Show Notes:
Today is part one of two where we are talking to Ellie Holland about her novels. Over the next 2 weeks you will hear about her journey how she found puzzle pieces for 20 years to develop her story, listening to reader feedback to know if there’s a problem, picking an editor, creating in darkness, publishing your books at the right time of year, her advice to new authors on when to publish your book, and learn the ropes before jumping in.
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I’m a portal fantasy author who is obsessed with Pokemon Go, Netflix, and reading any books with dragons.
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Transcript:
Speaker A: Welcome to Freya’s Fairy Tales, where we believe fairy tales are both stories we enjoyed as children and something that we can achieve ourselves.
Speaker A: Each week, we will talk to authors about their favorite fairy tales when they were kids and their adventure to holding their very own fairy tale in their hands.
Speaker A: At the end of each episode, we will finish off with the fairy tale or short story read as close to the original author’s version as possible.
Speaker A: I am your host.
Speaker A: Freya victoria I’m an audiobook narrator that loves reading fairy tales, novels, and bringing stories to life through narration.
Speaker A: I’m also fascinated by talking to authors and learning about their why and how for creating their stories.
Speaker A: We have included all of the links for today’s author and our show in the show notes, today is part one of two, where we are talking to Ellie Holland about her novels.
Speaker A: Over the next two weeks, you will hear about her journey, how she found puzzle pieces for 20 years to develop her story, listening to reader feedback to know if there’s a problem picking an editor, creating in darkness, publishing your books at the right time of year.
Speaker A: Her advice to new authors on when to publish your book and learn the ropes before jumping in.
Speaker B: The portal.
Speaker A: Guardians.
Speaker A: An epic fantasy adventure.
Speaker A: An elf, a dragon, a shifter, a dwarf, three humans and a cat.
Speaker A: What could go wrong?
Speaker A: In a magical library, a young elf studies brian had one dream to learn everything he could about magic.
Speaker A: To become a powerful capare mage, he wanted to travel the world.
Speaker A: Right now, though, he must go pick up some ingredients for erastos.
Speaker A: The old dragon always needed something.
Speaker A: It shouldn’t have been hard.
Speaker A: When the mysterious pattern of holes appeared on the ground, brahen didn’t mean to step into one.
Speaker A: Then, before he knew it, he tumbled through a giant hole and into another world.
Speaker A: On the night shift at the Natural History Museum, nothing interesting ever happened.
Speaker A: Moyer tried to find good in her awful situation.
Speaker A: The reason she was a security guard and not in the NYPD seemed like a cruel cosmic joke.
Speaker A: She wasn’t just a strong black woman.
Speaker A: She was stronger than any person alive, and it ruined her life.
Speaker A: Now she had this guy in some sort of elf costume bleeding all over the clean floors.
Speaker A: If worried gets out that someone snuck into the museum, she might lose her job.
Speaker A: And that’s when they were chosen.
Speaker A: Will they find the others?
Speaker A: And should they trust the cat?
Speaker A: Join this diverse cast of characters on their quest to find the answers they seek in the first book of the Amalgam Chronicles series.
Speaker A: Because long ago, the portals were the key to everything.
Speaker A: Find out why they’re back.
Speaker B: The name of the show is Freya’s fairy tales and fairy tales are kind of two ways, so it’s something that as a kid, we either watched or read or our parents read.
Speaker B: To us or grandparents or whatever, some kind of fairy tale or short story.
Speaker B: And then it’s also the journey of you spending weeks, months, years writing your book and then getting to hold that in your hand also feels like a fairy tale for you.
Speaker B: So I like to start off first thing.
Speaker B: Is there a fairy tale or short story you remember from when you were a kid?
Speaker B: And did it change as you got older?
Speaker B: Your favorite?
Speaker C: Yeah, like every Disney princess movie.
Speaker B: Is there any particular one you watched more than the others?
Speaker C: Probably Mulan.
Speaker B: I’d say okay.
Speaker C: I love mulan.
Speaker C: That one hasn’t really changed, so I love that one.
Speaker C: I guess if I had to pick one, it would be like, I don’t know, beauty, the beach, probably.
Speaker B: And did that change, or is it still the same as it was when you were a kid?
Speaker C: Oh, it definitely changed.
Speaker C: I’m like, Why are you doing why are you making these decisions?
Speaker C: You’re an idiot.
Speaker C: The whole thing was, you know, or maybe like, Cinderella or sleeping Duty would be better examples, because it’s like, oh, I just met you and I love you, and that’s fine.
Speaker B: So you are not a fan of instal love stories?
Speaker C: No, not realistic whatsoever.
Speaker B: Okay.
Speaker B: And then at what age did you think or start writing think, hey, I might want to be a writer someday.
Speaker B: At what age did that start?
Speaker C: I didn’t really think when I was younger that I wanted to be a writer.
Speaker C: I just had a story, and I’m like, I probably should do something with this, so it’s kind of cool.
Speaker C: And that started at, like, 15.
Speaker C: I used to write a story and get in trouble in class.
Speaker C: I had a Dragon Ball Z fan fiction that I wrote in trouble.
Speaker C: And then right around that same time was when I actually started the story that I just published 20 years later.
Speaker B: Oh, gosh.
Speaker B: So you started writing this one a really long time ago?
Speaker C: Yeah, I need to find it.
Speaker C: But I have a dream journal that I had some really strange dreams.
Speaker C: I have the weirdest imagination ever, and I wrote them down.
Speaker C: I’m like, this is cool.
Speaker C: I should make, like, a book out of this or something.
Speaker C: So I started just piecing it together over 20 years, and then I went through two unfinished art degrees, and I’m like, I don’t want to do this.
Speaker C: I joined the 20 books to group of indie authors in 2020.
Speaker C: I want to say in April, right when the pandemic started, basically.
Speaker C: And I was like, okay, I think it’s time to actually do something with this, because the world is suffering right now.
Speaker B: I’m stuck in my house right now.
Speaker C: Yeah, I’m stuck in my house.
Speaker C: People are suffering, and there’s so much just horrible stuff going on, and maybe I can distract someone for a few hours with my book.
Speaker C: I should probably write this thing now.
Speaker B: So how detailed was the dream to get you to the book?
Speaker C: Okay, so my dream that I had when I was, like, 15 ish it was about, like, a sentient land that could change its landscape whenever it wanted to.
Speaker C: And if you are not, like, an evil piece of crap, basically, it wouldn’t harm you in the process, so it wouldn’t hurt innocent animals.
Speaker B: So if you’re a good person, you’re safe.
Speaker B: If you’re a bad person, you’re not.
Speaker C: Yeah, like, the ground would consume you or something, but if you were just, like, a little innocent, like, I don’t know, squirrel creature or something in my fantasy world, then the land would just change underneath you, and you’d suddenly be on snow or something.
Speaker C: So that was, like, one of the pieces.
Speaker C: And I had a couple of other dreams that contributed to it, but that was, like, the major one.
Speaker B: So did you actually work on writing it for 20 years or just kept having these random dreams that you built over 20 years into your book?
Speaker C: I didn’t actually.
Speaker C: I guess I kind of just, like, threw a bunch of ideas down over the years and saved them, and then they started making sense.
Speaker C: I figured out who my characters were, like, ten years ago or something, and then yeah, it was just kind of like finding puzzle pieces for 20 years and then finally writing it two years ago.
Speaker C: Yeah, like, how old am I?
Speaker B: Well, I had it pulled up here because you just released it this year.
Speaker B: Right.
Speaker C: I have made so many mistakes for this book.
Speaker B: I think that’s pretty common for first books.
Speaker C: It was bad.
Speaker C: I released the first edition in December 30 last year.
Speaker C: Okay.
Speaker C: And I had a bad experience with an editor, which was, like, half my fault because I was an idiot.
Speaker C: And then my book was poorly edited, published it, and then I had to get a new editor, and then I did my formatting myself because money also made mistakes, and so I basically had to redo the entire book and fix a bunch of stuff, and I had a new editor that fixed it.
Speaker C: So then I rereleased the second edition March 25, I want to say.
Speaker C: Yeah.
Speaker B: I mean, obviously you hired the person, so you would have thought it was okay to start.
Speaker B: How did you, like, figure out something’s wrong with this?
Speaker B: I need to have it redone.
Speaker C: My readers told me, and yeah, basically getting lots of feedback and looking at it myself, and I’m like, this is terrible.
Speaker C: I have an almost graphic design degree, and for some reason, I was blind when I first published it, but then I realized it later.
Speaker C: I’m like, this formatting is terrible.
Speaker C: There’s, like, letters touching and different lines, and stuff happened.
Speaker B: All the words are smooched together.
Speaker C: Yeah, this was awful.
Speaker B: I was asleep that day.
Speaker C: Yeah, apparently so.
Speaker C: I made lots of mistakes.
Speaker C: So many mistakes.
Speaker C: But I fixed it all with the help of my new editor, and I hired a formatter to fix it.
Speaker C: And it looks much better now.
Speaker B: So I guess what would your advice be to someone who’s looking for an editor and formatter from the beginning?
Speaker B: What are things to look for and things to avoid?
Speaker C: Definitely get a sample of their work.
Speaker C: I didn’t do that.
Speaker C: Just because someone has edited, like, a thousand books doesn’t mean that they’re good, doesn’t mean that they are necessarily going to be good for your genre, because apparently I learned later from another author who worked with my last editor that he doesn’t like fantasy.
Speaker C: He just doesn’t really care for fantasy.
Speaker C: And I write fantasy.
Speaker C: So I think that he just kind of was like, I want to get this over with.
Speaker C: Kind of.
Speaker C: I don’t want to smear him or anything because part of it was my fault because I was inexperienced.
Speaker C: But, yeah, definitely do your research.
Speaker C: Make sure that your editor likes your genre, likes your genre and reads in your genre and wants to work in your genre and then formatters.
Speaker C: I don’t really have any complaints with her.
Speaker B: How did you find her?
Speaker C: She actually works with my first editor, but it was fine.
Speaker C: There was no conflict or anything.
Speaker B: Well, I feel like too, asking for not references, asking for the Facebook group that you’re in.
Speaker B: Asking for recommendations would be helpful, too.
Speaker C: Yeah, I actually I’m in another big group called Fiction Writing, and that’s where my editor and my formatter came from on Facebook, too.
Speaker B: Okay.
Speaker B: I’ve seen on TikTok authors asking for recommendations as well.
Speaker C: Yes.
Speaker C: My new editor, her name is Norma Gambini.
Speaker C: She’s Norma’s?
Speaker C: Nook.
Speaker C: On TikTok.
Speaker C: She’s amazing, and I would highly recommend her to anyone.
Speaker C: She reads so many books and reads so fast and so efficiently that she’s like a superhero.
Speaker C: She can literally edit, like, 150,000 wordbook in, like, five days thoroughly.
Speaker C: It’s not crap at all.
Speaker C: It’s seriously, like, thoroughly.
Speaker C: Yeah.
Speaker C: So she’s amazing.
Speaker C: She actually works with a ton of pretty I don’t know, I guess famous or well known authors, indian authors on TikTok.
Speaker B: Okay.
Speaker C: She’s like, constantly busy because she’s so.
Speaker B: Fast, but spent 20 years kind of developing your storyline.
Speaker B: When did you actually sit down to start actually writing it?
Speaker B: And how long did that take you for first draft?
Speaker C: I write terrible first drafts, first of all, so my brain works very differently than most people.
Speaker C: I think it took me I wrote 1000 words a day for 100 days, and it was like 100,000 words originally.
Speaker C: I think it was like August through September or something.
Speaker C: That three months.
Speaker C: September, October, somewhere around there.
Speaker C: It was July through October 2020, I think.
Speaker C: Yeah, that sounds right.
Speaker B: Now, you said you started thinking about it in April.
Speaker B: That’s a pretty good gap there from April to fall.
Speaker C: Just basically taking notes and learning everything I could from that big indie author group because there’s like six, seven year authors in there.
Speaker B: So researching for those months?
Speaker C: Yeah, it’s like researching, okay, what am I going to do?
Speaker C: They don’t really do craft advice, but they do, like, how to publish, how to market, how to make money off your books, basically.
Speaker C: So I wanted to learn all of that before I published, which they basically told me I should write the entire trilogy first and then rapid release them.
Speaker C: And I didn’t do that.
Speaker C: I probably should have, but then part of me, I have a bad habit of not finishing projects, so part of me was like, if I don’t publish one of these books, I’m never going to do all of them.
Speaker C: So I kind of had to do what was best for me.
Speaker B: So your first draft had 100,000 words, and then what happened?
Speaker C: Terrible, terrible first draft.
Speaker C: I vomit out my words.
Speaker C: Sometimes I have to turn off the brightness of my computer and type in blackness, like in darkness, and not look at anything I’m typing.
Speaker C: So I would just go and get it all out really quick.
Speaker C: And then it’s so funny because I’m, like, the only person I know that does that.
Speaker B: You’ve never even heard of that.
Speaker C: But okay, yeah, I’m weird if it works.
Speaker C: Yeah, I can’t edit as I go, which is way more efficient.
Speaker C: And most people do that, I guess, but to an extent, yeah.
Speaker B: So you plowed out draft number one in the dark?
Speaker C: Yes, basically.
Speaker C: And it’s so bad that I would find random notes for other chapters in another chapter, or I would accidentally have, like, a voice text of me, like, yelling at my kids or something in the middle of the stage.
Speaker B: So it would have, like, randomly jumped around on you?
Speaker C: Yeah, well, I mean, I did that.
Speaker C: I was not organized.
Speaker C: Once again, lots of mistakes, but got my huge rough draft out and then had like a thousand anxiety attacks and then didn’t really look at it for like eight months.
Speaker C: And then I went back and finally went through and edited it to the best of my inexperienced ability.
Speaker C: And then I hired my editor, barely made it on time with my deadline, which was my fault.
Speaker C: I wasn’t very organized.
Speaker C: And then he went through it and fixed what he could, and then I published it in December 2021, and it was still a mess.
Speaker C: But I will say that the best thing I did was have Arc readers.
Speaker C: I posted about it in a bunch of Facebook writing groups and on TikTok, and I got 250 Arc readers, and I want to say, like 10% of them left.
Speaker C: Review something like that, 5%, which is fine.
Speaker C: I got lots and lots of feedback.
Speaker C: And if I didn’t do that, my story would not sell because it was a huge mess.
Speaker C: My new editor tells me I write, like, a blend of third person on Niscient and third person limited, which confuses people.
Speaker C: And then I have three person point of view, so I have multiple point of views.
Speaker C: And I had them randomly spread throughout the whole book.
Speaker C: And my arc readers were like, this is really confusing, all this head hopping.
Speaker C: So I organized it better to have one person’s point of view per chapter.
Speaker C: They also said I needed more character development because they loved the characters and they wanted to know more of what they were thinking and feeling.
Speaker C: So added 10,000 words a week before I published.
Speaker C: I worked like 80 hours that week on my book, so that was great.
Speaker C: I really needed that feedback.
Speaker C: I’m a strong believer in do what your readers want, cause they’re the ones that are buying it.
Speaker C: You don’t have to do every single thing.
Speaker C: You don’t have to fix everything to an extent.
Speaker B: So for me, well, I’m working.
Speaker B: I’m actually researching.
Speaker B: I don’t know.
Speaker B: I started one book and then another book started writing itself, and now I’m researching for the other book.
Speaker B: In my thinking, it’s like I see over and over and over again, make sure that you write the book that you want to have to read over and over again as you edit it over and over again.
Speaker B: But to an extent, too, if you’re getting and it’s the same in Narrating, if you’re getting the same comment over and over again, gosh, this narrator does whatever it is they’re saying they don’t like.
Speaker B: If you get it once, it could just be that person’s point of view.
Speaker B: But if you’re seeing the same comment over and over again, you should maybe look into it because it’s probably a thing.
Speaker C: Yeah, those big changes were basically unanimous from my art readers.
Speaker C: They’re like, you need to fix this because this is really confusing.
Speaker C: So I did, and now my book is much more well received.
Speaker B: Okay, and so when did you start on TikTok?
Speaker C: I started September 2021.
Speaker B: Were you talking about your book at that point?
Speaker C: Yes, I was, but barely.
Speaker C: I didn’t know what I was doing because I’m super introverted and I don’t like myself on camera or Photos or I don’t like wearing makeup because I have kids and I’m tired all the time.
Speaker B: I’m in a sweaty booth all the time, so there’s no point for me.
Speaker B: It was just all smart.
Speaker C: Yeah.
Speaker B: There you go.
Speaker C: It took me like a couple of months to get used to doing videos and figure out how to get views, which is do, like the trendy sounds and stuff and try to make them all most of them book related.
Speaker C: I followed a ton of other authors, a ton of readers.
Speaker C: I just basically looked at what everyone else was doing and turned it into made it my own without copying everything they were doing, essentially.
Speaker B: Right.
Speaker C: So I got to hang about it.
Speaker C: Yeah.
Speaker C: And I genuinely started having fun with it.
Speaker C: So I think that’s when my account started taking off because I have like 8200 followers now and I’m hoping by my year mark I’ll have like 10,000, which is going to happen easily.
Speaker B: I’m over here.
Speaker B: I think I’m at like 700 something.
Speaker B: I had like one video this past week that suddenly I got a couple of hundred followers on it.
Speaker B: It’s always the dumbest videos.
Speaker B: It’s always the dumbest.
Speaker B: I know I got thousands of views on this stupid, like 15 2nd video I did about my fan in my booth.
Speaker B: But all the voiceover people were like, oh my God, there’s airflow in a booth.
Speaker B: Like, where do we go buy this?
Speaker C: That’s funny.
Speaker C: Yeah, I have a non book related video about me being bi, basically, and it went like super viral.
Speaker C: It has like 450,000 views on it.
Speaker C: And I’m like, of course it’s not book related.
Speaker C: And I’m like, you know what?
Speaker C: I got a bunch of new followers that are LGBTQ followers out of it and I have those types of characters in my books.
Speaker C: So it was a good thing it worked out anyway because now I have more people that are looking at my page.
Speaker B: Hopefully that also read books.
Speaker C: Yes.
Speaker C: But I feel like me growing so fast is because I’m on there a lot.
Speaker C: I used to get on there like 4 hours a day.
Speaker B: Oh, gosh.
Speaker C: I’m a stay at home mom, so my kids are running around the house and I’m on TikTok basically.
Speaker C: But I follow people and I actively search for other accounts to follow.
Speaker C: I think one of the big mistakes that people make when trying to grow is that they don’t actively try to follow people.
Speaker C: They wait for everyone to come to them.
Speaker C: That doesn’t always help.
Speaker B: Yeah, I try to follow and then like and comment on videos that I want.
Speaker B: Not on every video, because you shouldn’t do that on every single video that you see, but on ones where you have a comment for it.
Speaker B: I will leave a comment for it, even if it’s like laughing faces or whatever.
Speaker C: But yeah, I definitely try to be an active member of the community.
Speaker C: If it’s book related, my algorithm is like, exactly where it needs to be.
Speaker C: Basically same get 99% book related videos that come out.
Speaker B: In fact, because I was messaging you over the last couple of days, I keep seeing your videos pop up.
Speaker C: Oh, yeah, people tell me that and I’m like, yeah, because sometimes I’m like, I really want to take a break from this, but I can’t because then it would take me like two months to recover from taking a break.
Speaker B: Well, they must have just added because I haven’t noticed that.
Speaker B: I mean, I message people on TikTok not all the time, but sometimes.
Speaker B: And I’ve never had it as bad as the last couple of days.
Speaker B: So I’m wondering if they just added messaging people into the algorithm because I have a lady that I’m talking to you right now about narrating her books, and now I’m seeing her videos all the time, too.
Speaker B: So I probably seem like a stalker.
Speaker B: Like I’m just going down her page and liking everything, but I’m like, it’s on my FYP.
Speaker B: I don’t know.
Speaker C: No people like it.
Speaker C: Unless you’re like a creepy bot or weird dude, then you’re a stalker.
Speaker C: Once you interact with someone a lot, then they’ll show up more on your page.
Speaker B: Right.
Speaker B: So what do you do?
Speaker B: That’s how you kind of started, because you just published.
Speaker B: So did you go through, like, trying to promote on Facebook and any other platforms, or did you just jump straight to trying to do it on TikTok?
Speaker B: Since that’s the thing right now, I.
Speaker C: Started with well, first of all, the reason why I went to TikTok is because there was a six figure author that had just started.
Speaker C: She made six figures her first year, and you can look her up.
Speaker C: Her name is Storm Song.
Speaker C: She used to be an author, but she got burned out because she was writing like 10,000 words a day and publishing.
Speaker B: Oh, yeah.
Speaker A: Golden angel.
Speaker B: I talked to her a couple of weeks ago.
Speaker B: She was talking about her yes.
Speaker C: I feel so bad for her because she was doing really good and she was making good money, and I love her video.
Speaker C: She’s amazing.
Speaker B: But she was putting out, like a book every other week or some crazy.
Speaker C: Yeah, like 10,000 words a day.
Speaker C: She published, like 17 books her first year or something.
Speaker C: But then she got burned out and got really depressed and took a huge break.
Speaker C: And now I think she’s like a tarot card reader, and good for her if that makes her happy.
Speaker C: But she’s still on there.
Speaker C: Her books are still on Amazon, but she got burned out.
Speaker C: But before that, she was posting about how the only reason I’m so big and making so much money is because of TikTok.
Speaker C: I’m like, oh, Jeez, I’m introverted.
Speaker C: I guess I’ll give it a try.
Speaker C: Thank goodness for the makeup filter because otherwise I would not be where I am.
Speaker C: But yeah, basically I’m a sponge.
Speaker C: And if someone says something works for them, I’m going to try it.
Speaker B: Right.
Speaker C: That’s why I started TikTok.
Speaker C: And then, yeah, I think I was promoting my book sort of a little bit, just talking about it, like, hey, I have this portal fantasy book coming out and still working on it.
Speaker C: I would update my progress.
Speaker C: I would talk about my characters, my writing process.
Speaker C: I actually have a couple of super fans that have been with me since the very beginning, before I even published, and they’re very protective of me.
Speaker C: They’ve let me know of someone copied my book cover.
Speaker C: They let me know about that, and I didn’t have anything idea about it.
Speaker C: So that was a big drama mess.
Speaker C: That person promised they would not publish their book and I haven’t seen it, so I think they’re fine now.
Speaker C: But they copied literally every single element of my cover.
Speaker C: And the funny thing is that particular person reached out to me asking for cover advice and I sent them to my cover designer, but then they went ahead and just copied my cover instead.
Speaker B: Of just using the same person.
Speaker B: Yeah, irritating.
Speaker C: Once again, sorry, I have ADHD, so I let go off on tangents.
Speaker C: So backtrack.
Speaker C: My Supermans are very protective of me and they let me know things like that and they deal with me since the beginning, since before I published.
Speaker C: So I have a whole group of them and they are amazing.
Speaker C: They’re the ones that arc read my book and gave me feedback and stuff.
Speaker B: So how did you find them?
Speaker B: Or how did they find you?
Speaker C: I posted in writing groups.
Speaker C: There’s like five to ten writing groups.
Speaker C: I was posting it on Facebook.
Speaker C: I’m not much on Facebook anymore because it’s just going downhill and I don’t really feel like it’s helping me at all.
Speaker C: I get like one interaction every week, maybe on there, but on TikTok it’s like I gained 100 followers in like a week or something.
Speaker B: I feel like every social media kind of has its ebbs and flows.
Speaker B: It will probably eventually come back around, but right now it’s not the thing.
Speaker C: I honestly think Facebook is going to go to way of my space because it’s going down.
Speaker C: The older generation is using it more.
Speaker C: And us younger people I’m almost 40, but.
Speaker B: I’m early.
Speaker B: Thirty s, so not that much different.
Speaker C: But, yeah, us sort of younger people are going to TikTok and yeah, it’s 1000 times better there.
Speaker C: I started out doing Facebook and then I kind of did Instagram a tiny bit.
Speaker C: I only post like, every other month or something on there.
Speaker B: Honestly, I’m so lazy.
Speaker B: I just post the same thing across Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
Speaker B: I just post the same exact, like, copy paste.
Speaker B: I have a website that posts it to all three for me, and then Tik tok gets my, like, custom stuff.
Speaker C: Yeah, I need to do that.
Speaker C: I’m kind of like, lazy right now.
Speaker B: I’m not saying there’s a lot of engagement because there’s not a lot of engagement, but at least something is going up there.
Speaker C: Yeah, I’m basically kind of doing the absolute minimal effort right now with social media until I have a couple of books out because readers really want to binge read a whole series, basically.
Speaker C: So I’m waiting until I have my fourth book out and then I’m going to go super hard on all the social media.
Speaker C: I might even do like, Patreon or Cinderella.
Speaker B: There’s this thing going on.
Speaker B: It’s the Grinneville series.
Speaker B: She always has, like, curvy women in her books.
Speaker B: She’s on TikTok.
Speaker B: I don’t remember her name.
Speaker B: It’s Elle something.
Speaker B: Always talks about her patreon and all the stuff that she does on there.
Speaker B: I never would have thought of that’s.
Speaker B: A big podcast thing to use Patreon for your extra content and stuff.
Speaker B: No, it’s something.
Speaker B: Let me see.
Speaker C: Hold on.
Speaker C: Is she well read nursing student?
Speaker C: Is that her username on TikTok?
Speaker B: Nitro?
Speaker C: No.
Speaker C: What is her name?
Speaker B: L Drew.
Speaker B: No, hold on.
Speaker C: Oh, LM Drew.
Speaker B: Yes.
Speaker C: Her big girls getting railed as her slogan.
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker B: So she talks about she does stuff on patreon and we’ll post.
Speaker B: She’s like the only author I’ve really seen talk about it.
Speaker B: But I never would have even thought of using patreon for author content.
Speaker C: Yeah, aka Mufford does that too.
Speaker C: I don’t know if you’ve been catching up with her, but she just got a seven figure deal from a publisher.
Speaker B: I knew.
Speaker B: She got a publisher.
Speaker B: I talked to her in two weeks, I think.
Speaker B: I talked to her like one of her friends, anne can’t think of her name right now.
Speaker B: They both live in New Zealand and something.
Speaker B: Right.
Speaker C: Okay.
Speaker B: I’m terrible with names.
Speaker B: Terrible with names.
Speaker C: That’s so nice.
Speaker B: Anyway, so I talked to her and then AK wasn’t following me at the time, so I didn’t ask her to be on the podcast.
Speaker B: But then suddenly I look at TikTok one day and I’m like, hey, it says we’re friends now.
Speaker C: She follows, like, any book account.
Speaker C: She’s awesome with that.
Speaker B: Well, mine is different because mine is actually a narrator account.
Speaker B: But I’m like, obviously I was a reader first and there’s that.
Speaker B: And then I started Narrating last year, and so now there’s that.
Speaker B: And now I’m like, I’ve always had book ideas, but I would try to write them and I’d get like, not even a chapter down.
Speaker B: And then it would just fizzle out and like, well, that’s not a full storyline.
Speaker B: So now I’m trying to actually write.
Speaker B: And like, my first book that I paused is like 30,000 words in right now.
Speaker B: And now the other one I’m like way researching because it’s going to be like mythology based.
Speaker B: So I’m like reading through mythology stuff.
Speaker B: I got my husband writing his own book this past March.
Speaker B: So now he’s like 20 or 30,000 words into his book.
Speaker B: It’s a whole thing.
Speaker B: So now I’m, like, fully immersed in this, like, all things book.
Speaker B: So my tick tock is all readers and authors and voiceover narrator people.
Speaker B: But it’s an interesting once you get past the initial tick tock of all the dance viral videos and jump that you got to weed through to find your people, it’s interesting to see the community of and I don’t know how the other sides of TikTok are community wise, but this community is really great.
Speaker C: I mean, yeah, I heard Booktop is actually one of the biggest communities on TikTok.
Speaker C: And it’s so big that Barnes and Noble we’re basically keeping Barnes and Noble afloat.
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker B: The last couple of times I’ve been in there, they have the table seen on TikTok or whatever.
Speaker C: Yes.
Speaker C: If.
Speaker C: It were not for TikTok, I honestly think Barnes and Noble would have gone out of business by now because we’re keeping the buying physical books, keep it alive.
Speaker B: So I work from home, so I narrate.
Speaker B: But I also have a day job, but I work from homes for that day job.
Speaker B: So I don’t like, leave my house very often.
Speaker B: But like, occasionally I’m like, we gotta go.
Speaker B: My daughter’s birthday, we always go to Build a Bear, which is at the mall and there’s a Barnes and Noble at the mall so we always stop in there when we’re there.
Speaker B: But yeah, I was joking the other day about we need to go to Half Price.
Speaker B: And my husband’s like, alright, let’s go.
Speaker B: And I’m like but money?
Speaker B: Because I spend way too much when we go there.
Speaker C: I was actually thinking about seeing what would happen if I tried to sell one of my books to Half Price books.
Speaker B: That would be interesting.
Speaker B: I’ve seen the authors that will leave their signed copies like at Barnes and Noble, like, this is free.
Speaker B: I don’t know if it’s a joke or whatever.
Speaker B: I’ve seen a couple of them do it though.
Speaker C: I saw one lady, she went into Target and signed all of her books at Target and she got stuck by the police and she had to prove that she was the author and then they let her go.
Speaker B: Note to self, put your face on the back of the book so you can just like, hold it.
Speaker B: See, it’s me.
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker C: That’S funny.
Speaker B: That’s pretty bad.
Speaker B: Stop by the police.
Speaker C: She made a video about it.
Speaker C: It was really funny.
Speaker C: I think it went viral.
Speaker C: But she’s like, I’m good now.
Speaker C: People are going to buy my sign books now from Target.
Speaker A: Ellie liked Mulan as a kid.
Speaker A: Huang Mulan is a legendary folk heroine from Northern and Southern Dynasties era, fourth to 6th century Ad.
Speaker A: Of Chinese history.
Speaker A: According to legend, Mulan took her aged father’s place in the conscription for the army by disguising herself as a man in the story.
Speaker A: After prolonged and distinguished military service against nomadic hordes beyond the northern frontier, mulan is honored by the Emperor but declines a position of high office.
Speaker A: She retires to her hometown where she’s reunited with her family and reveals her gender, much to the astonishment of her comrades.
Speaker A: Scholars generally consider Mulan to be a fictional character.
Speaker A: The first written record of Mulan is The Ballad of Mulan, which is what we will be reading today.
Speaker A: This week on our patreon, we will be starting Lemort de Arthur, the Story of King Arthur and of his noble Knights of the Round Table.
Speaker A: The Ballad of Mulan.
Speaker A: The sound of one sigh after another as Mulan weaves at the doorway no sound of the loom and shuttle only that of the girl lamenting ask her of whom she sings ask her for whom she longs there is no one I think of there is no one I long for.
Speaker A: Last night I saw the army notice the con is calling a great draft a dozen volumes of battle rolls, each one with my father’s name.
Speaker A: My father has no grown up son and I have no elder brother.
Speaker A: I’m willing to buy a horse and saddle to go to battle in my father’s place.
Speaker A: She buys a fine steed at the East Market, a saddle and blanket at the West Market, a bridle at the South Market and a long whip at the North Market.
Speaker A: She takes leave of her parents at dawn to camp beside the Yellow River at dusk.
Speaker A: No sound of her parents hailing their girl.
Speaker A: Just the rumbling waters of the Yellow River.
Speaker A: She leaves the Yellow River at dawn to reach the Black Mountains by dusk.
Speaker A: No sound of her parents hailing their girl.
Speaker A: Just the cries of barbarian calvary in the Yon Hills.
Speaker A: Ten 0 mile she rode in war, crossing paths and mountains as if on a wing.
Speaker A: On the northern air comes the centuries gone cold.
Speaker A: Light shines on her coat of steel.
Speaker A: The General dead after 100 battles.
Speaker A: The warriors return after ten years.
Speaker A: They return to see the Son of Heaven who sits in the hall of brilliance.
Speaker A: The roles of merits spin a dozen times rewards in the hundreds and thousands.
Speaker A: The con asks her what she desires.
Speaker A: I have no need for the post of a gentleman official.
Speaker A: I ask for the swiftest horse to carry me back to my hometown.
Speaker A: Her parents, hearing their girl returns out to the suburbs to welcome her back.
Speaker A: Elder sister, hearing her sister returns, adjusts her rouge by the doorway.
Speaker A: Little brother, hearing his sister returns, sharpens his knife for pigs and lamb.
Speaker A: I open my East Chamber door and sit on my West Chamber bed.
Speaker A: I take off my battle cloak and put on my old time clothes.
Speaker A: I adjust my wispy hair at the window sill and apply my bisque makeup by the mirror.
Speaker A: I step out to see my comrades and arms.
Speaker A: They are all surprised and astounded we traveled twelve years together, yet didn’t realize Mulan was a lady.
Speaker A: The buck bounds here and there whilst the doe has narrow eyes.
Speaker A: But when the two rabbits run side by side, how can you tell the female from the male?
Speaker A: Thank you for joining Freya’s fairy tales.
Speaker A: Be sure to come back next week for the conclusion of Ellie’s journey to holding her own fairy tale in her hands and to hear another of her favorite fairy tales.
Speaker B: You.
