Nova McBee On Getting A Film Deal First & Having An Editorial Agent

February 21, 2022 Mindy McGinnis

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 a a guest.

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Mindy: We're here with Nova McBee author of the YA trilogy that begins with Calculated, which is pitched as Count of Monte Cristo meets Mission Impossible. Calculated is available now, Simulated is the sequel, and then there is Activated, which is the third book, which will be upcoming. So Nova has a very, very interesting story in that her publishing journey is very much backwards. So if you would like to talk a little bit about what that means.

Nova: When I say that – my agent was like, who are you? This doesn't happen. And it's not normal. You're not normal. I mean, it's true. Everyone has a completely different path when it comes to anything really, but especially publishing. Some people can get deals within a week and others take seven years. The backwards journey is I got a film deal first, right after I got my agent. And then I got an audio book deal. And then lastly, I got a publishing deal. That is completely backwards.

We have to talk about our journey. And I remember when I first started writing books, how hesitant I was to say, I'm a writer or I'm an author. You feel like you have to get it somewhere for that to be spoken out. It was a challenge in me and I, I needed to start speaking it out to all my friends and family that didn't know I was doing it–and even strangers–before I had my agent before I had my publishing deal. And because of that, I ended up meeting a girl who was living in China at the same time as me. And she happened to be an up and coming producer. Her father was a producer. So we got to talking about my book that I was still pitching to agents at the time.

And she's like, wow, that sounds like right up my alley. She's like, I'm actually working with these producers right now that are looking for something almost exactly like that. I would like to read it, to see if it's worth passing on to them. You know, how do you say no to that? You're like, okay. And, you don't know where it's going. I was rejected for two and a half years at this point with agents. Let's just try at this point. I gave it to her. Didn't hear back for a while. And then I got an agent and we signed. Maybe three weeks after we signed – on a different book, by the way – and then I get this call from the other two male producers in California. And they're like, this book has gone through our entire team and we need to sign you before anyone else does.

We need the rights to this. And my agent was like, who are you? And what book are they talking about? So she's like, well, I better read this book, you know, which was Calculated. And so she read it in a day and that started this very unique journey of just negotiations and learning about the industry and what that means. And then she's like, well, then we have to put down the other book and we need to focus on Calculated, getting Calculated a publishing deal. She kind of threw it out to all of her contacts and it was taking again a long time, but she had put it out to some of her audio book contacts and the audio just responded first. And they're like, Hey, we're super interested. We really like it. We wanna sign you. That’s my backward publishing journey. I think it took almost a year.

This new imprint contacted us. They'd heard about the book and they contacted us and said, Hey, we're starting a brand new YA imprint. And we would like to have the chance to read Calculated to consider it as the lead title. And we were not sure because it was a brand new imprint, a very unique style of publisher. They're sort of a mix between independent and traditional. They do both. They're very fascinating and very innovative and very cool to work with because they are so flexible and willing to try everything. I've just had the best experience with how awesome they are, like truly team players. And so they read it, they loved it. We signed that deal. It went backwards very much.

Mindy: So I think it's really interesting that you had this relationship that got you a film deal. It can feel like it is almost a barrier in some ways, because people are like, I don't have connections. I don't have the things that I need in order to make that happen. I understand that feeling because I had heard for so long that networking is so important. Networking in this industry is a big deal. I am a farmer's daughter from Ohio. I was not going to have contacts in publishing. And I got into the industry by cold querying, my agent picking me up and that was in 2010. And so I've just been building since then. It's been real work, but, but because of the networking that I do, like I did have an in, in the sense that I was a librarian at a public school. So I had connections in the library world that could help me then promote the book, but all of that, networking with other authors and agents and editors, knowing who you are that does take time to build.

Nova: Exactly. And one thing that I didn't mention was while I was cold querying, which is how I got my agent, I actually was accepted into PitchWars. And before Calculated, actually. Pintip Dunn was my mentor and I didn't know anybody in publishing. I had nobody. I started out as like, you know, zero contacts, like you, in the industry. I was actually living in China at the time with zero contacts. Rachel Griffin, who's the author of The Nature of Witches, we had met on one of my visits back to Seattle. And she's a friend of mine. She was like, yeah, I'm gonna try, try this thing called Pitch Wars. And I'm like, oh, I am so not into contests. But, then I felt like I was supposed to do it. In the midst of that, there was an agent who was really interested in working with me, but I just felt like it was wrong.

And I was like, well, I'm gonna try to do Pitch Wars first. And then I got in and then the networking, like you're talking about it, sort of exploded because you meet everyone in Pitch Wars. My year was just incredible. Everybody was so encouraging. So supportive, all wanted to be friends, all wanted to boost, all wanted to read each other's work. I was like, what is this goodness? Because everyone was just pouring into each other and boosting each other. And it was like the most fruitful year ever, where I just got to meet all these people, it was just sort of placed upon me. And yet I didn't get my agent through that either. You know, my agent was cold querying. All the Pitch Wars agent requests didn't pan out. Nobody wanted Calculated,. And so I, in the midst of that, I wrote another book called The Never House. And I started querying that book and that's the book my agent read and signed me on. And she had no clue about Calculated.

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Mindy: I think it's really interesting too, that we talk about publishing and the different paths of publishing, but I also wanna point out, you did get your agent through cold querying. I know people hate it. I know people hate the process. I know that it is soul sucking. I know that it is hard, but I was querying for 10 years. You gotta get punched in the face, if you wanna be able to move forward in this business. I was rejected for 10 years.

Nova: That is intense. Mine was two and a half. I watched people give up after like 10 rejections and I'm like, yeah, what? But what? No. And, people do give up. And, but in the midst of that, I was actually growing stronger. It sucks, like rejection does not feel good, but in the midst of that, this article popped up and it was like this actress. I don't even remember who it was, but she was like, if you can't handle rejection, you will never be able to handle success. And I was just like, dang, that's so good. Because in the midst of that, like, if you're not really sure you're supposed to be somewhere, it's so easy to get bullied back out of it. You know, you learn to stand your ground and who you are and what you want and what you think you're supposed to be doing. You know? And it just, for me, it was a good season where I was like, no, it doesn't matter what they say. I'm supposed to do this. I'm gonna write books and I'm gonna get that publishing deal. And it's gonna happen. I don't know when, but it's gonna happen.

Mindy: You have to build that thick skin. There's no doubt about it. And one of the reasons why I was getting rejected, yes, for 10 years, I wrote four different novels. The fifth one was the one that finally got picked up. I deserved to be rejected for 10 years. I didn't want to process feedback. I didn't wanna share my work with anybody. I didn't wanna have critique partners. Like I didn't wanna do the actual work. I wanted to write a book and have everyone love it. And tell me it was a genius. That is not how this shit works. I had to basically grow the fuck up. So I deserved all the rejections I got and it did make me obviously a better writer. It pushed me out into sharing my work with other people, processing feedback, learning the industry, discovering trends, all of the different things. Yes, it did build that thick skin.

And you will be rejected. Once you get an agent, your rejection is not over. You're gonna be rejected by publishers. And then you will be rejected by your readers. Like that's just all there is to it. I used to read my reviews. I don't anymore. I simply don't see the point. Good reviews make you rest on your laurels. Bad reviews make you feel like shit. There's nothing you can do about them. You can't respond to bad reviews. That's poor author behavior. So there's literally nothing you can do. I didn't write this book for you.

Nova: Yeah, no, I think that's so good to talk about, actually. You had to step into like letting people see your work and getting feedback. That happened to me too. And the first time I shared my work with somebody outside of my family and they were like, yeah, I'm not really feeling it. I'm like, oh… But then, but then I'm like, well, why? And they were like, well, because of this and this, and I was like, oh yeah, I can see that. Once you receive feedback and have awesome critique partners, it's like gold. The minute I show them, they're gonna see something that I'm missing. And then I'll be able to go back and make it even better. It's such a powerful stage in the process. It is.

Mindy: And it preps you for that larger, it may not be a rejection, but it feels like we're when you get your letter from your editor. You get an edit letter. You open it up, you read it. And it's one of two things. You either cry or you get pissed. I get pissed. Like, that's just who I am. I'll read the edit letter. And it's like, you don't understand me. You don't get what I'm trying to do. I usually don't return to it for as long as a week, sometimes two. And then you open it up and you read it again. And you're like, yeah. Okay, fine.

Because the truth is every time I turn in a book, I know exactly what's wrong with it. When I get that feedback returned that says - Yeah, you were right. You didn't do this good. It's just like, oh yeah? You're just defensive. You know where your weaknesses are. And having them pointed out does not make you a kinder, gentler, more lovely person.

Nova: That rejection keeps coming. And, and then, you know, you'll get reviews on that same book, an author, Shannon Dittemore, we were talking right before Calculated came out. She told me the same thing. She's like, I don't read any reviews. And she's like, I just advise you not to do it. Well, that's really hard to do for the first time author. Right? I did. So of course I read my reviews. Thankfully, the ones that came in right away were good. Like really good. And I was encouraged.

I had a really cool experience with Pitch Wars when it comes to edit letters, because Pintip Dunn, she was incredible. She marked out all the places that she loved, which I think is the best kind of critique. Here's all the places that you are so strong. And this is why I love the book. This is why I chose you as a mentee. And here's where we can make it really stronger. Calculated, has a dual timeline. And it was already pretty tight, but she pressed me in that. She's like, you can make this better. She's like, you need to pull information that I need in the present from the past and vice versa. The more you pull these two together and you stretch that information. Just those nuggets of truth that she really passed on to me, just like really built me as an author as well.

And my agent, her name is Amy Jameson. She's absolutely incredible as well. She launched Shannon Hale's career, and Jessica Day George. And she's an editor too. So before my work goes to the publisher, she reads it for me. She doesn't give me a huge edit letter, but oh, I will have comments all the way down. She tells me, I'm your toughest critic, but I'm also your greatest supporter. She goes through the whole book with me. And I don't know if that's part of her job description, but she just believes in her clients.

Mindy: I have a very, very good relationship with my editor. For one thing we've been working together since 2015 at this point.

Nova: Is that at Harper Teen, are you with Harper?

Mindy: I’m at Katherine Tegen, which is a branch of Harper. So I'm with Ben Rosenthal and he's been with me since 2015. We've actually worked together a lot and that's kind of rare and we have a wonderful relationship. So my agent is pretty hands off in the editorial area because she knows that I have a great relationship with my editor and that he and I are gonna hash that out. And we work really well together now. I've also been with my agent for 12 years. So in the beginning she was a little more hands on, but now that I'm a little more established and I have my own relationships within the publishing industry, everyone knows that I am not going to turn in junk and that I am going to fix whatever you say needs to be fixed. Like I am going to work my ass off. People know that about me. So I already have that reputation, so she doesn't have to guide me editorially like she did in the beginning.

Nova: That's so true. And every publishing house will be different, you know? Are all of your books with Katherine Tegen?

Mindy: With the exception of my two fantasy novels that are with Putnam? Yes.

Nova: That's amazing. Wow. I'm impressed.

Mindy: I love, I love the imprint. Also of interest - I've had the same cover designer for all of my books.

Nova: Wow. Are you kidding me?

Mindy: No, I'm not. The ones that are with Putnam aren’t her, but yes.

Nova: You know, just having a team that you know, and that you trust. That's so powerful as well. It's just so cool. Cause then you guys know how to work together. You know, each other's systems and you can speak freely with each other. I'm assuming.

Mindy: Oh yeah. Very. I would like to talk about using the classics and in your particular case, the Count of Monte Cristo, as a launching point for your story. So is it a story that you've always loved? Like what led you there?

Nova: I didn't know anything about the industry when I started Calculated. So I was living in China and then also, I've lived abroad for a long time. I've also lived in Europe, in the MiddleEast. And I actually read the count of Monte Cristo when I was living in France. It's intense.

Mindy: I've read it.

Nova: But you're so steeped in the story that it stays with you for so long. It just like completely captivated my mind. And I went through a whole period of time when I knew I wanted to be a writer where I went through a classic period. I'm from Seattle. And there's quite a large community of people who are anti-trafficking, you know, Seattle's a hub for that. So I had come back to the states for a little trip and I had gone to this trafficking meeting and I was just sitting in my living room afterwards thinking like, what if this story happened today? Where would it be? It would have to be a super powerful country.

And at the time I was living in China, I was like, oh, what if it happened in China? Who would be taken? Would it be a guy or a girl? I was like, oh, it'd definitely be a girl. And like, the story just started evolving in my head. What if I could do a spinoff? How would she transform into all of these identities? Cause like in the count of Monte Cristo, he has more than one identity. He's not just the count of Monte Cristo, he has multiple identities. In one morning. I had the whole story in my head, but it took two and a half, three years to write that. And it was my first novel.

Mindy: It's pretty fascinating how you can take these disparate things in your life. Like you were saying, it was a book that you had read and then living abroad and then being involved in this, this trafficking concept and those things all coalesce. Last thing, why don't you let people know where, where they can find all of your books and where they can find you online.

Nova: Of course you can buy them on Amazon, but they're also through any bookstore. You can order them through any bookstore online. And my local bookstores, the Edmund's Bookshop and Third Place Books, you can order them there. There's signed copies in those bookstores. I'm on Instagram and, and Facebook. You can find me there and Twitter, I pop in on sometimes, but not, not usually. And yeah, my third book comes out in April and there's exciting film news about to come in the next few weeks. So I'm looking forward to announcing all of that and hope people like my books!

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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.

A Narrator & Author Talk Creating Audiobooks For The Indie Market

July 5, 2021 Mindy McGinnis

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Mindy: So we're here with Kate Karyus Quinn and Carrie Coello, which was actually more difficult to say than I anticipated, the both of you together. So we're here to talk about exactly that kind of thing, how difficult something may or may not be to say, because Carrie is an audiobook narrator. And Kate, many of you who have been listening to me for a while may remember Kate was actually my very first guest on the show for the very first episode of Writer, Writer, Pants on Fire and she also co hosted with me last summer until everyone told me that she shouldn't be allowed to do that anymore.

Carrie: Kate, what did you do?

Kate: I think it was all the ChapStick talk.

Mindy: I think that really killed it, Kate.

Mindy: Kate had a big idea that I needed to be more chatty and talk about myself and my life more. And so we tried it for a couple of months last summer with her as a co host to like, prompt me to say regular ass shit. And I got like five emails. They were like, what have you done?

Carrie: Oh, I need to go back and listen to those episodes.

Kate: I love the chatty part of a podcast. Almost every podcast I listened to has a chatty part at the beginning and I feel like it's what makes you bond with the listeners. But I guess not Mindy's listeners. Mindy's listeners are like - put the information in our brains, we are here for the content.

Mindy: Kate had an idea. It didn't work out.

Kate: We tried it. But we also talked about indie publishing and we had some really good guests. Hopefully that part of it was helpful.

Mindy: I would think we had some really high rollers in the indie community.

Kate: Actually, that's how I connected with Carrie, through the indie books that I've been doing with my co authors, Demitria Lunetta and Marley Lynn. We started a new series last fall - Down and Dirty Supernatural Cleaning Services. And it is a funny, cozy mystery, A little bit of romance. Hopefully lots of laughs. It's meant to be very, very funny and kind of silly. We sort of started talking about maybe doing an audio book.For our first series, we sold some audio rights, but we wanted to try and produce the audio books ourselves, which is something a lot of indie authors do. It was Kismet because I received an email from Carrie. I Think around that time, two or three different people emailed us enquiring if we were going to make audiobooks, sending samples, you know, I would listen to them. But when Carrie's came I looked at it and I was kind of like, uh and I listened to the sample and I was like, oh my gosh, this is so perfect, she's so good. I was amazed. I went to my co authors and I said she's really good. What do you guys think? And they were like, yeah, sure, sounds great, let's do it. And so we jumped into audiobooks and Carrie was super patient and kind of held our hands. So that's my side of it.

Mindy: Carrie, why don't you tell us a little bit about what that's like from your end as a vocal performer, kind of like a freelancer. Really like trying to pick up those gigs because I know that like Kate said you kind of like Cold called her and you had read a section of the book ahead of time to present to her, to show her, you know, this is what I can do. So what's it like on your end?

Carrie: Well, I love working with indie authors. You see a lot of creativity and innovation. I feel like on the indie side of things. And as a freelancer, I do like working with the author directly. Often when you work with a production company, you're working with their producers and sometimes they limit your contact with the author. They don't necessarily want you to have any contact with the author at all. But I prefer a more collaborative approach where I can bounce ideas off the author, get into the book's interpretation, make sure that I'm understanding the characters and themes. There are a couple of different places that narrators can go to to try to connect with authors and the biggest one is ACX. That's the Amazon Creation Exchange. And so for any e book that's available on amazon, an author can put out an audition and narrators can search for auditions and try to match with projects. The problem with ACX… ACX is beautiful and has done wonders for the audiobook community, Indies in particular and small publishers. But the issue with ACX is that once a book is available for audition there could be hundreds or even over 1000 narrators looking at that audition and competing. So one thing that I like to do in addition to auditioning on ACX, Is to go prospecting.

Prospecting is when I open amazon and I start scrolling through recently published e books and basically trying to find a match on my own. So I know who I am and I know my voice and I know what kind of characters really get me excited and right now what I really like is characters that are just a little bit naughtier or edgier than I would ever be in real life. I like to swear a little more. I like to lean in maybe to that edge more than I feel like I actually get to experience as a... I don't necessarily want to just call myself a 41 year old mom.

Mindy: So you want to live vicariously?

Carrie: I do. I want to live vicariously through some of these characters, the swashbuckling, the badass fantasy, the complicated heroines. And I'm also looking for books where it's clear that the authors know how to do a little bit of that marketing and self promotion. If it's part of a series that's definitely a plus. If they have produced other audio titles or had them produced, like I saw that you had sold the rights to a previous series. That's a plus for me too, because you'll already have a little bit of a following that we can work on together.

Mindy: I'm curious, as an author who operates in the traditional sphere, I'm interested in the philosophy and I know it's true that typically audiobook narrators operating in the traditional publishing industry don't interact with or connect with their authors. I have a little bit of an exception to that. Brittney Presley has done I think, six of my books at this point, maybe more. My editor just emails me and says, I assume you want Britney if we can get her? And I'm like, yes, and she will uh send me like, DMs on Twitter and have questions.

The first time that she contacted me was because of I wrote a book called This Darkness Mine, the main character believes she's communicating with the twin that she never had, and it's coming through her texts and emails and things like that, and they're really, like, broken up and even weird punctuation and very, very difficult for her to deliver in an audio form, because they're even like, kind of little puzzles sometimes. She basically reached out directly, and she was like, I just need you to break this down for me. How do you want to do this? So what do you think is, why do you suppose that contact is limited?

Carrie: I'm not a producer myself, so I'm edging into the realm of speculation here, but I've certainly seen a lot of comments from producers about how audiobook narrators might reach out directly to the author and confuse the author or distress them. I think the producers just sort of see it as more work for them. They're already managing a relationship with an author and maybe soothing the author’s ego a little bit, or laying everything out very smoothly, gently. And then to have a narrator pop in there and be like, you know, there's 14 typos on page four, and how exactly did you want me to pronounce this? So they prefer to be the go between so that they're managing the delicacies of the relationships on both sides.

Mindy: That makes sense. I tend to be pretty…

Kate: Does it make sense though?

Mindy: I think it does if you consider some of the personalities. So it's like, I just don't care about many things, like I'm not going to get my ruff up about the audiobook world, I don't know audio books, I don't know how they work. I'm not a producer, I don't understand anything about that particular art, so if they just want to handle that cool, like, I get that, but I can see where some ego might get involved.

Kate: I feel like most authors are so excited just to be part of the process, just to be making an audiobook, just to have this thing just to hear somebody speaking their words. I really think that's most authors. Yes, of course, there's always some people who stink.

Carrie: I think that you're right, 75% of the time. But I also think probably a producer only has to deal with one or two horror stories before they sort of set it as a policy uh that they just don't want to work that way. Like you said, you have established a relationship with a narrator. And I actually think that that's pretty common for someone who's doing a whole series or working with the same author over and over. But I think that initial contact is often carefully managed.

Mindy: Back to the indie world. What's the word that you used?

Carrie: Prospecting.

Mindy: Prospecting. Personally, as a writer, If someone were to reach out to me and be like, I took the time to do this. For me, I would already be interested.

Carrie: Like Kate said at the time that I reached out to her, a couple of other narrators reached out to her as well. So I think there are a lot of us out there who may be looking for the same things. The last thing we want to do is inundate authors with dozens of requests to listen to our samples and hire us, particularly if we're not a perfect fit. So I try to be really, really judicious and confident that I believe my voice could be a great voice for this particular project and I'll usually put maybe half an hour or an hour's worth of research, looking through the book, learning as much as I can about the characters, reading the sample chapter, reading the reviews, researching the author, going on the author's website, taking a look at everything else that they've written, putting together the whole picture. And then I'll even kind of go through and read a page or two out loud often to myself to make sure that this particular style of writing and my mouth fit together, that my brain works to interpret it. And then I'll take a chance and send the email.

Kate: I think that all really showed in your email because I remember like you referenced the book and you knew it was a series because we had several books out by that point and you know, you said complimentary things about the book, enjoying it and really the big thing was the sample. It blew me away. Reviews that we have since gotten have been so impressed with your performance.

Carrie: As soon as I would finish each recording session in my studio, I would usually pop out jazzed almost like high off of this book because there's so much energy in it and it moves really quickly and the language has a flow and there's all the different characters and personalities. Can I talk about the plot or we don't want to use spoilers? You know, there's vampires and there's pixies and there're werewolves and it's all over the place and you just never know where it's going next. And so I would come out and I would Rush over to my husband and high five him and be like, yeah, I'm so excited about this project.

Kate: It was really fun listening to the different samples you would send and the different voices you did for everyone. Do you want to talk a little bit about that? Because like you said, there are a ton of characters in our books and there are some crazy characters. I'd imagine that at some point it becomes challenging to separate all those voices, remember who's supposed to be who.

Carrie: I think the fact that the characters are Such different types is actually really beneficial in creating voices that are really distinctive. You know when you've got a book that is about seven 18 year old girls that are all best friends, that's actually much more challenging in giving each one a unique voice. So the fact that the characters are so different from each other really helps. But I have a hard time really focusing on reading print books these days. I think I'm so used to audio books, but reading print is an important part of my job. So what I usually do is I draw a really hot bath and I light a bunch of candles and I just sit my butt in the bath with the book and there's nowhere else to go and there's no other distractions and I'll just stay in there for a couple of hours. I usually put the main character's voice as close to my natural speaking voice as possible. And that's really critical with this series in particular since it's told in the first person, so that I don't strain my voice so that I don't injure myself. And I'll give them an attitude that might be different than my personality, but in terms of pitch and mouth position - so Paige had my pitch in my mouth position.

Kate: You sound like her. Like when I first came on this call, I was like oh this is so weird, it sounds like Paige Harper.

Carrie: And that goes back to prospecting, right? As I'm looking at different projects, I have to make sure that that main character is going to work with my natural voice. So it's got to be a caucasian woman between 18 and 60, right? And then we go from there with an American accent. So then as I'm sitting in the bathtub, I'll be just like reading, reading, reading, reading, skimming, and then whenever I get to a character I'll just test out their voice. So someone sitting outside the bathroom would just hear all these little random snippets of dialogue, you know and here's the vampire and here's the pixie and that's my prep. And by the time I get to the end of the book, those voices are really set and then I can go right into the studio and do them confidently.

Mindy: You know, it's so alien to me. I guess as a writer people probably wonder how a person switches when you're writing different POVs, how you switch your styles up when you hit that bump and you change. I'm sure people wonder how a writer does that and I just do it naturally. Whereas I can't imagine changing my voice for a new character and there's dialogue like back and forth. And it’s eally snappy in these books. So I mean when you're doing that, do you read it linearly? Do you do it in one go? Do you hop between the voices in a conversation?

Carrie: Yes, I do. That's the most efficient way to do it and it just gets better with practice. If I have a really challenging accent sometimes I can't, if it's an accent I'm really not familiar with then it's better if I can kind of tune myself to that accent and then I'll do all of that character's dialogue or a big chunk of it in a row and then I'll go back and cut it in. But that's so much more time consuming. It's better if I can just flow.

Kate: I think the hardest thing must be your voice getting tired because I love reading aloud with my kids. My youngest. You know we still do picture books so that's pretty doable. But my middle daughter, she and I have been reading aloud, we've actually been reading Kate diCamillo Louisiana's Way and after like a couple chapters, I have to stop. It's hard on your voice.

Carrie: I’ve been narrating professionally for two years and when I first started out I could really only do half an hour at a time and you kind of build it up like a muscle and relying also on previous acting and vocal training of working with your diaphragm and making sure that your posture is good. And you choose character voices. I choose voices that I can maintain. I'm thinking of the books that we did together. Nico's voice is low and gravelly and that is a bit of a strain. So I have to use that judiciously. If I do a chapter that has a long section of dialogue with Nico, then I'll need to take a little break. There really are physical limits to how much you can do. You maximize everything you can by being warmed up and limber and having a good posture and minimizing vocal strain through your acting choices. Start hydrating two hours before I go into the booth, drink water constantly while I'm working. And then even with that really the most That I think is healthy for me is a 2-3 hour studio session maybe four times a week.

Kate: That makes sense about the different voices. Because I have chosen in reading picture books to do something like a funny monster voice and after doing it like I am a monster, I'm like, oh what, why did I do that? That was a bad choice. Like even just doing that little bit, I can feel it like nails on my throat.

Carrie: Yeah, and you can give yourself an actual injury like it's no joke, you can cause polyps on your vocal cords. I took a job a year ago where I overcommitted myself to do a 37 hour fantasy trilogy all in one month. And that was So much. And that was my July 2020 and there were a lot of demons and really deep voiced men and I did, I did start to injure myself and so then I had to take most of the next month off because I was like I can't actually endanger my career.

Mindy: Kate has traveled with me multiple times when I have lost my voice. It doesn't take much. I get laryngitis really, really easily. Something interesting, I started substituting once COVID became a thing because our substitute pool at the local school where I used to work was mostly made up of retired teachers and they didn't want to be going back into the schools. So I took a long term sub position as a 5th grade teacher for like the last nine weeks of school. I hadn't been working in like a classroom setting for gosh, four or five years and I knew I was going to lose my voice because on your feet talking to the kids all day for eight hours and I knew I would lose it in the first week and I did and I just babied myself and I got it back and it is amazing how you can build that.

Interestingly enough, uh, to take a personal detour my past two long term romantic relationships were with people that didn't talk a lot. So I was always like, not having conversations if I was home, like it just wasn't happening. So the person I've been seeing now for the past like almost two years talks a lot. So we're having conversations like all the time, very long, 6-8 hours and I'm like this is good. I'm building up my vocal cords.

Carrie: Yeah, I know what you mean about teaching. I taught 7th and 8th grade for three years and then I also taught preschool for five years. You have to be careful with your voice, man.

Mindy: So tell me, I know what I do and I know what I found works for me, but I'm really curious about what your steps are to protect your voice.

Carrie: So in addition to what I've already mentioned Like that month that I did 37 finished hours in addition to just good posture and hydration. I learned this technique called lax Vox or bubble cup. I was so amused when I found it because who would have thought? But you take one of those sippy cups with a firm plastic straw, like the kind you get at a hospital, fill it up part way with water so that the straw is partially submerged by just a few inches. Blow into it while humming and relaxing your throat. And it's the most soothing feeling.That little bit of water that's in the straw balances out the pressure when you're blowing and humming.

Mindy: A Friend of mine, well Kate’s too Joelle Charbonneau. She's also a writer but she's also a trained opera performer. I tweeted about like I've lost my voice, I'm on tour, I can't talk. And she emailed me and she's like start humming. Start now. Bubble cup sounds like weird sex move.

Carrie: Yeah it definitely does.

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Mindy: Kate, do you want to talk more about your interaction through the ACX platform? Like as an indie author, did you ever put any of your books up for audition or were you just lucky enough that Carrie like cold called you And it went well?

Kate: My co authors and I were discussing putting them up when we started getting these emails. You know, I kind of thought, what are the chances that someone's going to contact us and they're going to be the one since we were looking? I would listen and I would read the emails so I was prepared to do the audition process. But honestly hearing about getting thousands of responses, even getting like hundreds. I can't imagine. That would be so overwhelming to listen to those. I'm so grateful that Carrie came knocking at our door and was like, um guess what? I'm perfect for this. I've done the work for you. But otherwise Carrie was also super helpful walking me through ACX. The first time I clicked the wrong button. I'm trying to do the first book and I did the wrong thing. So I had to go back and undo it. And she was just so so nice willing to hold my hand and walk me through it and put up with my terrible emailing habits of letting things fall to the bottom of my email inbox.

Carrie: Forget it. So it's not that bad. It was not that bad. It's me being like, Hi, I still really want this job! Well, ACX It can be done. There's thousands and thousands of books produced through ACX all the time. But their interface is not necessarily intuitive, it kind of surprises me seeing that they're an Amazon product. How much it feels like 2008 when you're trying to go through their website.

Kate: It’s interesting. The back end of it, it's very clunky and slow. I have to reload it and it's also really confusing just on the payout and of trying to figure out, why did you give me this much money? But with the royalties and stuff. So they are the biggest game in town right now.

Carrie: They are the biggest game in town. You know, you're not the only one who's had a little bit of frustration though with the interface and with the payout clarity and there are other folks moving into this space. There are a lot of production companies, audiobook production companies that kind of act as middlemen between the author and different narrators and that will assist you with casting and with production. And a lot of those are actually started by narrators who became frustrated with the process and you know, they had their own clients and were able to kind of expand and facilitate other author narrator relationships.

And then there are other aggregators who will assist author narrator teams in distribution, not only to Amazon, but to all of the other apps that are starting up. Some of them have been in the space for a while. You know, whether it's Kobo or Scripd or Libro FM or getting into Overdrive and Libby and Hoopla for the library market, it's a balancing act for authors. And maybe you can speak to this Kate because, you know, if you go exclusive with Audible, you do get a higher royalty percentage, but then you're dealing with some of the frustrations that come from working exclusively with Amazon. So it's - do you cast your net wide and accept the lower royalty Payout in the hopes of a return from a broader variety of sources? Or do you just work with the 800 lb. gorilla?

Kate: Amazon is like the big guy that every indie author has to figure out how much you want to jump in bed with them and how much you just want to make them one of your regulars? Because they're not just seeing you. They are definitely not true to you. We did the first three books of this series and we're waiting to see how much we make back on them. But I would definitely say in the future I'd be interested in trying to go somewhere else and trying not to go exclusive with Audible and Amazon. Just because that's kind of my approach to being an indie author at this point is that you have these options and you can try different things and so it's like, well let's see how this works. If the results aren't amazing or you aren't totally happy, then the next time you can say, well let's try this thing and see how that works. And if it's better and you know then you have the data and you can look at it and you can make choices. It is difficult with ACX, so far to look at the data and make choices. Because the reporting is very need to know and Amazon doesn't think we need to know that much.

Mindy: The series that you had out first, Kate, those first three blocks are on audio, but there with Blackstone audio. So those are wide. Right?

Kate: Yes. Those books we recently experimented with because we originally had them available for reading through Amazon's Kindle unlimited platform, which is for people who sign up for Kindle unlimited. It's all you can read as many books as you want, as long as they're enrolled in that program. And for some readers, that is an amazing thing because there are people who are very big readers. They read a ton, mostly genre readers. They will read our whole seven book series in a day or two because that's what they do. They just go from one book to the next. My co authors felt like maybe we were missing some of the market and that we might be able to do better wide. So we're experimenting by putting those books wide. We may do the same with this other newer series, the Down and Dirty Supernatural Cleaning Services, which we’re closing in on book six. I think it's also going to close out with seven books and then we'll start another new series.

It's constantly trying things and seeing what works. I definitely feel like moving into doing our own audiobooks has been really great. You know, we are selling audiobooks every single day because I check it every single day and the number keeps going up. Our read through or I guess are listened through rate is really great. Most people who are listening to the first book probably about 80% are going to the second book. And then the numbers for the 2nd and 3rd book are almost exactly the same. So people who are listening to the second book are jumping into the third.

Mindy: You have that data. Whereas with the first three books of your first series with Blackstone Audio, you really don't know how those are performing because it's through a distributor, right?

Kate: Yeah. I get the statements every six months. So the data is a lot older at that point and it's dated by the time I get it. It's not as helpful. Especially, you know, I can run sales on my books. Usually if you buy the e book on Amazon then you can add on the audio book for a very small price. I can look at data and say, oh I sold a lot of these books on sale in my audio book sales went up. So people are obviously doing the add on. Or if I'm running ads, I can see my audio sales are going up. So obviously some people are clicking on the book and choosing to buy the audiobook. Audio is becoming so huge and so many people love to listen. I've had one person, she loves the book. She's a reviewer. I found her on an audio book review site and she's read all the books and she's left really great reviews. She wanted the fourth book and I said, I don't know yet if we're going to do it in audio, but I'd be happy to send you a copy of the book just so you can read it. And she said, no, I don't read books. I only listen because of health reasons. And I said, well now audio counts as reading you're still reading the books, you're just reading it with your ears. I don't know what my point was.

Carrie: Whatever it is, I like it. I've seen a number of articles recently where they do functional magnetic resonance imaging the FMRI tests and see which parts of your brain light up when you're actually reading print versus when you're listening to audio. And it's basically the same parts of your brain.

Mindy: I've seen similar studies before, the audiobook boom when e books came out and it was talking about how with an e book it actually lights up less of your brain because you don't have some of the inputs. So, for example, you're not moving your body, you're not turning a page. You don't have the tactile feedback to your fingertips. It's very different when you're on an e reader. It actually uses less of your brain, whether that's a good thing or bad thing is up to you. The audio book, I can see that it would actually be very, very similar because you're engaging another sense completely.

Carrie: And I think it's really about immersing yourself in the world of the story and the characters.

Kate: Do you have any thoughts about people who listen to the book at like two times or three times speed?

Carrie: It's fine if they do that, but I don't want to hear about it. I do my performance the way I do my performance at the rate that I think is right for me. But then once I've done it it is released and then people can listen to it however they want. There is a general school of thought that as a narrator if you're going to err on one side or the other, err on the side of being just a little too slow because most listeners know how to turn it up.

Mindy: Carrie, you mentioned other alternatives for both vocal performers and indie authors when it comes to connecting and getting audiobooks made. So other than ACX, like what names can you throw out there that people can be looking for?

Carrie: Yes. I mean the other major audition space for narrators I would say right now is Ahab, which is not actually an indie space, so maybe I'm not answering your question, but it's a project put out there by Penguin, Random House audio to help connect publishers and audiobook producers with narrators that they might not already be working with and they're really expanding that to include formats other than audio books as well. So other types of vocal work. You know, there's other things out there that you hear about like voices dot com up work, but I honestly haven't heard of people having really good experiences with those. There's still an opening in the market for another good matchmaking service. When it comes to aggregators, if you'd like to distribute wide, I've worked with Audiobooks Unleashed on a number of titles and I found them very easy to work with. So they don't pair up authors and narrators at this time, although I think they might be moving into that space, if you know that you want to distribute your book wide, they can help you with that.

Kate: Do you have any advice for anyone who says, oh, I always wanted to be an audiobook narrator? How did you decide to get into this? You said you've been doing it for two years and you have a theater background?

Carrie: I had quite a bit of theater and acting training actually as a child and teenager. And then in my 20's I worked in film on the production side as a editor and script supervisor primarily, which was great because that gave me a lot of technical skills and also a chance to spend a lot of time evaluating performance, which I think serves me well now where I both perform and evaluate my own performance because narrators frequently are their own directors, almost always in the Indy space. And even for major publishers often as well, then I got into education and I spent a lot of time reading to Children and I had my own Children and I spent a lot of time reading to them and practicing all my farm animal voices and my fairytale skills. And I had always loved audiobooks. I've loved audio books since I was 10 and playing around with cassette tapes for the blind. It just kind of occurred to me one day that this dream that I thought I could never actually attain actually is possible now in the world of Home Studios and DIY. And so many people working in this indie space. And I know we've given ACX a little bit of flak in this conversation so far, but really ACX made this possible, bringing narrators and authors together.

Kate: We're sorry Jeff, don't don't be too sad, we still love you.

Mindy: Yeah, he’s fine.

Carrie: So yeah, I just kind of realized that I actually had a lot of the technical skills and performance background to start to pull this together into a legitimate career. For people starting out, acting training helps. And the first thing that I would do though is lock yourself into a closet and read out loud to no one for several hours and see how you feel because that's the job. And you have to actually love doing that sitting still and listening to the sound of your own voice.

There is a website out there called the narrator's roadmap that was put together by Karen Commons with input from a number of professional narrators and that's the best place to start as a newbie, if you want to see what it's like to look for work and some of the minimum technical requirements and how to get up to speed. People don't go out and get a degree in being an audiobook narrator, aside from the acting and technical skills and literary analysis, being a great reader that definitely helps. Aside from that, most people learn through workshops, webinars and coaches. It's almost like an apprenticeship system where well established narrators will take students under their wing and answer all their questions and give them personalized feedback and help them get started. So I've had some great coaches, Carol Monda and Emily Laurence, I would definitely recommend Crystal Lewis. And then there's a number of technical coaches as well, Don Barnes and James Romick, folks that will help you get set up on the technical side.

Mindy: You know, I've often heard that publishing itself is the last apprentice based functioning model and I think that that can be fairly true. I mean Kate and Demitria give me a hard time all the time because they're always like, well Mindy knows somebody there. You know, I'm always networking and just the other day we had exchanged an email and there was a question about this new, like a new start up and I was like, wait, I think I know somebody there, like let me let me email them and see. And they knew me and they remembered me. We're interested in looking at something that Kate and Demetria had written. There is of course any time there's an apprenticeship model, the tough part is getting your foot in the door and making those connections. But networking just matters so much, I think, especially in this industry.

Carrie: Yeah, I think so too. And then also recognizing if you want to get into narration, it's going to take a couple of years and you're going to put in some unpaid hours and in fact you're going to pay a coach, you need to invest in the education and in the time to develop. Fair or not, that's just kind of the barrier to entry. And there's a lot of competition, especially at the early levels, there's a lot of work to go around because there are so many, like you said, the audiobook industry is exploding, but still at the entry level, there is a lot of competition.

Kate: So, Mindy famously always records her podcast in her closet. Are you in your closet right now?

Mindy: I’m actually laying on my bed. Because with the advent of Gus, my Dalmatian in my life, there is no sacred space. He watches me take a bath. He usually is halfway involved in the bath. Going to the bathroom is a partnership, so I can no longer do that.

Kate: He’s very needy.

Mindy: Basically either I'm a Dalmatian or he's a human. He doesn't care either way we're married. He's the man in my life. So I can't sit in my closet any longer to do my podcasting because the dog will not allow it. So I am in fact just sitting in bed, but I'm guessing the question that you're getting to Katem is about appropriate recording space.

Kate: I’m also sitting on my bed.

Carrie: I'm in a closet. I am in the closet under the stairs. This is like my little Harry Potter hideaway.

Mindy: And closets, interestingly enough, the whole thing where I even - because I wanted to start a podcast and I was excited about it and of course everybody was starting a podcast. I knew that I wanted to start a podcast, but I also was like, you know, I don't know if I want to put money into this and software and hardware and all this stuff. And I was listening to Serial and at one point in the later episodes, one of the reporters was on location at Adnan Syed's trial and she was giving an update and she was like, I hope this sounds okay, I'm not in the recording studio, I'm on the road and I'm just sitting in the closet at the hotel. She said I hung up all my clothes in here and I'm just sitting in the closet - and it sounded exactly the same as a recording studio and I was just like, well shit, I guess I can just sit in my closet and that's what I did. I would get emails and people would ask me, I had people that were doing like podcast seminars and they would email me and I'll be like, can you give us a little bit of insight in your process and your hardware, your mic, what mic do you tell use? Tell us about your studio? I’ Always just like, dude, and I take a picture of my closet and my laptop with Garageband open and they're just like, are you serious? I'm like, yes.

Carrie: That's really all you need.

Mindy: It's low rent. And for someone like me who isn't like making money off of the podcast, it's perfectly acceptable. But if you were an audiobook narrator wanting to start out, how do you do that? Like how do you walk that line between being professional and not like burning yourself in the process?

Kate: Can I also add that we haven't even talked about the post editing and the time that that takes. Mindy. I know you often are saying, “and I have to edit my podcast.” Like some people I know just record the podcast and throw it up. But you like to edit out the pauses. You really hate all my ums. You edit out the 5000 times I say like unless I attached them to another word, God bless you.

Mindy: At this point in time, I have identified in the waveform Kate's ums and likes. I don't even have to listen to it. I can just take them out because I know what it looks like.

Carrie: Yeah, you can develop an ability to read it like a cuneiform.

Kate: Editing audio I think is horrible. When I went to film school. It was the thing I hated the most, I really hated looking at those sound wave forms and honestly the idea of editing a podcast or a book would make me just want to like run down the street screaming.

Mindy: Carrie, what kind of time involvement do you have there? And what kind of program do you use?

Carrie: I definitely edit all my auditions and I also have a podcast and I edit that myself and master that myself. But with a book like the Down and Dirty series, I outsourced editing and mastering. So I work with Centennial Sound Ben Zito in Michigan and send him my files and he makes them pretty. It's this push pull between, do I need the time or the money more on each particular file? And, and so that's kind of on a job by job basis, you know, just as you're speaking sometimes your mouth till mumble or I will literally belch sometimes I'll hear the way I said it and I'm like, oh I could do better, I definitely choose my takes and put it all together myself and then send it out. There's a technique called punch and roll where you, as you're working along, you get to a place where you know that you just made a mistake. And here's the other thing as I'm speaking, my mouth builds up saliva and I literally need to just stop and swallow all that shit before I can keep speaking at least once every two minutes. Or it starts to sound frothy, but usually I have some other fudge in less than two minutes and that gives me an opportunity to swallow. So by the time I send it off though, it's nice and clean.

Kate: What is the mastering involved?

Carrie: They're doing a little bit more than removing pauses though because actually even my pauses are mostly timed. Not that there isn't some room for improvement, but that's actually part of the flow of the performance. There is little like mouth clicks or a little thing in the background or maybe I accidentally bumped the keyboard or there's a car driving by. My closet shares no exterior walls with my house, so it's actually pretty well insulated but it's not perfect. An editor can go through and look at the waveform and do spectral editing to pull out particular frequencies to make a plane disappear. Or to minimize a little mouth click. So to discuss editing and mastering, editing is the process of going through and removing things by hand that need to be removed and adjusting the timing is necessary. And then mastering is running a set of plug-ins or filters balancing the EQ, making sure that everything is of equal loudness, that all the specs are met. There might be a file conversion process. So mastering is that process at the end.

Kate: Are you really in a closet under the stairs? Do you make sure no one else is home or is it like no one allowed to go up or down stairs when you're in the closet?

Carrie: Yeah, no one's allowed to go up and down stairs when I'm in the closet. And of course with Covid, everyone's home. So my husband is home, my two Children are home, my dog is always home and when they know that I'm recording, it's like the house is on lockdown and the Children are on mattresses because even just like bouncing and kicking their little heels against the edges of things. So they are on mattresses and my husband is working in the back and he has to take work calls quietly. But you know if someone needs to get up and pay, I can pause, right?

Mindy: Yeah. It's amazing the things that you have to consider, the things that get picked up. So when I'm getting ready to record, I have to make sure the ceiling fan is off. I have a very, very old house. So like basically I have to turn the furnace or the air conditioning off because when it kicks in it's so loud.

Carrie: I've been able to line my closet with mass loaded vinyl which is these sheets of think they're like metal particulates infused into vinyl, it's like a quarter of an inch thick and you lay it across the wall, you get a little air space and then you get the mass loaded vinyl and then there's a little more air space and then there's layers of moving blankets. So I've got both the deadening effect of the vinyl and then reducing the reflections from all of the blankets. And then I've closed pinned pretty little curtains up to cover some of the moving blankets so that the space feels a little bit more mine. It's a closet.

Mindy: I'm really curious what's your podcast?

Carrie: My podcast is Elderberry Tales. It's folktales and fairy tales for kids aged 4-8. Yeah, it's a lot of fun. It's sort of a continuation of the work I was doing as a preschool teacher as I let go of that career and moved fully into this. It's a way to stay connected with my students and my kids.

Mindy: Last thing Carrie, why don't you let our listeners know where they can find you like, either as a narrator or just to reach out and say hi?

Carrie: Yeah, definitely. I have a website Carrie Coello dot com where I post demos. That website is primarily to connect with authors. So if you're curious about my work and you want to know what kinds of books I've done and listen to some of my samples, then Carrie Coello dot com is the place to go for that. And then if you enjoy listening to my work and want updates on upcoming releases, I have a Facebook page Carrie Coello Voice where I keep folks updated on what's coming down the pike.

Dan Koboldt On Co-Authoring & Putting the Science in Fiction

April 20, 2020 Mindy McGinnis

Mindy: Today's guest is Dan Koboldt. Dan joined me today to talk about his publishing journey with SciFi, non-traditional routes to success in the audio world and how to put the science in fiction.

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Mindy: Your SciFi series Gateways to Alissia was published beginning in 2016 with the Harper Voyager imprint. So if you could talk a little bit about that experience because I know it's slightly different from the traditional publishing route. I think it would be really interesting for listeners to hear about someone that achieves success through something other than a traditional manner.

Dan: The experience was pretty traditional for me because I had to go query, get an agent, go on submission, and they are a Big Five Publisher. I think the difference was the imprint itself. So I was actually published through Harper Voyager Impulse, which is an imprint under the Harper Voyager envelope. It has, in theory, the backing of Harper Collins, but their model was a little different.

They decided to try sort of a digitally focused imprint, which a lot of publishers were trying at the time because they could see that self and indie publishing were really taking off, and they wanted to try new things to compete with that market. So under the Voyager Impulse imprint, our books came out in e-book first, and then they came out in print like a month and 1/2 after that.

I think a lot of things were the same to what some of your other interviewees who have gone Trad Pub have experienced with the exception that this was kind of an experimental approach. It was very digitally focused. They also probably signed a lot of authors and books. I think at the peak of Impulse they were putting out 2 to 6 titles a month. maybe more, so they were putting out a lot of releases. Probably too much for what sort of their publicity marketing could really support in substantial ways. So that was the experience. I mean, it's been a while now, but remember it being a little bit different from what some of my friends have gone through other modes of publishing have experienced.

Mindy: For example, cause I know it's also now all of them are also available in audio and in physical copies. Did you see it as a successful experiment? Did you move many e books?

Dan: Most of us sold mostly e books and that was the focus of the imprint, I honestly think that they offered a print version mainly because they would have had difficulty signing authors if they didn't have that component to it. So because, you know, authors like, Oh, wow, it's Harper Collins. If it were digital only offer, I think a lot of us wouldn't have signed, myself included. But, um, e books have always been the focus. And I think their model, if they wanted to go after was, we're gonna focus on E books. We're gonna keep them reasonably priced as another component of impulse. I think all all the e books are priced Dollar 99 to 3 99 maybe 4 99 at the highest. So it really was them trying to compete with what you'd consider the Indie model right now, from the point of view of producing a quality e book that's reasonably priced and having it available across all the e book platforms, I think that part was a success.

I think where the imprint struggled is in marketing and promotion because they put out a lot of these. We were assigned publicists and we got some sort of basic support along those routes. I think that the venues that were being pitched about us were aware that this was sort of a digitally focused thing and that, like, shifts you into a lower priority tier for coverage, as you're probably aware. So it was a struggle for us to get publicity, and there were other types of support and marketing that we didn't get compared to, sort of, a classic Voyager Imprint author might get where they're only doing one or two of those tiles a month.

Mindy: And do you think that in general, SciFi performs well in that ah medium of e books? Because obviously, romance is always the e book, the big push for e books. That's where romance does a lot of their business. Ah, Indy publishers and self publishers obviously hit that pretty hard, but we're talking about traditional publishing houses. SciFi Is that something that generally does well in E books? Because they know that I write YA, and we don't move e books. Everyone talks about teens always being attached to their phones and attached to their computers, and the truth is that when they want to read, they actually sign off. They have a physical book. So you're writing SciFi for adults. Do you find that your audience is there for e books?

Dan: Oh yes. I think SciFi is probably second only to romance, possibly also the mystery in e book adoption, cause I mean, think about the readership people like SciFi. We're usually very tech adjacent, And so they were early adopters. And that's been the case even for authors who like pretty well established traditional SciFi authors, for example, Ann Leckie. I met her once and she gave a seminar and and I think she reported that 75% of her sails are E books, and she certainly has got all the different print and other format options that you could imagine. But it's just the readership, we're very tech adjacent.

Mindy: Yeah, definitely. No, that makes sense. And it's something that I know as someone... you know, I look at my my royalty statements and I sell like 1/4 of my sales is e book. They just, they're not there. But I want to talk about audio books as well, because I see you also have your books available in audio now. Is that something that was part of the original plan? Or did the very recent boom of audio books make that a possibility?

Dan: That's a great question. It was not part of the original plan. None of the Harper Voyager impulse authors got audio books. But HarperCollins, even in the mid 20 teens, was requiring audio rights for any book contract. Like they were forward thinking in that way, and their house was notorious for it in a time when not many houses were requiring that, but Harper Collins did so they had the audio rights, but they were pretty up front about not having intentions to produce audio books because it's expensive.

The boom hadn't quite happened either. It was just starting. And so it was one of my great regrets that we had sort of given them the audio rights. But they were going to languish because an audiobook wasn't going to be made. So what happened is my agent and I worked out a deal with them where they wouldn't revert the audio rights, but they'd allow us to shop the rights, and then they would get a cut if they were sold. But we could at least market them. And that for me was important because I could see that audio was really blowing up. And I, um, I had had some other projects come out in audio, one of which we're gonna talk about later.

And it was just so amazing for me. And I thought, it would be fantastic to get my books into audio. I think they would do pretty well in that format. And also, I could just tell a segment of the readership was moving to where they only read books that are on Audiobook. I even saw that in 2015 when I was approaching book reviewers a lot of them had start asking, Do you have an audio book? Because that's what they had switched to as their preferred format.

So I didn't get that initially, but once we worked out this deal and were able to, we shopped the rights, this was somewhat later, this was in the past year or two, my agency started shopping the rights around. I think the handicap, though, is that yes, audio's hot, but a lot of publishers are sort of less enthusiastic about something that's not a brand new book, right? I mean, It's not, It couldn't be an audible original or something had been published for starting in 2016. The market was growing enough that we did get some interest and we eventually got Blackstone Audio made an offer for all three books, which we were super excited about. At least one other Voyager impulse author has also gotten audio books. So I think the segment and the format is so hot right now that some people are having success even in books that sort of have come out already.

Mindy: I think Black Stone in particular, I know that, Ah, friends of mine that have gone into self publishing, and indie publishing, Blackstone has bought up their rights, and they produced fairly quickly as well. They were very surprised at how quickly the, and the quality of the audio that was produced and on the market very fast.

Dan: I'm impressed with that, too, and that exact same impression. I mean, it seemed like we were just sending that contracts and stuff, and very soon I was, you know, getting narrator auditions, MP three's and stuff, so it did move very quickly. That's a perk of like an already established work that someone comes and gets the audio rights to, is it's already been through edits and copy editing and everything. It's I mean, it's a publishing ready product, and so it's just making the audio.

Mindy: Speaking of audio, let's talk about a project that we worked on together. We worked on a series for a company called Serial Box. And since that is your baby, why don't you explain to the listeners what Serial Box is and the model that we followed in order to make that come alive?

Dan: It might have been my starting baby, but eventually that was adopted by the three of us, Yes, so Serial Box is a relatively new publisher. They've been around for a few years now, and their model is that they wanted to publish projects that were co written by multiple authors in episodic format. So rather than having a book, you would have a season of episodes like nine or 10 episodes, each of them being about 10,000 words that were written kind of like how TV show writers would do it. There would be a writer's room involved, and a writer would take the lead on each episode and they would get released week after week in these bite size chunks.

And what was different about Serial Box, everything is essentially released through their app, so you can open a Serial Box app. You can start reading, Ah, one of their many serials that they have. The first episode is always free, so you can try it out and see if this is kind of interesting to you, and then you can buy additional episodes or buy the rest of the season. It's usually like 10 to $12 to buy the entire season, so it's definitely a different model for publishing. And it was my first experience in co writing, too.

But I had heard of Serial Box. I had met some people who wrote for them and was started hearing about them. And my agent let me know. Hey, this company Serial Box is interested in hearing pitches. So they had issued a prompt at the time they said something along the lines of We're interested in new series, basic premise being that a group of people are getting some sort of messages, preferably in audio, because they were really pushing the audio format, that are related to a mystery they're trying to solve, and that was a loose prompt they gave. So almost right away, I just had this idea for it. I thought it would be really cool to do something with the Bermuda Triangle because I'm sort of conspiracy theory, hobby fan of that sort of stuff. I like historical mysteries, and I was thinking about what we know from history about the disappearances in the Bermuda Triangle could be a really interesting setting for that.

So we put together this proposal, the basic premise being that after a particularly bad hurricane season, the Bermuda Triangle reawakens and starts claiming ships and planes at an accelerated rate. And so there's a team of people that are assembled to try and figure out what's going on. And as part of that, they're getting these snippets of audio from the crafts that have disappeared like shortly before they disappeared. So that was the basic premise that we pitched Serial Box. They liked it. They said, we'd like you to write a series bible of what a whole season one would look like And we did that, and they sort of green lighted the project and they said, Okay, now we want you to find a couple of co writers to write this with you. That was sort of the establishment of the baby, as you called it.

That was when we first got started. Then it was like, Okay, now let's talk about what co writers do you want. And they came to me, which I was a little surprised by. But they're like, we need you to pick some people that you think you could work with who, and they also wanted writers who were somewhat established in some way. And so I had two thoughts for people that I found it reasonable to recruit. One is Sylvia Struck Wrigley who was an aircraft crash expert and a friend of mine. And I knew her through some writing groups. And I thought, this is somebody whose expertise we're gonna need with all these airplanes and ships disappearing and radio conversations, et cetera. So I said we should try and recruit Sylvia.

Serial Box had sent me a list of people that they thought might be valuable to try and recruit to write for project. And your name was on it. And I was like, Mindy? I know Mindy and I knew you were a boss and I was like, We should try and get Mindy So that's how it all started.

Mindy: One of the things about it that I was so excited about as a writer was to have this experience of co writing, because at that point in time I had not done that. And the other part of the model that is so interesting is that Serial Box flies us all in and puts us together, and we're in a writer's room and we bang out a season. And it's actually so much more in tune with how you would write for TV than how you would write a novel, because you are planning an entire season with an arc for the season. But an arc also for each episode, and what was so interesting to me was how truly collaborative it was, because we started with an arc that became something entirely different by the time we worked over like, three days. I think we only worked for three days. Is that correct?

Dan: That's right. They were long days, but there were only three of them, and through they were long days.

Mindy: They were very long days, but it was really interesting to me to have that writer's room experience. So if you want to talk about that a little bit, and I like how it's so different from the experience of writing in isolation.

Dan: That's true. And part of the process that they had sort of set up was okay. When we GreenLight a series you and your co writers, we're gonna have a writer summit. It's in person, but we all went to New York City. Serial Box, brought us there, and we had this schedule of three days where we were going to basically map out the entire season, figure out what was going to be the plot arc overall, what was gonna happen in each episode? The characters, the world, the rules of the world, etcetera.

So it was really interesting. I mean, we're all got together and we were literally in a room for three days, as we said, planning this stuff out and our starting point was the series Bible that I've been paid by Serial Box to write. But that got heavily revised as we started working through a lot of the questions and like. Okay, So if we're really gonna make 10 episodes out of this, what's gonna happen in each one? How are the character's gonna interact? What are the relationships gonna be like? So we were creating and deleting characters from that, like nobody's business. And I think we all brought something interesting to the conversation, which I think was immensely helpful. We also had our producer in the room who was helping guide the conversation. So is, um, I thought, It's a really interesting experience.

Mindy: Yeah, definitely. And I thought, to, how interesting it was to be working with a series. One of the things that was difficult about it. And it could be frustrating, but it was also really pushed the edge for me creatively was we had to leave a window for a season two. if we got one, which we didn't. But we needed to make sure there was the possibility of one, yet also completely settle everything like more or less we had to write a TV series that was only in audio that could be a stand alone with serious potential.

Dan: It was funny because I was always thinking about that. I'm always like Let's leave this open for this. And so I came in from the point of view of leaving way too much open. And they're like, OK, no, we need to somehow close this. That needs to be a complete story in itself with just room to do more. I mean, for me the challenge was when I initially conceived the idea with the premise I already described, the idea I had for this first season is they assembled this team. This team gets together on an island and starts working on the problem of all these ships and planes have gone missing. Their investigation was like the 1st 2/3 of the season, and then basically not to spoil anything, but they find a location that they need to go investigate and end up sort of crash landing on this island where this source of the mystery seems to be located.

So we had this plan of, like, all this investigation with all these audio clues, and I was thinking that's gonna carry us forward, and then they were like, No, we need to, Is there any way you could have them get to the island like right away? And I was like, Oh my God, I had this whole season in my head about resolving the mystery and all the disappearances and we kept having to squash that as much as possible basically cut to the chase as far as the series was concerned, So that was the hardest part for me.

Mindy: Yeah, that was definitely difficult, because I think I think your original plan was to have them getting to the island and, like the end of Episode five, and we did at, like, beginning of Episode two.

Dan: It is so crazy, just like trying to squash all that in and make it interesting and just totally reframe our thinking. I think because Serial Box is part of the process, they use a producer who's involved in the series. And they also eventually have, like a beta reader of the people who, some company people in some external advisors, and everyone was saying like, Let's get there as soon as we can. So I think that's the direction was going.

But you're right. It was challenging because we kept having to squish all that and make it make it intense and pacey and lay the appropriate groundwork. But then also get to where the mysteries took it as soon as possible. But one of the nice things about that is we got a season much as we had to squish all this stuff I had planned for the first half of the season. We got to expand and build upon kind of what happens once they get there. And that was a lot of fun, because I had. It wasn't just me. I had you and Sylvia and we were all coming up with ideas and talking about different interactions and who would be on the island, what would be on the island? How would that unfold? As time went on, that was a lot of fun.

Mindy: Yeah, it really was, and so non traditional for me, as far as writing style and just procedure, it was so different and it was such a great experience. And that's part of what, it's part of the reason why I signed on right away. When you contacted me, I was like, I need to expand my wheelhouse and expand my skill set. I don't know how to write for television I because that's basically what we were doing. I don't know how to work in a writer's room or be a co author. It's like, Let's do this. Let's go for three days and bang out some shit, you know? And it was great. Like I I was freaking exhausted. At the end of it was it was creatively draining. I thought it was great. It was a great experience as a writer.

Dan: I know. It almost killed me. Um, yes, but it was also like I look back, but then when we finished you know, the writing portion of it was really interesting, too, because we didn't write the whole thing that weekend. Obviously, we sort of laid out the season, made the assignments as best we could. We framed what would happen in the episodes, and we decided, Who's going to take a lead on writing each episode. And then the other interesting element to how Serial Box does things is their creative process for the whole writing of it is also under this formula. So the team of writers we each take an episode and they're the sequential episodes like 1,2,3 or 2,3,4 And we're all writing those simultaneously. That part was also like a little crazy because you're writing something that's gonna end right where somebody else's picks up and we're all writing at the same time.

Mindy: It was crazy and we would get together, there were Google chats where everybody would be like, this is where I'm stopping. My biggest concern. Of course was and I think everyone else's was, too, was continuity, continuity, continuity. How do we do this and keep things straight across? Because even things like, Ah, one of our main female characters is a police officer. But she's on a particular island where it was like the culture there, they wouldn't call her a detective. They would call her something else. And so we had to make sure we were using the right word, and all of us were using the right word every time. And the same was true of like Sylvia knows more about planes than I do. You know more about boats than I do. So it was like, you know, we had to make sure that all of us were using the right terms and consistently using really small things like that, that we had to be sure that we were consistent about what we were calling things even.

Dan: Right there. I mean, that was a challenge. And I think it was since I was assigned to be the lead writer it's technically my responsibility to ensure continuity. But there was also no way I could do that by myself. So that was the purpose of these get togethers. We would talk, and there were even, like, simple things that came to light that were like, Okay, well, here's what I'm gonna have, you know, my characters do in this part, and we're like, wait you can't have those two because I have those two making out in the cave. So, like banging out all the stops, the sort of model out and figure, where is everyone and what's happening? And what happened with this ship wreck? There are a lot of details, and it's funny, too, because our our personalities came out, I think a little bit. We're on a scale of detail oriented, where Sylvia, I think, is by far the most detail oriented and very technical and very capable. In that way, you were probably the least caring about details, and were just like, No, that's probably what we're gonna work out. I'm gonna write this thing and I was somewhere in the middle. I try to.. I was trying to follow some details, working it out with Sylvia, but also, like, not to her level of being being that capable. So it's really Interesting seeing how we would handle stuff like that. Like usually, if it's like, OK, if we have to figure out how this speculative element is gonna work, let's work out. The timing of this and Sylvia and I are like trying to do these calculations and all the stuff you and you were just like just let me know what you guys figure out.

Mindy: Yeah, I was like, I literally don't care. Like that is, well, timelines for me - and I'm like this with my editor on my own books - I'm like, I don't care if you say it has to be a Tuesday, then just tell me it's Tuesday and I will do whatever. You figure it out and tell me and that's what I'll write. But I'm just like I don't know, timelines linear time. I do not care. I I don't even exist in it very well. I'm just like whatever. I'll be there when I get there.

Dan: It's so true. But, you know, you you brought your strength to the to the project to. Like you were really good at killing people. And so whenever we had somebody that had to die, we were like, Well, that's clearly gonna be a Mindy episode because someone's going to die horrifically so that will go to you. And if there was, like, a plane crash or a boat crash or whatever, it was we're like, well, we should have Sylvia do that, clearly.

Mindy: Sylvia's gonna take that one. Yeah, Yeah, it was fun.

Dan: It was so fun, cause I think we all got into the story. And what's great is we all you know, after that summit, we all had invested, and it was our group story that we created together, and we're all super excited about what we're gonna write the week to week. You know, writing schedule was intense and it was, like, creatively and physically taxing, like you said. But it was also just fun because we weren't in alone. We're all writing together, and something we could count on you, Mindy, is you were, like, always done first. Like we had to write 10,000 words. And for me, and Sylvia it was, like, brutal to write that much in some short period of time. And you were always, like, done way before us, like an authority.

Dan: It was so great. So it was like, my goal to like, one time during the season beat Mindy in creating my first draft. I think I got it done once. But that was it.

Mindy: I think you did. I think you managed. Like, at one point, I think I was on tour and you were like, I did it. And I'm like, I'm on a plane, Dan, it's because I'm on a plane, okay?

Dan: I gotta victories any way I can get him.

Mindy: I understand. Yeah, it was It was fun. Like I had a good time with it.

Dan: It was a cool experience. I learned so much from writing with you guys. And we learned so much from you. Learned so much from Sylvia. Um, so it was really It wasn't just a work co writing experiences, it was really educational. I felt like I grew as a writer because of all those different elements working with you two, and the sort of dense timeline, and the team approach to this. It was, it was really interesting for me.

Mindy: Let's talk about your book Putting the Science in Fiction. It's from Writer's Digest Publishing, and it was really cool, because what you did is you put together Ah, bunch of advice for writing with authenticity in science fiction, fantasy and also other genres. So you brought together scientists, physicians, engineers and experts in other areas to talk about how to put these things into your story. Essentially, your title says it all, Putting the Science in Fiction. So why don't you talk about that a little bit?

Dan: So I'm glad you asked. That thing has been a long running project. Basically, several years ago, I started a blog series where once a week I would invite an expert in some area that requires technical or engineering or medical expertise to come and do a guest post on my blog about their particular field and in particular, how to write it accurately. If you're just a lay person and I think the inspiration for the series was that I as a person who is a genetics researcher. I am easily annoyed by what I see as mistakes in the field of genetics and DNA research and that sort of stuff. Whenever I encountered it bothers me. That's just my personality, I guess. But like if it's a TV show, a movie, a book, anything where they're just making gross errors about the scientific accuracy, something it would bother me.

And and so I started running a couple of these articles about, like, how to put more science in your genetics themed story that got a good response. And so I started inviting these other experts because I, sadly, the great secret about scientists is we don't know everything about all sciences. And so as much as I try and keep that on the D. L, there are a lot of other disciplines where my knowledge is cursory as anyone else's. And so I knew I needed to find other people who had expertise in those areas, and I would invite them to come to a guest post. It would basically be like this format. Okay, tell me the things that you encounter in media where people get something wrong about your area of expertise and then tell us about some ways that you could get it right or some elements to this particular subject, that if I understood a little bit about it and show that I would come off as a person who's convincingly knowledgeable about X and X might be space travel. It could be genetics, like in my case, it could be gravity. It could be systems, biology, anything like that.

We basically wanted to come up with these relatively short pieces that would instruct an author in enough information to be dangerous. That's what we wanted to have, and so that blog series was going for some time. And then my agent said, Hey, you know, we should think about maybe trying to propose that to become a book and Writer's Digest books was the natural venue to pitch. But we put together a proposal and said, Look, we had this long running series. It's got a good readership. People really interested in this and we think would make a good book and this is what we put in. We proposed, I think, to do 30 or 40 chapters covering a lot of different disciplines and we would have 10% of those be ones that did not appear online, that were unique to the book because that's important when you're kind of taking something from online to book format. That's what became Putting the Science in Fiction. I mean, we pitched it to them. They really liked the idea. And I worked with my contributors to get their chapters sort of edited and consistent for inclusion as chapters in the book.

Mindy: Very cool and I own that, I personally really enjoyed reading it. I find, without having much of a science background myself as a farmer's daughter, whenever I'm reading anything or watching a movie that has farming in it, I'm just like, Oh, no, no, no, no, no, All wrong. And so you know, we all have our areas that we are specialists in, and I think that putting together specifically something ah, that is science based and is for science fiction and fantasy writers. Specifically, I think it's just fantastic. I love the idea. I love the book. There were plenty of things that I found useful to me. Even without being a science fiction author.

Dan: I'm glad you said that I appreciate your kind words, and you remind me to point out that this book is, I mean, the audience is writers, firstly, writers who are in genre fiction, but it's really any writer whose whose work might cover some of these technical elements. And so, um, there there's obviously gonna be some genetics because that's my wheelhouse. But there's also chemical, psychiatric and neurology components to it. There's wildlife biology. Then there's computers and technology, Earth and other planets. astronomy, and then actual rocket science. I mean, we have people who are astronomers and true rocket scientists who make contributions to it. So that's that's one of the appeals Is everyone who wrote an article for this is an expert in that field who works in that field. And so I think that was one of the unique things about it is that you can count on this person really knowing the nuances of it. So what I need to do clearly in the future is to get a farming article from you because clearly you're the farming expert.

Mindy: Actually, I was sitting here thinking we should ah, band, together with a few other folks that we know and just do Putting the Midwest in your fiction because it's never right. It's never right. It's always just like either pure Appalachia or everybody's a redneck and is like, Dude, you know, I mean Dan's from Ohio and Dan's a genetic scientist. So it's like, I'm from Ohio. I am not a redneck. It's really bad. Whenever I see anything that's supposedly set in the Midwest, it's like everyone is racist and sexist and they all kick their dogs.

Dan: Yeah, it's so true what you bring up, because I see a lot. I grew up in ST Louis, Missouri, which is a city. And But if you ever see Missouri portrayed in any form of media, it is, um, it's the absolute worst, most backwards hicks that you can imagine. So that bothers me, too. I'm totally behind this, putting the Midwest accurately in fiction idea. I think we should talk more about it.

Mindy: I think we should, because it is something that I could I could get on my soap box about.

Dan: You make the notion that everybody's an expert in something. It could be about where your from, about what you do for a job, even if you could even be something. It's like you're a custodian and you see how custodians are portrayed in TV snd it's totally wrong. All that stuff. Everyone has something they're an expert in, so I like it when bloggers and podcasters like yourself go out and find those people and interview them about this, their expertise because there's only so much research you can do on your own online, like Googling things or reading Wikipedia. That is a useful starting point. But finding someone with real expertise is so valuable and getting a little bit of their time to talk to them makes such a difference in how you are able to graft subject matter. I just I highly recommend it whenever you can do it. And most people, I don't know if you know this Mindy, but most people like talking about stuff that they know about their job.

Mindy: I mean, the easiest thing to talk to someone about is themselves.

Dan: That's good. Yes, see, and most people probably don't get asked as much as they would like to about their job that they do. And about what things they bring to work or where they're from. So it's so easy to have those conversations, especially among other people who were also writers.

Mindy: You know, it's funny, you know, when you go to the doctor's office and you have to update all your paperwork and all that stuff if you're only there for your yearly or whatever. I'm always amused because it's like I will sit down and I update everything, and I fill everything in. I don't have a lot of medical like problems, history and my family. So it's a lot faster for me than it is for some people. But so it's like, You know, I'm just like, boom, boom, boom. Fill it out and I hand it in. And without exception, every time the secretary will say, Wow, that was fast. I'm always like, Well, I knew all the answers.

Dan: Oh, that's good. Yeah, that's helpful.

Mindy: I mean, it's not a test. It's like you're literally asking me about my own body, and I know these answers.

Dan: There's so much information out there, right? There's so much misinformation out there. It's sometimes comforting to know that you can trust the source. If something's worth printing right now with Corona virus, and then there's like an overwhelming amount of information. And I'm trying to sort of cull how much stuff I get so that I only get it from people who are known and trusted experts in the thing that I'm interested in. And that's something we should all strive to do in the information age is sort of reduce the noise and focus on good, high quality information.

Mindy: That's so true and will continue to be true. Moving forward. Last thing. Why don't you let listeners know where they can find you online and where they can find your books?

Dan: We'll start with my books. My fantasy series is now in audio is called Gateways to Alissia. It's about a Vegas magician who is trying to make it on the Strip and gets recruited by a company to go on a mission in this secret medieval world that they've discovered. And so the first book is called The Rogue Retrieval that's available in audio now. For my nonfiction book that we discuss is called Putting the Science in Fiction and the project that you and I discussed the Serial Box project that's called The Triangle, and you can listen, listen to or read the first episode for free on the Serial Box website that's serial as in Serial killer or you can get it through their app.

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