Mindy: Welcome to Writer Writer Pants on Fire, where authors talk about things that never happened to people who don't exist. We also cover craft, the agent hunt, query trenches, publishing, industry, marketing and more. I'm your host, Mindy McGinnis. You can check out my books and social media at mindymcginnis dot com and make sure to visit the Writer Writer Pants on Fire blog for additional interviews, query critiques and more as well as full transcriptions of each podcast episode at WriterWriterPants on Fire.com. And don’t forget to check out the Writer, Writer, Pants on Fire Facebook page. Give me feedback, suggest topics you’d like to hear discussed, and let me know if there is someone you’d love to see as a guest.
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Mindy: We are here with Jenn Bouchard, who is the author of First Course, which was published in 2021 by Touchpoint Press and has won 12 different awards. In addition, Jenn has published five short stories in literary journals, which I'm really looking forward to talking to her about because I personally find the short story market and literary journals to be one of the hardest things to crack. I actually spent quite a bit of time trying to do that in my mid-thirties and finally kind of gave up, but we can talk about that. Just to get started, why don't you tell us a little bit about your publishing journey?
Jenn: I did not seek this path at all. It sort of came out of nowhere when I was just finishing a major volunteer role. I had this big kind of gap in my life, this big hole. I was super busy. My kids were really young. I'm a full-time teacher, so I certainly had plenty to do, but I was looking for that thing for myself. And I think I want to try to write a novel. I really had no idea what I was doing. I started coming up with some ideas, but I started also going to a lot of author events. A lot of authors do come through the area. So First Course took me two and a half years to write a first draft. Gosh, I queried First Course for about ten months. I had a lot of really close calls with that. I had a number of agents who were like almost. It was so close I could kind of taste it. And so I noticed that there were a couple of small presses that were making a number of publishing deals with un-agented authors. And so I thought, "you know what? Maybe I'll just try and see if this is my path." So I noticed Touchpoint Press had been making a number of deals, and so I submitted to them in June of 2019. And within an hour, they asked for the full manuscript. And then four months later, I got a publishing offer from them. It's a journey I'm very grateful for.
Mindy: I love how you decided to go the route of going to author talks and author visits and author signings. I can say as someone that lives very rurally, I didn't have that option. I think that that is a really good way, especially if they're talking about their own journeys and how they got there. I think it can be very difficult to see someone that has quote unquote "made it" and realize that they used to be you, right? They used to be someone that didn't have an agent and didn't have a publishing deal or didn't even have a finished manuscript. I want everyone to realize that I don't forget that pain. No, I'm terrified every day. What if I can't write today? Or what if I don't have an idea? Or what if publishing tanks? What if AI starts writing all the books? There's always something to worry about. You had 14 awards. What are you winning out there? What are you out there doing?
Jenn: You know, there are a number of awards that are very much geared towards people like me. People who are with smaller presses.
Mindy: I'm going to share my experience. My book, A Madness So Discreet, won the Edgar Allan Poe Award in 2015. And that's a really big award. And that's a really big deal. And the people that love that book absolutely love that book. But the pie chart of people that love gothic historical fiction is small. That little wedge is very small. So people talk to me all the time about that book and they're like, "oh my God, I love that book." The people that love it, really love it. But it's like 15% of the reading population. So the sales aren't that great. People ask me all the time when there will be a sequel. They really want a sequel. It's set up for one. And I'm like, "you know, I would love to write one, but unfortunately I didn't sell well enough for my publisher to green light a sequel." And they're just like, "but it won the Edgar Allan Poe Award." And I'm like, "I know." And that was really cool. And it was super exciting for me, but awards don't necessarily drive sales. So did you find that there was any sort of like uptick in sales when you won these awards?
Jenn: I think it was more the feather in the cap. I think it helped me get a few book events, interviews, and things like that. I got accepted to a couple of book festivals. I would say I think it's helped with things like that. I think it also gave me the confidence to keep going. So you know, the book was published in June of 2021. I think the awards started coming in at a time when I needed a little bit of a push to show me that I was going down the right path. I think that helped a little bit with some of the imposter syndrome too.
Mindy: Those awards are really, really helpful to make you go, "oh yeah, I can do this." So tell me about being a teacher and a writer, because I know so many writers that are also teachers and teachers that are also writers.
Jenn: It is nice. I feel very fortunate to have something else. I don't talk about it much at school, but I did start the year just as, you know, telling them about myself. I did say, you know, I'm a published author. Every once in a while I'll have a student be like, "so you wrote a book, right?"
Mindy: I love working in schools, and I love working with kids. I like what you're saying too about having something else that you care about because writing is so solitary and it is so isolating and it is tough some days. So, talk to me a little bit about that balance. Not necessarily work and creative balance, but the balance of input versus output.
Jenn: If I've got a bunch of papers that I've got to get graded, the writing has to be put aside, you know, until I can get through that because I've got school deadlines. But I am getting a little bit better at looking at my time and being like, all right, I'm going to write for an hour and then I'm going to grade these papers for an hour. It used to be that the writing always got shoved to the side, and I'm really trying not to do that anymore. So I'm on a book a year plan. I know that for the next few weeks I have to work every day. You know, I have to really schedule the time. At least for me anyway, it's the first thing to get pushed to the side.
Mindy: I'm the same way, and it's my actual job. Just because it's hard. I end up in a "do as I say and not as I do" situation a lot because I will tell people, you know, you can't wait for inspiration. You can't wait to be in the mood to write. You can't wait for it to be the right time to write. You can't wait until you feel like writing. If you want to do this and you're serious about it, then you have to say, I am writing and I'm going to sit down. I'm going to put my butt in the chair, and I'm going to write. I say those things. Doing them is very different. I will do just about anything in order to avoid writing. I think too that other people give me a lot of energy. I am not currently working outside of the home. I haven't been for, I think, five or six years now. I don't get to pull energy from other people. You've got a family, and you're a mom. How do you balance any sense of guilt? As a female, we've got a lot of, if you're not putting your family first, what are you doing? How do you balance that?
Jenn: We bought the biggest calendar. It's this big glass calendar for the month, and everybody knows what everybody's up to. I think it helps that the kids are older now. They love the fact that mom's an author. That's super cool to them. So, they're old enough now that if I'm like I need to do this, they know that now. It was definitely a little bit tougher when they were younger, and I'd feel more guilt then. They've also seen mom get rejected. They've gotten to see that and they feel terrible for me, but they've also gotten to see me bounce back from it. So, I think it's been a really great way for them to grow up.
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Mindy: So talking about the short story market, and talking about the perseverance required there. I went through a period of time where I was like, "I'm going to try to use short stories as a way to supplement my income." Boy, was that fucking stupid. So...
Jenn: I've never made a dime.
Mindy: Okay. So tell me a little bit about that. Tell me about wanting to get yourself out there in short stories...
Jenn: Yeah.
Mindy: What your goal was, and if you do not see a monetary benefit from it, which I did not either, then what is the benefit, and why would you encourage someone to try it?
Jenn: So these are all fantastic questions. When I was waiting to see if First Course was going to get picked up anywhere by a publisher, I decided I was going to try to build a platform for myself. I was a complete unknown - a teacher. I'm a mom. I'm not the most interesting person. So I was like, well, if I could write some short stories and get them published, that will at least give me something. Because I was writing query letters. I had nothing to even say in the bio piece. And so I wrote a couple of short stories, and started sending them out there. I knew I probably wasn't going to get picked up by anywhere that paid anything. It was definitely more about building the platform. It took a while to get things accepted. Brat was the first story I had published and that was by Bookends Review. That got picked up at the very beginning of the pandemic. So I had started submitting that probably November of 2019. Another one that got accepted very quickly, like within five weeks. But the very first one I wrote took 11 months. I wanted to go with quality publications. That was really important to me. The places that I was published in were really lovely to work with. And I felt very proud to be with them.
Mindy: Would you kind of classify that in the same arena as winning the awards? Like, there's no monetary benefit, but it just kind of feels like an acceptance and maybe even a nod. Yes, you are a writer and you can do this.
Jenn: It's more validation, more things that are on my website now. So if someone enjoyed First Course and they're waiting for Palms on the Cape to be published next summer and they want to read something else I've written, they can read one of these stories. You've got a tremendous body of literary work. I don't have that yet, and so this is nice to be able to offer something else.
Mindy: It's kind of a weird place to be. I remember when my first book came out and people would reach out and be like, "oh my gosh, I loved your book," but you don't have anywhere else to point them yet.
Jenn: Right.
Mindy: How your marketing and how your approach to things changes a little bit too. You were talking about doing a Goodreads giveaway. I should still be doing those things. I am not utilizing all the tools that I used to, but I have hit a point with social media. I'm not sure it really works. And I am not interested in making TikToks, and I'm a writer because I'm a writer. I am not an actress. I don't mind being on camera. I like talking to people, speaking is part of what I do, but what I do is interact with people. That's what I do well. If you put a person in front of me, I can go. You put 800 people in front of me, I can go. You put a phone in front of me and you're like, pretend like you're talking to 800 people. Like I'm not good at it. Tell me about how you as an indie and as a debut author are using or not using social media.
Jenn: I launched in 2021. So I mean, it was a strange time. Most bookstores were not really having events. My launch was with a bookstore, but it was virtual. So I had to get very used to talking to a screen very quickly. I agree. I do much better when I can connect with people in person, but I ended up doing a lot of virtual events. I did have some, there were some outdoor events I was able to do in 2021, but it's really been combination of different things. Trying to collaborate with different authors. Number of authors from my debut year connected really well and because of the circumstances of debuting during a pandemic, we've had to be more creative in a lot of different ways. And so we've done some Instagram lives together. We're trying to build on all of that. But one of the things that I found, I don't know if it really drove that many sales, but I think it definitely got my name out there more, was that I started connecting with friends around the country and I placed copies of my book in little free libraries in every state. My friends or their friends, whoever I was able to find in all these different places would take a picture for me and send it to me. And then I would post it on my social media, and I would include the location. I would tag a local indie bookstore. So I was trying to make connections in these different geographic places. It was a way for me to make some inroads in some other locations. And so I do think it helped. I think my name is out there much more than if I hadn't done that.
Mindy: I love the idea of using little free libraries. For anybody that doesn't know little free libraries, you've probably seen them. They look like bird houses or little barns and they're usually just on posts and usually they'll be in the town square or the middle of a town or in front of a library. I actually put one up in my hometown here in Ohio, and I put it next to a coffee shop. I use little free libraries too as a way of promoting myself. It's wonderful. Every now and then I'll slip some books in there. Somebody will reach out to me over Facebook or Twitter and be like, "oh my gosh, your book was in here and it was signed. That's so cool." And I'm like, yeah. So whenever I have an event, if I'm in a town and I'm driving through and I spot a little free library, I will put one of my books in there. And whoever finds it, finds it. And it's a really cool little way to try to get yourself out there. I also recommend just if you're a person, like me, that has 30 to 50 books just sitting on top of their dresser, if you are reading something and you're not into it, or if you finished something and you know you're never going to read it again, take it to a little free library. Because I think they're so important. Like I said, I put one up in my hometown. I put it up at the beginning of the pandemic. Our library closed, and it's a really small, really rural town. That thing gets traffic.
Jenn: Yeah, they're awesome. They're creative. The stewards, the owners of them, they really put so much of themselves into the design and the upkeep in certain circumstances. And I really enjoyed connecting with those people too, the people who kind of manage those libraries.
Mindy: If you're interested, just check out Little Free Library, I think dot net? You can find locations for every little free library across the United States. And if you're interested in putting one up, you can buy a little free library from them so you don't have to make one if you don't want to. Little free libraries are fantastic. It's wonderful as a reader, but it is also great as a writer. Like you're saying, you can use them to kind of passively market yourself.
Jenn: I put bookmarks in them too. You know, talking about my next book. They're always gone whenever I check to see if the bookmarks are there. They're always gone.
Mindy: Oh yeah. Well, what better market for bookmarks than a place where people are going to pick up books? Everybody needs bookmarks. Yeah, that's perfect. So tell me a little bit about your second book. You've mentioned it a couple of times already, and then you had just informed me over email about some recent successes.
Jenn: There is an audio book being made of First Course. Tantor Audio acquired the audio rights. So, that's really exciting. I always wanted it to be an audio book. So, hopefully early 2023 for that. And then Palms on the Cape will be published by Touchpoint Press, the same publisher that published First Course, in summer 2023. I don't have an exact date yet, but I'm really excited to work with them again. I got to work with my same editor again, which was fantastic. I'm super excited about it. It is about a owner of an upscale beach bar. She's on the verge of turning 40. She might be in love with her male best friend, but she won't admit that to herself yet. But everything's going fine, and then one day this group of people come into her beach bar and everything changes. It was an absolute blast to write. It was so much fun.
Mindy: I don't hear that often. So I'm really glad to hear that.
Jenn: I smiled the whole time I wrote the book.
Mindy: I was either tense or crying the whole time I was writing my 2024 release. But that's okay, because that's my brand. So tell me, is there anything that you are going to do differently this time around?
Jenn: You know, I'm really hoping that there will be more opportunities for events this time. And even if there aren't, I think I can make those opportunities because I know so many authors in so many places now, and we're just going to put together events ourselves. I think that that will be fun. So I feel more confident this time in my ability to make things happen. I'm excited that more book festivals will be in person and not virtual. And I've actually got a couple of things over the next few weeks. There are more opportunities now, which I'm excited about, but I think with the second book, there'll be more that I can do. I think that there are more possibilities.
Mindy: Last thing, why don't you let listeners know where they can find you online and where they can find your book First Course.
Jenn: I'm at JennBouchard.com. All my social links are easily available there. Instagram is where I spend most of my time, but I do have a presence on Facebook. First Course is available wherever books are sold, you can get it. It is available on all the major online retailers and then any bookstore. If it's not stocked there, they can order it for you.
Mindy: Writer Writer Pants on Fire is produced by Mindy McGinnis. Music by Jack Korbel. Don't forget to check out the blog for additional interviews, writing advice and publication tips at Writer Writer Pants on Fire dot com. If the blog or podcast have been helpful to you or if you just enjoy listening, please consider donating. Visit Writer Writer Pants on Fire dot com and click “support the blog and podcast” in the sidebar.