Show Notes:
Over the past 2 weeks you will have learned about starting to write in middle school, plotting your story with your family (even if you stray from the outline), researching and querying, fighting for what you want in your story, building a community for authors and all the resources they need, making sure your story stays unique to your own ideas, and being sensitive to other people when you’re writing your story.
J.L. Casten’s Website – J.L. Casten’s Instagram – J.L. Casten’s Facebook Page – J.L. Casten’s TikTok – J.L. Casten’s Twitter
JL Casten was an Army brat, who then married a soldier, only to become one herself. She has lived a nomadic existence and attended 7 schools before she was 10. She loves the rich and nuanced world she was exposed to traveling and living around the globe. She is now a disabled Army Veteran who loves to write stories and release them for the world to escape into. She is a married mother of 4 and lives in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
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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 episode we will finish off with a fairy tale or short story read as close to the original authors 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 two of two, where we are talking to J.
Speaker A: L.
Speaker A: Caston about her novels.
Speaker B: After today, you will have heard about.
Speaker A: Starting to write in middle school, plotting your story with your family, even if you stray from the outline.
Speaker A: Researching and querying, fighting for what you want in your story, building a community for authors and all the resources they need.
Speaker A: Making sure your story stays unique to your own ideas and being sensitive to other people when you’re writing your story.
Speaker A: An amulet of stars and fire, an ancient order, a hidden enemy, a dormant magic awakens.
Speaker A: An annual family trip to Scotland becomes a catalyst that shatters everything Laurely thought she knew and sets her life plan ablaze.
Speaker A: Magic ran through her veins and she.
Speaker C: Was born to lead.
Speaker A: Not that anyone bothered to tell her that the power within her should be enough to deter any threat, if only.
Speaker C: She knew how to use it.
Speaker A: Her family hid the truth in hopes of keeping her and her brother safe, knowing some would do anything to control them.
Speaker A: Instead, they may have made them sitting targets.
Speaker A: How much longer can they be kept a secret?
Speaker A: Can they learn to wield the power they were born with before the truth is revealed?
Speaker B: So now I do have to ask, as an audiobook narrator, are there plans in the works for the books to be made into audio?
Speaker D: Yes, it is a goal.
Speaker D: It is something that I want to do.
Speaker D: I have had talks with production companies and several narrators just about how that works and what happens and what costs look like and all of these things.
Speaker D: It’s definitely something that I aspire to, but right now it’s not something that financially I can do right.
Speaker B: In the future.
Speaker D: Definitely it is something that I absolutely want to do.
Speaker D: And there’s a portion of royalties that go to a specific pot of money where that is the only goal for that money, because it’s very, very important for me to have the books in that format just purely for accessibility reasons.
Speaker D: Like, it killed me.
Speaker D: It ripped out a piece of my heart when people say to me, I would love to read your book, but my brain can’t focus in and sit down and read words on a page.
Speaker D: It has to be that kills me.
Speaker D: I hate it.
Speaker D: It breaks my heart.
Speaker D: I want to be totally accessible to everyone.
Speaker D: So that is absolutely one of my top goals right now.
Speaker B: All right, now I typically just ask, do you have any advice for authors starting out or ones that need a revamp?
Speaker B: But for you, I want to ask that along with if you were starting back with a publisher coming at you, are there things you would have done different or researched before jumping in with that?
Speaker D: Yes.
Speaker D: So one of the best resources for independent authors is something called the alliance of Independent Authors al L I for short.
Speaker D: I am a member.
Speaker D: I have been a member for over a year now.
Speaker D: And they will look into contracts, they will look into potential companies.
Speaker D: They will make sure that everything is as it should be.
Speaker D: And if it’s not, if they find something that raises a red flag or something that you need to be aware of, they will let you know before signing anything, as an indie author, you should be using that service 100% of the time without fail.
Speaker D: Because a lot of the reason that my publisher, for instance, ended up closing their doors was some issues that was found by Ally.
Speaker D: So if they hadn’t done that research and they hadn’t said, look, these are potential problems, and pointed those problems out, it could have been much worse later.
Speaker D: Right, right.
Speaker D: Things could have really blown up later.
Speaker D: It could have really harmed anyone involved, more so than it already had impacted us.
Speaker D: So, yes, absolutely is necessary if you need to be a part of it.
Speaker D: As an author, it’s $120 a month for me.
Speaker D: It is an absolutely essential expense.
Speaker D: And there’s some perks too.
Speaker D: Ingram Spark, you can publish five books a month for free with Ingram Spark by using the alliance of Independent Authors.
Speaker D: A lot.
Speaker B: Dude, if you’re writing five books a.
Speaker D: Month and considering that if you publish an ebook and paperback with Ingram Spark, that cost is $50, you have paid off your dues for the alliance within that first month if you max out your allotted number of books.
Speaker B: Yeah, it’s $50 per format.
Speaker B: Right, right.
Speaker D: Yeah.
Speaker D: So you’re already paying off more than you spent on your dues for that organization the first month if you publish five books.
Speaker D: So 100% believe that they are unnecessary resource for any author, especially if you are looking at working with other people.
Speaker B: So for them now, that would be obviously if you’re planning on self publishing alone and you’re just going to go, the Amazon is going to do all your stuff for you route, that’s a little bit of a different story because you have to agree to Amazon or you can’t publish with Amazon.
Speaker D: Right.
Speaker D: If you are only publishing with yourself and you’re not working with anyone.
Speaker D: I mean, they don’t look just at publishers.
Speaker D: Let’s say that I am commissioning covers and I’m working with an artist because I want illustrated covers.
Speaker D: That contract, I can take that to Ally and I can say, hey, can you look at this?
Speaker D: Do you see anything that I should go back to the artist and say, hey, what do you think we can change?
Speaker D: Or is this non negotiable?
Speaker D: They’ll do that too.
Speaker D: It’s not solely, oh, well, you’re working with a publisher or you’re working with a big entity.
Speaker D: It can be between an author and an editor, an author and an artist.
Speaker B: And all that’s included in your fee or do you have to pay extra?
Speaker D: No, that is included.
Speaker D: They will look at contracts, it’s included in the price.
Speaker D: And then there are different tiers to membership.
Speaker D: So I am I’m going to misquote it.
Speaker D: I don’t have it in front of me, but I think I’m mid tier.
Speaker D: So there’s starting out, which is very cheap, almost no dues, but they don’t offer a ton of stuff.
Speaker D: It’s just like typical, right?
Speaker D: And then you’ve got my Level, which is mid tier, where they offer most of their services and then they have an entrepreneur, which is more expensive a year.
Speaker D: But you have to be accepted into that tier.
Speaker D: So you have to sell a certain number of copies a year.
Speaker D: You have to have reached certain milestones.
Speaker D: And they do check.
Speaker D: They do that, of course, yeah.
Speaker D: So that tier has a lot more requirements.
Speaker D: Right.
Speaker D: And requirements.
Speaker D: So they have an agent for the alliance that is available to entrepreneurs that I don’t necessarily have access to.
Speaker D: I could request access, but I can be denied.
Speaker B: Right.
Speaker D: Whereas an entrepreneur, they can utilize that agent as their agent.
Speaker D: They can help negotiate contracts and things.
Speaker D: Whereas for me, they’ll look at my contracts and tell me what I need to fix or what they feel is not necessarily beneficial to me.
Speaker D: But I have to say that myself.
Speaker B: For the low tier and the mid tier, are there any requirements for that or you can just sign up.
Speaker D: You can just sign up if they don’t vet you or do any research on members until the entrepreneurs here where you’re being sort of, in a way represented.
Speaker B: So you would have had did they look over your contract beforehand or did you join after the fact?
Speaker D: No, I didn’t send it to them.
Speaker D: I had a previous friendship with a lot of people involved.
Speaker D: I didn’t feel like I needed to and that’s the advice here would be.
Speaker B: Even if it’s a friend, when it comes to legal things, have a legal professional look at it.
Speaker D: And it’s not that anything that they did was malicious because I truly do not believe for 1 second that anything that they did was intended to be malicious in any way.
Speaker D: They truly, truly were trying to be helpful and provide a resource for indie authors to help them be successful.
Speaker D: 100%.
Speaker D: I believe that in the videos that.
Speaker B: I saw from them, it looks like they just got in over their head.
Speaker B: Yes.
Speaker B: Their videos.
Speaker B: That’s what it seemed like.
Speaker D: Yeah.
Speaker D: They weren’t ready for all that.
Speaker D: Being a publisher entailed, I don’t feel like they didn’t know what they didn’t know.
Speaker D: Right.
Speaker D: Right.
Speaker D: They thought they were ready.
Speaker D: And I still to this day believe that everything that every mistake that was made could have been fixed, it could have been changed and they could have stayed in business and kept operating.
Speaker D: But I feel like it got to a place publicly where they were being attacked and there was so much coming from outside that painted them with a brush of being malicious.
Speaker B: And that comes back to the bad review thing we were talking about.
Speaker D: Right.
Speaker B: Some people I know we’ve seen on TikTok recently of people attacking people that they don’t like the I don’t remember what the name of the book is, but people leaving bad reviews on books that they didn’t actually read just for the sake of being hateful human beings.
Speaker D: Right.
Speaker D: That’s the hard part, too, is that and this is where the dangers of social media come in.
Speaker D: Right.
Speaker D: Is the people who were painting them with a malicious brush had good intentions.
Speaker B: They just went about it.
Speaker D: Yeah.
Speaker D: They felt like they were doing a service, that they were warning authors from hitching their horse to something that could harm them.
Speaker D: They thought they were doing good.
Speaker D: Everyone thought that they were doing good.
Speaker D: Everyone had good intentions.
Speaker D: But the course of action to get the desired result was lacking all around, in my opinion.
Speaker D: It just wasn’t handled well on all sides.
Speaker B: But unfortunately, just talking business wise, the statistics on how many businesses make it past the first year is not great.
Speaker B: I randomly decided I’m going to open a publishing house.
Speaker B: I’m going to as someone who actually runs a company, I would be hiring people that have done it before and know the business and know because I don’t know anything about publishing.
Speaker B: And as someone who’s trying to write my own books, eventually, someday, when I can get ahead on Narration reading, I’m like, you don’t know what you don’t know.
Speaker B: And the only way to know that is to hire someone who’s done it before.
Speaker B: Or at very least, like, there’s people in all industries that you pay them for an hour, two, three of their time just to walk through questions and answer questions.
Speaker B: Like, there is no industry that I know of that doesn’t have someone willing to do that, sit down and talk to you and help you kind of figure out what you’re going to need or not need.
Speaker B: And that’s the same with like, Narration has coaches that we can talk to and they’ll typically do like a free consultation at first to kind of figure out where you need to go or whatever.
Speaker B: But I mean, authors have the same thing.
Speaker B: There’s all the Facebook groups with all the authors that are way more experienced with their tips and tricks and whatever.
Speaker B: So I feel like that maybe could have benefited them.
Speaker B: But I mean, everything’s at this point, it’s all irrelevant because they’re closed.
Speaker D: Right.
Speaker D: It’s done now.
Speaker B: So what are you as far as advice for someone who’s starting out on their writing journey or someone that maybe just needs tips on how to continue their writing journey?
Speaker B: What are some tips that you have on the writing side of things?
Speaker B: Like how to, I guess, keep your story going or anything along those lines?
Speaker D: Yeah, find a support system.
Speaker D: You need to be, at least for me, because everyone’s different.
Speaker D: Maybe some people it’s better if they don’t have people.
Speaker D: But I think for the majority of us, you need at least, at least one, at least one other author who you trust, who can read your work and critique your work and help make you better.
Speaker D: You need to be constantly learning because it changes like everything else, you need to be reading.
Speaker D: I didn’t read anything while I was writing Amulet, and I think that that was kind of a mistake because I feel like I could have done Amulet better.
Speaker D: I don’t believe in going back and rewriting incessantly until you have a perfect product.
Speaker D: Because, let’s be honest, you’re never going to have a perfect product.
Speaker B: Right.
Speaker D: But I think that it’s important to, as an author, also be a reader.
Speaker D: You’re making a product and you want people to enjoy that product.
Speaker D: You need to know what they enjoy.
Speaker B: What books, I think, specific to what genre you’re writing into, because we already talked about you’re not going to write a mystery book.
Speaker B: So it wouldn’t make sense to be reading mystery books.
Speaker D: Right.
Speaker D: I do have a line like, I don’t read Arthurian.
Speaker D: Fantasy of any kind will not do it.
Speaker D: It’s too similar.
Speaker D: And I don’t ever want my brain to latch on to an idea that is someone else’s idea.
Speaker B: Right.
Speaker D: So I do not read Arthurian anything, I don’t watch Arthurian anything, none of it.
Speaker D: I am very strict about that.
Speaker D: But that’s just because I want my story to be as original as it can be.
Speaker D: I don’t want the ideas to be my own.
Speaker D: But I read a lot of fantasy, I read a lot of romance, I read a lot of scifi, because I’ve got aspects of that in there and it’s very helpful.
Speaker D: You get to learn what tropes are popular and where the genre is going, which is really helpful because when you get finished with a book and you loved it, and you never wanted this book to end, I don’t know about you, but the first thing I do is go to Amazon and try to find something that is exactly the same.
Speaker B: Right.
Speaker D: So if I’m wanting people to avidly search for my stuff, then it needs to be in line with the other things that they love.
Speaker B: Right.
Speaker B: And it needs to be I mean, ideally, because there’s a whole, like, recommended or whatever when you search for a book in your genre, in theory, yours should also pull up along with other ones in that, too.
Speaker D: Exactly.
Speaker B: Or, you know, the hey other people have bought section on Amazon.
Speaker B: Yeah, because when I’m reading, I go through, like, spurts where I’ll get on a kick where I want to read all suspense stuff, and then I’ll get on a kick where I want to read all fantasy or all Ya, or just, like, buy a bunch of books that are all very not the same.
Speaker B: The same, but like, all in the same genre at a time until I get tired of reading that genre.
Speaker B: I now have backlists of all these books that I didn’t I got tired of the genre before I finished all the books.
Speaker D: It happens, right?
Speaker D: I got fancied out for a while, especially when I’m in edit.
Speaker D: Like, when I’m in edit, I am not reading fantasy.
Speaker D: No, absolutely not.
Speaker D: It’s too much and my brain gets overwhelmed and I want to cry.
Speaker D: Like no.
Speaker D: So I read something totally different when I’m in edit.
Speaker D: Right now I’m in edit for An Era of Time and Shadow, which is book two.
Speaker D: So I’m reading a lot of contemporary fantasy, a lot of, like, Talia Hibert and Helen Wong and off the top of my head, I don’t even know, but a lot of, like, very progressive, feminist, contemporary romance type stuff with a lot of diverse representation and LGBTQ representation, especially by stories.
Speaker D: But it’s just totally different from what I’m writing.
Speaker B: Yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker B: And yeah, I think because I’ve talked to a couple of other authors about it’s important to read in your genre, but also to get out of your head.
Speaker B: And that makes total sense about not reading or watching or anything.
Speaker B: Arthurian I’m, like, trying to do essentially mythology retelling stuff, but I’m reading, like, the original stuff because in my mind, not like spinoffs and rewritings and stuff, but I’m like, in my mind, I’m like, you can’t rewrite something unless you read the original.
Speaker B: So I’m having to read through The Iliad and The Odyssey and the other ones like that because I’m like, I’ve never read through those before.
Speaker B: In the reading through those, I have been reading other books.
Speaker B: Like, I was reading through A Court of Thorns and Roses, and I’m like, hey, some of these seem like they’re kind of, like pulled from Greek mythology.
Speaker B: And then I go look at what genre it’s in, and sure enough, it’s in mythology genre, too.
Speaker B: And I’m like, oh, yeah.
Speaker B: So I’m not crazy.
Speaker B: But I didn’t and it’s very, very loosely.
Speaker B: Like, they just pull a couple of characters, but I didn’t even realize it was in there.
Speaker D: Yes, I remember.
Speaker D: I haven’t read any of the Axar books in ages.
Speaker D: Now it’s been years, but I remember when I first started reading them, I was like, wow, this sounds like Greek like you said, like Greek mythology.
Speaker D: This sounds like a little bit like the with Hercules and not Hercules.
Speaker D: Dang.
Speaker D: I’m mixing up mythology now.
Speaker D: The golden ram story, where he has to go and kill the golden ram and then you get all these transformative powers from it.
Speaker D: Like, that is very similar to how Terra’s story starts, right?
Speaker D: Like, she knows the animal and all of these crazy things happen because she did that.
Speaker D: So yeah, I picked up the same things.
Speaker D: But it’s been many, many years.
Speaker D: So I remember the beginning and like bits and pieces.
Speaker D: But I know they’re very popular though, and people love them.
Speaker B: Yeah, well, and that’s why I’m typically if everyone’s talking about it, eventually I’m going to read it just to see like, what the hype is all about.
Speaker B: Same with like TV shows and other stuff.
Speaker B: Eventually I’m going to get around to watching it to see what the hype is about.
Speaker D: Except for Game of Thrones.
Speaker D: I am boycotting all of it.
Speaker D: I’m not people are like, what?
Speaker B: But it’s so good.
Speaker D: And I’m like, yes, that was Game of Thrones until the last season.
Speaker B: I started watching Game of Thrones.
Speaker B: Like, season seven had just ended.
Speaker B: So by the time I finished season seven, season eight was already almost done airing.
Speaker B: Yes, I did.
Speaker B: I basically watched it all the way through, but also I can’t get through the books.
Speaker B: And that one I tried and I’m like, yeah, two and a half books in.
Speaker B: And I’m like, no.
Speaker D: Yeah, the books are heavy.
Speaker B: My brain just can’t take the character jumping as much as it character jumps.
Speaker B: Like, it confuses me so much.
Speaker D: He’s not very clear.
Speaker D: It’s not like where you have these multiple POV books at the top of the chapter.
Speaker D: It tells you who you’re following.
Speaker B: Right.
Speaker D: Martin doesn’t do that.
Speaker D: You can jump characters in the same chapter, which is definitely difficult for a reader to follow.
Speaker D: Even though the story like, the bones of the story are good, obviously we all loved it.
Speaker D: But yeah, it’s a little hard to follow when you’re reading the books.
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker B: There are some things that I don’t recommend.
Speaker B: And I’ve narrated a couple of books that were like that.
Speaker B: Thank God they were told from third person perspective so I could have a separate narrator’s voice.
Speaker B: Because I’m like, dude, if I had had the head jump voices, I would have lost it.
Speaker B: Because no, but then I did another like, three weeks ago, I did another third person POV that it was told from two it was mainly two characters.
Speaker B: Point of views.
Speaker B: But there was like another two that very small sections.
Speaker B: And it made sense that it was told from their point of view.
Speaker B: So in that particular one and there were page breaks every time it changed perspective, there was a page break.
Speaker B: So you knew this is now.
Speaker B: Either it’s a time jump, like we’ve jumped forward a day, or it’s now in a different person’s perspective.
Speaker B: So in that particular book three weeks ago, it was really easy for me to change up the narrator voice because it was clear where it needed to change.
Speaker D: Right.
Speaker B: The one from three months ago was not that way.
Speaker B: You’d be with the bad guy, and then suddenly you’re with the main character, and then you’re with the head vampire.
Speaker B: He just kept jumping that’s hard.
Speaker D: That’s hard to understand.
Speaker D: I get it.
Speaker D: I have not finished the Game of Thrones books either for the same reasons.
Speaker D: They’re just very difficult read.
Speaker D: It’s almost, you know, it’s like people who screw it I’m just going to say it people who get very academic about Dune, you know, oh, well, you haven’t read Dune, so you’re not a serious reader.
Speaker D: That doesn’t make me not a serious reader because I had never even heard.
Speaker B: Of Dune until the movie came out.
Speaker B: And then my husband’s brother wanted to go see the movie with him.
Speaker B: And I’m like, I’ve never even heard of this series before.
Speaker D: It’s not an easy read.
Speaker D: It’s very lapacious.
Speaker D: There are a lot of things that probably could have been written a little simpler, but I think that these books were written in a time when authors felt very much like they needed to be taken seriously.
Speaker B: I also have a daily fiction podcast where I read, like, classic novels.
Speaker B: Like, right now I’m going through Anne of Green Gables, but prior to that, it was Emma and Jane Ayer and all these books.
Speaker B: And they are so, like, if you compare how books are written now to the wording, the phrasing, the conversational abilities of the characters, how they are written now versus books from back then, we write way different now.
Speaker D: And it’s so funny to me, too, because you’ll get even now, you’ll get the occasional author who’s like, oh, well, I’m not going to write that because that’s trash, and my work will be taken seriously.
Speaker D: I’m going to be the next Shakespeare.
Speaker D: And it makes me laugh so hard because Shakespeare in his day was the equivalent of Sarah J.
Speaker D: Math.
Speaker D: Like, it was trash.
Speaker D: It was trashy, smutty, convoluted, drama field.
Speaker D: Like, Shakespeare was not known for his seriousness.
Speaker D: It makes me laugh so hard when people are like, well, I’ll be taken seriously, like Shakespeare.
Speaker D: And I’m like, that’s not he’s taken seriously now.
Speaker D: Right now we see him as this amazing linguist who could weave a story so beautifully and was just so talented and serious and thoughtful, and he wasn’t any of those things.
Speaker D: No, it’s just so funny to me because he was very like, oh, I’m going to tell the story about the girl who marries the prince, but his brother hates him and wants to overthrow him.
Speaker D: So he tells them a lie that she’s sleeping around with his best friend.
Speaker D: And like, it’s so drama, so wonderful.
Speaker D: You know, that’s what people like to read because written in a way that we don’t speak anymore, in a way that language isn’t used anymore, people just automatically assume that it’s just so much more serious than it really truly is.
Speaker D: I mean, Midsummer Nightstream?
Speaker D: Come on.
Speaker B: Isn’t it a state of thought?
Speaker B: Like, so I obviously have like a normal American generic voice.
Speaker B: And I will have like I’ve had a couple of authors that are British and they’re like, oh my God, I love your voice.
Speaker B: It’s so like they think that we with our big movie budgets and whatever, american accents are just like the thing.
Speaker B: And it’s like professional if it’s an American accent.
Speaker B: And then we’re the opposite because we’re like, oh, it’s so much like more higher, whatever.
Speaker B: If it’s done in a British accent, right?
Speaker D: This is highbrow stuff because they’re speaking like the queen and that’s awesome.
Speaker D: And just we have to really attention.
Speaker B: What’S so funny too, I have an American author that was asking.
Speaker B: She’s about to do some promotional thing sometime next year.
Speaker B: And she was like, hey, do you know if the audiobook is going to be available on the UK version of Amazon?
Speaker B: And I’m like or audible.
Speaker B: And I’m like, I don’t know the answer to that.
Speaker B: So I’m like, okay, we’re going to Google Audible UK and get on there.
Speaker B: And I realized that there are one, apparently all the reviews on the UK version are exclusive to the UK version.
Speaker B: They don’t show up on the US version.
Speaker B: They’re their own entities, apparently.
Speaker B: And two, I only have good reviews on that side.
Speaker B: I’m like, we’re just going to hang.
Speaker D: Out on the UK version, right hill over here.
Speaker D: We’re good.
Speaker B: It’s just so funny how that works, how like, oh, the old fashioned language is fancy.
Speaker B: But I mean, the reality is language evolves over time.
Speaker B: So what we use right now, in 20 to 30 years or more, people are going to think we’re fancy and we’re not.
Speaker D: You just think about great literature and all of these classic stories that are just, you know, oh, well, this is just such a serious topic and it’s so well written and they were such artists.
Speaker D: And these are masterpieces of literature.
Speaker D: And you really look at them and you look at the actual bones of the story and not much has changed.
Speaker B: I think it’s Jane Austen.
Speaker B: Of course, she was a female writing in a time when females didn’t write, but I think it was one of the female ones.
Speaker B: I don’t remember if it’s Jane Austen or Charlotte Bronte, but one of them self funded.
Speaker B: Their book getting published because no one would pick it up.
Speaker B: So they’re like, fine, I’ll just do it myself.
Speaker B: Back in a time when it was unheard of to be selfpromised at that time.
Speaker B: So it’s crazy how and nowadays, I think it’s still very heavily male authors nowadays, but it is obviously way more accepted for a female author to be an author.
Speaker D: Yeah, it’s almost like a kind of branch.
Speaker D: So women in Sci-Fi are rare, traditionally published speaking, that’s a rarity.
Speaker B: You can’t do that.
Speaker B: You’re a woman.
Speaker D: And that’s not the Sci-Fi is for male writers.
Speaker D: But if you’re a female and you’re writing romance, then they’re like, oh, well, of course you’re writing romance.
Speaker D: You’re a woman in fantasy is kind of that mixed bag.
Speaker D: It’s starting to more women are starting to break into that, but I think it’s still maledominated, kind of.
Speaker D: And then if you get into other genres, like thriller, horror and stuff like that, that is very, very maledominated.
Speaker D: And then you get into discussion of diversity beyond just gender, and you really start to see disparity in traditional publishing, especially.
Speaker D: And I love, love, love that there are these agents in these publishing houses who are starting to just strictly go after diverse voices.
Speaker D: So when I was querying in particular, I was going through everybody, anyone that looked like they accepted something in my genre, and I would go through it.
Speaker D: And some of the ones I found were, like, only accepting own voice stories, only accepting POC authors.
Speaker D: And I think that is such a necessary thing right now, and I love that they’re doing it.
Speaker D: And even in my own reading, like, for every one book that I pick up by a white author, I’ll pick up four or five by a woman of color.
Speaker B: See, I’m like one of those.
Speaker B: Like, I don’t even and I hope this doesn’t make me ignorant, I never pay attention to who the author is at all.
Speaker B: I’m like, I’m going to read the blurb.
Speaker B: And sometimes I don’t even read the blurb.
Speaker B: I’m like, I like the COVID I’m going to buy it.
Speaker B: But I don’t care.
Speaker B: I could meet some super famous author in person and have no idea because I don’t look up the author ever.
Speaker B: I’m like, I have a book that looks interesting to me.
Speaker B: I’m going to read it.
Speaker D: I think that’s a common thing.
Speaker D: And I don’t actually know what your ethnicity is.
Speaker D: I’m just pasty okay, that’s what I see here.
Speaker D: But I didn’t want to jump because I’ve made that mistake before, and it’s awful, and I felt awful.
Speaker D: But I think it’s even especially for people who are white, we don’t have to think about those things.
Speaker D: Those just aren’t things that we really pick up on unless we train ourselves to pick up on them, right?
Speaker D: So, like, if I pick up a book by a white author that has something that is problematic, for example, the Hispanic community, the conversation on TikTok right now had I picked up a book, one of the books that they’re talking.
Speaker D: About at the moment.
Speaker D: I may not have my brain may not have picked up on that specific line of text.
Speaker D: I may not have realized, right, glanced over it because it’s not something that I have to think about.
Speaker D: It’s not something that my experience that I have ever had to think about.
Speaker D: So I think it’s a lot easier for us to be like, oh, well, I just like the story and I pick it up and I read it.
Speaker D: Whereas someone who is a woman of color, for example, might feel like they have to do a little bit more research before they pick up a book because, well, is this author problematic?
Speaker D: Am I getting it halfway through this book and really, really love it?
Speaker B: I do avoid authors that I’ve seen people talk about they are problematic or whatever.
Speaker B: But yeah, as far as I’m just saying, I just don’t typically like I’m not Googling everybody’s picture before.
Speaker D: Yeah.
Speaker D: And I think that’s just because it’s not something that we have ever had to think about doing, whereas other communities do because they have the experience of going through a book and loving a book and then getting halfway through it and coming across something that is really harmful to them.
Speaker B: Now, I did almost and then didn’t buy because there was so we just went to Barnes and Noble this last weekend because it was my birthday.
Speaker B: And so I’m like, I’m going to go buy books on my birthday because that’s what I want to do.
Speaker B: And so we go and I almost picked up this series and I was like, oh, it’s so cool.
Speaker B: It was co written by two Chinese men.
Speaker B: And I’m like, oh, this is super cool.
Speaker B: It was a scifi series.
Speaker B: And then I look and it was like, translated by a white guy.
Speaker B: And I’m like, it would be cooler if they were able to translate it themselves or New or whatever.
Speaker B: But I’m like, I’m not going to sit in Barnes and Noble trying to figure out was the translation accurate or not.
Speaker B: Because in my reading the fairy tales on to like at the end of every podcast episode, I’ll cut the interview in half and I’ll read your favorite fairy tale as a kid with the first half and then as a grown upper person for the second half words.
Speaker B: Anyway, as a more grown up person with the second half.
Speaker B: But I’ve found that with a lot of the fairy tales and short stories and stuff, they were written in other languages and finding accurate translations is really hard.
Speaker B: Like Beauty and the Beast.
Speaker B: I found one translation and it was like this short, super, super pared down version of the story because that one was originally written in French.
Speaker B: So it was this really pared down version of the story that I had to read on the podcast because the most accurate translation is like 9 hours long, right?
Speaker B: I’m like, okay, so I did that one on Patreon in 15 minutes sections.
Speaker B: But I was like, sometimes for the podcast, like, I can’t have a nine hour podcast episode.
Speaker B: That’s ridiculous.
Speaker B: It’s very, very long.
Speaker D: Let’s make this a series.
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker B: So I’m like, we’re going to do it on Patreon if you want to hear the, like, more accurate story.
Speaker B: And I was very clear, like, I do a little blurb about the story and, like, where it came from and all of this.
Speaker B: And so we’re going to do the shorter version here.
Speaker B: But if you want to hear cause in that particular story, in the nice version, it’s, will you marry me?
Speaker B: Will you marry me?
Speaker B: Will you marry me?
Speaker B: Over and over again.
Speaker B: And the not nice version, it’s will you sleep with me?
Speaker B: Will you sleep with me?
Speaker B: And in French, it was probably a little more vulgar than sleep with, but on short.
Speaker B: And I found a collection of basically Beauty and the Beast fairy tales that it was like, here’s the more classically accepted version and then here’s the more accurately transcribed version of it.
Speaker B: But yeah, I mean, some of the fairy tales, like, some of them were originally German or I’m trying to think I don’t know that I’ve done any Russian ones yet, but just, like, different ones.
Speaker B: And it’s just difficult to find.
Speaker B: You want to make sure that it’s an accurate or I want to make sure that it’s an accurate translation.
Speaker D: Yeah.
Speaker D: And that’s a problem.
Speaker D: Because, again, you go back to these conversations that are being had on social media about some of these books and the issues behind some of them, and that’s a big one right now.
Speaker D: Is that an author that the Hispanic community has loved and stood behind and rooted for had a book that was translated into Spanish and on the COVID of the book?
Speaker D: I’m not even sure what it means because I haven’t dug into it too much, but it’s like a slur or a reference to femicide.
Speaker D: And it’s like, I mean, it’s causing a lot of lot of ways, like, why would the publisher do this?
Speaker D: Exclusive Palm Beach Living jessie has some videos about it where she talks about it and she shows the COVID and she’s like, why would you and Ruthie Narrates, she’s also talked about it.
Speaker D: And I mean, they absolutely have more to say on this topic than I ever could.
Speaker D: But yeah, you got to be careful with translations because sometimes they’re not translated correctly correctly, and sometimes it can cause some really major problems.
Speaker B: Yes.
Speaker B: I had an author that I narrated for that he talked about his publisher on his main oh, my God, main character is a Hispanic female.
Speaker B: And so he was very clear with this publisher, like, I want a Hispanic female on the COVID And they put a white female on the COVID And he’s like, all right, for book two and book three, he designed the COVID himself because he’s like, I am not okay with that.
Speaker B: And then he said, for narrator, he said, I wanted a Hispanic female narrator.
Speaker B: He said, they got half of it right because I’m a female, but I’m not Hispanic.
Speaker B: I’m like, her name was Mira.
Speaker B: And so I’m like, the only thing I have going for me is I can roll my Rs.
Speaker B: But I was the second narrator because her name is now I’m not going to remember her name.
Speaker B: Mirabella servantes.
Speaker B: Ramirez is her full name.
Speaker B: And like one of his the first narrator didn’t say Servantes.
Speaker B: It was like sarvantes or something like ridiculous.
Speaker B: And he was like, no, I’m like, sir, I live in Texas.
Speaker B: That is a common name around here.
Speaker B: I got you.
Speaker D: Yeah.
Speaker D: Those things, they’re important.
Speaker D: And I think that people are being more vocal about how important those things are.
Speaker D: But I think it’s a good thing.
Speaker B: Saying he wanted a Hispanic narrator.
Speaker B: Like, the only Spanish in the book is like, her name.
Speaker B: And then her dad calls her Miha.
Speaker B: That’s the only Spanish in the whole series.
Speaker D: Right.
Speaker B: Which I get because I know I talked to oh, my gosh, my brain is just like not working with names.
Speaker B: AK Mulford and she talked about how important it was for her to have a POC narrate the audiobook.
Speaker B: And that’s what she ended up getting because that’s what she asked for and that’s what she had a part in that process or whatever.
Speaker B: Unfortunately, the particular author that I narrated for did not get the choice.
Speaker B: His publisher picked me.
Speaker B: Yeah, but sometimes we unfortunately have to do the best that we can.
Speaker B: But I don’t think there’s any if I was going to write a book that had any representation of anything in it, I’m going to hire a sensitivity reader to make sure that I don’t do something wrong.
Speaker B: And most people either do that and ignore what the sensitivity reader says or don’t do that at all and just I’m going to do it myself and not care.
Speaker D: Right.
Speaker D: And you know, that rarely works out well.
Speaker B: No, it does not.
Speaker D: But there’s a lot of lot of conversation going on on social media right now.
Speaker D: And I love that the conversations are happening.
Speaker D: I haven’t made a public statement, and I won’t I don’t feel like my voice is needed.
Speaker D: I feel like they can handle this.
Speaker D: And I’ll just sit back and listen and be like, go you.
Speaker D: And repost and repost and like and engage and boost the video and the content.
Speaker D: But I mean, a year ago, maybe I made, I think, one video where I was like, listen, if you are a white writer and you’re writing diverse cast, absolutely.
Speaker D: For me, personally, I write diverse characters.
Speaker D: I feel like it’s necessary.
Speaker D: The world is not white, and books shouldn’t be either.
Speaker D: But there’s a very easy way to keep yourself from crossing a line that shouldn’t be crossed.
Speaker D: And that is very simply, am I telling someone else’s trauma?
Speaker D: Am I telling the story of someone else’s trauma?
Speaker D: And if you are, don’t.
Speaker D: I mean, it’s not that hard when you think about it.
Speaker D: It doesn’t seem that way to me.
Speaker D: I don’t understand authors who are like, well, I’m just going to write this.
Speaker D: And, you know, you just can’t please everybody.
Speaker D: And I’m like, well, that seems like trying to not be accountable for your own crap.
Speaker B: But okay, to be honest, I am probably the worst descriptor.
Speaker B: Like, I don’t write descriptive.
Speaker B: I describe things, yes, but like, in my head, I don’t have in my head a clear picture of my characters.
Speaker B: So I’m not describing most books will have this where they describe the color of their skin and their hair and their eyes.
Speaker B: And like, that is not in any books.
Speaker D: That is how I wrote amulet first.
Speaker D: When I first wrote Amulet, there was no descriptor of skin tones at all for any character.
Speaker D: You had hair color.
Speaker D: You had eye color.
Speaker D: That was it.
Speaker D: That was all you got.
Speaker D: And I did it that way very deliberately.
Speaker D: I wanted to ensure that people could read these characters the way they saw them in their head.
Speaker D: But in my head, almost all of the entire cast of characters were POC.
Speaker D: And I was cool with that.
Speaker D: And I was like, okay, yay.
Speaker D: Good job.
Speaker D: Me.
Speaker D: I patted myself on the back.
Speaker D: I did awesome.
Speaker D: And then Shay Stewart, who is my creative partner, read it.
Speaker D: And she was like, oh my God, I love it.
Speaker D: This is great.
Speaker D: And she started talking about who she pictured her head when she was reading.
Speaker D: And I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Speaker D: No, that’s not right.
Speaker D: And she was like, oh, they’re not all white.
Speaker D: And I was like, no.
Speaker D: She was like, oh, well, I just assumed they were all white.
Speaker D: And I was like, okay, this is going to be a problem, right?
Speaker D: But it’s just not something that previously I had really put much thought into.
Speaker D: But if you think about it, it makes sense.
Speaker D: Traditionally, books are whitewashed.
Speaker D: Everyone’s white.
Speaker D: I’m a white author.
Speaker D: People are going to assume that I’m writing white characters.
Speaker D: So I had to go back and go, okay, we need to make this a little more clear because I don’t ever want someone to pick up my book and be like, oh, it’s just another white author pretending like white people are the only people in the world that exist, right?
Speaker D: Never, ever, ever do I want to erase other people.
Speaker D: So I was like, nope, we’re going to go back and we’re going to make sure that people understand that these are not all white characters.
Speaker D: So I went back and I did that.
Speaker B: But like, mine hasn’t even been a conscious decision to leave all that out.
Speaker B: That’s just not like I haven’t made it through first draft of anything yet.
Speaker D: Right.
Speaker B: Something that can be added later on.
Speaker D: That’s a personal preference for me.
Speaker D: That’s, like, my personal feelings on the subject.
Speaker D: That’s how I want to portray characters and how I want to write and how I want to be seen as a writer.
Speaker D: I think that it’s okay to make your characters ambiguous.
Speaker D: I’ve heard so many people well, in.
Speaker B: Mine will be very much like the series that I’m planning is very much going to be mythology based, so the characters will be from the region of that mythology.
Speaker D: I’ve heard so many book talkers, especially readers talk, about, I don’t care how you write your book, because I’m always picturing every main character in this way, like, low, well read nursing student on TikTok.
Speaker D: She has made so many videos where she is like, I don’t give a s*** if your main character has blonde hair and blue eyes and ivory skin in my head, she’s got a lace front and blue contact, and she is a black woman.
Speaker D: And I’m like, okay, cool.
Speaker B: Okay, good.
Speaker B: Like, the audiobook listener that likes they don’t want you to do the voices and the drama.
Speaker B: They just want you to read the book.
Speaker B: To read the book.
Speaker D: Yeah.
Speaker D: Well, then go have Alexa read it.
Speaker B: I had someone ask me if I could do that, and I’m like, no.
Speaker D: Right.
Speaker B: There are narrators that can, and I am not one.
Speaker D: Right.
Speaker B: But I have the most boring voice in the world, apparently, according to recent reviews, that I shall now ignore.
Speaker D: I think they’re wrong.
Speaker D: I think they’re a little bit crazy.
Speaker B: But well, do you have any final parting words?
Speaker B: Because I need to get out of my hot closet.
Speaker D: Gosh, I don’t know how you guys do it in that heat.
Speaker D: Final words?
Speaker D: I mean, I just think that it’s important to build a community, have people around you that you can work with and trust and collaborate with and who can listen to you when you’ve had the worst day and you feel like you never want to write another word for the rest of your life.
Speaker D: Who can, you know, commiserate with you and then kind of give you a swift kick in the a** and be like, okay, enough now.
Speaker D: Like, give me more read.
Speaker B: You’ve moped long enough, long enough.
Speaker D: Let’s figure this out.
Speaker D: I feel bad for you, but we don’t quit around here, so let’s figure out what our next steps are, right?
Speaker D: Those people are invaluable, and I have people like that who they are worth their weight in gold.
Speaker D: I would never trade them for anything on this planet.
Speaker D: They are amazing, and I love them with my whole heart, and they have gotten me through some really, really tough spots.
Speaker D: Those people are important.
Speaker D: Everyone should have those people.
Speaker D: And then, you know, write what you know, tell your story and make sure that when you tell your story, you’re not hurting other people in the telling.
Speaker D: Of it.
Speaker B: I think that is a very, very good summary of everything that we talked about.
Speaker D: I do tend to ramble on.
Speaker B: Well, thank you so much for your time today, and I will see you around TikTok.
Speaker B: And Discord.
Speaker A: And discord.
Speaker B: All right.
Speaker D: Bye bye.
Speaker A: As Jail got older, she became obsessed with all things Egyptian mythology.
Speaker A: Egyptian mythology is a collection of myths from ancient Egypt which described the actions of the Egyptian gods as a means of understanding the world around them.
Speaker A: The beliefs that these myths express are an important part of ancient Egyptian religion.
Speaker A: Myths appear frequently in Egyptian writings and art, particularly in short stories and in religious materials such as hymns, ritual texts, funeral texts, and temple decoration.
Speaker A: These sources rarely contain a complete account of a myth and often describe only brief fragments inspired by the cycles of nature.
Speaker A: The Egyptians saw time in the present as a series of recurring patterns, whereas the earliest periods of time were linear.
Speaker A: Myths are set in these earliest times, and myth sets the pattern for the cycles of the present.
Speaker A: Present events repeat the events of myth and in doing so, renew MOT, the fundamental order of the universe.
Speaker A: Amongst the most important episodes from the mythic past are the creation myths, in which the gods from the universe out of primordial chaos, the stories of the reign of the sun god Raw upon the earth, and the Osiris myth concerning the struggles of the gods.
Speaker A: Osiris ices and horus against the disruptive god Set.
Speaker A: Events from the present that might be regarded as myths include Rod’s daily journey through the world and its otherworldly counterpart, the dwat.
Speaker A: Recurring themes in these mythic episodes include the conflict between the upholders of MOT and the forces of disorder, the importance of the pharaoh in maintaining MOT, and the continual death and regeneration of the gods.
Speaker A: The details of these sacred events differ greatly from one text to another and often seem contradictory.
Speaker A: Egyptian myths are primarily metaphorical, translating the essence and behavior of deities into terms that humans can understand.
Speaker A: Each variant of a myth represents a different symbolic perspective, enriching the Egyptian’s understanding of the gods and the world.
Speaker A: Mythology profoundly influenced Egyptian culture.
Speaker A: It inspired or influenced many religious rituals and provided the ideological basis for kingship.
Speaker A: Scenes and symbols from myth appeared in arts and tombs, temples and amulets.
Speaker A: In literature.
Speaker A: Myths, or elements of them were used in stories that range from humor to allegory, demonstrating that the Egyptians adapted mythology to serve a wide variety of purposes.
Speaker A: Today we’ll be reading the story of Osiris.
Speaker A: Don’t forget we’re reading LaMorte de Arthur, the story of King Arthur and of his noble knights of the Round table on our patreon.
Speaker A: You can find the link in the show.
Speaker C: Notes osiris.
Speaker C: When Osiris was born, a voice from out of the heavens proclaimed, now has come the lord of all things, a wise man.
Speaker C: Pamela’s had knowledge of the Tidings in a holy place at thebes and he uttered a cry of gladness and told the people that a good and wise king had appeared among men.
Speaker C: When Raw grew old and descended unto heaven, osiris sat in his throne and ruled over the land of Egypt.
Speaker C: Men were but savages when he first came amongst them.
Speaker C: They hunted wild animals.
Speaker C: They wandered in broken tribes, hither and thither, up and down the valley and among the mountains, and the tribes contended fiercely in battle.
Speaker C: Evil were their ways, and their desires were sinful.
Speaker C: Osiris ushered in a new age.
Speaker C: He made good and binding laws.
Speaker C: He uttered just decrees, and he judged with wisdom between men.
Speaker C: He caused peace to prevail at length over all the land of Egypt.
Speaker C: Isa was the queen consort of Osiris, and she was a woman of exceeding great wisdom.
Speaker C: Perceiving the need of mankind, she got at the ears of barley and wheat, which she found growing wild, and these she gave unto the king.
Speaker C: Then Osiris taught men to break up the land which had been under flood, to sow the seed, and in due season to reap the harvest.
Speaker C: He instructed them also how to grind corn and need flour and meal so that they might have food and plenty.
Speaker C: By the wise ruler was the vine trained upon poles, and he cultivated fruit trees and caused the fruit to be gathered.
Speaker C: A father was he unto his people, and he taught them to worship the gods, to erect temples, and to live holy lives.
Speaker C: The hand of man was no longer lifted against his brother.
Speaker C: There was prosperity in the land of Egypt.
Speaker C: In the days of Osiris the Good, when the king perceived the excellent works which he had accomplished in Egypt, he went forth to traverse the whole world.
Speaker A: With the purpose to teach wisdom unto.
Speaker C: All men and prevail upon them to abandon their evil ways.
Speaker C: Not by battle conquest did he achieve his triumphs, but by reason of gentle and persuasive speech, and by music and song.
Speaker C: Peace followed in his footsteps, and men learned wisdom from his lips.
Speaker C: Isa reigned over the land of Egypt until his return.
Speaker C: She was stronger than Set, who regarded with jealous eyes the good works of his brother, for his heart was full of evil, and he loved warfare better than peace.
Speaker C: He desired to stir up rebellion in the kingdom.
Speaker C: The queen frustrated his wicked designs.
Speaker C: He sought in vain to prevail in battle against her.
Speaker C: So he plotted to overcome Osiris by guile.
Speaker C: His followers were 72 men who were subjects of the Dusky Queen of Ethiopia.
Speaker A: Thank you for joining Freya’s fairy tales.
Speaker A: Be sure to come back next week to hear Kimberly’s journey to holding her own fairy tale in her hands and to hear one of her favorite fairy tales.
