Show Notes:
Today is part one of two where we are talking to Tanya Lynn about her novels. Over the next 2 weeks you will hear about making your own books about things around your house, being discouraged by your family, researching the way that you’d like to publish your book, learning as you go, having your family read your books, having your friend read your reviews for you, and dealing with imposter syndrome.
Tanya’s Website – Tanya’s Facebook – Tanya’s Instagram – Tanya’s TikTok
Tanya Lynn has always been creative, dreaming of becoming a published author her entire life.
She self published her debut book Mask of Broken Things in July 2022.
She lives in Canada, with two great kids and a floofy Maine Coon cat. She loves to read, workout & listen to music.
She’ll keep writing & testing out different genres but you can always expect something suspenseful up her sleeve.
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Transcript:
Speaker A: Welcome to Freya’s.
Speaker A: Fairy tales.
Speaker A: We believe fairy tales are both stories we enjoyed as children and something that we can achieve ourselves.
Speaker A: Each week, we will talk to authors about their favorite fairy tales when they were kids and their adventure to holding their very own fairy tale in their hands.
Speaker A: At the end of each episode, we will finish off with a fairy tale or short story read as close to the original author’s version as 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 am 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 A: Be sure to check out our website and sign up for our newsletter for the latest on the podcast.
Speaker A: Today is part one of two where we are talking to Tanya Lynn about her novels.
Speaker A: Over the next two weeks, you will hear about making your own books, about things around your house, being discouraged by your family, researching the way that you’d like to publish your book, learning as you go, having your family read your books, having your friend read your reviews for you, and dealing with impostor syndrome branches of betrayal.
Speaker A: Hoping for a fresh start, sophie buys her grandparents old home.
Speaker A: But this farmhouse is holding more than memories and her choice may not be the only thing that comes back to haunt her.
Speaker A: Turning from his past to stand atop his empire alone, eric searches for the missing piece to unlock his future.
Speaker A: The problem is, the walls that hide his answers belong to someone else.
Speaker A: Though Sophie and Eric’s meeting is innocent enough, will their unexpected chemistry spiral into more?
Speaker A: Someone is pulling strings, controlling lives and lighting the match that will spark broken hearts, unimaginable fear and immense torment.
Speaker A: How far would you go to betray someone?
Speaker A: Branches of Intimacy the past came to kill with twisted family ties came unhinged terror, spreading like wildfire and burning the world as they knew it to the ground.
Speaker A: Now they rise from the ashes, facing fear to become the strongest versions of themselves.
Speaker A: Eric rebuilding his life after the devastating quake of truth.
Speaker A: He seeks answers.
Speaker A: He works at finding the monster of his past to avenge his present.
Speaker A: But his ultimate goal is proving he’s worthy of a second chance as he vows to protect his loved one, even if she chooses to turn him away.
Speaker A: Sophie healing her soul and becoming stronger than she’s ever been.
Speaker A: Sophie works to overcome the damage that was inflicted by others and finds family in a place she never thought possible.
Speaker A: She learns who she really is and what she is capable of.
Speaker A: But can she reconnect with the man who once set her body on fire and made her believe in love again?
Speaker B: So this show is Freya’s fairy tales, and that is fairy tales in two ways.
Speaker B: Fairy tales are something that we either watched or read or had read to us as kids.
Speaker B: It’s also the journey of spending the weeks, months, years working on your novel.
Speaker B: To then get to hold that in your hands is also a fairy tale for you.
Speaker B: So I like to start off with what was your favorite fairy tale or short story when you were a kid and did that favorite change as you got older?
Speaker C: I think my favorite is one.
Speaker C: So when I was a kid, I was all about the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.
Speaker B: Okay.
Speaker C: Which is not a fairy tale.
Speaker B: It is not.
Speaker C: I didn’t grow into fairy tales until they were not popular as a kid.
Speaker C: So I was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles all while I was a little girl.
Speaker C: And then they put the good fairy tales back in the vault because that’s what Disney yeah, I think they still do The Little Mermaid.
Speaker C: Okay, but it was back in the vault.
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker B: At one time, I was on there, like, whatever the buy the movies at a discounted plan thing was, and I would sit and wait for them to come out of the vault so I could buy it because I wanted Beauty and the Beast as a grown adult.
Speaker B: As a grown adult, I wanted Beauty and the Beast, but I had to wait for it to come out of the vault.
Speaker B: So I get it.
Speaker B: I get the irritatingness of I don’t know why they do it, but it’s so irritating.
Speaker B: So at what age did you start writing or start thinking about writing?
Speaker B: When did the creativity start?
Speaker C: Like, forever.
Speaker C: So when I was little, I used to write all these I remember making a book when I was still maybe, like, six or seven, and it was like serial killers, but it was actual cereal.
Speaker C: Cereal.
Speaker B: Did you, like, glue cereal to it?
Speaker C: No, it was just, like, boxes of cereal.
Speaker B: Okay.
Speaker C: I still have it.
Speaker C: Not that, but I made, like, a comic book, and then I just stopped for a long time until I was probably a teenager.
Speaker C: But yeah, since I was little, I’ve been making up stories.
Speaker B: Where did a serial serial killer book idea come from?
Speaker B: That’s so random.
Speaker C: I don’t know.
Speaker C: I’m still the same.
Speaker C: Everything is so random.
Speaker B: Hey.
Speaker B: I feel like that is how most books come to be.
Speaker B: Someone will be they’ll be listening to a song or watching a show or a movie or having a random conversation and be like, what if we turned this on its head and did this instead of that?
Speaker B: How would that turn out?
Speaker B: All the ideas are random.
Speaker B: What would happen if we changed this part of it?
Speaker B: Make the book.
Speaker C: Yeah.
Speaker B: So you took a break until you were a teenager, and then what kind of stuff were you writing at that time?
Speaker C: Dark poetry.
Speaker C: I would just fill books and books and books.
Speaker C: I don’t exactly know where they all are.
Speaker C: I have a storage unit.
Speaker C: I suspect they’re somewhere in there.
Speaker C: But, I mean not going to dig through it.
Speaker C: I just pay for it to hold my crap.
Speaker C: I have three published in, like, an anthology of poetry.
Speaker B: Okay.
Speaker C: Not under Daniel, but it was a Canadian Institute of poetry.
Speaker B: Okay.
Speaker C: And so you applied or you sent in your thing, and then if you won, you got to be in the book.
Speaker C: And I did that three times.
Speaker B: That’s cool.
Speaker C: Yeah.
Speaker C: And then I was really pumped, and I was like, I’m going to write a book, and I’m going to do this, and this is amazing.
Speaker C: And family was like, no, that is stupid.
Speaker C: You’re not doing any of that.
Speaker C: You’re never going to make it.
Speaker C: And I was like, that makes sense.
Speaker C: Okay, you’re right.
Speaker C: And I just stopped.
Speaker C: Right.
Speaker B: I don’t understand.
Speaker B: A lot of families are that way.
Speaker B: A lot of families are that way.
Speaker B: That is not unique to any particular person.
Speaker B: There’s a lot of families that are that way.
Speaker B: I don’t understand the reasoning that goes behind, like, what does it hurt if I do this thing on the side that makes me happy?
Speaker B: Is that hurting you?
Speaker B: I don’t get it.
Speaker B: I imagine most of the time it’s probably jealousy.
Speaker B: They wanted to do it and decided it wasn’t for them or whatever.
Speaker B: But yeah, no, my daughter’s like, I want to be well, now she wants to be a narrator.
Speaker B: I want to be a narrator like Mommy.
Speaker B: And I’m like, okay, yeah, it doesn’t hurt me at all if you do that.
Speaker B: As long as you can sustain yourself on whatever you want to do, go for it.
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker C: It doesn’t hurt me to tell my kids, as long as you might need a side job or a full job or some sort of job to eat.
Speaker C: But as long as you’re good, we don’t need to squash your dreams.
Speaker B: Right.
Speaker B: How old were you when you had the three poems published?
Speaker C: Between 15 and 17, because you had to be a teenager.
Speaker B: Okay.
Speaker B: And then your first eventually, you did get into novels because that’s why we’re talking today.
Speaker B: So when did you start writing?
Speaker B: And you may not have published your first full length, but when did you start writing your first full length, and did you ever finish it and did you publish it?
Speaker C: It’s actually coming up.
Speaker C: March 27 will be a year since I started writing my first book.
Speaker C: I had this idea that I just wanted to write a book, and then I was like, no, I didn’t tell anyone.
Speaker C: And I was like, no, I can’t do that because I read a crap tone.
Speaker C: I read an abnormal amount of books, and so while I’m reading, sometimes I’m like, okay, but I want to read this, and I can find this.
Speaker C: And then last year, I was in therapy, just kind of going through some childhood trauma and stuff like that.
Speaker C: And we were talking, and it’s just sort of like I helped unlock something.
Speaker C: It just unlocked I don’t know the creative part of it that’s not even true because I’ve always been creative.
Speaker C: But she helped me unlock something.
Speaker B: The creative part that your family squashed.
Speaker C: It could be.
Speaker C: But I have been creative.
Speaker C: Like, I used to make cakes.
Speaker C: I used to have a store that made T shirts, that sort of thing.
Speaker C: But yeah, I was just like I texted my best friend last year, and I was like, I think I’m going to write a book.
Speaker C: She was like, you should absolutely write a book.
Speaker C: And I was like, yeah, I think I’m going to do it.
Speaker C: And she’s like, I wish I could write a book.
Speaker C: And I was like, you can.
Speaker C: She was like, you do it.
Speaker C: And I’m like, okay.
Speaker C: And I just started writing.
Speaker C: I had no idea what I was doing.
Speaker C: I just started writing.
Speaker C: And that’s actually the first book that came out.
Speaker C: Master broken things.
Speaker C: I wrote it April May.
Speaker C: I think it took three months.
Speaker C: I thought it would take a lot longer, but pretty fast.
Speaker B: Pretty fast.
Speaker C: Three months.
Speaker B: I think the last person I talked to said seven years, I think is what she said.
Speaker C: I did a lot of research, so I, of course, looked up Stephen King’s knowledge, and he said, just write.
Speaker C: Don’t look back.
Speaker C: Just write.
Speaker C: Don’t stop and look at it.
Speaker C: Just keep writing.
Speaker C: Because if you stop and look at it, you’re going to think, this is crap.
Speaker C: I need to go back and fix it.
Speaker C: Then I’m going to just get you will get stuck in this loop.
Speaker C: And I was like, okay, all right.
Speaker C: I got this.
Speaker C: And I just started going, yeah.
Speaker B: So it took you three months.
Speaker B: You typed the end or however you signed off your book, and then what did you do next?
Speaker C: I researched a lot.
Speaker C: I spent a lot of time researching because I was like, what do I well, I wrote the thing.
Speaker C: That’s fine.
Speaker C: That’s enough.
Speaker C: I could say I wrote a book.
Speaker C: That’s pretty cool.
Speaker C: And my best friend, again, she was like, Maybe you should get it published.
Speaker C: And I was like, no, that’s crazy.
Speaker C: She’s like, but then you’ll be an author.
Speaker C: And I was like, no, I listened to what it takes to get traditionally published.
Speaker C: And that sounded horrible.
Speaker B: Terrifying.
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker C: I didn’t think that I could deal with all the rejection.
Speaker B: Same.
Speaker C: And also, I just felt like I looked at a lot of pros and cons between Trad and Indy, and one of them is how you are on their timeline.
Speaker C: And I felt like it would stall me.
Speaker C: I hear a deadline, and I’m like, we do nothing.
Speaker C: Remember that call we had to make?
Speaker C: Yeah, we’re making that.
Speaker C: Remember?
Speaker C: We need to deep clean this house.
Speaker C: Yeah, because no deadlines for me are just I mean, I work good under pressure, but I don’t know, I just felt like it wasn’t and I don’t necessarily write mainstream.
Speaker C: Like, when I wrote Mask a Broken Thing, so I wrote it because I hadn’t seen something like it, so I wanted to write, so I did.
Speaker C: And when I was writing it and when I was reading it back, I was like, I wish somebody else wrote this because I want to read it.
Speaker C: I want to read it without knowing what’s coming.
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker C: I did a lot of research, and then I just decided that I got a KDP account.
Speaker C: I paid an editor.
Speaker C: I didn’t know that you were supposed to get an editor via maybe word of mouth or that sort of thing.
Speaker C: So mine didn’t really do anything except take a lot of money.
Speaker B: You don’t have to I think that’s just the recommended because then they’ve been vetted.
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker C: So live and learn.
Speaker C: There’s a lot of live and learn here.
Speaker C: And then I made my cover.
Speaker C: I recently changed my cover, actually, because it just didn’t suit the book.
Speaker C: But yeah, it’s just kind of all this is what I’m doing now, and this is what I’ll do.
Speaker B: Well, you said you had the T shirt shop, so you made your own cover.
Speaker C: Yeah.
Speaker B: Okay.
Speaker B: Which I’m sure the T shirt shop helped you in that because you’re used to making stuff look pretty.
Speaker B: Because I was like, I would not have guessed that you made your own cover.
Speaker B: They looked good.
Speaker B: You had two books on your website, right?
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker B: Okay, so you hired an editor that did not as much as they should have and then had your cover.
Speaker B: You did your cover, and then what did you do?
Speaker B: Do you just publish it after that?
Speaker C: I wanted to do it near my birthday.
Speaker C: I waited until my birthday is July 15, so I think it was published July 13, so it was pretty close.
Speaker B: That’s pretty fast.
Speaker B: So March 27, you started writing it, and July 15 you published it.
Speaker C: Yeah.
Speaker B: Pretty good turnaround.
Speaker C: I didn’t know how to format properly at first, and, I mean, I read everything.
Speaker C: I watched so many tutorials, and so on my end, it looked perfect.
Speaker C: When I loaded it into the preview on KDP, it was not and it was just like, I don’t understand.
Speaker C: And so it has been reformatted since then.
Speaker C: Hindsight is 2020.
Speaker C: If I could go back, I probably would have delayed it a couple of months just to get everything super perfect, but for me, I thought that it was the best that it could get.
Speaker C: I just stopped sleeping for weeks to watch tutorials on how to do this stuff, and it still wasn’t working.
Speaker C: It was like, I guess this is it.
Speaker C: I guess.
Speaker B: So it wasn’t working.
Speaker B: How did you get it to work?
Speaker B: Did you just publish it as is, or did you eventually figure it out.
Speaker C: Yeah.
Speaker C: And then I went back.
Speaker C: I have reedited it a couple of times.
Speaker C: The thing is, I’m Canadian, and I spell everything Canadian.
Speaker C: My books are in Canadian, in Canada, so all of them are based in Canada.
Speaker C: I write too much like a Canadian to ever write anywhere else.
Speaker C: Yes.
Speaker C: I say A, and that part I got a lot of messages and just like, you spell all these words wrong.
Speaker C: And I was like, what words?
Speaker C: And they were like, color favorite neighbor.
Speaker C: Because we spell it with an extra U.
Speaker B: You use the British spelling of it.
Speaker C: Yes.
Speaker C: And so I was like, It’s not a typo.
Speaker C: It’s just how I spell because I’m Canadian.
Speaker C: The book is in Canada.
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker C: So my best friend, she would like to go through it and fix it up a little.
Speaker C: But, I mean, it’s good as is right now, I think.
Speaker B: So you published it and then how did you like, this is last year, all this happened, right?
Speaker B: So what did you do after that?
Speaker B: Because I know now you’re on TikTok and you’re in a couple of discords that I’m in.
Speaker B: So how did you kind of talk about that first book when you published it?
Speaker C: That’s another thing that I would have waited as well, because I could have built up more.
Speaker C: But again, I don’t regret anything.
Speaker C: It was what it is.
Speaker C: I was so happy, and I was just like so my only goal in the world was just to see my book in my hand.
Speaker C: And of course, now that’s been moved and moved in, right.
Speaker C: But that was eventually my only goal, and I hit that goal.
Speaker C: I’m in an indie author support group.
Speaker C: I’ve been in it since I published on Instagram.
Speaker C: I think last May.
Speaker C: I got into book talk because I’ve been on TikTok for, like, three years.
Speaker C: I started my TikTok as kind of like a mental health account.
Speaker C: I continued to do that because I didn’t want to make seven different tip.
Speaker C: I didn’t want to make too many accounts.
Speaker C: It’s hard enough to post just on every platform of my own, let alone right.
Speaker C: I watched other people drop, like, little parts of their book, like the quotes and stuff.
Speaker C: Yeah.
Speaker C: So I did parts of that leading up, and I mean, sure, now I probably would be better, but then I wouldn’t have all that experience either.
Speaker B: I feel like it’s also really hard.
Speaker B: Like, for me, of course, my book that I’m currently working on, I’m like a chapter in.
Speaker B: So I’m like, I don’t want to post quotes from, like, chapter one.
Speaker B: That’s so weird.
Speaker B: But it’s really hard to sell when you don’t have a product yet.
Speaker B: Now once you’re closer and it’s like, in the edits and the COVID stage and all of that, like, your book’s almost there, a little bit easier to do that.
Speaker B: But I’m like, at this stage, I’m just like, I’m writing a book that’s like all my author page is about.
Speaker B: I’m writing a book, technically two, but one is on the back burner because the other one took over my brain.
Speaker C: The first so mascar, broken Things, it just keeps getting like it got a new blurb last December, which they are the worst.
Speaker C: And I, as a reader never read them.
Speaker C: I never read anything.
Speaker C: I pick up a book, I read.
Speaker B: It, I look at the COVID I read the title.
Speaker B: I’m like, that sounds cool, as long.
Speaker C: As I check the genre on him.
Speaker B: Yeah, well, I’m usually searching by genre, like on Kindle and stuff.
Speaker B: I’m like in whatever I want at the time.
Speaker C: So she just keeps getting few makeovers here and there.
Speaker B: I feel like everybody’s first books go through well, and it may be that you have to update the covers because you published it ten years ago and now the COVID styles are all different.
Speaker B: Or I mean, like 20 years ago when there wasn’t the giant influx of indie authors and like you could publish anything and people would read it.
Speaker B: Those people are having to fix their books, so I don’t feel like that’s unreasonable.
Speaker B: So you said the first editor didn’t really do a whole lot.
Speaker B: Did you end up taking it through another one?
Speaker C: Well, I couldn’t afford another one.
Speaker C: Okay.
Speaker C: I have a beta reader who is incredible.
Speaker C: They read everything I write and then I listen to it through Microsoft Word.
Speaker B: Okay.
Speaker C: Richard he’s a monotone.
Speaker C: He is awful.
Speaker C: It is so boring.
Speaker B: So you don’t want a monotone?
Speaker B: Narrator someday.
Speaker C: I found myself even falling asleep and I’m like, no, I am in love with this story.
Speaker C: This story is good.
Speaker C: How are you making this boring?
Speaker C: But hearing it out loud, I was able to pick up a whole bunch of things that didn’t quite I read the entire thing out loud to myself, which, again, found me a whole bunch of things and I was it’s good enough?
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker C: That’s the biggest thing with indie authors.
Speaker C: So if you have some typos or some grammar, people generally jump all over you.
Speaker C: But I’ve seen it in traditional all the time.
Speaker C: Same, nobody bats an eye.
Speaker C: Yeah, no, we can only be humans because that’s what we are, right?
Speaker B: Some people don’t ever hire editors.
Speaker B: I just got Pro writing aid, which basically just told me that my sentences were too long and I needed to cut them up.
Speaker B: But yeah, I mean, that’s part of it.
Speaker B: I’m like, I don’t know if I’m going to be able to pay an editor.
Speaker B: Of course, my brother in law also went to school for editing, so I’m probably just going to ask kindly for him to do it for me or trade an author that I royalty share narrated for to edit my book.
Speaker B: Another reason to make connections.
Speaker B: But there’s a lot of authors that I’ve talked to that just use their alpha and beta readers to do the majority of their editing?
Speaker C: Yes.
Speaker B: As long as you’ve got beta readers that do a really good job, and I’m a big fan of constructive criticism, I don’t just want you to be like, this is so amazing, and never tell me anything’s wrong with it.
Speaker B: Something is wrong with it somewhere, I promise.
Speaker C: My beta reader is savage.
Speaker C: They’re very kind about it, but yeah, it’s never like, just, you’ve done a good job.
Speaker C: You have messed up seriously here, and I love it.
Speaker C: It’s great.
Speaker B: So you got the first one out.
Speaker B: You’ve made a couple of tweaks to the first one.
Speaker B: You’ve now started talking about it on TikTok Some.
Speaker B: So how long did it take you for the second book?
Speaker C: So after I wrote the first book, I tried to write so in the first book, there’s a side character who deserves his own story because he’s a gem.
Speaker C: He is just so awesome.
Speaker C: And that was my pure intent.
Speaker C: I started it and I couldn’t write it, and I was like, oh, maybe I’m a one hit wonder.
Speaker C: And it’s because I had these characters start talking in my head, and I was like, this doesn’t seem normal because it didn’t happen with the last one.
Speaker C: So I was like, I assure you.
Speaker B: Every single author I’ve talked to has said the same thing, so it is normal.
Speaker C: And I tried to ignore it, and I kept trying to write this other book, and I was like I was getting woken up in the middle of dead sleep.
Speaker C: Woken up just constant, constant, constant.
Speaker C: And I was like, okay, all right, you’ll win.
Speaker B: I will write the book.
Speaker C: I started writing it in May, probably two weeks after I wrote the first one.
Speaker B: Okay.
Speaker C: And then I wrote it I think I finished it in August, but it was no, I finished it in July, but it was too much.
Speaker C: And I wasn’t happy with the ending.
Speaker C: The story was just too much.
Speaker C: It was too much for one book.
Speaker C: Plus it would be like 400, 500 pages, which isn’t terrible, but I find in dark romance, you generally have shorter shorter books.
Speaker B: Not short short, but I know the what are the ones on my shelf I haven’t read yet.
Speaker B: The Demon king.
Speaker B: Is the Demon King the something?
Speaker B: I think it’s four books right now.
Speaker B: I don’t remember what the name of the Never King?
Speaker B: That one.
Speaker B: Those ones are pretty small books.
Speaker C: Yes.
Speaker B: The rest of the dark romance I’ve read have been on Kindle.
Speaker B: I have no idea the size of those.
Speaker B: I just read them.
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker C: It’S a lot for one story.
Speaker C: And I was like, I didn’t mind.
Speaker C: I was like, I have to cut it in hand.
Speaker C: So I had to find the right place to cut it because I could have cut it a very cliche cut.
Speaker C: Eric Cliffhanger.
Speaker C: I was like, no, I don’t like that.
Speaker C: So I cut it where I thought it made the most sense.
Speaker C: And then I rewrote the second book completely.
Speaker C: Okay.
Speaker C: So that’s not something I’d like to do again.
Speaker B: Yeah, that does not sound fun at all.
Speaker C: I didn’t write it just once.
Speaker C: I wrote it twice.
Speaker C: Definitely not.
Speaker B: At least it was only half of the book.
Speaker C: So the first one, Branches of Betrayal, it went to my beta and then I got it back.
Speaker C: I formatted it.
Speaker C: I learned how to format.
Speaker C: So I went back and formatted the first one and then it went to my editor.
Speaker C: Now, she is very old school.
Speaker C: She likes the paperback, so I order a proof, I send it to her and she takes about three months.
Speaker C: And then she brings it, drops it off, and we move on to the next one.
Speaker B: Okay.
Speaker B: How did you learn to format in there?
Speaker B: What finally got it for you?
Speaker B: I don’t know.
Speaker C: I got really frustrated and I guess you add so I do everything in Microsoft Word, which again, is not I hear of all these people doing all these fancy things, but I just can’t it’s not in the budget.
Speaker C: So maybe one day.
Speaker B: Yeah, I was looking at what is it, vellum for Mac?
Speaker B: And I was like, I might eventually save up for it, but I’m like, I’m on chapter one.
Speaker B: I don’t need to pay for that right now.
Speaker B: That’s in six months.
Speaker B: Problem.
Speaker C: Yeah, I know.
Speaker C: I can’t remember exactly what the PC one is.
Speaker C: Atticus, I think so, yeah.
Speaker B: But I’ve heard that one because that one just came out of, like, beta testing or something.
Speaker B: So that one had a lot of issues.
Speaker B: At least in the last two months.
Speaker C: Ago, you kind of add.
Speaker C: I don’t even think I do it right, if I’m being honest.
Speaker C: At least it looks right.
Speaker C: That’s fine.
Speaker B: It looks right.
Speaker B: Who can’t look right?
Speaker C: I don’t think it is right.
Speaker C: But I add a lot of page breaks and page so it was a word problem.
Speaker C: So it looked fine on my end, but then when it went, it was showing the spaces and stuff and formatting is my worst enemy.
Speaker C: I hate it so much.
Speaker B: I think every single author I’ve ever talked to also hates formatting.
Speaker B: Or they pay someone to do it for them because they hate it.
Speaker C: That is my next big goal is to be able to pay for somebody to format my book.
Speaker B: Because I’ve had a couple that said they hired someone on fiverr to do the formatting.
Speaker B: I have no idea what that would cost because fiverr my mom says back in the day, fiverr used to be everything was $5.
Speaker B: But that is definitely not the case now.
Speaker B: So I don’t know if that was the case when it started.
Speaker B: I never used it when it started.
Speaker C: The one thing that it’s not something you do often, so I have to be like three times a year.
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker B: Now I have authors that I narrate for that are popping out like a book a month.
Speaker B: So I’m like, that’s the person I’m going to go to.
Speaker B: Or ones that have been doing it for like 20 years.
Speaker B: Those are the ones that you go to and you’re like, could you please tell me how you do it?
Speaker B: Just give me, quite honestly, a checklist or a numbered list of do this first, do this second, do this third.
Speaker B: And that applies for everything.
Speaker B: Just give me a list of what I need to do.
Speaker B: I’m like, for social media, that would be great.
Speaker B: Tell me, do all these things like Monday, do this Tuesday, do this Wednesday, and I’d be great.
Speaker B: Instead, I’m like, Why am I only getting two views on my videos?
Speaker B: Because unlike you, I do have a lot of different accounts for different things because I have different podcasts and I narrate under two different names.
Speaker B: And then I have an author account and I don’t recommend it unless you have a bunch of things that need their own thing.
Speaker B: So, yeah, no.
Speaker B: So you have two books out now.
Speaker B: When does book number three come out?
Speaker B: Which would be part 2?
Speaker C: April 28.
Speaker B: Okay, so that should be out by the time this actually airs.
Speaker C: Yeah.
Speaker B: And so it picks up and finishes the story from the one that just came out?
Speaker C: Yes.
Speaker B: Okay.
Speaker C: It’s been edited.
Speaker C: I just haven’t fixed anything.
Speaker C: The one that’s coming out in August, I finished writing it, so I’m editing it to get it to the editor.
Speaker B: I feel like it’s a constant leapfrog.
Speaker B: Like, I’m done with this.
Speaker B: Now we need to go over here and do this.
Speaker B: Now we need to go back over here.
Speaker B: And it’s a constant back and forth.
Speaker B: If you’re working on multiple books at once and you’re not a beginning to end, begin again type person.
Speaker C: Once I finish it, I send it to her and then I just can’t work on two things at once.
Speaker C: The worlds are too different and Branches is more of a dark romance and in the second one they’re healing, et cetera.
Speaker C: But my other books are more crime and I don’t need any sort of overlap.
Speaker B: Right, well, as I said at the beginning, I have two current in progress ones.
Speaker B: One’s about 30,000 words in.
Speaker B: The other one I’m like 2000 words in, but I put the one on the back burner.
Speaker B: It’s like fantasy Sci-Fi dystopian, kind of.
Speaker B: And then the one that I’m currently working on is more fantasy romance.
Speaker B: Saying two different one is fairy tale retelling.
Speaker B: One is I made everything up, but I put the one on pause because I’m like that one.
Speaker B: My brain just I would sit there and stare at the screen and I’m just like, there are no words coming for this book.
Speaker B: My brain is like over in fairytale land.
Speaker B: So finally I’m like, I had an idea for that book, the fairy tale one last Christmas.
Speaker B: And so that one has been taking over my brain.
Speaker B: So I was trying to force the Sci-Fi one and it just didn’t work.
Speaker B: Yeah, so I’m like, we’re just going to put pause on that.
Speaker B: We’ll work on this other one, maybe.
Speaker B: I talked to April Barry a few weeks ago and she talked about how she tried to write fantasy at first and she could never finish a book.
Speaker B: And then she wrote Romance and now she’s written I don’t even know how many books.
Speaker C: There’s a lot.
Speaker C: And I’ve read almost all of them.
Speaker B: Yeah, so I’m like, I feel like that may have been it.
Speaker B: I’m just not a Sci-Fi, which I don’t even read Sci-Fi books normally.
Speaker B: So why I thought let’s write that first, I don’t know.
Speaker B: And I may come back to it eventually.
Speaker B: But this other one is just like I have seriously, the Sci-Fi one, as I was writing it, it was like all dialogue, barely any inner dialogue, just all like them talking with nothing in between.
Speaker B: Just talk, talk.
Speaker B: And then spice.
Speaker C: You’re writing a screenplay, basically.
Speaker B: And then this other one I’m like, I’m 1200 words in and there has not been a lick of dialogue yet, except I had 40 word plus sentences in there.
Speaker B: Whatever.
Speaker B: So you are in the final stuff for book three.
Speaker B: I didn’t actually check.
Speaker B: Do you have any audiobooks?
Speaker B: Are you considering audiobooks at some point?
Speaker C: At some point I just don’t have the income sort of thing.
Speaker B: That is the one thing I’ve heard.
Speaker C: It’s bad and then it’s just there’s.
Speaker C: So I started writing almost a year ago and I’ve written six books, so I kind of have so much right now that I’m like, I don’t know what to do.
Speaker B: Because you were talking about it feels like you want someone else to have written the book or whatever.
Speaker B: I narrated a book and that was the one thing the narrator said when I was listening.
Speaker B: She said, When I was listening to your narration, I felt like it wasn’t my book anymore, it was someone else’s book.
Speaker B: Because it fresh take on it, not the dry monotone read of Microsoft Word that might help you, but there’s always options.
Speaker B: I had talked about I came across a video earlier where the lady was talking about do not use ACX, which is what most indie authors do use.
Speaker B: But then she went to talk about she went through some other website where the narrator didn’t research the words ahead of time, just mispronounced normal words that you could have looked up how to pronounce, which should not have happened.
Speaker B: And then they also didn’t make sure it was retail ready.
Speaker B: So it’d be like your book not being formatted, but in the audio version.
Speaker B: So there’s clicks and pops and weird buzzing in there.
Speaker B: They just recorded it and sent it and that was it.
Speaker B: I’m like, these are things that had you used ACX.
Speaker B: We’re not allowed to screw it up like that.
Speaker B: Her quality is going to come back and be like, yeah, what were you doing?
Speaker B: And she said, well, it was just so expensive.
Speaker B: I’m like, well now you’ve had to pay for a narrator and someone to edit the audio.
Speaker B: I’m like, how did that get cheaper?
Speaker B: Then there’s also like royalty share and stuff like that, which a lot of I don’t know that I really see.
Speaker B: Dark Romance up for auditions on there.
Speaker B: I see right now there’s a lot of like 20 year old terribly written smut.
Speaker B: There’s a lot of that up there right now with like 90s covers with like the big blocks of color on it.
Speaker C: When I initially started writing branches, I tried branches of the trail.
Speaker C: I didn’t think that mask was spicy.
Speaker C: People corrected me and said, whoa, this is pretty spicy.
Speaker C: And I was like, oh, my bad.
Speaker C: Because it’s so subjective, though, what is spice to someone is a walk in the park on Sunday for somebody else.
Speaker B: Right.
Speaker C: So for me, I was like, sorry.
Speaker C: So then I updated everything.
Speaker C: I know it’s not an actual genre according to Amazon, but I call them romantic thrillers because they are both romantic and thrillers.
Speaker B: Wouldn’t that be romantic suspense?
Speaker B: Which is a category?
Speaker C: Yeah, but one of them isn’t as.
Speaker C: Yeah, I suppose so.
Speaker C: They are in there.
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker B: The series I have done many a series where literally every book in the series would be classified in a different genre.
Speaker B: So don’t be afraid to do that.
Speaker B: I’ve also seen some where they only have it in one genre.
Speaker B: And I’m like, you realize you can have it in multiple ones and then more people see it, right?
Speaker B: Can’t you do like up to ten?
Speaker B: I think you have to email for the email.
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker C: So with branches, I decided I’m going to set out to write a spicy book so that my second one is spicier darker.
Speaker C: And people aren’t like, whoa, where did you suddenly come from writing?
Speaker C: Just what I thought was not.
Speaker C: But once I got started writing, the plot got away on me.
Speaker C: And some people think it’s super, super spicy.
Speaker C: Some people are like, this is pretty light and it’s subjective.
Speaker C: But the plot really took me and I’m like, I guess that’s just who I am.
Speaker C: I can’t just write smut.
Speaker B: This is going to sound so stupid.
Speaker B: I did not realize that people had varying tolerance levels for Spice.
Speaker B: I was writing my Sci-Fi book and I had my best friend Alpha reading it.
Speaker B: And I had written like a spicy scene.
Speaker B: And she was like, whoa.
Speaker B: And I’m like, what do you mean?
Speaker B: That’s really tame.
Speaker B: And then I’m like, wait a second.
Speaker B: She reads mostly ya.
Speaker B: I’m like, oh no.
Speaker B: So I send her my fantasy book, the romance one to read.
Speaker B: And I’m like, my husband’s like, you really she’s going to have to tap out, right?
Speaker B: Like, she’s not going to be able to handle it.
Speaker B: And I’m like, oh, no, I post, like, a video on TikTok.
Speaker B: And I’m like, I need your one to five star recommendations.
Speaker B: And what do you qualify?
Speaker B: What is a one to you?
Speaker B: What is a five to you?
Speaker B: So we know what the scale we’re measuring on for I saw your post.
Speaker C: But I was like, I don’t know.
Speaker C: When I started dark romance, I started with HD.
Speaker C: Carlton.
Speaker C: I mean, I didn’t really start off light, see?
Speaker B: And I started off with like at like, I don’t know, probably twelve or 13 with like, Nicholas Sparks.
Speaker B: And now I’ve had let’s see, I read what is her name?
Speaker B: Sierra Simone.
Speaker B: That’s probably the Spiciest that I’ve read so far.
Speaker B: I don’t think it’s the Spiciest that I own.
Speaker B: I have quite a lot that I haven’t actually read right now that’s sitting on shelves.
Speaker B: But I’m like, there’s a wide range.
Speaker B: Wide, wide, wide range.
Speaker C: So I do sell, like, signed paperbacks.
Speaker C: And I had some friends and extended family.
Speaker C: So with the first one, they bought the signed copy.
Speaker C: Two of my people who buy whatever I write, they buy.
Speaker C: One is close to 80.
Speaker B: Okay.
Speaker C: And one is 78.
Speaker C: And so the first one, they were like, this is really good.
Speaker C: I mean, spicy, but those scenes.
Speaker C: And I was like and then so for the second one for branches, I know significantly more.
Speaker C: And my son’s aunt wanted one, or great aunt wanted one.
Speaker C: And I was like, okay.
Speaker C: And she is like in her late seventy s.
Speaker C: And I’m like, yeah, that’s fine.
Speaker C: And then my other one is he is 78 or 79.
Speaker C: And I was like, no, you can’t buy my book.
Speaker C: No.
Speaker C: And he went to his wife and he was like, when is Tanner’s book coming out?
Speaker C: And blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker C: She was like, no.
Speaker C: And then he’d go to my oldest son.
Speaker C: My oldest son is 16.
Speaker C: And he reads not the spicy parts.
Speaker C: So I cut those parts out and he reads everything else just so that he’s really good at picking up inconsistencies or like, hey, use the wrong name over here.
Speaker C: So just another set of eyes.
Speaker C: And he is very mean about it, so it’s good.
Speaker B: And then you can punish him later.
Speaker C: So nothing.
Speaker C: Which is awesome.
Speaker C: But he would go to him and be like, when is your mother’s book coming out?
Speaker C: And he was like, no.
Speaker C: And we went about this for quite some time.
Speaker C: And I was just like, fine, thank you for supporting me.
Speaker C: Don’t read it.
Speaker C: And he read it in less than 24 hours because it is quite a mystery, an intense mystery throughout the book.
Speaker C: And that’s his kind of thing.
Speaker C: And he was like, Those scenes?
Speaker C: And I was like, yeah, I saw it in the movie.
Speaker C: And so but he, you know, like, loved the plot.
Speaker C: And he was like, when is the next one.
Speaker C: And I was like.
Speaker B: I do not have any idea that my husband will ever read my stuff.
Speaker B: Not that he makes fun of me for it.
Speaker B: Now I narrate from sweet fiction, ya fantasy, all the way up to erotica.
Speaker B: So I do not narrate under my legal name.
Speaker B: The only people that I know in real life that know what name I narrate under is, like, my mom and my sister and then my best friend, also my sister in law.
Speaker B: But she was given a disclaimer of, if you tell your mom, I will kill you.
Speaker B: My mother in law stayed with us a couple of months ago for, like, a week and a half, and I was quite literally narrating the worst erotica that I had done up to that point while she’s here.
Speaker B: And I’m just like, please don’t ever walk into the room you’re staying in, which is just outside the closet I narrate in, because last thing I need is you to walk in.
Speaker B: And I’m, like, in the middle of some spicy scene, and I don’t hear the you.
Speaker B: So there’s a reason I don’t post my reels cross posted onto Instagram and Facebook because most of the people that I know in real life aren’t on TikTok, where they are on other platforms.
Speaker B: So I’m like, I post about the podcasts, where I don’t ever post a video of me.
Speaker B: It’s always just, like, the audio clips from the podcast or the quotes from it.
Speaker B: So I’m like, could they recognize my voice?
Speaker B: Yeah, but most likely they won’t.
Speaker B: But yeah, it’s so funny.
Speaker B: I imagine that being the case.
Speaker B: I mean, they all know that I narrate, and they all know that I think they know that I’m writing.
Speaker B: Who knows?
Speaker B: But I will never tell them what name I use.
Speaker B: Yeah, I’m from the south.
Speaker B: I’m in Texas, and, like, most of my family goes to church and are very like, my grandfather’s a pastor.
Speaker B: You can know some things.
Speaker B: But also, my uncle’s in a Screamo band, so he’s the black sheep of the family, and so he does all this bunch of drugs and being in the party scene and all that.
Speaker B: He’s the black sheep because everybody else is perfect until they all started getting divorced.
Speaker B: But whatever.
Speaker B: It’s a different world sometimes, and I just keep my mouth shut in family situations because I’m like, you don’t want to know that I disagree with you because then you’re going to try to tell me why I’m wrong.
Speaker C: I’m definitely the black sheep.
Speaker C: I don’t really have any family, so it works out.
Speaker A: Tanya liked teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles growing Up Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, sometimes abbreviated to TMNT, is an American media franchise created by the comic book artists Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird.
Speaker A: It follows Leonardo, Michelangelo, Donatello, and Raphael, four anthropomorphic turtle brothers trained in new jitsu who fight evil in New York City.
Speaker A: Supporting characters include the Turtles, Rat Sensei, Splinter, their human friends april O’Neill and casey Jones and enemies such as baxter stockman crang and their arch enemy, the shredder.
Speaker A: The franchise began as a comic book, teenage Mutant ninja turtles, which eastman and laird conceived as a parody of elements popular in superhero comics at the time.
Speaker A: The first issue was published in 1984 by eastman and laird’s company, mirage studios, and was a surprise success.
Speaker A: Today we’ll be reading the hare and the tortoise from asop’s fables.
Speaker A: Don’t forget we’re reading lemourde arthur, the story of king arthur and of his noble knights of the roundtable on our patreon.
Speaker A: You can find the link in the show notes.
Speaker A: The hare and the tortoise.
Speaker A: A hare was one day making fun of a tortoise for being so slow upon his feet.
Speaker A: Wait a bit, said the tortoise.
Speaker A: I’ll run a race with you and I’ll wager that I win.
Speaker A: Oh, well, replied the hare, who was much amused at the idea.
Speaker A: Let’s try and see.
Speaker A: And it was soon agreed that the fox should set a course for them and be the judge when the time came.
Speaker A: Both started off together, but the hare was soon so far ahead that he thought he might as well have a rest.
Speaker A: So down he lay and fell fast asleep.
Speaker A: Meanwhile, the tortoise kept plodding on and in time reached the goal at last.
Speaker A: The hare woke up with a start and dashed on at his fastest but only to find that the tortoise had already won the race.
Speaker A: Slow and steady wins the race.
Speaker A: Thank you for joining freya’s fairy tales.
Speaker A: Be sure to come back next week for the conclusion of tanya’s journey to holding her own fairy tale in her hands and to hear another of her favorite fairy tales.
