Robbie Couch Talks LBGTQ Issues And Small Towns

May 3, 2021 Mindy McGinnis

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

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Mindy: We're here with Robbie Couch, author of The Sky Blues, which released April six. The heartfelt and tender story that celebrates resilience blazing your own trail and the joys of discovering your truest self. So, you're a journalist as well, and your work primarily focuses on LGBTQ issues, progressive causes, which of course, ties into the novel as well. I feel like especially in YA literature we see a lot of coming out stories. Which is great and it's really awesome that we're seeing those, we don't see a lot of the post coming out stories and those lived experiences once you've made your statement and put yourself out there. So, if you could talk a little bit about that and how it ties into The Sky Blues, that would be great.

Robbie: I think you put that really well, fortunately, we've had many more LGBTQ stories in general in the past few years, but I think even within that genre, I think the coming out story is a little bit over saturated within the genre. But I do kind of feel like there's so much more to the queer experience than just that coming up moment. And sometimes I think in the genre we can kind of get pigeonholed into that one moment. Also with a lot of coming out stories, there's this very big build up to the moment and then it can sometimes feel like rainbows and sunshine afterward and for a lot of LGBTQ people, that's really not the case. Coming out is a wonderful moment, but oftentimes it does come with unfortunately, some backlash. Family rejection and even just internal struggles of finding your way and being comfortable in your skin and navigating the world as an openly queer person, that comes with its own challenges. I wanted to capture the moment after a young queer person, in my story his name is Sky Baker, and you meet him right in Chapter One, a few months after his mom found out that he was gay. He's openly gay, but he's still in that awkward, contentious weird moment in his life where he's trying to be comfortable essentially with this new normal.

Mindy: I really, really like that you are examining this in a realistic way because yes, it is awesome to be able to be yourself and, you know, make your announcement and be present as your true self. But no, not everyone is going to be accepting and loving and not necessarily just in novels but tv shows and movies, I just see so much celebration - which is great and is necessary - it needs to be there. It's too long in coming. But I don't always see a realistic presentation of fallout. So I wrote a book called HEROINE which is about the opioid crisis and my main character is a female athlete who becomes addicted to heroin and her best friend also was in the car accident with her and suffered through pain and recovery without becoming addicted to opioids. And at the end of the book her best friend is like fuck you, you know, she's like I did it, why couldn't you? What the hell is your problem? And I had a lot of people you know email me and be like, you know, thank you for not just making it - Yeah, it's okay. Because there were plenty of people that are like, you know, it's all right, Mickey. We still love you. We're going to help you through this, we're sorry this happened, it's not your fault, it's just what happened. And then one of the most important people in her life is like no you're weak, I'm done with you. It's important to show that.

Robbie: For sure. I think especially in the genre, there should be sort of a balance where of course we want young people to feel empowered to come out and we want to give them hope that there's a place for them in this world. So we don't want to paint it in this very dark light where it's this scary thing. But at the same time to your point, it often is very complicated and there are tough challenges that arise. And I think it's just as important to tell the stories of those people who face those challenges and then still come out thriving and doing well. And another theme of The Sky Blues, a big theme is found family. Our chosen family and Sky is able to, even though he faces some family rejection and there's certainly people in his life and in his town that do not respect him as a gay kid, there are many people who do. And I think that was something that I really wanted to make a part of the narrative and a part of that story because yeah, I think it's just as important to show those tough, challenging stories, but then also showing resiliency and showing young where people are overcoming those things and finding the pathway forward.

Mindy: Absolutely. A realistic expectation for those who are going to be walking that path. Yes, absolutely. We're in prom season. So I work in high school and it is prom season. Last year we didn't have a problem at all because of Covid. This year we are having a masked prom. Prom of course, comes with all of the social expectations and body disparities. I went to high school in the 90s. I think especially for girls body positivity has changed a lot of things. I see girls wearing something that they are like, yeah, I'm rocking this, you know, and they don't feel... they don't feel any type of shame or anything like that. And it's such a relief. I remember in the 90s taking water pills, I would have rather peed in my dress, dripping urine as my body expelled everything just so that I looked as absolutely swim as possible. I mean, it's just ridiculous.

Robbie: Wow, that's awful. And I do think there absolutely is, of course, a double standard between genders in terms of expectation and what you look like and what you can wear and what you can't wear and how people are going to judge you. So, oh my God, I'm sorry. Hopefully we've made progress since the 90s.

Mindy: It’s so much different now and I'm so, I'm so pleased and happy when I see my kids that are just content with themselves, not just content, but proud and muscular girls, too. Like built girls that are like yeah, I look good. I really like seeing that there's also this whole other experience of Prom for LGBTQ plus youth. Can you talk about that experience since we're in that season?

Robbie: I think prom can be at least a wonderful, amazing, beautiful experience for high schoolers, but it's also this very traditional, conventional thing that I think can sometimes be dripping with heteronormativity in many ways. Sometimes for young queer people, it can feel very othering to be either gay or trans or bisexual and want to come to prom as your full self and be able to express yourself in whatever way that looks like. Sometimes that can be really challenging, especially if we're going to a school where there aren't a lot of openly LGBTQ students and teachers and it doesn't feel as inclusive. Something that's a secondary narrative in The Sky Blues and something that you're seeing at a lot of high schools across the country nowadays is like a queer prom or an LGBTQ prom or gay prom. It's a separate space, a separate event for LGBTQ students to really be able to come and be their authentic selves. As much as I wish that there didn't have to be that separate space and that we could have one big problem for everyone, I think it's really important that young queer people do feel safe and supported and can be celebrated doing the things that every other high schooler gets to do in their high school experience. Hopefully one day we won't have the need for those sorts of problems and they truly will be inclusive. We're not quite there yet in many schools. I do think it's gotten a lot better. My heart is always bursting when I hear about LGBTQ students who are crowned prom king or queen, even when I was in high school back in 2007, it's changed quite a bit since then. So it's very encouraging. But I think we have a little bit to go and it's important for those big quintessential high school moments to be inclusive for everyone.

Mindy: Absolutely, the quintessential high school experience. That's exactly right. Everyone should be included in that. And I do think we're making strides.

Robbie: Another theme that is sort of touched on in the book too is oftentimes we're not aware of the messages that other people are being sent and absorbing from their communities. So, as a straight person, you might not necessarily see the sorts of homophobia that he faces, even if it's not blatant, even if it's just microaggressions or just the things people say or making off the cuff remarks. There's certainly people in my own high school that were LGBTQ that I didn't know. It's tough to think about going through that experience and wishing you were there for each other and kind of having the hindsight now as adults to wish you had that supportive network and could really encourage people to be their true selves.

Mindy: You say too and you're so right, just about the microaggressions. When I was in high school, so in the 90s, if something was stupid or dumb or boring or if you didn't want to do it, you said it was gay That's what you did. You were like, that's gay. It was a negative connotation. I used it never meaning it in any way as to hurt or harm towards a gay person. That was just the word we used. That is not cool, you can't do that. I worked really hard to get out of my vocabulary as a derogatory term. Shen I think back now to the casualness of dropping that and probably most definitely in front of even my teammates - wer’e all telling them that's bad, that's not okay.

Robbie: Even after I came out when I was in college, I would have folks accidentally say that's gay and then immediately tense up and say something to be effective - I don't mean it like that, I'm sorry. And I believe that. But the implicit message, like you said is that there's something wrong with it or abnormal or lame or stupid or whatever it may be, and especially if you're a young queer person that can really leave a mark on your self esteem. And it can also be sending you this message that there's not really a place for you in your hometown or if you do come out, you're going to be facing a lot of hostility, you're going to be othered and you're not going to be accepted in the same way. I mean, I think about it too as a white person, I remember being much younger in high school and we would throw around the word ghetto, right, well that's ghetto. And I didn't think twice about it. And it wasn't until I was much older that I realized all of the layers of using a term like that, especially as a white person. And I felt awful and I had to really challenge myself and think about using a word like that differently or not using it at all, really. There's all sorts of words like that, that as you get older, you have to push back and question and push for our culture to shift because they do send messages be they positive or negative and especially young people are hearing that in absorbing that.

Mindy: Tying that into the small town theme, those cultural settings, I can say I'm very proud of the small town that I live in that it is of course, not 100% accepting, I'm sure, but we do have two trans students and they seem to do much better than I ever would have anticipated. I do think things are improving here in a rural, rural small town community, there's support and I see more support even from my generation for these students, I see staff being careful with their pronouns. God, it's so refreshing.

Robbie: That is so refreshing to hear. Yeah, that's amazing. You and I think probably have a lot in common. I'm from rural Michigan. So I grew up in a small town right outside of Flint, very working class, predominantly white conservative town. The book is not set in my same hometown, but I definitely let my own experiences growing up in the rural rust belt inform the world that Sky lives in. Yes, Sky is facing homophobia. Yes, he is certainly facing bigotry. But would this same conversation happened in the same way today than it would have back when I was in high school? Or would it look differently or would there be more acceptance? Sky learns throughout the book, there are so many people in his corner, in his small town, even though he didn't realize it. At first there's a trans character, there's a black character who is Sky’s good friend. And you see these journeys that other characters who are marginalized in their small town also take, you realize that although yes, there's certainly homophobia and transphobia and racism. I think sometimes you also find the most fiercest badass sort of allies in those communities that can really stand up for the little guy and that's especially cool and awesome to see.

Mindy: I think two summers ago my local library had an LGBTQ book display. There was definitely a backlash. Some people were extremely upset. It was a very small group of people and I wouldn't even use the word group - handful - but a very loud minority. I was looking at the posts on Facebook and I was greatly relieved to see that besides the usual suspects, even older people were just like, you know what? Leave it alone doesn't matter. Let people be people.

Robbie: Oh my gosh, that's awesome to hear. And to your point about the very small minority sometimes being the loudest people in the room, five angry people can sometimes feel like 200 angry people if they're shouting, shouting into the void. That's so awesome. And I think that's why it's really important that when you in these small towns or really anywhere that when you have people speaking up being upset about LGBTQ stuff that you do have allies also speaking up and whether that's in digital spaces and going into the comments sections or showing up at school during a community meeting or whatever it looks like. I think it's really important that you have outspoken adult allies who aren’t just letting that sort of bigotry go without having some push back to it and saying no, that's not who we are and we're not going to allow that sort of thing.

And I think we are seeing more and more of that resilience in small town America where my parents live now. They live on the west coast of Michigan and it's a small town, I wouldn't necessarily say it's super conservative but it's a little bit more moderate. And at their high school a few months ago there was a little bit of controversy around the library at the high school wanting to put all the books that had any sort of LGBTQ theme or characters in a specific restricted area where they would need to get parent permission in order to check out the books.

Although it was of course very discouraging to see that that was proposed. It was also really encouraging to see so many people in my parent’s town really stand up and go wait a minute, No, that's not how we do it. My parents’ pastor at church was one of the most vocal proponents of making sure these books were accessible to young queer kids. So it's really, really cool to see that progress happening on the ground in small town America and it's complicated right now. There's still a lot of traditional conventional ways of thinking that do come with homophobia and transphobia, but there's also a lot of forward thinking happening to you for small towns.

Mindy: Yeah, there's more going on here than you think. I'll say that.

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Mindy: Now, to your point, I'm glad you've mentioned, a church was one of the largest proponents of the LGBTQ book display in my public library.

Robbie: I'm not personally religious, but I think that queer people should be accepted every space that they want to be. And I think especially when you look at younger generations, you do see a lot of younger Christians are more, far more accepting and tolerant of LGBTQ people and that's great to see.

Mindy: Not a small town environment, but a friend of mine, a good friend of mine from college is a minister and she's a head minister at a very, very large church. She had some concerns when they were going back to in person services, they have very hardcore Trumpers and they have diehard liberals. The church was like, hey listen, we're going to church, you guys are gonna be nice to each other. The day after they resumed in person, of course with masks and distancing, she was like, it was fine. So there weren't any problems. It was good. And people gathered. They may not be having those conversations in that space, but they are present together. as long as you're seeing other people as humans and there with you, there's room for growth.

Robbie: Absolutely. And I think it's a more pressing thing now more than ever. And it will probably become even more of a pressing issue as we go on. And we have this sort of division in digital spaces where it's so easy to just be surrounded by people who agree with you 100% of the time on 100% of the issues. I'm a very proud, progressive person and I have very, very low tolerance for any sort of bigotry, homophobia, racism. At the same time, I think in general, it's not a good thing when we push ourselves into these echo chambers and aren't interacting and connecting in the real world. And it's great that we have spaces where we can still come together as people and even if we don't agree on everything, we can still connect.

And that's really I think how you move hearts and minds, right? Befriending someone who is different than you. Or maybe you haven't thought about an issue in a particular way because you haven't known anyone who was trans or who was gay. And if you meet that person and actually just have a normal conversation with them, they're not this scary boogeyman that you might see on FoxNews, but they're actually a real person with real experiences and you might be able to connect about baseball or apple pie or whatever you want to talk about. I hope that moving forward, even if we do continue in the direction of everything going mobile and technology just taking over, we still can find a way to have those spaces to have genuine connection, whether it is somehow online or in the real world because I think that’s how you have progress, how you can change hearts and minds.

Mindy: Having that person physically in front of you, flesh and blood, changes things. When I was in college was when AOL first came out with instant messenger and I had someone from high school that I was still in contact with. I was in college and some of my friends were younger, so they were still at home. I was in college and we would get on like group chats and talk in the evening or whatever. And I had a friend from high school that basically had some beefs with me, really like, kind of went off on me over AIM and said some really hurtful things. And one of my dude friends said, it's a lot easier to say mean things over this chat box. She would never say that to your face. And he said, I'm not sure that this whole AIM thing is a good idea. I think it makes it a lot easier to be mean to each other. 25 years later, I'm like, Oh, how right you are.

Robbie: Oh my gosh, yes. And I've had so many interactions with people that are just so telling. Before I wrote this book, I worked in progressive media, I worked at HuffPost and UpWorthy. And so I had a lot of bylines on issues that were somewhat controversial and I would often get very trolly people reach out to me, or say something really mean spirited in my replies and most of the time I would ignore it. But there was a few times that I would reach out and very gently kindly ask why they said that? Starting a conversation in a productive way and 99 percent of the time with those people, as soon as you engage them in a sincere way, they immediately kind of back down and they don't have that rigidness and they will either apologize or say they didn't mean it, or they didn't think about it in that way. But I think when you're just firing off things online, especially if you're anonymous in doing so right, if you don't have a profile picture, you kind of feel protected by the anonymity of the internet, people say absolutely horrible egregious things to complete strangers. And I think especially if you're a woman or LGBTQ or a racial minority, you get it even worse, of course. Your friend was definitely onto something by predicting the future of media in that way. But I think we're becoming more and more aware of that and I hope that whatever it looks like moving forward, we’ll be able to carve out a way that we can just be a little bit kinder to one another.

Mindy: You are so right about even if someone attacks you first, approaching them as a human being and them not knowing quite what to do with that. I write dialogue for a living, I can do a zippy come back and I can bury you. It's pointless. We’re both screaming at each other. We're literally looking at a box and getting angry. I had RT’d something about people should be able to go to the bathroom wherever they feel they want to go to the bathroom from a friend, and somebody came in on it and I don't even know where they came from, attacking and angry. And this person's last name was McGinnis. They were from Pennsylvania and they were from an area in Pennsylvania - because they do a lot of geology - that some of my family is from. And I was like, can you like.. this bathroom stuff aside... do you happen to know when your family landed in this area? Because I think there's a possibility that we're related. He hit back something like, I'm not related to some stupid liberal, like you. And I'm like, well, actually, I think you might be. If you are, this is really bad because we're both McGinnis’s and McGinnis’s are never wrong. So this is gonna be a long fight. And he's like, I don't know, I'll ask my dad what his dad's name was. I'll get back to you. And I'm like, okay, cool, have a good day. And he's like, you too!

Robbie: Oh my gosh. I'm certainly not completely innocent. But people I think sometimes go into those conversations so charged up and fired up. And as soon as you say something nice or try to connect with them on something other than whatever hot topic you're discussing, there's like this immediate, almost relief. I think sometimes we've seen people like, okay, like you’re a person. I'm a person. Yes, we disagree, but we can still have a conversation. I say that also knowing that I'm also someone who doesn't think we should be compromising when it comes to human rights and accepting people and totally, if someone is not wanting to have those conversations, if they're trans or from a marginalized community and they have to deal with someone who is spouting bigotry in their face, I'm never going to tell that person no have the conversation with them. People should absolutely have the ability to shut that down to not engage. They're being harassed, they should report it, block the person, whatever. But if there are spaces where you think there is room to have a discussion, totally go for it because that's the only way we're going to build bridges. No

Mindy: No one should ever be in a conversation that makes them feel badly about themselves insulted or even if it's just making you angry, like I make myself sound good over here, but I've had days when I'm like, I'll have it written down and it's like here it comes, going to go nuclear on your face. And then it's like I'm just going to delete this and go outside.

Robbie: Oh my gosh, yeah, I do that too. I have done that so many times. A few years ago when I was much more active, I would write out these oh my gosh, several paragraph responses to something problematic that someone said and just writing it out, I felt was kind of cathartic. And then I would get to the end and be like actually I don't even need to send this now because I got out of my system. And maybe I will reply with something a little bit more tame or less combative, or maybe I won't reply at all.

I totally hear you on that and I think it's a good practice. I spend way too much time on Twitter and it's such a immediate platform where you know, you're engaging with people constantly and you're writing quick replies and responses and sometimes if you’re emotional - for better or worse- you can quickly respond to something when, if you just took a couple minutes to think about it, maybe go for a walk to separate yourself from it for just a minute and then return to it with fresh perspective or fresh eyes. Sometimes you can articulate your perspectives better and maybe not come across as intense. I certainly need to practice what I'm preaching right now. I've done it too.

Mindy: I've really, here in my forties, come to ascribe to that idea of your feelings, becoming thoughts and those thoughts becoming actions and interrupting that process when it's negative, recognizing that cycle and be like - no, you don't have to eat a whole row of double stuffed Oreos today.

Robbie: Replace double stuff Oreos with a big pot of fettuccine pasta and that's me. I think that's a good point though. I was actually just having this conversation with someone about improving mental health and that was something that I noted. The older I've gotten, the more I've realized how important it is to be aware of my thoughts and be aware of my feelings. And if I'm kind of falling into a darker period, and a lot of times it's associated with self doubt or insecurity or just not feeling good about myself in some way, I can sense those thoughts starting to spiral. And if I can have sort of like my own little toolkit to be able to do something that I know can disrupt that spiral. Whether it could be something as simple as calling my mom and having a good conversation with a family member, just having those tools at my disposal to kind of recenter me and make me aware of what I'm feeling and why I'm feeling that way can work wonders, I think, when it comes to mental health.

Mindy: That's what I do for a living is I spin narratives. And so my anxiety just looks like me doing that with the worst possible outcomes. Put myself in bed in the middle of the afternoon, because I got completely wrapped up in it.

Robbie: And then when you can kind of find some space between those thoughts and where you are now, it can sometimes feel so irrational looking back and it's like, why did I feel that way? Like, of course, of course that was an irrational course, it makes sense. But in the moment, that's where your thought is, and it can be so difficult to get out of that funk or to get out of that way of thinking.

Mindy: Last thing, why don't you let listeners know where they can find the book, The Sky Blues, but also where they can find you online.

Robbie: I am, as I mentioned earlier on Twitter, probably way too much. So you can find me on Twitter at Robbie underscore Couch. Last name is just like a sofa. And I'm also on Instagram. So @Robbiecouch and if you're interested in buying The Sky Blues, you can see the link in my bio. It'll take you to the Simon and Schuster landing page where you can get it through whatever bookseller you want to get.

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.

Abigail Dean Talks Writing Psychologically Flawed Characters

April 19, 2021 Mindy McGinnis

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Mindy: We're here with Abigail Dean, author of Girl A. It covers so many different topics but specifically the main character is a survivor of a really shocking case of child abuse who escapes and then as an adult has to return when her mother dies and makes the main character, Lexie, the executor of her will. So why don't you tell us a little bit more about the book Girl A?

Abigail: So, yeah Girl A is Lexie Gracie. She is the survivor. She's the woman, kind of summoned back 15 years after this escape that she's made from her parents’ house which becomes kind of known as the House of Horrors in the press. Lex is really a character who in a way she wants to be known as anything other than Girl A. That's almost become a kind of millstone to her, this association with her parents, almost this heroic image has become something she's just desperate to get away from. And when she is summoned back to deal with her mother’s will, she's also dealing with the fact that she's being left the House of Horrors along with her siblings in her mother's will. That's kind of what prompts this reconnection with her siblings. She grew up with six brothers and sisters and they suffered this shared childhood which was a childhood of trauma. Girl A, I think to me really deals with sort of resurrecting those old battles and alliances that the siblings developed in the house, really just seeing how they translate into adulthood and how each of the siblings has both coped and failed to cope, I guess with what happened to them.

Mindy: I’m currently reading a book, not to change the subject too quickly, but I think this could tie into a book that I'm reading right now that's called The New Evil and it's very much like a psychological textbook, but it's all about understanding modern violent crime, specifically 1960’s and forward. Child abuse is not a new crime. This is something that has always gone on. But I think our understanding and the public perception of the damage that is done to Children in these situations has changed. Like we've come to understand that these adults may not be fully functioning or may have some real trauma and triggers in their adult lives as well.

So I think it's interesting to talk about that and the disparate ways that some of your characters have healed or failed to heal, as you say in this book that I'm reading called the New Evil. They talk about the fact that pretty much without exception, very few exceptions, serial killers typically suffered some sort of abuse in childhood. You can almost count on it. However, not every child that is abused in childhood grows up to be a serial killer. So if you could talk a little bit more about the coping mechanisms and the way that Lex has performed better or worse than some of her siblings as an adult.

Abigail: I think that's exactly right in terms of these kind of very interesting and very, very tragic as well, kind of studies and greater understanding into what actually causes crime, I think are just really valuable and definitely something I was thinking about it in kind of creating Girl A, I think especially in the context of juxtaposing the past and what happened to the different siblings with who they've become In the present.

Kind of 15 years later, not all of them have become particularly sympathetic characters. One of the reasons that I kind of wanted to move quite a lot between the present and the past in writing the book is I think it kind of sets a challenge in terms of your sympathies because certainly with some of the characters, and I'm probably thinking especially if Lex’s older brother Ethan, he's a really difficult adult. He's very, very difficult to like, and can be kind of extremely unpleasant. A lot of people said to me, you know, he's kind of the real villain of the novel and I kind of question that because as a child he's so sympathetic and he does his best to kind of stick up against his father.

That was one of the reasons for the sort of structure of the book in terms of the very close passages of the past and present, focusing on each of the siblings. I always like to think that I would have coped with Lexie’s kind of grace in a way, you know, she's very kind of resilient, she's an incredibly strong, dry, humorous character in many ways. She sees the world with the kind of very wry sense of humor. Um but I'm not sure, you know, going through what the characters in the book do go through, I'm certainly not sure if I would have come out with Lexie’s perspective on life. And it was a question I kept kind of thinking as I was, I was writing the book, you know, would I have been like Lex or would I be more like Ethan, who is very questionable or like his younger brother, Gabriel, who just really struggles through life and is kind of as much a victim outside of the house in a way as he was within it.

Mindy: I’m a writer as well. And whenever I teach any writing workshops I always tell my students and my audience that everyone, and your characters of course this applies to them, but you can move the lesson into real life. Everyone is the way they are for a reason and everyone is also the hero of their own narrative and that is something we really struggle with sometimes because I'm like, even the worst person that, you know, is the hero in their story. When I'm talking to my students, when we're doing any sort of writing workshop, I always ask them to consider whose story are you the villain in? Because you are. To someone, you are a bad person, I know whose villain I am. And so I think it's an interesting way to really make people consider when you're building your characters not to create a moustache twirling villain.

Abigail: I love that idea that, that you know, everybody is the hero of their own narrative. I really agree with it and I think that that kind of, in building characters in a way is what's going to make them most alive. And to me that always seems to be the kind of key thing, you know, above having particular characters who you think will elicit sympathy. It's more just about creating people who feel incredibly real to you as a writer and to the reader. I know that I sort of become really obsessed with the characters, kind of end up thinking about them almost all the time and their relationship dynamics with one another, which I think was one of the real joys of writing Girl A was creating those kind of sibling relationships, I think you see, in that there's dialogue scenes as well. exactly that - that each of the Children believes that they have handled things in the right way.

Mindy: So did you do any research about childhood trauma or about different psychological responses for each different character?

Abigail: I did. And I did especially in relation to Gabriel and Delilah's characters. So, in terms of Delilah sort of some reading around Stockholm syndrome and how that can develop for people who have been in the kind of incredibly high stress traumatic situations that she has lived through. And then also in relation to Gabriel who suffers from these kind of rages that he can't control, almost kind of a physical residual response to his anger and his sort of frustration from being in the house. I did some reading into the psychology behind the characters.

But at the same time I kind of wanted it to be a question as well around how much of these characters is entirely formed by their childhood. To what extent would they have been like that anyway, to some degree, because I think you see sort of little glimpses of the characters even as Children maybe, but before that they kind of go through these traumatic events. And so I wanted that to be kind of a lingering question as well and for it to be kind of in a way I guess slightly more ambiguous I guess then a sort of cause and effect case.

Mindy: So let's talk about you yourself, you actually have a day job as a lawyer for Google. So what made you decide to go this creative route?

Abigail: In a way, I think some of it was such a product of where I was at the end of my 20s. I used to work at Google, I used to work in a law firm. It was a kind of incredibly intense lifestyle, um kind of like Lexie’s lifestyle in Girl A to a huge degree. So a lot of kind of airport lounges and meeting rooms and sort of, you know, sleepless nights. I'd lived like that for kind of six years or so. They were kind of the bulk of my 20s years and I think I sort of started approaching 30 and I really felt like I'd let go of this thing, writing that as a teenager, as a child, had been this huge part of my life. It had been kind of an absolute love. I tried to write novels then, and I tried to, I wrote loads of fan fiction and I think I was a bit shocked to find that I'd neglected it. And I think that's sort of coincided with the realization that I wasn't particularly um happy day to day in my job, that I didn't really have time for a lot of the things that I just love to be doing.

I actually took three months out. I left my job in a law firm, took three months out to start writing Girl A and then joined Google at the end of that three month period. This role in Google kind of allows me to do both. Like it allows me to write in the evenings while at the same time, really enjoying a legal job as well. I kind of find that the two things complement each other quite a lot in terms of that sort of scrutiny of language, you know, deciding the weight behind each word and this sort of impact of it. And you know, questioning whether there'll be any ambiguity behind it. I kind of see quite a lot of similarity in terms of law and writing in that respect. I think just the sort of power of words, I guess.

Mindy: That makes sense. I really like it because, of course, I have no legal background, but when I am writing, I am weighing every word. If I use this one, as opposed to that one, does it change the flavor of the sentence and how does that affect the paragraph and so on and so forth? So yeah, that's a really interesting parallel.

You also worked as a bookseller at a point in your life. I've been a librarian for 14 years, so it's similar. I'm always pitching books to people trying to talk them into, take this one, take this one, you'll like this one. Thinking about that then as being a bookseller. What about that job did you love? And what kinds of books were your favorites? And if you were pitching your own book, if you were hand selling your book, how would you do that?

Abigail: I loved the job and I think the very sort of best thing was just talking to customers about books. Especially I think talking to like child customers about books because I think Children were just sort of uniquely excited to be in a bookstore. I still remember really vividly working the launch of the last Harry Potter book. I just remember the sort of joy of these kids and teenagers who queued, you know since 10 p.m. and then we opened the store at midnight and they kind of flooded in wearing amazing costumes. Ao there was just a real kind of joy I think in sharing experiences of books. Whether it was an event like that or just chatting to some of the people who became regular customers. I'm sure you find this as a librarian as well, Random people coming in and saying they enjoyed a book that you recommended, Just like a real gives you a kind of glow.

Mindy: In real life when you do matchmaking it’s different. I have a unique matchmaker resume. Everybody I've ever introduced got married but they also got divorced

Abigail: With a book you don't have that risk of legal entanglement. And if I was selling Girl A, I think I would say, you might read the back and think of this, this could be a kind of dark story. But I'd also say that it's really a book about family relationships and a book about a huge amount of hope I think in the face of something traumatic. So yeah, that it's about strength and resilience and hope those would be the kind of attributes. But I would talk about what lies behind the pale.

Mindy: You’ve had some tremendous success already here with the Girl A, which I should add it has released here in the United States. It was on sale February second. But it is one of the Most Anticipated Books of 2021 from Marie Claire, O Magazine, Good Housekeeping, Lit Hub. It's sold in international auction and it's sold in 25 territories. So a division of Sony, preempted tv rights for a series with the director from HBO’s Chernobyl attached to it. This is your debut novel, I should add. So you have come out of the Gates running. So is there anything about the success that has set you back a little? Has it surprised you? And does it feel, I know many people that I talked to who have had a debut that really blew everything else out of the water and they are like, oh shit, what do I write next?

Abigail: I am definitely surprised, I am hugely surprised, I think kind of it's just a very surreal thing when this dream that you had as kind of a kid actually starts to happen. I think I’m kind of potentially still in a bit of a state of shock about the whole thing. My agent had some really amazing advice for me just as Girl A was sold and she essentially said, look before it is published, get as far with your next book as you can, so that you don't have that kind of self doubt and that sort of second guessing and um you know, just try and plough on with that second book.

And so that advice I think was really, really helpful because although I've not finished my second book, I've kind of made a lot of headway with it and I'm sort of, a first draft is nearly in place. So I think that was really helpful advice because otherwise there'd be a much more intense kind of pressure and yeah, I think of course it changes things because writing Girl A was done in such kind of isolation. My objective was just to see if I could write a novel and and finish it, you know, maybe self publish it, get it published if things went well. That was I think the extent of the ambition behind it. Um So yeah, it is definitely different writing with the deadline and writing with some expectations, but I think the nice thing is that a lot of the writing of my second novel was done before Girl A went out into the world.

Mindy: I think I have 10 books out now and another one coming out in 2022. You do get into a pattern of trying to get the next one as far as long as possible, particularly if you're writing in a series, because I had the experience of working on a second book knowing that the first one had not done well at all. That was very difficult because I'm trying to deliver a good product and write a good book for the few people that did read the first one, but at the same time really just kind of working out of a sense of, well, I know very, very few people are going to read this because very, very, very few people read the first one. So that can create a vacuum, kind of in which you're trying to write and be hopeful and wish all the good things that you can for this manuscript. But Knowing that typically in publishing you lose 40% Of your readers from the first book, only 60% pick up the second and knowing what those numbers already looked like. That was difficult.

Abigail: And it just seems, I think writers in general are, there's so much self doubt, self criticism anyway. Like even sort of writing with zero expectations and with zero pressure, there's still sort of self doubt. I think it's that kind of slight cliche of feeling self doubt and doing it anyway. It seems to be the only way to keep going. Is that how you overcame it, Mindy?

Mindy: Yeah, well that and I had a contract to fill. So I had to write the book and it's like, I'm not going to put something half assed out there. It's like I'm going to write this book. And you know, sadly enough, it was a fantasy series that I wrote. It did not sell well. And sadly enough, I feel like it's some of my best work, just the challenge of the genre and the multiple POVS I was writing. It was work. They are the longest books I have ever written and they are the most complicated plot wise that I have ever written and they are the least read. So I put a lot of like, real work into those books. I could feel myself stretching my skills and my bounds as a writer and being like, wow, like you're really doing something with this, but you know, nobody cared.

And that's a risk that you take every time. And it's something you… published or unpublished, but being unpublished is much more…. my fifth novel was the first one that got picked up. So, you know, writing something that you're fully aware no one may ever read. That's tough. And you're talking about self doubt, you're so right. I have a book coming out in about two weeks and I'm so I finished it, you know, turned it in and while I was writing it, I'm like, this is awesome, this is this, is good. This is, like, my best work has great critical reviews and has been, you know, picked for a book of the month for different things.

I substitute now. I'm no longer a librarian in the school districts, but I substitute, which has been pretty much a full time job lately. And the other day I had a group that I couldn't get them settled and I was like, hey, I just got my author copies of my new book, Want me to read you guys? And they were like, oh yeah, cool. Right. So I started reading and I was sitting up there and I hadn't touched this material in, you know, probably six months, so I'm sitting up in front of them and I start reading from my book that comes out in two weeks and I'm like, this is, this is terrible. I'm just, what was I thinking? You know? And meanwhile everyone… most everyone that has read it, like it has great early reviews and everybody's like, oh, this is so great. As soon as I, as an author started participating in a public forum, I'm just like, oh my God, this is embarrassing.

Abigail: I think it's Sadie Smith who said that in a way, once the novel is published, you're kind of free to hate it, it doesn't really belong to you anymore. And you only need to love it for a very short amount of time, enough to press SEND. I don't know anybody who kind of looks back at their work and thinks, I mean every sentence that was just immaculate. Yeah, that's quite comforting. I think that actually there's some freedom there and actually that's the point when you can't do anything about it. So that by then it's actually okay to have the doubt. It's okay to have the hatred. It's done.

Mindy: You can't do anything about it. Yeah, there is some comfort in helplessness. And I will say, my older novels because, you know, I've been writing for like 20 years, been publishing since 2013. So some of my older novels when I read them aloud, I truly am a better writer now than I was when I wrote them. So I tell audiences if I do a reading, which I don't do that often, but I tell audiences, you know, if you're interested to see how I would write this now, follow along because I edit as I'm reading aloud my older books now. I change things like no, I wouldn't do, now. Yeah, so it's interesting. Last thing, let listeners know where they can find the book Girl A and also where they can find you online.

Abigail: My website is Abigail hyphen Dean dot com and you can find kind of upcoming events there and some kind of blog posts that I've done in partnership with my editor and agent and I'm Abigail S Dean on Twitter and Instagram, so feel free to say hi. Girl A is out. It's available online in most bookie, most bookie places I know that independent bookshops in particular have had a rough time over the last year and you can certainly order it from your local independent bookshop. .

Inclusivity In Children’s Books & How Publishers Find Illustrators

April 5, 2021 Mindy McGinnis

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Mindy: We're here today with Maria Dismondy, founder of Cardinal Rule Press. Cardinal Rule Press is dedicated to producing picture books that empower Children with timeless messages of hope, courage and the golden rule. They work very hard to release Children's literature that represents today's diversity while remaining dedicated to messages that make a difference. Those are awesome statements, but if you could put a little more of a human touch on that and just talk about Cardinal Rule press.

Maria: Absolutely. So I actually started out as a writer myself, and the reason I started writing is because I was a classroom teacher for 11 years. I liked to use Children's literature as a mentor text to spark a conversation, so I noticed that a lot of my students were feeling bad about who they were. It was a very diverse community, and kids were embarrassed by the foods they were eating at lunchtime, like their traditional Indian dishes. I had families who invited me over for these amazing meals at their homes, and I was young and unmarried at the time. I was going to these beautiful dinners and just celebrating their culture in their homes. But at school it looks different. They were embarrassed.

So I was like, Let me find a book that I can read to the kids about a child who has positive self esteem and the courage to be themselves. Well, this was back in 2006. I could not find a book. I found books about dancing dinosaurs and singing fish, and I just found that there was a big lack of realistic fiction depicting Children characters. So that's when I wrote Spaghetti In A Hot Dog Bun. So I started out on my own writing journey, and I really wanted kids to be able to see themselves within the pages. So Spaghetti In A Hot Dog Bun has Children who are diverse not only in their skin color but in their abilities. and in their personalities. And so I continued this journey as a writer myself for many years, and then I started transitioning into Okay, I don't want to do this. I want to help other people to get similar messages into the world. And so, in about 2015, that's when I started Cardinal Rule Press.

Mindy: It puts more of a human touch on it, and I think that that is really important because diversity is a buzzword right now in the world, also in our industry. And so having it broken down into the actual where did this come from? And why is this important? Instead of just using the word and having everyone nod their head and assume that everybody is starting from the same place in the same understanding of diversity. Because you say Spaghetti In A Hot Dog Bun, you know, I never would have thought, Oh, that would be what we mean when we talk about diversity, right? So that's super relatable as someone that, as a kid, really enjoyed - this is disgusting to me, as an adult - I really enjoyed tearing up pieces of ham, tearing up pieces of American cheese and pouring ranch over that and eating it.

Maria: Oh, my goodness.

Mindy: It was like a salad with no vegetables.

Maria: Oh, my goodness. It was the ranch phase. I feel like most Children go through a ranch phase, right?

Mindy: Oh,my gosh, that's what I did. I would come home from school and I would tear up chipped ham, American cheese and pour ranch over that. And my God, I It was just a protein carb sugar bowl. That's what that was. Immediately, as soon as I said that you were like, Oh, yeah, ranch phase, right? So more about when you're talking about Children's books and the messages that we put out there for our Children, and you're saying that you, for example, have located a niche in terms of diversity of food and just like what people are eating at lunch.

It's an interesting space, because that is a weird but very specific source of insecurity for kids. And you do see it. I work in a public school as a substitute. I used to be a librarian. You do see kids that are embarrassed about what they bring for their lunch or they are envious sometimes of what other people have for their lunch and and, of course, unfortunately, kids with no lunch at all. So that's the kind of thing that, yeah, I mean, a Children's book about this would be so helpful. Can you talk about like some of the other titles or some of the other areas that Cardinal Rule Press has explored?

Maria: We just had a title come out in October. It's called Rajas Pet Camel, and it's all set in India. And it's a story about a little boy who wants a camel as a pet. But really, camels are used for work. So it's a beautiful story of hope and determination because he just doesn't let this go with his dad. And the author is Indian American, and she did not grow up in India. Her parents did, but she spent a lot of summers in India and continues to have a lot of those traditions with her family. So we put a lot of the culture from India into the story. We actually were able to find an illustrator who lives in India currently, who is Indian himself, and so the illustrations are authentic and beautiful.

So that was a book that we were super duper proud of. We have a title coming out this year, and we had a hard time finding an illustrator that was from the Latino community. So what we did is we hired an author illustrator, and we brought in someone called a sensitivity reader. So we put extra money into hiring someone from the Latino community to look at our illustrations to look at our book because the character is a Latina girl and we said, We want to make sure that we're representing the culture appropriately. We want to make sure that somebody who grew up in the community, who has the authenticity to tell us whether or not we've done justice on this title. So that's another example of kind of what we're doing to keep that diversity in our stories because, oh, my goodness, it's hard. I think it's wonderful that there has been this highlight on diversity, but it has made certain illustrators hard to come by.

Mindy: I want to come back to the idea of illustrators in general in a moment. On the inclusion aspect. I'm an author, I'm a YA author and always on panels of course, representation and diversity has been a big part of the conversation for a few years now. Yet we're not seeing a ton of actual forward change. That is slowly, slowly becoming the reality. But not without pretty much everyone you know, digging their heels in and putting their shoulder to it and trying to move this behemoth forward.

One of the things that I want to mention is that I am often on panels, you get questions about, you know, diversity and inclusion, and sometimes often it has followed up with - And why does it matter? It should be a question that holds an obvious answer. But I think one of the things that particularly the average white viewer reader doesn't quite realize is that you know, we have been living in an assumed white or a white based media world for so long.

I wrote one of my books, Heroine, which is about the opioid epidemic, and I am white. I'm from the Midwest. I practice inclusion. My main character is always going to be white because that's what's appropriate for me to be writing. But that doesn't mean that you then only write a white cast. So still practice inclusion one of the things that I did was I had the best friend be Puerto Rican. I had actually had a really, really awesome interaction with a Puerto Rican book club. Just had, like, this great interaction with these kids, and they were so enthusiastic. And I ended up meeting with them again for the next book that I wrote.

And then I remembered that one of my classmates, when I was growing up in a Super white Midwest area like super rural everything is very country, and I grew up pretty much surrounded by white faces. One of my classmates was Puerto Rican, but he was white passing, and I did not realize that he was Puerto Rican until I was in high school, possibly even an adult. And I was like, Wait a minute, What? And so I just felt, uh, like, I would write a Puerto Rican character into this mostly white space, and so that was a choice that I made for that book Heroine.

Interestingly enough, I got an email just last week from a librarian in a town that isn't terribly far from me, like maybe 40 minutes away, and she was like I just wanted to tell you how much I enjoyed your inclusion of a Puerto Rican character in a white space and in the Midwest, because she's like, I'm Puerto Rican and I ended up having a conversation with her. And it turns out that she grew up like, 20 minutes from me, and she was like, Yeah, I'm Puerto Rican and we're here. We're in the Midwest. I've never seen an acknowledgement of that. And she was like, Thanks, like that meant a lot to me. She's, you know, she's an adult and she had an emotional reaction to seeing herself represented.

Maria: That's what I'm passionate about, because I mean, I taught these students and like to open up the pages of these books and for them not to be able to connect with characters on that level. I thought that was really disheartening. I mean, I love that story that you shared because it's not just Children, but it's people of all ages that want to be represented.

Mindy: Absolutely. So if you want to talk a little bit about how you go about finding your illustrators, your authors, your artists to help create that wider palette.

Maria: This has actually been a challenge in the book industry for me, because finding authors, um, I need them to know about us. I need them to submit their books to us, and their books also have to follow our guidelines. So we still are only producing realistic fiction. So that's something that I've stuck my foot in and said, This is our niche. We're gonna do this over the lash in about a year and a half. We've done a huge visibility campaign and are really trying to get our name out there so that people know what is Cardinal Rule Press all about.

So we've had these, like, 30 second commercials created and we're putting them on social media. We're putting them out there. So people of different colors of different races of different abilities know, they can come to us with their stories, so that's the first part. The second part is we use different agencies to find our illustrators. And so I worked with agents at those agencies to tell them what we're looking for. And then we also have our budget. And so what we found actually this last time around is people of color are booked out 3 to 4 years in advance on their illustration projects, which I think is fantastic. It's wonderful. This means that something is happening. We're starting to see a change. So that's how we go about finding our illustrators.

Mindy: Speaking about illustration in general, a lot of the times when I am talking to authors, aspiring authors and especially aspiring Children's book authors. Now, if they've done any of their work, they should know that the Children's market is actually one of the most difficult markets to break into. And partially that is because I think people don't actually respect what it takes to write a Children's book. Parents sit down and they read to their kid that has, you know, like a very low lexile level, and it's just like rhyming or whatever, and they're like, Oh, I could do that and they don't understand that, it's actually extremely difficult.

I can tell you, as someone that writes novels and writes short stories, that I could not write a Children's book. It is misleading in its simplicity. Let's put it that way. It does use a very specific skill set to be able to write a Children's book. I hear a lot of aspiring authors, they want to provide their own illustrations or they already have, like a friend they want to have do the illustrations for them, and oftentimes I have to explain - No, that's not how that works. The publishing house will match an illustrator with you. That's the process, not Hey, my mom is good with Photoshop. So if you could talk about that a little bit like, why is that in the first place? How do you go about the process of matching an illustrator with an author?

Maria: What we do to match? Um, we have a team meeting with our book designer and our acquisitions editor, and we sit down and we say, Okay, here's the manuscript that we've taken on. Let's have this discussion. Let's brainstorm. What is the feel that you have for this book? Are we looking at soft pastel colors? Are you looking at bold colors like, what is the voice of the story? Um, what do we want the artwork to really look like? So that's our first conversation. And then I go to the agent at the illustration company and I'll say, Hey, this is what we're looking for. This is the manuscript. These are kind of our thoughts on what we're looking for, and then she or he will give us about six portfolios to look at. And then I'll go back to our team and we'll look at those. So that's kind of like the matching process.

Mindy: I'm curious about, If an author comes to you saying, you know, Oh, I already have illustrations I did myself or I would like for someone else to do it, um, does that help or hinder them?

Maria: It actually hinders. And the reason why is because unless you are a professional artist, which means you have some history in graphic design or you have some history in publishing, it can hinder you. Because most publishers have some sort of a consistent style in their illustrations that they're looking for so if you come to us as an author and you don't have that style in your artwork, but your manuscript is really great. Well, you're hindering yourself because one doesn't match the other.

We find that there's a lot of learning curves with people who say, Oh, my mom is an artist. She would love to illustrate this book. Well, unless you really know, like bleeds and, um using templates from printers and being able to lay out a book when you're designing it and you're illustrating it, if the person doesn't know that there's a lot of learning curves and it can slow a project up. So I think that that's really why. And also we don't want you to be emotionally tied to the illustrations. We want an artist to say, Okay, here is the manuscript. I'm going to take my creative spin on it because an artist truly does take the words and says, How can I show this? How can I really help the child to be able to look at the illustrations and go beyond the text? And I think there's an art to that.

Mindy: There most definitely is. Just as there is an art to actually composing the words and putting together that manuscript, you know, I can tell you, as someone that saved their books from their childhood. When I look at those books again, it is not the words that I remember. I mean, I can pick them up and I can be like, Oh, yes, you know, and especially if there's a cadence or a rhyme, I might even be able to still predict and know what the next page says. But the reaction that you get from me and the thing that actually makes me go Oh, yeah, is the pictures. Seeing those pictures.

And it's amazing to me how they still drum up the same emotions. So it's like I can look at like a particular picture of a cupcake like a cartoonist drawing of a cupcake. And I'm like, Oh, God, I love cupcakes, right? I mean, I feel that way, just like looking at a picture of a cupcake. But there is a specific type of like food desire that I would just like as a kid. I'm just going to sit and look at this picture of a cupcake, right? Like it makes me happy. There is an innate skill at work there. But like you're saying, there are also so many different skills that come with working in the industry and just being a professional, as opposed to being a hobbyist.

Maria: Yes, absolutely. I think you got it right there being a professional versus being a hobbyist, and a lot of times we come and my sister's grandma's cousin, that's a hobby.

Mindy: Oftentimes, when I am speaking with people that are interested in becoming a Children's book author, they also don't understand the competitiveness of that world and not necessarily competitive between authors versus authors. But just how hard it is to even like find a slot and to break in. It doesn't mean that just because you can rhyme you're in. So if you could talk about those specific skills that are required for the author of a Children's book.

Maria: You may not like my answer, but I'm going to be completely honest. We are a small press, which means we produce a small number of books per year, usually about four titles per year, and I'm connected in the industry with companies that have 100 titles a year that they're putting out into the market and there's a couple different things. I'm gonna start with number one and this one, I think, is fine. You're not going to be like, Oh my goodness. But Number one is market research, so please do the research before submitting a title. Let's say you have this grandiose idea. You've written a book, you submit it. But little do you know that there are five other books doing really well out in the market, getting a ton of sales, a ton of reviews on a very similar topic and a very similar story.

So you want to have something that is slightly different from what's out in the market. We don't want the same stuff over and over again. Granted, we'd love more books on kindness, but can you take a different spin on it? Can it not be the same thing over and over again? And so that's called market research. So authors really should be going to bookstores going online, looking at different titles, getting them from the library and making sure your book is different. It's going to stand out, and one suggestion that I have for that is to actually look at negative reviews on those books that are doing well because there's always going to be a negative review. Look for a negative review. What do people say That book is lacking? How can you write something that adds that?

And then number two- a platform. So actually being a writer who starts to create a platform for yourself and what I mean platform, you can have a blog, and maybe you share short, short stories on your blog. You can have a social media account that is professional, maybe on Instagram, Let's say, because a lot of Children's book authors are on instagram right now because their audience, which would be teachers and parents, are on instagram. It should be a public account. You should be posting about your love for literacy, maybe about the writing process.

For those of you who are like but wait a second. I'm not a published author yet. I understand. But through talking with my friends in the industry again, I have this friend who they produce 100 books a year, and he tells me nowadays they're looking for a really good manuscript. But they're also looking. Does that author have a platform? I was shocked by this because I said, Okay, I'm a small press. Of course, it's harder for us to take a risk on someone who doesn't have a platform. And we have. We've taken risks on people without a platform. But I'm shocked to see that somebody who produces so many books a year and has more of a backbone in sales, saying they're not taking risks on these debut authors who are not visible. I wish that I could say it's only about your writing, but nowadays it's about your writing. But it's also about how are you going to help your publisher? How are you going to help your distributor get the word out there about your books? Are you connected socially?

Mindy: No, it's not easy to hear, especially for people that are out there going - But I don't have anything to actually share with the world yet! It's okay, I can tell you as someone that, uh, started blogging in 2011. I started blogging once I had an agent, but I could have been blogging before that and simply writing about learning about the publishing industry. I learned so much in forums. In particular, I was very, very active, and I was like a moderator in a writing forum that doesn't exist anymore. But I could have been blogging and just about topics of interest and things in the publishing industry, the very first time I ever went to a writer's conference. And essentially the function that my posts in that forum served was more or less a blog because I was one of the leaders in that particular community.

Now I know that, of course, as soon as I say I was a leader in that particular community, people like, Yeah, so you already had an audience, Sure, but, you know, I got there by walking in and creating an account and saying, Hi, my name is... right? You have to start somewhere and I know, I know that it's like, easy for me to say as I sit here and you know, I have 10 books published, and that's what I do for a living. But I wasn't born with 10,000 Twitter followers. It was work. It is work. You don't always love it. You don't always have something to say, but you have to put yourself out there. You have to be present. And I know that people don't want to hear that, that you just want to make your art and have someone love it. And that sounds great. Me, too. But that's just not the world we're living in.

Maria: Exactly. I think you have a great point. And like you said, uh, you could have been blogging before this happened. And I also found that, you know, I started blogging. I think my goal at the beginning was three days a week, which is a lot, but it was helping with my writing to to write that much.

Mindy: And it's a different form of writing. Speaking directly to your audience, and that helped me be better at any type of marketing language, any type of promotional language, like I am fluent in that now. And it's not because I went to school and have a degree. It's because I moved through these circles enough.

Maria: I love that point.

Mindy: I know that nobody wants to hear about all the work that you have to do before you even begin your work, but we have the Internet now, guys. I was querying when you had to go to Barnes and Noble and buy the marketplace Guide to literary agents and print a query and have a self addressed, stamped envelope and mail your query. Get your envelopes back with your own handwriting on them, addressed to you with a little card inside that says No.

Maria: I'm laughing because I did the same thing for Spaghetti In A Hot Dog Bun, but I sent it out to 90 publishers. I had that book. I had little dog-eared pages. I highlighted. I had a checklist that when a letter came in the mail and it said No, I would, you know, market on my checklist, it was old school.

Mindy: Old school. And it cost you money. You had to buy ink and you had to buy paper and you had to buy postage. And it's like, Dude, all you do now is send an email. You can learn how to do these things quickly. The Internet is here for you. You're not being asked to do anything that is impossible. I have a degree in English literature, but I've never taken a writing class in my life. I don't know anyone in publishing. I had no connections. I'm a farmer's daughter from Ohio and I write novels for a living because - the Internet. It sounds like so much work. But I believe me, it used to be harder.

Last thing, if there are any of my listeners that want to submit to Cardinal Rule Press, can you talk about your submission guidelines?

Maria: First of all, we take unsolicited manuscripts, so I think that's awesome. You don't have to be represented by an agent to submit to us. Everything is digital, so we don't accept anything in the mail, which people still send us submissions through the mail, which clearly they're not following the guidelines and they're wasting their money.

So we have an open submissions period, which begins November 1st, so you have plenty of time to work on your submission. It closes February 1st, so we usually open up that window for a certain amount of time, and then we read all the manuscripts and then we make our selections. However, next year we're going to break that up into a couple different submissions period, so just kind of stay tuned for that.

But the first one coming up would be November 1st 2021. Realistic fiction picture books under 1000 words depicting positive character traits. So think of stories that are teaching kids the values of courage and kindness and generosity and determination and perseverance. We are active on Twitter and Facebook as well as Instagram. Um, so we're in all three places. We have a zero inbox policy. So between the inboxes that you would be submitting to myself, Maria at Cardinal Rule press or marketing or submissions, we read your emails. We do. So we'd love to hear from you if you have any questions.

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