The Am Writing Fantasy Podcast

A brand-new podcast from Autumn Birt and Jesper Schmidt, the creators and hosts of the Am Writing Fantasy podcast. This limited series is eight episodes long, dedicated to make you a better writer and understand story structure better. You get to listen in on Autumn and Jesper's conversations as they plot a short story from scratch. It's a behind the scenes look at the process of creative writing. Simply search for 'Write the Story' in your podcast app, or visit the website here: https://www.writethestory.show/, to get started right away.

Come for three days of writing workshops, writing time, one-on-one coaching, and group activities. Leave with a completed short story to be included in a published compilation, polished writing skills, and new author friends. Sure, writers are often introverts, but aren’t you tired of everything happening online? We are! Plus, you can learn more and improve your writing skills faster with a select group of writers (no more than 40!) along with personalized coaching. Be warned, this is not going to be one of those events where you simply show up, listen to a bunch of PowerPoint presentations, and then head back home by the end of the weekend. No! We want you to actually complete a work of fiction. During this weekend, all attendees will jointly worldbuild a setting for a story together with five elements which everyone needs to incorporate into the story along with a character. Each participant will then write a short story between 1,000 and 10,000 words. Along the way, we’ll cover writing aspects such as worldbuilding, character development, plotting, outlining chapters, and more… all of which you’ll get to use that weekend. By Sunday afternoon, all stories will be handed over to us, Autumn and Jesper, and we’ll then get them all edited and have a cover made for inclusion in a compilation made free for readers! We’ll do all the final work—you just need to come, learn, have fun, and write the story. YES! You’ll get a published piece of work and a bunch of new author friends to help you promote it. The benefits of this Getaway doesn’t end on Sunday—not by a long shot! Check out the registration page and the full event schedule here: https://www.amwritingfantasy.com/getaway-2023/    And just in case you're interested, here's the link to our brand-new novel, Magic Unleashed: https://books2read.com/MagicUnleashed    As mentioned, we're also working on a new podcast for you. Find it here: https://www.writethestory.show/ Make sure to subscribe in your podcast app, so you don't miss any episodes once we start releasing them.    Stay safe and happy writing.

We've unfortunately come to the end of the Am Writing Fantasy podcast. In this short brief, you'll learn why and where to go from here.

The New York Times bestselling author, Anthony Ryan, joins the Am Writing Fantasy podcast for a discussion with Jesper about fantasy writing, publishing, and marketing books in today's publishing landscape.   Find Ryan's books here: https://anthonyryan.net/   Tune in for new episodes EVERY single Monday.  SUPPORT THE AM WRITING FANTASY PODCAST! Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review.  Join us at www.patreon.com/AmWritingFantasy. For as little as a dollar a month, you’ll get awesome rewards and keep the Am Writing Fantasy podcast going.  Read the full transcript below. (Please note that it's automatically generated and while the AI is super cool, it isn't perfect. There may be misspellings or incorrect words on occasion). 0 (2s): You're listening to The Am. Writing Fantasy Podcast in today's publishing landscape, you can reach fans all over the world. Query letters are a thing of the past. You don't even need an literary agent. There is nothing standing in the way of making a living from writing. Join two best selling authors who have self published more than 20 books between them now on to the show with your hosts, Autumn Birt and Jesper Schmidt. Jesper (30s): Hello, I'm Jesper. And this is episode 154 of the Am Writing Fantasy podcast. And Autumn is putting the finishing touches on editing our next novel today. So instead I'm joined by a New York times bestselling author, Anthony Ryan. And normally when I do these interviews, I have like a massive time difference, Anthony, but not today because I think you're in the UK or something. Is that right? Anthony (58s): Yes. Almost instantaneous. Jesper (1m 4s): Yeah. And it's, and there's even light outside my window today, which I'm not used to when I do podcast recordings, but you are you're from Scotland originally. Is that right Anthony (1m 17s): Originally? Yes, I don't sound Scottish, but I was born then spent most of my childhood there. Jesper (1m 24s): I would actually love to visit Scotland one day. I've been to the London and stuff like that multiple times, but I've never been to Scotland and it's just like the scenery there. It's, it's almost a bit fantasy inspiring sometimes. Isn't it? Anthony (1m 39s): It is obviously if you, if you grow up there, you have a different view of things. You don't know you growing up in it, you know, I see landscape the, yeah. Obviously, you know, as a true Scott, I recommend everyone should go to Scotland at least one. Jesper (2m 1s): Yeah. I would really love to go one day, but perhaps before we sort of get started for real here, maybe you could just share a few words about yourself, Anthony, and just talk a bit about what you're writing and maybe how you got into writing. And so on Anthony (2m 17s): Anthony Ryan, the also the raping shadow trilogy, the cottage Memorial, Trelegy blatantly the covenant of steel, excuse my most recent work and I, which is what I'm currently working on. I got published. I self published back in 20 11, 20 12 and was persuaded to go the traditional route when my first novel blood song took off and been a full-time author since the end of 2012. So yeah, this is what I always wanted to do. Anthony (2m 57s): And I consider myself really to be able to make a living doing what I love to do. Jesper (3m 4s): Yeah, that'd be pretty cool. So you have, you have some stuff that you publish and some stuff that is traditional puppets. Is that still the case today? Anthony (3m 14s): Yes. I don't do that much self publishing these days. It's usually one or two things a year, if that, and it's usually a short work, it's a novella or short story or something like that. Full length works with pretty much always traditionally published these days. And to be honest, given the time and I'm sure, you know, better than I do the time it takes to do self publishing. Well, it's a lot of time. It's a lot of efforts to do it properly. And frankly, that was the time to do all sort of being traditionally published for the most part. Anthony (3m 55s): It suits me quite well. Jesper (3m 59s): Right. And you're with penguin IO Anthony (4m 2s): These days is mostly all wet, a little and brown, I believe, but I'm still, you know, technically published by a switch is part of a penguin. So, you know, it's a thing with traditional publishing. You can be a bit confusing with all the different contracts and everything, but I don't think meters care that much, you know, you publish your next book. So yeah. Yeah. Well, within the national publishers as well, got a lot of different contracts and things with various different publishers around the world can be a bit hard to keep track of them all. Jesper (4m 45s): Yeah. But then coming from a situation where you have experience with both the traditional side of publishing, but as well as some self publishing, what would you, sorry? Well, you touched upon this slightly there, but what would you say is the pros and cons of each of those two approaches? If somebody is sort of listening to this and debating, should I do one or the other? Anthony (5m 8s): Well, it's weird. I think the advantages of self publishing are the disadvantages of self publishing of the same things. The advantages are you have to do everything. You know, you do everything yourself. You have complete control over everything. The disadvantages are, you do everything yourself and you have complete control over everything. So, you know, it's, it's a lot of work basically to self publish. We're new at officially published. You will have an editor who works for a publisher. Who's a professional editor. You won't have to hire them yourself, which can be very, probably the most expensive part of the process for self publisher. Anthony (5m 48s): Especially if you're starting out, you know, a professional editor doesn't come cheap. And if you're writing epic fantasy, I mean, and the charge by the word, I mean, typically in the 200,000 word range, paying somebody a word by word basis to edit one of my novels. That's a lot of money would be very expensive for me. So publish as well as very time consuming. But you do, I think with self publishing, you do get control over the control you get. I know we'd be telling you attractive for a lot of people. If you know, I'm a bit of a control freak, I'm not too bad, but I can't be obsessive about details. Anthony (6m 33s): And if you're that kind of person, self publishing is probably going to see it quite well, especially when it comes to cameras and cover design and you know, book descriptions and all that kind of thing. So yes, the advantages are that say are the same as a disadvantage, it's all on you. Or you either do it all yourself or you pay people to do it when you're traditionally published. Some of the burden is taken off you because you're not paying for you are an editor, a cover designer and all of the, Jesper (7m 6s): Yeah. And I'm also thinking maybe what about reread with gods to the editing itself? I mean, of course when you are self publishing, you, as you said, you hire the editor and basically you can just decide what to ignore, what to agree to, whatever, whenever the editor tells you something, but with the traditional publishing, is it more in your experience that you have to more accept what the editor is pushing on you? Or can you still, do you still have the freedom to say like, like, no, that's not going to, I'm not going to change this or that. Anthony (7m 40s): Unfortunately, I've never got to the point where I vehemently disagreed with us in the editors have told me there is a back and forth and other things we don't, you know, sort of mindless things don't always agree with when it comes to word choice, you know, cutting smaller scenes or something like that. But there have been times when I've been asked to do more substantial rewrites and others, some books don't require a lot of work at the editing stage and others do I take the view that these are professional people who've been doing this for entire life and it would be foolish of me to ignore their advice. Anthony (8m 22s): If I ever got to the point where it is vehemently disagreed with what they were asking me to do, I would say, so we did have a discussion, but you know, as of yet, it hasn't come up where it really just completely at loggerheads and can't reach an agreement. I don't know what would happen if we got to that point, you know, contractually, you know, they can reject the book and then they want to have advanced back. We haven't asked, but yeah, that's, that's always the nuclear option, but it it's extremely, rather than the publishing world, you know, for that to happen, you know, it can happen sometimes when you get controversial figures, who've been given large Southerns to write a memoir or something. Anthony (9m 10s): And, you know, especially with the insist on not having a ghost writer. Oh yeah. I've heard stories of people submitting manuscripts that were just unreadable tripe, and then wondering why the, you want to do advance back can happen. But yeah, when it comes to professional writers, people who wrote fiction for a living, it's very, very rare. And as yet, luckily for me as it come on, hopefully no. Jesper (9m 39s): Yeah, no, I agree. And of course it's also a matter of, I mean, of course some editors could be difficult to work with, but so could some authors, right? It could also sometimes be the author who just makes a big deal out of something where the editor might be actually quite fair in what they're asking Anthony (9m 56s): And I'm never going to nitpick over commerce or, you know, stuff like the semi-colons in the wrong place of don't get excited about that. You know, when it comes to, you know, the overall arch arc of the plot and stuff like that, it's, you know, it's pretty rare for them to have a problem with it. In my book, there's been a few things about have, by my own admission, I've gone d

Today we delve into the Nebula Award Nominated and bestselling book Jade City by Fonda Lee. What can this highly acclaimed AND popular novel teach us about worldbuildling, plotting, and characters? Join us and we share what we love, what we didn't prefer, and our thoughts on this novel. Tune in for new episodes EVERY single Monday.   SUPPORT THE AM WRITING FANTASY PODCAST! Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review.   Join us at www.patreon.com/AmWritingFantasy. For as little as a dollar a month, you’ll get awesome rewards and keep the Am Writing Fantasy podcast going.  Read the full transcript below. (Please note that it's automatically generated and while the AI is super cool, it isn't perfect. There may be misspellings or incorrect words on occasion). Narrator (1s): You're listening to The Am. Writing Fantasy Podcast in today's publishing landscape, you can reach fans all over the world. Query letters are a thing of the past. You don't even need a literary agent. There is nothing standing in the way of making a living from writing. Join two best selling authors who have self published more than 20 books between them now on to the show with your hosts, Autumn Birt and Jesper Schmidt. Jesper (29s): Hello, I'm Jesper and Autumn (31s): I'm Autumn. Jesper (33s): This is episode 153 of the Am Writing Fantasy podcast. And it is time for our Critical Reading of Jade City by Fonda Lee. And we'll be sharing our thoughts and views with the aim to see what we write as can learn from Autumn (51s): Yes, I'm looking forward to it because it was such an interesting story, but you know, listening right now, if you were planning on reading this book and you haven't yet spoilers, there will be spoilers. So keep that in mind. If you're listening, this is a critical review, not a blurb or a teaser. We're going to rip it apart and say what we love, what we wish had been different and see what else we can learn from this book. Jesper (1m 15s): Yes. And we also got a few remarks from patron supporters. So we will also mention some of that Autumn (1m 23s): As well. Yes. I'm looking forward to it. I happen to have read some of those comments and I'm kind of in agreement with them. So that'll be really fun. Jesper (1m 32s): I am for the most part as well. Autumn (1m 36s): All right. End of episode. No, Jesper (1m 38s): That was it. Go on. Read, read, threatened. That's it Autumn (1m 43s): Awesome. Well, how are things over at Denmark? It's been a little while since we talked, which was partially my fault. I will warn viewers now. I am still, I had a cold. It really knocked it. Wasn't COVID knock on wood, but it's definitely knocked me for a loop. So if my voice is a little hoarse or if I will, I swear I will cough. I'll either mute myself or he'll go away from the microphone. But yeah, there's, there's a chance I'm still coughing a little bit. So it's been awhile. This episode was supposed to be the previous one and we just couldn't get together because cold I've got to call. Jesper (2m 18s): Yeah, this was supposed to be 100 and episode 1 55, 2, and then it now turned out to be 1, 5, 3, and, well, it was a bit of a mess because we had to rearrange stuff and redo stuff and rename podcast episodes and whatnot, but we succeeded and we're here now. Autumn (2m 36s): That's what counts. So how are things been? It's been absolutely ages since we talked. Jesper (2m 42s): Yeah. Well now I don't remember if it was last week or the week before, to be honest. But we were in here during winter time, as I've said on previous podcasts, I started doing sea kayaking. So here during winter time, well, you can go out, see kayaking, but you need a dry suit, which costs a lot of money. So, and we don't have that, but then what we can do is we can go to the swimming hole. So we take the kayaks into the swimming stadium and we train in the swimming pool to do like, you know, Eskimo rolls is what we call them. Dana's I don't know what the English word is, but you know, without getting out of the kayak, you basically you're upside down in the water and then you learn how to get back up out of the water without exiting the kayak at all. Jesper (3m 31s): And I actually managed to do the first roll this last time when we went to practice for the first time I succeeded in rolling around. So that was pretty cool. Autumn (3m 42s): That is really cool. I've never managed to do a full one note. I usually, I was a whitewater kayaking so much smaller, like half the size of a ocean kayak, a sea kayak. And I still never quite learned the hip snap part to get myself fully back on my own. So that's really cool that you could advantage one. Jesper (4m 2s): Yeah, well, it was like a w the time before my wife succeeded doing it and she was just like, and she did it like 10, 15 times, like, like w what, what brown run around. And I was, and I was just so much struggling. It was like, fuck, I can't do it. And then, but then last time we were here in the swimming hole, we had a couple of instructors with us. So I think the instructor probably spent like an hour with me trying to explain how, you know, because it is really, I mean, when I succeeded, I was actually surprised to see how little muscle power you need to use it. It's actually, it's all about technique. You, you almost need to do nothing to flip around if you just use the right technique. Jesper (4m 45s): So, and, and if you like, like angle your body just slightly wrong, or you, you use your arm slightly in the wrong way, you're not going to flip around. So it's really about techniques, but it it's, I succeeded, but now of course, I'm concerned the next time we're going to go train, then I can't do it again. Autumn (5m 4s): Well, it's all muscle memory. So eventually you'll get it down with that as awesome. However, it's hilarious. Your wife was like, whoo, I'm just rolling. Like Jesper (5m 12s): Rolling around like, well, it's quite easy. Yes. That's easy for you to say Yeah. At the other than that, then a well on, in terms of working wise, we've sent book one of our new series off to the editor. So we're waiting to get it back from the first edit, and then it'll go to the second editor and so on, but, but we're getting there now. So, so that's pretty cool. And otherwise we've started to look ahead for 2020 and kind of discuss some of our future plans and so on. But I quite like this time of year when we're sort of reviewing, what are we going to do next inside? That that's always fun to me. Autumn (5m 54s): It is. I think it's it's so it's good to do that. You should do in your life. Should do it in your writing, your book, marketing, whatever you got going on. I think so many people don't take the opportunity to reflect and then reorganized and then hit the new year with maybe some new goals and some new operations and stuff. So I agree which again, you know, go figure we've we tend to agree on just about everything. So it's no surprise. We both enjoy looking over stuff. And I think it gets your passion going, if you feel like you're just doing the same old thing and you just need to keep plugging away at it, you'd lose the passion. And, and it's half the fun is getting that back and getting excited about things and what you're going to do for the next year. Jesper (6m 35s): Yeah, indeed. So how about you? What have you been busy with the last couple of weeks Autumn (6m 40s): Sick, but not much. I've well, I mean, I've managed to get the editing done and so that's been off and I'm going to be working, starting to delve into getting our website for dot com, going some minor, things like that. So I'm looking forward to really getting into that more, but I was surprised last time I was truly sick was actually right when I came back from London and in January, 2019, I got kind of the same thing, chills, really sick. And that really knocked me down for three days. But this one, it was funny. I started feeling better and then I'd be sick for two days and then I'd start feeling better. Autumn (7m 20s): And, oh, it's been a nightmare. I really thought I was surprised when I got the COVID test results back as negative. I'm like, really? If this isn't COVID, oh, there's some other nasty bugs out there. No one should ever have to go through this, but I have never had chills, like shaking so hard while I had a fever in my entire life. Thank goodness. My husband has medical wilderness medical training. Cause he's like, I wasn't worried. We're fine. I know what to do. But I was like, he's saying, right, this is not right, Jesper (7m 52s): But there is a buck like that going around because I mean, over the last two weeks, I was sick for a couple of days as well. And I wasn't, I didn't have the shakes like you're describing there, but I did have a fever. And I was absolutely absolutely sure that this is COVID because it felt like, you know, the, all the flu kind of symptoms, all the stuff that you hear about and, and your throat, you can feel it all the time. It was exactly like the symptoms described for, for COVID. But I also went and got a test and it was negative, but there is something going around like that at the moment. Autumn (8m 23s): Yes. I mean, none of our listeners catch it. It's not contagious through podcasts. Thank goodness. I Jesper (8m 28s): Don't think it's contagious through podcasting. Autumn (8m 32s): I hope not. But yeah. I mean, as I've described it, I feel like I've actually been sleeping with a hot water bottle. I feel like my internal thermostat, we, we speak in car language all the time. I'm not sure, but my thermostat is busted. It is not working. So please, if you find yourself getting cold, stay warm, make sure you, I was sleeping with a hat on and a hot water bottle and a coat. And it's just ridiculous. But yeah. Keep yourself warm and healthy and have a good December. Cause you don't want to get sick at the beginning of winter. It's I

Do you wonder if you've avoided stereotypes in your writing and been appropriately sensitive to people of different races, ethnicities, or neurodivergent? There are aspects to look for as you write and edit to make certain you are aware of how what you've written will be perceived. Plus, there are sensitivity readers who can help you out! With special guest and sensitivity reader Iona Wayland, Autumn covers some tips from tying mental health to character arcs to checking yourself for outdated language which will help your writing cast aside stereotypes. Find Iona on her website at https://ionawayland.wixsite.com/author and on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/iona.wayland/ Tune in for new episodes EVERY single Monday.   SUPPORT THE AM WRITING FANTASY PODCAST! Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review.   Join us at www.patreon.com/AmWritingFantasy. For as little as a dollar a month, you’ll get awesome rewards and keep the Am Writing Fantasy podcast going.  Read the full transcript below. (Please note that it's automatically generated and while the AI is super cool, it isn't perfect. There may be misspellings or incorrect words on occasion). Narrator (2s): You're listening to The Am writing Fantasy Podcast in today's publishing landscape, you can reach fans all over the world. Query letters are a thing of the past. You don't even need a literary agent. There is nothing standing in the way of making a living from writing. Join two best selling authors who have self published more than 20 books between them now on to the show with your hosts, Autumn Birt and Jesper Schmidt. Autumn (31s): Hello, I'm Autumn. And this is episode 153 of the Am Writing Fantasy podcast. And this week we have, yes, we're on vacation and taking a bit of a break, you know, I guess he deserves, but so instead I have with me a different author and sensitivity reader and someone who writes fantasy and I'm so looking forward to talking to her, so welcome to the podcast. I own a Wayland. Iona (59s): Hi there. Thank you for having me. Autumn (1m 1s): Yeah, I'm so excited. I, you said you're a tea drinker. You're a pet mom. This is going to be so much fun. And I even like the sensitivity, I can't wait to talk about that because I know my first story, my first passions were like, well, you know, we have these giant epic fantasy quests and no one ever seems to come out the other side with like PTSD. So that was one of the first things that I thought of when I first started writing back in 2010. So I cannot wait to talk to you, but first go ahead and introduce yourself. I know you have your book, ashes and talk is tell us a little bit about that and tell us how you decided to become like a sensitivity reader. Iona (1m 45s): Well, I, and my day job is a trauma therapist and by night, so to speak, I write and ashes is my debut. It's a dark fantasy novel. It has a Latin X main character named Angela. And she has to decide if she wants to journey and avenge her brother's death. And so it's those trials of figuring out herself in the midst of trying to save her brother. Oh, Autumn (2m 16s): That is cool. So yeah. So he's dead. Is it saving his soul or saving him or is that giving away too much of the book? Iona (2m 23s): It won't give away too much. He is, he is dead at the beginning of the book, but it explores what was behind his death and what is behind like what his soul needs to pass on. Autumn (2m 36s): That is so cool. I love it. Well, that is because I looked at the cover. I'm also a graphic artist and I saw the cover. I'm like, cool. I like this. This is a very nice cover. So, Iona (2m 47s): So glad you like the cover. I designed it. I'm not, I mean, I'm not talented, like what you're saying, but I did design. I was like, this is exactly what I want, please, if you're able to do that. And they were so Autumn (2m 60s): Nice. Fantastic. Well, yeah, it came out really nice. I do like it. So, wow. You've been working with trauma. So that's already your interest in your background and a, did that bring you to writing or have you always been a fantasy reader? Always wanted to be a fantasy writer. Iona (3m 15s): I've always been a reader and a writer to the point where before I even could write, like I knew the alphabet or anything, I would watch cats out of like alley cats out of my window as like a little kid and right. Loop de loops. And that was my version of writing stories about the cats that I saw. So ever since then, I've just always wanted to be an author. And I've definitely, definitely a reader. So fantasy is the main thing, but I really like all genres. There's not any that I dislike. Autumn (3m 47s): I think that's one of the benefits of being like an indie author, that if you want to do a cozy mystery slash fitness slash something, we can mash those up and turn it into something really special. Iona (4m 1s): Yes, it's true. It gets very niche. I love it. Autumn (4m 4s): Yes, very much so. So before we get into some of the topics and I think it's interesting, so it sounds like your, your writing tends towards inspiration, which is a super cool and more like noble bright, but I have to ask what your favorite type of tea is because I never get another tea enthusiast on the podcast. Iona (4m 22s): The hard, oh, that's so hard. Well, right now I'm drinking an English breakfast, but oh man, my favorite tea, I have to say chai tea, which isn't really specific. Cause chai just means tea, but I like the spice tea for sure is, is so delicious. And I I'm really into bubble tea right now. Yeah. I definitely have that as like my Wednesday treat to myself middle of the week, treat to myself, I'll get a bubble tea. Autumn (4m 54s): Oh, I love that. I'm not anywhere close to any place that sells bubble tea. So I will live vicariously through you for that one. Yes. Iona (5m 3s): I definitely got lucky. Yes. Autumn (5m 5s): Oh yeah. Well, chai tea again is a perfect answer for this time of the season and the fall. We're recording this in October. So yeah, we're all in the pumpkin spice attitude right now. Iona (5m 16s): Yes we are. All Autumn (5m 18s): Right. So this is, Ashley's your first one. Are you working on something else right now? Or are you going to Iona (5m 24s): Actually working on a sequel? But there was a bunch of very happy but intense life stuff popping up. That was really good and wonderful, but it also made writing go on the back burner for a little bit, but I am working on the sequel to that. And the goal is to make it a SQL within the same universe. And the main characters of the first book are mentioned, or maybe even run into, but it is like a different main character. Autumn (5m 53s): Oh, I like the ones like that, especially where you can, you know, work in somebody from a previous book or a different book. And they just do like a cameo. That it's Very cool. So yeah, I was like reading about what you do and as, as sensitivity. So you have to tell us what a sensitivity reader is and how you came up with that idea. But I was going to say, looking at your own writing, you like, you like to look at grief and surviving trauma and finding purpose and strength. And when I read that, I'm like, oh, you probably liked the, as someone else put it what's considered traditional fantasy, but they decided to start calling it noble bright, which is, you know, it might go dark, but there's always that hope that's buried in there rather than everything being dark and dire. Autumn (6m 37s): And you're wondering, I remember one of the first dark fantasies I read it was really closely and in a sister died, everyone, this person cared about a diet and he's trudging through a swamp and I can never remember what the purpose, you know, what the final target and goal was. And I'm just like, you know, if I was this character, I would just lay down in the swamp and I'm done. So that's the other side of dark fantasy, but it sounds like you try to pull out a little bit of that hope in the healing. Iona (7m 5s): Yeah. I definitely am healing focus and it's not saying that it's necessarily a happy or what the character expected to have happen. And there's still trauma from those experiences. And at the same time, I feel like healing is such a beautiful, intense process that all humans are capable of making that. I just wanted to make sure I depicted the human experience in that way and my writing for sure. Autumn (7m 34s): I love that. That is so, you know, it's touching and it's, I love not, I it's one of those things when you're writing, you know, some people like have a moral compass and they're, it's almost like the fable where they're like doing a morality play and they're pushing the novel that way. But I do love it when you have characters. And like you said, it's almost like a twist or it's not what they expect. It's not what they fear, but it's a different result. But I do love the power of that change. The character arc, you probably work on that specifically is to see a character go through this trauma of face it and come out the other side one way or the other or somewhere in between. Iona (8m 14s): Yes, exactly. I love some good character arcs for sure. Autumn (8m 18s): Oh, is there a special one that you like to see? Like, is there something you've recently read as a sensitivity reader or even when you're writing or just a book you picked up and you're like, gosh, that was a good healing. You know, what made you think this is not only realistic, but just a very solid character, a character arc and maybe a little bit of a surprise. Iona (8m 40s): There was one. So this is actually from a TV show that I've been watching and it's an, it's an older TV show, but I, there is this character that was really annoying in the beginning and, and he was kind of insufferable at times and very emotionally immature. And as it's carried on, you could tell that his character arc was instead of being in

A Game of Thrones has inspired characters who contain such strong good qualities, like honor or justice, that it can lead to his or her death.  And writing classes teach developing characters with strengths and weaknesses to make them well rounded. A heroine can be a skilled warrior AND too self assured.  This makes a more complex character, one that is beyond two dimensions, but what about a good character that just loses it and takes the first punch? In this episode of the Am Writing Fantasy podcast, Autumn and Jesper discuss the Evil Within. The episode is inspired by this blog post: https://www.amwritingfantasy.com/the-evil-within/ Tune in for new episodes EVERY single Monday.  SUPPORT THE AM WRITING FANTASY PODCAST! Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review.  Join us at www.patreon.com/AmWritingFantasy. For as little as a dollar a month, you’ll get awesome rewards and keep the Am Writing Fantasy podcast going.  Read the full transcript below. (Please note that it's automatically generated and while the AI is super cool, it isn't perfect. There may be misspellings or incorrect words on occasion). Narrator (2s): You're listening to The Am. Writing Fantasy Podcast in today's publishing landscape, you can reach fans all over the world. Query letters are a thing of the past. You don't even need a literary agent. There is nothing standing in the way of making a living from writing. Join two best selling authors who have self published more than 20 books between them now on to the show with your hosts, Autumn Birt and Jesper Schmidt. Jesper (30s): Hello, I'm Jesper Autumn (32s): And I'm, Autumn. Jesper (33s): This is episode 155 of the Am Writing Fantasy podcast. And when studying the craft of writing, we learn about creating characters who are well-rounded, who have weaknesses and strengths. But what happens when characters unleased the evil within? Autumn (55s): I like this topic because, well, I do like gray and nuanced characters. I like fillings with good traits and I like heroes with not always the best of traits. I think it makes them more relatable. So this is going to be a fun podcast to explore the dark side of your heroes. Jesper (1m 14s): Yeah. Yeah. Autumn wrote a blog post quite a while back for the AmWritingFantasy a block. So that's sort of the starting point for this conversation. I guess you could call it at least that's what inspired us to dive into the pool of evil to The Autumn (1m 34s): It's good. It's the good evil pool, right? So it should be kind of, I don't know if it's shallow early, deep in a couple areas, but we'll figure it out. Jesper (1m 42s): Yeah, yeah. That's yeah, that'll be interesting. We'll see where it takes us. Autumn (1m 47s): So how are things over in Denmark? Jesper (1m 51s): Well, not much as chains, to be honest since last week, you know, I'm still just preparing for the referee instructor class and practicing presentations. And I had a meeting the other day with, with my mentor. And so, yeah, I still have not gotten back to writing at all. Autumn (2m 11s): Well, I think you have enough going on that. That seems fair. Plus, it's giving me time to read book two so that I'll be ready to help plot book three. So take your time. You're good. Fine. Jesper (2m 25s): Good. Don't worry about it. Autumn (2m 27s): You deserve the break? Jesper (2m 30s): Yeah. Well, something funny. I wanted to mention, you know, how in the master mailing list, because that we have available for sale on I'm Am Writing Fantasy dot com total block there. If somebody wants to check that out, but, but you know, in that course, how we talk about how you can possibly segment your email list? Autumn (2m 52s): Yes. I remember that. Yeah. Jesper (2m 55s): Okay. Yeah. So our insurance company should really learn a bit about this segmentation of email lists. Yeah. Autumn (3m 3s): Oh, Jesper (3m 5s): The letter from the, or an email rather, from the insurance company yesterday, and then I logged in to read what this message was about? Because I was not expecting any message. So I was like, okay. And then I read that email from them and they just wanted to let me know that in some cases they have not treated cases concerning pregnant, pregnant women in the proper way. And they want to let me know that this would change going forward. Okay. That was exactly my thing of like, okay, I'm not a woman. I don't think I'm pregnant. At least I don't, I don't believe so. Jesper (3m 48s): So I was just thinking maybe you should learn a bit about segmenting your email list, at least at least segment between men and women. I think that should not be too difficult. Autumn (3m 59s): Well, maybe they thought, you know, in case you wanted to let your wife know that, you know, the car and send the message to her. I agree. They should have been able to figure that one out. Jesper (4m 10s): Yeah. I mean, may, maybe there's something about it that they thought like they wanted to inform people, you know, in general, like a general information that we are sorry that we have. I mean, I fully understand the message, nothing wrong with the message there. Right. It's good that if they had discovered that they have been doing something wrong and they recognize it and they would want to correct it, I'm all for that very good, good information. Right. But couldn't you just like maybe put an announcement on your website or on your blog or something to say, like, I just, I don't know. Maybe it's just me, but I don't understand why they're sending out emails to males, letting them know about pregnant women and how they, how they handle cases for pregnant women. Jesper (4m 50s): I don't quite understand. Autumn (4m 52s): I didn't understand either. They took the least, they did the, Jesper (4m 58s): Yeah, yeah. Maybe it was the intern who was at work that day. And it was like, who am I supposed to send it to? I don't know. Send it to everybody. Okay. Autumn (5m 7s): I can do that. I don't know how to segment. Oh, there you go. Well, you know, I guess it's better to be over informative, less informative. Maybe they just never had thought about putting a gender question in their information. Jesper (5m 25s): Well, they have like a, what is that called in English? I don't know. Dennis Deniz is like, you have a, it's not a social security number, but you have like a number, you know, what is it called, named you don't you have like in the U S like a number in the official systems for you yourself, you know, Autumn (5m 49s): Their social security number. Jesper (5m 51s): Is it that in your yeah, but, okay. But anyway, they do have that number, a numbers ending on equal numbers is women and unequal numbers are men. So it's not that difficult to work out. Autumn (6m 6s): Yeah. And it's not like that over here. It's pretty random. Jesper (6m 10s): I couldn't imagine. Yes. Why am I not surprised Autumn (6m 14s): You threw something at the wall? It seems to be working at least it hasn't collapsed in weight yet, so we're good. Jesper (6m 21s): Well, okay. I'm not going to comment on that. Autumn (6m 25s): That's what I covered. Comment on the U S government. Please Jesper (6m 29s): Know, that's what I was thinking. Autumn (6m 31s): This is not a political podcast. Jesper (6m 34s): No, just let it fly. Let it fly. Didn't hear anything. So, but how I think so on your end, Autumn (6m 42s): Pretty good. Just a lots going on doing a little bit of actually be doing a little bit of a seasonal job and just rearranging life and we're going to be moving. And we have some extended family worries with mental health and old age. So that's, you know, weighing on us and, but the good news is at least I've had some gotten to create some really awesome book covers recently. And I'm on like the last chapter for magic unleash. So I'm just moving it up and got to check some of the weird character traits that we came up with, especially dialect. So once I finished that off to the editor, so I'm really excited and I can't wait to delve into the second book, which is being dark gods. Autumn (7m 28s): And then we have to figure out the plotting for the final book and the name. We still only one, we have a name, so we Jesper (7m 34s): Have no name for us. Autumn (7m 36s): So we have to name it and we have to come up with the plot. So that's all going good. So, you know, there's, there's bright lights here and there and mid the murkiness life chaotic. Eventually I keep saying this, eventually my life will settle down, but yeah, we can hope I have hope. Jesper (7m 55s): I hope it's a good note to end on Narrator (8m 0s): A week on the internet with The Am Writing Fantasy Podcast. Jesper (8m 6s): So just a couple of thank yous to share here today. First of all, Pamela Payne joined us on Patrion. So thank you so much for your support, Pamela. Yes. And we also have moose beard. That's actually the name that it goes by on Patrion, but it must be at rejoined us as well. So thank you for that. We really appreciate it. Autumn (8m 33s): Yes. I enjoyed the conversations with moose beard. I know I've talked to him a couple of times in the past, so I'm excited. He came back to us after a little hiatus and it's wonderful to meet you, Pamela. Thank you so much for your support on Patrion and we're well, glad to have you. And it's my responsibility to send you the book cover bookmark that comes with joining. Yeah. Book covers. Sorry. I've got book covers on the brain, but bookmark and it we'll do that tomorrow or Thursday. I promise. So if it's late, it's my fault. I'm sorry. Jesper (9m 7s): Yeah, it happens. But if you haven't checked out patron yet and all the different rewards that we do offer to support us over there, please follow the links in the show notes. And Joel also just to reiterate a patron is the only source of funding we have for this podcast. And to be very honest, we are not Sealy seeing nearly as much support a

Do you want to write a page turning novel that will keep readers up long past their bedtime? Well, one key to doing that is to write chapters that keep readers turning pages. We go over some tips from opening lines to closing and everything in between to help you write chapters that will keep your readers hooked. To check out the book Plot Development that we mention in the podcast, follow this link: https://books2read.com/Plot-Development Tune in for new episodes EVERY single Monday.   SUPPORT THE AM WRITING FANTASY PODCAST! Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review.   Join us at www.patreon.com/AmWritingFantasy. For as little as a dollar a month, you’ll get awesome rewards and keep the Am Writing Fantasy podcast going.  Read the full transcript below. (Please note that it's automatically generated and while the AI is super cool, it isn't perfect. There may be misspellings or incorrect words on occasion). Narrator (1s): You're listening to The Am writing Fantasy Podcast in today's publishing landscape, you can reach fans all over the world. Query letters are a thing of the past. You don't even need a literary agent. There is nothing standing in the way of making a living from writing. Join two best selling authors who have self published more than 20 books between them now on to the show with your hosts, Autumn Birt and Jesper Schmidt. Jesper (29s): I'm Jesper Autumn (31s): And I'm Autumn. Jesper (33s): This is episode 150 of the Am Writing Fantasy podcast. And we are taking a closer look at Chapters today. How to Create Chapters, That Hook you readers, and hopefully give you some good and strong tips in the process here. Autumn (50s): Absolutely. I mean, these are sort of the building blocks of that. Pull the reader through the story. And I don't think there's a lot of people who realize maybe the importance of setting them up. I mean, we spend so much time talking about that Plot outline and what goes into the intro of your story, but we don't talk a lot about what actually is happening in each individual chapter. So I think this will be a good one we'll chapters or a book is made up by chapter. So I don't know why Chapters would be important at all at all. It's like building a wall without using any bricks. We're putting them on the walls. No, there's you go, but let's assume you want a wall and if you just put your bricks, like just dump them in a pile, you're not going to have a very good wall, so you should make sure you put it together constructively. Autumn (1m 41s): Okay. Well, if I say showed and I guess we have to talk a bit about that today. Jesper (1m 45s): Yeah. I guess we will. We'll talk about some construction equipment. No, thanks where you over there. Autumn (1m 52s): It's quite good. There is a school break here this week. So actually I don't have to get up that early in the mornings. That's very, very nice. That is always a sweet thing considering, especially, yeah, since I'd be getting up at 5:00 AM with my husband to see him off to his current training, he's going through yeah. That's, I'm envious if I'm AM's a little early for me. Yeah. The only problem is that now when you don't have to get up that early, you stay up later. And especially because my wife and I started watching squid game on Netflix. I heard about that. Yes. I've actually, I started up watching episode one and honestly I didn't get into it and maybe I was tired. Autumn (2m 35s): So I just kind of put it aside. How are you guys liking it? Jesper (2m 39s): Oh, I love it. I think it's so good. I finally understand why this caught on so big that it had it's I think it's so good. I buy have to try it again eventually, but yeah, I'll have to keep that in mind. Maybe I was just off that night. I don't know. But I think one good thing that be Taken away from us, you know, for us as writers and authors, is that the writer who wrote squid game, he actually tried to sell the script for 10 years, 10 years. Think about how much success it has right now. And it took him 10 years to, to sell it. Jesper (3m 19s): And finally Netflix said, okay, fine. We'll buy it. And then it's a massive success. Autumn (3m 24s): That's crazy. Jesper (3m 27s): Yeah. And I think that's a good thing too, to keep in mind for us as authors, as Willy, when we write our books. And so on that, sometimes it just takes a long, long time and then success comes so Autumn (3m 38s): Assistance and belief in yourself and just keep trying until someone finally says yes, Jesper (3m 46s): Exactly. Autumn (3m 46s): Very nice. I like that. Oh, it's been good. I, I showed you pictures, but yes, my husband and I entered dog, went whitewater kayaking. It was so cute. Yeah. We've done some really crazy adventurous things with this music, current terrier. So he's, he's a little, he's supposed to be like Toto, but he's a little bit of a, he's a monster version of Toto. He's a little bit like five pounds bigger than Toto would be. But yeah, we went, we went kayaking as a family and it was just gorgeous fall weather. And that was right before it switched from being like 70 degree days to now. It's like in the fifties that I've got the wood stove going, but that's nice too. It feels like fall. Autumn (4m 27s): I can't complain. It's bit of kind of dice. I've been burning the candle at both ends though, because I, I, this is like my, why we're meeting and doing our recording. This is my afternoon slump time. And I'm trying with caffeine to get through it, but I am horrible. I get up at five and I am dead until about six o'clock and then my mind turns on them and I'm fine. And I find, I go through the afternoon and there's this slump. And then right around dinner time, I'll wake up and I'll be good to like 10. And I just can't change that rhythm in my body. It's been that way since I was a kid. And so yeah, I try, I keep myself awake right now. Jesper (5m 6s): Yeah. But, but I think actually, I don't know, but I have a theory that probably a lot of people have it like that because I know exactly what I mean. What do you mean? I can also be like in the morning, you know, getting up for something you like really tired and it's like, oh, it's early. And then you think, oh, then I'll, I'll be thinking to myself then, okay. Tonight, I'm going to go to bed early because I'm so tired and I need to catch up on sleep and so on. And I'll be tired throughout the day as well on those days. Not right today, but in general, I mean, if that happens right. But then once I get to dinner time and afterwards, then I start getting, I start waking up and it's just like, no, you don't want to go to bed. And then the next day, the whole cycle repeats itself. And it's just like, I don't know, but you're not the first one saying it. Jesper (5m 50s): And I have it the same way. I don't know if it's like something, probably not all EVERY everybody, but I think a lot of people, I like that they, they wake, my wife has the same thing she wakes up in the evening. I dunno. It's weird. Isn't it? Autumn (6m 6s): Maybe we are. But I'm also really good at, up until about one o'clock in the afternoon from like 6:00 AM to one o'clock. I am fine. I am full throttle, but it's like, I need an afternoon nap. I needed like at one 30 to two, I need like a little bit of a nap and I'd be fine. And maybe I should just put that in my schedule somewhere. And I would probably be so much better, but I'm usually pushing myself through it. Jesper (6m 30s): So if it goes quiet on UN, then the listener will know it's because you take a nap and then we should just, we just sit around here and quiet on the podcast, waiting for you to wake up and then we can continue. Autumn (6m 41s): I won't do that to you. I think we can make it through. Jesper (6m 45s): Okay. Okay. Narrator (6m 48s): A week on the internet with The Am Writing Fantasy Podcast, Jesper (6m 53s): I noticed this morning that we just about to reach 7,000 members in the Am, Writing fences, you Facebook group order. Autumn (7m 1s): That is so I knew we were getting close. It actually, it seemed like we hit 6,000 wait went from 5,000 to 6,000 really, really quick. The 6,000 to seven has been a little slower, but oh my gosh, that is so many people and so awesome. Jesper (7m 16s): Do you remember the early days Autumn? Autumn (7m 19s): I Remember when it was me making the group and then inviting a couple of Fantasy authors. I knew it. I hadn't even met you yet. Or maybe if I had, I didn't know you on Facebook yet. I only knew you on Twitter and yeah, it was just me and a couple of people. So yeah, I remember very much so. And it was me and some crickets. Jesper (7m 40s): Yeah. And it was called slate. The fences, the Facebook group. Autumn (7m 45s): That's right. I saw the, I actually still have the original logo, like the artwork I did for it. Way back when tucked away and like terrified. You're right. You're right. That'd be great. I will have to go and do that too. Especially if I happen to catch it at 7,000, I'll do a little celebration and like, oh my God, this was, this was when it was just me and like three other people, which I think are still members too. So that'll be, I will do that. Jesper (8m 13s): Yeah. That would be fun. I think for people to see what it used to look like. But the funny thing is also when you have this many members, because I had the, there was somebody posting a, and there's nothing wrong with this. I'm just mentioning it for the fun of it. So the people involved should not feel bad about it at all, but there was somebody posting whether or not it was allowed to ask for some better readers in the Am, Writing Fantasy, Facebook group. And then I posted a, or I replied to say that, yeah. As long as you don't ask people to sign up to an email list or you know that in, in, in other ways you are trying to, to get them on your list or earn money from it or anything like that, then it's fine.

Some plot twists can elevate a story into a masterpiece, whereas others utterly destroys everything that came before it.  In this humorous episode of the Am Writing Fantasy podcast, Autumn and Jesper compete to come up with the WORST five plot twists ever created.    Tune in for new episodes EVERY single Monday.  SUPPORT THE AM WRITING FANTASY PODCAST! Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review.  Join us at www.patreon.com/AmWritingFantasy. For as little as a dollar a month, you’ll get awesome rewards and keep the Am Writing Fantasy podcast going.  Read the full transcript below. (Please note that it's automatically generated and while the AI is super cool, it isn't perfect. There may be misspellings or incorrect words on occasion). Narrator (1s): You're listening to The Am writing Fantasy Podcast. In today's publishing landscape, you can reach fans all over the world. Query letters are a thing of the past. You don't even need a literary agent. There is nothing standing in the way of making a living from writing. Join two best selling authors who have self published more than 20 books between them now on to the show with your hosts, Autumn Birt and Jesper Schmidt. Jesper (30s): Hello. I'm Jesper. Autumn (31s): And I'm, Autumn. Jesper (33s): This is episode 149 of the Am Writing Fantasy podcast. And this is the first episode of the month. And we all know what that means. Don't we Autumn? Autumn (44s): This one's a challenge where we compete with each other to come up with the worst of something. So these are always kind of fun. Jesper (54s): These are my favorite ones and today's top 10 list is the WORST Plot Twists EVER. Autumn (1m 3s): Oh gosh. At least I'm not going to give you a plot twist and say what? That's not what I prepared for. So I'm ready. Like I just mentioned to you, I actually was, I thought we were recording this two days ago, so I've been ready for two days. So I've got a good list. I think it'll be fine. It was actually really fun. This one was feeling kind of, I don't know what to come up with. And so I did a little bit of reading and research and started thinking and I'm like, oh yeah, there's some fun ones in this slide. Yeah, I think so too. All mine movies, although I only have two movies, so ha I, I actually tried to stick with books as much as possible, but yeah, two movies snuck in there. Autumn (1m 49s): Okay. I know I picked movies on purpose because then I could play some audio clips and I liked those. Lets you do one of these days. I want you to plan ahead and send you some movie, some clips and tell you not to listen to them until you play them. But that's going to be kind of hard cause you have to test them somehow. No, no, that'll be fine. That's fine. I can just click and listen half a second just to see if it plays and then stop it. Okay. One of these days, one of these days I'll really be prepared. It'll be a miracle, but everybody's mind just like my God. Yes, it will be and prepare us. Autumn (2m 30s): That'd be fantastic. Just imagine. Anyway, how are things going for you? Jesper (2m 37s): I'm pretty busy these days. I just finished up the first draft of book two in our new Sherry's over this last week. So that was good. That's exciting. Yeah, but I'm taking a short break from writing now because I have so much preparation to do for my attempt to become a referee instructor. So that's basically, Yeah, it's taking up so much time. So yeah, just taking a bit of a break between book two and book three in our series a so that will probably be okay. But Autumn (3m 11s): I think that is fine since you were so much further ahead of me on the Writing department. I don't mind if you take a little writing break and let me catch up a bit. Jesper (3m 22s): No, no, indeed. That's fair enough. And yeah. And, and, and speaking about referee, actually, sometimes it's nice to have a referee at hand because yesterday my youngest son, he was playing a match and then we arrived there and then the coach came over and he said like, well, the referee who was supposed to be here has not shown up. So can you just refereed this match for me? I was like, oh my God. I mean, I don't have any of the clothes on, I don't have whistle. I don't, I didn't have anything because I was not going, I was just going to be spectator. Jesper (4m 2s): Right. But, but then of course, I mean, they, they don't have a referee and I was just standing there. So I said, okay, fine. But I don't have any of my things with me. So I'll have to shout instead of blowing the whistle and so on, because that's what you're going to get then. And, and we did then, but that why I'm mentioning it because I was really surprised because these are a 13 year old kits. Yeah. Right. And I'm a bit surprised about how their behavior, you know, that, that they can talk the way they do to adults. Autumn (4m 40s): Really. Jesper (4m 41s): Yeah. Because I don't get, I mean, they, the away team there, they were the players that their 13 year old kids. Right. But they were complaining a lot, like all the time, like, well they've, they felt like the free kick was the wrong way or to the wrong team, or it shouldn't have been a free kick and, or the throw in wasn't in the other direction, in their point of view. And it was just all kinds of things. They complained all the time. And then the one point, like during the second half, I, I started getting a bit annoyed by it. Right. So I, one of the guys, one of the kids then complained again. And I just said to him, like, be quiet and concentrate on playing soccer instead. Jesper (5m 24s): And then another teammate of his who was also walking by, he then said, well, we can't concentrate with your round. It took me a bit back. What did these are 13 year old kids talking like that to adults. What's going on? That Autumn (5m 39s): That's crazy. That's quite a backtalk man. Yeah. Jesper (5m 43s): But I didn't do that when I was 13 years old, no, to an adult? I mean, what's going on? Autumn (5m 50s): I don't know. I didn't raise kids so I can not even imagine. Jesper (5m 56s): No. But do you remember when were 13 year old? You wouldn't speak like that to an adult, you didn't even know, would you? Autumn (6m 1s): No, I usually didn't speak. I had my nose in a book and I was just like, I prefer a silence. I am mute. So no, I would never have spoken to a, an adult with a bit of a snap, not till I was at least 16 or 18 and being snarky. Jesper (6m 19s): Yeah, indeed. Yeah. I don't know. I think there's something going, because, and we talked about with some of the parents as well, not, not specifically to refereeing as such, but just in general. How, how the younger generations nowadays, they, they are very like egocentric, you know, they just focus on themselves and their life and they are the ones who are important. And I don't know. It's it's, I I'm, I D I don't like that kind of attitude, I must say. No, Autumn (6m 48s): No, I, I respect any parent trying to raise a kid these days. It's, it's, it's a challenge with internet and so many issues. And I just Instagram for kids that they won the launch. I mean, let's just see this hideous. Absolutely. He is. Jesper (7m 6s): Yeah, indeed. So, yeah. But how about you? You've been busy as well. I know Autumn (7m 14s): I've been working on a portfolio website and, but it was also my husband's birthday. So we went for a hike it's high it's like peak fall colors. The trees are like yellow, and they're just dropping these gentle golden leaves in the sunlight. If it's sunny, this is all for artificial lighting today. It's a kind of a gray day, but other days it's been sunny. It's just, just, you know, in the seventies. So maybe a flannel weather and just absolutely stunningly gorgeous. So I cannot complain. It's, it's always a shame to have to do to computer work on such lovely days, but at least I have a nice view of the forest. Autumn (7m 56s): As someone pointed out, I've got a nice view behind me. So, you know, I'm not suffering too badly that way, but yeah, it definitely seems to be a very busy fall, but it was wonderful to take a day off, to go hiking. And we're actually hoping for a bit of a float trip cause he worked as a whitewater raft guide for the summer. So we're hoping to go back and do the same trip together without paying customers just to have fun. And that'll be really kind of nice to get out. So yeah, I think so. Jesper (8m 28s): Very cool. And you're also busy editing. I know. Autumn (8m 31s): Yes. Yeah. That's what I was going to say. Thank you for jogging my memory. I'm so close. I wanted October one. I wanted to be done, but between that fantasy colony, I went to and a birthday celebrations and fueled their little life hip cups. I'm so close. But then I also remember we are, one of our characters is a dwarf and we created this whole speech pattern for how they speak and was like, oh, bugger that I had tried to do it a little bit, but now I've got to go back and double check. So it's like, I have like two, three chapters from the end and also have to go back and do a quick sweep of everywhere the door speaks. Autumn (9m 9s): And so it'll probably be at least another week. Yeah, probably another week, but I'm living with it because it's so nice to be like seeing Scribner and you like, you're this, this long we're hitting definitely over 40 chapters, by the way, to see this huge list of Barbados so close. So that does feel very, very good knowing this is the last one, but it's still like, I feel like this is the one that every time I think. All right. I'm oh shoot. I forgot about doing that. It is the never ending story. We're so close though. Jesper (9m 45s): We'll get there Narrator (9m 48s): A week on the internet with The Am Writing Fantasy Podcast. Jesper (9m 53s): So after launching our new critical reading initiative, two weeks back, you can go back and listen to episode 1 47 if you mis

Many authors have considered starting a YouTube channel. Autumn and Jesper tried for a couple of years - and failed. It's much harder than it looks. The questions is... will YouTube videos, focused on writing, actually help with fiction sales? The extremely successful YouTuber, Jenna Moreci, joins the Am Writing Fantasy podcast to offer advice and guidance. She knows everything there is to know about leveraging YouTube as a marketing tool for authors and writers.   Check out Jenna's books: The Savior’s Champion: https://books2read.com/tsc/  The Savior’s Sister: https://books2read.com/tss/    Tune in for new episodes EVERY single Monday.  SUPPORT THE AM WRITING FANTASY PODCAST! Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review.  Join us at www.patreon.com/AmWritingFantasy. For as little as a dollar a month, you’ll get awesome rewards and keep the Am Writing Fantasy podcast going.  Read the full transcript below. (Please note that it's automatically generated and while the AI is super cool, it isn't perfect. There may be misspellings or incorrect words on occasion). Narrator (1s): You're listening to The Am Writing Fantasy Podcast. In today's publishing landscape, you can reach fans all over the world. Query letters are a thing of the past. You don't even need an literary agent. There is nothing standing in the way of making a living from writing. Join two best selling authors who have self published more than 20 books between them now on to the show with your hosts, Autumn Birt and Jesper Schmidt. Jesper (30s): Hello, I'm Jesper. And this is episode 148 of the Am Writing Fantasy podcast, and Autumn is taking care of some editing today. And once you use a way I've secured an amazing guest speaker for you, because today I'm going to talk to the very talented Jenna Moreci so welcome to The Am Writing Fantasy Podcast. Jenna, Jenna (51s): Thank you so much for having me. I'm super happy to be here. Jesper (54s): Yeah, it's a pleasure talking to you. And I just want to say for those who might not know, Jenna is a number one best-selling author of dark fantasy, and she also runs a very successful YouTube channel. So I couldn't think of anyone better to bring onto the podcast today to talk about YouTube for Authors, Jenna. Okay. Jenna (1m 13s): Well thank you. I'm super honored. Yeah. I kind of fell into YouTube sort of accidentally, or maybe not accidentally, but I didn't expect it to get to this level. So yeah, I'm, I'm super down to talk about it and everything that I've learned along the way. Jesper (1m 31s): Yeah, because wait, well maybe for context, I could just start out by saying Autumn and NAI and even myself before I sort of teamed up with Adam, tried my luck. If you want to call it that and running a YouTube channel and my God is difficult. And then Autumn and I tried for a while as well, probably like two years. And then we transitioned into podcasting and this is going much better to this, but the YouTube stuff is difficult. So yeah, it's, it's tough getting traction unusual. So I'm very going to be very curious during this episode here to sort of get your thoughts on it and maybe some tips and tricks for people who might want to try on their own to see if they can get a YouTube channel going. Jenna (2m 19s): Absolutely. I mean, I've been doing this for almost a decade now, so I've been, I've been around for awhile. I've made all the mistakes and you know, that's what you got to deal with in order to become successful. You got to mess up a few times. So I, I hope I can answer all of your questions. Jesper (2m 37s): Yeah, probably, but I don't know. Maybe we could just start a bit more on the, you know, not low side. I don't, that's not what you call it, but slowly and maybe, maybe you can just, yeah, a bit more about yourself and maybe put a more, a few more words on, on what you just said about why you started the YouTube channel in the first place. Jenna (2m 56s): So I have been wanting to be, you know, author since I was six years old, it's literally my lifelong dream. And around the time I heard what a lot of people, you know, are told when they're young, that's authors don't make any money. It's not, it's not a viable career. You should try something else. And so I started off in finance. I have a degree in business with a concentration in finance and I got a job in finance. I was a stockbroker and I hated it. It was driving me crazy. I, I just, there was a moment where I realized I CA like I can't do this every day of my life. I have to at least try to become an author. Even if it's just a side gig. I just need to know that I gave it a shot. Jenna (3m 39s): So at that point I started writing my first book and I started trying to build a platform. I researched the industry and, and I'm really glad I got a degree in business because I learned all about the business side of things and being an entrepreneur and creating a platform. And I started like most authors do with blogging. And I had a blog for a few years. It, you know, I had about 200 followers and I hated it. I hated blogging. I mean, I liked to write, but I like to write fiction. I don't like to write about, you know, normal life stuff. So I was blogging for a while. I'm working on my book, try to figure out a way to expand my platform even more. And a lot of people had told me, you should do YouTube. Jenna (4m 21s): You're funny. You're sarcastic. You give really good writing advice. I was also doing critiques at the time. So people were like, you should create a Writing YouTube channel. And like most introverted Authors. I was like, no, like there's no way I am. Yeah. The only way I'm sitting in front of a camera and putting myself on the internet like that, sorry, fast forward a couple years, my then boyfriend now fiance suffered a very terrible accident. He fell two stories and broke his spine. And I had to put, you know, I quit my job. I put everything on hold to be as caregiver. And when you go through something like that, it kind of changes your perspective on life. And you know how our time here, isn't guaranteed. Jenna (5m 3s): And I had paused working on my book. I had paused the blog and I just thought, you know what, like as he started to get better and I started to build my platform again, I was like, you know what, I'm just going to try YouTube. Okay. Like what have I got to lose? If it doesn't work out, it doesn't work out. But I, you know, my, my time here is it permanent. So I got make an account and I started the YouTube channel, made a couple of crappy videos and started to get the hang of it. Yeah. I mean, that's how it always works. It always starts off with the bad videos, but I started getting the hang of it and I started off trying to be very professional and like, you know, like, you know, oh, I'm a dignified writer and that's just not really my style. Jenna (5m 46s): And no one was watching the channel. And so finally I said, you know what? No one's watching anyway. So I'm just going to be myself and I'm going to be goofy and I'm going to be custody. I'm just going to be my normal personality. And literally the very next video, my channel skyrocketed, I went from a hundred subscribers to nine to 9,000 subscribers in a week. And, and the rest is history. Now I'm at 260,000 subscribers. I really did not expect to be in this place. But yeah. And because of YouTube, I was able to make Writing and YouTube my full-time career. And I'm doing a whole lot better at this than I was as a stockbroker financially. I'm making triple what I made as a stockbroker. Jenna (6m 27s): So it all worked out. Jesper (6m 29s): All right. Yes. Do you think actually considering that it was quite some time ago since you started out, do you think there's a difference in starting, you know, running a YouTube channel today versus back when you did it, do you think, has that sort of, is it more saturated market had more difficult now? How do you see that? Jenna (6m 51s): Absolutely. I really got in at the perfect time when I started my channel, I looked for other writers on YouTube and I could only find two and their channels were very small and they were really young. And I was inspired by that because at the time I was like 28 and they were teenagers. And I was like, you know, what, if these teens have the courage to do this, that I have no, excuse, I'm a, I'm a grown woman. I have no excuse. And now after my channel kind of blew up, now, there are tons of writing channels on YouTube. So it's, I'm not going to lie. It's definitely harder to get started. Now, the key is, is to find a way to stand out and authenticity. Jenna (7m 34s): Like I said, I started off very professional, a very phony and I wasn't going anywhere. Right. And once I became my authentic self people, people really, you know, gravitate toward that. You know? So I think that if you want to stand out in this market, you really have to create quality content that is consistent and authentic because people want someone that they can relate to. And they feel like they actually know. Jesper (7m 60s): Yeah. Because I think reflecting back on the time that we spent on attempting to run a YouTube channel, I think once I reflect back to it nowadays, look, you know, couple of years since we transitioned into podcasting instead, I think I was very much focused at the point in time around probably thinking too much about how do you make a YouTube video that is engaging. And also because, you know, usually when people watch YouTube videos, at least as far as I've sort of in investigated or researched my way into, it's also about, you know, keeping people's attention in a YouTube videos. Jesper (8m 45s): It's very difficult. It's not like the same as a podcast here. We are talking to each other. People are probably doing the dishes while they're listening to this stuff. And you can sort of do other things, which is very nice. I podcasts a l

The best way to learn the craft of writing is to study the best of the best! Join us for our first critical reading episode where we take a look at the Hugo Award winning novel the Fifth Season by N. K. Jemisin. We take a look at what this story does right... and what had us scratching our heads. Warning: there are spoilers if you haven't read the book! Do you agree on our assessment of the book's strength and weaknesses? Leave messages in the comments or join the discussion thread in the Am Writing Fantasy Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/AmWritingFantasy/! And don't forget to signup for the Fantasy Map Masterclass to be held October 28. Register at https://ultimatefantasywritersguide.com/fantasy-map-masterclass/. Tune in for new episodes EVERY single Monday. SUPPORT THE AM WRITING FANTASY PODCAST! Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review.   Join us at www.patreon.com/AmWritingFantasy. For as little as a dollar a month, you’ll get awesome rewards and keep the Am Writing Fantasy podcast going.  Read the full transcript below. (Please note that it's automatically generated and while the AI is super cool, it isn't perfect. There may be misspellings or incorrect words on occasion). Narrator (1s): You're listening to The Am writing Fantasy Podcast in today's publishing landscape, you can reach fans all over the world. Query letters are a thing of the past. You don't even need an literary agent. There is nothing standing in the way of making a living from writing. Join two best selling authors who have self published more than 20 books between them now on to the show with your hosts, Autumn Birt and Jesper Schmidt. Jesper (30s): Hello. I'm Jesper. Autumn (31s): And I'm Autumn Jesper (33s): This is episode 147 of the Am Writing Fantasy podcast. And we've finally arrived at our new initiative. So once a month, we are reading a high profile fantasy book, and then we record an podcast episode about it. So this is our Critical Reading of the Fifth Season by NK Jemisin. Yes, I am looking forward to getting into the nitty gritty because I admit some of the aspects of this one or what kind of gave me the idea for the Critical Reading group when we were first talking about it. I also don't know if our listeners will be surprised at our, I think we both have a very similar takeaway from this book, but the Le there's some aspects of this one that are like, oh, that is so different. Jesper (1m 22s): It's amazing. I see why I want to Hugo for this is such a cool book and there's other aspects that well we'll get there all the way. Yes. You're already teasing it. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we got make people want to listen to like the heart of this line, which they should be excited. Yeah, I think it's, I think it's going to be an interesting conversation. And of course the, the idea is also here to see if we can try to draw out some things to learn in terms of either D these are good ideas or this kind of stuff you should probably avoid, you know, that kind of thing is what we're trying to draw out of the Critical Reading. Jesper (2m 3s): Exactly. And we'll, we'll get to it, but it's all matter of opinion, obviously. So yes, you can disagree with us. That's okay. It's just our opinions, but yeah, we'll, we'll get to, it sounds good. Well, if we're going to get to it, how are things going for you over in Denmark? Yeah. Well, I don't think I have wage that much to share this week. I'm just attempting to finish up the first draft of book two in our new series. So a couple of chapters to go and maybe I will be done by Friday. I hope don't tell me that. That that's my, well, you should be happy about that or very happy, but I was hoping to finish the edits on book one, which always seemed to be getting pushed back ever so slightly. Jesper (2m 50s): I'm so close. Maybe, maybe the end of next week, but you're going to beat me on the book too. I will catch up eventually. Autumn (3m 1s): Yeah. Yeah. So I, I don't think I have that much other to share this week. It's just been, you know, what do you call it? Like a head in the sand? No, not head in the sand. That's not good, but in the trailer, how do you say Jesper (3m 15s): Clouds? How did the clouds? Autumn (3m 19s): That was not what I was looking for, but nevertheless, I know, I know you were at some FANTASY con or something or Jesper (3m 25s): Yes, I went to a Vermont fantasy and sci-fi con up in Burlington and that was a lot of fun. I was there, there, it was definitely, I think, more, more than 50% Saifai but at the same time, it was so much fun. You would have, I thought of you several times because they had a R2D2 that was like truly moving. You could have mistaken it for the from the movies and the guy who could control it was so good. Like he didn't have to look down at the remote and the remote was so small. You didn't even really notice who was responsible. And this little thing would come up to your booth would be talking to you. And you're like, this is awesome. Jesper (4m 7s): And there was like Ghostbusters, there was a gorgeous Ghostbusters car and some plasma things. But one of the coolest things is definitely the star wars. And there was a lead the 501st Legion for the stormtroopers. So representatives there. And so there's these guys walking around and for full storm trooper armor. And the coolest thing is that they had to go upstairs to the conference room and I happened to be up there and I look out and I see one in the hallway and I'm pointing out to my husband. He ran out there and got a picture just as the elevator doors were closing. It looks so star wars. I'm like, that is the best picture ever. Jesper (4m 47s): So that one framed, it's just always, we're going to take a picture of a storm trooper. It should be in an elevator. It's just so cool. Autumn (4m 57s): I've always loved those uniforms. To be honest, I think I always also in the movies, you know, when it seems like they just look so cool. And, and sometimes I feel like it's a shame that they had just like Canon father in the movies, just don't troopers because they look so cool. Jesper (5m 11s): They look so cool. It's a very cool armor. And I was actually, I mean, I've been part of the SCA, the society for creative anachronism. I used to do that back in my twenties. And so I really enjoy that, but I didn't know there was a 501st Legion of storm troopers. I'm like, dude, you can go and dress up and be a storm trooper. That is cool. Autumn (5m 38s): Yeah. Well, I would rather be the Sith Lord, to be honest, Jesper (5m 42s): Probably I would want to go in as a Jedi master, but I do come from a FANTASY background. I think any Fantasy author should automatically get to be a Jedi or Sith master just it's in our resume. Autumn (5m 56s): See you, you pick the good guys and I automatically pick the bad guys. I don't know what the tails, Jesper (6m 3s): Well, we have to bounce each other's out. It's the force there's balance. Autumn (6m 8s): Oh, okay. Okay. Fair enough. Narrator (6m 12s): A week on the internet with The Am Writing Fantasy Podcast. Autumn (6m 18s): One last reminder here on the 28th of October, we are having our very first ever virtual Masterclass. Jesper (6m 28s): I can't wait. It's a Maps. I love fantasy maps. Autumn (6m 33s): Fantasy Maps. Yes. And if you can't make it in person, there will be a recording made available for you as well. So I don't know, I'm looking so much forward to just geeking out for an hour about fantasy maps. This is going to be so awesome. Jesper (6m 48s): It'll be almost better to on, so yeah, it'll be fantastic. Autumn (6m 54s): Yeah. We'll have a lot of fun and I will share some thoughts on map-making that you might not have considered before. So whether you want to learn something or if you just want to, well, kick out with us, we hope that you will join the Masterclass. It is a very inexpensive and it is conducted online. So you don't need to leave your house or anything like that to attend. Jesper (7m 18s): And the fact it's actually a really good deal. It's not only is it expensive, but it's a two for one, you get a second invitation to a second Masterclass as you have to be scheduled. So it's a two for one deal. It's a really good deal. Yeah. Autumn (7m 34s): Yeah. So there's a link in the show notes and you can find the registration page from there and yeah, we really hope to see you otherwise it'll just be you and me Autumm and I think talking, we can talk to ourselves about map-making, but it might be slightly boring. Jesper (7m 52s): Never boring. Autumn (7m 54s): That's true. That's true. Narrator (7m 59s): And onto today's topic. Autumn (8m 3s): Okay. So while we're doing, while we're doing Critical Reading here today, we, I think we better start out by saying that the purpose here is to learn from the books that we read, not to bast them or claim that anything is wrong with these books. Well, with this book in this case, and we should also say that the fifth season is a very popular book. It was awarded by the Hugo award for best novel in 2016. And this means that there's a lot of people loving this novel. So everything we say is personal opinions, and we fully understand that some people will disagree with that. Autumn (8m 42s): And that's okay. Jesper (8m 44s): Yes, exactly. And actually, I didn't realize this, but it's also has won the Sputnik award. It was nominated for Nebula award and it's a world FANTASY award best novel. This, this is a highly acclaimed story. So I think it'll be really interesting to look at it, but it's definitely that's. We want to learn why this is so popular and it's okay to, you know, find things that you don't like about it, but that's why it's a learning experience to find maybe the core features that you love and then, you know, learn from those and maybe learn what you want to stay away from. If you, especially, if people are leaving reviews or comm

Masterminds and masterclasses has been around for quiet a while - and for good reason. The best thing you can do for your author career is to invest in yourself. To learn and grow.  In this episode of the Am Writing Fantasy podcast, Autumn and Jesper share some of their personal experiences from being part of masterminds, as well as, thoughts on why they are so beneficial.   If you want to join the masterclass on fantasy map making, sign up here: https://ultimatefantasywritersguide.com/fantasy-map-masterclass/   Tune in for new episodes EVERY single Monday.  SUPPORT THE AM WRITING FANTASY PODCAST! Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review.  Join us at www.patreon.com/AmWritingFantasy. For as little as a dollar a month, you’ll get awesome rewards and keep the Am Writing Fantasy podcast going. Read the full transcript below. (Please note that it's automatically generated and while the AI is super cool, it isn't perfect. There may be misspellings or incorrect words on occasion). Narrator (1s): You're listening to the Am Writing Fantasy Podcast. In today's publishing landscape, you can reach fans all over the world. Query letters are a thing of the past. You don't even need a literary agent. There is nothing standing in the way of making a living from writing. Join two best selling authors who have self published more than 20 books between them now on to the show with your hosts, Autumn Birt and Jesper Schmidt. Jesper (29s): Hello, I'm Jesper. Autumn (31s): And I'm, Autumm. Jesper (33s): This is episode 146 of the Am Writing Fantasy podcast. And today's topic is Masterclasses and Masterminds for authors. And it's actually a topic that we've sort of been sitting on for quite a while. Isn't it? Autumm Autumn (49s): It is. We've had this idea and another big idea that kind of goes hand in hand with it. Why, why are we like Masterclasses or Willy's what the benefit of them are, especially mastermind groups as well. So this will be a fun one to jump into and I'm looking forward to hearing a reader and listener. I should say reactions because I would love to know what their take is on Masterclasses and all of these things that are out there to learn. Jesper (1m 16s): Yeah. Yeah. And of course we have a bit of a culture. W what is it called? Autumn (1m 20s): Altera photos. Yes. Jesper (1m 22s): That's what I was trying to say yes. With this one, but that will become clear Indian, but I think most people can probably guess it already now Autumn (1m 31s): Probably, but we'll see if they're right. Let them consider that we could pull twist ending. You never know. Jesper (1m 39s): Yeah, no, no, that's right. I've had a bit of a cipher weekend this last weekend. Yeah. Autumn (1m 48s): Well, I know because he, over the weekend you had a lot of refereeing and things going on. Jesper (1m 52s): I did, yes, I did do that. I refereed three matches in the weekend, but then Sunday evening, I, I went to watch the new Dune movie in the theater, Autumn (2m 3s): Right? Jesper (2m 4s): Yes. And then I also started watching a foundation on apple TV plus. Which is also sci-fi. Autumn (2m 11s): Yeah. That is a huge sci-fi weekend. How are they, how is Dune? Jesper (2m 18s): Actually, I think, I think for once they have actively succeeded in making a Dune movie, because I think it works. They they've sort of slowed down the pace. It even says in the, in the opening credits. So it's not a spoiler. I won't spoil anything here, but assessing the opening credits part one. So it's only going to be the part of the, part of the doom story that they're going to show in this movie. And it definitely ends as well. That it's very clear that there needs to become be more movies. I don't know how many, but, but this one actually works for once. I mean, they've tried to make doom before and failed, I think, but, but this one was good and the end, the cinematography is it's amazing. Jesper (3m 2s): Oh, nice looking. Autumn (3m 5s): Excellent. I'm going to have to put that one on my list of, you know, date nights with my husband. If I can find it playing anywhere near us, where we're still, Jesper (3m 14s): You should go and what's it for sure. That'd be. And, and also if anybody of the listeners, I don't know, I don't think you have apple plus two TV Autumm, but if any of our listeners do then what's foundation, as well as it goes, it has a very strong dune vibe to it. And, you know, in terms of cinema photography, it looks amazing. And it's so fun. I only watched the first episode I should say, but I actually quite liked it. I was pretty good. So yeah, a lot of scifi this weekend for me, Autumn (3m 49s): Just trying to get out of this world a little bit. Orange juice. Very cool. I will have to go look this up. I'm good. I actually started a Netflix series that kind of goes along with some of the murder mysteries. You and I have been reading, call it high sixties, so, and that's on Netflix. So if you happen to see it, it's actually, it's fun because it takes part. I think the ship is probably the 1920s era, the roaring twenties. And so it's got all that gorgeous styling and the art deco, which is one of my favorite design times. So just gorgeous little elements. And it's a feisty young heroine who, you know, they ship a ship's officer who definitely is kind of interested. Autumn (4m 34s): And she was just kind of batting them off as they did in the roaring twenties. Just like get serious. There's a murder we're trying to solve. So it's really kind of cute and good acting. I think that's actually, it might be Spanish based, but it's, it's really fun. But besides that, life's been quiet literally in a way, because you know, you know that I'm partially deaf and I've picked up a hearing aid this summer, but I finally decided it's I love hearing, but it's incredibly uncomfortable. I like, while we're podcasting, I can't have anything over my ear, like while I have it on. So there's this surgery that I've been contemplating, but I do risky surgeries. Autumn (5m 18s): I'd had PRK done on my eyes so that I could go from like seeing three inches to 2020, it was a miracle. I cannot believe that modern science can do such things. And there's something very similar for my ear. And I'm like all for it, except for one thing, there's the nerve that goes for your taste. Buds goes right over where they need to, you know, do their little finagling. And so then she adds, you know, me, I'm a foodie. So, you know, I'm a foodie. I love food. I was like one of my joys in life. If I can't drink tea, you know, I might as well not get up for the day. Well, just exposing this nerve to light can mess it up. And they're like, usually it's three days. Autumn (5m 59s): Sometimes it's a week. Sometimes it's a couple of weeks in 5% of the cases, it is a term sauce possibly, you know, the rest of your life injury. I'm like 5%. So that's one out of 20 people. This is just the doctor. He's like I said, 5% of my patients have this long-term issue. So one out of 20 people walk out of that door and they're never going to taste quite right again, I'm like, that's like saying I don't like my front door and I could get it fixed and have it moved or changed my front door. But there's a 5% chance that you're going to destroy the entire house. I don't know if it's, so I've been sitting here like flipping coins going. Autumn (6m 43s): I trying to think of an analogy going, you know, if I, if I had a scratch on my front door and it really drove me nuts and I hated seeing it every day, what I risked destroying the entire house, just to have it fixed should probably just suck up the hearing aid, but hurts. It really hurts, Jesper (7m 2s): But it isn't a hearing aid, also something about getting used to it, that wearing it enough and getting used to it. Autumn (7m 7s): I was hoping so, but it's actually the longer I wear it, the worst it's getting, I have, it turns out I have a tiny ear canal. Of course it's got all these problems, but so it actually wearing, it makes it feel like you have a major sinus infection. That's just like clogging your ear canal. So it was like when I pull it out, if I wanted to pay a lot of money. So maybe if I save up a couple 10, 15,000, it's really expensive. Very, very expensive. So yeah, I'm on the fence. If any listener out there or someone reading the transcripts, if you cannot listen, has any suggestions, please let me know, because I am on the fence with this one leading towards sucking it up and not getting it. Autumn (7m 54s): But maybe if someone has had a state, but it's got a stupid doc to me, if anyone else has had that and they've had a success, you know, let me know. I need some advice. Jesper (8m 6s): All right. Well, that's a call for the listeners. I don't think I can help months on that one. Autumn (8m 10s): Okay. Fair enough. You don't have hearing problems. Jesper (8m 15s): No, probably other things, but not hearing. Okay. Autumn (8m 18s): Fair enough. Narrator (8m 22s): A week on the internet with The Am Writing Fantasy Podcast Jesper (8m 27s): This week, I was thinking to keep this section sort of short and sweet by just mentioning that we had a soon call with Jason, our Facebook group moderator last week, and Luke was supposed to be there too. He's the other moderator of the group, but unfortunately he couldn't make it, but it was so great talking to Jason, But, but the reason I'm bringing it up is basically because the Am Writing fences, your Facebook group has really come a long way since we started. Autumn (8m 55s): Oh my gosh. As I told Jason, I remember, I remember when it was me and I was inviting a couple of Fantasy authors. I knew to join it. So if he did tell me I should get a pin for Jesper (9m 6s): Being an inaugural member, but yes, it's not two people anymore. It's almost 7,000. It's a crazy, yeah. We were sort of joking if we would make it to 10,000 before the end of this year, b

Have you ever opened a fantasy book, looked at the map, and wondered what the author was thinking? Jesper and Autumn pull out their favorite worst fantasy maps and a few map pet-peeves in this humorous episode of the Am Writing Fantasy podcast. Oh, plus a ghost story and more! Join our Fantasy Map Masterclass at https://ultimatefantasywritersguide.com/fantasy-map-masterclass/! All maps mentioned were chosen in good humor and jest and reflect personal opinions that aren't meant to be mean! Check out some of the maps we talk: Jesper's maps— Wheel of Time: https://casapittura.blogspot.com/2018/08/the-wheel-of-time-map.html Warbreaker: https://www.brandonsanderson.com/annotation-warbreaker-map/ Warhammer: https://www.reddit.com/r/totalwar/comments/ft00oy/made_the_full_warhammer_map_including_the_east/  Eragon: https://www.etsy.com/dk-en/listing/485637759/map-of-alagaesia-eragon-mapchristopher Kushiel-world map: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/118923246398203552/ Autumn's maps— Game of Thrones: https://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/File:WorldofIceandFire.png Shannara: https://www.fantasybookreview.co.uk/blog/2012/05/29/new-shannara-map-of-the-four-lands/ Terry Goodkind: http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/sot/images/4/45/New_world_map.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20100308012633 Anne Bishop: https://www.annebishop.com/s.tir.alainn.map.html ______________ Tune in for new episodes EVERY single Monday.   SUPPORT THE AM WRITING FANTASY PODCAST! Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review.   Join us at www.patreon.com/AmWritingFantasy. For as little as a dollar a month, you’ll get awesome rewards and keep the Am Writing Fantasy podcast going.  Read the full transcript below. (Please note that it's automatically generated and while the AI is super cool, it isn't perfect. There may be misspellings or incorrect words on occasion). Narrator (2s): You're listening to The Am writing Fantasy Podcast. In today's publishing landscape, you can reach fans all over the world. Query letters are a thing of the past. You don't even need an literary agent. There is nothing standing in the way of making a living from writing. Join two best selling authors who have self published more than 20 books between them now on to the show with your hosts, Autumn Birt and Jesper Schmidt. Jesper (30s): Hello, I'm Jesper. Autumn (32s): And I'm, Autumn. Jesper (34s): This is episode 145 of the Am Writing Fantasy podcast. And we are back with one of our top 10 episodes. And this time we'll each share five fantasy maps that are the worst, and we'll see who can well, basically create the best worst list again. Autumn (53s): And this was an interesting challenge to be describing Maps well on a podcast. So the YouTube listener, I think everyone just go check the show notes. We're going to have a links to some of the Maps we're talking about, but it'll be, yeah, we'll do our best, but I think we can be descriptive enough of what drove us crazy about the map in question. Jesper (1m 16s): Yeah. And we'll, we'll try, we'll try. At least we have 144 episodes behind us. So hopefully we should be able to think about this being an audio medium. Autumn (1m 26s): I know. Compared to some podcasts we're like middle-aged or something we're getting into the here. Jesper (1m 35s): Yeah. Yeah. That, that, when you said that, that reminded me of the, some of the comments on Facebook, around the episode we did about marketing to different generations. And Jason commented on one of the, on that post about listening to that episode, made him feel really old. And I just had to tell him like me too. Autumn (1m 59s): Yeah. When you're aged generation is next to the top, you're like, Ooh, that happened. Jesper (2m 5s): Yeah. Autumn (2m 6s): That's never fun. Jesper (2m 8s): No, no, it's not. Autumn (2m 11s): So how are things over in Denmark though? Jesper (2m 15s): Well, yeah, so this last week has been one of those where it actually started out quite well, but then it just went downhill from there. Yeah. I mean the good news was that I went to that interview to become a referee instructor that I mentioned a couple of episodes back. And then the national football association actually came back and confirmed that I was selected. That was a good start to the week. That is awesome. Of course, I, I still have an exam to pass and I have like tons of homework I do need to do in preparation as well, learning like the laws of the game by heart and interesting stuff like that. Jesper (2m 58s): But it does look like this is going to happen. So I'm pretty excited about that. It's Autumn (3m 2s): Very exciting. Jesper (3m 5s): Yeah. But then it went downhill from day, as I said, you know, so first the party who was selling the house that we were negotiating for, they decided that they didn't want to sell anyway. Oh my God. So I just said that we're going to pull the house off the market. So it was just like a colossal waste of our time, but also money of course, because we actually paid a building inspector to go out and, and look at the house and go through it with us. Right. So totally waste of time and money. But I really think that this, these people selling the house, I think they were just in it for the money. You know, they tried to see if they could sell the house with a huge profit. Jesper (3m 47s): And then when it turned out that they couldn't because when we placed our bit of wee bit far less than what they wanted, and then they decided, well, apparently we can't get this much money for the house. So then we're just not going to sell it. But I, I don't know. I just feel, of course it's, it's there. Right? They, they can do that as they please, but it's really annoying. Autumn (4m 8s): Yeah. You know, that's not the way that, you know, test your house market by like, you know, taking unsuspecting people who are sincerely interested in buying a house and you're like toying with them, you know, it's that little rude. Jesper (4m 23s): Yeah. I dunno. It, it also rubbed me the wrong way to that way of doing that, but, oh, well, what are you going to do? There's nothing we can do about it, but at least now we know it's not going to be that house. So we'll keep looking and searching and figuring out what to do. But what was worse than that was that our youngest son was also tested positive for Corona. Yeah. We talked a bit about it offline already. Autumm yeah. So, but yeah, he's been in self isolation since the beginning of the week with me sort of attending to him. I'm just a room service guy now. Autumn (5m 4s): Yeah. Jesper (5m 5s): Yeah. I think that pot actually, he quite like, so he's like, I would like something to eat and then it was just like me coming with a tray with something, food for him and stuff. So that part, I think he's, he likes, but he's doing all right after the circumstances and he's already starting to feel better and he's, what's like 200 million hours of TV, so we'll see how it goes. But at least I've not got any symptoms yet, even though I'm in close proximity with him, but I just fingers crossed that it'll stay like that. Of course. Autumn (5m 39s): Yeah. So near fully vaccinated. So that's, if you get it, the reason you are vaccinated, that is that it should be, hopefully be mild. So knock on wood that you'll be, everyone will stay healthy and he'll get better. Very soon. I have to admit when I was a teenager, tens, a little young, but when I was a teenager, I think I would have adored being locked in my room with a whole bunch of books and some music kid comic books and been like, yes, just bring me food and T I'll be fine. Just leave me in here for a month. Yeah. Jesper (6m 9s): I think like a 16, 17, 18 year old, you know, they would love that kind of thing I would to have at that age. But Tim, no. Autumn (6m 19s): Yeah, yeah. I was always a drawl or so was all my Crans were with me and some markers. I probably might be fine in there for awhile. Jesper (6m 27s): Yeah. Yeah. True. But yeah, I mean, due to all of these things, I haven't really written much this last week, so I'm not too happy about that, but what can you do that? Autumn (6m 36s): Yeah. We'll get back on track. It's fine. Life happens. Jesper (6m 41s): And how about you? Autumn (6m 42s): Oh, I already hinted. I had a bit of a story. So this is one that there's a lot going on in my life right now. Like everything from a sick dog that has kept me up and I'm hoping I can stay coherent for the entire podcast because I'm unlike, it's like, you know, having a baby every hour and a half the dogs go out. So I'm so tired. This was day four in a row. Parents. I don't know how you do it. I really don't know how you're doing, but I can handle a dog for about a week. And then I'm like, oh, please just get better. But I had an interesting thing that I had to share with you in the listeners that happened as you know, it was just down at my parents' house and that was, oh, it was so much fun. It was great being a kid again and getting to be spoiled with my parents taking me out. Autumn (7m 27s): But the day I went to leave was actually my brother's birthday. And as you know, my brother passed away in 2000. So 21 years ago, he actually would have been 51. And my parents and I were sitting around there's a little island in the kitchen and I'm like, yeah, you know, today was, would have been his birthday. Right. And they're like, yeah, yeah. And my mom said, well, you know, it's funny. It's, you know, it's like, he's there because I'm his youngest son and my one cousin or the spitting image of my brother and all the way down to his voice. And just as my mom was saying that, and my dad was agreeing the two drop-down lights above our head pop like really loud and blue, but they didn't just blow. Autumn (8m 9s): They blew the entire circuit in the kitchen and this is a newish house, you know, it's less than a 10 years old. They've just built it. And so like, w

You've researched how to ride a horse, maybe how to shoot a bow or what that fiddly bit on a sword hilt is really called, but have you considered how combatants actually FIGHT? Or how long it takes a bruise to heal... and what exactly is the impact of adrenaline post fight? Join Autumn and special guest Carla Hoch from FightWrite as they tease apart what so many authors get wrong about fight scenes, how to write a great fight scene, what Wonder Woman got wrong, and why dragon smoke is actually white (not black!). Visit FightWrite at www.fightwrite.net and follow Carla on Instagram at www.instagram.com/carla.c.hoch/. Tune in for new episodes EVERY single Monday.   SUPPORT THE AM WRITING FANTASY PODCAST! Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review.   Join us at www.patreon.com/AmWritingFantasy. For as little as a dollar a month, you’ll get awesome rewards and keep the Am Writing Fantasy podcast going.  Read the full transcript below. (Please note that it's automatically generated and while the AI is super cool, it isn't perfect. There may be misspellings or incorrect words on occasion). Narrator (2s): You're listening to the Am Writing Fantasy podcast in today's publishing landscape, you can reach fans all over the world. Query letters are a thing of the past. You don't even need a literary agent. There is nothing standing in the way of making a living from writing two best selling authors who have self published more than 20 books between them now on to the show with your hosts, Autumn Birt and Jesper Schmidt. Autumm (30s): Hello, I'm Autumn. And this is episode 144 of the am writing fantasy podcast. And today Jesper is on break. And instead I have a very special guest with us. So Carla, who is the host of the FightWrite Podcast. Plus you have a website and classes and so much more. So I want you to introduce yourself, Carla (55s): Okay. I am Carla Hoke and I am the purveyor, I guess that's the word for the fight? Yeah, the fight right brand. I have the website fight, right? If I G H T w R I T e.net, and it's kind of a one-stop shop for everything that has to do with fight, right? Which helps writers write fight scenes action, and violence. And I have a book with writer's digest and it is fight right. How to write believable fight scene. And I have class with a writer's digest university. That's always in their library and hopefully we'll have more in the fall. Oh, I guess it is fall. We'll have, Autumm (1m 35s): That's fantastic. This year, Carla (1m 36s): I'm telling you this year has been slow and fast at the same time. It's either in park or it's in full speed ahead, right? Exactly. Autumm (1m 47s): Yeah. And in some ways, days can be, have elements of both. And so I'm not sure where we are. Carla (1m 55s): Yeah. Well, you know, they say that the days are long, but the years are short. Oh, Autumm (2m 1s): It's very, very true. Well, that is awesome. I remember, I think your website has actually won something for reader writer's digest too. Like best law Carla (2m 12s): It has. So it has it's it's in there top 100 websites for writers and they have different categories. And I think mine was in the category of writers helps writers. So three years and I have won a brand award to twice with can Christian authors network. Autumm (2m 35s): That's so brilliant installations. Yeah, that is fantastic. And so I do want to give a shout out because it was actually the secret of how we met is a joint listener. Stephen recommended that I see if you wanted to come on the am writing fantasy podcast because he thought we would just be cool. It's like dream diner duo. Oh yeah. Big shout out to Steven as a thank you for introducing us and making this podcast happen. Carla (3m 6s): And what's his last name? Autumm (3m 7s): Guglich. Carla (3m 10s): Okay. Autumm (3m 12s): All right. Well, I, you have quite the background in fighting yourself. So I Think that is really interesting. So this came about because you're also a writer end of fighter. Carla (3m 27s): Yeah. It, well, it came about because I was a writer and this is a classic case of the days being long, but the years being short, because it seems like I just kind of started, but it's, it's been like 10 years, 10 years since I started martial arts. I can't believe that, but it all started because I was writing a work that had fight scenes in it and I didn't know how to fight. And so I, my kids, I had my kids in TaeKwonDo. I think they were in like first grade and yeah, kindergarten, first grade. And there was a self-defense class that was at the TaeKwonDo studio. And I went to a couple of classes. I thought, you know, how much really do I need to know one or two classes, surely I'll know everything I need to know to write fight scenes. Carla (4m 12s): And I got in there and I kind of loved it. And it just, it just kinda snowballed from there. And the strange thing is I was asked in a podcast one time, and this was the hardest question I've ever been asked. He was like, what's the weirdest thing that's ever happened to you? And I'm like, where do, where do I even start with that? But one of the weird things, my life tends to backpedal. Like it's, you know, circular, like I taught at a high school that was the Raiders and then moved to a whole new city, whole, whole new state and the Raiders, you know? And it's like this person I knew. And then boom, this person I knew with the same name, coaches, exact same names. Carla (4m 53s): And I'm like, I don't, I'm not planning this, but I went to a writer's conference and I had the work with me that I started taking self-defense for the whole reason. I started wanting to know how to learn fight scene was this particular work. And I went to a writer's conference and I presented it to a man named Steve lobby, who I did not know. I had no idea who he was. It turned out he was Steve lobby of the Steve blobby agency. He was the head of a, a writer's agency. And I presented it to him and he, he didn't really, he, he didn't like it, you know, which I'm okay with that. And he said, I don't like the work. Carla (5m 33s): It's not right for me, but I do like you, so let's keep in touch. And so year after year after year, we would see each other. If you don't go to writers, conferences, writers, I highly suggest it because it's, it's the adult version of camp. You see the same people. It is, you see the same people year after year after year. And so I kept up with him and anytime we saw each other to writer's conference, we would make time to kind of sit and chat. Cause we get along really well. And when I wrote the book, I got in touch with him and I was like, you know, what would you like to read this book? He's I, of course I'd like to read it. So he read it. And he said, because he also has an imprint of small house publishing for craft books. Carla (6m 14s): And he goes, I do love this book. He goes, I don't have it in my budget right now. And I'm like, well, you know what? I, I sent it to writer's digest and he goes, you did what? I said, I sent it to writer's digest. And he started laughing and he was like, okay girl. He said, you go for it. And he goes, what he said, you know, just be patient, it'll take about six weeks for them to get back to you. And if you haven't heard from him by then, then just, you know, reach out. And I said, I'll do that. And it was not six weeks. It was six days. Oh my gosh, I know miraculous. And so I sent him a message back and I said, would you be interested in representing a writer's digest author? And he said, may be. And so the first person, I really pitched this book to the whole reason I started writing fight scenes is now my editor. Carla (7m 3s): I know my agent for a book about writing fight scenes. So circle Autumm (7m 8s): Really good kismet there. That is really Carla (7m 13s): Is, it really is writers don't give up writing honestly is just a war of attrition. It's about successful authors. Aren't necessarily the best writers. I mean, come on. We've we've all read some books. They were like, wow. I mean, I've read books. I'm like, how is this person got this book out? And I don't have this book out, but it really is. It's the difference in who, who gave up and who didn't. I was a high school teacher and a track coach for awhile. And there was a psycho psychological study done that when two runners are running side by side, after three strides, one of them will probably give up, oh. So I used to coach my runners and say three full strides and at time and time again, and I think that's how it is with writers. Carla (7m 59s): Keep the strides. Somebody is going to give up and you're going to be the one left standing. So just, just don't give up, keep pushing. Autumm (8m 7s): I love that. And I think that is so true because it's, I know I've read recently that it's 10 years and 1 million words before you can really start seeing your career take off. Carla (8m 17s): And Autumm (8m 19s): That's a long time I would lose a lot of authors, one or two books, and that's their feeling. They're feeling it. Then they want to see something then, but to really come into your own 10 years in your words, Carla (8m 33s): Right. And, and the average book and its lifetime in its lifetime, a published book only sells 2000 copies in its lifetime. Wow. So if you look and you think, okay, I've self published this book, or I've traditionally published this book and you know, I've only sold a hundred books this first year. Well, yeah, that's right. I worked, you know, people who are rich from writing, first of all are probably lying or, or they have, you know, a ton of books or they are just kind of, you know, this kind of lightning in a bottle kind of situation, you know, the JK Rawlings, you know, that just hit it big. Carla (9m 15s): So if, if you, you know, if you're struggling, if you're not selling as many as you think you should sell, if you're like, we

Sure, you can target ads by keywords, age, and gender... but have you ever thought about what all that means? Not every generation is the same or will respond to the same tactics! In this week's episode, we take a look at the different trends of Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z. Where do they hang out online? What are their spending habits? What key phrases will get them to buy your book... or cause them to run away in disgust? You might be surprised at which generation is the most ready to buy your book, what it takes to actually hook Gen X... or why KU might be the best fit if you write YA! Tune in for new episodes EVERY single Monday.   SUPPORT THE AM WRITING FANTASY PODCAST! Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review.   Join us at www.patreon.com/AmWritingFantasy. For as little as a dollar a month, you’ll get awesome rewards and keep the Am Writing Fantasy podcast going.  Read the full transcript below. (Please note that it's automatically generated and while the AI is super cool, it isn't perfect. There may be misspellings or incorrect words on occasion). Narrator (1s): You're listening to the Am Writing Fantasy podcast. In today's publishing landscape, you can reach fans all over the world. Query letters are a thing of the past. You don't even need an literary agent. There is nothing standing in the way of making a living from writing. Join two best selling authors who have self published more than 20 books between them now on to the show with your hosts, Autumn Birt and Jesper Schmidt. Jesper (30s): Hello, I am Jesper Autumn (32s): and I'm Autumn. Jesper (35s): This is episode 143 of the Am Writing Fantasy podcast. And this is a bit of a different topic that I actually haven't seen covered anywhere else. And Autumn, you wrote this a really interesting block series for our patron supporters. So perhaps I can just hand it over to you to share what we're talking about here today. Autumn (60s): So you want me to do all the work again? I see how it is. Well, Jesper (1m 6s): I prefer it that way. Autumn (1m 8s): Well, you've been busy, so that's fair enough. But yeah, I don't even, honestly, I don't even know where this idea came from, but there was at some point I was like, what would it be interesting to look at marketing book marketing by generation? Like, is it different to market, to boomers? Should you be marketing your books to boomers? Cause you know, when you do your Facebook ads, it almost, almost all the trainings, like say two 60 and under, well, why are boomers not buying books on Facebook? Are they not on Facebook? So I'm always curious. And you know, I like to question the status quo and see, well, why does it work this way? So I wrote a series of four Patreon posts looking at marketing to boomers, marketing to gen X, go gen X marketing to millennials and gen Z. Autumn (1m 57s): So I was actually really interesting and it did influence all of my thoughts on marketing. So it'll be really fun to dig into that today, Jesper (2m 6s): For sure. It should be a quite interesting and yeah, maybe we'll learn some stuff that we need to think about here. Autumn (2m 16s): No, I, I, I have to admit that it made me even rethink some of the stuff I'm doing my entrepreneurial sphere in my own life. And I think there is one generation that is like the ideal of who you should be marketing to. And I'm like, oh, I want to try this. So we'll have to get there. Jesper (2m 38s): Wow. Nice. Yes. Autumn (2m 41s): So anyway, how are things for you over in Denmark? Jesper (2m 47s): Well, as you said, pretty busy, I would say. And we also really still struggling with the potty who selling the house that we put in an offer for still Autumn (2m 60s): No definite there. Jesper (3m 4s): Well, we are pretty far from each other when it comes to the price at the moment, we probably have a gap like 45, 50,000 us dollars between us at the moment, which is quite a lot. And if I'm honest, I'm not really sure that we are going to be able to agree. Yeah, we did increase our offer with around 17,000 us dollars, but because the house needs a new roof, which will be very expensive to fix. Like I, like I mentioned in a podcast episode, a couple of weeks back, we have more or less offered now as much as we're willing to offer. Jesper (3m 51s): And if we offer more, we basically risk losing too much money if we won one day, want to sell the house again. So I think with the increased offer, we made, honestly, we're probably, if we want to sell the house again, we're probably going to lose around 50,000 us dollars the day we sell the house. And I don't like that, of course, but it's sort of within F acceptable acceptable range. I mean, we can live with that, but it cannot be any more than that. Right. And, and still, if I didn't look at that, then the selling party still needed to drop their price around 45,000 us dollars to meet us, which I don't think that'll happen to be honest, Autumn (4m 37s): Too bad. Cause I know you guys liked that one, so that's really unfortunate. Maybe they'll change their mind. You know, you're going, we're going into winter. And most people, most houses don't sell in winter. I know in the United States. So I can't imagine that they're selling like hotcakes in Denmark. So maybe they'll rethink that. Jesper (4m 57s): Yeah, usually, usually there's no problem selling houses in the winter here in Denmark that does, it goes year round. But I did talk to the real estate agent today and you know that the selling parties real estate agent, because she called me to sort of ask how things were going and what we were thinking. And I was sort of explaining to her like, you know, you're asking way too much money. And the fact that you had to put in a new roof, you need to account for that in the price, which you're not doing. And then I also told her, you know, find if he doesn't want to drop the price, but at the end of the day, the next buying party, if it's not going to be us, but the next party will have the same problem as we have now. Jesper (5m 40s): So you're not going to sell the house. If you keep insisting on chatting this much for it, because other people will also figure out that, okay, we need to put in a new roof, that's very expensive. We want a price reduction because of it. So you're going to end up in the same place next time. And he's been, they've had it for sale for about six months now. Right. So it's also about time that you start questioning. Maybe your price is too high after six months and you still haven't sold it. Yes. Autumn (6m 8s): Especially in the current. Jesper (6m 13s): Yeah. W w we'll see how it goes. But honestly, I, I don't know. Yeah. So we will, we've submitted the, a slight increase in our offer. And then also said in the email that this is our last offer. So we're not gonna increase the price any more than this. So either you take it off or that's Autumn (6m 31s): It, well, I'll keep my fingers crossed. We'll see what they say. Jesper (6m 35s): Yeah. I think it'll be a no, but, but maybe who knows, maybe they changed their mind in, in four or five months when they still haven't sold it. And maybe they'll come back and say, okay, are you still interested? Who knows? You know, Autumn (6m 46s): Maybe you'll find the perfect house coming up. I know you guys are so busy, so it's hard to look for houses at the same time, but you never know. You might find something else you like even more. Jesper (6m 58s): Yeah. Yeah. Who knows, but you're also trying to work out what to do and what not. So I know you are busy as well. Autumn. Autumn (7m 4s): Yeah. Yeah. Just a, I think it's so funny because we were just joking. I mean, it looks like I'm in the middle. It's like midnight here that we're somehow on the same continent, but it's only three in the afternoon and it is just like gray and raining. We got the fall rains coming into Vermont. But yeah, our housing where we're kind of wanting to leave here around November, you know, my husband spent all summer working in Maine. He's got some good job offers up that way. So we're kind of up in the air trying to look around too. But the housing market, the rental apartment market and the U S is just insane. So we're like, well, you can want to change something, but sometimes it's not as easy as you expected. So I don't know why we're going to end up doing where we'll end up being. Autumn (7m 47s): But I know the next, I know the upcoming podcast will be slightly out of order, but I am going to go see my parents and that'll be fun. So I know one of our episodes we'll be recording soon. I'll have a whole different backdrop and maybe some overhead lighting. I won't look like I'm coming from like, Jesper (8m 6s): Just for a change Autumn (8m 7s): For a change just to, you know, make things exciting and keep my life exciting. It'll be good. Jesper (8m 13s): Oh yeah. Sounds like a good idea. Okay. Let's move on here Narrator (8m 19s): A week on the internet with the Am Writing Fantasy podcast. Jesper (8m 25s): So the most important thing first here, Autumn. Okay. Are you ready? Oh, I'm going to spring something on you. Autumn (8m 34s): I'm taking a deep breath. Okay. I'm ready. Jesper (8m 39s): So one of the YouTube comments on episode 141, that was the one where we went head to head trying to come up with the worst superpowers ever. But one of the comments was from Zayed and he actually declared a winner. Did you notice that? Autumn (8m 54s): I think I did... Jesper (8m 56s): See that one because it made me rather happy. You want to guess who he thought was the winner or him, Autumn (9m 5s): If it's the same post well, no, that's right. I saw a Facebook comment, not a YouTube one. Shoot. So you better not tell me he thought you were the winner. Jesper (9m 15s): Of course. Otherwise. Why would I bring it up? Otherwise I would just have ignored it Autumn (9m 22s): Really? I swear on Facebook

The Internet is filled with advice for how to become a better writer. Some are good, others not so much.  In this episode of the Am Writing Fantasy podcast, Autumn and Jesper share the best of them and try their hardest to agree on one winning tip. It's not as easy as it might sound.  Tune in for new episodes EVERY single Monday.  SUPPORT THE AM WRITING FANTASY PODCAST! Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review.  Join us at www.patreon.com/AmWritingFantasy. For as little as a dollar a month, you’ll get awesome rewards and keep the Am Writing Fantasy podcast going. Read the full transcript below. (Please note that it's automatically generated and while the AI is super cool, it isn't perfect. There may be misspellings or incorrect words on occasion). Narrator (1s): You're listening to the Am Writing Fantasy podcast. In today's publishing landscape, you can reach fans all over the world. Query letters are a thing of the past. You don't even need a literary agent. There is nothing standing in the way of making a living from writing. Join two best selling authors who have self published more than 20 books between them now on to the show with your hosts, Autumn Birt, and Jesper Schmidt. Jesper (30s): Hello. I'm Jesper. Autumn (31s): And, I'm Autumn. Jesper (34s): This is episode 142 of the Am Writing Fantasy podcast. And I've actually been looking forward to this conversation, Autumn. Autumn (43s): Oh, really? This one kind of took me by surprise. I had to look at it this morning. I'm like, oh, I need to come up with some tips. So I did come up with a few and I'm now excited to, to talk about it. But at first I was like, geez, this is so broad. Where do we start? Jesper (1m 3s): That was why I was looking forward to it because I was curious to see what you've come up with. And, and we're talking about the best thing to do every day to become a better writer. So this is going to be interesting. Autumn (1m 16s): It will. I think I came up with some stuff that I'm like, yeah, that's a good tip. So I can't wait to find out what you came up with us. You always research, plan it a little bit more than I do. Jesper (1m 31s): That doesn't necessarily make it better, but at least I try, I put in the effort at least. Autumn (1m 36s): That's right. And it's not that I don't have the effort. I just, I, I intensify my effort into a shorter amount of time. Jesper (1m 44s): Yeah. Like five minutes before we record. Autumn (1m 47s): It wasn't that bad. It was just a few hours ago. Jesper (1m 55s): Well, okay. So it's only a few hours ago that I did it, to be honest. Okay. Hey, this'll be interesting. Yeah. How are you going to have something planned? Yes, we can plan. Yeah. So we'll see how that goes. Well, I'm doing okay. I w I was out doing my kayaking course again earlier this week I had to strain the muscle. Oh no. Well is one on my left side of my torso based somewhere. I, I don't, I don't know quite where it is, but it's like, when it happened, you know, I felt it right away. Something like happened in the muscles. Jesper (2m 38s): Like, but then it didn't hurt too much. Then it was more like, it was just a smaller inconvenience, like, oh, it's okay. But then, you know, one night, once I got back home afterwards and I had taken a shower and I guess my muscles weren't in use anymore, then it started to become really sore. And then a Wednesday morning here, it was just like, oh my God, I slept bad all night. Because every time I turned, I woke up and it was the same last night. So it's starting to feel a bit better. Now I can move my arms around, like without hurting now. So it's, but it's still, if I do the wrong, like move, then I can still feel it. Jesper (3m 18s): But I don't know. These past two days, I've actually taken some naps just to keep up with the last hours of sleep at night. Autumn (3m 26s): Geez. That is pretty bad for you. That's what you're doing like a roller or was it just paddling? Jesper (3m 33s): No, I think it was when, well, because it's, it's the cost of we're checking now. So we also practicing, falling into the water and getting back up on the kayak on purpose and stuff like that. And I think it was one of the times when I was getting back up, I think when I jumped up onto the kayak or something, I think that was when something happened. But yeah, I don't know. It's just a, I mean, it's funny because my wife has been teasing me because she started the kayaking like six months before me. And when she come back, when she came back from kayaking, she was all this like, really like tired. And, you know, you could, you could just see the workout on her, how tired she was. Jesper (4m 18s): And, and then, and I was always like, well, is it really that hard because you don't get your, you know, you don't get your pulse up. You're not out of breath or anything. Right. And, and now she's just laughing at me all the time, because when I get back, I'm just like, oh, my muscles are so, because you're using all kinds of muscles that you don't normally use. And so I'm just so sore when I go, go back and really, really tired from spending a couple of hours out on the sea. So she, she, she, for some reason she finds it incredibly amusing. Now it's like I told you, Autumn (4m 50s): You know, it comes back around, but I will say, I, you know, my mom always told me that there's something about sea air. That just makes you tired as well. So Jesper (4m 59s): It does indeed. Autumn (4m 60s): I will. I, you know, you can always bring that up, say it makes you tired. Hello. Imagine the shock of the cold water would, you know, kind of take a lot out of you too. Jesper (5m 15s): Well, well you have, well, I don't know what the English words, but you have the gear on, you know, so it's not really cool. I don't know what it's called though. The wetsuit, I guess it's called a wetsuit, isn't it? Autumn (5m 25s): Yeah. Jesper (5m 25s): That's one of the times you have a wetsuit on. Okay. So it's not that cold. Really? Yeah. That's okay. That's cool. But, but it's more the workout of it and all that using muscles that I don't normally use. I run a lot of course, because I'm a referee, as people have probably heard me talk about million times before on this podcast. So running I'm very used to, and I'm very using used to using my leg muscles, but here you really use your upper body all the time, which I'm not used to do. So I can feel that. I bet. Autumn (5m 58s): Yeah. I know. Even Jesper (5m 58s): With my little bit of exercise program I've been doing, I, one day is like abs and legs and the next day is upper body. And you can feel, it takes two days to, to work out. I mean, not nearly as bad as the first week I started the first day. It did take me two or three days. I really filled it. But now that I'm in, like my second, yeah. Second week, almost the end of my second week doing it. It's rare when I have a day where I'm like, oh, but I did do something with my upper back arms. Cause again, you're not used to using some of those muscles and doing some weird down plank move and I'm like, that's not even possible. And yeah, it tends to be a little twin to the next day. Jesper (6m 39s): Go figure. Especially as writers who just sits in front of a computer all the time Autumn (6m 45s): Writer, graphic designer. Yeah. Website builder. I, I need my exercise program, my spare time online. Jesper (6m 56s): But otherwise things are going okay on UN you had a storm coming or something, didn't you? Autumn (7m 0s): Yeah. Well, we just had the remnants of hurricane Ida go through and it wasn't actually that bad up here, but yeah, some people died in New York and my parents in Pennsylvania, they had three days of rain and their basement started flooding. So it was bad. But what further west? I think of them. It, the whole town was flooded through, so it was pretty intense. But yeah, we have like, we've went from the eighties and like super high humidity. It was like 89. And like, it felt like the rainforest again, which we've had almost all of August. And then overnight, it blew out after a whip tail end of Ida. And it I've been wearing flat all it's it feels like September it is cool and Chile and I'm thrilled, but I was like, okay, we've gone from high humidity and really steamy, warm to, Hey, it's new England and we're in the fall. Autumn (7m 55s): Just not ready for that. It's good. At least I've had my excitement this week is I've been preparing for Vermont's fantasy con, which is coming up October 2nd and third there's any other new England authors, fantasy authors or readers, which most of us are readers come to Burlington, October 2nd and third, I'm going to be there. I'm going to be on panels and talking. I think we're doing a lot of podcasts. I somehow signed myself up for everything, including organizing a paperback, give away. I don't know. I just, it's my nature. I get excited, but I've done all new swag. I just ordered new bookmarks for my two series and some new banners and a new tabletop display ordered all my books. Autumn (8m 37s): So I have all this author stuff coming and I'm going to, I'll have to do some like unpacking boxes and videos because I am so excited to get author swag. It'll be great. Narrator (8m 49s): Oh, a week on the internet with the M writing fantasy podcast. Jesper (8m 55s): And we have also, apart from all that other stuff, you have ongoing there, autumn. And we also started a brand new initiative here. We decided for, for the podcast. And I don't know, maybe you want to explain what that is all about. Autumn. Autumn (9m 8s): Again, you're not preparing me. This was originally my idea. So I think I can wing this one, but you did, Jesper (9m 14s): You can manage. Autumn (9m 15s): Alright. So I know this idea. I was reading some really good books this summer. So I'm like award-winning novels that were just, I wanted to talk about them with other

It's time for another of our humorously competitive top ten lists! This time Jesper and Autumn go head to head to see who can come up with the worst power to have—you know, the one that makes you think maybe NOT having any magic might not be such a bad thing. 🤣 Join us for some laughs and then comment to let us know who you think won the battle! Tune in for new episodes EVERY single Monday.   SUPPORT THE AM WRITING FANTASY PODCAST! Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review.   Join us at www.patreon.com/AmWritingFantasy. For as little as a dollar a month, you’ll get awesome rewards and keep the Am Writing Fantasy podcast going.  Read the full transcript below. (Please note that it's automatically generated and while the AI is super cool, it isn't perfect. There may be misspellings or incorrect words on occasion). Narrator (2s): You're listening to the Am Writing Fantasy podcast. In today's publishing landscape, you can reach fans all over the world. Query letters are a thing of the past. You don't even need a literary agent. There is nothing standing in the way of making a living from writing. Join two best selling authors who have self published more than 20 books between them now onto the show with your hosts, Autumn, Birt, and Jesper Schmidt. Jesper (30s): Hello, I'm Jesper Autumn (31s): And I'm Autumn. Jesper (33s): This episode 141 of the am writing fantasy podcast. And are you ready for another top 10 episode today on him? Autumn (43s): Well, Actually it's been a little hot and sweltering and humid. I mean, it feels like I just got dumped into Costa Rica without the beach. So I don't have a highly competitive edge, unless maybe it's a lay on the beach and drink a beer contests. So I'll do what I passed. I did not bring my game face to this one. I'm sure you did because you thrive off of competition, I think. Jesper (1m 12s): Well, at least we are going to try to have a bit of fun today here and share our list of the five worst powers a character could have. And then as usual, we'll need to see if we can agree on who had the best worst list, Indiana and agreeing on who won is usually the hardest part of these episodes. Autumn (1m 31s): Well know you always think you won, but I always know I did. Jesper (1m 34s): See that's what I mean; we can't agree. Autumn (1m 39s): We agree. We both feel that we can agree that each of us one. Jesper (1m 43s): Yes, but, and then sometimes somebody on Patreon are the ones who do the tie-breaking. Autumn (1m 49s): Yeah, that's exactly it. Sometimes they put on YouTube videos. So we, we do take votes. I don't think it's ever changed how we felt we did, but we try. Jesper (2m 1s): Well, usually if they do conclude that they think I won, then I definitely agree with them. And then I think very wise people voting in that, those cases. Autumn (2m 11s): Yeah. I would say, I think I've had more votes than you. So I think they are very wise. Jesper (2m 17s): No, I don't think so. Is he already with disagreeing? Autumn (2m 21s): I have more competition in me than I thought so we'll be good. Jesper (2m 27s): Yeah. Apparently, so. Autumn (2m 31s): So how are things over on your side of the planet? Jesper (2m 35s): No, it's, it's it's good. We actually started, well, we talked about this a bit offline, but we did stop looking at a house because there's just not enough space in this apartment. I mean the location of this apartment, it's, it's like 200 meters from the beach wonderful location, but it's just, it's too small for the four of us. So we, yeah, we started looking at some new houses and we found one that is newly renovated. It was a completely overhauled about a year ago. So it, it looks really nice and we are looking at it last week and we felt like, ah, this is quite good. Jesper (3m 22s): The price on the house is quite high. So we want that of course reduced. But just to be on the safe side, we, we hired a building inspector and we went out with him the other day to just go through the house and just check if there's nothing wrong with it. Some hidden stuff that you don't know about. Those kinds of interesting. Autumn (3m 43s): Yeah. Some of my favorite parts of looking at houses. Jesper (3m 47s): Yeah. But he found mold in the attic. Oh no. And he found the fact that the, I don't know what the correcting this term is, but basically not the roof, but like the inner inner structure of the roof. Autumn (4m 7s): Like the trusses or just the plywood? Jesper (4m 13s): The, the supporting structure. It's, it's a there's mold in it. And he even found water on some of the supporting beans. So it's, it's a matter of time before you have water pouring in from the roof. He said, I mean, the only thing that keeps out the water right now is the, the tiles on the roof. So, but if they start leaking or something, then it's going to go straight into the house. So that's of course a huge issue, but it's, it's fixable, but it's expensive. The building inspector said that he estimated it to cost about $60,000 to fix. Jesper (4m 53s): So it's not a small expense, but we are actually thinking to put in an offer, but of course we need to have a significant price reduction to counter for this, but we haven't put in the offer yet. So, and I don't know how the selling party will react to, we're going to ask for a huge price reduction. Right. So I don't know how they'll react to that. And maybe, I don't know, we'll see what happens next. So that's where we at. And that's way more exciting on the house front than I expected. Autumn (5m 27s): That's really crazy having built and restored houses. Yeah. The roof and the foundation are like two of the places you don't want problems. So, Ooh, no, indeed. But then, I mean, the building inspector said, he says that like, this is what he sees all the time because people are so fixated on isolating houses. Jesper (5m 49s): So they just keep isolating more and more and more most offer to make it so tight and tight and tight box as they can. But nobody ever thinks about them. You still need to ensure that there's ventilation, but they never do that. And he says, she said he sees it so many places. And then, you know, a year or two later, then the structure up there, it's wet. It's moldy because of all the condensed that is created as well. And then it's just, yeah, that's very true. So I don't know, but apparently like ventilation, it's not something people think about for some reason, which is a shame because it's, like I said, it's completely renovated like a year ago. So it's really a shame. Autumn (6m 29s): Yeah. That is really a shame. But yeah. I mean, it's funny the green houses and stuff, I mean, you want a good insulated core because it's easier to heat or keep cool. But yeah. I mean some of the best houses I knew one of them had a whole house turnover where they had a fan in the attic that could actually exchange all the air with outside air. Like open up all the bottom windows. Yeah. It was like five minutes. I was like, okay, that's a little intense, a half an hour would have probably done fine. But he was like, okay, hot air's out. I was just like, wow. You're you're into ventilation to more than I that's a little extreme. Jesper (7m 9s): Yeah. Anything exciting going on on your end? Autumn (7m 13s): Oh, well, one thing I'm going to share with you in, in when we talk about internet, which I actually meant to share last time, but I'm kind of glad I waited. I have a, I have, I have a show and tell, but well, yeah, so right now I can see two big things have happened. So one is, my husband is up in Maine and I wanted to give a shout out to him because he passed his main guide, which is a registered Maine guide. It's actually the oldest guide license in the United States and one of the hardest to get, and he just passed a sea kayaking test. So he is now a registered Maine guide for a C I kayaking recreation. Oh, whitewater. I just, he's got a ton of them now. So really kind of tickled that he's doing so well up there. Autumn (7m 55s): So shout out to him for being awesome. And then the other thing is, I'm so excited for him. He's up there obviously guiding right now and in high demand. So I'm quite happy for him. He's actually, as we speak, he is leading a moose tour, hopefully on a canoe off looking for moose in the wilds of Maine. I think that's not a bad job description. Yeah. I, I need to maybe rethink doing that a little bit every once in a while to get my license to oh, and then the other thing, well in your world. Jesper (8m 31s): Yeah. Well, dragon success, Autumn (8m 34s): That's better than mooses true. We'd go looking for dragons as well as moose. Maybe it could be fun, but then I wanted to let people know if I actually started a new exercise program, which shouldn't be as exciting as it is, but I there's gotta be other people in the world who one just feel they're busy all the time. And for me to go to a gym is like a half an hour drive. Not even counting like the time to exercise and then come back. So I don't have two hours a day to do this. So it's been such a struggle. And I actually just found a new online program that's from home and it's called high intensity interval training. Autumn (9m 18s): So hit HIIT and I had never heard of it before it. Oh my God. It's awesome. Because I also get bored really easy if no one has realized that here yet. I don't know. I'm good at writing books, but you know, put me on a treadmill for 20 minutes and I would rather jump off a cliff. I'd actually, I'd love to jump off a cliff, give me a squirrel suit. And I would still jump off a cliff. Not a problem, but exercise. No, but this is great because it's like literally 20 seconds. Some of them do it for one minute on one minute off, but I'm on one where it's 20 seconds for three different exercises in a row. So it's 20, 20, 20 and a 1 minute break. Autumn (10m 0s): I didn't know. You could ge

What kind of stories are agents interested in? How do you find an agent and how do you know if the person is any good? And what about your publishing contract? What should you be mindful about there? All these questions, and many more, are answered in this episode of the Am Writing Fantasy podcast by Jane Friedman. Links to what was mentioned in the episode: QueryTracker: http://querytracker.net Duotrope: http://duotrope.com Publishers Marketplace: http://publishersmarketplace.com Not discussed during the interview, but this one is interesting as well: http://mswishlist.com You can find Jane at: http://janefriedman.com Tune in for new episodes EVERY single Monday.  SUPPORT THE AM WRITING FANTASY PODCAST! Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review. Join us at www.patreon.com/AmWritingFantasy. For as little as a dollar a month, you’ll get awesome rewards and keep the Am Writing Fantasy podcast going. Read the full transcript below. (Please note that it's automatically generated and while the AI is super cool, it isn't perfect. There may be misspellings or incorrect words on occasion). Narrator (2s): You're listening to The Am Writing Fantasy Podcast. In today's publishing landscape, you can reach fans all over the world. Query letters are a thing of the past. You don't even need in literary agent. There is nothing standing in the way of making a living from writing. Join two best selling authors who have self published more than in 20 books between them. Now onto the show with your hosts, Autumn Birt and Jesper Schmidt. Jesper (30s): Hello, I'm Jesper. And this is episode 140 of the Am Writing fantasy podcast. Autumn is busy launching her brand new novel today, so I've instead brought someone else on, so I won't be all alone because that will be pretty boring on a podcast. Narrator (48s): But joking aside, I have to say that I really looked forward to this conversation, our little piece of intro music there to the podcast says that you don't really need a literary agent, or worry about gatekeepers and all that stuff, but that is all true if we are talking about self publishing, but not so much, if you want to get a traditional publishing contract and Autumn and I have actually started talking a bit about maybe trying to become hybrid authors, meaning that we will have both self published books and traditionally published titles. And so I guess in some ways you could say that it's a bit of, for selfish reasons as well, that I'm are joined by the very knowledgeable Jane Friedman today. Narrator (1m 31s): Welcome to The Am Writing Fantasy Podcast, Jane, and I hope you won't mind me picking your brain today. Jane (1m 38s): Not at all. It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you. Jesper (1m 41s): Yeah. I have a sneaky suspicion that the quite a few of our listeners will already know who you are, Jane, but the, let me just, I'll try to give a short introduction, Jane, and then you can see if I miss out something important here. So Jane has more than 20 years of experience in the publishing industry. And in 2019, she was awarded what the publishing commentator of the year by digital digital book world. And Jane also has an incredibly popular, I guess I could say newsletter for authors with in 2020, it was awarded media outlet of the year. Jesper (2m 23s): And she also runs the award winning block for writers over@janefriedman.com and has been featured by New York times, Washington post publishers weekly. And the list just goes on and on. And that I miss anything that those are the important ones. Yeah. Yeah. And I think with those credentials, it's quite obvious why I want it to have a chat with you about traditional publishing, but maybe, maybe before we get into all of that, maybe you could just sort of share a bit about yourself that maybe has less to do with the business side, but more like who you are. So Jane (2m 58s): Yeah, I started in the business in the late 1990s, right out of college. So in some ways my, my life has been spent on nothing but publishing in one form or another. I did go full-time freelance in 2014. So I was traditionally employed out a book publishing company and a media company in the literary journal at a university. And then finally after, I guess it was 15 years, 15 years of, of working for other people. I decided to just embark on my own. So I've been very happy working independently. Jane (3m 40s): It's, it's a combination of doing the newsletter that you mentioned, which is for authors online teaching. And then I also do some consulting. So aside from that, you know, I do a lot, I do a lot of travel, but a lot of its because I go to the writing conferences. Mmm. So during the pandemic that certainly slowed down dramatically and I've spent a lot of time that my home office in the past year, but it's been good. I've been able to focus on things that I didn't have time for when I was traveling so much. Jesper (4m 11s): Yeah. W what, what drew you to publishing and writing original that, do you, do you do you know, it was more like some people stumbled out to collage and by coincidence they end up in some sort of industry, but I was there something in particular that drew in there. Jane (4m 26s): So it's, it's hard for me to say that I was drawn as much as it was the, maybe the process of elimination when I was growing up, I, I come from a very rural part of the United States. There wasn't a whole lot to do other than go to school and go to the library. My mother was a very bookish person. She was a librarian, in fact. So I spend a lot of hours in the library and I was just good at school. And I liked reading. And I dunno that I think this happens to many people who ultimately become English majors or they studied creative writing and they think, well, I I'd like books, I'll study literature. And so it just, I, but I think I'm fortunate in that I was able to turn that into something that actually pays the bills. Jane (5m 10s): Not everyone does that. Jesper (5m 12s): Oh, I know that. That's true. Yeah. I still have very fond memories myself of the library when I was a kid. I just, I don't know. I just love I could spend hours and hours in their well, but back then, it was the most comic books I was looking at. Of course. But yeah, you could just go out and take a new one and another one in another one in, and sit there for hours. Just go through all those pages. I don't know. There's something about it. Isn't that? I don't know what it is. Jane (5m 36s): Yeah. I I've always been drawn to bookstores and libraries from a young age, although I will admit now in the digital landscape it's I do a lot less of that. And I do have as much of a fascination with computers and with figuring things out from a digital media perspective. So I like bringing those two areas together. Jesper (5m 58s): Right, right. Yeah. OK. Well, in terms of, of talking about traditionally publishing contracts and how to get one, which is actually something that I'm, we are asked, but not all the time, but on a similar, a regular basis on them. And I, my cohost asked about how to, how to do that, how to get those kinds of contracts. And honestly, we're not the best one to advise on this because while autumn, they did have a contract like 10, 15 years ago, but I don't, we are not like the expert on this topic. And also, as I said, a bit earlier, 'cause we actually considering trying maybe to see if we can find an agent for ourself maybe in the years time or something, once we have a novel written for that particular purpose, I was thinking that maybe we could just try to structure our conversation in, in the same fashion light, sort of a bit of step-by-step where, where did we start and, and with what happens next to the next time. Jesper (6m 56s): So on, in the process, because then it might make a bit more sense for the listener. And obviously where we start is with the story of self, you know, and do you, do we need to sort of think about what kind of story or what kind of novel we are we right. If we want to get it traditionally published? Jane (7m 18s): Oh, a little bit, but not too much. So in other words, I think first and foremost, you need to write the story you feel called to riot, or that your interested in writing or, or that you are passionate about. And that's sort of cliched advice. You hear a lot, but its true that it takes far too much work, especially in my mind to go through the traditional publishing process, to try and write something that you think is going to just fit the market. To me, that's actually what self publishers do. There are always studying what's happening in the market and trying to jump on where the readers are going that happens in traditional publishing to, but I think there's also a concern for what's this writer doing that only they can do on, usually it comes out of your own obsessions or interest areas. Jane (8m 12s): So, but on the, on the other hand, you know, you do have to be aware of kind of the model that traditional publishing works under, which is the way, if you're a first time author for them, they want the book to be a certain length. You know, they're going to get dissuaded. If your book is say more than 150,000 words are more than 120,000 words, it's usually the, where things start to get rejected more often because it's just too long when they don't know you yet as an author, they haven't established an audience for you yet just costs more in terms of time and editing to do a longer book. And if you're writing something that is a real mashup or hybrid of lots of different things, if it's really too far out there that might also dissuade them. Jane (9m 3s): So they like things that are both familiar and fresh, which are, this is very frustrating to writers because what defines that? No one knows, you know that when you see it. Jesper (9m 15s): Yeah. Because, and I don't know if this is right or wrong, but I have

Dominic asked a question in our Patreon group and we answered with this episode! Does race and gender really matter in fantasy? We take a look at the history of fantasy up through modern trends, looking at how fantasy has changed and is still changing. This simple question leads to an outcome that surprises Jesper... how important do you think race, gender, and sexuality are in fiction? And a big thank you to Dominic for the question! We really appreciate having you with us on Patreon. ❤️ Tune in for new episodes EVERY single Monday.   SUPPORT THE AM WRITING FANTASY PODCAST! Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review.   Join us at www.patreon.com/AmWritingFantasy. For as little as a dollar a month, you’ll get awesome rewards and keep the Am Writing Fantasy podcast going.  Read the full transcript below. (Please note that it's automatically generated and while the AI is super cool, it isn't perfect. There may be misspellings or incorrect words on occasion). Narrator (2s): You're listening to The Am Writing Fantasy Podcast in today's publishing landscape, you can reach fans all over the world. Query letters are a thing of the past. You don't even need in literary agent. There is nothing standing in the way of making a living from writing. Join two best selling authors who have self published more than in 20 books between them now onto the show with your hosts, Autumn Birt and Jesper Schmidt. Jesper (30s): Hello, I'm Jesper. Autumn (32s): And I'm Autumn Jesper (35s): This is episode 139 of the am writing fantasy podcast and a while back at, well, to be honest, this is, yeah, Quite some time ago, we received the question from one of the patrons supporters. Dominic asked if race sex like male and female and sexuality matters and is relevant to think about when writing fantasy fiction. And that is what we aim to answer today. Or at least you have some thoughts on that because we noticed how the same topic actually came up a few times in The Am Writing Fantasy Facebook group. So it's apparently something and above author's are wondering about, Autumn (1m 16s): Oh, I'm looking forward to this one. And actually in a couple of books I've read recently, you kind of prepared me for this one. So I think will have some stuff to discuss, but first, so how were things going in Denmark? Good. Jesper (1m 34s): Well, it's going fine. I actually started a kayaking course. So the other day. Yeah. Well, I, I S I think I emailed you a bit about it, but we never got to talk about how we went Autumn (1m 51s): In curious. So yeah, you're out in the ocean and Denmark. This it is August, so that's okay. Jesper (2m 1s): Yeah. It's okay. I mean, of course you, you have all the gear on and so on. And so it was that because it's called, but there was, and we went out on Tuesday. So a couple of days ago at the point of recording this and that there was a lot of waves and a lot of wind. So it was, and so they do like a five to six weeks course where you sort of learned all the techniques in how to save yourself if you fall into the water and all that kind. So you, you, you do a lot of practicing over like five or six weeks, and then once you're done, you are sort of released, not that you can't just go out as you please, even, I think even after that, but you, you can go out with some other people in and, and so on, but at, on Tuesday than I was out for the first time, and we were to post to sort of first just sale a bit, but there was way too many waves. Jesper (2m 57s): So it's like the instructor said, no, lets just go back closer to the, to the shore because this is way too much waive here. Ah, so we, we did that and the, all my way back I fell in for the first time, which was not on purpose. Oh Autumn (3m 14s): No, it's a good practice though. Jesper (3m 16s): Oh. And then we got back and then yeah. And at that point we haven't even practiced how to save ourselves. So anything so, but it was very shallow water 'cause we were trying to keep close to the beach, but because of all the wave's, so if I could just, you know, stand on there on the bottom of Maya. So we, it was not so bad. And then when you were supposed to Trane saving ourselves, so he set, like we needed to tip over on purpose M two times each. Oh. And then, you know, gate get out of the kayak while you were basically upside down. So underneath water, get out of the kayak and get up and turn it around. Jesper (3m 57s): And then he showed some techniques on how to climb on, on board again, which is pretty difficult. I have to say, because you were out in the water, in the kayak, his shaking and not very sturdy either. And you had to climb on border with that if that's not easy, but M but he showed some techniques to do that. A and so I think the first time I try it, I actually got up on the kayak and the knot plumped into the water on the other side of, if I was just back in the water. Autumn (4m 28s): Oh, that's great. I wish I had a recording of that. Oh, well you make me miss my to practice things. Yeah, yeah. Jesper (4m 41s): Yes. And then I did my two practice, a, you know, tipping over on purpose. And then he said like the Indian, he said, okay, I think that's it w we will stop for today. Let's say go back. And then we, we were sailing back and then I, I accidentally tipped over again. So I ended up in the water for the fifth time then. Well, Autumn (4m 60s): You got you're dunking in that. That's great. Oh, oh, you definitely making me. When I, before I met my husband, like I had done whitewater kayaking and there was never a particularly good at the roles, but, you know, I was used to going down rapids. I was doing all that kind of stuff. And we got to me, it was in, it was a lot of lakes. What we both got CK at kayaks and they had a 17 foot sea kayak, but it had a rudder on the back. So yeah. Some of those techniques on how to get into it and I'm like, oh, you don't want to watch out for the rudder. But yeah, I would, we left, I sold mine. He still has his cause it's a fiberglass one in, and it's gorgeous. Autumn (5m 40s): It's so much later than mine, but I miss the times we've had on the water, you know, me, I've had sailboats like KX, we'd still have canoes. So I like the water. That sounds like a lot of that. Oh Jesper (5m 54s): No, I like it at two one. And, and you, you can, you can sell some really, you know, some of you are very nice trips, right? You that you can do on the sale down on some very nice like streams where you can go and watch some nature in while we were sailing as if it's very nice. I think that like it, but I have to say Tuesday evening when I came back and I had taking my shower and I was back in the couch, I had a bit of soul muscles study. But if it's a good way to get some exercise in as well, Autumn (6m 25s): There it is. You making me miss it. And you will do this. One of these times, there is actually a trail call the Maine coastal kayak trail in main. And I forget, I guess too, like 200 different Highlands. You go to an island every night and you camp and you just keep going down the trail. So you and your wife and your kids, you're going to have to come over and we're going to have to do it because its been my goal to do that. Ever since I moved to Maine was deleted part of the Maine kayak trial. So I think that this might work out a lot of these days it could be really fun. So that would be cool. Okay. Well we get to the gut plans, Jesper (7m 0s): But I'm like, Autumn (7m 2s): Oh well I'm, I'm solitary again. As my husband's off, back up in Maine guiding people on moose, watching tours, canoe watching canoe in whitewater rafting. So if I'm getting all these gorgeous pictures of Lake's in the sunsets and moose and I'm sitting in our little cabin and very dry Vermont working on in graphic design thinking to get myself back up to me and as soon as I can, so we're starting to figure that out so that maybe he'll have less of a commute when he goes to work. Instead of being seven hours away, we, we could maybe be a couple of hours away from home. That'd be nice, but otherwise good doing some fun designs. Autumn (7m 43s): And we're actually in the middle. I dunno if you can hear the rain, but if anyone hears in the thunder, interesting sounds we're in the middle of the end of a tropical system. So we've had this height. It's like not hot the humidity, but its high humidity in damp and its just been raining like the rainforest all day. It's its very nice, but its also very stinky. So I'm, I'm expecting you to the tree to fall over or some thing again. Oh I know. And a bear coming to the cabinet or something. Hopefully not because I don't really want the dog and the bear to say too much. Autumn (8m 24s): Usually every time we dealt with bears, I almost always had the dog like some of our high. So I was never that worried except for one time, literally in this property we were walking to the main house and I saw this creature moving through the field next door in, running into the woods, like running towards us. It was going across our path and I've just looked at me. I'm like, damn, what is there a Shetland pony rules? And then I realized it wasn't a Shetland pony. It was one of the biggest black bears I have seen outside of a Labrador in, I mean I've seen some there seeing a huge, even in a grizzly while we are in dead horse, Alaska, what? This was like at least 300 pounds, he was massive. Autumn (9m 4s): And we had the dog with us and he was ahead of us. And he was well-trained if you dropped out and you kind of throw your arms open and you call for him and he's like, oh, so he turns around and comes running for me. And I'm just focusing in on our dog while there is massive black bear runs right behind them. I'm just like, holy, oh, like I said, I had a little fizzy gig. This was a man. He wasn't even on the size of this thing, but it was really cool to get the sealer bear. What I s

What is the difference between preselling your book and making it available as a preorder on sites like Amazon? Is one better than the other? Tune in to the Am Writing Fantasy podcast, episode 138, where Autumn and Jesper share the result of a recent experiment, using the pre sales function as mentioned by Mark Coker, the CEO and founder of Smashwords, in episode 118.   If you're interested in the $150 discount voucher, to be used for any of the Am Writing Fantasy premium courses, sign up via this link: https://www.subscribepage.com/awfnewsletter   Tune in for new episodes EVERY single Monday.  SUPPORT THE AM WRITING FANTASY PODCAST! Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review.  Join us at www.patreon.com/AmWritingFantasy. For as little as a dollar a month, you’ll get awesome rewards and keep the Am Writing Fantasy podcast going. Read the full transcript below. (Please note that it's automatically generated and while the AI is super cool, it isn't perfect. There may be misspellings or incorrect words on occasion). Narrator (2s): You're listening to The Am Writing Fantasy Podcast. In today's publishing landscape, you can reach fans all over the world. Query letters are a thing of the past. You don't even need an literary agent. There is nothing standing in the way of making a living from writing. Join two best selling authors who have self published more than 20 books between them now onto the show with your hosts, Autumn Birt and Jesper Schmidt. Jesper (29s): Hello, I'm Jesper. Autumn (31s): And I'm Autumn. Jesper (33s): This is episode 138 of the Am Writing Fantasy podcast. Back in the eighth episode, 118, Autumn talked to special guests, Mark Coker, the CEO and founder of Smashwords. And during that conversation, some new tools where shared, which was around how to resell your books as opposed to set up pre-orders or pre-sale as you write and say, presale you books, as opposed to setup, pre-orders like to do on to Amazon. And you have been testing that out, Autumn. Autumn (1m 8s): As always, I'm the perfect Guinea pig for all our experiments. So I tried out for free sales and I have tried out preorders, both on Smashwords in other places. So we have some results to share on some thoughts and tips. If anyone wants to check out this feature and I can't wait to share it, but really today we're both kind of getting back into the driver's seat because you just back from vacation. Jesper (1m 38s): Yeah, yeah, indeed. I mean, we recorded the bunch of episodes before the holidays to carry us through. So in reality, well, for the listener, that sounds like it's only been a week, but for us it's been a month since we last recorded anything. Autumn (1m 51s): Oh, I know you have to record it even late. Cause we had so much stuff to talk about forehand. So yeah, we have a lot Jesper (1m 60s): Of future pants to the future plans to have to talk about Autumn (2m 5s): Definitley, but you have a good vacation. It's been good. Yeah. Jesper (2m 8s): Good vacation. A lot of relaxation and the doing as little as possible apart from reading a ton of books, I think I managed to read five books, which has never happened before or some of them where a fairly short, but there was also a one very long won in between. And so, yeah, and that was good. And the way it's been busy, so busy coming back, I must say a and the, the, the, the thing is that time off work always makes me think about a million new things. So apart from writing stuff, in what we should write about how we should tackle our next series, which we just talked about offline here, I've also filled up my pocket of marketing ideas, primarily like Facebook ads, strategies. Jesper (2m 54s): I think you noticed all in once I started emailing about, can you make new ad images for this and that? Autumn (3m 1s): I know you're on vacation. I started getting some new tasks. So I was like, wait, what? So I'm not on vacation. Doesn't mean you could assign me things. Yeah. It, you know, so it was fun. Oh yeah. Jesper (3m 14s): Yeah. That, that happens. So, you know, I, I stopped thinking once, once I get down, then my brain start thinking about new things. So I think that's good. It's good to take some time off sometimes. Autumn (3m 25s): Yes. I think it is very good. And I have to admit, even though I S I had a total task list that I, I didn't actually get the bottom, have there still few things on my list of things I've meant to do while you're on vacation when we didn't have our normal sessions when we record. So they're still have stuff to do, but I have to be in, I snuck in some extra books and some extra reading as well. So it was nice to meet me. You slow down a little bit and get some reading in it. It was kind of, Jesper (3m 56s): Yeah. And the, the other thing that actually happened while I was on vacation was that like, I got an email from the national soccer association. Oh yeah. And they, yeah. They asked me or they sort of, well, how do you say that? But they suggested in a nice way, because they have a position coming up a as to become a referee Instructure oh, instructor, referee Instructure. So they send me the email and says that we would like you to apply for this position, if you would please consider it really. So, yeah. That's pretty cool. Jesper (4m 36s): So, and of course there is no guarantees that I will get it. I was not the only one, but I think they have, like, that was five people as something on, on that email that they have picked out and say would like you guys to apply for this. But if I understand correctly, I think there are going to hire a couple. So it's not only one person. I think there are going to be a couple of, but yeah. So as we know from the recording, this podcast, all the courses we do with writing and I love teaching. So I think this is excellent. So I would like to become an instruction. And if I'm honest, one day, at some point in the future, I will not be able to run as well anymore. And she catches up with me. Jesper (5m 16s): So maybe teaching would be good to get into. Autumn (5m 19s): Yeah. Oh, I can see that. Let's not talk about age because I'm even older than you. So lets just not, that might be that, you know, it's so flattering to even get an email asking you to apply, but good luck. That would be really kinda cool. We just spend like two hours talking to you. You didn't oh, you're just telling me this now. And I always do this on purpose and I think he like holding out on me. Jesper (5m 46s): Yeah. I could, I could just say it to the listener that a, we just had a two hour like business and writing meeting. And I think I started up by saying, I want to ask Autumn a question and then I did not ask the question until two hours later and I gave her like three teases throughout the two hours that I'm going to come back to the question Autumn (6m 7s): That you didn't know where it was. We go to each other, having to use, I was like, okay, what is this question? And then you have to keep hitting sing about, but if we got through it with the question, we can do it. Yeah. Excellent. Narrator (6m 24s): A week on the Internet with the Writing Fantasy Podcast. Jesper (6m 27s): So Autumn, another thing I want a spring on you here. Autumn (6m 30s): Already? Jesper (6m 32s): Already? We are recording, but the first time in the months, so I'm kind of like coming to the, the gates running now Autumn (6m 40s): That you saved all of these things up on you have in place. This is why you been thinking about while you're on vacation are the things that you can the spring on me. No, I know. Jesper (6m 49s): No, but this is now on probably a month ago because that's how long it's been since we recorded. What did you notice? How Dominick wave in on Patrion on which one of us? One episode 123 where we did the top 10 lists of the worst characters, all the worst people that we could think about teaching magic. Did you see to the, he actually I have sometimes to say about who Autumn (7m 15s): You bring this up 'cause he said you won that's my reading this out. Otherwise you would probably have forgotten about this topic of conversation, Jesper (7m 30s): But he did say something else as well. Yeah. He did say something else as well. And that's where I first my memory, he was saying that the way I was trying to move the goalpost and change the rules of our top, Tim you where I have no idea what he means. That's you, that's not as important either. That was the important thing was that you said you wanted, he said that I was the wind up that episode Autumn (7m 58s): And he apologize to me, but I don't know that it was just one opinion. I'm still holding out for other's Jesper (8m 8s): I'll really oh, patron supporters. Very important. So Autumn (8m 15s): Maybe we can double Waite him. At least Jesper (8m 16s): They have to say, I want to him, that's it. Autumn (8m 18s): Yeah. That's all you need. So know I see how this goes. Oh yeah. Jesper (8m 24s): Oh yeah. A quick reminder here. A as I mentioned in the past few weeks, on the past few weeks of episodes and we might just mention it next week as well, but after that it'll be too late. So this is one of those last kind of reminders now. But we have decided to offer everyone on our email list, a massive discount for either one of our flagship courses. So I want to mention that in the autumn, Autumn (8m 53s): You said either one, you have forgotten your month off, we decided it was going to be for three, either have the three courses Jesper (9m 1s): Three. Yeah. That was you explain what those costs as well. Autumn (9m 5s): Obviously I've kept my mind going in. Was it on vacation? But yeah, so we're going to offer coupon for either the ultimate fantasy writer's guide, which is our premium premier writing Corus, the one-stop shop for everything, from how to write, develop ideas, to marketing and building your author brand and platform to crafting i