Show Notes:
Today is part one of two where we are talking to Ty Carlson about his novels. Over the next 2 weeks you will hear about writing in middle school and developing his writing as he got older, researching the querying process, strategizing with other authors to get your pitch out there, listening to and implementing the advice of others, learning how to promote your books on social media, and his favorite advice to write even if you don’t feel like it.
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Ty Carlson is a sci-fi writer who delights in the unseen strangeness and wonder of “what if.” Growing up in the Ozarks of Arkansas gave him and his three siblings plenty of room to play knights and dragons or jungle explorers, igniting his imagination early on. Ty started writing at a very young age and his passion has only grown over time. He loved to read so much that he once was grounded from reading, a fact that his brothers tease him about to this day. He hopes readers discover new ways to see the world through the perspectives offered in the stories he tells.
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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 Ty Carlson about his novels.
Speaker A: Over the next two weeks, you will hear about writing in middle school and developing his writing as he got older, researching the querying process, strategizing with other authors to get your pitch out there, listening to and implementing the advice of others learning how to promote your books on social media and his favorite advice to write even if you don’t feel like it.
Speaker A: The shadowless.
Speaker A: The Everstorm is merciless.
Speaker A: The people who live beneath it are even worse.
Speaker A: The Earth has become a wasteland as a result of humanity’s mistreatment.
Speaker A: The sky has been dark for as long as anyone can remember, covered in an infinite rolling mass called the Everstorm.
Speaker A: There are no trees.
Speaker A: There is no hope.
Speaker A: Unless, of course, you’re one of the privileged to live in the protected cities beneath the domes.
Speaker A: In these cities, there are trees, parks full of vibrant grass, and even waterfalls.
Speaker A: All thanks to the solar energy harvested by those who have no choice but to brave the Everstorm.
Speaker A: Shipley bowden is a lowlife, working his way into the good graces of the citizens, hoping one day to be allowed a living space beneath the protective dome.
Speaker A: But when he stumbles upon an orphaned girl in the ruins of the past, he decides to deliver her to the nearest settlement and be done with it.
Speaker A: When Shipley runs afoul of violent marauders who call themselves the of Kings, he must draw upon all the knowledge he’s gained.
Speaker A: Only now he has a little girl to think about.
Speaker A: So the podcast is Freya’s Fairy Tales.
Speaker B: 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 when we were little.
Speaker B: Also, the journey for you to spend weeks, months or years working on your book, to hold that in your hands, is going to be a fairy tale for you.
Speaker B: So the first question I like to start off with what was your favorite fairy tale or short story when you were a kid and did your favorite change as you got older?
Speaker C: Yeah, so I loved reading when I was little, and we had a lot of books.
Speaker C: My parents were really they really encouraged us to read, and they would limit kind of what we read.
Speaker C: I didn’t read any Stephen King until I was an, which which was mean.
Speaker C: I love it.
Speaker C: But my favorite fairy tale, I think, was either Puss and Boots or The Emperor’s New Clothes.
Speaker C: I got a kick out of Emperor’s New Clothes, and I know it’s more like a morality story, but Hans and Gretel was always a winner.
Speaker C: We got the toned down version where they weren’t really eaten at the end.
Speaker C: They just kind of that was that was fun.
Speaker C: But as a high schooler, I got a complete works of Grimm’s fairy tales.
Speaker C: And that was eye opening to see all of and read all of the actual stories of how they originally kind of were and more of a terror horror version of what I had known growing up.
Speaker C: So that was really fun.
Speaker C: But Emperor’s New Clothes is kind of the one that I always go back to as what do I remember in my childhood, reading kind of over and over.
Speaker C: It was like, oh, man, what an idiot.
Speaker C: Like, I thought he had clothes on.
Speaker C: Ha.
Speaker B: And so at what age did you start writing your own stuff, whether that be short stories or actual novels?
Speaker C: Yeah, so I started reading or writing.
Speaker C: My first little story was third grade.
Speaker C: I wrote about four other siblings that I had.
Speaker C: It was called cointuflus in the family.
Speaker C: I only have three other siblings, and so I added a new one.
Speaker C: And then I wrote a story.
Speaker C: It started a story, a novel in 7th grade called The Betrayal Trilogy.
Speaker C: And I didn’t finish book one.
Speaker C: It’s still on my computer at 162,000 words, and it’s not very good.
Speaker C: I wrote in it from, like, 7th grade.
Speaker C: Essentially, it’s The Legend of Zelda.
Speaker C: Ocarin of Time is kind of what it is.
Speaker B: Okay.
Speaker C: And I have realized that I like the story, but it’s always going to remain one of those just a fairy tale, really, of like, I’m not going to finish that.
Speaker C: That’s my beginning.
Speaker C: It helped me get where I am now.
Speaker C: And so 7th grade is really where I started writing writing and then developed it through junior high and high school and actually started writing seriously in college and then post college.
Speaker C: Had an idea for a book and really kind of hit it hard to finish it just a few years ago.
Speaker B: And that would be the bench, right?
Speaker C: Yeah, that was the bench.
Speaker B: How long from whatever you started the book with to the first draft, how long did it take you to draft the first one?
Speaker C: I had the idea for about a year of kind of thinking this would be an interesting story, this would be a cool idea.
Speaker C: I talked to my wife about it actually kind of the impetus for the story is talking to her about an idea I had.
Speaker C: And then I wrote on and off in it for about eight months, and I got to 16,000 words, which is like, 30 pages, and then decided that I actually wanted to be a writer.
Speaker C: Before, it had just been kind of a hobby of like, yeah, I can do this in my time off, or I can do this whenever I have time.
Speaker C: And what I found is that I didn’t ever have time because I didn’t prioritize it, right?
Speaker C: So I decided, okay, so if I really want to finish this book, I’m going to have to buckle down and actually do it.
Speaker C: So in June of 2019, I actually started writing the book Diligently, and I finished it December of 2019.
Speaker C: 1st Draft I spent 2020 going back through it and editing and making sure that the story made sense and not editing in the sense of this doesn’t belong, I’m going to take it out.
Speaker C: This doesn’t belong, I’m going to take it out.
Speaker C: But editing in the sense of this needs to be a little bit more robust.
Speaker C: This needs more explanation.
Speaker C: This doesn’t make sense, so let’s adjust it.
Speaker C: I rewrote the first chapter a couple of times.
Speaker C: And so 2020 was all of that.
Speaker C: And by the end of 2020, I had what is now known as the bench, or mostly, and spent the first part of 2021 Querying and trying to look into what would look like to get published.
Speaker C: So it took about, from inception to completion, about two and a half years for me to finish the first one.
Speaker B: Okay.
Speaker B: And that included like, self edits and stuff like that too, though.
Speaker B: A couple of rounds, seven months for first draft.
Speaker B: And then it sounds like the next thing you did was heavy developmental type editing.
Speaker B: I never thought because I’m such a wordy individual when I talk, I never thought I would be an underwriter.
Speaker B: But I added like 10,000 words in my first edit and I was like.
Speaker C: Wow, see, I’m so glad that you said that because I went from 63,000 words to 81,000 words in my first edit.
Speaker C: My first edit was not taking hardly anything out.
Speaker C: It was adding a lot of content.
Speaker C: And then my second edit, I added 30,000 words, which I also rewrote part of the story, but it ended up almost double the size of my first draft simply because I added background and relevant information.
Speaker C: But Stephen King was like that too.
Speaker C: He claims that in his book, he adds stuff all the time.
Speaker B: So I started my first book.
Speaker B: That is not the one that’s about to come out for me, but I started my first book, got about 30,000 words in, and then I’m like I paused for like seven months working on I also narrate audiobooks so I was working on narrating and prepping other people’s audiobooks.
Speaker B: And so at the beginning of this year, whatever year we’re in 2023, I went back to the beginning and was like, we’re going to spend the time, we’re going to focus.
Speaker B: And I was like, Ten minutes a day?
Speaker B: I can get everybody else’s stuff done and focus on my book for ten minutes a day.
Speaker B: That’s easy.
Speaker B: Time to carve out.
Speaker B: And I went back to the beginning of it and was like, this is all dialogue.
Speaker B: There’s no internal dialogue to this.
Speaker B: I’m like, this is going to take a lot of rewriting.
Speaker C: Yes.
Speaker B: And that was the point where I realized that I was a severe underwriter.
Speaker B: The book that’s about to come out for me, I made sure to focus on, you need to add inner dialogue as I was writing it, so it wasn’t as bad.
Speaker B: But I know whenever I go back to that first book, it’s going to be a lot of adding stuff.
Speaker C: The struggle for me is realizing I’m a big ideas person, like, oh, wouldn’t this be a cool plot?
Speaker C: And then you realize in the middle of writing it, you have to describe what the sidewalk looks like and how their face looks and the color of the sky.
Speaker C: And it’s like, that has nothing to do with how amazing this story is.
Speaker C: Come on, let’s go, let’s go.
Speaker C: That’s what I had to add a lot of.
Speaker C: Yeah, and there’s like, expressions and people around them and whatever, but here’s the story.
Speaker B: So you said you spent some time querying.
Speaker B: What did that process kind of look like?
Speaker C: That was hard.
Speaker C: Querying is hard.
Speaker C: I spent about an hour a day researching.
Speaker C: It was a process.
Speaker C: And I had an Excel file and a notebook that I kept track of stuff in.
Speaker C: I spent an hour a day finding probably the best fits for what I wanted to query, which was like, Sci-fi.
Speaker C: And so I was looking really specifically at Sci-fi agents and Sci-Fi publishers.
Speaker C: And so I built a list of potential agents and publishers.
Speaker C: And then when I started querying, I would go to their websites, look what their query either their query dates are, because a lot of you know how it is.
Speaker C: A lot of companies are you can query between these times or these months, or I’m opening queries up in three months.
Speaker C: So I would make notes of those and keep track of it, and then I would get their template for what their query needs to look like, because all of them are different.
Speaker C: What do I need to include?
Speaker C: Cover letter?
Speaker C: Yes, no, that kind of thing.
Speaker C: And then I would make a list of all their requirements, and then I would go after that was complete, I would just go down the list.
Speaker C: And I started with just the A’s that I wanted to do, and then the B’s and the C’s, and would query and it took.
Speaker C: I sent out 78 total queries, which is not very much compared to a lot.
Speaker B: Right.
Speaker B: So did you actually end up getting signed?
Speaker C: I did, but not from any query.
Speaker C: I had five partial requests, two full requests, and no acceptances, which I knew that it was going to be very difficult to get into this, but back when X was Twitter, there was a.
Speaker B: I still call it Twitter, but me too.
Speaker C: I know there was not a contest, but there was like, every quarter, there was something called PitMad, and it was where you could pitch your book in one tweet, 240 characters, and if an agent or a publisher liked it, then that was essentially them requesting your manuscript, or at least a partial request.
Speaker C: So I did that three times, and it was the middle of 2020, the end of 2020, and the beginning of beginning of 2021, March.
Speaker C: And the first two attempts, I got a couple of likes, and nothing came out of that.
Speaker C: And then I actually went to Reddit, and I requested some help, and I posted my pitch, and I got a lot of feedback, and some of it was really hard, and I totally revamped my process.
Speaker C: And so then I kind of got a little bit more serious about it, and I downloaded a tweet deck, which doesn’t exist anymore for Mac, where you can schedule out your tweets.
Speaker C: And I scheduled out my tweets for, this is what my pitch is going to be like at 08:00 a.m., this is what my pitch is going to be like at 11:00 a.m..
Speaker C: And I would adjust it a little bit.
Speaker C: And I rallied a lot.
Speaker C: Not me.
Speaker C: I rallied with a lot of other authors and did a lot of retweets, did a lot of shares, did a lot of comments.
Speaker C: And so we kind of built this community on these PitMad events, where I was just retweeting hundreds and hundreds of these, and people were retweeting hundreds of mine.
Speaker C: And I got, like, twelve likes, and out of those, I got three agents and two publishers to do full requests.
Speaker C: And then my publisher that I ended up signing with was Four Horsemen Publications, and they did a full request and then offered me a contract a few weeks later.
Speaker C: When I got on the call with them, they were before the contract, they were excited about what I was writing, but they felt like it could be stronger, and so they asked if I would consider rewriting the first chapter.
Speaker C: For me, it was rewriting it again.
Speaker B: Right.
Speaker C: And I was like, I mean, if it can be better, yeah, of course I’ll rewrite it.
Speaker B: Right?
Speaker C: And they were really wonderful about, we think that your writing is fantastic, which, of course, was nice to hear.
Speaker C: But they said, we think it could be better, because the way that you have it started is kind of a trope.
Speaker C: It doesn’t seem very believable whenever you get into the story.
Speaker C: We really love the story, but the beginning is a little bit rough.
Speaker C: And so I said, yeah, absolutely, if you think it could be better like that.
Speaker C: I’m not so attached to my writing or so naive to think that my writing is perfect right now.
Speaker C: So they said, okay, great, so rewrite it, submit it again and let us know.
Speaker C: And I took a week to rewrite that first chapter, totally revamped it, and that chapter became what is now the bench’s first chapter.
Speaker C: And they offered me a contract after that and after I signed with them, and the contract is really great, and it’s a five year contract.
Speaker C: I talked to them and they said it was so nice and encouraging that you were willing to rewrite the first chapter because there were some authors that we’ve requested that with, and they said, absolutely not.
Speaker C: And I couldn’t understand that because if I thought someone came to me and said, we like your writing, but it could be stronger, I would definitely want an outsider’s perspective to be able to hold a little bit more weight than mine.
Speaker C: Of course I think my writing is good.
Speaker C: If I didn’t think it was good, I wouldn’t submit it.
Speaker B: Right?
Speaker C: I know it’s not perfect.
Speaker C: So to have them say that was really encouraging for me because I want to make sure that I’m still developing as a writer and as an author and having someone else say it’s good, but it could be better, just affirmed that, right?
Speaker B: That’s so weird.
Speaker B: So I just had an author well, more specifically, I was terrified to have beta readers read my book.
Speaker B: And so I got beta readers on TikTok, and there was like five of them that actually went through my book.
Speaker B: And like, four of them well, the prompt that I gave all of them was basically I wanted them to developmental edit, kind of, because I had done my edits, but I was like, I need an outsider’s perspective of like, hey, this doesn’t make sense.
Speaker B: It makes sense to me because I wrote it, but it may not make sense to other people.
Speaker B: So that was like the prompt I gave them, and four of them followed that prompt, and then one of them completely destroyed my book.
Speaker B: Completely destroyed it in a good way, though.
Speaker B: In a good way, in a very helpful like, you don’t need to say this because it’s implied.
Speaker B: You don’t need to do this because you’ve already said it 15 times in the previous three paragraphs and stuff like that.
Speaker B: So that same beta reader tagged me in another author looking for beta readers and was like, you can ask Freya about me as a beta reader.
Speaker B: And so my message to that author was long, but in that message, I was like, listen, you need other feedback and you need to set your ego aside because they’re not there to hate on you.
Speaker B: They’re not there to be mean.
Speaker B: They are there because they want to help you make your book the best that it can be.
Speaker B: And you need to set your ego aside, because if you’re going to think like, I’m the best writer ever, you’re not.
Speaker B: No one is.
Speaker B: You need to set your ego aside.
Speaker B: But I was like, this particular beta reader, I’m like, she will tear your book apart, but she will then help you put it back together if you ask her for help.
Speaker B: If you just want to take her feedback and implement it and be done with it, that’s fine too.
Speaker B: But if you give a suggestion if a beta reader gave me a suggestion, sometimes it wasn’t quite clear, like, well, what how do I fix that?
Speaker B: Right?
Speaker B: Just having the mind to allow the feedback.
Speaker B: Because if they are volunteering to help you and spend all this time with you, they want to make it better.
Speaker B: And clearly with, like, a publisher, their goal, obviously, is to sell copies, so they want to make it as best as they can to sell the copies.
Speaker C: Exactly it’s.
Speaker C: Exactly it.
Speaker C: If you’re not willing to accept that you’re very imperfect and your writing is not good in some spots, you’re not going to be successful.
Speaker C: That’s just kind of the bottom line.
Speaker C: And that’s something that I really try to internalize, is that I know that I can write, and I know I can write well, but I may not be able to write well all the time or about everything.
Speaker C: And so to have someone else come in and be able to say, my editor is really wonderful, and a lot of times she’d be like, I get the idea of this, but it doesn’t make sense.
Speaker C: Okay, that’s great advice.
Speaker C: So I would message her, and I’d be like, okay, so would you suggest this?
Speaker C: Or what about this?
Speaker C: I changed it.
Speaker C: And just having kind of a team that you both trust and that trusts you is really valuable because your beta readers, if they wouldn’t spend the time doing that, if they didn’t think, this isn’t going to make a difference, they’re not going to change it.
Speaker C: So it’s a two way street.
Speaker B: Well, as a debut, too, you’re looking at no one knows how you write or how you’re going to behave or if you’re going to implement any of this feedback at all.
Speaker B: So for those five people that saw that I implemented 99% of their feedback, they can then tell people in the future, like, hey, she listens, she’s going to do unless it completely like there was a couple of things that went against, like, oh, that’s a future book explanation thing, so I can’t explain it here.
Speaker C: Right?
Speaker C: Yeah.
Speaker C: This is foreshadowing.
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker B: So you go through the querying process, you don’t get picked up.
Speaker B: I actually have another author I narrated for that got picked up in the Pitch Mad, too.
Speaker B: Not my first time hearing about that.
Speaker B: So you go through that.
Speaker B: How long did the process from them signing you to getting it out, how long was that process?
Speaker C: Let’s see, we signed in June of 2021, and The Bench came out December 2021.
Speaker C: So it was pretty fast for publishing.
Speaker C: Yeah, they’re very quick.
Speaker C: Their big thing, and I love my publisher, I would not trade them for anything.
Speaker C: Their big thing is, we will edit your book, but we want you to have kind of creative control over it.
Speaker C: And there’s not been one time where I’ve pitched an idea and they’ve been like, no, we don’t want that as part of our kind of repertoire.
Speaker C: They’ve been like, okay, that sounds great.
Speaker C: So it’s been really fun.
Speaker C: And I have two works a year contract, so every six months I’m pumping out another one.
Speaker B: So you basically have a five year whatever you put out, they get first dibs kind of thing.
Speaker C: Yeah.
Speaker C: So I submit to them, they publish it under their kind of umbrella, and I can switch.
Speaker C: I’ve got a couple of series.
Speaker C: I’ve got the Deary Saga, which is the first one, the first book, The Bench, and then The Favorite and The Shadowless, and then this fourth one that comes out January, convergence of Gods is all the Deeri.
Speaker C: And then the fifth book that I started and I’m submitting in December is the first book in the Dominus trilogy, which is like true Sci-Fi, spaceships, aliens, lasers, planets, that kind of stuff.
Speaker C: Like genuine space opera really is kind of what it is.
Speaker C: Okay, so that’s going to be fun.
Speaker B: So it comes out in December, the first book.
Speaker B: What did you do when it came out?
Speaker B: Did you know to promote it?
Speaker B: Did you kind of just freak out?
Speaker B: What happened?
Speaker C: I wasn’t quite sure, and this was a little bit think.
Speaker C: I don’t think I was on TikTok yet for this.
Speaker C: I don’t even know if TikTok was popular enough yet.
Speaker C: But I did a lot of twitter was my main platform, so I had a lot of followers on Twitter and a lot of really good community on Twitter, and I promoted it through a lot.
Speaker C: I did some on Instagram.
Speaker C: I was never a big fan of Instagram.
Speaker C: I’m still not a huge fan of.
Speaker B: Instagram, but they’re all unnecessary evil to me.
Speaker C: Exactly.
Speaker C: So I did do a lot of my own marketing on Twitter, and then 2022, I think, is whenever I joined TikTok and really started pushing my stuff there.
Speaker C: And I like TikTok way more because there’s a lot more engagement.
Speaker C: I think being able to reply automatically with video and just the way that the platform is set up, I think it lends itself to being more fan based and creator based interactions.
Speaker C: So that’s what I use.
Speaker B: So you do.
Speaker B: That how I found out about you.
Speaker B: You did a giveaway a couple of months ago.
Speaker B: My husband won the books in oh, awesome.
Speaker B: So when did you start doing was that the first one that you had done or have you done multiples of those?
Speaker C: I think that was the first giveaway on TikTok that I had done.
Speaker C: I’d done a giveaway on Twitter for a signed copy of The Bench.
Speaker C: I think that was when it launched, too, back in December or January of 2021.
Speaker C: So, yeah, that was the first major giveaway where I really promoted it and worked really hard to kind of put it out there as much as I could.
Speaker C: Yeah.
Speaker B: And so now that I follow you, I see your videos sometimes.
Speaker B: So kind of like now that you have three books out, has what you do to promote things changed?
Speaker B: I know you said you added in TikTok.
Speaker C: Yeah.
Speaker B: What has the learning curve been like?
Speaker C: It’s steep and it changes constantly.
Speaker C: What’s popular on TikTok?
Speaker C: Today you wake up and yesterday it was like, memes and today it’s the Taylor Swift songs and tomorrow it’s going to be whatever else.
Speaker C: And so it’s a lot keeping up with it, and I don’t keep up with it very well.
Speaker C: I’ll do my own.
Speaker C: What I feel like a promotional video is where I’ll explain what The Bench is about, or I’ll explain what the Favorite is about.
Speaker C: I’ll do an excerpt from The Favorite or the Shadowless?
Speaker C: Or one time I did a TikTok Live where I read the first chapter of The Shadow List or the prologue.
Speaker C: And that was really cool.
Speaker C: There was a lot of people that thought that was a lot of fun.
Speaker C: And so I lean more towards being conversational with TikTok videos.
Speaker C: There’s not a lot that are like sound bites where I copy them and do my own twist on those, but you got to mix it up because that’s what TikTok demands.
Speaker C: So I do.
Speaker B: So now you also have audiobooks out.
Speaker B: How did that were you involved in did your publisher do those?
Speaker B: Did you do those?
Speaker B: How’d that come about?
Speaker C: Yeah, so my publisher does typesetting, cover art, audiobooks editing, all of that.
Speaker C: They do all that for me.
Speaker C: But I did get to pick the narrator.
Speaker C: And so kind of a funny story is my narrator’s name is Ken Allen, but he has a Pin name, or the equivalent of a Pin name, a voice name maybe, of what he would go under as when he narrated the other books that he’s done before.
Speaker C: My publisher started out as an erotica publisher almost exclusively, and so he would narrate all of the erotica books, and his narration name when I got it was Ken.
Speaker C: And then there was another person named Seth and another person named John.
Speaker C: And I listened to them read the first chapter of my book, and I decided which one I wanted.
Speaker C: I was like, you know, I really like Ken.
Speaker C: I think he’s going to be great.
Speaker C: And they were like, okay, perfect.
Speaker C: That’s who we’ll use for all of your books, they want to kind of keep maintain the same voice for all of the stories that you tell.
Speaker C: So my book came out, and I was super excited, and the audiobook came out, and I look and I said, it’s narrated by wait a second, who’s?
Speaker B: It.
Speaker C: Narrated by Ken B.
Speaker C: Erotica And I was like, Wait, that’s Ken.
Speaker C: That’s Ken.
Speaker C: That’s my narrator.
Speaker C: His pen name or voice name was Ken Erotic.
Speaker C: And I didn’t know that because I just had Ken.
Speaker C: And so my book is not erotic.
Speaker C: So I thought that was hilarious when people were like, oh, who narrates your book?
Speaker C: And I’d say, well, it was very fun, but now he does much more than just erotica, and so he’s changed when he does my books.
Speaker C: He’s ken Allen.
Speaker C: But that first one there for a while was narrated by Ken B.
Speaker C: Erotic.
Speaker C: He’s awesome.
Speaker C: I’m a big fan.
Speaker B: So I started narrating in September of 21, and then in January of 22 is when I got my first fiction.
Speaker B: So prior to that, I did nonfiction and author that landed the first fiction book with was like, I’m planning on writing some more erotic stuff.
Speaker B: Do you want to keep doing this under the same name or you want a different name or whatever?
Speaker B: And I’m like, all right, we’re going to do it.
Speaker B: So I pick a name and I tell all the fiction books that I had landed.
Speaker B: Like, hey, this is the name I’m gonna be narrating it under.
Speaker B: That’d be Freya Victoria.
Speaker B: Or it wasn’t Freya Victoria at the time.
Speaker B: And then one of them, I guess, looked up that name on Audible to see what other books I had done.
Speaker B: And they’re like, hey, did you do this massive quantity of erotica stuff?
Speaker B: And I’m like, no, let me pick a different name.
Speaker B: So I ended up with Freya Victoria, which works great.
Speaker B: That’s the name that I’ve been promoting myself under for a long time now, two years now, almost, because I started it in, like, January of 22.
Speaker B: So we’re coming up on two years under Freya, because the other name that I used, I still do.
Speaker B: If I ever land a nonfiction, which I haven’t in a very long time, I would still do it under the nonfiction name.
Speaker B: Same with, like, children’s books or things that don’t want to be grouped in with the spicier fantasy and romance books I’ve done.
Speaker B: It’s funny that you said that, because a lot of narrators, I think typically I see them call it a pseudonym instead of a synonym.
Speaker B: But, yeah, we’ll use different names for different genres, same as authors.
Speaker B: Authors do the same thing.
Speaker C: Yeah.
Speaker B: Go ahead.
Speaker C: My publisher said if I wanted to write erotica, I would need to change my name.
Speaker C: And I said, Well, I don’t have any plans on that, so we’ll talk about this later.
Speaker B: You’re like, Maybe not.
Speaker C: I get embarrassed when I write the one sex.
Speaker C: Scene in the bench.
Speaker C: I don’t think I could write erotica.
Speaker C: I’m much too shy about it.
Speaker B: I was a little bit scared for the first book that is about to come out.
Speaker B: I was like, I don’t know.
Speaker B: I have no problem with spicy books or writing Spice.
Speaker B: No problem with any of that at all.
Speaker B: But my brother in law was one of my beta readers.
Speaker B: I was like, Maybe I don’t want him to read that.
Speaker B: So I was really scared.
Speaker B: And then my characters kind of took over it and ended up being a super slow burn book.
Speaker B: But for his copy, before it gets to the Spice, there’s like two chapters of Spice in the whole book and they’re at the very, very end.
Speaker B: So I had Star star warning.
Speaker B: There are sex scenes past this point if you continue reading that’s on you.
Speaker C: Yes.
Speaker B: He said he basically just skimmed those sections.
Speaker C: Yeah, which is fine.
Speaker C: You’ll get feedback from other people.
Speaker B: Exactly.
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker B: And mine like yours.
Speaker B: For me, it was the first six chapters were the roughest that needed the most rewriting.
Speaker B: And then after that, even my editor didn’t have a lot to say.
Speaker B: After the first six chapters, you kind.
Speaker C: Of hit the groove and then things just kind of fall into place.
Speaker C: Yeah, I get it.
Speaker A: Ty liked Puss and Boots growing up.
Speaker A: Today we’ll be reading Charles Peralt’s version.
Speaker A: Don’t forget we’re reading LeMorte de 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 master cat or Puss in boots.
Speaker A: There was a miller who left no more estate to the three sons he had than his mill, his a** and his cat.
Speaker A: The partition was soon made.
Speaker A: Neither the scrivener nor attorney were sent for they would soon have eaten up all the poor patrimony.
Speaker A: The eldest had the mill, the second the a** and the youngest nothing but the cat.
Speaker A: The poor young fellow was quite comfortless of having so poor a lot.
Speaker A: My brothers said he may get their living handsomely enough by joining their stocks together.
Speaker A: But for my part, when I’ve eaten up my cat and made me a muff of his skin, I must die with hunger.
Speaker A: The cat who heard all this made as if he did not, said to him with a grave and serious air do not thus afflict yourself, my good master.
Speaker B: You’ve only to give me a bag.
Speaker A: And get a pair of boots made.
Speaker B: For me that I may scamper through.
Speaker A: The dirt and the brambles and you shall see that you’ve not so bad a portion of me as you imagine.
Speaker A: Though the cat’s master did not build very much upon what he said.
Speaker A: He had, however, often seen him play a great many cunning tricks to catch rats and mice, as when he used to hang by the heels or hide himself in the mule and make as if he were dead, so that he did not altogether despair of his affording him some help in his miserable condition.
Speaker A: When the cat had what he asked for, he booted himself very gallantly, and putting his bag about his neck, he held the strings of it in his two forepaws and went into a warren where was great abundance of rabbits.
Speaker A: He put bran and so thistle into his bag, and stretching himself out at length as if he had been dead, he waited for some young rabbit, not yet acquainted with the deceits of the world, to come and rummage his bag for what he had put into it.
Speaker A: Scarce was he lain down, but he had what he wanted.
Speaker A: A rash and foolish young rabbit jumped into his bag, and Monsieur Puss, immediately drawing close the strings, took and killed him without pity.
Speaker A: Proud of his prey, he went with it to the palace and asked to speak with his Majesty.
Speaker A: He was showed upstairs into the king’s apartment and making a low reverence, said to him, I’ve brought you, sir, a rabbit of the warren, which my noble lord the Marquis of Carabas, for that was the title which Puss was pleased to give his master, as commanded me to present to your Majesty from him.
Speaker A: Tell thy master, said the king, that I thank him, and that he does me a great deal of pleasure.
Speaker A: Another time he went and hid himself among some standing corn, holding still his bag open, and when a brace of partridges ran into it, he drew the strings and so caught them both.
Speaker A: He went and made a present of these to the king, as he had done before of the rabbit which he took in the warren.
Speaker A: The king, in like manner, received the partridges with great pleasure and ordered him some money to drink.
Speaker A: The cat continued for two or three months.
Speaker A: Thus to carry His Majesty from time to time game of his master’s taking one day in particular when he knew for certain that the king was to take the heir along the riverside with his daughter, the most beautiful princess in the world.
Speaker A: He said to his master, if you will follow my advice, your fortune is made.
Speaker A: You have nothing else to do but go and watch yourself in the river.
Speaker A: In that part I shall show you and leave the rest to me.
Speaker A: The Marquis of Caribus did what the cat advised him to, without knowing why or wherefore.
Speaker A: While he was washing, the king passed by, and the cat began to cry out as loud as he could, help, help.
Speaker B: My lord.
Speaker A: Marquis of Carabas is drowning.
Speaker A: At this the king put his head out of his coach window, and finding it was the cat who had so often brought him such good game, he commanded his guards to run immediately to the assistance of his lordship, the Marquis of Carabas.
Speaker A: While they were drawing the poor marquis out of the river.
Speaker A: The Cat came up to the coach and told the king that while his master was washing, there came by some rogues who went off with this clothes.
Speaker A: Though he had cried out thieves.
Speaker A: Thieves.
Speaker A: Several times as loud as he could, this cunning cat had hidden them under a great stone.
Speaker A: The king immediately commanded the officers of his wardrobe to run and fetch one of his best suits for the Lord Marquis of Carabas.
Speaker A: The king received him with great kindness, and as the fine clothes he had given him extremely set off his good mean, for he was well made and very handsome in his person.
Speaker A: The king’s daughter took a secret inclination to him, and the Marquis of Carabas had no sooner cast two or three respectful and somewhat tender glances, but she fell in love with him to distraction.
Speaker A: The king would needs have him come into his coach and take part of the airing.
Speaker A: The cat quite overjoyed to see his project begin to succeed.
Speaker A: Marched on before and meeting with some countrymen who are mowing a meadow.
Speaker A: He said to them, good people, you who are mowing, if you do not tell the king that the meadow you mow belongs to my Lord Marquis of Caribos, you shall be chopped as small as minced meat.
Speaker A: The king did not fail asking of the mowers to whom the meadow they were mowing belonged to.
Speaker A: My lord Marquis of Caribos, answered they altogether, for the cat’s threats had made them terribly afraid.
Speaker A: Truly a fine estate, said the king to the Marquis of Carabas.
Speaker A: You see, sir, said the Marquis, this is a meadow which never fails to yield a plentiful harvest every year.
Speaker A: The master cat, who still went on before, met with some reapers and said to them, good people, you who are reaping, if you do not tell the king that all this corn belongs to the Marquis of Carabas, you shall be chopped as small as mince meat.
Speaker A: The king, who passed by a moment after, would need snow, to whom all that corn which he then saw did belong to my lord Marquis of Carabas, replied the reapers, and the king again congratulated the Marquis.
Speaker A: The master cat, who went always before, said the same words to all he met, and the king was astonished at the vast estates of my lord Marquis of Carabas.
Speaker A: Monsir Puss came at last to a stately castle, the master of which was an ogre, the richest had ever been known, for all the lands which the king had then gone over belonged to this castle.
Speaker A: The cat, who had taken care to inform himself who this ogre was and what he could do, asked to speak with him, saying he could not pass so near his castle without having the honor of paying his respects to him.
Speaker A: The ogre received him as civilly as an ogre could do and made him sit down.
Speaker A: I have been assured, said the Cat, that you have the gift of being able to change yourself into all sorts of creatures you have a mind to.
Speaker A: You can, for example, transform yourself into a lion or elephant and the like.
Speaker A: This is true, answered the Ogre very briskly, and to convince you, you shall see me now become a lion.
Speaker A: Puss was so sadly terrified at the sight of a lion so near him that he immediately got into the gutter, not without abundance of trouble and danger, because of his boots, which were ill suited for walking upon the tiles.
Speaker A: A little while after, when Puss saw that the ogre had resumed his natural form, he came down and owned he had been very much frightened.
Speaker A: I have been moreover informed, said the cat, but I know not how to believe it, that you have also the power to take on you the shape of the smallest animals, for example, to change yourself into a rat or a mouse.
Speaker A: But I must own to you I take this to be impossible.
Speaker A: Impossible.
Speaker A: Cried the ogre.
Speaker A: You shall see that presently, and at the same time changed into a mouse and began to run about the floor.
Speaker A: Puss no sooner perceived this, but he fell upon him and ate him up.
Speaker A: Meanwhile, the King, who saw as he passed this fine castle of the Ogres, had a mind to go into it.
Speaker A: Puss, who heard the noise of His Majesty’s coach running over the drawbridge, ran out and said to the King your Majesty is welcome to this castle of my Lord Marquis of Carabas.
Speaker A: What?
Speaker A: My Lord Marquis.
Speaker A: Cried the king.
Speaker A: And does this castle also belong to you?
Speaker A: There can be nothing finer than this court and all the stately buildings which surround it.
Speaker A: Let us go into it, if you please.
Speaker A: The Marquis gave his hand to the Princess and followed the King, who went up first.
Speaker A: They passed into a spacious hall, where they found a magnificent collation, which the ogre had prepared for his friends, who were there that very day to visit him, but dared not to enter, knowing the King was there.
Speaker A: His Majesty was perfectly charmed with the good qualities of my Lord Marquis of Carabas, as was his daughter, who was fallen violently in love with him, and seeing the vast estate he possessed, said to him, after having drank five or six glasses, it will be owing to yourself only, my Lord Marquis, if you are not my son in law.
Speaker A: The Marquis, making several low bows, accepted the honor which His Majesty conferred upon him, and forthwith that very same day married the Princess.
Speaker A: Puss became a great Lord, and never ran after mice anymore, but only for his diversion.
Speaker A: The moral.
Speaker A: How advantageous it may be by long descent of Pedigree to enjoy a great estate, yet knowledge how to act, we see joined with consummate industry.
Speaker A: Nor wonder ye, thereat doth often prove a greater boon, as should be to young people known.
Speaker A: Another.
Speaker A: If the son of a miller so soon gains the heart of a beautiful princess and makes her impart sweet, languishing glances, eyes melting for love, it must be remarked to find clothes, how they move and that youth a good face, a good heir with good mean are not always indifferent mediums to win the love of the fair and gently inspire the flames of sweet passion and tender desire.
Speaker A: Thank you for joining Freya’s fairy tales.
Speaker A: Be sure to come back next week for the conclusion of Ty’s journey to holding his own fairy tale in his hands and to hear another of his favorite fairy tales.
