This episode highlights the upcoming 39th Rally of Writers on April 11th at Lansing Community College’s West Campus. Guests Stephen Mack Jones and Rob Edwards discuss the realities of being a writer and balancing creative work with the business side of publishing. From those starting out, to seasoned writers, everyone is invited to celebrate Michigan’s vibrant and growing literary community.

Event Informaton: A Rally of Writers

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Lansing Community College Library

You are listening to Written in the Stars Books and Beyond, where hosts from the LCC Library sit down with writers, publishers, entrepreneurs and literary enthusiasts of all types.

Join us as we explore the very heart of the written word.

Welcome to Written in the Stars Books and Beyond.

I'm John Selegy and beside me today is my co host, Robin Moore.

Hello.

Today we are joined by Stephen Mac Jones and Rob Edwards.

Stephen Mac Jones is the author of the popular August Snow series.

He is a two time recipient of Michigan Notable Book Award.

He is also a recipient of the Nero Award and a finalist for Seamus Award and many other awards as well.

In addition, he is also a proud recipient of the prestigious Kresge Arts in Detroit Literary Fellowship and and the keynote speaker at this year's rally of Writers.

Rob Edwards is a video producer and author, also our colleague at LCC and current president of a rally for writers.

So welcome Stephen and Rob.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good to be here.

Yes, we're very happy to have you.

Rob, this is the second year we've talked with you about a rally of writers.

So tell us for this year, when and where will the rally of Writers be taking place?

This year is the 39th gathering of a rally of writers.

Yes, it is going to be held on April 11.

It runs from 8 in the morning till 4 in the afternoon and it will be held at Lansing Community College's west campus, so out in Delta Township.

Okay.

Okay.

You were on our podcast last year promoting the rally of writers along with the keynote last year.

Right.

Erin, what made you want to have Stephen as your keynote speaker this year?

Well, I have been thinking about Stephen for a while, but it was two or three years ago I ended up going to the Michigan Notable Book Awards event and Stephen was the keynote speaker there and he literally brought the house down.

It was amazing.

And I have been a fan ever since.

So I said he has got to be our keynote.

Well, thank you.

Thank you very much.

And what an honor is to have you in this space with us.

Thank you for gracing us with your presence.

Oh, well, you make me sound more grandiose than I really am.

Which reminds me, I have laundry to do when I get home.

But no, this is a wonderful honor and I'm very grateful to the rally of writers and Rob for inviting me.

When you get up to give your keep note speech at Rally of Writers, what do you hope emerging writers will take away from your remarks?

I really hope that they'll take away a sense of hope, primarily because a lot of writers that are Starting out, regardless of their age, they don't know where to begin.

They know where their story begins.

But the business side of writing is shrouded in fog.

And it takes some courage and takes fortitude and a bit of knowledge to navigate your way through the writing world.

So what was the defining moment when you realized you wanted to become a writer?

Well, shortly after coming out of the birth canal.

Wow.

Yeah, it's been a while.

My brother and I were always encouraged by our parents to read.

They always found that reading was the key to understanding the world around us.

And my father had ninth grade education before he started working.

My mother had a bit of college.

But they always knew that reading was understanding the world.

And that's where my love of words began and writing shortly thereafter.

You had mentioned kind of the business side of writing.

And I've heard other authors say, you know, really focus on the writing and then worry about the business aspects later.

Yes.

Do you feel that way or do you think there is importance in understanding the business aspects of writing as well?

Well, first and foremost for me is the writing, Understanding your story, giving the best part of yourself to the writing.

But once the writing is done, the editing is done, the fourth, fifth, sixth draft is done, if you're feeling like, well, I'd like a larger audience to enjoy my words, learn from my words, be moved by them.

That's when you move into the business part of writing.

And it's, it's, it's hard to navigate sometimes.

It's hard to get an agent.

It's hard for that agent sometimes to find a publishing house.

And the marketing.

Don't think just because your book sold that you're done.

You have to be an integral part of moving the book forward.

And you have to learn the ways to do that and become comfortable with those ways.

That's true.

That's true.

Yeah.

The comfortability of it.

You have to ask people for reviews.

Yes.

You have to be that forward.

Yeah.

And I would say so.

I'm thinking about, I have a few friends that self publish.

Right.

You know, you've got, you've got that platform we can use.

So you know we have Amazon.

Right.

And you can self publish on that platform.

And I'm just wondering, I heard you say that you have to constantly put it out there.

You have to get reviews.

Talk to me about that.

Rob, you want to go a little bit on that?

Well, yeah.

Some publishing houses, from what I understand, don't do much marketing for you at all.

They, they make sure that your book is available.

And you are required to get it out there.

There's such a thing in, well, I was going to say the publishing world, but in the business world of something called a loss leader.

And essentially that means some publishing houses will publish your book and, and bury it primarily to take a tax loss.

I'm not saying that's widespread, but it is a part of the business.

And as the writer, you have to put your business head on and challenge the norms.

Get on social media, any social media.

I hate being on social media, but I know that I have to do it.

I'm not a Facebook guy, I'm not an Instagram guy.

Here I am sitting at my typewriter, smiling for the camera.

No, it's difficult.

But you have to change your ways.

And we were talking about self publishing.

The same applies to self publishing.

Self publishing even more so because you have to learn to promote yourself and through social media through whatever means you can.

And you have to be comfortable with that.

So, yeah, there's a lot involved.

You're not done with the child after the baby is born.

That's right.

You're never done with the child.

Stephen, before you were full time writer that you worked in advertising and marketing, talking about both the business of writing as well as just the act of writing.

How has that experience helped or hindered your writing career?

Well, to be really honest with you, I really, maybe despised is too strong of a word.

Didn't really enjoy marketing advertising as much as I thought I was going to.

I did have those wonderful carefree, scrubs like moments in advertising and marketing communications.

But the one thing that I did get out of it and it saved my behind on the first book was learning to rewrite and rewrite the rewrite and being fast about it.

That is one thing that I learned in advertising and marketing communications that has helped me immensely.

In advertising, you can take the best commercial, the best magazine copy to your creative director and your creative director will say, this is really tremendous.

I think you need rewrites here, here and here.

And it's.

You're not going to argue with, you know, you're arguing against your best interest, which is a paycheck.

So you learn to rewrite and polish.

And that's the one thing that I got out of 35 years of my life in advertising.

35, 35 years.

You know, there's a. I think it's, I think the quote is associated with Kurt Vonnegut who said, books are not written, they're rewritten.

I like that.

Yes, yes.

So how did your journey Evolve from poet to award winning playwright to a crime novelist.

Those are different levels.

Come on.

They're different levels.

Yes.

And again, adaptability comes in.

I first wanted to be an award winning poet until I realized that nobody likes mediocrity.

And I was a good but mediocre poet, I think.

You know, I loved Octavio Paz and Pablo Neruda and all of those writers, Seamus Heaney and Nikki Giovanni, I loved all of them.

But they did what I couldn't do, and that was to raise the word to something sacred.

So it's like, okay, I'm a good poet, not an award winning poet.

Let me move on.

So I moved on to playwriting, which was a lot of fun and involves a lot of people, which is both good and bad.

But I enjoyed playwriting.

But while the expenses of playwriting are never ending, I mean, bringing something to the stage, you're asking for a theater to invest 60, 70, $80,000 of their money into something untested.

And then I just float into novels because I really love, you know, the classic mysteries.

They got me through the flu, you know, where you wrap a blanket around you and have a cup of tea with lemon and read Agatha Christie.

Yeah.

And I love the genre.

I really do.

Other than Agatha Christie, who are some of your favorite authors in the mystery genre?

Oh, that's fairly easy.

I'm going to forget some, but James Salas, who recently passed away, he was wonderful.

His first book, I would suggest, is the Long Legged Fly.

And it's, it's a short book, but it's, it's tremendous.

Walter Mosley.

Oh, gee, Robert B. Parker was a great inspiration.

And of course, Dashiell Hammett and some of the modern writers that are, that are always discovering new ways to bring a mystery to you.

So.

Yeah, those are just a few.

Yeah.

And Ashley, I was thinking of some of those very authors as I was thinking about names for detectives that come up, you know, in stories like Mike Hammer and Sam Spade.

And I put Eazy Rollins and that too all have great names.

And I think August Snow has a great name too.

Oh, thank you.

How did you come up with that?

How did you come up with the name August Snow?

Well, it's probably one of the more boring stories that I can regale you with.

I was mowing the lawn one summer and the two words August and snow settled on my mind.

And I thought, that's stupid.

It doesn't snow in August.

And those words kept burrowing into my brain for like a week and a half, two Weeks.

And after two weeks, I thought, well, I'm going to have to do something about this.

It either means I need talk therapy to get to the root of that, or I can use that as a name for a story and save money that I would have spent on talk therapy.

So that's where the name came from.

It really was my wife who defined it the name for me.

She was coming downstairs in her house and I was downstairs, and we were about to pass each other, and she said, boy, you know, I've been thinking about that name, August Snow.

It's really.

It really encapsulates the character because, like August, he can run hot.

He's very quick to get hot under the collar.

And like Snow, he's very cool.

And I told her, yeah, I know that, baby.

And she just shook her head and went to the kitchen.

And I stood there thinking, oh, my God, I didn't realize that until now.

So it was.

It was really Mary Kate's wonderful.

So Detroit feels like a character in your work.

What makes the.

I'll say the D. Can I just say the D?

Yes, you may.

The D feels like the character in your work.

What makes the city such fertile ground as a setting?

Well, I've seen Detroit in the bad times, and I've seen it in the still reemerging good times.

And there is something different about Detroiters.

Yes.

I mean, for decades, Detroit scouting, you know, beat up in the ring, black eye, lost a tooth, cauliflower ears, bleeding, broken nose, and we're never down for the count.

Never.

We always get up and reassert ourselves.

And that attitude is something special.

I don't think you see that in Chicago.

I don't think you see that in Los Angeles.

You might see it in New York, but everybody that's got that attitude in New York says, forget this man, I'm out of here.

And then they go to Jersey.

God only knows.

I think that those Cities have similar DNAs, though.

Chicago has similar DNA to New York, to Los Angeles.

I think Trey has a different DNA because it was built on blue collar mentality.

And it's not about falling down, it's about getting up every single day.

Every day.

Exactly.

Yes.

Which I kind of feel works so well for.

For a mystery novel, in a detective novel.

Right.

Of, like, we see all of these characters that, you know, are picking themselves back up again.

And, you know, another.

Another aspect of, you know, Detroit and your novels is kind of the social and political landscape that gets tied into them.

And so, you know, how does that influence Your storytelling as well.

Well, it's certainly not in the minutia of creating a character.

It's a part of the character's intellect and soul.

I mean, we're all political people.

That's how we move through our lives, whether we acknowledge it or not.

And it's also a part of the environment that we move through.

So we can all say, oh, I'm not political, but we are in our social lives, our intellectual lives.

It's just a part of who we are.

It's a part of our internal landscape.

Stephen, besides being the keynote at the rally of Writers, what's next for you?

Probably lunch.

That's right.

Yeah.

And a trip.

Trip to the peanut store.

Oh, yes.

Good job.

So glad.

I love that place.

Go to Kewpie's across the street and have lunch.

I have.

Oh, my father used to talk about Kewpies.

But anyway, what's.

What's next for me is finishing the fifth book in the series.

I've taken couple of years off, but polishing that story and ending the August Snow series and moving on to something else.

All right, so where can our listeners connect with you and follow your work?

They can connect with me through my website, but it is a part of Soho Press.

That's my.

My publisher, and they built my website, so I'm an old guy, so I don't remember, you know, websites or things like that.

We'll be sure to include it in the show notes with this episode.

Oh, great, great, great.

And.

And I'll be reminded then.

Yes, yes.

So, Rob, in addition to Stephen being at the rally of Writers, can you give us kind of a brief overview of what else is going on that day?

Oh, yeah, yeah.

We have several speakers coming, and it's important to note that people who come to the writers conference are varying levels of writing, some just entering, some, you know, several books behind them.

We have a craft track for the beginning writers, and so that's four consecutive sessions of getting started writing.

You know, we have a poetry track.

In fact, one of our speakers this year is Esther Belen, who's now teaching at msu, but she is the current poet laureate of Durango, Colorado.

She came to us from Colorado.

Yeah.

One of our sessions is on publishing.

We have someone from Mission Point Press coming to talk about the three different types of publishing.

So indie publishing, traditional publishing, and a hybrid of the two so you can get all your publishing questions answered there.

And person that seems to be bringing a lot of excitement, Jim C. Hynes, who's a prominent fantasy author who lives in the mid Michigan area will be there.

And Dedalien is bringing up.

I love this.

Yeah, Colleen Gleason is also there and she writes under three different pseudonyms, so.

And she's very successful this state.

Michigan has an abundance of fantastic writers.

And that's one of the great things about the rally, is getting these writers to come here and share their stories, share what it means to be a writer.

I'm constantly amazed at the number of tremendous writers in this state.

I agree with that.

Even just doing this podcast, the amount of writers that we have to be on this podcast from this area and from Michigan has just been phenomenal.

We keep coming up with more ideas than we could possibly use.

So you're absolutely, absolutely true.

Rob, can you remind us once more of when and where Rally of Writers will be taking place?

Yes.

It takes place April 11th at LCC's West Campus.

It goes from 8 to 4, 8am to 4pm you can get your tickets@arallyofwriters.com and early bird registration only goes till March 31st.

After that, the prices go up.

Okay, that's good to know.

That's good to know.

Venue based thing.

We're not trying to be difficult.

You can be difficult.

No.

Thank you so much, Stephen and Rob for sharing this space with us today.

We really appreciate you being here and continue writing.

Thank you.

Yes,

you have been listening to Written in the Stars books and Beyond.

Visit lcc.edu library to find the titles discussed in this episode.

You can find previous episodes Written in the stars and other LCC Connect shows@lccconnect.com and in the words of Miguel D', Unamuno, I hope, reader, we shall meet again and we shall recognize each other.