Dan Koboldt On Co-Authoring & Putting the Science in Fiction

Mindy:            Today's guest is Dan Koboldt. Dan joined me today to talk about his publishing journey with SciFi, non-traditional routes to success in the audio world and how to put the science in fiction. 

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Mindy:             Your SciFi series Gateways to Alissia was published beginning in 2016 with the Harper Voyager imprint. So if you could talk a little bit about that experience because I know it's slightly different from the traditional publishing route. I think it would be really interesting for listeners to hear about someone that achieves success through something other than a traditional manner.  

Dan:                The experience was pretty traditional for me because I had to go query, get an agent, go on submission, and they are a Big Five Publisher. I think the difference was the imprint itself. So I was actually published through Harper Voyager Impulse, which is an imprint under the Harper Voyager envelope. It has, in theory, the backing of Harper Collins, but their model was a little different. 

They decided to try sort of a digitally focused imprint, which a lot of publishers were trying at the time because they could see that self and indie publishing were really taking off, and they wanted to try new things to compete with that market. So under the Voyager Impulse imprint, our books came out in e-book first, and then they came out in print like a month and 1/2 after that. 

I think a lot of things were the same to what some of your other interviewees who have gone Trad Pub have experienced with the exception that this was kind of an experimental approach. It was very digitally focused. They also probably signed a lot of authors and books. I think at the peak of Impulse they were putting out 2 to 6 titles a month. maybe more, so they were putting out a lot of releases. Probably too much for what sort of their publicity marketing could really support in substantial ways. So that was the experience. I mean, it's been a while now, but remember it being a little bit different from what some of my friends have gone through other modes of publishing have experienced.

Mindy:            For example, cause I know it's also now all of them are also available in audio and in physical copies. Did you see it as a successful experiment? Did you move many e books? 

Dan:                Most of us sold mostly e books and that was the focus of the imprint, I honestly think that they offered a print version mainly because they would have had difficulty signing authors if they didn't have that component to it. So because, you know, authors like, Oh, wow, it's Harper Collins. If it were digital only offer, I think a lot of us wouldn't have signed, myself included. But, um, e books have always been the focus. And I think their model, if they wanted to go after was, we're gonna focus on E books. We're gonna keep them reasonably priced as another component of impulse. I think all all the e books are priced Dollar 99 to 3 99 maybe 4 99 at the highest. So it really was them trying to compete with what you'd consider the Indie model right now, from the point of view of producing a quality e book that's reasonably priced and having it available across all the e book platforms, I think that part was a success.  

I think where the imprint struggled is in marketing and promotion because they put out a lot of these. We were assigned publicists and we got some sort of basic support along those routes. I think that the venues that were being pitched about us were aware that this was sort of a digitally focused thing and that, like, shifts you into a lower priority tier for coverage, as you're probably aware. So it was a struggle for us to get publicity, and there were other types of support and marketing that we didn't get compared to, sort of, a classic Voyager Imprint author might get where they're only doing one or two of those tiles a month.  

Mindy:            And do you think that in general, SciFi performs well in that ah medium of e books? Because obviously, romance is always the e book, the big push for e books. That's where romance does a lot of their business. Ah, Indy publishers and self publishers obviously hit that pretty hard, but we're talking about traditional publishing houses. SciFi Is that something that generally does well in E books? Because they know that I write YA, and we don't move e books. Everyone talks about teens always being attached to their phones and attached to their computers, and the truth is that when they want to read, they actually sign off. They have a physical book. So you're writing SciFi for adults. Do you find that your audience is there for e books? 

Dan:                Oh yes. I think SciFi is probably second only to romance, possibly also the mystery in e book adoption, cause I mean, think about the readership people like SciFi. We're usually very tech adjacent, And so they were early adopters. And that's been the case even for authors who like pretty well established traditional SciFi authors, for example, Ann Leckie. I met her once and she gave a seminar and and I think she reported that 75% of her sails are E books, and she certainly has got all the different print and other format options that you could imagine. But it's just the readership, we're very tech adjacent. 

Mindy:            Yeah, definitely. No, that makes sense. And it's something that I know as someone... you know, I look at my my royalty statements and I sell like 1/4 of my sales is e book. They just, they're not there. But I want to talk about audio books as well, because I see you also have your books available in audio now. Is that something that was part of the original plan? Or did the very recent boom of audio books make that a possibility? 

Dan:                That's a great question. It was not part of the original plan. None of the Harper Voyager impulse authors got audio books. But HarperCollins, even in the mid 20 teens, was requiring audio rights for any book contract. Like they were forward thinking in that way, and their house was notorious for it in a time when not many houses were requiring that, but Harper Collins did so they had the audio rights, but they were pretty up front about not having intentions to produce audio books because it's expensive. 

The boom hadn't quite happened either. It was just starting. And so it was one of my great regrets that we had sort of given them the audio rights. But they were going to languish because an audiobook wasn't going to be made. So what happened is my agent and I worked out a deal with them where they wouldn't revert the audio rights, but they'd allow us to shop the rights, and then they would get a cut if they were sold. But we could at least market them. And that for me was important because I could see that audio was really blowing up. And I, um, I had had some other projects come out in audio, one of which we're gonna talk about later. 

And it was just so amazing for me. And I thought, it would be fantastic to get my books into audio. I think they would do pretty well in that format. And also, I could just tell a segment of the readership was moving to where they only read books that are on Audiobook. I even saw that in 2015 when I was approaching book reviewers a lot of them had start asking, Do you have an audio book? Because that's what they had switched to as their preferred format. 

So I didn't get that initially, but once we worked out this deal and were able to, we shopped the rights, this was somewhat later, this was in the past year or two, my agency started shopping the rights around. I think the handicap, though, is that yes, audio's hot, but a lot of publishers are sort of less enthusiastic about something that's not a brand new book, right? I mean, It's not, It couldn't be an audible original or something had been published for starting in 2016. The market was growing enough that we did get some interest and we eventually got Blackstone Audio made an offer for all three books, which we were super excited about. At least one other Voyager impulse author has also gotten audio books. So I think the segment and the format is so hot right now that some people are having success even in books that sort of have come out already.

Mindy:            I think Black Stone in particular, I know that, Ah, friends of mine that have gone into self publishing, and indie publishing, Blackstone has bought up their rights, and they produced fairly quickly as well. They were very surprised at how quickly the, and the quality of the audio that was produced and on the market very fast.

Dan:                I'm impressed with that, too, and that exact same impression. I mean, it seemed like we were just sending that contracts and stuff, and very soon I was, you know, getting narrator auditions, MP three's and stuff, so it did move very quickly. That's a perk of like an already established work that someone comes and gets the audio rights to, is it's already been through edits and copy editing and everything. It's I mean, it's a publishing ready product, and so it's just making the audio.  

Mindy:            Speaking of audio, let's talk about a project that we worked on together. We worked on a series for a company called Serial Box. And since that is your baby, why don't you explain to the listeners what Serial Box is and the model that we followed in order to make that come alive?  

Dan:                It might have been my starting baby, but eventually that was adopted by the three of us, Yes, so Serial Box is a relatively new publisher. They've been around for a few years now, and their model is that they wanted to publish projects that were co written by multiple authors in episodic format. So rather than having a book, you would have a season of episodes like nine or 10 episodes, each of them being about 10,000 words that were written kind of like how TV show writers would do it. There would be a writer's room involved, and a writer would take the lead on each episode and they would get released week after week in these bite size chunks. 

And what was different about Serial Box, everything is essentially released through their app, so you can open a Serial Box app. You can start reading, Ah, one of their many serials that they have. The first episode is always free, so you can try it out and see if this is kind of interesting to you, and then you can buy additional episodes or buy the rest of the season. It's usually like 10 to $12 to buy the entire season, so it's definitely a different model for publishing. And it was my first experience in co writing, too. 

But I had heard of Serial Box. I had met some people who wrote for them and was started hearing about them. And my agent let me know. Hey, this company Serial Box is interested in hearing pitches. So they had issued a prompt at the time they said something along the lines of We're interested in new series, basic premise being that a group of people are getting some sort of messages, preferably in audio, because they were really pushing the audio format, that are related to a mystery they're trying to solve, and that was a loose prompt they gave. So almost right away, I just had this idea for it. I thought it would be really cool to do something with the Bermuda Triangle because I'm sort of conspiracy theory, hobby fan of that sort of stuff. I like historical mysteries, and I was thinking about what we know from history about the disappearances in the Bermuda Triangle could be a really interesting setting for that. 

So we put together this proposal, the basic premise being that after a particularly bad hurricane season, the Bermuda Triangle reawakens and starts claiming ships and planes at an accelerated rate. And so there's a team of people that are assembled to try and figure out what's going on. And as part of that, they're getting these snippets of audio from the crafts that have disappeared like shortly before they disappeared. So that was the basic premise that we pitched Serial Box. They liked it. They said, we'd like you to write a series bible of what a whole season one would look like And we did that, and they sort of green lighted the project and they said, Okay, now we want you to find a couple of co writers to write this with you. That was sort of the establishment of the baby, as you called it.  

That was when we first got started. Then it was like, Okay, now let's talk about what co writers do you want. And they came to me, which I was a little surprised by. But they're like, we need you to pick some people that you think you could work with who, and they also wanted writers who were somewhat established in some way. And so I had two thoughts for people that I found it reasonable to recruit. One is Sylvia Struck Wrigley who was an aircraft crash expert and a friend of mine. And I knew her through some writing groups. And I thought, this is somebody whose expertise we're gonna need with all these airplanes and ships disappearing and radio conversations, et cetera. So I said we should try and recruit Sylvia. 

Serial Box had sent me a list of people that they thought might be valuable to try and recruit to write for project. And your name was on it. And I was like, Mindy? I know Mindy and I knew you were a boss and I was like, We should try and get Mindy So that's how it all started. 

Mindy:            One of the things about it that I was so excited about as a writer was to have this experience of co writing, because at that point in time I had not done that. And the other part of the model that is so interesting is that Serial Box flies us all in and puts us together, and we're in a writer's room and we bang out a season. And it's actually so much more in tune with how you would write for TV than how you would write a novel, because you are planning an entire season with an arc for the season. But an arc also for each episode, and what was so interesting to me was how truly collaborative it was, because we started with an arc that became something entirely different by the time we worked over like, three days. I think we only worked for three days. Is that correct? 

Dan:                That's right. They were long days, but there were only three of them, and through they were long days.

Mindy:            They were very long days, but it was really interesting to me to have that writer's room experience. So if you want to talk about that a little bit, and I like how it's so different from the experience of writing in isolation. 

Dan:                That's true. And part of the process that they had sort of set up was okay. When we GreenLight a series you and your co writers, we're gonna have a writer summit. It's in person, but we all went to New York City. Serial Box, brought us there, and we had this schedule of three days where we were going to basically map out the entire season, figure out what was going to be the plot arc overall, what was gonna happen in each episode? The characters, the world, the rules of the world, etcetera.  

So it was really interesting. I mean, we're all got together and we were literally in a room for three days, as we said, planning this stuff out and our starting point was the series Bible that I've been paid by Serial Box to write. But that got heavily revised as we started working through a lot of the questions and like. Okay, So if we're really gonna make 10 episodes out of this, what's gonna happen in each one? How are the character's gonna interact? What are the relationships gonna be like? So we were creating and deleting characters from that, like nobody's business. And I think we all brought something interesting to the conversation, which I think was immensely helpful. We also had our producer in the room who was helping guide the conversation. So is, um, I thought, It's a really interesting experience. 

Mindy:            Yeah, definitely. And I thought, to, how interesting it was to be working with a series. One of the things that was difficult about it. And it could be frustrating, but it was also really pushed the edge for me creatively was we had to leave a window for a season two. if we got one, which we didn't. But we needed to make sure there was the possibility of one, yet also completely settle everything like more or less we had to write a TV series that was only in audio that could be a stand alone with serious potential. 

Dan:                It was funny because I was always thinking about that. I'm always like Let's leave this open for this. And so I came in from the point of view of leaving way too much open. And they're like, OK, no, we need to somehow close this. That needs to be a complete story in itself with just room to do more.  I mean, for me the challenge was when I initially conceived the idea with the premise I already described, the idea I had for this first season is they assembled this team. This team gets together on an island and starts working on the problem of all these ships and planes have gone missing. Their investigation was like the 1st 2/3 of the season, and then basically not to spoil anything, but they find a location that they need to go investigate and end up sort of crash landing on this island where this source of the mystery seems to be located. 

So we had this plan of, like, all this investigation with all these audio clues, and I was thinking that's gonna carry us forward, and then they were like, No, we need to, Is there any way you could have them get to the island like right away? And I was like, Oh my God, I had  this whole season in my head about resolving the mystery and all the disappearances and we kept having to squash that as much as possible basically cut to the chase as far as the series was concerned, So that was the hardest part for me. 

Mindy:            Yeah, that was definitely difficult, because I think I think your original plan was to have them getting to the island and, like the end of Episode five, and we did at, like, beginning of Episode two.

Dan:                It is so crazy, just like trying to squash all that in and make it interesting and just totally reframe our thinking. I think because Serial Box is part of the process, they use a producer who's involved in the series. And they also eventually have, like a beta reader of the people who, some company people in some external advisors, and everyone was saying like, Let's get there as soon as we can. So I think that's the direction was going. 

But you're right. It was challenging because we kept having to squish all that and make it make it intense and pacey and lay the appropriate groundwork. But then also get to where the mysteries took it as soon as possible. But one of the nice things about that is we got a season much as we had to squish all this stuff I had planned for the first half of the season. We got to expand and build upon kind of what happens once they get there. And that was a lot of fun, because I had. It wasn't just me. I had you and Sylvia and we were all coming up with ideas and talking about different interactions and who would be on the island, what would be on the island? How would that unfold? As time went on, that was a lot of fun. 

Mindy:            Yeah, it really was, and so non traditional for me, as far as writing style and just procedure, it was so different and it was such a great experience. And that's part of what, it's part of the reason why I signed on right away. When you contacted me, I was like, I need to expand my wheelhouse and expand my skill set. I don't know how to write for television I because that's basically what we were doing. I don't know how to work in a writer's room or be a co author. It's like, Let's do this. Let's go for three days and bang out some shit, you know? And it was great. Like I I was freaking exhausted. At the end of it was it was creatively draining. I thought it was great. It was a great experience as a writer. 

Dan:                I know. It almost killed me. Um, yes, but it was also like I look back, but then when we finished you know, the writing portion of it was really interesting, too, because we didn't write the whole thing that weekend. Obviously, we sort of laid out the season, made the assignments as best we could. We framed what would happen in the episodes, and we decided, Who's going to take a lead on writing each episode. And then the other interesting element to how Serial Box does things is their creative process for the whole writing of it is also under this formula. So the team of writers we each take an episode and they're the sequential episodes like 1,2,3 or 2,3,4 And we're all writing those simultaneously. That part was also like a little crazy because you're writing something that's gonna end right where somebody else's picks up and we're all writing at the same time. 

Mindy:            It was crazy and we would get together, there were Google chats where everybody would be like, this is where I'm stopping. My biggest concern. Of course was and I think everyone else's was, too, was continuity, continuity, continuity. How do we do this and keep things straight across? Because even things like, Ah, one of our main female characters is a police officer. But she's on a particular island where it was like the culture there, they wouldn't call her a detective. They would call her something else. And so we had to make sure we were using the right word, and all of us were using the right word every time. And the same was true of like Sylvia knows more about planes than I do. You know more about boats than I do. So it was like, you know, we had to make sure that all of us were using the right terms and consistently using really small things like that, that we had to be sure that we were consistent about what we were calling things even.

Dan:                Right there. I mean, that was a challenge. And I think it was since I was assigned to be the lead writer it's technically my responsibility to ensure continuity. But there was also no way I could do that by myself. So that was the purpose of these get togethers. We would talk, and there were even, like, simple things that came to light that were like, Okay, well, here's what I'm gonna have, you know, my characters do in this part, and we're like, wait you can't have those two because I have those two making out in the cave. So, like banging out all the stops, the sort of model out and figure, where is everyone and what's happening? And what happened with this ship wreck? There are a lot of details, and it's funny, too, because our our personalities came out, I think a little bit. We're on a scale of detail oriented, where Sylvia, I think, is by far the most detail oriented and very technical and very capable. In that way, you were probably the least caring about details, and were just like, No, that's probably what we're gonna work out. I'm gonna write this thing and I was somewhere in the middle. I try to.. I was trying to follow some details, working it out with Sylvia, but also, like, not to her level of being being that capable. So it's really Interesting seeing how we would handle stuff like that. Like usually, if it's like, OK, if we have to figure out how this speculative element is gonna work, let's work out. The timing of this and Sylvia and I are like trying to do these calculations and all the stuff you and you were just like just let me know what you guys figure out. 

Mindy:            Yeah, I was like, I literally don't care. Like that is, well, timelines for me - and I'm like this with my editor on my own books - I'm like, I don't care if you say it has to be a Tuesday, then just tell me it's Tuesday and I will do whatever.  You figure it out and tell me and that's what I'll write. But I'm just like I don't know, timelines linear time. I do not care. I I don't even exist in it very well. I'm just like whatever. I'll be there when I get there.  

Dan:                It's so true. But, you know, you you brought your strength to the to the project to. Like you were really good at killing people. And so whenever we had somebody that had to die, we were like, Well, that's clearly gonna be a Mindy episode because someone's going to die horrifically so that will go to you. And if there was, like, a plane crash or a boat crash or whatever, it was we're like, well, we should have Sylvia do that, clearly. 

Mindy:            Sylvia's gonna take that one. Yeah, Yeah, it was fun. 

Dan:                It was so fun, cause I think we all got into the story. And what's great is we all you know, after that summit, we all had invested, and it was our group story that we created together, and we're all super excited about what we're gonna write the week to week. You know, writing schedule was intense and it was, like, creatively and physically taxing, like you said. But it was also just fun because we weren't in alone. We're all writing together, and something we could count on you, Mindy, is you were, like, always done first. Like we had to write 10,000 words. And for me, and Sylvia it was, like, brutal to write that much in some short period of time. And you were always, like, done way before us, like an authority. 

Dan:                It was so great. So it was like, my goal to like, one time during the season beat Mindy in creating my first draft. I think I got it done once. But that was it. 

Mindy:            I think you did. I think you managed. Like, at one point, I think I was on tour and you were like, I did it. And I'm like, I'm on a plane, Dan, it's because I'm on a plane, okay? 

Dan:                I gotta victories any way I can get him. 

Mindy:            I understand. Yeah, it was It was fun. Like I had a good time with it. 

Dan:                It was a cool experience. I learned so much from writing with you guys. And we learned so much from you. Learned so much from Sylvia. Um, so it was really It wasn't just a work co writing experiences, it was really educational. I felt like I grew as a writer because of all those different elements working with you two, and the sort of dense timeline, and the team approach to this. It was, it was really interesting for me.

Mindy:            Let's talk about your book Putting the Science in Fiction. It's from Writer's Digest Publishing, and it was really cool, because what you did is you put together Ah, bunch of advice for writing with authenticity in science fiction, fantasy and also other genres. So you brought together scientists, physicians, engineers and experts in other areas to talk about how to put these things into your story. Essentially, your title says it all, Putting the Science in Fiction. So why don't you talk about that a little bit? 

Dan:                So I'm glad you asked. That thing has been a long running project. Basically, several years ago, I started a blog series where once a week I would invite an expert in some area that requires technical or engineering or medical expertise to come and do a guest post on my blog about their particular field and in particular, how to write it accurately. If you're just a lay person and I think the inspiration for the series was that I as a person who is a genetics researcher. I am easily annoyed by what I see as mistakes in the field of genetics and DNA research and that sort of stuff. Whenever I encountered it bothers me. That's just my personality, I guess. But like if it's a TV show, a movie, a book, anything where they're just making gross errors about the scientific accuracy, something it would bother me.  

And and so I started running a couple of these articles about, like, how to put more science in your genetics themed story that got a good response. And so I started inviting these other experts because I, sadly, the great secret about scientists is we don't know everything about all sciences. And so as much as I try and keep that on the D. L, there are a lot of other disciplines where my knowledge is cursory as anyone else's. And so I knew I needed to find other people who had expertise in those areas, and I would invite them to come to a guest post. It would basically be like this format. Okay, tell me the things that you encounter in media where people get something wrong about your area of expertise and then tell us about some ways that you could get it right or some elements to this particular subject, that if I understood a little bit about it and show that I would come off as a person who's convincingly knowledgeable about X and X might be space travel. It could be genetics, like in my case, it could be gravity. It could be systems, biology, anything like that. 

We basically wanted to come up with these relatively short pieces that would instruct an author in enough information to be dangerous. That's what we wanted to have, and so that blog series was going for some time. And then my agent said, Hey, you know, we should think about maybe trying to propose that to become a book and Writer's Digest books was the natural venue to pitch. But we put together a proposal and said, Look, we had this long running series. It's got a good readership. People really interested in this and we think would make a good book and this is what we put in. We proposed, I think, to do 30 or 40 chapters covering a lot of different disciplines and we would have 10% of those be ones that did not appear online, that were unique to the book because that's important when you're kind of taking something from online to book format. That's what became Putting the Science in Fiction. I mean, we pitched it to them. They really liked the idea. And I worked with my contributors to get their chapters sort of edited and consistent for inclusion as chapters in the book.

Mindy:            Very cool and I own that, I personally really enjoyed reading it. I find, without having much of a science background myself as a farmer's daughter, whenever I'm reading anything or watching a movie that has farming in it, I'm just like, Oh, no, no, no, no, no, All wrong. And so you know, we all have our areas that we are specialists in, and I think that putting together specifically something ah, that is science based and is for science fiction and fantasy writers. Specifically, I think it's just fantastic. I love the idea. I love the book. There were plenty of things that I found useful to me. Even without being a science fiction author.  

Dan:                I'm glad you said that I appreciate your kind words, and you remind me to point out that this book is, I mean, the audience is writers, firstly, writers who are in genre fiction, but it's really any writer whose whose work might cover some of these technical elements. And so, um, there there's obviously gonna be some genetics because that's my wheelhouse. But there's also chemical, psychiatric and neurology components to it. There's wildlife biology. Then there's computers and technology, Earth and other planets. astronomy, and then actual rocket science. I mean, we have people who are astronomers and true rocket scientists who make contributions to it. So that's that's one of the appeals Is everyone who wrote an article for this is an expert in that field who works in that field. And so I think that was one of the unique things about it is that you can count on this person really knowing the nuances of it. So what I need to do clearly in the future is to get a farming article from you because clearly you're the farming expert.

Mindy:            Actually, I was sitting here thinking we should ah, band, together with a few other folks that we know and just do Putting the Midwest in your fiction because it's never right. It's never right. It's always just like either pure Appalachia or everybody's a redneck and is like, Dude, you know, I mean Dan's from Ohio and Dan's a genetic scientist. So it's like, I'm from Ohio. I am not a redneck. It's really bad. Whenever I see anything that's supposedly set in the Midwest, it's like everyone is racist and sexist and they all kick their dogs.

Dan:                Yeah, it's so true what you bring up, because I see a lot. I grew up in ST Louis, Missouri, which is a city. And But if you ever see Missouri portrayed in any form of media, it is, um, it's the absolute worst, most backwards hicks that you can imagine. So that bothers me, too. I'm totally behind this, putting the Midwest accurately in fiction idea. I think we should talk more about it.  

Mindy:            I think we should, because it is something that I could I could get on my soap box about. 

Dan:                You make the notion that everybody's an expert in something. It could be about where your from, about what you do for a job, even if you could even be something. It's like you're a custodian and you see how custodians are portrayed in TV snd it's totally wrong. All that stuff. Everyone has something they're an expert in, so I like it when bloggers and podcasters like yourself go out and find those people and interview them about this, their expertise because there's only so much research you can do on your own online, like Googling things or reading Wikipedia. That is a useful starting point. But finding someone with real expertise is so valuable and getting a little bit of their time to talk to them makes such a difference in how you are able to graft subject matter. I just I highly recommend it whenever you can do it. And most people, I don't know if you know this Mindy, but most people like talking about stuff that they know about their job.

Mindy:            I mean, the easiest thing to talk to someone about is themselves.  

Dan:                That's good. Yes, see, and most people probably don't get asked as much as they would like to about their job that they do. And about what things they bring to work or where they're from. So it's so easy to have those conversations, especially among other people who were also writers. 

Mindy:            You know, it's funny, you know, when you go to the doctor's office and you have to update all your paperwork and all that stuff if you're only there for your yearly or whatever. I'm always amused because it's like I will sit down and I update everything, and I fill everything in. I don't have a lot of medical like problems, history and my family. So it's a lot faster for me than it is for some people. But so it's like, You know, I'm just like, boom, boom, boom. Fill it out and I hand it in. And without exception, every time the secretary will say, Wow, that was fast. I'm always like, Well, I knew all the answers. 

Dan:                Oh, that's good. Yeah, that's helpful. 

Mindy:            I mean, it's not a test. It's like you're literally asking me about my own body, and I know these answers.  

Dan:                There's so much information out there, right? There's so much misinformation out there. It's sometimes comforting to know that you can trust the source. If something's worth printing right now with Corona virus, and then there's like an overwhelming amount of information. And I'm trying to sort of cull how much stuff I get so that I only get it from people who are known and trusted experts in the thing that I'm interested in. And that's something we should all strive to do in the information age is sort of reduce the noise and focus on good, high quality information. 

Mindy:            That's so true and will continue to be true. Moving forward. Last thing. Why don't you let listeners know where they can find you online and where they can find your books? 

Dan:                We'll start with my books. My fantasy series is now in audio is called Gateways to Alissia. It's about a Vegas magician who is trying to make it on the Strip and gets recruited by a company to go on a mission in this secret medieval world that they've discovered. And so the first book is called The Rogue Retrieval that's available in audio now. For my nonfiction book that we discuss is called Putting the Science in Fiction and the project that you and I discussed the Serial Box project that's called The Triangle, and you can listen, listen to or read the first episode for free on the Serial Box website that's serial as in Serial killer or you can get it through their app. 

Stephanie Wrobel on Researching Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy & the Value of an MFA

 Mindy: Today’s guest is Stephanie Wrobel, whose debut novel, Darling Rose Gold, is available now. Stephanie joined me today to talk about her research involving Munchausen syndrome by proxy in order to write her novel. 

We're here today to talk about your new novel, Darling Rose Gold, which has gotten a lot of buzz already. A lot of people are talking about it, say that it will appeal to fans of Fiona Barton, Lionel Shriver, Riley Segar, anybody that likes true crime stories as well. So to start, why don't you just tell us a little bit about Darling Rose Gold and what it is about?  

Stephanie: Sure. So it's the story of a mother and daughter named Patty and Rose Gold Watts. And unbeknownst to Rose Gold, her mother had been poisoning her for her entire childhood for 18 years. And so Patty goes to prison for these abuses, and my book starts with Patty getting out of prison. Ah, at which point the now adult Rose Gold makes this sort of calculated decision to take her in. And then it becomes, ah, battle of wits as we try to figure out what each of these characters want. 

Mindy: And it is very much about Munchausen syndrome by proxy, which I know some of my listeners might be familiar with. But if you could talk a little bit about what M. S B. P is? 

Stephanie: Sure. So it's a mental health illness where a caregiver fakes or induces illness in the person that they're caring for, which is often a child. 

Mindy:  In order to gain attention for themselves and sympathy for themselves. Correct? 

Stephanie: Yes, exactly. To gain attention or love from the medical community. So usually doctors and nurses.  

Mindy: Darling Rose Gold is different from other books that talk about Munchausen's syndrome by proxy because of the fact that you you open with that reveal that this is in fact, what happened, and it's more about the path forward in this case. 

Stephanie: What I was really interested in doing is examining the why. Why perpetrators do this. Do they know that they're lying? Do they think that they're doing what's best for their kids? And so in order to do that, I feel like you kind of had to be up front, you know, at the beginning and say, Hey, these are the things that Patty has been accused of have been convicted of. And that kind of sets the tone for the rest of the novel. 

Mindy: I'm sure you probably had to do a lot of research in order to write this.  

Stephanie: Yeah, I read some memoirs. I read some news articles. I read a medical textbook, and all of that really helped to form these general profiles of both perpetrators and survivors of the abuse. And then, from there I was able to take it and flush them out and make them my own characters.  

Mindy: And this is also told in alternating viewpoints. So I think that is particularly, I think, challenging as a writer because as a writer you have to create sympathy for your characters on some level, even if it isn't this complete - yes, I'm on your side. You at least have to create - Okay, I understand why you did this, whether I agree with it or not. And I think that's something that, in my experience as a reader, simply, in reading the Game of Thrones books, which I read back in the nineties, I love to tell everyone I was way ahead of you.

But I thought that George R. R. Martin did such a good job with the character of Cersei, and that we absolutely hate her. We find her despicable until we get her POV chapters and when we get them. And I think that wasn't until the third book might have been the second. But when we get Cersei's POV. As a mother and you see that everything she has done it was for the, you know, the benefit of her Children. You begin to, if not necessarily sympathize with her, at least understand. So is that a challenge for you? As you are writing, Patty?

Stephanie: I think, Yeah, that's a really good parallel example. I am also a huge Game of Thrones fan and yes, you you got there before me. But I agree. You see some relatable sides of her in the show, but certainly not as much as you do in the books. Of course, there's much more room for character development in those giant bricks of books that they are. Getting back to Patty. Yes, it was. It was a bit of a challenge, but I think I just tried to put myself in her shoes and think somebody with this syndrome would be minimizing the terrible things they're doing and really focusing on the image of the perfect mother and caring for your child, and so that that's what I tried to do.

And also just really focus on the parts of Patty that do make her a little more relatable, or human, such as her own terrible childhood or her legitimate concern, when Rose Gold was first born about her well being and you know she was having these breathing problems. And I think that vulnerability, it's probably pretty universal with new parents, where they just are almost frantic, with worry of wanting to make sure that their newborn is okay and so by emphasizing those things, I think, instead of making it into this sort of like one dimensional villain who's just like bad all the time.  

Mindy: Motherhood is so complicated, it's complicated on so many levels, and we see, of course, today with everything that's going on with the Corona virus, we see people behaving badly in many cases, and I try not to get caught up in media cycles. But, you know, a lot of people are posting about people that are hoarding or people that are over buying toilet paper, for one thing. But other things as well. The first thing on my mind is I wonder how many of them are mothers, mothers that are panicking and are just doing... they're literally going like, you know, Nature Channel. I'm hoarding for mine and my own and my nest.

Stephanie: It comes out in a different action. But it is a primal urge and just this sort of maternal instinct to protect your young at like whatever costs. I'm not a mother, but I know it from watching my own mother from watching my sister, who has a baby, and it's just it does feel like this sort of biological pull. 

Mindy: Yeah, absolutely. Well, that's what I always tell people. In one of my my first novels, It actually takes place during an apocalyptic situation, and the mother character in that story is very primal and more or less like, shuts down her household and is teaching her daughter how to use a sniper rifle and protect their water source.

And so many people have e mailed me and just been like, Oh my gosh, she's such a terrible character. She teaches her daughter how to kill and not to love. And I'm like, Well, but look at the environment. It's like she's teaching her daughter how to survive. That's what she's doing. She's being an awesome mom. Teaching her love and kindness is going to get her ass killed, Right? So that is one of the things that you know, I think about when I think about motherhood. But Munchausen's syndrome syndrome by proxy, which is... are you... do you practice saying that so that you say it right every time? 

Stephanie: I've started abbreviating it to MSBP. Once I say it once, I'm like, Okay, I got it out once. 

Mindy: Okay, I'm gonna follow your lead, then. Okay, So when you were researching M S B P, did you come across anything that, like, surprised you because of so many stories that are already out there? What kind of preconceived notions did you have and were any of them corrected or had to be updated by your research? 

Stephanie: Yes. So I didn't know a ton going in. But my friend, who's an elementary school psychologist, was the one who introduced me to the syndrome. And I think my biggest surprise was that it's usually women and often mothers who have this illness. I mean, I knew that it was frequently parents, but I definitely didn't realize that it was almost always women. That really intrigued me, not only because of the mother child bond that we've been talking about, but also, you know, when we think of violent abuse like it's, you know, women are not usually typically the ones committing the majority of it. And so that really made me want to dig in and find out what you know, what's happening with these women, that they're doing something that's so outside of normalcy.  

Mindy: You mentioned to that Patty in the book has a history of suffering abuse herself. So did you find in your research that that tends to be something that crops up, that the the mothers that are victimizing their children suffered some sort of abuse themselves? Is that typical?  

Stephanie: Yes, that's almost universally true from the research that I've done. It's either some sort of abuse or really severe neglect. Almost all of these perpetrators. 

Mindy: You said that a friend of yours introduced you to the concept when you were working on this novel? Did you write at the same time that you were researching? Or did you research first and then dive into the fictional aspect? 

Stephanie: No, I really did all of the research first, because I just felt like I needed to do a deep dive into who the perpetrators and victims are. Um, I feel like doing the fictional character development was hard enough, so I think like doing the more clinical research aspects of it would have been hard to do at the same time while developing the characters.  

Mindy: And did you yourself as a writer, have trouble sympathizing with Patty or is that easier once you had done the research?

Stephanie: I think it was easier once I'd done the research and I think, you know, like I said, just kind of minimizing the bad parts and not really focusing on that. The abuse is not really on the page. It's sort of just summarized what's happened in the past. Yeah, you know, in order to become her, I just kind of I focused on the best parts of her a lot of the time. I mean, the reader knows that she's horrible, and I don't think that that that I mean, I think realistically, somebody with this syndrome would not be sitting there thinking about the atrocities they committed. You know? They would be right thinking about everything else that they want, the things that are motivating them to do it.

Mindy: And the motivations are what is most important with any character and in any fiction, always motivation is what matters. But at the same time, when your motivation is going to result in harming someone else, that is a trick as a writer to create that sympathy and in a reader, connect for someone. So hats off to you. That's a that's a tough one. 

Mindy: Coming up, how being a copywriter and having an MFA helped Stephanie Transition into the publishing world. 

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Mindy: You're a former advertising copywriter. So I know that is very different from writing fiction. So could you talk a little bit for listeners that don't know what is advertising Copy writing?  

Stephanie: Sure. So any time you see a TV spot or hear radio ads, somebody had to write those. And so that's what copywriters and advertising do. There's also print ads and billboards and all the digital stuff you see online. Um, copywriters do all of that stuff. And so it was. It was very different, but it was also really good training for fiction writing because, you know, you are coming up with sort of fictional worlds and writing scripts and those kinds of things, and it really teaches you the art of concession and getting rid of extraneous copy and dialogue and all of that stuff. So I like to think that it actually, like, prepared me well for this.

Mindy: And did it also prepare you just in a marketing sense? You have your marketing chops now, right? It's like you already know how to market in a sense. I know that a lot of fiction writers come into that area of publishing really not knowing what's up and and really stumbling in that arena. So have you found it's helpful to you in that way? 

Stephanie: I think so. I mean, I think just having a general understanding of marketing, Certainly there's a lot of nuance that's very specific to the publishing industry that I didn't know. And I think actually, I kind of thought writing an agent query like that won't be so bad like I've done, you know, I've written this kind of stuff before. But it turns out it's still pretty challenging. Even if you do have, ah, marketing background. I mean, I think summarizing you know 90,000 words into a few paragraphs is a challenge, particularly when you came up with the 90,000 words. So I still had my fair share of struggles. 

Mindy: Oh, definitely that query letter. And that's what I'm always trying to tell people, because often, and I'm sure that you experience this, too. People ask, you know, how do you go about getting published? How do I get published? And I'm like, Well, it depends, of course, on what route you want to go, but when you want to be published by a traditional publisher, you have to start with a query letter.

And I usually say what you have to do is right a letter that's about 300 words long and make your book sound like the most interesting story that's ever been told and yourself sound like the most fascinating person that ever existed. And you have 300 words, and usually they're just like, Oh, and then they're like, I thought you just, like, mailed the book to the publisher and they printed it and I'm like, no, that's not right. 

Stephanie: Wouldn't that be nice, though?  

Mindy: Oh, maybe. Maybe not. Because I have some pretty bad books that I had faith in 10, 15 years ago that I might have just ripped right off. And ah, there would be some pretty bad stuff circulating with my name on it. So I don't know. Perhaps I was saved, saved by the walls that were put up to prevent me from printing really bad fiction.  

Stephanie: Yeah, that's a good point, I think. You know, with the query letter. It is, ah, daunting exercise to do, but there's so much stuff online now. I like Query Shark a lot. I don't know if you're familiar with it. But this agent, Janet Reid, who does who's been doing this blog for like decades now. And I just found those archives so helpful and just starting to practice and writing your query letter like long before you actually want to send it. Ah, lot of what I discovered as I was going through the Query Shark archives were people saying they read half the blog in one night and the other half the second night and like now they're ready to write the letter and send it off. And it's like I just kind of treated it as another writing project. And I worked, like, slowly shaped it over the course of I don't know, four or five months. And you know, once you know what the premise of your book is, I think you can start practicing your query letter. 

Mindy: Yeah, absolutely. And practicing is correct. That's the right word to use there by all means. I was querying for 10 years, and that's because I wasn't doing it right. And I was just, you know, doing like you said. I was just crash coursing and ripping something off because as a student in high school, I could get away with that right? I could get away with cramming and regurgitating and, you know, get straight A's and kind of sailed through. It doesn't work that way when you're, when you're moving into the adult world. There's a real craft in a particular craft to writing a query letter, and I tripped myself up. It's hard enough anyway. And then I tripped myself up by going in guns blazing and, you know, ripping off some really terrible query letters just being overconfident. But, I mean, that's the thing about being a writer. You can't go into it saying and I'm gonna fail. 

Stephanie: Yeah, I mean, you have to have some sort of, like, delusional level of hope in order to even try at this thing that... I think you know, when you're talking about writing like a 300 word email, it doesn't seem like it should take that long, given that you've presumably just finished writing again, 80 or 90,000 words. But I do think, but sometimes that can be just as hard as you know, writing the last page of the middle of your book or whatever, so I think it does require a lot of thought and examination, which is the last thing you want to do when you're also writing a book. But it's a really important step. 

Mindy: Absolutely. So you have your MFA. So why don't you talk a little bit... and I know that darling Rose Gold was actually your MFA thesis. And it is your first novel. So why don't you talk a little bit about the experience of getting an MFA and ah, developing this novel then as your thesis?  

Stephanie: Sure. So I was between jobs, between freelance jobs for quite a period of time in advertising, and I kind of felt like, Well, I don't have anything to lose right now, So I might as well finally give writing a novel, a try. And for me personally, I'm a super structured and organized thinker. I've always done well with a plan. And so I thought an MFA program would be a good way to expedite my learning of the craft. 

I hadn't really been seriously working on fiction at that point. I was just kind of plodding along in my advertising jobs and just leaving the writing dream on the back burner. So I went to Emerson College in Boston, and it was basically a crash course in fiction writing. I was very lucky too, really early on, connect with this professor who became my thesis advisor, and she really shepherded me all the way through the process from page one in our workshop to the very end as my thesis at the end of the program. I submitted it as my thesis, and then a few professors thought it looked kind of agent ready and suggested that I take it out. And so I did.  

Mindy: And then, at the end of your MFA experience, did anything about what you were doing with the book change. I mean, it's got a great hook, and it's very high concept and marketable. But was there anything about what you turned in as a thesis that changed then, in order to make it a sellable novel? 

Stephanie: The one thing I would say that my once I signed with my agent that she encouraged was just, there were a few small plot hole things that we kind of took care of. And then it was just kind of evening out the voice. So there were places where Rose Gold was perhaps like too crude or places where she was like too passive. And so that was always like my biggest struggle with this book was getting Rose Gold's voice just right, and I continued to work on that with my editors. When I you know, once the book had sold. 

Mindy: And did you find that it changed much from, Ah, your editors, as opposed to your professor's feedback, then from your MFA program? 

Stephanie: The professors had a lot more work to do because they were dealing with a much less polished document. So by the time it got to my editors, it was more kind of finessing vs, getting rid of huge like sections or chapters. But a lot of it was kind of in service to the same thing, which was just pushing the characters, pushing the voices and just tightening up some of this stuff.  

Mindy: What was that experience then moving from the academic area than into the publishing? Like you already had this marketing background from being a copywriter, but you're jumping into the query process and finding an agent. What was that transition like going from the academic realm then moving into the publishing world?  

Stephanie: I think actually it wasn't too rough of a transition because my background is closer to the publishing world than it is to the academic world in time. I did my FMA program kind of late, so I hadn't been a student, like I hadn't been in college in you know, 10 years or something. And so I was pretty primed by the time I was finished with school. I think it was actually more of an adjustment when I started the MFA versus when I came out of it as a kind of reframe being a student and being in academia. And so the concept of selling and especially like you said with the marketing advertising background, it was just a matter for me of finding the tools of finding out what I needed to do in order to get an agent and to get a publishing deal and then just kind of executing on that. 

Mindy: And how long were you querying then? 

Stephanie: It actually went really shockingly smoothly. From the time I sent the first query out, it took about a month, to sign with my agent. 

Mindy: Who is your agent? 

Stephanie: My agent is Maddie Melbourne. Sh's UK based, and so am I. So that's really nice to be able to see her in person all the time. And I actually did query both U S and U K agents, but, you know, in the end, just her track record and just she as a person is lovely. And I just felt like we had the same level of ambition for my career. And so we just got out really well from the beginning. 

Mindy: Being based in the UK, I know you had tours set up all across the United States that I am assuming have been canceled now. So that's a bummer. I mean, I'm dealing with the same thing. I was supposed to be on the road this entire month and that all, that all disappeared. It is what it is. So are you, kind of recouping by doing interviews like this by having a social media presence. I know it is very difficult right now to make yourself heard and seen, but the good news is that we're producing content for people that like to be at home. So this could be a golden hour. 

Stephanie: Yeah, it's really interesting. I mean, it's obviously unprecedented, So who knows what will come of it and how it will turn out? I mean, it would be amazing if all of these cancellations at least resulted in because people are at home, they're reading more books, but that remains to be seen. My team and I are still sort of pivoting and figuring out, you know, do we do more virtual events? You know, do we do with stuff on Instagram or Facebook? Or, you know, what can we do where? And we're kind of like right in the middle of figuring that out.

I mean the book, my book just came out yesterday, and so the tour, I think I found out, you know, early this week or maybe late last week, that the tour was being canceled. Um, so it's a bummer not to be able to celebrate with friends and family, but I think it's also a very interesting challenge to see what we can do. Instead, when people are confined to their homes. 

Mindy: In the past, you know, few years audiobooks having exploded, and people, of course, if they're stuck in their homes, they can still download books, so we still have a line on our public. And as long as the Internet stays up! 

Stephanie: God. Can you imagine?

Mindy:  It would be bad. It would be very bad. Why don't you let my listeners know where they can find you online and where they can buy your book, Darling Rose Gold.  

Stephanie: Sure, So my website is Stephanie Wrobel dot com. Spelled the same way as my name and I am the most active on Instagram, which my handle is Stephanie Wrobel. Again, same spelling, and you can buy my book anywhere that books are sold.

Caroline Zancan On the Editor & Writer Relationship

Mindy:             Today's guest is Caroline Zancan, author of the novel Local Girls, as well as her latest, We Wish You Luck. She's a graduate of Kenyon College and holds an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars. A senior editor at Henry Holt, she lives in Brooklyn with her husband and their Children. Caroline joined me today to talk about the unique mix of art and business that is the publishing industry. 

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Mindy:             Your new book is called We Wish You Luck, and it is very much about the creative world, creative people, how creativity and our own personal projects can become such a drive. At the same time, being very much also a story about female friendships. So if you could talk for a little bit as an introduction about We Wish You Luck. 

Caroline:          Yes, so We Wish You Luck is about an MFA program, a low residency MFA program, which means that students kind of come to campus for these residences that are 10 days long, and they come for residency twice a year. And then they do their long term writing projects off campus and kind of have, like, correspondence with Professor at the times in between. And so it's kind of a little bit like camp. It's almost like writer's camp. This novel is narrated by one class of this MFA program.

Something terrible happens to a member of their class and they only know little bits and pieces of the story through rumor, through gossip, through little bits of conversations that various members of the class had overheard. And they're kind of coming together to piece it together because, you know, they're only on campus ten days a year. 

Some of story happens off campus and in between residencies. So it's all kind of happening just beyond their line of vision and their line of knowledge until they kind of need each other to tell the story. So they end up working together to tell it instead of competing with one another the way that writers often do in writing programs. 

 Mindy:             And can you talk for a little bit about that arena of competition. Because it is there. And I think that's an interesting thing to mention. It's not only present in MFA programs, either. Obviously, that is a smaller arena. But in the broader world of publishing, competition is something that, or at least comparison, is certainly something that happens often. So if you could talk a little bit about that mindset within an MFA program, but then also in the broader scope of publishing, 

Caroline:          I have an MFA myself. And as soon as I got on the campus, it was just so apparent how badly everybody wanted to be good at this thing that it is very hard to be good at. Um, I find writing to be the hardest thing I've ever tried to do. Creative writing, storytelling. There's so many ways to get it wrong. Um, and so it's just kind of like thankless, hard thing to do, and they're on these campuses are people who want it so passionately, so badly, even though it doesn't always make a lot of money. And it can take years of working and grueling over something before it's even has a shot at publication and, you know, wanting anything that badly that's such a long shot can read bad behavior in anybody.

But at the same time, it was so clear that this impulse was coming from a good place. They wanted to write something good because they had been moved or their lives have been changed by something else that had been written beautifully written by somebody else. Anyone who's a writer, even people who aren't writers who are just readers or aspiring writers, you know, can think of a book or a poem or a set of lyrics that completely grabbed them and just shook them up as a person and completely changed who they are. And having that kind of profound experience oftentimes makes people want to have the same effect on somebody else through their writing. There is this competition, but it only comes from wanting to create a wonderful experience for someone else. 

Mindy:             Moving that then out into the world of publishing. I know that many people outside of the industry have this idea of the writer as a creature that doesn't actually exist. Completely solitary an isolated individual, that is, you know, kind of a manic creative, but also always rich. And the reality is that only 1% of published writers actually can live off of their income. So is that something that you can like address a little bit as far as competition In terms of success.

Caroline:          That's funny. Success is a funny word in writing, because what what really measures success? There's getting an agent it's so hard to do, and then getting published is really hard to do and then having it be well received critically, it's really hard to do. And then, you know a different measure of success is like selling a bajillion copies Is your goal to change one person's life by having written something beautifully that you're connecting with one soul? 

I personally write, because I just can't not. Like even if I knew no one was going to read what I wrote, I would do it just because it brings me to life in a way that very few things do. Like, there's nothing that puts me in a better mood than just like an hour of really immersed thought and work in a project that has legs. It's just, you know, sometimes the words come and sometimes they don't and a one hour session during which the words like really come, like that's so invigorating and enlivening. It's just incredible.

I would never discourage anyone from writing like, I think writing is so good for the soul. But at the same time, like there's no reason to write, except for because you have to, or you feel like you have a story to tell, or you enjoy it Like if you're doing it to get rich or to get famous, even to have it be your steady income to live. I wouldn't recommend putting all your eggs in your basket for that.

You know, I am an editor by day, and I've read so many brilliant manuscripts that are beautifully written that just there's no market for them or the publishing house doesn't have a vision for how they can break this book out to the people who want to read it. So editors are really buying books not only that, they love, what they think they have a vision for how to sell on market. Even being great is not always, like guarantee that great things are gonna happen to a book, which I don't mean at all to be discouraging. 

It's just like you have to write something, um, kind of with that in mind, knowing that you're writing it because you want to write it and there might be, you know, even if it's only a handful of people who need to hear this, you're putting it out there so that those three or five or 100 people can hear it. And in that reality and in this kind of world, you just have to think of success in different ways. 

Mindy:             It is a hard thing to say. It's a hard thing for people to hear, but it's still true, and that needs to be said. One of the reasons I blog and one of the reasons I started this podcast was because I, too, was someone you know, 15 years ago, I had this idea that if I got published, everything was going to be fine. Your life is magically changed. 

Well, you know, move forward like 15 years and you know, I am able to work from home. I am a full time writer and that's awesome. I wouldn't trade it for anything. I am not complaining, but it is a constant hustle. It is not just my book in come that is what I live off of. You know, I'm always traveling. I'm always doing appearances. I'm speaking. I am teaching. I have the blog and the podcast, those are monetized. 

Like everything. It's a constant, constant hustle, looking for contests to put your stuff into that will pay, looking for -  I do editorial work, freelance on the side. I make it, but it is constant. I think that it's important for writers to know that.

I want to pop back to something else that you said that I think is inspiring. You said that you would write anyway, you write because you have to and I love that statement. I also write because I have to. I was attempting to get an agent for 10 years. It took me 10 years and five manuscripts before I got an agent, and at one point I was like - I quit. You know, I'm gonna go, I have a bachelors. I was like, I'm gonna go get my master's in something a little more applicable so I could make a living wage and go do something else for a living and kind of give up on this dream of writing.

And so I did. I told myself multiple times I quit. But just because I quit trying to get published, it didn't mean that stories stopped happening in my head. And so once, once they were there, I might as well write them down. And once they're finished, I might as well try to get it published. And once I changed that mindset is when I became successful. 

Caroline:          I'm not surprised to hear that. I feel like that happens for a lot of people -  that's, you know, a familiar story. I also even now, having published two novels, I tell myself that the thing that I'm working on right now, like this is for me. Maybe I'll share it one day maybe I won't. I'm writing this story right now to see where it goes. I might finish it and then put it in a drawer for six months and take it back out and be like, this needs to stay in the drawer and let me go write something else or conceive of this other story and put it all together and maybe I'll decide. Okay, to show it to my agent and see what you think you know kind of go from there. But I think that if too many hands are on something to early you have too many grand, like final plans for something before it is what it is. It just kind of stops it from getting to be what it is trying to become. I think you have to kind of let something become what it is before you decide where it's gonna go, where it's gonna end up in what's to become of it. 

Mindy:             That's a great point because the actual creative process is organic. You can fiddle with it yourself. You can force things. You can, you can do certain things to make it less organic if you choose to. But the actual process itself is organic. Publishing is not. That is a business. And so as soon as you are looking at what you have produced as something that can be marketed. It has changed. It is no longer a work of art. It's a product to be sold, and that changes the way you look at it and how you interact with it. 

Caroline:          And also, like publishers, are businesses, you know. At the end of the day like, I think it is kind of the halfway point between art and commerce. There's a P&L for every book that is published by the Big Five, which isn't to say they don't care about great literature. They absolutely do. And you know they I think, you know, as someone who's part of this industry and most of my community and like my peers, my colleagues and my closest friends are also part of this community, and we are for the most majorly English major nerds

We didn't go into it as business majors like we got into it for books, and the love of books, and it's like not the highest paying industry and we're there because we love the books. But at the end of the day, like when I read a manuscript, my first question is like, Do I love it? That's always the first question. But then the second question is like, Do I know how to publish this? And then the third question is like, Does my company publish this kind of book well, or is it better suited for a different house? So it's not just, you know, which book is the one that had the prettiest writing? Uh, because it's just, you know, it is a business, and the business is kind of reacting to the marketplace. What people are buying. People don't always want quiet, beautifully written stories, right? 

Mindy:             And you were saying earlier, What determines success? What's your definition of success? And you mentioned awards and great reviews and things like that. And then you also mentioned selling a bazillion copies. And sometimes in fact, my experience, often times those are two separate things. 

Caroline:          They are. I think they are separate things. The third thing, seeing a Goodreads review or getting an email from someone being like, Oh my gosh, or instagram post its like - this book made my day or was such great company during you know, it's been a few posts like this was my pandemic reading like it kept me occupied. Like I do it to connect with other human beings. I think that it's the great connector between people who will never otherwise be in touch with one another. And so that's so largely off the page and unseen like I, if someone could be reading my book right now when I would have no idea because reading is something that generally happens in private on the individual basis. So when you do, like, get that connection or the reinforcement that it's happening, it's a really lovely, beautiful thing.  

Mindy:             Agreed. And as a writer, you get those e mails, you get those tweets, you get those instagram posts, and sometimes it can be what keeps you going through your day. 

Caroline:          Totally. Totally. It just makes you feel like Okay, somebody... I feel heard like somebody out there heard what I had to say. It's like that for me. That's enough.  

Mindy:             Coming up. Being both an author and an editor and the often misunderstood author editor relationship. 

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Mindy:             So you mentioned the pandemic. Obviously, we're all in it, and I myself follow the publishing industry pretty closely just to see what's going on. I'm really curious, like, what do you see as an editor? How do you see publishing being impacted in the immediate, obviously, but also then, like long term, What's the tail on this? 

Caroline:          I mean, it's so hard to say, because we still don't know. Everyday, it changes every day. The news is different and giving us a different timeline, publishing kind of, it feels like a very safe, comfortable, inviting group of people to work with. I trust that my company is gonna keep me safe and not call us all back to work before it's safe to get on a subway in New York City again. So I have that trust, but so I think that that means we're probably, you know, gonna err on the side of going back later. But what that means in terms of the calendar, I have no idea. 

But I can say I am impressed by how quickly we have gotten up and running just remotely. Like we're still here. We're still open for business. I'm still reading submissions. Agents are still sending submissions out, I think throughout the history of the written word and books, the way that people read and the way that people make books has changed. The format books are read and the the way that people decide which books are going to be made and how they make them is always evolving. But there I think that the way we hunger for, and that way we value stories has stayed consistent, like, I think, as a culture and a society. We've always agreed that this is something we value now more than ever. This is important, like we're here, we want to be publishing books, books aren't going away on, and we're just trying to keep up with how that looks like in practice rather than in theory. 

Mindy:             Yeah, and I'm interested to see because audiobooks, of course, absolutely exploded in recent times, and a lot of that is due to the average American commute. So with so many of us not commuting anymore, I'm really interested to see if there's a medium shift. 

Caroline:          I think it's too early to say that. There will be like short term trends and long term ones, but I'm curious as you are.  

Mindy:             So let's talk about being a writer and being an editor at the same time. What's it like being on the other side of the desk? 

Caroline:          I like to think that being a writer myself makes me a more empathetic editor. It's very vulnerable making to put your work out into the world. It's hard to really grasp how vulnerable making it is until you've actually been through it. So I'm more of a Mama bear editor, I think, having been on the other side of it, I also really love the process. Like I love the editor writer relationship on either end. Like I believe in the editing process. Some writers don't like to be edited, especially ones that are really established. 

I actually have gone the opposite way, like the further along I've gotten in my career. The more I'm like, yes, this is needs to be a group project I'm like, actually more loath to finally let go of a manuscript. Yes, this is actually ready to go out into the world they like, want to discuss it even more. Just in general, I love that back and forth between the writer and editor in the collaboration, whether I'm giving the suggestions or incorporating them.  

Mindy:             My editor is Ben Rosenthal at Katherine Tegan Books, and we've been together for oh boy, I want to say six books now, possibly seven. We've been together a long time, I trust Ben. A lot of people outside of the industry and especially aspiring writers misjudge the editor writer relationship. Whenever I'm teaching or if I am doing a presentation to the general public, I generally get that question - Has there ever been anything that your editor made you change? And I'm just like, Dude, your editor doesn't make you do anything. Yeah, I mean, a real editor, anyway. I mean, I have heard one or two horror stories, but few and far between. It truly is a collaboration, and that's something that is, I think, greatly misunderstood.  

Caroline:          I mean, an editor's job's really to like to protect the writer from the public. I think more than anything, the way that I look at it, actually. Here's how this is coming across, maybe you mean it to come across this way. Here's what's on the page and here's the takeaway from it. If you want that to be the experience and you want me to have that question, great. If you didn't want me to have that question and you wanted me to know X or Y, you should put that in there somewhere. It's to me... I just want to make sure my writer's expectation of how a reader is perceiving something are absorbing something matches the way that reader actually is. 

Mindy:             And it's very easy as an author because you have a preconceived notion of what that character's motives are, what they're thinking, how they meant what they said, what their action is supposed to represent. But it might not actually be on the page. It's called Manuscript Blindness. That's something I deal with a lot. Just as a freelance editor, I will have someone say, Well, this character is supposed to be this certain way, and I'm like, Really? Cause it's not on the page. I don't see it at all. That's not how I interpreted it.

Caroline:          I feel like there's such a gap between what's in a writer's mind and what's on the page. So it's like, really, that's just what the editor's job is to close that gap. 

Mindy:             And I think too, having those relationships with your editor, it is interesting because once you've worked with someone on more than a handful of books, they know you, they know how you operate. They know your strengths and they knew your weaknesses. And without exception, every time that I have sent a manuscript off to Ben. I already know what my edit letter is going to say because I know my own weaknesses. I know what they are, but that it doesn't make it any less frustrating when I actually get the letter right and it's and it says exactly what I knew it would say. And I'm just like Mindy, you already knew that you already knew that. Why didn't you just fix it on your own? 

Caroline:          Well, sometimes, too. They are like a 1,000,000 different ways to fix something, right? So I feel like the editors job is also to be like, Here's the thing I'm noticing. Here are 10 different ways you can fix it and you can choose any one of these 10 ways. You can choose any combination of these ten ways, or you can come up with an 11th completely different way to change all that. Sometimes I as a writer at least need to like go through the 10 ways to fix it that are not the right way to land on the right way. You know, I need to, like, walk through all the potential solutions before I can figure out exactly what the fix is. Even if you knew kind of what you were saying, you knew where the problem lied in your manuscript, the conversation that exists or lies in the editor's letter back to you helps you kind of find that fix.  

Mindy:             It does. I absolutely agree. Why don't you, last thing, tell us where people can find you online and connect with you on social media and also where they can find the book, We Wish You Luck.  

Caroline:          I will start with the last part. I think the book is is available wherever books are sold or your favorite local Indy, Barnes and Noble Online. I know that a lot of the Barnes and Noble's are closed right now, but they're still definitely shipping books online. Amazon, of course. I think that there are like delays everywhere because of closing.

But I think it's more important now than ever to be buying books because you know, we want bookstores to be able to open when all this is over, even if you don't want to buy my book by someone else's book. So please buy a book that doesn't have to be mine. And then I'm on Twitter and Instagram. I'm a more active instagram er Caroline Zancan is my name is my Twitter handle and then CarolineZancan82 is my instagram handle. So please, I'd love to hear from you. And everyone stay well and reading. It's a great way to pass these weird, strange, lonely days.