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Dear Writer, giving and receiving feedback can be hard. Haven't you ever wished you could watch someone else's writing group to see how they do it?
This podcast is focused on just such a writing group. Join authors JC Bybee, Grey Alder, and Tyler Hess as they razz and encourage each other, talk about every writing topic under the sun, and exemplify the subtle art of helping other writers write better.
00;00;00;03 - 00;00;22;02
Speaker 1
But with all of my books, Magical Regency and any book I'm going to write in the future. Mainly just writing them so that teenagers have kind of a clean, good idea of what real romance looks like. So that's kind of my, I guess stick as an author is like, I want my books to be a safe place for teens.
00;00;22;02 - 00;00;51;15
Speaker 1
I want them to not read about like toxic relationships or anything like that. It's I want it to be very realistic of how the characters fall in love and what the future is going to look like. And so not everything is fairytales and rainbows or, you know, super to morally gray. Off to the other thing.
00;00;51;17 - 00;01;00;15
Speaker 2
Dear listener, I am joined today by my good friend Human Schaffer. Did you realize we've known each other for ten years now?
00;01;00;18 - 00;01;03;06
Speaker 1
No, not even we feel old. Don't say that.
00;01;03;08 - 00;01;05;26
Speaker 2
I don't like rowing adults when we met too.
00;01;05;28 - 00;01;07;15
Speaker 1
Yeah. That's crazy.
00;01;07;22 - 00;01;20;15
Speaker 2
Let's think about the other day. Keelin is very, a very interesting person. We met in England, and I still remember her telling me about her pet falcon and her. Right. Falcon?
00;01;20;18 - 00;01;21;29
Speaker 1
My sister had the pet falcon.
00;01;21;29 - 00;01;45;26
Speaker 2
Yes, sister had the falcon. And then your background in, like, stage fighting, fencing, stuff like that. So already she was like, one of the coolest people that I know. And it's been great to see her, her authorial, journey. That's a weird way to say that, but we're going to go with it. So you have three books out right now, one novella, and then one book in developmental editing, correct?
00;01;45;27 - 00;01;51;23
Speaker 2
Yes. Awesome. How's that going? How's the developmental editing side of On Guard going?
00;01;51;26 - 00;02;09;01
Speaker 1
That's been really fun. It's probably one of the longest books I've written. I wasn't planning on it being over 100,000 words, but that's just kind of where it came out. So right now, my poor developmental editor, her job is to kind of cut it down to about 90,000 words. So she's going through and doing that right now, which I guess for her is easy.
00;02;09;02 - 00;02;14;21
Speaker 1
She's like, oh yeah, you kind of have lots of inner monologue. I'll cut all that out. So she's having fun.
00;02;14;23 - 00;02;30;04
Speaker 2
Good, good. And then your, your other series you have right now out right now. Magical Regency romance. I partway through the first one, it's really. You want to tell us a little bit about the Davenport family?
00;02;30;06 - 00;02;59;29
Speaker 1
Yeah. So I basically wanted a Bridgerton esque series, but teen appropriate. And so the Davenport's are kind of like the Bridgerton in the sense where each book follows a different member of the family, and so the love interest in the first book becomes the side characters in the second book. And then the third book is their daughter. It kind of skips a generation, but I.
00;03;00;04 - 00;03;20;20
Speaker 1
I added magic because I kind of I needed a little bit more high stakes than just your average Regency romance, where the only thing you needed to find was a husband, and that was like the end of the world. So I, you know, I like to have someone who's dying or someone who's getting like, scammed or blackmailed. That's kind of more my vibe.
00;03;20;22 - 00;03;39;25
Speaker 1
But yeah, there's there's three distinct love interests. Plus, I guess for if you count the, the novella and I kind of loosely based them off Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice for the first one, Emma for the second one, Mansfield Park for the third one, and then persuasion for the novella.
00;03;39;28 - 00;03;46;25
Speaker 2
So very much Austin inspired. That's really cool. And tell me about On Guard. If you can't tell me anything about On Guard.
00;03;46;26 - 00;04;13;26
Speaker 1
Yes I can. On guard is fun. I it's actually not the first contemporary wrote or written, but it's definitely the one that I feel probably the most connected to because like you mentioned, I was a competitive fencer as a kid and the the main character has endometriosis, which is what I also have. And so it's it's definitely very like a personal story to tell.
00;04;13;29 - 00;04;25;28
Speaker 1
But I of course had to add enemies to lovers, lots of banter, make it really fun and a little bit more intense than kind of the fencing that I did as as a 12 year old.
00;04;25;28 - 00;04;29;14
Speaker 2
But you didn't have any enemies to lovers tropes in your childhood?
00;04;29;15 - 00;04;38;18
Speaker 1
No, I did make a boy cry when I beat him out of a silver medal, but you know that's about it.
00;04;38;21 - 00;04;52;11
Speaker 2
Awesome. So that kind of leads into one of the questions I had for you. So with On Guard with your endometriosis character, who's also a fencer, is that is that something like a self insert for you? Like, how much of yourself do you feel like you're putting into that character?
00;04;52;13 - 00;05;21;02
Speaker 1
Medically, everything the character goes through is all things that I went through in high school and college and before we could have kids. Other than that. Apart from her being a fencer, she's not super like me at all. I kind of have a separate insert character in there because since me and my sister did fencing and our names were pretty similar, Kieran and Keelan, everyone in fencing just called as K1 and K2, and so there is a K1 and K2 character on her fencing team, and she's kind of this little psychopath who wants to murder everyone.
00;05;21;02 - 00;05;25;03
Speaker 1
And so that's my self insert. That's what I was like as a 12 year old.
00;05;25;06 - 00;05;35;19
Speaker 2
Awesome, awesome. Do you do you typically do something like that where you'll have a character that you really associate yourself with in your books?
00;05;35;21 - 00;05;45;29
Speaker 1
Yeah, they're they're normally me, but a little bit more unhinged, kind of like, you know, the, the intrusive thoughts that I don't let other people see. That's that's my self insert characters.
00;05;46;02 - 00;06;05;28
Speaker 2
They wear the intrusive thoughts on their sleeves. That's really cool. I feel like I kind of spread myself out between my characters. Like in my book. I have a principal, so I kind of put my educator kid focus size into that person, and they have a character who's like a ranger. So I put like my outdoorsy ness into that character and kind of spread it out.
00;06;05;29 - 00;06;20;24
Speaker 2
I don't know if I have like a straight self insert character yet, but I think it's a it's a fun idea. I've seen in your social media posts that you have your first morally gray love interest in Guy. Tell me about that. Why did you decide to join the darkish side?
00;06;20;26 - 00;06;39;20
Speaker 1
I needed a villain, but I feel like a lot of people who write morally gray characters get them wrong. They're either they're doing the wrong thing, but for the right reasons, or they're doing the right thing, but for the wrong reasons. But I needed a character who was actually doing the wrong things for the wrong reasons, but justifying it.
00;06;39;20 - 00;06;56;06
Speaker 1
And as the reader, you kind of like you get where he's coming from and you agree with him. You still agree that it's wrong, but you see why he's doing it. And so you almost feel bad for him. And that, in my mind, is what makes people morally gray's. When you're like, you're agreeing with the villain even though they're doing the wrong thing for the wrong reasons.
00;06;56;09 - 00;07;10;17
Speaker 1
And so, yeah, I mean, obviously, since it's contemporary villain is kind of a weird definition, but it's just someone who had to be the enemy of the protagonist, who then eventually, of course, becomes enemies to lovers part of it.
00;07;10;19 - 00;07;23;21
Speaker 2
Sure, sure. I guess I don't want I don't want to ask anything too. Searching about your books. We don't spoil anything. But are they, like, cheating? Or what kind of villainous behavior are they? Are they doing in your contemporary story?
00;07;23;23 - 00;07;43;25
Speaker 1
Basically, I can tell you this because it's the first chapter in the book, so it doesn't spoil the whole book for anyone, but they are at a competition and she meets the main guy, and he basically kind of flirts with her, and she opens up and she gives him kind of like her background of why she's fencing and like some of her strategies.
00;07;43;25 - 00;08;06;07
Speaker 1
And then she finds out that he is her final competitor. And the only reason he was flirting with her was so that he could extract information and now kind of cheat, but not really cheat. Like he now knows all of her strategies and so he beats her and then that becomes her driving force for the rest of the book is like, I have to beat this guy and get my gold medal back.
00;08;06;09 - 00;08;11;01
Speaker 1
And so he's he's cunning, I guess is a better way to put it.
00;08;11;03 - 00;08;16;03
Speaker 2
Doing things not strictly against the rules, but kind of ethically wrong. Them.
00;08;16;04 - 00;08;17;08
Speaker 1
Yeah, exactly.
00;08;17;14 - 00;08;25;24
Speaker 2
That's cool. What other main conflicts are going to come out in this book in broad strokes again? So I don't want to.
00;08;25;27 - 00;08;45;06
Speaker 1
Yeah. Broad strokes. I mean, people know that endometriosis is a theme of the book, but the character herself is kind of she kind of goes through what I went through in high school where she doesn't she doesn't know that she has endometriosis. And so it's a lot of she's confused where like all the pain is coming from and what's wrong with her.
00;08;45;06 - 00;09;02;16
Speaker 1
And so she just kind of starts to pull away from people because she's a competitive fencer. She doesn't want to appear weak, she doesn't want people to baby her. And since the doctors keep telling her there's nothing wrong with you, we can't find anything the matter, then she's just kind of starts to believe that, but in a bad way, to just, like.
00;09;02;16 - 00;09;15;01
Speaker 1
All right, I'm just going to throw myself into the sport. I'm just going to prove that there's nothing wrong with me that I can, like, power through. And then, of course, that comes back to bite or in the but later in the book and becomes a big conflict. So yeah.
00;09;15;03 - 00;09;18;10
Speaker 2
Gotcha. Sounds a little bit like your story. All right.
00;09;18;13 - 00;09;20;14
Speaker 1
Yeah.
00;09;20;16 - 00;09;33;10
Speaker 2
That's really cool. Not not cool for the cake for you, but good conflict makes for good stories, right? Why did you decide to write the kind of stories that you write?
00;09;33;12 - 00;09;36;18
Speaker 1
00;09;36;21 - 00;09;42;10
Speaker 2
It's kind of a really hard question. I don't know if I could even answer that for myself.
00;09;42;12 - 00;10;09;26
Speaker 1
I guess for for this one, I definitely wanted to just empower other young women who may be struggling with, you know, any sort of medical issue, whether it be PCOS or something like that, because those are those issues are becoming more and more commonplace. Like give them, yeah, empowerment to just kind of stand up to, you know, take charge of their health and tell the doctors like, no, there's something wrong with me.
00;10;09;28 - 00;10;34;01
Speaker 1
You just got to go find it. So that for me is, like one of the main reasons I'm writing this book in particular. But with all of my books, Magical Regency and any book I'm going to write in the future, I mainly just writing them so that teenagers have kind of a clean, good idea of what real romance looks like.
00;10;34;03 - 00;10;51;12
Speaker 1
So that's kind of my, I guess stick as an author is like, I want my books to be a safe place for teens. I want them to not read about like toxic relationships or anything like that. It's I want it to be very realistic of how the characters fall in love and what their future is going to look like.
00;10;51;12 - 00;10;59;21
Speaker 1
And so not everything is fairy tales and rainbows or, you know, super to morally gray off to the other side too.
00;10;59;23 - 00;11;25;11
Speaker 2
That's why I said joining the dark ish side with your morally gray cake. Because yeah, it's cool that you're resisting that very lucrative option of writing. I'm on a lot of editing job boards, and there there's a lot of smut, right? Yeah. Good for you. And then what has your what has your publishing journey been like?
00;11;25;13 - 00;11;50;03
Speaker 1
It's kind of just been figuring it out as I go along. I went to a writers conference called Story Makers in Utah about two years ago, and back then I was planning on going the traditional publishing route just because I didn't know how to self-publish. But then I ended up taking a class from an awesome author. Her name is Becky Monson and she has, I believe like 30 books out.
00;11;50;04 - 00;12;05;03
Speaker 1
She makes six figures a year and she's all indie published. And so she just kind of gave a crash course of how to do it. And after that I was like, oh, this is ways than I thought it was going to be like. Sure, it takes a lot of time. It takes a lot of your own investment money because you're paying for covers.
00;12;05;03 - 00;12;38;07
Speaker 1
You're paying for, at least for me, I pay for a formatter, I pay for the editors because I don't feel like I can do that on my own. But I, I feel like it's definitely taught me a lot. And even if it's not as successful as other indie authors, I feel like the magical Regency romance series is almost like my practice series in a sense where, you know, just dipping my toes in the water is a little baby author kind of building up an audience and following on social media and taking off from there.
00;12;38;07 - 00;12;39;07
Speaker 1
So it's been fun.
00;12;39;07 - 00;12;59;14
Speaker 2
That's really cool. And you're absolutely killing it on social media. So congrats on that. Looks like it's going really, really well. And between all the writing and all the social media marketing and everything you're doing, how do you how do you kind of balance all of these hats that you're wearing because your mom as well. Yeah.
00;12;59;21 - 00;13;36;04
Speaker 1
Other things. So let's see. Mother, homeschool teacher, author, marketer, wife, church responsibilities. I've got a lot going on, but I am super blessed. I have an awesome husband and he also he owns his own business and works from home. And so we have the ability to kind of make our own schedules and share the kids equally. It's not just like you're the mom and I'm the provider, which of course he is and I am, but he works from 6:30 a.m. to 2:30 a.m., so he gets his eight hours of work, and then that's when we kind of switch.
00;13;36;04 - 00;14;06;27
Speaker 1
So I've been doing the homeschooling. I've been doing the, you know, the housework at that time. And then he takes the kids at 230 in the afternoon until their bedtime. And so then I have another. If I go to about 1030 at night, eight hours of me time where I can write and I can actually get a full 40 hours or more of writing and filming and posting in every single day, which is literally the only way I'd be able to do any of this is if I wasn't working on it full time.
00;14;06;27 - 00;14;29;13
Speaker 1
It probably would not have happened. So yeah, it's been really fun. Also, I'm just ADHD and so my brain has this special ability to hyper fixate on things. And sometimes I can write from like 1 p.m. to 1 a.m. like 12 hours. No, stop eating is kind of an inconvenience. Like just really get it done. So it's my little secret superpower too.
00;14;29;19 - 00;14;55;17
Speaker 2
I saw that I saw that post when you were talking about that 12 hour. I was like, Holy cow, that's crazy. They can't do that. I typically will write for like an hour in the mornings, and then I do my my actual job. That's really cool. So I guess your advice for other authors is to marry someone really entrepreneurial, like Dylan, who worked for themselves and to do what they need to do basically, right?
00;14;55;19 - 00;14;56;27
Speaker 2
Yeah.
00;14;57;00 - 00;15;12;01
Speaker 1
I think if it's important to you, you'll you'll find the time to like, there's just going to be certain things that you have to cut out. For example, me and my husband, we don't ever really watch TV shows we don't ever like. The only way we can read a book is if we're doing audiobooks, while we're also doing laundry or dishes or something like that.
00;15;12;03 - 00;15;41;07
Speaker 1
I don't have time to just, like, sit down and go to the park or read a book or play video games or anything that I feel like most people do to kind of like take a break or chill out. And so I'm just go, go, go 24 over seven. But yeah, I feel like if writing is something that people want to do, and even if they only make like three hours a day for it, then it's worth the sacrifice of whatever those three hours of maybe just doom scrolling you're giving up.
00;15;41;09 - 00;15;59;17
Speaker 2
I feel like that that could cover a lot of time for a lot of people is just getting up, giving up those little, little things that, like you said, you know, people will do to take a break, but sometimes it's actually not really taking the break. It's just disassociating, maybe, or avoiding work or do what you think you got to do.
00;15;59;17 - 00;16;07;01
Speaker 2
But really, if you have a change, I think it was Winston Churchill who said, what did he say?
00;16;07;03 - 00;16;21;01
Speaker 2
I don't remember what he said. It was something about having a change, like not not taking a break, but like changing what you're doing to something else to give your mind a break. Does that sound familiar, though? That's probably the dumbest thing I've said.
00;16;21;04 - 00;16;23;01
Speaker 1
But not ringing any bells.
00;16;23;04 - 00;16;39;04
Speaker 2
Ringing any bells? That's right. We we, my podcast co-hosts and I, we made a list of questions that we're thinking about asking every author. So you're the first author that we're doing with this. We're going to see how this goes. Have you ever been in the writing group.
00;16;39;06 - 00;17;01;18
Speaker 1
In a official writing group, like in any online ones or like Anwar or anything? I've just been in writing groups with my friends or fellow authors that I know, and we recently got together like just a couple weeks ago, and we went at a Starbucks and a Barnes and Noble, and we wrote for like an hour. We did like a sprint, and then for another half hour, then we kind of read what we wrote and critiqued each other's work.
00;17;01;18 - 00;17;04;25
Speaker 1
And so just kind of unofficial writing groups like that.
00;17;05;02 - 00;17;24;10
Speaker 2
That's that's what we are. I feel like we're an official writing group, but I feel like that's that's a very efficient way to do it. You'll have to be in the San Jacinto writing group or or whatever to be official. How have you seen that being in the writing group? How have you seen that affect your writing?
00;17;24;12 - 00;17;43;13
Speaker 1
I'm going to be honest. I don't really like writing groups. I like I like the social aspect of it and like getting together and talking about the books, but I much prefer and I feel like I learned better. If it's just me and a critique partner, I give as just two people kind of working on the book, then I have a clear vision of what I want to happen.
00;17;43;14 - 00;17;59;12
Speaker 1
Whereas if I'm getting like 3 or 4 opinions of voices of like, oh, you should change this, or I don't like this character. And I'm like, well, that's just your opinion. So it's invalid, you know? And I get like a little defensive if there's multiple people telling me something's wrong, whereas if it's just a critique partner, I might be offended at first.
00;17;59;12 - 00;18;17;07
Speaker 1
And then the next day I'll be like, no, you're right. Okay, I'll change that. But it's just fun in the sense of writing. Groups help you not feel so alone, because sometimes being an author, you're like, okay, well, I'm just, you know, stuck inside or in an office for 12 hours a day writing, and I feel like I'm the only one in the world doing this and struggling.
00;18;17;07 - 00;18;24;14
Speaker 1
Whereas you go and you have the writers who are literally doing the exact same thing as you, and you're like, okay, this is fun. It's not that bad.
00;18;24;16 - 00;18;54;25
Speaker 2
Yeah. I mean, we're just like a writing your podcast, like we're we're marginally like, we'll talk about writing craft and stuff like that. But most of what we are as a writing group podcast, and we think it's just so important to have other people to have that community and also have the other people reading your writing. When I first started, I was really struggling with kind of going in between having like really bad imposter syndrome and thinking I was like the best writer in the world, neither of which are particularly healthy places to stay.
00;18;54;27 - 00;19;17;20
Speaker 2
And so being a part of writing, being their encouragement and also their their critiques helped me kind of plant somewhere in the middle the better place. So I'm glad that you've got people that you're going to. I totally get what you're saying about one thing only one person. For me, I kind of like having multiple people because I can get multiple sides because sometimes they'll disagree with each other and be like, oh, what do I actually think about my stuff?
00;19;17;22 - 00;19;29;11
Speaker 2
That's really useful for me. But being in the writing group is really, really, really good. Keenan, why the heck do you write?
00;19;29;14 - 00;19;54;00
Speaker 1
I feel like you're either born a storyteller or you're not. You're either, you know, waking up in the middle of the night with running dialog in your head or you're not or you're a normal person, you know, like, I've been writing stories since I was probably seven. I have like my first published book that I wrote at eight years old that I illustrated, and it was about fairies and lions in the Tooth Fairy.
00;19;54;01 - 00;20;16;12
Speaker 1
And, and that's like sitting on my bookshelf just being like, yeah, look, you've always wanted to be an author from like 20 years ago. And so I think that's just the way my brain and other storytellers brains are hardwired. You know, some people might turn that into songwriting or going into theater and like actually being part physically, part of their stories and their storytelling.
00;20;16;15 - 00;20;33;18
Speaker 1
But for me, that's just kind of how I found my creative outlet. And so, yeah, even if it never makes me another dollar, like, I'm just going to keep doing it because I feel like I physically can't. Not right. I have like all these characters and stories in my head and I just have to get them out somehow.
00;20;33;20 - 00;20;54;00
Speaker 1
We were literally in Canada over Christmas break and I was playing with my daughter, and she handed me a little King Arthur like puppet, and we were playing, and then I was like, oh, this would make a really great middle grade series with five books about King Arthur or Prince Arthur meeting Berlin in a magical school. And I literally now have like an entire five book series plotted out.
00;20;54;00 - 00;21;01;25
Speaker 1
Because of that one game I was playing with my toddler and I'm like, I don't think normal people's brains work like that, but mine does, so that is why I. Right?
00;21;02;01 - 00;21;05;09
Speaker 2
Is that something? You're right. Someday that that five book series.
00;21;05;12 - 00;21;07;29
Speaker 1
For sure. It already has like 50,000 words in the first book.
00;21;08;01 - 00;21;30;04
Speaker 2
So I got. That's awesome. That's really cool. Yeah, I think it's interesting. You know, some people just have a propensity for it. I think other people, they probably do have to work out a little bit more, but they want to want to wear that hat to be a writer, just maybe it is a little bit harder sometimes. That's really cool.
00;21;30;06 - 00;21;48;05
Speaker 2
So what kind of stories are you drawn to tell? Not just. And we've kind of already touched on this a little bit before, but, what themes do you like to have in your stories? What what kind of broad sort of conflicts do you enjoy writing about?
00;21;48;08 - 00;22;10;13
Speaker 1
I really like writing stories that ask moral questions that kind of make the reader like question if they would make the same choices as that character, or if they would sacrifice something different in order to get the same end result. And I feel like those are the types of stories that kind of stick with you. You finish the book and put it back on the shelf.
00;22;10;15 - 00;22;31;24
Speaker 1
Like if it's just a cute little romance and they get together in the end and there's no moral conflict, then you're like, oh, that was fun, and you forget about it a week later. Whereas if you're like, oh dang, like that really like got to me, why did that character do that? Or I would have totally done something different, or I wish I was never put in that situation where I had to make this choice over that choice, or sacrifice this person over that person.
00;22;31;27 - 00;22;42;27
Speaker 1
So yeah, that's I feel like the fun part about writing is like writing something. Be like, oh, this is going to make readers squirm. That's the kind of books that I like writing.
00;22;43;00 - 00;23;04;28
Speaker 2
That's cool. The more I write. And being an English teacher, I think that having some kind of lesson is really, really important. In your books. You don't necessarily want to be like, super didactic, like super preachy about it. But if you are able to raise those questions like you're talking about. I agree, I think your books are going to be a lot more powerful and stick with people a lot more.
00;23;04;28 - 00;23;12;06
Speaker 2
So what's scares you about writing?
00;23;12;08 - 00;23;42;05
Speaker 1
I'm not. I know some authors are like, oh, I'm scared I'll run out of ideas. That's that's not a problem for me. I have 14 projects I'm working on right now. Yeah. So I am not, like, afraid people will hate my writing. And I'm kind of like, well, I'm doing it for me anyway. But I do feel like because I made HD and I hyper fixate a little bit too much sometimes, then I'll burn myself out and eventually, like, never have the drive to write again and then never have purpose in life anymore.
00;23;42;07 - 00;23;44;04
Speaker 1
Which sounds very dramatic, but.
00;23;44;08 - 00;23;47;06
Speaker 2
Like they got dark really fast.
00;23;47;08 - 00;24;11;26
Speaker 1
Yeah. Yeah. Because like with my my fencing romance, I spent basically from January to March. My goal was to get it finished before the baby we're adopting. That was due. And so I finished it and I did it, but I was like writing probably 50 hours a week on it for like three months straight. And then now this month of April, I'm like, I haven't written like a single word because I'm just like, I can't, I need a break.
00;24;11;29 - 00;24;29;16
Speaker 1
So I guess I'm afraid that, like, eventually if I publish lots of books and I try and pump them out faster or, just trying to keep up with, like, this imaginary goal that I have, then eventually I'm just going to get burned out and be like, you know what? The stress and the the time isn't worth it anymore.
00;24;29;19 - 00;24;31;28
Speaker 2
Then all these stories will be untold.
00;24;32;01 - 00;24;34;04
Speaker 1
Yeah. Then I'll just they'll stay in my head and I'll go crazy.
00;24;34;04 - 00;24;40;22
Speaker 2
So how's that? Has that happened yet already? Do you think you have gone a little bit crazy from all these ideas in your head?
00;24;40;28 - 00;24;44;09
Speaker 1
I hope not. I feel like I've gotten more crazy, just, you know, racing toddlers.
00;24;44;09 - 00;24;52;18
Speaker 2
But that's very fair. What books slash movies. TV shows have influenced your writing?
00;24;52;20 - 00;25;29;09
Speaker 1
There was a series called The Enchanted Forest Chronicles by Patricia Siri. I believe it came out in the 80s, but I've read that series starting when I was 11 years old, probably every year since. And so that series alone is just like my favorite. I always go back to it. There are definitely more like middle grade style, and so they're quick and easy to get through, which I feel like at the time when I started really writing stories, when I was about in middle school, that just kind of helped me get the motivation, be like, okay, one day this is what my book is going to look like.
00;25;29;12 - 00;25;52;22
Speaker 1
Anything by Marissa Meyer is awesome. You know? Of course, if you if you've never read Brandon Sanderson, you've been living under a rock. But for sure with his books, I definitely feel like I read them more for like, learning writing as an art and like his structure as opposed to necessarily entertainment because like, I've read probably 30 of his 50 books and I only like, really like about like ten of them.
00;25;52;24 - 00;26;11;16
Speaker 1
But I will probably read every book that he's ever published just for the fact that I'm like, this guy is a literal genius. And even if I don't like the characters or the magic system or it's kind of a weird world, like you learn so much just from reading his books. And then let's see TV series.
00;26;11;18 - 00;26;15;11
Speaker 1
I don't know if you've ever seen the How to Train Your Dragon Netflix series.
00;26;15;11 - 00;26;17;25
Speaker 2
There's the dragon.
00;26;17;28 - 00;26;19;04
Speaker 1
There's writers.
00;26;19;06 - 00;26;19;16
Speaker 2
The writers.
00;26;19;22 - 00;26;42;09
Speaker 1
And then there's race to the edge. Yes, I feel like those have definitely inspired the type of humor that I like to put in my books, especially like the side characters or like, you know, like my rough and tough nut there one liners, you know, those are really fun to just like, watch every once in a while. If I need inspiration to actually be funny.
00;26;42;11 - 00;27;15;21
Speaker 1
I feel like now that I'm a published author and I've been studying story structure movies, kind of any movie, to be honest, really just is entertaining for me now because I can pick out like, oh, this is the the climax and this is the midpoint, and this is where the, the bad guys close in. And so if I want like a refresh on structure, but I don't want to go back and read a whole book, I will just watch a movie and then you can get those story beats within an hour and a half, as opposed to a 13 hour audiobook.
00;27;15;23 - 00;27;26;03
Speaker 1
So yeah, I don't know if there's any specific movies that I've seen, but pretty much any movie nowadays, I'm like, oh, I can learn from that. Doesn't matter if I like it or not.
00;27;26;04 - 00;27;31;14
Speaker 2
Do you find that you can kind of predict what's going to happen in the movies now that you've done so much, right? Yeah, yeah.
00;27;31;16 - 00;27;44;21
Speaker 1
Yeah, it kind of ruins it sometimes for me. Now I'm just like, okay, I know what's going to happen. Oh yeah, he's the bad guy, that sort of thing. But it's fine. I'm like, oh, I see what they were doing. And that's actually a good idea. I would have done the same thing.
00;27;44;24 - 00;28;02;14
Speaker 2
Or you would have done something different. And then you want to go write that right. That story. Yeah, sure. Cool. Well, I don't have any questions. We burn through those faster than I thought we would. Do you want to talk about anything else?
00;28;02;17 - 00;28;05;26
Speaker 1
I don't know. What's your guys's goal for the podcast?
00;28;05;29 - 00;28;34;19
Speaker 2
Basically, we want everyone to be in the writing group, so we're we're showing what the writing group is like, what it's like to get. So it's like to receive critiques, not to get defensive about wrong opinions from your book, like you were saying before. And yeah, we're just having we're just kind of having fun for it was something we were doing anyway, like we were already meeting every week for our for our Ryan gift, and we just thought that we just start recording and start publishing and see what happens with that.
00;28;34;19 - 00;28;49;18
Speaker 2
And now we're actually we're doing a community panel at Gem State Con this Comic-Con in Boise, which are really excited for we think we're going to be able to to teach a lot of people there. Other than that, we're just kind of having fun with it. So what happens?
00;28;49;22 - 00;28;51;20
Speaker 1
What kind of books are you writing?
00;28;51;22 - 00;29;22;02
Speaker 2
So I'm writing or I wrote a contemporary fantasy that we're talking about right now. My friend Jake, we were for a long time, we were working on his superhero procedural book where he has superheroes kind of as the cops of the world, which is really good. Now he's writing a a Regency style fantasy. I don't think there's going to be much romance, because none of us are very good at romance, and you need to come into our writing group and teach us how to write good romance.
00;29;22;04 - 00;29;42;17
Speaker 2
And then my friend Gray Alder, he is writing like a not epic fantasy, but pretty, pretty high fantasy otherworld core magic system monsters, magic, mayhem, all that good stuff. And then we're we're recently added Kim Reed, who was writing A Regency as kind of like, wow, like what you've done, actually.
00;29;42;18 - 00;29;44;11
Speaker 1
So that's.
00;29;44;11 - 00;29;45;29
Speaker 2
Also a lot of fun.
00;29;46;01 - 00;30;01;25
Speaker 1
Yeah, I don't know if I could ever do like a high or epic fantasy, because I'd get a little bit too bogged down with all the things that are going on. So I kind of I went with the Regency because the world building was already done for me, and the only thing I had to add was a magic system.
00;30;01;25 - 00;30;04;21
Speaker 1
So that was a little easier to tackle.
00;30;04;23 - 00;30;22;26
Speaker 2
I feel like what I'm doing writing contemporary fantasy is a little bit cheating, because I don't have to make up a world like you said, I just have to add magic to it, and then I don't have to speak in a different, not a different language, but different style. You know, like you need to kind of hit those those Regency notes, which is really hard and lots of respect to you.
00;30;22;26 - 00;30;27;10
Speaker 2
But I just I just talk like normal modern people.
00;30;27;12 - 00;30;53;23
Speaker 1
So that's writing. My contemporary definitely was way easier, especially with dialog. I would definitely get bogged down a lot with the Regency language and have to go watch like Pride and Prejudice or something to kind of get my brain back into that space. And so yeah, having like modern slang or just like characters who can say whatever the heck they want, it's I was able to give that book out a lot faster.
00;30;53;24 - 00;31;18;16
Speaker 2
I, I thought, awesome. Well, Keelan, thank you so much for being on the show. We hope to have you someday on one of our critique episodes. I want to convince you to come on and do a writer group session with us, but anything else you want to say to my listeners find here on Amazon Booksellers. Where else? Where else should they be finding you?
00;31;18;18 - 00;31;28;03
Speaker 1
Yeah, I'm just on Amazon right now for publishing. I am, fingers crossed going to publish my contemporary fencing romance, so we will see how that goes.
00;31;28;05 - 00;31;29;29
Speaker 2
Awesome. Thank you so much.
00;31;30;01 - 00;31;31;10
Speaker 1
Yeah, thanks for having me.