Louise Kennedy on Coming to Writing Later in Life & Short Form vs. Long Form

Mindy:   Welcome to Writer Writer Pants on Fire, where authors talk about things that never happened to people who don't exist. We also cover craft, the agent hunt, query trenches, publishing, industry, marketing and more. I'm your host, Mindy McGinnis. You can check out my books and social media at mindymcginnis dot com and make sure to visit the Writer Writer Pants on Fire blog for additional interviews, query critiques and more as well as full transcriptions of each podcast episode at WriterWriterPants on Fire.com. And don’t forget to check out the Writer, Writer, Pants on Fire Facebook page. Give me feedback, suggest topics you’d like to hear discussed, and let me know if there is someone you’d love to see as a guest.

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Mindy: We're here with Louise Kennedy, author of the novel Trespasses which is a forbidden romance set in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. So because my audience is primarily American, if you could just even illustrate what the Troubles are.

Louise: Okay, first of all, Mindy, thank you very much for having me. The reason for that is that it was first used in the early 1920s. So the part of Ireland that I was born and raised in, in the northeastern corner, has really seen a lot of sectarian conflict - basically conflict between Catholics and Protestants. In the early 1920s this erupted, and someone then called it the Troubles. Then in 1969 rioting happened as a result of civil rights marches that were handled very briefly by the police. A journalist apparently referred to it as the Troubles - said that it resembled the Troubles of the 20s, and I think that kind of stuck. So that's why it possibly sounds like a strange term. So I suppose from 1969 until mid to late 90s, three and a half thousand people were killed and very, very many more were injured as a result of sometimes sectarian violence and sometimes state violence. I grew up in a small town on the edge of Belfast Loch during those years.

Mindy: My family's also from the north. It's something that I've always educated myself about and tried to learn about for a lot of different reasons. Of course, obviously part of like the history of my family, but it is also very much a wonderful backdrop for so many things. Romance and of course, fighting and families being torn apart. It's also a true story. These things happened, have continued to happen. Setting this story, setting your novel Trespasses in this time and in this environment, is so interesting to me and to so many people. Like it's just compelling stories. But also it's somewhat based on your life. Is that correct?

Louise: My family owned a bar in a town that was predominantly Protestant. We belonged to a small, tight Catholic community. The town had a very large British army base on the edge of it, which wasn't particularly troublesome until the Trouble started. And then that meant that there were vast numbers of extra troops had been sent in by the British government. My family - we have to tread a fairly fine line in dealing with these British soldiers who were coming in in a place that was very mixed. You know, there's another thread in the story, which is, you know, Cushla, the main character, her role in the book as a primary teacher. I was probably seven or eight in 1975, the year in which the book is set, and I could have been one of Cushla's pupils. So the school day, you know, that the children in her class have is very much like the one that I had. The story is completely fictional, but maybe to compensate for that I felt it was really important to make everything else as true to what those days were like as possible. The news reports in the book correspond with what actually did happen in the news on corresponding days in 1975. All of those other aspects of the world, I tried to make them as real as possible.

Mindy: I wanted to talk to you about the fact that this is your debut novel. Have you always wanted to be a writer? Is this something that has always been present for you or is this a later decision?

Louise: I don't know if I could even call it a decision. So I suppose maybe when I was a young child, I read a lot. My mother kept me very well supplied with books. Maybe when I was around seven or eight, I had a teacher. She used to do these with everyone in the class where she made me play a piece of classical music and ask us to write about it. Which was fairly ambitious of her. But we did write some things, and she was always really encouraging. But that was probably about the last bit of encouragement I got. I borrowed money and trained as a Cordon Bleu cook when I was about 21. And yeah, so I spent nearly 30 years cooking and running restaurants. I always read a lot. So when I was 47 a friend of mine asked me to join a writing group with her, which I thought was a ridiculous idea, but I went along and tried my hand at writing a short story. When I brought it to the group, they were insanely encouraging.

Mindy: And so Trespasses is your debut novel. And you already mentioned so you were a child in the 70s when the Trespasses is set. So you're now in your 50s, and you've written your debut novel. So what is that like?

Louise: Well, it's sort of great, I have to say. You know, I've had people ask me before, and I think there are some people who are of the opinion that maybe publishers are only interested in youth. And I really didn't find that to be the case. I had a collection of short stories that came out last year. So I mean, I guess I had a little bit of practice with publication with that. I think it's never too late. I think it's kind of a great exercise also in just kind of blundering along whether you think it's a good idea or not. I think I possibly couldn't have done this in my 20s, to be honest. I think I wouldn't have been able to sit in a room and have my work critiqued. I think I would have had a lot less to write about then. Now, that's not to say there's other people in their 20s. But just for me, I don't think it would have worked.

Mindy: So you think that like life experience for you was such a major part of helping to build that?

Louise: Yeah, I think so. I think all of the reading I did really helps. You know, I think as a reader we don't just take in story. I think we take in the shape of things and techniques, or there's even knowing what it is that we're taking in. So I think that that probably had a huge influence on me. It's probably just about practice as well. The Irish writer Anne Enright said, "You know, just treat it like yoga or anything else that you do all the time. If you habitually turn up, there's a possibility that something's going to happen on the page."

Mindy: I agree with that entirely, and I agree very much about reading being a huge part of being a writer. It's always a big part of my life. And that's something I like to tell people because obviously you are someone that has extensive training and extensive experience in the restaurant business. You are not someone that has training in writing. You don't have like a background or a special degree.

Louise: I did come to writing late, and actually the year after I started, I did do an MA in creative writing and then I did a PhD. But those would have been recent. So, I think really what I was trying to do for myself then was I felt that I'd left it very late, not too late, but I felt that I'd left it late and I wanted to learn as much as possible. So I think maybe very quickly it had become quite serious for me. So I did enroll in an MA when I was 48 and then the PhD the following year. I think maybe very quickly I realized that writing was going to be very important to me and it seemed very serious. Not that I ever thought anyone would ever pay me to do it or that anybody would ever publish me, but I just wanted to have some sort of structure around the deadlines and things.

Mindy: For you, it was something that you discovered could be a part of your life and a pretty major part of your life outside of your career.

Louise: I joined a writing group in January 2014, but I probably wasn't at a really great place with my current life as a chef. So myself and my husband had been running a restaurant for around six or seven years. It had opened during the recession and it just got worse and worse and more and more difficult. I think things probably had to be fairly bad for me to even consider trying to write. It wasn't that I thought it was ever going to materially solve any of our problems. I was ready for something that was going to take me out of myself, and I think that writing really did that for me.

Mindy: So you're utilizing it as an escape very much.

Louise: I could sit in a corner and scribble away making things up instead of checking the bank balance. It was fantastic.

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Mindy: So then tell us a little bit about Trespasses.

Louise: So Trespasses... It's set in 1975. It is about a young Catholic teacher called Cushla Lavery. By day, she teaches a class of seven, eight-year-old children. In the evenings, sometimes she helps out in the pub that her family owns. So Cushla is in the bar one evening on a quiet night - a stranger walks in. His name is Michael. He's a barrister. He's a lot older than her. He is a Protestant, and also he has a wife.

Mindy: So when it came time for you to say, I think I want to try my hand at a novel, what was it that made you decide this? This story. This setting. These people.

Louise: For a few years this young female character in the north of Ireland was wandering into stories and bits of things that I'd written. And it wasn't Cushla, you know, maybe sometimes the character would be quite different. I think maybe that this character was sort of playing on my mind. You know, just the idea of placing her in the seventies. And I think maybe the thing about the north that I'm really interested in is a relatively small number of people were directly involved in the fighting, but yet it affected everyone else every single day and every single thing that they did. So I just wanted to maybe show how this young woman, you know, she's had all the normal feelings like sort of desire and frustration with her mother and you know, the role of these constraints on how people lived back then. In March 2019, I got a diagnosis for malignant melanoma and I had some surgery and I knew I was going to be off work for a few months. Partly to take my mind off whether I might be dying or not, I suppose, I decided to try and write a thousand words a day. And I figured that if I managed to do that most days that I would at some point have a draft of a novel, and that's what happened. So I guess within about three months I had something that... A fairly crazy first draft.

Mindy: That's exactly my process as well. Thousand words a day and you keep that up long enough and you will have a novel eventually.

Louise: Absolutely. And I think also, I'm sure you find this too, that even if what you've got is an awful mess, I think that some of that energy and that momentum of the writing every single day stays on the page - even after you've cleared up all the mad stuff.

Mindy: Yeah, absolutely. And I think too, something that one of my friends says is "you can't edit what doesn't exist." You can fix it later, but do your thousand words a day until you have a novel. And then worry about fixing it.

Louise: Trying to do that at the moment. That is definitely the way to do it because when I write short stories I don't do it like that at all. I tend to just like torture myself over every paragraph for days on end and then move on to the next one. And it's sort of hellish. The discipline of turning up and working every day is the way to do it, isn't it?

Mindy: Yes, it is. Do you find that writing short stories then is harder than writing a novel? Because I certainly do.

Louise: I think they're really hard. I think because they're so unforgiving. I mean, you don't get away with the spare words - nevermind a sentence. You don't get away with like a big range of images. It all has to be working towards the same thing. I think tone is so important. I'm very slow at writing short stories, and I find them extremely hard. I also think that when they work they're the most beautiful things on earth. The idea of a draft of a novel... I just think it's a lot more freeing. I mean, that's not to say that it's easier, but it's just very different, isn't it?

Mindy: It is. You've got a lot more room to build your characters and establish your plot and build your environment. You've just got more space - "more forgiving" is the way you put it -and I think that's absolutely accurate. Then as someone who has become published and just like really changed the career path very suddenly later in life, what is that like? What has that been like?

Louise: It's been kind of amazing actually, because I never thought I'd ever earn a penny at this. I never thought anybody'd want to publish me. I probably needed a bit of encouragement. First of all, in my writing group and then maybe in my MA class. And then after that, pals of mine who are also students in Queen's University or was doing the PhD. I think I really wanted that. But like I was absolutely thrilled if something was accepted into a journal or if it placed in a competition. All along I thought I was just kind of doing it for myself. It's been really actually kind of incredible. Although I live in an ordinary town in the northwest of Ireland. It rains a lot. I have two kids who are 22 and 19 who are both students in Dublin. I need to get out and do some digging in my garden. I mean, my life, it's no different than it ever was. It's just that sometimes I get to go to festivals, or I get to have lovely chats with people like you. And sometimes it feels like somebody else did it. I don't know.

Mindy: I often feel like somebody else did it. When I look at my books that I've published, I'm like, "huh, that's interesting."

Louise: Exactly. It's like, how did I even do that? Like, was I even there?

Mindy: Yeah, absolutely. So now that you've moved into the realm of being a published author, does it change how you approach writing now that you're not just writing for yourself anymore?

Louise: I think maybe it's okay. I wrote a collection of short stories, which is published in the UK and Ireland last year. I didn't really look on that as a collection until really quite late in the process. I wrote that crazy draft of Trespasses. My editor in the UK saw it was three chapters and a synopsis. She didn't see anything until I'd done about five drafts. So I did kind of feel as if I was writing on my own. But also there was the obligation there because I was under contract. I was really worried at the start where I thought, "oh my God, is this going to just like stifle me completely and, you know, instill me with so much terror that I won't be able to do it." But actually it was okay. I'm hoping that it's going to continue to be okay. I'm trying to write another novel at the moment. I when to say trying to... It's just that my melanoma came back, so I'm getting some treatment for that as well. Although it's going really well, but it's just, you know, there are appointments and things. You know, I was worrying for a while. I was thinking, "oh, I'm not writing. I'm not writing." And then one day I sat at the computer and everything was all better. I mean, I suppose the cure for not writing is just to write, isn't it?

Mindy: Yes, it is. Well, and like you said, you have that discipline of showing up and sitting down and writing every day. And if you do that, I think it doesn't matter who you're writing for or why you're writing. You're still writing.

Louise: Exactly.

Mindy: Last thing, why don't you let listeners know where they can find the book Trespasses and where they can find you online?

Louise: Trespasses ... I think it's going to be at all bookshops. Is it All Good Bookshops? You can find me on Twitter, Kennedy Lulu. I'm also on Instagram a bit, and I think it's Louise.Kennedyy with two Y's.

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.

Jamie Lyn Smith On Writing Appalachia & Short Stories

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 are here today with Jamie Lyn Smith, who is the author of Township, which is a collection of short stories - many of which are set in Appalachia, Ohio. So, actually one of the first things I'd really like to talk about, when people talk about Appalachia, I don't think everyone quite understands how large of a swath that actually covers. A lot of people don't really recognize that parts of Ohio are considered Appalachia.

Jamie: Very much so. And you know the town that I'm from, Mount Vernon, you can see where the Blue Ridge starts. It's kind of cool where the glacier slid to a stop. If you look one way, you see the plains to the west, and if you look east, you can see that lovely hazy blue line that comes from certain flora and fauna that define the Appalachian region. And of course, Appalachia stretches from Alabama to Maine. Communities like the one that I live in and that I wrote about are also comprised of a lot of migrant Appalachians. I'm kind of considered second or third generation because my father migrated, and then my grandparents migrated from my mother's side of the family. So it exists in many places. In addition to being like a physical place, there's also many diverse cultures within Appalachia that exists outside of the actual hills.

Mindy: Where I live it's very flat. I live in farming country, and it's very, very flat out here. I was thinking this morning, actually - I was at the dentist. I'm from a very, very small town. I know you're from Mount Vernon - so much smaller even than that. It's tiny. We have one stop light. I was at the dentist this morning, and I was in the chair, and there were two people in each of the other rooms, and I knew who they were. They hadn't seen them walk in, we didn't see each other in the waiting room, nothing like that. But I was laying on my chair and just hearing them speak or saying whose graduation parties they were going to this weekend, I was like, "Yup, and that's so and so, and that's so and so, and that's so and so." Some things that I run across in my writing that people don't necessarily think are plausible, but are very, very true - I'll be around people that are like, "Well, I grew up in a small town, and it's not true that everybody knows everybody." And I'm like, "Well, then your town wasn't actually small enough."

Jamie: I love that you come up with a measure. I never really thought about defining it like that. I'm actually from Centerburg. I was born in Mount Vernon 'cause there is no hospital in Centerburg. We've got maybe one or two more traffic lights than you.

Mindy: I do have measurements that I use. When people tell me they live in the country, I always ask if there's paint on their road. If you have lanes in your road, you don't live in the country. So that's something that I run into when I'm writing about small towns and small town cultures - people that have never lived that way, not quite understanding the way things work, how small things really are, but also an assumption that everyone is like a redneck or a hillbilly or a racist or sexist or, you know, any collection of bad tropes that we get about country life. So what are some things that you've run into or that you experienced or that you're kind of writing against - that you're writing to push back about.

Jamie: Oh, I love this question. I'm actually working on a panel proposal for the AWP Conference with a couple of other Appalachian writers about this very thing. In it, we talk a lot about querying and dissenting our narratives in ways that we write about people that you wouldn't expect. There are so many surprises in a small area, and I think the other thing that is unique to Ohio, and I don't know if you recognize this as well, but like you can't drive there more than 25 miles in any direction and not hit a college. We have colleges everywhere - and so, you know, little ones, big ones, technical trade schools. And this is a state where you may have kind of a racist redneck-y person, but they're living right next to this professor who's working on the cutting edge of the response to Covid-19.

And I think that those kinds of experiences are rare for people in dense cities often where there's a lot of stratification of wealth and income based on where you live. Those kinds of things I think are really interesting. And also to the idea that people who farm or who are working in trades, whether it's agriculture, whether it's factory work, that they're not smart. That's one of the things that I really push back against. And for me, one of the ways to do that in my writing is through humor. People that are dealing with terrible choices and terrible situations are keenly aware of that, and they're also keenly aware and often employ gallows humor to cope. So when I'm writing about terrible things like the kid who survived his brothers accidental death by auto-erotic asphyxiation, I know that there has to be room in the story, because there has to be room in life, for all of us to breathe. So finding the humor in the surviving brothers' religiosity and his struggle to be both smart and cool and popular and sexy and also Christian - 'cause it's really important to him. Those are the kinds of things that I see every day in small town culture. There's a whole skill set to living out here. If you move from a city, you gotta figure out - how do I hook up a generator? 'Cause you're gonna need it.

Mindy: You would just not have power sometimes. When I was growing up, if a storm came through and you lose your power, you are not high on the list of this road that has two houses on it, three houses on it. They're not in a hurry to get to you. One of the things that I run across is men and boys being described or displayed as not intelligent, but also mean or cruel. One of the things that I really enjoy - somebody shared a TikTok with me the other day, and it was of a guy, and I don't know where he was from - it was somewhere in the south, just by his accent - he'd stopped to get a kitten. There was a kitten on the side of the road, and he had stopped. He had this old work truck, and he'd gotten out of his car and he was videoing. And he got on his work boots and he goes up there and he picks up the kitten. And he was like, "Hey there, you need some help, buddy?" and he picks him up and then all of a sudden there's this - he literally gets swarmed by - somebody had dumped 20 kittens. He's like, "We got a kitten situation," you know, and it's like, he takes all 20 kittens and gets everybody the vet care that they need. That's the men and the boys that I grew up around. And I have never seen that man or boy in popular fiction or TV or movies. Any time you got a guy that's got a backwoods or a country accent, he's an idiot and he's cruel.

Jamie: One of the things that my book deals with indirectly, if you will, I guess, is that kind of toxic masculinity. I think so much about how we coach much of the tenderness out of men and boys. I worked, interestingly, in a domestic violence shelter for several years. What are we doing? And I think that as we look at things that are happening with violence across the nation - what is going on with men? And I think about that so much when I'm writing and I see men in terrible, terrible situations, boxed in by expectations of a culture that rewards violence, that rewards avarice, that rewards the pursuit of power at any cost. From the point of view of an advocate, and as a survivor, I have some limited amount of mercy, in my ability to write with great tenderness about the people that are showing that kind of avarice. It brings me to the last story in the collection, Love is Patient, Love is Kind, and in it, I think this is the hardest character I've ever written because he, Gene, has committed terrible crimes against children, done his time, and wants to come back and be accepted in society as a good guy. What does it take? If there's no redemption for people who, they can't change, they can't ever be anything else? Grappling with that and thinking about the ways that country life, in particular, effects men in rural areas - you're definitely not allowed to be gay. The danger of that. And I write, too, because I would like to see the world that I live in be a better place, find in it ways for us to exist side by side whether we love the same people or not. So that's where a lot of my character studies come from. I force myself into the shoes of the character that I really don't like.

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Mindy: And I wanna talk about writing short stories because Township is a collection of short stories. I'm a novelist, and I have novels published 'cause I personally find short stories to be harder than writing a novel.

Jamie: Everyone says that. And right now, I'm working on a novel. I didn't set out to be a short story writer. I really didn't read that many of them. And I became a huge fan of them when I got into my MFA Program at Ohio State, and that was reading short stories and writing short stories for workshops, became my life for three years. I went to graduate school thinking I would write a novel. I had an idea. I had done a ton of research. I just hadn't had the time to dedicate to it that I wanted, and so that's why I was pursuing the degree. And then, in pretty short order, I realized that I didn't know how to write a story. I put the novel aside and just started working on craft and on my structure. When you have a novel, you can be really forgiving. If you've got a sentence that isn't a Pulitzer Prize winner, it's fine if it propels the story forward. In a short story, you have just a few pages. So you have to be so efficient. And I found that it was a great exercise for me. Many of these stories were part of my thesis - my MFA thesis. I really had to spend a lot of time in a bunch of small worlds and learn how to be much more efficient in my writing and in character building and world-building. I have so enjoyed writing short stories and having my art go in a direction I never imagined. I'm really surprised this is my first book. I really thought it would be a novel. And so I think sometimes as an artist, you have to ask, "Am I so beholden to the idea of what I want to do that I'm not letting other good things happen?"

Mindy: I think what happens to me is that I'll have an idea and sometimes I don't know if that idea is a novel or if it's a short story. Often times, because this is what I do for a living, I do have to try to only conceive of ideas or only give ideas my time when I know that it's a novel. But I do love short stories and I love writing them. One of the reasons why I don't dabble in it more is, like I said, I do find it to be particularly challenging. Also, for anybody out there, any listeners that do really relish and love that short story format and form, how do you go about writing short stories, if that's what you love or where your talent is, and try to make, not necessarily a living, but make some money in that arena?

Jamie: The capital side of it is really tricky. I mean, the secret to writing, just get your ass in the seat and write. You're gonna write what your heart wants you to write. It's kind of like your sexuality. You're going to love what you love for no reason other than it is what attracts you. If short stories are your thing, there are a fair number of writers who have made quite a tidy living at it. When I'm sending my stories out, I have kind of a tiered submission system. And I can usually tell when I finish something if I'm gonna be able to sell it or not. But I start with the places that I know pay well for short fiction. If it gets rejected by those places, I'll do a rewrite, move it down the list. I do that, in part, because sometimes you get feedback that's like, "Oh, this is great, it's just not right for us right now." And the hard thing with short stories is that if I've written a terrific short story about a working class guy who was out and rescues 20 kittens and what happens but they just published a story about someone rescuing kittens in the last issue, then they're not gonna take your piece. 'Cause they don't wanna become the magazine that only publishes kitten rescue stories. And there are so many variables in the selection process that I'm a big fan of sending it out, sending it out, sending it out. That's the part where I think you only have success with it, if you kind of cast your bread on the water.

By sending work out regularly, I've heard that the average is something like one placement for every 30 submissions. There's a combination of rigor, persistence, love - that goes into this work. And I think too, I mean, I'm really lucky to have an agent who believes in what I'm doing and helps me try to sell it and get my work out there. So if your agent says to you, "I'm not interested in short stories," then you need to find an agent who is. Maybe that person can still represent you on your novel. You don't need to leave them at the altar, but you gotta find someone who can work with you on what excites you and what makes you passionate. I know sometimes it can feel when you're seeking a rep, like you don't have a lot of choices, you need to dance with who ever asks you. But you always have choices. Giving your work the time that it deserves is the best thing that you can do for it.

Mindy: Maybe about five years ago, I was really trying to get something going. I was writing for literary magazines, and I was using Submittable. And I was doing all that. And the amount of research that was required for me to figure out where my work was gonna fit and doing the reading that I had to be doing to understand how each magazine works and everything like that, it was a lot of work. And I don't know that people understand that the amount of work that you put into understanding the publishing industry from the side of someone as a novelist, you almost have to put in the same amount of work to understand the literary magazine and the short story market because it's its own beast.

Jamie: Oh, it definitely is. I think one of the best things that ever happened for my work was I taught a literary publishing class a couple of years ago, and I hadn't taught that particular subject before. I felt like I knew a lot, and it was great to be able to share what I did know, but it was - what was more important was what you talked about getting that coherent sense. I will send this to lit mag, for example, but I'm not gonna send it to story 'cause I know this editor. It's not really gonna be their jam. It is a ton of work, and it's the same like work you do in prospect research when you're getting ready to send out a novel. Or when you're looking for an agent.

Mindy: I subscribe to Poets & Writers, so everyone's looking in the back at the contests and the things that are coming up in submission guidelines and submission windows opening. So what would you suggest to someone that wants to maybe dip their toes into that part of the publishing arena? What's a good first base to start looking and beginning to understand that market.

Jamie: I think Poets & Writers is a great place to start. I think that joining AWP and reading The Writer's Chronicle, the AWP magazine, is another great place to start. One of the things I did my first year in graduate school, because I really knew nothing about literary fiction, I really didn't even know what I didn't know, and I felt so dumb and uninformed in class that somebody mentioned Poets & Writers to me. So I went to their website, and they have a wonderful resource, which is a list of literary magazines. I made a spreadsheet for myself. I got the deadlines in there, what they were interested in, who the current editor was, page length, word count requirements, cover letter, no cover letter - I mean, I had a very detailed spreadsheet. I've shared it with other writers when I'm teaching workshops, because I really think that being open and open sourcing stuff like this - if I can save someone all of that work and all they need to do is go through and update it? Then yeah, I'm gonna share a resource that I have. But putting that together and maintaining it really keeps me on my toes.

I don't do contests very often, like every now and then I do, but I'm not a big fan. I think that you're better off just submitting most of the time, particularly in paying markets. Contests can be good, but they can also be, in the worst cases, they can be just income generating tools for literary magazines. And I know, all lit mags need incomes. I work at one and I run another one, so it's, I get what the economic landscape is like for small publishers. But I also think, especially as I see the fees, the submission fees climb and climb and climb, I can no longer conscionably direct people to most contests. Now, if contests are your jam, go check out CLMP, the Center for Literary Magazines and Small Presses. They are fantastic, and they have a list of contests that are vetted, that are not scams, and it's a searchable, sortable list. You don't have to be a member to access it. That's another great resource. And also NewPages, which is a small non-profit based in Michigan. NewPages had listings every month, and very often those are great resources for emerging writers. If you just are starting out, and particularly for young writers, NewPages is a fantastic resource.

Mindy: Absolutely, I did the same thing. I had a spreadsheet made up with the dates, the submission dates that they were open, what they were looking for, if it was themes, things like that. I know something that people talk about in the short story world and the small press world, submission fees or reading fees. So when you submit a work or if you're entering a contest, you will be most oftentimes paying a submission fee. And it's something that comes up a lot about whether or not that is acceptable, whether you should be engaging with someone that does charge a reading fee. As someone that was coming out of the world of novelists and of hunting for an agent, if someone is asking for money up front, it's a scam. That was just always - that was a red flag.

Jamie: Right.

Mindy: Yeah, but in a short story world, it is a little bit different. So if you could just talk about that for a second. Simply because a lot of the times there are little magazines or whatever, it's like the only way they get income is through something like that. So if you could talk about how someone can differentiate between what would be a legitimate ask or how to, I guess, sort the apples when it comes to that.

Jamie: Totally, and that's where clmp dot org comes in. They are fantastic. You can also check duotrope, another resource to confirm whether or not a contest is legitimate or if the magazine is legitimate. In literary world, I would say probably 80 to 90% of magazines require a small submission fee, and that fee ranges from $3 to $5. If they're asking you for more than that, I would caution you to not pay it and keep moving unless a subscription is included. That's part of me being a good literary citizen. And I also have kind of a magazine subscription problem, and I love getting them and supporting them. And it's also important for me as someone who edits a small magazine to know what is going on, and someone who reads for a larger magazine to know what is going on. So to me it's all in a day's work. If you're a writer just starting out, that would be the range that I think you should feel comfortable with. I would also, and I always encourage my students to submit in groups of 10. So make your list, your 10 dream journals, submit to them. See what happens. Don't submit to 30 places and spend $3 a pop, and you wind up getting your heart broken because your story is not ready yet, right? Submit to 10. See what happens. If you get some good feedback saying, "Hey, we like this, it's not right for us now," or "please send us more work in the future," they mean that. Follow up later. But if you get a bunch of just form rejections, then it's time to look at your story.

Again, contest that don't charge fees, they are out there, and lots of literary magazines have an option where they have an open submission period where there is no fee. So put that in your little spreadsheet and keep track of it. I also use calendar reminders to tell myself like, "Hey, don't miss the deadline for Ploughshares." There are certain magazines that only open for submissions for one month once a year, so you don't wanna miss that window. So I use technology shouting at me a lot to keep myself on track. Another red flag for me is when - Google is here for a reason, right? You can look up a contest and see if they are legit. If they're not posting who the winners are, or they're extending their deadline over and over again, I would avoid that contest. Those are always red flags for me.

Mindy: Last thing, why don't you let listeners know where they can find you online and where they can find your collection of short stories - Township.

Jamie: Thank you so much. You can find me at Jamie Lyn Smith Square Space. I have a website there and I have a contact form if you wanna send me a comment or if you would like that spreadsheet I mentioned. I will send it to you. Like I said, I'm always happy to share resources. And I'm on social, I'm on Twitter and Instagram usually, and Facebook sometimes. And that's at Jamie Lyn Writes J-A-M-I-E-L-Y-N W-R-I-T-E-S. You can get Township anywhere that books are sold. So I encourage you to go to your local indie bookstore or to bookshop dot org. But if you get it from a larger retailer, I'm just gonna be so thrilled that you did that, that it's cool.

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.

R.S. Mellette, Matt Sinclair & Elephant’s Bookshelf Press on Indie Authoring & Publishing

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: So we're here today with two guests, and if you recall from a former episode with MarcyKate Connolly, we talked about AgentQuery Connect, which was a forum that was very active 10, 15 years ago, where a group of us all met, came together, and all of us have achieved different forms of success in different arenas of publishing. Today I have Matt and Robert who have had success in the indie publishing arena. That is an arena that I dabble in as well, and I wanted to have them come on and talk because Robert is an author and then Matt runs his own publishing company. So if each of you would like to just begin by introducing yourself.

Matt: This is Matt Sinclair, I'm the president and Chief Elephant Officer of Elephant Bookshelf Press. The company I formed 10 years ago, last month, it was 2012, that was our first anthology and the first short story in that anthology was written by our wonderful host, Mindy.

Robert: And Robert Mellette. I write as R.S. Mellette. The books that I have published are through Elephant’s Bookshelf Press, so I'm very happy about independent publishing as none of my stuff tends to fit in the large commercial publishing world. I'm the author of Billy Bobble Makes a Magic Wand and Billy Bobble and the Witch Hunt, the newly out, Kiya and the Morian Treasure.

Mindy: I think you make a really good point about finding a place for books that aren't necessarily fitting inside those pre-approved niches that the traditional publishing industry likes to use to do their marketing. Robert, why don't you talk about that a little bit, like what you write and why you weren't necessarily finding any traction in the trad world?

Robert: It's really weird, the traditional publishing world because you really do have to thread a needle from miles away. It's so hard, but if you just look at Kiya and the Morian Treasure, it came about because I was working on Xena: Warrior Princess, and I was writing the Xena Scrolls for the website, which was basically a way of recapping the episodes, but with modern day characters arguing about the translations of these ancient scrolls So it was kind of fun and tried to get a publishing deal with Universal. Well, Universal Merchandising was fighting it out with Universal New Media about who would own this, and I lost the fight, no deal was made. So I moved the characters into outer space and that became Kiya and the Morian Treasure.

Now, as I was getting it published, I got an agent. I was going to the editors, this was a good book, but the editors would all come back saying – I love this, but it needs a boy character. What do they always say? The girls will read books about boys, but boys won't read books about girls.  That's the line and they will not change it. No, I think what you're saying is that girls will read action books, but boys won't read romances, 'cause that's kind of what I was getting out of it, and I wasn't sticking to my guns and being all - no, I will not change my work, it's my work! 

I tried, I tried to change it. It would fall apart, I'd put it back together. I tried so hard to meet their standards. It just wouldn't work. I kept getting back – I don't know what shelf it goes on. Middle grade or YA? Its science fiction- put it on the science fiction shelf. Where’s Hunger Games? It's a very frustrating battle, and I don't bequeath those editors. They all have to keep their jobs, they all have to put their kids through school, they've got their things to do, that's their job. But they very much need a Matt Sinclair and Elephant’s Bookshelf Press to relieve that pressure valve. Because I think the audience, they don't want another forced romance, they don't want another, Oh, what boy will she choose book? They want something fresh and something new, and you need Matt to do that.

Mindy: You're right, tat old school mentality that is really entrenched, that won't budge, and there is a feeling that boys don't read books either number one, written by a women or featuring girls as characters. I'm here to tell you that's simply not true. I think trade publishing still believes it, but a lot of my readership is male. My publisher does a very good job of number one, trusting me. Number two, putting gender-neutral covers on my books. Anyone can carry around my book and read it, a boy doesn't have to feel like he's carrying around a girl book. But you're right, there are those... I don't know what shelf it goes on, that's the primary consideration, you're right. They wanna sell books, they've gotta know where they're gonna put it in the bookstore, and if it doesn't fit nicely somewhere that is a roadblock for your book. It is unfair from the creative side, but from the business side of it, it is a consideration. Matt, do you wanna talk about how the indie world can help alleviate that?

Matt: I would also say that they're not wrong. It is hard to identify which shelves books should belong to. I wish Billy Bobble, which is a really great story, I wish I had a better place to put it in terms of shelf myself. The difference is, the vast majority of what we do with Elephant’s Bookshelf Press is sell books online. And so it's a different type of shelving situation, you had Dave Chesson from Kindleprenur on recently. Quite honestly, he saved Elephant’s Bookshelf Press without him knowing it. What was then called KDP Rocket came out, it helped me better identify categories for these books, and I'm still experimenting on every single book. Like I said, we've had 10 years of publishing now, and I recently changed categories on books that I published eight or nine years ago, because there's still ways of getting these books out in front of people. There are some wonderful short stories, and short stories are a hard sell to begin with, but there are wonderful short stories that have barely gotten any readership yet, because I'm still trying to figure out what exactly is the best way to get those books in front of the right readers. 

To Robert’s point and to your point, I publish what I love, and the advantage is I have a small little publishing company, and I can choose books that might be difficult to place on the shelf. It might be difficult to market, but I really enjoyed them. I'm literally reading Kiya to my kids at bedtime right now. It is a real issue. I'm glad that I'm fitting a niche, as Robert and Mindy are saying, but I would also like to sell more copies of these wonderful books. My chief objective right now is to find more ways of getting these wonderful books in front of the readers that want them and deserve them. 

Mindy: And that is the trick when you are an Indie, because I write underneath a pen name as you know, and I think that the pall that kind of hung over self-publishing and Indie publishing for a long time has gone away. There is a lot of really good stuff out there, equally as good and some of it, if not better, then trad stuff that I come across. But the problem becomes visibility and marketing. So Robert, if you wanna talk about how that comes into play for the author on the author’s side of marketing. When you're an Indie author, what are some of the things that you have found that will work on the Indie side, and what are some things that might work for trad and don't work for Indie?

Robert: It's all the stuff that everyone has said before, you know, if you're researching how to sell your book, you've heard everything I'm about to say. But I'm telling you it's true, you have to find your platform. I 'm lucky–lucky and I worked really hard. There’s still a huge Xena fan base out there. They're fantastic. So a while back, I started joining all their Facebook groups and just saying Hi. That's the other thing. You have to be honest, you're selling a book, you've gotta get in there and say, Hey, I'm selling my book. You can't get on there and go, Hey, I'm one of you guys! Unless you are. I'm actually a fan of the fans, so I get on and say things about that, and I've been posting on there for a while. In Hollywood, this isn't a big deal, I was a featured extra on Star Trek Enterprise, so I went on to the Star Trek Enterprise fan base on Facebook and said, Hey, I'm selling a book. And this was like a year ago, two years ago. I posted about being on Star Trek and people were like, Oh my God, you're a star! And it's like, no, I was just unemployed and I have a SAG card, so I signed up.So on Enterprise, I became a thing. 

Now, it was interesting, if I tried to post about my book on the Enterprise Facebook page, it would get rejected. So I would go to my initial posts that said, Hey, I'm here to sell my book, and I happen to have been on Enterprise, and I put notices in the comments, and that would push that up to the top and then people would be able to see what was going on in the comments. So there's little tricks like that. I did spend some money, I decided, you know, if I was a deep sea fisherman, that was my hobby, deep sea fishing, and I went out and bought a boat, everybody would be fine with that. That's your hobby. I went out and bought a boat, not expecting to make any money… maybe I could become a commercial deep sea fisherman, I don't know. I went out and spent quite a bit of money on a PR firm. That's actually going pretty good, but if you're hiring a PR firm - one, you are setting money on fire. You're just hoping somebody sees the freaking fire. Please see the smoke from the fire that I have set with his money.

Now, everybody complains, Well, I hired a PR firm, but I'm doing all the work. They're doing a lot of work too. Half of their job is to just get you to a place where you can do the work. I say it's like hiring a Sherpa, they're gonna carry a lot of stuff up the mountain with you, but you have to climb the mountain. That's helping a lot. And you just have to keep at it. It's a job. I get on Facebook, my wife's like, What are you doing? You're on Facebook. Well, I’m working.

Mindy: I'm working as a substitute, and I will be in the school and a kiddo can come to my desk, and they’ll be like uhhhh, you’re on Facebook. And it's like, I'm working. We're gonna do sustained silent reading for five hours, kids. I'm really curious about your experience with PR, because I think that you're right, people misunderstand what it is and what it's about and how it works. I think it's very similar to an agent because it's your agent's job to get you in front of the editors, but your work still has to sell itself. So I feel like with PR, it's their job to get you in front of people that can get you noticed, but then you have to produce the content or the video, or do the interview, or do whatever it is that's going to get attention.

Robert: That's exactly the case. You're also the one that's getting yourself in front of things, but you've got the PR back up. And that's the other nice thing about having the subtle difference between self-publishing and independent or small press publishing. Matt's a traditional publisher. He's a traditional publishing house, he's just a very, very small publishing house, he's not under one of the Big Five. So for me, it's kind of nice to be able to say, my publisher’s doing this, or my Publicist is doing that. Somebody just reached out, I think on Instagram, and was like, Hey, do you need to help promoting your book? I'm like, Sure, talk to my Publicist. I’m on Facebook working, and somebody said, Hey, I need a novelist to sit in on a panel at WonderCon. I message the guy and gave him my credentials, and he's like, Yeah, let's do that. He was another AgentQuery person. Two cool things happened. 

One is that I was at an artist booth, and I was telling them about the book and somebody standing next to me got this weird look on her face and said, I've heard of that. She had not been to the panel, we couldn't figure out how she heard of it, whether she heard of it because of me doing stuff, or whether she heard of it because of the PR doing stuff. I just love the fact that a complete stranger had heard about my book – so something's working. Also, I sat in on another panel and there was a guy from SciFi radio, and he said, if anybody's got an audio book, come up and talk to me. I just finished editing the audio book, which about killed me. And so I went up and I got myself a gig. A lot of writers would say, Well, my Publicist didn't get me that gig, I got that gig. Yeah, but when I emailed the guy, I’m gonna copy my publicist. And two, I had a killer press kit to send to him. I had back up. 

Matt: It gives you legitimacy. Someone else thinks that this is a quality book, this is a quality writer. So I think that has a lot to do with it as well. It's some of the legitimacy that you get when you have an agent. Yes, it's an extra level of security for anyone who books you. It's a good investment. 

Robert: That's the other thing too, is that just because you have the money to hire a publicist. I’m not rolling in it. No, I just had some money saved up. Just because you have the money doesn't mean a Publicist is gonna take you on. I got turned down by three or four different Publicists because they didn't do SciFi, they didn't have space. It's like getting an agent, they've gotta like your work.

Mindy: I have not taken that step of hiring an outside publicist yet, it's something that I considered multiple times for different books of mine. I've never been in a position where I've had the money that I could just be like, Yeah, I'm gonna spend it on this. And I've heard wonderful success stories from people that invested that money and did very, very well because of it, and then I've heard from people that really felt like they had just thrown their money down a black hole. So you've gotta do your research, you have to know that the people that you're giving your money to are going to be worth it, and that they've got those credentials themselves. But also like you're saying, you've got to be ready to do that work. It's them laying the groundwork for you to be able to prove yourself, you still have to show up, and prove yourself.

Robert: You work your behind off on PR, Mindy, so you're doing a lot of the work and you've done it for so long. You've got your own ground work. There really is a thing you have to figure out for each different platform.

Matt: And Mindy has established a brand as well. Whether she did that consciously,  I think her books are all consistent. They can be different genres, but they all sound like Mindy McGinnis. And that's very much to her credit. And that's how her publicity efforts appear to be too, and that's what we're trying to do with Robert's books. 

Robert: The other thing too, is you write so fast. Oh my God, you write faster than I can read. But also, I’m dyslexic. So, you know. 

Mindy: Yeah, I do write fast. What's interesting, 'cause you're just seeing the trad side. So it's like I write very fast, but then if you consider it- since 2018, under a pen name, I put out (with other writers... Let's be clear) With co-authors, I've put out about 20 books. I write very fast. It is a skill that I have built over time. It's partly because I was working full-time. I think I was probably five years into a trad career before I was able to say, I am gonna work from home. And it was still not an easy decision, it was a risky move, and I've been able to do it. For the longest time I was writing in stolen moments. I was writing in the doctor's office. I literally had my feet in the stirrups, getting my Pap last year with my laptop across my knees and they're like, Are you good? I'm like, I'm great. You do what you need to do. That's who I am and that's how I operate. So when I do have free time, I'm like, Well, I'm gonna write and I can write 3000-4000 words in about an hour and a half.

Robert: I hate you.  I hate you.  I hate you.

Matt: I'm basically the anti-Mindy. This is the first book we've published since the pandemic. A big part of that is because the majority of what I did for Elephant’s Bookshelf was at lunch time at my day job and on my commute to and from New York City. People ask, where is your office? I said, first car in New Jersey transit from the 609. That's where I did almost all my Elephant’s Bookshelf  work. And then on my 12-hour EMS shift, I would put in several hours twice a month, and that was how I'd get the advertising research done. Stolen moments is the right way to put it, you do what you can when you can, and to the best of your ability.

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Mindy: So tell me a little bit about getting started as an Indie, I know that you were just getting your feet underneath you, and that things were going pretty well, and then the pandemic hit.. So just tell us a little bit about EBP in general, how you built it and how it's going today.

Matt: Well, the two of you are part of the beginning of Elephant’s Bookshelf. It started with two other writers, Rob Grindstaff has been doing a good job of promoting his new books, also was part of my initial team looking at the short stories that became Spring Fevers. It started from AgentQuery Connect. We just shared some messages between myself and Rob and Cat Woods - ebook publishing is getting pretty hot, this is interesting, we should look into this, and let's all collect writers that we trust, basically have them write some short stories and let's see what we can do with it. And for years before that, I have been thinking about creating a magazine, like basically a literary journal, 'cause I work in the magazine world essentially. So the idea of just organizing it appealed to me and I said, Alright, I'll serve as the publisher, I know more about writing than I do about publishing. I don't think I actually said How hard could it be? 

Robert: Oh, the number of times I have said that about something.

Matt: From there to “how hard could it be” is something that emerged over time. I quickly realized that I had to spend a lot more time learning how to be a publisher, becoming a better editor and still trying to write as best I could. In terms of the fiction, personally, I don't wanna say I lost a decade, but I spent a lot less time writing than I would like, and I know that I'll get back to it, I have ideas that just don't leave my head. 5000 words here, 10000 words there. I know I will be able to complete them. The publishing journey is something that continually evolves, you're continually learning from every success and from every failure, and from every mistake. And I spent a lot of money just trying to get the right tools to get these books out in front of people. I think the best part is just learning, I enjoy learning.

Mindy: How did the pandemic affect the small publishing world? What has it been like? How did you have to shift?

Matt: When the pandemic struck, we had just had our first writer event, if you will. Basically, Valentine's week 2020. Four writers, myself included. promoting the last short story collection, Flight, which was science fiction. And Robert actually briefly contemplated flying in from California for it, which shocked the heck out of me, I'll tell you. I wasn't even asking him about it, as he lives in California, but we had a great time. We had a great response with the Q and A. I felt like we were really developing a readership, just right in front of my eyes there, and I could see where it was going, and one of the other writers, he and his wife and I went out after the event. Elephant’s Bookshelf is gonna really take off now, and then within a month, we had the pandemic taking away everything. As I said, it was difficult for me to find time to do things, to promote things, it made advertising more crucial. And we did okay, initially. You had more people with time to read, but reaching them was just as difficult, and then you couldn't go out and promote in the way that I was just starting to enjoy doing. It was hard, I suspect that's true for many other independent publishers, and probably some had greater success 'cause they had more time to concentrate differently.

Mindy: One of the things that you have to do to balance is of course, where you're putting your time. That's the biggest thing for me as a writer who also is self-published, the money that I'm putting into it is a question on the self-pub side, the time is a question on the trad pub side, but you kinda have to balance both of those things.

Matt: And you have to balance family. One of the things that I loved about the pandemic, and it sounds weird just to say that sentence, is I got a chance to coach my daughter Kathleen's soccer team. And that's the time I wouldn't have had if not for the global pandemic. That was valuable to me. You're absolutely right that it's a give and take in terms of time and where your priorities are at that point in time. I think that from a writer standpoint, there's probably stuff that will emerge from these two years that I can't even imagine right now. I've often wondered even before the pandemic, how is it that people forgot basically about the flu pandemic a little over a century ago? There's very little in writing in the novels of the time, I couldn't imagine that happening after this pandemic, we're seeing writing with The covid story as a key element already.

Robert: They did outlaw spittoons.

Matt: You can no longer spit on the sidewalk.

Mindy: You sure can where I live. And then I wanna say really quick, you talked a few times about your short story collections that EBP has, so I have a short story in each of the collections that is based on seasons. I always see The Fall, which is called The Fall: Tales From the Apocalypse. I'm looking at my Amazon author page right now. Your author page is listing like what's selling the best, Right? So right now, there's $1.99 Kindle deal on Heroine, so it's in front, followed by my book that tends to always sell the best no matter what. Then my two newest. Two that I did not expect to see sitting here – my fantasies are here, which is surprising. I've been doing a lot of school visits, so that's probably why. Even before one, two, three… in front of three of my trad pub books is The Fall: Tales From the Apocalypse, which is the short story collection from EBP. That one is always showing up for me, it seems to always be doing well, what do you credit that to?

Matt: Honestly, I think one of the big things that I would credit that to is, if you remember the final story in that collection was a short story written by a South African writer named Judy Krume. The story is very dark, it's basically about the South American shaman, the tribe is restless, if you will, and it's very graphic, and I remember I was thinking, Alright, don't put my story after that. I was like, You know what, no one will ever read my story, if I did that because people are not going to read past that story. So it became a quick decision as to where to put it. Judy sent a copy to one of the Good Reads groups and said, I think this would be an interesting book for you to review, somehow got them to make it their book of the month, and that was what got it, the initial bump. That's how I see it. That's 2012. We published that 10 years ago in the fall. I tried to publish it on the Mayan calendar end of the world, that was the pub date, and ironically enough, it was also when Hurricane Sandy wiped me out in New Jersey. We did a little bit of publicity right after that, calling attention to the fact that the publisher's home was knocked off the grid for two weeks, just as this book was going live. I had Jean Oram push this across, I went up to my first aid squad, which had a generator and sent her a quick email just saying, here's all the files. Can you finish this? It's already done, I just had to basically press Publish. And so she did that because she was the editor for that particular edition. Got a little bit of a bump from the Good Reads group. 

And then again, I mentioned KDP Rocket. I got good categories on that particular one, it's a post-apocalyptic story, as you alluded to earlier, Robert, it had a shelf, it was easy to publicize. Honestly, it was one of the reasons I chose to do science fiction for Flight. It's one of the reasons I chose to do urban fantasy, which actually the urban fantasy didn't really do well. The Horror collection has done okay at times, that is a cover issue, probably need to change that cover. The Fall has done very well, it's been very consistent, and I owe that basically to readers. that's what it comes down to, there's an audience for that type of story, that type of book.

Mindy: The last thing: where can listeners find you online? Where they can find Robert, your books online? And then Matt where people can find EBP and where they can find Kiya and the Morian Treasure, and if they're interested in submitting, where they can submit.

Robert: Best place to find me is on Facebook, RS Mellette. As far as where to get the book, you can get the book anywhere books are sold. So go down to your local independent book store and have a chat with them and have them order it. Bezos does not need to send another celebrity into space. He can, that's fine. I don't care, but I just assume that that local bookstore owner gets to feed their family.

Matt: And you can find Elephant’s Bookshelf Press at Elephant’s Bookshelf Press dot com. That's the primary place. You can also, if you're a writer and you're going to send something to be considered, you can send it to submissions@elephantsbookshelfpress.com. As Robert said, wherever fine books are sold. 

Robert: And even some so-so books. 

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.