Mindy: Welcome to Writer Writer Pants on Fire, where authors talk about things that never happened to people who don't exist. We also cover craft, the agent hunt, query trenches, publishing, industry, marketing and more. I'm your host, Mindy McGinnis. You can check out my books and social media at mindymcginnis dot com and make sure to visit the Writer Writer Pants on Fire blog for additional interviews, query critiques and more as well as full transcriptions of each podcast episode. at WriterWriterPants on Fire.com. And don’t forget to check out the Writer, Writer, Pants on Fire Facebook page. Give me feedback, suggest topics you’d like to hear discussed, and let me know if there is someone you’d love to see a a guest.
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Mindy: We're here today with MarcyKate Connolly, who is the author of multiple middle grade and young adult novels. And one of the things that I think is really interesting, and I stress it a lot whenever I am talking to new writers and up and coming writers is networking, networking, networking. With that in mind, why don't you talk a little bit about how we met in the first place?
MarcyKate: We met back in the day on AgentQuery Connect, and that was such a great place to meet other writers before we both were published. There was a whole bunch of us, and almost all of us have been published at this point, maybe a handful having not been. We got to reach each other's books and give feedback, and for me it was extremely helpful 'cause I really never got critique on my books before. It was like my friends and mostly they were like, This is so great, I love this! Which is great, but not as great for actually improving your novel and your craft, but having other writers working through this and learning how to critique and take critique. You can give critique, and we all kind of did that together, which is really fun. It's a good networking opportunity just to meet other writers and commiserate as well, especially when we're querying, that was like an absolute necessity to have someone to be like, Oh my God, it's been so long that they've been reading these pages or I just get another rejection.
Mindy: I'm not sure if the boards are functioning anymore, it is still a database and a site that people can go to to get information about agents and what they accept. When we were there... Man, it was a lovely place to connect, like you were saying, and you're so right, you have to be able to share with other writers because the feedback that you get from friends, usually it'll be nice, but even if it's not entirely nice, it is usually their opinions. And are subjective, I didn't like this character, or this part wasn't funny, or something that is an opinion that a reader can have, but they aren't gonna be able to tell you exactly why. Usually they aren't able to pinpoint the word choices, whatever it was that they have this reaction. Sometimes they don't know why. And a writer, number one, knows that likeability isn't necessarily the most important aspect of character, but also number two, they can say why. Or they can give you ideas about how to fix it. And it doesn't necessarily mean that you are always taking the advice of another writer, but you have that in your tool box, you have the opinion of another writer, and I think when we talk about critique partners, it absolutely has to be another writer, if you really wanna get something out of it.
And a lot of us, I know I, for example, live rurally, there simply aren't any writing critique groups where I live. Every single one of us, when we met on AQC was working full-time, if not working more than one job, we couldn't necessarily do a writer's Brunch or, let's get together at noon on Wednesday. We were getting online after we got home from work in the evening and talking to each other, and operating that way.
MarcyKate: It would have been nice to get together for brunch though, that would be awesome. But that was actually one of the best things about it really was members were from all over the country, so you wouldn't have met otherwise if you had a local group.
Mindy: Absolutely, having that online access to so many people, I really don't think that I would have gotten an agent if I hadn't joined AQC because we were hard on each other, we made each other's queries improve, we were not hand-holding. I learned everything that I know about the industry from that site, there is no doubt in my mind, and people that were a little bit farther ahead of us, - like Sophie Perinot and she's also writing under the name Evie Hawtrey now, too. We were all operating under screen names at the time. Except for you, you actually had your real name out there. That was really cool, because some of us really did just know each other by our screen names. Interestingly enough, moving through the world now, I have run into people in the publishing industry that were on AQC at one point or another, and I'll share my screen name and they'll be like, Oh my gosh, that was you! That was me.
MarcyKate: That's awesome.
Mindy: I'm sure that there are still sites like that now, I feel like I have no need for such a thing at this point, so I've moved away from that or even being aware of what's functioning, but I can say for sure that Query Tracker is always a reliable resource. Are there any others that you know of right now that we can point people towards?
MarcyKate: Not off-hand. And the ones that I always use were AgentQuery dot com to track agents and Query Tracker a combination of the two. Those are my go-tos. That's really what I used a lot.
Mindy: And I think things have changed now where people are using Slack and Facebook groups and even Reddit subgroups. When I think about it, that was like 14, 15 years ago. The dynamic is still the same, that you can go online and you can meet these people and they're going to help you. So for example, there were two people in general that were really, really helpful to me, one of them who's actually gonna be a guest here on my next episode, who works in LA and is in the film industry, and so had different arenas, different ways to approach things, new areas of that angle of the business, but also kind of that more like slick LA style. Whereas Sophie Perinot who was operating there underneath a screen name who had an agent and was writing in a different arena, she was writing Adult Historical Fiction, but she was a rung up above the rest of us and was still hanging out every day and helping and so professional. She's just like, professional to a T. She’d be like, This is how you interact with an agent, and this is the best practice. She knew best practices and etiquette.
MarcyKate: She was amazing. It was kind of a shock, I think, sometimes to some people who are brand new, and I think it always is, when they start to learn about what an agent is, how you get an agent, what they actually do. She was just full of information, which was really helpful to have that resource there.
Mindy: Like I said, when I moved through the industry now, some of the people that I run into are people that were on the boards and moving in the background, but also present, and we're just industry movers and shakers that were there. Being present and just even absorbing knowledge I probably lurked for five or six months before I had the nerve to post even just doing that, just lurking and just absorbing that information, I learned so much.
MarcyKate: I think I did a lot of lurking too. I don't remember exactly how long I lurked. Posting publicly is nerve wracking, you don't know what kind of feedback you're dealing with yet, 'cause you don't know the people.
Mindy: Well, that's part of what I did too, was I was just reading and listening and paying attention and seeing who was posting often, who was being helpful, who had the type of mindset that I wanted to interact with, that kind of thing.
MarcyKate: It was wonderful and I miss it. I think so fondly on those days, I miss it. It was really fun, especially during the pandemic too, where it's been very isolating. It was fun times, especially when we had the chat room. That was fun.
Mindy: Monday nights. Yeah, well, and it was my go-to when I got on the internet, it was like a Hotmail, and then AQC. That was my home.
MarcyKate: Same.
Mindy: It built me. And then that's how I learned. You were just talking about the sheer number of people, and most of us are traditionally published now. In different arenas, but then also we have fellows who have gone on to start their own indie publishing company, there's a lot of different areas of success that I've seen. Jean Oram, who was the super moderator for a long time, I see her all the time moving in the Romance Indie world
MarcyKate: Yeah she always has something going on.
Mindy: It's different areas of success for everybody. And like I said, I think that's kind of unique. I think our success level, the percentage is higher than was to be expected.
MarcyKate: I think so too. We became friends, there was that morale boost as well, we're obviously not pulling punches on critiquing our work. But to bounce ideas off, vent to, that I think really helped. That was helpful for me, and keeping me going and not being like another rejection - I'm done. That camaraderie really helped keep us going, at least it did for me.
Mindy: I’d be like - So I got another rejection today, and then somebody is like, Well, I got my 300th rejection.
MarcyKate: Perspective.
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Mindy: So I wanna talk about writing. Because you write both middle grade and YA with quite a bit of success.
MarcyKate: I like to think so. I hope so. I started writing young adult books and then kinda fell into middle grade, then eventually my seventh book that was published was a young adult, so I took a lot to actually get published in young adult. I started writing my first published work Monstrous, I wrote it as a young adult. My agent took me on with it as young adult, and then we pushed to editors and my editor who ending up buying it was like, I wanna buy this as middle grade. Which kinda had us scratching our heads for a little bit, then we had a conversation with her, and it was really illuminating that the book really was middle grade, and I hadn't realized it was middle grade, except for this one part. And the last part of the book that we had to age down then it was middle grade. I kind of fell into it, but I love middle grade. It's a great age to be writing for, and I know for me when I was actually a middle grader, reading was just such a formative thing, it was so necessary. It was my escape. It was so important to me, so it's pretty cool writing for that age. It was also very important to me as a young adult, so I was excited to have some Young adult out there as well. So I actually write more young adult books and middle grade only they’re just still trying to get them out there published.
Mindy: Yeah, young adult is super competitive. There's no doubt. I think the middle grade is actually edging that way too. Personally, I could never write it, it isn't my arena, it isn't my content, it isn't my subject matter, it isn't my age category, there's no world where I'm a middle grade writer.
MarcyKate: Never say never, Mindy.
Mindy: Can you imagine? It would be so bad.
MarcyKate: I would love to read it.
Mindy: I can do fart jokes.
MarcyKate: Yes! You’re funny! Like you are so funny, even though your books are dark, you could totally leverage your comedy skills in middle grade. This is an opportunity. You should absolutely do this.
Mindy: Can you write a whole book about farts?
MarcyKate: You could try.
Mindy: I don't know. farts are funny. That's true. Okay, ‘llI hang that on a peg in the back of my mind - write a Middle Grade fart book. This is one place where I hit the skids pretty hard when it comes to middle grade, and I was actually having a conversation in my last episode with Fred Koehler, he is an illustrator and a writer that lives in Florida, and he was saying... Especially during the pandemic, he's never interacting with his audience when he does a Zoom. You don't have 10-year-olds aren't excited about sitting down and meeting the writer on the computer, it's just not that interesting to them, the impact isn't there, and I think it's a really interesting dichotomy, because I know that for middle grade writers and children's writers, they can get into a school and they can absolutely mop it up and they can do amazing amount of sales and an amazing amount of work in one day going into a school visit. Teens are a harder sell. But I think that the online side of marketing and promotion for middle grade has to be super tricky, I assume that you're aiming it at the adults in their lives?
MarcyKate: Exactly, it's definitely different from YA. You’re marketing to the gatekeepers. They're not buying their own books, people are buying them for them, and so you have to be able to find those people and make them sit up and take interest. So that means there's a lot of reaching out to libraries and teachers, getting reviewed in the School Library Journal and Kirkus and places like that, where they're looking for things and where they're tuned in. That's actually pretty important just to get that awareness out there that your book exists, 'cause they're not necessarily browsing the shelves at Barnes and Noble or looking on Amazon for books, they're looking at other places. And I've been very fortunate that my publisher, most of my middle grade books are with Sourcebooks, and they're fantastic. They have this wonderful school and library marketing team, and they've been really great at getting my books out there. Things like getting your book in Junior Library Guild Selection also really helps, 'cause they are buying those as packages. I've been very fortunate that I think most of my books have been JLG selections, which is awesome. It's definitely a very different animal than with a young adult, 'cause young adult, you can actually reach the teens 'cause they are more online, and there's still obviously a lot of adults reading young adult books as well, but you can access them more directly.
I actually had four books launched during the pandemic, so four, two duologies. As you can imagine, they have not done as well as we would have liked, which is unfortunate. The first book, it was like right as the pandemic was starting, so I launched that one in person, that worked out fine, but then the second, third and fourth books were all during the pandemic, and for the fourth book, I didn't even do a virtual launch party. Because the first one was my first YA novel, Twin Daggers, and we had four people show up, and I think I know all but one of them. Then for the second one, no one showed up, it was just me and the two people from the bookstore. So we were hanging out on Zoom, which was fun. It was great, we chatted for like an hour, and actually the one person who I know did show up briefly for a little bit of time, but her microphone was having issues, so she really didn’t get to talk, which is too bad.
I kinda switched gears for the fourth book that came out, which was Lost Island, which was a sequel to Hollow Dolls, which is the first book that came out during the pandemic times. We did this pre-order incentive through my local bookstore Porter Square Books, that if you order it through them, you get some swag. It’s definitely Been much more difficult to get people engaged, generally speaking, during the pandemic. At least that's what I found, and it's also been more like emotionally taxing to be engaging yourself or putting yourself out there, the whole situation is very demoralizing and there's burn out on a personal level that just makes doing anything hard, and I was pregnant for most of it as well, so that didn’t help.
Mindy: I have felt the same way. Be Not Far From Me came out, I was on tour, and I came home and we were on shutdown, and we haven't really done a whole lot since. I do think that people are burned out, and I think that they're done with virtual. And I think that at the beginning of the pandemic, everybody was like, We're gonna make the best of this. And it was kind of a new and novel experience, and then it was like, This is bullshit. I've done things with festivals where it'll be like four or five authors and we'll have maybe 17, 18 people show up and that's not bad, really. I just did a Zoom this past weekend that was supposed to be for the release of The Last Laugh back in March, and then it just didn't happen for various reasons, and we had to reschedule for here in May. It was me and Maureen Johnson, who is a big freaking deal, and we had nine people show up. She was totally cool, she was absolutely wonderful. I was like, I am so sorry that there were only nine people, and she was like, Oh, it's fine, I don't care at all, I don't mind. This is the job, and I was like, Thank you, I really appreciate that. I've been handing out her books to kids for 20 years, I was just like, Oh my God, this is embarrassing. Yeah, nine showed up.
MarcyKate: I think every author can pretty much understand, unless like they're super famous and it's gone to their head, they forget.
Mindy: I don't think I will ever forget because I am 12 books in. I had one actual bookstore signing for release week, the rest were all library events in school events, and for the library events they were bussing in kids and school events, and so it was captive audience type of stuff, and they were supremely successful. But again, attendance is mandatory. Right. And man, I was feeling good because things were going well, and I was just like, Oh my gosh, if I spoke to 300 kids about 150 bought a book. I could get with my audience, man, I was high on life, and I was telling my boyfriend - I don't know if it's because people are so excited to be able to go out and do things now, I don't know if people are just excited and appreciating life more, or if I'm doing better, if I'm more well-known, or if I'm just selling better, I was like, But I don't know, I’m killing it. Things are really working. Things are going good, right? And then I had a bookstore signing just me, and it was a drop-in thing on a Saturday afternoon, and I had one person show up. I sat there for two hours and one person showed up, and then this past weekend did a signing with Natalie Richards, who is a fellow Ohio author, she's a Sourcebooks, author.
MarcyKate: We share an agent, actually.
Mindy: And she's like, super famous. NYT. And she and I did a signing together this past weekend, literally zero people.
MarcyKate: That's hard. You're so hit or miss. Sometimes you'll have a ton of people. Other times like absolute crickets, it's so hit or miss.
Mindy: I think it's good to be humbled, but I don’t want to be humbled all the time. That’s why I think that for middle grade and ya authors - school visits. School visit. School visits.
MarcyKate: Yeah, if you can get them. Those are definitely the best. I found it has been more difficult during the pandemic to get those. There's so much going on in schools and they're like, at first they were so concerned about how are we going to do testing? And that was a real big challenge initially, but since then I've done a few online ones which have been decently well-received, but it's not as, definitely not the same as going in person and having a book there to sign for the kids and handing them a physical copy like that. That's definitely a different dynamic. That's for sure.
Mindy: Yeah, I've just now, in the past two months, started getting these school visits again, it's been really nice and the energy is there and everything about it. They feed me, I feed them and it all feels really good. I don't get that over-Zoom. I don't feel it. I don't think the energy exchange is there.
MarcyKate: There's nothing like being in person, and been talking to actual kids, that's just the best talking to kids about books.
Mindy: I love talking to kids. It’s my favorite.
MarcyKate: And it's even more fun when they've read your book and they love it, and they're like, I want to hear about this character. And are you gonna write a book about this? Or are gonna do this?
Mindy: Yeah, it's why I write. It's not the only reason. Really, a paycheck is nice. But just because of the nature of what I write, it reaches some kids that otherwise aren't going to be reached by books and usually by the content, I get a lot of rougher kids and they're the kids that need to have some sort of escape or something to do in their lives that is healthy and man, it's like if you're able to reach them, God, that's everything.
MarcyKate: That's amazing, absolutely.
Mindy: I will say, I wanna go back real quick to the Zoom question. Being extraordinarily famous does make a huge difference, I was in a Zoom with R L. Stine, and we had like 325 people.
MarcyKate: That's amazing.
Mindy: It was like me, R L. Stine and I think two other authors, 'cause R L. Stine’s actually from Ohio, originally. And so it was an Ohio-based thing. Have you ever met him?
MarcyKate: I have not.
Mindy: Oh, okay, so because he is originally from Ohio, I've actually crossed paths with him multiple times and, oh my gosh, he's so kind.
MarcyKate: These are the circles you’re moving in. With RL Stine. That's so cool.
Mindy: I have occasionally been in the same room as RL Stine, let's put it that way. But he's very kind, and when you hit RL Stine levels, it doesn't matter. You get 300 people in the Zoom.
MarcyKate: I think it's harder for people who are like midlist or new authors, and just being on sub in the pandemic has been very strange too.
Mindy: I’ve heard that from other people. Is it just like long wait lines?
MarcyKate: Everybody is so burned out, I mean, especially editors, they're trying to push these published books. It’s hard, it's 10 times harder than it was, and then trying to read and get new submissions, it's just... It seems like it's so much more difficult. And I've been on sub with one book for a year and a half, and we just sold it like two weeks ago. And then I have another book that's been on sub for a year now, a picture book. We'll see if that ever happens. It’s my weirdly dark picture book for baby Goths. It's actually Poe inspired. I'm not complaining by any means. I totally understand I've been burned out too, so I think it's just kind of this mass burn out.
Mindy: I've been hitting it pretty hard myself. It's a beautiful day today, and I'm doing this interview with you and I've got people coming on next, and then I am going outside for the rest of the day because it's like, I can't sit in front of my laptop anymore.
MarcyKate: Nice, nice. I have to sit in front my laptop 'cause I have to work, but that's okay
Mindy: Oh I have to work. I'm just not doing it.
MarcyKate: Good for you, that's awesome.
Mindy: Last thing, why don't you let listeners know where they can find you online and where they can find your books?
MarcyKate: You can find me online at Marcy Kate dot com, if you can spell my name, you can find me... It's M-A-R-C-Y K-A-T-E dot com. All my books are listed there along with buy links. You can get my books from Bookshop dot org, from your local bookstore, or you can also get them on Amazon, Barnes and Noble. Pretty much anywhere. If you contact me through my website, you can request a bookmark and I'd be happy to send them to you. I hope people like to read my books, I write weird, dark children's books and middle grade. That's kind of my brand.
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.