, you are one of my favorite authors and I'll just put that out there. So sweet. So talk to me about your process, your, you were you, how do you go building about building plots? How do you figure out what more can I throw into this story to keep the characters on their toes?
Speaker 3:Oh, so sometimes I start with a character and sometimes I start with a world and sometimes I start with a plot. And what I find is that obviously you can't build a whole book with just one of those things. And so pretty quickly thereafter. So, um, you know, girl who goes to a boarding school for spies, probably the spy school came first and that one, and then you have to ask yourself, okay, who's the most interesting person to put there and why is this person our point of view, character? And, um, what is, you know, the worst thing that can possibly happen to her? Um, the idea for high society was girl who grew up in a family of Kahneman and art theme. So it actually started with, I was reading a book and there was a line that said, I was like a cat burglar in my own house. And I thought, Oh, I'm going to write a book about a girl named cat. Who's a burglar. And, and, and so that one started very much with the character. And if you are a girl who grows up in a family of thieves, again, what's the worst thing that can happen to you. And, and, and what are the sort of the rules of your world? Um, with Winterbourne, like I said, it really started with the idea of the house. It started with the idea of this big creepy mansion on the edge of the world and who the man who owns that mansion and the kids who come in and, and, and make it their home. And so for me, it was always about the relationship between Gabriel, who is our missing billionaire in April, who is the main army, our heroine, and the 12 year old girl who has been in the system for 10 years and only wants to find her mother. And so for, for that situation, the plot really came from, you know, there's, there's got to be, if you, if you've got a guy who's been on the run for 10 years, why what, what would make a billionaire walk away from his mansion, walk away from his money, walk away from fame and just fall off the face of the earth. And so that's when you start kind of, you know, almost like an archeological dig, you start going back farther and farther and farther with him. And then you also got April whose mom has been missing for 10 years and she's been in the system. And just, you know, she was left in a fire station with a note that said, this is my baby April. I'll be back for her. And so April is completely and utterly up optimistic. She knows her. I mean, she's got a note, she's got a, been writing. Her mom is coming back for her. And it doesn't matter that the mom has been gone for 10 years. And, and I was talking with a good friend of mine, Sarah spread, and who's a brilliant author. We were actually on a writing retreat. And when I started working on this and, and, and it just, didn't nothing quite clicked at the beginning. And then I realized that April needed some sort of like physical MacGuffin. She needed something almost like a talisman. And that, that is the thing that would sort of give her agency because it's one thing to have a character who has certain, that her mother is coming back, but that's a passive state. That's a character who's just sitting around waiting for her mother. And so I needed April to have a reason and a way of being proactive. And so I said, okay, when her mom left her, she didn't just leave her at a note. She left her and a note and a key. And so now April's got this key and she knows that as soon as she finds what that key opens, that will be the literal key to finding her mother. So that was sort of the Genesis of a lot of this. And then you, and then you dig down deeper and deeper and deeper, and you start sort of seeing where all of the characters on their individual journeys were, all of their paths condensed. And I think that that's, that's really where I think real genius lies. Not that I'm a genius by any means, but if I look at like, uh, an episode of television that I love, you know, there's always like the, a storyline with the B storyline, really great episodes of television, those storylines inner set at some point in time, you know, and, and in a way you didn't necessarily see coming in in a way that, you know, both storylines would have been fine on their own, but then there's the part where, Oh, the, the loose chicken actually is the thing that messes up the wedding or whatever, and you didn't see that coming. And so, so figuring out where these characters in their journeys intersected was really a big, big part of it. And I feel like I didn't answer your question. No, no. It's, I mean, it's a weird question
Speaker 2:To answer. Like, how do you come up with obstacles? How do you develop a plot? Yeah.
Speaker 3:Who the heck knows exactly. It's for me, I have so many post-it notes in my house and I have so many whiteboards and I have so many notebooks and just, I make lists. I make, you know, all the ways in which, um, you know, this can go wrong all the ways in which this can go, right. All the reasons why this person might have done that. Um, I worked with on the Winterbourne books with a wonderful editor named Catherine Onder, and Catherine had been actually at Disney Hyperion, um, when I was doing Galiber bros there. So she was the editor of the last, I don't know, I think maybe the last two Gallagher girl books and the last two HighSpot books, maybe I don't remember. Um, but we had worked together before, so we had a really good shorthand. And, um, I remember going to her early on and being like, can I just like, you know, have, you know, do this with the villain or, you know, I'm really tired of having to have big plot twists. What if I wrote a book that didn't have a big plot twist, he's like, that's, that's a loud, you can do that. I was like giving your best shot. Let me write a book without a plot, give it a go. It is amazing how you can. It's really easy for me to get so hung up on the plot types of stuff that you forget about the characters when in truth, the great care, great plots grow out of interesting characters. And I always like to say, if you give a plot, a different character, you get a different plot. And so that's why, especially with winter born, it, it all comes back to Gabriel and April. And what, what sort of wound do they have in their past and how are they going to help each other, get what they need. And, and then you, then you mix in the other kids and the other, the other, um, people who live at the orphanage and, um, that really rounds it out. So you
Speaker 2:Obviously have done a ton of heists, a ton of kind of big explosive action sequences. What do you do when you were riding along and you get stuck and your characters are whatever stuck in the bank vault or wherever they are, and you don't know how they're going to get out of it.
Speaker 3:That's what I know I did my job, right, because I D I don't ever want to write something that's like a heist or an action sequence or whatever were the way to get out of the super obvious, because that's, that's not very good. And I remember writing, um, I think it was the second high society book, and I'm going to spoil it here real quick, because I got to the end and I was, so I was just like, how am I going to do this? How am I going to do this? How am I going to do this? And I remember calling up, uh, Jennifer Lynn Barnes, who was a good friend of mine and saying, Oh man, I wish I could just have her switch the signs. And she's like, you do realize again, you can just do that. That's actually genius. I'm like, Oh, but I need another like, action sequence. She's like, no, you don't. And so, so I think that that's that again, like with a high cyst, specially the, the more obvious and the simpler, the solution, the better, like, I really think in a heist or, or a big action sequence, like that is better when it's almost like an Audrey Hepburn, little black dress, you know, not a lot of frills, not a lot of, hand-waving just very, very simple that you get that D I should have seen it from the beginning kind of moment. And, um, and also it's those types of things. I get a lot of credit for like, Oh, she's so smart. She figured that out. And I'm like, you do realize I get to plan the heist and design the security system. I get to play both sides of this game. And that makes the game much, much easier to win.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's a good point. I know exactly what you're talking about with my Renegade's book. I was constantly feeling like I was trapped in, in what I was trying to accomplish. And the characters were always in big action sequences, and I was constantly feeling like I had to up the ante and make it bigger, make it bigger. But it's so many times you're right. It is the simple solution. It is the obvious thing looking you in the face that it's like, Oh, of course they can do X, Y, Z. Why didn't this occur to me sooner.
Speaker 3:Exactly. And it's easy for us from the writer side of things to think that that's what people, what fans care about the most. And it's really not like it's going to be that little moment in the car with the, with the two characters, having that little five second conversation, like that's going to be the thing that launches 500 pieces of the fan fiction and a whole bunch of fan art, you know, it's, um, I like to think that plot is like a clothesline. And so it is, and then the character moments are like the clothes hanging on the line. And so plot really just stretches from the beginning to the end. And it's the stuff that you hang on it that ma that that's what readers really actually latch onto. And so, um, you want to have an interesting plot. You want things to happen. You want things to move. You want things to be at stake. You want there to be some urgency, but it can't all just be action or people won't care. And so that is, that is another hard thing, um, to try to always remember. Yeah,
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, that's a great point. I think we've all seen an action movie and came away from the movie theater thinking, I don't care one little bit about that movie could a lot of exciting sequences, but it didn't touch my heart.
Speaker 3:Exactly. Yeah. I think that, that is a very, very easy thing to, to overlook and, and, um, and, uh, at the end of the day, the ones, the stories that with the, with the great plots and the great plot twist, I think are the ones that, that have a lot at stake. And again, the stakes don't matter if you don't care about the character. Yeah. Like, okay, this person might live or die. Now I don't care. I'm good either way. Right. I'm just here for the popcorn,
Speaker 2:Which is, you know, legitimate, legit. Um, I want to go back to something you mentioned earlier, uh, this idea that if you were writing Gallagher girls today, you would have to write it as a middle grade. And I am fascinated by that idea, like many of your readers, Gallagher girls was the first series, the first books of yours that I read. Um, and I love them because I am a huge sucker for anything spies. And I clearly remember reading the first book and having that feeling like, I wish I'd had this idea. I wish I could have written this book because it is just so fun and full of all of the things that I love in it. So with that said, I'm super curious. Do you feel like if you were writing Gallagher girls today, do you think that you would still try to write it as a Y a do you think you would have to age it up? Do you think it would make a great middle grade? Like how do you feel about that? I find that really interesting.
Speaker 3:I think I probably in hindsight would have aged it up if I were trying to do it today. Um, you don't have a lot of spy things in, in the WIA genre. They'll a bunch of it going on in middle grade. Um, so, so in that respect, it does make sense to try to put it in the middle grade space, but really it's, there's, there's the romance aspect of it is, is hugely important. And I, I do think that that's part of, um, so I have this analogy that I use all the time, right? So people are no doubt, very, very sick of hearing me say this, but I always like to say that nobody buys an ice cream sandwich because they're in the mood for a sandwich. Okay. So you've got all of these different elements that go into a movie or a book or a TV show or anything. You've got lots of different things, and you've got to pick the parts of those things that are sandwich and the parts of those things that are ice cream. And so what I've learned in dealing with Gallagher is that a lot of people like, and specifically like from like a Hollywood film adaptation standpoint or whatever, when they look at something like Gallagher girls, about a bunch of teen girls who are spies, who, you know, have relationships with each other and with their families and with boys and with, um, you know, trying to grow up and become spies, what they always want to do is they always want to double down on the sandwich. They always want to double down on the spy stuff that in truth, it's, it's the relationships between the girls and the relationships between, you know, the love, the love, um, the romance storylines, um, that is where the ice cream lies. And so I think if I were to try to make it middle grade, we would have lost the romance. And that I think was a big part of the ice cream of that series. So I probably would have had to age it up just a little bit, because in book one, she's actually 15 and we do not as an industry right now published 15 year-old heroines or heroes, we just don't do
Speaker 2:It. Yeah. And
Speaker 3:So, like we, and we don't, we, we published twelve-year-olds in middle grade and we published 16 and plus in WIA. So if you're a 13, 14 or 15, nobody's writing a book about you and publishing it in the United States, we don't do it.
Speaker 2:That's so insane. It's actually funny because my character prudence and instant karma that just came out is 15. Um, but she's like on the verge of 16. And I, I had to like set it at the end of sophomore year because of things I have planned for future books that hopefully will get written at some point. Um, but I, I remember like going back and forth with myself, like, this is kind of that this is that weird in-between age where she's a little too young for a Y a, but I kind of need it to be here because of X, Y, Z. And yeah, I know it was a weird, a weird thing to try to convince myself that this was going to be a lie, but
Speaker 3:You have to try to convince an editor about it.
Speaker 2:I mean, I don't think it's ever actually said in the book, like has a friend who's 16, who's driving. And so that's how I got around like that they have transportation. Um, but yeah, I don't think it's specified. Yeah. But it is said that she's, you know, that they just wrapped up a sophomore,
Speaker 3:Sophomore year. Yeah. Yeah. And speaking of transportation, that was one of the challenges that I had with middle grade, because like you said, my characters are constantly getting in over their heads and, and writing middle grade versus Yia. That was one of the bigger challenges is there's, you know, we can, we can forgive a 16, 17 year old character for getting in way over their heads and a 12 year old. You're like, why aren't you telling a grownup, you know,
Speaker 2:Do you want me to go to a page
Speaker 3:And, or guardian right now, young lady and tell her about the almost dead guy in the basement.
Speaker 2:You need to do that. Well, I love that because there's actually one point in this book where someone comes, has that idea of like, should we tell an adult about this? And then they realize that no, we can't because of reasons. But yeah. I love that. I love that. That was pointed out and addressed because yeah. In middle grade, how do you get rid of the adults? How do you,
Speaker 3:That is, that is the entire Genesis of, of, of mayhem a mystery. I asked myself the very first question I asked myself for the sequel was how can I get rid of as many grownups as possible, Basically just became the plot of the book is all of the grownups are gone.
Speaker 2:We have, we started out with three
Speaker 3:Perfectly respectable grownups, and we are down to none. What are we going to do about that At first? Cause it starts, you know, kind of that, like what I call the Mr. Mom sequence and this guy who's, you know, 30 year old guy, who's, who's been living, you know, off of his wits and the land for 10 years and all of a sudden, Hey, you're a single dad to five kids. That's fine.
Speaker 2:Just what you always wanted. Go do some lines,
Speaker 3:Three Gabriel, you've got this. Um, and so you've got that. And then like, I was like, well, that's cool. Cause Gabriel's around. But then like anything happens, why can't Gabriel just take care of it. I know I'll just get rid of Gabriel. And so that's because that's, that's the hard part is you've got to figure out a way of keeping your characters with agency and they have to be, you know, they, they have to have their hands on the wheel, which is a problem when they're 12 and they can't drive. So that's why I set it on the coast so that they can take boats everywhere that needs to take. So, um, the 12 year olds
Speaker 2:Allowed to drive boats on the Kobe. They
Speaker 3:Are, they may not be around, but they're sure doing it.
Speaker 2:Yeah. No people just aren't paying that much attention on the water.
Speaker 3:Yeah, exactly. There it's it's, you know, it's a big C they're probably fine. Um, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:I want to make sure we also have a little bit of time here to talk about your writing guide. Um, dear Allie, how do you write a book? Uh, there are
Speaker 3:Very, very graciously contributed to which I know.
Speaker 2:And I remember contributing something. I know my name's in it. I don't remember what I said, but that's, this is not about me. Tell people, obviously there are a ton of writing guides out in the universe. What is special about this one?
Speaker 3:This one came about because I was, you know, we are lucky you and I to get to go around and promote books all the time. Or we were in the before times and I was at a festival in Houston, it was a tween book festival. So most of the kids, there were probably nine to 12 and I did three sessions in these giant gymnasiums. All of them packed full of like, let's say 11 year olds. And the very first question at every single one was I'm working on my first novel. What advice do you have? And these, you know, nine, 10, 11 year olds could not have been more earnest and that they were working on their first novel. And I realized that kids are doing that. Kids are writing. Like that is, that is when people are getting that writing bug. And there's not a lot of advice out there that is actually tailored to kids and actually answering the questions that they have. And so I said, I would like to get on paper, a resource that is specifically focused to the questions that real kids have. And so every single chapter or section in there is an actual question from a kid. And so I actually put it on my website and people could submit their questions. And so I think we had about over a thousand questions and we did through them. And of course, you know, they kind of come in very easily sort themselves, you know, you get 700, where do you get your ideas? And then, you know, and so I kind of grouped them together and then I answered a lot of them, but then there, you know, we had, I think, 30 different co authors or contributors and like yourself who I'm like, you know what? I have never co-written anything with anybody. So I'm going to ask Holly black and Cassie, Claire, who co-wrote a series to talk about their co-writing process, or I've never written anything in second person. So I'm going to ask this person who wrote something in second person to talk about that. And, um, it, it, I was so much fun to work with. It was so much fun to work with, um, lots of different authors on it. It was so much fun to actually read and see what kids worried about. Um, and I think that the book was so much better for having started with those questions, because there were certain things that obviously you're always going to talk about, how do you develop your characters or how do you, you know, write a good plot? You know, there was some things that are pretty in any writing book you pick up are going to talk about those things. But, um, there were a lot of questions on things like, what do you do when you tell your friends that you're writing a book and they laugh at you, you know, and things that are very kids specific and those sorts of worries of how do I break it to my parents? I think I might want to write books. Do I, how do I, you know, go about this thing that, that people might laugh at me for, or that I know that most people fail at, but I want to try it anyway. And so it was, it was very, very fulfilling and, and a great privilege to get to do that. And I, I wasn't so much the author of it as I'd maybe was more like the, the shepherd of the process because it was, um, it was, it was really all kind of came from those questions from the kids.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I think it's a great idea. It's a turned into a wonderful book and I love it. I love because yes, we go and we do these school visits and you know, every time, every time you go and you present, you talk about books, you talk about writing. And then after the assembly, there's always that one kid or that small group of kids that come up to you and they're just shaking and they're clutching their notebook and they are writers and they are so excited to be able to talk writing with somebody. And it's so special. And I just love that your book exists to now kind of help guide them and give them this advice.
Speaker 3:I hope so. You know, I worried a lot when I did it. Oh my gosh, who am I to tell anybody how to write a book? Like I'm just such a hot mess all the time. And I'm not the most partially successful person. And I'm not the most critically acclaimed person. I am somewhere in the middle and it's, you know, who am I to do this, but nobody else was doing it. So I was happy, happy to try it. And I'm very, very pleased with the results because it is it's, it's very much focused at that kid level. And that's not to say that a adult writer couldn't benefit from it. Cause I think, I believe drew genuinely believed that they could. Um, but most of all with it, I just wanted to write a book that teaches kids, that they can do this too. Like you, you, you, you were all worried about the fact that you can't get past your first paragraph and, uh, you never finished something before. Guess what? Every, every writer in the world started out exactly there. Yeah. And so this is, this is how you go to the next level.
Speaker 2:Yeah. All right. On that note, we are going to wrap this up with our happy writer bonus round first question. What book makes you happy?
Speaker 3:Winterbourne home for making a history because it's finished So happy to have it finished and out there in the world. And I just am really, really happy about that. I know that feeling really well as a reader. The book that makes me happy is Serena Bowen is an adult romance author. And she has written a book called moonlighter. That is like, she made it in a lab just for me. It's like everything that I love in one book. And every time I'm having a bad day, I reread that book.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh, Allie. That's how I feel about your book. Just for me.
Speaker 3:You're just making stuff up now.
Speaker 2:It's true. And I've told people like, I, I want to write, I want to be just like you. Next question. So you are of course, well into your career. How do you keep your love of writing alive? Ooh, that's a hard one.
Speaker 3:Um, I think that the key is to always have something that you're riding on just for fun. So you've got the stuff that you've got under contract that you have to do. And usually that starts out as a lot of fun. And I'm sorry, was this supposed to be more like a lightning round? Cause I feel like I'm missing the lightning ever. You want to take it so you always have the thing that's under contract, which starts out as fat. And then eventually it reaches. Like, I always like to say that writing a book is like taking a red eye flight until you're really excited when you get on the plane and then about six hours into it when you can't sleep and you need to get up and go to the bathroom, but somebody snoring on you and everything, you just want to get off that plan and you never want to travel again. And then you get to the end and you're like, Oh, there's the great wall of China. Yeah, I'm here. And so it's, it's, that's sort of the arc, the, of writing a novel. Um, so I always like to have one or two things that I'm working on just for me, like in maybe they come, you know, something comes of them. Maybe they don't. Um, for example, I wrote a cheesy, cheesy Christmas movie that I thought, Oh, you know, this is, this was fun. This was just, just a goofball kind of thing that I'm doing. And I showed it to a friend of mine and the long story short, it's going to be on Netflix next fall. So it's just one of the wildest it's called castle for Christmas.
Speaker 2:I love it. I'm writing it down right now.
Speaker 3:Scott, Brooke shields and Kerry Ellis, who was in the princess bride of course. And, um, it's about an, a romance author and a Duke who, um, the romance author is trying to buy the Duke's castle. So see Allie, you're in my brain because I love, I love a cheesy Christmas movie and I just, just for fun, just about writers, it's all the things. Exactly. I want to go. I mean, I think right now, especially with pandemic, like I've written all kinds of things like that that are like, what if I went to Switzerland? Like I'm not going to Switzerland that I can in my head. Yeah. So it's, you know, I think that that's, that's how you keep the love of writing. If you have something, you know, the old Stephen King quote about you, you write the first draft with the door closed and the second draft with the door open. And I think you've always got to have something that you've got the door closed on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I am also a big fan of the secret projects. I relish them.
Speaker 3:And if, if, if money comes out of them, great, if not, you still had a good time. And I I'm a firm believer that that time spent writing is never time wasted. So you will learn something from that process. You will become a better writer for having done it, whether or not the world ever sees it. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I agree. 100%. What is your personal mantra?
Speaker 3:Probably don't get it right. Get it written. Um, and, and I get credited for that all the time. Like, I'll see, like people who've made like Instagram quotes, Allie Carter. I did not come up with that. I have no idea where that came from. I saw it somewhere years and years ago. Um, so don't give me credit for it that, um, but it is something that I go back to all the time because I write the world's worst, first stress and I just power through. And then I go back and I say, okay, this is, this is working. This is not working. This is, you know, mayhem and mystery. I throw away basically the entire first draft and started almost, almost totally from scratch. And because I had to write that first draft and get it, get it out and figure out that, Oh, no, it was terrible. And now I, now I have an entirely different villain and an entirely different plot.
Speaker 2:Yeah, same. I have to rewrite everything.
Speaker 3:Yeah. And that's something new writers, draft twos, the real draft, like draft two is where, you know, it's, it's my draft twos are never like publishable by any stretch of the imagination, but that's when the, the real book shows up in the graph to use. Yeah.
Speaker 2:What are you working on next?
Speaker 3:Uh, working on next, I'm working on a very super secret project. So, um, I, I don't want to be cryptic and coy, but there is something that I'm extremely excited about, um, that it's like deep, deep, deep, um, confidential confidentiality, um, stuff. So I can't really talk about that, but I do have some, some just for fun me projects that I'm also working on that, um, you know, I've, I, I've got a bunch of things that I've started through the years that, um, you know, are just sitting on my laptop with, you know, 150 pages or whatever. And I think, I, I think my next thing is going to be picking out one or two of those and just making myself finish them. And again, maybe money comes of it, maybe it doesn't, but at the very least I will enjoy doing that. Um, I would very much like to do Winterbourne three, as soon as this thing I'm contracted for is wrapped up. Um, and I'd like to do another middle ground another. Why a, we didn't talk any about, not if I say to you first, my standalone, Y a, but I would love to do another, um, action, adventure romcom kind of, you know, I, I like to describe not if I say to you first as it's a, it's a gender swapped, Y a N romancing, the stone set in Alaska. So I'd like to do, I'd like to do something else kind of like that in the, you know, two people, um, thrust together who, you know, against the odds and the weather and everything else. And if they don't kill each other, they're gonna fall in love. And I'd like to, I'd like to do another one if they don't kill each other, they'll fall in love. So, yeah.
Speaker 2:I love that idea of taking some time to go back and finish up old projects, because I think so much of us have things is lingering on our computer drives and in the back of our heads, that just kind of get pushed to the side, put on the back burner. And, but they're always there. They never really leave you.
Speaker 3:Exactly. And, and I, you know, I, I have, I used to read a lot and I still do read a ton of historical romance. And, um, you know, I w I like most of the world binge-watched bridge written. And when I finished that, I was like, you know, whatever happened to that historical romance that I started, and what did I have, like 20, 30 pages of that. I had like 150 pages. Like, why, why did I not finish this? I should finish this. And again, well, probably do anything with it, but then I should. Cause it was, it was really fun to work on.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Last question. Where can people find you?
Speaker 3:Um, I, unfortunately I spend entirely too much time on Twitter at officially alley. Um, I'm on instagram@thealleycarterandalliecarter.com. That's sort of the, the home base, um, which I do not update nearly as much as I probably should.
Speaker 2:Awesome. Allie, thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you
Speaker 3:You for having me, this is very, very nice.
Speaker 2:It was so awesome to talk to you. Um, before we started the recording, we were reminiscing about our time in Texas, which happened right before the lockdown. It was our last hurrah. I'm glad that I got to look forward to the day, the day we can all go to festivals again,
Speaker 3:Hopefully very soon. Yes.
Speaker 2:Readers be sure to check out Allie's many phenomenal books, including her newest, the Winterbourne home for mayhem and mystery, and also her writing guide. Dear Allie, how do you write a book both of which are available now, of course, we always encourage you to support your local indie bookstore if you can. But if you don't have a local indie, you can check out our affiliate store at bookshop.org/shop/marissa Meyer. If you're enjoying these conversations, please subscribe and leave us a review. You can follow us on Instagram at Marissa Meyer author and at happy writer podcast until next time stay healthy and cozy and your bunkers and whatever life throws at you today. I do hope that now you're feeling a little
Speaker 1:[inaudible].