Today is part one of two where we are talking to Nicki Rae about her novels. Over the next 2 weeks you will hear about reading with your grandmother as a buddy reader, reading other authors work to learn what you like and don’t like, buddy writing your novels, using existing resources to promote your book, various reasons behind pen names, dealing with people that don’t like your book, and interacting with your followers.

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Nicki is the author of The Moore Love Series: Lather and The Date: A Moore Love Short Story, The Perfection Series: Damaged Perfection and Resisting Perfection, Broken Minds, Angel Face, and Fire Within.

She is a born Buckeye turned Hoosier who loves to spend time with her family.

Along with being an avid reader, she also loves her animals and the Indianapolis Colts!

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Welcome to Freya's Fairy Tales, where 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 the fairy tale or short story right as close to the original author's version as possible.

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'm 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 Nicky Ray about her novels.

Over the next two weeks, you will hear about reading with your grandmother as a buddy reader, reading other authors work to learn what you like and don't like buddy writing your novels, using existing resources to promote your book, various reasons behind pen names, dealing with people that don't like your book and interacting with your followers.

Fire within beyond the stage.

Book one music brought us together six years ago.

Our love existed between guitar strings and every beat of the music.

Song lyrics spoke the words of our souls, words only meant for us.

He was a coworker at my first job, a record store.

So many great songs surrounded us, but I was only interested in what our song would become.

With Kelly Shane, I found the first love song that filled my soul with fire.

But he also introduced me to my first sad song, Heartache that filled my veins with ice water.

Marketing a new band has brought us back together, going on a three week tour with Kelly.

It's not how I pictured our reunion.

I'm not sure I can trust him to have my back, let alone confide in him.

But what worries me the most what if my heart decides to trust him without my permission?

The show is Freya's Fairy Tales and so that is fairy tales in two ways.

Fairy tales are something that we watched or listened to or read as kids, and it's also the journey of you spending weeks, months, years working on your book to then get to hold that in your hands as a fairy tale.

For you as well.

So I like to start off with what was your favorite fairy tale when you were a kid and did that favorite change as you got older?

My favorite fairy tale?

That's a good question.

I don't know that I've ever thought about that.

I would have to say Little Red Riding Hood.

Yeah, because any type of stories that I read has to have some kind of, I don't know, a little bit of darkness in it, I guess.

That sounds really bad, but I feel like maybe with adding the big bad wolf in there, maybe add that kind of element to it.

So I would probably go with Little Red Riding Hood.

And did that change as you got older, or has it been the same throughout?

Did you like a nicer story when you were younger?

No, I think that's been pretty much the same.

Okay, and so you at what age did you think, hey, I might want to write a book, or did you start, like, kind of probably started with short stories.

Most don't start out with novels.

Yeah, so I've always been an avid reader.

Reading has always been a big part of my life.

I did write stories in school.

You have the little books that you put together for elementary school?

I have several of those.

I think it was probably once I got a little bit older, my grandma and I were like, buddy readers, and so she obviously read probably books that maybe I shouldn't have been reading at maybe a junior high, early high school level that I was my grandma let me read them.

I think it's probably since then, since when I started reading my first actual adult story books.

Not like kid books or whatever.

I just really enjoyed reading, and I felt like I've always enjoyed English and literature and that type of thing.

So I think once I got up maybe into early high school, I always told my grandmother, I think this is something that I would like to do.

So you're thinking that in high school, when did you actually start, whether you published it or not, when did you actually start writing your first novel and did you ever finish it?

How long did it take you?

I actually did not start writing my first novel until 2014.

Okay, so that was about twelve years after I graduated high school.

That's a long wait.

It is a long wait.

I did a lot of reading because as a writer, you also have to be I feel like you have to be a reader.

Yes.

I don't know if you're a writer, but just because I feel like it's good to see examples of what other people do, how they put the story out, how they show their readers different.

Ways that they display plot twists.

Absolutely.

Did I like that or did I not like that?

Was that too intense?

Not intense enough.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

And so I did a lot of reading, a lot of reading of different types of stories, of different types of genres within that time.

And then it was about 2013 ish.

I think that I actually kind of made my way into the book world.

I started a blog, so I was blogging and reading early advanced copies of books and writing reviews and those types of things.

And then once I started doing that is when I started really, like, plotting a book.

And then it was actually New Year's Day of 2014.

My aunt I had posted something somewhere.

I'm sure you've seen it, but it's like, today's the first day of this year.

Make your story good, or something like that.

I had posted something like that.

And my aunt, who knew I wanted to write a book, she was like, well, let's do it.

Let's write a book.

She actually did not write hers, but I did write mine.

So that was what started it.

And I feel like once you start that writing process, like, your brain just opens to, like, this this is going to sound really strange, but opens to this multiverse, and I can't stop writing it's.

Literally, my favorite thing to do now.

Other than reading my story, is a little bit differently.

So I always tried to write, always read, tried to write, and then I started narrating audio books, and that's what got me into being able to get past one or two chapters and then losing the story.

Yeah.

So it's kind of the same.

I mean, I still obviously read, and now I have to read books because I have to narrate them.

Yeah, a little bit more of a roundabout way.

That's cool.

So did you hold it over your aunt's head?

We do talk about it still.

She's one of those where she writes it all down on paper, which is fine.

A lot of people do that.

So I don't know how active she's doing it.

I think she is still writing, but it is taking her, obviously, a little bit longer.

So you started on January 1.

How long did it take you to write the first one?

So the first one I had published by June, I self published.

So I had it published by June.

Looking back, maybe I should have taken a little bit more time.

I don't know.

I say that, and I think everybody says that.

Yeah.

I mean, like now, though, I publish maybe a book a year.

Not because I don't write maybe as often, but I kind of sit on the stories a little bit until I'm 100% certain that this is how I want the story to go.

Right.

The first year I published, I actually published two books.

And it was a lot.

It was so much because I am an independently published author.

So I have to find all the professionals that have to also go with making the book polished.

Right.

Editors, coverage designers, and all of that.

Covers are great.

I was looking through your books.

Thank you very much.

You picked well.

Thank you very much.

I lost my trade off there.

I'm so sorry.

It was a lot of the first year to do it twice.

Yes, it was a lot to do it twice.

And not that I couldn't do it again.

I just feel like now I'm not a fast enough writer to put out two works in one year.

So I just kind of go at my own flow.

And it's usually maybe about one book a year.

Well, I feel like most authors that I've talked to, they have like they're set.

Like, I'm going to put out this many books a year or every other year or whatever.

And then maybe you'll get a bonus one occasionally.

Yeah.

Now, I have been in a few anthologies.

There was some shorter stories, so along with the larger novels or whatever, I do have a few short stories.

So those are kind of sprinkled in there a little bit every so often.

So you start writing your own book.

Do you still do the blog or did that stop?

I actually do not do the blog anymore.

I actually turned it over to my friend just because I couldn't write and do the blog at the same time.

So I turned it over to my friend and she did really well with it.

She's a much better blogger than I am, I think when I handed it over to her, I had maybe 2500 followers.

And she actually doesn't have it anymore either.

She's kind of transitioned into a group where people can talk about the books they are reading and advertise their books and everything like that.

But she had it up to like 25,000 followers.

Oh gosh, yes.

She was a much better blogger than I was.

Doesn't that hurt a little bit though, when you're like, well, what was I doing wrong?

At first it was like that, yes, absolutely.

But then I was like, you know what, she's fine.

She's a better blogger, I write.

So it just happened to work out.

We actually now have our own podcast, kind of doing the book stuff too.

So she and I work really well together and it's really fun.

How did the podcast come about?

So, like I said, I had the blog, she had the blog.

She actually doesn't necessarily do a whole lot of blogging.

Like I said, she transitioned it into a group.

So it's not really a whole lot of we moderate it, but she's not really like reviewing.

I wasn't really doing a whole lot of reviewing anymore and we kind of missed it.

But I don't really have a whole lot of time to do any reviewing, or I don't want to say reviewing because if I read a book, I review it.

We just thought that we wanted to do something, me being an indie author, her being very supportive of indie authors, we want to do something for other indie authors.

And so like, you know, let's do a podcast.

Let's see how that goes.

Because we really miss being in the book world in that way.

And it's actually gone pretty well.

So it's really fun, I'm sure, as you know.

At least I think it's really fun.

I only have three podcasts.

That's it.

That's it.

I saw someone posting one of the podcast groups on Facebook and they were like it's kind of like tattoos.

Once you get one, you can't stop.

Yeah, and I actually thought about starting one just for myself and for my book writing specifically.

But I was like, I don't know.

I don't want to put myself out there too much because I also have a full time day job.

So it's just a lot.

We're on a high ages right now, but we'll probably start back up after the first of the year.

Okay, so you put out two books your first year.

What were you doing to promote to get people to buy them?

What did you do in that first year?

Or did you do anything?

Yeah, so marketing my own books is very tough, but being a blogger first, I had a lot of blogger friends, and so I was able to pull together some blogs who would like to do blasts and reviews and things of early copies of my book.

For them, marketing has come a long way, and maybe it's just for me, I didn't know what I was doing in 2014, but now there's like, Amazon ads and goodreads ads and book pubs and those types of things.

So those are all options that I have utilized.

Also social media, and the big one now is TikTok.

Like, talk on.

TikTok is huge.

So I have a little bit of traction there as well.

If you've never seen me around, I'm in there too.

I don't know if I have, actually.

I have to look you up now.

I have to ask.

I do Narrate audiobooks, and I noticed you don't have any yet.

Are there plans for that at some point?

Yeah, I actually just started getting into, first of all, my personal self, listening to books.

I can devour so many more books now by listening to audio.

It's like an addiction to me.

Now I am constantly having my headphones on listening to audiobooks.

You can do your housework while listening.

It's just but anyways, yes, I did notice that I'm kind of scared of audiobooks, to be honest with you.

But I did just notice that Drafted Digital has a program.

I'm sure you know what it is.

Voice is something or other that I was looking into about putting some of my books and audio, but I'm not there yet.

Yeah, I get most of my work from ACX.

And so that's like the Amazon equivalent of draft digital.

I have accounts on the other ones, but the other ones are very much like they whittle down the list for the author.

And so not every narrator has an option to audition for every book.

I have yet to get an audition request from any of the other ones.

Got you.

All right.

But I'm staying busy with ACX and with authors that find me or I find on TikTok.

I may have some questions for you then.

Hey, I am totally happy to answer them.

Awesome.

I started Narrating about a year ago, a little over a year ago now.

Do you love it?

Oh, absolutely.

It's one of those and I tell people this all the time.

So I take on a lot of newer authors that don't have big budgets to spend thousands of dollars on audiobook productions.

I work a day job that pays all my bills just fine, so I can do that.

Okay.

But it was something that I'm like, I would sit on my couch for years, sit on my couch binge reading everything.

And I'm like, I just want something that I can make money reading books.

So I'm like, is there a way I would google Is there a way to make money reviewing books?

Is there a way to make money doing whatever?

Never even considered that audiobook narration was an option.

I think, too, that it's just really gotten more prominent recently.

In the last few years, too, I.

Stumbled across some very clickbait and make $1,000 an hour narrating audiobooks.

And I'm like, okay, that's clearly clickbait.

But can a random person start doing that?

Yes, they can.

You have a great clocking voice.

So I see that.

It'S the same with authoring.

Like, you put yourself out there and you're like, oh, no one's going to like it.

I'll maybe land like five books and then that'll be it.

I haven't taken a break since I started.

That's good.

I had a break around Christmas because I intentionally gave myself a break around Christmas last year.

And now I'm booked in advance quite a ways now because I take on a lot of royalty share projects and newer authors.

And I've got a couple of publishers that are like, hey, you don't ghost us.

So we're going to keep giving you.

Books because you get them done right.

That's awesome.

I do often wonder, if you don't mind me asking, do you read the books first and then narrate them?

That's kind of a process.

I'm very intriguing.

Every narrator is different in their process.

For a nonfiction, I do not read those ahead of time because worst case, you're going to have to look up words you don't know how to say, but the subject matter doesn't matter.

It could be a medical book, it could be a horse book.

It doesn't matter what you're talking about.

It's a nonfiction right now.

I perform them slightly better than dry reads that you will usually hear, but it's nonfiction.

You don't have to know.

Oh, this scene is real soft and quiet and oh, this scene is going to be action packed, so you need to speed up your talking.

So I do for fiction, which is all I do now, I read them ahead of time and I will take notes.

I have like, a Google sheet where I'll note, like, in chapter one, these characters speak.

Is it a male or a female?

What character traits are said about or just if the person talks and they're very rude, I'll put in rude character notes.

So then when I'm going through and actually narrating it, I know kind of what voice to pick based on the read of the book.

I mean, there are sometimes where there's characters where they're just kind of not a bland character, but they just don't have any super distinguishing characteristics.

And so I'll just give like a very generic eVoice to them.

But for the most part, your main character is going to be my normal voice.

Main male character will be my normal male voice.

I have set ones that I use, and then the blonde will have a more bubbly voice, unless she's a bitchy blonde, in which case she'll have more of that tone.

Right.

But yes, I do read ahead of time, and most narrators that I know also read ahead of time for the same reason, to get a feel for the story and the characters and all of that.

Well, that's very interesting.

It's interesting.

And I've definitely gotten better at the process.

Like the beginning, I would just like, read through the book, take no notes at all, just read through the book and I'm like, I'm good to go.

And then I got a couple of complicated books with a whole lot of characters and I'm like, I need a way to organize this mess.

When you go from one normal romance with like, a male and a female and the few side characters that keep the story moving to some epic fantasy where you've got 100 characters, right?

Yeah, I can certainly see that, for sure.

I imagine at the beginning with your advertising, you said you had your friend bloggers kind of blog about it, but you didn't really know about the ad stuff or they weren't available back then.

So you've kind of perfected.

Not perfected, but got better at the process.

Yeah, I've definitely not perfected it.

But yes, I have figured out a little bit more into the ad process.

And I think too, social media has gotten wiser to the fact that offers are probably making a little bit more money using their services for free.

And so I've noticed that if you don't pay for ads on social media, they're probably not going to get seen as much.

That's another thing.

That's another aspect of like, now it's like you can post, I think with social media, it's like its own thing.

I don't know how to describe it.

But each each platform is its own ecosystem.

That's correct.

How to make it work.

Yes, obviously you want to be interactive with your followers.

Obviously that's a given.

And you should be interactive with your followers.

But if you're not as interactive with your followers, you're not going to get as many views on your information.

You have to walk this tightrope of, I'm writing this story, I'm marketing the story, I'm making friends.

There are so many layers to being an author.

And really, sometimes I'm just like, I just want to write my story.

That's it.

I just want to write my story.

That's all I want to do.

And you just pray that you end up the next AK Molford, whose video blows up, or Emily Black something, I don't remember her last name, who posts one video and then gets $17,000 in royalties that month.

And you're just like, please let that be me someday.

Yeah, absolutely.

I don't know if you've seen any of these people, but AK Molford got, after two books, published a seven figure book deal.

Like, you're like, please let that be me.

Yes.

And then also a little bit like, that would be slightly terrifying if that were me.

Yeah.

Because when you're at the top, there's only one way to go, right.

You are expected to produce this perfect product every single time.

And it's like, that's a lot of weight to be on your shoulders.

So would I want to be in that situation?

I wouldn't mind the money.

Right?

I'm not going to say no.

I'm not going to say no.

But it kind of like being like there in the middle kind of would be good for me.

It'd be nice to quit the job, but I don't necessarily have to be making seven figures.

I just need to be like, somewhere where I could only do writing and book related things.

Yes.

I feel like right now, I feel like I could definitely do a little bit of better time management for myself.

But I feel like right now my time management is not the best for trying or for being able to only be a writer.

I had a little bit of better time management skills.

I think I probably could do a little bit better than what I'm doing, but I am not there right now.

I like writing.

I love publishing stories.

It's so cathartic for me to just sit down and put my headphones on and listen to music and just write and just write whatever.

But the rest of the stuff is just a lot.

Yeah, it's a lot.

So where do you get the ideas for your stories from?

Oh, goodness.

Everywhere.

Anywhere.

I'll tell you one of my stories, it actually was my first story.

I was writing it, and I had come to a section where I'm like, I'm not really sure which way this story should go, because even though I do, like, loosely outline the book, I don't have everything pinpointed of what's going to happen.

Right.

I was watching TV instead of writing, I was watching TV, and a commercial came on, and it was a tire commercial, right.

And the song in the background mixed with what was happening.

Like this guy, like this I don't remember exactly what happened in the tire commercial, but she had a flat tire, and she had called someone to help.

But between the story that was happening in the commercial and the music that was happening in the background, I was like, that's it.

That's what I'm going to do.

Inspiration comes from a lot of different places in the shower, mostly long car rides.

I have two brothers that live down I'm from Indiana, and I have two brothers who live down in Tennessee.

So it's like a good five hour drive.

And I actually drove there and back by myself one time and plotted my whole book I was working on and pretty much just wrote it from there.

So it can come from anywhere at any time of the day or night.

So do you use, like, notes on your phone to keep track of this?

Oh, yes, I do.

But before I started doing this, I just have notebooks everywhere.

Notebooks everywhere with notes everywhere.

I'm like, okay, I need to do a little bit better with this.

Yes, I started using my notepad, and you should just see it.

I just have pages and pages on my phone, on my notepad on my phone.

And some of them have, like, three words on it that would help me remember of something that I was thinking of.

I don't know.

I hope maybe four years down the road when I finally get to that story, I'd be like, Red shoes.

Like, what am I supposed to do with that?

Yeah, I've gotten to the point where when I'm doing my character descriptions, I try to be more helpful for myself.

But yesterday I'm voicing a new character, and I'm like, what's my character description for this guy?

All I typed was a******.

You can do a lot with that.

I'm like, all right then.

Aka.

Because he's like, Colonel something, but his actual name is Arthur.

And so it was like, oh, a******.

Aka arthur.

All right, got it.

I happened to be doing a live on TikTok when I was trying to do that part, and the author was in the live.

And I'm like, well, it's accurate to the character.

At least sometimes the notes are less helpful than that.

I got you.

And sometimes it'll be like a reminder thing of like, I had one like one of the characters there's like a scene where she's not sure who's talking.

So I had put like, hey, it's this character, but change his voice slightly so that it's not a dead giveaway who that was in that scenario where you're not supposed to know yet that that's who that is in that scenario.

Yeah, but sometimes not helpful notes.

But book writing is the same.

Your notes are only as helpful as you being able to recall what the heck you were talking about.

Exactly.

That is exactly right.

Three words, man.

Those better be three perfect words because I'm not sure.

Did the main character is she supposed to be wearing red shoes?

Is she a stripper wearing red shoes on the pole?

Is she like, a businesswoman that likes to wear red shoes?

I don't have quite as many of the three word notes as I do, like, maybe a full paragraph or something, but I do have a couple of them, and I do every now and then go through and clean it out because I'll use whatever notes are in there.

And then I'll go through and clean out what I've already used, and I'll see some of them and I'm like, what am I talking about here?

We'll leave it.

We'll try to figure it out later.

Yeah, I had too much going on.

I'll figure out what I'm doing with these d*** red shoes later.

What was the note before it?

What was the note after it?

Maybe we can figure it out in context.

Where was my brain at the rest of that week or month or whatever?

Yeah, and sometimes you won't use them, and that's okay.

At the time, I thought, this is a good plotline.

I can maybe build from this.

But when I come back to it and that spark isn't there anymore, it is what it is.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

So I started writing, I guess towards the beginning of this year.

What happened was I couldn't manage to land a fiction book to save my life to Narrate.

So I'm like, I'm just going to write my own.

There you go.

I started and then I started landing fiction books.

But then around my anniversary, I'm like, talking to my husband about my book, and he's like, oh, I've had since I was in junior high this idea for this book.

So I got him writing and but then he like, he'll get bored or he'll have another idea.

So now he's got two books he's kind of working on side by side.

When he gets bored of one, he'll work on the other, and he goes back and forth.

I had one, I got bored.

I wanted to do something with mythology, so I bought all the books to research the mythology, and then I got completely booked up on Narrating and don't have time to read any of them.

Yeah.

So I'm like, well, that's what you get when you give yourself a full time job, plus Narrating.

Full time plus three podcasts.

Yeah, exactly what you get.

Exactly.

That's kind of why we're on a little bit of a hiatus right now on my podcast.

So we usually try to do about twelve or 13 episodes per season, and then we take a small break.

It's taking a little bit of a longer one this time because my mom actually got sick at the beginning of the year, so I've been doing a lot of things with her.

And then my son is a senior in high school this year, so he has a lot going on.

And then him and.

I went on almost a two week trip to Europe in October with his school.

And I just got to the point where I was like, I cannot do one more thing.

We ended our season and I told my co host and I was like, okay, we need to take a break, because I was to the point where I was like, I don't even want to do this podcast ever again.

And I knew that I wouldn't continue that way.

Yeah, I just needed a break.

And so that's kind of why we're on a little bit of a longer hiatus now.

So I start Narrating last September and I was landing nonfiction, and I'm like, oh, we just need to practice our fiction.

So I start a daily fiction podcast.

Daily, daily, daily.

But it is a read, a chapter, a day of a classic novel.

And so I'm not having to do like I know a lot of people will say, like, podcasts are a full time job, but I don't have to go research that.

I just pick the next public domain book and I read a chapter or two each morning and then I go about the rest of my day.

And then obviously, I edit it.

I did not edit at the beginning.

And the audio quality is not great.

They are edited now.

They sound much better.

I've gotten better at the beginning.

If you don't have an acting background and you haven't really ever had to read books out loud to people and sound professional doing it, you sound very stiff and it sounds like you're reading off of a book.

So now when I listen back to all those early books that I did, I'm like, oh, I sound so bad.

It's not like bad bad.

I mean, I have a lot of downloads on that podcast, so I'm doing okay for myself.

But I'm like, man, why did people listen in the beginning?

You live and you learn.

Yeah, you learn to edit and you learned.

That was a big thing for me too.

At first I tried to edit.

I'm like, okay, this is good.

And then as I went along, I was like, yeah, we're going to have to go back to those other episodes because I've just learned so much more about editing episodes.

Obviously, I don't know everything and I still have a lot to learn about it, but I'm a little bit better than what I was a year ago.

Well, I listened to one of your podcast episodes, the Bridgerton One, so I was like, I just wanted to hear your podcast ahead of time.

So I was listening to The Bridgerton One, and I was like, this is actually I think I only got like halfway through it because I was, like, trying to do one job and I finished doing what I was doing.

Thank you.

I enjoyed the episode.

So it's still on my continue playing thing on my Apple podcasts.

Yeah.

Thank you.

So you're learning the editing with the podcast.

How does your editing process for your books go?

Like, you finish the book and then what do you do?

I actually have readers, beta readers who read along with me.

That way I don't get too far into the book and there's like a huge plot hole that I miss and that would take a ton of work to fix.

That's almost more like an alpha reader.

Than a yeah, more like an alpha reader.

I have both.

But yeah, I guess that's more like an alpha reader.

They read along with me.

Not only do they look for like plot holes or whatever inconsistency, they do a little bit of proof reading, although I don't tell them to put as much emphasis on that during the writing process.

But then I do have someone who will go through the book for me and do some light proof reading on it.

And then I do have an editor who will go in and do like line edits and things like that.

Once the book, once I feel like the story is fine and there's no plot holes in it, and then it's been through the alpha and data readers and they are fine.

And then I have my one friend who proofreads and then I will send it off to the editor.

My biggest problem though is I still am one of those writers who I feel like I need to make sure I edit as I go instead of just writing and then going back and editing.

I don't know why I still do that because I know a lot of writers are like, no, just get your words down on the paper and then you can go back later and do it.

For me, it does take longer.

That's why I'm not a fast writer.

At the end of the day though, you have to do what works for you.

As long as you're getting from idea to finished book, not everybody's way of working is going to work.

Just like with narrating, it's the same thing.

There's a lot of narrators that will narrate their script based on this character's in blue and this one's in red and all of that.

For me, seeing all those colors is going to be incredibly distracting and it doesn't work for my brain.

Not everybody's process works for everybody, right?

That's my husband is Dyslexic, and so when he's writing, he's doing the same thing and he will also have it read it to him to make sure that he used the right word because his spelling is not great because of the Dyslexia, right?

And so he's had a couple of times where it's been reading to him and he's like, that's not the word that was supposed to be there.

Yeah, as long as it works for you and you're not putting out not subpar.

I do not subscribe to the indie books are not as well done as traditionally published books.

I've found issues in both indie and traditionally published.

I think Indy has a tendency to have more authors that don't do any editing on their books, but there are as long as you're going through the process and you don't even necessarily if you have a really good set of beta readers and alpha readers that are catching all of those mistakes.

It may not even need to see an editor, but understanding where your shortcomings are and when you need to ask for help, like you do a podcast.

So you use your voice.

You may not like your own voice for your own audiobooks.

You could do it if you wanted to, but not everybody wants to listen to their voice for hours.

And I had actually thought about that, but I don't think I could do it.

There's other people out there like you who love to do narration and that is fine because that's just not something that I feel like I could do.

My sister actually has a great speaking voice and I've been trying to talk her into trying to try narration.

I don't know if I'm going to get her to do it, but she has a great speaking voice.

Just don't show her.

I don't know if you've seen the video on TikTok of You Can Do This From Your Bed.

I actually haven't seen that.

It caused like a big uproar in the narrator and voiceover community.

They're like, what you could, but it's not going to sound good.

I've listened to a couple of audio books where you can tell that they're either not properly spaced from their microphone, like they're too far away and it sounds like they're talking down a hallway, or it just didn't really get edited at all.

And you can hear a bunch of like noises in the background.

There's an occasional where a noise may slip through because it's like, wow, I did that scene so well.

But oh my gosh, there's a police car siren in the background.

Yes.

So you always have to ask yourself, can I do it better?

Or would I probably do it worse and I shouldn't touch it.

Right.

I feel like that's the same with books too, though.

Like when you're writing, can I write that better?

You could probably always spend extra years working on your book to make sure.

That'S the thing too.

I think that's my problem is I spend so much time like rereading what I wrote and I change it and I change it and I change it and I just have to tell myself, you are always going to change this.

Just keep writing.

You can always write this better and you will continue to change it if you just focus on this one section.

So let's move on.

And I actually recently just found out and I never thought I'd be able to do this.

Generally.

I would think generally I have written my books in linear order.

Start here, go to the end.

This last book that I just released a couple of weeks ago, I was stuck in the middle.

I was completely stuck.

And I was like, I have this part, and I know what's going to happen here, but I cannot get this middle to line up with what I wanted to do.

So I went ahead and I wrote the ending.

I wrote the beginning.

I wrote the ending.

And I'm like, okay, I have these two sections, and we got to bridge it.

I have to bridge it.

But now I have a little more context on how I'm ending.

So now I can fill in all these empty spaces where I was having an issue with and you know what?

It works so well.

And I couldn't believe it because I've always like, how am I going to write out of order if I don't know what's going to happen to begin with?

Yeah, but it actually worked very well and it saved my life.

I don't know if you've seen on TikTok, have you seen Amber Lee Henning at all?

I'm not sure.

Contained in Darkness, Bound in Shadow or her two books that are out now this sounds familiar.

So she writes these, like, 120,000 plus word books, epics.

She wrote the first two, skipped the third, and is writing the fourth so that she can go back and write the third to make sure she ties up all the plot holes and stuff.

Makes sense.

So me, I'm narrating her books, books one and two.

And she's like, I'm 70,000 words in.

Well, now she's 100,000 words in.

And she's like, I still have, like, 30 something chapters in my outline to go.

And I'm like, oh, my goodness.

I basically took her book because I've saved time slots to finish this series of hers.

And so I'm like, yeah.

So I filled as much time as I could.

I'm like, you have 170,000 words.

If you go over that, we may have to push it back in time.

That's a lot of days.

I think that's like 15 days of narrating to get that book done.

Yeah, that's a lot.

That's a lot of words.

I don't know.

My books are not that long.

I'll just tell you.

Now, yours are mostly romance, right?

They are.

Well, mostly, yes.

I do have one that's a thriller.

I don't know if you saw Angel Face, but it's a thriller.

She's an assassin.

There is like a love story, like, woven in there, but it is not the main aspect of the story.

And then I have one that does have a romance in it, but it really has a little bit of a darker theme to it.

That one made me question myself a little bit.

I don't know where that story came from, but it's a little bit of a darker story.

It does have a romance in it, but it's more of, like, I don't even like I call it, like, a thriller, mystery, dark romance type of thing.

Because it does have a story, like the way that I wrote it.

And I've gotten very mixed reviews on it.

But the way that I wrote it was I started at present day and kind of every so often would throw in there, like, the past and then at the end of the book, like, past and present meet.

So you know what the whole story is, right?

I've gotten very mixed reviews on that, but I thought it worked.

I really liked it.

But most of the other ones are, like, full on romance.

Typically, like a romance, you're not going to get over, like, 100,000.

It's going to be, like, topping the charts.

It's not until you get into, like, fantasies that you're getting, like, way over that.

And most romance ones that I've done have been around, like, 60 to 80,000 words.

Yeah.

And that's about what mine are.

I don't know that I've gone over 70.

Mine go from about 55 to 70.

I did a few, like, novella length ones, but that's not normally what I'm doing.

Yeah.

Nikki loved Little Red Riding Hood growing up.

Little Red Riding Hood is a European fairy tale about a young girl and a sly wolf.

Its origins can be traced back to several pre 17th century European folktales.

The two best known versions were written by Charles Perrault and the Brothers Grimm.

The story has been changed considerably in various retellings and subjected to numerous modern adaptations and readings.

Other names for the story are Little Red Cap, or simply Red Riding Hood.

It is number 333 in the ARN Thompson classification system for folktales.

Today we will be reading Le Petit Chaperon Rouge, the French version of this fairy tale.

Don't forget we're reading Les Mort, DeArthur.

The 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.

Le Petit Chaperon Rouge little Red Riding Hood once upon a time, in the middle of a dense forest, there was a small house where lived a pretty little girl named Little Red Riding Hood.

One sunny day, her mother called her into the kitchen of their little house.

Grandma is sick, she said.

Take her this basket of cakes, but be very careful.

Stay on the path through the forest and don't stop.

If you walk quickly, no harm will come to you.

Don't worry, she said.

I will run to Grandma's.

Without stopping, little Red Riding Hood kissed her mother and left.

The little girl started her long trip through the forest, but she soon forgot the wise words of her mother.

She saw a patch of strawberries under a tree.

What lovely strawberries.

She exclaimed, laying her basket on the ground.

They are so nice and ripe and so big.

Delicious.

I'll maybe just have one more.

Suddenly, Little Red riding Hood remembered her mother, her promise, her grandmother and the basket.

She hurried back towards the path.

The wood became thicker and thicker.

A yellow butterfly flew down through the trees.

Oh, how pretty.

She exclaimed.

And she chased the butterfly through the trees.

I'll catch you.

And she saw some large daisies in the grass.

Oh, how beautiful.

She exclaimed.

Grandma will love them.

And she picked a huge bunch of flowers.

Meanwhile, two menacing eyes watched her from behind a tree.

A strange noise in the woods made Little Red Riding Hood jump with fright and her heart started to thump.

I must find the path and run away from here quickly.

Little Red Riding Hood ran and ran and finally found the path.

But as soon as she started to relax, she heard another strange noise behind her, a very big voice which said hello, little girl.

Why are you walking in the forest all alone?

Where are you going?

I'm taking some cakes to my grandma.

She lives at the very end of this path, said Little Red Riding Hood in a very small voice.

Does your grandma live alone?

Asked the wolf, for it was the Big bad wolf she was talking to.

Oh, yes, replied Little Red Riding Hood.

And she never opens the door to strangers.

You have a very clever grandma, answered the wolf.

Well, it was very nice talking to you.

Maybe we'll meet again.

The wolf left, thinking, I will first be the Grandma, and then I will wait for the little girl to come.

The wolf arrived at the end of the path where the little house stood.

Knock, knock.

The wolf knocked on the door.

Who's there?

Called Grandma from her bed.

It's me, Little Red Riding Hood.

I've brought you some cakes because you are sick.

Answered the wolf, trying his best to hide his big wolf voice.

Oh, that's marvelous.

Said Grandma.

She didn't notice anything strange.

Come in.

Poor Grandma.

In less than 2 seconds the wolf had jumped across the room and swallowed.

The old lady gulp.

And the wolf put on Grandma's dress and hat and slid into the bed.

Soon little Red Riding Hood knocked on the door Grandma, it's me.

May I come in?

The wolf tried to imitate Grandma's small voice and answered hello, my dear, come in.

What a big voice you have, Grandma.

Said the little girl in surprise.

It's to greet you better, my dear, said the wolf.

And what big eyes you have, Grandma.

It's to see you better, my dear.

And what big hands you have.

Exclaimed Little Red Riding Hood, approaching the bed.

It's to hung you better, my dear.

And what a big mouth you have.

Murmured the little girl in a feeble voice.

It's the better to eat you with.

Growled the wolf, and he leapt out of the bed and swallowed her as well.

And with a full stomach he fell asleep.

At that moment, a hunter emerged from the forest.

He saw the house and decided to stop and ask for a glass of water.

He was looking for a big wolf.

Who had been terrorizing the village.

The hunter heard a strange whistling inside the house.

He looked through the window and saw the big wolf snoring on Grandma's bed.

The wolf, he won't escape me this time.

The hunter opened the stomach of the wolf and to his surprise, outpopped Grandma in Little Red Riding Hood safe and sound.

Oh, thank you, said the old lady.

It's safe to go home now, said the hunter to Little Red Riding Hood.

The Big Bad Wolf is dead.

There's no more danger on the path.

Little Red Riding Hood's mother arrived at Grandma's house when the sun was setting.

She had been worried when her daughter hadn't returned home.

When she saw Little Red Riding Hood, she burst into tears of joy.

Oh, you're safe.

After having thanked the hunter again, little Red Riding Hood and her mother walked back home through the forest.

As they were walking quickly under the trees, the little girl said to her mother we must always stay on the path and never stop.

If we do that, we will stay safe.

Thank you for joining Freya's fairy tales.

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