Today is part two of two where we are talking to Kelsey Ortiz about her novels. After today you will have heard about writing since 1st grade, taking 7 years to write your first book, finding a narrator quickly after publishing, hiring a cover artist, developing stories from random ideas, promoting your books, copyrighting your book to protect it, and her advice to new authors on setting goals for themselves.

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Kelsey Ortiz was born with a pen in her hand and grew up with a wild imagination that made everyone around her wonder if she lived in reality. The first story she ever wrote, around the age of five, was about a butterfly and a zebra who had to save their friends from the evil tornado that kept his captives locked in a cage. Kelsey currently lives in Idaho with her beloved husband and three dogs who are are her rally team. Nothing makes her more happy than chilly, stormy days, a fuzzy blanket, puppy snuggles, and a good book. Someday, in the near future, the five plan on moving to Germany where they can continue searching for proof of fae and the fantastical.

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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.

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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.

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Today is part two of Two, where we are talking to Kelsey Ortiz about her novels.

Over these two weeks, you will have heard about writing since first grade, taking seven years to write your first book, finding a narrator quickly after publishing, hiring a cover artist, developing stories from random ideas, promoting your books, copywriting your book to protect it, and her advice to new authors on setting goals for themselves.

Bringer's ascension.

Death is only a release.

Pain is only numbness.

Loneliness is only the beginning.

Tormented by visions of the crushed and burned bodies of her guildmates, ray Lynn, the only lightbringer, hasn't stopped running.

Accompanied only by a shadow who protects her from the Brotherhood's control, ray Lynn fights against the fate she's been told about since childhood.

But when her guardian steps out of the shadows, the carefully built walls around her crumble into dust.

To rid the world of the corrupt Brotherhood, ray Lynn must trust herself and to not be afraid of who she was born to be.

Now she has two choices to make.

Will she succumb to the darkness in her soul?

Or will she give in to the temptation of falling in love again?

So how many beta readers did you have for book one versus how many you were planning on sending to book two?

I had five.

Five for book one.

So you had five beta readers for book one.

You said you're planning on more.

How many more are you planning on?

I want to try and get to ten.

So double it.

Okay.

Which I'm going to have all five who read book one.

I'm planning on asking all of them.

Okay.

So how did you handle the beta reading process?

Like, did you throw it in a Google Doc?

Did you use some other weird way?

I just did Google Docs and I did one beta reader at a time and then went through edited next beta reader edited.

This time I'm doing three beta reader readers at one because they're all commenting to each other like, oh, this scene said this, and it's just kind of fun.

Yeah, I think so.

I talked to P.

S.

Nail like two weeks ago, I think, and she sent hers to like or maybe it was April, I don't know.

I talked to someone who said they use five beta readers so that there's a tiebreaker.

There's never going to be a tie, but they send it all at the same time so that they do that commenting with each other.

And you're not getting the same comment over, but then you're getting them all reading at the same time so you get back faster.

Yes.

I'm like, yeah, that sounds great.

Although I don't have time to do anything.

I'm about to do book two, narrate, book Two for a lady.

And she had asked me to beta read.

And I'm like, I'm so sorry, I don't have time.

I would love to say that I could, but honestly, it would take me forever to get it back to you.

It's like people that send me books, I'm like, it's going to take me.

I had a couple of people at one point I was asking for recommendations for books with Cliffhangers.

And so I posted a video on TikTok asking for books and I had a few that were like, oh, we'll just send it to you, just leave a review.

And I'm like, no, I'm going to pay for it because I don't know if it's going to take me a year or two years or three years to get through this book.

So I'm like, I would rather, rather pay for it because then I don't feel bad if it takes me forever to get through it.

Plus then support.

Exactly.

I'm like, ebooks aren't that expensive.

And actually funny.

One of the ones that I bought, she ended up hiring me.

I'm about to prep her book to Narrate.

Hey.

That'S awesome.

So what kind of videos are you posting?

You said you're using mostly, well, social media wise, pretty much only TikTok for promotion.

What kind of videos are you posting?

Random stuff.

I do a lot of like editing tips, writing tips, but then specifically promotional videos.

Just kind of mentioning the themes of my book and just kind of trying to reach out to the audience who might enjoy it.

Have you tried like the ones with the pictures and stuff like that yet?

Yeah, I've done those ones.

Mostly those actually.

There's so many and now they have the ones with the cameras where they're running down the page of the book with the COVID It's so cool.

I'm like, man, mine are going to be like the most boring ones on the planet because I just don't have the time.

I'm going to have to either pay somebody to make all these videos for me or carve out.

Ten minutes a day I write and ten minutes a day I make weird videos.

But like, some authors talk about spending hours editing.

And I'm like, I don't have hours to edit a video.

I'm like.

No.

Mine now.

Like, a minute of me talking, and then I push send.

Like, there's no editing.

And with the clock app, you know, if you spend those hours editing, you're only going to get 200 views, right?

Most likely, I get 200 views consistently with just me, like, talking about random crap.

Absolutely.

So why spend the extra time?

It's going to be 200 views no matter what.

Now, my highest viewed video was literally 15.

Might have been a minute of me talking about my fan that I found for my booth.

Because literally every narrator ever complains about how hot it gets in their booth.

And even the fancy ones that have air conditioning systems, you can't have it turned on while you're recording because it makes noise.

So I looked into getting a window unit that could pump air into here or whatever, but they were all noisy.

So I found, like, a fan that's very quiet, and I actually edit the sound of it out because it's a consistent noise you can take out of the audio.

But I have a couple of books.

I did not know to edit it out until I had a sound engineer was, like, looking at my levels.

And he's like, what is that consistent thing at the bottom there?

And I'm like, oh, that's my fan.

And he's like, Here, we're going to get that out.

I'm like, okay.

But as far as things go, the quietness, your audio has to be, like, a certain level of quietness to pass all the checks to go live.

And I was still passing all the checks, so I'm like, it only raises the sound this much.

And everybody, every voiceover and narrator that saw it was like, oh, my gosh, where do I get this?

What is the name of it I need to go by?

That's awesome.

Oh, man.

So that video did really well.

All the rest of mine, like, 200 ish views if I get lucky.

Like the first Fem takeover last July, my video got more views than anybody else's, which is it was insane.

I had, like, 50 videos I put out that day or 30 videos.

Insane.

I had an insane number.

And at one point, I'm like messaging.

I don't know if you know who Paige and Ruthie are, but I messaged both of them because they were like, the two of the ones heading it up.

And I'm like, how many things are you all doing?

This is like, a couple of days ahead.

I'm like, how many are you all doing?

They're like, oh, we're doing this many?

And I'm like, Dude, I have, like, four times, five times that number.

They were like, Just hand it off.

We just asked our authors if we could hand it off if we got too many.

I'm like, I didn't ask a single one of them.

That so I'm like, I'm not going to hand it off without having permission to hand it off.

That's like hiring an editor to edit your book and then being like, oh, my friend is going to do it instead.

It's like, no, I don't remember.

It was 30 or 50, but it was a lot.

Like, all day, every hour, I would take a break from Narrating, and I would release four different video clips every hour until I want to say, like nine to five.

Four videos every hour.

It was insane.

So I had pre recorded most of them, and then I had a few, like, the day of that were like, hey, can I do it too?

And I kind of knew that was I think pretty much all of us knew that was probably going to happen as you started posting videos.

And then the last couple, my house had to have foundation repairs done for the next one.

So there was people with Jackhammers at my house.

I'm like, maybe I can't be recording things right now.

And then my mother in law was in town, and we haven't done one since because I was around Thanksgiving.

We haven't done one since then.

Yeah.

But the last one, I didn't even post a video.

And I had authors reaching out, like, are you doing it?

And I'm like, I'm so sorry.

No, I wish I could.

That day was like, try to get in the booth and get like that entire week, I was like, get in the booth, get recording done as fast as possible so you could go hang out with we don't see them.

My in laws live in Missouri and we live in Texas, so we don't see them.

But like twice a year maybe.

So if they're in town, you try to hang out with them as much as you can.

It was just weird.

It was a weird week.

Weird couple of months, foundation repairs, mother in law in town for like a week and a half.

It was weird.

Now life is mostly normal.

That's good.

As normal as it can be, that's good.

So what are yours?

You have booktubes ready for beta readers.

What are your plans?

You're planning on publishing by May?

What are your plans after?

How many books is the series going to be?

So this series is four books, but I have a prequel plan and then kind of an epilogue series after that.

Okay.

It's like a continuing yeah, continuing.

It might only have to be one or two books, but yeah, I have all of it plotted and planned and ready to go.

Oh, you're one of those.

The main story is plotted, ready to go.

Not the details.

Okay.

Mine's like, in my head, I know the major plot points.

This is the major thing.

But then got 30,000 words and had to go back to the beginning, read through, because I had taken like, almost a year break yeah.

So I had to go back and read back through and remember, like, what did I write again?

Because I knew I wasn't anywhere close to done with the book yet.

I started that, I think.

Let's see, we were in Missouri for Christmas.

We got back, like, the first, and I think I started this on the second.

I've been doing ten minute increments every day since, like, the second or the third.

But I had to read back through.

And as I'm reading back through my book, that was going to be a book, not a whole series.

It was going to be a book.

I'm like, oh, we should set this further in the future, and we should make it more fantasy.

So we're renaming some objects with different names.

And then also, I think it'd be really cool to have instead of just the one bad guy, we're going to have the one bad guy.

And then we're going to have basically started over from the beginning but following a different character.

And then they have a different bad guy.

And then eventually I don't want to do that too many times.

Do it like, two times, I guess, because I'm like, if you're going to fight a big bad guy, you want more than, like, two people.

I'm like, it needs to be like, six main character people.

Feels like a reasonable number to me.

I don't know.

You don't want to be like, for ten books.

You're just constantly, like, go back to the beginning and follow it from someone else.

That's a lot like the next person.

What was their life before they met up with these two people?

There's one on a train that does that where it repeats.

I don't remember.

There's a movie on a train, and it constantly that one, though, they aren't getting it right.

And so it resets and they have to try again kind of situation.

So this would not be exactly like that because it'd be like, they're getting it right.

It's just like, what did those other two characters do before they met these people?

Basically, anyway, the creativity is insane.

And I have other ideas, and I'm like, when am I ever going to write this?

I don't know.

I know with this series, I never really planned on writing anything else besides this series.

I was like, this is going to be it.

This is going to be the big one.

Who knows?

But I now have another series.

I've started already.

First book of that one will be published, hopefully this fall.

Okay.

And then I've got a couple stand alone that I've planned.

I'm like, oh, goodness.

So the second series, was that kind of like, you needed a break and something else just popped into your head?

Yeah.

So it was based off of a dream.

That classic, classic rope.

But it was right after I had finished book two, and I did need a break before editing but it was a dream that I had.

And I was like, this has to be turned into a book.

And then honestly, it was like a week later I had another incredible dream that I was like, this has to be turned into a book.

And I figured out how to make them in the same world.

So it's going to be an anthology.

So each of them is a standalone, but all in the same universe, that type of thing.

See, I want to do, like, mythology retellings.

And I have a plan in my head for taking Greek and Roman, which are pretty much the same thing.

And then like Norse and African and Australian taking all these different mythologies and having, like, standalone series of the Greek.

Roman would have its own standalone series and the Norse but then have it where they occasionally intertwine.

So like, the Norse people are in.

They need them, the Norse Gods, to come help in the Greek world or what?

Constantly intertwining.

I want to do something like that, but I have to have time to read all the mythology books first, or at least some of it.

Yeah.

So I'm like, well, if I just quit Narrating, which I absolutely love to do, then I'd have all the time in the world, of course.

And also if I quit Narrating, narrating is what got me back into writing.

So I'm like, if I quit that is all the creative juice just going to turn off.

Also, as of right now, I'm booked to Narrate Books through August.

Wow, already?

Yeah, I was booked through August.

In November.

I'm like, yeah, I am not a don't finish your commitment.

Like, if you agreed to do something, you should finish it.

But I've always said from the beginning, I don't want Narrating to become my job.

I want it to stay a hobby that I enjoy doing even though I work the hours.

Like it is a job.

But like, something where it's like, I know I could always step away if I had to after fulfilling the commitments for the series I'm currently doing or whatever.

But it's like I could take a step back if I needed to.

But I love it.

It's super fun to get to voice all these characters and all these different genres and all these different authors.

It's super fun.

And then I'm very neuro divergent.

And I'm not a great I fake being a people person very well.

But my tiktoks, I'm like, I see all these other narrators and authors that have all these groups of friends and stuff.

And I'm like, I'm on the outside because I'm like, I don't know how to do that.

I'm in the same boat.

I'm like, I'm just going to like yeah, it was crazy at Christmas.

It was me and my uncle were both very similar, like, personalities.

We're talking to my grandma and he was talking about he's going to go get autism tested.

And he's talking basically like, Why?

And he's explaining these things that his brain does that he does that are not normal things.

And I'm like, oh, yeah, totally.

I do all those same exact things, and I just don't see the point in going to get tested.

I'm a full grown adult now who works for myself.

I'm my own boss, so it literally does not matter if I had a diagnosis.

It affects my job.

Not at all.

Yeah, but we're talking about these things.

And then she's like, I do that too.

Okay.

But then one of the things, he's like, my uncle says he's uncomfortable in people situations.

And I'm like, yeah, same.

And she turns to me, and she's like, you're fine.

You act just fine.

And I'm like, yeah, the problem is I'm acting.

And then I go home, and I'm like and now I'm going to be quiet for hours because or talk to my husband, my poor husband, he's like you know, every time he's like, you'll ask me a question when I have a bite of food to my mouth when I'm about to start a TikTok video.

I'm like, I had a lot to say that day, and you're the only grown up that I feel comfortable talking to all the time, right?

What husbands are for.

My daughter, she's a chatterbox.

She is, like, social butterfly.

No idea where she got it from because neither of us are that way.

My husband's very reclusive, and then I'm like, I can fake it, but I prefer not to.

It is what it is.

I just know, like, I watch all my friends.

I'm so proud for the ones that are working for publishers now that we all started around the same time.

And I'm just like, I don't know how they did that, but I also don't want the pressure.

It's the same, like, querying, the spending the time.

It's the same thing for the narrating.

I'm like, I don't want to get rejected.

Like, getting an audition where you don't get the book is one thing, but like, a publisher being like, no, you're not good enough.

I'm like, no, I don't want to hear that.

That's different.

I'm like, no, back to the querying.

I can't even it sounds miserable.

I just came across a video, like, 20 minutes before we got on here, and the girl was talking about she accidentally sent her manuscript to the same agent that had already rejected her manuscript.

And I'm like, no, now I'd have to keep track of who I sent it to.

No.

How about no and then all the.

Research to figure out what agent you think could work.

Yeah.

Now, I did talk to names or there's an author on TikTok that got a seven figure book deal for, like, multi series.

She self published.

I think she was three books in before she got an agent, and then the agent pitched one of her other book series.

And when Harper Collins was like, hey, we want your new book series, can we also have your current book series?

And seven figures later, I'm like, yeah, I'd be okay with that scenario.

Like, agents coming at me like, we would love to represent you.

That is totally different.

Like, I'm not going to say no.

If a publisher was all of a sudden like, we would love you on our roster.

I'm not going to say no.

Exactly.

That sounds great, but I'm also not going to go out of my way to awkwardly pitch myself.

It's so weird.

This is such a weird world.

It really is.

So what ultimately ended up pushing you to publish your book.

Just to do it?

Because, I mean, I think by the time I decided I was going to self publish, it was pretty much the time that I was like, okay, I'm going to go the self publishing route.

So I'm just going to get it out there.

And it still took me, like, nine months to figure it out.

I had no clue how to buy an Isbn.

I had no clue how to get my copyright with the Library of Congress.

I had no clue about any of that.

But yeah, it was really just to get it out there because I was so tired of not being published.

So you did know enough to now the Isbn, you can get free ones, but you went the route of paying, buying that you knew enough to get it copyrighted, which I am very much a like, I'm going to legally own my stuff before I put it out there for anyone.

Now, this podcast, I actually went so far as my daily fiction one.

I own the registered trademark for the name, the logo and the tagline.

I went through that for this one.

I'm like, if I have to rename it, I don't really have a tagline.

There's like, the thing I say at the beginning that's like, what's your favorite fairy tale when you're a kid?

And I'm like, those are questions people can ask.

Yeah, you can't trademark fairy tale because everybody literally has always used that.

It's not like superheroes.

You cannot call them superheroes in your books because Marvel and DC co own the trademark for superhero.

I actually did not know that.

My husband is who figured that.

So he's writing a superhero book, and he's calling his I don't remember what he's called, not superheroes because he figured out that they owned that.

The coin term.

That's insane.

They own that.

And it was one of those like, they were both using it, and rather than fight for years and years and years to be the guy that won, they were just like, why don't we co file?

And then we don't have to spend all this money fighting each other for years to probably both end up losing.

To be honest.

They've both been doing comic books for forever.

But yeah, they don't co own superhero names or whatever, but both of them have their major superheroes.

Like, they own the likeness and the name and all of that.

So my husband, who's my book, is also superheroes, but they don't have like, fun superhero names.

His do have fun superhero names and like costumes and stuff.

And in his he's had to be really careful not to copy any comic book likenesses because he was big into comic books as a kid.

Still.

He has a ton of comic books still.

But be really careful not to copy any coloring or logos or anything that.

There are already out there.

That's got to be so hard.

There's thousands of superheroes.

Yes.

And so some of them you can use the name on some of them.

One of them the name that he's used was originally some king was nicknamed this really, like, way before Marvel and DC even existed.

So he's like, I can use that one because that was that guy's name like 600 years ago or whatever.

They can't own that one, but he can't use the same logo or color scheme or anything for that one.

You can't just straight up be like, I'm going to use Iron Man and red and white and blue.

He's getting big trouble.

Yeah.

No, I'm like, why don't we not get us sued?

Because they would sue.

They take that one seriously.

Yeah.

Now there are writers that do not copyright their stuff.

Granted, it is still yours even though it's not registered copyrighted.

But I've heard a lot of horror stories about people stealing Vella stories because you're not going and copywriting that as you go.

So I'm like, I might release mine as a Vela, but I'm going to finish the whole thing first and copyright it and then publish it as a Vella.

That's what I'm going to do.

Because I'm like that way.

I own it already, even though it's mine because I wrote it.

I just like the legal paperwork to make my job easier if they do something stupid.

Exactly.

So now occasionally I just came across my other podcast is called Bite at a Time Books.

Okay.

And I have it registered.

And like, you have to pick what category your trademarks are in.

So it's like downloadable media, streaming media, and then like clothing items because I want to do like T shirts.

So I'm like, I should have done, like, stickers too, but I don't want to have to pay for that.

So like, whatever.

Someone else can make the stickers, I guess, or not.

So I own it.

There.

And I just came across a thing that was calling something a book byte.

And it was like a downloadable audiobook thing.

And I'm like, I feel like I could win that, but I also don't want to pay for that.

Pick the battle.

Yeah.

I'm like yeah, what I don't want is like, with any lawsuit.

You can only get money if they have money, because if they're broke, there's no money.

And also, I don't want to go around suing people.

I just wanted to own it and be able to have the little R next to my logo.

I mean, like, if I had someone straight up try to copy my entire thing, that's different.

Some semblance of the name, whatever.

But yeah, books.

I don't understand why people think they can get away with taking people's stuff and changing the location or the character's names or whatever.

But yeah, I am very much a fan of have the copyright paper in your hand before it goes out to people.

So that the protection.

Right.

I just came across an editor that talked about having, like, your beta readers and stuff signed NDAs, which feels a little excessive.

Yeah.

But at the same time, is it really?

I mean, like, for the podcast, I have you guys sign because I've seen in, like, podcast, Facebook groups, horror stories of, like, someone say there's some person that I don't know, let's go with, like, Wicked.

We're going to go with that one.

So the person comes on a podcast and they're Wicked.

And then suddenly they decide, oh, no, now I'm Christian, and I need you to pull that episode because I don't agree with anything that I said back in the day.

There's a certain extent of, like, be reasonable with your pulling your interview, but some people will talk about, like, that was their best episode ever.

And now the person's telling Orton to pull it, I'm like, no, I have you guys sign partially so that if you're coming at me with an unreasonable request for pulling it down, because and I've quite honestly edited out.

Some of my own talking really stupid on here before.

But I'm not going to edit it and make it seem like you said something you didn't say.

I may cut out parts where it's like, that sounds kind of bad.

The robotic speaking.

Yeah.

That's why I asked you the question afterwards again, so I had a clean version of it.

I've edited out, like, dogs barking or people knocking on doors.

My dog I was talking to someone earlier today, and my dog kept barking.

My husband came home, and she's barking at my husband.

I'm like, oh my God.

And my phone rang.

My phone rang too, of course.

Could everything go wrong in an hour?

1 hour?

This is so funny.

So what are the biggest tips or tricks that you would give to someone either just starting out or someone that is still trying to figure out what they're doing?

What are the biggest tips and tricks you've got?

Don't stress about it, but make an end goal.

End goal of when that first draft needs to be completed.

I wouldn't suggest doing a publication goal until your draft is done.

Set yourself a goal.

Don't stress, but keep with.

The goal, make it day by day.

What would you say would be a reasonable time frame goal for that first draft?

Like, I wouldn't set it less than however long.

It really depends.

I mean, for me personally, I wouldn't set it less than four months.

I don't think I could write a full 110,000 word draft in less than four months.

But there are some authors that I've met who are pushing out two or three first drafts in three months.

So they're writing a book a month.

So it really depends on you, your time schedule, with work and everything with life, and then just kind of knowing.

And of course, it's different once you know your writing habits, but if you're just starting out, it's a matter of figuring out, okay, well, if I sit for an hour, I usually average this amount of words, or maybe there's not an average of words.

And so, like, for you, it's a time thing.

You have your ten minutes.

It doesn't matter how many words you get, it's ten minutes.

And so it really depends on the writing habits, and you have to play around with it and figure out what works best.

Well, it's the same with think weight loss goals, which more people will understand that some people setting, I'm going to lose this much weight a week is a really good goal.

Some people, if you've had, like, eating disorder background, it may just be like, I'm going to eat fruits and vegetables and lean meats and stay healthy, as opposed to like, I'm going to hit this many calories every day.

It's going to be different.

Could I have told you in September of 2021 that I narrate at roughly 9500 words an hour?

No, I could not have told you that.

Or that it's probably going to take me about an hour and a half to actually narrate that hour because I screw up sometimes.

No, but I figured, you know, the first couple months, you figure out same with writing, you figure out what your thing is.

I don't honestly think it matters if it's a time goal or a date goal or a word count.

Each day goal.

Like a goal is a goal.

Exactly.

If word count makes sense in your head, go for that.

If can commit to 30 minutes a day works in your head, do that.

Yeah.

I've talked to several authors that talked about the importance of being in it every day as best as you can.

And then some, like your weekends, you're going to be able to do more because if you don't have kids and activities for kids, you have free time on the weekends where you're not working your day job or whatever.

And some the weekends is the worst time because the kids are doing soccer and football.

My weekends, I only do interviews on Saturdays because my Sundays are busy, and the rest of the week I'm like day job and Narrating, that is, you got to do whatever your goal is.

I have reminders on my phone too, to remind me at 07:00, whatever I'm doing, put it down.

And I read a chapter a day and a book that is not related to Narrating.

And then I spend ten minutes on my book immediately after that.

That's awesome.

That was New Year's resolutions, was like, we're going to commit to, like, I'm not just working on books, I'm getting paid for.

That's awesome.

Well, that is some pretty that's a good I like goal setting.

What are the different goals that you set for yourself?

So you have the first draft one, and then once you've finished that, what's the next goal that you set?

Next goal is then just finding the beta readers.

With book one, I had no clue how long to give beta readers.

I was saying, oh, get it back to me as soon as you can.

Five months later, I'd be reaching out like, hey, did you forget?

But this time around, I'm like, no, honestly, I probably could have said two weeks with most of them.

But you know, this first group, I'm saying a month, have it done by the end of January.

I sent it to them within the first week, and I'm like, just have it done by the end of January.

So it's setting a timetable with them, right?

I do the same with audience.

So through Acx is where I get most of my jobs, and I think they give once the full thing is done, it's like a ten day time frame in the contract that they give you.

And I've had a couple of authors that I had one that her day job all of a sudden basically blew up, and she took her, like, a month or two to get it back to me.

And I'm like, just keep me updated.

It's okay if it takes you longer.

I had one that was like, I'm having a hard time.

And I was finally like, listen to a chapter while you're drinking your coffee in the morning.

And then it was like a 20 chapter book, so I'm like, in 20 days, I'll have it back.

Or listen to a chapter before you go to bed at night.

Like, whatever time.

Just one a day is one a day.

At least you're making progress at this point.

I'm like, I have one author that's having, like, mental health stuff going on right now.

I'm like, just like, take care of you.

Just keep me updated every couple of days, every week or so, let me know what's going on.

Not saying you got to give me all the nitty gritty details.

Just like, how are you feeling today?

In fact, I just reached out to her a couple of days ago to see what's the status where we at, because for mine, what I do for edits, I send a Google doc with the book and then all the chapters on it so they can put timestamps and what they want changed for editing.

So I can also see how far they are listening, because it's my Google Doc that I have here to them, so I can see how far they are.

Same with you.

With beta readers in the Google Doc, based on the comments, you can see how far they are into the book, just like the things that you I didn't do that at the beginning.

That's definitely not how I did it.

I didn't even think to ask for timestamps until I had an author that sent me timestamps, and I was like, oh, my God, this is so much easier to go find these spots to edit now.

So I have to listen through, like, in chapter two, you said, blah, blah, blah, and you're like, Where is that?

Somewhere in chapter two.

Somewhere in that 30 minutes.

Yeah.

So now I'm like now I'm like timestamps.

Like, if you want anything changed, you must provide me the chapter, the approximate if you get 30 seconds before or after, I can listen forward or back a little bit, that's fine, but I'm like the approximate timestamp and what's wrong?

Did I say something not sarcastic enough?

Did I accidentally say something in a mad tone?

And it should have been in a sweet tone.

I don't know how you messed that up, but I did once.

I don't know.

I'm like, well, you could have taken that line either way, so I didn't know.

But just things that you no matter what you're doing, you learn.

You pick up these little tricks as you go.

And seriously, all of you guys have different tips and tricks that are like the things you think are this is the most important.

But for me, who doesn't have a book out yet?

I stored them away in the back of my head for, like, when I'm ready for that stage, do it this way instead so that you know you've given them a deadline.

I saw a narrator, talked about she will give out free codes, and she says if you don't redeem it within two weeks, I'm passing it on to the next person in line.

That's so dumb, because with the code that's literally click a link and then sign into your account and it's redeemed.

But apparently that's too hard for some people to do.

I don't know.

I click links all the time and emails all the time from legitimate sources.

I click on every link in every email I ever receive.

Legitimate source email.

My husband will get stuff on his phone and he's like, Is this a legit email?

And I'm like, no, don't click on anything.

That's so funny.

But you know those I hate spam emails.

Anyways, like, way off topic.

All right, well, I think unless you have anything else, I think we're good.

That was fun.

All right, well, thank you so much for your time and I hope you have a good rest of your day.

Thanks.

You too.

This was great.

So thank you.

No problem.

Bye.

Bye.

Getting Older kelsey liked Peter Pan peter Pan is a fictional character created by Scottish novelist and playwright JM.

Barry.

A free spirited and mischievous young boy who can fly and never grow up, peter Pan spends his never ending childhood having adventures on the mythical island of Neverland.

As the leader of the Lost Boys, interacting with fairies, pirates, mermaids, Native Americans and occasionally ordinary children from the world outside Neverland, peter Pan has become a cultural icon, symbolizing youthful innocence and escapism.

In addition to two distinct works by Barry the Little White Bird, 1902, with chapters 13 to 18 published in Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens in 1906, and the Westin stage play Peter Pan or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up 19 Four, which expanded into the 1911 novel Peter and Dwindy.

The characters been featured in a variety of media and merchandise, both adapting and expanding on Berry's works.

These include the 1924 silent film, 1953 Disney animated film, a 2003 dramatic live action film, a television series and many other works.

Berry commissioned a statue of Peter Pan by the sculptor George Frampton, which was erected overnight in Kensington Gardens on 30 April 1912, as a surprise to the children of London.

Six other statues have been cast from the original mold and displayed around the world.

In 2002, Peter Pan featured on a series of UK postage stamps issued by the Royal Mail on the centenary of Barry's creation of the character.

Today we'll be reading chapter one of Peter Pan by JM.

Barry.

Don't forget we're reading Le Morte Arthur the Story of King Arthur and of the snowball knights of the Round Table on our Patreon.

You can find the link in the show notes.

Peter Pan, chapter One peter Breaks Through all children, except one, grow up.

They soon know that they will grow up.

And the way Wendy knew was this one day, when she was two years old, she was playing in a garden and she plucked another flower and ran with it to her mother.

I suppose she must have looked rather delightful for Mrs.

Darling, put her hand to her heart and cried, oh, why can't you remain like this forever?

This was all that passed between them on the subject.

But henceforth Wendy knew that she must grow up.

You always know after you are two.

Two is the beginning of the end.

Of course, they lived at 14, and until Wendy came, her mother was the chief one.

She was a lovely lady with a romantic mind and such a sweet, mocking mouth.

Her romantic mind was like the tiny boxes, one within the other, that come from the Puzzling East.

However many you discover, there is always one more.

And her sweet mocking mouth had one kiss on it that Wendy could never get.

There it was perfectly conspicuous in the right hand corner.

The way Mr.

Darling won her was this the many gentlemen who had been boys when she was a girl discovered simultaneously that they loved her and they all ran to her house to propose to her except Mr.

Darling, who took a cab and nipped in first.

And so he got her.

He got all of her except the innermost box and the kiss.

He never knew about the box and in time he gave up trying for the kiss.

Wendy thought Napoleon could have got it but I can picture him trying and then going off in a passion, slamming the door.

Mr.

Darling used to boast to Wendy that her mother not only loved him, but respected him.

He was one of those deep ones who know about stocks and shares.

Of course, no one really knows, but he quite seemed to know.

And he often said stocks were up and shares were down in a way that would have made any woman respect him.

Mrs.

Darling was married in White and at first she kept the books perfectly, almost gleefully, as if it were a game.

Not so much as a Brussels sprout was missing.

But by and by, whole cauliflowers dropped out.

And instead of them there were pictures of babies without faces.

She drew them when she should have been totting up.

They were Mrs.

Darling's guesses.

Wendy came first, then John, then Michael.

For a week or two after Wendy came it was doubtful whether they would be able to keep her that she was another mouth to feed.

Mr.

Darling was frightfully proud of her, but he was very honorable and he sat on the edge of Mrs.

Darling's bed holding her hand and calculating expenses while she looked at him imploringly.

She wanted to risk it, come what might.

But this was not his way.

His way was with a pencil and a piece of paper.

And if she confused him with suggestions he had to begin at the beginning again.

Now, don't interrupt, he would beg of her.

I have £1.17 here and two and six at the office.

I can cut off my coffee at the office.

Say ten shillings.

Making two nine and six with your 18 and three makes three.

Nine seven with five.

Not in my checkbook.

Makes eight nine seven.

Who is that moving?

Eight nine seven.

Dot and carry seven.

Don't speak my own.

And the pound you lent to that man who came to the door.

Quiet, child.

Dot and Carrie, child.

There, you've done it.

Did I say nine nine seven?

Yes, I said nine nine seven.

The question is, can we try it for a year on nine nine seven?

Of course we can, George.

She cried, but she was prejudiced in Wendy's favor and he was really the grander character of the two.

Remember, Mumps, he warned her, almost threateningly.

And off he went again.

Mumps, £1.

That is what I've put down, but I dare say it will be more like 30 shillings.

Don't speak measles one five German measles half a guinea makes 215 six.

Don't waggle your finger whooping cough, say 15 shillings.

And so on it went, and it added up differently each time.

But at last Wendy just got through, with Mumps reduced to twelve six and the two kinds of measles treated as one.

There was the same excitement over John, and Michael had even a narrower squeak, but both were kept, and soon you might have seen the three of them going in a row to Miss Folsom's kindergarten school, accompanied by their nurse.

Mrs.

Darling loved to have everything just so, and Mr.

Darling had a passion for being exactly like his neighbors, so of course they had a nurse, as they were poor owing to the amount of milk the children drank.

This nurse was a prim Newfoundland dog called Nana, who had belonged to no one in particular until the Darlings engaged her.

She had always thought children important, however, and the Darlings had become acquainted with her in Kensington Gardens, where she spent most of her spare time peeping into perambulators and was much hated by careless nursemaids whom she followed to their homes and complained of to their mistresses.

She proved to be quite a treasure of a nurse.

How thorough she was at bath time and up at any moment of the night if one of her charges made the slightest cry.

Of course her kennel was in the nursery.

She had a genius for knowing when a cough is a thing to have no patience with and when it needs stalking around your throat.

She believed to her last day in old fashioned remedies like rhubarb leaf, and made sounds of contempt over all this newfangled talk about germs and so on.

It was a lesson in propriety to see her escorting the children to school, walking sedately by their side when they were well behaved and budding them back into line if they strayed on John's footer days.

She never once forgot his sweater, and she usually carried an umbrella in her mouth in case of rain.

There's a room in the basement of Miss Folsom's school where the nurses wait.

They sat on forms while Nana lay on the floor, but that was the only difference they affected, to ignore her as of an inferior social status to themselves, and she despised their light talk.

She resented visits to the nursery from Mrs.

Darling's friends, but if they did come, she first whipped off Michael's penafoure and put him into the one with blue braiding and smoothed out Wendy and made a dash at John's hair.

No nursery could possibly have been conducted more correctly, and Mr.

Darling knew it.

Yet he sometimes wondered uneasily whether the neighbors talked.

He had his position in the city to consider.

Nana also troubled him in another way.

He had sometimes a feeling that she did not admire him.

I know she admires you tremendously, George, Mrs.

Darling would assure him.

And then she would sign to the children to be specially nice to father.

Lovely dances followed in which the only other servant, Liza, was sometimes allowed to join such a midget she looked in her long skirt and maid's cap, though she had sworn when engaged that she would never see Ten again.

The gaiety of those romps and gayest of all was Mrs.

Darling, who had Pierre wet so wildly that all you could see of her was the kiss.

And then if you had dashed at her, you might have got it.

There never was a simpler, happier family until the coming of Peter Pan.

Mrs.

Darling first heard of Peter when she was tidying up her children's minds.

It is the nightly custom of every good mother, after her children are asleep, to rummage in their minds and put things straight for next morning repacking into their proper places the many articles that have wandered during the day.

If you could keep awake, but of course you can't you would see your own mother doing this and you would find it very interesting to watch her.

It is quite like tidying up drawers.

You would see her on her knees, I expect, lingering humorously over some of your contents, wondering where on earth you had picked this thing up, making discoveries sweet and not so sweet, pressing this to her cheek as if it were as nice as a kitten, and hurriedly sewing that out of sight.

When you wake in the morning, the naughtiness and evil passions with which you went to bed have been folded up small and placed at the bottom of your mind and on the top beautifully aired, or spread out, your prettier thoughts ready for you to put on.

I don't know whether you've seen a map of a person's mind.

Doctors sometimes draw maps of other parts of you, and your own map can become intensely interesting.

But catch them trying to draw a map of a child's mind which is not only confused but keeps going round all the time.

There are zigzag lines on it, just like your temperature on a card.

And these are probably roads in the island.

For the Neverland is always more or less an island with astonishing splashes of color here and there, and coral reefs and rakish looking craft in the offing and savages and lonely.

Lairs and gnomes who are mostly tailors and caves through which a river runs and princes with six elder brothers and the hut fast going to decay and one very small old lady with a hooked nose.

It would be an easy map if that were all.

But there is also first day at school, religion, fathers, the round pond needlework murders, hangings verbs that take the date of chocolate pudding, day getting into braces, say 99, three pence for pulling out your tooth yourself, and so on.

And either these are part of the island, or they are another map showing through.

And it is all rather confusing, especially as nothing will stand still.

Of course, the Neverland's very a good deal.

John's, for instance, had a lagoon with flamingos flying over it, at which John was shooting, while Michael, who was very small, had a flamingo with lagoons flying over it.

John lived in a boat turned upside down on the sands.

Michael in a wig wham, wendy in a house of leaves deafly sewn together.

John had no friends.

Michael had friends.

At night, Wendy had a pet wolf forsaken by its parents.

But on the whole, the Neverlands had a family resemblance.

And if they stood still in a row, you could say of them that they have each other's nose and so forth.

On these magic shores, children at play are forever beaching their coracles.

We too have been there.

We can still hear the sound of the surf, though we shall land no more.

Of all delectable islands, the Neverland is the snugest and most compact.

Not large and sprawly, you know, with tedious distances between one adventure and another, but nicely crammed.

When you play at it by day, with the chairs and tablecloth, it is not in the least alarming, but in the two minutes before you go to sleep, it becomes very real.

That is why there are nightlights.

Occasionally, in her travels through her children's minds, mrs Darling found things she could not understand.

And of these quite the most perplexing, was the word Peter.

She knew of no Peter and yet he was here and there in John and Michael's minds, while Wendy's began to be scrawled all over with him.

The name stood out in bolder letters than any of the other words, and as Mrs Darling gazed, she felt that it had an oddly cocky appearance.

Yes, he is rather cocky, Wendy admitted with regret.

Her mother had been questioning her.

But who is he, my pet?

He is Peter Pan, you know, Mother.

At first Mrs Darling did not know, but after thinking back into her childhood, she just remembered a Peter Pan who was said to live with the fairies.

There were odd stories about him, as that when children died, he went part of the way with them so that they should not be frightened.

She had believed in him at the time, but now that she was married and full of sense, she quite doubted whether there was any such person.

Besides, she said to Wendy, he would be grown up by this time.

Oh, no, he isn't grown up, Wendy assured her confidently.

And he is just my size.

She meant that he was her size in both mind and body.

She didn't know how she knew, she just knew it.

Mrs.

Darling consulted Mr.

Darling, but he smiled.

Poopoo.

Mark my words, he said, it is some nonsense Nana has been putting into their heads.

Just the sort of idea a dog would have.

Leave it alone and it will blow over.

But it would not blow over, and soon.

The troublesome boy gave Mrs.

Darling quite a shock.

Children have the strangest adventures without being troubled by them.

For instance, they may remember to mention a week after the event happened that when they were in the wood they had met their dead father and had a game with him.

It was in this casual way that Wendy one morning made a disquieting revelation.

Some leaves of a tree had been found on the nursery floor which certainly was not there when the children went to bed and Missus Darling was puzzling over them when Wendy said with a tolerant smile I do believe it is that Peter again.

Whatever do you mean, Wendy?

It is so naughty of him not to wipe his feet, Wendy said, sighing.

She was a tidy child.

She explained in quite a matter of fact way that she thought Peter sometimes came to the nursery in the night and sat on the foot of her bed and played on his pipes to her.

Unfortunately, she never woke, so she didn't know how she knew.

She just knew.

What nonsense you talk, precious.

No one can get into the house without knocking.

I think he comes in by the window, she said.

My love, it is three floors up.

Were not the leaves at the foot of the window, Mother?

It was quite true.

The leaves had been found very near the window.

Mrs.

Darling did not know what to think, for it all seemed so natural to Wendy that you could not dismiss it by saying she had been dreaming.

My child.

The mother cried, why did you not tell me of this before?

I forgot, said Wendy lightly.

She was in a hurry to get her breakfast.

Oh, surely she must have been dreaming.

But on the other hand, there were the leaves.

Mrs.

Darling examined them very carefully.

They were skeleton leaves, but she was sure they did not come from any tree that grew in England.

She crawled about the floor, peering at it with a candle for marks of a strange foot.

She rattled the poker up the chimney and tapped the walls.

She let down a tape from the window to the pavement and it was a sheer drop of 30ft without so much as a spout to climb up by.

Certainly Wendy had been dreaming.

But Wendy had not been dreaming as the very next night showed the night on which the extraordinary adventures of these children may be said to have begun.

On the night we speak of all the children were once more in bed.

It happened to be Nana's evening off and Mrs.

Darling had bathed them and sung to them till, one by one they had let go her hand and slid away into the land of sleep.

All were looking so safe and cozy that she smiled at her fears now and sat down tranquilly by the fire to sew.

It was something for Michael, who, on his birthday, was getting into shirts.

The fire was warm, however, and the nursery dimly lit by three nightlights.

And presently the sewing lay on Mrs.

Darling's lap.

Then her head nodded oh so gracefully she was asleep.

Look at the four of them.

Wendy and Michael over there.

John here and Mrs.

Darling by the fire.

There should have been a fourth nightlight.

While she slept, she had a dream.

She dreamt that the Neverland had come too near and that a strange boy had broken through from it.

He did not alarm her, for she thought she had seen him before in the faces of many women who have no children.

Perhaps he is to be found in the faces of some mothers also.

But in her dream, he had rented the film that obscures the Neverland.

And she saw Wendy and John and Michael peeping through the gap.

The dream by itself would have been a trifle.

But while she was dreaming, the window of the nursery blew open and the boy did drop on the floor.

He was accompanied by a strange light, no bigger than your fist, which darted about the room like a living thing.

And I think it must have been this light that weakened Mrs.

Darling.

She started up with a cry and saw the boy.

And somehow she knew at once that he was Peter Pan.

If you or I or Wendy had been there, we should have seen that he was very like Mrs.

Darling's kiss.

He was a lovely boy, clad in skeleton leaves and the juices that ooze out of trees.

But the most entrancing thing about him was that he had all his first teeth.

When he saw she was grown up, he gnashed the little pearls at her.

Thank you for joining Freya's fairy tales.