Show Notes:
Today is part one of two where we are talking to DK Shepston about her novels. Over the next 2 weeks you will hear about getting in trouble reading, jotting down book scenes as a kid on whatever surface you can find, meditating the ideas for your stories on accident, growing as an author, learning social media, getting out of your comfort zone, to just keep going, get your story out there.
DK’s Website – DK’s Facebook Page – DK’s TikTok
D.K.Shepston is a writer, traveler, and adventure seeker, wirh an affinity for YA novels. In 2018, she left the stationary life and career behind for a life on the road in a 1993 RV, traveling North America with her bestie and four felines. She has lived in Chicago, Germany, Austin, and numerous states while on the road. She now finds herself enamored of the Pacific Northwest and the Olympic Peninsula. She just might hang there for a spell. Her first series, The Reckoning of Anecor Trilogy is a near-future, dystopian sci-fi trilogy, featuring a female lead, a touch of romance, lots of adventure, and a mystery.
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Transcript:
Speaker A: You.
Speaker B: Welcome to Freya’s.
Speaker B: Fairy tales.
Speaker B: 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 about their favorite fairy tales when they were kids and their adventure to holding their very own fairy tale in their hands.
Speaker B: 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 possible.
Speaker B: Possible.
Speaker B: I am your host.
Speaker B: Freya victoria I’m an audiobook narrator that loves reading fairy tales, novels and bringing stories to life through narration.
Speaker B: I’m also fascinated by talking to authors and learning about their why and how for creating their stories.
Speaker B: We have included all of the links for today’s author and our show in the show notes.
Speaker A: Be sure to check out our website.
Speaker B: And sign up for our newsletter for the latest on the podcast.
Speaker B: Today is part one of two where we are talking to DK Shepston about her novels.
Speaker B: Over the next two weeks, you will hear about getting in trouble reading, jotting down book scenes as a kid on whatever surface you can find, meditating the ideas for your stories on accident, growing as an author, learning social media, getting out of your comfort zone to just keep going and get your story out there.
Speaker B: The breaking the mystery Deepens as the virus continues its rampage in Montrose, rebecca and Colossus must find a way to stop an enemy more lethal than the virus.
Speaker B: But new information and unfolding events threaten the group’s mission and their very lives.
Speaker B: As pressure mounts to take bold action, rifts form between members.
Speaker B: Rebecca and her friends are forced to make difficult choices and face unexpected challenges that will test their bonds and reveal secrets that will either bring them closer or drive them apart.
Speaker B: How far are the newest Colossus members willing to go to do what’s right?
Speaker B: The stakes are so much higher than they could have imagined and all Anacor citizens are in danger if the gang breaks up.
Speaker B: If Colossus breaks apart, humanity in Anacore is doomed.
Speaker A: So the name of the show is Freya’s Fairy Tales, and that is fairy tales in two ways.
Speaker A: Fairy tales are something that we watched or listened to or read as kids, and it’s also the journey of you spending weeks, months or years writing your book to then get to hold that in your hands as a fairy tale for you.
Speaker A: So I like to start off with what was your favorite fairy tale when you were a kid and did that change as you got older?
Speaker C: Okay, so when I was a kid, I loved to read and I remember Hansel and Gretel and the Three Little Pigs and Rapunzel being among my favorite.
Speaker C: But we had all of those little.
Speaker A: Golden books, the nice ones.
Speaker C: Yes.
Speaker C: And they were just on a shelf.
Speaker C: And I would literally like I used to sort of get in trouble for reading too much because I would do it when I was at the dinner table or when company was coming over or my grandparents were visiting.
Speaker C: I’d be hiding out, reading instead of socializing.
Speaker C: That was how I would get in trouble.
Speaker C: I like to say it, but really it was because it was at times when I shouldn’t have been doing it instead of times that I should have been.
Speaker C: So I used to just kind of devour books from a very young age all the time, but those were the ones that sort of stick out in my mind in terms of fairy tales.
Speaker C: And then I like, the Frog and Toad books.
Speaker C: I’m probably totally dating myself here.
Speaker C: That’s okay, but I love those ones.
Speaker C: And then as I got older.
Speaker B: I’m.
Speaker C: Trying to remember, as I aged, it kind of grew out of the fairy tales and more into things like Laura Ingles Wilder books and that sort of thing.
Speaker C: And then for a time, I taught Toddlers in a preschool, and then my favorite book became The Giving Tree, except I hated reading it because I couldn’t read it and not cry.
Speaker C: And so here I am, little two year old.
Speaker A: I’ve done that a few times.
Speaker A: Narrating where I’m like, I got to stop for a minute, get myself together.
Speaker C: Oh, no, you’re trying to swallow it down and stay in character.
Speaker A: You just hope that well, sometimes I use the emotion, but then sometimes when you write a character, you get very attached to the character because that’s like it’s basically like it’s you.
Speaker A: You’re writing whatever was in your head as if you were that character at that time as you were writing it, so narrating I tried to do it the same way where I put myself into the head of the characters.
Speaker A: So when the dad dies tragically, or when the first book that I cried on was one of the first fiction books I did, and throughout the entire book, she was slowly dying of cancer.
Speaker A: And I narrated this, like, three months after my father passed away from a terminal illness, and I’m like, Terminal?
Speaker A: I don’t know, complications from diabetes.
Speaker A: And so it was just like, I did this, and I let the author know.
Speaker A: I was like, I am so sorry.
Speaker A: There’s way more emotion in this than there probably should be.
Speaker A: But I couldn’t pull myself out of it.
Speaker A: So I’m like, now I know I need to wait a few more months before trying to do anything.
Speaker A: And then the next book that I did, it was actually a talking horse.
Speaker A: It was a fantasy, and it was this talking horse, but it was like he could mind speak, not speak speak, and he dies tragically.
Speaker A: But everybody as he dies, he sends out this telepathic thing, and everybody hears him die.
Speaker A: And then not only then, there was, like, flashes of it throughout the entire next book in the series.
Speaker A: And I’m just like, oh, my God.
Speaker C: No.
Speaker C: Kudos to you.
Speaker C: That would be hard.
Speaker A: That’s where you just hope you’re not doing it, where it’s video recording you and you get the ugly crying tears as you’re trying to get yourself together.
Speaker C: It works sometimes the pause button comes in really handy.
Speaker C: I’m sure.
Speaker A: Yeah.
Speaker A: So you were a school teacher in a past life?
Speaker C: Yeah, I’ve been many things in a past life, yeah, I taught preschool when I was over in Germany.
Speaker C: Like, I traveled over there and landed in this beautiful setting, and the American military had a set up there in Germany, and I got a job at the childcare center, so I did that while I was in Germany.
Speaker C: Like, just traveling, playing, having fun, doing just taking a break from life sort of thing.
Speaker C: And then I worked with people with disabilities for a while, and then I went back to school, and I actually got a master’s in reading, language Arts, writing and social studies for middle school four through eight, actually.
Speaker C: And so then I taught I did my education there.
Speaker C: And then when I went on for my PhD, I went on for a second master’s in anthropology.
Speaker A: Unrelated.
Speaker C: Yeah, sort of.
Speaker C: I studied primates, so that’s pretty related.
Speaker C: Primates we are.
Speaker C: And then I went on for a PhD in environmental geography.
Speaker C: So I’ve had this long trajectory of different experiences and education and all that kind of stuff, and then wound up teaching at college level, which I still do some of, and then teaching kindergarten through fifth grader science and so at.
Speaker A: What age did you start writing your own stuff?
Speaker C: When I was young.
Speaker C: I mean, I’ve been a pretty avid journal keeper my whole life, but when I was young, I used to just jot down scenes that would pop into my head, like on napkins and sometimes in my journal and sometimes in a notebook or whatever, but they never really amounted to a story.
Speaker C: But I had this sort of, like, fantasy in my mind of writing a book someday.
Speaker A: Okay.
Speaker C: I don’t know, probably it was probably, like, starting at eight years old or so, I would start doing this, and then by the time I hit my teenage years, I was just like, oh, all that.
Speaker A: I’m too cool for this.
Speaker C: Well, no, like, I’m not talented enough for this, okay?
Speaker C: I don’t have the I don’t have the imagination to write a whole book and all those self doubts and who makes money as a writer?
Speaker C: And I’ve got to do something more normal, I guess, in my little teenage mind that was like, go to college for this and do this.
Speaker C: And I still didn’t take that track right?
Speaker C: Like, I still just sort of did my own thing and enough I didn’t.
Speaker C: Like, when I was in college, I wrote, obviously, all kinds of stuff all the way through my thesis and a dissertation and all that kind of stuff, but I didn’t really want people to see my writing, okay?
Speaker C: And then I did something completely crazy and quit it all full time and just started kind of navigating.
Speaker C: I decided I wanted to travel for a while around the United States, and so I saved up some money and I bought an old RV and renovated it and started traveling around the United States and started writing a blog.
Speaker C: And that sort of initiated stuff like that.
Speaker A: Is this where the RV cat book came from?
Speaker C: This is where the RV Cat book came from.
Speaker C: That was the first thing I wrote that was like a book form other than the blog that I was writing, okay?
Speaker C: And that’s where that came from, was that.
Speaker C: And then I still didn’t have anything about writing fiction.
Speaker C: I thought, well, I’d write about my journey, and I’d write a book about what happened on my journey.
Speaker C: And then I was meditating one day, okay?
Speaker C: And all of a sudden, the storyline for this trilogy, I wasn’t meditating about anything, and it just sort of erupted into my mind, and I was like, what?
Speaker C: And I was like, that would be kind of fun.
Speaker C: And so that actually started my fiction writing journey.
Speaker C: And now I’m like, oh, well, no wonder I love to do this when I was a kid, like, now this is what I want to do.
Speaker C: And I’m sitting here, and every time I turn around, a new story idea is popping into my head faster than what I can write the current one I’m writing.
Speaker C: So, yeah, it was in my upper 40s that I actually took the leap into fiction writing.
Speaker A: So the first book that you did was the nonfiction.
Speaker A: How long did it take you to did you just use your blog posts and compile those together for that one?
Speaker A: Or how long did that one take to do to write that one is.
Speaker C: Just a short little thing, and it probably only took me a couple of weeks to write it.
Speaker C: What had happened was that I have cats that my best friend traveled with me, and there are four cats traveling in the RV.
Speaker C: And people always thought it was just like, whoa, you have cats?
Speaker C: How they do in an RV?
Speaker C: So I’d get a lot of questions about that on Instagram or whatever.
Speaker C: So I thought, so many people are asking these questions.
Speaker C: I’m just going to write out a little book about how to prepare for it, what to do to your RV and how to get your cats and yourself ready, and different things I learned.
Speaker C: So that to me was not like it was fun to write.
Speaker C: And I did some little doodle drawings, and they’re just hand drawing just for fun for me and put it up there.
Speaker C: And oddly, it was a different experience putting that out there.
Speaker C: And people seem to find that book without me doing anything because I guess not a lot of people write little how to books about traveling with cash, but yeah, so that was my very first one, and that one was fast.
Speaker C: It was like, I don’t know, two weeks, but it’s like 68 pages or 62 pages.
Speaker A: Pretty short.
Speaker C: Yeah, it’s a short book.
Speaker A: So then your first fiction book, was that the children’s one, or was that the trilogy?
Speaker C: It was the first book of the trilogy, and I wrote that one that was published in 2019.
Speaker C: And in between that, I’m trying to remember the order of things.
Speaker C: In between that and the second book in the trilogy, I wrote the children’s book.
Speaker A: Okay, so how long did it take you to write the first fiction in the Ya one?
Speaker C: The Ya book took me, so at that time, I was just living off of my savings, so all I had to do was write and get outside and travel a little bit and get outside and hike and stuff like that.
Speaker C: So I was able to actually finish that one probably within about a month and a half.
Speaker A: Okay.
Speaker C: And writing it and some of that time was taken, like, traveling for a long distance.
Speaker C: So that one came pretty quickly.
Speaker C: Okay.
Speaker A: And so you write it in, like, a month and a half, and then what did you do with it once you had it finished or the first draft finished?
Speaker A: What happened?
Speaker C: No cried because I actually did it.
Speaker A: Yeah, no.
Speaker C: I read it again.
Speaker C: I was so new to this whole, like, author process, you know?
Speaker C: So a lot of the stuff that I did was just sort of feeling my way through.
Speaker C: So when, you know, so when I was done, I didn’t know anybody else who had written books, and I wasn’t connected to authors on social media or anything like that.
Speaker C: And so I was finding things a little bit on the Internet, but I basically wrote the book.
Speaker C: I read through it, and then I sent it out to several people that I know and trust to A, tell me if they think it’s crap or say, you know what, Desiree, I can’t finish this book because it’s not my thing or whatever.
Speaker C: I know them, but I trust them to be honest, and they’re thorough readers.
Speaker C: They’re good editors.
Speaker C: One of them is a teacher in middle school and a science teacher at that because this is Ya dystopian Sci-Fi.
Speaker C: So I trust them implicitly to be very honest and very brutal.
Speaker C: And so they helped me make it a lot better from that first one.
Speaker C: And they’re really good at catching blunders in the writing, too, that was getting all these things like, oh, well, there was a discrepancy here and, oh, I don’t think that was the person you meant, or all these typos and those sorts of grammar things that you don’t want to really slip through.
Speaker C: So they did that and worked with me and read it a few times through, and then I just put it up on Amazon.
Speaker C: I found out about self publishing and was like, well, that’s the route I’m going to go.
Speaker C: So I did the whole self publishing thing.
Speaker A: So did you make your own cover, or did you have your cover made?
Speaker C: So my first cover, I’m on the second cover, my first cover, we’ve had a redo already.
Speaker C: We’ve had a redo, yeah.
Speaker C: My first cover, actually, I liked it.
Speaker C: I still like my first cover.
Speaker C: And the first cover, I had gone through somebody on fiverr.
Speaker C: Okay.
Speaker C: And I had a really strong idea about what I wanted, and so I sort of picked out the stock images and she did the design and put it all together and did all of that, and she did a fabulous job with it.
Speaker C: And she did that for my first and second book.
Speaker C: And like I said, I don’t dislike my covers, but I wanted to do something that was more thematic across all three books, and then that was more probably in keeping more strongly with the genre.
Speaker A: Okay.
Speaker A: I saw the covers, and they do look very genre like, appropriate for what covers are in Ya right now.
Speaker C: Right.
Speaker A: So the previous ones just didn’t quite fit all the way.
Speaker C: Right.
Speaker C: They were sort of cool, but the first one might have fit fairly well.
Speaker C: The second one, not at all.
Speaker C: It was a fun, Sci-Fi sort of COVID but it was just a little off of the genre.
Speaker A: So you had them redesigned to where they all kind of look like they belong together, judging by the first two, at least that are up right now.
Speaker C: Right.
Speaker C: And the third one is going to be yeah, I’ll have the same people the third one as I did the other two.
Speaker A: Okay.
Speaker C: The same kind of thing going on.
Speaker A: Were you getting, like, what made you redesign it?
Speaker A: You just thought, I should probably update this, or did someone comment and tell you, hey, something’s wrong with it?
Speaker A: What made you decide to change it?
Speaker C: I think mostly a lot of it was just kind of participating in more author groups on social media and realizing just getting more educated about kind of what all goes into cover design versus my own instincts weren’t necessarily bad, but they were just a little off versus having somebody do it who was professional and knew exactly what would go into this type of genre and that sort of thing.
Speaker C: And so it was just education.
Speaker C: It was just really finding out a lot more and thinking, well, mine aren’t bad, but they’re not quite it either.
Speaker C: I just wanted to boost that up a little bit and be able to republish it with the new cover on it.
Speaker C: And then at the same time, I made some more edits and revisions and stuff like that, and I kind of re released the whole entire thing.
Speaker C: Or the first two books also in anticipation of the third book coming out.
Speaker A: Okay, so you put them up on Amazon and then what did you kind of do to or did you do anything to help promote your books?
Speaker A: I imagine with the redesign, you probably did a little bit more than with the initial one, right?
Speaker C: It’s so funny because I’m not a natural at self promotion.
Speaker C: I’m a pretty introverted person and I’m pretty shy by nature.
Speaker C: But obviously my age have figured it out.
Speaker C: But I don’t do a whole lot on social media, so I sort of counted on other people to promote my stuff on social media, like my family members to stay here.
Speaker C: And I did at the school where I was working at, I passed things out.
Speaker C: But then I did do ads too.
Speaker C: So I did Amazon ads, I did Facebook ads, and I figured out the whole ad thing.
Speaker C: I’ve learned a lot more about that too.
Speaker C: And then recently I’ve done other types of giveaway promotions and stuff like that.
Speaker C: So many authors have this.
Speaker C: It actually is kind of nice to know that I’m not the only person who’s like self promotion.
Speaker C: How do I do it?
Speaker A: That’s like the overarching majority are introverts that have to pull themselves out of their bubble in order to whatever.
Speaker A: Like me, for example.
Speaker A: I would rather not be doing this, but I have a lot of fun doing this.
Speaker A: But then I’ll be sitting in my chair doing reading for the rest of the day.
Speaker A: I do these interviews and I was actually talking to my grandma about Christmas.
Speaker A: Me and my uncle were mutually discussing the things that make us weird, basically.
Speaker A: And my grandma’s like, you guys don’t seem like she turns to me and she’s like, you seem normal.
Speaker A: You don’t seem like you have a problem talking to people.
Speaker A: And I’m like, yeah, that’s the problem.
Speaker A: I can fake it really good, but I don’t want to do it.
Speaker C: You have to gear yourself up for it.
Speaker C: And then when you’re done, you’re like, yeah, you know what?
Speaker C: I need a nap for the rest of the day and just not talk to anybody.
Speaker A: I finally figured out let’s see, I started Narrating in 2021 and I figured out if I put myself on a schedule.
Speaker A: So if I say, oh, I’m going to post on TikTok once a day, Monday through Friday, I’m fine because I know I get into the recording booth to record book, and then first thing that I do, I warm up, get my vocal cords working, and then I post a TikTok and then I go about the rest.
Speaker A: It’s just regimented.
Speaker A: Like, I do things in that order and it works fine.
Speaker A: The awkwardness of being on camera.
Speaker A: I started a fiction podcast and I was like, we’re going to put like behind the scenes up on YouTube.
Speaker A: So I just put my phone in front of my face, record myself reading the story and sometimes I’m like jabbering about who knows what about the story, or you’ll get like Frankenstein.
Speaker A: I did Frankenstein around Halloween and half the time I’m just going, what the h*** is wrong with this guy?
Speaker A: It’s such a weird story.
Speaker A: So you get a little more of the behind the scenes.
Speaker A: But I started doing that.
Speaker A: And then when I started promoting fiction audiobooks that I was doing for money to get paid, I started recording sections of the books that I was doing, which I was already comfortable with doing from the fiction podcast.
Speaker A: So it’s like just the building.
Speaker A: And now I schedule out like, oh, you need to send out newsletters and all that.
Speaker A: So I like schedule everything is I have reminders on my phone for the night before it needs to go out.
Speaker A: Make sure you schedule your newsletter to go out.
Speaker C: I have a question for you.
Speaker C: I like to pick other authors brains about things and creatives their brains about.
Speaker C: When you do your newsletter, how often do you put it out and do you stick to some sort of name when you write it or what goes into your newsletter?
Speaker A: So I have three, because I have two podcasts I send out newsletters for, and then I have the one for the Narrating author Freya Victoria name.
Speaker A: So the podcast ones I send out for the daily fiction one, I send it out when a new book starts because each season of the podcast is a different classic old school public domain novels.
Speaker A: Like right now I’m doing Anne’s House of Dreams.
Speaker A: So I’ll do like when the new book starts, I’ll send out a, hey, the new book is starting.
Speaker A: And then at the beginning of the month I try to send one on the first because some of those books are really long.
Speaker A: So you may not have seen a newsletter in a long time, but for that one, it’s just like, here’s what we just finished, here’s what we’re starting, here’s what’s coming next.
Speaker A: And then usually something going on in my life at the time.
Speaker A: Same for this podcast I do every Monday when the episodes release.
Speaker A: I’ll say, this is the author that we’re talking about, and I’ll put what’s going to be in the episodes.
Speaker A: And then like, I think that’s pretty.
Speaker C: Much it for this.
Speaker A: Oh, and then the book links.
Speaker A: So I’ll put the author bio about the book.
Speaker A: And then for Freya I do once a week on Fridays.
Speaker A: And for that one I’ll do a little thing of just me talking about what’s going on in life.
Speaker A: And then I’ll do here’s the status of the audiobooks.
Speaker A: Like, here’s the one I’m currently narrating, here’s the ones that are waiting on author approval.
Speaker A: Here’s the one I’m currently prepping to narrate, which just means reading through and labeling characters and they’re identifying stuff.
Speaker A: And then I’ll put like, this is the book I’m reading for fun.
Speaker A: So it’s just more like, here’s what’s going on.
Speaker A: I mean, I have like a set what’s it called?
Speaker A: Yeah.
Speaker A: They don’t call it a format, though.
Speaker A: It’s like a set template.
Speaker A: That’s what it is.
Speaker A: It’s like a template.
Speaker C: Yeah.
Speaker A: So I’ve set up my template for each of those things.
Speaker A: Like, this is the template I want to use.
Speaker A: And then I just plug in the new books or whatever.
Speaker A: So right now I have quite a list of audiobooks that I’m waiting for author approval.
Speaker A: So I keep having to add extra images to that section as I wait on these authors to approve their stuff.
Speaker C: Oh my gosh.
Speaker A: But then when I have like, ones waiting for Acx quality to approve it, I move it into that section.
Speaker A: Right now that section is not there because I’m still waiting for I got to do edits on some audiobooks tomorrow to get some added into that section.
Speaker A: So sometimes it’s waiting on me.
Speaker A: It’s like I’m waiting on the author to approve the final version that I have to provide my edits for.
Speaker A: Just general updates.
Speaker A: And from what I’ve seen, you can do a monthly or a bi week.
Speaker A: You want to do it often enough that people remember you exist, but not so often that you’re driving them crazy.
Speaker C: That they’re like, oh my gosh, yeah, quit sending these things.
Speaker A: Yeah.
Speaker A: So for me, because I’m going through, like, let’s see, a 50,000 word audiobook is going to take me like four days.
Speaker A: So like, every week I have a constant influx of the only thing that hasn’t changed is the book I’m reading for fun has been the same for months because I’m reading a chapter a day and it takes a long time to get through a book at that rate.
Speaker C: Yeah.
Speaker A: So it’s been Handmaid’s Tale for several months now.
Speaker A: Those are short chapters, though.
Speaker A: Like, the book’s not that big, but the chapters are only like, I don’t know, 1200 words.
Speaker A: Maybe they’re short chapters.
Speaker A: I mean, if I was doing like I don’t know, I’m trying to think of a book that has really like I know the outlander books all have really long chapters.
Speaker A: Some are short, most are very long.
Speaker A: So I can go through I just happened to already be reading Handmaid’s Tale when I was like, we’re going to read a chapter a day at the beginning of this year, finish this book we’re currently reading.
Speaker C: Oh my gosh.
Speaker A: I set a template and I also have my social media links on there so that if you found me on TikTok, you can follow me on the other places if you want.
Speaker A: At this point, I’ve joined quite a few author newsletters.
Speaker A: A lot will do, like, giveaways or hey, here, my friend released this book.
Speaker A: Yeah.
Speaker A: So, I mean, it’s just kind of what you can do.
Speaker A: Mine’s already long with just all the stuff I have going on there.
Speaker C: Yeah.
Speaker C: And that’s the other thing, right?
Speaker C: You have to be mindful of links so that they actually read the whole.
Speaker A: Thing, most of it.
Speaker A: So I don’t have the only books that I do like the blurb on the newsletter is the one I’m currently narrating, the one that I’m prepping, and then the one that I’m reading for fun.
Speaker A: All the other ones because it’s probably already been on a newsletter.
Speaker A: I don’t do blurbs for every single book cover that’s on my thing.
Speaker A: A large, like with the author currently are waiting for it to be approved to go live on Audible.
Speaker A: Those ones I just do the picture of the COVID because the rest of it I also have a section for like, hey, these ones just released so that you can I mean, mine is a long one.
Speaker A: Most people wouldn’t need it to be that long.
Speaker A: But I don’t want to leave off someone’s book and then be like, why’d you have your newsletter.
Speaker C: That makes sense.
Speaker C: Yeah.
Speaker A: So what did you use to learn how to do the ads?
Speaker A: Because I know that’s a big thing that takes it’s a learning curve for everybody.
Speaker C: Yeah, when I first started doing it, I was just winging it.
Speaker C: So I probably spent way more money than I needed to for ads because I didn’t really know how they worked.
Speaker C: And then I have taken some courses on how to do the ads and those are super helpful.
Speaker C: But it’s something that you can’t just take one class because all of this stuff, they all sort of change how they do things on a very regular basis.
Speaker C: So one thing might work for six months or whatever, and then you’re like, wait a minute, I’m not getting any results here.
Speaker C: Right?
Speaker C: Or I know like Facebook, and I haven’t done a Facebook ad in a while, but Facebook has become a lot more challenging for authors in doing the ads.
Speaker C: And so people I know a lot of people are experiencing quite a bit of frustration with trying to figure out how to do those ads with the new sort of constraints and stuff that Facebook has put on and the stuff that they’re doing.
Speaker C: So I feel like that is something that you just never figure out.
Speaker A: It’s a constantly moving target.
Speaker A: I did podcast ads for a while, probably like almost the first year.
Speaker A: Maybe I may have stopped before a year, but the only comments I would get on posts and stuff, I mean, I was hoping to get listeners, so I wanted link clicks, right?
Speaker A: And like, mostly what I would get was like people would leave usually very rude comments about it and I’m just like, whatever.
Speaker A: And then I’m like, all right, we’re going to experiment.
Speaker A: We’re going to stop posting any ads and see what happens.
Speaker A: And my listeners did not go down.
Speaker A: So I’m like, well, we’ll just keep now I do post multiple times a day across all the social major social medias.
Speaker A: I’m still putting.
Speaker A: In an effort to free advertise, essentially putting in the effort to post.
Speaker A: I have a scheduler where I go to one place and it posts to everywhere for me.
Speaker C: Oh gosh, that’s so nice.
Speaker A: It was one of those like I was going to each place because I was like free.
Speaker A: If you just go to each place individually, it’s free to post that way.
Speaker A: And then I was like, this is taking me hours every day to post for three podcasts across all these things.
Speaker A: So I started paying for a scheduler where I can do the same post in all the places at once and schedule it ahead of time and then.
Speaker B: I don’t have to touch it.
Speaker C: Yeah, and then if you can schedule it ahead of time, you can also bank them up and say, I’m just going to spend X amount of time, get them all set up for the next few days or the next week or whatever and you just chunk it.
Speaker C: I think that I haven’t quite gotten the handle on that yet, but theoretically I know a lot of authors do that for TikTok and stuff.
Speaker C: It’s like I’m just going to save them all the drafts and then I just wrap it.
Speaker C: Release.
Speaker C: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker A: For podcasts, for the daily fiction one.
Speaker A: So daily I’m doing a chapter a day in that one.
Speaker A: So I’ll typically record two or three chapters a day.
Speaker A: So in case I get sick or go on vacation or something happens, I’ve got episodes banked so that I don’t have to be there.
Speaker A: So when I am listening back through what I recorded, I’m taking the first section of that chapter and I make like little quote slides, so make videos and then I’ll immediately schedule those.
Speaker A: So right now I have scheduled into mid February because that’s how many episodes ahead I am on that podcast.
Speaker A: I don’t have to touch it now.
Speaker A: I did just change my scheduler website this week because it was like half price.
Speaker A: And when you’re talking in the multiple hundred dollars, half price is nice.
Speaker C: Yes.
Speaker A: Plus my previous one, it was like it would schedule like Facebook posts and Twitter posts and Instagram posts, but it wouldn’t do reals.
Speaker A: Yeah, everybody.
Speaker A: So I’d have to go to Facebook and TikTok and YouTube to do like the short stuff and I’m like, that’s annoying.
Speaker A: So I found one that does all.
Speaker B: Of the things nice and it’s half.
Speaker A: The cost of the previous one.
Speaker C: Bonus.
Speaker A: Yeah.
Speaker A: Even if it wasn’t doing those half price when you’re talking about it was $700 for my previous one.
Speaker A: For the year.
Speaker A: For a year.
Speaker C: For the year.
Speaker A: Okay.
Speaker A: For a year.
Speaker A: So that in almost half.
Speaker A: I’m like worth it.
Speaker C: Yeah, I would say so.
Speaker A: And then it’s a learning curve like it is with ads.
Speaker A: You have to learn this whole new software essentially.
Speaker A: Like how does this one work?
Speaker B: Because I’m used to the buttons being.
Speaker A: One way I’ve been using it for a year, so you got to figure it out.
Speaker A: So now I have to go delete three weeks worth of posts and put them in the new one because they’re in the old one.
Speaker C: Wow.
Speaker C: It’s like a full time job doing all of the business administrative end of creative stuff.
Speaker C: Like, you really do have to learn.
Speaker A: You have to learn what works for you and what is the fat.
Speaker A: I used to when I started doing the little quote slides, I would skim through the chapter.
Speaker A: This is after I’ve already spent the time recording it.
Speaker A: I would skim through the chapter to find the most interesting part.
Speaker A: Well, that takes time.
Speaker A: I’m like, screw this.
Speaker A: We’re just going to put the first couple of sentences on these slides.
Speaker A: I have a template for my slides where I just have to paste it into the text box.
Speaker C: Nice.
Speaker A: And then I export it and put it into the social media schedule.
Speaker A: Now less than five minutes to get them done and uploaded into the scheduler while I’m listening through the episode.
Speaker C: So much easier.
Speaker A: Everything is like, get it.
Speaker A: Same with author stuff.
Speaker A: So I have the scheduler you set up.
Speaker A: Like, I want it to post it these times.
Speaker A: And I did a bunch of research at one point for like, how many times should you be posting on Facebook.
Speaker C: A day or whatever.
Speaker C: And TikTok.
Speaker A: So I have my times set up where it’s like and I have a spreadsheet that tells me like, at the 07:00 slot, post on these ones.
Speaker A: And then so there’s a little bit of manualness to it, but eventually I kind of remembered that.
Speaker A: But new scheduler, new way I have to do things, have to remember how eventually it’ll be like, oh, click, click, done.
Speaker A: Right now I have a spreadsheet that has like, here’s the hashtags we’re using for this post.
Speaker A: Copy paste is your friend when it comes to social media.
Speaker C: Yeah, and that’s something.
Speaker C: When I was getting my PhD, facebook was my avoidance thing, right?
Speaker C: Like, oh my gosh, I don’t want to do this, so I’m going to just scroll Facebook on Facebook.
Speaker C: And then at some point I ended up just being like, oh my gosh, Facebook is taking up so much of my time.
Speaker C: So I got off of it.
Speaker C: And you know what?
Speaker C: Once you sort of extract yourself from that environment, for me at least, I find it hard to get back into it.
Speaker C: I find it hard to all of a sudden this thing that I used to spend forever killing time on, now it’s a business thing, right?
Speaker A: You have to do it now.
Speaker C: How do I get back into this in a way where I actually remember that it exists.
Speaker C: It’s just no longer in my purview of things I do in my day.
Speaker C: The whole scheduling thing, I totally get that.
Speaker C: Because if I didn’t have reminders, if I didn’t do that it just wouldn’t even cross my mind to look at any of the social media things.
Speaker A: My thing is like TikTok now.
Speaker A: I spend way too much time on that.
Speaker A: So now I’m like, all right, when you’re eating meals, so you can’t physically be doing anything else.
Speaker A: I mean, I could read a book, a fun book, I guess, right?
Speaker A: But when I’m prepping a narrating book, I have a spreadsheet where I keep track of the chapters and what characters talk in that chapters.
Speaker A: And do you describe them as having an annoying voice or a deep voice or a husky voice?
Speaker A: Like all those I have in a spreadsheet that I can reference while I’m narrating.
Speaker A: So I can’t be doing that while I’m eating.
Speaker A: So I’m like, all right, you can watch TikTok or scroll through Facebook or that is your social media time while you’re eating meals do that.
Speaker A: And then when you’re done eating and I usually wait till the next, like 15 minutes interval or something, but it’s like then it’s time to get back to work, get stuff done.
Speaker C: Yeah, I’m still working on the whole because you have to in some I know, at least for TikTok and for a lot of them, you have to engage too, in order to get the algorithm to pick up on you.
Speaker C: But also, more importantly, you have to have some sort of engagement to have a relationship with the people that are on there with you.
Speaker C: So you want to find a new audience, but you also want to be participating with the people that are on there because it’s a community and you are a part of it.
Speaker C: You want to actually engage.
Speaker C: So you do have to spend time on there.
Speaker A: Yeah, I’m probably the least interactive narrator that’s on there.
Speaker A: And I’ve tried this last week, I tried to do a couple of videos about why, and I’m just like, in my awkward brain, commenting on things just doesn’t come naturally.
Speaker A: So it’s like it’s not that I don’t like you.
Speaker A: It’s that, like, it doesn’t.
Speaker A: Now, if you comment on my video, I’m going to comment back because you have reached out to me.
Speaker C: You’ve taken the initiative.
Speaker A: But I’m like, yeah, my brain is just like, why would I want it?
Speaker A: Now?
Speaker A: There’s some people that I do like, if they post a question or something, I’ll respond to it or whatever.
Speaker A: But yeah, it does not come naturally to me at all.
Speaker A: I have to make myself interact with someone.
Speaker C: Yeah.
Speaker C: I am so right there with you, my natural self in my nature, initiating is definitely the harder thing.
Speaker C: I’m all about responding.
Speaker C: I can totally do that, but I have to push out that’s outside of my comfort zone too.
Speaker C: So it’s like I have to like, oh, be brave, step out there.
Speaker A: It’s almost like I haven’t done this, but it’s almost like I’ve put like, you must respond to five people a day.
Speaker A: Not that I’ve said that to myself, but I kind of have that in the back of my head.
Speaker A: Like, you need to respond to some people today, right?
Speaker B: DK liked The Three Little Pigs growing up.
Speaker B: The Three Little Pigs is a fable about three pigs who build their houses on different materials.
Speaker B: A big bad wolf blows down the first two pigs houses, which are made of straw and sticks, respectively, but is unable to destroy the third pig’s house that is made of bricks.
Speaker B: The printed versions of this fable date back to the 1840s, but the story is thought to be much older.
Speaker B: The earliest version takes place in Dartmoor with three pixies and a fox, before its best known version appears in English Fairy tales by Joseph Jacobs in 1890, with Jacobs crediting James Hallowell Phillips as the source.
Speaker B: The phrases used in the story and the various morales drawn from it have become embedded in Western culture.
Speaker B: Many versions of The Three Little Pigs have been recreated and modified over the years, sometimes making the wolf a kind of character.
Speaker B: It is a type B 124 folktale in the Thompson motif index.
Speaker B: Today we’ll be reading The Three Little Pigs by Joseph Jacobs.
Speaker B: Don’t forget we’re reading Lemort de Arthur.
Speaker B: The Story of King Arthur and of his noble knights of the Round Table on our Patreon.
Speaker B: You can find the link in the show notes.
Speaker B: The Story of the Three Little Pigs once upon a time, when pigs spoke rhyme, and monkeys chewed tobacco, and hens took snuff to make them tough, and ducks went quack, quack, quack.
Speaker B: Oh, there was an old sow with three little pigs, and as she had not enough to keep them, she sent them out to seek their fortune.
Speaker B: The first that went off met a man with a bundle of straw, and said to him, please, man, give me.
Speaker D: That straw to build me a house.
Speaker B: Which the man did, and the little pig built a house with it.
Speaker B: Presently came along a wolf and knocked at the door and said, little pig, little pig, let me come in.
Speaker B: To which the pig answered, no, not by the hair of my chinny chin chin.
Speaker B: The wolf then answered to that then I’ll huff and I’ll puff, and I’ll blow your house in.
Speaker B: So he huffed and he puffed, and he blew his house in, and ate up the little pig.
Speaker B: The second little pig met a man with a bundle of furs and said.
Speaker D: Please, man, give me that furs to build a house.
Speaker B: Which the man did, and the pig built his house.
Speaker B: Then along came the wolf and said, Little pig, little pig, let me come in.
Speaker D: No, not by the hair of my chinny chin chin.
Speaker B: Then I’ll puff, and I’ll huff, and I’ll blow your house in.
Speaker B: So he huffed, and he puffed, and he puffed, and he huffed, and at last he blew the house down, and he ate up the little pig.
Speaker B: The third little pig met a man with a load of bricks and said.
Speaker D: Please, man, give me those bricks to build a house with.
Speaker B: So the man gave him the bricks and he built his house with them.
Speaker B: So the wolf came, as he did to the other little pigs, and said, Little Pig, little Pig, let me come in.
Speaker D: No, not by the hair of my chinny chin chin.
Speaker B: Then I’ll huff and I’ll puff, and I’ll blow your house in while he huffed and he puffed, and he huffed, and he puffed, and he puffed and huffed, but could not get the house down.
Speaker B: When he found that he could not, with all his huffing and puffing blow the house down, he said, Little Pig, I know where there’s a nice field of turnips.
Speaker D: Where?
Speaker B: Said the little pig.
Speaker B: Oh, in Mr.
Speaker B: Smith’s home field.
Speaker B: And if you will be ready tomorrow morning, I will call for you and we will go together and get some for dinner.
Speaker D: Very well, said the little pig, I’ll be ready.
Speaker D: What time do you mean to go?
Speaker B: Oh, at 06:00.
Speaker B: Well, the little pig got up at five and got the turnips before the wolf came, which he did about six, and who, said, Little Pig, are you ready?
Speaker B: Little pig said ready?
Speaker D: I’ve been and come back again, and got a nice pot full for dinner.
Speaker B: The wolf felt very angry at this, but thought that he would be up to the little pig somehow or other.
Speaker B: So he said, Little Pig, I know where there’s a nice apple tree.
Speaker D: Where?
Speaker B: Said the pig.
Speaker B: Down at Mary garden, replied the wolf, and if you will not deceive me, I will come for you at 05:00 tomorrow and get some apples.
Speaker B: All the little pig bustled up the next morning at 04:00 and went off for the apples, hoping to get back before the wolf came.
Speaker B: But he had further to go and had to climb the tree, so that just as he was coming down from it, he saw the wolf coming, which, as you may suppose, frightened him very much.
Speaker B: When the wolf came up, he said, Little Pig, what?
Speaker B: Are you here before me?
Speaker B: Are they nice apples?
Speaker B: Yes, very, said the little pig, I.
Speaker D: Will throw you down one.
Speaker B: And he threw it so far that while the wolf was gone to pick it up, the little pig jumped down and ran home.
Speaker B: The next day the wolf came again and said to the little pig, Little Pig, there is a fair at Shanklin this afternoon.
Speaker B: Will you go?
Speaker D: Oh, yes, said the pig, I will go.
Speaker D: What time shall you be ready?
Speaker B: At three, said the wolf.
Speaker B: So the little pig went off before the time, as usual, and got to the fair and bought a butter churn, which he was going home with when he saw the wolf coming.
Speaker B: Then he could not tell what to do, so he got into the churn to hide, and by so doing turned it round and it rolled down the hill with the pig in it, which frightened the wolf so much that he ran home without going to the fair.
Speaker B: He went to the little pig’s house and told him how frightened he had been by a great round thing which came down the hill past him.
Speaker D: The little pig said, I frightened you then I had been to the fair and bought a butter churn, and when I saw you, I got into it and rolled down the hill.
Speaker B: Then the wolf was very angry indeed and declared he would eat up the little pig and that he would get down the chimney after him.
Speaker B: When the little pig saw what he was about, he hung on the pot full of water and made up a blazing fire, and just as the wolf was coming down, took off the COVID and then fell the wolf.
Speaker B: So the little pig put on the COVID again in an instant, boiled him up and ate him for supper, and lived happy ever afterwards.
Speaker B: Thank you for joining Freya’s fairy tales.
Speaker B: Be sure to come back next week for the conclusion of DK’s journey to holding her own fairy tale in her hands and to hear another of her favorite fairy tales.
Speaker A: You and.
