Dear Writer: Episode 19

Ashley: Hey everyone, welcome back to Dear Writer. This is episode 19 where we are going to be Talking Shop. This is the third episode of that miniseries. And so we talk about the tools of the trade that help us increase and better our craft and also some of the books that were reading for fun. Sarah, what’s the, what’s your tool of the month for this month?

Sarah: So this month I thought I’d talk about The Creative Penn podcast by Joanna Penn. I’ve mentioned her several times on our podcast, because I have been listening to a lot of her podcast. It’s probably the main one I listen to. Joanna Penn writes thrillers under her, under the name J.F. Penn, which are usually centered around religious artifacts. She also writes a variety of nonfiction books on writing and the business side of being an author and she writes those books under Joanna Penn. So she’s been hosting The Creative Penn podcast since 2008 so it’s pretty well known.

Ashley: Long time.

Sarah: Yeah. And still going strong. So certainly a big, a big name in the world of self-publishing it at the very least. But yeah, you know, she’s well known by traditional authors as well. But she’s sort of bases it loosely around the topic of self-publishing your work. She doesn’t tell you how, exactly. So if you’re looking for the ins and outs of exactly how to do it, there are better resources out there. But, it is a good place to keep abreast of all the changes happening in the publishing world in both traditional and self-publishing And how that effects self-publishing. So she interviews quite a wide range of authors on their books. Usually nonfiction writing resources and about their processes.

Ashley: That sounds real interesting. I’ve never listened to her podcast before, is it just her?

Sarah: She does, usually she will do an intro of like an update of her own writing life which is just her, and about any changes that might have happened within the last week or changes that she foresees coming soon.

Ashley: Right.

Sarah: And then she’ll usually do—and that usually last like the intro, about half an hour—and then she would usually do about a half hour interview with you sort of voices in the industry. Yeah, and those interviews are quite wide… like a wide variety of topics. Like some will be on craft, some will be on with companies who do like self-publishing. Or some might be you know people’s experiences of how they found the journey self-publishing, and the nonfiction work that they’ve done, things like that.

Ashley: Oh, yeah.

Sarah: So yeah.

Ashley: Were there any particular Interviews that were really interesting?

Sarah: There are a couple that I was going to mention. Because she’s been running the podcast since 2008 there’s really, there’s tons of really good content to get through. But one episode from 2017 that really piqued my interest was with Ingram Spark. So for those of you know who don’t know, Ingram Spark is a company who are largely known for the print on demand services. But they’re also quite a wide reaching book distributor. So you still have to do all the marketing like, it’s not just… your books aren’t going to magically appear in bookstores, or in the library without marketing. But you have the ability of getting your book into bookstores and libraries, because they do wholesale discount prices. And they just take it off the like…

Ashley: Right.

Sarah: So, you know, you set in a set price for your book to be printed at. And then you say, oh, I’m going to do a I think it’s about a 40%? 40 to 60% discount for wholesalers and so that just minuses off. So you, you only see like the, the stuff that’s coming in, like it just automatically gets deducted. But yeah, I found it really interesting.

Ashley: That’s cool. That’s quite a good concept I guess for, for self-publishing.

Sarah: Yeah, I mean Amazon does kind of do that too with their Create Space, but the thing—wasn’t really going to talk about this because it’s quite a big topic—but the reason why I’m so interested in Ingram Spark is because Amazon, if we go into self-publishing, we’re probably going to be having a company that’s New Zealand based, and Amazon unfortunately, when they do that payments, they only—to New Zealand—they will only do a wire transfer or a cheque, they will not do electronic fund transfer. And so that means that every time you receive payment, then you’re going to have to pay probably like a $15 fee to your bank depending on your specific bank’s fees, and depending on how big the cheque is that’s coming in. You know, like looking at it, it’s like, well, that’s not very maintainable. If you’re paying like $15 every single time for every single payment, so I started looking at other options and Ingram Spark do payments to, like they don’t work in the New Zealand currency, but they do do payments through PayPal and PayPal has a lot… like the fees for that as a lot less than if we were to do it through, through Amazon. So that’s why I’ve been…

Ashley: Looking into that.

Sarah: …Quite curious about that. Even like because they are mainly known for their print distribution, but they also do do eBook distribution as well. I’m not quite sure… most people don’t use the eBook distribution, because they’ll distribute through Amazon, they’ll distribute themselves through Kobo and Apple and all the other things. But I’m thinking that might be an option for us? We’ll see. Will have to do a bit more research.

Ashley: Sounds really interesting to look into it.

Sarah: Yeah. So another interview that I really liked was about how to write emotion and depth of character. Where Joanna interviewed Becca Puglisi. And Becca Puglisi and Angela Ackerman wrote the book The Emotion Thesaurus, which basically gives a whole list of actions characters might use to portray their feelings.

Ashley: Oh yeah, that sounds really helpful.

Sarah: It does sound really helpful. And it is on my wishlist of things to get, because it would be really nice to be able to look at, you know, oh, my characters feeling angry, and then look at like a different range of options of how I might show that. And then, you know, you still need to relate it to your character. So you need to sort of integrate those actions like you can’t just like you know copy paste, but I think it’s a really cool idea for expanding your emotive vocabulary, I guess.

Ashley: Definitely.

Sarah: In terms of actions and showing not telling. So…

Ashley: That’s such a good idea!

Sarah: Yeah they do some other thesauruses as well. Like, I think they do one on like character traits. And I actually think I may have looked at this one from the library at one point, but I didn’t really… at the point like Dan got it out from the library and I kind of like flicked through it and I didn’t really pay too much attention to it, but then now I’m like, oh, hang on a second. I think that was from these authors.

Ashley: Maybe that would have been really helpful.

Sarah: Yeah, I found it quite interesting that they actually do… so Becca Puglisi and Angela Ackerman, they’re both collaborative authors as well, coauthors. And they write young adult fiction and historical fiction, just like we do. And I was like…

Ashley: Oh.

Sarah: Got some doppelgangers or something. Maybe we’re their doppelgangers I guess since they’ve probably been in it a lot more longer than us.

Ashley: Yeah.

Sarah: But it’s a bit weird. I was just like, hey, that’s funny.

Ashley: Like, oh all right.

Sarah: They do the exact type of… yeah. Anyways, just a random fun fact. But yeah. So other things about The Creative Penn podcast, coming back to The Creative Penn. Joanna is also very interested in how future technology might affect the life of a creative entrepreneur. Which is important to think about if you’re headed on a more longterm journey as an author. I actually listened to a really interesting one. Just yesterday about where she sees… and the future of sort of technology in integration with writing.

Ashley: Okay.

Sarah: And they were talking all about, she was having a discussion with… I can’t remember who was unfortunately. But they were talking all about the possibility of having virtual bookstores and you know those gaming goggles that you can get?

Ashley: Oh, like the VR… VR stuff?

Sarah: Yeah that virtual reality. They were talking and apparently Apple is going to be coming out with some of that stuff in the near future and that people were beginning to use it for things like hosting virtual events. And so they were envisioning a world, Joanna Penn and this… I should probably just quickly look it up. Yeah, so it was Len Edgerly? Len Edgerly.

Okay. Now what does he do?

Sarah: How to say something. So he’s really interested—he has a podcast himself and he’s really interested in apparently a non-fiction author with degrees in business and poetry. He hosts the Kindle chronicles podcast. Where he’s interviewed some big-name authors like Margaret Atwood, Dean Koontz, and Jeff Bezos. I’m probably saying all these names wrong, and I apologize.

Ashley: I think you said it right.

Sarah: But yeah, so they were having a discussion about virtual realities and the options for the future and how even like just we’re talking over zoom at the moment. That kind of thing, in the future we might put on our headsets and be on a place of our choosing maybe on like some beach somewhere…

Ashley: Oh that would be exciting.

Sarah: Just having a chat with each other with our avatars. I was like, oh my god, this is so cool. I really want this future. I mean, it sounds very Ready Player One-ish—

Ashley: It does!

Sarah: —Just describing it. But…

Ashley: I was thinking about the same—I was like, oh this does sound like Ready Player One.

Sarah: I, I would be quite excited about a feature that involves technology in that way. I think it could be quite, quite fun.

Ashley: Yeah. Be quite cool.

Sarah: I’m not concerned that machines are going to take over creative jobs or anything like that, I think, as she says we need to learn how to work with technology and work with machines and so yeah. I find that quite an interesting part of the podcast to listen to is, where things are headed in the future. Yeah.

Ashley: It sounds like a really good podcast, I might have to give it a go.

Sarah: Yes, it is a lot of episodes get through. I think she has at the moment because episodes drop off from the back of the list every week as she adds new ones.

Ashley: Right.

Sarah: At the moment she’s got down to like 2017, and then if you want to listen to any more, then you can pay to become, on Patreon, to become a patron and get access to her backlist. And so maybe when I run out of the episodes I may end up doing that. I kind of listen to them from the back going forward. So at the moment, I’m in 2018’s episodes but then I’m also listening to 2020 at the same time, because I want to stay abreast of the changes. And then hopefully eventually I’ll catch up.

Ashley: That makes sense.

Sarah: So what was your tool of the month, Ashley?

Ashley: So I also picked a podcast again for my tool of the month.

Sarah: Our podcasts are about podcasts.

Ashley: I know. Well, I um, I wasn’t going to pick a podcast, but for about a week I… I go through phases where I listened to, binge listen to things.

Sarah: Yeah, me too.

Ashley: And I found I found myself binge listening to The Career Author Podcast which is hosted by Zach Bohannon and J. Thorn.

Sarah: Who, I should point out, Joanna Penn has also collaborated with so.

Ashley: Oh, cool.

Sarah: Both of them. But anyways, continue.

Ashley: No, so I will continue. They write post-apocalyptic and dystopian sci fi fiction. And they have this podcast, which is all about transitioning your life to becoming a full-time author, so they have done a lot of self-publishing, and they all originally had day jobs and I guess I didn’t, I didn’t listen to things in order. But I think they eventually met… both were in the same life stage and both ended up leaving their jobs to pursue writing full time. The podcasts covers a lot about, you know, the art of craft, finding your audience, and a lot about navigating the world of self-publishing, which has been quite interesting because it goes through a lot of the tactics they’ve used. There’s even one episode where they… so one of them had released a book, like through self-publishing. And they basically talked through the first, I think it was 60 days, starting like before they released it. And then once they released it and all the different strategies they used and how it helped, what one’s worked and what didn’t work, which I found quite interesting. But there were a lot of helpful episodes that I listened to. As I have said before, I don’t really listen to them in order, I kind of just look through the list and decided what I felt like listening to, at the time, so they’re very sort of, jump around from all different, all different times.

Sarah: Definitely understandable. I used to do that with, with The Creative Penn. But then I ended up discovering that even the ones that I didn’t think that I was going to gel with, or I was like that’s not real like relevant.

Ashley: Yeah.

Sarah: They had pieces in it that I was actually quite interested in. So now I’m just doing it all in order, but I totally understand jumping around, because, you know, you only have so much time.

Ashley: Yeah.

Sarah: And there’s so much out there.

Ashley: You never know what you’re going to, if you’re gonna like podcast or not, right?

Sarah: Yes. Yeah.

Ashley: Yeah, so I’ve listened to a few episodes. A couple that I found really helpful were ‘The Golden Age of Independent Publishing’ and also a very, in a similar vein, ‘The State of Independent Publishing in 2020.’ Those two were really helpful because they were very relevant talking about right now, what self-publishing is like, because a lot of resources you find are a bit older, or not up to date or, you know, whatever. So that was really interesting. And they also were postulating where indie publishing was going to go in the future. And an interesting point that they were making was, obviously we want to self-publish. So we know a lot about it, but the number of people that are like us and actually know that self-publishing exists is really small. And same with people who buy self-published books, too. Like a lot of people don’t even realize that they’re self-published or whatever.

Sarah: Well because that it’s to such a professional standard these days that as a buyer, you know, you get these covers that are professionally designed by self-publishers and so you may not necessarily know the difference between it unless you specifically look it up, right?

Ashley: Yeah, exactly. And I guess if you carry on from that there’s such a large proportion of the world, one that is even unaware of eBooks, to start with, or have very limited access to like eBooks at all. So it was sort of about once these people become aware of it, how much room to grow the field has. So I found that really, really interesting. Very thought provoking.

Sarah: Yeah. There’s definitely a lot of areas in the world. Like, I think India is a big one, that’s the market that’s supposedly going to, to grow. And China, to an extent I think. Although it depends on, you know, they’ve got all those specific rules around… yeah.

Ashley: Yes, yeah.

Sarah: Yeah, so it depends on that, but yeah. There is certainly room for growth in the future.

Ashley: And even my friends and people that I know that are still like, I’m not so sure about eBooks, or I, you know, I don’t know. It’s still… there’s not a lot of people that even actively read them, if that makes any sense.

Sarah: Even audiobooks. Audiobooks has been growing hugely over the last little while. Like personally I don’t listen to audiobooks, because I find I don’t like the narration. I find it really hard to gel with all the voices. Although the, you know, in saying that in the future, sort of, one of the things that’s being explored is that whether you could select—like with AI development—whether you could select a specific accent from… which might make it more palatable to you. But, I find that, yeah, it alters the way that I… like I’d usually read it differently. And then if, so if I’m listening to it I don’t take it as seriously, and I don’t get quite as involved in the book, because this is weird narration going on in my ear that makes me laugh.

Ashley: Yeah.

Sarah: So it will be like the most serious topic, and then I’ll be cracking up laughing at this weird narration. People putting on voices.

Ashley: Yeah.

Sarah: But yeah, audiobooks are growing too. And a lot of people don’t even think about that.

Ashley: Yeah. I’m a, I sometimes I listen to audiobooks. James listens to a lot of lot of audiobooks, because he has quite, he has quite a long commute, where he drives in. So instead of podcasts he listens to his audiobooks. I think it also helps because it takes them a long time to read normally, because he’s dyslexic, so.

Sarah: I think it’s probably easier to listen to like nonfiction audiobooks.

Ashley: Yeah, that’s… he listens to… we’ve been listening to A History of Everything. A lot of those Stephen Fry ones. Like heroes and the Greek god one. I can’t remember. Mythos. And then James loves Lee Child. So he also will occasionally listen to those. But yeah, I like them. I don’t know. I prefer podcast when we’re traveling or just music. But I can see the benefit of um…

Sarah: Yeah, no definitely. I listened to one over Christmas. And while I was, you know, getting Christmas dinner ready and things because it takes so long. And it was really nice like I really enjoyed being able to do something while listening to a book. But yeah, I’m not sure I can get past the voices at the moment. You get kind of used to it, but it’s, it’s a bit weird. I don’t know that it’s for me because I just get too distracted by it.

Ashley: Yeah. I both read and listened to Ready Player One. So I was reading the novel and James had the audio book. And that was actually quite good, because it’s in first person and they have… my gosh, what’s the actor’s name. I think it’s Will Wheaton who does the narration. And because it’s a first person one, it’s only his voice that you hear. So actually feels really natural. Because like we were talking about in our point of view, episode on our podcast. It’s like someone telling you a story. So the first person worked really well for the audiobook. But yeah, I don’t know. They’re, they’re all right.

Sarah: Sorry, we’ve gone on like this whole…

Ashley: Audiobook tangent. It’s fine. So another—going back to The Career Author Podcast—another episode that I found very interesting was one that was called, ‘Pursuing the Traditional Publishing Path’ and it was them talking about their, you know, attempts at accessing traditional publishing streams, and whatnot. And basically the reasons why they were going for it as well, which I thought was interesting, because they’re quite successful self-publishing. So they’re like why do you want to get traditionally published. So that was quite thought provoking about why people want to go down that path in the first place.

Sarah: That sounds very interesting.

Ashley: It was, and how they’re kind of saying that, you know, you don’t decide to either do self-publishing or traditional publishing, you either decide to self-publish or decide to try and pursue traditional publishing, if that makes any sense.

Sarah: Ha, yeah. That’s true.

Ashley: I found that really funny and relevant.

Sarah: I think it does depend on what type of project that you have to pitch.

Ashley: Yeah. So, that was interesting. Oh, and one of them had just submitted one to a bunch of agents. I think he’d sent it to 13 or so. And he was like, I have five no replies. Six noes. And one that said they’d get back to me by the end of the year. I was like, I feel you.

Sarah: And then sometimes you get like a response that’s like, I don’t know, five or six months later.

Ashley: Yeah, you’re like okay.

Sarah: You’re like, oh I cast you off like a long time ago. You didn’t need to respond.

Ashley: And the last episode that I found incredibly interesting was called, ‘Don’t Start a Series Until You Can Answer These Two Questions.’ And the two questions, well, the two points were: making sure you roughly know how your series will end. Even if it’s just this character dies or the war ends. You know, like something so it’s not going to go on forever, to kind of help you think about, you know, the books in between that need to happen. And then also making sure your series, they say, has an overarching decision that every character in the world has to eventually make. And I thought that was a good point, though, as well. Making, I guess, making sure your world has, like, you know, one big issue. It’s not just this one random thing happening on the side that you’re trying to stretch out over 20 books. I think they want to do like a ten-book series. And I was like, that’s a lot of books. But no, it’d be more like… I think their example was in Star Wars. It’s whether they want to join, you know, the Rebel Alliance or The Empire. Or that kind of thing.

Sarah: Like what side are they on.

Ashley: Yeah, and everyone in the entire world has that issue they have to face. I was thinking about our teen fiction, we have the exact same thing.

Sarah: Yeah, that’s what I was thinking. I was like, okay, we have covered those two, that’s good. I was like, Phew!

Ashley: We do have it. Yeah. And the same for our current one, if our world is our city.

Sarah: Yeah.

Ashley: So I was like, yeah, no, that’s fine. It was interesting to go through that mental exercise.

Sarah: Yeah.

Ashley: Anyways, they are also collaborative authors as well, which I found very interesting because there’s a lot in their backlog of podcasts about how they deal with it and how they work together. And they work very differently to Sarah and I, which I also found it really interesting because they write… one writes the first draft, and the other edits behind them, which I found very, very interesting. And there’s like, you know, it’s playing to their strengths, like one prefers to write a first draft, and the other enjoys the editing and like, crafting process. So that’s how they do it. Whereas, obviously, Sarah and I write different chapters so, just different. It was interesting. So, anyways I was gonna say we should probably move on to what we’re reading this month. What’s your—

Sarah: Yes. I was going to say the same thing.

Ashley: What’s your book for this, for this month?

Sarah: Oh my goodness. So, my book for this month is It by Stephen King

Ashley: That’s a big book.

Sarah: It really is. So after reading Sawkill Girls I became kind of curious about horrors. And I was like, hey, maybe I should read an adult horror book. Of course, where would you start with adult horrors if not with Stephen King? So.

Ashley: Exactly.

Sarah: I have to admit, I haven’t read many Stephen King books have read, randomly, Under the Dome because I think I, I think I actually read the book before the series came out, or as the series came out, I can’t remember which was. I think I saw it in a bookshop and was like hey, that looks good. It’s massive but who really cares. And so I read that one. It was all right, probably not his best work. And as a teen I read a few Gunslinger novels. But apart from that feeling naive to Stephen King’s works. And obviously I’ve read On Writing. But yeah, that’s entirely sort of different. So anyways, I hi—loaned out this book It from the library because I was like, well, that sounds like a quite a horror-esque one. If anything, It…

Ashley: Have you watched the movie?

Sarah: No, I have not. Anyway, so I went to the library to pick up this book. It’s curbside delivery at the moment. Got the bag from the curbside delivery and was like, whoa, that’s heavy! Open it up and oh my gosh, I am never getting be able to finish this in three weeks. You have to be kidding me. Especially with the other books I’ve got on the go, I was like, this isn’t, this isn’t happening. But, I did try. I’ve Started it, I’m about three chapters through. Didn’t grab me from the outset, I mean, the first sentence was, I was like, well, yes, you can tell he’s hooked, like, done the first sentence hook thing because it felt very… but yeah. So I’ve started it and I feel like in the midst of chapter three I’ve started getting into it a bit more. I think because he kind of grabs you a bit more by the way he describes the characters dread in such detail before they’re even aware that something has happened. So I think that’s a big part and creating the tension in the book. But also yeah, it uses the omniscient point of view. Which I found quite interesting. I was like, oh, this is how you do it. Kind of like dialogue, but you know, like you start with the character and their action, and then like as a new paragraph, and then like segway into the thoughts, but I was still like, yeah, I’m never gonna probably write it myself. But it was very interesting to read and realize that this is how he’s doing it.

Ashley: I’m too afraid to read it, I watched the movie, and I really don’t like horror, it terrifies me. And I, I managed to get through the movie. I have not braved It II, because I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

Sarah: I can’t watch scary movies. But I can read scary novels.

Ashley: Couldn’t bring myself to read It. And my, my brother in law tried to read it and said he was absolutely terrified. So I think I’m just gonna stick with The Stand. Which is so far, all right.

Sarah: Well, we’ll see how I go then.

Ashley: You’ll have to let me know.

Sarah: Might come back in the future and be like, yeah, I’m never going to read a horror again. I don’t know, we’ll see. I think I should be okay.

Ashley: I’m sure you’ll be fine.

Sarah: May not be a ‘before bed’ book. We’ll see.

Ashley: No. It depends how much you like clowns, I think.

Sarah: Ah dear. So what have you been reading?

Ashley: I was about to say, I’m reading, I think about as opposite of a book, as you can probably get to It. I’m reading—I actually don’t have to say this title. I’ve been trying to practice, and I have no idea. So I’m gonna go with The Penelopiadby Margaret Atwood.

Sarah: Yeah, that sounds about right.

Ashley: So it is way outside of the realm of books I would usually read. Unintentionally, but it… I… yeah. It’s a novella, to start with, I don’t often read novellas I also didn’t know it was a novella when I got it. It’s also the first book by Margaret Atwood that I’ve read, I haven’t even watched Handmaidens Tale or read it.

Sarah: Me neither.

Ashley: So, I don’t really know much about her writing style. And I was only reading it, because I was wanting to compare within the genre of historical fiction and, in particular, books that are set in ancient Greece. So, this novella tells the story of a Odysseus, which is told through the eyes of his wife Penelope, which is fine. So that’s the blurb that I read, I’m like, sounds good to me. I start reading it, and first thing, it’s first person. I’m like, okay, I got it. First person. Very, very clearly first person. And very quickly, you also learn that she’s reminiscing from beyond the grave, and like she’s in not Hades, but she’s on the other side of the river Styx basically, with a whole bunch of other Greek gods and things, which is a bit odd. And she’s sort of dead but reminiscing about the things that happened in her life and now she knows more about it because she’s dead. So, sees different perspectives or something which is good. It’s structured like a classical Greek drama. I don’t know if you’ve ever read any Greek dramas?

Sarah: No, I have not.

Ashley: They’re… some of them are, they’re very tragic. So I did a paper at university about about Greek tragedies, so. It reads similar to that, like the acts and things. Well it’s not an acts, but you can tell that she’s structured it in a certain way. To add to the bit that I wasn’t expecting, so it alternates between Penelope’s first person storytelling from after she’s died, and coral commentary by her twelve maids and song form.

Sarah: That’s amazing.

Ashley: So, so after every chapter, every two chapters, there’s a musical interlude by her twelve maids. And so I struggled a bit, I actually had to look this up because the first song, I… I’m not good at reading songs. Let’s start with that. I really struggle to hear the melody in it. So the first one was fine, because it was like a jump-rope kind of song so you can follow along quite easily with the rhyming. But then the next song wasn’t a jump-rope song.

Sarah: That’s hilarious.

Ashley: And so I had to end up, I ended up looking it up and it turns out every single coral commentary, they call it, is from a different type of verse, like a different style of verse. So they’re all different. And I’m not gonna lie. I’ve been struggling to read the songs. I’ve mostly just skipped them. Because they’re just commentary on what she’s just said. But as…

Sarah: That’s funny. Are the songs, like did she write the songs? Or they songs that are inserted?

Ashley: I believe, no, she wrote the songs. She wrote songs.

Sarah: Oh okay. I wonder if she put music to them.

Ashley: So I’m just going to grab it. Yeah, it’s a bit… I don’t know. So it’s like the first part of one of their ‘A Jump-Rope Rhyme’ that’s what it’s called. And it’s, “We are the maids, the ones you killed, the ones you failed. We danced in air, our bare feet twitched, it was not fair.” It’s like that. But some of them obviously more complex. It’s a bit strange. Additionally, if any of you listen to our perspectives podcast. She does also semi-use the second person point of view, as well. So she addresses the reader a lot. So it will be like, I, I died. As, as you are probably aware. Did you know that I did this? Or she’ll be on the side, she’ll be like, you, you probably feel the same way, sometimes. I’m like, do I? I don’t know. It’s been a bit strange. Yeah, it’s weird. It’s really interesting though because I could never write a book like that. At all. But it’s not, it’s not bad, it’s just very different to what I’m used to. And I don’t know any other… I’ve never read any of her other books. I assume that they’re not structured like Greek plays, reminiscing from beyond the grave. In first person and sometimes second person with songs.

Sarah: I would assume so.

Ashley: But yeah, I read it in about, oh I think I’ve got thirty pages left. No. Sixty pages left. And I’ve only been reading it for like, two hours. So it’s quite quick so I’ll finish it. But yeah, it’s very different. And I have enjoyed the experience. I feel like I’ve learned a lot about different techniques that you can use.

Sarah: Challenged your mind.

Ashley: Yeah. I should really read the songs, but I just can’t.

Sarah: That’s fair enough.

Ashley: They’re really long, some of them are like ten pages long of—

Sarah: Oh my goodness.

Ashley: —song, and I, and I don’t like when I can’t find the tune of what the song is, so then I try and read it and it’s just a bit strange.

Sarah: Just makeup a random tune.

Ashley: Yes.

Sarah: Just grab the guitar. Strum a couple notes. Okay…

Ashley: Start singing. Another one, so it’s called A Wily Sea Captain – A Sea Shanty, is the name of the song. It’s like, “Oh wily Odysseus, he set out from Troy, with his boat full of loot and has heart full of joy. For he was a thief, our own shiny eyed boy, with his lies and his tricks, and his thieving.” so I can’t, I can’t.

Sarah: That actually segues brilliantly into what we’re doing next time on our podcast, I think. Because we’re probably ready to round this up, do you think, or?

Ashley: Yeah.

Sarah: So next time. It’s our main podcast, and we thought we would do something a little bit more lighthearted. As much as we like to think we’re getting a handle on our novel writing, there’s something that we both struggle in.

Ashley: Yes.

Sarah: And that’s poetry. Especially we’ve written quite a few poems from when we were teens. Which looking back on them now are very cringe worthy, and very hilarious. We thought we’d share them in an inaugural cringy poetry slam. So it’s gonna be like a whole podcast of mistakes of the month, except in poetry form.

Ashley: Yeah.

Sarah: That’s how I envision this.

Ashley: Me too, because some of them are terrible.

Sarah: There’s the odd not too bad one, I feel, in my selection, but… hmm.

Ashley: I have a, I have a thing about rhyming and I can never get away from the rhyming so…

Sarah: I think I consciously tried to get away from the rhyming and then it just sounds random. Anyways. No rhythm whatsoever.

Ashley: So hopefully that will be a relatively hilarious podcast for everyone listening at our expense.

Sarah: Yes, I hope so.

Ashley: Anyways, if, if you want to get ahold of us, you can reach us on www.lindersoncreations.com, or you can contact us through Instagram or Facebook and that would be also @lindersoncreations.

Sarah: If you liked this podcast and you want to hear more from us. It would help us if you rate and review the show on Apple podcast, or tell a friend about it and subscribe on whatever podcatcher you use. And yeah, I hope you enjoyed this podcast.

Ashley: Hope you guys have a great rest of your week. Happy writing, everyone.