Today is part one of two where we are talking to Katharine Sweet about her novels. Over the next 2 weeks you will hear about writing since you could hold a pen, starting with fanfiction, learning how to market your books, re-writing your characters, overcoming typos that make it into your manuscript, formulating your spicy scenes and sometimes having characters that take over your story.

I want to make a disclaimer for these two episodes, we do talk trigger warnings and some details that may be harmful for some listeners.

Get Love Is...

Get Love Stories Are...

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I’m a Michigan girl born and raised and I’m a typical fall-loving girl, please give me cool nights, falling leaves, hoodies, and hot caramel apple cider. I work fulltime and write when I can, so my days are powered by good coffee, chatting with friends, nerd culture, and just a splash of spite

I’ve loved to read and write since I was a child, which stems from a little escapism and a lot of listening to characters “talking” in my head. I love the way that stories can not only pull you in, but also help you connect to worlds you might unfamiliar with.

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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 a fairy tale or short story read as close to the original author's version as possible.

I am your host.

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

I'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.

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Today is part one of two where we are talking to Catherine Sweet about her novels.

Over the next two weeks you will hear about writing since you could hold a pen, starting with Fanfiction, learning how to market your books, rewriting your characters, overcoming typos that make it into your manuscript, formulating your spicy scenes, and sometimes having characters that take over your story.

I want to make a disclaimer for these two episodes.

We do talk trigger warnings and some details that may be harmful for some listeners.

Love stories are you know the term write what you know.

Generally, it implies you're writing about your life, not plagiarizing someone else's tale.

Because if you do, you better hope they don't find out.

Vinny's professional life fine.

His personal life consists of helping everyone with whatever they need whenever they ask.

He's always been an afterthought, the supporting character in the story.

On impulse, he writes a book based on his brother's love story and sends it to a publishing company.

Anna's professional life great.

Her personal life contained neatly within one building her office, apartment and little black cat.

When she snatches a book out of her coworker's trash can, she has no clue how her life is about to change.

Anna wants his book.

Vinny doesn't want his family to know what he wrote.

To explain the time they'll be spending together, they agree to act as a couple.

No one will realize Vinny's publishing a book with Anna's company and Anna can keep creeps from hitting on her at upcoming events.

Love Stories are is the second book in the Goodrow brothers duet, continuing the story of Matt and Vinny's lives.

This time the focus is on Vinny and what happened at the end of Love is with feelings swears and spice.

This foray into fake dating is the perfect friends to lovers treat.

Grab your favorite drink and pick up a copy today.

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

It is something that we watched or read or listened to as kids.

And also the journey for you spending.

Weeks, months, or years working on your novel to hold that in your hands is a fairy tale for you.

So what was your favorite fairy tale when you were a kid and did your favorite change as you got older?

So my favorite fairy tale is one my grandmother told me, and it's like an Irish I don't know the actual name of it, but it was like an Irish fairy tale of like a woodcutter that goes into the woods and sees this pretty girl and he's like, oh, I'm going to make you my wife.

And she's like, no, I can't leave.

I'm tied to this tree.

I can't leave.

And he cuts the tree down so she's free.

And then when they go to leave the forest, she dies.

Oh, no.

Becomes a flower because she couldn't leave.

She was like, Buddy, no.

She's like, no.

But yeah, it'll be totally fine.

I'll cut the tree down, save you from the curse.

And I think it stayed consistently my favorite fairy tale because it just says so many things.

Like as a child, I was just horrified.

I'm going to have to find that one because that sounds fantastic.

It is.

There's a musical version of it and I can't think of her name that I found it.

She basically wrote the thing as a song.

It's a super pretty myth and tragic, obviously, but they are.

So at what age did you start thinking about writing or maybe start writing?

As soon as I could hold a pen.

I was trying to make like my mom had an old typewriter and before I even knew how to write words and actually make sentences, I was constantly typing.

I would bully her into typing things for me.

And my mom didn't like to read or write, so it was like, torture for her to sit here and have this five year old be like.

As all five year olds do, and then is the repetitive word that you're like, if you were doing that today, you'd be like, I have to take all this out?

Every single one of them.

So when did you actually start writing, like full actual with plot stories?

Because little kid would like, my daughter write stuff and it is entertaining, but there is no full blown plot involved.

Right.

I think I started writing fan fiction when I was around 16.

Okay.

And I'm older, so the Internet was like brand new when I was in high school.

So you'd have been chat room would that have been chat room fan fiction at that time?

I was writing so bad.

So I was writing when it was fan sites.

And you would email your chapter updates to the owner of the host site.

Okay.

Like old school fanfiction.

Yeah, I was free fanfiction.net when that thing came out.

I was like, oh my God, I don't have to communicate.

I can update this myself.

It's amazing.

Ultimately.

And then it was hard because you had to make sure that you sent it in a file that they could read or you would just send it in bulk email thing.

It's a nightmare.

But that's when I started writing with actual plot.

And I would try to create characters and like, oh, I can fix the show.

I didn't like how the show went when they did this, so I'm going to fix it, and that kind of thing.

And so when did that evolve into a full novel?

So I had been writing pretty consistently with a fan fiction writing group for over ten years, and a lot of us were very seasoned writers.

We've been writing forever.

And so we started to challenge ourselves because there were a handful of us that were thinking, well, I'd love to write my own novel one day, and I don't think I'm there yet.

I don't think I'm as good as Trad.

Publishers are all the self doubt, the imposter syndrome.

So to challenge ourselves, we started to do what we called Roulette.

So we would take characters from show A, the plot from show B, and everybody would get those two things.

So you have your A show, your B show, and then someone would anonymously email you what type of story you had to write.

Oh, no.

So like romance or fantasy, right?

So I got the characters from a horror show called from Dusk till dawn.

I got premise of Jane the Virgin, and someone sent me rom.com, and I was dark and dramatic, and I was like.

What do I do with this?

What do I do with this?

I know this was partially my idea, but can I be excused now?

I'm going to go, this is too much challenge.

I would like to pass.

And I got about two chapters into it, and I was like, I think this is my novel.

But I wasn't sure I finished writing it.

And then the panini hit, and suddenly I went from two jobs and 60 hours a week in six days to one job 40 hours a week and having the weekends.

And I printed it in this massive binder, printed the whole thing out, and I started editing it.

And I did it through the first run.

And I sent it to my cousin who's like an English major and like an avid reader.

And I was like, I just need you to read it, okay?

And she calls me and she goes, so I'm editing your first book for you as a present, and we're going to go and I was like, oh, no.

Yes.

I'm always like, well, I'm not going to say no if you're offering no.

I'm going to say no to free editing.

That's going to happen.

Who's going to do that?

Absolutely not.

Especially since she's got a good eye.

I'm like, no, I adjusted the premise and I already adjusted it, obviously, somewhat.

And so I finished, like, yeah.

So it was just I took all the fandom stuff out of it, and I got it done.

And after my cousin read it, I ran through another thing of editing.

And then I realized that no one was going to publish it in the format that it was in too long.

And I write what I like to call rated our hallmark.

So it has feels and, like, all the emotional things in the plot, you have the tragic backstory and all of those things.

Well, you're working with horror characters, so you had to have tragic.

Right?

But it swears a lot, and there's a lot of laughs, and there is spice of it.

It's not closed door.

So I call it rated our hallmark.

Because I'm going to make you feel things.

I'm also going to cuss like a sailor and make you laugh hysterically.

That is part of the goal of the book.

And there's one particular scene in it, without really giving a spoiler, is that the two main characters cass, who is the female protagonist, she ends up naked at one point.

And Matt, the male protagonist, sees her.

Okay, and it's this very rushed kind of thing that happens.

And so she's panicking post, and she's like, oh, my God, I saw you naked.

And he's like, I wasn't paying attention.

So it was naked ish.

And she's like, there are no degrees of naked.

I tell jokes like that.

And I love Galas and, like, blue collar humor.

My father's tool and die.

I'm from Michigan, so that's a very big dynamic out here.

Very much blue collar.

And so that humor has always been in my ears, and it's always been what I've heard growing up and all those stories.

So to me, that's just how jokes are.

I said I don't want to change how I write, and I want to have those emotional moments, but I also want to be able to make people laugh, and I also want to be able to have that kind of thing.

So I realized I was going to have to self publish.

So I got an LLC and did Sweet Tales with Spice because I made my last name is Sweet.

Why would you not roll with it?

Now I have two books under the imprint and a cookbook.

So how long did it take you to write that first draft?

The first draft took me a year and two months.

Okay.

And then you send it off to her to read and then apparently edit.

And then how long did it take you from her editing it to actually publishing it?

She started editing it in August of 2020, and I published it September 28 of 2021.

So about a year.

Yeah, about a year.

And then the second book I did in one year.

So with that so you realize you're going to self publish.

You do all the businessy things that, in my opinion, you should do.

In fact, I just literally had this conversation with my husband earlier.

Someone on TikTok was talking about pricing her books really low, and I'm like, that's how you know someone is pricing it not as a business, because if you want to keep going, eventually you may be totally happy that more people can read your book because it's cheaper now.

But at some point, you're going to start to resent that because you're not making a reasonable amount of money.

It is a business whether you want to look at it that way or not.

Right.

And that's the hard thing for me, is because I hate thinking of writing like a business.

Yeah.

Because I'm a creative.

I don't want to think it's a.

Little bit of both, but if you're just the one, like, if you're working, if you're Trad publishing, someone else is doing the business part of it.

So all you have to do is a creative at the point you're having to choose what your price is and make all your covers or hire out to make your covers and editing, and at the point you're doing all of that side of it beyond just the writing.

And I say just the writing that's obviously, like, the biggest part of it.

It's making the story.

But it is a business like someone's doing the business part of it, whether it's you or the publisher, right?

Yeah.

When I started the COVID process, because I'm only creative of words, like, I am every time I have to design anything for my Instagram or go out, I'm always like, oh, I hate this part.

I'm not creative that way.

Visually, I'm not creative.

A nightmare.

And so I hired a cover artist and went through the whole process, and then, I don't know, it was like, three months out or four months out to the book's date that I had already set and in my head, and she ghosted me.

Oh, no.

Just disappeared.

And I was like, oh, okay.

All right.

And so I made a TikTok, and I was like, hey, baby, dose cover artist.

Might need one right now.

Right now.

And someone that reached out to me, her name was Kayla.

She was the sweetest thing.

And she's like, how much did she charge you?

And I was like, I told her.

And she goes, okay, well, that's how much I usually charge, so I'll just do it for free.

And I was like, Absolutely not.

Right?

It's not your fault.

She goes to me, right?

And she goes, no.

She goes, I want to do it.

She's like, I'll write it off as a charity.

Yeah, I guess that would I was.

Like, Are you sure?

She's like, yeah.

And I was oh, my God.

So I sent her a book and a bunch of other stuff.

When the book was done, like, I sent her a signed copy and everything but my heart, man, I was like and so then I took the COVID that she designed for the first book, and I use it as a template to design the one for the second because they were duet.

I could do this.

I believe in me and Canva, we can make this happen.

Yeah, I am great at copying things.

Coming up with my own.

That's what, like, canva is my favorite thing ever.

I'm like, it is.

And I pay for the pro, because if you're doing any significant amount of things, you have to have the pro.

But I look through their templates first, and then for podcast covers and stuff, I'll take that, and then I'll tweak it for, like, well, the podcast colors are black and pink.

We don't want an orange thing in there.

Suddenly, let's tweak the colors exactly.

Or, that book looks really stupid.

Let's go find a better one instead.

Yeah.

I was not coming up with much, and the only thing I told Kayla and that was the problem, is she's like, well, what do you want the COVID to look like?

I was like, that's the problem.

I don't know.

The only thing I know is Romcom is going with illustrated covers right now is the on trend.

I would like to kind of stay in that niche.

I was like, the only thing I know is that the female main character on the COVID has to be pregnant because the book follows this pregnancy.

It's kind of the timeline for the majority of the book.

And I was like, I feel like if she's not pregnant on the COVID that's going to be disingenuous and is going to confuse people.

And she's like, yeah, totally.

So cute.

And it's adorable, and it makes me so happy.

And, yeah, Matt spends the entire book swearing and being angry.

He's an angry, confused man who didn't ask for any of this, quite literally.

So you have a disaster with your cover designer, but you finally get to hit publish, and then what did you do next?

So next it was just talking about it and learning how to market and learning how to market well, which I don't think I do yet.

I try.

I am lost in the woods sometimes, but it's just trying things that will work.

I have done mailers, and I have done, like I reached up to some arc people that I sent the book out to.

Some of it worked, some of it didn't.

And then it's constantly talking about it, constantly posting and making noise.

And it was the same thing when I got around the second one, it was like, okay, how do I market at this time?

I will say I'm getting a little bit better at TikTok for marketing, like learning how to use cap cut and some of those things that helps.

But I still feel like I'm lost in the woods sometimes when it comes to marketing.

But I like it in a weird way.

Like, I like to struggle and learn, if that makes sense.

Yeah, I just told someone this this week.

I am more like a throw me in the deep end and I'll figure it out type person.

Did I know how to do a podcast when I started it?

No.

Did I know how to narrate a month earlier when I did that?

No.

But my dumbass was like, let's start narrating, and then a month later, let's start a daily podcast.

This makes sense.

Yeah.

Listen, just pick me up, toss me in the middle, and I'll either sink or I'm going to get back to shore.

One of the two is going to happen.

Yeah.

I'm like, something's going to happen at this point.

I've been narrating for, like, a year and a half, and the podcast is still going daily.

Every single day, there are new things up there.

And then I started this one, like, last year sometime, and it's just like, just keep going.

Amazing.

That's so good.

I have authors that I narrate for that are constantly like, but are you taking care of you?

And I'm like, Dude, I would sit on my couch bored out of my mind half the time prior to this.

So my ADHD insane brain needed things to focus on during my day.

That hyper fixation.

Yeah.

My husband laughs at it.

He's just like, yes, you definitely have that.

I'm like, well, and now I'm out of the audiobook hyper fixation, but I have all these contracts that I still have to do.

But I'm like I also love it.

So I'm like, I don't want to stop doing it.

And now I've learned how to do it decently.

Right, whatever.

We just keep going.

Exactly.

We'll figure it out as we go.

So you're figuring out the marketing, but now you said you actually have three books out total, so how long you said the second one took you about a year.

Yes.

And you kind of, I'm guessing, learned how to better promote as you were going through that year.

In theory.

I don't know.

My promotion was better.

My planning was better, so I wrote the majority of it during Nano.

I had a chunk written, and then I got up to, like, 90,000 words during Nano when I did Nano in 2021.

And then the story stopped.

Okay.

Like, it halted.

Like, I couldn't figure out how to get past where I was at.

And I was staring at the screen, I'm staring at the cursor.

And finally I figured out I had the female main character's personality wrong.

90,000 words.

I had to completely remove 35,000 words.

Like, the scenes wouldn't work.

Nothing would go from those.

I had to change your personality completely because it didn't work.

And the second I changed it, I just went, oh, my God.

I think it was within two months.

I had it back at, like, 110,000 before the first cut edit that I did.

So I'm guessing there would have been some tears involved when you realized.

100%.

I have a graveyard for anything that I delete from a story.

And I title the different sections, what stories they've come from.

And so I have a graveyard full of documents and scenes and dialogue because I can't delete anything.

So if I try to delete it, I get anxiety.

Who knows?

That character may fit perfectly into a future story.

And you're going to be like, let me go read that old dialogue to remember.

Well, the big thing with Anna's personality and why it was so wrong, the first book was a twist on the pregnancy trope, right, that everybody doesn't like.

And I was like, ha ha, I'm going to make it funny.

And then I did a twist on the billionaire trope for my second book and then dwelling.

So the woman is the billionaire, and what I got wrong within the personality is I made her shy and demure and withdrawn, and I was like, but.

If she's a billionaire, she's been on.

A board since she was, like, in her early 20s.

There is no way in h*** should.

Be a secretary or something.

But at the same time, I didn't want to make her a b****.

Here's that line toe.

So she is straightforward to the point she is not cold, but she's not emotional.

So once I got her personality in the range it needed to be in, she was like, thank you.

We're going to go now.

I was like, oh, okay.

All right.

You tell me where we're going.

My apologies.

Yeah, I can see where that shy and demure would definitely not fit billionaires at all.

We went from her being nervous around the other main character to the first scene of the second book is her on a very bad first date and blind date with this guy.

And he tries to order for her.

And she's like, no, I don't eat red meat.

And he tells the waitress to bring it anyway.

I just walk out at that point.

She does.

She tells the waitress, she's like, hey, do you have, like, a side door?

And she's like, yeah, do you want me to let you out?

She goes, no, I need to place an order, and I'll pick it up from you after I tell him I'm leaving.

So, like, walks out, explains that she's not going to continue the date.

When he starts to fuss, she drops $50 on his plate and tells him he can use that to pay for it since he's worried about it and leaves and tries to pick up the waitress on her way out the door, like, hey, you want to come over my place for a drink?

No.

She's like, okay, have a nice day and sleep.

Which is Anna in a nutshell.

So how did you end up from fiction to you said a cookbook yeah.

How did that happen?

So in the first book, in the first book, the female main character, her full name is Cassera.

Okay?

So Cass, which is what she goes by her grandmother in the fictional world, was a roadie for a rock band, okay?

And Cass can't remember the name of it, but she taught her all of these recipes from all of her time on the road.

Okay?

She calls them rated R recipes because they all have inappropriate names, okay?

Like curly or toast, french toast and deep fried pleasure pops.

Hey, that's an actual thing because there's like better than sex cake in real life.

So that's a thing, right?

So the cookbook right now is only available on Kindle, okay?

It's Graham's rated our cookbook, and it's like $3.

And they're all real recipes in there.

There's about 25 or 30 ranging from regular to drinks.

And there's like a morning after drink for hangover cure and stuff like that.

Like comfort foods, like stuff that you would serve if you were on the road with a bunch of morons who drank themselves into oblivion.

Right.

Tacos.

Are there tacos?

I think I did a taco.

I know I did.

Mac and cheese.

Perfect, because sounds like love.

Mac and cheese.

I just remember my sister, we were at like our friend group used to do a Halloween party, and the Halloween party would basically be we'd all get drunk, like one night a year together.

And there was one time where we're driving my sister and her boyfriend at the time home, and they're like, we got to stop and get tacos.

Like super drunk.

Them.

They're just like, Taco Bell.

It's all we want.

Yeah, I mean, they were very adamant it was Taco Bell on the way to their house or they were just going to not be okay with any of this.

Oh, I love it.

Yeah.

And that's kind of that inspiration of that very silly.

So it became a running joke between the two books, and I was like, oh, that'd be really fun.

I'm hoping if I ever make it to writing conventions, I want to print it out like a little booklet.

It's something that I can have on hand, but for now it's just on a Kindle.

That'd be a good newsletter.

What do they call it?

Whatever they call it when it's like the thing that you use to get people to get your newsletter.

Like, hey, if you sign my newsletter, sign up for my newsletter, you get the free recipe book or whatever.

I don't remember what they call it.

I have put a couple of the recipes in my newsletter that was super fun.

I got a really good response to that.

They're like, this was such a cute idea.

Yeah, we're only going to do so many because I don't really like to cook.

And coming up with that many recipes was taxing.

I don't like to cook.

I am simple.

Give me rice and eggs.

So now we talked about before we actually started.

So have any of the books been made into audio yet?

No.

And I am attempting because I'm poor.

We all live in that poor life.

I'm trying to work on the audiobook myself.

My husband bought me a very nice microphone.

I'm still learning how to use it.

And I really want to narrate the film, but it's a slow burn.

And the first one is 140,000 words.

And sometimes I can talk a little bit around spicy scenes, but sometimes I can't say the actual spicy scene out loud.

So I don't want to record 85,000 words and then get to the spicy scene and be like, I can't say any of this out loud.

That's 19 hours of my life wasted.

I'm going to go cry in the shower and go to bed.

Yeah.

I'll be quite honest with you.

Yeah.

Each hour of audiobook takes, on average for new people, 10 hours to produce.

Yes.

I'm going to try the spicy scene first, see if I can say these things.

Yeah, I've kind of taken.

So I have a day job that pays all my bills, and I narrate.

I say on the side, but I do narrate.

Like, my day job is very much on call situation.

My day is mostly before narrating.

I would just chill on the couch reading books or binging Netflix all the time.

So I'm like, I've taken the I don't need the income.

So I do a lot of royalty share stuff for newer authors, which at the beginning, your covers are beautiful and very much fit the genre.

I did not care about that at the beginning, which, to be fair, my narrating also wasn't that great at the beginning.

At least it probably was fine.

And I just feel super critical of it.

But I'm like, I'm so much better now.

But then you don't want to be like, I'll rerecord your book because I do better now.

I don't have time for that.

I am so sorry.

Others are getting the benefit of my learning.

It's one of those things.

Anything that you do, whether it be writing, narrating, podcasting, art of any kind, all you can do is the best you can do at that time and then improve from there.

You have no idea if you can do spicy scenes.

One of my very first audiobooks was erotica.

Very early on, I'm narrating b*** stuff.

Like, all right, okay, this is where we live now.

I'm like, then I got hired on for another one.

I didn't even audition for this one, but I got hired on for one, and I'm like, the other eroticas I've done are nothing compared to this one.

Just like, oh, my God.

My demisexual brain be like, oh, I'm going to go.

I'm just going to see myself out.

People be like, why do you take such long breaks from TikTok lives that.

I'm like because sometimes I'm doing books that aren't appropriate for like if I have to fly at this point in time.

Now that I've learned how to do things better, I'll be like reading through prepping a book ahead of time.

And I'll put like, chapter I have a spreadsheet that has all these Vlookups, so I only have to type the character description once.

But I'll be typing.

Chapter one has these characters that talk.

And if at any point anywhere in that chapter there is any kind of content that's going to get me banned on Lives, there's check marks down the left side.

Uncheck the check marks.

It is not safe for Live.

Yes.

On the last erotica I did, the funny thing was the publisher is like, yeah, you can do the whole thing on Live.

It that's so cool.

And I'm reading it.

I'm like, I could do maybe a sentence here or there.

Don't think you know how this works.

Yeah.

I'm like, Sir, I got banned for his hand grazed across her parts.

I got banned for three days.

I'm like, this is way worse than that.

There was like BDSM and multiple partners and very descriptiveness.

Yeah.

Not going to make it on live.

No, I'd make it like 5 minutes in and then it'd be like I'd be like, hold on, this part's inappropriate.

Let me pull the pots.

It real quick every 5 seconds.

This is the weirdest line I've ever been a part of just waiting to come back.

Then people are like, but what are you actually saying?

Buy the book.

Yeah.

So you are planning to start when are you planning on attempting this monster?

Probably next month with how this month is going.

We got a lot of family things going on right now.

So I'm going to start knock on wood in March.

I'm going to be testing and playing with the microphone all through February, like random parts to kind of figure out where my vocal range is.

I do know that I have a lot of ups and downs in my voice.

I get very loud and very outwardly expressive because I talked and just started running through part of the story in my head.

And I was watching the range of the way my voice goes up and down.

I was like, oh, I have no control over the way my voice goes.

Yeah, that is going to be a nightmare.

Yeah.

I am way more expressive than most in my stuff because mine does do that with the thing, like whatever it's called.

The lines on the screen do go up and down a lot.

So if it's an action scene, I'm going to be more involved in it.

If it's like a quiet, spicy scene, it's going to be slower and more drawn out to make it more tense and awesome.

But yeah, mine, same thing.

Same thing.

Okay, don't feel so bad then.

If a professional does this then I feel less bad.

Yeah.

Now the key is try not to yell because that will kill your throat.

I definitely have occasionally there will be a line like I was doing before we got on here, I was doing edits for a book, and there's like one part where she screams, like and the author's comment because he's already listened through, was like, this wasn't good enough.

I'm like, all right.

He's like, Be more angry and mad.

And I'm like, all right, then.

Yeah, I know.

There's at least one part in the first book where Cass yells because Matt growly.

I wouldn't necessarily he's not necessarily like he kind of yells, but it's more of that rough, like, because it's a grumpy sunshine.

So it's more of like the USA kidding me kind of thing.

But yeah, there's at one point where they're having a discussion and Matt is just talking over her, not trying to interrupt her, but he's like, I can't believe they did this.

And she just screams at him to stop.

And that's not in her personality range.

And so I guess it could be a little loud right there.

But yeah, got to test that, I think maybe and who knows?

Maybe with as stressful as this month is, maybe I'll use that as a frustration.

I'll try to see if I can record that spicy scene.

I'm like, oh, maybe I'll start there.

You need to look at there's a thing on just a website.

It's like ten steps to getting your mic positioning correct.

And a key to that is like, getting it the correct distance and angle from your face.

So for me, if my mic is too close, it sounds super bassy and weird.

And if it's too far, it sounds like tinny.

And just like, it doesn't sound like a full voice.

It doesn't sound good.

It doesn't take long.

I think it took me, like, maybe 10 minutes to get it.

Like, this is the best angle for my face.

And then I have a roller that I keep in my booth, so I know eight inches away from my face.

Oh, I love that.

So it's one of the weird things.

Like, you don't think about it until I actually was in a Facebook group for Narrators, and they were talking about, oh, have you seen the so and so is like I don't remember if it's ten or eight or it's some amount of steps to perfect mic positioning.

So it's like, yeah, off center, so it's not catching all the hissing sounds.

Yeah, you may look that up because that will help.

And yeah, a lot of it's just like learning one, what loudness doesn't hurt your throat.

Can do it for a long time.

But even if you're recording, like, a chapter a day, that's making progress.

I figure whenever I eventually publish, that's going to be how my book gets done, like a chapter a day after I finished.

Other people's stuff or on the weekend, knock out a couple of chapters or something.

Okay, so you said the books you have is a Duology plus the Cookbook.

So what is coming next?

Yeah, I have two things in progress right now.

I have another one that's going to be under my Sweet Tails imprint.

That one, I'm not sure all the details on that yet because my brain is like, I haven't decided.

But I know I'm going to twist the billionaire or the bodyguard trope somehow.

Haven't quite figured all of that out yet.

But I know that's the next trope I want to twist up a little bit and have some fun with.

Okay, I'm working on that one.

And the other one I'm working on, I am going to publish under a different pen name because it is going to be a dark fantasy story essentially about a monster that's killing monsters without any remorse, about the gray area of morality.

If you're killing a monster because you're taking everything out, but should you be?

Yeah, but should you be killing all these supernatural things just because they're supernatural?

I'm sure mosquitoes are here for a purpose, but I kill all of those too.

Right, exactly.

So I know the fantasy story is going to take me about two years.

My brother and another friend of mine, we are working on writing the mythology and the gods and the hierarchy and pecking order of all the supernatural beings, and everything feeds into that.

I am super excited about that one, but I can't say a ton about it because there's a couple of twists in there that I want to keep post touch.

Yeah, but the goal is to every year, year and a half put out something under Sweet Tails with Spice so they rated our Hallmark book.

Okay.

And so on the business side, are you going to have like I know for me, I just basically do a bunch of DBAs under the same registration stuff.

Is that kind of the plan to not because you said under that imprint.

So I imagine another one is coming as well.

Yeah, I'm going to have to I don't know exactly what that one's going to be.

X again, a lot of this is my hypothetical at least two years out.

And then I think that one will end up being a trilogy.

There's a lot of more plotting.

I'm a planter, so I'm like right in the middle.

But I know this one.

I'm going to have to slide more towards my plotter side of things because it's going to take more because there's a lot more in depth and there's a lot more real world building versus a contemporary where it's always right.

I always write the end first of all of my books.

I always write the ending first and it might change depending on what happened between the start and when I get there, but I'm always writing to that ending versus reading my because I'll write myself into oblivion if I don't have where I'm going.

I always write the ending first.

So that's where we're going to end up is right there.

At that point, I didn't write my ending, but in my head, I know where it's going.

Well, originally it was like, oh, it's going to be a single book and this is going to be like the big plot twist or whatever.

And then it's like, no, I think we could make this a little bit of a series.

So let's have that be the big plot thing in the last book and then we're going to add littler things in the other books.

Exactly.

Yeah.

And with the dark one, I know the first one is going to be more establishing and the second one is going to be like the lead up to the big bad, and the third one is going to be the big bad and the aftermath.

Yeah.

So there's all of that.

But yeah, my contemporary ones, I would say they're easier, but I am manic when I get into writing a book, for example.

So the two books mainly that I've written mainly take place in Houston.

Okay.

And I did research to the level of I figured out when they went from a regular coin system for parking your car like a coin meter to the app on your phone, why it's not in there, but I needed to know because reasons and I'm like, no one's going to ask this question.

This is not going to come up.

But it might.

Okay, fine.

Wet year.

Yeah.

Mine, I'm like asking my husband, how long do you think it would take our entire world to Crumble and them to build these giant think like the 100 where they have to go live on the spaceship kind of thing.

Mine is not set in space, but it's like, how long would it take for that kind of de evolution to happen where everybody had to move into this?

My husband will give me all these weird answers that it's like, okay.

He's like, I don't know, said it at least 500 years from now.

I'm like, okay, I can do that.

I keep track of everything with spreadsheets.

Same on my browser.

I have my document with my I do stuff in Google Docs or just Google Drive in general because then I can do it on my tablet or my phone or my computer.

And so with that one, I always have the manuscript up and then I have the spreadsheet with the things that I've renamed to different things like cars and phones and stuff like that.

And then I have the what was the percent of the population that's going to be affected by this thing?

And so, like, that all the calculations and what the different like how I got to the number that I did are all on a separate sheet on there at one point I had to figure out the year, so I made sure that was on the sheet in case I ever referenced the year again, I remember, right?

So things that I'm like, I will never remember this go on there.

So that I remember.

And it's little things, too.

That one of the things with both of my books that I've been complimenting on and in my fan fiction writing is the same thing.

It was like how I wrote dialogue.

I studied theater when I was young.

I loved how your dialogue told your story.

And so I have a tab for each character in my spreadsheet.

And part of that tab includes words they normally use, words they normally don't use, and words they wouldn't use.

Okay.

If they're normal.

And then any slang terms.

Because one of the characters, he's older.

He's like the adoptive uncle of the two brothers.

So there's older slang that he uses, obviously being sensitive to changing times.

But there are some phrases that are not bad, but they're older slang.

They're not something a young person would use.

So I definitely have him reference those.

He calls calf consistently calls her Darlin, and they're from Texas, so they drop the G's a lot.

Yes.

Hi, I'm from Texas, and I have a terrible Southern accent, and I don't.

Put it in every time.

Obviously annoying and stupid.

But if I'm highlighting a piece of dialogue, like, Darlin is one of the ones that I do do consistently, that I drop the G.

And I'm from Michigan, and so I had to remember to not write pop when I was referring to soda, because that is very much a Midwest thing to call pop.

And soda is more common overall.

Not in Texas.

No, not in Texas.

It's all coke.

What kind do you want?

Do you want coke?

I had that conversation once.

They're like Pepsicoke.

And I'm like, which one?

I am confused.

But it's pop up here.

So that was definitely like I had to remember to not write it pop, because I was like, oh, that's going to come across as like but then there's little things, like, geographically.

Like, in the second book, they go to Chicago, and obviously, being from Michigan, chicago is one of the places that I visited when I was younger.

That was like, one of the cool places that we could go that wasn't too far away.

And Anna grew up there.

So the Hancock building, which was the Sears Tower.

Vinny, the main character in the second book, is very precise about things, and so he calls it what it's called now.

And Anna corrects it.

You mean the Sears Tower?

Because she's from Chicago.

And if you're from Chicago, they correct people.

They're like, no, it's the Sears Tower.

They're like, that's not what it's called anymore.

And they're like, the Sears Tower.

Yeah.

How many things are there where, like, other I guess Texans are also like, that, though, because I've definitely done that before.

If it's from your region, you're protective of it.

Yeah, no, that's not what that's called.

Well, if it was called that for a ton of years, you would also be like, no one calls it that.

What are you doing?

Oh, you're a tourist.

Got it.

Welcome to the city.

So where are you from exactly?

There's a city near me that's called Waxahatchee.

Okay.

And everybody you know when they're from, especially California, because it is Waxahatchy if they say it, and you're like, anytime I get a call from my day job, and they're, Where are you moving to?

Waxahatchi?

I'm like, really?

Where are you moving from?

Because you're not from around here.

There's so many Michigan towns that have weird names.

I think Yipsalani is, like, my favorite one to reference.

I feel like I just had to look up a lake or something from Michigan.

Yeah.

I couldn't tell you what it was now because it was like that's how you pronounce that.

Yipsolani starts with a Y.

Like, that city name starts with a Yip, and it does not look like Yipselane.

Like, you look at it, it's, like, sturdy.

And there's a bunch of other towns, like, Charlottevoy's Got, like, the End.

It's French, so it ends in, like, the Uiex.

Oh, my gosh.

And it's like we were just doing the most when we named our cities, and then in contrast, we have H*** Michigan, which is just every time H*** freezes over in the wintertime, it's just a running.

It amazes me.

What did I do in the first book?

Oh, I had a typo.

So you always find typos in your books?

Yes.

You never miss one.

So there is an AI, and I know AI is a very touchy subject.

Good for some things, shouldn't be used for others.

Yes, exactly.

So Marlowe is an AI that analyzes your writing.

Now, it analyzes it from a computer standpoint, so not everything is accurate, but what it does do is it looks for repeated words.

Okay.

And also words that might be typos.

This doesn't sound like this is a real word, which is actually super helpful, but it also picks up a lot.

Of slang words that's that like, darlin.

Pick that up every time.

Yeah, it did every time.

Which is fine.

You can flag that.

I can make sure I don't use it too many times.

Yeah, but one of the helpful things is it helps with those filler words, those repeater words.

Yeah.

And I don't believe in taking out all filler words.

I think it's normal speech for most people.

Yes.

So while I don't think you should necessarily, like, if your count is very high, you should look at what your writing is and assess it, but you shouldn't be determined to get zero that in your manuscript.

Oh.

And 100,000 words you use that 100 times.

That's not that big.

Oh.

You use it 1000 times.

You should maybe when I read it.

Yes, please and thank you.

When I ran it on my first book, and again, it's 140,000 word manuscript, I had 142 variations of f***.

And I was like, Matthew, my dude, what are you doing?

He's like, I'm very angry about being in this story.

I don't want to be here, so I'm going to swear a lot.

The other thing it would phrase is pick up his phrases.

So, like, common things you said.

So, like, grab hands or something like that.

Good to know that you glanced in her eyes.

Right?

Well, okay.

Now remember, my first book takes place throughout a pregnancy for the most.

Yeah.

So pregnancy would be used a lot.

The phrase it picked up was, she went to the bathroom.

That's accurate.

You use this 17 times and I'm like, she's pregnant.

I feel like it's valid.

And she also used it for her escape mechanism.

So if she got nervous or she'd be like, I'm so sorry, I got to be by.

I'm pregnant.

Juices.

I got to just leave the room before this sentence continues.

I can't deal with emotional stress.

I've gotten under that's the baby I swear the baby picked me.

It does pick up those things, but unfortunately it doesn't catch typos in the way if it's a real word.

Just like spelling.

Yeah.

So in the second chapter, we're less than 50 pages into this book, there is a sentence that reads, he gauged her.

Like, he's assessing her.

Okay.

I'm looking at this person, says gagging in, like, the first handful of book prints.

That changes that sentence a lot.

Like, a lot.

Like, very uncomfortably.

And I was like, Why do me like that?

This is so uncomfortable now.

I had something similar happen to me in an audiobook I was just doing, but I don't remember what the word swap was.

And I was like, that is not what she meant.

That is not the word that you wanted to use there.

Yeah, that was my favorite one.

So anytime I feel bad about something in one of my other book, I'm like, it's not gagging does not equal gagging.

No.

I win.

As long as it's not that bad.

Oh, my God.

It was so embarrassing because I was reading through one of the copies and I was like and I missed it.

I got my proof copy and looked at it at the proof copy.

And this was like my family through a little celebration party when I published my first book, which was super sweet of them and wonderful and fun.

I ordered books for that party so I could find them and go feel like a real writer.

Yeah, it was in all of those copies, every single one of them, you.

Know, get better every day.

Yes.

The only typo I have that comes anywhere near it in the second book is so each of the books have a top tagline.

The first book has a dramatic romantic comedy.

The original tagline for the second book was a romantic comedy with drama in all caps.

Okay.

I changed it because I wanted a more hooky tagline on the top to get people's attention.

So it was a billionaire romance without misogyny.

Okay.

Which I thought was really cool hook, female billionaire, whole thing.

Yeah, I spelled misogyny wrong.

Fun.

On the COVID On the COVID And there's, like, four of those that exist in the world.

Real embarrassing.

I'm like, if you could never tell anybody about that book, my friend's, like, it's a special edition.

That's where you just hope that you didn't order a ton of copies, that now you're stuck with 100 copies of whatever.

Yeah, I forgot the oath.

I just spelled misogyny without the majority of the oath.

I'm like, Why canva why have you betrayed me?

I don't think all the other type.

Of oh, does it?

I have grammarly attached to the browser.

Okay.

So it'll catch it yeah.

I don't think canva usually catches typos because I usually have to catch them myself.

I like to yell at campaign for it because I felt jilted.

Although it would really be Grammarly's fault, not canva.

It is.

I need to blame the correct source.

And I was so nervous about COVID anyway because I designed that one myself.

Yeah, I was already super nervous about it, and I was like, I think it's too much.

I think there's too much stuff in it.

Everybody goes, It's fine.

I was like, Are you sure?

Because I feel like it's really busy, and they're like, It's really not.

I was like, okay, paranoid.

So what is the biggest piece of it?

If you were talking to New You before having done any books, what's the biggest piece of advice that you would give to yourself starting out that you know now but wish you had known back then?

Give yourself more time.

If you make a deadline, you can change it.

No one's going to hate you.

Things are going to go wrong.

Yes, cover artists are going to ghost you.

Possibly.

Or in the case of the second book, the editor ghosted me.

Oh, no.

I have never cried so much in my life.

We had a deadline.

She's supposed to get me, and she goes to me for four days.

And then the end of four days, her email was essentially, whoops a daisy.

Don't worry, I'll have it to you soon.

Oh, my God.

No.

Absolutely not.

No.

I spent three days in agony.

Correct.

So that's my advice to young me and any author out there is to leave more time for disaster.

If you think 60 days, give yourself 90, give yourself 120, and be kind to yourself if you need to change those things, do not make yourself feel dumb or small because you didn't know something and you had to adjust your time frame.

It's okay.

You're learning.

I didn't know how to format.

I didn't know how difficult formatting was going to be.

Like, I was like, Once I get through editing, this will be easy.

Absolutely not.

Now you have to make it look like a book.

Yeah.

Even if you have programs.

Like, I used Atticus to format my books.

And as far as a PC program, a PC working program, I like Atticus.

It functions very well.

I really enjoy it.

But there's still a learning curve, and it's still a little wonky.

I think if I could learn to use and could afford InDesign, I would probably be doing it on InDesign.

But I don't have that kind of money.

So we use atticus.

I got the beta version, so I got a discount when I got it.

But that's the thing.

I didn't know formatting was that difficult.

Yeah.

And now when everyone what's the worst part about writing?

I was like, formatting.

Formatting and marketing.

I hate formatting.

Now, the big one a lot of people use is the Mac one, right?

The Vellum.

Yeah, Vellum.

But that one's mac exclusive.

Yeah, Mac exclusive.

I get them for a program and a Mac.

I'm working with the tools that are at my disposal.

Yeah.

See, I had a PC, and I was six months into Narrating.

Or I should say I started narrating in September.

My father passed in November.

His life insurance paid out in, like, January or February.

And that was like the one thing that I bought was a Mac because I needed one without a fan noise.

And Mac Pros are, like, the best, or the MacBook Pros are the best at that.

So that's the only reason I was able to afford one as quickly as I was able to.

But not everybody I hope not everybody has that same scenario happen, because that was awful.

But about back to deadlines and stuff, that's the only time I ever missed Narrating deadlines, was during I emailed everybody I was currently working on a book for and was like, this is what's happening.

Do you want me to do your book or do you want me to cancel the contract?

Because either one is fine with me.

It's going to be a couple of days of downtime.

They're like, keep going.

I had one that was a Christmas book, so she wanted it done by Christmas, which I'm like, I get it.

One.

I was like, 90% of the way done, Narrating.

And he's like, Just finish it.

I'm like, I would have been really irritated if that one had canceled.

Like, I put all these hours into your book, but everybody was super nice about it.

They were like, thanks for letting us know everything.

So that's the only time.

Every other time, I'm like, Listen, this is the absolute latest.

I'll have your audiobook to you.

It could possibly be sooner, but it won't be later unless something catastrophic happens.

Right?

I think that flexibility, especially with professionals.

I think the big thing is communication.

It would have been a different story had the editor been communicating with me.

Hey, such and such happened.

I'm behind.

I can give you this piece and this piece because I could have worked on it incrementally as I was getting it from her.

Yeah, but that wasn't the case.

But yeah, like, awkward situation.

But the communication and being flexible within those deadlines, within those professional guidelines, I think, is huge.

But to yourself, you need to be kind, because you can't control everything.

As much as we would like to.

We can control the world we create, but we can't control everything.

Yes.

Catherine has always liked the story her grandmother told her about a woodcutter and a fairy.

From what I can tell, the wood sprite is the closest to what she described from Celtic mythology.

Celtic mythology is the body of myths belonging to the Celtic peoples.

Celtic myth influenced later Arthurian legend.

Today we'll be reading Khanla and the Fairy Maiden from Celtic Folk and Fairy Tales collected by Joseph Jacobs.

Don't forget we're reading Le Mort.

DeArthur.

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.

Khanla and the fairy maiden Khanla of the Fiery Hare was son of Khan of the Hundred Fights.

One day, as he stood by the side of his father on the height of Uzna, he saw a maiden clad in strange attire towards him coming.

Whence comest thou, maiden?

Said Khanla?

I come from the plains of the ever living, she said.

There where is neither death nor sin, there we keep holiday always, nor need we help from any.

In our joy and in all our pleasure we have no strife.

And because we have our homes in the round green hills, men call us the hill folk.

The King and all with him wondered much to hear a voice when they saw no one for save Khanla alone, none saw the fairy maiden.

To whom art thou talking, my son?

Said khan the king.

Then the maiden answered, Khanla speaks to a young fair maid whom neither death nor old age awaits.

I love Khanla and now I call him away to the plain of pleasure Moymel, where Bodag is king for I.

Nor has there been sorrow or complaint in that land since he held the kingship.

O, come with me, Khanla of the Fiery Hair, ruddy as the dawn, with thy tawny skin a fair crown awaits thee to grace thy comely face in royal form.

Come.

And never shall thy comeliness fade, nor thy youth till the last awful day of judgment.

The King in fear at what the maiden said, which he heard though he could not see her, called aloud to his druid corin by name.

O Corin, of the many spells, he said, and of the cunning magic, I call upon thy.

Aid.

A task is upon me too great for all my skill and wit greater than any laid upon me since I seize the kingship.

A maiden unseen has met us and by her power would take from me my dear, my comely son.

If thou help not, he will be taken from thy king by woman's, wiles and witchery.

Then Corn the Druid stood forth and chanted his spells towards the spot where the maiden's voice had been heard.

And none heard her voice again.

Nor could Kanla see her longer, only as she vanished before the druid's mighty spell she threw an apple to Kanla.

For a whole month from that day Khanla would take nothing either to eat or to drink, save only from that apple.

But as he ate, it grew again, and always kept whole.

And all the while there grew within him a mighty yearning and longing after the maiden he had seen.

But when the last day of the month of waiting came, conlat stood by the side of the King, his father on the Plain of Arkaman.

And again he saw the maiden come towards him.

And again she spoke to him tis a glorious place forsooth that con the holds among short lived mortals awaiting the day of death.

But now the folk of life, the ever living ones, beg and bid thee come to moymel the Plain of Pleasure for they have learnt to know thee, seeing thee in thy home among thy dear ones.

When Con the King heard the maiden's voice, he called to his men aloud and said summon swift, my druid corin, for I see she has again this day the power of speech.

And the maiden said almighty Khan, fighter of a Hundred Fights, the Druid's power is little loved, it has little honor in the mighty land peopled with so many of the upright, when the law comes, it will do away with the druid's magic spells that issue from the lips of the false black demon.

Then Khan the King observed that since the coming of the maiden Khanla his son, spoke to none that spake to him.

So Khan of the Hundred Fights said to him is it to thy mind what the woman says, my son?

Tis hard upon me, said Khan La.

I love my own folk above all things, but yet a longing seizes me for the maiden.

When the maiden heard this, she answered and said the ocean is not so strong as the waves of thy longing.

Come with me and my Kurag, the gleaming, straight, gliding crystal canoe soon can we reach Boadag's realm.

I see the bright sun sink yet far as it is, we can reach it before dark.

There is too another land worthy of thy journey, a land joyous to all that seek it.

Only wives and maidens dwell there.

If thou wilt, we can seek it and live there alone together.

Enjoy.

When the maidens ceased to speak, Conla of the fiery hare rushed away from his kinsmen and sprang into the Kurag, the gleaming, straight, gliding crystal canoe.

And then they all, king and court, saw it glide away over the bright sea towards the setting sun, away and away till I could see it no longer.

So Kanla and the fairy maiden went forth on the sea and were no more seen, nor did any know whither they came.

Thank you for joining Freya's fairy tales.