Fading Fame: Pam Munter on Women, Aging in Hollywood, & the Casting Couch

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 Pam Munter, author of Fading Fame: Women of a Certain Age in Hollywood, which tells the fictionalized stories of old Hollywood actresses and addresses some of the issues that we talk about today, such as the MeToo movement. it obviously is in the news and constantly being updated, of course, as people continue to come forward with their stories. But the casting couch in particular is hardly a new reality in the world of Hollywood. So if you could tell us a little bit about the book Fading Fame and how you came to write it.

Pam: I have always been in love with Hollywood. That's no secret. Since my first movie at age five, it never quite left me. I'm really a writer of nonfiction. And mostly what I have written up to this point has been nonfiction. I wrote a whole bunch of stories about old, mostly dead Hollywood actors and actresses for classic images and films of the golden age. And so I've always written to some extent about Hollywood. When I got into the Master of Fine Arts program, though, I was told that writing nonfiction was not enough. And I had to have a second genre, which kind of freaked me out, because nonfiction is all I've ever written and really all I ever read. I thought, OK, well, I'll try my hand at fiction. So I got into my seminar and the instruction was to write a short story. Well, I barely knew what that was because I read them in high school and college, but it had been a long time. So I thought, you know, I'll have all this information about Hollywood. What if I take that bulk of data and mess with them a little bit, fictionalize it and produce a short story? And out came the first, actually it's also the first one in the book called “Frances.” It's about Mary Pickford and her best friend, Frances Marion, who was a screenwriter. 

And some of the story, of course, is true. They were friends. Francis Marion was an extremely successful screenwriter. She was the first woman, in fact, to win two Oscars for screenwriting. Mary was, in fact, a pioneer in Hollywood. She was the first woman to form her own studio. Believe it or not, before the 1920s. And then she and Douglas Fairbanks and D.W. Griffith and Charlie Chaplin founded United Artists, which was a major studio that was still in operation today. So it was irresistible. I mean, these are such rich characters to write about. After I wrote that story, it turned out to be quite successful, almost immediately published, much to my shock. I thought, you know, maybe there are more women whose stories have yet to be told. And so each of the stories in Fading Fame, which is a collection of 10 short stories about women of a certain age, each of them have a grain of truth to them. But of course, they're fiction. And I just love putting it together, it was so much fun to give these women space and to hopefully engender some empathy in the reader for these women and what they went through.

Mindy: You say that you yourself have always been interested in films and a golden age of Hollywood. What is it about this that draws you so deeply?

Pam: Well, as a kid, the only mass media we had, the only information we had about Hollywood were movie magazines, and they were fake. They were pretty much written by the studio publicists. You know, there were five major movie studios that controlled the information flow. But I believed all of it. I just thought it was wonderful. It was a fairytale that you could walk around Hollywood and be discovered. And God knows I tried. And I believed the fairytale lives of these people. And before I knew what I was hooked. I mean, I later, of course, learned that hardly any of it was true, that there were gay people and people who were divorced many times and child abusers. And I mean, things we weren't supposed to know. I later found out, but it didn't dim my love for that era at all. And of course, they produced some pretty fine films

 Mindy: Talking about that golden age and the arena of women, because women have a shorter shelf life in Hollywood. If you could talk about that?

Pam: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And a lot of the women in these stories just ran out of time. They were hired because they were sexy and willing to engage in casting couch activities. But then, you know, after a couple of years, that they were bankable was not as important as the fact that they were no longer casting couchable, to put it politely. And so movie studios moved on. They were disposable commodities. 

Mindy: I feel like today things are changing somewhat. I can, of course, speak to how casting works. But I know that in media and in advertising, you are seeing more of a representation of people of color, people with all body shapes. It's not all the the white, fragile beauty that was always pushed upon the public for the longest time. Speaking then about the similarities and the differences now, do you think that progress has been made?

Pam: Well, changes have been made. Certainly we have mass media and everywhere you turn around, there's the 24/7 news cycle. There's very little we don't know now. To put it romantically, some of the magic has gone out of Hollywood. In a way, we know too much. We know who's suing whom and who's doing what to whom all of the time. Has it changed? Well, you know, one of the reasons it has changed has been the dispersal of power in Hollywood. As I said, there used to be five major studios with five nasty, old, white men in charge of it who could do what they wanted. That's no longer the case, Harvey Weinstein aside. There are so many companies now and independent producers, women have options. So it's not quite as restrictive. Is there sexism? You bet. I mean, every time you open the paper or go on Google you see #MeToo. It's there.

Mindy: Speaking about women in particular. I know, of course, that women feel pressure to keep up their looks, keep up the image of youth, even if it's fading, even if it's leaving them. And hopefully we are moving away from it. But we're used to seeing Botoxed faces and faces that change and women that change their looks like Renee Zellweger, you can’t even recognize anymore. And they go under the knife to sometimes an extreme extent. Were those options available to women during the golden age? How did they go about attempting to preserve their youth. 

Pam: Well, some were, but of course, the joys of plastic surgery that most of the technological innovations have happened in the last, what, 20, 30 years? They could fix your nose pretty easily. Facelifts were riskier. With Rita Hayworth, who, of course, was a bombshell in the 40s, they changed her hair line, which they thought was important, but mostly they did it with makeup. They didn't do a lot of surgery back then, so there weren’t options. If you got old, well, that was just too bad. Look at women who tried to keep looking young, and it's sort of sad to see that they feel they have to.

Mindy: Speaking of makeup, I know I don't know much about Marilyn Monroe, I'm not a fan girl, but I read Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates, and she talked about how Marilyn's personal makeup artist would work on her as she aged for hours and hours, getting her just right even to walk out of the trailer.

Pam: And, you know, she was only thirty six when she died. So you talk about aging and it's pretty cruel.

Mindy: Yeah, absolutely. Thinking about that makeup and of course, the irony being that the more of the makeup and the chemicals that you're piling under your skin, the more you're actually aging your skin.

Pam: Yes. And of course, we didn't know about tanning and the costs of that kind of thing on skin cancer in those days. And so you'd see movie stars sitting out by the pool, you know, getting tan for the next role.

Mindy: When we talk about women and the various things that we will do and you don't even have to be in Hollywood to do these things. You certainly don't have to rely on your looks as income. We all participate in it. The attempt to not age is certainly not restricted to Hollywood. These women that have aged out and like you said, Marilyn Monroe was only thirty six when she died. What was considered aging out? Like at what point were they bringing in the fresh crop and it was harder for women to attain any type of role or interest?

Pam: Boy, I don't know. There wasn’t a cutoff point. I think it had to do with box office to some extent, the whims of those five white men who decided that there were better, more exciting women lining their office waiting for their next break. 

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 Mindy: You mentioned that you yourself have a history as a performer. Why don't you tell us about that?

Pam: Well, as part of falling in love with Hollywood, I think, you know, I was convinced that anybody could do it. I don't believe that anymore, but certainly I did then. One of my undergraduate degrees is in theater. So I started doing some of that. And as I got older, I realized that you really couldn't have a career in that, that was stable. There was a lot of common sense in my life. So I know better than that. I grew up to have a lot of college training and other things besides theater. But when I finished my career as a clinical psychologist, I decided to jump into show business full time, which I could do. And I had the luxury of doing that. 

I went to an actor's conservatory. I took singing lessons. And I started appearing in independent productions in Portland, Oregon, which is where I was living at the time. Got an agent, got some film parts, and started traveling the country with a jazz cabaret show, played all the major cities in the country. I needed to play that out. I needed to find out what I was capable of doing and to experience really from the inside what some of my heroes had gone through. And I'm so glad I did it. My last gasp was I decided to learn to play the cornet. When I was a young girl, girls didn't play that instrument. They didn't play trumpets and cornets, they played flutes and violins. And so I thought, screw that. I'm going to learn to play the coronet. And I formed a Dixieland band. We were traveling around the area I live in now near Palm Desert, doing shows. I was singing and playing the cornet. And that was the last really showbizzy thing I did. Now I'm just writing about it, which is a lot more fun in some ways.

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 Mindy: And when you talk about writing about Hollywood, this particular book, Fading Fame, is fiction. But you said you've done quite a bit of nonfiction writing as well. It was a topic close to your heart. So who are some of your favorite Golden Age of Hollywood actresses, and what are some of your favorite stories from that time?

Pam: Well, I fell in love with Doris Day, very young. My first movie, in fact, was hers. It was called Romance on the High Seas. And she had a really blockbuster part; it was her first starring role. One of those magical things, you know, she's discovered at a party and she's hired and boom, she is a star almost overnight. I love that story, of course, because that's the myth of Hollywood. But as I followed her career, I realized that all was not wonderful with Doris Day. One of those stories, of course, would have to be about Doris in Fading Fame, because I felt I knew so much about her already and her travails later on. The more I read, the more I realize how victimized she was and how oppressed. You wouldn't know that because Warner Brothers created this Sunny Girl next door image for all of us that she maintained all of her life, really. But it wasn't quite true. When she was discovered, quote unquote, at this party, she was signed to a contract by Michael Curtis, who was a very well-known director. People know him really for having directed movies like Casablanca, for instance, but he was a predator.

A recent biography came out about him that suggested that he was a compulsive womanizer on the set. Doris had to pay her dues to be involved with that. She was signed to a contract by Jack Warner, who was another famous predator. You know, we didn't know all of that. So you have to wonder, what did she go through to get where she got? And where she got was fame. You know, she was famous. She was obviously very talented. I mean, a wonderful actress and even better singer. And had a wonderful career, and really she was one of the few people I think of, the women I have written about in Fading Fame who had a satisfactory ending to her life. You know, she left the career when her husband, who bilked her out of millions of dollars, died. She went on to found animal foundations, moved to Carmel, and had this huge operation. But she loved what she did then, and most of the women in the book didn't as well. So her story is sort of a tale of Hollywood. What you had to do and how to escape successfully.

Mindy: And a lot of women didn't escape successfully.

Pam: That's right. They didn't. One of the people I discuss in the book is Joan Davis, who your listeners may not know or remember, but she was a vaudeville performer for years. She had a very popular radio show, top rated, and is probably best known for her starring role in a TV sitcom about the same time as I Love Lucy premiered. It was called I Married Joan, and it was very popular. And she did it for three or four years, I think. My story deals with her short term affair with Eddie Cantor, who was also well known at the time. And her ending was sad because of her alcoholism. She pretty much drank herself to death. And again, the time was up for her. She couldn't get a deal. Her television show was canceled. She was too old by that time. She was in her 50s. Way too old to be hired by anybody. And that's a more typical ending, not necessarily the alcoholism, but the kind of petering out of a life.

Mindy: Yeah. Without having something else, another interest, something else to live for. Well, and I think that's true of anything. If a person is completely sold into and dedicated to one thing, if that one thing is no longer available to you, that's devastating.

Pam: Oh, you're right. And certainly Hollywood stardom required a 24/7 dedication. I mean, that was the only way to be. And they had no hobbies or interests outside, really, of themselves, to put it bluntly. Everything was around being successful, being famous, being known, getting fans. You know, all of that was what was most important to them. So when that went away, there was nothing. They didn't even develop close relationships, many of them, Doris, for instance, her closest friends were her schleps, you know, people who worked for her. And that's a very different kind of friendship than you or I might develop.

 Mindy: When you talk about yourself and making that transition from being a performer to being a writer. What kind of skills were useful in both?

Pam: Well, I'd always been a writer of some sort. You know, I started a typewritten newspaper when I was nine, and I got so much reinforcement from teachers. And in high school, I was editor of the paper and I wrote movie reviews every week. When I was a psychologist, I wrote a newsletter for my clients. And of course, I wrote academic articles which were required for being a professor at the university. And when I did showbiz after that, I wrote my own shows. Cabaret, you do a lot of talking you sing, but you also have patter, as they call it. So it wasn't difficult to make the transition to writing. 

I started by writing about, again, old dead movie actors that I was curious about from my childhood. I was watching TV once, and I saw a movie featuring five actors who pretended to be teenagers. Actually, they weren't teenagers, but the series was starring “the teenagers.” And I sort of wondered about the lead actor whose name was Freddy Stewart. As much as I studied film, nobody I knew had ever heard of this guy. And he made, you know, maybe a dozen movies in Hollywood in the 40s. So the first article I ever wrote was a research piece about Freddy Stewart, because I was curious. And I went on to write, as I say, a couple dozen more about people I wanted to know more about. So really, it was an intellectual, emotional curiosity that got me started writing about Hollywood more aggressively than I have been in the past.

Mindy: And what led you to become a psychiatrist? Because that is so divergent from these creative urges of writing and acting.

Pam: I think people work in mental health because of their own personal experiences. You know, I was raised in a loving but dysfunctional family and wondered how I turned out the way I did because I'm nothing like them. And again, a curiosity about my own life, I think, led me to read books about human development and personality development. I wanted to know more. And so I went back to school. I got a master's degree in psychology, admitted into a Ph.D. program in clinical psychology. I knew I wanted to be in private practice because I'm a very independent person. I'm happier not working for somebody else. And did that for 25 years, really, and loved every minute of it. The only reason I left was managed care, a movement which kind of removed my independence in big ways.

Mindy: That in-depth knowledge that you have about the functioning of the id and the ego and everything that comes into play and is fed very much by Hollywood and everything about the scene there. Does that help you when you're writing about these women? Does it give you some insight into who they were and why they made the decisions they made?

Pam: Oh, absolutely. I think a strength in my writing is my ability to get inside their head. There's a lot of internal dialogue, in these stories, really more than action, because I have a sense of what they were probably thinking and experiencing internally. And I enjoyed writing about that. I actually met some of these women over the course of my life, but I didn't know them very well. So I was guessing. But one can predict, really, if you have a certain set of characteristics in your life, some experiences you have to undergo to get to where you want to be, the things that happen inside your head. You know, the way you characterize your own self is very different than how you may present yourself to the outside world. And that divergence, I think, is fascinating.

 Mindy: Definitely. And I think it becomes even more fractured when you have people that are not only having to convey a certain manner to keep up a public performance at all times, but also then having to put on a new hat every time they walk out of a trailer, come onto the set.

Pam: It's all artifice. It's all image. More so back in that golden age, perhaps, than it is now. I think people, as you suggested earlier, I think that things have changed enough that women can be themselves more now and they know who that is than they might have in the golden age. That's good.

Mindy: I feel like it would be mentally exhausting to have to keep up performance 24/7. 

Pam: It becomes so much who you are and you lose track of who you are, you know, and a lot of these women, because they were in the business so young, missed important developmental stages and developing a personality. You know, again, the friendship and the trial and error of education. A lot of these women didn't have much education. If anything, I don't think Mary Pickford went to school at all

Mindy: When you were working on Fading Fame, you mentioned in your email to me that it had a unique writing process. Can you illuminate that?

Pam: Well, it was done in chunks. You know, I had done this story, as I mentioned earlier, for my class, and I thought that would be it. I just wanted the degree to get out. And what I didn't think about writing anymore. Again, I'm not a fiction writer, but I got encouragement from not only the quick publication, but my classmates who were telling me it's good and I should be writing more. And so it came in spurts. The next one was, of course, about Doris, because it was so easy for me to write. I just sat down and out it flowed. I knew the crux I wanted to talk about the violation done by her husband in stealing all our money and how she might react to that. 

And so one followed another one of the stories called “The Curtain Never Falls,” is about an older woman who is in a wheelchair in a nursing home. And probably there are the rest of her life. And I got the idea for that story, because I was watching a documentary about Rosemary, who was a cabaret performer, and she's best known for being Sally Rogers on the Dick Van Dyke Show. The documentary was in her last years of her life. And she said to the interviewer, “you know, some nights I lie in bed and go over my act.” And I thought, wow, I mean, there is a story there. This woman who's about to die is still fantasizing, performing.

Mindy: I can speak to how I, as a writer, then go out and, of course, you know, have to do public speaking and panels and interactions. And that, too, is a performance in many ways. And it's something you do kind of analyze. Think about how you could have done it better. It can. It can make you crazy.

Pam: Yes. Yes. We are our own worst critics. No, no doubt about that.

Mindy: Absolutely. And that applies to both those public performances and our writing in private.

 Pam: Yes. I try not to reread anything that I have published. I did two CDs when I was singing and I never, ever listened to them because I know I'd be frustrated and want to go back and do it all again.

Mindy: I tell everyone that once it's in print and once it's out there and published there, I don't think there's any point in reading it or really interacting with it any further, because you can't change it. And you will, of course, improve as you continue to write. And if I read my first book, which was published in 2013, but I wrote it in 2010, 11 years, a better writer now I have 11 years more experience if I were to read it. I'm sure I would want things differently.

Pam: Oh, yeah. Yeah, I agree. And just move on, you know, see what's next. As you say, there is a learning curve to writing. And I found that the more I wrote, I think the better writer I became. I've never been a lyrical writer. I'm very meat and potatoes. I want to tell you the story and move on. I don't think I'm ever going to be any different, but I'm learning to describe things better and to immerse myself better and to throw in more dialogue and some of the things I've learned over the years.

Mindy: You end up populating that toolbox.

Pam: You're right. Yes. That's a good way to put it.

Mindy: Last thing. Why don't you let listeners know where they can find the book, Fading Fame and where they can find you online?

Pam: Absolutely. Amazon, which of course sells everything, also sells Fading Fame. And you can find my memoir there, too, which is called As Alone As I Want to Be, which is a little bit about the saga of my Hollywood adventures up and down. I can be found at Pam Munter dot com

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Mary McCoy on Jumping Genres & Misleading Representations of Romantic Love in YA

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 Mary McCoy, author of Dead to Me, Camp So and So and also I, Claudia. Her forthcoming book, Indestructible Object, is about a Memphis girl who starts an investigative podcast to figure out whether love exists after her personal life goes up in flames. So with that backlist and with this upcoming book, it's pretty clear that you do a lot of genre hopping, which is something that I do as well. So I would love to talk about that. First of all, maybe your thoughts on why you are a genre hopping writer and then the thoughts on whether publishing is kind to that or not.

Mary: It's funny, I was thinking about that before we started talking and I'm like, why do I do that? Because the first answer that came to my head was - I'm trying to entertain myself when I write. I think it's more than that. I think it also speaks to the kind of reader that I've always been. Like I've never been a reader who just reads one kind of thing. I've always read across genres, non-fiction, fiction, even as an adult. I read books for children, books for young adults. I read a lot of adult fiction, too. So I think it makes sense that you write the kind of books that you want to read. Why do you do it?

Mindy: It's a great question and my response has been that I write widely because I read widely. So all of my inspiration, any ideas that I have or stories they can come from anywhere, focus on anything. So it's something that I just believe has always been part of my wide curiosity as well. I'm just like you. I read everything. I read nonfiction. I read fiction. I read Y.A. I read for adults. I don't read romance. That's just not my thing. But I will read anything as far as genre goes. I don't mean to be particular, but I don't understand just reading in one genre. I know people that do. I don't think I could ever have that kind of diet in my reading. So I read widely. And I think that that means that any of my ideas and any of my inspiration also happens across a wide spectrum.

Mary:  Something my agent actually pointed this out to me, that this is something I do. She said, It seems like when you start a project, you have also set yourself some kind of little challenge. I think that's true. I think whenever I'm working on a project, I want to tell a story. But I also have set some sort of... like I think that this might be just outside my abilities. And I want to see if I can grab it. So I don't know, maybe that's why I do it as well. Like, I'm trying to grow as a writer.

Mindy: Well, I think that's a really good point. I know with my book A Madness So Discreet, that one is historical. And when I wrote it while I was getting ready to write it, I was really excited about it. And I was doing all this research and looking at everything that I had going on and really just like, yeah, this is going to be great. And then when it came time to write it, I kept putting it off. I researched for 18 months before I even started writing it. And a lot of the reason why is because I was afraid that I would not be able to pull this off because it's historical and it's a mystery. And my main character is a selective mute. So there wasn't a lot of chance to be working with dialogue. 

So, I mean, it was a huge challenge. My book that came out in 2020 is called Be Not Far From Me, it's about a girl that is lost in the woods. It's a survival book. It's basically like Hatchet but with a girl. She is alone in the woods, Ninety eight percent of that book.

Mary: How do you do that? That’s got to be damn hard to write.

Mindy: When I started writing it and I was just like, I would come and I would sit down in front of my laptop and I'll be like, OK, so what's going on now? Oh, yeah, she's in the woods. There's no one to talk to. 

 Mary: Just her own terrible, terrible thoughts.

 Mindy: Many of my friends that are writers have sent me messages or emailed me because they actually saw that challenge. I'll get emails from readers. They're going, gosh, I love this book, thank you. But I get an email from a writer and they're like, how the hell did you do that? And I like those challenges, changing things up. I think you're right. I think that's a really good point. Switching things around to challenge yourself

Mary: Like in Indestructible Object a lot of that story is told in podcast transcripts. And like that was something that I wanted to play around with. But part of the story is the main character is running around trying to get her parents to tell her the story that they do not really want to tell her, over the course of the book, trying to draw that story out from them and then working that into the narrative as well. Because - and this is something my editor pointed out to me - when you're writing a young adult contemporary novel, the point of the book can't be getting to the bottom of her parent's mystery. You have to keep the story focused on her and her life and what she's going through. And that has to be the center of the story. That was an interesting challenge as well. You know, I love a book where someone digs up family secrets. 

Mindy: I write small town stuff, so, yeah, family secrets are always big,

Mary: You and I have a weird amount in common in addition to our alliterative names, like we both grew up because I grew up in western Pennsylvania in a small town. Used to be teen librarians. 

Mindy: Oh, yes, absolutely. Yeah. And I think that probably also contributed to my reading and writing widely because I was always reading things that normally I wouldn't, so that I would be able to do good at my job and be able to, you know, give the books to kids that needed those books. So, yeah, I think that that definitely contributed to me reading widely and writing widely as well.

Mary: Yeah. And it's funny, I'm not a young adult librarian anymore. I'm now an art librarian and I feel like I'm not nearly as well versed in what's going on in young adult literature as I was when I worked with it with teens. And I miss it a little bit. There are times I'm like, oh, what's on trend right now? What is everyone reading? I have no idea, unless I go on Twitter, but it's a terrible place to be.

Mindy: Well, I don't go on Twitter unless I have to. Weirdly, a lot of people that I know had this problem - COVID hit and it should have been like our time for readers. We should be like the happiest people on Earth. And I had a hard time reading over COVID for whatever reason, nothing was speaking to me. I've been really struggling with reading lately, but part of it is because I'm writing so much, I get no breaks from words. It's all I do is words, words, words. So when it's time to relax, sometimes I'm like, no, no more words.

Mary: I had this a similar problem the first few months of the pandemic and actually the book that was kind of my drought breaker was Felix Everafter by Kacen Callendar. I read that book and it was just like a beam of sunshine. And I don't know, it opened a floodgate and I was able to read after that. I was also like all during 2020, pretty much from March 2020 through December 2020, I was on deadline. I was doing all of it, doing my revisions on Indestructible Object. And I discovered that being on deadline during a pandemic works pretty well. Being Focused on something that is the very immediate future, trying to be a creative person, writing first drafts during a pandemic is proving to be slightly more difficult. I’m just having a really hard time getting into that headspace right now, which… it's never really happened. I've never experienced it. I wouldn't call it writer's block because I know what I want to write. My body's just like, no, no.

Mindy: I understand I'm in a similar position and I don't want to write. It's when I sit down in front of my laptop... I mean, it's always work, but it feels kind of like drudgery. And yeah, I don't know why. It's partially because I'm an outdoor person and I don't like the way my publishing schedule is currently set up where I'm drafting in the summer. It makes me sad. I want to be outside and I want to be working. And it's like, you know, my flower beds don't look good. My garden is a mess. I haven't even been out there. And that tends to drag me down a little bit. So that's part of it for me. If my drafting was in the winter months, I would be probably much happier. Speaking of that genre jumping, when you talk about the different types of books that you read, but then also what you write, do you think that publishing or maybe your sales numbers would be kinder to you if you just picked a thing and stuck with it?

Mary: I don't know the answer to that. I feel like I will keep doing this as long as I can get away with it. And I feel like maybe at some point I'll be told no and I'll listen to that. But I don't know. I also wonder if at some point I won't just return and go full circle in a way. Like the book that I would like to try to write next is a mystery. My first book was a historical mystery. I feel like along the way through my four books I have, I don't know, that there's definitely a through line, but there's a trajectory. 

I heard from a young reader who has read all four of my books, and she said, I liked this one the best. I feel like you just keep getting better. Which was really nice to hear from someone. I was just talking to a friend the other night who said the same thing. And that's good to hear. 

And I think about my first book, Dead to Me, which is like this Hard-Boiled detective novel, and I remember having conversations with my editor while I was working on that book. And the whole time she was like, could you give her some feelings, too? She's a real cool customer. And I was like, no, she can't have feelings. That's too hard. And then Indestructible Object is nothing but feelings and characters who talk about their feelings all day long and are either really in touch with their feelings or trying to be. That's a nice journey to see, because I think that in some way reflects something of a personal journey, not just a creative one.

Mindy: I've had similar feedback over the course of writing, for as long as I've been writing and having my critique partners be like, how does she feel right now? And I would have so many comment bubbles on the sides where it was like - and she feels how? And people really pushing me to dig into those feelings and that internal monologue that is definitely part of the craft that you get better at. You don't necessarily see it at first. When you are a newer writer or an early writer, you are just thinking plot most of the time. All the time. But you want to get everything down on the page so that you don't lose it. And that is a progression of events. I know that I have gotten better as I get older and I'm writing more. I don't have to go back in and layer in feelings as much as I used to.

Mary: Something that I feel like I've gotten better at over four books is making that translation between what's in your head and what actually shows up on the page, because I would miss that early on. I would know what the character looked like and I would know what they were feeling, but I hadn't actually written it. And it would take feedback from critique partners to realize that like, oh, I never actually put that on the page.

Mindy: I depended too heavily on inferences. So like. but like in this dialogue right here, you can see that that's how she feels and it varies. But you're right, you're the author, so you already know how they feel or what they look like or what they're wearing. And so you don't necessarily put it on the page, but you feel like you see it that way because that's what it looks like. And you didn't necessarily do a good job of actually putting it on the page. That is something that you learn as you go.

I think, too when it comes to the genre hopping. I think I have 12 books out, maybe 11, and I've got two more coming. I have kind of begun to settle because I've written everything from historical, mystery, fantasy, post apocalyptic. I've written a little bit of everything, contemporary thrillers, and I have started to find a little bit of a groove, like you were saying before, about a through line. All of my books, like you read any of my books from the fantasy to the contemporary thriller The Voice is there. The grittiness and the feeling is, is there, that this is a Mindy McGinnis book. But it may not have the same genre or the same style because my style can vary pretty widely. 

And some of my books, like A Madness So Discreet and then my fantasy books are written a little more with a literary bent. Whereas my first two books, the post apocalyptic books, they're very sparse just to reflect the landscape and reflect what's going on in the world. But when I have a book that has a little more of a rich setting, the language changes. So I am a little bit all over the place and I do think it has probably hurt me in terms of finding core readers, in terms of my publisher knowing how to market me. I do think that that probably has not done me a lot of favors just in terms of straight up book sales.

Mary: Yeah, and I don't know for me, I don't know how much of a commercial writer I am, so I don't feel like it impacts me quite as much. I'm a mid-lister, I guess I feel like over four books there are readers who have come with me because they like the style, they like the voice. You're saying, like you can tell when you're reading a Mindy McGinnis novel. I think something like that develops when you're writing. Do you ever feel like like you're just trying to see what you can get away with?

Mindy: All the time. I'll write something and I'll be like, oh, that's not going to make it, you know, but we'll see what happens.

Mary: I mean, I remember when The Female of the Species came out and just everyone was like, I can't believe she got away with that. Like, she just... she got to do that? And that was what made me realize - and this is probably why I'm still writing Y.A. - because I feel like you can really be experimental in Y.A. You can do things in a way that they would never let you do in the adult market. And I think it's a very exciting place to be for that reason.

Mindy: Yeah, I do. I think so, too. I think that you can have some fun and play with young adult, because I think the younger readers are going to be more receptive. My most recent book has, it's written in three POV’s and one of them is a panther. And most of my readers have been like, oh, that's really cool. But then it's like I've had adults that are like, what the hell are you doing? I'm having fun. 

Mary: Exactly. 

Mindy:   The Female of the Species is a good example. So I think that was my fourth book and I was not, and I still am not like a very well-known writer. I have a group of people that really love me and will buy every book that I write, but that's like maybe five hundred people. I don't have a huge audience. I definitely think that there is a perception that I sell more than I actually do. If I'm being totally honest, I'm probably actually, as far as numbers go a mi-lister. I just get away with a lot. And I think honestly, that's part of the reason why I get away with it. 

I mean, The Female of the Species should be banned. Like there's no reason why that book should not be banned, other than it isn't read as widely as some other books that get banned. This Darkness Mine, when I wrote that, I was like, oh, this is getting banned. No, not not a peep. And I think it's just because they aren't read enough and that's fine. It's like - I'm ready to be banned. I think it'll be great. Every time I write something. I think, well, this one's not going to make it and I keep getting away with it. 

But I think that's partially because I do have a reputation that I write the way that I do. And the people that like it already know it. And that's who's going to pick up my books. It's people that already know who I am.

Mary: I think we've both been called gritty. My first couple of books got called Gritty. My second book definitely got called Weird. The word that keeps coming up with Indestructible Object, every review that I have seen of it, the word Messy seems to be the word. I've decided, I don't know, I don't think everyone means that as a compliment. But I've decided to wear it as a point of pride because it's a book about human relationships and human emotions and those are rarely tidy. Or if they are tidy, they're not interesting.

Mindy: No, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, I get a lot of Bleak and I'm always like - Is that good or is that like… Well, I mean, it was supposed to be. So I guess I did it right.

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Mindy: Talking about Indestructible Object, the book that I'm drafting right now deals with a girl, a young girl who is creating a podcast. So I think that's really interesting that you're doing the same thing, because I am also toying with writing out the podcast, like the transcript as a chapter.

Mary: Was Courtney Summers the first one to do it with Sadie

Mindy: Yeah.

Mary: My book is very different from Sadie because there are no villains and no one dies. And the podcasts are about art and love instead of murder. But it's a very satisfying format to write. In my third book, I, Claudia the last section of that book is written entirely in court transcripts. So there was something similar stylistically and I don't know, I hadn't listened to a lot of podcasts prior to writing this book and I do now. It was easy to kind of fall into the rhythms of it. 

And there are actually two different podcasts in the book. There's the one that she produces with her boyfriend. It's called Artists in Love, and every week they tell a different artist's love story. Then they break up and he's gone and she's kind of in a tailspin. And she ends up starting her own podcast to sort of investigate the mystery of why her parents, who are in the middle of getting divorced, got together in the first place because they just seem like such a doomed couple. So the podcast kind of ends up being about this mystery and about trying to figure out whether love exists, whether love is ever worth all the goddamn trouble of it.

Mindy: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love it. I think that's wonderful. I love the experimental structure as well. I'm playing with it too. In mine. It's like you're saying- it's a team, it's two girls. It's an unlikely duo that ends up having to do a podcast together because they don't have enough history credits to graduate because they had a guidance counselor that just did not do his job. One of them is like the valedictorian and the other one is barely going to graduate. And so they have two very, very different voices. And they end up getting involved in a mystery that nobody even knew existed, a disappearance, someone that disappeared 40 years ago. Nobody even knew she was gone. 

Both of them with their different approaches where the valedictorian is just kind of like, oh, my gosh, it's so horrible. And I can't get my mind around the darkness of the situation and where the other girl is like, I am so not surprised. Yeah. A teenage girl disappears. Oh, yeah. That that's never happened before. And just having these really, really very divergent voices. And they each hosted a different episode. So I haven't written one of the episodes by the rougher girl yet, but I wrote the one that's by the valedictorian. 

And so it was kind of fun to play with because I was writing it. How would she do this? Like, what is her voice going to be like on her podcast? It’s going to be very serious. But I was like, we're going to really heavy hand this, like it's going to be a little too much and she's going to take herself very seriously. It was a really good way to investigate that character.

Mary: That sounds fantastic. Does it have a title?

Mindy: Right now it's a working title and I hope it does stick most of the time it does. What they're supposed to be doing is just doing a historical podcast about their small town. There was a week in and this is actually true -this happened in my small town. Forty years earlier, there was a tornado that wiped out the town, a flash flood that came in right after that. And then the only murder that has ever occurred in the town happened in that same week. Everybody from the town calls it the long stretch of bad days. So that's the name of the book. 

Mary: Oh, wow. I love that. 

Mindy: Thanks. And it's not all my hometown, the tornado is my hometown. The flash flood is like the next town over and the murders are completely made up because nobody dies where I live. But, yeah, I'm excited about it. And I'm playing with that format, like you said, that podcast format. So it's fun. I mean, I really enjoy it. 

I love the question in Indestructible Object. What is love? I've been divorced twice. I think that's a wonderful topic for a teenager to be interested in. It might help them discover some things earlier rather than later.

Mary: That was something I was really trying to do in the book. I feel like people get a lot of bad information about love and relationships and what constitutes a healthy or a successful relationship. Like often what constitutes success is it lasts until you die. Nobody cheats and nobody fights. And there's so much variation in between. And I think that a relationship can end and can still be a success, you have other options with people then, like we can't be together anymore, therefore you suck. And I have to just sort of burn down all the memories. 

There are no villains in Indestructible Object, which is funny because my first three books all have these villains who are so bad like they’re badness is visible from space. And to have in this book be something that's a lot more nuanced that you don't need to have someone who is the bad guy necessarily, because just the way that people bounce off each other, the way that they communicate or fail to communicate, that can create all the conflict and tension and the things that can blow up a relationship. 

Although I will say this like the main character, she's an imperfect character. You find out as you go further in, like at the beginning, she's really idealized to this relationship with her boyfriend that's just ended. But the more you learn about their relationship, the more you begin to see that it was not perfect at all, like it never was, that they sort of enjoyed telling each other sort of the story of themselves. They looked really good on paper.

Mindy: I really resent the TV shows and the movies and the books that I read that cast love in a certain light where you were always happy and nothing ever went wrong and he loved you so much. I get very frustrated with the way - it is changing, but I was a librarian for 14 years and I would get so irritated when the main character's love interest, the male was so just genuinely perfect. And he takes care of his little brothers and sisters and he volunteers at the Humane Society and he plays guitar and he cooks dinner for his family and he never even looks at other girls. You are the only girl that exists. And I'm like, bullshit. Yes, he does. He looks at other girls because he's a boy. 

It would frustrate me because I would read when I was younger, too. It's like I would read these books about idealized love, where it’s like you are the only one for me and I have found you and we will be together forever. Then dating someone and being like. So you really seem to look at Kathy a lot. And I'm thinking, oh my God, this relationship is never going to work. He is attracted to someone else. And it's like, well, that's just biology.

Mary: I don't know. I feel like some of those grand romantic gestures can often be, They're not always weaponized, but when they are deployed upon you, they're very difficult to resist because you're being fed, like there's a moment where in Indestructible Object, where the main character and her boyfriend, they've broken up and he shows up at her house, like in this grand, like I want you back kind of gesture. She knows even then she should say no to it, but it's just too alluring. And she's getting the thing that she wanted like the thing that fills in that particular narrative, she should say no to it and she can't.

Mindy: That's something I've always felt about public proposals and someone is proposed to in public and people are like, oh, my God, it's so sweet! And I’m like NO! Because she can't say no now.

Mary: But when they do say no, it's so rich.

Mindy:  I know there was a Tumblr for a while. I don't know if it's still out there. And it was all like public proposals gone wrong. I love that because it was like, this is reality. We don't always get what we want. And it’s guys, it's girls, it's both. And it's like people really putting themselves out on the line and being told no, being rejected. And it's heartbreaking to watch, but it's also real. That's reality. I would never say I grew up reading romance, but there was definitely like a summer where I think I was probably fifteen or sixteen. And I read a lot of Jude Deveraux and Kathleen Woodiwiss, so I read a lot of romance. And it was all very much like that, swoony, our eyes met and our fates were sealed. And that is just not how it works. And even the best possible relationship in the world, if you're not fighting, something's actually wrong because somebody isn't saying something.

Mary: What I was reading when I was in high school, I never went through a romance reading phase, but I was reading like. Pete Hamill and John Irving and John Cheever and all the Johns - mid century American masculinity romance novels. And that narrative is like, oh, I'm middle aged and emotionally battered and this person is going to save me. It’s just as much a fantasy.

Mindy: I have a lot of thoughts about the way relationships are portrayed and when you see a messy one, I really enjoy that. I know Friends is coming back and the kids are watching Friends. But I watched it through high school and then in college and then I stopped watching it after college. But I remember when Ross and Rachel broke up like my entire dorm was watching it. It was one of the best fight scenes that I've ever seen. It was very realistic, like they were yelling and then they were crying and then they were sorry. And then they were like, we really love each other, but this just isn't working and we don't know why. And they're both sad. It was just like a real relationship.

Mary: Well, I did not expect Ross and Rachel's relationship to show up in this conversation.

Mindy: I don't know. I've been because the friends, everybody's watching Friends again and people are wearing t-shirts and everything. I was really invested in it as a teenager. As an adult, If it's on, I'll watch it and it just doesn't do anything for me. But I remember being probably 18 or 19 when that episode aired and being like, oh, yeah, this is actually realistic. This is nice.

Mary: And, you know, there are people who were never quite into Ross and Rachel again. Once they broke up the first time and then got together, it was kind of like, well, they're not perfect anymore. So I'm done.

Mindy: Which is just not real at all.

Mary:  Well, I mean, happy endings are all about where you stop telling the story. The first time that I ever thought, that I ever really saw that, it hit home for me was when I saw the movie The Graduate. And the movie ends with the big romantic gesture. He actually pulls it off. It goes well. And then the scene of them just driving away on the bus with these horrible expressions on their faces of like, oh, - we done fucked up and now we have to live with the consequences of our own actions. 

And I remember really resisting that at first, the movie ending. And I was mad like that was my initial response of like, no, you can't you can't do that. That's not right. That's not how you tell a story. And then I realized, wait, no, that is exactly how you tell a story.

Mindy: I read very recently. I actually read The Hunchback of Notre Dame because I've never read it before.

Mary:  I haven't read that. 

Mindy: Oh, God. OK, so I talked about it on the podcast before. I don't know who at Disney read that and was like, this is a children's movie. Oh my God. The priest like flat out attempts to rape Esmeralda. Esmeralda is 14 and her knight in shining armor, whose name I forget. He literally can't even pronounce her name like she decides she loves him because she likes his military helmet, literally. 

Mary: Oh, no. 

Mindy: Oh, yes. She likes the way he looks. And then she's like, I love you. Let's get married. And then she even drops it where she's like, You don't even have to marry me. I will just be your mistress. That's fine. Let's make this happen. And he's like, You're so cute. My little pet, he’s patting her head and he won't, he can't even pronounce her name. And everyone ends up dying. Literally, the entire cast dies except for her lover, whose name I can't remember. But the very last line of the Hunchback of Notre Dame, it made me so happy because it said, as I forget his name, we'll just say it's Greg. It says, As for Greg, he suffered the worst fate of all. He was married,

Mary: I guess, at Disney. They were like, well, if we got away with The Little Mermaid and making that palatable to an audience of children, surely we are invincible now. We can adapt this.

Mindy: It was really good. I enjoyed the book. It was fun to read. It was very well written. Everyone dies, Esmeralda is hanged. Quasimodo crawls into her grave and just chooses to lay there until he dies. And as for him, he was married and it was the worst fate of all. The worst of all. Thanks for that happily ever after. 

Last thing, why don't you let readers know, first of all, when the release date is for  Indestructible Object, where readers can find the book and where they can find you online.

Mary: It came out June 15th. It is available anywhere books are sold. And my website is Mary-McCoy.com. I just got two pieces of good news yesterday. I found out, first of all, that Indestructible Object, there's going to be a paperback edition. And I also found out that it was nominated for YALSA’s Best Books for Young Adults list they produce every year. And it's funny, that just felt like such an achievement unlocked. Like four books, and I've never gotten that honor before. It felt really special.

 Mindy: Absolutely. And I don't think that people realize you don't automatically get a paperback. You have to sell well enough in hardcover in order to get a paperback release.

Mary:  Yeah, this is the first time that's happened. I did just find out also my second book, Camp So and So, which this is wild - that book came out in 2017 and it's paperback edition is coming out next May. That's nice to know that you've written something that's kind of had that much of a long tail on it.

Mindy: Any positive things, no matter when they come in this industry you embrace.

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.

 

Actress & Author Meg Tilly On Writing Organically

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: I'm here with Meg Tilly, the Oscar nominated and Golden Globe award winning actress who has transferred her talents over into the world of publishing. Her newest book, The Runaway Heiress, releases on July 27th. And it's really kind of a fun mix of really  intense thriller elements, but along with a romance and it's set in the backdrop of Hollywood. And reading it, my feeling was, it kind of felt like a Sleeping with the Enemy meets Hollywood kind of feel. 

Meg: I’m so excited you read the book? So I'm just sitting here grinning at the computer screen and thinking, oh my gosh, she read the book! Oh she read the book!, somebody's read my book! 

Mindy: Yeah, I know the feeling.

Meg: I'm so happy that you described it that way. Thank you. 

Mindy: Oh you're welcome. So if you'd like to tell our listeners a little bit more about the book and how it breaks out what the plot is. 

Meg: What happened is I had done the Solace Island series and in the third book of the Solace Island series which was Hidden Cove, there was a character named Mary Browning. And when my readers had finished that book they kept writing to me and saying what happened to Mary? Mary needs a book! Can you tell us what happened to Mary? And I thought well that's pretty impossible because Mary Browning isn't her real name. And then she's on the run again. So she had to change her name again. So how could you possibly - not you, me - write a book with somebody who has three names? 

But I somehow figured out a way to do it. And she is an heiress and she's on the run from her abusive husband who's a lieutenant who is determined to do whatever it takes to get Sarah and her inheritance back under his thumb. And so she ends up running out of money near Hollywood. So she has to get a new name, fake ID. And she lands a job as personal assistant to Hollywood's Golden Boy movie director. And so then the question is - is she finally safe in this exclusive money enclave of Mulholland Drive - which I based the character and the home on someone quite famous that I knew. So then you don't know if she's safe or if this in fact has thrust Mick into the crosshairs of the deadly danger that stalks her. That's sort of what it is. And then you've got their relationship, but you've got this really (hopefully) strong thriller element feeling of a net tightening closer and closer and closer. And I thought it was an impossible task and I worked really, really hard on it. But I'm really pleased with the way it turned out, and I'm very grateful to my editors and my publishing house for just how they helped me make it even better. 

Mindy: You have this opportunity to write, it's not new to you, as you were saying, you had a series before this. So that initial thrust when you began writing novels, was this something that you had always wanted to do? Had you dabbled with it? Obviously you've been acting for quite a long time. At what point were you like, I think I'm going to try being a novelist?

Meg: I didn't know I was going to be a novelist. It happened to me by accident. It started when I was 30 when I was pregnant with my youngest child. I had started having early spotting, early labor, so I had to go to bed rest. I had written a little short film that I was going to shoot because the cinematographer had told me - you're a director, I see the way you work, you see the whole story. If you write a short film, I'll shoot it and I'll get crew and equipment for you. So I wrote a short film and was going to be shooting it when this happened. And so I couldn't shoot it because I had to be confined to bed rest for several months. And so I thought, what I'll do is I’ll write a script, then I'll have it so that when I have the baby then I could shoot the short. If I take it to festivals, people will say, oh, this is good. If you have a film you want to do, we'd be interested in seeing, I'd say, well I do have a script right here. 

It started off like that, but then instead it just became short stories or actually just memory snippets of my childhood that had kind of leapt to the forefront. And so that's how I started writing these short stories. It wouldn't come out as a screenplay, it came out of short stories and it was a relief to write that. I was very famous at the time and just to put it out on the page. But I never thought I was a writer. I thought writing was for quote smart people. Writing was for people who had college degrees, but these memories needed to be written. That's how I wrote my first book. I was helped by Charlotte Sheedy who was a literary agent who had read my first pieces. I didn't know if they were any good, I didn't know what to do. And she said - They're beautiful short stories, you need 100 pages in a short story collection. So I did 100 pages and then she said, you need 200 pages because these aren't short stories, it's all about the same family - big surprise - so you need 200 pages for a novel.

That became my first novel and it was Singing Songs with Dutton that was an imprint of Penguin. And it's weird because throughout my career I've had 10 books published. The majority of them have been with one imprint or another of the Penguin and now Penguin, Random House umbrella. I've had one with St. Martin's press and some with Canadian publishers here. But it's quite astonishing to me. And now, finally, after my fifth book, which was published by publishers, I thought, oh my gosh, I think I am a writer! Like a real writer, but it took that long to be like, oh no, I just had something to say, oh, I just had something else to say. Even though I sat down at my desk every day, you know, minimum five days a week. And I have a multitude of manuscripts and short stories that will never see the light of day, while I learned from my first novel to my second. For around 10 years, you know, I went to writing groups, weekly writing groups, and workshops. I needed to learn how to write fiction. 

Mindy: I think probably anyone listening to this, that is also a writer, still feels the same way. And also questions whether they too are writers, that's the way it works. I can relate even though I am a writer, I have 10 books out.

Meg: We’re like twins!

Mindy: Yeah, mine are with Harper Collins. Every day that I do sit down to write every time, there's fear.

Meg: You’re writing and your characters are doing and you're like, what! If I can't corral all these kittens into shape - You! No! One's going off here, and you're like, no, no, no, no, that's not the plan. That wasn't the plan. Well, I can't let you just run away and get run over by a truck. And then by the time you come back the others are scampering off. So what are you working on now, Mindy? 

Mindy: I am actually in a little bit of a groove. I'm waiting to start something new. My next book comes out March 15 of 2022, so that's in the can.

Meg: What’s the title? 

Mindy: It's called, The Last Laugh. It's the second in a series. 

Meg: Good name. 

Mindy: Oh, thank you. It's the second in a series. The first is called The Initial Insult and they’re like updated Edgar Allan Poe murder mystery elements set in Appalachia.

Meg: Wow. See, I'm so crazy. I'm a writer. So I know how things get, but I'm like, wow, how did you come up with that? And what a cool setting. And you know, the first thing I think is so, I could never write that. You know, like every time it's like, you pick up your books and you're like, wow! Well, I was really lucky this time because I really loved this book. But right, I don't know how I did it. 

Mindy: You're like, I got away with it again. Never fails to as you're saying feel like something that maybe another part of you did. A part of you is really smart and did a good job, but it's certainly not you.

Meg: And you're just praying that they show up to the party the next time. 

Mindy: Yeah, exactly. And I could relate to - you say something like, oh, I could never write that. I have felt that way so many times. I'll have the idea, I'll have it put together, I'll pitch it and they’ll say yes, do it and I'm like, okay, but... okay.

Meg: And or have you ever had, like, I'm working on a manuscript now where I had decided because of the pandemic, because I do the romantic suspense with like the strong thriller aspect, I had the idea that -  the pandemic - I just don't want anything scary. I don't want any dead bodies. I don't want anything. And this one, the manuscript is turning out -- what the heck happened here? Because it's not just a light, straightforward, happy feel-good. It's just my writing body just wasn't able to, it's just like, nope, nope -  if anything is going to be a tiny bit darker. 

Mindy: Yeah, my most recent book that is out, part of the Edgar Allan Poe series, is called The Initial Insult and it deals with an epidemic, like a flu virus epidemic. And there is an element of - I'm from the midwest, what we would call a white trash zoo. Which is just like an irresponsible, exotic animal owner. And I wrote this book in 2018 and then the Tiger King came out, Covid hit. Everyone is like, oh my God, how did you write this book so fast? And I'm like, No I wrote it in 2018! I'm like, it makes it much easier to pitch because it’s a complicated book and I'm like, it's Tiger King meets Edgar Allan Poel with Covid, but a stomach flu and they're like, oh! 

Meg: I couldn’t do that. That's the one thing I can't do is that, where you can just succinctly get it down and distill it down. That was great. 

Mindy: Mash ups are a talent of mine. I love movies, I love books and pop culture so much and I can tie things together because, like, when I was reading The Runaway Heiress, and I was like, oh, this is great, this is Sleeping with the Enemy in Hollywood. I don't know, my mind just works that way with the puzzle pieces, it's wonderful. But as I'm getting older and publishing kind of remains younger, some of my references they're not working because they might not get my movie comparison from 1981. 

Meg: I know. I haven't seen Sleeping with the Enemy, but my mind is spinning ilke, oh, I'm gonna check and see what that is now! 

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Mindy: So, coming back to Hollywood and your Hollywood experience, did you intend, like from the beginning with this book where you like, I know I'm going to use my background and my insider knowledge to write this or like you're saying, did Sarah just end up in California and you were like, oh good. Now she's in Hollywood and I can do this.

Meg: I knew she needed to be somewhere other than Solace island because the Solace Island series ended and she was on the run. So obviously she couldn't be on the run and stayed on the little small gulf island. And then I was like, well, who would the guy be and I have a lot of false starts until I find the guy where I'm like, oh no, this chemistry is good. So I actually had one where she was working and it was, I can't remember where it was somewhere in the Midwest and it was a guy who was an executive who sold automobile parts. You know, there's like a big business with that and I went down that road and I'm like, this just doesn't feel right. I mean their interaction didn't feel right for her. Kind of like The Dating Game which is again dating myself or whatever. 

Sometimes more with one book than another, I start with the woman and the woman's voice and one guy and another and another and different professions. So actually in Cliff’s Edge, it's the second one of Solace Island, had also an actor who was a friend with the guy who was a security expert on the first one. So it's like I try on different people and I don't know until they actually, I get the sense of the guy. So I've written a scene with Mick just seeing it like who is he? And I'd written where she first meets him and comes to the door. So that scene has totally, totally been rewritten a bunch of times and once it feels right in my skin that I'm like, aaah. And I go forward, I just try on different people until the guy feels right and the situation feels right, and I'm like, oh, oh yes, that's wonderful. 

Mindy: I don't do much plotting myself. I also just wait and see what happens and you know, typically the right thing happens and the story can keep going and it feels really organic. So I think it's really interesting to hear you say that you operate in the same way. Do you think that that kind of free floating form approach - Do you think that has roots in your acting background? 

Meg: For sure. In the way that I act, the way that I was trained with Peggy Fury at The Loft Studio, I couldn't go forward until it felt right in the gut. So I would have to do all the background on the person - where they came from, what the weather is like outside. Are they coming outside, inside or from another room? What have they been thinking right before? Or what have they just gone through? What are they wearing? What did they have for breakfast or lunch or what is their relationship with all the other people when you come into the scene? Are they strangers? Are the people, you know what is the past history? So all of those questions, but for me it's like, if I can't walk in the door with them, then I'm scrambling and I'm faking it and to me, the joy of it is feeling it and just walking in as a person and seeing the world through their eyes. That's the privilege of acting or writing is to be in the skin. 

So, for me, I mean, some authors have a different way of working and they're able to just pound it out. And I have pounded out the series I've started now. I pounded out 25 pages of who they are, what's going to happen. The arc of the thing. It's totally changed from the first book, totally changed everything. There's some things that I can use, but even when I pound it out, it doesn't happen that way because you're operating without all the information that you obtain as you write and dive deeper in and understand them more. It's really a kind of for me, a very organic thing, the unhappy part about it is I have to rewrite a lot because something will show up part way through, halfway through, three quarters way through, two chapters in and then I have to go back and rewrite and put little plants, and little bits. 

I wish I was the kind of author who just ran full tilt down the hill, arms outstretched and tumble where I may. So my writing process is slower. I'm always going back and rewriting and then going forward and then something shows up and I have to go back and weave it in and change stuff so that it flows smoothly. Luckily I don't have to slam a lot of things out because I'm not career building. I'm writing for the sheer pleasure of writing it, although it's hard work and sometimes it's not pleasurable at all, but also for sharing my story with my readers in the world. That's the joy for me. And that's lucky because it takes me a little while to get each book out. 

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Mindy: I love what you're saying about drawing that line between acting and you having to know the person before you can be the person and then pulling that into writing. I feel similarly and I do operate very organically. My trick that helps me avoid any rewriting is that I don't really put things down on paper until I know the characters fairly well. So I just kind of have it all mentally in a cloud and I just haven't downloaded it yet. I'm figuring them out as I think. So I can do Like 2-3 months of pre writing, just in my head. So I liked what you were saying earlier too about the kittens going to do whatever it is they want. I was running this morning and I need to begin a new book - like today. But I was running this morning and I always really agonize over opening lines and I was running and I had an opening line, I'm like okay, that's good. And I know who the narrator is and in my mind, you know, there's going to be the unlikely duo, right? The Good Girl is my opening narrator and she just kept saying things in her head that weren't that nice. Like she wasn't that girl. Outwardly she was. But inwardly she was kind of sarcastic and a little bit mean and I was like, oh I okay, I didn't know you were this way, but apparently you are. 

Meg: I find when a character starts talking to me, I just start writing because that's their voice and when they have those surprises, it's such a gift. But sometimes it's a pain in the ass because like you said, the kittens right? But it's a tail of a dream. So you're like, I keep it in my head and I turn it - and I do turn things over. Like during the day after I finished my writing, sometimes I'm still in the writing world, even though I'm not. But when I have that, it's like the tail of a dream and I have to grab ahold of it before it dissipates and I forget, like a dream. You know, when you wake up, you're like, oh, I remember that and then by afternoon - I had a really interesting dream and then it's gone. I'm like the kind of person who, if that happens, I need paper! I need paper! And you know, if you have it with you, great -  or you have your phone and you can take notes, or it's just gone, like a mouthful of smoke if I don't grab ahold of it. I wish I could keep it in my head and sort it all out for you know, a couple of months and I know other authors who do.

Mindy: I mean, it is a scary approach because I do lose things like there's no doubt about it, I do lose some of that ballast. But what I do is, in particular if I have a wonderful line or a wonderful piece of dialogue, I will write that down right away. I don't lose it because that's very specific. And I find that if I have written down that very specific dialogue or that one line, it has captured a voice, a scene, a feeling, a tone and I can look at that and recall all of the other elements that were built around this. So I just kind of have these anchors that I will toss onto a piece of paper and everything else. I can just kind of let coalesce and organically create a thing. 

Meg: Yeah I do that too. Something pops in my head like oh this ties into this which is later then I'll draw it down on a piece of paper or post it. I mean I have files, two sets of files on my screen and then I also have a binder. And I also had, unfortunately, copious amounts of post-it’s from when I'm just you know in another room where this is? That by the time I finish a book, even though I say it every time - this time I'm going to be like those people with those careful files and this and that. I have the files, but it also looks like a bomb exploded. 

Mindy: Oh, yes.

Meg: You too?

Mindy: Oh yes. These little Notes to Self things. I write in the margin of other books sometimes. Now are your notes that you write to yourself. If someone else were to come along and look at all of your notes, would they be able to decipher them and know what you meant or is it just for you? 

Meg: It depends. Okay, so if I'm doing research about something, then of course there'll be lots of notes about that. Lots of times those notes are points that are going to happen. They tie in this thriller aspect that needs to be touched either before or after. And I'm writing something and I want it or it's night and I'm like, no, you have to go to sleep. I’m like, but I don't want to forget this. Then it might be a paragraph here, three lines here, a sentence here that somebody says, that is key to something there. So it might just be like when you're reading you're just like, oh wow, this is fun. I mean just going on this little roller coaster ride. But believe me, it's like, I’ve got to weave this and I gotta with that and oh wait, okay, Oh really? Alright. And then you go back and you weave it through again and again and again. It's fun I guess. You know, I have friends who like doing puzzles, like 1000 piece puzzles. For me, you know, I don't like that. But in a way, these books are puzzles of pieces of zillions of zillions of little moving parts and when they all come together and it's like a story that somebody can read and enjoy, then you're like, oh my gosh, you know? It just makes you so happy. 

Mindy: Oh, it does, it does feel like a small miracle when all those cogs come together and they actually make an engine that works. 

Meg: And do you pick up your books, Mindy, and look at them and all of a sudden and just flip it open and be like, where did that come from? I don't read through them, but I pick it up and I might, if I'm having to talk about it or find something to read for a book thing. And it's just like, how did I ever write this?

Mindy: I do that. I'll crack open the book. Like to do a reading or something like you're saying or look for an area, a section to read aloud or share. I’m like - I  don't know who wrote this, right? I don't remember doing it. Good job, you! But yeah, it is a bizarre, inexplicable feeling and I feel very similarly and I can't put words to it, but it's like - someone better than me did that. They also live inside me. 

Meg: Yeah. That's it. 

Mindy: It's a weird experience. Why don't you let listeners know where they can find you online and where they can order The Runaway Heiress

Meg: I started during the pandemic, a thing called Meg's Cozy Tea Time on Youtube, that my husband talked me into doing and I just did to entertain him because you know, it was just him and me. He really wanted to, he thought it would be a cool thing and I wanted him to know that I listened to him sometimes. We've just got this great community and I sit down and I chat about whatever. People ask me a questions. So I talk about writing and I talk about life and they asked me questions about my old life as an actress and it's fun. So you can find me on Youtube, Meg's Cozy Tea Time, you can find me on Twitter as meggamonstah because I didn't really know what Twitter was and some of the kids on when I did Bomb Girls, the TV show Bomb girls, they're like, no, you have to get on Twitter and I'm like Twitter? I just got my first phone! But so they put me on Twitter and I made up the name meggamonstah because I thought it was funny, because it was so not like me and but it's stuck now. So that's what it is. And on instagram, I‘m Meg Tilly, I think I Meg Tilly Author, I'm not sure. But you can plug it in, you can find it. The Runaway Heiress you can purchase in any store, go independent first and if you can't find it there, then go to uh bigger ones.

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.