Show Notes:
Today is part two of two where we are talking to Claudia Blood about her novels. After today you will have heard 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 B: Each week, we will talk to authors.
Speaker A: 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 a newsletter for the latest on the podcast.
Speaker A: Today is part two of Two where we are talking to Claudia Blood about her novels.
Speaker B: After today, you will have heard about.
Speaker A: 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, despondent, angry, ravine is lost until.
Speaker B: She discovers a video that seems to.
Speaker A: Show her daughter being saved by a mysterious figure.
Speaker A: 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: So we talked about before this that you have not figured out TikTok yet, what have you or what are you scared of figuring out?
Speaker C: Okay, so I’m kind of a dork.
Speaker C: I’m not going to lie, right?
Speaker C: I like Dungeons and Dragons.
Speaker C: I like science.
Speaker C: I’m a nerd at heart, right?
Speaker C: But I’m a social enough nerd to recognize that people look at me sometimes and they’re like, wow, I get the fat on the head, right?
Speaker C: So the TikTok thing is okay.
Speaker C: And I even have a girlfriend who did Tik tok and then had such a horrible backlash that she left TikTok.
Speaker C: Like, she was one of those people who had thousands of negatives on her video for something that wasn’t even like something she was focused on.
Speaker C: And she’s the sweetest, kindest little thing, and it like, devastated her.
Speaker C: So there’s me socially awkward, thinking about doing my little videos and thinking the house is going to work.
Speaker C: Right?
Speaker C: I’m just so afraid of being live and just being a dork that everybody is going to pat me on.
Speaker C: No, you can’t even talk like I’m going to read your book.
Speaker C: Whatever.
Speaker C: It’s just the fear, I guess, of being too dorky.
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker B: I feel like every author that I’ve talked to has said that they’re socially awkward authors, right?
Speaker C: Maybe.
Speaker B: I think it’s just the fact that you can’t write a book with a bunch of people around you.
Speaker B: You spend most of your day in solitude, so it would make sense that that’s what you’re used to.
Speaker B: Your friends are in your head, which sounds crazy because it is slightly crazy, but you all come up with amazing stories from it, so who cares?
Speaker B: None of you have been committed for the stories you write.
Speaker B: Steven King, prime example, right?
Speaker C: Not committed.
Speaker B: Not committed.
Speaker B: Writes the most disturbing books ever.
Speaker B: But I had the because I work from home, so I’m a very chatty person.
Speaker B: But I spend most of my day by myself with my eight year old, now eight year old.
Speaker B: So I’m like, you know, my husband gets home and I’m like talking his ear off, but I don’t do that in public most of the time, right.
Speaker B: So I start the podcast and I’m like, oh, it would be great if on YouTube I could have this behind the scenes situation going on.
Speaker B: And then I’m like, that means you’re going to have a camera in your face while you’re talking and messing up, and your family knows about this, so you can’t exactly be just like right.
Speaker C: And I’m so afraid I’m going to say something that’s taken the wrong way.
Speaker C: Right.
Speaker C: In today’s day and age, people seem just so angry about everything.
Speaker C: And I’m just like but I’m not like I don’t know.
Speaker B: Yeah, there’s part of it.
Speaker B: I try to keep my nose out of all the drama because most of the drama I don’t have an educated leg to stand on.
Speaker B: So it’s better just to stay quiet than to say something that’s completely wrong.
Speaker B: But I feel like the people that people don’t get mad about are the ones that find out they did something wrong, apologize from a place of they are actually apologetic.
Speaker B: Not, oh, I’m so sorry I made you all mad.
Speaker C: Right?
Speaker B: Because there are ones that are done.
Speaker B: Yeah, it’s not sincere.
Speaker B: As long as it’s sincere.
Speaker B: And then you take this for authors, it would usually be you used problematic material and you’re writing of your book or whatever, that’s usually an author’s thing.
Speaker B: Or you said something on social media that got you in trouble.
Speaker B: But as long as you I mean, there are some things that I’ve seen controversy over that should not have been said at all.
Speaker B: But sometimes we write things and it’s mostly you just don’t know.
Speaker C: Right.
Speaker C: And there’s also that whole thing.
Speaker C: Okay, so Ravine is an example, right?
Speaker C: She’s killed people.
Speaker C: She has sent people to their death.
Speaker C: She has done terrible, horrible things.
Speaker C: So for the record, I’ve never killed anybody.
Speaker C: I have no friends to kill anybody.
Speaker B: I’m so glad you clarified that.
Speaker C: I’m not a serial killer.
Speaker C: But she kind of is.
Speaker C: But there’s like taking it less dramatically, though.
Speaker C: So if you have someone who says something that is phobic or whatever, that’s the character.
Speaker C: Right.
Speaker C: Like I don’t like woo.
Speaker C: Like I’m the the character speaks.
Speaker C: It’s not necessarily a reflection of me.
Speaker C: I’m not going to kill people, so right.
Speaker C: So whatever.
Speaker B: Right, right.
Speaker C: So I I’m always also afraid that people are going to read this stuff and be like, wow, you are kind of a twisted little thing, aren’t you?
Speaker B: Stephen King.
Speaker B: Back to Stephen King.
Speaker C: Back to Stephen King.
Speaker C: Right.
Speaker B: I tell my husband, I’m like, I love true crime.
Speaker B: I’ve listened to true crime podcasts.
Speaker B: Crime related shows.
Speaker B: True crime related shows.
Speaker B: Like fictional and actual.
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker B: Like, I will listen and watch those all day long.
Speaker B: But I’m like, I don’t think I could write a book like that because I feel like it would put me in a really bad headspace head space to be there.
Speaker B: The book that I started that I stopped is like Sci-Fi fantasy, same as yours.
Speaker B: So it’s that normal thing.
Speaker C: Normal.
Speaker B: A lot of people like those genres.
Speaker B: It’s all good.
Speaker B: They are not typically disturbing books.
Speaker B: So, like, we’re good in this head space.
Speaker B: I get to make things up.
Speaker B: Said enough in the future.
Speaker B: And you don’t have to know about science in real life because you made it up.
Speaker C: Right, that’s true.
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker B: I don’t think I could be in that head space to write like he does and like other authors do.
Speaker B: And I feel like I’m really good at puzzles, but I don’t think I could make one.
Speaker B: I don’t think I could do a mystery.
Speaker B: Yeah, I’m solving the ending, but I don’t think I could make put up.
Speaker C: All the clues and everything that you’d have to do to weave it through.
Speaker C: I thought I was going to be a horror writer, so I’ve been doing the song enough that it was before I had kids and I thought I was going to be a horror writer and then I had kids and I can’t right.
Speaker C: I don’t need that headspace.
Speaker C: I can’t get into this.
Speaker C: What’s the craziest, awfulest thing that could happen?
Speaker C: Because yo, there’s horror and there’s no happy ending.
Speaker C: I can, I totally can’t off topic before.
Speaker C: Did you ever see the Facebook where she reads about the murder mysteries and she does her makeup while she does it?
Speaker B: You’re talking.
Speaker B: Bailey Sarion.
Speaker C: Is that who it is?
Speaker B: She got black hair.
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker B: Crazy.
Speaker B: And she do, like, these murder mystery and Makeup Monday.
Speaker C: Yes.
Speaker C: I’m not a makeup person, but I watch her in, like, fascination that’s just putting on this closely.
Speaker B: Popular.
Speaker C: Sorry.
Speaker B: I’ve watched not her recent stuff because I added a lot of things to my calendar, but I watched a lot of her newer stuff prior to September of last year.
Speaker B: I’ve seen everything prior to September of last year and everything since I’ve sporadically walked, actually.
Speaker C: It’s crazy.
Speaker C: But again, I could never write that.
Speaker C: But it’s just fascinating listening to it and watching you put on makeup.
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker B: Well, then there’s so many podcasts that are I’ve had several people while I’ve been doing live narrating audiobooks, people have been like, oh, you should do a true crime podcast.
Speaker B: And I’m like, when would I have the time to research that?
Speaker B: I would need a team to do the research for me and then I can read it and you could read it.
Speaker C: Yeah, I would probably feel kind of bad if you read and you’re like, they did what?
Speaker B: I want to do that a lot of times.
Speaker B: So right now for the daily fiction, I’m doing Frankenstein.
Speaker B: And for a lot of that, I want to be like, stopping and be like he walks into he makes the monster.
Speaker B: He leaves his room because he’s afraid of the monster.
Speaker B: He comes back and the monster is gone.
Speaker B: And he’s like, thank God.
Speaker B: And I’m like, Where’s the monster?
Speaker B: Where did it go that you’re not like, oh, I’ve let it loosen to society.
Speaker B: No, you’re like, oh, thank God it’s not in my bedroom anymore.
Speaker C: Knock the door down so you can’t come back in.
Speaker B: But I’m just reading the story.
Speaker B: I’m not commentating on the show, which.
Speaker C: That might be an interesting side to have the reading and then have you watching your reading and doing the commentary.
Speaker C: Pause.
Speaker C: And this is the part I’m thinking, what the heck was he doing?
Speaker B: That would be a good YouTube one.
Speaker B: Have the last living back.
Speaker B: I feel like you need someone else to do that part, though.
Speaker B: I feel like it’d be weird to listen to myself and video it’s.
Speaker C: Your evil twin.
Speaker C: Twin.
Speaker B: I mean, I already narrate under two different names.
Speaker C: There you go.
Speaker B: It’s the under me, but my family knows about one and not the other.
Speaker C: It’s probably racy.
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker B: When I started doing fiction, I was using all of the nonfiction I did.
Speaker B: So I started my first five books I did under my own name.
Speaker B: And then I was like, we should probably use a pseudonym.
Speaker B: So I start using a pseudonym.
Speaker B: I did all the nonfiction, and then I tell the family about the fiction podcast and whatever whatever.
Speaker B: And then this year, I start landing fiction.
Speaker B: And the first one was like a nice, sweet romance.
Speaker B: But in talks with that author, she was like, hey, I have a book coming out that’s going to be kind of like 50 Shades of Gray.
Speaker B: And I’m like, maybe we should not narrate this under the name that people know about because the two don’t generally cross.
Speaker B: I mean, I read everything too, but we’re talking about my mother in law’s coming into town.
Speaker B: And I’m like, oh God, I got to hide.
Speaker B: I just got the Never King books.
Speaker B: And I’m like, yeah, we’re going to hide those while she comes because I don’t want to hear it.
Speaker B: I mean, it’s my house.
Speaker B: I’m going to read what I want, but I don’t want to hear about it, right?
Speaker C: I don’t want to be judged on my reading.
Speaker C: I just want to read.
Speaker B: Yeah, the first couple of books were okay, and now I’ve done quite a few erotica books.
Speaker B: And so I’m like, yeah, I’m glad they all know that I narrate.
Speaker B: And most of them listen to the podcast, which is all classic novels.
Speaker B: So I’m like, classic novels.
Speaker B: You get a little more leeway.
Speaker B: Plus, they didn’t really write erotica one step.
Speaker B: Then it was different.
Speaker B: So I’m like, yeah, we’re relatively safe with those.
Speaker A: Plus, they’re classic.
Speaker B: So what are you going to say about a classic novel?
Speaker B: But yeah, for this, like, new stuff, I’m like, I start one next week that’s like, it’ll be the spiciest one that I’ve narrated so far.
Speaker B: And I’m just like, oh my gosh.
Speaker B: The other one comparing it to the previous erotica ones I did, I’m like, those ones should have been like, spicy romance.
Speaker B: And this one is definitely erotica.
Speaker C: Erotica.
Speaker B: Oh, God.
Speaker C: But it is popular and people like it.
Speaker B: Yes.
Speaker B: I don’t know.
Speaker B: For you, I’m sure it’s a little bit weird because Sci-Fi is typically a male dominated genre.
Speaker B: Have you had any do people even know that you’re a woman?
Speaker B: Have you had any comments on you’re a woman?
Speaker B: You can’t ride in the genre?
Speaker C: I’m in a Facebook Sci-Fi group that I really love, but there’s this divide between the hard science fiction and sort of the softer science fiction.
Speaker C: So as soon as you have any sort of fantasy elements, or if the science isn’t quite up to spec, like, I’ve got some things with relativity and the way that time travel and time dilation and that kind of jazz and how it would work in the universe.
Speaker C: But there’s some things that like, if a physicist were to read what I said, they’d be like, equations don’t work that way.
Speaker C: Right?
Speaker B: But it’s fantasy.
Speaker B: I can say what I want exactly.
Speaker C: And that’s fine.
Speaker C: I say I write science, fantasy.
Speaker C: And so on the book, the group, which is mostly men, they’re like, oh, so you write fantasy?
Speaker C: And I’m like, well, no, the science is there.
Speaker C: So science fantasy is a legit emacory.
Speaker C: Did it?
Speaker C: It was the thing well, no, when.
Speaker B: You’Re on Amazon, too, when you’re going down for Sci-Fi, fantasy is a heading.
Speaker C: So that’s the only thing that I’ve had is sort of if you don’t write hard Sci-Fi, then you’re not really writing hard Sci-Fi is what I’ve gotten, but I’ve never gotten I mean, I work in it, so it’s a male dominated society.
Speaker C: I’m used to guys, and I can give it just as well as I can take it.
Speaker C: I don’t care.
Speaker B: Yeah, it’s like, why don’t you just focus on your book and I’ll focus on my book, and we’ll just stay in our own lanes and it will be fine.
Speaker C: And you write hard.
Speaker C: Sci-fi.
Speaker C: Great.
Speaker B: I don’t my husband listened to the audiobook for Moby D*** and he was it Moby D***?
Speaker B: No, it’s 20,000 leaks under the sea.
Speaker C: Yes.
Speaker B: And he had only read the Abridged version previously, so he’s listening to the unabridged audiobook and he’s like, I had no idea there was so much science in that book.
Speaker B: Yeah, he’s like, there was I don’t remember how long he said some ridiculously long time of them just going over science and stuff of this submarine and all that.
Speaker C: In today’s days, you can’t do that, really.
Speaker C: You’re going to lose readers.
Speaker C: It has to be as good as it can be and as understandable as possible without bogging it down.
Speaker C: And a pretty good back story, right?
Speaker C: Like you don’t want to dump the two paragraphs of and 2000 years ago, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
Speaker C: That’s not going to the same way.
Speaker C: You can’t say, okay, so here’s how time dilation works.
Speaker B: You have to breadcrumb it like little.
Speaker C: Bits as you go.
Speaker C: Right?
Speaker B: Now, this is relevant for this part right here.
Speaker B: So I have to drop it.
Speaker B: So this makes sense.
Speaker C: This makes sense because she ravine in the book that’s about to come out.
Speaker C: She takes an almost fastest light drive.
Speaker C: And so that means she’s going like 99% of light, which means her time is shorter than what the rest of the universe is.
Speaker C: And the equation works out to be about one year of her traveling is about 22 years for Earth.
Speaker C: And so I had to kind of explain that that’s just kind of part of the science and going almost as fast as light and keep it consistent and just remind them of the facts that they’re not like, wait a minute, how come 22 years goes well?
Speaker C: Because she’s going almost as fast as light.
Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker B: And this is why and this is.
Speaker C: What but don’t ask.
Speaker C: Like, I’m not going to put the equation on the book.
Speaker C: Well, first of all, I wouldn’t be able to solve for it.
Speaker C: And second of all, like, whoa, people close that book so fast to throw it.
Speaker B: So I had to somewhat science for the book that I stopped writing.
Speaker B: It’s like I don’t remember what COVID number I gave it, but it’s like COVID, like, say, 30.
Speaker B: And they’re like, there’s this disease that’s around, and no one has been able to come up with a vaccine.
Speaker B: And so they have come up with this thing that accidentally gives people superpowers.
Speaker B: And so in all of this, I’m like, I don’t want the entire world to have superpowers.
Speaker B: I want it to be, like a pretty small percentage.
Speaker B: So I’m like, what percentage of the world and I’m not going to tell what my thing is.
Speaker B: I don’t want to give it away because I will eventually work on this book.
Speaker B: But I’m like, I need a small enough percentage, like 1% or less of the world’s population, ideally.
Speaker B: So I’m like, what percentage of the world has done this?
Speaker B: Okay, now let’s narrow that down a little bit.
Speaker B: So people have had this done.
Speaker B: What percentage of the world has had this done?
Speaker C: Just bring it down to tell me.
Speaker C: They’re redheaded who’ve been exposed to this chemical, who live on a farm.
Speaker B: I guess it’s kind of the mystery aspect because then they can’t figure out why.
Speaker B: So they have like you would do with the vaccine.
Speaker B: They’ve tested it on a certain group.
Speaker B: I don’t remember how many people it was, but only two in this group end up with some kind of power.
Speaker B: So they’re like, well, what’s the commonality between us that we don’t share with the other people?
Speaker B: And so eventually that will be so it’s kind of dropping like breadcrumbs along the way of, like, looking into their medical charts, what’s happened to them in the past?
Speaker C: Have they so much data, right?
Speaker C: There’s so much data on a person’s life and what thing is relevant and.
Speaker B: What things in my book did your mom never tell you?
Speaker B: Right.
Speaker C: Oh, that’s good.
Speaker C: Love it, love it.
Speaker B: That’s what it ends up being.
Speaker B: The big giveaway is his mom never told him that this happened in his life.
Speaker B: And so it’s the guy that’s running the experiment didn’t ever pull his medical record because he didn’t tell anyone.
Speaker B: He had given himself the shot, basically, as one would be in a novel.
Speaker B: The government says, all right, we have to distribute this to the world now that we’ve figured this out.
Speaker B: And they’re, of course, like, we’re not going to tell anybody that we have superpowers.
Speaker B: Only two of us out of like, 1000 have it.
Speaker B: So we should be fine.
Speaker C: We should be fine.
Speaker B: And of course, interesting, as things happen in a book, things go downhill very.
Speaker C: Quickly because books are logical, right?
Speaker C: They’re always logical.
Speaker C: There’s cause and effect and it goes down.
Speaker C: You don’t end up as many random.
Speaker C: Like, you have to explain everything.
Speaker C: And it has to make sense.
Speaker C: It has to make sense for your world, the rules of your world as you build them.
Speaker B: So do you plan your books out ahead of time, or do you fly by the seat of your pants.
Speaker C: I am a panther.
Speaker C: Okay, so I figured out recently that I am a panther up to a certain point, and then my brain freaks out, and then I have to figure out everything.
Speaker B: So you start writing and then you go, where do I go next?
Speaker C: Right?
Speaker C: I keep writing, like I was telling you about being stuck.
Speaker C: So the current mouse I’m working on mouse right now, and there’s this part that has to happen and I’m really struggling with, well, what direction should it go?
Speaker C: And what I recognized was I didn’t understand.
Speaker C: Okay, I’m going to back up.
Speaker C: I do really complicated things in my head for these books.
Speaker C: And so I have like this causal because it’s a time travel book.
Speaker C: The original Ravine had a thing that she did that caused her to come up with, like, meet aliens and caused her to do all this other kind of jazz.
Speaker C: And then it caused infighting and then there’s another version of her, and then there’s another version of her.
Speaker C: And so I had to kind of understand what all the different players were doing because it’s all supposed to come together in that.
Speaker C: So I ended up having to sort of plot out all these different not the specific necessarily, but what their motivation was.
Speaker C: What did they want, what did the alien that had his civilization destroyed want?
Speaker C: Was it to go home?
Speaker C: And then you start asking more questions.
Speaker C: So I do pants it up to a point.
Speaker C: And then I have to plot.
Speaker B: Mythology book.
Speaker B: I haven’t even started plotting plotting that one yet.
Speaker B: I have like, a general idea of main plot points.
Speaker B: I know I want to have the other book.
Speaker B: I have, like, I want this to happen and this to happen and this to happen in my head.
Speaker B: But then I have characters fight it.
Speaker C: Because sometimes I have that and then my characters fight it and they’re like, no, I don’t want to do that.
Speaker B: I haven’t had that happen yet.
Speaker B: No one’s fought any I haven’t gotten to any so far.
Speaker B: It’s still the like, it hasn’t gone worldwide, and they still haven’t figured out why they both have it.
Speaker B: So that’s going to be like a huge thing later on.
Speaker B: But at the beginning, like my prologue, it’s like a snippet from later in the book.
Speaker B: A very short, like three paragraphs snippet from later in the book.
Speaker B: And I kept it short for a reason, and it could go longer as I keep writing the book.
Speaker B: I had one author I showed it to and he was like, it’s such a short prologue.
Speaker B: And I’m like, okay, some people hate prologues.
Speaker C: Absolutely.
Speaker B: I’m like, it’s a snippet from later in the book.
Speaker B: If someone chooses not to read the prologue, it’s still later in the book, so it’s fine.
Speaker C: Right?
Speaker B: But then it was like the first chapter is six weeks later, so I had to kind of plot to make sure I knew where have we made it to six weeks yet?
Speaker B: Because I didn’t want to be like, we’re going to go over every day of their lives for the next six weeks.
Speaker B: No week after this or three days later, like, whatever.
Speaker B: Skip chunks of time.
Speaker B: You don’t need to go over every single minute of their lives for them.
Speaker C: Please.
Speaker C: New authors out there, please.
Speaker C: Jerk.
Speaker C: I don’t forget.
Speaker B: No.
Speaker B: And my husband’s working on his book, and his is also superheroes, but his is they’re like in this college class or whatever.
Speaker B: And so his he’s like going over, like the classes and the schedule.
Speaker B: So for the first couple of chapters, it makes sense that you are following them for the first couple of days of classes because in a college setting, typically your classes are going to change from day to day.
Speaker B: But then he skips time because you don’t need to follow the same five classes, however many classes, because a month.
Speaker C: Later is when the exciting incident happens.
Speaker B: It makes everything so jump to a week before the exciting incident happened or a couple of days before and be like, here’s what led to that happening.
Speaker C: Yes.
Speaker B: Something I feel like is a good tip.
Speaker B: I mean, you need to know where your book is going to an extent.
Speaker B: Otherwise, why are you writing?
Speaker C: Yes.
Speaker B: What is your story?
Speaker B: What was your dream that you’re trying to solve?
Speaker C: Right.
Speaker C: And even the Panthers, what I’ve heard, the way it’s represented in some of the other people that I talk to, is more like it’s like you’ve got your hunk of clay and there’s a statue underneath it, and so you’re feeling your way to the thing that you’re doing.
Speaker C: So you do still have an end goal.
Speaker C: You just might not be consciously aware of it.
Speaker C: Iowa with him.
Speaker C: I’m like, oh, I think this is what’s going to happen.
Speaker C: I’m aiming for this.
Speaker B: I don’t know if you’ve seen Golden Angel on TikTok.
Speaker B: When I talked to her, she said she had one book where she completed well, she plans out all of her books, but she has one where she ended up putting the plan up on her patreon because her plan changed.
Speaker B: Like, the actual book and the plan looked nothing alike.
Speaker B: So she’s like, fine, here’s what this book was supposed to be.
Speaker C: Yes.
Speaker C: Not anything like that bracing it.
Speaker C: Right.
Speaker C: I mean, she probably made a fabulous book when done.
Speaker C: Like, the plan would have been great.
Speaker C: And she came up with something even better, probably.
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker B: And then there’s some where you’re like, I know that this needs like, eventually in my book, they’re going to have to figure out why the people are getting superpowers.
Speaker B: That has to happen when you’re dealing with what’s this giant mystery thing.
Speaker B: But the how and why they find out can constantly change that’s the anchoring event.
Speaker C: Or I’ll do something where I’ll be three quarters of the way through the book and something happens.
Speaker C: And I realized that there was something there that hadn’t been mentioned before.
Speaker C: The McGuffin whatever it is, the ray gun, the test results, whatever, right?
Speaker C: And so you have to go back and be like, all right, chapter three means I need to set it up.
Speaker C: Chapter four, I need to make sure that if you see in chapter five, I need to make sure whatever, so that it works and it’s not just a boom, there it is.
Speaker C: That it makes sense in the context of the story.
Speaker B: Well, that’s where drafts two, three, 4500 come into play.
Speaker B: Because when you go back and read through it, you realize, oh, crap, I changed the eye color.
Speaker B: Halfway through the book, we had disappearing dogs.
Speaker C: We call them the teleporting dog.
Speaker C: So these dogs were super central to them.
Speaker C: And the next two chapters, they were gone.
Speaker C: And then they showed up again.
Speaker C: And I had the editor go, so Teleporting dogs, like, what happened to them?
Speaker C: Were they just funny?
Speaker C: I was like, oh.
Speaker B: I’m working on I just finished an audio book today.
Speaker B: And as I was reading through the book, I was like, hey, I have a question about whatever.
Speaker B: And he says, because I’m very upfront with my authors, if it’s going to give away something in a later book, I don’t want to know about it right now.
Speaker B: You can just say that’s plot spoiler a couple of times.
Speaker B: I’ll be like, hey, what’s going on with this?
Speaker B: Do I need to know something about this later on that’s going to help me narrate this better?
Speaker B: If it’s going to help me narrate it, then I have to know the answer.
Speaker B: If it’s just that’s going to totally ruin it.
Speaker B: Just narrate it however you want to, then I’ll do it that way.
Speaker B: But I’ve had a few where it’s like, who is this random character that’s on the phone for two sentences and then he disappears?
Speaker B: Like, who is that character?
Speaker B: Because it felt like a really important part.
Speaker B: Right, but then he’s not in any of the rest of the book.
Speaker C: Yes.
Speaker C: And what did they say?
Speaker B: Were they like, oh, yeah, no, it was, oh, this is his name.
Speaker B: He shows up.
Speaker B: This particular series that I’m working on is a series of interconnected series.
Speaker B: And so it’s like he’s in the next series.
Speaker B: He’s like one of the main characters.
Speaker C: Yes, they do.
Speaker C: That a lot of romances, too, where they try to get you interested in the side characters.
Speaker C: So you’ll read the rest of the book.
Speaker B: Yeah, that’s a great tactic.
Speaker B: I mean, he’s like a hitman.
Speaker B: So he says, like, I’m looking at the targets or some big I’m clearly a hit man.
Speaker B: But what he was saying, I was like, it was so specific that I’m like, does this matter or does this not matter?
Speaker B: Is this just like a random hit man, or is.
Speaker B: He important later.
Speaker C: Yeah.
Speaker B: What should his voice sound like?
Speaker B: Sometimes I have to ask when I only have three sentences.
Speaker C: Three sentences, right.
Speaker C: Because you don’t want to get it wrong and have the next time.
Speaker C: They’re like, Wait a minute, how did Whiny b*** turn into this alpha guy?
Speaker B: I’ve had that happen with a book where she was like the author at the end was like, why did you give the character this, like, bubbly blonde voice?
Speaker B: Like, she’s going to end up in the later books like the boss of the organization.
Speaker B: And I said, you described her as not wanting to get dirty and thinking that everyone was yucky and she was blonde and bubbly.
Speaker C: Did you have to redo all of that or did you make it work?
Speaker C: Okay?
Speaker B: No, because she was like, can we bring her voice down closer to the main character?
Speaker B: And I said, we can’t make them sound the same.
Speaker B: They’re in too many scenes together.
Speaker C: Right, that’s true.
Speaker B: The main character has to stay the main character, and she’s just going to have to be the blonde, bubbly person.
Speaker B: You can make her a little bit rougher later on, but her voice needs to be unique because she’s the main character.
Speaker C: Yeah.
Speaker B: So part of the job occasionally occasionally, you got to talk the author down for like, that requires almost re recording the entire book.
Speaker C: Right.
Speaker C: And you should have caught that sooner.
Speaker C: Right.
Speaker C: Because don’t you do voice demos for each of the characters where you actually have little snippets for each of the characters so that they can I do.
Speaker B: Not typically for all the characters, I’ll do the first 15 minutes of a book, which that character was in the first 15 minutes of the book.
Speaker C: There you go.
Speaker B: But yeah, it’s called so I get most of my work from ACX, and for that one, it’s called a first 15.
Speaker B: I typically just do the first 15 minutes because I’ve already auditioned with the piece that they thought was the this is the piece that’s going to make or break the narrator for this book.
Speaker B: I’ve already auditioned with that piece.
Speaker B: But yeah, the rest of the characters, I mean, as long as it makes sense.
Speaker B: And I’ll tell authors, like, I will up to a point.
Speaker B: But you wrote your characters a certain way, and I took notes as I read for how you described these characters.
Speaker C: Right.
Speaker B: And then you get as a narrator, you get where the main character is normally going to have my voice, and the main male character is going to have a slightly lower version of my voice, and like, the bubbly blonde is going to have this particular voice and the old man is going to sound like this.
Speaker B: Like you just get in your little lanes of characters described a certain way are going to sound a certain way.
Speaker C: A certain way.
Speaker C: I mean, as they should.
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker B: So if you listen to all of my audiobooks back to back, it’s going to sound very repetitive because I use the same voices a lot.
Speaker C: It’s like you only have one voice.
Speaker C: I know.
Speaker C: Writing.
Speaker B: It’s like my voice is my voice is your voice.
Speaker B: So as an author, what is a piece of advice you wish you had gotten before you started writing?
Speaker C: So the thing that I wish that I would have known before I started writing, so that it’s a little bit complex, but it really well, there’s two.
Speaker C: Okay, so the first one is you are who you are, and the way that you do things isn’t necessarily wrong.
Speaker C: So being a panther or being a plotter or needing to walk and talk about your book or having to write in a journal or doing a big painting, like whatever your process is, it’s you and embrace it and use it.
Speaker C: And don’t do a plot because someone told you that’s the only way to do a book.
Speaker C: Right.
Speaker C: Find your path and then do the things that feel good to keep you moving forward.
Speaker C: Try lots of things.
Speaker C: Right.
Speaker C: And then find your thing and then do it.
Speaker C: And don’t let somebody tell you that there’s only one way of completing a book, because that’s kind of BS besides.
Speaker C: Right.
Speaker C: So that would be the first thing.
Speaker C: And the second thing is a little bit weirder.
Speaker C: Like, you know that different genres have different expectations.
Speaker C: Right.
Speaker C: So a romance has a different expectation on what the voice is and everything else.
Speaker C: A mystery has a different expectation.
Speaker C: Nonfiction has a different expectation.
Speaker C: So if you have something that you’re writing that’s a fantasy, say, and you give it to a mystery reader to get feedback on, you’re going to get mystery reader feedback.
Speaker C: You’re not going to get fantasy reader feedback.
Speaker C: And so making sure that you are getting the appropriate feedback from the appropriate set, like who your reader is, I think is super important.
Speaker B: Well, that’s as simple as asking, do you like to read your break?
Speaker C: Right.
Speaker C: But not even thinking of asking that, that it’s just feedback.
Speaker C: And all feedback is good feedback.
Speaker B: If they hang a fantasy, it’s not going to be helpful.
Speaker C: You’re a nonfiction author and you’re trying to give fantasy feedback.
Speaker C: Like, that’s not necessarily helpful because there’s different expectations.
Speaker B: An author I talked to that her editor that she used didn’t like her genre.
Speaker B: She has it edited, as she should.
Speaker B: She puts it up, and all the reviews were like, oh, gosh, this is terribly edited.
Speaker B: It needs work on it, whatever.
Speaker B: And then she finds out he doesn’t even like her genre.
Speaker C: Right.
Speaker B: I’m like but as an editor, that should have been made clear.
Speaker C: Yeah.
Speaker B: Also, if you’re editing a book, a book is still a book to different expectations.
Speaker C: Like, mystery readers, I figured out, were much more like, they expect things to be very precise.
Speaker C: Right.
Speaker C: They want to see.
Speaker C: And so there’s a lot of precise romance readers.
Speaker C: As long as you can get caught by the people and the wanting to know what’s going on, they will give you a lot of rope.
Speaker B: But if you’re the editor on that, sentence structure is still sentence structure, but.
Speaker C: There’S also, like, artistic things where you have your fragments when you’re supposed to and you’ve got your maybe not comma places.
Speaker C: You’re really not supposed to do that, but there’s things that you would do that are poorer because it sounds good instead of dramatically good.
Speaker B: When I saw one author or one editor talked about, you should learn the rules of how it’s supposed to be, and then you can bend or break the rules if they need to be bended or broken for your book.
Speaker B: Because not every book if every single book had exactly perfect grammar structure, we would all be bored to death.
Speaker C: We absolutely would agree.
Speaker B: Well, that is pretty good advice, because I never thought about I mean, I just sit on my couch and type, but I guess some people I think I heard of one author that painted a painting and then that inspired a book.
Speaker C: I’ve got a girlfriend that I do sprints with, and she periodically will do, like, hand puppet plays.
Speaker C: Like, she’ll do, like, hand puppet plays for her her scene, because she wants to figure out where the people are and, like, do, like, the mental blocking, and having puppets helps her, and she writes some amazing stuff, right?
Speaker C: So I’m like, hey, it totally works.
Speaker B: I may have narrated a romance that would have benefited from sock puppet position help.
Speaker C: Does the third arm come with no alien?
Speaker B: No.
Speaker B: The position that the female ended up in would have been incredibly uncomfortable for the things happening in the scene.
Speaker B: And I’m like, maybe maybe we didn’t try to picture in our heads what it would be like if her arms were, like, strapped behind her, not, like, up above her head, like, sitting in an upward position with her arms stretched out behind her.
Speaker B: I’m like, that would have been so painful in that doesn’t matter how in the moment you are.
Speaker B: That would have been incredibly painful.
Speaker B: And I had to read the scene, like, three times to make sure, like, I wasn’t just reading it wrong.
Speaker C: Again, the commentary would have been like, you to pause.
Speaker C: What the heck did this work exactly?
Speaker B: You’re like, Did I read that right?
Speaker B: Okay.
Speaker B: They were in this position, and then they moved like that, and then they did that.
Speaker C: Next, I need your help.
Speaker B: The sock puppets.
Speaker B: We’re going to puppet shows to figure out to figure out logistics.
Speaker C: Yeah, she totally does that, and it’s awesome.
Speaker B: I’ve heard a couple of authors say they’ll watch spicy videos to figure out if things are possible.
Speaker B: Is that an actual thing?
Speaker B: Let’s google it.
Speaker C: Let’s google it.
Speaker C: Yeah.
Speaker B: I feel like you could end up in some really creepy rabbit holes.
Speaker B: I know.
Speaker C: People like, so many different things.
Speaker C: And so there you go.
Speaker C: Yeah, we’re both probably like, I know my face is totally red right now.
Speaker B: I’m in a hot closet.
Speaker C: I’m in the hot closet, too.
Speaker C: That’s why my face is red.
Speaker B: That’s happened a couple of times while I’ve been on lives.
Speaker B: People will be like, why is your face getting so red?
Speaker B: And I’m like, it’s totally because I’m in a really hot closet, not because I’m narrating a spicy scene and 100 of you are watching me do that.
Speaker C: Poop where’s the fan?
Speaker B: In the floorboard, but it’s very quiet, so it doesn’t move air very fast.
Speaker B: All right, well, I think we are about done.
Speaker B: And you just gave your tips, so I’m not going to ask if you have any final tips, because you just did that.
Speaker B: So I want to say thank you.
Speaker A: Very much for your time today.
Speaker C: Thank you for having me.
Speaker B: This was a lot of fun.
Speaker B: Bye.
Speaker C: Bye.
Speaker A: Claudia liked ASOPs fables growing Up ASOPs fables or the Asapica, is 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 to be reinterpreted in different verbal registers 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 Asop’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 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 Asop’s fables were among the earliest books in a variety of languages.
Speaker A: Through the means of later collections and translations or adaptations of them, asop’s reputation as a fablest 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 and 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 Lion and the Hare, one of Asop’s fables.
Speaker A: Don’t forget we’re reading Les Morte Arthur.
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.
Speaker A: The lion and the Hare a lion came across a hare who was fast asleep.
Speaker A: He was just in the act of seizing her when a fine young heart trotted by, and he left the hare to follow him.
Speaker A: The hare, scared by the noise, awoke and scutted away.
Speaker A: The lion was unable, after a long chase, to catch the heart, and returned to feet upon the hare.
Speaker A: On finding that the hare also had run off, he said, I’m rightly served.
Speaker B: For having let go of the food that I had in my hand for.
Speaker A: The chance of obtaining more.
Speaker A: Thank you for joining Freya’s fairy tales.
Speaker A: We’ll be taking a break for the holidays for the next couple of weeks, but sign up for our newsletter, and we look forward to seeing you in 2023.
