April 30, 2025 • 45 mins
Bestselling authors William and Lara Bernhardt discuss the latest news from the book world, offer writing tips, and interview Kaira Rouda, the author of many bestselling novels of domestic suspense, translated into more than a dozen languages. Her new novel is Jill is Not Happy.
Openting Thoughts
NaNoWriMo has shut down—but don't let that stop you from writing. Create a schedule for yourself and stick to it!
News
1) Plagiarism Accusations in the Romantasy World
2) An AI program "specifically designed for writers"
Craft Corner
Marty Ludlum, author of At First I Was Afraid, discusses the importance of choosing the rights words to bring your story to life.
Interview with Kaira Rouda
Parting Words
It's not to late to register for the WriterCon Alaskan Cruise, May 31-June 6, departing from Seattle. Over 20 hours of instruction, meetings with a major literary agent, plus one-on-ones focusing on your work-in-progress. Workshop your book while admiring some of the most beautiful vistas on earth. For more information about the cruise, the retreat, and the annual conference, visit www.writercon.com.
Until next time, keep writing, and remember: You cannot fail, if you refuse to quit.
William Bernhardt
www.williambernhardt.com
www.writercon.com
Openting Thoughts
NaNoWriMo has shut down—but don't let that stop you from writing. Create a schedule for yourself and stick to it!
News
1) Plagiarism Accusations in the Romantasy World
2) An AI program "specifically designed for writers"
Craft Corner
Marty Ludlum, author of At First I Was Afraid, discusses the importance of choosing the rights words to bring your story to life.
Interview with Kaira Rouda
Parting Words
It's not to late to register for the WriterCon Alaskan Cruise, May 31-June 6, departing from Seattle. Over 20 hours of instruction, meetings with a major literary agent, plus one-on-ones focusing on your work-in-progress. Workshop your book while admiring some of the most beautiful vistas on earth. For more information about the cruise, the retreat, and the annual conference, visit www.writercon.com.
Until next time, keep writing, and remember: You cannot fail, if you refuse to quit.
William Bernhardt
www.williambernhardt.com
www.writercon.com
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This week on the writer Con podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Well, I wouldn't be here talking to you if I
had given up, because this whole business is about I mean, unfortunately,
it's brought with rejection and it's really easy to start
second guessing yourself. So always tell people the number one
thing to do is keep writing, and the number two
thing is not to give up. I really do think
that people that make it in this business have a
(00:23):
lot of resilience.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
Welcome to writer Con, a gathering place for writers to
share their knowledge about writing and the writing world. Your
hosts are William Bernhardt, best selling novelist and author of
the Red Sneaker books on writing, and Laura Bernhardt, Award
winning author of the want ln Files book series.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
Thank you, Jesse Ulrich. Hey there writers, thanks for joining
us today. I understand that the non profit organization known
as Nano Raimo is shutting down in the way Convector
already has as I record this in the wake of
a scandal involving a I mean, I just thought Nano
(01:03):
Ramo was a thing people did every November. I didn't
know there was like a nonprofit organization. I guess that's
okay because now there isn't anymore. But don't let that
stop you from writing. My writing friends, you don't need November,
and you don't need to do it in a month,
which is basically impossible. A draft in a month maybe
(01:25):
a finished Polish novel. No, And I've always worried that
this plan for generating a book in thirty days would
or has led people to release books before they were ready. Laura,
what do you think Have you ever written a book
in thirty days?
Speaker 4 (01:44):
No?
Speaker 2 (01:45):
No, we're close.
Speaker 4 (01:46):
No, we're close.
Speaker 5 (01:47):
And I never attempted to participate in Nano Ramo because
I feel very strongly that if I put limits on
myself like that, it would just lead to disappointment and frustration.
And I'm I wouldn't enjoy that process. But I know
people who did rely on that to help motivate them
(02:09):
to crank out their first draft, and I feel bad
for them, so hopefully they can find that motivation on
their own.
Speaker 4 (02:16):
I do agree with you that I think it's led
to the idea that.
Speaker 5 (02:21):
A whole novel can just be knocked out in a
couple of days and boom, you're ready to release.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
Four days in that Bradley Cooper movie, As I I
can't think what that was called. Sometimes on this subject
where your tipe of people will say, well, you know,
Fitzgerald wrote The Great Gatsby and I forget twenty four
days or something like that. I'm like, yeah, but that
wasn't the first draft. He'd already done. It was almost
published as Tromacchio, a whole different thing, and then he
(02:48):
rewrote that and it's short too, So I mean, you know,
come on, ye, Jesse. Since you don't write, I won't
ask you the same question. But have you ever read
a book that you felt like I had been written
in thirty days?
Speaker 5 (03:02):
Anny?
Speaker 1 (03:03):
James Parrisondo, I'm like, he can write it.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
You can write a.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
Book on thirty days. He just assigns it to four
of his ghostwriters.
Speaker 6 (03:15):
Long.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
I should have known that was coming. Why did I
not see that coming?
Speaker 2 (03:20):
Gotcha, James.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
Our interview today is with Kara Ruda. She's a friend
of the podcast and the author of many best selling
novels of domestic suspense. She's been translated into more than
a dozen languages. Three of her novels have been Amazon
number one editor picks, and her book book The Next Wife.
(03:45):
That's when we had her here before. That's when I
stutter her. It's when I'm trying to think two things
at once and I can't pick which one. But you
didn't want to hear about that. Anyway. She was here
for the Next Wife, and that won a bunch of awards,
including being one of Suspense mag Magazine's Best books of
the year. Her new novel is called Jill Is Not Happy.
(04:06):
I'm looking forward to talking to talking with her about
all that and more. But first the news news story
(04:29):
number one, and unfortunately, this is another one you might
be able to file under Jesse. This was your category
the author's behaving badly or something like that. Well, this
story involves romanticy and entangle, the now very famous publisher
of the unexed Storm and other things and idea theft.
(04:53):
Bear with me, it's going to take a minute to
explain the background so you understand what's going on. So
autumn of twenty ten, Lynn Freeman, who was a family
law attorney and an unpublished author, finished up her novel
Blue Moon Rising, which involved a teenage girl named Anna.
(05:14):
She falls in love with a werewolf and she learns
that she has magical powers. Obviously, this is a fantasy novel,
but the author drew on her own experiences growing up
in Alaska. After she finished it, she signed with an agent,
Emily Sylvan Kim, who is the founder of Prospect Agency,
(05:35):
a small firm in New Jersey. Kim sent pitches for
this book to more than a dozen publishers. Results were
not good. By March of twenty fourteen, everybody one publisher
had said no. However, Entangled hadn't, and so she withdrew
(05:56):
her outstanding submission from Entangled. In twenty twenty one, Freeman
and her son are at a bookstore and they see
this book called Crave by Tracy Wolfe, read the descriptions,
see that it was published by Entangled, and start to have,
(06:17):
as she says, a panic attack. She immediately spotted what
she says are similarities to her own unpublished book. The
lead character's name had been changed it was Grace, not Anna,
and the love interest was a vampire not a werewolf.
But in both stories, the heroin moves from San Diego
(06:38):
to Alaska after members of her family are killed in
an accident. She lives with the only two relatives she
believes she has left, both of whom are witches. A
female rival slips her drugs there's a lot of them,
an intimate moment under the northern lights, and a climactic
scene where the evil Empire or Wherewolf kidnaps her and
(07:03):
she ends up accidentally freeing a different one. All of
these things occur in both books. In addition to the
obvious similarities, Freeman is pointing out that it has details
that could only have come from her, like a Crave's
(07:23):
opening scene describes flying in a little puddle jumper above Alaska.
That's what Freeman's grandfather did. He was a bush pilot.
So she's like, where else could this have come from me?
I expect the answer would be, well, we did a
lot of research or something like that. Anyway, you've probably
(07:45):
seen this coming already. Everybody hired lawyers, they said, a
lawyer threatening legal action to the agent who submitted it
to Entangled and also has some connection to Wolf. And
now Universal has optioned the Crave books. And anyway, so
(08:08):
she sends this threatening legal letter, say, and this is
a quote. I really assumed that they would just apologize
and fix it. Not what She's never worked in a
law firm. Not what happened. Two days later, the lawyers
for Entangled issued or response stating that quote neither the
(08:28):
author nor the agent ever heard of Freeman, and so
Freeman filed a copyright infringement lawsuit. Okay, well that was
a long walk to the short point. But the point is,
you know, it hasn't even gone to trial yet, and
(08:48):
this has in fact cost the author Freeman several hundred
thousand dollars and Entangled is spent more than a million.
So I got a I think the best thing is
to not get into situations like this in the first place.
So only deal with professionals, only deal with people you trust.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
You know.
Speaker 3 (09:14):
The problem here really isn't that somebody else saw her book.
Speaker 6 (09:20):
It's that.
Speaker 3 (09:22):
Maybe if what she says is true did occur, that
you know, people have ideas close at hand and they'll
remember them and possibly use them. I don't know, Laura,
bail me out here. Let's assume that everything Freeman says
(09:43):
is true. Is that I mean, it's not plagiarism. Nobody's
claiming that absolute words, you know, a sequence of the
same words were repeated. It's just idea theft. Is that
a copyright infringement?
Speaker 5 (10:00):
Oh I am not a copyright attorney or any attorney.
Speaker 3 (10:05):
And you still wouldn't know the answer even if you were,
because they don't know the answer.
Speaker 5 (10:10):
I think it's very easy for any author to put
themselves into her position and imagine this happening. In fact,
I hear it all the time. People don't want to
submit an entire manuscript to an agent, to an editor,
to a small publisher who just accepts them for fear
that someone will steal their idea and go write basically
(10:31):
their book, but just a little bit different.
Speaker 4 (10:34):
And so this does kind of make me sick.
Speaker 5 (10:35):
I reassure people all the time, we're all professionals, we
wouldn't do that, and writers wouldn't.
Speaker 3 (10:42):
I think, right right. What I backed off of before
was saying, you know, it's not writers who are going
to rip you off, it's corporations or exactly people and
other professions related to writers who may or may not
be as scrupulous as they should.
Speaker 5 (10:58):
I think I would need to see I think I
would need to see the evidence in it, because we
also have that happened where we see similarities because some
of us just have kind of the same ideas. We
were just interviewing an author that started talking about the
setup for their series, and I thought that there's a
(11:18):
lot familiar, even a character with a very very similar name,
but it obviously diverged and there were different stories, but
people had the same ideas, and I would probably need
to see exactly what she says had to have.
Speaker 4 (11:37):
Come from her novel.
Speaker 5 (11:39):
But for her to she has to be feeling this
very strongly to take that kind of action and not
just let it go.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
So every member of the jury would have to read
both books. Jesse. When I read this story, what I
remembered was, you know this episode of The Simpsons where
Homer and his crew are going to write a young
adult novel, so they basically do Harry Potter, but make
(12:06):
superficial changes. Instead of instead of wizards, they'll be vampires.
Well this story, instead of were wolves, they're vampires. Is
this what people do in the fantasy world?
Speaker 1 (12:19):
Well, so, you know, this is one of those problems
where like, if you go under the assumption that every
story has already been told and Western fiction sort of
based off the sort of Joseph Campbell hero model, then yeah,
every story is gonna have similarities to other stories. But
if you wrote it first, right, Like I feel like
(12:40):
it was a guest on this show because I've always
remembered this fact, which is like or maybe Berry told
me this, like after you've written a draft of your novel,
like mail it to yourself and lead it sealed so
that you can prove date wise that you wrote the
growth the thing first. Right, Yeah, it's you know, it's
one of those things where if something's not super you know, original,
(13:02):
how can you tell who did it first? It is
a little fishy that, like, she got turned down a
lot by publishers. One of those publishers and also happened
to publish this book. It feels very much like these
sort of Babylon five D Space nine story.
Speaker 3 (13:15):
Right, it might have been a you know, a good
idea but not expressed as well. Yeah, but you know
again go to writerons.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
So yeah, so I mean I feel bad for her
either way, but you know you got to That's why
you know, there are resources to learn how to protect
yourself from things like this.
Speaker 3 (13:34):
That's very true. All right, New story number two. Well
we're back to AI, but I couldn't let this go.
There's a new program. Is that an app? Is that
the same whatever? It's called Muse, and it's the first
AI program specifically targeting writers now, in our last episode
(13:57):
we found out that people like AI poetry better than
human poetry, and now we have an AI program to
write fiction. So I'm a little nervous. I haven't used it.
And this is an announcement of news, not a recommendation.
But I've been to the website which talks about its
(14:17):
values to writers promising to be and these are all
quotes the go to creative sidekick for pro authors. They
promise peerless prose, stellar openings, chapter linked outputs, high quality fiction.
And then they have a bunch of endorsements from writers
(14:39):
I've never heard of before. Laura, would you be willing
to give this a dry.
Speaker 5 (14:45):
Mm?
Speaker 4 (14:47):
I don't know. I'm dubious. I'm I'm old school writers
right there? Same, yeah, well an old, old, old and
old school. I'm send of my ways.
Speaker 5 (14:57):
But like, I think that writers should write their own stuff.
But that said, Ralph had some lovely beginnings of stories
based on Bustifer and One Offred that were absolutely delightful
and thoroughly entertained me while he was sharing those with us.
(15:19):
So if it could maybe help with an outline, I
don't know, flip.
Speaker 3 (15:25):
It, Jesse. So you're not a writer, writer, as you
remind us often, but you must have to write things.
Sometimes you're writing email or you're writing letters or whatever.
Speaker 6 (15:38):
Would you use muse.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
Uh so?
Speaker 1 (15:43):
And I feel like I've said this on the podcast before.
I've used AI to help me write like minutes from
a meeting, like a board meeting that I'm secretary of,
right to help me take my sporadic notes and turn
it into more you know, adult sounding where But again,
(16:05):
why are people spaying time having AI tools do the
things that are creative versus helpful?
Speaker 6 (16:13):
Yeah, we don't need this.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
I need an AI to notice that I put a
calendar thing to do something and then I didn't do it,
and so I can remind me again to do it.
That's what we want work on that people, Yes, agreed. Also,
not a very clever name because there are multiple use
AI websites that do different things.
Speaker 3 (16:34):
So would it be a good name if it had
been used fourteen times or something like that? Yeah, okay, anyway,
let's move on to Craft Corner today. We're going to
have a few words from Marty Ludlam. You remember he
was on the podcast a few months ago January, I think,
talking about his new mystery novel at First I Was Afraid, Well,
(16:59):
I'll be has a disco theme. Anyway, He's here today
to talk about how to inject mystery into any story.
Take it away, Marty.
Speaker 7 (17:12):
Craft Quarner.
Speaker 6 (17:17):
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome to Bad Words with Marty. I'm Marty Ludlam,
your author and guide. Today is the first episode of
Bad Words with Marty. Don't worry, it's not that kind
of bad words about me. I am the award winning
author of the Disco Diva series. I laugh a little
(17:40):
bit every time I mentioned that, because I can't believe
I really won some award. My novel's feature, the ultimate
hero of America, Donna Summer, was NICKI. Yes, she's named
after the disco queen. It's a long story. Check it
out at ludlambooks dot net. My first book, At First,
(18:00):
I Was Afraid, Boom Boom Boom, came out November twenty
twenty four by Babylon Books. Check it out on Amazon,
Barnes and Noble and everywhere books are sold. In this podcast,
I want to mention we're focusing on words, words especially
(18:21):
that make your writing weak and ineffective. Today's word drum
roll please, And of course the drummers on strike. Almost. Yeah,
terrible terrible word almost is one of those words where
good writing goes to die. Consider the couple of examples.
(18:48):
I was almost freezing. I was almost crying in pain.
I was almost pregnant. Don't get me started on the
last one. All of those are actually very weak. Now,
I'm not saying go through and delete the word almost,
because that really doesn't help. Even if you go through
(19:12):
and delete the word almost, I was almost freezing and
change it to I was freezing, it's not much of
an improvement. You're still telling instead of showing. You need
to show for the reader. You need to be definite,
(19:32):
be dramatic, paint a picture for the reader. I was
almost doing something. Never paints that picture. Instead, consider this.
I'd been walking for four days in the frozen woods.
My hands were numb, my face no longer had feeling.
(19:55):
My breath rose like a gray cloud. Each breath burned
on the way in. I couldn't go much further. Yeah,
that's much more powerful than I was almost freezing, Even
though in the author or that's what you were thinking.
You've got to convey the details. Now. Sometimes my author
(20:21):
friends and I were discussing this and said, sometimes maybe
you need the word almost, especially when you're talking about distances.
I was almost at the end of the driveway. I
was almost to your house. I almost reached my car.
I think.
Speaker 5 (20:37):
No.
Speaker 6 (20:37):
Even then, those little details, just a couple words here
and there, changed the whole picture that's painted for the reader.
Consider this one. I was two steps away from my
car door when someone grabbed me from behind. Not I
(20:57):
was almost to my car. The smallest details matter when
you're painting that picture for the reader. Those details can
also build tension. Classic horror movie Children of the Corn
from the Stephen King Story against spoiler alert. If you
haven't seen it, you're the one of the three people
(21:20):
on earth who haven't seen it. But be it as
it may. Remember, our young couple is driving across the country.
I can't even remember why they're driving across country doesn't matter.
The important thing is they don't want to stop in Gatlin.
They come up on an intersection. Turn right, five miles
(21:40):
to Gatland, so they turn left. They drive for little ways.
Next sign says four miles to Gatlin straight ahead. They
turn right. They drive a few miles two miles to Gatlan.
No matter which direction they go and how far they drive,
(22:02):
They're always getting closer to Gatlin. And those details, the
ticking countdown from five miles to four miles to three miles,
or those little details that add tension to that story. Now, instead,
imagine that same narrative the couple driving and as they
drive they see a sign that says, you're almost to Gatlin.
(22:26):
You're almost to Gatlin, You're almost to Gatlin. Zero Tenson.
It just doesn't do it. Those little details paint the
picture for the reader. And almost is one of those
words you just need to clean out of your vocabulary
again when you go through your text, search for it
(22:47):
and rewrite those sections. Make sure you are showing, not
just telling. Yeah almost as yucky. I couldn't have said
it better myself. If you have questions or suggestions, or
you want to make a voodoo doll in my likeness,
(23:09):
contact me. There's my email address. If not, I'll see
you next time on Bad Words with Marty.
Speaker 3 (23:17):
Thanks so much, Thank you so much, Marty Ludlun. All right,
now let's talk to Kara Ruda. Kara Ruda, welcome back
to the podcast.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
Thank you, William, so happy to be there here again.
Speaker 3 (23:38):
So you probably already know this. But the first question,
if you could offer writers one piece of advice.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
What would it be. Well, I wouldn't be here talking
to you if I had given up, because this whole
business is about I mean, unfortunately, it's brought with rejection
and it's really easy to start second guessing yourself. So
always tell people the number one thing to do is
keep writing, and the number two thing is not to
give up. I really do think that people that make
(24:05):
it in this business have a lot of resilience.
Speaker 3 (24:09):
I think you're right. This is a business where, even
though it seems counterintuitive, perseverance is even more important than talent. Yep,
I thanks sadly, talent a lot of people have it.
Perseverance h much smaller, and this is a tough business
(24:30):
to break into it. How long did it take you
to get your first book published?
Speaker 2 (24:34):
Gosh, let's see, Well, I wanted to write since third grade,
so that's been a while.
Speaker 3 (24:40):
So if you count from when you were eight, then
it was a long time.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
It's a long time. But I guess what. My life
was kind of funny because I always knew I wanted
to be an author, but I never had the confidence
to go forth and do it. So I was a
journalist and a magazine editor, and then I went into
the advertising agency world and copywriting, and I think I've
done every type of writing you can imagine at that point.
Went into marketing as a vice president of an INK
(25:07):
one hundred company and did that for a lot of times,
and joined my husband and we started a business together
and rolled it out. And during that time I got
to work with all these amazing women entrepreneurs. So I
had a chance to write a book, and on fiction
book that was your first, right, Yeah, that was my first.
So that was like, I guess seven two thousand and eight.
But I never thought i'd write a business book. I
(25:27):
you know, I always dreamed of writing a novel. So
that was funny. And I also didn't realize that if
you write a non fiction book, you have to go
on book tour for it and you know, like to
business conferences and all of this stuff. But I was
totally shy. I'm like, go on nuts. So then I
had to get a speech coach so that I was speaking.
I'm like, everything I know is in the book, just
read the book. But anyway, so I went on tour
(25:48):
and I was in Austin, Texas at this women's expo,
and I was telling people to it's never too late
to live the life of your dreams and to put
your passions into action, and all of my kind of
talk about my book. And this woman raised her hand
and asked me, so have you done it? Have you
done everything you wanted to do? And I still want
to write a novel. And she's like, well, what are
(26:09):
you doing that. I'm like, you know what, You're right,
So I did. I went back. We had moved across
the country and my kids were settled in school, and
I sat down and I wrote my first novel. And
I didn't get it published by anybody.
Speaker 3 (26:21):
So you say you didn't get it published.
Speaker 2 (26:26):
I got an agent and I guess.
Speaker 3 (26:28):
Is that the second one that got published?
Speaker 6 (26:30):
No?
Speaker 2 (26:30):
So this one the first one here home hope. I
went with a green Leaf Book Group, which is kind
of a what do they call it, like a hybrid publisher,
and they, you know, they only accept a few people,
but they also pay for the services to you to
get it published. But you know, they were great to
work with, so professional, like their editors were from New
York and I really was a great experience and I
(26:53):
think mostly I was kind of impatient. I got a
lot of rejections, and I didn't I was used to
being in marketing and kind of doing stuff for myself.
So I did a start so and then I did
two more books self published, and then I got my
first traditional publishing.
Speaker 6 (27:08):
Right.
Speaker 3 (27:09):
Well, you you you earned it. I'd say. The hardest
thing would be trying to convince after you've published nonfiction,
can you jump to fiction, because people seem to object
any time you want to do anything different, right right.
Speaker 5 (27:25):
I've also heard from some people though, that if you
have published yourself, if you've indie published, that you probably
have less chance of being picked up by a traditional publisher.
So I find it very encouraging that you you did
go that route.
Speaker 2 (27:41):
Well, and that's why I tell everybody I think it's
bandwidth with self publishing. You learned so much about the
marketing side of it. You learn about packaging, absolutely, algorithms,
you learn all this valuable information that you know. Is
it harder to do it that way? I think so yes?
And is it harder? The whole problem with self publishing
is the distribution and the competition. Now, so that is
(28:04):
the negative side, right, But you do, you learn so
much and actually, if you just carry on, don't give
up that whole resilience thing. Self publishing your learning. Every
book you write your learning. So when you have a
chance and you get your big break with the traditional publisher,
those self published titles get a huge lift. Yes, it's nice.
Speaker 3 (28:24):
Yeah, that would be nice. Okay, so now you've got
more than twenty books in print.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
Nice.
Speaker 3 (28:31):
And if there seems to be a unifying theme, and
you already know, I'm going to say there is, or
I wouldn't have started this question that way. But if
there is one, it might be uh, trying to peek
behind the curtain of seemingly perfect lives. Does that sound accurate?
Speaker 6 (28:52):
That?
Speaker 2 (28:52):
Does that? Does? That's always been my fascination and fact
when I first my first three novels are what they
consider women's fiction, I don't really know what that means.
Women read most of books anyways. I think I'll fix
this for one but let's just say so. And then
I went two years into romance, which I had never
had a friend that started romance imprint and she said
(29:12):
try romance. So I tried that and I had a
great two years there. I realized I'm not good at
sex scenes, so I had to get out of that,
so then I went into domestic suspense. But the thing
is that unifies all of my stories is that whole
notion of nobody's life is perfect, and if somebody's trying
to make you think it is, then there's probably something
horribly wrong going on there. And that kind of does
(29:35):
work its way through everything, and especially now with domestic
suspense and kind of my thrillers, there's definitely always something
terrible going on.
Speaker 3 (29:43):
Well, another thing I really like about your books is humor,
which uh, I mean, I've written thrillers too, and I
remember being specifically told this was back in the nineties.
Toned down the humor. That's not what guys want to
see in a thriller. You know, they want a big,
thick action impact. But you're getting away with it. In fact,
you've got a fairly wicked wit. I'd be willing to say, so,
(30:09):
is this risky? Is this something your publisher encourages?
Speaker 2 (30:13):
You know, I've never had any fishback on my characters starting. Yeah,
not at all, because I think what I'd like to
think I use it for is I write a lot
of first person unreliable narrators. And if they're making you laugh,
then they're probably distracting you for some something devious they're
actually doing. So if I can keep you laughing when
(30:33):
there's something going on, then it's kind of a double
WHEMMI when you find out what's really happening.
Speaker 3 (30:39):
Yeah, very cool way of planning a clue but making
it not seem like a clue. It's just a joke.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
Right, I'm throwing you off.
Speaker 5 (30:47):
Yeah, yeah, Well tell us about Jill is not Happy.
You've piqued my interest. I'd like to hear more.
Speaker 2 (30:53):
Oh well, thank you. Yes, Jill is Not Hoppy comes
out June tenth, and it is. I guess they're called
marital thriller. I seem to write about husbands and wives
behaving badly and this is no exception. And this you
will meet the perfect couple wink Jack and Jill Tingley,
and they are having a little bit of marital strife.
So Jill suggests that they go on a road trip
(31:15):
together to kind of reinvigorate their marriage and spend some
quality time together. So what starts as a road trip
ends up, you know, going haywire.
Speaker 3 (31:25):
And whoever argued during a road tripped.
Speaker 2 (31:30):
Right, and yeah, they go to the Utah National Parks.
I don't know if you guys have been there before,
but like Zion and Bryce k Oh, my gosh.
Speaker 4 (31:37):
I would like to go there, but I haven't been.
Speaker 2 (31:39):
They're beautiful and my husband and I actually went there
during the pandemic because we were stuck at home and
so we go there and it's beautiful, but they're also
like very scary places there because it's such extreme landscape.
So I'm just thinking, Wow, this would be a great
place to kill somebody. Should I want to do that fictionally?
(32:00):
So yeah, so that's kind of where the story has sparked.
And my books, it's hard with domestic suspense. I find
to talk about them too much without giving anything away.
But yeah, it's just a Jill wants them to stay
together and Jack might have other plans, but that is me.
Speaker 5 (32:16):
That sounds like maybe the real life inspiration for your plot.
Did you have real life inspirations for your characters as well?
Speaker 2 (32:26):
No, not really, I think they Usually what happens is
a character pops into my head and then they kind
of start talking to me, which sounds crazy, but it's fun,
and so Jill kind of popped into my head and
I'm not sure where she came from, but I mean
there's inspiration all around for couples who are seemingly happy
(32:47):
and they aren't. In this case, Jill just wants what
she's always wanted, which is Jack, and you know, to her,
it's pretty simple. It's you know, we are the perfect couple.
You and I belong together, and I'm going to do
everything being possible to keep us together, even if Jack
doesn't necessarily want that.
Speaker 5 (33:06):
And this, it sounds like, is particularly full of like
really shocking plot twists.
Speaker 4 (33:14):
And I'm gonna ask you a question that I get
asked and I hate I'm gonna ask you anyway, how
do you come up with this?
Speaker 6 (33:19):
Like?
Speaker 2 (33:20):
How how do you? How do you plot that out? Yeah?
I'm a pancer actually, so I don't. Yeah, I don't
really plot. So that's why when I say my characters
take over, they actually really do take over while I'm writing.
So she Jill scared me a lot too, like Jill,
what are you doing?
Speaker 6 (33:39):
So?
Speaker 2 (33:40):
Like she just would surprise me. And yeah, she She's
definitely one of my more crafty, more a little bit
darker characters, I have to say, But It is kind
of fun in the way that I write because I
don't actually know what she's going to do next. So
I'll be up here in my office and if any
of my characters can do this to me, I've had
(34:01):
it happened before, and they just scare me and I
have to close my computer and then go running down
stick get away from them for a while. Really. Yeah, yeah, that.
Speaker 4 (34:09):
Is a very visceral response, it is.
Speaker 2 (34:13):
Yeah, And they're actually in my head, so they're following
me downstairs, but I picture them staying inside the computer.
Speaker 6 (34:20):
Hm.
Speaker 3 (34:20):
Wow, Okay. I know some of your books of the
past have been optioned for film. What about Jill? You
think she's got movie potential?
Speaker 2 (34:30):
You know, I like to think all of my books
have the Hollywood sparkle potential, but as you know, that's
a whole different industry. That's just it's kind of you know,
I don't know what happens behind the Hollywood curtains, but
if someone like peeks out and says, oh that your
book would be good, that'd be awesome.
Speaker 3 (34:49):
Yeah. Did you go along with that?
Speaker 2 (34:51):
Yeah? Exactly.
Speaker 5 (34:52):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:52):
I do have Beneath the Surface has been optioned, which
is great, and it's this amazing up and coming director
who I love talking to occasionally, and they have a
really great script that they are happy with. So that's
kind of moving along, but hopefully that will fingers crossed.
Speaker 3 (35:07):
I hope that happens for you. Yeah, I think you
also founded the Killer Author Club. I'm not sure. Well
you explained what is it?
Speaker 2 (35:17):
Yeah, So the Killer Author Club was creative. So I'm
sitting here in my office and I have my second
pandemic book coming out, and it was ironically called Somebody's
Home and we're all trapped in our houses, and I
was trying to figure out how do we even get
the word out because you weren't going anywhere, you were
just in your house. And so I thought, maybe maybe
it would be fun to do a show about killing
(35:39):
of the fictional kind from the perspective of thriller writers
and suspense writers. And so I called up to my
friends Heather gouden Cough and Kimberly Bell, who also had
books coming out about the same time, and they're like, sure,
let's do it. So we kind of it was kind
of a whim and we started out and we started
out like the three of us talking about killing in
the fictional kind, and then we started inviting gas and
(36:01):
almost three years later, we've had, you know, tons of episodes.
We do it every other Tuesday, and it's been really fun.
Not only have we gotten to speak to all of
our favorite authors, we've also just become really close friends.
So it's been it was really fun to have them,
especially during the pandemic when we couldn't go anywhere.
Speaker 3 (36:20):
That's funny. I went to the website for a Killer
Author Club today and you had just posted an episode
with Emily Carpenter, who was on our podcast episode before last. Okay,
Gothic Down.
Speaker 2 (36:33):
Yeah. Actually I have that book right around here, so
please yeah this scary book.
Speaker 3 (36:38):
Huh yeah, Okay, I don't want to embarrass you, but
you have been very active in community affairs and civil service.
I read you created the first walk in emergency shelter
for homeless families in central Ohio, right.
Speaker 2 (36:56):
Amazing, Yeah, way back in the day. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (37:00):
Well, I was going to ask how do you find
the time? And you know, how do you pick a project?
Speaker 2 (37:07):
I think you know what I've always found and I
read about this in my first book, Really You Incorporated,
is that the more you give, you get so much
more back. And it sounds like such a cliche, but
I find that once people get involved in their community,
they're like they just get so much more back. So
you're actually you're donating your time or your money or
whatever you're donating, but then in return, it's just you know,
(37:30):
without without even it's not even comfortable. I guess what
you get back. And lately I've been on I was
on the California Volunteer Commission, and our entire mission is
to get everybody in California to just volunteer in their
community at least one hour a week, which seems like
naton nationally, if we were all doing that, everybody would
(37:50):
get a lot closer. Yes. Yeah, So anyway, I encourage
everybody to do it because you have a passion and
you can tap into and you can help other people
while you're doing it.
Speaker 5 (38:02):
That sounds amazing well, speaking approaching, Speaking of approaching projects,
you've mentioned that you're a panther, You've already touched on that.
How do you approach a new book project? How do
you get started on that? Do you really just open
up a word document and start typing? Do you have
an outline, notes, anything?
Speaker 2 (38:22):
Nope? I mean my favorite way of writing. And you know,
as you guys know, every book's different, so they're all
a little somebody's more cranky than another book, and another
character is like just ready to talk right away. But
my favorite way to write is just opening up a
word doc and start.
Speaker 5 (38:37):
I'm just going that's amazing. I have so many people
tell me can they do that?
Speaker 4 (38:42):
Hang on?
Speaker 3 (38:43):
So sorry, well let's hit pause. He was getting louder
and louder. Yeah, hang on, let me uh get any
possibility of a shelter for elderly beagles or.
Speaker 6 (38:55):
You know what.
Speaker 2 (38:56):
I'm surprised to be have two dogs too. I'm surprised.
Nobody barked in response. You know, they must be honest.
Speaker 3 (39:01):
He was barking. That's why she brought him into the
room with her so he stopped sitting at the door
and whining. Even though we're both in the same house,
Jesse makes us sit in separate rooms to keep the
sound the same. Yeah, you think our son Alan is
now the dog?
Speaker 4 (39:19):
I texted him.
Speaker 5 (39:20):
I was like, come, I get away, but it wasn't
quite creaky enough.
Speaker 3 (39:23):
Sorry, I don't even remember what we were saying. Is
there a is there a way to get back into that. Yes,
I think, so we asked the question if that works.
Speaker 5 (39:34):
I okay, so you've you've already touched on the fact
that you are a pants not a planner.
Speaker 4 (39:41):
So how do you approach a new project? Do you
keep it?
Speaker 5 (39:44):
Do you have to keep an outline or some notes,
or do you really just open up a board document
and start typing?
Speaker 2 (39:50):
Yeah, you know, that's my favorite way to write is
just opening the word documently. Yeah, it's so fun to me. Now,
I will say, my agent and you know, editors like
to kind of have an idea where you're going. And
earlier i'd say, you know, like five years ago, I
would write the book and then write an outline and
then submit that. This is not a good way to
(40:14):
write a book because let's just say they have changes
and then you're like, oh nuts, because you've written a
whole book. So to be a little more collaborative. But
I find that if I talk about my stories too
much before I write them, then my character is flatten
out all of a sudden, they're just like interesting, So
I try. I mean, my favorite way to do is
to just secretly start writing and have a novel up
(40:34):
here and then tell people about it.
Speaker 4 (40:37):
Well, I love that for you.
Speaker 5 (40:38):
I get so many questions when we speak at conferences
or I have a session and people will people will
tell me that they open up their document and they
just stare at it and they can't get started.
Speaker 4 (40:48):
I'm like, that's not.
Speaker 5 (40:49):
Your process then, but it's your process, so that's cool, yeah,
and it is not good that it stays that way,
but that's not my favorite way to write, definitely. And
what does a typical writing day look like for you?
Speaker 2 (41:02):
Now?
Speaker 4 (41:03):
You know?
Speaker 2 (41:03):
I have found that I am an afternoon, like an
early afternoon to evening writer, that which I think is
a little unusual. I kind of do the book marketing
stuff in the morning and maybe play pick a ball,
although now that I well, not so much.
Speaker 7 (41:17):
But yeah, well not for a minute, but I kind
of like to do the exercise part and like get
my day started that way, and then if I can
sit down up here like by one o'clock and just
write until my husband is like.
Speaker 2 (41:29):
Aren't you hungry yet? You know that that kind of
like yeah, no time five hours or so is really fun. Nice.
I like that.
Speaker 5 (41:39):
What are some things that you have learned so far
in your writing journey? Because You've had quite a journey.
You you've got an indie start, you've got over twenty books.
What are some very helpful things.
Speaker 4 (41:51):
You might be able to share with our listeners.
Speaker 2 (41:54):
I mean, I do believe. Number one, it's the not
giving up part, because if it is your dream to
do this, then and the only way it's not going
to happen is if you give up, Right, that's just
the bottom line. So and as I said, there's many
ways you can do it nowadays. So you can, you know, publish,
you can hybrid or whatever it's called. And yeah, I
mean there's just a lot of different options. But that's helpful.
(42:16):
I think going to conferences and continuing to learn is
really important. I'm going back and getting my MFA, which
is funny because I always wanted to do that. And
so I was at a book event and this other author,
Todd Goldberg. They happened to double book us. Both of
us were there and he writes crime too, but like
more at the Hard Scrabble Detective, and he's talking about
(42:39):
his book, and then it was my turn to talk
about mind and he's like, and I'm also the director
of the low residency MFA program at you see Riverside.
I'm like, get out. That's what I've always wanted to do.
I didn't even know there was one close enough for
me to drive to it. So anyway, So I'm a
student now and I do think learning and meeting with
people or getting together with people who also have the
(43:01):
same passion is really helpful.
Speaker 3 (43:03):
Yeah, me too. All right, twenty plus books and a
school career and a bunch of other projects as well.
What's next for you?
Speaker 2 (43:13):
What's next? Well, My Jill Is Not Happy comes out
in June, and then my next book is called we
Were Never Friends, and that comes out in February. So
I'm excited. You need to get you.
Speaker 3 (43:24):
Back then the same publishing house.
Speaker 2 (43:26):
No, this one's with Source Books.
Speaker 3 (43:28):
Oh nice, have your publicists with us whatever, so we'll know, Yeah,
I will.
Speaker 2 (43:34):
Yeah, I'd love to talk to you again.
Speaker 3 (43:36):
This has been a lot of fun, Kara, thanks so
much for being on the podcast.
Speaker 2 (43:40):
Thank you, thanks for having me.
Speaker 3 (43:42):
Bye. Now, just a brief parting word. I want to
remind you once again that the writer Con Cruise is
coming up soon. It's May thirty, first June seventh, leaving
from Seattle and heading for Alaska. Some of the most
(44:06):
beautiful scenery you're ever likely to see. But when the
boat is on the sea, you know, not in port.
That's when we'll have our classes, over twenty hours of
writing instruction. Different people agent on board, ready and willing
to meet with you, and we hope you'll join us.
(44:31):
But we'll also have the writing Retreat in July at
Cane Break, which is on land, and we'll have small
groups working focusing on whatever your work in progress might be.
All right, all right, until next time, keep writing. Remember
(44:52):
you cannot fail if you refuse to quit. See you
next time.
Speaker 6 (45:00):
By then, as a spe
This week on the writer Con podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Well, I wouldn't be here talking to you if I
had given up, because this whole business is about I mean, unfortunately,
it's brought with rejection and it's really easy to start
second guessing yourself. So always tell people the number one
thing to do is keep writing, and the number two
thing is not to give up. I really do think
that people that make it in this business have a
(00:23):
lot of resilience.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
Welcome to writer Con, a gathering place for writers to
share their knowledge about writing and the writing world. Your
hosts are William Bernhardt, best selling novelist and author of
the Red Sneaker books on writing, and Laura Bernhardt, Award
winning author of the want ln Files book series.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
Thank you, Jesse Ulrich. Hey there writers, thanks for joining
us today. I understand that the non profit organization known
as Nano Raimo is shutting down in the way Convector
already has as I record this in the wake of
a scandal involving a I mean, I just thought Nano
(01:03):
Ramo was a thing people did every November. I didn't
know there was like a nonprofit organization. I guess that's
okay because now there isn't anymore. But don't let that
stop you from writing. My writing friends, you don't need November,
and you don't need to do it in a month,
which is basically impossible. A draft in a month maybe
(01:25):
a finished Polish novel. No, And I've always worried that
this plan for generating a book in thirty days would
or has led people to release books before they were ready. Laura,
what do you think Have you ever written a book
in thirty days?
Speaker 4 (01:44):
No?
Speaker 2 (01:45):
No, we're close.
Speaker 4 (01:46):
No, we're close.
Speaker 5 (01:47):
And I never attempted to participate in Nano Ramo because
I feel very strongly that if I put limits on
myself like that, it would just lead to disappointment and frustration.
And I'm I wouldn't enjoy that process. But I know
people who did rely on that to help motivate them
(02:09):
to crank out their first draft, and I feel bad
for them, so hopefully they can find that motivation on
their own.
Speaker 4 (02:16):
I do agree with you that I think it's led
to the idea that.
Speaker 5 (02:21):
A whole novel can just be knocked out in a
couple of days and boom, you're ready to release.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
Four days in that Bradley Cooper movie, As I I
can't think what that was called. Sometimes on this subject
where your tipe of people will say, well, you know,
Fitzgerald wrote The Great Gatsby and I forget twenty four
days or something like that. I'm like, yeah, but that
wasn't the first draft. He'd already done. It was almost
published as Tromacchio, a whole different thing, and then he
(02:48):
rewrote that and it's short too, So I mean, you know,
come on, ye, Jesse. Since you don't write, I won't
ask you the same question. But have you ever read
a book that you felt like I had been written
in thirty days?
Speaker 5 (03:02):
Anny?
Speaker 1 (03:03):
James Parrisondo, I'm like, he can write it.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
You can write a.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
Book on thirty days. He just assigns it to four
of his ghostwriters.
Speaker 6 (03:15):
Long.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
I should have known that was coming. Why did I
not see that coming?
Speaker 2 (03:20):
Gotcha, James.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
Our interview today is with Kara Ruda. She's a friend
of the podcast and the author of many best selling
novels of domestic suspense. She's been translated into more than
a dozen languages. Three of her novels have been Amazon
number one editor picks, and her book book The Next Wife.
(03:45):
That's when we had her here before. That's when I
stutter her. It's when I'm trying to think two things
at once and I can't pick which one. But you
didn't want to hear about that. Anyway. She was here
for the Next Wife, and that won a bunch of awards,
including being one of Suspense mag Magazine's Best books of
the year. Her new novel is called Jill Is Not Happy.
(04:06):
I'm looking forward to talking to talking with her about
all that and more. But first the news news story
(04:29):
number one, and unfortunately, this is another one you might
be able to file under Jesse. This was your category
the author's behaving badly or something like that. Well, this
story involves romanticy and entangle, the now very famous publisher
of the unexed Storm and other things and idea theft.
(04:53):
Bear with me, it's going to take a minute to
explain the background so you understand what's going on. So
autumn of twenty ten, Lynn Freeman, who was a family
law attorney and an unpublished author, finished up her novel
Blue Moon Rising, which involved a teenage girl named Anna.
(05:14):
She falls in love with a werewolf and she learns
that she has magical powers. Obviously, this is a fantasy novel,
but the author drew on her own experiences growing up
in Alaska. After she finished it, she signed with an agent,
Emily Sylvan Kim, who is the founder of Prospect Agency,
(05:35):
a small firm in New Jersey. Kim sent pitches for
this book to more than a dozen publishers. Results were
not good. By March of twenty fourteen, everybody one publisher
had said no. However, Entangled hadn't, and so she withdrew
(05:56):
her outstanding submission from Entangled. In twenty twenty one, Freeman
and her son are at a bookstore and they see
this book called Crave by Tracy Wolfe, read the descriptions,
see that it was published by Entangled, and start to have,
(06:17):
as she says, a panic attack. She immediately spotted what
she says are similarities to her own unpublished book. The
lead character's name had been changed it was Grace, not Anna,
and the love interest was a vampire not a werewolf.
But in both stories, the heroin moves from San Diego
(06:38):
to Alaska after members of her family are killed in
an accident. She lives with the only two relatives she
believes she has left, both of whom are witches. A
female rival slips her drugs there's a lot of them,
an intimate moment under the northern lights, and a climactic
scene where the evil Empire or Wherewolf kidnaps her and
(07:03):
she ends up accidentally freeing a different one. All of
these things occur in both books. In addition to the
obvious similarities, Freeman is pointing out that it has details
that could only have come from her, like a Crave's
(07:23):
opening scene describes flying in a little puddle jumper above Alaska.
That's what Freeman's grandfather did. He was a bush pilot.
So she's like, where else could this have come from me?
I expect the answer would be, well, we did a
lot of research or something like that. Anyway, you've probably
(07:45):
seen this coming already. Everybody hired lawyers, they said, a
lawyer threatening legal action to the agent who submitted it
to Entangled and also has some connection to Wolf. And
now Universal has optioned the Crave books. And anyway, so
(08:08):
she sends this threatening legal letter, say, and this is
a quote. I really assumed that they would just apologize
and fix it. Not what She's never worked in a
law firm. Not what happened. Two days later, the lawyers
for Entangled issued or response stating that quote neither the
(08:28):
author nor the agent ever heard of Freeman, and so
Freeman filed a copyright infringement lawsuit. Okay, well that was
a long walk to the short point. But the point is,
you know, it hasn't even gone to trial yet, and
(08:48):
this has in fact cost the author Freeman several hundred
thousand dollars and Entangled is spent more than a million.
So I got a I think the best thing is
to not get into situations like this in the first place.
So only deal with professionals, only deal with people you trust.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
You know.
Speaker 3 (09:14):
The problem here really isn't that somebody else saw her book.
Speaker 6 (09:20):
It's that.
Speaker 3 (09:22):
Maybe if what she says is true did occur, that
you know, people have ideas close at hand and they'll
remember them and possibly use them. I don't know, Laura,
bail me out here. Let's assume that everything Freeman says
(09:43):
is true. Is that I mean, it's not plagiarism. Nobody's
claiming that absolute words, you know, a sequence of the
same words were repeated. It's just idea theft. Is that
a copyright infringement?
Speaker 5 (10:00):
Oh I am not a copyright attorney or any attorney.
Speaker 3 (10:05):
And you still wouldn't know the answer even if you were,
because they don't know the answer.
Speaker 5 (10:10):
I think it's very easy for any author to put
themselves into her position and imagine this happening. In fact,
I hear it all the time. People don't want to
submit an entire manuscript to an agent, to an editor,
to a small publisher who just accepts them for fear
that someone will steal their idea and go write basically
(10:31):
their book, but just a little bit different.
Speaker 4 (10:34):
And so this does kind of make me sick.
Speaker 5 (10:35):
I reassure people all the time, we're all professionals, we
wouldn't do that, and writers wouldn't.
Speaker 3 (10:42):
I think, right right. What I backed off of before
was saying, you know, it's not writers who are going
to rip you off, it's corporations or exactly people and
other professions related to writers who may or may not
be as scrupulous as they should.
Speaker 5 (10:58):
I think I would need to see I think I
would need to see the evidence in it, because we
also have that happened where we see similarities because some
of us just have kind of the same ideas. We
were just interviewing an author that started talking about the
setup for their series, and I thought that there's a
(11:18):
lot familiar, even a character with a very very similar name,
but it obviously diverged and there were different stories, but
people had the same ideas, and I would probably need
to see exactly what she says had to have.
Speaker 4 (11:37):
Come from her novel.
Speaker 5 (11:39):
But for her to she has to be feeling this
very strongly to take that kind of action and not
just let it go.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
So every member of the jury would have to read
both books. Jesse. When I read this story, what I
remembered was, you know this episode of The Simpsons where
Homer and his crew are going to write a young
adult novel, so they basically do Harry Potter, but make
(12:06):
superficial changes. Instead of instead of wizards, they'll be vampires.
Well this story, instead of were wolves, they're vampires. Is
this what people do in the fantasy world?
Speaker 1 (12:19):
Well, so, you know, this is one of those problems
where like, if you go under the assumption that every
story has already been told and Western fiction sort of
based off the sort of Joseph Campbell hero model, then yeah,
every story is gonna have similarities to other stories. But
if you wrote it first, right, Like I feel like
(12:40):
it was a guest on this show because I've always
remembered this fact, which is like or maybe Berry told
me this, like after you've written a draft of your novel,
like mail it to yourself and lead it sealed so
that you can prove date wise that you wrote the
growth the thing first. Right, Yeah, it's you know, it's
one of those things where if something's not super you know, original,
(13:02):
how can you tell who did it first? It is
a little fishy that, like, she got turned down a
lot by publishers. One of those publishers and also happened
to publish this book. It feels very much like these
sort of Babylon five D Space nine story.
Speaker 3 (13:15):
Right, it might have been a you know, a good
idea but not expressed as well. Yeah, but you know
again go to writerons.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
So yeah, so I mean I feel bad for her
either way, but you know you got to That's why
you know, there are resources to learn how to protect
yourself from things like this.
Speaker 3 (13:34):
That's very true. All right, New story number two. Well
we're back to AI, but I couldn't let this go.
There's a new program. Is that an app? Is that
the same whatever? It's called Muse, and it's the first
AI program specifically targeting writers now, in our last episode
(13:57):
we found out that people like AI poetry better than
human poetry, and now we have an AI program to
write fiction. So I'm a little nervous. I haven't used it.
And this is an announcement of news, not a recommendation.
But I've been to the website which talks about its
(14:17):
values to writers promising to be and these are all
quotes the go to creative sidekick for pro authors. They
promise peerless prose, stellar openings, chapter linked outputs, high quality fiction.
And then they have a bunch of endorsements from writers
(14:39):
I've never heard of before. Laura, would you be willing
to give this a dry.
Speaker 5 (14:45):
Mm?
Speaker 4 (14:47):
I don't know. I'm dubious. I'm I'm old school writers
right there? Same, yeah, well an old, old, old and
old school. I'm send of my ways.
Speaker 5 (14:57):
But like, I think that writers should write their own stuff.
But that said, Ralph had some lovely beginnings of stories
based on Bustifer and One Offred that were absolutely delightful
and thoroughly entertained me while he was sharing those with us.
(15:19):
So if it could maybe help with an outline, I
don't know, flip.
Speaker 3 (15:25):
It, Jesse. So you're not a writer, writer, as you
remind us often, but you must have to write things.
Sometimes you're writing email or you're writing letters or whatever.
Speaker 6 (15:38):
Would you use muse.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
Uh so?
Speaker 1 (15:43):
And I feel like I've said this on the podcast before.
I've used AI to help me write like minutes from
a meeting, like a board meeting that I'm secretary of,
right to help me take my sporadic notes and turn
it into more you know, adult sounding where But again,
(16:05):
why are people spaying time having AI tools do the
things that are creative versus helpful?
Speaker 6 (16:13):
Yeah, we don't need this.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
I need an AI to notice that I put a
calendar thing to do something and then I didn't do it,
and so I can remind me again to do it.
That's what we want work on that people, Yes, agreed. Also,
not a very clever name because there are multiple use
AI websites that do different things.
Speaker 3 (16:34):
So would it be a good name if it had
been used fourteen times or something like that? Yeah, okay, anyway,
let's move on to Craft Corner today. We're going to
have a few words from Marty Ludlam. You remember he
was on the podcast a few months ago January, I think,
talking about his new mystery novel at First I Was Afraid, Well,
(16:59):
I'll be has a disco theme. Anyway, He's here today
to talk about how to inject mystery into any story.
Take it away, Marty.
Speaker 7 (17:12):
Craft Quarner.
Speaker 6 (17:17):
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome to Bad Words with Marty. I'm Marty Ludlam,
your author and guide. Today is the first episode of
Bad Words with Marty. Don't worry, it's not that kind
of bad words about me. I am the award winning
author of the Disco Diva series. I laugh a little
(17:40):
bit every time I mentioned that, because I can't believe
I really won some award. My novel's feature, the ultimate
hero of America, Donna Summer, was NICKI. Yes, she's named
after the disco queen. It's a long story. Check it
out at ludlambooks dot net. My first book, At First,
(18:00):
I Was Afraid, Boom Boom Boom, came out November twenty
twenty four by Babylon Books. Check it out on Amazon,
Barnes and Noble and everywhere books are sold. In this podcast,
I want to mention we're focusing on words, words especially
(18:21):
that make your writing weak and ineffective. Today's word drum
roll please, And of course the drummers on strike. Almost. Yeah,
terrible terrible word almost is one of those words where
good writing goes to die. Consider the couple of examples.
(18:48):
I was almost freezing. I was almost crying in pain.
I was almost pregnant. Don't get me started on the
last one. All of those are actually very weak. Now,
I'm not saying go through and delete the word almost,
because that really doesn't help. Even if you go through
(19:12):
and delete the word almost, I was almost freezing and
change it to I was freezing, it's not much of
an improvement. You're still telling instead of showing. You need
to show for the reader. You need to be definite,
(19:32):
be dramatic, paint a picture for the reader. I was
almost doing something. Never paints that picture. Instead, consider this.
I'd been walking for four days in the frozen woods.
My hands were numb, my face no longer had feeling.
(19:55):
My breath rose like a gray cloud. Each breath burned
on the way in. I couldn't go much further. Yeah,
that's much more powerful than I was almost freezing, Even
though in the author or that's what you were thinking.
You've got to convey the details. Now. Sometimes my author
(20:21):
friends and I were discussing this and said, sometimes maybe
you need the word almost, especially when you're talking about distances.
I was almost at the end of the driveway. I
was almost to your house. I almost reached my car.
I think.
Speaker 5 (20:37):
No.
Speaker 6 (20:37):
Even then, those little details, just a couple words here
and there, changed the whole picture that's painted for the reader.
Consider this one. I was two steps away from my
car door when someone grabbed me from behind. Not I
(20:57):
was almost to my car. The smallest details matter when
you're painting that picture for the reader. Those details can
also build tension. Classic horror movie Children of the Corn
from the Stephen King Story against spoiler alert. If you
haven't seen it, you're the one of the three people
(21:20):
on earth who haven't seen it. But be it as
it may. Remember, our young couple is driving across the country.
I can't even remember why they're driving across country doesn't matter.
The important thing is they don't want to stop in Gatlin.
They come up on an intersection. Turn right, five miles
(21:40):
to Gatland, so they turn left. They drive for little ways.
Next sign says four miles to Gatlin straight ahead. They
turn right. They drive a few miles two miles to Gatlan.
No matter which direction they go and how far they drive,
(22:02):
They're always getting closer to Gatlin. And those details, the
ticking countdown from five miles to four miles to three miles,
or those little details that add tension to that story. Now, instead,
imagine that same narrative the couple driving and as they
drive they see a sign that says, you're almost to Gatlin.
(22:26):
You're almost to Gatlin, You're almost to Gatlin. Zero Tenson.
It just doesn't do it. Those little details paint the
picture for the reader. And almost is one of those
words you just need to clean out of your vocabulary
again when you go through your text, search for it
(22:47):
and rewrite those sections. Make sure you are showing, not
just telling. Yeah almost as yucky. I couldn't have said
it better myself. If you have questions or suggestions, or
you want to make a voodoo doll in my likeness,
(23:09):
contact me. There's my email address. If not, I'll see
you next time on Bad Words with Marty.
Speaker 3 (23:17):
Thanks so much, Thank you so much, Marty Ludlun. All right,
now let's talk to Kara Ruda. Kara Ruda, welcome back
to the podcast.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
Thank you, William, so happy to be there here again.
Speaker 3 (23:38):
So you probably already know this. But the first question,
if you could offer writers one piece of advice.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
What would it be. Well, I wouldn't be here talking
to you if I had given up, because this whole
business is about I mean, unfortunately, it's brought with rejection
and it's really easy to start second guessing yourself. So
always tell people the number one thing to do is
keep writing, and the number two thing is not to
give up. I really do think that people that make
(24:05):
it in this business have a lot of resilience.
Speaker 3 (24:09):
I think you're right. This is a business where, even
though it seems counterintuitive, perseverance is even more important than talent. Yep,
I thanks sadly, talent a lot of people have it.
Perseverance h much smaller, and this is a tough business
(24:30):
to break into it. How long did it take you
to get your first book published?
Speaker 2 (24:34):
Gosh, let's see, Well, I wanted to write since third grade,
so that's been a while.
Speaker 3 (24:40):
So if you count from when you were eight, then
it was a long time.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
It's a long time. But I guess what. My life
was kind of funny because I always knew I wanted
to be an author, but I never had the confidence
to go forth and do it. So I was a
journalist and a magazine editor, and then I went into
the advertising agency world and copywriting, and I think I've
done every type of writing you can imagine at that point.
Went into marketing as a vice president of an INK
(25:07):
one hundred company and did that for a lot of times,
and joined my husband and we started a business together
and rolled it out. And during that time I got
to work with all these amazing women entrepreneurs. So I
had a chance to write a book, and on fiction
book that was your first, right, Yeah, that was my first.
So that was like, I guess seven two thousand and eight.
But I never thought i'd write a business book. I
(25:27):
you know, I always dreamed of writing a novel. So
that was funny. And I also didn't realize that if
you write a non fiction book, you have to go
on book tour for it and you know, like to
business conferences and all of this stuff. But I was
totally shy. I'm like, go on nuts. So then I
had to get a speech coach so that I was speaking.
I'm like, everything I know is in the book, just
read the book. But anyway, so I went on tour
(25:48):
and I was in Austin, Texas at this women's expo,
and I was telling people to it's never too late
to live the life of your dreams and to put
your passions into action, and all of my kind of
talk about my book. And this woman raised her hand
and asked me, so have you done it? Have you
done everything you wanted to do? And I still want
to write a novel. And she's like, well, what are
(26:09):
you doing that. I'm like, you know what, You're right,
So I did. I went back. We had moved across
the country and my kids were settled in school, and
I sat down and I wrote my first novel. And
I didn't get it published by anybody.
Speaker 3 (26:21):
So you say you didn't get it published.
Speaker 2 (26:26):
I got an agent and I guess.
Speaker 3 (26:28):
Is that the second one that got published?
Speaker 6 (26:30):
No?
Speaker 2 (26:30):
So this one the first one here home hope. I
went with a green Leaf Book Group, which is kind
of a what do they call it, like a hybrid publisher,
and they, you know, they only accept a few people,
but they also pay for the services to you to
get it published. But you know, they were great to
work with, so professional, like their editors were from New
York and I really was a great experience and I
(26:53):
think mostly I was kind of impatient. I got a
lot of rejections, and I didn't I was used to
being in marketing and kind of doing stuff for myself.
So I did a start so and then I did
two more books self published, and then I got my
first traditional publishing.
Speaker 6 (27:08):
Right.
Speaker 3 (27:09):
Well, you you you earned it. I'd say. The hardest
thing would be trying to convince after you've published nonfiction,
can you jump to fiction, because people seem to object
any time you want to do anything different, right right.
Speaker 5 (27:25):
I've also heard from some people though, that if you
have published yourself, if you've indie published, that you probably
have less chance of being picked up by a traditional publisher.
So I find it very encouraging that you you did
go that route.
Speaker 2 (27:41):
Well, and that's why I tell everybody I think it's
bandwidth with self publishing. You learned so much about the
marketing side of it. You learn about packaging, absolutely, algorithms,
you learn all this valuable information that you know. Is
it harder to do it that way? I think so yes?
And is it harder? The whole problem with self publishing
is the distribution and the competition. Now, so that is
(28:04):
the negative side, right, But you do, you learn so
much and actually, if you just carry on, don't give
up that whole resilience thing. Self publishing your learning. Every
book you write your learning. So when you have a
chance and you get your big break with the traditional publisher,
those self published titles get a huge lift. Yes, it's nice.
Speaker 3 (28:24):
Yeah, that would be nice. Okay, so now you've got
more than twenty books in print.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
Nice.
Speaker 3 (28:31):
And if there seems to be a unifying theme, and
you already know, I'm going to say there is, or
I wouldn't have started this question that way. But if
there is one, it might be uh, trying to peek
behind the curtain of seemingly perfect lives. Does that sound accurate?
Speaker 6 (28:52):
That?
Speaker 2 (28:52):
Does that? Does? That's always been my fascination and fact
when I first my first three novels are what they
consider women's fiction, I don't really know what that means.
Women read most of books anyways. I think I'll fix
this for one but let's just say so. And then
I went two years into romance, which I had never
had a friend that started romance imprint and she said
(29:12):
try romance. So I tried that and I had a
great two years there. I realized I'm not good at
sex scenes, so I had to get out of that,
so then I went into domestic suspense. But the thing
is that unifies all of my stories is that whole
notion of nobody's life is perfect, and if somebody's trying
to make you think it is, then there's probably something
horribly wrong going on there. And that kind of does
(29:35):
work its way through everything, and especially now with domestic
suspense and kind of my thrillers, there's definitely always something
terrible going on.
Speaker 3 (29:43):
Well, another thing I really like about your books is humor,
which uh, I mean, I've written thrillers too, and I
remember being specifically told this was back in the nineties.
Toned down the humor. That's not what guys want to
see in a thriller. You know, they want a big,
thick action impact. But you're getting away with it. In fact,
you've got a fairly wicked wit. I'd be willing to say, so,
(30:09):
is this risky? Is this something your publisher encourages?
Speaker 2 (30:13):
You know, I've never had any fishback on my characters starting. Yeah,
not at all, because I think what I'd like to
think I use it for is I write a lot
of first person unreliable narrators. And if they're making you laugh,
then they're probably distracting you for some something devious they're
actually doing. So if I can keep you laughing when
(30:33):
there's something going on, then it's kind of a double
WHEMMI when you find out what's really happening.
Speaker 3 (30:39):
Yeah, very cool way of planning a clue but making
it not seem like a clue. It's just a joke.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
Right, I'm throwing you off.
Speaker 5 (30:47):
Yeah, yeah, Well tell us about Jill is not Happy.
You've piqued my interest. I'd like to hear more.
Speaker 2 (30:53):
Oh well, thank you. Yes, Jill is Not Hoppy comes
out June tenth, and it is. I guess they're called
marital thriller. I seem to write about husbands and wives
behaving badly and this is no exception. And this you
will meet the perfect couple wink Jack and Jill Tingley,
and they are having a little bit of marital strife.
So Jill suggests that they go on a road trip
(31:15):
together to kind of reinvigorate their marriage and spend some
quality time together. So what starts as a road trip
ends up, you know, going haywire.
Speaker 3 (31:25):
And whoever argued during a road tripped.
Speaker 2 (31:30):
Right, and yeah, they go to the Utah National Parks.
I don't know if you guys have been there before,
but like Zion and Bryce k Oh, my gosh.
Speaker 4 (31:37):
I would like to go there, but I haven't been.
Speaker 2 (31:39):
They're beautiful and my husband and I actually went there
during the pandemic because we were stuck at home and
so we go there and it's beautiful, but they're also
like very scary places there because it's such extreme landscape.
So I'm just thinking, Wow, this would be a great
place to kill somebody. Should I want to do that fictionally?
(32:00):
So yeah, so that's kind of where the story has sparked.
And my books, it's hard with domestic suspense. I find
to talk about them too much without giving anything away.
But yeah, it's just a Jill wants them to stay
together and Jack might have other plans, but that is me.
Speaker 5 (32:16):
That sounds like maybe the real life inspiration for your plot.
Did you have real life inspirations for your characters as well?
Speaker 2 (32:26):
No, not really, I think they Usually what happens is
a character pops into my head and then they kind
of start talking to me, which sounds crazy, but it's fun,
and so Jill kind of popped into my head and
I'm not sure where she came from, but I mean
there's inspiration all around for couples who are seemingly happy
(32:47):
and they aren't. In this case, Jill just wants what
she's always wanted, which is Jack, and you know, to her,
it's pretty simple. It's you know, we are the perfect couple.
You and I belong together, and I'm going to do
everything being possible to keep us together, even if Jack
doesn't necessarily want that.
Speaker 5 (33:06):
And this, it sounds like, is particularly full of like
really shocking plot twists.
Speaker 4 (33:14):
And I'm gonna ask you a question that I get
asked and I hate I'm gonna ask you anyway, how
do you come up with this?
Speaker 6 (33:19):
Like?
Speaker 2 (33:20):
How how do you? How do you plot that out? Yeah?
I'm a pancer actually, so I don't. Yeah, I don't
really plot. So that's why when I say my characters
take over, they actually really do take over while I'm writing.
So she Jill scared me a lot too, like Jill,
what are you doing?
Speaker 6 (33:39):
So?
Speaker 2 (33:40):
Like she just would surprise me. And yeah, she She's
definitely one of my more crafty, more a little bit
darker characters, I have to say, But It is kind
of fun in the way that I write because I
don't actually know what she's going to do next. So
I'll be up here in my office and if any
of my characters can do this to me, I've had
(34:01):
it happened before, and they just scare me and I
have to close my computer and then go running down
stick get away from them for a while. Really. Yeah, yeah, that.
Speaker 4 (34:09):
Is a very visceral response, it is.
Speaker 2 (34:13):
Yeah, And they're actually in my head, so they're following
me downstairs, but I picture them staying inside the computer.
Speaker 6 (34:20):
Hm.
Speaker 3 (34:20):
Wow, Okay. I know some of your books of the
past have been optioned for film. What about Jill? You
think she's got movie potential?
Speaker 2 (34:30):
You know, I like to think all of my books
have the Hollywood sparkle potential, but as you know, that's
a whole different industry. That's just it's kind of you know,
I don't know what happens behind the Hollywood curtains, but
if someone like peeks out and says, oh that your
book would be good, that'd be awesome.
Speaker 3 (34:49):
Yeah. Did you go along with that?
Speaker 2 (34:51):
Yeah? Exactly.
Speaker 5 (34:52):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:52):
I do have Beneath the Surface has been optioned, which
is great, and it's this amazing up and coming director
who I love talking to occasionally, and they have a
really great script that they are happy with. So that's
kind of moving along, but hopefully that will fingers crossed.
Speaker 3 (35:07):
I hope that happens for you. Yeah, I think you
also founded the Killer Author Club. I'm not sure. Well
you explained what is it?
Speaker 2 (35:17):
Yeah, So the Killer Author Club was creative. So I'm
sitting here in my office and I have my second
pandemic book coming out, and it was ironically called Somebody's
Home and we're all trapped in our houses, and I
was trying to figure out how do we even get
the word out because you weren't going anywhere, you were
just in your house. And so I thought, maybe maybe
it would be fun to do a show about killing
(35:39):
of the fictional kind from the perspective of thriller writers
and suspense writers. And so I called up to my
friends Heather gouden Cough and Kimberly Bell, who also had
books coming out about the same time, and they're like, sure,
let's do it. So we kind of it was kind
of a whim and we started out and we started
out like the three of us talking about killing in
the fictional kind, and then we started inviting gas and
(36:01):
almost three years later, we've had, you know, tons of episodes.
We do it every other Tuesday, and it's been really fun.
Not only have we gotten to speak to all of
our favorite authors, we've also just become really close friends.
So it's been it was really fun to have them,
especially during the pandemic when we couldn't go anywhere.
Speaker 3 (36:20):
That's funny. I went to the website for a Killer
Author Club today and you had just posted an episode
with Emily Carpenter, who was on our podcast episode before last. Okay,
Gothic Down.
Speaker 2 (36:33):
Yeah. Actually I have that book right around here, so
please yeah this scary book.
Speaker 3 (36:38):
Huh yeah, Okay, I don't want to embarrass you, but
you have been very active in community affairs and civil service.
I read you created the first walk in emergency shelter
for homeless families in central Ohio, right.
Speaker 2 (36:56):
Amazing, Yeah, way back in the day. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (37:00):
Well, I was going to ask how do you find
the time? And you know, how do you pick a project?
Speaker 2 (37:07):
I think you know what I've always found and I
read about this in my first book, Really You Incorporated,
is that the more you give, you get so much
more back. And it sounds like such a cliche, but
I find that once people get involved in their community,
they're like they just get so much more back. So
you're actually you're donating your time or your money or
whatever you're donating, but then in return, it's just you know,
(37:30):
without without even it's not even comfortable. I guess what
you get back. And lately I've been on I was
on the California Volunteer Commission, and our entire mission is
to get everybody in California to just volunteer in their
community at least one hour a week, which seems like
naton nationally, if we were all doing that, everybody would
(37:50):
get a lot closer. Yes. Yeah, So anyway, I encourage
everybody to do it because you have a passion and
you can tap into and you can help other people
while you're doing it.
Speaker 5 (38:02):
That sounds amazing well, speaking approaching, Speaking of approaching projects,
you've mentioned that you're a panther, You've already touched on that.
How do you approach a new book project? How do
you get started on that? Do you really just open
up a word document and start typing? Do you have
an outline, notes, anything?
Speaker 2 (38:22):
Nope? I mean my favorite way of writing. And you know,
as you guys know, every book's different, so they're all
a little somebody's more cranky than another book, and another
character is like just ready to talk right away. But
my favorite way to write is just opening up a
word doc and start.
Speaker 5 (38:37):
I'm just going that's amazing. I have so many people
tell me can they do that?
Speaker 4 (38:42):
Hang on?
Speaker 3 (38:43):
So sorry, well let's hit pause. He was getting louder
and louder. Yeah, hang on, let me uh get any
possibility of a shelter for elderly beagles or.
Speaker 6 (38:55):
You know what.
Speaker 2 (38:56):
I'm surprised to be have two dogs too. I'm surprised.
Nobody barked in response. You know, they must be honest.
Speaker 3 (39:01):
He was barking. That's why she brought him into the
room with her so he stopped sitting at the door
and whining. Even though we're both in the same house,
Jesse makes us sit in separate rooms to keep the
sound the same. Yeah, you think our son Alan is
now the dog?
Speaker 4 (39:19):
I texted him.
Speaker 5 (39:20):
I was like, come, I get away, but it wasn't
quite creaky enough.
Speaker 3 (39:23):
Sorry, I don't even remember what we were saying. Is
there a is there a way to get back into that. Yes,
I think, so we asked the question if that works.
Speaker 5 (39:34):
I okay, so you've you've already touched on the fact
that you are a pants not a planner.
Speaker 4 (39:41):
So how do you approach a new project? Do you
keep it?
Speaker 5 (39:44):
Do you have to keep an outline or some notes,
or do you really just open up a board document
and start typing?
Speaker 2 (39:50):
Yeah, you know, that's my favorite way to write is
just opening the word documently. Yeah, it's so fun to me. Now,
I will say, my agent and you know, editors like
to kind of have an idea where you're going. And
earlier i'd say, you know, like five years ago, I
would write the book and then write an outline and
then submit that. This is not a good way to
(40:14):
write a book because let's just say they have changes
and then you're like, oh nuts, because you've written a
whole book. So to be a little more collaborative. But
I find that if I talk about my stories too
much before I write them, then my character is flatten
out all of a sudden, they're just like interesting, So
I try. I mean, my favorite way to do is
to just secretly start writing and have a novel up
(40:34):
here and then tell people about it.
Speaker 4 (40:37):
Well, I love that for you.
Speaker 5 (40:38):
I get so many questions when we speak at conferences
or I have a session and people will people will
tell me that they open up their document and they
just stare at it and they can't get started.
Speaker 4 (40:48):
I'm like, that's not.
Speaker 5 (40:49):
Your process then, but it's your process, so that's cool, yeah,
and it is not good that it stays that way,
but that's not my favorite way to write, definitely. And
what does a typical writing day look like for you?
Speaker 2 (41:02):
Now?
Speaker 4 (41:03):
You know?
Speaker 2 (41:03):
I have found that I am an afternoon, like an
early afternoon to evening writer, that which I think is
a little unusual. I kind of do the book marketing
stuff in the morning and maybe play pick a ball,
although now that I well, not so much.
Speaker 7 (41:17):
But yeah, well not for a minute, but I kind
of like to do the exercise part and like get
my day started that way, and then if I can
sit down up here like by one o'clock and just
write until my husband is like.
Speaker 2 (41:29):
Aren't you hungry yet? You know that that kind of
like yeah, no time five hours or so is really fun. Nice.
I like that.
Speaker 5 (41:39):
What are some things that you have learned so far
in your writing journey? Because You've had quite a journey.
You you've got an indie start, you've got over twenty books.
What are some very helpful things.
Speaker 4 (41:51):
You might be able to share with our listeners.
Speaker 2 (41:54):
I mean, I do believe. Number one, it's the not
giving up part, because if it is your dream to
do this, then and the only way it's not going
to happen is if you give up, Right, that's just
the bottom line. So and as I said, there's many
ways you can do it nowadays. So you can, you know, publish,
you can hybrid or whatever it's called. And yeah, I
mean there's just a lot of different options. But that's helpful.
(42:16):
I think going to conferences and continuing to learn is
really important. I'm going back and getting my MFA, which
is funny because I always wanted to do that. And
so I was at a book event and this other author,
Todd Goldberg. They happened to double book us. Both of
us were there and he writes crime too, but like
more at the Hard Scrabble Detective, and he's talking about
(42:39):
his book, and then it was my turn to talk
about mind and he's like, and I'm also the director
of the low residency MFA program at you see Riverside.
I'm like, get out. That's what I've always wanted to do.
I didn't even know there was one close enough for
me to drive to it. So anyway, So I'm a
student now and I do think learning and meeting with
people or getting together with people who also have the
(43:01):
same passion is really helpful.
Speaker 3 (43:03):
Yeah, me too. All right, twenty plus books and a
school career and a bunch of other projects as well.
What's next for you?
Speaker 2 (43:13):
What's next? Well, My Jill Is Not Happy comes out
in June, and then my next book is called we
Were Never Friends, and that comes out in February. So
I'm excited. You need to get you.
Speaker 3 (43:24):
Back then the same publishing house.
Speaker 2 (43:26):
No, this one's with Source Books.
Speaker 3 (43:28):
Oh nice, have your publicists with us whatever, so we'll know, Yeah,
I will.
Speaker 2 (43:34):
Yeah, I'd love to talk to you again.
Speaker 3 (43:36):
This has been a lot of fun, Kara, thanks so
much for being on the podcast.
Speaker 2 (43:40):
Thank you, thanks for having me.
Speaker 3 (43:42):
Bye. Now, just a brief parting word. I want to
remind you once again that the writer Con Cruise is
coming up soon. It's May thirty, first June seventh, leaving
from Seattle and heading for Alaska. Some of the most
(44:06):
beautiful scenery you're ever likely to see. But when the
boat is on the sea, you know, not in port.
That's when we'll have our classes, over twenty hours of
writing instruction. Different people agent on board, ready and willing
to meet with you, and we hope you'll join us.
(44:31):
But we'll also have the writing Retreat in July at
Cane Break, which is on land, and we'll have small
groups working focusing on whatever your work in progress might be.
All right, all right, until next time, keep writing. Remember
(44:52):
you cannot fail if you refuse to quit. See you
next time.
Speaker 6 (45:00):
By then, as a spe
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