← The Creative Penn Podcast For Writers
The Creative Penn Podcast For Writers
Writing Emotion, Discovery Writing, And Slow Sustainable Book Marketing With Roz Morris
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Welcome to the Creative Pen Podcast. I'm Joanna Penn, thriller author and creative entrepreneur, bringing you interviews, inspiration and information on writing, craft and creative business. You can find the episode show notes, your free author blueprint and lots more@thecreativepenn.com and that's Pen with a double N. And here's the show hello creatives, I'm Joanna Penn and this is episode number 853 of the podcast and it is Sunday 8th March 2026. As I record this in today's show, I'm talking to Ros Morris about how being an indie author has evolved over time, writing emotion and why home is such a powerful emotional theme. Practical craft tips on show, don't tell why sometimes writing is chaotic discovery and why some books take a long time. And we also talk about low key email marketing. So that's coming up in the interview section in Writing and Publishing. So on the Written Word Media podcast, Ricky and Farrell discuss KU vs wide, what the data actually says, and a topic we've been discussing in the indie author community for over a decade since Amazon launched kindle unlim in 2014. Now they shared an interesting stat. The KDP Select Global Fund started at 2.5 million when it launched in July 2014 and that fund is the amount that's split between authors based on page reads. Originally it was sales and then it moved to page reads. This January it hit $62.2 million for the month. And that really just shows you the growth in customers choosing to read through Kindle Unlimited and of course the growth in authors who publish there too since that pool is split them and the rate changes regularly. Now remember, this is ebooks only, not print or audio. And if you're new to this whole thing, it means that if you're if you go into the KDP select program, you check a checkbox that is for 90 days and your ebook must be exclusive to Amazon in that time now and again this doesn't affect your print or your audio. So Ricky and Farrell discuss how these things work and the trade offs of ku, including the page read payouts, the Kemp why that changes so much, countdown deals, free promo days, how to promote books in KU and then what going wide looks like and how to manage multiple platforms covering drafted digital versus Publish drive, which have different models and make sense for different authors. So I wanted to talk about this. I don't talk about this very much because I've been very focused on wide publishing since the beginning, being on as many platforms as possible. But in recent Years, as things have grown more and more complicated and my own backlist has grown bigger and bigger, I have shifted some of my books into ku. Firstly, my mum's books as Penny Appleton. Some of you longer term listeners will know I wrote. Well, I helped my mum write three books as Penny Appleton and then she wrote another two books herself. Sweet romance, sweet clean romance with a couple with older protagonists. And I never wanted to actively manage her brand, as you all know. I'm. I'm not a sweet romance person. So I was like, I can't manage this. You know, my mum is retired, she's 78 now and she didn't want to do any marketing. So literally we just put the books in KU and we do free days and that's it. And we now have some Spanish and some in German, more to come in translation, but essentially they're all in ku and I do five free days every 90 days for each of her books and that shifts enough books for me to pay her a few hundred pounds a month. We also get good sales in print and actually we had a bumper month in December. She has a book called A Summerfield Christmas Wedding and the large print edition of that book in December. I don't know what happened because we didn't do any marketing on it, but it went nutso and so she got a Christmas bonus. And when I say nutso, you know, for us or for Penny, that was like I think we made like £800 or something in a month with no marketing because something happened. And so I was able to give her £400 because we split that and she was super thrilled and went and booked a holiday. So yeah, KU is just ebooks but you never know how people will discover things. Although of course you will sell more books if you do marketing and other good candidates for KU standalone fiction. So I now have Catacomb, Death Valley, Blood, Vintage are all in ku. Because standalone fiction is so hard to market wide. Most of the wide marketing does much better with series books certainly in my experience. And so my arcane thrillers, all my non fiction is wide and of course on my own Shopify stores, jfpenbooks.com and creativepenbooks.com now again this is not print or audio. So all my print and most of my audio is available wide. So essentially if you have a bigger backlist and different kinds of books, different kinds of marketing activities activities, and you're a one person business who doesn't want to have to manage everything in all these different ways all the time, then I would say Having some books in KU and others not is a good thing. On the it's only for 90 days thing, this is technically true, but I also kind of disagree with it because it is a real pain to cycle books in and out. So if you put books wide, it's actually really hard to wind them back to be in ku. I have done this. Sometimes it can take months to get the books pulled back. So while technically it is for 90 days and you could just go in and out, it's very hard to do that. And again, you have to mark it differently. So I would suggest if you're going to do it, you need to do either inter KU for more than 90 days and then go wide for more than 90 days. Whatever you're going to play with, I think probably a year worth of marketing to see what's actually working. And I think this is what we've discovered in the community. There's no rules, there's no hard and fast this works or that works. You just have to give it a go, test it, do some kind of marketing to get the books moving and then, yeah, change your strategy over time. And I've had books up now for almost 20 years, so it's really hard to keep track of a lot of books. I do have my master asset spreadsheet, but it's not very coherent and as I said, I'm pretty chaotic around these things. I do have my Finger Things app where I manage promotions that come up and I do schedule things and I do this sometimes. But I have found over time that the books which are more set and forget and let's face it, standalone fiction, which is great for Kickstarter, I really love doing it on Kickstarter. So Bones of the Deep is going out on Kickstarter first, so that is essentially wide and then later on I'll put it into ku. So yes, fun times. Have a listen to that episode on Written Word Media. I think those of us who are hardcore, one or the other, can learn from doing things a bit differently at different times, especially in translation. So I am doing some books in translation and putting those in KU because I don't want to do wide marketing in lots of languages and a lot of indies are revisiting translations at the moment because of the various AI assisted methods. I wanted to give a shout out to Sky McKinnon who has a Kickstarter for self publishing in German and that is under Periton Press on Kickstarter. I will put a link in the show notes. If you go on to Kickstarter and search self publishing in German. This is an updated edition that will be useful that's launching very soon on Kickstarter, and Sky will come on the show at some point to talk about that. But if you have resources on self publishing in Spanish, primarily for the US market, or for French and Italian, definitely let me know. I feel like with the AI assistance, this is becoming a lot more viable for a lot more people. And related to book marketing, the New Publishing Standard reports that podcasts overtake radio. What this seismic shift means for publishers and authors, of course. So According to Edison Research's Q4 2025 share of ear data, the authoritative annual survey of American listening habits, podcasts now command 40% of all daily spoken word audio time among Americans over the age of 13. Radio include including both over the air and streaming, has slipped to 39%. Audiences have grown accustomed to choosing what they listen to, when they listen, and for how long, which is incompatible with radio's fixed schedules and geographic constraints. 55% of Americans, approximately 158 million people, now listen to a podcast at least monthly, and 40% do so every week. These are not casual experimenters. These are committed, habitual listeners with deeply ingrained audio routines built around trusted voices and niche communities. And yes, that's you lot. Committed habitual listeners. And I love this. And this is so true for me too. I haven't listened to radio in oh no, I I do listen to some radio when I'm driving to my weightlifting and I listen to 80s 90s and noughties music, but for my walking and my sort of learning, I only listen to podcasts. So back in the article, video podcasting is also moving on. Platforms are no longer purely audio. First, when we speak of the podcast audience, we are increasingly speaking of an audience that watches as well as listens, which has implications for author presentation and multi format production. Podcast platforms now function as the dominant discovery engines for spoken word content, the spaces where audience encounter new ideas, build relationships with voices, lets say build relationships with people and make decisions about what to read, buy and recommend. TikTok works through visual brevity and algorithmic amplification. Podcasting works differently through extended intimate parasocial engagement. A listener who spends an hour with an author discussing the research behind a non fiction book or exploring the emotional architecture of a novel has formed a relationship with that author that a 30 second social clip simply cannot replicate. Conversion rates from substantive podcast appearances to book purchases reflect this. The engagement is slower to build, but deeper and more durable when it arrives. Yes, this is so true. And this is what I found, I guess anecdotally from my years of podcasting this. My business is built on podcast content and the relationships that I've built here with you, the listeners and also my Patreon community and also with people who come on the show. You'll know from regulars and relationships that I've built that this is very human. It can be, I say it can be a very human way of marketing. And it's kind of. It's almost awful to even use the word marketing. But of course people who come on this show to talk about books do sell books. And I also sell books. So yes, you have to do marketing somehow. And you don't have to do short term video, you don't have to do KU and algorithmic stuff. You can do long form audio. It's very interesting because I'm getting an increasing number of pitches from traditional publishers and podcast tours are definitely picking back up. So something for you to think about, it is very much about niche audiences as well. So what you want to do is think about what are the themes. I mean if you've written a non fiction book, it should be really easy. If you've written fiction, it doesn't have to be, let's say you've written a fantasy novel, it doesn't have to be a fantasy novel podcast. It can be around the themes and the places at the time period. So like the Bridgerton stuff. If you were a new author writing Regency romance, you could go on a Regency podcast like Bath, for example, a place specific podcast. You could also talk about locations. For my Map Walker fantasy, for example, I could pitch cartography or map based podcasts to talk about the research. And so I think, and this is where your friendly AI will be very useful. You can ask Claude or chat GPT or Gemini, find me the top 20 podcasts in that would intersect with these themes. Or give it your book and then ask it to find things. And don't go for the top ones. Like for example, if you've written a fitness book, then don't pitch the Tim Ferriss podcast, you're never going to get on that. So start much smaller and then work up and the article notes. One of the most underappreciated challenges and opportunities is the variable quality of author performance as audio talent. Print trained authors who communicate brilliantly on the page can struggle with the spontaneous conversational register that podcasting demands. So yeah, you do have to give a good interview. I think that is the point. And there are a few books the podcast Guest playbook from Mattie Dalrymple and Mark Leslie Lefe. Mattie was on this show last year to talk about tips, episode 815. If you want to have a listen to that again I'll link that in the show notes. Also I have a book on public speaking for authors and I also have audio for authors which has tips in. But yeah you can find help on this. But if you are going to pitch podcasts then definitely upskill to become better at interviews. And the new publishing standard article has loads more in it's really good nuance around how a AI voices and production could disrupt the space as well as audio licensing, for example licensing your book for podcast distribution as well as audiobook distribution and more links in the show Notes. On AI things I did want to mention two things that might help frame usage of AI because I get sort of quite frustrated around the attitude of all or nothing, that all AI is bad or all is good. And of course like any technology, it is both at once amazing and awful, useful to create and useful to destroy. Like fire, like electricity, like the Internet. These things can be true at the same time. And we are human, we are capable of holding two things to be true at the same time, or in fact many things to be true at the same time. So remember Walt Whitman, I am large, I contain multitudes. I can use AI tools for some things and not for others. And last week the Vatican put out a couple of things. I mean they are super active, the Vatican, around AI. And in fact Pope Leo took the name of Leo as an echo to the last Pope Leo who dealt with the Industrial Revolution. And so Pope Leo engages a lot with the AI community. And last week in the National Catholic Reporter, the Vatican has now embraced AI for translation, translating maths into 60 languages in real time. So that's where they've said, yes, this is a good use case. But also Pope Leo has said that priests should not use AI to write their sermons and they should also not chase likes on TikTok, both reported in the National Catholic Reporter. Now, of course you don't have to be Catholic, you don't have to agree with what the Vatican thinks about a lot of things. But whatever you think about the Pope and the Vatican, they must clearly be having discussions around ethical things, around what they want to use AI for and what they don't want to use AI for for. And so I thought this was a good example of a use case that was genuinely useful for the audience and a use case where they want to kind of protect things. I just wanted to bring this up because I, like many indie authors, am currently playing with AI translation again, using the various tools in various ways and human proofreaders to see if this is could be a sustainable process. I demoed my process with Claude code with iterative changes with my patrons at office hours this week, which was fun. But yes, I thought the Vatican example might be interesting. We can hold two opinions at the same time. We can think this is useful for some things and not for others in the same way, I guess. Like, I love the Internet for what we do. I couldn't do this job without the Internet, right? I want to put my words out into the world. I want to podcast with you. I want to publish my books online. I want print on demand. I want ebooks and audiobooks and streaming audio. But of course I don't want the Internet to be used used for scamming and all the awful things that the Internet is also used for. So this is what we have to think. Just keep in mind both things can be true at the same time. Now, in personal news, I have been working hard on my masters. I'm. I'm actually quite busy with my Masters. I've got one essay around death rituals in Modern Orthodox Judaism. That draft is almost done and I'm resting it. It's printed out. It's next to me here. And now I'm writing the draft of the Christian Theology of Assisted Dying. So yes, these are pretty in the uk, I should say, because laws are different in every country, in every state, say in America and that. But I'm also planning my dissertation. So we're coming into dissertation season. I will be doing digital necromancy. I just love this. Digital necromancy is a thing. So bringing back the dead from their digital footprint. Is bringing back people based on their books and their video and their audio and their author platform a good thing because Meta just got a patent around this and there's a recent example of Agatha Christie being used digitally to teach writing, obviously something she didn't do. And so I will be investigating this. So there's so much I want to think about and write about. But the Masters is pretty hardcore at the moment and it's taking a lot of my time to aid with this. I have been revisiting NotebookLM. Now, if you haven't used NotebookLM for a while, so it's notebooklm.google.com and it is a Google product, you can use it for free. It is based on the Gemini model, but it also uses the material that you put in there. So you can also create custom audio podcasts based on what you pull in. So I've been doing that with a lot of my material, my study material, going for a walk and listening and then reading it because the audio just helps frame the whole thing and then I can read the pieces. So the theological texts from many centuries ago are pretty deep and difficult to read because they're written in very different texts obviously than modern language. So I found this super useful. If you haven't tried NotebookLM for a while, definitely give it a go. It's more exact than other AI things because it just works on the sources that you select so you can be sure that it is working with those rather than other things. I am also still working on the Bones of the Deep audiobook on elevenlabs with my voice clone. I only do a couple of chapters at a time as it's pretty intense. I am very picky about my audio so I add and change things, add pauses and there's a lot of suspense in this book so I like to add more pauses into the audio. And I have been rephrasing some dialogue. I think this is a natural thing that occurs when you read dialogue in on a page or even if you read it out loud, it's different to when it's kind of performed. So yeah, I'm doing some minor changes there. Still thinking about after Easter so early April for the launch then this week personally I am at London Book Fair. It is a big week actually. I have lots of meetings, going to some panels with indie authors. I will be getting some inspiration from the book fair itself. I always love going. I take lots of pictures of book covers of books I want to buy because there's always pre launch books that are up and you're like oh yeah, I'm totally going to buy that when it's out. And it will be interesting to see for example around the AI stuff because there's lots of talks on AI and publishing. I imagine there'll be lots of discussion about that. There are different country stalls with books in different languages and just feeling part of the bigger industry is always inspiring. I'm speaking on Wednesday at the alliance of Independent Authors Indie Author Lab, so I might see some of you there. As ever, if you see me in person. Selfies are good and I always love to see people so please say hi. But I do try to avoid hugging and handshakes otherwise I become a disease vector. So that's now what I do. I don't wear a mask to these things. Although, of course, if you want to wear a mask, most people are happy with that now. But I definitely try and avoid being a disease vector because these book fairs and conferences really are those.
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So.
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Thanks for your emails and comments and photos this week. Ronnie Roberts said on YouTube about Jack's interview. What a terrific interview. So inspiring. Made me think about what I'm doing, why I'm doing it, and to question if my efforts to create balance in my writing and home life is an honest effort after all. I really enjoyed this. That is a lovely comment and so good to question why we do things, because so often we're like, oh, what do I really want? Oh, I want more time with my family. Well, have more time with your family and don't do whatever you've decided should be done to market your book or something like that. I mean, I get this so often with people, they're like, well, I need to market my book loads. Needs in order to make money, in order to then spend more time with my family. And it's like, I think maybe we just need to turn this around. Now I find myself doing this. I'm like, why am I doing this thing? I really don't need to. I have got a lot better about saying no over the years. I just. I'm saying no a lot more and it just gives me more time to. Well, this year I need the time to do the Masters, but Jonathan and I are going to get more time away soon. We do have the Paris trip in, so I'll be back into my book research, which I'm super excited about doing. I really need some more travel in my life. So. Yes. Anyway, thank you, Ronnie, for that. And Ashley Rescott on YouTube, on Alicia's episode said, I resonated with so much of this episode. So often I see perfectionist creatives struggle with this idea that they have permission to make their art and put it out into the world. Yes. So keep creating. Yes, you don'. Need permission. And I actually had this very early in my author career and I actually wrote it on the creative pen when I used to blog a lot more. I guess it's sort of, you don't need permission. It's like I had to tell myself that. I had to say to myself, you don't need permission. You can create what you want. You can publish what you want, you can put what you want into the world and either people will like it or they won't, but you can still do it. So, yeah, Alicia was great. I on that. And finally Emma left a comment on Tegan's interview on genealogy, which is from a while back. Now, she said, I found your interview with Tegan fascinating. My debut historical fiction novel is based on my own family history and I went through similar challenges to Tegan when conducting the research. I second her view that newspapers are fabulous, but equally recognize the frustration about the compartmentalisation of records. It's very much like putting a jigsaw together, except you have to go on a scavenger hunt to find the pieces, which actually sounds like a lot of fun. Emma. I imagine this is why people do genealogy. Okay, so please leave a comment on the podcast Show Notes at the creative pen.com or on the YouTube channel, or email me. Send me pictures of where you're listening, your favorite cemetery or churchyard. JoannaTheCreativePenn.com I love to hear from you. It makes this more of a conversation so today's show is sponsored by Publisher Rocket, which helps you with keyword and category research on Amazon which you need for your metadata when self publishing, as well as helping you generate lists of keywords for your Amazon ads. You can do this manually on Amazon, but it takes a lot more time and you have to think of all the different permutations to search for. So I found that Publisher Rocket saves me so much time and frustration so I use it for every book in every genre that I publish. It makes the process easy which let's face it, is what we need so we can get back to writing. You can use it to find keywords that readers actually type into Amazon Search. You can also learn about other authors sales with the competitor analysis. You can even use the reverse ASIN feature and the ASIN is the number that Amazon assigns to things like Kindle Books to see what keywords other books are benefiting from. Plus you can discover best selling book categories and niche categories which you can use to write to market if that's your thing. And you can find profitable keywords for Amazon ads and easily export them. You can also search separately across Amazon stores for the us, uk, Germany, Italy, Canada, Australia, France and Spain as well as for ebooks, audiobooks or print and in different languages. Again very useful for translation English, German, French, Italian and Spanish. Publisher Rocket is constantly adding new features and capabilities. It's always a free upgrade for a owners. It's a one time payment and you get 30 days money back guarantee. You can start researching keywords, categories and competition right away. Publisher Rocket is one of my must use tools as part of my Amazon publishing process and it is very reasonably priced. Check it out@publisherrocket.com that's publisherrocket.com so this type of corporate sponsorship pays for the hosting, transcription and editing. But my time in creating the show is sponsored by my community@patreon.com thecreative.com Pen thanks to the six new patrons who've joined over the last week and thanks to everyone who's been supporting for months and years. If you join the community, you get access to all my backlist videos and audio covering writing, craft, author, business and AI tutorials. Last week we had live office hours where I demoed Claude code for various things and we did a Q and A. The recording is out now for all patrons. The Patreon is a monthly subscription, the equivalent of buying me a black coffee a month or a couple of coffees if you're feeling generous. So if you get value from the show and you want more, come on over and join us at patreon.com P-A-T-R-E-O-N.com TheCreativePen Right, let's get into the interview. Ros Morris is an award nominated literary fiction author, memoirist and previously a best selling ghostwriter. She writes writing craft books for authors under the Nail youl Novel brand and is also an editor, speaker and writing coach.
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Coach.
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Her latest travel memoir is Turn Right at the Rainbow. A Diary of House Hunting, happenstance and home. So welcome back to the show, Ros.
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Hi Jo. It's so lovely to be back and I love that we managed to catch up every now and again on what we're doing. We've been doing this for so long.
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We have.
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Great.
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In fact, if people don't know the first time you came on this Show it was 2011, which is 15 years. It's just, it is so crazy. And I guess we should say we've known, we do know each other in person, like in real life. But realistically, we mainly catch up when you come on the podcast.
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We do, yes. And. And by following what we're doing around the web. So I read your newsletters, you read mine and.
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Yeah, exactly. But it's so good to, to kind of return and you write all kinds of different things. But let's just first take that look back. So the first time you were on 2011, 15 years, you've spanned trad indie, you've seen a lot that's going on. You know a lot of people in publishing as well. So what are the key things that you think have shifted over the years? And why do you still choose indie for your work.
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Well, lots of things have shifted. Some things are more difficult now, some things are a lot easier. The things that are more difficult are getting your work noticed. We were lucky to be in right at the start and we learned the ropes and we managed to make a lot of contacts with people. And now, though, much more difficult to get your work out there and noticed by readers. So you have to be more knowledgeable about things like marketing and promotions. But that said, there are now much better tools for doing all this because there's some really smart people who've put their brains to work about how authors can get their work to the right readers. There's also a lot more understanding of how that can be done in the modern world. We have. Everything is now much more needed. Niche driven, isn't it? People, people know exactly what kind of thriller they like or what kind of memoir they like. In the old days it was probably, well, you like thrillers, that could be absolutely loads of things, and memoirs, that could be absolutely loads of things. But now we can find far better who might like our work. And also the tools we have are astonishing. To start with, in about 2011, we could only really produce ebooks and paperbacks. That was all. Anything else, you'd have to get a print that would be quite expensive. But now we can get amazing, beautiful special editions made and we can do audiobooks, we can do multi voice audiobooks, we can do ebooks with all sorts of enhancements. We can even make apps if we want to. There is absolutely loads that creators can do now that they couldn't before. So it's still a very exciting world.
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So do you think as well that like when we first met, there was still a lot of negativity here in the uk, certainly around indie authors or self publishing and I mean, that does feel like it shifted. Do you think that has changed?
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I think it has really changed, yes. To start with, we were regarded as a bit of the wild west. We were just tramping in and making our mark in places that we hadn't been invited into. And now it's changed entirely. I think we've managed to convince people that we have the same quality standards and readers. I don't think the readers ever mind it actually. So long as the book looked right, felt right, read right, and it's much easier now. There's much, much more of a level playing field. We can prove ourselves. In fact, we don't necessarily have to prove ourselves anymore. We just go and find readers.
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Yeah, I, I feel like that, like I have nothing to prove. I just get on with my work and writing our books and putting them out there, and we've got our own audiences now. I guess I always think about, perhaps it's more of not a shadow industry, but almost like a parall that we live in. But you have spanned a lot of traditional publishing and you still do editing work and you know a lot of tradpub authors. So do you still actively choose indie for a particular reason?
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I do, but I. I really like building my own body of work and I'm now experienced enough to know what I do well, what I need advice with and help with. And we don't do all this completely by ourselves, do we? We bring in experts who will give us the right feedback if we're doing a kind of genre or genre that's new to us. I choose indie because I like the control, because I began in traditional publishing. I was making books anyway for other people. So I just learned all the trades and how to do everything to a professional standard. I love being able to apply that to my own work. I also love the. The way that I can decide what I'm going to write next. If I was in, if I was traditionally published, I would have to really do something that felt fitted with whatever the publisher would want of me. And that isn't necessarily where my muse is taking me or what I've become interested in. I think creative humans evolve throughout their lives. They become interested in different things, different themes, different ways of expressing themselves. I mean, I began by thinking I would just write novels, and now I found myself writing memoirs as well. And that shift would have been difficult if someone else was having to make me fit into their marketing plans or what their impact print was known for. But because I've built my own audience, I can just bring them with me and say, you might like this. It's still me. I'm just doing something different.
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Yes, I like that phrase, creative humans. I mean, that's what we are. And as you say we, we get into. I never thought I would write a memoir and then I blooming did, and I think there's probably another one on its way. So I feel like we do these different things over time. But let's get into this new book, Turn Right at the Rainbow, and it is about the idea of. Now, I've talked a lot about home on my books and travel podcast, but not so much here. So let's talk about home. Why is home such an emotional topic? And maybe for both positive and negative ways? And why did you want to explore it?
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Well, I think home is so emotional because it kind of grows around you and it grows on you very slowly without you really realizing it. As you're really, as you're not looking, you suddenly, suddenly realize, oh, it means such a lot if you compare. I'd love to play this mind game actually with myself. If you compare what your street looks like to you now and how it looked the first time you set eyes on it, it's a world of difference. There are so many emotional layers that build up just because the amount of time we spend in a place and it's like a relationship. It's like a very slow growing friendship or relationship, as you say. Sometimes it can be negative as well. And I became really fascinated with this because we decided to move house. And we'd lived in the same house for about 30 years, which is a lot of time. It had seen a lot of us, a lot of our lives, a lot of big decisions we'd made, a lot of good times, a lot of difficult times. And I felt that was all kind of somehow encapsulated in the place. And I know that readers of certain horror, even spiritual fiction, will have. Have this feeling that a place contains emotions and pasts and all sorts of vibes that just stay in there. And when we were going around and looking at a house to buy, I was thinking, how do we even know how we will feel about it? Because we're moving out of somewhere that has immense amounts of feelings and associations and we're trying to judge whether somewhere else will feel right. It just seemed like we were making a decision of cosmic proportions. And also it comes down so much to chance as well, because you're not only just deciding, okay, I'd like to buy that one. And you press a button like on ebay and you've won. Doesn't happen like that. There are lots of middle steps in between. The other person's got to agree to sell to you and not to just do the dirty on you and sell to someone else. Instead. You've got all sorts of machinations going on that you have no idea about. And you only have what's on offer as well. You only get an opportunity to buy a place because someone else has decided to let it go. All this seemed like immense amounts of chance and dice rolling. And I thought, and yet we end up in these places and they mean so much to us. And it just blew my mind. I thought, I've got to write about this.
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A
Yeah, it's really interesting, isn't it. I really only started using the word home after the pandemic and living here in Bath over the pandemic. And we had, luckily, I think, just bought a house before then. And I. I'd never really considered anywhere to be a home. And I've talked about this and this idea of third culture kids, people who grow up between cultures and so don't feel like there's a home anywhere. So I was really interested in your book because, yeah, there is so much like functional things that have to happen when you move house or when you look for a house. And often people aren't thinking about it as. As deeply as you are. So did you really start working on the it as a memoir as you went to see places, or was it something that, that you thought when you were sort of leaving? So was it a moving towards kind of memoir or a sort of sad nostalgia memoir?
- [38:07]
B
Well, it could have been very sad and nostalgic because I do like to. To write really emotional things and they're not necessarily for sharing with everybody. Not all of it is, but I was very interested in the emotions of it. But I started keeping diaries and some of them were just diaries I'd write down, or some of them were emails I'd send to friends who were saying, well, how's it going? And then I'd say, and I found I was just writing pieces, rather emails, and it built up. Really?
- [38:34]
A
Yeah. So it's interesting the, the idea you said you write emotional things there and we mentioned nostalgia. And obviously there's memories in the home and. But it's very easy to say a word like nostalgia. And everyone thinks that means different things. And of course, one of the important things about writing is to be very specific rather than general. Can you give us some tips about how we can turn big emotions into specific written things that bring it al for our readers?
- [39:04]
B
It's really interesting that you mentioned nostalgia, because what we have to be careful of is not writing just for ourselves. It starts with us. It starts with our feelings about something and our responses and our curiosities. But we then have to let other people in. And there's nothing more boring than reading something that's just a memoir, a manuscript really, that doesn't reach out to anyone in any way. It's like looking through their holiday snaps. So what you have to do is somehow find something bigger in there that will allow everyone to connect and think, oh, this is about me too, or I've thought this too. And as I said, we start with things that feel powerful and important for us. And I think we don't necessarily need to go looking for them, they just kind of emerge. The more deeply we think about what we're writing, we find they're building. And certainly for me, it's what pulls me back to an idea. Think there's something in this idea that's really talking to me now, what is it? And often I'll need to go for walks and things to just let the logical mind turn off and ideas start coming in. But I'll find that something is building and it seems to become more and more something that will speak to others rather than just to me. So that's one way of doing it, by just listening to your intuition and delving more and more until you find something that seems worth saying to other people. But you could do it another way. If you say, decided to, you wanted to write a book about home, you'd already got your big theme and let's say it's home. So you could then think, well, how will I make this into something manageable? So then you have to start with something big and build it into smaller scale things that can be related to. So you might look at ideas of homes such as situations of people who have lost their home, or like the kind of displacement we see at the moment. Or we might look at another aspect, such as people who sell homes and what they must feel like being. These go betweens between worlds, between people who are doing these immense changes in their lives. Or we might think of an ecological angle such as the planet Earth and what we're doing to it, or our place in the cosmos, all sorts of things like that. So we, we might start with a thing we want to write about and then find how we're going to treat it. And that, that usually comes down to what appeals to us. It might be the ecological side really appeals to. It might be the story of a few estate agents who are dealing with trying to buy, trying to sell homes for people. And that appeals to you as the, the narrative you're going to look at it through. Or it might be like mine, just a personal story of trying to move house. So from that, that we can create something that will seem to have wider resonance as well as starting with something that was personally interesting to you and the big emotions will come out of that, the wider resonance.
- [42:10]
A
Yeah, I think trying to go deeper on that. I feel like it's this, I guess, show, don't tell idea, which is if you'd have said I felt very sad about leaving my house or I Felt very sad about the prospect of leaving my house. That is not a whole book.
- [42:29]
B
Yes, it's why you felt sad, how you felt sad, what it made you think of. And that's a very good point about show, not tell, which is a fundamental writing technique, but it basically tells people how exactly you feel about a particular thing, which is not the same as the way anyone else would feel about it. But still curious can be universal and something that we can all tap into, funnily enough, by being very specific by saying, I realized when we'd signed the contract to sell the house that it wasn't ours anymore and it had been and I felt like I was betraying it. And that starts to get really personal. And people might think, yes, I felt like that too, or I hadn't thought you'd feel like that. But I can understand it. Those specifics are what really let people into the journey. Journey that you're taking them on.
- [43:27]
A
Yeah. And I think isn't that this is one of the challenges is we're not going to even use a word like sad, basically.
- [43:34]
B
Yes, yes. It's like, who was it who said, don't tell me they got wet, tell me how it felt to get wet in that particular situation. Then the reader will think, oh, yes, they got wet. But they'll also have had an experience that took them somewhere interesting.
- [43:49]
A
Yeah. And I think it's like, show me the raindrops on the umbrella and the splashing through the puddles and that kind of thing. And I, I think this is so important with these big emotions as well. And also we think that somebody, like when we say nostalgia and we've talked before about Stranger Things and Kate Bush and the way Stranger Things used songs and nostalgia and oh, I was watching Derry Girls. Have you seen Derry Girls?
- [44:16]
B
No, I haven't yet.
- [44:17]
A
Oh, it's brilliant. It's so good. It's a bit quite old now, but it's a 90s soundtrack. And I, I'm just watching, I'm going, oh, oh, they got this so right. They just got this right with the songs. And so you feel nostalgic because you feel an emotion that is linked to that music and it makes you feel a certain way. But everyone feels these things in, in different ways. And I think that is a challenge of fiction and also. Well, maybe it's a challenge of all genre. I don't know. I mean, I guess not just the self help kind of books, but certainly with memoir and fiction, this is so important.
- [44:51]
B
Yes. And I was just thinking with self help Books, it's even important there because self help books have to show they understand how the reader is feeling.
- [45:02]
A
Yeah. And sometimes you use anecdotes in that way to do that. Okay, well, I guess another challenge with memoir and you in this book, you're going around and having a look at places and they're real places and there's real people and this kind of can be difficult. So what are things that people need to be wary of if using real people and real places and permissions for things.
- [45:26]
B
Yes, that. That book was particularly tricky because as you said, I was going around real places and talking about real people. With most of them, they are not identifiable. Even though I was specific about say, particular aspects of particular houses. It would be very hard for anyone to know. Know what where those houses were. I think possibly the only way you would recognize it if was if you that happened to be your own house. And then the people. Similarly, there's a lot about estate agents and other professionals. They were all real incidents, real things that that happened, but no one is identifiable. But a very important thing about writing a book like this is you're always going to have antagonists because you have to have people who you are finding difficult and people who are making life a bit difficult for you. And you have to present them in a way that understands what it's like to be them as well, particularly in this kind of book. Now if you're writing a kind of book where your purpose was to expose wrongdoing or injustices, then you might be more forthright about just saying this is wrong, the way this person behaved was wrong, and so on. And you might identify villains if that's appropriate, although you would have to be very care legally. But in this kind of book it's more nuanced. The antagonists were simply people who were trying to do the right thing for them. And you have to kind of understand what it's like to be them. And quite a lot of the time I found that the real story was how ill equipped I sometimes felt to deal with people who were maybe covering something up or maybe not, but just not expressing themselves very clearly. Estate agents who had an agenda. And I was thinking, who are they acting for? Are they acting for me or are they acting for someone else that we don't even know about? And there's a fair bit of conflict in the book, but it comes up from people being people and from doing what they have to do. I just wanted to find a good house in an area that was nice, a house I could Trust and rely on for, for a price that was right. The people who were selling to me just wanted to sell the house no matter what. But that was because that was what they needed to do. So you always have kind of understand what the other person's point of view is. And often in this kind of memoir, even though you might be getting very frustrated, it's best to also see that a bit of a ridiculous side to yourself when you're maybe getting grumpy, for instance. It's all just humans being humans in a situation where ultimately you're going to end up doing a life changing and important thing. And I found there's quite a lot of humor in that. Here we were kind of shuffling things around and as I said, we were going to be eventually actually making a cosmic change and it would affect the home, the place we called home. And I found that quite amusing in a lot of ways. So I think you've got to be very level headed about this, particularly about writing about other people. And sometimes you do have to ask for permission. I didn't, didn't have to do that very much. In this book there were people I wrote about who were actually friends who would recognize themselves, would recognize their stories and I checked that they didn't mind me quoting particular things and that they all fine with that. In my previous memoir, Not Quite Lost, I actually did write about a group of people who were completely identifiable and would definitely have known who they were and other people would have known who they were and there was no hiding them. It was the people near Brighton who were cryonicists. They were preserving dead bodies, freezing them in the hope that they could be revived at a much later date when science had solved the problem that came killed them. And I went to visit this, this group of cryonicists and, and I'd written a diary about it at the time. And then I followed up when I was writing that book to find out what happened to them and I thought I've simply got to contact them and tell them, look, I'm going to write this, I'll send it to you, you give me your comments. And I did and they gave me some good comments and they said, oh please don't put that on, let me clarify this. And everything was fine. So there I did a actually seek them out and check with them that what I was going to write was
- [49:51]
A
okay, yes, in that situation there can't be many cryonicists in that area.
- [49:57]
B
Are they identifiable? And they really, really were.
- [50:00]
A
Yeah, there's probably only one, but yeah, I think this is really. Obviously, memoir is a personal thing and so you are curating who you are as well in the book and your husband. And so I think it is interesting. Interesting because I. I had the problem of, am I giving away too much about myself? So do you feel like with everything you've written, you've already given away everything about yourself by now? Are you just completely relaxed about being personal for yourself and for your husband?
- [50:32]
B
I. I think I have become more relaxed about it. My first memoir wasn't nearly as personal as yours was, so you were going to some quite difficult places. I think. Think that with this one, Turn Right at the Rainbow, I was approaching some darker places, actually, and I had to consider how much to reveal and how much not to. But I found once I started writing that just the honesty took over and I thought, well, this is fine. I have read plenty of books that have done this and I've loved them. I've loved getting to know someone on that deeper level. And it was just something I took my example from other writers I enjoyed.
- [51:14]
A
Yeah, I think that's definitely the way with memoir has to happen, because it can be very hard to know how to structure it. So let's come to the title again. You just mentioned it. Turn Right at the Rainbow. Really great title and obviously a subtitle, which is important as well for theme. But talk about where the title came from and also the challenges of titling books of any genre, because you've had some other great titles for your novels, or at least titles, I've thought, oh, yes, that's perfect. And I feel this myself. Titling can be really hard.
- [51:45]
B
Oh, thank you for that. Yes, it is hard. And Ever Rest, which was the title of my last novel, that just kind of came to me early on and I was very lucky with that. It fitted the themes and it fitted what was going on, but it was just a kind of bolt from the blue. And I found that also with Turn Right at the Rainbow. It was an accident. It slipped out. I was going to call it something else and then this incident happened. Turn Right at the Rainbow is actually one of the stories in the book. I call it the title track, as if it's an album. And we were going somewhere in the car and the sat nav said, turn right at the Rainbow. And Dave and I just fell about. We said, what's it just said. And it also seemed to really sum up the journey we were on. We were looking for rainbows and crocks of gold and completely at the mercy of chance. And it just stayed with me. It just seemed the right thing. I wrote the piece first, and then I kept thinking, well, this sounds like a good title. And Dave said, it sounded like a good title. And then a friend of mine who does a lot of beta reading for me, he said, oh, that is the title, isn't it? And so when several people tell you that's the title, then you've got to take notice. But how we find these things is more difficult, as you said. I mean, you just work and work at it. You kind of beat your head against the wall looking for it. But I found they always come to me when I'm not looking. And it really helps to do something like exercise, which will put you in a bit of a different mind state. Do you find this as well?
- [53:28]
A
Yeah, I often like a title earlier on that that then changes as the book goes. I mean, we're both discovery writers, really, although you do reverse outlines and other things. But, I mean, you have a chaotic discovery phase. And I kind of feel like when I'm in that phase, it might be called something. And then I often find that that's not the one that it ends up being, because maybe the book has actually just changed in the process.
- [53:55]
B
Yes, very much. And that's part of how we realize what we should be writing as well. So I do have working titles. And then something might come along and say, this seems actually like what you should call it and what you've been working towards, what you've been discovering about it. But I think that a good title has got a real sort of sense of emotional frisson as well. With memoir, it's easier because we can add a subtitle as well to explain what we mean. With fiction, it's more difficult. We've got to really hope that it all comes through those few words. And that's a bit more difficult.
- [54:38]
A
Yeah, it is. So let's talk about your next book. So on your website, I had a look, and it says it might be a novel, it might be narrative nonfiction, and you have a working title of four. And so I wondered if you'd talk a bit more about this sort of chaotic discovery writing phase when we just don't know what's coming. And I feel like you and I have been doing this long enough, and you longer than me. So we're kind of. Of maybe we're okay with it. But newer writers might find this stage really difficult. So maybe talk about this and why. Where's the fun in it? Why is it so difficult? And how people can deal with it.
- [55:17]
B
Yes. You've summed that up really well. It's fun and it's difficult. And I still find it difficult, even after all these years. And I have to remind myself, looking back at where Everest starts started because that was a particularly difficult one. It took me seven years to work out what to do with it. And I wrote three other books in the meantime and it just comes together in the end. And what I find is that something takes root in my mind and it collects things. So the title that you. You just picked out there, the book with working title of four, it's now two books.
- [55:52]
A
Oh, right.
- [55:54]
B
One possibly another memoir and one possibly fiction. And. And it's evolving all the time. I'm just collecting what seems to go with it for now and thinking, oh, that just belongs with it somehow. Don't yet know how. But my intuition is that the two work well together. There's a harmony there that I see. And in the very early stages, that's what I find. Something is. And then I might get a more concrete idea of, say, a piece of story or a character, and I'll have the feeling that they really fit together. And once I've got something concrete like that, then I can start doing more active research to pursue the idea. But in the beginning, they're all just little twinkles in the eye and you just have to let them develop, really. But if you want to get started on something because you feel you want to get started and you don't feel happy if you're not working on something, then could do for far more active kind of discovery, like writing lists. Lists are great for this kind of thing. And I find lists of what you don't want it to be are just as helpful as what you do want it to be, because that certainly narrows down a lot and helps you make good choices. You've got a lot of choices to make at the beginning of a book. You've got to decide what's it going to be about, what isn't it going to be about? What kind of characters am I interested in, what kind of situations am I interested in, what doesn't interest me about this situation? Very important, say you a lot of time. What does interest me? So if you can start by doing that kind of thing, you will then find that you start gathering stuff that gets attracted to it. It's almost like the world starts giving it to you. This is discovery writing, but it's also kind of chivying it along a bit and getting going. It does work.
- [57:54]
A
Yeah. I Like the listing, what you don't want it to be. I actually think, I think that's very useful because often writers, especially in the early stages or even not, I mean I still struggle with this is knowing what genre it might actually be. With Bones of the Deep, which is my next thriller, it was originally going to be horror and I was writing it and then I kind of realized the. One of the big differences obviously between horror and thriller is the ending and how character arcs are resolved and the way things are written and all that kind of thing. But I was just like, you know what? I actually feel like this is more thriller than horror. And that really shaped the direction. Even though so much of it was the same, it shaped a lot about the book in the middle sense. And then things kind of came together. It's always hard talking about this stuff without giving spoilers. But. But you know what I mean. Like, I think deciding, okay, this is not a horror actually helped me find my way back to. Back to thriller, I guess.
- [58:59]
B
Yes, I do know what you mean. That and that makes perfect sense to me with no spoilers either. And it's so interesting how a very broad strokes picture like that can still be very helpful. And just trying to make something a bit different from the way you've been envisaging it can lead to massive breakthroughs. It can be, oh no, it's not thriller. I don't have to be aiming for the that kind of. Or try changing the tone a little bit and see if that just makes you happier with what you're making, more comfortable with it.
- [59:35]
A
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And then I guess you, when you mentioned there the seven years that Everest took and we should say that the title is in two words so ever and rest. But it is also about Everest, the mountain in many ways. And that's why it's such a perfect title. But if that took seven years and you were doing all this other stuff and writing other books, books along the way. So how do you keep your research under control and how do you do that? Like I use. I still use Scrivener projects as my main sort of research place. How do you do your research and organization?
- [60:09]
B
A lot of scraps of paper. My desk is massive. It used to be a dining table with leaves in it. It's spread out to its fullest length and it's got heaps of little pieces of paper and I know what's on them all. And there are different areas, different zones. I'm very much a paper writer because I like the tangibility of It. And I also. Also like the creativity of taking a piece of paper and tearing it into an odd shape and writing a note on that. It seems as sort of found and lucky as the idea. I really like that kind of thing. I do make text files and I keep notes that way. And I. Once something is starting to get to a phase where it's becoming serious, it will then be a folder with various files that discuss different aspects of it. But I do a lot of discussing with myself while writing. And I don't necessarily look at it all again, but the writing of it clarifies something or allows me to put something aside and say, no, that doesn't quite belong. But gradually I start to look at things, look at what I've gathered, and think, how does this feel? Fit with this? Fit with this. And it helps to look away as well. As I said, with finding titles, sometimes the right thing is in your subconscious and it's waiting to just sail in if you just look at it in a different way. And I think it. There's a lot to be said for working on several ideas, not looking at some of them for a while, then going back and looking at them and thinking, oh, I know what to do with this now.
- [61:42]
A
Yeah, Yeah. I mean, I. I know that my writing, the Shadow, I was talking about that when we met. And so that definitely took like a decade. Decade. And, yeah, I kept having to come back to that. And sometimes we're just not ready. Even as experienced writers, we're not ready for a particular book. I mean, this Bones of the Deep, I did the trip that it's based on in 1999. And really, since. Since I became a writer, I've thought I have to use that trip in some way. And I never found the right way to use it. I've kind of come at it a couple of times, and it just never sat right with me. What. What it was. And then something on this master's course I'm doing, human remains and indigenous cultures, and it just suddenly all clicked. And you just. You can't really rush that, can you?
- [62:29]
B
You absolutely can't, no. And something you develop a sense for, the more you do is whether something's ready or whether you should just let it think about itself for a while while you work on something else. It really helps to have something else to work on because I find I. I panic a bit if I don't have something creative to do. I just have to create. I have to make things better, particularly in writing. But I also like doing various little Arty things as well. But I need to always have something to be writing about or exploring in words. And sometimes a book isn't ready for that intense pressure of being properly written. So it helps to have several things that I can just play with and then pick one and go, okay, now I'm going to really perform this on the page.
- [63:23]
A
Well, do you find that non fiction because you have some craft books as well? And do you find that the non fiction side is quite different and you can almost go write a non fiction book or go write something. I mean, you're an editor as well, so work on someone else's project. Like that uses a different kind of creativity.
- [63:41]
B
Yes, it does. Creativity, where you're trying to explain something to creative people is totally different from creativity where you are trying to involve them in emotions and a journey and nuances of, of meaning that they're very different, they're still fun. And yes, I, I am an editor as well. And that feeds my creativity in, in various unexpected ways. I'll see what someone has done and I'll think, oh, that's very interesting that they did that. And it can make me think in different ways, just in different shapes for stories or different kinds of characters to have. It really opens your eyes working with other creators of people.
- [64:22]
A
So I wanted to return to what you said at the beginning, which is that it is more difficult these days to get our work noticed. And there is certainly a challenge in writing a travel memoir about home. But I wondered, what are you doing to market this book? What have you learned about book marketing for memoir in particular that might help other people?
- [64:45]
B
Well, partly I realized it was quite a natural progression for me because in my newsletter I always write a couple of little pieces that I think they're called life writing. And it's just little things that have happened to me. And that's sort of like memoir. It's creative nonfiction, personal essays, I think is the term. So I was quite naturally writing that sort of thing to my newsletter readers. And that I realized was already good preparation for the kind of way that I would write in a memoir, in a whole book. Although the whole book has got a much deeper journey. As for the. The actual campaign I'm doing, I actually came up with an idea, which I quite surprised myself. And I came up with an idea because I didn't think I was good at that. I'm making a collage of the word home written in lots of different handwriting on lots of different things in lots of different languages. I'm getting people to do this and send them to me. And I'm building them into a series of collages that have just got the word home everywhere. And people have been contributing these, sending them to me by email or sending them to me on Facebook messenger, and I've been putting them up on my social platforms and they look stunning. It's amazing. People are just writing the word home on a post it or sticking it to a picture of their radiator. Or someone wrote it in snow on her car when we had snow. Someone wrote it on a pottery shard that she found in her drive when she bought the house. And she thought it's mysterious. And there are all these lovely stories that people are telling me as well, making them all into these little artworks and putting them up every day at the moment as the book comes to launch. And it's so much fun. And it's also got a deeper purpose because it shows how home is different for all of us and how it builds as uniquely as our handwriting. Actually, our handwriting has a story. I should do a book about that.
- [66:47]
A
Yeah, that's a weird one. Handwriting always gets me. Although it'd be interesting these days because so many, many people don't handwrite things so much anymore. I mean, you can probably tell the age of someone by how well developed their handwriting is.
- [67:03]
B
Except mine has just withered. I can barely write for more than a few minutes.
- [67:07]
A
Oh, I know what you mean. Like your hand gets really tired.
- [67:10]
B
We used to write three hour exams. How did we do that? I really don't know.
- [67:14]
A
But just coming back on that. So you mentioned mainly you're doing obviously your newsletter and you're connecting with your own community. I mean, obviously you're using. You've done podcasts with me and you do podcasts with other people. But I feel like in the indie community, this sort of you must build your newsletter thing is a very important. But it's sort of described as something quite frantic. How have you built a newsletter in a sustainable manner?
- [67:39]
B
I've built it by finding what suited me to start with. I thought, what will I put in it? News, obviously. But I wasn't doing that much that was newsworthy. But then I began to examine what news could actually be. And the turning point really happened when I wrote the first memoir, which was not quite Lost Travels without a sense of direction. I thought, I have to explain to people why I am writing a memoir. Because it seemed like a very audacious thing to do, you know, read about me and I thought, I have to explain myself. So I told the story of how I came to write, to think about writing such an audacious book and, and I just found a natural way to tell, to tell stories about what I was doing creatively. And I thought ah, I like this, I like writing a newsletter like this. And it's not all me, me, me, it's just I'm discovering this and it makes me think this which just seems to be generally about life or about little sort of questions that we might all face. And from then I found I really enjoyed writing a newsletter because I felt I had something to say. I couldn't put lists, I was speaking what, where I was teaching, what special offers I had because that wasn't really how my creative life worked. But once I found something that, that I could sustainably write about and, and do every month, then it really helped. I would also help to have a pet by the way.
- [69:06]
A
Yeah, you have a horse.
- [69:07]
B
I've got a horse. And people absolutely love hearing the stories about my ongoing relationship with this horse. And even if they're not horsey, they write to me and say we just love your horse. And it helps to have a human interesting that's going on like that. So that works for me. Everyone's got different things that will work for them but it, it, for me it builds a, just a sense of connection, human connection. I'm human making things.
- [69:36]
A
Yeah, but, but in terms of actually getting people signed up on that is it, has it literally just been over time people have read your book, signed up from the link at the back of your book or have you ever done any special specifically growth marketing around your newsletter?
- [69:50]
B
I tried a little bit of growth marketing. I have a freebie version of one of my nail or novel books and I put that on a promotion site and I got lots of newsletter signups but they, they sort of dwindled away. When I get unsubscribes, it's usually from that list because it wasn't really what they came for. They just came for a free book of writing tips. And while I, I do do writing tips on my blog, I'm still doing those. It wasn't really what my newsletter was about. So what I found was that that was not going to get people who were going to be interested long term in what I was writing about in my newsletter. So whatever you do, I found from that has got to be true to what you are actually giving them.
- [70:36]
A
Yeah, I think that's really key. And as you said, I mean the I, I make sure I email once every Couple of weeks and you welcome the unsubscribes. You know, you have to welcome them because those people are not right for you and they're not interested in what you're doing. I think at the end of the day, I mean we are still trying to sell books. So as much as you're enjoying the connection with your audience, you're still trying to sell Turn Right at the Rainbow and your other books, right?
- [71:04]
B
Absolutely, yes. And yeah, as you say, someone who decides, no, not for me anymore, that that's good. There are still people who you are right for. And I do market my newsletter in a very low key way. I do things like I, I make a graphic every month for the newsletter so it's like a magazine cover, what's in it and I put that around all my social media. I change my Facebook page header so that it's got that on it, my blue sky header so people can see what, what it's like, what the vibe is and they, they know where to find it if, if they're interested. I find that kind of low key approach works quite well for what I'm offering as well. It's got to be true to what you offer.
- [71:47]
A
Yeah. And true for a long term career, I think. I think that's another reason, you know, when I first met you and your husband Dave, it was like, oh, here are some people who are in this writing business, have already been in this writing business for a while and both of you are still here. And I just feel like this, this, you just have to do it in a sustainable way in the, what you're talking about, whether it's writing or marketing or any of this like this, the only way to do it is to, as you said, live as a creative human and not make it kind of all frantic and must be now.
- [72:21]
B
Yeah, yeah. I mean I do have to do lists that are quite long for every week. But yes, it, I've learned to pace myself. I've learned how often I can write a good blog post. I mean I could churn out blog posts that were far more frequent but they wouldn't be as good, they wouldn't be as properly thought through. In the old days, actually with blogs you had an advantage if you were blogging very frequently because probably I think you got more noticed by Google because you were constantly putting up fresh content. But if that's not sustainable for you, it's not going to do you any good. And now actually there's so much content around that it's probably fine to post once a month, if that is what you're going to do and how you're going to be able to present the best of yourself. I see a lot of substacks. I recently started Substack as well. I see a lot of substacks where people are writing every other day and I think they're good, they're interesting, but I don't have time to read it. I would love to have the time to read it, but I don't. So there's actually, I think no sin in only posting once a month or one newsletter a month. Maybe one blog post a month. One substack a month and then that's plenty. People still will if they get you, they will still find that enough.
- [73:39]
A
Fantastic. So where can people find you and your books and everything you do online?
- [73:44]
B
My website is probably the easiest place. Rozmorris.org and I'm R O Z M O R R I S Brilliant.
- [73:52]
A
Well, thanks so much for your time Roz. As ever, that was great.
- [73:56]
B
Thank you Jo.
- [74:01]
A
So I hope you found the interview with Ros interesting and that it made you feel a little calmer about the long term view of being an author. I love that Ros takes years to write some of her books and spends time low key email marketing and building relationships. The indie author life doesn't have to be a rush. You can take it slow and enjoy the creative journey. So let me know what you think. Please leave a comment on the podcast Show Notes at the creative pen.com or on the YouTube channel, or email me joannathecreativepenn.com also send me pictures of where you're listening or your favourite cemetery or churchyard. Next Monday I'm doing a roundup show on Writing 15 Actionable Tips for Writing Deep Characters with the tips taken from various episodes over the years, so hopefully that will be useful. I am so slammed with the Master's work right now so I wanted to try something different content wise. So let me know what you think about that next week. In the meantime, happy writing and I'll see you next time. Thanks for listening today. I hope you found it helpful. You can find the backlist episodes and show notes@thecreativepen.com podcast and you can get your free author blueprint@thecreativepen.com blueprint. If you'd like to connect, you can find me on Facebook and X at the Creative Creative Pen or on Instagram and Facebook @jfpenauthor. Happy writing and I'll see you next time.