Today is part two of two where we are talking to Steven Guglich about his novels. After today you will have heard about writing in elementary school, going from remedial English classes to editor and chief of the school paper, starting with stories for dungeons and dragons, taking 15 years to write your first book, adapting existing fairy tales for your own book, writing before the family wakes up, finding a narrator, scheduling a book tour, helping young authors, and starting your own publishing company.

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Steven A. Guglich grew up in New York City. He lives in Williston, North

Dakota with his wife, his four children, and his collection of books. He is

an Elementary School Principal and is the 2020 North Dakota Principal

of the Year.

In 2022, he and his wife launched Your Wildest Dreams Publishing, LLC

to fulfil a dream born in the imagination of Steven’s Dad, Stanley and to

publish Steven’s books.

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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 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 two of Two where we are talking to Stephen Guglich about his novels.

After today, you will have heard about writing in elementary school, going from remedial English classes to editor in chief of the school paper, starting with stories for Dungeons and Dragons.

Taking 15 years to write your first book.

Adapting existing fairy tales for your own book writing before the family wakes up, finding a narrator, scheduling a book tour, helping young authors, and starting your own publishing company.

Piercing the Veil Book One of the Veil Saga they say that legends are born, not made.

But for Jeremy Goodson and Masaru Hagen, that is far from the truth.

Confronted by something that neither of them can explain, two complete strangers from opposite sides of the world embark on an unforgettable journey that will forge them into living legends.

It's been almost 4000 years since magic disappeared from the Earth.

Hidden from humanity by the veil, those who possess magic live in ancient settlements across the globe.

Over the centuries, these beings have pierced the veil, leaving behind glimpses and shadows of the fantastic and arcane.

Fueled by distant memories and humanity's desire for wonder, familiar stories of myths and legends have been passed down for thousands of years in nearly every culture and nation.

Jeremy Goodson, an average overweight teacher in New York City, finds his entire world turned upside down when a stranger tempts him to leave everything behind and start a journey that will test Jeremy's mysterious gift and bring magic and hope back to humanity.

Masaruhagan, the adopted son of American tech entrepreneurs living in Tokyo, has been guided by an unseen voice all his life.

On the eve of his 20th birthday, the voice leads him across thousands of miles on a mysterious and perilous mission he alone can undertake.

But there are principalities of this world that will do whatever they can to stop Jeremy and Maseru and keep magic out of the hands of humanity forever.

One of these men will bring hope to the world.

The other will bring death the world they once knew will be changed forever, not only for themselves, but for everyone on Earth, and maybe not for the best.

So you had it go through editors and all of that.

You found an audiobook narrator you released it all this March, right?

Yeah, March 31 of 2023.

So you get it out live into the world, and then what do you do?

Then it's all marketing.

Then it's like you got to get it out there looking for opportunities like this.

I came across your podcast because the fairy tale Connection, I thought it would be a great fit for that and then just trying to get it out there, do podcast, do advertising, do promotions, all that stuff.

So that's taken away from my writing time as well, because so many hours in the day, thankfully.

My wife has really been good at helping me with that.

She's definitely looking out there for promotional aspects.

We have a book tour coming up in July, so we're excited about that.

My wife is pretty much planned that we're going to go across the North Midwest, then down the East Coast and then through the Midwest and back up.

So we're kind of going to do a circle from North Dakota to New Jersey, then back to and then back to North Dakota.

But in a circle, I guess it's more of a square, but just going to all these independent bookstores and doing book signings.

So we're looking forward to that.

Okay.

And so you are currently because you said you're still writing, so you're working on the next book, I imagine.

Oh, for sure.

And continuing the series.

You haven't veered off?

No.

Well, yes and no.

I have ideas for some short stories that I want to do.

Like I said, I released one of the short stories with the book, and then I have some other short stories that probably come out with it.

I have a project that I'm doing to help young writers called a Shared World project.

So I'm looking for other writers to come along and write vale saga short stories type stuff.

Because the idea taking the idea of rewriting a fairy tale and making it into a realistic story, going into the origin stories of what happened, how did take Rumpel Stiltskin?

What's the real story of Rumpel Stiltskin?

What I want to do in that sense, like I said, is just help young writers, because I know there are probably lots of writers out there that were like me when I was in my teens and early 20s where I wanted to write, but I didn't have the confidence enough to pursue it.

Like I said, if it wasn't for my wife saying, you have to write, you have to do this, this book wouldn't be out right now, and you and I wouldn't be talking right now.

And so that's what I kind of want to do is help other young writers get their career started early.

So I started that Shared World Project, and I have information about that on my website, and I've had a few people sign up, so I'm looking forward to getting when I get to ten people who have signed up for that at that point, then we're really going to hit it hard and look at releasing an anthology.

And my publishing company would publish their story, so they would have that idea of getting published as well, not just writing the short story, but getting their story published.

So you started a publishing company before you launched your book?

Yes, and we did that to launch the book, pretty much.

I decided early on that I wanted to do self publishing, and I did it for a reason.

After hearing Dave Farlan I don't know if you're familiar with him.

He's a famous author and story coach.

He passed away last year, but he was actually Brandon Sanderson's writing teacher in college.

So he had talked about how when he wrote the Room Lord series, that he knew it was three books.

That's it.

It was three books, and he was going to be done with it.

Publishing company picked it up.

He was excited, and they said, we want you to write nine books.

And he was like, well, it's not a nine book story.

It's not nine books.

We want you to write nine books.

I don't know if nine was the exact number, but more books than planned.

Right.

And he just said that he knew he had no more stories left in this world after and you could even tell.

I mean, the first three are bestsellers and the rest are not.

Just because his heart wasn't and he said in that conference, he said if he had the choice to go back and self publish, because at the time he wrote them, obviously self publishing was pretty much nonexistent.

He said if he had the opportunity to self publish, he certainly he would have done that.

And that really struck with me because I didn't want anybody telling me, you need to write this, or you need to have this included in your story.

Or you have to take this out of your story.

Right, exactly.

And the confidence was there where I knew this was a good story.

I wasn't worried about someone not picking it up.

I figured I'd find somebody who would eventually pick it up, but just wanting to be able to have control.

So with that, my wife and I, we opened up our own publishing company as well to produce my books and possibly others down the line.

See, I already did that.

I am the wife that pushed my husband to write.

We were our anniversary last year, I was talking to him about, which, ironically enough, our anniversary is March 31.

Oh, my goodness.

We took like, a weekend away, and I had started writing a science fiction fantasy book, and so I was telling him about this book that I'd been writing that I started at the beginning of the year.

And so I was, like, telling him about it, and he's like, yeah, I've had this story in my head since junior high.

Oh, my God.

But I'm dyslexic, so I don't think I'm ever going to be able to write the story.

And I was like, Dude, write your story.

And me and his brother, who went to school for English stuff, I don't know what his actual degree was in.

I just English stuff.

Okay.

I'm like, we will edit whatever you can't figure out.

If you spell things the phonetic way, we can figure out what word that was supposed to be, like, not the end of the world.

And so he is now writing his very massive book.

He tells me.

Originally, I was like, how many words do you think this book is going to be?

And he's like, I don't know, like, 150,000?

And now he's like, yeah, maybe like 250,000.

I'm like, Maybe we may have to split that first book up a little bit.

My book was over 200,000, and my editor was able to actually get it down to 170 something thousand.

Well, I'm paused the science fiction fantasy.

I'm now working on a fairy tale retelling.

Oh, neat.

But both of us are very conscious of if it doesn't help move the plot forward, it doesn't need to be there unless it's there to build the character or something like that.

So both of us are very conscious, and both of us are very much editing while we go, which I know is not recommended for some people.

But both of us need that for our brains to be able to like I already said, my memory is garbage, so I had to go back to the beginning because I couldn't remember what I wrote, right?

And I find that that's a great thing for me personally, too, because I like being able to go back.

And that's when I like, if I'm writing a story and I get stuck, that's what I'll do.

I'll go back and edit.

And then by the time I get to the point, I get stuck in the juices are flowing again, and I'm good to go.

And I also find that that's when I start adding more and stuff that really works for the story when I do that self editing.

So I'm one of those people who are weird.

I actually like the editing process.

For mine, in particular, his, I haven't read a ton of his because I'm always reading other stuff for other people that I'm like, when you finish, I'll read it.

But I can't be constantly dipping in and out of this book.

I don't have the time.

But for Mine, I started the beginning very like, there's a lot of inner dialogue and description and not necessarily world building because it starts off in our world.

Mine's like, dual realm, kind of.

So the original Beauty and the Beast, right?

I don't know.

She's in a world, right?

And then at night in her dreams, she's with the beast in our world.

And then at night in her dreams, she's with the human version of the Prince.

And so very different from the Disney version.

But I'm taking that same kind of concept and then twisting it up because why not?

So I'm having to build like our world is our world.

I don't have to do much building for that.

But this other world, I'm having to do more building.

And so I started out very strong with the building and the our world description.

And then I got into the fantasy part of it and was like lost all description.

My editing right now is mostly just like fluffing it up with like, you have to have description or people are going to be so bored that they're not going to know what's going to.

Know what's going on.

Yeah.

You have book one.

Now you're working on book Two.

How long do you think book two is going to take?

Well, now it certainly won't take 15 years.

So I'm hoping maybe within the next two years.

I got about 30% of book one done right now.

Book two.

I'm sorry.

I got about 30% of book two done right now.

And I'm hoping to get a chunk written this summer because I have the month of July off, even though we're going on book tour.

But I'll have plenty more time to write with that.

So I'm looking forward to that and just having those to see where that goes this summer.

So we'll see.

I'll probably know more by the end of the summer on how far I'm going to better idea of when book two will be out.

So what is the best piece of advice you've gotten and the worst piece of advice you've gotten?

Oh, gosh, the worst piece of advice is going to be hard because if it doesn't work for me, it doesn't work.

I guess outlining is probably the worst advice I got because I cannot outline.

For the life of me.

Even my editor was trying to get me send me an outline.

I'm like, I tried outlining.

It just doesn't work.

Because what happens is I wind up just writing.

I'll come up with an idea, I'll write the outline, and then soon I don't have an outline.

I have several paragraphs.

So I'm like, what's the point?

There's no point in outlining.

So for me, I guess outlining didn't work.

And I think every writer needs to figure that out for themselves.

There's lots of writing advice out there.

And you just got to do what works for you.

So the best advice that I've ever gotten was to just write.

And that's what I want to do with a shared world project is just like what you were saying with your husband.

He had all these doubts in his head, and he had, I can't do it because of this.

I can't do it because of that.

Just write your story.

You got a story that's on your heart.

Just get it out.

It doesn't matter what it looks like.

That first draft is yours.

To get it out from your head and your heart onto paper or onto the screen.

And that, I think, is the best advice I've ever gotten to just do that because there's freedom with that.

You're not worried about the spelling, you're not worried about the grammar, because nobody else is going to be looking at it except for you.

So you get it done.

You get your first draft done, then you go through, and then that's when you work on the spelling and the grammar, and you touch it up, and then you start sharing it with critique partners.

And there's so much freedom in that.

If I can just instill that in other people.

And again, that's part of what the Shared World Project is.

It's still that idea that they can just write and not have to worry about all that other stuff.

Well, and even, like, say you do write a book, and it is terrible.

I've talked to many an author who have hidden away or locked away their first manuscript that they wrote because it wasn't ready for other human consumption.

Yes, I've heard other writers call them trunk copies, which I didn't know.

I heard Brandon talk about that last year.

He's got all these trunk books that he has.

And I was like, trunk book.

What's that?

Those are the copies that you just take and you just throw in a trunk because no one else is going to read them.

But you see, I will say all the time, well, not all the time.

Anyways.

I do not DNF books I do not do not finish.

Books I will set aside for later.

May not be it's not the right mood for me.

I'm in a romance mood, and it's a horror book.

It may be that.

It may be a super dark book, and I'm just not in the headspace to be able to enjoy that.

And so for me, I started a science fiction fantasy writing it, and I was like, I'm really not in a science fiction fantasy mood.

I have 31,000 words written in a science fiction fantasy book.

I did an excellent job of world building this really cool Dystopian type, but grown up thing.

I built a really cool world.

And then my brain was like, we want to write a fairy tale retelling.

And I could not get any more words.

It was like pulling teeth to get words on the page on my computer for this science fiction fantasy because my brain was writing this fairy tale one.

Which I just a couple of days.

Ago, crossed over the 31,000 word count that I had for this.

So I hopscotched over the first draft of the first one.

Wow.

Taken me a little bit longer to write this other one, but in my brain, I am publishing this by the end of the year.

So I have a lot of writing, a lot of writing between now and the end of the year.

Oh my goodness.

I feel like I talk to authors and I ask them all the same thing, what's your best and worst advice?

Or whatever.

And I feel like it's like collecting because not every piece of advice.

I would say I'm somewhere between a panther and a plotter.

But my plot is like these one word things.

Like this chapter, you need to be introduced to the main character in this chapter.

There's going to be a battle that happens in this chapter.

That's my outline.

That's more of an outline than I ever have.

I have an idea in my head, and that's it.

I know how the beginning begins, and I know how the end ends, and then I pants my way through it.

Hey, that works too.

Connect.

That's how my husband started.

He'd be like, I have this scene stuck in my head, but it's not until exactly further in.

So he would write chapter, question mark, question mark.

And then he would write that scene that was in his head.

And now he's great.

Now he's having to connect the dots.

That's good, though.

That works for him.

Again, like I said, the worst advice I had is doing what somebody else does as a writer.

You have to do this.

No, there's so many different ways.

Everybody's going to be different.

Everybody's going to have their own way of doing things.

Do what works for you, but be cognizant of, are you wasting more time?

It's that double edged sword.

Maybe it works, but be open minded enough to be able to explore other know well.

And you can even say, you're know, Facebook groups or you're on TikTok in writers groups or whatever.

There are so many authors giving so many different pieces of like, I've had a couple things that I'm like that might work for me.

So I try it for a couple days and I see, does that work for me?

I saw, for example, my most recent thing I have seen since I joined TikTok two years ago.

I have seen so many people talk about Scrivener.

So I was writing in Google Docs because it was free, and I was using a Google Sheet for all of my character information and chapter information and world building and all that.

So I'm going to multiple places for all of this stuff.

And finally I came across another.

I mean, I've seen how many TikToks up to this point about Scrivener, and finally one was like, what I love most about it is all of my stuff is in one place.

And I'm like, oh my God, that would be amazing to not be clicking between tabs on my browser to have it in some organized and then I download it.

And if anyone has ever not seen you've never seen Scrivener before, it has these preset for novel where for your characters, you add a character and it's like, how old are they?

Where do they live?

What's their name?

What's their personality?

What are their likes and dislikes?

And it has all these questions that you can fill out ahead of time.

Or if you're like me, you fill them out as you write it in your story, then you paste it over it's like last night.

I'm like dang it.

The whole family is coming together for Christmas, which is why I'm trying to publish by the end of the year because it's Christmas based, and I don't want to wait another year.

But right, I'm like, all the family is coming together.

So I'm like, well, I have to introduce her brothers that I've named one of, but she has a second one I haven't named yet, and now I have to give their descriptions.

So I'm like, pasting it over into their character profile as I'm doing it.

But you got to do what works for you.

My husband has a whole separate Google Doc with all his character stuff all lined out that he wrote before he touched his.

Screens guy.

And I tried Scrivener, but the learning curve on Scrivener was just okay.

I had to ask myself, do I want to spend weeks trying to learn this program, or do I just want to spend weeks writing in Microsoft Word?

Because I already know how to do that.

See, I probably don't use it how it's besides the character.

I use the character part.

I use the setting part, which the character part and the setting part are not all filled out questions.

Like, I filled out what mattered at the point in the story that I wrote about it, and then I use the writing part.

There's probably a ton of stuff there that I just don't use because I don't know it exists.

I bought it too, because that was one of the writing advice.

If you're a writer, you have to have Scrivener.

I even paid for the course I even paid the $100 for the Scrivener course, thinking that okay, it's going to be.

And I'm a pretty techie guy.

I'm the tech coordinator for my previous district when I worked as an administrator there, and I consider myself very techy, and there's a lot there to learn.

And I just decided I'd rather spend my time writing than learning this program.

See, I opened up they have a PDF manual that you can get to in there, and I opened it up, and I started to read it, and then I went, why am I wasting my time doing this?

If I want to try to figure out how to do something, I'll just Google it.

Yeah.

So do you have it on Mac or do you have it on PC?

Mac.

Okay, see, now I've heard the Mac version is much nicer than the PC version, so maybe that was part of my issue, too, because everybody says that the Mac version of Scrivener is so much easier to use.

Well, I've been using it for two weeks now.

I'm still in the 30 day free trial period, but at this point, I copied everything over from the Google Doc over into it.

And so at this point I'm like, all right, we're good with this.

I'm just going to pay the 60 70, however much it is for it, because I'm like, at this point, I like it.

I like that I can set in a goal date to have it done by, and it tells me it gives me a little progress bar for like, you need to keep writing today if you want to hit your goal.

Those are all things that make me write more where prior to that, I was writing like, 250 to 500 words a day.

Granted, I was only spending like, 15 minutes a day doing that, but now I give myself like, an hour, and then I can get, like I don't know.

Last night I had to get, like, 1200 or 1300 words done because I cut my deadline back by two weeks so I can get it to my developmental person sooner.

But that's on me and that's like, this weekend's goal, right?

As much as possible.

So we cannot have to write 1200 words every single day.

All right, well, thanks again.

No problem.

You have a good rest of your Saturday.

You too.

Bye.

Bye.

Bye.

As Stephen got older, he liked The Elves and the Shoemaker by the Brothers Grimm.

The Elves and the Shoemaker is a set of fairy tales collected by the Brothers Scrim about a poor shoemaker who receives much needed help from three young, helpful elves.

The original story is the first of three fairy tales contained as entry 39 in the German Grimm's Fairy Tales.

In her translation of 1884, margaret Hunt chose the elves as title for these three stories.

The first tale is of ARN Thompson type 503 Helpful Elves, also classified as a Migratory legend.

The second is of at 476 type a wid wife or Godmother for the elves, also categorized as a migratory legend at 50 70.

The third tale is of at 504 type The Changeling, also categorized as a migratory legend at 50 85.

Don't forget we're reading Lemort de Arthur, the story of King Arthur and of his noble Knights of the Roundtable on our Patreon.

You can find the link in the show notes.

The Elves and the Shoemaker there was once a shoemaker who worked very hard and was very honest, but still he could not earn enough to live upon.

And at last all he had in the world was gone, save just leather enough to make one pair of shoes.

Then he cut his leather out, all ready to make up the next day, meaning to rise early in the morning to his work.

His conscience was clear and his heart light amidst all his troubles.

So he went peaceably to bed, left all his cares to heaven, and soon fell asleep.

In the morning, after he had said his prayers, he sat himself down to his work, when, to his great wonder there stood the shoes already made upon the table.

A good man knew not what to say or think at such an OD thing happening.

He looked at the workmanship.

There was not one false stitch in the whole job.

All was so neat and true that it was quite a masterpiece.

The same day a customer came in and the shoes suited him so well that he willingly paid a price higher than usual for them.

And the poor shoemaker with the money bought leather enough to make two pairs more.

In the evening.

He cut out the work and went to bed early that he might get up and begin batimes next day.

But he was saved all the trouble, for when he got up in the morning, the work was done ready to his hand.

Soon in came buyers who paid him handsomely for his goods, so that he bought leather enough for four pair more.

He cut out the work again overnight and found it done in the morning as before.

And so it went on for some time.

What was got ready in the evening was always done by daybreak and a good man soon became thriving and well off again.

One evening about Christmas time, as he and his wife were sitting over the fire chatting together, he said to her I should like to sit up and watch tonight that we may see who it is that comes and does my work for me.

The wife liked the thought, so they left a light burning and hid themselves in a corner of the room behind a curtain that was hung up there, and watched what would happen.

As soon as it was midnight, there came in two little naked dwarfs.

And they sat themselves upon the shoemaker's bench, took up all the work that was cut out, and began to ply with their little fingers stitching and wrapping and tapping away at such a rate that the shoemaker was all wonder and could not take his eyes off them.

And on they went till the job was quite done and the shoe stood ready for use upon the table.

This was long before daybreak, and then they bustled away as quick as lightning.

The next day the wife said to the shoemaker these little whites have made us rich and we ought to be thankful to them and do them a good turn if we can.

I'm quite sorry to see them run about as they do, and indeed it is not very decent, for they have nothing upon.

Their backs to keep off the cold.

I'll tell you what I will make each of them a shirt and a coat and a waistcoat and a pair of pantaloons into the bargain.

And do you make each of them a little pair of shoes?

The thought pleased the good cobbler very much.

And one evening when all the things were ready, they laid them on the table instead of the work that they used to cut out and then went and hid themselves to watch what the little elves would do.

About midnight, in they came dancing and skipping, hopped round the room and then went to sit down to their work as usual.

But when they saw the clothes lying for them, they laughed and chuckled and seemed mightily delighted.

Then they dressed themselves in the twinkling of an eye and danced and capered and sprang about as merry as could be till at last they danced out at the door and away over the grain.

The good couple saw them no more, but everything went well with them from that time forward, as long as they lived.

Thank you for joining Freya's fairy tales.

Be sure to come back next week for Will's journey to holding his own fairy tale in his hands and dare one of his favorite fairy tales.