Show Notes:
Today is part one of two where we are talking to Melinda Kucsera about her novels. Over the next 2 weeks you will hear about making up stories for her siblings, when characters take over your books, winging it to get your first book out there, book promotion struggles, what to do when unexpected storylines pop-up, and her favorite advice to not look at everyone around you as competition.
Melinda’s Website – Melinda’s Facebook Page – Melinda’s Facebook Group – Melinda’s Instagram – Melinda’s TikTok – Melinda’s Twitter/X – Melinda’s YouTube
Melinda Kucsera writes fantastic short stories, novels, and books when not being kidnapped by dragons or chased by armies of fictional creatures. (We do, on occasion, rescue her.) She leaves the running of her newsletter to a cast of lovable characters who hog her inbox.
Check us out on our website or Support us on Patreon
Follow Our Show On Socials: Facebook – Instagram – Twitter – TikTok
Follow Our Host Freya: Facebook – Instagram – Twitter – TikTok
Want Freya to Narrate Your Audiobook? Complete This Form
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 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, 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’m also fascinated by talking to authors and learning about their why and how for creating their stories.
Speaker A: We’ve included all of the links for today’s author and our show in the show notes.
Speaker B: Be sure to check out our website.
Speaker A: And sign up for our newsletter for the latest on the podcast.
Speaker A: Today is part one of two where we are talking to Melinda Kusera about her novels.
Speaker A: Over the next two weeks, you will hear about making up stories for her siblings when characters take over your books, winging it to get your first book out there, book promotion struggles, what to do when unexpected storylines pop up, and her favorite advice?
Speaker A: To not look at everyone around you as competition.
Speaker A: Robin of Lark Spur trilogy when her daughter disappears without a trace, Robin embarks on a perilous quest to find her that tests her courage and determination.
Speaker A: In Robin of Larkspur books one to three, join Robin on three thrilling adventures and risk it all to find her daughter.
Speaker A: In Hunter’s night, Robin treks through a treacherous winter wonderland filled with wolves, shapeshifters, and sentient trees to seek help from the rangers of Mount Eridren.
Speaker A: En route, she discovers a strange power that might help her if she could figure out how to keep it from imprisoning her.
Speaker A: In Rogue Night, Robin discovers the Rangers have a deadly secret they will kill to protect.
Speaker A: Robin must face a powerful golem and win the help of the mage bound to it.
Speaker A: But the new magic she found complicates things, and that help may cost more than she can pay.
Speaker A: In Rogue Ranger, Robin treks back into the enchanted forest with a powerful mage and his enigmatic companion as her guide and trackers.
Speaker A: One of her allies is not who they seem.
Speaker A: Encounters with shapeshifters, fallen gods, overzealous guardians, and strange magic spells threaten to turn the trio against each other.
Speaker A: Will their alliance last long enough for Robin to find her daughter?
Speaker B: Well, the podcast is Freya’s fairy tales, and that is fairy tales in two ways.
Speaker B: Fairy tales are something that we watched or read or had read to us as kids.
Speaker B: Also, the journey for you to spend weeks, months, years working on your.
Speaker B: You’ve done a whole lot of books.
Speaker B: To get to hold those in your hands is a fairy tale for you.
Speaker B: So the first question I always start off with is, 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: Okay.
Speaker C: My favorite was a little mermaid.
Speaker C: The original cartoon version came out in 1989, and I was nine years old.
Speaker C: We went to see it for my mom’s birthday, and I think what also made it special was, like, my aunts and my cousins came up, so it was like nine people in a row.
Speaker C: My poor dad just want to eat the popcorn.
Speaker C: And I was nine.
Speaker C: My sister is four years younger than me.
Speaker C: She passed away in 2014, but at the time, she was four.
Speaker C: My twin cousins are also four years young.
Speaker C: I’m sorry.
Speaker C: She was five.
Speaker C: My twin cousins are also four years younger than me.
Speaker C: They were five.
Speaker C: So there’s three screaming five year old.
Speaker C: My brother is two years younger than me, so he was seven.
Speaker C: And he’s just like, oh, God, Disney movie.
Speaker C: What’s going on?
Speaker B: Why do I get dragged to all this girl stuff?
Speaker C: And my mom is like, this is what I chose to celebrate my birthday.
Speaker C: I’m regretting my life choices.
Speaker C: We went out to dinner and stuff.
Speaker C: I don’t remember if it was before.
Speaker C: I think we went out to dinner after the movie, because the movie, we probably went to see the matinee.
Speaker C: I can’t imagine we went in the evening.
Speaker B: Typically, parents with kids don’t do nighttime.
Speaker C: Movies, especially when you have four adults and five children under the age of ten.
Speaker C: I don’t think you would do that.
Speaker B: Did your favorite change as you got older, or is it still little mermaid?
Speaker C: I will always have a fondness for Little Mermaid, but it did change a bit when Aladdin came out in the cartoon, because there was the first time that a Disney princess had brown hair is black.
Speaker C: My hair is lighter now, but it was very dark brown, almost black.
Speaker C: And she did not have blue eyes.
Speaker C: Her eyes were brown like mine, and she had that sort of mediterranean coloring, which there was finally a Disney princess.
Speaker C: I mean, I’m not skinny or anything like she is, but who looked kind of like me, and I was like.
Speaker C: So I got all the dolls and everything, and I was all about that, and she was feisty.
Speaker C: I will always love the little mermaid.
Speaker C: That will always be close to my heart.
Speaker C: I also feel like the little mermaid is kind of an analog for us.
Speaker C: Women, because we’re always trying to.
Speaker C: She had to get out of the ocean and get legs to go on land and go chase her dreams.
Speaker C: We’re always trying to break through that glass ceiling.
Speaker C: It still exists.
Speaker C: I work in corporate America, and there is very much still a glass ceiling.
Speaker C: There is a point at which you just cannot advance if you are not a man.
Speaker C: It sucks, but it’s reality.
Speaker C: And I’ve come across it quite a bit in the 20 years that I’ve been working in corporate America.
Speaker C: It still resonates with me today.
Speaker C: I’m sure that Disney was not intending to put that in there and hands Christian Anderson, which I did, eventually read his version.
Speaker C: It was so sad.
Speaker C: But in a way, the ending of that one makes more sense than the ending of the Disney one, even though it’s super.
Speaker B: That I.
Speaker B: I did that on the podcast fairly early on, and I was like, this is how this ends.
Speaker C: There was, like an animated version they did, and we found it at the library, and we’re all excited.
Speaker C: My mom had no idea.
Speaker C: It was very pretty, and she’s like, I’m going to watch this with you girls.
Speaker C: And we’re watching it.
Speaker C: And at some point, she realized this was not going to end well, and she had to make that decision.
Speaker C: Do I let my daughters keep watching this?
Speaker C: And she did end up letting us watch it.
Speaker C: And it was so sad.
Speaker C: I remember crying over it, and we had a whole long talk about it.
Speaker C: I remember everything that we said, but at least it was a teachable moment in it.
Speaker B: Hey, that’s good.
Speaker B: So at what age did you start writing anything?
Speaker B: Short stories, actual full length novels, whatever you started writing.
Speaker C: So I started writing when I was really little because I had two younger siblings.
Speaker C: And as being the oldest child, when you have younger siblings, your parents kind of lean on you to entertain them.
Speaker C: And I used to just make up stories for them.
Speaker C: And then my sister’s like, you’re changing it.
Speaker C: That’s not how you told it last time.
Speaker C: I remember it being this way, and she’s like, you need to write this down so it doesn’t keep changing on me.
Speaker B: I told this story before.
Speaker B: I don’t remember that I was telling.
Speaker C: The same story over and over again.
Speaker C: At least I thought I was telling it the same way every time.
Speaker C: But it was changing.
Speaker C: And I didn’t realize because I was so.
Speaker C: Because it wasn’t just like, monotone.
Speaker C: No, I was all animated, and there was stuffed animals and visuals, and we were drawing things on the walls.
Speaker C: I mean, it was a full production.
Speaker C: That a young child was capable of putting on.
Speaker C: At one point, I built a whole thing with blocks.
Speaker C: There was castles production.
Speaker C: I was so caught up in it, I didn’t realize I was changing the story.
Speaker C: Every time I told her.
Speaker C: She’s like, you need to write it down so it doesn’t change.
Speaker B: So did you write it down?
Speaker C: Yeah.
Speaker C: I had horrible penmanship, though.
Speaker B: Wrote it down, but then couldn’t read it.
Speaker C: Well, I struggled to write more than, like, a few hundred words because writing was really hard for me.
Speaker C: And I think it’s because I found out when I was in my 20s that I’m actually ambidextrous.
Speaker C: And I think that if in school they weren’t forcing you to always use the right hand or whatever.
Speaker C: I think I might have had an easier time writing if they hadn’t forced that because the pencil never felt comfortable in my right hand.
Speaker B: So you probably should have been left handed, but they forced the right hand.
Speaker C: My brother’s left handed.
Speaker C: But I could actually make words that were.
Speaker C: If you squint hard enough at them, you could kind of tell what they were.
Speaker C: I was really the bane of all my elementary school penmanship teachers.
Speaker C: But as soon as computers came out, I don’t remember exactly when that was.
Speaker C: And I first got a chance.
Speaker C: I think it was in 8th grade or something.
Speaker C: It was like, forget writing with pen and paper, everything is going to be typewritten, because then I can read what I have written.
Speaker C: I have notebooks and stuff that I wrote, but I can’t read any of it.
Speaker C: It’s completely illegible.
Speaker C: It’s also written in neon colors, which doesn’t help.
Speaker B: So did you continue to write up until you published your first book, or did you kind of, like, set it aside and come back to it at some point?
Speaker B: Oh, no.
Speaker C: I continued to write.
Speaker C: As soon as we could afford a computer, I begged my parents to get one.
Speaker C: But we got this other electronic typewriter thing, which I don’t recommend.
Speaker C: Zero stars.
Speaker C: I like to permanently block it out of memory.
Speaker C: It was not a good thing.
Speaker C: It did not work well.
Speaker C: It did not save.
Speaker C: Well, we all have that first novel that we write.
Speaker C: No one’s ever read this.
Speaker C: Well, actually, my sister has read some of it, because what else do younger sisters do except Wonderland?
Speaker C: What are you doing?
Speaker C: Oh, you wrote some.
Speaker C: I want to read this.
Speaker C: Get off the chair.
Speaker C: Yeah.
Speaker C: So I did write that first book all the way through college, and then eventually I’m going to come back and edit it and actually put it out because it is so much a mismatch of everything I love from everything else read or watched.
Speaker C: I mean, it is like if you took Star wars and what’s her name, Mercedes Lackey’s Valdemar series and Lord of the Rings and stuck them in a blender and added some other stuff that like 13 1415, 1920 year old me was reading or watching.
Speaker B: Right.
Speaker C: A lot of really fun things in there, but it clearly needs severe editing.
Speaker C: And then I started working on another, what became the first book that I published.
Speaker C: But I wasn’t writing it to publish.
Speaker C: It was just writing because I like to write it.
Speaker C: The stories were there.
Speaker C: The characters would drive me nuts.
Speaker C: They’re always whispering in the background, and they were more interesting than schoolwork.
Speaker B: Isn’t it interesting?
Speaker B: So normal people have voices in their head and they get committed and medicated for it.
Speaker B: Authors have voices in their head and it’s totally okay.
Speaker C: Of course, we can totally hallucinate scenes from our books, and that’s totally fine as long as we put it down and put it out there and sell it, I think because we can monetize the voices in our heads, that’s why it’s okay.
Speaker B: There’s only a small niche of people that’s voices get incredibly violent.
Speaker C: Yeah.
Speaker C: Mine just demand more page time.
Speaker C: Like, go write my book.
Speaker C: They’re not telling me to go do anything dangerous.
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker B: So my book is currently with arc readers right now, and it’s very slow burn.
Speaker B: And I’ve had people be like, last three chapters before anything spicy happens, beyond hand rubbing cheeks kind of stuff.
Speaker B: And they’re like, why is it such a slow burn?
Speaker B: And I’m like, well, it was supposed to happen earlier.
Speaker B: And then the male main character was like, no, we have to be married first.
Speaker B: And that took over the book.
Speaker C: That’s life.
Speaker C: Some relationships are super slow.
Speaker B: So you did all of this writing on this weird typewriter thing.
Speaker B: When did you start the first book that you actually published, and how long did it take you to write the first draft of it?
Speaker C: I started somewhere after college, actually somewhere after grad school, in between getting the first good job I started.
Speaker C: But I had one main character, and then it just didn’t work with them.
Speaker C: And then I switched it to this other character who just kind of walked into the scene and took over the book.
Speaker C: And I was like, okay, then you’re now the main character.
Speaker C: You’re giving main character energy.
Speaker C: We should just hand the book over to you and see what you want to do with it because nobody’s listening to me.
Speaker C: There’s an outline but no one’s following it.
Speaker C: I don’t know why.
Speaker C: I outlined, I’m in the middle of writing my 23rd book, and I write the outline and they still completely disregard it.
Speaker C: This is more like guidelines, not actual things we need to do.
Speaker C: But, yeah, I don’t know exactly.
Speaker C: My sister passed away in 2014, and that’s when I really, seriously, before she passed away, she asked me to publish all the stories I’ve been writing.
Speaker C: And at that point, I had like 50 unfinished stories on my Google Drive account.
Speaker C: I never thought of actually publishing any of it.
Speaker C: I was just writing because I like to write.
Speaker C: The grieving process took a bit, and then, well, the grief took a long time.
Speaker C: I’m only finally starting to come out of that.
Speaker C: The next year is a ten year anniversary of her passing, but I did.
Speaker C: Two years after she passed away, almost two years later, I did publish that first book, and it was cursebreaker.
Speaker C: Enchanted.
Speaker C: And what a wild ride that was.
Speaker C: That has led me to where I am now.
Speaker B: I don’t know if that was so for your first one, did you self publish it or did you query it, or what did you attempt to do for it?
Speaker C: I self published it.
Speaker C: I work in traditional publishing, and everything I’ve seen in it just convinced me I wanted no part of it.
Speaker C: Yeah, if you get a job in publishing, you may not ever want to publish.
Speaker C: Traditionally, you see what goes on behind the scenes.
Speaker B: I’ve had this podcast going for about a year and a half now, and I’ve talked to self published, I’ve talked to small published, I’ve talked to big five published authors all across the board.
Speaker B: I’ve talked to, and for the most part, the only thing that I know I have no interest in doing is spending all the time querying something when I could have self published it and be earning the money now instead of waiting multiple years and then giving up a whole lot of the royalties.
Speaker B: So I’m like, I tell my husband all the time.
Speaker B: I’m like, everyone has a price.
Speaker B: If someone wanted to pick up my series and was going to pay me a ridiculous amount of money for it, of course I’m going to say yes.
Speaker B: But I’m like, in the meantime, I have no desire to go through the querying process.
Speaker B: And I know you’re not really supposed to query with a book that’s already out.
Speaker B: So I’m like, no, we’ll take the self published route until or unless, and my editor tells me, she’s told me several times, don’t take a contract unless it’s a big five publisher.
Speaker B: So I’m like, hey, ridiculous amounts of money can come from small publishers, too.
Speaker B: But I’m like, no.
Speaker B: No desire to spend any time being demeaned in the querying process.
Speaker A: No, thanks.
Speaker C: No, definitely not.
Speaker C: And especially after seeing the marketing side.
Speaker C: If you’re a new author who gets picked up by traditional publishing, you are on your own for marketing the money.
Speaker C: And the attention goes to the Brandon Sandersons and the, you know, to the big names that they’re going to get a return on their investment for.
Speaker B: Well, and that’s where, if you.
Speaker C: Much for.
Speaker B: You say any publisher picks you up for seven figures, they’re going to put advertising dollars behind you because they got to make that money back.
Speaker B: If you’re getting less than a six figure advance, they’ll just write it off on their taxes.
Speaker B: There’s no incentive for them to put advertising dollars behind you at that point.
Speaker B: So I’m like, I would rather listen to Jason Duro on TikTok, who says all the time that he has no interest in handing his book over, that he’s self published.
Speaker B: But then you look at, there’s other authors on there, like AK Mulford, who got picked up on a seven figure book deal with Harper Voyager, or Tor, who just picked up.
Speaker B: I can’t remember her name right now.
Speaker B: I don’t remember what it is she calls herself.
Speaker C: I can’t think of her name.
Speaker B: She writes the lesbian cozy tea fantasy books.
Speaker C: I don’t know what.
Speaker B: Treason and tea can’t spell.
Speaker B: Treason without tea is the name of her book.
Speaker B: I can’t remember what her name is.
Speaker B: But, I mean, there’s authors on TikTok that you see that will suddenly get picked up by a publisher on these ridiculous deals, and you’re like, good for you that you went out there and did it.
Speaker C: But they’re getting picked up because they have a big following on TikTok, and the publisher is expecting them to leverage that to sell books.
Speaker C: Because once you get picked up by a traditional publisher, they are making most of the profit.
Speaker C: You’re only getting a small bit.
Speaker C: So when you get in advance, you have to pay back that advance before you get any more money.
Speaker B: Right?
Speaker C: So if your book doesn’t earn out, you don’t get any more money.
Speaker C: And most contracts, you’re locked in that you have to give them first right of refusal on your next book that you write.
Speaker C: And if they want it, yeah, you go, you’re kind of stuck.
Speaker C: If a traditional publisher approached me and wanted to do, like, an audio version or print or something.
Speaker C: They’re really good at print.
Speaker C: I’m not really good at print.
Speaker C: I’m really good at ebooks.
Speaker C: So I would be totally interested.
Speaker C: I also am a humongous audiobook fan, but I’m not good at audiobook.
Speaker C: Audiobooks are very expensive to create and marketing them is a mystery to me.
Speaker B: I just did a video.
Speaker B: I think I did a video.
Speaker B: I may have deleted the video.
Speaker B: I don’t know.
Speaker B: I just had an audiobook yesterday that I did for royalty share with the author and it hit number one in its genre.
Speaker B: The audiobook hit number one in its genre yesterday.
Speaker B: So there’s authors all the time that talk about how expensive it is, but I’m like, there are other options out there that aren’t as expensive.
Speaker B: But most narrators, if you’re say you put your book out there and you do absolutely no advertising for it ever, a lot of narrators aren’t going to take that as a royalty share because you’re not going to sell any copies if you’re not ever talking about, right.
Speaker C: I mean, I would talk about it and put it and talk about it on my podcast, but I spoke to ACX and I wouldn’t be able to put any excerpts from it on the podcast to try and get people, I’d have to remove all the episodes where I read excerpts from it and those episodes get a ton of listens and are what gets people to listen to other episodes.
Speaker C: So I just felt like it would be like doing the royalty share would cut off me at the knees and the avenue that I have to reach.
Speaker C: People are interested in my books in audio, I wouldn’t be able to reach them.
Speaker C: The option of that, I’d have to do it completely outside of royalty share so that I have control and can do that, but that’s too expensive for me.
Speaker B: I feel like there’s a, I don’t love it.
Speaker B: I just really want human read audiobook.
Speaker B: I just read through the ACX.
Speaker B: So they have two different sets of contracts.
Speaker B: There’s the ACX contract with you put it up for royalty share and a narrator does it and all of that.
Speaker B: And then there’s the contract that you sign if you paid for it outside of ACX and you’re just uploading the files there.
Speaker B: And I think one of them, I don’t remember which one, allows for the author to do author red sections, but I don’t remember which contract it is.
Speaker C: It’s not royalty share because I had a long chat back and forth through the emails with ACX to try it.
Speaker C: But I wanted to understand because everybody’s like, you should do royalty share.
Speaker C: And I get people ask me on my newsletter, when is it going to be an audio?
Speaker C: Because they know I’m a huge audiobook fan.
Speaker C: So I was like, okay, I keep getting hammered with this question.
Speaker C: Let me find out what I can do.
Speaker C: And the royalty share one is the one that is super limited.
Speaker C: You cannot do anything outside of the audio platform, audible platform.
Speaker C: Nothing can be outside of it.
Speaker B: Yeah, I think technically the only thing that can be is like the five minute sample.
Speaker B: All right, so you put your first book out there.
Speaker B: Did you go through like beta readers or arc readers or editors or anything for the first book you did?
Speaker C: I didn’t know about arc readers or anything.
Speaker C: I was not part of any sort of author community.
Speaker C: I was posting it on my blog and I was doing a lot of short fiction and stuff on there, too.
Speaker C: And people were know, we’re going to be able to buy the book.
Speaker C: So I put together some of the.
Speaker C: Before I published the first book, I did this whole holiday thing that was like, I don’t know, Google must have picked it up or something because I was getting a lot more traffic than somebody who had no idea how to promote anything should be getting, especially at a time when I had no newsletter or anything.
Speaker C: I didn’t know that that was a thing that I should have at that point.
Speaker C: So I took the holiday story and I put it together into a book and I just put it on Amazon KdP just to figure out how does one it.
Speaker C: How do you put together an ebook just to practice, not expecting that anybody would buy it?
Speaker C: And how do you create a cover?
Speaker C: Where do you get covers from?
Speaker C: Do they rain from the sky?
Speaker C: Do you wish upon a star to get them?
Speaker C: Do I need to go trade my legs for fins and go swim through the ocean to find where?
Speaker C: I had no idea because at that point I was working traditional publisher, but I was in their it department, right?
Speaker C: We had some designers, we had the web designers, which I know what they did.
Speaker C: I gave them projects, they work in it, and I am their it project manager.
Speaker C: But the whole print design thing was like they were off in a mysterious cave in the mountains, or they might as well have been.
Speaker C: We weren’t even on the same floor.
Speaker B: Of the building, right?
Speaker C: I had no clue.
Speaker C: So that first one, I made it myself.
Speaker C: I took some pictures at a holiday party, like the tree and ornaments, not thinking that maybe this could be problematic later.
Speaker C: No idea what I was doing, and I just sat down and figured and did lots of googling.
Speaker C: And this was in 2016, so there was not a heck of a lot of resources then.
Speaker C: Right now there’s all these publishing courses.
Speaker C: They’re very expensive, but I didn’t have that.
Speaker C: That wasn’t an option for me.
Speaker B: Right?
Speaker C: I had no idea this existed.
Speaker C: I put it together.
Speaker C: I did my absolute level best with it, and I put it out there.
Speaker C: And eleven people bought it.
Speaker C: I hadn’t told anybody except they put a note on my blog telling people that I was doing this and what I did.
Speaker C: And eleven of those people went and just bought copies.
Speaker C: Immediately it went up and they bought the copies.
Speaker C: I was like, oh, my goodness.
Speaker C: I was like, oh, God.
Speaker C: I also bought myself a copy after that, and I looked at it on my Kindle and like, okay.
Speaker C: It looks okay.
Speaker C: And I did a print version and it looked okay.
Speaker C: It looked pretty good because I had done print formatting for my first job out of college at an arts council.
Speaker C: I had to lay out the newspaper insert that was going into the ganette.
Speaker C: Then the journal news, they’re part of Ganette.
Speaker C: I don’t even know if they think they’re still around.
Speaker C: They’re the newspaper.
Speaker C: If you live in Wechester County, New York, or Putnam or the Hudson Valley, like, you get the journal news, that is our paper, or you get the New York Times.
Speaker B: The formatting experience.
Speaker B: You made up your own cover.
Speaker B: Did you have it edited at all before you put it out there?
Speaker C: Yeah.
Speaker C: I asked a couple of relatives who were to read it over, and it’s like, does it make sense to you?
Speaker C: People who don’t normally read fantasy books or anything, figuring out people who don’t read this stuff, if they trip over it, then I need to do something.
Speaker C: Something isn’t right.
Speaker C: And I also had written this Christmas story in verse.
Speaker C: I don’t know why.
Speaker C: Grief does strange things to the mind.
Speaker C: I wrote the whole thing inverse.
Speaker C: It was not written as prose.
Speaker C: I have to do a prose version of it because it was a really fun story.
Speaker C: And even though it’s inverse, it still gets a ton of traffic around Christmas.
Speaker C: That sounds like I need to fix that.
Speaker B: That sounds really hard to do.
Speaker C: It was just this wild.
Speaker C: Like, they had to go save Christmas.
Speaker C: And at some point they ended up way back in time with baby Jesus.
Speaker C: And I just took all the Christmas tropes and some of my favorite fantasy characters from my blog that I had created and just had them head off with Santa to save Jesus.
Speaker B: So you put this first book out there with what I’m guessing was not nothing up to snuff cover, but decent formatting and editing.
Speaker B: And you magically sold copies.
Speaker C: Yeah.
Speaker B: How long did it take you to get the next one out?
Speaker C: You know what?
Speaker C: I could probably check that because I published that in, like, it was a few months later because I was mostly finished with.
Speaker C: And then at that point, for my first actual book, which is in prose, not verse at all, which was the original version of Curse Breaker Enchanted, I got some family friends to read it.
Speaker C: I was trying to get an editor, but all the quotes I got was for 2000, $3,000.
Speaker C: It’s 160,000 words.
Speaker C: And at that point, before my sister passed away, I was out of work for two years because the financial market.
Speaker C: I live in New York very, like, maybe an hour from outside of New York City.
Speaker C: At the time that the crash, I was working in New York City in the corporate offices of a fashion retailer.
Speaker C: And basically, when the financial markets crashed, a lot of companies laid off people.
Speaker C: Like the company that I work for laid off 30%.
Speaker C: They called in about 20 of us into an office and said, you’re all redundant.
Speaker C: Pack your stuff out.
Speaker C: Oh, gosh.
Speaker C: So we’re all leaving, and we all had to leave together.
Speaker C: They put everybody else in the company in another room, and so it was so awkward.
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker B: I was like, my God, I carrying.
Speaker C: My stuff through York City.
Speaker C: Like, I was so traumatized, I didn’t even think about, you should get on a subway.
Speaker C: It’s like January.
Speaker C: The wind is, like, howling through the canyons in New York.
Speaker C: I’ve got all my stuff, and I’m, like, wandering around, and at some point, I’m like, where am I?
Speaker C: Where is Grand Central?
Speaker C: That’s where I need to go to get out of the city.
Speaker C: After that, I applied to over 100 jobs.
Speaker C: I went on, like, I don’t know, 20 or 30 interviews, got hired by Tiffany and co.
Speaker C: To work in their it department, then got unhired because their stocks went down.
Speaker C: So they had a hiring freeze that went into effect right before I was supposed to start.
Speaker C: So I was.
Speaker C: That was in around Christmas.
Speaker C: So it took another few months after that to get the job that I’m still at today.
Speaker C: So when I got these quotes back from the editors, I was so massively in debt because my sister and my brother were also out of work at the same time because the financial markets crashed, the banks laid off lots of people, and that’s what my brother worked for.
Speaker C: He worked for Chase.
Speaker C: My sister worked as an accountant for construction.
Speaker C: So constructions weren’t doing there.
Speaker C: Was no money for any of that.
Speaker C: So we were all out of work, and my sister had just gotten out of college, like, a few years before that.
Speaker C: I had been out for a while, and so I was like, they can’t help all of us with our bills because we were all living there.
Speaker C: I was planning to get.
Speaker C: I was looking at apartments, and I had the job in the city, and I was like, oh, I’m making a good paycheck.
Speaker C: And I’m so glad that I didn’t go beyond thinking about that to actually.
Speaker B: Right.
Speaker C: Because I had only been at that job for a year, and I was like, maybe another year just to get filled up a little bit more money.
Speaker C: We were all living there, and they can’t help all of us with our bills.
Speaker C: They still have their own bills and stuff.
Speaker C: I was up to, like, ten k in credit card debt by the time I got the job that I have now because I was not going to allow anybody to pay any of my bills.
Speaker C: I did not want to be a burden on my parents.
Speaker C: So I was hitting the credit card when I needed to go down to the city for interviews and needed to get a new interview suit or whatever, because if you’re trying to get a job for two years, at some point you don’t have a choice.
Speaker C: You can’t keep wearing the same suit, and it’s clearly not working.
Speaker B: Gosh, you got to put that Elwood suit in the back of the closet and get a new.
Speaker C: At one point, I was like, it’s got to be the clothes.
Speaker C: I’ve reached out to the resume 85 times.
Speaker C: I’ve read 85 times.
Speaker C: It’s got to be the d***.
Speaker C: It’s not my.
Speaker C: Off the rack from the cheap store is not working.
Speaker C: We got to get something a little bit nicer.
Speaker C: Would you rather work for two years?
Speaker C: Like, you start getting crazy?
Speaker C: Yeah.
Speaker C: You get all these weird rituals, like, well, if I get to the train station 20 minutes early this time, that’s my lucky charm.
Speaker C: If I get the seat on the train in the middle car by the.
Speaker C: Whatever you get on these weird rituals.
Speaker A: Melinda liked the little mermaid growing up, but since we’ve already done this fairy tale, today we’ll be reading another Hans Christian Anderson story, the leapfrog.
Speaker A: The leapfrog.
Speaker A: A flea, a grasshopper, and a leapfrog once wanted to see which could jump highest, and they invited the whole world and everybody else besides who chose to come to see the festival.
Speaker A: Three famous jumpers, were they, as everyone would say when they all met together in the room.
Speaker A: I will give my daughter to him who jumps highest.
Speaker A: Exclaimed to the king, for it is not so amusing where there is no prize to jump.
Speaker A: For the flea was the first to step forward.
Speaker A: He had exquisite manners, and bowed to the company on all sides, for he had noble blood, and was, moreover, accustomed to the society of man alone, and that makes a great difference.
Speaker A: Then came the grasshopper.
Speaker A: He was considerably heavier, but he was well mannered, and wore a green uniform, which he had by right of birth.
Speaker A: He said, moreover, that he belonged to a very ancient egyptian family, and that in the house where he then was, he was thought much of.
Speaker A: The fact was he had been just brought out of the fields and put in a paceboard house three stories high, all made of court cards, with a colored side inwards, and doors and windows cut out of the body of the queen of hearts.
Speaker A: I sing so well, said he, that 16 native grasshoppers, who have chirped from infancy, and yet got no house built of cards to live in, grew thinner than they were before for sheer vexation when they heard me.
Speaker A: It was thus that the flea and the grasshopper gave an account of themselves, and thought they were quite good enough to marry a princess.
Speaker A: The leapfrog said nothing, but people gave it as their opinion that he therefore thought the more.
Speaker A: And when the house dog sniffed at him with his nose, he confessed the leapfrog was of good family.
Speaker A: The old counselor, who had had three orders given him to make him hold his tongue, asserted that the leapfrog was a prophet, for that one could see on his back if there would be a severe or mild winter, and that was what one could not see even on the back of the man who writes the almanac.
Speaker A: I say nothing.
Speaker A: It is true, exclaimed the king, but I have my own opinion notwithstanding.
Speaker A: Now the trial was to take place.
Speaker A: The flea jumped so high that nobody could see where he went to.
Speaker A: Zale asserted he had not jumped at all, and that was dishonorable.
Speaker A: The grasshopper jumped only half as high, but he leapt into the king’s face, who said that was ill mannered.
Speaker A: The leapfrog stood still for a long time, lost in thought.
Speaker A: It was believed at last he would not jump at all.
Speaker A: I only hope he’s not unwell, said the house dog, when pop he made a jump all on one side into the lap of the princess, who was sitting on a little golden stool close by.
Speaker A: Hereupon the king said, there is nothing above my daughter.
Speaker A: Therefore to bound up to her is the highest jump that can be made.
Speaker A: But for this one must possess understanding, and the leapfrog is shown that he is understanding.
Speaker A: He is brave and intellectual.
Speaker A: And so he won the princess.
Speaker A: It’s all the same to me, said the flea.
Speaker A: She may have the old leapfrog for all I care.
Speaker A: I jumped the highest.
Speaker A: But in this world, merit seldom meets its reward.
Speaker A: A fine exterior is what people look at nowadays.
Speaker A: Flee then went into foreign service, where it is said, he was killed.
Speaker A: The grasshopper sat without on a green bank and reflected on worldly things.
Speaker A: And he said, too, yes, a fine exterior is everything.
Speaker A: A fine exterior is what people care about.
Speaker A: And then he began chirping his peculiar melancholy song from which we have taken this history, and which may very possibly be all untrue, although it does stand here printed in black and white.
Speaker A: Thank you for joining Freya’s fairy tales.
Speaker A: Be sure to come back next week for the conclusion of Melinda’s journey to holding her own fairy tale in her hands, and to hear another of her favorite fairy tales.
