On today's episode, we'll chat with Leanne Treese, an author of both Women's Fiction and Romantic Comedy. After working as a matrimonial lawyer for eighteen years, Leanne turned her focus to writing. Her debut work of fiction, Their Last Chance, sought to demonstrate the pitfalls of the legal process as it pertains to divorce. Leanne wrote a second legal-themed book, Mother of the Accused, which tells the story of a single mother whose eighteen-year-old son is accused of sexual assault during his senior year in high school. While Leanne loves writing of all kinds, she found writing the few funny parts of these more serious novels especially enjoyable and wrote two romantic comedies: The Santa Games and Fun Lessons. Though these books are light in theme, they tackle difficult issues such as navigating life with ADHD or learning to accept a transgender sibling.

You can learn more about Leanne and her books on her website www.leannetreese.com and follow her on Instagram @leannetreese.

If you are hearing this before 12/15/23 - be sure to rush over to Amazon and get Santa Games while it is on special!! - https://amzn.to/3TgULhN

Mother of the Accused is also in Kindle Unlimited on Amazon - https://amzn.to/3Tkv3Ji

If you are interested in checking out the Rose River Romance series by Avery Lawrence - you can start with Fire from the Ashes - https://amzn.to/41fuTEZ

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A little about today's host-

Shawna Rodrigues left her award-winning career in the public sector in 2019 to consult and publish her first novel Beyond the Pear Blossoms. Her desire to connect and help others led to the launch of her podcast The Grit Show shortly thereafter. When she learned women host only 27% of podcasts, her skills and passion led to the founding of the Authentic Connections Network. She now helps mission-driven entrepreneurs better connect with their audiences by providing full-service podcast production and through a community for Entrepreneurs & Podcasters – EPAC. Podcasting is her primary focus, so she continues to support the writing community through this podcast, and her writing time is mostly focused on anthologies.

She offers a free 7 Steps to Perfect Your Podcast Title to anyone interested in launching a podcast. You can also follow her on Instagram-@ShawnaPodcasts, and learn more about the network and community at https://linktr.ee/37by27.

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Welcome to Author Express. Thanks for joining us today. I'm Shawna Rodrigues, one of your hosts and the founder of Authentic Connections Podcast Network, which makes this podcast possible. This podcast is where you discover the voice behind the pages of your next favorite book, and I'm excited about the author we have for you today.

On today's episode, we'll chat with Leanne Treese, an author of both women's fiction and romantic comedy. After working as a matrimonial lawyer for 18 years, Leanne turned her focus to writing. Her debut work of fiction, Their Last Chance, sought to demonstrate the pitfalls of the legal process as it pertains to divorce. Leanne wrote a second legal themed book, Mother of the Accused, which tells a story of a single mother whose 18-year-old son is accused of sexual assault during his senior year in high school. Well, Leanne loves writing all kinds. She found writing the few funny parts of these more serious novels especially enjoyable and wrote 2 romantic comedies, The Santa Games and Fun Lessons. Though these books are light in theme, they tackle difficult issues such as navigating life with ADHD or learning to accept a transgender sibling. And since it is December, we are going to focus a little bit more on The Santa Games today as well as talk about some of her other writings.

You can learn more about Leanne and her books on her website, which we'll talk about the end and follow her on Instagram at Leanne Treese. Thank you so much for being here today, Leanne.

Oh, thank you so much for having me. This is awesome.

Well, I love it that because you have some serious books we get to touch on and then we also get to event celebrate the holidays a little bit, which is so nice to be doing in December.

Yeah. Yeah. It was a fun book to write, and a lot of the writing took place in December. Components of it, a few years back, but it was nice to sit by the tree and be writing a book that was Christmassy, so that was a lot of fun.

Oh, good. Well, wonderful. We'll get more into that then. So, we start each of our episodes with a question, tell us something interesting about where you are from.

Yes. Well, I am from New Jersey. I was born in South Jersey, and I live in the middle of the state. And what I actually really love about New Jersey and particularly where I live now is it's very different than I think the perception a lot of people have of the state. So, I live near the Delaware River. There's rolling hills. It's very green. A lot of woods. And what's neat about it is I'm also an hour or so from reaching the shore. I'm an hour from Philadelphia, and I'm an hour from New York. So, I feel like we've got a nice little gem of this state that often doesn't get appreciated. I'm pro New Jersey.

That's a good thing to be. I lived in DC and was driving from DC up to Niagara Falls, and I actually got to drive through more the middle and see more of New Jersey. And I'd been to the Jersey shore before. I've been to different parts, but driving through the middle, there is so much to offer there. It was like, felt like dairy country almost.

There's a lot of, like, horse farms around me, and it's not, I think, what people picture when they picture New Jersey. There's a lot of parts that are really very pastoral, but it's what's fun is you're close to a lot of big cities and all of that. So, I like New Jersey.

Yes. Surprisingly compact for how much it actually holds.

Yeah. That's a great way to put it.

Yes. I definitely enjoy it. And our question to get to know you, we're doing something very different because it is the holidays. What is your favorite holiday tradition?

Well, I love the tree. I mean, everybody loves that. My daughter always makes peanut blossoms, and we get everybody, like, a special ornament each year that kind of represents something that reflects, like, either the year, like a trip that they took or an achievement. Like, my oldest daughter just graduated as an occupational therapist, so her ornament last year was a little occupational therapist ornament, but we always try to get something nice. So, when those ornaments get pulled out, it brings back a lot of memories. And what's kind of fun is I have another daughter who's living in Pittsburgh now, and we're going to get all those ornaments out and give them to her for her tree. So, it's been like a fun thing to pass along. So, the tree trimming is something that, you know, has really become a fun experience.

That's so exciting. My mom did that when we were kids, so we each got our own ornament every year. They usually match, but we all had our own ornaments, so it was always a big deal. When we got older, I have my ornaments that I got to take with me that I made to talk about my entry. So, yeah, very meaningful. That's so special. I love it.

Yeah.

So, we're going to talk a little bit more in-depth about the Christmas book, but let's talk a little bit about one of your other books, too. Did you just talk about your writing process? Like, for you, what is your favorite thing about sitting down or writing a book?

You know, I'm like, probably in the minority in that. Writing the first draft for me is always a little tougher and I'm a huge reviser. Like, I love having my book out and the story told. I love refining it. I love developing characters that seem real, and I feel like you can do that even better. Like, once the initial parts are down, you can, it's almost like an artist, I would assume, like, making, like, changes to a painting, like making it better. So, I love that process of improving writing even more than the first draft of doing it. So, that's my favorite part.

That's wonderful. I think, yeah, knowing which parts of it you like the best. So, when you wrote Santa Games, did you release it that same year, or did you had to release it, like, a year later because it took you most of the holidays to write it?

Because I think you'd mentioned the fact that you kind of felt like he was almost your consultant on it too because of one of the characters in it.

Yes. One of the characters actually, the main male character has ADD, which is something that my son has grappled with as well. So, he was helping me with some of that characterization of that character, but he's also pretty good at being very pragmatic. So, I would come up with ideas and he be like, mom, like, why would that happen? Like, that doesn't make any sense. Like, you know, but it was good because it gave us something fun that we could kind of work on a little bit together during the pandemic when we were all locked in, so that was fun.

Yes. And you have this great balance between your writing. So, your first 2 books we're a little bit more serious, really reflective of your career in the legal system and being able to, like, tell the stories. There weren't specific stories, but kind of reflective of, like, what you kind of saw families dealing with and kind of bringing that light to that work. And then you found that you loved writing the comedic pieces, the balance to all of that, and that kind of led you into writing more of the romantic comedy. So, what do you find is the best way to do that balance? How do you manage to do that balance between the serious pieces and the funny pieces in those novels you've written?

Yes. So, the first 2 pieces, what I tried to do with the first 2 books, like, they are very serious, so you have to be really careful about when you're using humor in very serious books because you don't want to look like you're not taking the subjects with the seriousness it deserves. So, I tried hard, but I also think sometimes if you read a book that has serious topics and there's never any light scenes or any scenes that kind of give the reader a break, that can be hard for readers. So, I really tried even in those books to have a balance. But I found that I looked forward to writing those funny scenes and to revising those funny scenes, and I also enjoyed reading romantic comedies. So, I was like, I am going to try this, and The Santa Games was my first stab at really just trying to write a book that would be funny and light. And I did try to incorporate, you know, something that might be challenging for some people, which is, you know, the ADHD and how that might impact, you know, your life.

So, I did try to put some other elements in it of seriousness, but that book in particular is very light.

Yes. And you kind of said that it reminded you of, like, a Hallmark movie with kind of those elements in it too.

Yeah. In fact, a lot of the reviews, if anyone looks at the reviews, a lot of people use that, you know, Hallmark as a way to describe the book. It was fun. It was fun to write something that I mean, the ending of it is very, very Hallmark-y. So, if you read it, you got to get to the end. But I understand you also have a piece that's a little Hallmark in theme. Am I right about that?

Yes. When we talked about the fact that we're trying to balance, like, the different things that you write, and so, when I wrote, I was kind of given the advice of having a different brand, so to speak, and so under a pen name. So, Avery Lawrence is my pen name that I did the romantic comedy stuff under. So, I have The Rose River Romance and I did a short story. So, mine isn't a full novel and it's called, Holidays from the Heart. And so, it does have, it has a balance. So, it's a romantic comedy, but it has that balance of, like, a more serious piece of, like, what she's gone through with her family and she goes back home for the holidays. She's from Oregon, but goes back home for the holidays in New England because of some health stuff with her mom. That's why she goes back and sees her old high school flame. And so, her trying to balance caring for her mom and needing to be in Oregon and seeing somebody that she used to care about and the end of things poorly with and trying to balance all those things. So, it has, like, that kind of the light and dark balance. Are you talking about that? So, even when I went to write a romantic comedy, it still had, like, those themes that are trying to balance in there too. So, I think that, like, with emotions, there always that line you're walking. Right?

Yeah. But I think those to me are the most powerful stories because everybody's lives are like that. We all have these moments. We all have more difficult times, and I think when your writing can reflect that, I think people and I think it resonates with people.

Yeah. Because it is, like, real life. We're trying to balance it all. I think the holidays can bring some of that stuff out as well.

Yeah. Yeah. That's for sure. Yeah. That’s why we need our books for a break. Right?

Yes. Exactly. Exactly. So that they can have the endings that have the glimmers in them and that have the different pieces that are part of it. Yes. That's wonderful. That's great. And you've been writing for a while now, so it's nice that you have a little bit of a collection of books for people to be able to choose from.

Yeah. I feel very lucky, like, to have written those books. And in some regards, it's nice if an author has, like, the same genre, but what's nice for me, I recently attended a book festival. I had my books there, and I was able to offer if somebody didn't like serious books, I was able to offer other books. I was like, why don’t you come to the table and say, what book do you like to read? Because I got a couple different kinds here. I got to write a mystery, I think, or a thriller. I'm all over to tell some teen books, but, you know, it was kind of fun to be able to connect with a lot of different readers. So, I'm not sure it was the best business plan, but as far as having fun, that worked out.

Yes. Well, I think here at Author Express, I love it that we do have so many different authors so folks can kind of find, like, what they're drawn to and intrigued by. And when I was looking at, I get Amazon first reads, and I was looking this time, and, of course, I went to, like, the women's fiction kind of first. But then I went this time, I think I chose a thriller that this last month as what I was going to read, and so I definitely like different books. For me, it being character driven and having that balance of making me feel and connect to characters is what really does it for me with books. So, I don't think I stick to one genre either. So, having somebody who's writing you like is probably and who does strong characters is important to me. I find that with what I choose for movies and books too is that variety. So,

yeah.

I think that's important.

Feel the same way about that. Like, the characters make the books, I think, even more than the plot a lot of times. You care about the character. You don't care about what happens to them no matter what.

Yes. Yeah. So, I think I like that. I think I like having that variety and being able to find what connects. And it's cute because my fiancé has read, so, Beyond the Pear Blossoms is my women's fiction book, and he read that because he loves me and adores me and helped me with it when it went out. And, you know, it has all the feels, which he works with. But my first, the novel length because I wrote the novel length book first, which is part of the Rose River Romance and it's the Fire from the Ashes is that book.

And it has a little more action in it, which I would've thought he might be more interested in, but he loves, there's a dog in it called Boots, and he likes the dog, and he likes it. It's like this sweet, you know, this sweet. And he says, like, it's like a romantic comedy. It's a sweet story that, like, has, like, all these angles and was, like, this town festival they go to, and it has, like, all the small, it's a small Oregon coast town. Like, you know, it has all of those relatable type things for it, and he loves that book so much more by all the feels Beyond the Pear Blossom book. Like, he likes that, and he likes the happy ending that comes with the sweet romance is not necessarily what I put into the other books that are more, like, serious. It has the, you know, complete ending in women's fiction, like, you know, but doesn't necessarily have the same types of endings, and so he likes that better. So, everyone has different things they like about books, so it's kind of fun to have a variety.

Yeah. Totally agree.

Yes. I love that. So, the same question that we ask all of our writers is, is there a book or story that inspires you the most? What is it?

Well, because I like, like you, the character driven books. Like, 2 authors that I find do it pretty well. One is Abby Jimenez, I think, does a really nice job of, she writes romantic comedy, but she had some powerful characters and some powerful topics in her books, and I like Liane Moriarty. I feel that's the same thing. Jodi La Coe doesn't, I think, have the humor, but her books always have that little legal piece that I really modeled my first 2 books after that kind of legal part. So, those are authors I will look like, any book I read though, I’ve almost ruined reading for myself a little bit because right now I read for what’s working, what’s not working, if I don't like this character, why don't I like this character? So, I read in part for enjoyment, but a lot for learning. So, that's both getting back. And to me, it is what I take out of it.

Sometimes it'll take me out of that analytical thing, and that's when I know it's really good. But I tend to, like, to try to learn. Even if I don't like a book, I'm like, why didn't I like it? Like, what was up with that, you know? So, that's probably a lot of us needed.

No. That's a great answer. I love that answer. And, also, this is amazing timing because you happen to have a special going on right now for Santa Games that folks can actually get a special deal on it if they listen to his podcast right when it comes out. They can get it for, what, 99¢ right now?

99¢, the eBook on Amazon. So, if you go on Amazon, you can get that book all the way through December 15th. If you pop on there, you can get the eBook for 99¢ and give yourself a break over the holidays and read about some people enjoying a Christmas themed amusement park, which is the setting of the book. So, if you want to be immersed in real Christmas, you've got it there.

That's perfect. This is the perfect time of year for that. So definitely, we will make sure we have that link to the Amazon. Because, you know, you should put the Amazon links in, so we'll make sure we have the Amazon link in so folks can just follow from the show notes and grab Santa Games because that is just such a special treat that we have that going on right now through the 15th. That's perfect. Thank you so much, and we'll have the links to the other books and all the links you guys can connect with. Leanne, tell us the spelling of your name for your website and so people can find you on Instagram, too. Go ahead and spell it out for us.

Okay. My website is leannetreese.com. But it's LEANNE TREESE. Everything about my books is in there. You can connect with my newsletter. You can read about me if you want to. You could see pictures of my dogs.

I'll look at that.

That's available on that site.

Perfect. And we'll have the links of the show notes too. Thank you for being here today, Leanne.

Thank you so much.

Thanks for joining us. I hope you take a second to give us a review or a couple of stars on your favorite podcasting platform, and we'll be here again next Wednesday. Follow us on Instagram at Author Express podcast to see who's coming up next. Don't forget. Keep it express, but keep it interesting.