The Sanatorium Author Sarah Pearse on Writing Closed Room Mysteries & Strong Women

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

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Mindy: So we're here with Sarah Pearse to talk about her debut novel, The Sanatorium, which is a locked room thriller set in an abandoned tuberculosis sanatorium that has been renovated into a five star luxury resort. So why don't you just start off by telling us a little bit about the book? 

Sarah: The Sanatorium is A is a kind of creepy thriller, and it's set in a luxury hotel called Le Sommet that used to be a sanatorium, and it's really high in the Swiss Alps in a very isolated location. And the book follows Elin Warner, who's a British detective, as she travels to the hotel for her brother's engagement. But things take a really kind of dark and eerie turn when her brother's fiancee, Laure goes missing, and Elin finds she has to step up to the plate to investigate amidst the snowstorm and all kinds of things going on. 

Mindy: It takes place, of course, in a sanatorium, which is fascinating but also the locked room concept, of course, is a wonderful setting and time honored, often used plot device. My audience is mostly writers. So why don't you talk a little bit about, first of all, that concept, the locked room thriller, the element that you use to create that environment in The Sanatorium? 

Sarah: I love reading locked room thrillers. I kind of grew up on a diet of kind of watching and reading Agatha Christie, who is very much local to my area, and I think there's a real magic in having a group of characters where there's no real kind of room for escape. So not only for a reader is it quite fun because you have a very sort of fixed pool of suspects. But I think it really tests the characters because there is no police that are able to come in. There's no one charging in on a white horse to sort of save the day, so you really get to see what the characters are made of. So I think in The Sanatorium by having the avalanche, and I mean the hotel is already in a very isolated setting, which is because, obviously it was a sanatorium, and that's how they tended to be. You immediately put the characters up against one of the biggest tests of their lives, and I think as a reader, it's fascinating to to put the characters under that pressure and you're reading along with them and feeling their fear. 

Mindy: One of the things that I often talk with thriller writers about one of the first elements that you absolutely must get rid of in order to create any kind of tension is that you have to get rid of your characters phones. 

Sarah: Absolutely. It's a tricky thing when you have a phone. Obviously there's so many aspects where you could lose the tension in a way. So I think you have to be quite clever, where and when that phone can be used. And if the signal is there, I think if you were writing a long time ago, before the advent of mobile phones, it made those cases much easier to write, I think. 

Mindy: Especially when you're working with not only just, like a call for help, just even if someone needs a piece of information, they need to know a critical thing in a moment. You know, if they can just google it, they have a computer in their hands at all times. It's very hard to create a situation where your character is ignorant of just about anything unless they're being Hoodwinked by the other characters.

Sarah: Absolutely. And I think that's probably where the lock door setting, I think if you have things that are set on an island or there's an extreme of weather and the character can be without their phone, I think it opens up a whole world of possibilities. But I think there's elements within the book where Elin does have her phone and she is able to look up certain things which are helpful. Particularly she's a detective there on her own. So it's kind of knowing where and when to have that technology, the key of where and when. It makes a big difference about how your plot plays out.

Mindy: The next thing I really want to talk to you about is the setting itself, the sanatorium having been renovated into a very luxurious setting in the Alps, but it was formerly a tuberculosis sanitarium, So how did you decide that this was the setting number one, and what kind of research did you do on this type of setting? 

Sarah: The whole idea from the book came from the idea of the sanatorium in the hotel aspect of it came after. So we go a lot to Switzerland for our holidays. We lived there, my husband and I in our twenties. So we go a lot of holidays now. And a few years ago I read an article in a local magazine about the history of a Sanatorium in the town and the local area. And there was some great photography of the old building. Um, and it really set my imagination firing. And then, yeah, in the article and the subsequent research I did, I found out some of the old sanatoriums have been converted into a hotel, and even the other way around. At the very beginning, there was a hotel which was then repurposed by a doctor as a sanatorium. And I just thought, Gosh, what a creepy idea this would be to stay in a hotel that had once been a place where there have been a lot of illness, where people have died. How would you feel as a guest?  And I know for me repurposed buildings in general are fascinating. I love the idea that there's a history bubbling beneath the surface, even when you've got, like, a very sort of modern building, even if it's been converted beautifully. And, yeah, the idea came from there.

Mindy: I set a book of mine in an insane asylum that's fairly famous here in Ohio. It's still operating. It has been converted. It's not operating as an insane asylum. Obviously, it has converted into buildings that are incorporated into a university campus. 

Sarah: Oh my, gosh, how interesting. 

Mindy: Yes, it’s so interesting. And so the building is still standing. Parts of it are no longer in use and will more than likely be demolished. But they still have the center of the building and the wing, the men's dormitory is now part of the art department and their offices and things like that. And of course, the building is gorgeous, and I'm so happy that it could be at least partially saved. But of course it's in a college campus, and there are parts of the building in parts of the area that are still you're not allowed to go in them for safety reasons because there's asbestos, and also it's just not entirely safe, especially the female wings. Those haven't seen any work for a very long time. And of course it's a college. So that's what people do. That's what the kids do. They go up and they break into the insane asylum and they go into the sections they are not allowed to. 

Architecture itself, It is fascinating to me. I love old buildings. I love old houses. I love all of that kind of stuff. Of course you are from Britain. I am from the U. S. The house that I live in is really old. It was built in, I think 1857. A Civil War soldier Built it after he got out of the war and I’m always like, Yeah, my house is old, my house is old. Well, I was in London on a trip with some friends, and I was in London, and it's so funny to me how my concept of old just changed so fast when you know, I, like, visited the tower and things like that. 

Sarah: It's amazing. I I don't know if you've heard about some of the mud larking that people do along the Thames where they found old arrowheads really to like the Norman times and it’s crazy thinking of the history. We have some caves. Not very far. Only five minutes from our house. That kind of have lots of the Stone Age remains in pottery in. Yeah, just just amazing. But yeah, that is very old for you guys, isn't it - something in the 1800’s.

Mindy: And I remember I visited the Tower and we were taking our tour with the Beefeaters, and he was talking to us and we were right there, like on the river and these steps that are going down into the river. And he was like, and these are the steps that Anne Boelyn walked up, walked to her death where they chopped her head off over there on that block. And I was like, Wait, like those steps? Like these steps right here? Those steps? And he's like, Yeah, those steps. She walked on those steps. And I was just... like my mind was blown.

Sarah: I know. That's what I think is so wonderful when you have something historical, isn't it where your imagination just sort of fires? I just love the idea that kind of all of that energy might still be lingering from the past. Oh, it's just amazing. 

Mindy: Absolutely. And like I said, as an American when I was in London, I was just like, Wow, I don't even know what old means. 

Sarah: Everywhere you turn, you see a landmark. 

Mindy: Yeah, that's the truth. 

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Mindy: Let's talk a little bit about female characters because your main character, Elin, is a female detective and, of course, has to operate in a really sticky situation and, of course, also a dangerous one. So how did her her gender, her sex, did this come into your choice of using a female detective? And does it connect to any of the themes in the book? 

Sarah: Yeah, very much does so. Primarily, I wanted to have a female detective because I think I've read a few books where the female detectives tend to take on quite sort of almost masculine traits or attributes as a character. So kind of quite suppressed emotion. And I wanted to have a detective, I kind of wanted to break free of that. And I think it makes it quite a challenging character to the reader at times, and to the people around her, but someone who's kind of suffered with anxiety. She's obviously got a complex past going on and she finds out in the book. But I wanted to show someone who I think people would be in real life. I don't think as a detective, you necessarily would have it all together. And I wanted to show that kind of internal thought process of her fears, her anxieties and, yeah, everything about her past that's made her who she is. 

And it kind of very much links in with the theme of the book, which is kind of women's voices. Historically, they've been suppressed or women themselves have felt the need to suppress them in order to kind of fit in in society and in the workplace. Where again, I still think even now there is a very specific way of communicating in large organizations, for example, which tends to be more masculine and I think, feelings have shown that can be a little bit sort of looked down on or people feel like they can't be themselves. So, yeah, I really wanted Elin to be a woman to reflect the themes that I sort of bring up within the novel. 

Mindy: Yeah, definitely. As women. If you're operating in a male space, there is a lot of pressure to not be emotional. 

Sarah: Yeah, and I find that It's a really fascinating concept because I think we've been told that being emotional is almost a bad thing, and that means you can't be taken seriously. But I think women and their emotions and how they relate to the people around them is a real strength. And yeah, I wanted to show that in the book that Elin journeys to a point of strength. But just because she's gone through that journey doesn't make her a weak person. Yeah, I think even now it is still the case that we have to sort of stiff upper lip and button up our emotions. And I think it can be weaponized against us if we are emotional, which is a shame. 

Mindy: Oh, yeah, absolutely it can. I think it's interesting talking about the idea of being a female, and she's operating in a male space, being a detective. I don't know what it's like in Britain, but I can say that as a writer in the US, we hear that phrase “strong female character” so much we roll our eyes. At this point, we're like, yes, strong female character. It's ridiculous to me that you even have to put the word strong in front of it to be like Oh, no, she's not like other women. She's strong. 

Sarah: Yeah, absolutely. You come on a really good point there. I think women are being judged all the time for their behavior and they are put under scrutiny all the time by everyone around them. And I think even sometimes other women - are they being emotional enough? Are they not being too emotional? I don't think women can just BE. And I think you're so right. I think there's like a label that is put on women constantly and that yeah, that idea of being strong automatically implies that women are inherently weak, which is very odd. And what is strong? I think strong is a word again that's often used to define against a male set of values, isn't it?

Mindy: Yes, absolutely. That's something that came up in an interview I was doing with someone else earlier this month. We were talking about that concept, the strong female character and how, for the longest time strength, you know, it meant that she could physically, best someone at something. She was Katniss in the Hunger games. You know, we really, many of us 0 because I write for teens. I'm a YA author - we really pushed back at that because female strength, and male strength too, I mean strength in general, there's different avenues and uses for that word.

I tell this story. So apologies to my listeners if you've heard it more than once. But I do a lot of genealogy. I have a very heavy German line in my family, and I do a lot of genealogy. And the Germans, of course, have like these excellent records, and my family tree had more or less already been done all the way back to the 1500s. On the German side. The Irish one is a huge mess. So that's what I work on. But the German one. It was pretty much done, but I went and, like, you know, Dug around with what other people have found anyway, and I found a woman. It was in the 1500s, you know, lived in just this little village, and I got to looking at some of the dates surrounding her and her Children and her husband's and her marriages. And I got really curious after I started seeing some of these dates pop up because a lot of the information was pulled from church records. 

I put together a calendar. I believe she had 13 Children. She outlived all but one of them. Two husbands. She lost two children… they both died and in the space of a single week, and I think it was a fall 1500s. She had two Children. I believe it was like an eight year old, and, uh, maybe a little one that was younger, die and then a teenage daughter died the week after, so there was more than likely an illness in the household, and she was pregnant. The mother was pregnant while these Children are sick, so she's probably trying to take care of them. All three of them die. She gives birth to the baby and the baby dies the next week. 

Sarah: Oh, my gosh. 

Mindy: She outlived most of her family except for one child. And it's ridiculous. I know. And like some of her grandchildren as well, she outlived. And I always tell people - like this woman more than likely probably could not read or write. She was a German housewife. She was not a liberated woman. She was raising Children and and being a housewife, Yeah, you would never say that this woman isn't strong. 

Sarah: No, absolutely. When you touched on there about that whole idea of strength being and we spoke about the being held up against that sort of male set of values, I think I don't know how you pull away from that. Because I think as you said before, that idea of physical strength is held up. And if you're writing about a strong woman, they have to be strong, like in a male way, as you were saying about the Hunger Games, they have to be, you know, a  tall muscular, strong woman and that is showing strength. But I agree with you. I think historically and throughout time, women have shown strength in numerous ways that we can't even probably in modern society begin to understand or articulate. But I think that they would have to be such a huge mind shift to go away from what is seen traditionally as strong.

Mindy: So tying into that. One of the themes in your book Is women not being believed. Women being questioned or their word not being taken as seriously as a man's. So tying into that strength and just reliability. How does that play out in the novel? 

Sarah: When I was researching I tied two ideas together here. So you have the idea of the Tuberculosis Sanatorium. But there are also sanatoriums in Switzerland and elsewhere all over Europe, which were more mental institutions, so they weren't called asylums. They were called Sanatoriums and I read a terrifying article in a book about how women were taken essentially to these institutions which were called Sanatorium on the guise that they were ill or unwell. It was basically because often they just had independent thoughts and they spoke up and as women, that kind of wasn't allowed in a way. So yeah, they were taken to these institutions, and quite often some of them lived and died there. So they were taken there in their twenties, thirties, and forties. They were committed on behalf of a family doctor who took the guardian, the father or the husband at their word. And these women were committed.

And it got kind of the idea in my mind, the kind of similar things with the Me Too movement. So how people, women were questioned and their accounts of things were questioned. And I think, to be honest, I think you see it in everyday life, don't you? Going back to that strength. I think if a woman accounts something and she shows some emotion they’re often historically they've tended not to be believed, which is shocking, and it's still shocking to me now. So it's something I wanted to play upon in the novel, and I think women, particularly when it comes to sexual assault and varying things, I think there's very much the sense of sort of, if it makes someone feel uncomfortable, it's often easier either for the woman not to speak up or the person listening to turn the cheek and not really hear, as we see in the novel, which can have quite devastating consequences.

Mindy: Tying that into that in the modern world, of course, the Me Too movement being a huge part of that. I just finished reading a book about gender disparities and data, which I know it doesn't sound interesting. However, it was fascinating because it was talking about how, especially in the medical world, women's pain is discounted often and they’re misdiagnosed or their complaints are ignored because they're a physician isn't believing their account of their own pain. 

Sarah: Oh my gosh, how interesting. I can see that because I think if women express pain, I can imagine often you might cry, or you might be quite open about that. And I think men still have that, sometimes if it's a male position or even perhaps female, you have that idea of Oh, you know, they're being over the top or too sensitive all of those things.

Mindy: Or even going back to using the word hysterical. 

Sarah: Absolutely. And I think that's such a weaponized word and that kind of idea of keep calm, dear or be quiet. It's a very, in a way, clever word of making a woman feel inadequate for showing what is quite a normal emotion. And I don't think it's healthy for men either. I think being told that as a man, you can't express those feelings, probably because it makes you seem more feminine, is a terrible way to approach the world. 

Mindy: Really, it is. I'm gonna see if I can pull up the name of that book because it was interesting. Another thing that they talked about in the book that was pretty fascinating. It's called Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men. It is fascinating. I will. I'll send you a link. I'll send a link to your publicist. They even talk about how, in clinical trials they only use men in medical clinical trials. At least they used to because they couldn't account for a woman's menstrual cycle and how it might affect the medication. 

Sarah: Oh, my gosh. 

Mindy: I know. We're back to -  It's a full moon. Don't cross the river at night. 

Sarah: Yeah. 

Mindy: Even in medical trials for FDA approval, they would only use male subjects as that was part of the control that they only use males. As time has progressed, they've discovered that certain medications interact differently with the female body, and I forget the name. But there was a specific medication for blood pressure and blood pressure problems, and it's supposed to bring your blood pressure down, but in women, it actually brings it up. And they didn't know this. They got FDA approval without ever trying it on women and people died. 

Sarah: Oh, my gosh, that's horrific, isn't it? Mm, Yeah, it's again. It's that sort of invisible woman. As you say. Isn't it terrible?

Mindy: I work in a high school. I substitute very often. Most of the time, these days. Anyway, you know most of the young women today. They feel like sexism has been either mostly taken care of or they feel it, or they see it mostly in representation, as far as like, an expectation for them to look or outward presence in a certain way. And they're aware of that. But some of the more heinous and insidious things... I'll tell them things like that. Like, for example, for the longest time crash test dummies were only made in a male form. 

Sarah: Gosh, I didn't know that, actually. Yeah. 

Mindy: Yeah. So hips and breasts weren't accounted for. And if you look at the data for women's deaths in a car crash, it's much, much higher than men's because the seats and the seat belts are made for a male body. 

I will send along the link for you, but bringing it back to The Sanatorium and last thing I know, I've got to let you go. Why don't you tell us where listeners can find you online and where they can find The Sanatorium?

Sarah: I think you can pretty much find it in all formats everywhere now, so online. Or be in your local bookstore, independent bookstore and, yeah, I'm online. I'm on Instagram at SarahPearseAuthor. I'm on Twitter at SarahVPearse, and then you can find me on Facebook. Just I think it's Sarah Pearse, Author again. I also have a website at www dot sarah pearse dot co dot UK 

Mindy:

Fauzia Burke on Building Your Online Platform & the Author as the Product

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

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Mindy: So we're here with Fauzia Burke of FSB Associates, and she is here to talk a little bit about different things involving being an author out in the world on your own, looking to build your author platform, but also looking for those digital tools for effective book marketing. There's so many books and so many authors out there, making yourself stand out is difficult self published or with an indie pub, and you don't have the money of a Big Five behind you giving you that digital boost to give you more visibility. What is like the number one thing that you would say, an author that wants to do their own promotion needs? 

Fauzia: It's a great question. And to be honest with you, so many things are overlapping with traditionally published and indie published authors these days, you know the Big Five is really important and obviously great for credibility. But a lot of the traditionally published authors need to do a lot of their own marketing as well, too, As you know so well, because you do it so well. Authors in general have to be thinking about their marketing. No matter how they published, I would say the number one thing that authors need is their website. That's sort of the hub of everything else that's built upon it. So social media is generally a very sexy topic. I get a lot of questions about it. Most people call me and say they want to promote their book and they want to do publicity. But one of the things that's so important is if you don't have a website where people can actually convert and get more information on you, you really miss all of that opportunity. So I would say their website is the central, most important thing. 

Mindy: You're so right about Big Five authors, traditionally published authors. No matter what the success level, you can boost and you can re-up what you've got. I've been publishing with two of the Big Five publishing houses since 2013, and I do a lot of my own work and a lot of contacting people and saying, Hey, can I be on your show? Or can I come to your library? Would you like some bookmarks for your library or for your classroom? I work every day, but probably only maybe an hour to two hours of that is actually writing. I'm typically spending 2 to 2.5 or three hours just answering emails and setting up appearances - when we used to do those - but just that connectivity, that putting yourself out there and then probably another extra hour on social media. 

So you're right when people talk about social media, that is something that everybody kind of wants to know how to do it, quote unquote “right” and in the end, what people are looking for there is to convert that social media presence into sales, and my experience has been that that's not necessarily going to work. Long story short In the middle of 2019, I went through a breakup of a relationship that has lasted for 12 years. So It was pretty devastating. I had been so active on social media all the time, like always. Push, push, push, push. And I just kind of stopped for about three months. I was like, I can't do this right now. It's just I don't have it in me. And to be honest, I don't think it hurt me. So if you'd like to maybe address that a little bit about like what the real goal is with social media because I don't think it's sales. I think it's connections.

Fauzia: Oh, my God. First of all, I love that story. Thank you for sharing it. I'm sorry for the breakup, but I'm glad you're well.

Mindy: I’m actually better. 

Fauzia: That's always the goal. When you go through a life change, right? You make such a good point. Social media is obviously really important. We all know that, but in a way that readers journey, it's the piece where you create likability. I tell authors almost daily - You are the product, like you've got to get over the fact that you need to promote yourself because you are the product, you know. Yes, you're publishing books, but it's your books that people are going to want to read. So you have to think of yourself in that way. And when you think of it that way, there's a sort of a buying journey in marketing, and I think about it as a reading journey. And one of the phases is actually creating likability for people to like you, because that's when they'll want to buy your book. 

And I think that's what social media does, because how many times have we looked at somebody's feed and instantly said, Oh, I like this person! Even without knowing them, right? We don't know them at all, But there's something about them that makes us feel either seen or heard or like something we can relate to, or their aesthetic or the writing style or their humor. Something about them makes us feel like we're connected with them. In all honesty, it's what the biggest piece of social media is. Of course, social media also drives traffic to your website. For example, 50% of my traffic to my website comes from social media. It has been. For many decades now, social media has been everybody's daily practice and I still hear from authors who say, “I hate social media.” And I'm like, Okay, you can hate it. It's no big deal. You're probably losing that connection with your readers before, during and after, and you're probably losing a ton of traffic to your website. So if you're okay with that, you can continue to hate it. That's really what the purpose is, in my opinion. 

Mindy: Yes, you absolutely, as the author, are a product, not just your books, you are selling yourself, and some people are uncomfortable with that. I understand. But the way that I have come to terms with it is that, you know, author Mindy is a certain person and real Mindy like at home with friends and family - that's a sliver that my audience doesn't get like that's inner circle stuff. So when I'm marketing myself, you know I'm selling author Mindy and I am pretty open about a lot of things in my personal life, just because I think it's important to be with things like mental illness, depression and things like that. But also, it's funny to me how easy it can be to make a real connection. Like, for instance, my instagram is mostly pictures of my cats and my dog, and people love it. 

So I have a Dalmatian and I got him as a puppy right when the shutdown happened, posted pictures of him and his journey growing up and being a little pandemic puppy. Interestingly, in my area, I'm from Ohio, the whole county, there's like a Facebook page called the County Block Watch, and it's just like, Hey, you know there's an electric pole down on this road or whatever. Be careful. There's flooding on this road, stuff like that. Somebody posted about a loose Dalmatian. They're like, there's a wandering Dalmatian at this intersection and I had three different people, and amazingly enough - I live very rurally - but these are not people that I know personally. But I had three different people contact me on Facebook and be like Hey, there's a Dalmatian. I hope it's not your boy. Is Gus loose? And I was just like, Oh, my God. And it wasn't him, he was with me, but it was so amazing to me. Those posts, we're memorable enough, and these people had interacted and remembered number one - I lived in their area. Number two. I had a Dalmatian and number three - his name. People contacted me and were like, Is this your dog? And I just Honestly, I was so touched because I thought it was sweet, But it was also just like, Dang, I mean, that just shows that it is effective.

Fauzia: You're absolutely right. And I think those are the kinds of things, when something like that happens, you start to go. Oh, there is someone listening. There is someone talking. Even if those people don't respond, you're connecting with them in a way that, you know, is funny and touching. And all of those things. One of the things I always tell my authors is that you know, when you're starting to build a platform and a brand and all of that for a while, it feels like nobody is listening, right? It's like they call me and go, I think it's only my mom reading my blog and nobody’s commenting and I just tell them Just keep at it, right? Just stick with it because there will come a moment when you're going to get that feedback and you literally are gonna be caught off guard because you'll be like, Wait, you read my blog? Like, wow. And it happens to all my clients at different levels. And when it does, we have a little phrase in my with my clients that I use, which is, you know, when you have a newborn baby and in the beginning it's all one way traffic, like you're just taking care of them. You're not getting a whole lot back. And then there was a moment where they actually look at you and smile and like, all the world turns around. And so I always say that. I tell them their brand is like their baby in the beginning they’re just gonna have to take care of it and feed it and do all of those things. But there's a moment that it's going to turn around and smile, and so I've actually gotten text from authors who say my baby smiled at me. 

Mindy: That's awesome. And it's a great analogy because it is very true. It does feel like you're just giving for a long time. I started blogging, so I started the Writer Writer Pants on Fire blog in 2011. I've been blogging actively since then, and there have been many, many, many times, and I just... I want to speak to that idea that you were saying that you aren't necessarily getting feedback all the time. It doesn't mean that people aren't listening. Pretty much just about every year I say, Am I really going to keep doing this? Because blogs are kind of dead and podcasts are everything which obviously I transitioned into doing a podcast alongside the blog. Now I don't know if this is worth my time and with my effort, and there's really no monetary value to it. So I think I make maybe 75 to $100 a year on ads, so you know, it's really just putting your time in. But I get every now and then, just like you're saying after gosh, well 10 years now. I've been blogging for 10 years. I get that email from someone that is just like, Hey, I love your blog. Or, because I do query critiques on my blog and they'll be like, You critiqued my query, and I just wanted to tell you that I landed an agent today or that my book got published today and so people will reach out in that way. But also when I look so actually, I'm gonna go look right now. When I look at my traffic, my analytics on my website, the vast majority is going to the blog. So people say blogs are dead. And I think in some cases, what they're saying is - comments are dead.

Fauzia: I have to tell you, I am not with those people. I do not think blogs are dead. I do think the commenting on blog posts is kind of a, you know, dated thing. Now, most of the conversations are happening in social media so that I do agree with. But blogs, the reason you write blogs is actually for the SEO benefit, right? For the SEO benefit and for having something of value that people will come to your website to read. Otherwise, you're just basically saying, Hey, I've put up a promotional website. I hope you check it out every day. If there's no new content, if you're not providing something of value, why are people coming to your website like What is the point? They come once. Maybe they look at your book or books and they go, OK, great. And then they go. And then there's no reason to come back if you don't change it, right?

If your website is just 100% a sales tool, then you're missing out because Amazon and Barnes and Noble do a better job of selling books than you will. So if you're going to create something that is yours, it's got… you know, it's so funny. You say that you started your blog in 2011. So I've been blogging for a long time and in fact, I was one of the first bloggers on Huffington Post when Huffingtonpost started, which is I don't even know when and at that time I wrote a blog. This is now God, I don't even know how long ago but I wrote a blog called I'll Take a Community With That Book, Please. 

At hat time the idea that we have to create community seemed insane. I mean, this is literally pre social media, but the idea is that your website is a place for people to gather information about the topic that they're interested in and blogs is a way that you communicate your expertise and your writing style. How well you write if you're writing novels, uh, and your expertise if you're writing nonfiction. But how else are you going to do that? And if you blog on other sites, which is fine, but you lose all of the SEO benefit. The majority of the people coming to your website are coming for your blogs, and they're hearing about your blogs from probably a newsletter that you send out or your social media. 

Mindy: Just to reinforce what you were saying, I'm looking at my analytics right now for my website. It's combined mindymcginnis dot com and Writer, Writer, Pants on Fire. They both go to the same place. This is very interesting, given what we were just saying. My home page for the last 30 days. My blog page views is double my homepage and interestingly enough, clicking on the young adult books... So basically my products, that is half of my homepage. So it just reinforces everything you were saying. Home is me -  literally someone Googling Mindy McGinnis. And then twice that is people coming for the blog and one third is actually going for that product for that book. So it just really reinforces that you yourself are the product, really, And then people are coming for that fresh content on the blog. It's so fascinating. 

Fauzia: I love that you did this in real time, and I think your readers are going to take such inspiration from that because the biggest thing is the fact that you could look at those data is amazing and so many authors don't look at it and don't know how to read it. And in my opinion, that is, one of the single most important things authors can do is if they have a website, they have to know the traffic on the website because you can base decisions on what you do on your website. Based on that data, which is so, so helpful and just like you did, you know you can stop writing the blog, but that's half the traffic you're going to lose. So I don't want to write a blog. I'm like, Sure, no problem. Don't write a blog, but you're probably going to lose half your traffic. Yep,

Mindy: Yep. And you were saying too, just about building. So as I said, I've been blogging for a long time. And so now I have people, authors and publicists come to me, and they're like, Can we get a slot on the blog for this author for an interview or for a guest post? So I'm not even really creating the content any more. People are wanting the slot because they know it gets traffic and it'll get them exposure. So I host the interview or I'll give them a prompt for the post. And of course I still do - I call it the Saturday Slash, but I do free query critiques on the blog. So obviously that's still me doing those. But I had to build it. So it took years. It took probably, I'll say, seven years before it really became other people wanting space on the blog. Um, the podcast has really just started to - because it was me at first, like going out asking my friends. Hey, will you please come on The podcast? You know, and now I have to turn people away. If I said yes to everyone that came to me asking for a spot on the podcast, I would be doing an episode a week, and I simply can't right now. 

Fauzia: This is another, because some of our authors are not traditionally published, another thing to think about. I wrote a book called Online Marketing for Busy Authors, and it was published by a publisher called Berrett-Koehler Publishers, in San Francisco. They’re my client, you know, we do publicity projects with them. I love them. They have an amazing mission. So I was thrilled to get a deal with them and get published by them. But the reason I got it, it's not because just that they knew me, but because they had read my blog. They read my blog and said, You know, we've forwarded your blogs to authors, and I think that having a book with your advice in it would be really helpful for other authors. And so it's a very specific book because it's literally online marketing for busy authors, meaning not authors who think this is their full time job. Not everybody can do that, you know, have a second career. And, you know, as we all know, books are not a money making enterprise for most people. I mean, that was another reason for writing blogs. How many people have gotten book deals because they wrote blogs? You know, blogs on a certain topic. Like suddenly someone said, You know, this is really useful information. So if you're looking to get the interest from a traditional publisher, that's another route that people can take, which is blogging on the topic that you're passionate about. 

Mindy: Something that I do in addition to the podcast is that I transcribe, I mean, I hire it out, but I transcribe every episode and it's posted in text on the blog. And that's all for SEO purposes.

Fauzia: Exactly. I saw that, and I thought that was so smart because that's one of the downsides of a podcast is that the audio is not generating any of the SEO benefit. But you turn that transcript onto your website and then, you know, and then some people actually prefer to read, so it gives readers a chance to enjoy the content the way they want. But also so smart of you to actually get all of that SEO benefit from every episode.

Mindy: And SEO, just like everything else we're talking about. You know, my listeners might find SEO to be a scary subject or like an intimidating topic. But search engine optimization - would you like to kind of, like break that down into layman's terms of how that benefits you and how you can improve it? 

Fauzia: I think SEO has been blown up to be a much more complicated thing than it needs to be. It's actually a pretty straightforward thing, which is when people do a search, does your website come up for that search? That's it. That's all it is. So if you make certain choices on your website, either benefit that search result or hurt the search results, People who have a business doing SEO - more power to you. But I think a lot of authors think that this is some kind of magic formula and that you have to, like, convince people, or actually manipulate people into coming to your website. I am not an advocate of that at all. I think what happens when people hire sometimes really expensive SEO experts to just manipulate the search engine... I've seen these reports. I've seen the Google Analytics on this. The traffic does go up, but people, the bounce rate is off the chart because people say, Oh, I'm interested in whatever they get to the website and go, Oh, this is not the site I was thinking I wanted to be on. So the high bounce rate is actually worse than having people, less people who come and actually are appreciating the content that you have on your website. 

So don't worry about the manipulation piece. The most important thing that you can do is, you know, make sure that your pages are named correctly. Make sure that the pages are not full of graphics, because search engines really don't use read graphics. Make sure you have text on your website. Make sure that you are updating your website on a regular basis and that it's not just one word here and there. It actually is, as I said, posting a blog on your website. Search engines can see that you are actually actively contributing to this site. Uh, they will not send traffic to sites that are not being updated. You're not updating your website. You're probably not going to get a lot of traffic. 

The other thing you can do is make sure that you ask other people that you know whether it's associations that you belong to, or writing groups or whatever to link back to your website. The more links you have back to your website, the more valuable search engines feel your website must be.  

That's why online publicity is so important, and I've seen this all along. I started my company 25 years ago doing online, so it's been a long journey. But what I can tell you is I watch so many analytics for my clients and their websites and things like that. People who have done online publicity, which means that their bios, with their link back to their website, are on different places. Under blog Post reviews podcast, you know video shows, the more links back to their website, the more steady their traffic is, because it doesn't fall off. 

Whenever you release this podcast people might listen to it at that time, but they could also listen to it six months from now, they could also listen to it a year from now. The link that you put to my website is always going to be there. That's why online publicity, in my opinion - of course, I'm biased - is even more important than traditional publicity. You get this kind of residual benefit from online publicity that you don't really get when people just turn the page on a magazine, and then it's gone. For a long time, people used to try to manipulate search engines by putting like, you know, the Kardashians in the keywords, thinking that if somebody does a search on that, they'll come here. But you can imagine that is not really helpful. And now search engines don't even really look at that. The content has to be relevant to what is on your homepage and on your actual pages.

Mindy: People over complicate it, and it doesn't have to be that hard. Another example of generating content, making it applicable to yourself - So like I probably have never mentioned the Kardashians on my website. I've never had anybody come to my website looking for the Kardashians. But the words that I do use very, very often on the website - query, manuscript critique, submission, publishing, editing - these words. So I do a manuscript critique, freelance editing, on the side and I don't advertise. I don't do anything. It's just a page on my website. I have never gone in search of clients. I have always, since I put up the shingle just had people flowing in really consistently and making a decent income off of it. So after about a year of this I put together - because someone asked me, they're like, Where do your clients come from? And I'm like, I actually don't know. So I put together a Google form, a feedback form, and I sent it out for like, a year to all my clients after we finished and of course, asking for feedback on my editing process. But the most important question is, how did you find out about me? And I assumed that these people found me through the blog or podcast, or because they were readers, were a fan. The vast majority of them told me they simply Googled “manuscript Critique” and they landed on me.

Fauzia: That’s because you use it consistently. You do it on an ongoing basis. You're not trying to trick anybody. This is literally what you do, and they found you. But I would bet that that just brought them to your front door, reading your blog, maybe checking out a podcast. Maybe checking out your social media is what closed the deal. That's the thing you can bring people to your website, but if it's a dated website where you haven't really shared any content, it's just a sales page. You know, landing pages are fine, but people aren't making decisions there. You've got to give them a way to engage with your work in a way that they trust you and they like you. And those are the two things - how are you supposed to get that if you don't engage in blog writing and in social media?

Mindy: That’s so, so true. 

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Mindy: So I want to touch on something real quick that you mentioned earlier briefly, that I have only recently, like in the past, maybe two or three years become skilled at which is the newsletter.

Fauzia: I’m a huge fan of, In fact, I tell authors that their mailing list is more important than their social media. 

Mindy: It is. 

Fauzia: Most authors are like, social media is what everybody talks about, and it is true. It is what everybody talks about. But your readers God, I don't even know how many times, but many times more likely to buy your book from your newsletter than your social media. And so I think when authors just think okay, I can just be on social media and then I'm doing my part, and I can tell my publishers that I'm doing my part. It's fine, but it's not as effective. So I'm a big fan of newsletters. You don't have to do them often. You know, I know authors who do them daily. I can't imagine doing that just because I don't have the time. For most authors, if you can do if you feel like you have a really engaged audience and you have really good new content, you can certainly do it every month. But I think once every three months is fine, too. You know you don't have to do it all the time. You just want to make sure that the people who are interested in your work kind of keep an eye on you. Make sure it's not, you don't only send it when you have something to sell. Authors are like, Oh, I have a new book so I'll send it out. But yeah, but that's then it becomes a sales tool. Newsletters, you're basically just saying Hi, just checking in. You know, here's some new stuff I've been working on. Here's some new content I've written for you. Here's a new podcast that I've created for you, like those are the kinds of things you want to have on your newsletter and then when you do have a new book, people are so much more generous, you know, with their attention and their time and their money than they would be if you hadn't been giving them useful information. 

Mindy: Absolutely. And I was doing newsletters wrong for the longest time, gathering emails pretty sporadically and more or less doing an email when I had a cover reveal. And then when my book came out and my unsubscribed levels were so high because people wouldn't remember that they signed up in the first place. I was getting spam complaints. I’d be like, No, you signed up, but it's like, No, they don't remember because it was six months ago. So what I do, I send it once a month. I send my newsletter on the first of the month, and I have a section at the top - Now, for the longest time, I did struggle with promoting myself as an author versus promoting myself as a person that helps other writers. So I ended up landing like somewhere in between, and instead of doing two newsletters, I have one that has a section that is for my readers, and it just has news. What's up with me and things like that, but also like this is what I'm reading or I just finished this book. It's really good. I'm giving it away now and I go to my blog and enter to win it. And here's a picture of my cat. And here's a news article about the best new mystery books of 2021. You know, stuff for readers. Halfway through its the Writer Writer Pants on Fire header and it says for my writers and it's got - This is what's been on the blog this month. This was what was on the podcast this month and then usually an article about writing or publishing.

Fauzia: So you're actually providing things of value and things are fun, you know, obviously connecting with your personal life as well. That's ideal. That's perfect. And, you know, you're basically, I'm so glad to hear that you do everything under one under your name. That's another thing that I think authors get confused about. There was a time when authors were told that they needed a website and social media for each book - craziness. And even now, when authors come to me and say, But I have this business and I’m like everything under your name. Everything under your name. You know, it's one umbrella, because it's so hard to create a following. You can't do it over and over again, like you just cannot do it. So it's really important. In fact, I'm not a big fan of pseudonyms for that reason, too, because it's so hard to create a following. And if you come out of thin air, meaning you don't even start with the network that you know already knows you and loves you, then it's even harder. 

Mindy: I've seen multiple, especially Indie and romance authors. So, for example, they might write erotica under one name. They write cozy mysteries under another. They use the same website. They have it clearly delineated, So it's like, you know, this is a spicy side, and this is the sugary side, right? It's so smart because, like you're saying you're drawing on the same audience, you're pulling them to the same place.

Fauzia: You never know. One might like the other, you know, might want to cross over into the naughty and the nice side, who knows?

Mindy: The only area where that does where I think it’s a mistake is if you write for Children or teens and you also right something like erotic or something adult, then you definitely need to separate those. 

Fauzia: Absolutely. I remember one time I was speaking at a conference and, you know, giving my spiel about why people should really think a lot before taking on a pseudonym, because it's a you know, it's basically you're launching a business under that name. And so you want to make sure that it's not something that you just did for one book that you really think it through. And one woman raised her hand and said, You know, I write erotica. I'm writing it under my pseudonym because of my career. She was a kindergarten teacher and I was like, You absolutely need a pseudonym. Yes, you do. You absolutely do. But you know, that's not the case for everyone. But I think any time that you have a situation or a category that doesn't kind of mesh with the rest of your life or something, yes, I understand that, But those things have to be thought through. 

Mindy: I was just remembering while we're having this conversation. There was an author and I looked it up really quick to make sure I was reiterating the story correctly. September of 2019 there was an article in Publishers Weekly about an author. Her name is Julia Watts. She was a YA author, and she had been invited to participate in a teen lit book festival. And she had at that point written 10 books for Y A. And they did feature LGBTQ characters. No one seemed to have a problem about that. There's a line here where it says even Catholic Library World raved about her books. So I mean, there's an endorsement. However, it seems like the indie bookseller that was supplying the books for the festival, Googled her and found out she had also written erotica. And it became an issue as to whether or not because she published the erotica under her same name, and then she was disinvited from the festival because they did not want to be promoting, literally the name and have a teen or a middle grade reader even Google her, and be like, Oh, who is this that's going to be at this festival and then accidentally pull up some erotica, so I mean that is one instance where you do want to divorce the two 100%.

Fauzia: Under those circumstances, I can understand it, but it is something to think things through as you're building your platform. 

Mindy: And when you say platform like what all would you consider falls underneath that umbrella of an author platform?

Fauzia: I have this formula that I use with my clients with my consulting clients, and it's called Design + Engagement + Visibility = Success. A lot of times when I'm working with authors and they're, you know, working on building their platform or just starting out, they have a million ideas, and I'm sure you've seen this. Many people have a million ideas about what they should be doing. And so I have to tell authors that not everything that they are thinking about is equally important. There is a phased way of building a platform, and it's important for us to focus on it in that phased way, because then it's more effective. 

So the first stage is that design phase, and in that design phase, what I mean by that is how does your website look? How is your social media? Do you have a platform or mailing list? Have you picked one? Literally creating the bones of your platform, because without that, the rest of it is actually a lot of work without actually turning that into something that's going to be useful for your brand in the long run. So what happens is if you have a website that's either dated or doesn't look very attractive or has four million words on it - you know it and I know it - this is a typical author thing. You may do other things, but by the time people come to your website, they are going to feel so overwhelmed and they're gonna just bounce right? So if you do all these other things, I mean, some authors spend thousands of dollars doing publicity, and I look at their website and I think, Wow, I would have never taken them on without fixing this first. 

You can do all the publicity you want, but publicity only really brings people back to some destination. That's the idea is that people will be, you know, might see you doing a podcast on another show and say, Oh, I've really liked Mindy. You know, she was great, go look her up. That's what people would do. And so when they look you up and your website is dated from, you know, 1996 they're probably gonna go. I think... forget it. Or you're not on social media. So here they are, kind of interested in learning more about you and your dogs, and they go to your Facebook page and you don't have one. That relationship ended, right? Like that relationship just now ended. That first piece where you can keep the relationship going is so important. 

So we work on design first, which is website, mailing list, social media blogs. That's sort of like, What are we going to do? Where are we going to do it? How does it all look? Do we have one photo across all channels? Do we have a unified color theme? Do we have a unified look? It doesn't have to be identical, but you want people to be like, I'm in your space. Once we've done that piece, then we move on to engagement. And engagement is How often are you going to blog? How often are you going to send your newsletter? How often are you going to talk to people on social media? How often are you going to listen to people on social media? Because people think you can hire someone to talk for you. But I always tell them nobody can listen for you, which is actually more important work on that engagement piece and honestly, the engagement piece is for the rest of your life, right? 

Like you do that piece, Mindy, and you're always going to be doing it. This is marketing, but for a lot of authors, they are all over the place. And they're like, Well, I'm on Twitter, and I'm like, Okay, well, I'm not that interested in that right now. Let's work on this first. Then we move on to what the content strategy is going to be, creating an editorial calendar. So it gives authors a little bit more structure, for something that feels very daunting to them. And then once those two things are in place, then you can think about advertising and publicity and all of the other pieces, because then you're set to leverage that attention. So if you get a book review somewhere and someone says, wow, this looks really interesting. I'm going to go check the website out or I'm going to follow this author on social media or I really love their blog. I'm signing up for their mailing list, which is the most committed you can get is someone signed up for the mailing list. 

So you want people to have multiple ways of engaging with you once you've gotten their attention and to be, that's what the brand picture looks like. You do it in this order and you do it all the time because obviously it's not something you do just for launching a book. You kind of set this up, and then the launch of the book falls into that visibility piece. But it's not something that you do only when your book comes out. You know, so many think you just do it for two months before and a month after, and then next time your audience is just gonna be sitting there waiting for you to come back to them. You know, that's just not how it happens anymore. So that's sort of my little formula, and it helps authors when they come to me and what about this and I'm like, That's not the phase we're in. And let's come back to that later. Just because otherwise it just feels very overwhelming. And I want my authors to have fun with this because it is fun. You know, it's gonna be so much fun if they just understand the rules and kind of the structure around it. 

Mindy: It can be very rewarding. I mean, like, you get those personal moments and I've had so many emails that begin with, you know, I don't know if you remember me or things like that, but I've even had - because I do interact on social media. I respond to the comments, and if someone asked me a question like I'm going to interact. I've had people - when we were still doing in person events - will be like, Hey, I'm going to be in, you know, Minnesota tonight. If you're near St. Paul come to my signing and somebody will respond to be like, Oh my gosh, I'm so excited what time? And I'll say seven PM and, um, they'll be going through the signing line and usually they’ll mention it. I tweeted you today, and I'm like Oh, Tara! And they're like, Oh, my God! Yeah, I mean, I responded to you. I made a note of your name and you came to the event and I remembered your name and like, blew her mind. 

Fauzia: It's amazing. And she bought your book. And because you remembered her, she's probably going to go sign up for your mailing list, right? She's a connection. And now she wants to. Right? So that's kind of how branding works. It's not some mystery. It's not like we're trying to create a Coca Cola logo for every author, but it's a way to keep a relationship with your readers, and it's a long term investment. It's not something you do just for the launch. It really is your, every launch, I bet Mindy, every book of yours probably does a little bit better than the one before it, and it's because of the work that you do on a consistent basis.

Mindy: For the most part. Yes, I get that consistent, and I and I'm at the point now I think I think I have 12 books out where, um, you know, on Instagram, for example, a bookstagrammer will be like, you know, Mindy is an auto-buy author for me. I've done enough work of putting out consistently that I have people that are like, Oh, Mindy has a book out. I'm going to buy it. Yes, that feels good. 

Fauzia: That's trust, right? And so you have built trust over your career by multiple multiple ways. I mean, you're literally the classic case study because not only have you written good, consistent books, which is all people thought they needed to do at one point, right, remember? Yes, you do need to keep doing that. But then, on the other hand, you've also built engagement with your readers. You've also given them quality material. You've done all of these things that have built the solid trust for you. And you know what's the biggest benefit of having this kind of trust and Loyalty with your readers is that they are actually immune to bad reviews. Your core super fans don't really care if other people don't like your book. This is why you do all that work is that your readers then become that loyal to you, which is pretty remarkable, and it takes a lot of work. Let's not make light of it. I mean, when you started this conversation and honestly told people how many hours a day you are putting into it, I think that's really important for artists to know, because so many of them are like, Well, I can do something for 20 minutes a day. What do you want me to do? And I'm like, Okay, but I'm just saying it's going to take a lot longer. Everything is.

Mindy: And this is something I've noticed, particularly on the social media side, Now with the blog, I'm trying to put up content for people to really interact with and learn from. But on the social media side, especially Twitter for the longest time, like I would get frustrated because I would put out what I felt was like good advice. Really, like, you know, listen to me about publishing or writing or whatever, and people would be like, Okay. You know where they would interact,  I get retweeted like once. Where like, for example, today, which I'll be tweeting this shortly. I just got home. We're in blizzard-like conditions here and I had to run to the store, I needed two things. I just needed two things - I needed a treatment for a yeast infection and then Cool Whip. So it's like, That's what I bought. I bought Monistat and Cool Whip and I'm just going through the line thinking, this is an interesting combination. And I'm telling you, when I tweet that, that gets all the hearts, all the retweets, all the likes, everybody, they're all over that. So it's like, you know, you don't have to put your... your tweet is not going to win a Pulitzer. 

Fauzia: In fact, there was this funny cartoon. I saw it on The New Yorker. This was a few years ago, maybe even 5-6 years ago. But it was this man sitting at a computer, you know, typing and uh, really frustrated. And the bubble says, “Two Likes? Two likes? That post took me two hours to write!” Yeah, that we all understand that. But I think one of the things about posting something like your shopping list is that it's so real it makes people feel like, Hey, that could be me. You know? They feel a connection for sure, and not everybody is comfortable with that. And not everybody is good at that. I mean, I've worked with authors who have 200,000 people following them on Twitter that do not result in 200,000 sales. So it's not really the number of people. It's the engagement of the people who are actually following you. That is so much more important. Of course, you know, everybody likes to have the big numbers, so that's kind of what a lot of times publishers are also chasing. So everybody's like, Oh, I need this. Otherwise I don't get a book deal now I think people are starting to realize that it's the mailing list where it's all at. 

Mindy: It's the quality of the interaction. When I speak about things like, you know, here I am tweeting about a yeast infection. You know, if I wrote for middle grade, I wouldn't be doing that. But I write for YA, and I write really edgy stuff. I was a speaker at a conference for librarians. I said the eff word kind of by accident, but you know, it just naturally came out. We get feedback and it was, You know, it was a room full of adults. I got feedback, and the vast majority of them were like, I'm so glad that Mindy is herself and is comfortable and it reflects in her books and etcetera. And I did have one person say that was really unprofessional. I didn't like it. She said the eff word. And I was like, Well, that's fair. Is it professional? Probably not. Is it also an active reflection of what you're going to see in my books? Yes, it is. 

Fauzia: So you're probably not the reader of my books, you know, exactly. You can't be all things to all people. One of the things that I really work on with my clients is making sure that we're very clear about our audience. You know, when we don't know who your audience is, you kind of like are all over the place. You just don't have an anchor. In my book, I have a worksheet. People can actually fill it out. And, you know, we don't know for sure. Of course, people. If they looked at data, they would know a lot more information. But even without that, artists do have an instinctive idea about who their readers are. And if they just push themselves, they can actually get a pretty good feel for where, you know, if you just ask them. Is it predominantly male or female? That your audience, you know, and they'll be like, Oh, I think it's probably this. Is your audience between 18 and 25 or are they between 55-70? And they pretty much have an idea. It gives you so much balance in terms of your marketing efforts, because if you are thinking, your audience is 18 to 25. But you’re marketing like you’re marketing to the 50 to 70 year olds, yeah, you're not gonna make it right? It's not gonna work. You've got to market to your demographic, to your audience. No one needs to do all things. 

Mindy: Interestingly, you know, Tik Tok has become the big thing, and I have people ask me, Are you on Tiktok? And I'm like, No, because I'm 41. 

Fauzia: I hear you, Mindy, but I think it's going to blow up in the next couple of years, and I know it is moving in that direction. But it's not for kids anymore. 

Mindy: That's true. So like, for example, Facebook changed dramatically. The teens are not there anymore. I have a huge strong following on Facebook because a lot of my readers are also adults, Librarians, teachers, right? 

Fauzia: And parents. So, yeah, absolutely. You are so clear about your audience. And I think that makes all the difference in the world to, like, really have that handle on it. But you're right, Tiktok and now Clubhouse is pretty cool. And we'll see that it takes off and whether it's going to, you know, it's always fun because I've been doing this for so long now, you know, god, 25 years. I've seen a lot of the platforms come literally before my eyes and see what takes off and which ones don't. And Google Plus was a disaster, as we all know.

Mindy: Terrible. 

Fauzia: I love these kind of digital tools because you kind of see which ones are resonating. Why they're resonating. Why now? So it'll be interesting to see where it goes.

Mindy: It is a good point that you make because you don't know what the next thing is going to be. And so I make it a point, like if something... I have a Clubhouse account and I've never used it yet. I mean, it kind of just became a thing. I try to get in if there's something that looks like it might be big now, TikTok not so much, but that's like I said partially because also, like when it started, it was so much about dancing, and I have no moves. Things like Clubhouse. And then there was something that was supposed to be the new Facebook that was called Ello. That was around briefly. I go in and I get my name. 

Fauzia: That's great. That's so smart. You make a really good point that you do need to grab your name, especially if you have a common name, so you definitely want to grab it just in case. But the other thing, because authors just feel very overwhelmed. They're like, I'm just starting to get a handle on Instagram, for God's sake. I generally tell them that they don't have to be an early adopter, but yes, you're right. You want to go get your name At least you know as soon as you can, just in case.

Mindy: Last thing, why don't you let my listeners know where they can find you and your services online? 

Fauzia: I tell people that the reason I married my husband is because I got the Irish last name, which is Burke, and my first name is Persian. So there's only one Fauzia Burke out there, which is the benefit of having a very unusual combination of a name. So you can literally search my name. It's Fauzia Burke. You'll find me. It's fauziaburke.dot com is my website. My company website is FSB associates dot com. We have a platform for building Author websites, which is Pub Site. 

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.

Landall Proctor On the Vulnerability of Writing Memoir

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

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Mindy: So we're here with Landall Proctor, whose memoir Headwinds is about an attempt to bike around the perimeter of the United States riding 10,000 miles in 100 days. So first of all, just tell me about that decision. What made you decide? Hey, this is what I'm doing now? 

Landall: I talk about it a little bit in the foreword of the book. I think the absolute objective like answer to that question is, I was in my early twenties and I was working a job that I was really unhappy, and my boss also happened to be a friend of mine. And so it made conversations about being like, unhappy with that job really, really sort of challenging. And I didn't have the emotional maturity to have those difficult conversations. And so I was looking for an out, but in a way that didn't result in some sort of like drag out blowout conversation where we like, left mad at each other. 

A friend of mine mentioned that in college he rode his bike- he went to college in Chicago and his family had a house on the coast of Maine, and he convinced his girlfriend at the time that they should ride there instead of driving or flying. So they did, and the story was just filled with mishaps and hilarity and and all sorts of things, and ended with his girlfriend literally got to their family's house and said, “This relationship’s over. Take me to the airport.” 

It was just such a great story that it sort of planted a seed in my head that I felt like, you know, I would like to ride my bike across the country, and it's sort of connected the dots with, like, Oh, well, my boss won't get mad at me if I'm quitting because I want to go on this epic adventure. It was not something that I have had sort of in the back of my mind for years, and planned and planned and planned and was prepared for. As readers would find out, I was very ill prepared for the trip from a logistic standpoint, pretty much from the start the stars aligned in a way that just made me think like sure, why not? I could do that.

Mindy: The early twenties is the time to do something like that. It's when you feel invincible and also like you're an adult now. I remember my early twenties. I got married in my early twenties.

Landall: I graduated from college with a religious studies degree with no interest in doing anything related to religion. And in 2006, we weren't like at the height of the job crash, I guess, we sort of, like, historically look on it now. But it wasn't exactly like a plentiful job market to roll into with sort of a non applicable degree to, like, you know, sustaining like employment. So I moved back in with my parents. I was living at home at the time. All the ways, like embarrassing. But what it did do is it gave me the opportunity to be able to do this trip because I had no obligations. I didn't have, like, rent that I had to pay when I was gone or a lease to get out of. I wasn't in a long term relationship. So the timing in that aspect also worked out well.

Mindy: As someone that also has a degree in religious studies, I can back you up on that really hard. I graduated from college with a degree in English literature and a degree in religious studies. No desire to teach. Didn’t have the qualifications to teach either. I didn't major in education, so I didn't want to teach. I didn't want to go into the ministry in any way. And I was like, Well, I mean, I feel very educated, but I'm not employable. So I got married, like that was my answer. You moved in with your parents. I got married. I think it’s Interesting, the freedom aspect being a huge contributor to your decision. I really like that. So how much time had passed then, in between you making this trip and then making the decision to write it down?

Landall: Right before I left for the trip a friend of mine who was like a critical component to letting me even be able to, like get myself together and the capacity of acquiring equipment and plans and things like that right before I left, handed me a moleskin journal. He's like your book will come from here, you know, And at that time it wasn't a thing that I'd even considered, but I did. I journaled every night just would write down the things that happened. Whatever funny interactions, stories, whatever, like, came to mind at the end of each day. And when I got back from the trip, I opened up that journal and I read through it and I sat down and I would start writing and would almost immediately stop. For all the reasons someone starts and stops writing a book, you know, I would overthink like what kind of book it was supposed to be. 

I remember very distinctly at the time when I was planning for the trip, I was just desperate because I didn't have a big, like I said, a lot of experience in terms of doing these types of things. So I was desperate to just read other people's experiences and what they encountered or what they did. And from a bike packing--which the term didn't even exist in 2006-- but from a bike packing experience like, no one had written about that. There just wasn't anything out there. And so I ended up reading like Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods. They weren't helpful from a like, Here's how you do this and don't die perspective. And so when I got back, I was like, Well, maybe that's what I should write about 

And then I was like, Well, but like, I didn't even -- spoiler -- didn't even finish my set out loop of the country. Who's going to take my advice on, like how to do this thing, you know? And so I just could never get settled on what the book was supposed to be. And I would also get caught up in self doubt. And like all who wants to read anything I'm going to write? And those types of things. And so just the project always just got pushed aside fast forward then, like many, many years. So in the fall of 2019, me and my ex wife, who we were living in Detroit at the time, decided we didn't really want to live in Detroit anymore. We neither one of us wanted a custody battle with our kid. We sat down and figured out a place that we could move together and we settled on Berkeley, California. 

I'm a software developer. I was kind of burned out from it. And so I took the opportunity during that move to just not look for another job. You know, I had some savings. I was going to be able to sustain myself. And I thought, you know, now is the time. You know, now is the time to, like, write that book, and I still didn't quite know what kind of book it was gonna be. But I guess I just was like, age and maturity. I decided that I wasn't gonna let that be the thing that got in the way. This time I was just going to start writing the stories, see what it ended up being, And I hope that it would inform itself through the process. So it was 14 years between coming back from the trip and before I actually sat down and, you know, hammering out pages.

Mindy: I've never written a memoir, but I really do think that that would be a great approach because you have distance from those experiences and those stories, and you're actually coming to those journals, into your own writing in that period of your own life with a different perspective than you had in that moment. Because you have 14 more years of experience. What was your experience then coming back to these stories 14 years later? Were there things that you had forgotten? Were there things that surprised you? Were there things that you were like? Man, I wish I would have done that differently. 

Landall: I mean, without the journal, there's no way I would have been able to write even remotely half these stories. There are things like reading the journal, I was surprised at how vividly details of conversations would like come back to me, where without that journal, I had completely forgotten the person I've had that conversation with, like, existed on the planet. It was really amazing how our brain works in that capacity, right? I think you're exactly right. The space between and allowing for my own worldview to develop further and create a little bit more of a nuanced realization of how different people see The world, I think, allowed me to like write some of the interactions and stories from the book in a way that if I had done it in 2006, I would have still been, like, amped up on the rage of them putting me in an awkward position to talk about. 

I got proselytized quite a bit by people that I would stay with and at the time. And I didn't want that. You know, I didn't ask for them to be like, concerned about my soul. You know, I would be like, really angry that this was happening to me. If I had written that in 2006, I would have been like these assholes blah, blah, you know? But I just think like the way that I wrote it now with some space and like, they view things differently than me. I didn't appreciate what they were doing, and I still didn't like it. They were doing what they thought was the thing. And so I tried in those cases to leave some space for whoever's reading it to determine their own sort of, like take on those situations, right? Maybe they side with the people who wanted to save my soul for Jesus. Or maybe they side with me. The kid who just, like, wanted to drink some coffee and get back on the road. 2006 version of me would have been like, You must side with me on this. 

Mindy: Your twenties are kind of polarizing. You're always right. I truly wish I would have kept a journal when I was younger. Not necessarily in my twenties, perhaps in my teens. Not that I did anything amazing than either, but what's astonishing to me - You're right. The brain is not quite the functioning machine that we believe it is. And I have done so much reading. I read a lot of nonfiction, and I've done some reading about how we don't Medical science doesn't necessarily understand how our brains even really work and memory, especially. It's something I've read a lot about. It's a malleable thing. It's just like ballast, like they'll just drop stuff we don't need and aren't using.

And I'll have conversations with people from high school or people from college that will be like, Yeah, then this happened, and this happened and you did this and it was so cool this thing that you did or so funny and I'm like, I have no idea what you're talking about. Like I don't remember being there. Was I drunk? What? Are you, Are you sure that was me? I have no recollection of this. And they're like, No, dude, like that was the thing. You were there, man. That sounds interesting. I don't remember.

And funnily enough, I even have experiences Where my dad, if I'll talk about something that he has that reaction to where he's like, Yeah, I don't remember that at all. And he'll be like, You dreamt that. That's just his dismissive answer. He's like no, you dreamt it. I don't know what you're talking about. And so sometimes I'll even have moments where I'm like Wait a minute. Am I making this up? Did I dream that? Did that really happen, or has my author's brain created this narrative around this thing that is not reality. Like that is not what happened. 

So many people I know journal and I admire them for that. I personally... my therapist has been like many times - you should journal. I've never written a word just because so much of my life is words. Freelance editing. I write, you know, the podcast on the blog, and it's like words are work for me. So I think your story is definitely a notch in The belt for people that journal.

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Mindy: I want to talk a little bit about something. You had written a guest post on my blog for me and one of the things that you talked about specifically was one of the first roadblocks. And for me, I think, and for many other people who were to consider writing a memoir is you know, who the hell cares? What is the audience for this? Exposing yourself, first of all to assuming that anybody is going to care about your story. But then also, the question of how vulnerable am I going to make myself? And  how honest, am I going to be? How revealing am I going to be? And you already said you didn't actually achieve your goal. And yet you still are writing this book and sharing these stories. So talk to me a little bit about that just in this role of, What the hell is even the point here and anyway, number one. And number two - how much of my true self and true experience am I going to share?

Landall: So I think there's actually sort of, like, two answers to that question. The first is I didn't finish the loop piece because I struggled with that quite a bit, like even after the trip. And obviously I talk about it, um, in the book itself. But the trip, as it was set out, was a totally arbitrary goal. The way that I came to trying to do an entire loop was really like a random node on my thought path, where I had read an article years previous, about a motorcycle trip where, the Honda Gold Wing. Those big like touring motorcycles, when the new version was coming out, they had set up these four different guys To each ride up, essentially to the four corners of the U. S. The one guy would ride from, like Key West to some point in Maine, and then he would hand it off to another guy. And then that guy rode it from Maine to Seattle. And then he handed it off to another guy and that guy, and so they connected the four corners of the US that way.

And so as I was thinking about the trip and most people just ride across the country again, like early twenties bravado, I was like, I guess I could ride across the country. But instead I could also - and my head thought back to this article - and I thought I could connect all four corners and not realize how absurd that would be. But also how arbitrary that was as well. It was absolutely my goal to complete that loop, but it was also completely invented by me. Still, I did not accomplish what I set out to do. That really grated on me for just years. 

And then Cheryl Strayed - and I'm not comparing myself to her in any capacity is a writer - But Wild came out. And then here was a story of someone who had gone on this established hiking route, the PCT, and she didn't finish it, But yet she wrote a book about it and clearly like the parallels between our stories ends there, you know, like we don't have a lot of other things in common. You know, she didn't finish the entire Pacific Crest Trail. And then so in the back of my head, I was like Huh? I haven't heard a single person say like, Oh, this is a good story. But what about the Washington portion of the trip that she didn't do? 

Realizing that did not make me immediately, like run to my computer and start writing. It was still years before I sat down and wrote Headwinds, but it did at least plant a seed that like Oh, like, maybe my own internal hang up on not finishing isn't as big of a deal to other people as it has been to me. And maybe there's something in that to be like, poked and prodded. 

And so what made me think that people would want to read it? I don't know if they do want to read it. There's a lot of people that were integral parts of this trip that I always wanted to tell them all of the stories but never had time. Invite them over for dinner and say here, Please sit while I hold court for, you know, 10 hours and tell you every story of my bike trip, right? And so there were just lots of stories. There's lots of funny stories that make the highlight reel as I'm sitting around with friends in bars. I accidentally spent the night at a nudist colony, and by accident part, I mean my mom set me up to do that, and did not inform me ahead of time until large, naked people on golf carts were driving past me as I made my way to the to the office to check in. 

Those stories make the rotation right, like somebody says tell me about your trip. Everybody thinks the nudist colony stories are funny. So I'll tell that one. But there's lots of other stories that never got told. I wanted to tell the people who, like, really helped with the trip. Just yesterday, in fact, I got a text message from one of those people. She was like, Look, I don't read any book slowly, but I'm reading yours so slow because while I thought we talked about it a lot and I knew a lot of these stories, she's like, I'm discovering new things that, like I had no idea about, and I'm just really enjoying the rest of the stories. The ones she was unaware of. 

And so I think like when I sat down to write it, I didn't know who would be interested, but I sort of viewed it as a very long thank you note to the people that helped the trip come to fruition. Way back in 2006. I didn't and I don't have grand aspirations for this book to change the way that I support myself or my family. So I think taking that pressure off of it allowed me to worry less about who would potentially want to read this thing and know that I had, like, an audience that I just wanted to tell these stories to as sort of a thank you. And then if I could get even more people to read it than that, then that's great. That's fantastic, that just icing on the cake. 

Mindy: I love what you're saying about arbitrary goals, especially because I have always been  an athlete. As an adult, I certainly haven't been competitive, but when we went into lockdown last winter, my gym closed, you know, and I'm like, Oh, crap, because I had always been active, but I usually went to the gym. It's a CrossFit gym. I went to the gym like twice a week. That was kind of it. So when everything shut down, I was like, Oh, man, you're going to have to do this on your own. You're going to make your own rules. 

So you know, I went and my gym was posting workouts online for you to do at home. So I went to town and I bought myself a kettle bell and a Wall ball and some free weights. I started running. I've never been a runner. I've never been good at running. I played softball and basketball. Running was punishment for doing your sport wrong. I live in the middle of nowhere. And in the lock down world, it was just like, Well, you have all the time and running is free. So go do it. 

So I started running and I was working out every night. For the very first time in my life, I ran a mile. The only reason I even managed it was because it was very, very foggy out. So I couldn't see the stop sign that represented the mile, so I had no idea, really, how much longer I had to go. I just kept going. And I was like, and then I got there and I'm like, I actually feel okay, so the lock down helped me get to a point where I could run a 5K. Pretty much like every morning I would wake up, run a 5K, and then work out in the evenings. And I am here at 41 probably the healthiest and the strongest that I've been in my life. 

All that being said last night, I go to the gym and we had a CrossFit workout. It was a good workout. I won't recite the whole workout, but it was a hundred reps of seven different movements, and the very last one was we had to do 100 Burpees at the end of the workout. It sucked. And it's like when I saw the board, I was like, Oh, shit. I didn't do it. I couldn't... I actually could not do it. So we did like, I think, you know, 100 wall balls, 100 sit ups, 100 push ups, 100 whatever's, squats. And then it was time to do 100 Burpees. And I think I did 50 and I quit and I have never quit a workout before, ever. And I went home last night just feeling like shit. I was like dude What the hell is wrong with you? What is wrong with you? You couldn't do 100 Burpees. I stopped and I thought about it. I was like, Okay, however, a year ago, you couldn't have done the first two reps. Like you couldn't have done the first two activities. So shut the hell up, Mindy. And so I do think we set these arbitrary goals for ourselves. Good for us for being humble people. But if I don't hit my goals, I'm just like you're a piece of shit, right? It's like I'm pissed at myself and I don't recognize everything that I did write up before I quit. 

Landall: You'll go back to your cross fit gym the next time, and everyone will be happy to see you, you know, and they'll be asking you how your day's been going, what have you been up to. And then, you know, no one's going to say like, Hey, what have you done to improve on those like 50 Burpees that you didn't do? 

That was my experience too. I got home, I got back to my folks place and I just was hiding in my bedroom. Hoping that, like I didn't even tell my friends that I was back, you know? I guess, someone saw me. My buddy Cary texted me and he's like, Hey, rumor has it you're back in town. Is that true? And I was, you know, like hesitantly.. I probably wrote like four different responses before finally sending off like, Yes I'm back. And he's like, Cool, let's go to dinner and you tell me some stories. Nobody cared. No one cared that I didn't complete this full loop. Like every person that I was nervous, that I had let down in some capacity, just wanted to, they just wanted to hear stories. They wanted to tell me how happy they were that I didn't die, you know, like apparently a lot of people thought I was going to die. 

So they were just all very, very happy. And another component of the trip was I raised money for the local Meals on Wheels program. I wrote a check for a little over $5000 to them for the trip, which, which felt really nice. And so I went in to call them. It was like, Hey, I'm back. I'd love to, like, give you guys the check and they're like, Oh, yeah, come on in for lunch one day and they had set up like a full, like the entire, all the volunteers and staff and everything were just like in this like room. And it was all people who I had never seen before because I'd only really been in contact with, like, a few folks from the organization. Who are all these people and why do they care? They wanted to hear stories. It was all very emotionally overwhelming. It's sort of reiterated that these are arbitrary goals. They're great to set. You should obviously work very hard to achieve things that you set out to do. But sometimes the failure part of that is more in our head than maybe our peers or friends care about.

Mindy: Absolutely. I have a lifting partner. We don't work out that often together because he's a dude. We usually pair off girls, girls, guys, guys. But if there's an uneven amount he and I will work together. He lifts more than I do. But we lift at about the same rate of speed. Like some people really fly through workouts. I think more about my form and like trying to do things right. But also, it's like I'll stop. I gotta stop. I gotta take a drink of water. I gotta wipe my forehead. I gotta blow my nose. You know, he and I work at about the same rate. It wasn't a partner workout last night. We weren't paired up, but he was already done. So he was giving me a hard time because that's just what we do. We just give each other shit. That's part of a gym. Like he was like counting my reps partially To, screw with me, but partially also like, encouraging me to keep going. And I looked at the clock and I've been working out for 45 minutes and I was like, I'm done and he's like, No, come on, He's like, you can do this. You only have 50 more left. I was like No, dude, I actually can't. I physically am not able to do 50 more Burpees. It’s not gonna happen. And you know, at first he did what a good training partner does, which is like, Yeah, you can! Come on, let's go And he's even like, I'll do them with you. Let's go! And I was like, No, I'm done. And he saw it in my face that I was done and he was like, Okay, he's like, That's cool. That's cool. I'll leave you alone. He's going to, I'm sure, give me shit about it tonight. He will also be glad that, like you said, be glad that I show up and then I come back. It was the first time I'd ever quit a workout. He's still my friend and is still impressed that I show up every day. So, you know, it's like Yeah, I couldn't do 100 burpees at that particular moment in my life. I thought I was gonna puke. I have yet to. I have pissed my pants, but I have not puked.

Landall: I’ve had that experience, but I have vomited during workouts before, but I think sometimes because I thought if I did it would make for a better story to tell my friends afterwards. I'm not sure that I’ve ever peed my pants though.

Mindy: I was pretty proud of pissing my pants, to be honest with you, because that’s like a rite of passage. So I told everybody. I was like - pissed my pants. It’s a lot easier for women to piss their pants than it is for men. I'll just say that. 

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Mindy: Last thing I want to talk to you about is the decision To actually move towards publishing. So you've written the book. You had the book. Now you're at the moment of deciding the method, the mode of publishing. So there's traditional publishing, attempting to get an agent and move through the traditional publishing world or self published or use an indie publisher. So what was your process there? 

Landall: I had a manuscript, right? So I sat down and I wrote the whole thing out and had, like, a first draft. I thought that my best bet, going back to the idea that, like, if this thing turned out to just be a very long thank you note to the people that helped, I was going to be totally content with that outcome. And so From that point, I was like, Okay, well, I want to keep working towards that goal so that I had something to give to people. 

So I hired an Editor. So then it became, instead of the writing process, it was going through and editing, and we went through it four times. We made a lot of decisions on what stories should stay and go. The first version, The Rough Draft, the first one that she started with 730 pages. The current published version in six by nine paperback is like 334 pages. So quite a bit of stories got cut for a variety of reasons.

To get to the crux of your question, I felt that my best chance if I was gonna have a publisher have any interest in this was to present them as close to a polished version as possible. And so we got to the point where we were happy with where we were at. I wrote up a couple proposals. I figured sending it to large publishing houses was not going to result in anything just cause I’m a complete, unknown entity, you know? So I thought maybe some small publishers that specialized in outdoor adventure or memoirs and things like that would be open to the idea of the project. Sent them off. And then it became like that waiting game, and it just... I had no confidence that I was going to get a positive response back from any of these publishers that they wanted it, but not from a like, I don't think this is good enough, but from a like you don't know who I am. I'm sure that you're wading through hundreds of these proposals at any given time. 

I just decided that I was tired of kind of  waiting to see it, like in print, since the last time I looked into self publishing like the whole world seems to have changed, right? You don't have to order 1000 copies of your own book and store them in your living room and try to peddle them through your own website anymore. Right? So I just used Amazon KDP. And so I don't have any of those overhead costs. And so, you know, I wasn't gonna have to shell out thousands of dollars of my own money to get the printing per unit costs down to something stomachable. 

I just decided. You know what? This is the way that I could see this thing in print and I could start sending out some of these thank you notes. So that's what I did. It just sort of, like met the needs. And the central goal of this project was to get it out there and not necessarily Like I said, I don't think that this is going to change the way that I'm supporting my family. And so, waiting on a publisher, I felt like I had been working on it long enough, and I wanted To see it live. So I just made that decision to go ahead and go the self publishing route. 

Mindy: That is true of so many people that I talk to that have self published. And I totally understand that urge. I write under a pen name as well with some friends and all that is self published stuff. And most of it in my world, I write very dark, very gritty and realistic fiction. Everything that I write is pretty rough around the edges. But I have ideas that are fun or silly or just, you know, off the wall and bonkers. And I can't really ever print those under my real name because it would skew my brand so badly. And it's something that I've talked with my agent about, especially about one of the very first books I ever finished, and she was just like, Yeah, it's great and it's fun, But it goes against your brand so hard that publishers gonna have a hard time marketing this and I was like, Yeah, I get it. That makes sense. 

But it's a book that I care about. I don't know. I mean again, it's not going to change the world. It's silly. It's a fun beach read. That's not what I write, but I did write it I can write that. I enjoy writing it. So eventually here, hopefully this year, I'm going to be self publishing that under my pen name because it's fun. I like writing. It doesn't have the depth and the smack in the face that my writing under my real name does. And that's fine. It still has value. It still has worth, and I have fun making it. So my opinion, much like the self publishing world, has changed. How I feel about and view self publishing has changed very much in the past 10 years. 

Landall: I should say, like Maybe as a caveat, You know, if someone from some you know, publishing house is listening to this and they want to talk,I look like I'm open to negotiation, right? I'm happy to have that. I'm happy to have that conversation. 

At the time. It felt like, you know, I wrote every day during that break between jobs to get all the words down and get the story out. I just felt this sort of anxiety over the waiting period that was inevitable with trying to, you know, to shop it properly and stuff. And I was just like, man, I just like I don't know if I have that in me, I wanna hold it, You know?

Mindy: We call it a book, baby, but it is very much like having a baby. You grow it for nine months. It's in there. People can kind of interact with it, but you haven't... you wanna be like, here's the thing that I made, right? And like I said, my opinions about self publishing have changed because the industry itself has changed dramatically. But I would never tell someone that they have made a mistake or gone the easy route by going with self publishing. It has its own trials and tribulations and they are different from trad publishing. But they’re there.

Landall: Also like a couple other independent authors that I have discovered who started with self publishing too, and I enjoyed their books so much, and I was like, Man, these guys are such talented writers. If they’re as good as they are and they self published, it sort of took some of that - If there was gonna be a stigma about it, which I didn't really feel - but if there was like that would have completely taken it away, these guys were great. 

Mindy: The pool of talent in self publishing is very, very different than it was 10 to 15 years ago for sure. Last thing. Why don't you let listeners know where they can find the book Headwinds and where they can find you online? 

Landall: Landall Proctor dot com Is my little space on the Internet. There's a link to your Headwinds there where you could get more information. There's a link, so it's available on Amazon readily. Iif you happen to live in Berkeley, California and you want to buy from a local bookstore, Books Inc on Shattuck Avenue is carrying it, which is really cool. There's a couple copies available there. I'd love for them to get purchased so they want more of them. You can find me on Instagram @Landall basically like with a name like Landall, I don't have to have interesting social media handles. I'm on Facebook as well. I'm pretty easy to find.

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.