Vellum Co-Founder On Creating Formatting Software for Indie Authors

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 as a guest.

Mindy: We are here with Brad Andalman who is one of the creators of Vellum which is a wonderful software. If you're a listener of the podcast, you know that I mention it often. I use it to format my books that I write underneath a pen name. And I also have Kate Karyus Quinn here, who is a fellow author and friend, who actually is the person that led me to Vellum. So Brad, Kate, thank you guys both for being here.

Brad: Thanks for having me.

Kate: Yes, thanks for having me, too. I'm so excited.

Mindy: Kate, since you are the person that actually came across Vellum first and led me to it... you've said before you downloaded it, and it was love at first use. So, why is that?

Kate: It was love at first use because it's just a wonderful program. It's super intuitive. It is incredibly easy to use. I was very concerned with formatting my own book and how I would do that. I know that publishers use an Adobe program that I don't know. I was, at that point, just barely trying to learn Photoshop and feeling super overwhelmed by it. I was nervous about formatting my own book and how I would make that happen. And it was my first indie book that I was publishing, so I was trying to learn all the things, all at once, and it was a bit overwhelming.

And when I came across indie authors talking about Vellum, I didn't really know what it was. I wasn't sure how hard it would be to use. I saw that there was a free trial, so I thought, "Well, it's totally worth trying it out and seeing how it goes." And it was so easy to use. Upload your eBook from Word, and it makes it look like a book. And it's beautiful, and there's all different things that you can sort of tweak and mess with. But so many of the things that I was nervous about doing... Thinking like, "Oh, I have to remember to do this with the front matter and the back matter." The front matter is your title, your copyright. All of that stuff, they have it all ready to go for you. So I didn't have to look up the copyright language. I just had to click that tab and it added it. It was amazing. And then just add my details into it. Same with the end page matter with acknowledgments. More than easy really, because it guides you and it really helps you make sure that you're getting all this stuff in there that you need.

Brad: We love hearing stories like that. That's one of the things we strive for. We want it to be fun and intuitive. We've been doing this a long time, but I never tire of hearing of those stories. Thanks.

Mindy: I also never get tired of hearing compliments on my own writing. So... Brad, how did you and your fellow Brad who began Vellum... How did you know that this was a need? How did you become aware that there was a market for software to help writers format their own books for self publishing and indie publishing?

Brad: We didn't really know, to be honest. Brad and I worked together before we started working on Vellum. We worked at Pixar for a while, but we knew that we wanted to write something ourselves. We had quit Pixar. We wanted to do something, and we wanted to do something that would help creatives... Basically to create professional software that would help creatives achieve their goals. We didn't know what that was, and there's only two of us who work on Vellum, and I'm named Brad. So is he. And Brad's wife, she was reading a ton of books on her Kindle. One of the books in the series was about to come out, and she was reading the author's blog and totally following the publishing process. And this person was like, "Oh, man. It would be out except for formatting. I've got to hire a formatter." She asked Brad, "What is this formatting thing? Why can't I read the book that I want to read?" And that started both of us down the path of "how hard is it to take your manuscript, make it look like a book, and publish it?" We dug a little bit into it and we're like, "This is actually harder than it should be." People are paying formatters all the time, and if they need to tweak it, they need to pay the formatter again to change their end matter. And it seemed like this was something we knew about. 

We both are book lovers and geeks about book design, and so we thought, "Let's try this." And we wrote the first version, and at that point it was only eBooks. We noticed that it was too hard, and we thought we could make something easier. And we gave it a shot. Pretty soon we realized, "Oh, there's a market for this here." But before we released it, we did a little market research. But, you know, you don't know until, you know, really with this kind of thing. And then ever since then, we hear stories like Kate's. People find it. They find it really easy. This part of the process, we don't want authors to have to think about too much. We want it to be more fun than stressful or anxiety inducing. Since then, we've added print and continued to improve it as we go.

Kate: You said you want authors to be able to make changes down the road, and that was one of the things that I was really concerned about. I didn't want to pay somebody to format my book and then find a misspelling or decide I want to change the backmatter and have to pay somebody again. I hate doing that. I want to keep my money to myself. Also, just the hassle of having to reach out to somebody and to ask them, "Can you change this?" And then wait for them to send you the files back. And this just makes it so much easier. I have gone back to books so many times. Readers will send me, "Oh, I found a mistake." Or a lot of times I change my backmatter when I have a new book coming out, and I can't imagine if I had to go to somebody every time I needed to make those changes. It would make me insane.

Brad: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, even if you had the money and it didn't matter. Just the time, the turnaround, and formatters were booked out weeks or months in advance. I just want to update this link in my backmatter. It shouldn't take more than a couple of seconds.

Mindy: And I love that you were led to this space as a reader as well. And a fellow reader was like, "Hey, I don't understand this little corner of the world." Because readers and writers are occasionally, you know, a Venn diagram that cross, but not always. If you move in the traditional world, those readers are often surprised that it can take 18 months to two years for your book to go from a Word document to a book that is on a shelf in a bookstore. Of course, that's a very different process when you are an indie writer. And again, that's one of the reasons why Vellum is so great. Because, like Kate is saying, you can upload your manuscript and Vellum just kind of... I don't know the first thing about software. I am just... It's like a small religious miracle. Every time I upload something and it's just like, "Yep, I know where the chapters are." And it's like, "Yep, this is the title page." And it just... It knows. I'm just always astonished by it, and as Kate has also said, the ease of use. So you started this ten years ago. I'm really curious how many iterations of Vellum have there been?

Brad: I don't know how many iterations there have been. Vellum 1.0. It wouldn't be completely unfamiliar to people today, but it had the same sort of overall structure. But it's gone through so many changes since then, and version numbers are sort of meaningless. But we're at Vellum 3.43 today. Actually Vellum 3.45, sorry. And some of these are just like minor bug fixes, releases, or minor improvements. Sometimes Amazon will change something, and we need to respond quickly. Sometimes Apple will release a new operating system, and we'll need to update Vellum for that. And then other times, like our most recent bigger release, we introduced a lot of fun new features that we were excited about. So things like text messages and written notes. And major releases like Vellum 2.0 is where we introduced the ability to create print books. So generate PDF print interior that you can upload to Amazon or Ingram Spark or wherever you print on demand. And then Vellum 3.0 sort of introduced way more styles.

Kate: Vellum 3.0. All the extras that you added were amazing. I originally downloaded it and used it on a very old Mac, and we had to upgrade the operating system to be able to use Vellum. But eventually we got to the point where it was too old, and we couldn't update it anymore. I mean, this is an old Mac. And so I didn't get to have the upgrades anymore. I've always been a PC person because again, I'm cheap and PCs are cheap. But I had to buy a Mac book so I could get the new version of it. And specifically, I was working on a special edition hardcover for a Kickstarter, and I really wanted those new features. I just love them. It was so fun. Like you said, it's fun, and it's play. And it really is. I love clicking through all the different styles and the little ways you can tweak them. It was really cool to see all the different things that you can now do and all the more ways to customize and really make a book special.

Brad: It's hard because, again, there's only two of us, and we strive to support the last 3 or 4 operating systems that Apple releases. But yeah, we do hear from some people that they're running on an ancient Mac, but it's also also really fun for when those people write us, they're like, "Oh my gosh, I just bought a new Mac book, and it's screaming fast. And I get to use all the new features, and oh, what was I missing?"

Kate: Anyone out there is still using the 2.0 version. Oh my gosh. It is worth giving Apple all your money just to upgrade to three. It really is.

Mindy: One of the things that makes Vellum so easy to use, as Brad was saying... You generate files for every platform out there off of one project within Vellum. So, when you go to produce that file, you just click your boxes and it will spit out... Here's your file for Apple. Here's Kobo. Amazon, of course. And, as you said, Brad, Amazon in particular and I'm sure Apple also, those are constantly changing. As a person that moves outside of the software world but I need to have enough operating knowledge to be able to produce my own versions of those files... It's so wonderful because Vellum just does it. It just does everything. It's so amazing to me that it's that simple on the user end when I'm sure it is incredibly complex on your end.

Brad: Yeah. There's a lot behind the scenes that goes on to make it so simple. But yeah, as you mentioned, one of the guiding tenets of when we started was we didn't just want this to be a Amazon e-book creator or a Amazon print generator kind of thing. We did want to be able to support people who are both focused on Amazon but also who went wide. Because we also think that for indie authors that decision can change over time. We hear from authors who sell mostly to Amazon, but we also hear from authors who have a huge market share in Apple or Barnes and Noble or things like that. And we wanted to make sure that Vellum could be used by all of those people. All of those authors. 

But you're right, behind the scenes, there's a lot that goes on in order to make sure that these books look good where readers read them. And for instance, Amazon applies this thing called enhanced typesetting, where they sort of take the epub that Vellum generates. They apply their own stuff to it, and so we need to account for that, you know. Apple's process is a little bit more straightforward, but again, they have different rendering display issues than Barnes and Noble. So one of the things that Vellum can do from this one, as you said, from this one Vellum file... When it generates something for Barnes and Noble, and Apple, and Amazon, those things are all subtly different. So they look the same when readers read them. When they purchase them through the app and they read them through the Apple books or on a Kindle, things like that. Staying on top of that is tricky. It's not like Amazon writes us and lets us know that these things are happening. So we're constantly testing and we always appreciate when authors reach out and let us know, "Hey, like this new thing happened," and we try to get on it as soon as we can.

Kate: Have you had a Sunday night where you're just, like, chilling at home, enjoying your weekend, and suddenly you realize something big has gone wrong and you have to rush over and start programming? 

Brad: There has only been one time in ten years where we actually sort of had to pull an all nighter, and it thankfully it was not related to an Amazon change. We try to think a little bit ahead. So if we think that something's going to happen, we'll try to code in options so that it makes it easy for us to switch gears. If we think that Amazon is going this direction, we'll try to prepare for that in earlier versions of Vellum so that we can say, "Okay, you're hitting this? Try this." It's actually truly a nerdy story about why we had to spend up all night. It was basically the server that we use to host purchasing actually got cyber attacked. So we had to move all of our purchasing stuff overnight so that people could actually buy Vellum. One of the things, Kate, that you mentioned is that Vellum is free to use to try to format your book. We thought that was crucially important. We're also software users, and we hate having to buy something just to figure out if it's going to work for me. And so we like making Vellum free to use to format your book. Now, yes, you have to pay when it comes to generate the final files. We have a lot of users who just use Vellum, and some people even write their books in Vellum, and you can do all of that for free. But then when people are like, "okay, I've got to publish this weekend." If they couldn't actually purchase a license to generate, that was a problem. So we had to stay up all night to fix that.

Kate: That's good. So Amazon has not yet tried to ruin your life?

Brad: Oh, well, let's not get crazy.

Mindy: We all move in those circles. I'm sure we've all been hit on the head with a club by Amazon once or twice.

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Kate: So, obviously you and Brad Two are often meeting and discussing what's coming down the road and thinking about troubleshooting. But, it's got to be more fun thinking about what new features you're going to add like we talked about for the new 3.0 release and all of those fun things. Is that the fun part, and how do you decide what you're going to do? Is it reader feedback? Do you talk to Brad Two's wife?

Brad: Features are really fun, and I think both of us really enjoy doing that the most. At the same time, your idea of a feature and our idea of a feature might be slightly different. For instance, workflow. Just improving those points. We strive for it to be very easy to use, but there are still things... We're like, Oh, doing this operation takes a little bit too many clicks. Or doing it like this could be improved. And that might not be as quote unquote feature-like as, you know, adding new text messages or things like that. But there's still a satisfaction to that that we both really enjoy. Even cleaning up some code so that it's going to be faster in the future to add new features is something we both take great pride in. 

We talk constantly. We think about where we want to go for the year, for over five years, things like that. And obviously we have to be super flexible because again, Amazon can come in and change our immediate plans. We talk to one another about the state of the software. And we also keep track of everyone who writes us, and we log those requests in our database. And absolutely, if we get a ton of authors requesting these features, we're like, oh, that's going to move to the top of the list. I think the thing that I struggle with the most is I would rather improve Vellum than I would work on ads. And I'm sure for authors it's the same thing. Maybe writing your first draft is the most fun or maybe editing is the most fun. Rarely do I come across an author who is like, "I love promoting my book and spending time looking at AdWords." That's important to sell your book just as it's important for Vellum to get out there. But that's the hard time. We have to balance our desire to make Vellum better versus also our desire for Vellum to be used by as many people as who want to use it.

Mindy: Yeah, that is definitely a struggle. I think Kate and I can both say that when it comes to ads period, it is just such a mind bender to try to figure out what works, what doesn't work, what is sucking the money right out of your pocket? I also despise trying to figure out ads and how to get my material in front of people so that they even know it exists because Kate moves in the indie world more than I do. But I wasn't aware that Vellum was a thing. And then Kate was like, "Oh no, this is a thing, and you need to be aware of it." And as soon as I was, as you were saying, I downloaded the free aspects and I was using it. And I was like, "okay. This is a no brainer." And I went in and I immediately bought that version and man, I was so glad I did. And continue to be. I think it's so cool that if someone emails Vellum, they're emailing you. I mean, you spoke earlier about working with Amazon because they are so far flung, and Kate and I both have also had numerous headaches working with Amazon and just being transferred to 5 to 7 different people or departments on a single phone call. So it is really cool that you yourself as an individual and then one other individual... If you've got five, ten, 18, 20 authors that reach out to you and say, "Hey, we would love to be able to put text messages formatting into our books," you know that and you don't have to go share that at a department meeting.

Brad: We don't have to lobby for that. The marketing department doesn't have to lobby. The engineering department doesn't have to... You know, doesn't have to, like, talk with the advertising department. No, we were like, "hey, text messages. It's going to be a thing, and let's just do it." And we did. There's some really, really nice things about being a small, fast company. And it's fun for us too, because there's that personal aspect we get with answering all the emails. It's both staying in touch with our authors, but also, even though most people are writing because they don't know how to do something or they have a problem, still, it's really great to like make that connection. And people are truly appreciative of the help.

Kate: I'm curious. How did you guys come up with the designs for the 3.0? Because you have so many options, and it's so clear that there was a lot of thought that went into making sure that there were choices that looked good for sci fi authors that maybe leaned a little more paranormal. Others that felt literary or classic. Do you go to the bookstore and flip through books for ideas? Or did you consult with someone?

Brad: Well, thank you for that. Yeah. Brad did basically all of the design for all of those styles. We get the inspiration in a variety of places. A lot of going to the bookstore. Going to the library. As I mentioned earlier, we're both avid readers. A lot of people ask, "Oh, are you writers?" It's like, "No, actually. We don't have pen names or secretly publishing books." 

When we first released Vellum, we had sort of eight styles that we thought covered a wide range, and some that we thought were more flexible, and some that we thought were more specific genre wise. But when we released 3.0, we really spent a long time, like you said, trying to think about what genres did we want to cover. At the same time, we didn't want them to be so specific they could only be used by that genre. What we would do is we'd push a design to a certain place and then we'd sort of scale it back to make it a little bit more wide ranging. We think that book design is really, really important. It's one of the reasons why Vellum is structured the way it is. It's like we have specific designs that people can choose from. Within those designs, you can further configure. You can change your heading style. Or you can change your first paragraph style. But these are like really buttoned down designs too, because if you go too far afield from some of these things, it starts not to look good. And one of the things we want is we want Vellum books to look great. And we also want to take that design burden off of the author and put it onto us. We do a lot of research, and then we do a lot of playing in the app to scale it back so that we think it can apply not just to one specific book about a fantasy book that's about dragons, but we could pull it back to something that maybe applies more generally to fantasy or more generally to paranormal.

Kate: Professional is absolutely the word. Especially as an indie author, you really want your books to be taken seriously and not to be seen as amateur. And especially the earlier version of Vellum that I used at the beginning... I put in my manuscript, and it just gave me these books that were so clean and so professional. And that was with me really not doing a whole lot except making sure that my chapters were there and making sure I had my backmatter... Definitely toggle through the headings and things just to play with them, but it was really simple and that sort of clean design aesthetic is so important.

Mindy: Yeah, I agree. I actually had a very emotional moment with Vellum. I had written a manuscript a long time ago. I think I was in college when I started writing it. So I was maybe 20 years old, and I wrote this book that as a published author in the traditional world does not fit my brand at all. Never has. Never will. Kate had said to me, "Just publish it underneath your pen name. There's no reason not to." And I was thinking to myself, "Well, yes. She's correct. So I'm going to do that." And I had this manuscript that I had updated and rewritten and worked with for actually 20 years at that point. 

And it's interesting, you were talking about upgrading your software all the time. Funny story. The characters in my manuscript were initially having big conversations, and a large part of the plot came about through a conversation over AOL Instant Messenger. That needs changed. So I had just been constantly going in and updating it - technology, slang, all the different things - for over 20 years and kept thinking maybe someday. This book. Kate said, "You really need to just self publish it under your pen name." I had been working with Kate on other things, and we had been working together using Vellum. And I had never used it for my own stuff specifically. I uploaded that book into Vellum. Chose all of my fonts and the styles. I looked at the front page and there's my title. And it has my pen name, but it says by someone kind of like you. Chapter one. And there's my first line that I wrote 20 years ago, and it was just like emotional for me because it actually got to be a book. And honestly, I would have never taken that step. I would have never done that if I didn't have Vellum, because now I have an e-book version. I have a print version. And, you know, I had it printed, and I sent my author copies to myself. And I actually was more, I think, moved by that than I have been over receiving some of my traditional books. Just because that manuscript had been set aside for so long. And to actually just be like, "You know what? All I have to do is upload this Word document, and it's a book."

Brad: I mean, that's a great story. I love that, that this thing had been sort of in the back of your mind for 20 years. We often hear that when people first look in the preview pane and see the drop cap and see the style applied, that it is emotional. It stops being a manuscript, and it becomes a book. And I'll be honest, I don't think that when we wrote Vellum, we thought that that would be the case. It was just like, Well, of course we have to have a preview. Like, how else are you going to see what it looks like? Make the editing pane the editing pane, and the preview can change according to the device or the font size. The very, very first time that people sort of like can envision it being an actual book as opposed to just an idea on the blank Word page.

Kate: I actually have a request for a tweak to the preview on my wish list.

Brad: Uh huh.

Kate: I was making a hardcover meant to be a special edition, and I really wanted to see the preview with both pages side by side. Even when you output it as a PDF, you see them stacked on top of each other. And so I actually ended up screenshotting the two separate pages and then cutting them out and pasting them into Photoshop so I could see them side by side. But before I did that I was clicking every button I could. And is there a way to do this? And I just can't figure it out. But I decided there wasn't.

Brad: So in Vellum, there is not a way to see it side by side yet. We've gotten that sug a few times. It's something we're definitely considering. It would make vellum fairly wide. There's some stuff to think about there, and you probably only want it for maybe the first page of the chapter. Who knows? Anyhow. There's a lot of stuff to think about there. However, what we usually recommend, which I think will be way easier than what you described is... We just recommend generating your PDF, and then opening it in your max preview app and going into two pages mode. And that will show it side by side.

Kate: I'm not surprised that I took the long way around to get there. Making easy things difficult.

Brad: When you don't know that it exists.

Kate: I just saw this in an ebook I was reading, and I thought it was so cool. I read The Scholomance series by Naomi Novik. It's an amazing series. It's a trilogy. It's so good. And I think it was book two that I was reading. I was noticing when I flipped to the beginning of a chapter, for the chapter header, they had some sort of design, and it would flash and change colors. And it was so cool. I think I even took a picture for my Instagram because I was like, "What is this magic? And how are they doing this?"

Brad: That's interesting. We do know that there are some times where Amazon works with authors who are selling a lot to allow a sort of a fancier version that they might not allow for just the rest of us.

Kate: This is a best selling series. So it's... Big deal.

Brad: There are things that are fairly frustrating. Uploading the epub to Amazon. They still don't support transparent images, let alone animated images. The technology has been around for years and years and years. They just don't support it through their self publisher network. So as soon as Amazon supports that kind of stuff, we're happy to jump on it. I'll dig into it. I've pulled up her books.

Mindy: So Kate has her wish list. Brad, you know, because we exchanged emails that I had been really looking for the text message exchanges, and that was introduced in 2022.

Brad: Yeah, we've gotten a lot of good response to text messages. There's been a lot of fun. It's such an important part of how we communicate these days that it just makes sense.

Mindy: And some of the things that you introduced or adapted in 2022, Kate already mentioned. The heading backgrounds. Introducing new headings for all kinds of different genres. Easier box set construction, which is actually really important to both Kate and I. Creating a box set file can make you a little bit nauseous.

Brad: Yeah. 

Mindy: Custom headers and footers so that the chapter and the page number can look however the author is looking for. You can export it back out of Vellum and into Word if you would like to. So those are all the different things that you guys brought about in 2022. What are you looking for and what can people expect? New elements that you're planning on or that might be coming up?

Brad: We tend to be fairly tight lipped. You know, we don't love to give specific answers, super specific answers. Because as we mentioned earlier, things can change, and we don't want to say things are coming in April 7th and then Amazon or Apple does something and we were delayed. But one of the things that we're focused on right now, in the short term, we're focused a little bit more on workflow. Even though it's been lovely to hear that like, "Oh, it's vellum. It's so easy to use." There are a few pain points, a few things that we want to do that we think we can make even easier. So we've got a few things coming down the pipeline soon-ish that we hope will make authors, the time they spend in vellum, even more fun. Even more efficient.

Mindy: Last thing. Brad, why don't you let listeners know where they can find Vellum and download that free trial?

Brad: Thank you. You can go to vellum.pub and if you have a Mac you can download Vellum. And like we said before, you can use it totally for free until it comes time to publish your files. And at that point you purchase a Vellum license and within seconds you can generate all the files that you need to publish your ebook or print edition.

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.

Caroline Kepnes on Loving Joe... Even If You Don’t Want To

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 as a guest.

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Mindy: We're here with Caroline Kepnes, who is the author of all of the You books featuring Joe Goldberg, who is just about one of my favorite people which makes me feel somewhat guilty, which is what we will talk about quite a bit. First of all, the next book in the You series comes out on April 25th - For You and Only You. The You series is the basis for a very popular TV show on Netflix. Pretty much everyone I speak to I have told to read these books. Let's just start by you telling us a little bit about the new one and what Joe is going to be up to next in For You and Only You.

Caroline: Yes. Well, thank you for having me here, Mindy. I love your podcast, and I appreciate being here. And I think it's wonderful that you say that you love Joe and that it says something about you. I feel like that's what started me with this, of finding this voice and wondering why it put a smile on my face. And every book is like this journey into his problems, but also the problems with our society. So it's like a kind of pick your poison thing where I'm like... the first one, of course, starts in New York with these Ivy League elites who think they're better than him and the girl caught in the middle of that. And in every book, like that's the deal that he sees the world mistreating a woman who he loves and he goes and tries to fix it. So this time around, we have Joe at Harvard University. He was very good with the pandemic, with the lockdown. He wrote a book and pulled off a kidnapping and did his little online sleuthing and managed to get himself a spot in a fiction writing fellowship. He's in this fellowship. It's supposed to be for undiscovered writers. That is what it said. But that is not the case. And everyone has a life and some success. And if you know Joe, you know that that's kind of not fair. There is a girl in the class named Wonder who is from Boston and didn't go to college and works at a Dunkin Donuts. I'm not going to start speaking in an accent, I swear. Instead of dealing with his own insecurity and his ego issues about writing, I mean, how convenient that he gets to project all of it onto her.

Mindy: Like I said, Joe is somebody who... I think all of us have those darker instincts and some of us are more in touch with our shadow selves than others. I'm pretty deeply in touch with mine. There are things that I don't do either because they are immoral or illegal. It could be one. It could be both sometimes. But you know, there's something that stops me from doing some of the darker things that I want to impulsively do. Joe doesn't have that problem.

Caroline: For me, there's something liberating about that. I like going into that space of like, especially the way he's obsessed with calling everyone entitled... It's like, how could you be more entitled than if you just go breaking every law and every social code?

Mindy: But he doesn't see that. Which has a little bit of a charm to it in a way, because we all have our blind spots.

Caroline: Yes. Oh, do we. Yes. Part of this book... Wonder does a lot of reviews on Goodreads, and with every book too, I'm exploring some form of social media. And in this one, he learns about her through her Goodreads reviews that are very revealing about herself, but in a way where she's very intelligent. But it's part of my basic fear. I grew up in the 80s and I just basically have been taught to be afraid to tell people things. And it fascinates me the way we all joke and we all get into rabbit holes and we can know a lot about someone. But it's like, you really can. I guess I just love going into that fear of when you put yourself out there, sometimes Joe is watching. You probably are the same way with that overactive imagination and taking everything as evidenced in your work to a very dark potential place.

Mindy: All day, every day. I want to talk about that. That's really interesting. It's an odd mind space to live in where most of the time, because I live in the country, I live very much rurally in Ohio, but I travel a lot. So I'm in big cities a lot. And because of my fairly cocooned life that I have out here, I generally feel safe all the time. And so when I'm out in the general public in a larger place, I mean, most of the time I'm not in any danger. But because of my imagination...

Caroline: Yeah.

Mindy: Everyone. Everyone is potentially going to kill me. I am always looking for the exit in whatever room I am in. I'm identifying possible weapons in case I need them.

Caroline: I am sitting with my back against the wall. Yes. You live in that space - an open space. I in some ways am more afraid. There's this place I like to go hiking where I grew up. On the one hand, you're totally isolated. For whatever reason, there's no one ever there. And you're, like, deep in this marsh. And then in the back of my head, I'm like, "This is the most dangerous place in the fucking world. I am alone. My cell phone barely works. Anyone could be here. Anyone could jump out from those dunes." And in some ways in the city, I always feel safer, and even if I'm walking around with headphones on, I just feel like, "Well, there are all these witnesses everywhere." And like you said, the majority of us are okay.

Mindy: I had a friend who got married and, you know, went to live in the city, and she had a very difficult time adjusting. And she kept telling me, "I don't feel safe. I don't feel safe." And I knew the part of the city she was in, and I'm like, "Dude, you're fine. Like, nothing's going to happen to you." Really if you think about it, living out in the middle of nowhere like we have our whole lives is actually more dangerous because there might be less people, so there's less of a ratio of people that could possibly hurt you, but if only that one person decides to, you can scream your head off. Nobody can hear you. You're done.

Caroline: It's the In Cold Blood of it. I read that in high school. I read it over and over. I feel like I did two term papers because I was just like, I will only read and write about this book and the possibility that whether it's random or intentional, you're a sitting duck and you're an isolated duck. There's a reason the ducks are in a group together in the lake, you know?

Mindy: So off topic. You brought up ducks so I just have to follow up with this. Are you familiar at all with the duck penis?

Caroline: Oh, very familiar. I've watched many videos. I don't remember how I originally learned, but every once in a while it's a really good Google. Some new tidbit to learn when you go back to it.

Mindy: I'm so glad that I'm not a female duck.

Caroline: Yes. I mean the violence with them, and there's a spot near where I grew up where they kind of gather and you can see them together, like working things out. And I just feel like the nastiest courtship rituals and the possessiveness and the violence.

Mindy: Pretty often, if it's a water based sports that they're enjoying, the female will get drowned.

Caroline: Yes. Yes. I mean, and the way that that's like just built into their system. What a world. What a world.

Mindy: So I just ended up learning about duck penises, and then, you know, it was one of those things where all of a sudden duck sex was like everywhere. I listened to a podcast and there was supposed to be like hunting and trapping and stuff, and they ended up just like really going into explicit duck sex. And I was just like, "Oh my God!" It was a... It was a real day. I had to turn it off. Like I was going through the drive through, and I'm like, "Dude, I got to turn this off."

Caroline: But then again, like the person at the drive through, maybe they learn about it and get turned on to it. Not turned on. Wrong word. But you know... but yeah, it is one of those things that it's like when you're trying to find shoes. So everywhere you go, you see shoes.

Mindy: Yep.

Caroline: And with duck sex... I heard it, there was something about it in a TV show or movie, I'm not going to remember what, a few weeks ago. But I remember thinking, if you didn't know about that, it would just go over your head. It was just like part of the dialogue. It wasn't a whole thing, but it's out there. People know.

Mindy: People know. I mean as soon as I saw a duck penis to you, you were like, "Oh, yeah, I know."

Caroline: And I love that moment of like, you tee it up and I'm like, "I'm not going to know what she's talking about." And then, "Oh! Duck sex! I know about that." 

Mindy: We can absolutely converse about duck sex. So speaking of just like, sex in general. I read recently Penn Badgley, who plays Joe on the show, gave an interview where he said he doesn't want to do sex scenes anymore because he doesn't feel that it is appropriate within the context of being a married man and it's a way that he wants to show his fidelity to his wife. And for one thing, my first thought was, "Man, you must be the best actor in the world. Because you feel that way, and then you play Joe." 

Caroline: Yeah. Yes. I mean, I think that's a personal choice thing, right? It's so personal. That's where acting freaks me out. Even in season one, I remember being on the set. He has to do everything twice because the voiceover acting with his face and his body and thinking all those sick thoughts and standing there. Anyone can use that moment to say, "You know what? This doesn't work for me. I don't want to do it." I think it's just good for the world because so many jobs in life are the exact opposite... Where you feel like you can't express your personal feelings about them, your preferences, or if you do, you might not be in that position anymore. I say, this is good. You know, like, what do you think?

Mindy: I thought it was awesome. I don't think that monogamy is cool in our society. Anybody can do whatever they want. It doesn't bother me at all. Like everybody has their own ways and they should go about that.

Caroline: That's you. I think that's the best thing to take away from it, because I can just as easily imagine a couple, whether they're both actors or one is, and they're good with it. It's such a thing between you and your partner and also your personal comfort zone. And it's an interesting thing too, because it's part of the age of hyper communication and just so much knowledge, you know. You figure years ago, there were probably actors that had this policy, or some degree of it, that we didn't know about because we just didn't have so much information thrown at us every single day. That's the thing that blows my mind about living the way that we live now. That's just so overwhelming when you think of us being a kid and waiting for Sassy Magazine to come out once a month.

Mindy: Oh yes, my Sassy and my 17. If I can just get one more glossy photo of Christian Slater, I will be so happy.

Caroline: Yes.

Mindy: It's really interesting what you're saying about the amount of media that we have in our faces all the time, because I was not even looking for information about you, about the show, about Penn Badgley. Nothing like that. It was on the front page of CNN.

Caroline: Oh, my God! I didn't know that. Wow! For the writers doing the show, it's like having a new circumstance and twist to deal with in storytelling. You and I can do whatever we want in our book. Have anything happen because no one has to use their physical form to bring it to life. The reader does that in their head.

Mindy: Then talking about the media. Like I said, that story was front and center for me on CNN, and I wasn't even searching for it.

Caroline: And that's fascinating because like, I love that that's news.

Mindy: Let me tell you, I scrolled past everything else and I read that. So... You were talking about how each of your books also in some way is kind of about or focusing on some form of social media in a way that is a little bit darker... A darker shade. And of course now everybody has their favorite podcast. Has someone else's voice in their ear constantly.

Caroline: Yes.

Mindy: I'm just curious if you could talk a little bit more about how you approach that because You, the You series, very much is social commentary.

Caroline: Yes. It's a commitment that I made in the first book. I remember the day that Lou Reed died, and I put it in the book. I didn't intend to write a series. Toward the end, when I wanted to do another, it was like, "Oh, boy. These take place now in this world right now." When the pandemic happened... Oh, this is an interesting conundrum because, yeah, like the way as a writer, you have those choices. You can write a world where it doesn't happen. You can mention it, or you can full on tell a story about it. And I loved the idea that we were all kind of living in this and figuring out how to deal with it in our stories and as we deal with it in real life.

So that's what got me started with this book where I had ended You Love Me with him in Florida in this place of mourning. And I had thought a lot about Florida Joe. I was alone. I'm like to me... Everyone was in some situation that is not the way they intended for their life to be right? If you're married and you love someone, you never meant to be together 24 hours a day. I like to be alone, but I never meant to be alone 24 hours a day. My first draft was... I started doing it with him having the fellowship over Zoom. Him using all of these new tools to get to people. And then it was like, "No, this is a book." And we're still, especially at that point I was like, "I can't write about this at length yet. Not that much." You know what I mean? So then it was like, okay, I'm going to send him to school. And he's going to be in the room smelling all the people and seeing them and eating with them. And yeah, it was, it was exciting because it was living vicariously through him, you know?

Mindy: It sounds like there's going to be a lot of inside baseball as far as writing and publishing goes in this one.

Caroline: It's his perspective on it, and he's very sure of himself. You know, he wrote this novel and I feel like in the way of living vicariously... oh God, to have his ego for an hour. What we could do with it! And then to see him be around these people and slowly realize that these people have done their work, and that if he shares his work with them, they're going to be allowed to say bad things about it. Which of course requires that he find a way to  kind of one by one, discredit, find every flaw, so that they can't affect him. And then that was the fun suspense for me with it. Because there's such a difference, right, between sitting alone and drafting it out and looking at your pages and exposing yourself to the world. I loved him sitting there with this bomb, with his book, in the sense that, like, what's going to happen if someone doesn't believe in him? And what's going to happen. And in that way, the girl that he liked, the books, the way they're always kind of talking to each other. Wonder writes, and Wonder is very sure of her process. And she is in no rush to get published. He takes it upon himself to change her approach to writing. Which is, in part, because he cares about her, but also because, of course, it allows him to avoid dealing with his own insecurities. It was very fun to give him a new job. Yes. To put him around other people who can handle their shit.

Mindy: That's the best place to put him.

Caroline: Yes. It just did feel like tingly good, right? Like I'm excited for you to read it. It's a good way to feel before a book comes out, right? 

Mindy: Oh, yeah. It's an amazing way to feel before a book comes out.

Caroline: I had so much fun naming the other writers and their books. And now when I go into a bookstore, I'm like, "Wait a minute. They don't have one book by Sarah Beth Swallows?" And I'm like, "She's not a real person!" Like, of course they don't. They're all fake.

Mindy: It's a good example of how real your characters are to you. Something else I wanted to bring up. A book that I just love that I think probably gets lost a little bit because of the fact that You is just so amazing and so popular. But you wrote a novel called Providence. I love that book! It's really good. I wish people would talk about it more.

Caroline: I know. Thank you so much. And that's like... It moves me so much when people say that because, exactly... Like You. I feel like it's like a middle school bully situation where not only are there now 4 You books, right? So Providence is just on its own out there, and it's its own thing. And it makes me so happy when I learn that someone has found it and enjoyed it, and I have such a soft spot for them in my heart.

Mindy: I love that book. I listened to the audio. It is quite good. I just loved it. I loved it so much, and I ran it down because I had... I had read at that point I think the first You book. And I was in a slump, and I could not find anything I liked. It was one of those weird times, and I was like, "Hey, I'm going to go see if Caroline Kepnes has written anything else." Then I was like, "Oh, she has." And I listened to Providence and God, I just loved it so much. So I was wondering, as a person that has had just a tremendous amount of success in this one arena, and you kind of already answered the question, but is there a part of you that is just like, "Man, I wish more for this other book."

Caroline: First of all, I want to go back to something you said about the moment for a book, because I love that so much. And something that makes me crazy about book culture is that like, here are the books to read this month! Here are the books to read this week! Here are the books to read today! And it's like the beauty of a book is that it never goes away. Sure, even if it goes out of print, you never know what you can find in a clearance bin at a used store like anywhere. And so I love when we're reminded that we can go find books. That there is no expiration date. Yesterday, I did a podcast and they were talking about Providence too. And the woman started out with like, "I am the biggest fan. I love it so much." And it's such a nice surprise that, yes, it just makes me happy because I would love for more people to find that book. And especially when it comes from readers, and especially author readers, who have that reaction to it, it's just a very good feeling. So right, you just always want more people to know that there's this other thing that I did that you might also like.

Mindy: You said, author readers... I wrote a book called Be Not Far From Me. It's about a girl that's lost in the Smoky Mountains. And she's out there for like a month, and she has to survive with just the clothes on her back. I started working on it, and as I was writing it, I was so pissed at myself because I had never thought about the fact when I pitched this idea that my main character is alone for 99% of the book. Alone. She has nobody to talk to. There's nothing for her to bounce off of. The environment isn't changing. She's in the woods alone for 99% of the book. And I was like, "Mindy, you fucking idiot. You have done this to yourself, and you are stuck. And you are in the woods with her." But the best thing that happened with that book is I would get, you know, texts, emails, DMs from fellow writers that would say, "How did you write a book where the main character was alone pretty much the whole time? That is incredible." And I was just like, "Thank you. Thank you for understanding how hard that was."

Caroline: That gave me such a good feeling to hear you say that, because that's my favorite part of writing once you're through it. But you know that moment when you're... You said it like, "What the fuck did I do to myself? What did I do?" Because I think that's where the best of us so often comes from. When we screw ourselves over, both in the way of deadline and also procrastinating and writing fast go together. You accidentally paint yourself into a corner and that just like you... Then you have no choice but to get out. Like you can always eventually feel that in the writing. In the pages. 

Mindy: Absolutely. Absolutely. My panic is inside of that girl who's trying to get out of the woods. Last thing. Why don't you let listeners know where they can find you online and then, of course, where they can get For You and Only You which will be out on April 25th.

Caroline: Yes. Well, you can get For You and Only You at your local bookstore. You can find it online. Hopefully, if they don't have it in your bookstore, you can go in there and be like, "Hey, you know what book you should have?" You can find me on Twitter for my wonderful retweets. Like, that's the bulk of what I do when I go on there and participate. You can find me on Instagram with book pictures, and I do have a Facebook page. And then there is kind of a secret place on Facebook that is called Caroline's Cage, and that's run by some readers who have been there ten years because it was 2013 when they got advanced copies of You. So yeah, that's a good group. Is that it? Are those the places?

Mindy: I think you got all the places.

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.

Melissa Landers on How Mental Health Impacts Your Writing & The Hit Or Miss of SciFi

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 as a guest.

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Mindy: We're here with Melissa Landers who is a fellow Ohioan and an author that has had a really interesting career path. One of the reasons why I wanted to have Melissa on the show is because she has not had the traditional path in a lot of ways. She has experimented, and she has done offshoots, and she has had lapses in her publishing career. And I think it's very important to talk about those careers as well. It's something that aspiring authors always wanna hear about - the overnight successes and people that hit the list and continue to hit the list and always do well. And the truth is that that is a very, very, very small percentage of people. Even continuing to publish is very, very difficult. For example, in my debut group of 2013, which was both YA and middle grade authors... Recently I was having a conversation with someone who was also a fellow lucky 13, and they said, "Hey, have you ever gone back and looked at our group and the people that we debuted with and done the math on how many are still traditionally publishing? Quite a few have found success in other arenas, but in the traditional publishing world have you ever gone back and looked?" And I was like, "No, I haven't." And just out of curiosity, I did, and I'm gonna take a stab at the numbers because I didn't write it down, and I'm not gonna take the time to go do that again. But I'm gonna say there were roughly 65 of us that were in this loosely knit group of debut YA and middle grade authors in 2013. And at the time that I looked, which might have been two or three years ago, I think maybe eight of us.

Melissa: Oh. Seriously?

Mindy: Yeah... Were still in the trad pub world. That's one of the reasons why I wanted to have you on here because you have had hiccups, as you refer to them, in your career, but you keep coming back. So if you would just like to tell the audience just like a brief overview of your career and what it's been like.

Melissa: Well, when I first started writing, Alienated was the first book I ever wrote. And I was very, very lucky that it actually sold and it did super, super well. But I also was publishing adult contemporary romance under a pen name at that time, and I couldn't decide which I liked more. I didn't know which would take off better, and so for a long time I tried to do both. I do not recommend that unless you're just a naturally prolific author who spews awesome words without effort, because for me, it did burn me out. Looking back, if I could do it over again, I would have stuck to just YA sci-fi and spent all of my time and my resources simply on creating Melissa Landers as a brand. Because by trying to launch Melissa Landers and Macy Beckett, I was dividing and conquering myself, so there's lesson number one. I think I am up to 14 novels that are out or slated for publication through 2023, but I might be miscounting. I've been busy. You just may not have seen the fruits of my labor, because again - two different pen names. That's the first lesson that I would impart. Choose a name. Choose a genre. Choose a market. Invest in that brand.

Mindy: You and I met at different various writers conferences around Ohio. Ohio actually has quite a few writers, and it's got many book festivals and conferences that happen a lot. And so we do have a pretty tight-knit group of writers. And I remember when you were writing under Macy Beckett as well as your real name as a YA sci-fi author, because I believe we actually met at a conference that was partially romance-driven because if I remember correctly one of the big draws of that conference was that they had dudes that were cover models there.

Melissa: Was it Lori Foster's reader author get together?

Mindy: That's exactly what it was.

Melissa: That conference was the best. I miss it so much.

Mindy: Yes, that was fun. It is not my genre. It's not my niche. It was just a conference that was nearby, and any kinda writing conference is gonna have something for you if you're a writer. And I remember showing up and there were just like… ripped dudes just standing in the lobby just kind of flexing their pecks on and off, and I was just kind of like "maybe I should write romance." I remember you trying to take that, that two-pronged approach, and while, as you're saying, you wish that you had not necessarily been trying to do that at the same time, you learn from it. But also, man, all the skills that you picked up as an indie author before indie was huge, I'm sure that that's useful.

Melissa: Well, I actually wasn't indie. My first three romance novels were with Sourcebooks and my second two were with Penguin Random House. Now, I did get all of those rights reverted to me, and I put them up on... What is it? Kindle Unlimited. I haven't done a very good job really pushing those titles 'cause I'm not currently writing them. The only project that I did that was kind of not full indie more like a hybrid, was United, the third book in the Alienated series. Alienated did amazing. It earned out its advance like twice over. Invaded... The last time I looked I was like a whisper away from earning out on that. Because trilogies were not doing so well in the YA market at the time, Disney said if you do a third book we're only gonna put it out in ebook only. No print. Not even print on demand, and that was a deal breaker for me. So I partnered with a small publisher to get United out in hard cover. Did the cover design. I contracted out editorial. It was a lot of work, but I was really, really pleased with how it turned out.

Mindy: For listeners, just to clarify, when Melissa is saying that she earned out on Alienated what that means is that she earned her advance back, and it sounds like then again. That tells you how extraordinarily successful Alienated was. And if you're a whisper away from earning out on the sequel, that shows your read through and the success of Alienated being so great. So yeah, you had great success in the trad YA world right out of the gate with your first book with your name on it in that realm. And you were also writing in sci-fi, which had a moment, and as you're saying, trilogies were suddenly like a bad word. At first that was all you were ever supposed to do is write trilogies, and then, you weren't anymore. I have multiple friends that came out 2013, 2014 who were supposed to have trilogies and were asked, "Hey, do you think you could wrap it up in two? Because trilogies aren't hot anymore." So talk to me a little bit about how things changed career wise for you after you came out of the gate so hard with the first two books in this series. You improvised and did your third one on your own, and then what happened next for you?

Melissa: Alright, so we have Alienated, Invaded, United - that series nice, tied up in a little bow. My next series was Starflight, and that did extremely well too. Starfall, which is the sequel... Not as well. And so Disney said, "No more in this series. Give us something new." So I did. I decided to take a stab at writing high fantasy, and I came up with a proposal for a book called The Half King which is about a failed oracle who has to leave the temple where she's lived at since birth and travel to the palace to serve the Half King - a charming man who serves his kingdom by day and turns to shadow at sunset. Now, I sold this proposal to my former editor, not my current editor, my former editor, on... Let's see, three chapters and a synopsis. So about 50 pages. And she loved it. The whole team loved it. They sold in a two-book, six-figure deal. Currently, it is my only six-figure deal, and so this felt like a big career high for me. Now, I had a phone call with my editor after selling the proposal. I always like to do that, just to ask if there's any changes they wanna see as I complete the manuscript. "We love it. Just one thing. Do you think you can set it in space?"

Mindy: Oh my god.

Melissa: There was a disconnect when it came to expectations. What I did not expect to happen and what completely knocked me sideways was for my editor to completely reject the manuscript. I gave my publisher two different books. I did IPs. The first one, Blastaway, which was my only middle grade release, and it's super cute. I'm very proud of it. It's basically Home Alone in space. And then I gave them Lumara, which just released last month, which was pitched to me as Crazy Rich Asians but with witches. And again, so fun. So fun. My first experience with an unreliable narrator. And so I gave them those two books to replace the books in The Half King, and then my agent eventually sold The Half King elsewhere. I've since re-written it as new adult fantasy with lots of sexy sex.

Mindy: Nice.

Melissa: And it works so much better that way, but this stumble in The Half King completely interrupted my release schedule. The Half King was supposed to release in 2017, but it didn't. And then after Blastaway released, my editor left - went to a different publishing house. I had to wait for a new editor and then Covid happened, and my new editor had just said to my agent, "Hey, does Melissa like witches? I might have a great idea for her." But before we could get it approved, Covid happened and there were so many editors on furlough that they literally could not form an acquisitions committee.

Mindy: Oh.

Melissa: So for all of Covid, I was stuck. I had a contracted book, but I could not move forward on it. It was maddening, and that created an even bigger gap. And so Lumara just released last month and Blastaway released in 2018. A four-year gap in releases! And because publishing moves so slowly and because projects that are contracted now will not see the light of day for two years, just the slightest little stumble and bam, you have a many year gap in your release schedule.

Mindy: Absolutely, you do. That's something that almost happened to me with my third book, not necessarily that large of a gap, but I would have had a year without a release. With only two books out, that would not have been good. Long story short, there was a miscommunication. As you were saying, editors leave. They hop around, and my acquiring editor for my third book, which was A Madness So Discreet, had left Harper and had gone to a different publishing house. And there was a miscommunication to me about the due date for my first draft. I was given a date, and I was like, "Oh great. I have plenty of time." And the date that I was given was the date that it had to go to copy edits.

Melissa: Oof.

Mindy: Yeah, and I thought it was my first draft due date. And when they did hire my new editor, who's Ben Rosenthal, who is still my editor - we've done, I think, 10 books together now. Ben called me, and that was the very first conversation I had with my new editor... Was that he called me and was like, "Hey, I'm Ben, and I'm really excited to work with you and I loved Not A Drop to Drink. And I'm ready to read this manuscript. Whenever you can send it, please do." And I was like, "Oh, well, I mean I will, but I haven't written it yet, buddy. It's not due until this certain date." And he was like, "Oh, that's not... That's not accurate." I was just like, "Wait, what?" I had three weeks to write the book. They were like, look, you're not in breach of contract. There was a miscommunication on our end. We are sorry. You are not in breach, but we do need the book in three weeks. Or we'll take... You take a year off. And I was like, "Uhh. Well, this is how I make a living. So not taking your off. Gonna write a book in three weeks." And so that's what I did. I understand that it's pretty good. I can't tell you what happens in that book. I wrote it in a fugue state. You're right. Those lags. You can have that happen. You can have those gaps in your career, and because of the fact that there is such a long lead time in publishing, in traditional publishing, that gap, even if you have one stumble, it's gonna cost you two years maybe. How did you keep your readers aware of you as an individual? And if you do continue to use social media and a newsletter, how do you keep your readers at least aware that you exist for those four years?

Melissa: Honestly, I kind of didn't. I focused on if I posted anything to the Gram, it was personal. Like, here's a picture of me on vacation. I wasn't just spewing monotonous pictures of my books because, for me anyway, as a reader of myself, I don't like to see too much repetition from authors that I follow. I know what your cover looks like. I don't need to see it 20 times in my feed. Plus, there's the issue that my readership were originally teenagers - 2014 when Alienated came out. They are grown now. In fact... Oh my gosh, what a mind freak. So on Instagram, I follow the original cover model from Alienated. He is now married with a baby. They're adults now. They're grown. I don't know how many of them are still reading YA as adults, but I'm gonna take a stab and say not a ton. So, I didn't see the sense in spinning my wheels and trying to hold on to a readership that was aging out of the market. I just kind of let things be organic. I posted some things about my ordinary life, and I let the rest go. And then I kind of just got started again once Lumara was in production to promote that. I watch other authors spin their wheels on social media trying so so hard to clutch at readers, and it's almost like the harder you try, the more inorganic it feels, and the more you lose.

Mindy: Absolutely. I just had a conversation yesterday morning with Beth Revis, and Beth and I were talking about exactly this because I personally have lost any affection or pride or connection that I ever had with social media. And one of the main reasons is because I went through a break-up, right? Oh, about two months before the pandemic. I went through a break-up of a relationship that had lasted for 12 years. So, it was very upsetting. I was gonna make it and I was gonna be okay, but I was not interested in tweeting about my book or my life. I was like, "Dude, my life is really shitty right now." It's like I don't have a lot to say, and I'm not gonna post pictures of my cat. I'm just laying in bed crying pretty often. So it's like, this is not part of my life right now. I'm not doing social media. And I had been someone that was very active, and if there was a new platform, I was like, "alright what's this?" and getting involved. I really invested my time into that, and I had two hours every morning blocked off where I just used social media and interacted with other people and was involved in conversations and making my own content. And I totally dropped, shut down everything. Not even a, "Hey, going through a hard time. I'm not gonna be around for a little while” post. Nothing for three months, and literally no one noticed. It did not affect my sales in any way whatsoever. And I was like, "Alright, then what am I doing here? What is the point of this?" 

And so I had that happen, which was just right before the pandemic, and then in the years that have followed, social media has changed very much from when you and I first started using it. It is now very picture and video-based, and it didn't used to be. Facebook and Twitter were the first platforms that I was active on, and it was, how clever are you with words? What can you do with words? I can utilize that. I am not dancing. I'm not lip syncing. I'm not pointing to words on a screen. I am 43. I don't give a shit. I don't know what's popular. I'm not gonna pick the right music. I'm not gonna... There's like none of it. None of it. I have continued now to just be like, You know what? I'm not interested. And I agree with you completely, that if I were to try any way, it would just be pathetic.

Melissa: Yeah, you can tell when it's inorganic and it's, as my teenager would say, cringey. I'm kind of like you not wanting to share hard times. There was no way five years ago that I was gonna be on social media and say, "Hey guys, you haven't heard from me because I wrote something so broken, my own editor doesn't wanna work with me." No, I was ashamed. I was very hurt. And that really taught me a lesson about how fragile my self-esteem is and how tightly bonded my self-esteem is to my creative process. I was unable to write for the longest time, and then when I finally could write, I was just a black hole of need for validation. My critique partner, Lorie Langdon, she's been on your podcast before.

Mindy: Yes.

Melissa: She can tell you every time I sent her a chapter, I would follow up, "is it okay? Does it suck? Does it suck?" And she would be like, "Oh my God, Mel. No. It doesn't suck. This is awesome. Stop." I like to think that I was this big tough badass. I am so not a big tough badass. I am like a little fragile flower made out of tissue paper.

Mindy: That was something I wanted to ask you about - was how did you recover? Not only talking about a career or maintaining your social media or the financial aspect. How do you recover emotionally?

Melissa: Time, honestly. Time was the only thing. Time and being able to get into a new project and watch that succeed. And by succeed, I don't mean in the market. Blastaway didn't sell super well, but I am so proud of it. It is freaking adorable, and I hate that it didn't do as well. But sci-fi, it is what it is. When you write sci-fi, you kind of have your hits and misses. For the longest time, I could not touch The Half King. The thing with The Half King is it's a beautiful book. It really is, and I'm not just saying that 'cause I wrote it. I think that when it releases in 2023 people who love high fantasy romance are gonna connect with it. But it has so much beauty in it, and I just knew that it deserved to be out in the world. But every time I would open the file, I would freak out and shut it down again. I could not work on the book. Last year when it sold again, and then I had a call with the editor and made a plan, and even kind of getting started on it, it felt... Oh, this is gonna sound so stupid, but it felt like revisiting trauma. And it took probably a month before I really got into the flow of things and began to truly enjoy the process and reconnect with those characters. It took a long time for me to get my mojo back for that project. Paper flower, fragile.

Mindy: No, of course it did. That makes perfect sense to me, and I don't think you're using the word trauma lightly. I will share what happened to me just this past summer. Starting last Christmas, I made the decision that I didn't think I needed to be on anti-depressants anymore. I had been on something for 15 years, and I was feeling good. And I'm in a great relationship, and my career is good. And you know, I've got a dog. I'm fine, right? So I slowly weaned, and the weaning process was great. I got myself completely off of the antidepressants that I had been on for a very long time. There was a window where I was okay, and then there was a much larger space of time when I just... What? It was bad. It was really bad. And I did not realize how quickly it was happening, and I did not realize how bad it was. And friends and family were like, "Mindy, you need to go back on a medication." And I was like, "No, I'm fine. Everything's fine. I'm fine. This is still just withdrawal." I was writing my 2024 release while I was basically having a nervous breakdown, and I didn't know it. I was aware that things were very wrong, but I just kept saying to myself that I am okay and this will pass. And it didn't. And I wrote my 2024 release, which is called Under This Red Rock, while I was going through the worst mental health period of my life. I wrote the book, and I turned it in, and I hit my deadline. And I emailed it to my editor, and I was like "Ben, here it is. This is not good. And I'm sorry, but I'm probably going crazy. And this is the best I can give you right now." And he was like, "Okay, alright." And he was like, "I'm sure that your version of horrible is probably a lot better than you think, and take care of yourself." 

I did end up going back on medication right around Thanksgiving. Ben had gotten back to me, and he had sent me my edit letter. And he was very kind, but my level of what I aim to turn in to my editor - that was not there. And I did give him a first draft. And it was a nine-page edit letter, and there were some pretty big problems. And, like you're saying, I can't work with this right now. And at that point, I had gotten back on medication, and I was going through the acclimation phase, which I still am. I can't do this right now. I didn't wanna read it. I didn't wanna open it up. I didn't wanna have anything to do with that manuscript because I felt so shitty while I was writing it, and I got myself into a much better mental space. I got back on medication, and I was able to do the edit. Like you said, even then, just the experience of reading it, it is almost a physical place that you go to and I had to go back there. For one thing, the book itself is heavily involved with a mental illness plot line. I was dealing with writing the fiction of it while also reliving how I had felt while I was writing it, and you're absolutely right. It's difficult.

Melissa: From the beginning, ever since Not A Drop to Drink, your brand is kind of dark and gritty, right? My brand is light, funny, and when you're in a bad mental place, guess how easy it is to write light and funny.

Mindy: Oh, I can't even imagine.

Melissa: My previous editor at Disney... One of the projects that I had pitched to her when I was trying to fulfill this last book on my contract was one of my 2023 releases. She rejected it because she felt like it was a better fit for the adult market, but my new editor at Hyperion absolutely loved it as much as I do. And it is very funny. It's basically like a Jessica Jones meets Veronica Mars. It's a murder mystery, and it is humor and sarcasm from start to finish. And I wrote it over the summer when the sun was out, and I didn't have seasonal depression. And I felt good, and life was good. And I was happy, and I was in a good place. And when I tell you that book just bloomed out of me effortlessly, it was the most fun I've ever had writing in my life. It's kind of miraculous what you can do when your mental health is in a good place.

Mindy: It is. It is. You're absolutely right about my brand and what I write. Obviously, I have no problem talking about mental illness, so I will just keep going. I've been thinking a lot about how I'm gonna talk about this book because it does have a major mental illness aspect for my main character, and I was not in a great place when I was writing it. And people have been asking me, "What do you have coming out next? What's going on next?" And I'm like, "Guys... " So I have a release in March of this year, of 2023, and it is my lightest, happiest - I mean, it's a murder mystery, don't get me wrong, and there's some dark things - but it is my lightest, happiest, and probably most hopeful book that I've ever written. And I wrote it, of course, while I was on medication. Just in a really good place. Things were... Everything was really good when I was writing it, and I actually remember working on that book, which is called A Long Stretch of Bad Days, when I was writing a darker scene or a more upsetting scene or something where my main character was not in a great place, I had to kind of work at it. You know sadness. You know how it feels, and I had to kind of dig for it. And writing my 2024 release, which is called Under This Red Rock, there might be three lines in it that are funny, because I do try to have a little bit of lightness somewhere in all of my books. My 2023 is actually funny. I just got my Kirkus review, and they made a comment about how funny it is. Yes, thank you. Because it's like I always try to have some funny in there, and that's not what I'm known for. My 2024 release I was in the total opposite place, mentally, where I was like, "Okay, you know what funny is, and you know what funny means, and you're able to make jokes, and you've made jokes before. So write something funny because you just wrote 30 pages of just deep dark black shit."

Melissa: The old advice - “butt in chair, hands on keys” - it's great if the rest of your life is also great. But if your life is falling apart around you, your emotions are in shambles, “butt in chair, hands on keys” doesn't yield the same output, and then that comes across on the page and all has to be re-written anyway.

Mindy: Let's talk about Lumara, which is your book that just came out last month. And that one is something, from my understanding, it has helped you get right back on to your trajectory and put you back on your path.

Melissa: Yes, yes, and Lumara is an IP. It was actually my editor's idea when she reached out right at the beginning of the pandemic and said, "Hey, does Melissa like witches?" I had just enough time to say Melissa loves witches and then the pandemic and everything went sideways.

Mindy: Yeah.

Melissa: But yeah, she said, I have this idea. It's an unreliable narrator. Magic. This island with living properties, and I was sold immediately. And so it was so much fun to plot the book with her assistance and to explore magic in a modern day setting. So Lumara is set in a world where magic is real, and everybody knows it's real. It's not hidden. Like in Harry Potter. Magic is real. We all know it. And people who can do magic are called mystics, and they are treated like modern day celebrities. There's Mystegram. There's mystecon - you know, kinda like comicon only just for magic - where you can go and you can buy spells and you can get healed. And so this is the world you live in, but the main character, Talia, hates mystics. Hates them because she had a really bad experience and was basically ripped off of her whole life savings from one. Everybody knows she hates mystics. She won't shut up about it, and then one day she learns that her boyfriend, who she loves very, very much, is not only a mystic, but the son and heir to the most wealthy, powerful, mysterious mystic family in the world. And his cousin is getting married, and he can bring a date. And he wants Talia to come home to his private island with him and meet the family. But once she gets there, all hell breaks loose. It's an unreliable narrator. So if I say too much, I spoil it. But it's a mystery. Murder, generational curses, magic, love, betrayal - all my favorite things.

Mindy: Would you like to mention your 2024 release?

Melissa: Oh, yeah. I would love to. My 2023 releases... The Half King should be coming along fall/winter - I'm not really sure - from Red Tower Books. Again, this will be my first new adult release. Sex on the page - explicit. So not for my younger teen readers.

Mindy: I'm ready.

Melissa: And then my Hyperion release will be December 5th of 2023, and that's called Make Me A Liar. And that's the one that I said was the most fun book I've ever written. Basically a teenage girl with the power of transferable consciousness hires herself out for side hustles, but while she's in the body of a client someone uses her body to commit murder in public. She has to prove that even though her body committed the crime, her mind was not in it at the time.

Mindy: Wow, that's fascinating. I love that.

Melissa: Well, you know, I can't just write a normal murder mystery. It has to have some kind of weirdness in it.

Mindy: So last thing. Why don't you let readers know where they can find you online, and then also where they can get Lumara.

Melissa: Perfect, yes. You can find me online at Melissa dash Landers dot com, and you can sign up for my email newsletter there. And I promise it's not spammy. I only send out a newsletter when I have a new release launching. You can find me on all the usual social media sites: Instagram, Facebook, Twitter. As far as Lumara, you can order that from your retailer of choice. And right now, Make Me A Liar and The Half King should also be available for pre-order. So, if either of those titles sounded interesting to you, I hope you'll preorder them.

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.