Mindy: Welcome to Writer Writer Pants on Fire, where authors talk about things that never happened to people who don't exist. We also cover craft, the agent hunt, query trenches, publishing, industry, marketing and more. I'm your host, Mindy McGinnis. You can check out my books and social media at mindymcginnis dot com and make sure to visit the Writer Writer Pants on Fire blog for additional interviews, query critiques and more as well as full transcriptions of each podcast episode. at WriterWriterPants on Fire.com. And don’t forget to check out the Writer, Writer, Pants on Fire Facebook page. Give me feedback, suggest topics you’d like to hear discussed, and let me know if there is someone you’d love to see a a guest.
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Mindy: We're here with Tavi Black, author of Where Are We Tomorrow, which is a novel about four women working backstage on a rock tour, each of them coming to terms with what it means to be a woman in a male dominated industry It was nominated for the Next generation Indie Awards and the American Fiction Awards. So that is super exciting. And when you reached out to me about being on the podcast, I was immediately interested. So why don't we just start with you telling us a little bit about yourself and your background and how you came to write Where Are We Tomorrow?
Tavi: I kind of think of myself more as an artist than a writer because I've done all kinds of different arts, but I came to write this particular book because my career has been in event production and I did tour with bands for many years. But my artist's life was always a little bit separate from that. This was a project that I was able to bring both my artist's life and my career into one project. I worked on this particular book for 12 years before I got a publishing contract. I got the idea for this book while I was on tour with four women and that's pretty unusual. It was on the Norah Jones Tour in 2003, I think. So, I was working with all of these women on tour.
And I started out in the lighting crew on the Phish tour back in, I think ‘95. I was the only woman. For many tours I went on other than caterers. I would often walk into a venue in the morning and the stagehands that were there - almost always all men - would point to the kitchen and say “kitchen’s over there.”
Mindy: So obviously you had the background to bring to writing a novel and you also had the experiences of someone who is kind of operating on the fringe as a woman, if you're the only woman for a long time backstage like that. I have no concept of what that is like. I know what it's like in a green room, you know, I’ve been in spaces with pretty famous people, but it's always been in a fairly diverse background, skin color, culture, but also gender. Can you talk a little bit about how that feels? Not necessarily externally, but internally, what was it like for you to be like, okay, I gotta walk in there and establish that I'm even allowed to do that?
Tavi: I like that you asked that externally versus internally because externally, of course I had to just be there, show up, do the job, do a good job, prove myself just like everybody else did. But internally I definitely felt so nervous. And my husband often asked me why did you do that? Why did you feel like you needed to be in that, really in some ways toxic environment, a place where men definitely let me know that they didn't necessarily want me there? Some did, obviously, the man who hired me wanted me there. He said, I think it's more civilized when there's a woman around. But internally there was something that I felt like I had to prove.
But the interesting thing about it for women, is that they were kind of two ways to go in this business and I'm not always proud of the way that I went. But there was the sort of go along with the jokes and laugh and everybody kind of gets along with you, which is sort of the way I went. I was like, I want to do well here, I want to have friends here. I'm going to just ignore their misogynistic rude comments. And then there's the other way you could go where you could call them out and say that's not acceptable. And those women were always known as the bitches. In some ways, I think, well why wasn't I a bitch? I should have been. But I didn't. That was the choice that I made.
And so in some ways this book is an exploration of the different ways to be female inside of that world. I think that the thing that makes this book different from other novels and memoirs about backstage is that you just don't hear about the lives of the people that are making the show happen, versus the people that are on stage very often.
Mindy: Yes, absolutely. My cousin is married to a cameraman and he is actually, in the world of cameramen, rather famous because he's very very good at what he does. Directors request him and asked for him to be there and have him on their films. But you know, if I said his name, like it doesn't matter, no one would know. And my nephew is in high school and he always knew that his cousin was a cameraman but it never really mattered. He ended up looking at his Instagram for some reason, there's all these pictures of him hanging out with Nicholas Cage and stuff like that and he was just like, oh my God, AuntMindy did you know? And I'm like yeah, I did. These people are - they're moving and they're making these things happen and they're there, you just don't know about them, you don't hear about them.
Tavi: One of the themes of the book is this idea of our addiction to fame. I was a painter for many years, sometimes I still paint, I feel like people would not be that interested in that. But the minute I said, oh I work for this famous person - that's so interesting, I'm like what about my art? What about the thing I'm doing? The writing I'm doing? Why isn't that interesting? It's only that I know this famous person 0 who is just a person by the way.
Mindy: Yeah, I have a friend that lives in Hawaii and she housesits for… I mean I won't say their names but extremely famous people. She's like, that's what people want to talk to me about. I have a whole life, I have all these things that I do. I just, this is like babysitting and that's what people want to talk to me about.
Tavi: These brushes with fame, we have a real addiction to it. There's this great book that I really love called Fame Junkies. It's written by Jake Halpern who actually does a podcast as well. It's one of my favorite books just talking about how addicted to fame we are and what we'll do to be around it. And as an artist, like I've always pursued an art, I was in a band when I was younger and it's a funny thing to have this feeling about fame, to actually now have to promote myself as a writer and like, what am I looking for - fame? Well, I want people to read my book. I want to talk about the book, but do I want to be famous? No, it looks awful.
Mindy: It is difficult. I agree. So the nice thing about being a writer is that being famous as a writer usually means you can still walk down the street and no one knows what you actually look like.
Tavi: I mean you have how many books out there? And I bet People don't know you when you are in public.
Mindy: I have like 12, 13 books out there and no, most of the time I can walk around completely anonymous and it doesn't matter. I have been recognized on the street. I mean it is cool and I actually like it. But generally people that are readers, I think that fan base is a little less toxic and a little more empathetic and understanding than like movie or music fans. I could be giving readers more credit than they deserve.
Tavi: But I think that it's true that often you don't know what an author looks like, anyway.
Mindy: You know, that's a really good point. And I personally I go back and forth because it's like I am very open and I talk about my life and I talk about all different kinds of elements of my life. I talk about mental health very openly because I write for teenagers and I think it's important for me to talk about these things. But there are things about my life that are really, really basic information that no one has. I don't talk about those things. There was an event where they were looking for information from every author and they just kind of had a grid where they were just filling in information about everyone. They were like, where are you from? And I'm like I'm from Ohio. And they're like, where in Ohio? And I'm like, it doesn't matter. Because if I say the name of the tiny tiny town where I'm from, you've got me within like a five mile radius.
My instagram is not me. It's books, it's cats, it's my dogs. It's not me. It's not my face. I don't put myself in front of the camera that often. It's not that I'm uncomfortable with it. I'm not comfortable selling my face.
Tavi: Yes, That's how I feel. My God, I'm just like, you don't want to look at me. That's not what this is about. I'll sell you my books and I'll talk to you about my books all day, but you're not buying me, so I struggle with that as well. And that's not the culture that we have right now. I have a young daughter and I don't let her on social media. She's 11. I've never put her face anywhere, but other people have. So how do I protect her from this? I'm not sure
Mindy: People are scary. That's how I feel about that.
Tavi: You know, with being scared, I just sometimes feel like maybe that's why I had to do this work that was so tough and I'm such a sensitive artistic soul. I think I needed to do some work that would really toughen me up, You wouldn't even get a nap on tour. You would get done at two am loading out, take a shower in the locker room, get on the bus, get up and load in at eight a.m.
Mindy: That's a crazy lifestyle even and I assume very little privacy.
Tavi: None. To roll out of a bunk and have, honestly, some guys that you just wouldn't ever want to see you in your pajamas like right there in your face in the hallway of the bus. It was not easy.
Mindy: No, I can't even imagine I need my privacy and I need my alone time. I imagine you do too.
Tavi: Yeah, I like it. Don't get it much though!
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Mindy: You said before that you had toyed with and developed your craft in different areas of art, you were painting and you were also in a band yourself. So you took this route of being a roadie in doing this work. What made you say, I think I want to try writing?
Tavi: Well I always secretly wanted to be a writer. When I was probably in high school or even at seven, I was writing stories but I got discouraged really young by a couple of people. One was a friend who just said, oh you better stick to painting after I had written my first play. And and then another was a tutor in high school who just was like, you're awful, basically, you shouldn't even bother. I feel like, wow, if I could ever go back, I would just talk to myself and say, don't listen to those people, they're just haters.
So I secretly wrote. I wrote in journals. I wrote songs. Finally the other art forms just weren't very portable for touring. I was pretty old when I decided - I'm going to actually write. I must have been about 35. I got a cabin in the Keys by myself and I said, I'm gonna go and I'm gonna sit in there for five days and if I don't come out with 50 pages, I'm not a writer. So I went and I did that and I wrote the 1st 50 pages of a novel of course that I never finished. It got me started. And so I just started writing, I'm like, I'm going to write a novel. And then of course, I realized quickly that I didn't really know what I was doing. And so I took a class at the U. Dub here in Washington and then I decided, oh, I need to go back to school because I've always loved school.
And so I went back and got my M. F. A. I I felt like, oh my gosh, I'm going to be the oldest person. When I stepped onto the campus, one of the people in the registrar's office was somebody who had just gotten out of undergrad. And she looked at me, and she was going in the program, she said, are you one of the professors? But you can write at any age doesn't matter.
Mindy: Of course you can. I think it's interesting that you had those experiences of negativity early on. I mean, I can tell you, I finished my first novel when I was in college, so I was like 19 years old and it was really, really bad and I’ve talked about this before. It's not false modesty, it's not - no, tell me it was beautiful, you know. It was really bad and that's okay. No one is an amazing writer when they are 15, 16, 17 years old. You have to give yourself that grace and that space to grow and improve. And I think way too often there are those people in young writers' lives, whoever they are, and even if they think that they're positively motivated by saying - don't waste your time. You don't know what you could be discouraging there. Everyone has to have that space to bloom and grow.
Tavi: That's okay, I'm here and everything teaches us something. Obstacles are good. It really just shows that I did actually want to be a writer if I kept going after all that and finally did it. And of course as soon as I got into grad school, it was the first place in my life, honestly that I ever felt like, oh, I belong here. This is what I'm supposed to be doing. Just took a long time to sort that out. Some of us are late bloomers and I've come to terms with that.
Mindy: Obstacles are good. I like that statement and I think that that probably can be applied pretty easily to the publishing industry. So let's talk about how you moved from writing to that process of becoming published. What was your course? You had an MFA, you wrote your book? What was that path?
Tavi: It is so long and winding, like so many writers. And as I was coming along, I loved to hear these stories because like I said, I worked on that one novel for 12 years. But of course, there are other novels. The first story I got accepted into - a literary magazine - I was so excited about. I was just out of school, I got a call on my birthday that said, actually, we're not going to publish it. I was like, you're kidding. Like, the first one I got accepted and the woman was like, you know, the editor just cut yours and I'm so mad about it and I'm sorry. And so there's that.
And then, I got second place in a contest, I got the check and the check bounced. I was like, oh my God. So this is sort of the way that it's gone. And I've tried over the years to get agents and I've had a lot of agents interested who all at the last minute said, actually - I think maybe not. Okay, what's next? And sort of strategize and after chasing agents for a long time, I finally just said I'm going to go straight to a small press and see. I was fortunate that Touch Point Press has been really supportive of this book and they accepted it.
They wanted to see some changes. As a writer, you have to be willing to hear this isn't good enough yet. You have to be willing to dig in, tear it apart again. This book has gone from first person to third person. It was past tense, then present tense and past tense again. Now, Touch Point is going to publish my second book as well, which was actually what I started working on in my MFA program.
Mindy: That's wonderful. So, tell us a little bit about that second book.
Tavi: The second book is completely different. It's a historical novel that is set on the coast of Maine in 1913, with a woman who has a maid on the estate. She's 17 and the estate owners and the servants' lives get entangled and there's a jewel heist. This one's more plot driven. It's kind of fun.
Mindy: Going the route of having an independent publisher gives you that freedom. I mean, I'm lucky I get to hop around. I write across various genres. I don't know why my publisher allows me to do this but I think it might partially be because I've never really hit really big with any one genre, so they're never pigeon holing me, quite. But I love that you are just writing so widely and so diversely.
Tavi: I'm just interested in a lot of things and now I'm working on middle grade. My daughter and I started working on it when the pandemic hit, just as a school project sort of like let's do some writing! And we've just had so much fun and now we're writing a series.
Mindy: I love that, I think that that is beautiful. Middle grade is not something I would ever be able to write and I just say that as far as my voice. My voice is pretty, it's dark, my interests are pretty rough and - not that middle grade doesn't pack a punch. It certainly does. I don't have the wide eyed wonder, I'm more acerbic.
Tavi: Yeah, I don't think I would have done it without my daughter. But she is just so full of ideas, she's just an idea gal, and she just throws them at me and we work it out and it’s been fun in that way. I don't know that I would have done it by myself, but now that I'm into this world, I'm really into this world, so that's really cool.
Mindy: I like that a lot, I think too, speaking of going directly to the publisher, I'm a proponent of agents. Like I'll just say that up front, but I know a lot of authors, because I have one foot in both worlds, I self published under a pen name and I also write trad. My publisher in the trad Pub world is HarperCollins, I do both and I love both. Like, there are pros and cons to both and straddling them has been super fun and I really enjoy it. After having the experiences that I've had in the indie world, I’ve really come to understand the attraction of absolutely and totally being your own person, like all the time. Which my agent doesn't like, tell me what to write or anything like that. There are pros and cons to absolutely and completely being your own person and handling everything yourself - but you are literally doing everything yourself.
Tavi: It's true. I mean if I'm being honest, I would love to have an agent. I really could use a partner navigating all of this because. All day long now what I do is send out queries, try to do marketing, to have somebody to sort of grow with would be really excellent. I haven't given up on that idea, I have to move on. I have to be able to somehow publish my books. Touch Point has been amazing in that I can reach out to them and I can talk to them. That's a real advantage of working with them to sort of strategize and figure out the next steps in getting the book out there. It's a big wide world of publishing. I mean, I really feel like I've taken a crash course in the last couple of years or maybe the last 10 years. How does publishing work?
Mindy: Or does publishing work? Sometimes it feels like. So when I first started trying to get into the publishing world back in like 2005, self publishing was like a dirty word. It really was only for people that couldn't make it for the most part. Production was sloppy. There just simply weren't the resources there that there are now and now, like I said, I participate in it, I self publish under a pen name and I am proud of what I produce under that name. It's not my brand, like it goes against my brand as Mindy McGinnis, but it's stories that I have in me, it's fun, it's loopy, it's silly. It's stuff that I can get out and still be producing rather than just writing one book a year.
Tavi: Well, but the thing is you have the advantage of knowing what you know now, like, I think with self publishing, the danger is that you're going to put out something that's not ready. The good thing is that there are gatekeepers that I'm so glad I didn't publish the draft of the book that I had six years ago, it's a much better book now. And I think that if you're a first time author, maybe it's not a good idea to self publish, because you need those gatekeepers. It's better to keep going and get the book that you want and it should be out there. But you've got the advantage of like, you know, what's a good book at this point? You've done this, you've got a lot of books out there. You can self publish because you're not going to put out something that's not up to your quality, right?
Mindy: And that is a really, really good point. And I have thought about that myself many, many times because I was trying for 10 years to get an agent. It took me 10 years and five novels and I wanted to quit so many times and I wanted to self publish. And I am so glad I didn't because then there would be very, very subpar books out there with my name on them.
Tavi: Exactly. And you can't take them back now.
Mindy: No. Now there are people out there with them on their Kindles and I would be so embarrassed. I would be so embarrassed if that was the case because what I was producing early on, I wasn't doing a good job. You said earlier, you've got to be able to process the feedback and the criticism and improve and I wasn't doing that. Very much in the early stages, I was like, no, I'm a genius and you will respect my work. I was 19. Last thing, let listeners know where they can find you online and where they can find your book, Where Are We Tomorrow?
Tavi: So I have a website, it's just to TaviBlack.com or TaviTaylorBlack.com. My book is published under Tavi Taylor Black. And I also have a podcast myself. It's called The Personal Element that I co host with another writer. We take personal essays that we really like and we have the author read them and then we talk about what we like about the essay.
Mindy: That is super cool because essays are an art form that are underappreciated.
Tavi: They are and I honestly was not somebody who I've written some, but I've never published personal essays, mostly just short stories and things like that. But my friend Christine Young, who's a writer, does personal essays. We have seven episodes out there, but it turns out that I love it and I guess you know, you've been doing it for a long time, it's actually quite fun to do a podcast.
Mindy: I love doing it, I love meeting people and talking to them and like after my conversations, I'm always energized and interested in something new and like you never know what's going to open up for you.
Tavi: And so you can find that podcast, The Personal Element anywhere that you get your podcasts or Personal Element Podcast.com or there's a link from my website as well. And my book’s on Amazon and Barnes and Noble.
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Mindy: Writer Writer Pants on Fire is produced by Mindy McGinnis. Music by Jack Korbel. Don't forget to check out the blog for additional interviews, writing advice and publication tips at Writer Writer Pants on Fire dot com. If the blog or podcast have been helpful to you or if you just enjoy listening, please consider donating. Visit Writer Writer Pants on Fire dot com and click “support the blog and podcast” in the sidebar.