Today is part one of two where we are talking to Neal Romriell about his novels. Over the next 2 weeks you will hear about writing prompts as a kid in school, starting with short stories based on life experiences, finally being able to write a novel when covid traps you at home, getting signed  by a publisher and getting your rights back, learning how to finish getting your book ready, dumb luck helping get things done for your book, writing multiple books at once, and doing things your own way.

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Born and raised in Idaho, Neal struck out for the east coast after graduating from high school. Over the years he’s worn many hats, including Retail and Restaurant Manager, Janitor, Youth Advocate, and now Author. His most important hat however is that of husband to his beautiful wife, and father to his wonderful daughters. He wrote his debut, Urban Fantasy novel- SITE ALPHA during the spring and summer of 2020 and self-published it in June of 2022. A short story of Neal's- THE TOP PRIZE was included in the Anthology WELCOME TO EFFHAM FALLS which released in May of 2032. He is currently working on Site Alpha’s sequel as well as a fantasy series.

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Welcome to Freya's.

Fairy tales.

We believe fairy tales are both stories we enjoyed as children and something that we can achieve ourselves.

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.

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.

I am your host.

Freya victoria I'm an audiobook narrator that loves reading fairy tales, novels and bringing stories to life through narration.

I am also fascinated by talking to authors and learning about their why and how for creating their stories.

We have included all of the links for today's author and our show in the show notes.

Be sure to check out our website.

And sign up for our newsletter for the latest on the podcast.

Today is part one of two where we are talking to Neil Romrell about his novels.

Over the next two weeks, you will hear about writing prompts as a kid in school, starting with short stories based on life experiences.

Finally being able to write a novel when COVID traps you at home.

Getting signed by a publisher and getting your rights back.

Learning how to finish getting your book ready.

Dumb luck.

Helping get things done for your book.

Writing multiple books at once and doing things your own way.

Sight.

Alpha eyes in the dark.

Book One what if I told you Sasquatches were real?

What if I told you we protect them?

Charlote chuck Barnes is an agent in the Rogers family, a secret society created to protect cryptids like Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster from the outside world.

Life is usually quiet at the aging site Alpha, where Chuck is stationed, but a series of deaths brings Chuck face to face with a dark foe from the family's past.

Along with senior Agent Sally DeRosa, chuck and her team will be forced to use every ounce of their training to battle arising threats to cryptid and human alike.

But will it be enough to stop the entity behind the Eyes in the Dark site?

Alpha will appeal to fans of The X Files, men in Black and the Mothman Prophecies.

It presents cryptids in new and interesting ways, creating a world that is both down to earth and out of this world.

All right, the podcast is Freya's Fairy Tales, and that is fairy tales in two ways.

Fairy tales are something that we either watched or read or had read to us as kids.

And also the journey for you to spend weeks, months, years working on your book, to hold that in your hands, is a fairy tale for you.

So the question I like to start off with is what was your favorite fairy tale or other short story when you were a kid and did your favorite change as you got older?

Well, when I was younger, my grandmother used to read us rumpelstiltskin a lot, and I remember that very vividly.

It wasn't a children's golden book.

It was like an actual bigger book.

So it was fairly large, which was probably one of the reasons I liked it as a kid, because it was vivid.

I could see everything.

And so she used to read that to us quite frequently as I got older.

I don't know.

I think that the only difference as I got older is that I learned some of the stories behind some of the fairy tales and found the darker versions of them a little bit, whereas as a kid, you get the kind of Disney Fide version of the fairy tale.

Nicer one.

Yeah.

When I kind of actually just started discovering some of the Grimms Fairy Tales and some of that stuff, I was like, oh, okay.

Yeah, probably for me, as I got older, I liked kind of the more like the more traditional Little Mermaid, where she actually turns into sea foam at the end, and some of those things.

She goes up into the clouds.

There was definitely some difference.

But as a kid, I like ruffle skillsen.

It wasn't just that it was kind of a nonsense word.

It was kind of a fun idea in that there was a way to beat this guy, but you just had to figure out how to get around all the stuff he was so his name exactly.

It's not like, I don't know, Bob or whatever the common name of the time would have been.

It's just like someone was just like, I'm going to throw a bunch of letters into a hat and just draw them out until something sounds like a absolutely.

Absolutely.

I kind of like that nonsensical factor about it.

And so I think that's why that one particularly stuck with me when I was younger, and so that would be my answer.

All right.

And at what age did you start writing at all?

Short stories, prompts in school, whatever.

It started out well.

So when I was 15 years old, as a sophomore in high school, I got a teacher, and every two weeks you had to turn in a writing assignment to this teacher.

Okay.

And so I think it was three paragraphs was like the Max Min.

I think you kind of just had to hit the number, essentially.

Okay.

It couldn't be more than a page.

I know that much.

So very short stories.

Yes.

And they weren't necessarily I think it was more supposed to just be a writing assignment as far as, like, write something that you care about.

Okay, right.

I had this brilliant idea at the time.

I had been reading a bunch of Stephen King, and I think I was reading some Terry Brooks at the time.

So I'd kind of gotten into fantasy and horror a little bit, and I was like, I could totally write a book doing right each time I'd have to turn in an assignment because this is going to go the whole school year.

And you know, when you're younger, a school year feels like it goes on forever.

Forever, yeah.

So I started writing.

Every one of my assignments was essentially a piece of this book and I really didn't know what I was doing.

I can still vividly remember what the story was.

By the time I got to the end, there were still a lot of gaps because I kind of hit just the big talking point points.

Right?

Yeah, exactly.

So it certainly was not anywhere near complete, even by the end of the school year, by no means, but that was kind of my idea.

And then summer came and it wasn't as important.

And by the next year I had a different teacher and we had to do different things.

So it kind of fell, by the way.

But that was my first attempt at writing a book.

And I played D and D pretty much from the time I was in middle school.

And so my next attempt to write a book was I had been playing with this particular group for a very long time and I thought some of the adventures that we've gone on would make great stories.

Right.

I start writing a book and I got five or six chapters in and again it was kind of yeah, I lost the passion for it.

The group ended up, I ended up moving away, but the group was kind of already had fallen off by then because two of the other members had already moved away at that point.

And so that was kind of the final nail on the coffin as we were all going our separate ways at that point.

So yes, that was my next attempt.

I tried again with a fantasy book several years later.

And then my last kind of effort before I actually wrote a book, I had decided I was just going to write down like short stories.

My grandfather, before he passed away, he had written a couple of books.

One of them was like a poetry book and another one was just stories.

Stories that he'd lived through in his life growing up through the Depression and things like that.

Kind of a memoir, sort of.

Yeah.

And I thought, well, I could probably do that, right?

Like we've all kind of had experiences, right.

And I got further I think I made it up to about twelve chapters.

Okay, so we're making progress.

I made about twelve stories and that one again, kind of fell off the wayside.

Now the one thing about that particular book is I did finally, eventually put those short stories on my blogs.

I've got blog posts and short stories and stuff on my website.

So many of them did survive and many of them are currently available to read.

If somebody were to go search them out all the other ones are just lost.

That link will be in the show notes for the episode, so we'll make it easy for people to find it.

There you go.

If you want to see you want to read some of my short stories of growing up in small town Idaho and a few other things, then that would be the place to go.

But, yes, that was kind of my whole journey to getting to the point where I actually was able to write a book.

Story, the short story one, because now you've released a full length novel.

But the short story one, how long did it take you to kind of work on that book, and what did you do once you finished draft one?

So with the short stories, what I had done with it is I had written it down almost more like a was a memoir ish.

But I kind of took like, okay, this trip to Las Vegas that I was on and these crazy things that happen on this trip to Las Vegas became like a know, my one of my favorite stories that I get compliment.

I don't know, the one I've gotten most traction with, let's put it that way.

Compliments might sound a little bit anyway, is this story that I titled the Time I'd Helped Clean Up a Murder.

Okay.

Yeah, it's a story that I would tell people and people would just be, like, fascinated by it.

And so I thought, well, this should definitely be something that I've written down because my kids would reference it and be like, oh, dad, you remember that time you were telling us about?

That wasn't the first story I wrote.

The first little short story, like, memoir thing I wrote was this one I titled Swinger Girl.

And it was just one of those moments.

I'm not so vainglorious that I assume everything I've ever done in my life has been completely unique to me.

Right?

There's got to be other people.

There's 8 billion of us in the world, right?

Almost everything that I've had happen to me has probably happened to at least one other person except that story.

I can't necessarily say that that's the case because it happened.

I was working in Virginia at a pizza place, and the place was located kind of in the middle of, like, a neighborhood, and so there were all these houses across the street.

And one day I was just making pizzas, and I noticed that there was this girl that lived in the street, in the house across the street who was always swinging in her backyard.

Like, from the moment she came home, apparently, to the moment she, I guess, went to dinner or something, she would just sit in the backyard and just swing on this swing, you know, perfectly fine.

A child can do that.

It didn't even think of anything as OD to me until the first time it snowed.

And I mean it.

Snowed.

Like, I grew up in Idaho, and this seemed like a big snow to me, right?

Like, I was used to snow.

This was a ton of snow.

And she was out there swinging in the snow, and I mean, she had to have, like I don't know how she did it, even.

She must have dug a trench or something to be able to swing.

And I thought, that seems kind of interesting.

And it wasn't.

Like I said, this might have been just a thing for her.

Maybe she was neurodivergent.

Maybe it was just something that calmed her.

I really don't know the story, honestly, other than that I was the one that witnessed it.

And then it would all these other times, pouring rain, we're talking like thunderstorm downpour lightning outside.

She's out there swinging, and I'm thinking.

It sounds artistic.

It sounds like an autistic thing, right?

But like I said, it was such an interesting thing to me in that this was what brought her peace.

I'm assuming you know what I'm saying?

Anyway, that to me is just one of those things where, again, I never interacted with her.

I never spoke a word to her.

I never saw her other than through the window of my pizza joint that I was working at.

And rain or shine, probably thought you were a creeper.

Well, I did.

Like I said, if it hadn't been for being directly across the street, I wouldn't even have noticed it.

But that was one of those things where I thought, there can only be so many people on this planet that have experienced that, right, that would have been in a scenario, been in the perfect kind of situation where they would see something like that going on.

And so that was kind of the first one that kind of got me to say, okay, well, if I can write that down and put it into words and like you said, admittedly, it's one of those things where it's not necessarily that.

It's a story that I'm actually being able to tell the whole part of.

I can just tell my experiences from it, right?

Like, I can only give it my side of the story, right?

And once I had done that, and I felt okay about that one, so then I moved on to the car wash.

Well, it's the murder cleanup, which happened at a car wash.

That one.

I wrote that down like, oh, okay, now I'm getting some fire, right?

I'm starting to get these stories, this story thing down.

Crazy situation.

Can I put myself into and write about?

Yeah, I had another one that I titled Zombie Cat because it was the time I encountered a cat that I'm pretty sure just came back from the dead to attack me.

There was just stuff like that.

So it's like things like this, and it was like, again, these are life.

Like, these aren't like crazy, crazy stories.

But they're very unique.

They usually had some kind of kind of bombastic feeling to them.

The one I was mentioning in Las Vegas, one of the stories from that time was I was with this group of people.

We were all in a manager's conference there, and one of the gentlemen that I was with, he goes, hey, I want to go to the club.

And I'm like, I'm not a club person.

Not only am I not a club person, I'm like, probably as far away from the possibility of a club person as you can imagine.

And I'm like, I'll come along with you all.

Just if nothing else, I'll be the designated driver kind of thing or whatever.

You know what I'm saying?

If you need somebody to make sure that the rest of you are not being idiots, I'll at least be there.

If I have to spring you all from jail, at least I'll be the one that does that.

But we go searching, and we came to this club, and it had this huge line, right?

This big line coming out of the club.

And this guy that I was with, I think his name was Chris, right?

Now, the actual name of him is kind of slipping my mind, and he goes, oh, no, don't worry.

I'm going to go up and get us in and pass the bouncer some money, and he's going to let us in.

I'm thinking, that only works in the movies.

Like this has got there's no way that's a real thing, right?

And what?

He goes up, gives the guy $100 bill, and this dude lets five of us in, and I'm like, what?

All these people in line are looking at us like, what are we doing?

I don't know.

I'm with him.

Seriously.

It was one of the weirdest.

So again, it's just one of those things where I can't even tell you other than I probably drank Diet Cokes at the club.

I couldn't even tell you hardly anything else that went on that night other than it just all seemed like a total fantasy to me.

And yet it worked.

And anyway, it was just one of those bizarre moments in life that you're just like, really?

Those are the kind of stories that I was writing down.

Like I said, I got about twelve of them down.

I think ten or eleven of them are on the actual website.

There was a couple that I kind of weeded out because either they felt repetitive, like they were kind of redundant with another story, or I didn't feel like they kind of had the same oomph as some of these first stories.

Well, that one was boring.

Yeah, they might be fun for me and my parents to talk about or something, but probably for the general audience, it wasn't as big a deal.

That's funny you mentioned your kids asking you about it, because that was a big thing.

When my mom was a Navy brat and so she traveled her childhood.

She spent all over the world.

And so we would ask, tell us a story from when you were a kid.

And of course we're getting stories from when she was in Japan and she had a man of war.

Is that the dangerous jellyfish?

Yeah, the jellyfish.

Yep.

They were swimming in the ocean and her friend had one go across her back and she would tell us these stories of like they were in California and had other crazy stuff happen or they know, in a boring place doing less exciting things.

But she would just tell us these stories.

And because she had been all over the world from the time she was born in Africa.

So just all these stories from all these different times, it feels very similar to you telling your kids.

But hers were more worldwide and more like from the lens of her being a kid because she was still a kid when her dad retired.

Yeah, it feels the same.

So you write these twelve now ten published ish short stories.

When did novels come into play?

Well, I have COVID to thank for that.

And I know that this wasn't a.

Lot of authors do.

It wasn't the first time.

You're probably hearing that when COVID actually hit.

I've told this story before in December, prior to COVID coming around.

I wasn't person that was participating.

I was like helping to cater essentially a government party.

And the people there, these are like kind of high ranking government people.

Not like high ranking, but they work for state agencies and things like that.

And they're all just joking about this COVID thing.

Oh, we heard this thing about this COVID bug or whatever, like they're kind of laughing it off and fast forward into March.

Boom.

It's not a joke anymore.

Right.

The job that I'm at, I mean, still, but my job, they essentially told me, look, we're going to send everybody home for a couple of weeks and just kind of see where things are at.

Right?

This is prior to everything's really getting shut down as a precaution.

We're just going to send everybody home.

Right?

Companies and schools did that.

A lot of them did.

So my daughter was in I had one daughter in college.

I had another daughter in high school.

Everybody has to come home naturally and we have to quarantine because, well, one came from this place, so we have to stay.

So one night we're sitting there and we're talking about the fact that I tell these stories and we were kind of just broaching the fact that a lot of authors get started by doing shorter stories or get doing things.

And we were talking about I was just talking about kind of experiences, like some weird paranormal experiences and things I've had out and growing up in Idaho and stuff.

And they said, well dad, you should write a book.

You should write a book.

I think you're a good enough storyteller.

You should try to write a book.

And I said, Well, I've tried.

It just always fails, right?

This isn't necessarily the first time it would happen.

We're all defined by our 15 year old self that failed at this thing.

Exactly.

So I said, you know what?

You're right.

We've got two weeks here at home.

I can't really do much else.

I'll sit down and try to write this book.

And really the catalyst for it was just talking about cryptids.

So we were talking about Bigfoot and Loch Ness Monster and things like that.

And my daughter's listened to a lot of podcasts that deal with creatures chupacabras and things like that.

And so I said, well, okay, I can write a book about that.

Right.

And so I sat down, started writing.

And it wasn't the first night, but it was maybe like the second day or something.

I had already cranked out, like, three chapters, and that was way faster than I'd ever written.

Right?

Yeah.

And I'm very much a panther.

I had no idea where the story was going.

I wrote one chapter and it's like, oh, well, okay, what happens after that?

Well, naturally, this has to be the next chapter.

Right.

And then, okay, I had gotten these three chapters down, and then I kind of was looking around.

I was going, well, maybe I need to get serious about actually thinking about this book, because that was not again, I was kind of doing it just as something to kind of keep my mind off everything else that was going.

On in the world.

And so I got really serious about it, and I still panced it.

By the time I made it to about the fifth chapter, I kind of knew what I wanted the ending to be.

And so I had some targets, but I still didn't know where the story was going.

Right.

Right.

That was it.

It took me about two months from start to finish to get to the end.

And when I finished, I was like, wow.

I got pretty emotional.

It was like Memorial Day weekend was when I finally I remember typing the end or whatever I typed at the end of the book.

And it was like one in the morning.

I was probably sitting on my desk, probably crying.

I finally did this.

It was one of those moments where I was like, I cannot believe I finally got this done.

And of course, then see, the funny thing, of course, as a first time author, you don't realize what the actual work is, right.

The writing, it while it's hard, it's nowhere near the editing and the revising, all the other stuff that goes into it.

So it took me I actually spent that summer working on revisions.

I got an editor involved, and I had written this book with the truest of intentions.

Was to just give it to my family.

I mean, basically it was like, I'll write this book, I'll get know kind of made to look it.

I don't want to present junk, but I was just going to make it look nice.

I was going to put it up on Amazon or someplace and tell my family, hey, if you all want to go buy this book, it's this book that I wrote and order a few copies that I could give to each my kids and call it a day.

And I sent the book to this editor and she said, well, are you going to query this book?

And I was like, I don't even know what that is.

I didn't know what querying you're like.

What does that mean?

Can you expound on that?

She said, I think you've got a good story here.

I would say because she worked with editor or with authors that had been traditionally published.

And so I did.

I sought out agents.

By that fall, I got quite a good bunch of feedback from agents, and I got full requests from manuscripts and stuff.

And I ended up eventually an indie publisher actually offered me a contract on my book, which was really cool.

I didn't have an agent, but I did have a publisher interested.

And so I did, I signed my book on to this indie publisher out of Ohio and it was looking really cool.

They had already published a few books and unfortunately what I didn't realize when I signed on but came out later, was essentially it was like a family business.

And unfortunately some members of the family decided they didn't want to be in the business anymore.

And because of that, there was some problems with finances.

Anyway, it dissolved.

But I got my rights back.

And I had a book that had been drugged through the mud of beta reading for several rounds.

I'd had a professional editor, had worked on it once.

I had now better experience.

I knew more people in the industry.

I knew more people that could help me to get to the right connections.

And I was very proud of the book.

And it had gone through a lot of revisions, I think from the first draft to the final was about 14 different revisions, including the ending, which I'd originally thought of and loved.

I ended up changing because beta readers did not love it.

But that's my favorite part.

Sometimes we make sacrifice.

But again, one of the reasons I had to make sacrifices for it is that I wanted this to be a book that more people would just read besides just the single book.

I wanted to make more books.

And I knew that going in.

I knew I wanted additional books.

My original kind of, I don't know what you'd call it, if I had my original Druthers, it would have been three different books based kind of on characters, loosely based on my three different daughters.

That's not how it ended up.

Kind of panning out as the additional books will not function that way.

But that was kind of my original idealistic thought for it was a three book series.

Each daughter kind of gets a starring role, and that's not how it's going to work out, but that's okay.

They're cool with that.

Finish a book, go through revisions, get a publisher, get your rights back from the publisher.

What did you do next?

Well, like I said, I had this book that I loved, and I was ready to self publish.

Well, I was ready to have it published.

And I guess at that point, what I had discovered is going through I had met a lot more authors.

I'd met traditionally published authors.

I'd met self published authors.

And to me, I didn't want to go back through that process.

At this point, having now gotten a book that I was really I was talking to somebody else right after the book had come out.

I had the opportunity to go on and talk with some people that were like, authors in a little conference thing.

And I told somebody, I would have told you straight to your face that when my book got signed by that publisher, that that book was so ready, and that book was so not ready.

Right?

But now, after this whole year of the beta reads and the revisions and all this other stuff, I was like, okay, no, now this story really is ready, because now I'm ready to move.

Like, I, as the author, was ready to move on.

But I needed to get that book out for me to be able to do that properly, right?

If that makes sense.

That's what it came down to.

And the crazy thing is that not only did I self publish, I mean, I formatted it myself, which some people like doing.

Some people don't like doing.

I was able to keep it fairly condensed.

My cover art and everything was actually from a friend of my daughter's from college, so she gave me a pretty rosy deal on the art.

Like I said, a lot of the stuff I was able to just kind of do in house, and I was like, this book.

Let's get it out there.

So I sent it to Arc readers, and I got a lot of positive feedback from the Arc readers, and there it was.

So how did you go about finding your beta readers and your editor, and what order did you do those in?

I did it all in the wrong order.

Okay.

When I mentioned that I had got that editor involved early on, granted, it was good of me to have her involved, because she's the one that helped me encourage me to actually seek this to be more than just some book that I put together myself and called a day.

But the book wasn't in a place where.

It really at that point, it shouldn't have gotten an editor.

It should have gotten some beta readers or something, you know what I'm saying?

Most of the beta readers of my however many, I think I had almost 20 beta readers total of my 20, I think twelve of them came from the actual publication, the publisher.

The publisher got me a bunch of, like, twelve true, real beta readers, right?

Like, people had no clue who I was, didn't know me from they got just a book that didn't even have a name, like an author on it.

It just said, this is the book, read it, give us your feedback.

That was very a it was humbling.

You find out some things when complete strangers are reading your book, but like I said, it was also very informative.

It gave me a lot of cues to say, okay, well, like I said, that ending that I personally liked, but nobody else did, well, that tells me I probably need to change the ending, right?

For me, it was editor, which shouldn't have been first.

And then I had some beta readers that I contacted through an author group.

So by that point, I had gotten.

Kind of knew you, but not really.

Right?

Exactly.

Your best friend did it.

No, we've never met for tea.

We've never seen each other face to face other than on maybe a zoom call or something.

But yeah, so I got a couple of beta readers involved.

Then on my, like, my fulls I got a couple of full manuscripts requests I mentioned before, but I also got a couple of revised and resubmits.

And those beta readers, those beta readers were essentially because I got those revised and resubmits.

I was like, well, okay, well, let me change it a bit and then see what these beta readers think before I send it back, right?

That helped.

And then, like I said, once I actually was with the publisher, they handled most of the beta and some of that stuff on their own.

I didn't really have to be involved with that other than to submit revisions.

They'd send it to a round of beta readers, usually four of them at a time.

They'd send me back the suggestions, I'd send them a new copy of the manuscript after I'd made those changes, and the process would go over and over.

And then, like I said, once, it became fairly clear because I got my rights back in March of last year, basically.

But by that January, I had pretty much figured out that it was not probably going to happen because it was like, Christmas time is when their family thing had happened, and it was becoming pretty clear that things were either grinding to a halt or might just be dissolved completely.

And I was like, well, my book's like two away from being published.

There was one person before me, and then there was supposed to be mine.

And they had talked about the fact that they had apparently contacted an artist.

They'd done all this stuff, but I didn't get to see any of that.

When I got my rights back, I did get my rights back.

I got the full book version that I had submitted to them, came back to me, but I didn't get any artwork.

It wasn't formatted.

And so that's when things kind of kicked into gear.

I was like, well, okay, I'm going to have to do this.

And I'd spent a lot of money on that initial editor, way less than what some people do, but I'd still spent money on an editor.

I've heard some crazy numbers.

I'm like, there's no world in which I would pay that for anybody unless I had some.

I understand.

I'm not going to say queried editors, but I have talked to a few editors about their rates and stuff, and it makes sense.

The ones I've talked to charge by the word.

So I'm like, I could see and it's the same for narrators.

I could see a crazy number to pay your narrator if your book is really long, but if you have a standard length book, I'm like, those numbers seem really high to me.

It shocked me.

There was a gentleman that not long after I had gotten the publisher, had signed a I was in an author group already, but I had been I don't remember.

I was doing something on Twitter, and this guy reached out to me through Twitter, and he was like, hey, I noticed you've got a book that got signed.

We've got, like, an author's group that meets here in the said because he knew I was from South Carolina where my base was.

And he said, we've got an author's group down here, and I'd love to see if you'd like to come and just see us with one of our meetups or whatever.

And so I joined, and one of the authors in that group who lives here not far from me, I've actually met him a few times.

He had paid an outlandish.

I mean, you talk about some outlandish numbers.

He had paid a crazy amount for a book that essentially he couldn't use anymore because the editor had really butchered it up pretty bad.

Well, I shouldn't say butchered it.

The editor had taken it and said, this is the way this should go.

And he was too naive an author, to know that you don't necessarily let the editors change everything.

You take their suggestions, or you do.

So the editor rewrote the book, essentially rewrote whole portions of the book.

Good grief.

Charged him a lot of money, like, three times what I'd paid for a slightly shorter book than what mine was.

Good grief.

Yeah.

And again, for a book that he wasn't happy with.

And I was like, man, it definitely happens.

Again, I've always had really good relationships with my editors for me.

But yeah, it can definitely get scary out there.

As far as the formatting, I know that there's programs out there, but again, I was pretty much at that point on such a budget for me that I just did it in Microsoft Word.

I think it looks great.

Most people like it.

You wouldn't know it, but it can be done.

You don't even need one of the fancy apps or the tools out there that they have.

Vellum, I think, is one of them.

Vellum and Atticus are the two.

Atticus is one that I just had a short story that literally just was in an anthology that released about three days ago.

They use Atticus and it looks fantastic.

Don't get me wrong.

I think that their book probably does look better than what my book did technically.

But my book was still fine.

I'm not ashamed of it or anything like that.

And mine didn't cost any money to format, right?

Yeah, I plan on getting so me and my husband both write.

So some things like, I bought Pro writing aid.

But when we file taxes at the end of the year, I'm splitting that between us because we're both using it.

So Vellum, I'm going to do the same thing.

We're going to split the cost of it because we're both going to be using it.

I have a mac.

I've heard I just talked to an author last week or week before that was like, I have Atticus.

Don't use atticus.

Something about like because Atticus hasn't been out that long.

And so they haven't super.

I mean, it was just in beta last year, like beta testing.

But Vellum is well developed, has been out for a while, is known in the industry.

And so they were foot they had gotten a really good deal on Atticus.

So they bought atticus.

And I'm like, yeah, it's like pro writing aid.

There are cheaper editing softwares than Pro writing aid.

But I'm like, if everybody's telling me that's the best, I'd rather pay the money for the best.

And I bought the lifetime subscription so I don't have to pay for it again.

There you go.

There you go.

I'm like, that makes a lot of sense.

I got it on some kind of sale.

I don't remember what the holiday was, but it was like, hey, that works.

That's the way to do it.

I'm always like, there are things with every new book that comes out, you're going to have expenses that are going to be specific.

Like every book you have to have a cover.

Every book, you should have an editor, beta readers, or some other person besides you looking at your book.

Every book, you're going to have, like, there's going to be specific expenses for every single book.

But then there are some expenses that are like, oh, that applies to every single book that I have.

So if you pay for a social media scheduler, or a PA or whatever, that's not all on one book.

Unless you only have one book out.

That expense is like for authors that break down their expenses per book, it's like, well, some of those don't only just go to one book.

Very true.

Well, what I have kind of set myself on as I've continued now to write and put out more material is there is probably going to be the day that I will just break down and say, yeah, I need some of these other pieces to continue to put out good.

Because what I don't want is I don't want every single thing to just be super.

I want to continue to develop as an author and I want to continue to get better and I want my books to get better.

And so yes, I'm going to have to do that eventually.

I'm a little bit of a brat that I'm like.

I want it to be the best from the get go.

And I talked to an author who tried, I think they said they tried to do it in Word and then they ended up having to pay somebody to format it because it didn't work right.

It was like, it looked good on their end until they got it up into the ebook format and it did not look good anymore.

Well, and that's one of the trickiest parts is for me, basically what I did is I went into Kindle, did their little Kindle download thing that lets you format your book in Kindle.

I did that and then essentially I had a program that allowed me to flip that over and just make it into whatever the other style file is.

I don't remember which the two are.

There's the Kindle, one is like a moab or something like that, and then the other one's a different style.

But I took that same file and just plugged it into all the other ebook places I needed it and it did fine.

Now, I'll be honest, that is one place that I'm a little bit disappointed on my ebook.

There is one spot where for some reason it should have been bold and it wasn't bold and I could not get it to fix and I finally gave up.

I tried to do it for like two days straight.

I just could not get over the hump on it.

But again, that's one of those reasons why maybe I would go in the future and getting an atticus or something like that or the vellum or something, just because then I would know, yes, this will get it into that format, no questions asked.

But again, like I said, for me it wasn't bad, but it's just the one little piece that I'm like.

So you get your cover, you get it formatted and then obviously, since you now have a book available, you got it live somehow.

How did you go about doing that?

Well, so this is where having author groups really helped because again, I didn't really know, like ISBNs, no clue what that was at first.

Again, having it with a publisher while I was with that publisher, like I said, I was signed for basically about a year with them in that time.

They released four books over that course that year.

And so I got to see each of those books.

A lot of times what they would do is as a book was being prepared, they'd share it with all the authors that were in the publishing house and be like, okay, hey everybody, here's the next book that's coming.

Check this over if you notice anything.

We've got our own people, but we're just kind of sending it out to you guys if you want to take a look.

And so I was kind of learning the process a little bit as I went.

So they were kind of using you guys as beta readers.

They kind of were, which was fine.

I personally didn't mind because I knew they were kind of a smaller outfit, didn't necessarily bother me.

What was I going to do in the meantime, you know what I'm saying?

Like I was writing, I'm just waiting.

For you to get my book ready.

Right?

That was kind of my thought of it is the faster that I help them get other books out, the faster it comes my turn.

So I had kind of seen kind of the stages, but going into those author groups and actually talking to people and saying, okay, hey, I know you self published last year, I know you self published a few months ago.

What did you need to get done?

And so I was able to start the know, I was able to go in and have my Amazon author account created two or three months before I actually was going to release the book.

I was able to go in and like I said, just for something as simple as getting that kindle tool downloaded and know that it existed again, I didn't know this prior to I get people that ask me a lot, especially like, if I'm talking to just people in the area about books will say stuff like, well, doesn't it cost a lot?

Or can't you do like, publish a book pretty much for free?

And I'm like, you can, but.

It.

Depends on what you want to get out of it, right?

And so I had this starry eyed thought that, oh, well, I want to get my book in all these bookstores and stuff, so I'm going to do everything.

And I spent money that I probably didn't need to I shouldn't say I didn't need to spend, but I bought ISBNs.

You don't have to do that, right?

You can.

It helps to go wide if you do.

So I bought me, I went out and talked to bookstores and said, well, what do you need?

Well, you need to be with Ingram Spark.

We're not going to buy books from Amazon.

It's what our local bookstores are telling me.

Okay, well, what's Ingram Spark let me go and find out about, you know what I'm saying?

So it was like I had kind of been dealing with this over some time.

And so I pretty much after I got my rights back, I spent about the next week just getting things settled on the back end.

As in making sure I had ISBNs, making sure I knew where I was going to distribute, making sure what the prices were going to be.

Then I actually got the confirmation that I had, like the because by then, like I said, I knew having known a couple of months before I got my rights back, I had already started the process of getting cover already started the process of some of that stuff.

So all this stuff was pretty much waiting for me to just give them the go ahead, like, yes, let's do it so I can give you some money and you can give me some art.

Like I said, it kind of was timed around the same time that I would have gotten my taxes back.

So that's kind of what like I said, I kind of knew that there was these expenses coming.

I kind of took that and then I said, okay, well, I'm going to do this book launch.

But I knew I wanted to have arc readers.

So from the time I got my rights back until I actually had my first ever copy of my book in my hand, like physical copy of my book in my hand was about four weeks total.

And that first copy was terrible.

And part of it was because I formatted some of the page numbers wrong and some other things that again, I thought I knew what I was doing, and I did.

I mean, I knew more than I had previously, but I still needed I need some work.

So luckily you have author copies.

That was the first time I held the book, and at that time is when I went ahead and said, okay, I'm going to get these Arcs out.

And I started contacting people through TikTok, through Twitter, through just kind of happenstance through the author groups.

I said, hey, well, I made this little Google form for people to apply to be an Arc reader.

And so I'd send the links to the author groups and they'd send it up to their local reader book clubs and different things like that.

I got 30 something people off of TikTok alone.

I'm pretty sure TikTok really helped me with all that part of it.

Yeah, I've heard they're a little bit helpful.

That's definitely not how you found.

Was, and that was kind of where they got the ball rolling.

So a few things about the art process, though, and I know that this was kind of something that happened like one of the real the recent controversies on TikTok.

This might be dating us a little bit too much here.

Hey, I'm not old, but the people that were talking about suing your Arc readers and stuff, I had Arc readers that gave me some feedback because one of the things that had happened for me was my publisher had gotten me sensitivity readers.

Because that's what you should do as an author.

Again, this is one of those expenses that some people will say, oh, well, you don't really need to do that.

No, I really sincerely think you should pursue sensitivity readers, especially if you're dealing with anything that is outside of again, I'm a white CIS male.

So definitely if I'm touching any subjects that aren't there, I need to have it.

If you're staying only in your own lane, only right.

Not necessary.

Right.

Maybe should still be done, but not definitely necessary.

If you're going outside of your lane, maybe have someone review it.

Yeah.

My main character is a young woman.

And so, again, that's something I wanted to make.

Again, it's inspired from my daughters.

And so I had a lot of their feedback, too, to help.

But but so they had gotten me sensitivity readers.

So I'd gotten feedback from these sensitivity readers.

I had made changes based on some of the sensitivity reader stuff when I sent out my Arcs, one of the first arcs that I sent out, complete Stranger.

First of all, this person again, I don't even know if at the time we're even friends on Twitter, TikTok, whatever.

At the time, she had gotten the book and sent me back some feedback probably within a few days.

I mean, she clearly had to have read it fairly fast.

And she mentioned a couple of things that were still in the book that they were changes I had made based on what the sensitivity readers were saying, except that I'm guessing these sensitivity readers were I don't know.

I don't know where they found them, because, again, I didn't ever meet them.

I just got their notes.

But there was a couple of things that were issues because one of them involved a Native American folklore, and it was something that they had told me to change in a previous thing.

But when I actually went based on this person's knowledge and talking to me about it, I went and actually looked up.

I was like, yeah, no, this person gave me the wrong advice.

I mean, it was literally like they had told me the wrong thing.

And so I made a change to the book even after the Arcs had gone out.

I think what you learned from that was do the research before making the change.

And that's it.

Again, I was a baby author.

I didn't know.

I just was taking what these people were saying and saying, oh, well, certainly I'm going to have to change that.

See, do your research.

I'm that t*** that's like, I have to prove you wrong.

So I'm going to go look it up.

Yeah, the thing about it was that I was grateful for the Arc readers because they did help me with some of that stuff as far as, like, hey, heads up.

I don't know if you noticed, but on page 248, it says it's 246.

Again, just little tiny things like that.

So I was literally making changes on my book up until about two weeks before it actually released.

But I gave myself a big release.

I mean, I had my Arcs going out two full months before the book was supposed to publish.

So I wanted that time because I knew there was going to be these things were going to come up.

Right.

I knew stuff was going to happen that was going to be like, you.

Know, at the point that it goes to Arcs, it should be almost completely ready to publish.

Like, at the point it goes to Arcs, you're not sending Arcs to the pre edited version.

No.

So at that point, you're like, any little thing left is going to be like a NIT picky little oops thing.

Yeah.

And then, like I said, I was very grateful.

And again, for me, I understand the concept of I don't go into my review spaces, but if people tag me in reviews, that's great.

If somebody wants to give me a one star review, fantastic.

You took the time to read my book.

I am grateful for that.

You know what I'm saying?

So that's a place where I don't get why some people get really weird about it.

Yeah, you can't do anything about it.

I'm of the mind, and now I get reviews as a narrator, but I'm of the mind that if I get tagged in something now, it's a little bit rude if you're tagging me in a lower starred review, but if you're tagging me in a review, you are now opening it up for me to comment.

Can I also choose not to comment on it?

Yes, I can, because I have my own brain and can make my own decision.

Usually I'm just like, why does that matter?

Why is that the thing that you're stuck on?

My level of interaction with most reviews, especially once I get tagged in, is simply to contact that individual and just say, hey, is it okay if I share this?

You know what I'm saying?

That's my real concern.

I don't want to share something that they're not comfortable with.

Generally, if you put it on TikTok, I'm assuming you mean it for it to be shared.

But I don't want to assume you know what saying.

So that's that's usually the level of, say, hey, you know, I'm going to share this to my feed so that people can see this review, and I'm done with it at that.

And Neil liked Rumpel Stiltskin growing up.

And since we've already read this story.

We'Re going to read another grim story with a weird name fundifogle Foundlingbird or Fundifogle is a German fairy tale collected by the brothers grim number 51.

It is ARN Thompson, type three one three A.

The girl helps the hero flee and revolves around a transformation chase.

Others of the type include the Master Maid, the Water Nixie Nick's, Not Nothing and the Two Kings'children.

Don't forget we're reading Le Mort de Arthur.

A story of King Arthur and of his noble knights of the Round Table on our Patreon.

You can find the link in the show notes.

There was once a forester who went into the forest to hunt and as he entered it he heard a sound of screaming, as if a little child were there.

He followed the sound and at last came to a high tree and at the top of this a little child was sitting, for the mother had fallen asleep under the tree with the child and the bird of prey had seen it in her arms, had flown down, snatched it away and set it on the high tree.

The forester climbed up, brought the child down and thought to himself you will take him home with you and bring him up with your Lena.

He took it home, therefore, and the two children grew up together.

And the one which he had found on a tree was called Fundifogel because a bird had carried it away.

Fundifogel and Lena loved each other so dearly that when they did not see each other, they were sad.

Now the forester had an old cook who one evening took two pails and began to fetch water and did not go once only, but many times out to the spring.

Lena saw this and said listen, Old Santa, why are you fetching so much water?

If you will never repeat it to anyone, I will tell you why.

So Lena said no, she would never repeat it to anyone.

And then the cook said early tomorrow morning, when the forester is out hunting, I will heat the water and when it is boiling in the Ketle I will throw in Fundifogel and will boil him in it.

Early next morning the forester got up and went out hunting and when he was gone the children were still in bed.

Then Lena said to Fundifogle if you will never leave me, I too will never leave you.

Fundafogel said Neither now nor ever will I leave you.

Then said Lena, then I will tell you.

Last night Old Santa carried so many buckets of water into the house that I asked her why she was doing that and she said that if I would promise not to tell anyone.

And she said that early tomorrow morning when father was out hunting, she would set the kettle full of water, throw you into it and boil you.

But we will get up quickly, dress ourselves and go away together.

The two children, therefore got up, dressed themselves quickly and went away.

When the water in the Ketle was boiling the cook went into the bedroom to fetch Fundifogal and throw him into it.

But when she came in and went to the beds, both the children were gone.

Then she was terribly alarmed, and she said to herself, what shall I say now?

When the forester comes home and sees that the children are gone they must be followed instantly to get them back again.

Then the cook sent three servants after them who were to run and overtake the children.

The children, however, were sitting outside the forest and when they saw from afar the three servants running, Lena said to Fundifogel, never leave me, and I will never leave you.

Fundafogel said, Neither now nor ever.

Then said Lena, do you become a rose tree and either rose upon it?

When the three servants came to the forest nothing was there but a rose tree and one rose on it.

But the children were nowhere.

Then said they, there's nothing to be done here.

And they went home and told the cook that they had seen nothing in the forest but a little rose bush with one rose on it.

Then the old cook scolded and said, you simple tins, you should have cut the rose bush in two and have broken off the rose and brought it home with you.

Go and do it at once.

They had, therefore, to go out and look for the second time.

The children, however, saw them coming from a distance.

Then Lena said, Funderfogel, never leave me, and I will never leave you.

Funderfogel said, Neither now nor ever, said Lena, then do you become a church, and I'll be the chandelier in it.

So when the three servants came, nothing was there but a church with a chandelier in it.

They said therefore to each other, what can we do here?

Let us go home.

When they got home, the cook asked if they had not found them.

So they said, no, they had found nothing but a church and there was a chandelier in it.

And the cook scolded them and said, you fools, why did you not pull the church to pieces and bring the chandelier home with you?

And now the old cook herself got on her legs and went with the three servants in pursuit of the children.

The children, however, saw from afar that the three servants were coming and the cook waddling after them.

Then said Lena, Funda Fogel, never leave me, and I will never leave you.

Then said Fundafogel, neither now nor ever, said Lena, be a fish pond, and I will be the duck upon it.

The cook, however, came up to them and when she saw the pond she lay down by it and was about to drink it up.

But the duck swam quickly to her, seized her head in its beak and drew her into the water.

And there the.

Old witch had to drown.

Then the children went home together and were heartily delighted.

And if they have not died, they are living still.

Thank you for joining Freya's fairy tales.

Be sure to come back next week for the conclusion of Neil's journey to holding his own fairy tale in his hands and to hear another of his favorite fairy tales.