Show Notes:
Today is part one of two where we are talking to Claudia Blood about her novels. Over the next 2 weeks you will hear about writing from a young age, overcoming writers block, dealing with negative reviews, trying to make sense of your dreams, finding your audiobook narrator, learning how to promote your books, making sure to keep your story trucking along, not bogging it down with the details with an info dump, and flying by the seat of your pants… to a point.
Claudia’s Website – Claudia’s Facebook Page – Claudia’s Facebbook Group – Claudia’s Instagram – Claudia’s Twitter – Claudia’s TikTok
Claudia Blood’s love of epic fantasies led her from life as a research scientist right into that of an award-winning author. With works such as the Relic trilogy, Merged series, and the Supernatural Detective Agency, Claudia Blood’s work cover a wide range of genres and themes that have captivated many.
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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 a fairy tale or short story read as close to the original author’s version as 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.
Speaker B: Be sure to check out our website.
Speaker A: And sign up for our newsletter for the latest on the podcast.
Speaker A: Today is part one of two where we are talking to Claudia Blood about her novels.
Speaker A: Over the next two weeks, you will hear about writing from a young age, overcoming writer’s block, dealing with negative reviews, trying to make sense of your dreams, finding your audiobook narrator, learning how to promote your books, making sure to keep your story trucking along, not bogging it down with the details, with an info dump and flying by the seat of your pants.
Speaker A: To a point.
Speaker A: Ravine renegades rising.
Speaker A: A brilliant scientist.
Speaker A: A tragic mistake.
Speaker A: Can she save what she’s already lost?
Speaker A: Ravine has worked hard to see the launch of Horizon, the first light drive come to fruition.
Speaker A: But her laser focus on the big day leads to tragedy when her daughter is caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Speaker A: When Ravine discovers the truth behind the accident, she seeks vengeance against the company at fault and is given an impossible.
Speaker B: Choice that leaves her on a year.
Speaker A: Long flight to deep space.
Speaker A: Lonely respondent angry ravine is lost until she discovers a video that seems to.
Speaker B: Show her daughter being saved by a.
Speaker A: Mysterious figure on that fateful day, confident the message she receives is from her future self, ravine sets out on a mission to invent time travel and go back to change the past.
Speaker A: Only messing with fate and time has unintended consequences.
Speaker A: Ravine must become the villain to be a hero.
Speaker A: Ravine is one of four interconnected novellas.
Speaker A: The full arc of the story is resolved in the final novel.
Speaker A: This novella ends in a cliffhanger.
Speaker B: All right, well, the name of the podcast is Freya’s Fairy Tales, and that’s fairy tales in two ways.
Speaker B: So fairy tales are both something that we either watched or read or listened to as kids, and that includes other short stories that you may have liked as a kid.
Speaker A: And it’s also the journey of you.
Speaker B: Spending weeks, months, years working on your book.
Speaker B: To then be able to hold that in your hand is a fairy tale for you.
Speaker B: As the author.
Speaker B: So I like to start off with what was your favorite fairy tale or short story when you were a kid.
Speaker A: And did that favorite change as you grew up?
Speaker C: So I used to love the ASAP tales.
Speaker C: And it’s funny, I say that I remember reading them and I think they were internalized.
Speaker C: But I’m sitting there going, okay, she’s going to ask me, what one?
Speaker C: And I’m like, oh.
Speaker C: But I just remember reading them and loving them that they were life lessons and they were just like so easy to understand.
Speaker C: And they made them approachable.
Speaker C: And I just love that concept.
Speaker C: So that’s where I think I started.
Speaker C: And then, okay, I don’t know if this is like I love Disney movies right now.
Speaker C: I have small kids if they’re not that small.
Speaker C: But they went through the Disney phase.
Speaker C: And so I love what they do with Disney movies now.
Speaker C: They make it a little bit like too much happy ending, in my opinion.
Speaker D: Sometimes.
Speaker C: Like some of the originals.
Speaker B: Yeah, some of those stories are not happy at all, right.
Speaker C: The Little Mermaid, right?
Speaker C: And some of those original things, rapunzel, not happy.
Speaker C: But still, there’s just so much like we all maybe we don’t all but I want people to have their happy ending, right?
Speaker C: Like, I want that.
Speaker C: I should have been a romance author, but I’m not.
Speaker C: But I totally want them to have their happy ending.
Speaker B: Well, in most of those stories, ASAP or any of the other ones, that a lot of them were collected by the Grim brothers, but they were like oral traditions.
Speaker B: They bind into a form where they were all together.
Speaker B: But a lot of those were like with the ASOPs for some kind of a lesson.
Speaker B: Some of them, I swear the lesson was to just scare the crap out.
Speaker D: Of the children because they are disturbing, disturbing.
Speaker B: Usually quite a few of them at the very end will have some little poem for like the moral to the story is whatever, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker B: And you’re like, oh, that was what.
Speaker D: I was supposed to get.
Speaker D: Do you remember the one?
Speaker C: And this was I think it was early Disney with the grasshopper and the ants and the world owes me a living.
Speaker C: That made it like the nice little diddy.
Speaker C: And I always thought about that, just that whole you do come in and we’re all self centered.
Speaker C: We all think that we’re owed something.
Speaker C: And no, it’s hard work and it’s effort and it’s us trying to make things happen, in my opinion.
Speaker B: I mean, it could be easy.
Speaker B: But you’re also and I post these kind of things all the time on my social medias.
Speaker B: It could be easy if you want to stay where you are, but if you want to improve and go places, it’s going to be hard.
Speaker B: You’re going to have to learn something new.
Speaker B: You’re going to have to do something that you don’t want to do, whatever the case may be, if you want to go places, you have to put in the effort to go there or you’re not doing anything.
Speaker B: If I made a podcast or an audiobook and no one ever talked about the podcast or the audiobook, never going to sell anything, never going to go anywhere.
Speaker B: No one’s ever going to download anything.
Speaker C: That’s one facet of what has to happen in order for you to go somewhere.
Speaker C: There’s also that whole, like, I’ve known people who things have come very easy to them, but that doesn’t necessarily make them happy, and it doesn’t necessarily get them where they want to be.
Speaker B: And then there’s too that sense of accomplishment.
Speaker B: When you’ve, like, put in all this effort when you’ve put in all this effort to then sell copies of your book, it’s like, oh, my God, I did this.
Speaker B: There is no well, something happened.
Speaker B: And, like, now what?
Speaker D: Right?
Speaker C: The death mackinar or whatever comes in.
Speaker D: And says you will sell books or whatever.
Speaker B: All right, so next I like to ask, when did you know that you wanted to write books or stories?
Speaker C: I’ve been writing for a long time.
Speaker C: I wanted to be a writer as a younger girl, and I wrote some very weird, crazy things.
Speaker C: But there was always that I have the b***.
Speaker D: Oh, my gosh, it’s a b***.
Speaker C: That’s not what you do when you do improv.
Speaker C: But there was this pressure, as you know, to try and do something that will support yourself.
Speaker C: And writing is not necessarily something that’s deemed supportable.
Speaker C: So it was suppressed for a long, long time.
Speaker C: So it was always there and always around.
Speaker C: But I went into computer science instead and did that for a long time before I came back.
Speaker C: And I was like, what if you got to lose?
Speaker C: You kind of have to embrace it and really give it a true go.
Speaker B: And so you wrote since you were a girl.
Speaker B: How long did it take you to write your first full length book?
Speaker C: There’s so many starts and stops, and.
Speaker D: So many have completed projects and so.
Speaker B: Many first one you got from beginning to end, how long did it take you?
Speaker C: Okay, there’s the first one that I actually finished.
Speaker C: So I had something that I’ve been working on for, like, five, six years that I could never quite get done, and I recognized that I was missing a piece of something.
Speaker C: I don’t know if you ever do this with your to do list.
Speaker C: Like, if you need to call the doctor.
Speaker C: If you don’t know the doctor’s number, you may not actually call the doctor because it’s too hard, as funny as that sounds.
Speaker D: So if you have to Google it and then call the doctor, it happens.
Speaker C: So I ended up making creating a book, end to end book that didn’t have any fantasy elements, anything else.
Speaker C: And that took me, like, six months I had the idea and I just wrote all the way to the end and I got it done.
Speaker D: I was like, yes.
Speaker C: And then I hated the book because it didn’t have any fantasy and Sci-Fi elements.
Speaker D: And I had to rewrite it to.
Speaker C: Add in all of that stuff.
Speaker C: But that whole, like, getting that first book done.
Speaker C: And then I went back to the previous one and finally had enough confidence maybe to get that book done.
Speaker C: So the first book that I didn’t finish first, but the longest was like seven years, I think.
Speaker A: Okay.
Speaker B: And so you write the end.
Speaker B: What did you do after that?
Speaker C: I agonized over whether it was good enough.
Speaker C: I put it to editors.
Speaker D: I tried some baiting.
Speaker C: Like everything that you do when you’re flying around trying to figure out if it’s something that is because you want to make the best story possible product.
Speaker B: Let someone else tell me if this is good or am I crazy?
Speaker C: Am I crazy?
Speaker C: Yeah.
Speaker C: And so then after putting it through its paces, I ended up Indie publishing.
Speaker C: So I’ll have my 7th book, Indie, published on October 24 of 2022.
Speaker B: Okay.
Speaker B: I kind of had that similarly with like, I just started narrating back last year.
Speaker B: I just passed my year mark of Narrating.
Speaker B: And I kind of had that at the beginning too.
Speaker B: I’m like, oh, maybe I’ll land like five books and that’ll be about it.
Speaker B: Who’s going to want my voice?
Speaker B: Whatever.
Speaker B: Let’s see.
Speaker B: Almost to 100 audiobooks.
Speaker C: Outstanding.
Speaker B: Contracted.
Speaker B: I’m booked out for almost a year.
Speaker D: Awesome.
Speaker B: Clearly in my head.
Speaker C: Did it stop the little voice in there that still says.
Speaker D: 100?
Speaker B: Still had that voice in my head until I had to have, like, a sound engineer come in and kind of tweak some of my settings.
Speaker B: And he was like, he doesn’t know who I am because I’ve been doing this for very long and nobody knows my name other than people on social media that see me.
Speaker B: And he was like, how are things going?
Speaker B: Whatever.
Speaker B: And I was like, oh, I just finished whatever the number was at the time.
Speaker B: This was several months ago.
Speaker B: And he’s like, you’re doing good.
Speaker D: Like, I guess.
Speaker B: Okay.
Speaker B: And like, he’s someone that like, he tweaks sound levels for thousands of people.
Speaker B: His wife is a professional narrator.
Speaker B: He professionally edits other people’s audio.
Speaker B: So I’m like for someone like that to be like, you’re doing a good job.
Speaker B: And then I would post up auditions on TikTok of me just Narrating.
Speaker B: And people would be like, oh my gosh, you did such a great job.
Speaker B: That was a great audition, or whatever.
Speaker B: And so it feels so stupid that you have to have this external validation.
Speaker B: But all of us, I feel like, do at some point.
Speaker B: So now I’m kind of like, clearly I know my stuff.
Speaker B: Like I’m good.
Speaker B: And in the podcasting space, I was kind of like, I started narrating.
Speaker B: And then about a month later, I started a daily fiction podcast for Practice with fiction and voices and narrating in general.
Speaker B: And I’m like, no one’s paying me for it, so if it’s terrible, it doesn’t matter.
Speaker B: But I went to a conference in August of this year, and I’m thinking it’s this big it’s supposed to be, like, the biggest podcast conference in the world.
Speaker B: And so I’m thinking, oh, I’m going to be this, like, small fish and this big pond of all these big people.
Speaker B: And while I was at the conference, I hit 15,000 downloads, and everybody like, I would say that, and their eyes would get gigantic, like, oh my God.
Speaker D: Validation.
Speaker D: That’s awesome.
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker B: And my mom I took my mom with me because I didn’t want to go to this for the first time by myself.
Speaker B: And so I’m like, mom, will you go with me?
Speaker B: And she said she would tell people the same thing.
Speaker B: And she said, yeah, you’re clearly one of the better ones that are attending.
Speaker B: I think all the other bigger names were the speakers and stuff.
Speaker B: But yeah, it’s just that same external validation.
Speaker B: And since then, I’ve bowled through.
Speaker B: I’m almost to 19,000.
Speaker B: Since August, I’ve gone from 15 to 19.
Speaker B: So I’m like, Good God.
Speaker B: We’re just like, the ball is rolling.
Speaker D: With all this down here gaining momentum.
Speaker B: I’m like, all right, so same thing.
Speaker B: Same you think it’s over, but you have to promote, and you have to you feel like it’s not over when.
Speaker C: You have the product.
Speaker C: It’s more yeah.
Speaker B: I’m sure you have seven books out now.
Speaker B: You said you’re about to release the 7th.
Speaker C: Yes.
Speaker B: And so do you ever look at your reviews to see what people are saying, or do you avoid those?
Speaker C: I do.
Speaker C: I do look at those.
Speaker C: And I’m always very almost afraid that someone is going to be like, you suck greatly.
Speaker D: Because they do.
Speaker C: I mean, people are not always all that nice, so they get very passionate about that.
Speaker C: But I’ve been very fortunate that I’ve had pretty much good reviews.
Speaker C: The worst reviews so far have been things like, it’s not my cookie.
Speaker C: Right?
Speaker C: So it’s one of those, like so, you know, I love chocolate chip cookies.
Speaker C: And so if someone bakes the perfect oatmeal cookie and it’s everything they ever dreamt of from oatmeal cookie and gave it to me, I’m not going to like it.
Speaker C: It’s not chocolate chip cookie.
Speaker C: Same thing with books, right?
Speaker C: It’s the same sort of thing.
Speaker C: So the review was, oh, this was great, but I was looking more for this.
Speaker C: And I’m like, well, it’s not that, right?
Speaker D: Okay.
Speaker B: Narrators get that with voices, too.
Speaker B: Most of my negative reviews are just like I didn’t like her voice.
Speaker B: I read them because, like, for you, I’m sure you want to see.
Speaker B: Is there something that is repeatedly being said that I need to change, that.
Speaker C: I need to change so far.
Speaker B: Just they don’t like my voice and I can’t change that.
Speaker B: Just like you can’t make a Sci-Fi fantasy book into a romance.
Speaker C: Exactly.
Speaker C: It doesn’t hit the beats.
Speaker C: It’s not going to be it.
Speaker C: Yeah.
Speaker B: So now your books are Sci-Fi and fantasy, right?
Speaker C: Yeah, I’m a cross genre, I think is the right way to say it.
Speaker C: So I’ve got a series that’s Sci-Fi and fantasy, a trilogy that’s completed, and I’m working on the thing that’s coming out as a prequel to it.
Speaker C: It’s the bad guy’s story because the bad guy ravine is awesome.
Speaker C: I just love her.
Speaker C: And then I’ve got a fantasy series called the Merge Series.
Speaker C: And it’s pure fantasy.
Speaker C: There’s no real science inside of it.
Speaker C: And then I’ve got a supernatural would it be suspense?
Speaker C: I think that’s what they call it.
Speaker C: So it’s got the fantasy elements, but it’s much more suspenseful than the other ones.
Speaker C: There’s a lot more danger in that kind of jazz.
Speaker C: So I’m sort of like the elements that are the same as the fantasy element.
Speaker C: The adventure elements are kind of the same and there’s always a little bit of mystery.
Speaker C: But I love fantasy and vengeance and dragons and unicorns and different things like that.
Speaker C: I just love that.
Speaker B: So where does your inspiration come from for your books?
Speaker C: A bunch of them came from dreams.
Speaker C: So I would wake up.
Speaker C: My favorite one for the Relic trilogy, it was this dream about this team of people, team of guys going through the jungle, and they unearth this like this old alien artifact.
Speaker C: And when they go inside, they start the machine up and it’s like the Terminator light ball.
Speaker C: Do you remember when it was that that turned up on this platform and there’s an aerobics in 80s?
Speaker C: Aerobics instructor.
Speaker B: Oh my gosh.
Speaker D: I know.
Speaker B: And I was like Richard Simmons going on.
Speaker D: It was a check.
Speaker C: It was a woman.
Speaker C: And it was the typical sort of like she was big blonde hair.
Speaker D: Big blonde hair and the blue the leg warmers and the big purse thing.
Speaker C: And so I basically was like, what the heck is going on?
Speaker C: How does this make any sense?
Speaker C: And so the story came from trying to make sense of everything that happened.
Speaker D: And now it has time travel and.
Speaker C: It has all sorts of different things in it.
Speaker B: So fun.
Speaker B: Dreams.
Speaker B: Dreams or trying to make sense of.
Speaker D: The dream of the dream.
Speaker B: So you basically start with like a dream journal that you can expand upon.
Speaker D: Well, I get this scene in my.
Speaker C: Head and my brain will keep going back to the scene, going, well, what happened and why are they there?
Speaker C: And where did this come from?
Speaker C: And it’s weird because when I start asking myself questions or other people, do I know the answers?
Speaker D: And I was like, I should write.
Speaker B: The answers down to my own questions.
Speaker A: Fun.
Speaker B: Now, I did see as a narrator, I did see that your trilogy has been narrated.
Speaker B: How did that come about?
Speaker C: I ended up going through draft to digital, and they’ve got some of the narrators there that you can interview.
Speaker C: And I found my narrator through that.
Speaker C: And I just love the idea of it.
Speaker C: So I ended up paying for the audiobooks.
Speaker D: It was fun, though.
Speaker C: I had never done anything like that.
Speaker C: And the guy was all kind and nice and almost held my hand a.
Speaker D: Little bit because I’d be like, hi, I’m freaking out.
Speaker D: All this.
Speaker D: And he’d be totally like, you’re okay.
Speaker D: It’s okay.
Speaker D: And I was like, okay, I want to do that.
Speaker C: And then I couldn’t even like, I can’t hear someone else read my stuff because it’s embarrassing.
Speaker C: And I’m like, oh, God, people are going to think this sucks.
Speaker C: So I know I wasn’t a good person.
Speaker C: So I sent one to my sister, and I sent it to some friends and was like, does this sound okay?
Speaker D: Does this sound okay?
Speaker D: Are you guys okay?
Speaker D: And they’re like, oh, yeah, he sounds great.
Speaker D: I’m like, okay.
Speaker B: I had an author, had to send it to her best friend to like, is this good?
Speaker B: Because it’s my book and I just think it’s good, or is this actually good because I don’t listen to audio.
Speaker D: Great.
Speaker B: And then I had one author that she won some kind of a pitch war on Twitter.
Speaker B: And so her publishers actually, who hired me, but she heard the clip, thinking they’re just going to have gotten some side of the road guy that it’s not going to be good.
Speaker B: And she’s like, I send her the audition piece or whatever.
Speaker B: She’s like, you sound like an actual narrator.
Speaker D: Thank you.
Speaker D: Awesome.
Speaker D: It’s a sign you put on your wall, right?
Speaker B: And then it was like several months later, I submitted an audition for an epic fantasy book.
Speaker B: And the guy like, messages me back.
Speaker B: And the subtitle, oh my God.
Speaker B: The message heading is like, oh my God.
Speaker B: And I’m like, this is either going to be really good or really bad.
Speaker B: And it was like, oh my God, you did such an awesome job.
Speaker B: I love it.
Speaker B: Let’s go.
Speaker B: I’m like, all right, it was good.
Speaker B: But I’m like I mean, if it was bad, I imagine most people don’t message you if they don’t like it.
Speaker B: You occasionally get the ones that do.
Speaker B: And you’re like, you could have just, like, not great.
Speaker C: And it’s probably not like to give you constructive feedback, but to just to.
Speaker B: Kind of no, it’s like, hey, we didn’t want you.
Speaker B: We like someone else better.
Speaker B: Okay, well, thanks.
Speaker B: I got that when I got the automated message saying, you didn’t get this book.
Speaker B: It’s a very generic response.
Speaker B: It’ll be like, hey, this book that you auditioned for went to someone else.
Speaker B: And you’re like, okay.
Speaker D: Okay, as it happens.
Speaker B: I’m like, that.
Speaker B: All right.
Speaker B: Sounds good.
Speaker B: And then other ones you’re like they send out ones too.
Speaker B: I guess the authors will go to a different platform, like drafted Digital, I guess, because occasionally you’ll get some saying the author pulled the title.
Speaker B: So it’s not that you didn’t get it, it’s that it’s not up there anymore.
Speaker B: So you don’t know.
Speaker C: Digital, I think, went to find a way because I think it’s find a way that I actually ended up going through.
Speaker B: Yeah, find a way I can’t manage to figure out how to get set up with them.
Speaker B: I don’t know.
Speaker B: They’re another one.
Speaker C: Yeah, there’s a lot because it’s popular.
Speaker C: Isn’t that like the trend right now is e and audiobooks are on the rise compared to everything else.
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker B: So we kind of talked about this ahead of time.
Speaker B: So what have you done up to this point to promote your books?
Speaker C: Okay, I don’t I am naturally an introvert.
Speaker C: So the whole concept of and I’m from the Midwest and I’m like so like, talking about myself and trying to say, look how great this is, is really against my nature.
Speaker D: This is not easy.
Speaker C: So I’ve tried getting some marketing people.
Speaker C: I’ve tried some of the newsletter exchanges.
Speaker C: I basically thrown a ton of spaghetti against the wall trying to figure out how to do it.
Speaker C: I’ve done the fussy librarians and the bargain bookseas and all those different sorts of things on all the right Facebook groups, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker C: So I tried a lot of different things and podcasts and things like that, right.
Speaker C: Trying to get out there.
Speaker C: That’s what I’ve basically done.
Speaker C: So it’s a whole range of things, some successful, some not, right?
Speaker C: But I keep trying to that dream.
Speaker B: And I talked to another author about this and I keep telling my husband this.
Speaker B: He’s working on a book, I’m working on my own books.
Speaker B: We’re just very crafty family.
Speaker B: But I’m like, you’re going to join a Facebook group and there’s going to be 1000 different ideas for how to promote your book.
Speaker B: But not every idea is going to work for every genre.
Speaker B: It’s going to work for every particular author.
Speaker B: There are just some platforms that I cheat.
Speaker B: I just post the same thing across everything I’m told.
Speaker A: That’s not what you’re supposed to do.
Speaker B: I don’t care.
Speaker B: I don’t have time.
Speaker B: So that’s what I do.
Speaker C: Do I write books or do I promote?
Speaker C: Right?
Speaker C: Because if I stop writing books, I have nothing to promote.
Speaker C: Right?
Speaker C: There’s like that whole balance of time.
Speaker C: And it’s not like for all of us.
Speaker C: It’s the only thing we do.
Speaker C: I’ve got the kids and the hubby and the day job and pets.
Speaker B: I’m over here.
Speaker B: I’m like, okay, I have three podcasts and I narrate audiobooks pretty much full time.
Speaker B: And I have a full time job.
Speaker B: So I’m like, when exactly?
Speaker D: Sleep.
Speaker B: I do.
Speaker B: I do sleep.
Speaker B: Everything is like segmented in my day.
Speaker B: Like, do this in the morning, and then do this and then do that, and just keep it segmented.
Speaker C: That’s good to get into.
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker B: I did not start that way at the beginning.
Speaker B: I learned towards the beginning of the year when I started getting more books.
Speaker B: Last year I got all non fiction and nonfiction.
Speaker B: I didn’t have to read ahead of time because beyond the words that you don’t know how to pronounce, which you can look up on the spot, I don’t need to know what the story is.
Speaker C: Right.
Speaker C: There’s no change in tone because, oh, no, I’m scared.
Speaker D: Yeah.
Speaker B: I don’t have to know the personality of the character.
Speaker B: There is no character.
Speaker B: So last year I did that, and then this year I started landing so I start that.
Speaker B: I’m only landing nonfiction.
Speaker B: I start landing fiction at the beginning of this year.
Speaker B: And then it was like, oh, now I have to read the book ahead of time because I got to know the personalities.
Speaker B: So I pick voices that match.
Speaker B: I don’t want to give an angry voice to a bubbly character.
Speaker B: That would be bad.
Speaker C: Right?
Speaker C: That would be bad.
Speaker B: So now I’m like, I have to add in the time to read the book ahead of time.
Speaker B: It all gets done.
Speaker B: And the weekends are generally my time, too.
Speaker B: I do these interviews and then I do any if I happen to have my daughter’s birthday was this week, so I had a day where I didn’t get everything done.
Speaker B: So I have to catch up over.
Speaker C: The weekend because with segmented, I’m sure it’s a tight schedule and as soon as something slips, it’s just well, and.
Speaker B: It’S kind of one of those like last weekend I had everything caught up.
Speaker B: This weekend, it was like, well, that happened.
Speaker D: Cash item.
Speaker B: Just like one day you have one day where, like, you spend a couple of hours at lunch.
Speaker B: That’s a couple hours of audio that didn’t get edited at the end of the day.
Speaker D: Right?
Speaker C: Yes, exactly.
Speaker B: But it’s the same with authoring.
Speaker B: And do you have a set time in your day that you write or just when you have time available?
Speaker B: How does that work?
Speaker C: I had a problem with the beginning of this, so we moved.
Speaker D: Okay.
Speaker C: And we moved and we switched school systems.
Speaker C: And so my kids actually start school an hour earlier, and I had no idea how much that was going to mess with me because usually I write at night, so everybody would go to bed and I’d take a couple of hours and I would write.
Speaker C: But now that time isn’t there.
Speaker C: Right.
Speaker C: And all of a sudden it’s not there.
Speaker C: And I’m really struggling, struggling to figure out how to get that consistency back.
Speaker C: Right.
Speaker B: And how the shift in schedule would throw you.
Speaker B: Yeah, it’s like with daylight savings time, it takes you a couple of weeks.
Speaker D: A couple of weeks.
Speaker C: And I’d like to say it’s a couple of weeks, but embarrassingly enough.
Speaker C: It’s been almost a year, and I still just haven’t quite figured out how it and then the other thing that I had is I’m very external, deadline driven.
Speaker C: So I can’t give myself a deadline, right?
Speaker C: If someone’s depending upon me, I will absolutely make that deadline.
Speaker C: I will make it happen.
Speaker C: But if it’s just me, I’m like.
Speaker D: If it takes another week, yeah, I’m going to be fine.
Speaker B: So you need to schedule your editor ahead of time.
Speaker D: I do.
Speaker D: And I had this editor that used.
Speaker C: To I had to do every month.
Speaker C: I had so many words that had to go, and it had to be done by the end of the month or I lost it.
Speaker D: And I’m like, I’m not going to lose that.
Speaker D: This is going to happen.
Speaker D: I’m going to make it happen.
Speaker C: She’s no longer editing.
Speaker C: So now I lost between the schedule change and no longer having that monthly deadline.
Speaker D: I’m like, oh, what are we going to do?
Speaker B: So you need to get you a PA or writing buddy or something that’s like you need to hold me accountable.
Speaker C: This last book I finished, which was A Christmas miracle, I felt like I think it was helping break me free from that.
Speaker C: Right.
Speaker C: So I’ve got the next book started.
Speaker C: I’ve got, honestly, four books that are half started that I just need to finish them because I kept thinking, well, maybe if I trade projects, it would get better.
Speaker C: Then I get halfway through.
Speaker C: And then the things we try to trick ourselves with.
Speaker B: So I in all of this.
Speaker B: So I have full time job, which is kind of an on call situation.
Speaker B: It’s usually like 2 hours in the morning of sitting at my desk.
Speaker B: And then I’m on call the rest of the day.
Speaker B: So it works well for the narrating.
Speaker B: I can narrate in the middle of that as long as I can stop and answer the phone and then go back to it.
Speaker B: But I decided at the beginning of the year like, oh, I’m doing all this fiction narrating.
Speaker B: So now I’m getting inspired to write my own stuff.
Speaker B: So I start this book and then I’m about, I don’t know, 30,000 words into the book.
Speaker B: And I’m like, oh my gosh, it’d be really cool to write a mythology based book.
Speaker B: So I buy all the mythology books because well, you’re like, for me, I’m like, I don’t want to write a mythology based book and not have read the mythology stuff.
Speaker B: And then I buy all these books and I’m looking at them and I start reading some of them.
Speaker B: And then I got behind on reading for narration.
Speaker B: And then I’m like, when the heck am I going to have time to.
Speaker D: Read these books, right, in order to.
Speaker C: Write the thing that I wanted to write that I stopped writing the previous thing for?
Speaker B: Yeah, I don’t know.
Speaker B: So at this point, I’m just like, Just keep plowing ahead, reading the narration books.
Speaker B: I’m like, maybe a week behind on what I should have read at this point.
Speaker B: So I’m getting caught up.
Speaker D: That’s good.
Speaker B: But I’m like, oh, my gosh.
Speaker B: I’m like, Why did you think this was a good plan?
Speaker B: And at this point, I’ve stopped auditioning for audio books and I’m still getting audiobooks.
Speaker B: Yeah, it’s a good problem to have.
Speaker D: It’s a very good problem to have.
Speaker B: But yeah, it’s very much I feel like and I’m a digital calendar person, but I feel like at some point in your supplies, to you or anybody trying to figure out when to squeeze the time into the day, anyone can benefit from, I wake up at this time and I go to bed at this time, right?
Speaker B: I could maybe stay up an extra hour, maybe wake up a little early, whatever the case may be.
Speaker B: But here’s what I have to do in my day, and for me, it was I had to cut out some TikTok watching time to read more to get ahead.
Speaker B: That extra 30 minutes of I used to stop at whatever I was doing at nine and watch TikTok for 30 minutes.
Speaker B: Now it’s like, nope, at 930.
Speaker B: Now you gotta stop, right, and do.
Speaker D: This other thing well.
Speaker C: And then I don’t know if you do this.
Speaker C: Like, sometimes the thing that I’m working on, I’m, like, stuck.
Speaker C: Like, it’s not really stuck, but my unconscious mind is pitching a fit, and it’s saying there’s something that’s not quite right, but my unconscious mind does not know how to talk to the rest of me.
Speaker C: So suddenly I’ve read ten books and the house is clean.
Speaker C: Okay, cleaner, let’s be honest here.
Speaker C: And then you look up and you’re like, I’ve been written for, like, ten days.
Speaker D: I’m stuck.
Speaker D: Why didn’t you tell me I was stuck?
Speaker D: Find your friend.
Speaker D: And you’re like, okay, let me tell you about Blue.
Speaker C: And suddenly you’re not stuck again.
Speaker D: So I do that.
Speaker C: I have that happen to me too.
Speaker C: And I’m just like, seriously, if my brain would just tell me what was going on, as crazy as that sounds, I might be more efficient with my time, perhaps.
Speaker B: Mine is usually like, oh, I’m two weeks ahead in daily fiction podcast episodes I don’t need to record right now.
Speaker B: I’ll do something else for a little bit and then I’m like, oh, crap, I don’t have an episode for tomorrow.
Speaker B: I think there’s two loaded in, ready to go.
Speaker B: And then I have, like, ten that need to be edited.
Speaker B: So they’re there and they’re ready, but I haven’t listened to them yet.
Speaker C: And again, it’s taking up that same time.
Speaker D: Like you said, here’s my time.
Speaker C: And okay, I’m taking this trunk now to catch up on all that.
Speaker D: Okay?
Speaker B: But then again, if you don’t want to go anywhere, don’t do anything.
Speaker B: If you want to go somewhere, you have to work hard and that takes time and priority.
Speaker C: Right.
Speaker C: Because what we’re really saying is for the 24 hours, these are the things that we’re prioritizing to the top so that they get done.
Speaker C: So I might love to hike, and I do, but I don’t do it very often because trying to write and being with my kids and eating goes.
Speaker D: On top of that.
Speaker B: I mean, exercise is important too, but hikes take a lot longer than 30 minutes on an exercise bike in your living room.
Speaker D: Great.
Speaker B: Yeah, I tried to do that.
Speaker B: I just bought one of the Hula Hoops.
Speaker B: I don’t know if you’ve seen those on TikTok, the, like, weird weighted things.
Speaker B: Anyway, I bought one of those and then I promptly injured my back.
Speaker D: On the wall.
Speaker B: It’s hanging on the exercise bike, actually.
Speaker D: Because you’re going to be on the exercise bike going like this.
Speaker B: I mean, it had to hang somewhere.
Speaker C: I’m always afraid if I put stuff on, like, the exercise bike, though, that at some point I’m not going to remember it’s an exercise bike.
Speaker C: I’m going to think it’s like a clothes holder or whatever, or that it’s not going to gain you.
Speaker B: Yeah, we kind of have this exercise nook in our living room where the exercise bike is, and there’s the weights, and I have, like, a kettlebell, and I don’t remember what else is in that corner, but it’s only exercise stuff in that little area.
Speaker B: And I have one of those ones that kind of folds up, so I have to move it out of the little corner to use it.
Speaker B: No clothes or blankets or pillows or.
Speaker D: Getting stuck on it.
Speaker D: It’s probably good.
Speaker C: One less thing that you have to move in order to use the equipment.
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker B: The things we do and how we.
Speaker C: Trick ourselves into trying to be healthy and getting our goals done.
Speaker B: So what has worked for you?
Speaker B: So you said you’ve tried a bunch of different things with the promoting.
Speaker B: What seems to have worked the best for you?
Speaker B: What have you learned?
Speaker B: What works and what hasn’t worked?
Speaker C: So I think doing something like what I’m doing with you seems like it actually does work, where we talk and we have a frank conversation and we have fun and people see that I’m not just a cardboard cut out.
Speaker B: I try to make it not so.
Speaker B: Like, here’s the list of ten questions.
Speaker D: To answer and some of those questions.
Speaker C: Sometimes between the interviews, I’m like, oh.
Speaker D: Wait, I’ve already answered this somewhere.
Speaker D: Oh, here’s my answer.
Speaker D: I’ve been asked that four times.
Speaker B: When I ask the one weird one, I always start out with the fairy tale one, because one, it’s a very good icebreaker.
Speaker B: It’s like people aren’t usually expecting that.
Speaker B: It gets them into thinking it’s not a stressful thing to answer.
Speaker B: Everybody knows what story they liked as a kid, for the most part.
Speaker B: I haven’t had anyone not know what they like.
Speaker C: Stories okay.
Speaker B: I mean, I would hope that if you’re an author, you like stories, maybe.
Speaker D: You like a story, maybe you’re a nonfiction author.
Speaker D: I don’t know.
Speaker B: I’ve only interviewed one of those.
Speaker B: And she wrote her own memoir.
Speaker B: It was a little bit different because some of the questions that I would normally ask, what’s your inspiration?
Speaker D: My life.
Speaker B: Right, yeah, I’m not going to ask that for her.
Speaker B: We went into a little bit of her life story because that applied.
Speaker B: But yeah, no, it’s different.
Speaker B: But I haven’t done I had one like business author, and I was like, yeah, it doesn’t really fit the format, so this isn’t going to be a good fit.
Speaker C: Right.
Speaker B: And he was really cool about it.
Speaker D: That’s good.
Speaker B: Like fiction, whatever, we’ll just go with what we can.
Speaker B: So what is your you said you had a book that’s well, by the time this airs, it will have come out.
Speaker B: What is the most recent thing you’ve got going on?
Speaker C: So it’s the story ravine.
Speaker C: It is part of a series that I’m starting that’s called Renegades Rising.
Speaker B: Okay.
Speaker C: So I told you a little bit about the Relic trilogy, which is science fantasy, and it’s set on this distant jungle planet with some orphans and time travel and all sorts of different crazy things going on.
Speaker C: But the bad guy in that series and that trilogy is Ravine.
Speaker C: And Ravine’s whole thing is that she is trying to save her daughter.
Speaker C: Her daughter had died years and years earlier, and Ravine blamed herself in the company she was working for, and she decided she was going to create time travel to save her daughter.
Speaker C: Okay, so this story Ravine is about how she goes about trying to do.
Speaker B: That and then eventually becomes the bad guy.
Speaker C: Oh, yeah, it’s a long, twisted story.
Speaker B: That’s fun.
Speaker C: Part of it was like losing your child, right?
Speaker C: Like, how far, what would you do to try and get them back?
Speaker C: How far would you go as a mom?
Speaker C: And authors are all very, not all of us, but some of us like your doomsday.
Speaker C: And you’re always thinking, oh my god, what would happen if they died in the slaughter?
Speaker C: What would happen if you know what I mean?
Speaker C: Because your brain what’s the worst case scenario?
Speaker C: What’s the worst case scenario?
Speaker C: It’s so I started thinking about with my daughter, ended up having to get stitches.
Speaker C: And she had this big I had a scare at daycare where she ended up in the hospital.
Speaker C: And so I had that moment of going, what would I do to keep her safe?
Speaker C: What would I do to get her back?
Speaker C: And then started really going deep.
Speaker C: And so Ravine is like, she ended up basically enslaving a whole population in.
Speaker D: The attempt to get her daughter back.
Speaker C: Right.
Speaker C: She acknowledged that she’s done there’s scientists out of air locks and she set up her but lots of just terrible, terrible things that she’s done, and it’s too much like, at the end of the book of the trilogy, I really ended up liking her, as crazy as it sounds.
Speaker B: She went to the trilogy done.
Speaker B: Trilogy is done.
Speaker C: Yes.
Speaker B: You haven’t released one yet.
Speaker C: That trilogy is done.
Speaker C: So now it’s Ravine’s story, where I’m like, okay, how did she get here?
Speaker C: So how did she become that mastermind?
Speaker C: How did she get to where she controlled the whole planet and she set up a caste system?
Speaker C: And how did this even happen that she decided to invent time travel?
Speaker C: I mean, who does that?
Speaker B: I think the first series I really remember that went into that.
Speaker B: Like, how did it happen?
Speaker B: Was the Maze runner series.
Speaker B: Yeah, I don’t know if you’ve ever.
Speaker C: Read I haven’t, but I’ve heard of it.
Speaker C: Yeah.
Speaker B: So that one they wrote, like, I think it’s a trilogy, and then I have all the books, but I think it’s a trilogy of, like, from the they’re trapped in this maze going forward, and then they wrote, like, a prequel, where it’s like, where did the maze come from?
Speaker B: Which is very I almost feel like you have to read the original books first and then read the prequel, because if you read the prequel, it gives too much away for the rest of the series.
Speaker C: Right.
Speaker C: And there is sometimes I’ve noticed that with authors and even something like Star Wars.
Speaker C: Right.
Speaker C: I did it in the order that I did it because I did the middle once first, obviously.
Speaker C: But people who are just getting into the franchise, if you start at the beginning, it’s a whole different experience than doing it the other direction.
Speaker C: So, yes, I do think there might be like, what’s your recommended order for reading this?
Speaker C: And I’m going to be like, I.
Speaker D: Don’T know, do the trilogy first if.
Speaker C: You want to get curious about Ravine, or do Ravine first if you want to find out what happens when she finally gets her goal of trying to get her daughter back.
Speaker B: So you need, like, two charts, the chronological order chart, and then if you don’t want spoilers before you read the bulk of the series, read it in this order.
Speaker D: In this order.
Speaker C: Yeah, but it’s so Ravine is coming out, and as you said, it’s going to be October 24, 2022.
Speaker C: I have to add the two there.
Speaker C: Sorry.
Speaker C: COVID Nine, and I think they’re going to be called they’re tentatively titled Mouse lira and the Duchess are going to be part of the renegade crew.
Speaker C: And then it’s all going to come together.
Speaker C: And right now, I’m calling it hostile Takeover.
Speaker B: Okay.
Speaker C: Final book where all of those POV characters come together, and I’m going to say save the world.
Speaker B: Tentatively.
Speaker B: That is the plan right now.
Speaker D: That’s the plan.
Speaker D: But I told you about my dreams and how things come up, so there you go.
Speaker B: That’s fun.
Speaker A: Claudia liked ASOPs fables growing up.
Speaker B: ASAPS fables or the Asapica is a.
Speaker A: Collection of fables credited to ASOP a slave and storyteller believed to have lived in ancient Greece between 620 and 564 BCE.
Speaker A: Of diverse origins, the stories associated with his name have descended to modern times through a number of sources and continue.
Speaker B: To be reinterpreted in different verbal registers.
Speaker A: And in popular as well as artistic media.
Speaker A: The fables originally belonged to oral tradition and were not collected for some three centuries after ASAP’s death.
Speaker A: By that time, a variety of other stories, jokes and proverbs are being ascribed to him, although some of that material was from sources earlier than him or came from beyond the Greek cultural sphere.
Speaker A: The process of inclusion has continued until the present, with some of the fables unrecorded before the late Middle Ages and others arriving from outside Europe.
Speaker A: The process is continuous and new stories are still being added to the ASOP corpus, even when they are demonstrably.
Speaker A: More recent work and sometimes from known authors.
Speaker A: Manuscripts in Latin and Greek were important avenues of transmission, although poetical treatments in European vernaculars eventually formed another on the arrival of printing.
Speaker A: Collections of ASAPS fables were among the earliest books in a variety of languages through the means of later collections and translations or adaptations of them, asop’s reputation as a fable list was transmitted throughout the world.
Speaker A: Initially, the fables were addressed to adults and covered religious, social and political themes.
Speaker A: They were also put to use as ethical guides and from the Renaissance onwards were particularly used for the education of children.
Speaker A: Their ethical dimension was reinforced in the adult world through depiction in sculpture, painting and other illustrative means, as well as adaptation to drama in song.
Speaker A: In addition, there have been reinterpretations of the meaning of fables and changes in emphasis over time.
Speaker A: Today we’ll be reading The Hair and the Hound, one of ASAP’s fables.
Speaker A: Don’t forget we’re reading Lemon, DeArthur.
Speaker A: 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 notes the Hair and the Hound.
Speaker A: A hound started a hair from his lair, but after a long run gave up the chase.
Speaker A: A goat herd seeing him, stopped mocking him, saying the little one is the best runner of the two.
Speaker A: The hound replied, you do not see the difference between us.
Speaker A: I was only running for a dinner, but he for his life.
Speaker A: Thank you for joining Freya’s fairy tales.
Speaker B: Be sure to come back next week.
Speaker A: For the conclusion of Claudia’s journey to holding her own fairy tale in her hands and to hear another of her favorite fairy tales.
Speaker D: Key points.
