Show Notes:
Today is part one of two where we are talking to Enni Amanda about her novels. Over the next 2 weeks you will hear about teaching herself to read, writing from an early age, taking a long break from writing while learning other arts, knowing that you always consider learning to improve, accidentally publishing your first book, joining critique groups before being ready, going wide from the beginning, writing what you love, the marketing struggle, finding the books that you love, taking into account your personal strengths when listening to advice.
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Enni Amanda is a graphic designer moonlighting as a rom-com author, or maybe it’s the other way around. In 2006, she and her husband moved from Finland to New Zealand and fell in love with the gorgeous islands and their laid-back people. They spent eight years traveling between the two rather inconveniently located countries, studying filmmaking and running a film festival. Through all the filmmaking, Enni discovered a passion for screenwriting, which eventually led to writing books (a slippery slope). Her heart-warming, funny stories explore real-life issues like identity, found family, and the housing crisis. These days, she lives in the Waikato, close to the rolling hills of the Shire, raising two cute, rambunctious boys while writing away and ignoring housework.
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Transcript:
Speaker A: Welcome to Freya’s 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 our 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, Freya Victoria.
Speaker A: 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 today.
Speaker A: It’s part one of two, where we are talking to any Amanda about her novels.
Speaker A: Over the next two weeks, you will hear about teaching herself to read writing from an early age taking a long break from writing while learning other arts.
Speaker A: Knowing that you always must consider learning to improve.
Speaker A: Accidentally publishing your first book.
Speaker A: Joining critique groups before being ready going wide from the beginning writing what you love, the marketing struggle, finding the books that you love.
Speaker A: Taking into account your personal strengths when listening to advice.
Speaker A: My lucky star imagine having a celebrity doppelganger.
Speaker A: Now imagine a hot tv star asking you to impersonate that celebrity to save his career.
Speaker A: Failing to make it as an actress, Arya Dunn is back in her hometown of Napier, working as a location scout.
Speaker A: No more unattainable dreams, just casual clothing and low expectations until she finds a turkish tv star hiding out in the historic hotel she needs for her client.
Speaker A: SEM or Cam is desperate for good publicity after a drunken night ends with compromising photos with his family.
Speaker A: Banking on his success, he hatches a wild plan, a fake relationship with the New Zealand woman who looks like his old co star.
Speaker A: He just needs to keep his hands off her since they have no future.
Speaker A: That’s what everyone’s saying, and they’re right.
Speaker A: But the more time they spend together, the harder it is to stick to the script.
Speaker A: Swept into Istanbul’s glitz and glamour, Arya is forced to reevaluate her sensible life plan.
Speaker A: Should she give her acting dream one more go?
Speaker A: And what is she supposed to do with the turkish heartthrob?
Speaker A: In the most unattainable dream of all, my lucky star is a story about rediscovering passion when your dreams have failed you.
Speaker A: It’s also a story of all that is hot and turkish men tea kebabs like a dizzy in book form but with a lot more heat.
Speaker A: Escape to New Zealand and Istanbul with this spicy slow burn.
Speaker A: Rom.com 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 watched or read or had read to us when we were kids.
Speaker B: Also, the journey for you to spend weeks, months or years working on your book to hold that in your hands is a fairy tale for you.
Speaker B: So you said you’ve heard the podcast before, so you know, first question I’m going to ask is what was your favorite fairy tale when you were a kid and did that favorite change as you grew up?
Speaker C: That’s a great question.
Speaker C: I grew up in Finland speaking finnish and reading in Finnish, so I don’t think we had access to all the same stuff.
Speaker C: And that’s where I will say that I didn’t actually read fairy tales as in the classic fairy tales.
Speaker C: I think those were kind of delivered through Disney or they were the that type of not really reading, but they were more turned into those kids know, you’d see something like Cinderella and it would be an animated film, not really a fairy tale.
Speaker C: I wish I’d been read fairy tales, but no, I think my mum and dad went for some local things and there was like, I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of Moomin trolleys.
Speaker C: That was my big favorite as a kid.
Speaker B: No, but I’ve never had one world.
Speaker C: Created by a finnish swedish author, Duveyanson.
Speaker C: And yeah, it’s beautiful.
Speaker C: I think Japanese, some japanese team picked it up and made like an animated film out of it or series, and it’s been done again since then.
Speaker C: So we had the books and we had coming from different culture and it’s like a different fairy tale.
Speaker C: Some of the english ones were there, but they were kind of like part of the mix.
Speaker C: So I do remember, I remember loving things like Pinocchio because it’s like the whole concept of someone becoming real because you love them.
Speaker C: So just, and I recently saw the Guillermo del Toro’s version of that gorgeous animated film and it just reminded me of how much I love that story.
Speaker C: But my problem is that I never really think about the past.
Speaker C: I’m like very future oriented person.
Speaker C: So when someone asks me what happened in my childhood or what I liked, I was like, I really takes me a long time to kind of go like, oh, do I have any memories of my childhood?
Speaker C: What can I access?
Speaker C: Can I actually pull anything out of it.
Speaker C: And I was like, well, fairy tale.
Speaker C: I think there are so many books that are informed by fairy tales or influenced by fairy tales that are kind of like, you end up reading fairy tales in different ways.
Speaker C: Even if you’re not Grimm’s classics or something, you’re still reading fairy tales of different twists and takes on them.
Speaker C: So I do remember reading.
Speaker C: I read everything Enid Blighton had, like, everything that was translated at our local library.
Speaker C: Those were like, I just loved anything with adventure and anything with detective stories, mysteries, that kind of thing.
Speaker C: So that was really where I went.
Speaker C: As soon as I learned to read and kind of build up, I taught myself to read, because in Finland, you go to school when you’re seven.
Speaker C: And I thought that was too long to wait.
Speaker C: I was five years old, and I was just fascinated by letters, and I needed to know what things said and what it meant and all that.
Speaker C: So I figured it out by myself.
Speaker C: And I think my dad was very much against it because he was like, oh, that’ll be the end of your childhood.
Speaker C: Like, don’t learn to read.
Speaker C: So it was almost like this forbidden thing.
Speaker C: I was supposed to continue my childhood.
Speaker B: Which makes you want to do it more when you’re a kid, doesn’t it?
Speaker C: Exactly.
Speaker C: So here’s a great trick to get your kids to read is, like, tell them that they’re not allowed, which I’ve failed myself as a parent because I’m always pushing books to my kid, and like, hey, here’s a great one.
Speaker C: And he’s like, I don’t want to read it, mom, because you gave it to me and because you told me to read, I don’t want to do it.
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker C: How have I not learned this?
Speaker B: So at what age did you start writing?
Speaker C: Well, I wrote my first book when I was eleven.
Speaker B: Okay.
Speaker C: I think it was mostly because my dad had bought a computer.
Speaker C: He was very much into technology, and he had to have the latest gadgets, so he got the first Amstrad 64 that was available.
Speaker C: I think some people had the commodore, but we had Armstrat, very similar.
Speaker C: We’re talking about, like, two color screen, right?
Speaker C: And no mouse, just the keyboard and lots of commands, short commands to bring up this very rudimentary program where you can write.
Speaker C: So, yeah, I started experimenting with that.
Speaker C: It was actually writing on the computer, and this was the 90s.
Speaker C: This was really early, kind of, and I got printed on this matrix printer that had, like, a green and white stripes and these holes in the side, and it came out this long continuous.
Speaker C: I still have a pile like, my mom kept this printing.
Speaker C: It’s fading, very much fading now, but still tell the letters.
Speaker C: So I wrote a story.
Speaker C: It was quite a long one, lots of chapters, and it was like 70 pages long in this printed format.
Speaker C: I spent quite a long time on it.
Speaker C: That was my first sort of attempt.
Speaker C: Then I went a completely different direction and didn’t do any writing other than for school or something like that.
Speaker C: For long, long.
Speaker B: I imagine in school you would have been doing short stories and essay more.
Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, I did, obviously.
Speaker C: And this is all still me in Finland writing in Finnish.
Speaker C: So again, yeah, very different in that sense.
Speaker C: So feels like a different world for me.
Speaker C: But I did.
Speaker C: Yeah, I did write quite a bit of that.
Speaker C: I enjoyed it and I did well at school.
Speaker C: And writing was always the easy subject and something that came easily, and I loved it.
Speaker C: But I didn’t really think about writing my own stories after that first attempt.
Speaker C: For some reason, I started doing more and more arts and drawing and something my kids trying to come in.
Speaker C: So I focused on art, and writing was just something that.
Speaker C: It was like a handy skill to have.
Speaker C: It’s good.
Speaker C: But I didn’t think about it for a long, long time until I went to film school and started writing screenplays.
Speaker C: And that’s when I was like, oh, I have all these stories I want to tell and all these things I want to do.
Speaker C: But I was then trying to write them all in the screenplay format because obviously I was studying that and I was thinking visually, and it’s, again, a very different medium.
Speaker C: And it’s an interesting introduction to the world of writing, again, because it forces you to focus on the visual and how it’s going to turn into a film.
Speaker C: And there’s a lot of things that you can’t do.
Speaker C: The rules are kind of, like, a lot stricter than with writing novels.
Speaker C: You have to stay out of their heads.
Speaker C: You have to find a visual way to represent anything.
Speaker B: Right.
Speaker C: Yeah.
Speaker C: Sometimes it felt really slow and difficult, but it never flowed in that sense.
Speaker C: Maybe because of the format as well, because you’re writing in this sort of, the script format isn’t not the nicest reading experience.
Speaker C: Even if you’re reading, it’s different.
Speaker C: And this is like, many years later.
Speaker C: I went to film school when I was in New Zealand, and I was already, like, 27 years old.
Speaker B: Okay, so that’s from twelve to 27.
Speaker B: That’s 15 years.
Speaker C: Yeah.
Speaker B: And so when did you make the switch from scripts into novels again?
Speaker C: Into novels?
Speaker C: Yeah, that was a lot later.
Speaker C: I must have been, like, 37 when I was expecting my second child.
Speaker C: And I don’t know, that was my deadline.
Speaker C: I was like, oh, when I have two kids, then I had this insane fear that I won’t have time for anything else anymore.
Speaker C: So I had a bit of, right now that I’m still pregnant, I mean.
Speaker B: That is a logical way to think of it.
Speaker B: There’s always that little bit of, you make time for what you want to make time for, too.
Speaker C: Yeah, I think it is.
Speaker C: Then you just focus.
Speaker C: And that was so easy.
Speaker C: That just felt so easy.
Speaker C: I think I was reading more sort of women’s fiction and chiclet and romance or whatever I was called back then.
Speaker C: Not really.
Speaker C: Not a lot of romance, to be honest.
Speaker C: I wasn’t fully aware of the genres back then.
Speaker C: I just picked up whatever looked interesting in the library and just read it.
Speaker C: So I wasn’t steeped into the world of romance or writing or anything like that.
Speaker C: I had never even heard of bookstagram or book talk, but I had this idea that I understand the basic workings of story.
Speaker C: I’ve read whole lot of these craft books when I was studying screenwriting, and I kind of, I continued studying screenwriting and writing screenplays after film school.
Speaker C: So I kind of did that and did some filmmaking and ran a film festival and did a whole lot of things.
Speaker C: So that was always part of my world.
Speaker C: And then, I don’t know, I think I read some chiclet book, and I was like, yeah, I can see how this is put together.
Speaker C: I can do this.
Speaker C: This seems like a really easy genre, which is really deceptive.
Speaker B: I feel like every genre has its challenges.
Speaker C: Yeah, it really does.
Speaker C: Deeper you go, the more challenging it is.
Speaker C: But I think it’s good that you get that first nudge that idea that, hey, this seems easy, I’ll just try it.
Speaker C: I mean, if you didn’t, then you’d never really start, right?
Speaker C: If I told everyone how difficult it really was, in the end, it’s like, I don’t really actually want to put people off, because if you feel like it’s easy and anyone could do it or you could do it better, then you should try.
Speaker C: And it’s like the only way to get started and get sucked into it.
Speaker C: And then you keep developing and learning, and that’s the fun part.
Speaker B: When there’s so many authors that I’ve talked to that you may think, oh, this is easy.
Speaker B: And you may get a page, a chapter, two chapters done, and then the idea kind of fizzles out and then you get another idea and you write another couple of chapters and you keep building on that until you’re finally able to.
Speaker B: Now, there are some authors that put pen to paper or whatever your writing medium is, and pump out this full blown novel right off the bat.
Speaker B: But for the most part, it’s a lot of starting with poetry or short stories or something smaller, and then building up to the full length novels.
Speaker B: I don’t know that I ever paid attention to specific genres.
Speaker B: I know for me, epic fantasies seem terrifying because of all of the big things that you have to do in an epic fantasy for it to be an epic fantasy.
Speaker C: And that’s a crazy thing, because when I was writing screenplays, I didn’t even classify them as being any particular genre, because there’s, like, different terms that you use when you’re selling a screenplay.
Speaker C: It’s often you’re just comparing it to certain things that were before, and it’s less genre based, or people don’t talk about genre as much.
Speaker C: But I wasn’t in the romance side of things at all.
Speaker C: I don’t think I ever wrote anything that had much romance in it.
Speaker C: It was all like, paranormal and very action adventure, very high concept.
Speaker C: I went for high concept every time.
Speaker C: It was like, I have one tv pilot that set in the afterworld.
Speaker C: It was all afterlife, mostly afterlife based.
Speaker C: Lots of the work goes into building and making the concept work.
Speaker C: Like, this is rules of it.
Speaker C: So it’s a lot like fantasy in that there’s a world that looks like ours, works a little different.
Speaker C: These are the rules.
Speaker C: This is where it resembles our world, and this is where it doesn’t.
Speaker C: So there’s a whole lot of that.
Speaker C: Yeah, it’s funny.
Speaker C: And I went from that and it’s like, I’m going to start writing novels and there’ll be romance.
Speaker B: So you went from no romance to, oh, Chiclet will be easy.
Speaker B: And then what happened?
Speaker C: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker C: I wrote my first book, which was.
Speaker C: Well, and then classified as a sweet romance.
Speaker C: That’s what I found out it was after I wrote it, it’s like, okay, that’s what people are calling it, because it didn’t have any sex on page and it was in two povs and very much focused on this one love story.
Speaker C: And I wrote it mainly because I spent years doing this research on living in a tiny house, because I had this dream, like, we’re going to one day live in a tiny house, build a tiny house.
Speaker C: But our family was growing, and that dream was slipping away with, like, with the picking kids.
Speaker C: I don’t think we’ll ever fit in a tiny house.
Speaker C: Like, this is not going to happen.
Speaker B: Not comfortably.
Speaker C: Definitely not comfortably.
Speaker C: And I didn’t want that research to go to waste.
Speaker C: So I was like, I can put that in a book, and I can live this experience through someone else in a different life situation.
Speaker C: That was my way of saying goodbye to the tiny house.
Speaker C: Dream of, like, I’ll just write a book.
Speaker B: So how long did it take you to get the first draft of it done?
Speaker C: I wrote it kind of on and off for maybe six or seven months until the baby came.
Speaker C: I didn’t know anything about editing or publishing or anything at that stage.
Speaker C: My whole experience was filmmaking and design and film festivals and things like that wasn’t really useful.
Speaker C: And I think I accidentally published it by uploading it on matchworth.
Speaker B: You accidentally published?
Speaker C: Yeah.
Speaker C: I didn’t understand.
Speaker C: I was trying to create an EPub file out of it or something.
Speaker B: Okay.
Speaker C: And I was using that website to do that.
Speaker C: And I was just like, I googled something.
Speaker C: I can’t remember exactly what I did, but at some point I was like, it’s actually on this website now.
Speaker C: And I had created a cover for it because I’m a graphic designer.
Speaker C: So I was like, I wrote a story, so it should have a cover, right?
Speaker C: So it was there and I put it as part of it.
Speaker C: I thought, well, that’s cool if it’s, like, part of the epub file.
Speaker C: And then I was on the website and people were, like, paying money to read, and I was like, what’s happening here?
Speaker B: I.
Speaker B: So you didn’t have it edited, you accidentally published it, and then what did you do?
Speaker C: Yeah, you can take this route to publishing everybody.
Speaker C: So I kind of retrospectively learned everything I need to know about publishing, and I don’t know everything, but I mean, a lot more than that.
Speaker C: Looking back, I’m like, wow.
Speaker B: Everybody has to start somewhere.
Speaker B: So people are buying your book.
Speaker B: Were they, like, leaving reviews when I’ve.
Speaker C: Just had a baby and I just really all over the place, didn’t know what’s going on.
Speaker C: It was just something that happened on the side when there was bigger things happening in my life, so it wasn’t that focused.
Speaker C: Yeah.
Speaker C: But from then, I went into writing another book because I felt like, well, that wasn’t too hard.
Speaker C: I could just keep going and see what happens with the next one, which was also very much a sweet romance and more sort of yaish.
Speaker C: And I didn’t really realize these things back then.
Speaker C: I wasn’t thinking of the character ages or things like that.
Speaker C: It was more about, oh, what would be a cool storyline or theme to explore.
Speaker C: I think I’m still a little bit like that.
Speaker C: I can’t go tropes first, or I always think of the theme.
Speaker C: I’m like, there’s got to be a theme that I’m really excited about.
Speaker C: And then everything else comes later.
Speaker C: So I wrote another book that was some similar things, but also there’s this whole, like, a little adventure, bit of a mystery storyline going through.
Speaker C: And there’s this lady looking for her father who comes to New Zealand, and there’s the location.
Speaker C: I really wanted to go to Waihi beach.
Speaker C: We didn’t have time to travel back then.
Speaker C: And it was again, like a way to spend time in this gorgeous place.
Speaker C: I can do it through my book.
Speaker C: And then I made the mistake, I suppose, of joining this big critique group on Facebook where you have, like, 30 something people reading your book.
Speaker C: I got their roster and I read and reviewed and kind of gave feedback on a whole lot of manuscripts.
Speaker C: And then it was my turn and I sent them mine.
Speaker C: And then I got all this feedback and it was just way too much feedback.
Speaker C: Like, I could not process it.
Speaker C: Like, 35 sets of feedback on one.
Speaker C: I was like, obviously, I’d been unclear about who I was writing to in terms of, like, it wasn’t that close to my first book, and this was a women’s fiction writers group, so everyone was kind of, like, looking at the book going like, well, this isn’t enough of a woman’s fiction story.
Speaker C: They were trying to pull and kind of push me towards giving the side characters more stories and things like that, things that didn’t have to do with the main romance.
Speaker C: And it took me a long time to figure out that that was where the problem was, that that’s what I was like.
Speaker C: I was rewriting and rewriting and kind of going like, I don’t even like this anymore.
Speaker C: I don’t know what it is.
Speaker C: And then I had to go back and really, like, I eventually just rewrote it as a romance because that’s what I wanted to do in the first place.
Speaker B: Right.
Speaker C: I realized that I was in the wrong place with the wrong people.
Speaker C: Getting feedback from people who read, didn’t really read romance or even value romance that much.
Speaker C: It was like, romance was this, like, sidetrack or afterthought.
Speaker C: The other book that I’d read and I kind of, like, still didn’t.
Speaker C: Took me embarrassingly long to put together that this is really why I shouldn’t have put my romance book to that group to be judged and get feedback because it was just confusing the heck out of me.
Speaker C: I just couldn’t.
Speaker B: I can’t even imagine, though.
Speaker B: Essentially you had like 35 beta readers.
Speaker B: Wrong.
Speaker C: Exactly.
Speaker B: Wrong genre.
Speaker B: Beta readers.
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker B: I limited mine to like, way to.
Speaker C: Get yourself super confused.
Speaker B: I did mine.
Speaker B: My first book went to five, but they knew what they were getting.
Speaker B: Next book I’m going to send to an extra five, so I’m going to do ten for the next book because I was like, five wasn’t quite enough, but 30, I think, would be way too much feedback on any book.
Speaker C: Like three or four at the moment, that’s all I need.
Speaker C: If they are like people who’ve read before and if you have people who you trust already, then you don’t have to do the numbers.
Speaker B: I think mine is a lot of.
Speaker B: So I had five, but only one gave, like, really big feedback.
Speaker B: But I also didn’t really know what to prompt them with for the first one.
Speaker B: So I’m going to do a bigger group with the second one just to help weed down the team, basically, which I don’t want.
Speaker C: That’s a good way to look at it.
Speaker B: I’m like, I don’t want to spend ten books trying to weed it down.
Speaker B: Like, let’s figure out who’s going to give the best advice in the first two or three, and then we’ll limit.
Speaker C: The team and people, they become unavailable, and then you have.
Speaker C: It’s an ongoing process, I think.
Speaker C: But I think the whole idea behind this large group of people is that you have to look at it like you’re a data analyst.
Speaker C: When you get your feedback, it’s like, how many people mentioned this thing?
Speaker C: How many people mentioned that you’re gathering.
Speaker B: All these statistics and then going like.
Speaker C: Okay, if 30% of people said that this was an issue, I’m going to look at it.
Speaker C: If it’s under 30, I won’t.
Speaker C: I should have done it like that, but I’m really not a mathematician.
Speaker C: That’s not my thing at all.
Speaker C: So I was reading every piece of feedback going like, oh, I really respect this person and I should listen to them.
Speaker C: It took me ages to get through it.
Speaker C: So I’d rather now just go for those three trusted people and get their feedback.
Speaker C: But I think when you write more and more, you start to develop this confidence in how you’re telling the story and what is the story that you’re telling.
Speaker C: And you also end up reading more and more in that particular genre and you start to understand it better.
Speaker C: So you have this idea in your mind of, this is where I’m going with this.
Speaker C: I’m writing a book, and it’s going to be like that.
Speaker C: Like that book.
Speaker C: You have these comps in your mind already.
Speaker C: It’s like writing a book that’s similar to these.
Speaker C: So it becomes easier, I think, in that sense.
Speaker C: And then you don’t need that sort of statistical analysis, feedback kind of thing, which is really, for me, it was quite off putting.
Speaker B: I think the only way I’d be able to handle that quantity of feedback would be if everybody was on the same Google Doc.
Speaker B: And so they were all commenting on the same exact thing.
Speaker B: Because, like mine, I asked my five people ahead of time, do you want me to send it all as one document or as multiple documents?
Speaker B: Because I’d talked to authors who did it either way and they were like, no, send it all to us individually so that we’re not influenced by the other people’s.
Speaker B: If someone really doesn’t like something, it doesn’t turn into everybody dogging on me for writing that thing.
Speaker C: I think there are apps that actually deliver that.
Speaker C: I haven’t used it for a while, but there’s like beta reader I o something where everyone does give individual feedback, but it all shows up in the same document and kind of shows you.
Speaker C: It starts to paint red the problem area where everyone was commenting or something like that.
Speaker B: I think because everybody was familiar with Google Docs, that’s why I went that way.
Speaker B: I didn’t even know that there was a platform that did that, but then everybody would have to know how to learn how to use it.
Speaker C: I find that major hurdle for that, and I also needed to learn how to use.
Speaker B: I’ll probably stick to Google Docs.
Speaker C: And the problem is, when you approach new people, you don’t want to onboard them onto new technology every time.
Speaker C: That’s a major thing to do.
Speaker C: When people know how to use word and know how to use Google Docs, it’s just so much easier to go with what’s already there, and you want to focus on the writing.
Speaker C: And if you’re part of one of those critique groups, they usually have their own rules and how things are done.
Speaker C: And in that one, you just got your word doc back with comments like times, however many, I think mine just happened to be a really large number in that month.
Speaker C: They just had a lot of reviewers and people, a lot of readers, but essentially you just have to kind of adjust.
Speaker C: Like, I wasn’t even writing in word, but I had to convert my manuscript into word format and learn to work in that because everyone was using it.
Speaker C: And then as I started really using editors and proofreaders and working with them, then I’d have to send my book in word format, and I had to be more comfortable with going between different formats.
Speaker B: So your first book that accidentally got published, I assume you pulled it down at some point.
Speaker B: How long did it take you?
Speaker B: Or is that version still up on there?
Speaker C: No, not that version.
Speaker C: I later on discovered that there was this place called Amazon selling books way more than just a little bit.
Speaker C: Never even shopped on Amazon for anything.
Speaker C: Not that I remembered, because it wasn’t like I’ve lived in Finland and New Zealand my whole life.
Speaker C: You can order it from Amazon here, but it’s not like a giant thing my husband does for certain things, and I now order books sometimes, but again, it doesn’t service New Zealand very well.
Speaker B: That company, yeah.
Speaker C: So we have other ways of buying things that you’re not that used to.
Speaker C: I think it didn’t occur to me at the.
Speaker C: Yeah, I pulled it from smashwords.
Speaker C: At some point I think I realized that I can go to Amazon and I can actually get this ready and publish it for real.
Speaker C: And then I discovered drafted digital so I could get it through them to all the other channels.
Speaker C: I didn’t even know about Ku at the moment, so I just went like wide everywhere.
Speaker C: And I think that was a good decision.
Speaker C: And I’ve gone back being wide after a stint in KU because I was like, that was actually, I did a lot of things accidentally right in the beginning, so I was selling more than I was.
Speaker C: After I figured things out and started adjusting what I was doing, my sales went down, and my next book that I wrote and actually got professionally edited never did as well as the first one that I accidentally published.
Speaker C: So I’ve gone this like now it’s just starting to pick up again.
Speaker C: But I’m kind of like I’m all over the place and what I do and don’t and what I learned doesn’t seem to translate how I sell.
Speaker C: So I’m really a weird one out in here.
Speaker C: I still haven’t fully analyzed.
Speaker C: I think it’s something to do with the small town tropes and certain things that were just making that first book really easy to grab.
Speaker C: It could be bookbub has taken it several times and that’s been like, most of my sales are probably from that, but it seems to be that one book that it’s just an easy one to sell.
Speaker C: Even though it’s my first one and I’m obviously pushing all the others and.
Speaker B: Not that.
Speaker C: But I’ve written better books that I’m really proud of that I really, really want to tell you about.
Speaker C: But they’re like, no, we want that reality.
Speaker B: There’s an author that I narrate for that writes a lot of paranormal romance.
Speaker B: And she’s like, 510 years ago when paranormal romance, Twilight was coming out, which I guess was more than ten years ago.
Speaker B: Anyways, a while ago, paranormal romance was like the big thing and everybody wanted to read and write paranormal romance.
Speaker B: And so she did really well during that time.
Speaker B: And now it’s kind of like slowed down a little bit.
Speaker B: But at the end of the day, I’m like, just write what it is you want to write because you’re going to be more passionate about it, which means you’re going to talk about it more and people are going to be able to tell that.
Speaker B: And eventually things come back around then your books are already there.
Speaker C: Yeah, I believe that.
Speaker C: I think that’s one of the issues that I’m facing because I am so future focused that I’m kind of like delving into issues in my books that are only just sort of developing.
Speaker C: I’ve had these weird moments when something happens in real life that already happened in my book, like a year ago or something.
Speaker C: I’ve already imagined this thing.
Speaker B: This already happened in my head.
Speaker C: Yeah, I was writing about this housing market crashing, which hadn’t happened yet in New Zealand, but it did happen and I were going through it and there’s other things, other developments within the housing market that I’ve kind of looked at like, oh, this is going to happen.
Speaker C: We’re going to be 3d printing houses and the whole villages and it’s only just starting to pick up.
Speaker C: But that was part of the plot in one of my books that kind of like, was a bit funny.
Speaker B: So you write future.
Speaker B: Let’s see.
Speaker B: You’re predicting the future in your books.
Speaker C: Yeah.
Speaker C: Even though they are contemporary and they’re not.
Speaker C: Sit in the future.
Speaker C: I don’t think many people write romance that sit in the future.
Speaker C: Can’t even think of anyone typically that’s.
Speaker B: Going to be Sci-Fi or fantasy.
Speaker C: Yeah, maybe a Sci-Fi romance if it’s really far in the future.
Speaker C: But I don’t know.
Speaker C: Anyone who writes like five years in the future.
Speaker B: I don’t know.
Speaker C: I don’t think there’s a niche there.
Speaker C: That’s not a thing.
Speaker B: I don’t know.
Speaker B: I’ve never heard of one.
Speaker B: That doesn’t mean they’re not there.
Speaker C: Could be.
Speaker C: So who knows?
Speaker C: That would be fun to kind of establish this new who knows?
Speaker C: But, yeah, I think it’s about timing, with lots of these genres and tropes and things that either sell or fall a little flat.
Speaker C: It’s all about timing and whether your book hits that little bell curve that’s going, things come and then they fade away.
Speaker C: And if you just happen to be there on the top when it’s like, oh, this is what we really want to see.
Speaker C: And right now then, yeah, you might get really lucky, but it’s impossible to predict.
Speaker C: And you have to, like you said, you have to be passionate about it.
Speaker C: You have to be interested in, like, how else would you market your books?
Speaker C: Because it’s like a full time job in itself.
Speaker B: Yes.
Speaker A: Ennie liked Pinocchio growing up.
Speaker A: Today we’ll be reading the first chapter of the Adventures of Pinocchio.
Speaker A: The Adventures of Pinocchio.
Speaker A: Chapter one.
Speaker A: How it happened that maestro cherry Carpenter found a piece of wood that wept and laughed like a child.
Speaker A: Centuries ago, there lived a king.
Speaker A: My little readers will say immediately, now, children, you’re mistaken.
Speaker A: Once upon a time, there was a piece of wood.
Speaker A: It was not an expensive piece of wood, far from it.
Speaker A: Just a common block of firewood, one of those thick, solid logs that are put on the fire in winter to make cold rooms cozy and warm.
Speaker A: I do not know how this really happened yet.
Speaker A: The fact remains that one fine day, this piece of wood found itself in the shop of an old carpenter.
Speaker A: His real name was Mastro Antonio, but everyone called him mastro cherry, for the tip of his nose was so round and red and shiny that it looked like ripe cherry.
Speaker A: As soon as he saw that piece of wood, mastro Cherry was filled with joy.
Speaker A: Rubbing his hands together happily, he mumbled half to himself, this has come in the nick of time.
Speaker A: I shall use it to make the leg of a table.
Speaker A: He grasped the Hatchet quickly to peel off the bark and shape the wood.
Speaker A: But as he was about to give it the first blow, he stood still with arm uplifted, for he had heard a wee little voice say in a beseeching tone, please be careful.
Speaker A: Don’t hit me so hard.
Speaker A: What a look of surprise shone on Mastro Cherry’s face.
Speaker A: His funny face became still funnier.
Speaker A: He turned frightened eyes about the room.
Speaker B: To find out where that wee little.
Speaker A: Voice had come from.
Speaker A: And he saw no one.
Speaker A: He looked under the bench.
Speaker A: No one.
Speaker A: He peeped inside the closet.
Speaker A: No one.
Speaker A: He searched among the shavings.
Speaker A: No one.
Speaker A: He opened the door to look up and down the street, and still no one.
Speaker A: Oh, I see, he then said, laughing and scratching his wig.
Speaker A: It can easily be seen that I only thought I heard the tiny voice say the words.
Speaker A: Well, well, to work.
Speaker A: Once more he struck a most solemn blow upon the piece of wood.
Speaker B: Oh, you hurt.
Speaker A: Cried the same faraway little voice.
Speaker A: Mastro Cherry grew dumb.
Speaker A: His eyes popped out of his head, his mouth opened wide, and his tongue hung down on his chin.
Speaker A: As soon as he regained the use of his senses, he said, trembling and stuttering from fright, where did that voice come from when there’s no one around?
Speaker A: Might it be that this piece of wood has learned to weep and cry like a child?
Speaker A: I can hardly believe it.
Speaker A: Here it is.
Speaker A: A piece of common firewood, good only to burn in the stove, the same as any other.
Speaker A: Yet might someone be hidden in it?
Speaker A: If so, the worst for him.
Speaker A: I’ll fix it.
Speaker A: With these words.
Speaker A: He grabbed the log with both hands and started to knock it about.
Speaker A: Unmercifully, he threw it to the floor, against the walls of the room, and even up to the ceiling.
Speaker A: He listened for the tiny voice to moan and cry.
Speaker A: He waited two minutes, nothing.
Speaker A: Five minutes, nothing.
Speaker A: Ten minutes, nothing.
Speaker A: Oh, I see, he said, trying bravely to laugh and ruffling up his wig with his hand.
Speaker A: It can easily be seen.
Speaker A: I only imagined I heard the tiny voice.
Speaker A: Well, well, to work once more.
Speaker A: The poor fellow was scared half to death, so he tried to sing a gay song.
Speaker A: In order to gain courage, he set aside the hatchet and picked up the plane to make the wood smooth and even.
Speaker A: But as he drew it to and fro, he heard the same tiny voice.
Speaker A: This time it giggled as it spoke.
Speaker B: Stop it.
Speaker B: Oh, stop it.
Speaker A: You tickle my stomach.
Speaker A: This time, poor master Cherry fell as if shot.
Speaker A: When he opened his eyes, he found himself sitting on the floor.
Speaker A: His face had changed.
Speaker A: Fright had turned even the tip of his nose from red to deepest purple.
Speaker A: Thank you for joining Freya’s fairy tales.
Speaker A: Be sure to come back next week for the conclusion of Enie’s journey to holding her own fairy tale in her hands, and to hear another of her favorite fairy tales.
