Melissa Landers on How Mental Health Impacts Your Writing & The Hit Or Miss of SciFi

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 Melissa Landers who is a fellow Ohioan and an author that has had a really interesting career path. One of the reasons why I wanted to have Melissa on the show is because she has not had the traditional path in a lot of ways. She has experimented, and she has done offshoots, and she has had lapses in her publishing career. And I think it's very important to talk about those careers as well. It's something that aspiring authors always wanna hear about - the overnight successes and people that hit the list and continue to hit the list and always do well. And the truth is that that is a very, very, very small percentage of people. Even continuing to publish is very, very difficult. For example, in my debut group of 2013, which was both YA and middle grade authors... Recently I was having a conversation with someone who was also a fellow lucky 13, and they said, "Hey, have you ever gone back and looked at our group and the people that we debuted with and done the math on how many are still traditionally publishing? Quite a few have found success in other arenas, but in the traditional publishing world have you ever gone back and looked?" And I was like, "No, I haven't." And just out of curiosity, I did, and I'm gonna take a stab at the numbers because I didn't write it down, and I'm not gonna take the time to go do that again. But I'm gonna say there were roughly 65 of us that were in this loosely knit group of debut YA and middle grade authors in 2013. And at the time that I looked, which might have been two or three years ago, I think maybe eight of us.

Melissa: Oh. Seriously?

Mindy: Yeah... Were still in the trad pub world. That's one of the reasons why I wanted to have you on here because you have had hiccups, as you refer to them, in your career, but you keep coming back. So if you would just like to tell the audience just like a brief overview of your career and what it's been like.

Melissa: Well, when I first started writing, Alienated was the first book I ever wrote. And I was very, very lucky that it actually sold and it did super, super well. But I also was publishing adult contemporary romance under a pen name at that time, and I couldn't decide which I liked more. I didn't know which would take off better, and so for a long time I tried to do both. I do not recommend that unless you're just a naturally prolific author who spews awesome words without effort, because for me, it did burn me out. Looking back, if I could do it over again, I would have stuck to just YA sci-fi and spent all of my time and my resources simply on creating Melissa Landers as a brand. Because by trying to launch Melissa Landers and Macy Beckett, I was dividing and conquering myself, so there's lesson number one. I think I am up to 14 novels that are out or slated for publication through 2023, but I might be miscounting. I've been busy. You just may not have seen the fruits of my labor, because again - two different pen names. That's the first lesson that I would impart. Choose a name. Choose a genre. Choose a market. Invest in that brand.

Mindy: You and I met at different various writers conferences around Ohio. Ohio actually has quite a few writers, and it's got many book festivals and conferences that happen a lot. And so we do have a pretty tight-knit group of writers. And I remember when you were writing under Macy Beckett as well as your real name as a YA sci-fi author, because I believe we actually met at a conference that was partially romance-driven because if I remember correctly one of the big draws of that conference was that they had dudes that were cover models there.

Melissa: Was it Lori Foster's reader author get together?

Mindy: That's exactly what it was.

Melissa: That conference was the best. I miss it so much.

Mindy: Yes, that was fun. It is not my genre. It's not my niche. It was just a conference that was nearby, and any kinda writing conference is gonna have something for you if you're a writer. And I remember showing up and there were just like… ripped dudes just standing in the lobby just kind of flexing their pecks on and off, and I was just kind of like "maybe I should write romance." I remember you trying to take that, that two-pronged approach, and while, as you're saying, you wish that you had not necessarily been trying to do that at the same time, you learn from it. But also, man, all the skills that you picked up as an indie author before indie was huge, I'm sure that that's useful.

Melissa: Well, I actually wasn't indie. My first three romance novels were with Sourcebooks and my second two were with Penguin Random House. Now, I did get all of those rights reverted to me, and I put them up on... What is it? Kindle Unlimited. I haven't done a very good job really pushing those titles 'cause I'm not currently writing them. The only project that I did that was kind of not full indie more like a hybrid, was United, the third book in the Alienated series. Alienated did amazing. It earned out its advance like twice over. Invaded... The last time I looked I was like a whisper away from earning out on that. Because trilogies were not doing so well in the YA market at the time, Disney said if you do a third book we're only gonna put it out in ebook only. No print. Not even print on demand, and that was a deal breaker for me. So I partnered with a small publisher to get United out in hard cover. Did the cover design. I contracted out editorial. It was a lot of work, but I was really, really pleased with how it turned out.

Mindy: For listeners, just to clarify, when Melissa is saying that she earned out on Alienated what that means is that she earned her advance back, and it sounds like then again. That tells you how extraordinarily successful Alienated was. And if you're a whisper away from earning out on the sequel, that shows your read through and the success of Alienated being so great. So yeah, you had great success in the trad YA world right out of the gate with your first book with your name on it in that realm. And you were also writing in sci-fi, which had a moment, and as you're saying, trilogies were suddenly like a bad word. At first that was all you were ever supposed to do is write trilogies, and then, you weren't anymore. I have multiple friends that came out 2013, 2014 who were supposed to have trilogies and were asked, "Hey, do you think you could wrap it up in two? Because trilogies aren't hot anymore." So talk to me a little bit about how things changed career wise for you after you came out of the gate so hard with the first two books in this series. You improvised and did your third one on your own, and then what happened next for you?

Melissa: Alright, so we have Alienated, Invaded, United - that series nice, tied up in a little bow. My next series was Starflight, and that did extremely well too. Starfall, which is the sequel... Not as well. And so Disney said, "No more in this series. Give us something new." So I did. I decided to take a stab at writing high fantasy, and I came up with a proposal for a book called The Half King which is about a failed oracle who has to leave the temple where she's lived at since birth and travel to the palace to serve the Half King - a charming man who serves his kingdom by day and turns to shadow at sunset. Now, I sold this proposal to my former editor, not my current editor, my former editor, on... Let's see, three chapters and a synopsis. So about 50 pages. And she loved it. The whole team loved it. They sold in a two-book, six-figure deal. Currently, it is my only six-figure deal, and so this felt like a big career high for me. Now, I had a phone call with my editor after selling the proposal. I always like to do that, just to ask if there's any changes they wanna see as I complete the manuscript. "We love it. Just one thing. Do you think you can set it in space?"

Mindy: Oh my god.

Melissa: There was a disconnect when it came to expectations. What I did not expect to happen and what completely knocked me sideways was for my editor to completely reject the manuscript. I gave my publisher two different books. I did IPs. The first one, Blastaway, which was my only middle grade release, and it's super cute. I'm very proud of it. It's basically Home Alone in space. And then I gave them Lumara, which just released last month, which was pitched to me as Crazy Rich Asians but with witches. And again, so fun. So fun. My first experience with an unreliable narrator. And so I gave them those two books to replace the books in The Half King, and then my agent eventually sold The Half King elsewhere. I've since re-written it as new adult fantasy with lots of sexy sex.

Mindy: Nice.

Melissa: And it works so much better that way, but this stumble in The Half King completely interrupted my release schedule. The Half King was supposed to release in 2017, but it didn't. And then after Blastaway released, my editor left - went to a different publishing house. I had to wait for a new editor and then Covid happened, and my new editor had just said to my agent, "Hey, does Melissa like witches? I might have a great idea for her." But before we could get it approved, Covid happened and there were so many editors on furlough that they literally could not form an acquisitions committee.

Mindy: Oh.

Melissa: So for all of Covid, I was stuck. I had a contracted book, but I could not move forward on it. It was maddening, and that created an even bigger gap. And so Lumara just released last month and Blastaway released in 2018. A four-year gap in releases! And because publishing moves so slowly and because projects that are contracted now will not see the light of day for two years, just the slightest little stumble and bam, you have a many year gap in your release schedule.

Mindy: Absolutely, you do. That's something that almost happened to me with my third book, not necessarily that large of a gap, but I would have had a year without a release. With only two books out, that would not have been good. Long story short, there was a miscommunication. As you were saying, editors leave. They hop around, and my acquiring editor for my third book, which was A Madness So Discreet, had left Harper and had gone to a different publishing house. And there was a miscommunication to me about the due date for my first draft. I was given a date, and I was like, "Oh great. I have plenty of time." And the date that I was given was the date that it had to go to copy edits.

Melissa: Oof.

Mindy: Yeah, and I thought it was my first draft due date. And when they did hire my new editor, who's Ben Rosenthal, who is still my editor - we've done, I think, 10 books together now. Ben called me, and that was the very first conversation I had with my new editor... Was that he called me and was like, "Hey, I'm Ben, and I'm really excited to work with you and I loved Not A Drop to Drink. And I'm ready to read this manuscript. Whenever you can send it, please do." And I was like, "Oh, well, I mean I will, but I haven't written it yet, buddy. It's not due until this certain date." And he was like, "Oh, that's not... That's not accurate." I was just like, "Wait, what?" I had three weeks to write the book. They were like, look, you're not in breach of contract. There was a miscommunication on our end. We are sorry. You are not in breach, but we do need the book in three weeks. Or we'll take... You take a year off. And I was like, "Uhh. Well, this is how I make a living. So not taking your off. Gonna write a book in three weeks." And so that's what I did. I understand that it's pretty good. I can't tell you what happens in that book. I wrote it in a fugue state. You're right. Those lags. You can have that happen. You can have those gaps in your career, and because of the fact that there is such a long lead time in publishing, in traditional publishing, that gap, even if you have one stumble, it's gonna cost you two years maybe. How did you keep your readers aware of you as an individual? And if you do continue to use social media and a newsletter, how do you keep your readers at least aware that you exist for those four years?

Melissa: Honestly, I kind of didn't. I focused on if I posted anything to the Gram, it was personal. Like, here's a picture of me on vacation. I wasn't just spewing monotonous pictures of my books because, for me anyway, as a reader of myself, I don't like to see too much repetition from authors that I follow. I know what your cover looks like. I don't need to see it 20 times in my feed. Plus, there's the issue that my readership were originally teenagers - 2014 when Alienated came out. They are grown now. In fact... Oh my gosh, what a mind freak. So on Instagram, I follow the original cover model from Alienated. He is now married with a baby. They're adults now. They're grown. I don't know how many of them are still reading YA as adults, but I'm gonna take a stab and say not a ton. So, I didn't see the sense in spinning my wheels and trying to hold on to a readership that was aging out of the market. I just kind of let things be organic. I posted some things about my ordinary life, and I let the rest go. And then I kind of just got started again once Lumara was in production to promote that. I watch other authors spin their wheels on social media trying so so hard to clutch at readers, and it's almost like the harder you try, the more inorganic it feels, and the more you lose.

Mindy: Absolutely. I just had a conversation yesterday morning with Beth Revis, and Beth and I were talking about exactly this because I personally have lost any affection or pride or connection that I ever had with social media. And one of the main reasons is because I went through a break-up, right? Oh, about two months before the pandemic. I went through a break-up of a relationship that had lasted for 12 years. So, it was very upsetting. I was gonna make it and I was gonna be okay, but I was not interested in tweeting about my book or my life. I was like, "Dude, my life is really shitty right now." It's like I don't have a lot to say, and I'm not gonna post pictures of my cat. I'm just laying in bed crying pretty often. So it's like, this is not part of my life right now. I'm not doing social media. And I had been someone that was very active, and if there was a new platform, I was like, "alright what's this?" and getting involved. I really invested my time into that, and I had two hours every morning blocked off where I just used social media and interacted with other people and was involved in conversations and making my own content. And I totally dropped, shut down everything. Not even a, "Hey, going through a hard time. I'm not gonna be around for a little while” post. Nothing for three months, and literally no one noticed. It did not affect my sales in any way whatsoever. And I was like, "Alright, then what am I doing here? What is the point of this?" 

And so I had that happen, which was just right before the pandemic, and then in the years that have followed, social media has changed very much from when you and I first started using it. It is now very picture and video-based, and it didn't used to be. Facebook and Twitter were the first platforms that I was active on, and it was, how clever are you with words? What can you do with words? I can utilize that. I am not dancing. I'm not lip syncing. I'm not pointing to words on a screen. I am 43. I don't give a shit. I don't know what's popular. I'm not gonna pick the right music. I'm not gonna... There's like none of it. None of it. I have continued now to just be like, You know what? I'm not interested. And I agree with you completely, that if I were to try any way, it would just be pathetic.

Melissa: Yeah, you can tell when it's inorganic and it's, as my teenager would say, cringey. I'm kind of like you not wanting to share hard times. There was no way five years ago that I was gonna be on social media and say, "Hey guys, you haven't heard from me because I wrote something so broken, my own editor doesn't wanna work with me." No, I was ashamed. I was very hurt. And that really taught me a lesson about how fragile my self-esteem is and how tightly bonded my self-esteem is to my creative process. I was unable to write for the longest time, and then when I finally could write, I was just a black hole of need for validation. My critique partner, Lorie Langdon, she's been on your podcast before.

Mindy: Yes.

Melissa: She can tell you every time I sent her a chapter, I would follow up, "is it okay? Does it suck? Does it suck?" And she would be like, "Oh my God, Mel. No. It doesn't suck. This is awesome. Stop." I like to think that I was this big tough badass. I am so not a big tough badass. I am like a little fragile flower made out of tissue paper.

Mindy: That was something I wanted to ask you about - was how did you recover? Not only talking about a career or maintaining your social media or the financial aspect. How do you recover emotionally?

Melissa: Time, honestly. Time was the only thing. Time and being able to get into a new project and watch that succeed. And by succeed, I don't mean in the market. Blastaway didn't sell super well, but I am so proud of it. It is freaking adorable, and I hate that it didn't do as well. But sci-fi, it is what it is. When you write sci-fi, you kind of have your hits and misses. For the longest time, I could not touch The Half King. The thing with The Half King is it's a beautiful book. It really is, and I'm not just saying that 'cause I wrote it. I think that when it releases in 2023 people who love high fantasy romance are gonna connect with it. But it has so much beauty in it, and I just knew that it deserved to be out in the world. But every time I would open the file, I would freak out and shut it down again. I could not work on the book. Last year when it sold again, and then I had a call with the editor and made a plan, and even kind of getting started on it, it felt... Oh, this is gonna sound so stupid, but it felt like revisiting trauma. And it took probably a month before I really got into the flow of things and began to truly enjoy the process and reconnect with those characters. It took a long time for me to get my mojo back for that project. Paper flower, fragile.

Mindy: No, of course it did. That makes perfect sense to me, and I don't think you're using the word trauma lightly. I will share what happened to me just this past summer. Starting last Christmas, I made the decision that I didn't think I needed to be on anti-depressants anymore. I had been on something for 15 years, and I was feeling good. And I'm in a great relationship, and my career is good. And you know, I've got a dog. I'm fine, right? So I slowly weaned, and the weaning process was great. I got myself completely off of the antidepressants that I had been on for a very long time. There was a window where I was okay, and then there was a much larger space of time when I just... What? It was bad. It was really bad. And I did not realize how quickly it was happening, and I did not realize how bad it was. And friends and family were like, "Mindy, you need to go back on a medication." And I was like, "No, I'm fine. Everything's fine. I'm fine. This is still just withdrawal." I was writing my 2024 release while I was basically having a nervous breakdown, and I didn't know it. I was aware that things were very wrong, but I just kept saying to myself that I am okay and this will pass. And it didn't. And I wrote my 2024 release, which is called Under This Red Rock, while I was going through the worst mental health period of my life. I wrote the book, and I turned it in, and I hit my deadline. And I emailed it to my editor, and I was like "Ben, here it is. This is not good. And I'm sorry, but I'm probably going crazy. And this is the best I can give you right now." And he was like, "Okay, alright." And he was like, "I'm sure that your version of horrible is probably a lot better than you think, and take care of yourself." 

I did end up going back on medication right around Thanksgiving. Ben had gotten back to me, and he had sent me my edit letter. And he was very kind, but my level of what I aim to turn in to my editor - that was not there. And I did give him a first draft. And it was a nine-page edit letter, and there were some pretty big problems. And, like you're saying, I can't work with this right now. And at that point, I had gotten back on medication, and I was going through the acclimation phase, which I still am. I can't do this right now. I didn't wanna read it. I didn't wanna open it up. I didn't wanna have anything to do with that manuscript because I felt so shitty while I was writing it, and I got myself into a much better mental space. I got back on medication, and I was able to do the edit. Like you said, even then, just the experience of reading it, it is almost a physical place that you go to and I had to go back there. For one thing, the book itself is heavily involved with a mental illness plot line. I was dealing with writing the fiction of it while also reliving how I had felt while I was writing it, and you're absolutely right. It's difficult.

Melissa: From the beginning, ever since Not A Drop to Drink, your brand is kind of dark and gritty, right? My brand is light, funny, and when you're in a bad mental place, guess how easy it is to write light and funny.

Mindy: Oh, I can't even imagine.

Melissa: My previous editor at Disney... One of the projects that I had pitched to her when I was trying to fulfill this last book on my contract was one of my 2023 releases. She rejected it because she felt like it was a better fit for the adult market, but my new editor at Hyperion absolutely loved it as much as I do. And it is very funny. It's basically like a Jessica Jones meets Veronica Mars. It's a murder mystery, and it is humor and sarcasm from start to finish. And I wrote it over the summer when the sun was out, and I didn't have seasonal depression. And I felt good, and life was good. And I was happy, and I was in a good place. And when I tell you that book just bloomed out of me effortlessly, it was the most fun I've ever had writing in my life. It's kind of miraculous what you can do when your mental health is in a good place.

Mindy: It is. It is. You're absolutely right about my brand and what I write. Obviously, I have no problem talking about mental illness, so I will just keep going. I've been thinking a lot about how I'm gonna talk about this book because it does have a major mental illness aspect for my main character, and I was not in a great place when I was writing it. And people have been asking me, "What do you have coming out next? What's going on next?" And I'm like, "Guys... " So I have a release in March of this year, of 2023, and it is my lightest, happiest - I mean, it's a murder mystery, don't get me wrong, and there's some dark things - but it is my lightest, happiest, and probably most hopeful book that I've ever written. And I wrote it, of course, while I was on medication. Just in a really good place. Things were... Everything was really good when I was writing it, and I actually remember working on that book, which is called A Long Stretch of Bad Days, when I was writing a darker scene or a more upsetting scene or something where my main character was not in a great place, I had to kind of work at it. You know sadness. You know how it feels, and I had to kind of dig for it. And writing my 2024 release, which is called Under This Red Rock, there might be three lines in it that are funny, because I do try to have a little bit of lightness somewhere in all of my books. My 2023 is actually funny. I just got my Kirkus review, and they made a comment about how funny it is. Yes, thank you. Because it's like I always try to have some funny in there, and that's not what I'm known for. My 2024 release I was in the total opposite place, mentally, where I was like, "Okay, you know what funny is, and you know what funny means, and you're able to make jokes, and you've made jokes before. So write something funny because you just wrote 30 pages of just deep dark black shit."

Melissa: The old advice - “butt in chair, hands on keys” - it's great if the rest of your life is also great. But if your life is falling apart around you, your emotions are in shambles, “butt in chair, hands on keys” doesn't yield the same output, and then that comes across on the page and all has to be re-written anyway.

Mindy: Let's talk about Lumara, which is your book that just came out last month. And that one is something, from my understanding, it has helped you get right back on to your trajectory and put you back on your path.

Melissa: Yes, yes, and Lumara is an IP. It was actually my editor's idea when she reached out right at the beginning of the pandemic and said, "Hey, does Melissa like witches?" I had just enough time to say Melissa loves witches and then the pandemic and everything went sideways.

Mindy: Yeah.

Melissa: But yeah, she said, I have this idea. It's an unreliable narrator. Magic. This island with living properties, and I was sold immediately. And so it was so much fun to plot the book with her assistance and to explore magic in a modern day setting. So Lumara is set in a world where magic is real, and everybody knows it's real. It's not hidden. Like in Harry Potter. Magic is real. We all know it. And people who can do magic are called mystics, and they are treated like modern day celebrities. There's Mystegram. There's mystecon - you know, kinda like comicon only just for magic - where you can go and you can buy spells and you can get healed. And so this is the world you live in, but the main character, Talia, hates mystics. Hates them because she had a really bad experience and was basically ripped off of her whole life savings from one. Everybody knows she hates mystics. She won't shut up about it, and then one day she learns that her boyfriend, who she loves very, very much, is not only a mystic, but the son and heir to the most wealthy, powerful, mysterious mystic family in the world. And his cousin is getting married, and he can bring a date. And he wants Talia to come home to his private island with him and meet the family. But once she gets there, all hell breaks loose. It's an unreliable narrator. So if I say too much, I spoil it. But it's a mystery. Murder, generational curses, magic, love, betrayal - all my favorite things.

Mindy: Would you like to mention your 2024 release?

Melissa: Oh, yeah. I would love to. My 2023 releases... The Half King should be coming along fall/winter - I'm not really sure - from Red Tower Books. Again, this will be my first new adult release. Sex on the page - explicit. So not for my younger teen readers.

Mindy: I'm ready.

Melissa: And then my Hyperion release will be December 5th of 2023, and that's called Make Me A Liar. And that's the one that I said was the most fun book I've ever written. Basically a teenage girl with the power of transferable consciousness hires herself out for side hustles, but while she's in the body of a client someone uses her body to commit murder in public. She has to prove that even though her body committed the crime, her mind was not in it at the time.

Mindy: Wow, that's fascinating. I love that.

Melissa: Well, you know, I can't just write a normal murder mystery. It has to have some kind of weirdness in it.

Mindy: So last thing. Why don't you let readers know where they can find you online, and then also where they can get Lumara.

Melissa: Perfect, yes. You can find me online at Melissa dash Landers dot com, and you can sign up for my email newsletter there. And I promise it's not spammy. I only send out a newsletter when I have a new release launching. You can find me on all the usual social media sites: Instagram, Facebook, Twitter. As far as Lumara, you can order that from your retailer of choice. And right now, Make Me A Liar and The Half King should also be available for pre-order. So, if either of those titles sounded interesting to you, I hope you'll preorder them.

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.

Katie Henry On Writing Humor During the Pandemic

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.

Mindy: We're here with Katie Henry, who is the author of multiple books. Her most recent release is Gideon Green in Black and White, which is actually her first mystery. So you have jumped genres and even switched mediums, which is, I think really important to being a writer and surviving in the industry is the ability to be adaptable. So why don't you talk a little bit about where you've been and what you've done, and how you've changed over the course of your career. 

Katie: I started out my writing life as a playwright back in high school because I was a theater kid, but I was a mediocre singer, dancer and actor. So you gotta do something. I decided what I would do was right plays, and I had a fantastic time doing that. I ended up going to college for playwriting, which if anyone is considering that, was a lot of fun, but not a whole lot of job opportunities after graduation for that. I had a fantastic time being a playwright, and I think the experience of going to art school and having that workshop experience was invaluable in learning how to take feedback and also give feedback that would be helpful to others. So I graduated with a degree in Playwriting. Job opportunities were limited there. I realized that I had been, throughout the course of college, I had only been writing about teenagers. Most of my classmates did not exclusively write about 16-year-olds in their plays. But I did. I've spent all this time writing about teenagers, maybe I should try writing for them. And I loved YA when I was a teenager, so I started reading it again, fell in love with it all over again, and decided that I wanted to try writing YA. And I wanted to try writing novels. That is basically how I got here.

Mindy:   I had to laugh a little bit to myself when you were talking about following what you love and doing what you want and getting your degree in the thing that matters to you, and then finding out you can't get a job. That's a real thing. My listeners are probably hearing this. I double majored in English literature, philosophy and religion. I learned so much, I am over-educated and unemployable. I had no desire to teach, no desire to go into any type of teaching English or any type of ministry. Both of those degrees without going on for your master's are fairly useless. I say that like tongue in cheek. Communication and empathy and all of the things that are absolutely critical to being a good writer, were all buried in there, but on a resume, I am not qualified to do much at all.

Katie: It's funny you bring up religion and philosophy, my first two books were about religion, which again, is not a super marketable topic for YA. Though I think that's changing, there are a lot more books that talk about faith and have religious protagonists or people figuring out their faith. But just like you said, doing what you love, and even once you are in a writing career, leaning into the stuff that really matters to you makes all the difference.

Mindy:   It can be hard and it can be discouraging. I actually had a long conversation last night, so I just read a book called Like, Comment, Subscribe by Mark Bergen. It is essentially the history of YouTube, and I read it out of curiosity. It was sent to me as an advanced copy and first of all, it's incredible. Everyone should read it, it's fascinating. Secondly, my initial reaction to it, my emotional reaction to it was that I got very angry. And it's not that there's no talent involved, there is talent involved, but when your job is to do un-boxing videos, this is my kid playing with a toy… I'm not saying that there's no talent involved in this, and it certainly is a time suck, but early adopters to YouTube, they were making 7 million a year. Why aren't I doing that? 

And those people get burnt out and they're working very hard and their entire private life has to be public, so I understand that there is an exchange. Don't get me wrong, but I was talking to someone about mediocrity kind of being the king of content these days and producing new content over and over and over, something just slightly different. I was just having a particularly pessimistic day as well, so I will add that, but I was definitely hitting a point where I work every day and I work so hard, and I'm sure that you do too. And I feel burnt out, and I am always trying to say the right thing or find an important topic, or be meaningful, or create art for lack of a better word, and it's like… I should just have a foot channel on Only Fans because I have great feet. I could make so much more money. Very often when we talk about the things that we love, like, these are our degrees. We wanna create art, and we want to do something meaningful. But at the same time, man, being a sell-out sounds awesome.

Katie: Yeah, it would be so great if what we found personally meaningful was also extremely lucrative. That hasn't happened to me yet, but fingers crossed. Here's hoping.

Mindy:   Is it something that you struggle with as a writer, where you sit down and you write one sentence and you're like… is that sentence right and you're just kind of staring at it?

Katie: It definitely is, and I think it is a lot more so now, when I know that a book is going to be out in the world. When it's part of a larger deal, and I know that not only does the sentence exist on my computer, but it may very well exist in a real book that actual people will read and write reviews of on Good Reads. That definitely makes me think in a way that is sometimes kind of paralyzing about - is this right? Is it doing enough? Is it saying enough? 

Mindy:   Me too, I'm very critical of myself, but I think that is of course what makes us get better all the time, continuously. When you're writing, do you write out of a place where you want to alleviate what I feel is a pretty low bar these days for entertainment, but also art? Do you want to write to that? Or are you writing for yourself? Are you writing for your readers? What are your goals personally, when you're creating?

Katie: I think I definitely write for myself first 'cause I have experience writing for someone else, it's just not as much fun and it's not as fulfilling. And if you were gonna sit down and write a 80,000-word book, you better be getting something out of it, or that is just gonna be a slog. I definitely am always writing the kinds of things that I enjoy, the kinds of things that I would want to read. Going back to what you said about writing now, this is a particularly hard time. I feel like I'm also writing with a sense of, How can I make the world just a little bit better? A little bit less bleak, in this time? All my books have varied in tone, they've all been funny or... I hope they’ve been funny. That's been the intention. And so particularly when you're writing humor, that's what you're setting out to do. I am always looking for, How could I make someone’s day a little bit more enjoyable in a time that seems particularly hard?

Mindy:   I write super dark. I write issues, I write to topics, my goal is to reach the person that also thinks about these things or experiences these things to get that feeling of, Oh, okay, I am not a freak for thinking this way, or I am not alone for feeling this way. And that brings its own form of relief. But I wanna come back to talking about humor because I think right now... Yes, we need it. It's so important. People need to laugh. And so when I say disparaging things about social media, YouTube, TikTok, whatever... Believe me, I'm on it, don't get me wrong. I am a consumer, so I'll watch cats missing their jumps for three hours, this is me.

Katie: There's nothing better.

Mindy:   My hang-up comes from the incredible amount of money that can be made that I can't. I think that's where my anger comes from.

Katie: It's not an even distribution.

Mindy:   So anyway, coming back to humor and Writing humor, I think that's the hardest thing to do. I can make someone cry. I can make you cry pretty easily, making someone laugh–I feel like that's always a pot shot.

Katie: You know, it's so interesting that you say that 'cause I felt the complete opposite way. I discovered that I liked writing humor when I was a teenage playwright. And when you're a playwright and you're sitting in the back of a theater, it's really hard to tell how the audience is experiencing your work unless they are audibly crying or unless they're laughing. It was much harder, at least for me, to make people cry, and a lot easier to make people laugh. I love that instantaneous reaction that lets me know that I have communicated with other human beings through my words. I think that's why I have always gravitated towards humor.

Mindy:   There is an amazing reward in making someone laugh. Yeah, you're speaking about your audience. I do public speaking, and even though I talk about my books and my books are not funny, my presentations always are, because I think, especially when you're speaking to teens, you have to be entertaining. And what amazes me is that I can take the same presentation and I've done them hundreds of times, I can deliver it the same way, I have the same slide saying the same lines and delivering the same jokes, nothing is changing. And there are days when I am murdering it and everyone is laughing and I'm getting DMs and tweets and emails, and people are like, Oh my God, that was amazing. You're fantastic. And then there are times when I'm up there… and there's nothing worse than pausing for the laugh that doesn't come.

Katie: Oh, yeah, absolutely. I think I almost thrive in that kind of chaos. Humor is so subjective and chaotic in that way, where you just do not know, it is hard to figure out what is going to be objectively funny and whether it's going to hit with anyone, much less a larger readership. I kind of like that challenge to be like, How can I take something that I think is funny and punch it up so that the greatest number of people will possibly find it funny? And just knowing that you can't get everyone, you will never get everyone, and sometimes people will hate your humor so much. It's actually gratifying in a different way because you have made a connection, just not the one that you intended to. 

Mindy:   I agree completely. If I can make you feel something, and I get emails, 'cause my books are hard and people die, and I get emails all the time, and people will be like, I am pissed at you. And I'm like, That's cool. The tagline for this podcast is, our job is to make people care about things that never happen to people that don't exist. And if I can make you very, very upset over the death of a person that never was alive in the first place, and if you're pissed at me about it. That's awesome, I've done my job.

Katie: Yeah, that is such a victory.

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Mindy:   Starting out with humor, that's where you were, and then you've moved forward into writing a mystery, which of course doesn't exclusively mean that you're not including humor anymore. But talk to me about that jump, talk to me about changing up there.

Katie: So it definitely is a comedic mystery. I actually think it's one of my funnier books. That was really important to me to include because something that I find is that the two genres that I feel are closest connected, and this is going to sound very weird, are horror and humor. And so thriller and mystery is included in that too, but they're both based on the element of surprise. Things make us laugh when they surprise us and things scare us when they surprise us too. And human beings love being surprised, even if we say that we don't. We love it. I went into that knowing that I wanted it to be funny and knowing that I wanted to carry some of the other things that I had done previously in more straight contemporary novels into this. But really working with the mystery element, it was really, really difficult to transition. I really love mysteries, I love reading them, and I very naively thought that that meant that I would be good at writing one. And I think eventually I did just get there, but it was a struggle. Mystery makes you level up, I feel like, and that is one of the reasons that I wanted to do it.

This is my fourth book, and I always wanna be growing as an author. If I'm lucky enough to have another book, I always wanna be doing something new and challenging myself, and I felt like every aspect of writing a mystery from the plotting to making sure there's still a character arc, and particularly in revision, when changing things, it means everything changes and clues have to be completely rearranged. It just asked me to be a better writer, a better collaborator with my editor, too. While it definitely was a challenge, I ultimately feel like I'm a much better writer for having tried it.

Mindy:   So talk to me about your process. Are you a planner? Are you a pantser?

Katie: I am such a pantser, which is another reason that a mystery was a real challenge because you can't just go into a completely flying blind. I mean, you can... And I definitely did. But at some point, you have to know where you're going. I always pretend that I'm a plotter. I feel like I lie to people, particularly my editor about that. I turn in the five-page outline, and then by the time he gets the first draft it is completely different, which he's always very cool with, which is nice. Pantsing entirely, it does not quite work for Mystery. In the same way though, I'm glad I kind of did that as a first draft because it allowed me to discover aspects to the story and to the characters that I might not have gotten if I had plotted it out more carefully as I probably should have.

Mindy:   So for the sake of the listening audience, Kaite and I actually share an editor. Our editor is Ben Rosenthal of Katherine Tegen Books. I think he's probably very accustomed to this kind of working relationship because I have turned in synopsis and outlines, and he just knows that that's just kind of what the concept might be, and I'm gonna turn in something similar in the same vein in about six months. 

Katie: And you'll have to stop me or This will turn into the Ben Rosenthal appreciation hour, but it sounds like we have a pretty similar working relationship where he gives us authors just a lot of space to discover what the book is without locking in too early. And is generally just very adaptable in what a story can be and where it can go, which I really appreciate. I feel like I don't figure out what the book is about until, I don't know, the second draft, at least.

Mindy:   I think that's fair. And I agree, Ben is wonderful. I've worked with Ben on, I think nine or 10 books now. Yeah, so we have a really good working relationship. I actually bristle when people ask me what my editor makes me change and I get almost angry about it. No, my editor is awesome, and that's not what an editor does, and you are misunderstanding the role of an editor. And for anybody that questions that, there are plenty of horror stories about editors out there, but I can say I've worked with three or four, and Ben the most often, and I've never had the experience of sending a book off and having it come back to me and the editor saying, Okay, this is what's wrong, and this is exactly how you fix it, or I fixed it for you. That's not what an editor does. And Ben is particularly good at saying, you gave me this, these are your strengths and this is the strength of this manuscript, these are the areas where it needs to work, and here are some ideas from me that I think could be utilized, and of course, I realize that you can just absolutely ignore everything I have to say and find your own way.

Katie: Yeah, yeah, I think a lot of aspiring authors or early stage career authors think of editors and even agents as sort of their bosses, and what you really quickly discover is they're not your boss. They are your collaborator, they are here to help you achieve your vision and that ultimately, this is your book, because when it's on a bookshelf, it's gonna have your name on the cover, and no one else’s.

Mindy:   I agree, ultimately, it is a team effort, and you're the author. Every editor I've ever had has always said, It's your book. You make the final decisions. I will say, in addition to what we were talking about in terms of being absolute pantsers in many ways, I enjoy the flexibility that it gives me. Yes, there is some panic and yes, there are some days when I'm just like, I have no idea what I'm doing, I have come to trust my process because I've been doing it a long time, and I haven't had it fail me yet. One of the reasons why I do enjoy being a Pantser is because it allows for so much elasticity. So in my book, that will be coming out in 2023, a murder mystery in a small town, and it is a pairing - the unlikely duo of the valedictorian, and then the girl who is going to be the first person in her family to ever even graduate from high school. When I started writing the book and when I had written the synopsis, I turned it in with my main character, the good girl, being very much like a straight arrow and I follow the rules and I'm always doing the right thing, and there is value to being perfect. And I started writing it and man, she was angry, she was an angry person.

And I was like, Dude, this is not what I expected out of you. And she was just moving through the world with a very different internal monologue than what she was showing to people. She was a good girl, and she was behaving in that manner and checking all those boxes, but her internal monologue is like, No, fuck you, fuck you and fuck you. And I was just like, Wow, girl. So, you know, she changed and it ended up, I think, in so many ways, making the manuscript so much better, making that allowance and not having a lock in for even myself about what I'm gonna do or where I'm gonna take things. That's why I really enjoy being a panster.

Katie: Yeah, and I do think there is a benefit, particularly with mysteries, to being a little bit of a pantser, because so often your protagonist doesn't really know what's going on either. In Gideon Green, he is a former child detective who is coming out of retirement to solve a case with his former best friend. Part of his character arc is realizing that he does not know everything, and as the mystery takes them on twists and turns, I think it helps get me in the headspace of not really knowing what was going on, to legitimately not really know what was gonna happen.

Mindy:   I really enjoy that. So tell us a little bit more about Gideon Green.

Katie: This is an idea that I had a long time ago when I was a teenager myself. I was thinking about how much I loved Encyclopedia Brown as a kid, those books with that wonderful child detective. But I was thinking about how long would that be cool? Because everyone in the Encyclopedia Brown universe thinks he's like the coolest kid ever. But that has an expiration date at some point. That becomes a lot less cool and a lot more off-putting and weird. I had this idea for a one-time child detective who is now 16, and because no one thinks the whole child detective thing isn’t particularly cool anymore. He has retired and instead spends most of his time in his room watching noir, which he is fully obsessed with, until his former best friend who ditched him in middle school appears at his door, wanting his help on an investigation that she's doing for the school newspaper. So reluctantly, he comes out of retirement and chaos ensues. Which is how I feel like all of my books eventually get to the place where, just chaos ensues. 

Mindy:   Chaos ensues is the best way to pitch anything. You wrote this during the pandemic, right?

Katie: I did, I did. I was going back in my email trying to find the actual date that I pitched it, but I couldn't. To the best of my recollection, I first pitched this book to Ben on maybe February 28, and then a couple of weeks later, the world completely ended. I live in Manhattan. And the world felt like it completely collapsed from underneath me as I was just starting to write this book. And my memory of writing the opening chapters of this book is sitting in my tiny New York apartment and outside the streets are completely empty, which is very weird for New York and just constant, constant sirens. That's my memory of it. And obviously, I would have preferred to be writing under pretty much any other condition, and it was horrible, a really difficult experience to be writing what almost felt like a fantasy book. I would write a sentence about how two friends hugged in the cafeteria and just burst into tears because that felt so far away from the life that I was living and I didn't know when that life would come back.

It was very difficult, but I feel like having written it during that particular time fundamentally shaped the book and what it is about. Gideon starts off as a kid stuck in his room with really nothing going on in his life except watching movies, and that's pretty much where I also was in March 2020, not through my own choice. Over the course of the book, he realizes just how much you need other people and just how valuable and magical and life-giving human connection is, and I'm not sure that it ultimately would have had that focus as a book if I had not been writing it during that time.

Mindy:   And what were the difficulties for you in trying to write something, so it's a mystery with a very deep roots in humor, when you yourself are probably really not feeling all that chuckalicious?

Katie: It was tough, but in some ways it was really nice to just say, Okay, you're going into another headspace. You are inhabiting a world that does not resemble your own world at the moment. It was a form of escapism where it was like, Okay, everything sucks right now, life is not going well, put on your headphones and for the next hour, two hours, three hours, you can be somewhere else. That was really valuable for me, and something that I'm so glad that I had, and I'm so glad that I basically had to force myself to find the joy in this book and the humor.

Mindy:   My books of course are very dark, but they also have moments of humor because you can't just hit your head against a wall all the time, you have to have a break. I always have those flashes of humor. When I hear back from people about my books, very often what I'm hearing is - they spoke to me or thank you for writing this, and I appreciate any outreach whatsoever that anybody gives me. But when I know that I made someone laugh, especially in this environment like you're talking about, I specifically tried very hard with the book that will be coming out in 2023, called A Long Stretch of Bad Days, I tried very hard to make that one funny and not just in surprising moments. There's a particular character, any time she's on the page, you know that she is going to make you laugh, and I'm like, This is what we need right now. I'm still gonna be Mindy McGinnis and I'm still going to give you a book with lots of horrible things happening, but I'm gonna try to help you laugh a little bit, too. 

Katie: I feel like in some ways YA leans more heavily towards the dark and the issue books, and obviously those books are completely needed and so important. But teenagers are also some of the funniest people I interact with ever, and I think that they want humor, they deserve humor too. It just shouldn't be just for middle grade books or just for chapter books. Humor in YA is a much needed component.

Mindy:   I agree, it's funny because I was talking to, at the beginning of the month, Marcy Kate Connolly. She was telling me that I should write middle grade and I said, That's a horrible idea. And then, but you know, I can really write a fart joke. I'm really good with farts. And she was like, then you've got it. Like, you're good. You know what I'm also really good at is dick jokes. I don't know how many dick jokes you are allowed to write, I mean none in middle grade, but I'm sure there's also a cap on YA. My mind goes weird places sometimes. So, I don't know, Teenagers can be difficult because they want dick jokes, they want sex jokes. That is the funniest thing when you're that age and raunchy humor, and believe me, I am here for it, but I also can't write a whole book of dick jokes. Much like I can't write a whole book of fart jokes for middle grade, you gotta have a little more substance there.

Katie: I have not yet found what the limit is for dick jokes. I've always wondered if I'm going to approach it, but haven't yet. My first book, Heretics Anonymous has an extended dicke joke that I cannot believe anybody let me keep. And it so divides the room like I have had people tell me, it is the funniest part of the book, and I have also seen people abandon the book at that exact moment, which is also a compliment.

Mindy:   Well, you know what, that's okay. When that happens, I always say, You know what, I didn't write it for you then. A buddy of mine, his name is Kurt Dinan, he is from Ohio. He writes humor, his book with Sourcebooks is called Don't Get Caught, and it's about a prank war in high school. And it's fantastic, so fine, but he's got a running joke, it's kind of like the equivalent of... That's What She Said, but it's -  like my balls. So if somebody is picking something up they’ll be like, Oh my God, this is heavier than I thought it would be. And they'd be like, Yeah, like my balls. 

Katie: That is great. Just like inappropriate enough, I think that's the kind of stuff that teens are gonna laugh at, their parents might not, but you know. I will say that I've never had a teenager complain about language or dick jokes, I have had many parents complain and one time, a parent found my third book, which is about stand up comedy, in the public library. And she circled every single swear word or a reference to drugs. Posted it on Facebook, and it's just like, you know what, I am so sorry. Your child has heard all of these words before, I am not the one showing this to them for the first time. Your child watches Euphoria and Riverdale, like none of this is my fault, calm down. And also who writes in a library book? Like, Come on. I don't even mind her hating swearing. But she did it in pen too, if you do that to a library book, what's wrong with you?

Mindy:   Once again, if you hate that, then I didn't write this book for you and you are not my audience. You can be angry over there by yourself and go find someone that fits what you wanna read a little bit better. I don't want to read happily ever after romances. They piss me right the hell off because I've been divorced like twice. This projects an unrealistic view of monogamy.

Katie: You're not highlighting every kiss in the book, and returning it to the library. 

Mindy:   This is misleading people about the size of most men's penises as well. We should do that, we should just start a Facebook page where it's like things that are just so inoffensive, no one would have a problem with. Me, I got a problem with the size of dicks in romance books, because you know what, not the case. Danielle Steele really set me up to be disappointed that's all. Her and Jude Devereaux.

Katie: No one is still listening. This has been like five minutes of talking about dick jokes.

Mindy:   Alright, last thing, why don't you let listeners know where they can find you online and where they can find any of your books, but especially Gideon Green?

Katie: So you can find all four of my books, including Gideon Green in Black and White most places that books are sold. You can find me at my website, which is Katie Henry dot com. You can also find me on Twitter and Instagram. I have not yet gotten on TikTok, but you can find me on Twitter and Instagram.

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.

Kurt Dinan On The Difficulty of Marketing YA Humor & Learning the Skills For Indie 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. If you have specific questions feel free to post them on the page and I will answer them on the podcast.

This summer I'm adding a co-host, fellow author Kate Karyus Quinn. We'll be doing a series that focuses on hybrid and indie authors. If you're thinking of going the Self Pub route we've got authors who found success with six figure sales, as well as authors who are just starting out on the road to indie publishing. Learn from them. Learn with us.

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Mindy:            Kurt, first of all, Don’t Get Caught, your debut, come out with Sourcebooks. I think one of the first things I really want to talk about is the fact that you write humor, which can be a particularly difficult genre to market and to put out there. So can you talk a little bit about what it's like to write humorous YA and what that market is like? 

Kurt:                I don't know what that market is. I just know it's all I can write. Even if I'm writing a serious email to someone, I slide into this humorous thing. It's just kind of what comes naturally. I wrote horror. Horror, not whore.

Mindy:             I’ve written whore, too, Kurt.

Kurt:                I wrote horror for you know, three or 45 years when I was kind of learning to write. I've really struggled with it because I... it took me a long time to realize it's just not who I am, you know, I just naturally want to be funny, I guess. were

Kate:                Were you like the class clown in school?

Kurt:                I was just really sarcastic and biting, but that voice is always there. And, you know, I've toned that down, but I guess the humor elements still exists.

Kate:                Are you sarcastic to your Children? 

Kurt:                Yes, and my students. And they'll say, I don't know whether to believe you right now. And I’m like, Excellent. That's exactly where I want you. I don’t want you comfortable. You know, I wrote a failed YA horror psychological cult novel that all these agents read it and some partials and fulls, but didn’t want any part of it. Yeah, I'm just trying to be something I'm not. So it was like I'm just gonna kind of write in my own voice.

Kate:                But you got agents to read your horror novel. So you must have had something there that they were seeing potential. 

Kurt:                What I had was a really, really good query letter. I learned a lot of rules about YA that I didn't know existed. One being you really need more than one teenage character in it. After Don't Get Caught got picked up by my agent. She was like, Well, let me see the other one. But she goes, Yeah, that's terrible, that novel’s terrible. We're not going to submit that. And thank you for being the one to Tell me flat out.

Mindy:             Let’s say that you had luck with horror. That would be extremely difficult, cause I feel like once you’re horror writer, you're gonna be that. So if you were like, yeah, I have this great horror novel and let's say it gets published and does fairly well or even just mediocre. It’d be really hard to make the jump then and be like... and I also write humor, right? 

Kurt:                You asked about the market for humor and in publishing The Scam List, I've had to look at that and there aren't a lot of books out there and even looking like at Amazon ads and categories like I'm like, Yeah, I don't even know where to put this book. There aren't a lot of them out there. And then I get irritated when you know I start doing like so what's the number one Humor YA book, and it's Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. Yes, JK Rowlings did you really need to, like, try to corner that market too?

Kate:                Harry Potter, I think is the top book in every category, and Amazon is like it's about pipe fitting. Oh, Number one book is Harry Potter. 

Kurt:                I look at the books and there aren't a lot out there, but I write it anyway because it's kind of what comes natural for me, and I also know that it's not that there's an audience begging for it. But when people have the book, like When I can get the book in people's hands, they’re like that was a lot of fun and really funny. And then people will call it like a palate cleanser And I'm like, That's fine for me. 

Mindy:             I've been hearing a lot of people talk about, especially now, with the world kind of exploding or imploding. Everything is just so negative right now, has been for a while. I've heard multiple people, readers saying, but also editors and people in the publishing world saying Now is the time we need lighter reads. We need funnier stuff, the dark stuff like obviously I write very issue driven and darker, gritty edges and stuff like that. Like right now, that's the real world. And I think people are looking for more escapism of the moment.

Kate:                I agree. I also I wonder if the lack of having a big category for comedic YA is just that there hasn't been one big breakout book because I know there is an audience for that. My kids are middle grade. My oldest is 13 so he started to edge into YA. But they love funny books. There's a ton of it in middle grade, and there is almost none of it in young adult like it's not like when you reach 13, you don't want funny books anymore, so I really think it's a missing chunk of the market. We have a need for this, but until a book breaks out, no one's really gonna buy a ton of it, right?

Kurt:                Right. It's always just been kind of my complaint. I think they would do really well if publishers would push them. I get it. Lots of teenagers and lots of teenagers who read specifically like they want serious books and issue driven books. And there's a huge need for that in a lot of ways. And it's a great way to address a lot of things that are going on in the world and in teenager’s lives. That's not all their lives are. I think a big part of being a teenager is just doing stupid things with your friends and being around and having inane conversations and goofing on each other. And there is a need for that sort of thing. 

Kate:                And I feel like there's probably reluctant readers out there who are like I don't want to read the serious issue book.

Mindy:             I can say, because I was still working the library when Kurt’s first book came out, which, I should say is called Don't Get Caught and it's all about a prank war. It’s hilarious, and I would put it in the hands very often of boys and reluctant readers and sometimes the mix of both of those things. And it always worked really well as a good light, fun read that they could read and be like That was cool and I enjoyed it.

I want to talk a little bit about your experience with Don't Get Caught because you did have some success with it out of the gate. I mean, it got attention in some ways, like we're saying, just because it was a funny book and we had, kind of like Kate is saying there hasn't been a book that was like this one. This one's funny. This is the funny book this year. Gordon Korman, You can always rely on to write a good, funny YA. But he had kind of fallen off, like in recent years, as far as like producing a book a year in that category, age category. So anyway, I was using Don't Get Caught in that way. Now, if you could talk a little bit about what your trajectory was, after Don't Get Caught came out. And what led you, then to move to the idea of publishing it yourself?

Kurt:                I got an agent for pretty quickly, and then in what year was that? God, I guess it would have been 2015 because it came out in 2016. 

Mindy:             I think that sounds right 

Kurt:                All the editors who read it they were like, I really love this. We're gonna pass. 

Kate:                I’ve been there. 

Kurt:                And then Sourcebooks came along, and the editor there just really liked that. She was like, Thank God I'm reading a funny YA novel. I worked with Aubrey Pool at Sourcebooks. They were really behind the book and the book came out, and it did well. The book has continued just to sell, but I think I've sold in the last four years like 20,000 copies of that book.

Kate:                That’s a lot. 

Mindy:             For anyone who doesn't know that's a lot of books.

Kate:                That is amazing.

Kurt:                I'm like 20,000 people have bought some you know, book I wrote that's just really filled with Dick jokes, right? I finished that. That was done, and I want to write another one. Like I know these people. I know where I can take another book of it. Kerry Sparks, my agent, we contact them about me writing a sequel, and they came back and they're like, Well, we want to see how this book is selling.

Kate:                That’s infuriating. 

Kurt:                I understood it, but at the same time I was like, You now want me to wait a year to write another book? Like that didn't make a lot of sense to me, But I also understood, you know, No, it's all about money. Like that ends up being the answer to every publishing question. I was like, Well, I'm not going to sit around for a year. What else do I want to do? Well, I want to write a teen detective novel. Because, really, that's what I read. I read crime novels and detective novels and stuff. And then I started working on... I don't even know what it was. At the time I had characters, I had Boone and Darby, and I had them not liking each other, really, but liking each other like I had a whole Moonlighting David and Maddie from, you know, the eighties.

Kate:                I love that show. You are speaking my language. 

Kurt:                I started messing with it, and it was, Ah, it was a detective novel or a mystery thing, but the problem was, I didn't have a mystery for it. I had settings, I had a relationships, conversations. I had all of that stuff. But I didn't have a plot that I liked. 

Kate:                I am not a big mystery reader, but I do find when I pick up a mystery that I do want there to be a mystery in it.

Kurt:                Right. That's a problem. You read a YA novel, you do expect there to be more than one teenager. So right around that time is when Mindy tried to murder me. 

Kate:                I know that sounds super like Mindy.

Mindy:             It’s very on brand. And of course, Kurt, I want you to share the story. But I was almost the last person that Kurt spoke to on this planet. 

Kurt:                Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you tried. Okay, here's what happened. I somehow tricked my way into being the Cincinnati Public Library systems writer in residence in, like, 2017. And as part of that job, I would do, um, a podcast, much like this. One Sunday, three and a half years ago, I interviewed Mindy. That evening, I ended up in the emergency room with a mystery illness that pretty much laid me up for like three years. 

Kate:                Three years? 

Kurt:                Yeah, it was just this bizarre. It was procedures and surgeries and everything. And I wasn't quote unquote normal until... this is really odd. I think today is the anniversary of the final “now you're back to normal.” I drove up to Cleveland Clinic today four years ago for my final procedure. Um, and now here I am. I'm tempting fate again, Talking to Mindy on a podcast. At that time, Like I could barely write. Part of it was just PTSD in a lot of ways. Part of it just being in the hospital. Part of it was all the meds I was on, and depression I was dealing with and the anxiety.

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Kate:                And I think a lot of people you know, right now with the pandemic and stuff can relate to that. Like, it's very hard to write and be creative when your life is an upheaval.

Kurt:                And I had no idea. Like I had never been sick in my life. And I had no concept of just how important your health is and mental health. And it gives me such a greater empathy for my students. You know, when they're like I’m dealing with a lot of anxiety, I fully understand what you're talking about. But somehow in that time, at some point I decided I'm not gonna... Why am I making this a detective novel? I don't have a mystery for it. I'm going to make them conmen. That's what I'm going to do. He's gonna be a con artist. And then the book just came out really easily. I sent it to my agent and she was thrilled with it. She was like, Oh, this is ready to go. Sent it out. And it was like, one after the other. All the publishers were like, We love this. This isn't for Me. I knew from Like my past history, like sales history. People want books like this. Kerry was like, I don't know what the problem is. She was like, I am just as shocked as you are that no one wants this in Sourcebooks. That really just irritated me. I've sold 20, you know, 20,000 copies of this little book.

Kate:                I’m surprised too, ‘cause I've generally heard good things about Sourcebooks and them being very supportive of their authors. So you must have really pissed someone off. 

Kurt:                My editor left.  And I think that--

Kate:                Ah. Well, yes, you were orphaned. Well, that's the whole story, right there. 

Mindy:             For my listeners, if you don't know you have your editor in your house. And generally your editor is your best cheerleader. Your editor is going to in some ways almost acts as your representative within that higher echelon of the publishing house. And if your editor,

Kate:                Because they picked your manuscript. 

Mindy:             Yeah, they pulled you out of the slush pile. They hung their own hat on you and your success. And editors leave houses all the time. Editors hop houses pretty consistently and what happens usually they’re authors are then left behind at the house without an editor, and they're called orphans. And you just kind of get farmed out. You’re farmed off to someone that has room on their list, And that person, you know, might not like what you write now, or might not be into you and your style and yeah, I mean, it's a really, really well known story in the publishing industry. 

Kurt:                Orphaned is the way you put that, because when other writers who were there found out who I had been given to--and this person's gone so it doesn't even matter--they were like, Oh, that's not gonna work. And I'm like, Why? They were like, that editor does not really have a sense of humor. 

Kate:                So this is a bad match. 

Kurt:                My agent texted her and said or emailed her and said, I want to talk to you on the phone about this book. 

Kate:                Were you hopeful?

Kurt:                No, no. He said, I want to explain myself. I can do it better just over the phone and got on the phone. He goes, I love this book. He goes, I would buy this book in a minute. I will buy this book for my kids. I would hand it out and tell everyone to read this book, but this is not a book that a kid would read 10 or 12 times, and that's what we want. Honestly, that was kind of a big wake up moment for me, and I was like, If that's the bar, I can never clear that bar. I don't read the book that a kid holds to his or her heart, you know, in 40 years down their line. They're like, I love, love, love. You know this. And you know, it's not like A Tree Grows in Brooklyn or whatever those books are. 

Kate:                Nobody knows what book is going to strike a chord with what kid. That's bullshit, man. My 13 year old loves Stuart Gibbs, reread all of his books. I’m always asking, What do you like about the books? And they're always like fast plotting. And they like funny. 

Mindy:             Yes, and Middle grade has a plethora of authors that only write humor. Or have you know there's a huge market for that in middle grade. And then you hit YA it really is just a black hole. Those kids didn't stop liking that. The products simply aren't there, and I do. It's a shame, but I also do think marketing comes into it. I really think that publishers don't know how to market YA humor, what to sell it, to know specifically to an older audience. So it's like for middle grade kids -they're like fart jokes! Here's a guy in a diaper, right? And that is that's funny. But like Kurt's book is full of dick jokes and they're hilarious. But they cannot be like, Hey, guys, Dick Joke Book! Right?

Kate:                So target, the people who watch, um, what's it called American Vandal? Is that what is called on Netflix? 

Mindy:             But how do you produce something that, like a commercial? It says Dick jokes - Now In Books, right? mean, that's... though any type of reference like that. It's already dated. I mean, I bet a handful of people with this right now already Googled American Vandal, like, What the hell is that? And now they're like, Oh, this looks funny. Five minutes ago on Netflix is a Flash in the pan, and I'm not saying that it wouldn't be a good marketing strategy. I think it's a great marketing strategy. I just think publishers... Netflix doesn't have to worry about being banned. Netflix doesn't have to worry about backlash from librarians and parents.

Kate:                You know, being banned would be awesome. You’ve said many times like, Oh, please ban me. I get it. Like I think, honestly, the problem is marketing people are underpaid and overworked and they don't have, You know, the resources to look for a new avenue to open up. Its not like publishers are evil, big jerks. But this is definitely one of the places publishing fails to service a specific audience. And I've heard the same thing about, you know, there's more of the need for YA that skews younger and that's not there. 

Kurt:                It goes to money, right? Like the marketing thing the marketing people are like. We know what we can sell that will sell, and we know how to sell those books. Why work really hard to find how to sell it? If it’s, you know, something we don't normally put out there. 

Mindy:             They already have a template on how to make something be successful. Why remake the wheel? They don't have to for a single book for one book for one guy. 

Kurt:                Once that happened and we ran out of people, I was just sitting there. I mean, it took me a couple months. I was like, What am I going to write now? If people like it, but they don't want to try to sell it. What am I gonna possibly write? You have a book that you know is good. That's kind of what push me into self-publishing. And I got to that point because, like you said, it was like, I know I have readers who want me to put something else out.

Like First, I think, was a combination of things. One was I wasn't sick anymore. And my head had cleared somewhere in there. I listen to like, to self help books, and I think that was a combination of it. And I had to get past this ingrained prejudice, you know, self published books, or indie, books are crap. I just started researching, researching, researching, you know, indie publishing. I was like, Okay, what would this project look like? I contacted my agent, and I was like, I've kind of come to a big decision. And I told her and she was like, This is a great idea. She's like, you should. Absolutely. The book needs to be out there. It will sell. I work well with projects, and this was a new project for me to work on. 

Kate:                Right cause now you had to learn how to be a publisher, not a writer, but the publisher in the marketing department and the cover designer, right? 

Kurt:                And I mean and it was a great project and it was really good for me. But like one of the positives of COVID because suddenly March hits and you know, I'm not at school every single day. I'm at home, so I have plenty of time to work on this stuff. That's suddenly how I ended up self-publishing.

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Mindy:             You knew that you had the product. So the writing part was done. You had to learn everything else more or less so. Like, how did you go about doing that? How did you go about learning basically everything there is to know and all the different things that you have to do in order to have, like, success at this? 

Kurt:                I'm very good at researching stuff. I can go right down rabbit holes as they say, and then not come up for a long time. I asked both of you a lot of questions. I ended up on the Facebook. What is it? 20booksto50k and I would just I'd be like, my writing time today. All of my reading time today I'm just going to read posts like I'm just going to read and read and read.

Kate:                And such a great resource.

Kurt:                It's a fantastic resource, and it's got great rules. You're not allowed to advertise your book, so it ends up being about the industry. 

Kate:                And it's very selling focused in a way that's very straightforward. How to make money selling your books. There are a lot of people on there who are making a very good living. 

Kurt:                And they're more than willing to explain to you how they did it. Yeah, and it's one of those things where I think the publishing industry could learn so much from what some of those people do. It just kind of all started coming together. But I felt like I had, you know, 10 or 15 plates up in the air, and I was like, Oh, my God, will I ever possibly going to make this happen? It was a great process. I learned. I've learned a lot of things. I made a few mistakes, the book’s out there and now I've got to kind of learn this other world of Amazon ads, and I'm gonna have to like, you know, people are always like, How is the book selling? And well, before I never knew. Right? With Sourcebooks, I had to wait six months. Now I know which is a positive and a negative.

Kate:                So now you have to tell those people mind your own damn business. 

Kurt:                I like being transparent on a selfish level. It makes me more comfortable with things. Yeah, when I was sick, I would be like, OK, this is what's going on with my rectum this week to people. And I was like, Yeah, I've got a hole in my rectum and no one knows why. Well, an additional hole, I suppose. I’m way more comfortable with it. With sales, it was like Now I can know everything about it. I'm gonna be transparent about within the publishing world. 

Mindy:             So how are sales going? 

Kurt:                In the first week? And this would count presales like, I think I sold 300 copies of The Scam List in like, the first week, but I was like, OK, I'm really thrilled with this. One of the things I've learned is I can't... I had to set a rule for myself a couple of like, a week and a half ago that it was - I am only going to check my sales on Fridays. The first week was like I've sold 300 copies and I felt really good. And then Friday came. This would be two days ago and I looked it up and I sold three copies last week and I went OK. This means I need to start learning to advertise like that's 20 books to 50 K thing. It's like, No, you've got to stay on top of this. I can't rely on Publishers Weekly getting librarians to buy my book, but in a way I can, because I think I've lucked into getting a Publishers Weekly review. But I went through that process and it's like cross your fingers and all of that, but I think that's gonna happen. 

Kate:                I just want to say it's not lucky. It's not like it's a draw to read your book and they decide whether they want to review it or not. If they like it and think it’s good they review it. 

Kurt:                I tend to, just like try to be as humble is possible. Of course, they're going to review it. That's in my dark heart. It's a job, but it's kind of a job I like, because again, it's a project. YALSA Teens Top 10. Don't Get Caught was on that list a few years ago. I've got to figure out how that happened because I didn't have anything to do with it. And then I just did a ton of research and found out who's in charge of that. And I'm gonna contact them. And they were like, Oh, yeah, here are the advisers running those teen reading groups and they gave me a list and I'm like, just gonna send them copies of the book, like to give to their kids. Publishing is making your own luck. I'm kind of good at going okay, if it's all on me, how far can we take this? Not everything's gonna stick, but something will hopefully.

Kate:                Are you feeling a little boxed in by the pandemic now? And there not being a lot of events where you could sell your book? 

Kurt:                I guess I'm just realistic about it. If I thought about it too much, Yeah, because I can hand sell books. I mean, if Mindy and I were sitting next to each other at a table, and we've been close to tables, like we would sell a shit ton of books because we just have those personalities.

Kate:                I hate you guys. I'm so bad at hand selling. I hate it so much, I can tell you that. I know Mindy can. I say next to Mindy at a table, and actually, we did an event... what was it? I was SEYA in Tennessee. Mindy had this long line, and I have, like one kid and a kid from Mindy's line looks over at me and he says, It's gotta be hard being next to her, huh?

Kurt:                I have no problem with this. And it's from teaching at school. Yeah, kids walking by and I'll just call them over. Be all, come here like, and I also know my people in a lot of ways, like, I know how to talk to different types of kids and that’s a lot of what it is. 

Mindy:             I think that's what works for me, too, is just I've been in front of kids for so long and interacted with all different types of kids and librarians to like I got an in with them. And so, yeah, it's all of those hours that I put in in the public school system, like finally paying off.

Kate:                So you're saying that I should get a job in high school to work on and try to sell to them? 

Mindy:             You go substitute and come back and let me know how that goes.

Kate:                I’ll call you crying. 

Mindy:             And I’ll tell you to put on your big girl panties and you go back in there. 

Kurt:                You were saying, how to talk to those kids... thinking about those those cons being or those festivals being canceled. Yeah, it does hurt in some ways because I know it works for me. It's like the one thing I know I can count on. Ohioana was like the first one I ever did and and I walked in. I was all excited and they showed me my table and there were, like, 10 books there. Do you have more books? And they're like, No, we have 10 books. And I just in the back of my head. This isn't gonna last long. And I went with the humor aspect, and I did. I sold out of those books really fast. It was like OK, well, you know, I’ll at least talk to people.

Mindy:             Same vein, then, because I know that you do have paperbacks available of The Scam List as an indie. Those 1st 300 in your debut week with that - were you selling E books? Were you selling physicals?

Kurt:                Physical books. 

Mindy:             Really?

Kurt:                Probably 75% of them are physical looks. I don't know. YA generally sells mostly paper. 

Mindy:             I mean, that's that's a question, because I know that my numbers from my trad books, I sell four times more physical copies than I do e books. However, that's where things get like a little bit gray and a little bit fuzzy in the indie world, typically in the indie world, you're moving E books, so I don't know. Kate - Any thoughts on that? Like, why would a YA humor novel be selling physical copies over an E book?

Kate:                Well, because he was marketing them to his traditional audience who want physical books. Now, I would say as he started to advertise more, he's going to want to maybe target those indie readers a little bit more, which is where you probably want to make sure your e book is priced reasonably. One of the reasons that traditional sells way more physical books is that they have made a decision, a deliberate decision, to price their e books very high, just in almost the exact same price, sometimes even higher, or maybe just a little bit lower than the paper copy. 

And so most people look and they're like, Well, if I'm gonna pay 11.99 and get either a physical book or get an e-book. So they want to push people into paper, they don't want paper to die. Obviously, traditional has access to being on the shelves at Barnes and Noble, which is huge. You know, we all know how big that is to have that order from Barnes and Noble and have them pick up however many of your books and you know, if they put it on an end shelf or if they put it on a table. With Indies not having access to Barnes and Noble like that, we sell e books and we can price them very competitively. And the traditional space has sort of ceded the bargain books to us, except for when they want to do sakes,

Kurt:                See, I think when I published my book, I was just going with Well, what was Don't Get Caught sold at? Because that's what works. But you're right. We probably do need to, like, shift my thinking on that, especially with the e book version, because it's like, yeah, if that's gonna be the target indie reading more e books. Okay, That's very, very helpful actually. 

Kate:                Yeah don’t overprice your e-book because, you're pricing like a traditional author. You're basically saying to people don't buy the e book buy the paperback. You don't want to say that to your audience. You want to buy my ebook? Look, it's a great deal, but if you prefer to read on paper, here it is. 

Kurt:                So, you've actually helped me in this podcast, whereas, whereas four years ago, Mindy tried to kill me. You guys have a partnership in a lot of ways right there. 

Kate:                Well, it's not over. Yeah, we're not done yet. I may still, I'm just maybe trying to draw you in closer, make you, you know, let your guard down so I can go in. 

Mindy:             Well, you know, I'm always looking for the next rectum to target. So you're good. You're off my radar. I completely annihilated your rectum.

So I'm wondering then, Kurt, when you do go into making ads, where you gonna put them like, are you looking at Amazon looking at Facebook? Cause I know Kate dabbles a little bit in both and, with Amazon in particular, I know it's a bear. 

Kurt:                I fooled around with Amazon ads for a little bit. I was getting clicks, but not sales. And then I think Oh, and now you have me thinking, Oh, no, this is just your e book is probably possibly priced too high. That could be it. Who knows? We're gonna learn all of that stuff. And then Amazon and again, through 20 books to 50 k, they have groups you can join on running Amazon ads. And it's the whole science that I really feel like Okay, that's gonna be my next deep dive is into all of that and marketing it. Because I when I go with authors who write things that are funny or funnier, I don't really get a lot of like clicks or impressions. Almost like people, but the reluctant readers usually gets me pretty decent return like like it clicks, and I think it's gonna be finding that sweet spot.

Kate:                Email me. Well, we'll talk more about all the ways of Amazon and Facebook, they're both extremely difficult. There is tons off writing about them and how to use them and how to bid and how to target. And there's lots of different ways to do it. And I am still learning. I think almost everyone is always still learning. I just did Amazon 30 day ad challenge. Ah, a couple of months ago through a Facebook group, and I learned from doing stuff and it’s an ongoing process. And they also, of course, are always changing things. You're...which that you have to like a just everything, you have to go with it. I do actually okay with Amazon. I've never like I know I've read a bunch of things with people saying, Oh my gosh, I poured hundreds of dollars into Amazon and, you know, seen no returns, and I've always come out ahead with my Amazon, ads. 

Kurt:                That’s huge. Holy cow.

Kate:                Well, it helps because I my books are in KU. So that helps when you're in Kindle Unlimited. So you're getting page reads and a lot of people on Amazon are looking for those Kindle Unlimited books. So that helps. And then Facebook. I think it's harder. It's much, much harder to track whether your clicks are leading to sales.

Mindy:             I know that some of your ads on Facebook, Kate. They get a lot of interaction. I don't know if they lead to sales, which, of course, is what you want to see. But they do get interaction, they get likes, they get comments. 

Kate:                I mean, I get comments. I made an ad that I've been running for maybe Oh, six months. I made a gif actually, using a program called Pixel Loop. And it like lets you animate pictures. So I used stock photography. And so I found a stock photo that was really good for Facebook. That's the way to go is to find a stock photo that sort of captures a mood or a feeling because Facebook wants people to be scrolling through the feed and not to immediately be like, Oh, this is an ad. Like I wanted to look like This is just another friend on your feed. That's why they have a thing about putting a lot of print on an ad. You can't have a lot of text on it or they'll reject it.

And so I found this one. It's like my book books are fantasy that I'm advertising, and it's about a girl who shifts into a dragon. And so I used some of my photo shopping skills and I added some like she’s got bare shoulders. And so I added some like scales like dragon-y sort of scales. And then I went, put that picture into Pixel Loop, and I animated it. So it has, like sparkle, and movements and it looked awesome. I am awesome and I'm very skilled, and I actually think it's that input thing. Where I can, like, go down a rabbit hole like I can just spend so much time on Pixel Loop. It's like playing with all the little settings and tweaking and tweaking and tweaking forever. And it's fun to me, and it's like relaxing. And so it ended up looking super pretty and I put it up as an ad and people love it. And so I tweak like my headlines and the wording around it. But the picture stays the same, but I think at first, the headline was, it wasn't immediately apparent that it was a book I was selling. 

Mindy:             You started out by saying, cause your character supposedly has, like, some sort of spinal issue. And so things like, Here all my life I thought that my scoliosis was because of whatever... And then it turns out I'm a dragon. But people, people because they don't either... there's just not like a high reading comprehension level or they only really read the first line. Because so many of the comments are like Prayers! Feel better! 

Kurt:                Oh, no.

Kate:                She’s got scales! And it's like in the GIF.

Mindy:             It's like she has dragon scales and blue hair and like is clearly not human. And everybody's like, Oh, honey, we're thinking of you.

Kate:                There's a lot like, Oh, you're so beautiful. Yeah, there's like a couple comments from one person who I think is drunk. So honestly, you're supposed to hide those comments and I just haven't because I think there are entertaining. And someone recently left another comment that was like, I did not understand half the comments. Yeah, In a perfect world, all the comments would be like, Oh, I read this book and it's amazing. Really, none of them are like that. 

Mindy:             They're like, you're really pretty and we hope you feel better. 

Kate:                I’m just like thanks for leaving a comment! The Facebook algorithms, you know, they just know I'm getting comments so They're like, Oh, people like this ad! And they show it more. 

Mindy:             Obviously what you need to do, though, now is to create, like, a Go Fund Me for this Dragon girl’s spina bifida. Everybody wants to help.

Kate:                The question is are they gonna put their wallets where their mouths are? They just gonna stay with thoughts and prayers? 

Kurt:                You know, I guess there's only one way to find out. What you could do is the people who don't understand, you should respond with -  If you really want to help me and then leave, leave another link to the book. 

Mindy:             You're right in the even if people aren't comprehending what's going on here -  They're still interacting with the ad. The ad is performing well, People are clicking on it, People are interacting with it, and that only improves the visibility level of it. Because Facebook looks at that and says, Oh, people like this right? 

Kate:                And I personally I mean, I don't see a lot of people doing the gif ads. I'll see him occasionally, but I don't see him a whole lot. And but I think they're very effective because when you're scrolling through your Facebook feed, I feel like that little bit of movement catches your eye.

Mindy:             You know, with the new thing you can do where you make your photos 3D or whatever. Have you seen that? 

Kate:                Yes, but I don't know how to that. 

Mindy:             I don't know how to do it either, but I'm just saying it’s catching your eye when I see someone, even if it's a picture of a teacher, you know, look back to my classroom in a week, Whatever. And it's just a picture of, you know, socially distanced desks because that picture shifts as I scroll, It catches my eye. So I think that you're right about the gif ads.

Kate:                Gif ads are like cats, right? Isn't that like how cats are like you can like, use a laser pointer and a cat will run after it like movement is like what catches their eye?

Mindy:             I mean, you could also just make ads with cats that have some sort of, like, respiratory issue and that, and you could you could make a video of them like trying to chase the laser and like, not able to and put your book ad in there and the Go Fund Me. Just give me money to help the cats.

Kate:                They’ll forget I’m even selling books at that point. 

Mindy:             Indoor cats with allergies. Cats Allergic to cats. They can't have any friends. And then the catch phrase is Will you be my friend? Click below. 

Kate:                Okay. If this is gonna be our con, we should probably stop talking about it.

Mindy:             Kurt, why don't you tell us where people can find you online? Your site, your social media links and where people can find The Scam List

Kurt:                Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, I’m Kurt Dinan on Twitter, and I barely do anything there, so that's not helpful. Um, mostly my website, which I kind of overhauled, is at Kurt Dash Dinan: D I N A N and Kurt is with a K dot com. Actually, you get like, there are three pretty cool stories to The Scam List you can get for free on there, which is like a nice introduction to kind of what the book would be. So you get that on my website and then, um yeah, The Scam List is available in, like, any sort of online retailer. Uh, you know, Amazon, Barnes and Noble. All of that. Um and that's my teen con artist book that I don't have, like, good qualifying titles for. I always just say it's like Better call Saul with teenagers. But that doesn't— 

Mindy:             I love that! It’s great! 

Kurt:                I know right? Like older people would totally get that.

Mindy:             I think you can use it. 

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.