Speaker 1 00:00:12 Hi, and welcome to Small Publishing in a Big Universe, the middle of December, and a secret in free gift you can give to any author. This month we have author Lisa Jacob talking about her most recent published novel, carnival Farm. We have news about new books being released just in time for your holiday shopping. Coming from our sponsors this month from Paper Angel Press two. New audio releases are Carnival Farm by Lisa Jacob and Pius Rebel by Jori Post. Both Read for You by Jen Broda. Available from Unruly Voices is Dear Goldie Han. Dear Leonard Conan by Claudia Sternbach Water Dragon Publishing has Sky Chase the first book in the Flight of Ship series by Lian Masuda. This is a young adult fantasy novel that will transport you to a vast world of airborne ships and floating islands. More details about that later. Also from Water Dragon Publishing is Bubbles of Time by Lorna Hopkins Keith, a follow-up to her novel city fall. If you're attending World Worldcon this year, the World Science Fiction Convention on December 19th at 10:00 AM paper Angel Press is presenting a panel to prepare your manuscript for submission so that it will make an editor or agent very happy and not distract from your story. Trust me, you want to make your editor or agent happy
Speaker 1 00:01:53 In Dear Goldie Han. Dear Leonard Cohen, Claudia Sternbach knits together fragments, using letters written to the family and friends, the famous and infamous to celebrities and artists like Goldie Hn, Leonard Cohen, Johannes Feir, the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, and more to shape a story of a woman attempting to make sense of life that she's living and those who have been a part of it knowingly or not. Dear Goldie Hawn Dear Leonard Cohen is available now from Unruly Voices in hardcover trade paperback and digital editions. For more information, visit their
[email protected] slash Dear goldie dash haw. Today we have Vanessa McLaren Ray interviewing me about my new book, carnival Farm. Stay tuned on how you can contact me, where you can find me, and what the book is really about.
Speaker 2 00:03:09 Welcome to small publishing in a big universe where today we're talking to Lisa Jacob whose new novel Carnival Farm is just released. So we're going to find out everything about that and everything about Lisa. So well, let's just talk about your just release novel Carnival Farm. And so just give us a really quick, what's it about?
Speaker 3 00:03:31 It is about a veterinarian who feels sorry for some animals that are in a carnival petting zoo and she buys them and tries soons them back to health.
Speaker 2 00:03:41 Okay. Well I've read the opening section and it feels to me very much a character driven story. Yes. So tell us about your main character, Sean.
Speaker 3 00:03:52 Sure. My main character, her name is Sean Conway. It's spelled s e a g n, because the mother at the time thought it was Gaelic and it's really not, but she was trying to be stylish. So she is a veterinarian, but she's bored with her job and so she finds out that there's this carnival in the area and she goes to the carnival and she sees these animals that are in such decrepit condition that she just feels really sorry for them and she decides to take them onto her wing and at the same time she finds love in the carnival.
Speaker 2 00:04:29 Oh, so there's romance in
Speaker 3 00:04:31 There's a romance in in there, yeah.
Speaker 2 00:04:33 Oh, wonderful. And you need to make sure to tell people that
Speaker 3 00:04:37 There's a romance in there. There is a lesbian biker gang in there.
Speaker 2 00:04:42 There's Tara readings,
Speaker 3 00:04:44 There's a Tara reading. Basically she finds out that she's like one of the most sane people in the group. I was a a Kearney for a summer, summer one year with my husband, well my boyfriend at the time, but he was, he ended up being my husband.
Speaker 2 00:04:59 This gets us to, uh, your inspiration for the story now. How much of your inspiration from the story comes from that experience of working in a carnival?
Speaker 3 00:05:09 Most of it does. A lot of the things that happened in the book happened actually during the time I was there. A lot of insane stuff happened. It was drugs and drinking and sex and more drugs and <laugh>, you
Speaker 2 00:05:25 Know? Exactly. And sometimes you have a disaffected veterinarian. Yes. Who wants to take care of animals?
Speaker 3 00:05:31 <laugh>. I got to work in the ticket booth for a while and then from the ticket booth I got to move to the bouncy house because the daughter of the person who was in charge of the carnival showed up and she took over my jobs in the ticket booth because she wanted a cushy job. And that was the cushiest job in the whole group.
Speaker 2 00:05:52 Well, bouncy house sounds like more fun than ticket booth.
Speaker 3 00:05:55 I, the bouncy house was. Okay.
Speaker 2 00:05:57 So will this become a series you're pretty well known on the Water Dragon side for writing series?
Speaker 3 00:06:04 Probably not, because it ends with the love relationship being established.
Speaker 2 00:06:10 Well, good. So we can promise that has what a romance needs. It has the h e a at the
Speaker 3 00:06:15 End. Yes, it's got the happy every
Speaker 2 00:06:17 Half. Okay. That's a relief. I Now you also write short fiction. Yes. So what's your favorite milia? Do you like to work long? Do you like, do you like short, do you or is it all what the story dictates?
Speaker 3 00:06:30 It's pretty much what the story does. I like to work short fiction more because it's like quick done, end of story. I like to do long stuff when I have a world to build and when I have a lot of details that I want to get out, then I'll do it as a long form. But I'm trying more short fiction now. And the only time I'll probably get a a novel out is during NaNoWriMo, which is National Novel Writing Month in November. So that's actually gonna be fan fiction. I'm writing it for fun.
Speaker 2 00:07:06 So you're going to take a vacation from writing by writing a novel?
Speaker 3 00:07:11 Yes. It won't be work. It'll be actually just, just for fun.
Speaker 2 00:07:15 There you have it. A true writer. When she needs a break, she writes a novel. Well, what's your personal style when you are drafting a novel or a short story? Do you just sit down and go, or do you carefully plot out the elements and the story arcs and the characters?
Speaker 3 00:07:31 Well, what I'm trying to do with this new novel is I'm, I'm establishing the character. I just put out a whole bunch of characters and I put down little things about them and stuff like that. And then usually what I do is I just let the plot happen or I'll get the beginning of the plot and the end of the plot, the main plot, and then everything else will just kind of like happen, uh, on its own. So I'm kind of a discovery writer, but I am a plotter in the sense that I've got a beginning and I've got an end, but I don't have much of the middle. The middle is very mushy.
Speaker 2 00:08:07 Oh, that's a good technique. I kind of work that way myself. I find if you plan too much, it gets boring.
Speaker 3 00:08:14 If you plan too much, it's like you've written the book, so why even bother
Speaker 2 00:08:17 Just to get it to somebody else? <laugh>, it's easier to find your novels because they're right there on Water Dragon and Paper Angel Press. Yes. So where do we look for your short fiction? Is it in the same location or, or is it squirrel way elsewhere as well?
Speaker 3 00:08:33 Well, most of my short fiction is for Dragon Gems. I try to do short fiction with a purpose now because before I had a website called 800 words.com. It was just 800 words of something. It was whatever I wrote that day. It was just 800 words of it. And I did write other short fiction based in some other worlds, some other fan fiction as well.
Speaker 2 00:09:01 To jump back to the longer form, how long would you say it takes you to get from, oh, I have a great idea for a novel to here. Publisher here is my novel.
Speaker 3 00:09:11 It can take me about two months. Wow. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:09:15 The way you say that is like, oh, that feels like a very long time. I think for most people that would be lightning.
Speaker 3 00:09:22 Yeah. Well, if it's the idea, like that's how long it took me to do Carnival Farm, because a lot of times I'm already thinking about the idea and so by the time I sit down with the book, it's kind of like Athena comes outta my head already grown. So I've thought my way through a lot of the plots and it's just, it's all in here. It just needs to come out onto the keyboard or onto the paper.
Speaker 2 00:09:49 Wow. Yeah. So organically grown. Yeah. Storytelling. So you're not spending time sending it out to a critique circle or
Speaker 3 00:09:58 Nope, I didn't
Speaker 2 00:09:59 Farming it out to beta.
Speaker 3 00:10:01 No, I don't because not that I think great. I'm just that great. Um, <laugh>, it's, it's a style that I figure that if the editor reads it and other people hear the idea, they'll be like, oh, that's just stupid, you know, <laugh> and I won't bother.
Speaker 2 00:10:17 Oh, you, that's a reluctance that someone might tell you No before you finish.
Speaker 3 00:10:22 That's why I don't send it out. I don't bother telling. Well, if it's a really good idea that it, it won't let go of me, then I'll just keep it and I'll write it. But if I'm on the fence with it, I'll go and post it somewhere, like on my blog or
Speaker 2 00:10:43 Oh, and where is your blog?
Speaker 3 00:10:45 My blog is also grimalkin.com.
Speaker 2 00:10:47 Okay. grimalkin.com Remember that
Speaker 3 00:10:50 I usually post on my blog and I try and see if there's any comments or anything that anybody says about,
Speaker 2 00:10:55 Oh, you occasionally do some sort of gentle what, uh, market testing.
Speaker 3 00:11:02 Yeah. And Twitter. I I'm also on Twitter. Yes. As war writer. Follow
Speaker 2 00:11:06 War writer at, at Twitter. If you don't, you're missing things. Okay. So I have one question here, which is kind of self-serving, but how <laugh>, how has this small publishing experience benefited your career and helped your books get out to the readers? And that's a different pack. Everyone talks traditional publishing or self-publishing, and this is small publishing. So how has that helped you?
Speaker 3 00:11:32 It's actually created this career. Small publishing is better than self-publishing because self-publishing, I'm kind of like throwing it out into the world as it is without having anybody else look at it but me, to me that's, I couldn't do self-publishing. I would need an editor at some point or I would need somebody to come over and say, this part of the book is just different. I don't understand this part of the book. Or consistency issues and stuff like that because I have a nasty habit of putting it down and then going back to it like a day later, and I forgot what I wrote the day before, uh, go along for this book. I repeated myself four times how old the secondary character was when he joined the carnival.
Speaker 2 00:12:21 So this is the love interest?
Speaker 3 00:12:23 Yes.
Speaker 2 00:12:24 Is it a spoiler to ask who the love interest is going to be?
Speaker 3 00:12:27 His name is Moose.
Speaker 2 00:12:29 Moose. Awesome.
Speaker 3 00:12:30 That's what he was called in the
Speaker 2 00:12:32 Carnival. So does everyone in the carnival have a carnival name?
Speaker 3 00:12:35 Yes. And the only one who doesn't have one is the veterinarian because she's not, well they call her the rich one.
Speaker 2 00:12:43 Oh, okay.
Speaker 3 00:12:45 <laugh>, because she bought that whole petting zoo and all the accruments with it. So she's considered the rich one out of the whole group. And she's also got, because she's a veterinarian, she has drugs. So
Speaker 2 00:12:57 Antibiotics,
Speaker 3 00:12:58 She has drugs, but she really doesn't have drugs
Speaker 2 00:13:02 <laugh>. But it gives her some cred with the carnival crowd. Yes. That's good. You wanna tell us a little bit more about moose?
Speaker 3 00:13:09 Sure. Moose is, he started the carnival when he was 17 and he's been in and out of the carnival for the last 20 years or so because he can't seem to get an actual job inside. He calls it wearing a monkey suit. Moose is actually based on my husband. Oh. There's a few things that Moose does that are like totally the way my husband was acting at that time.
Speaker 2 00:13:38 So, so how does he feel about being written into a book?
Speaker 3 00:13:41 Well, my husband has passed away.
Speaker 2 00:13:44 Oh,
Speaker 3 00:13:45 He passed away in 2008. And so this is kind of like a little homage to him so that his attitude, his kind of like his being mm, is a legacy and passed on so that it's living, it's going to be living on. And that's what I wanted to put cross with the book is that it's not only the story of the veterinarian, but it's also the story of my husband. And that
Speaker 2 00:14:11 Is
Speaker 3 00:14:11 Just, he would be
Speaker 2 00:14:13 Wonderful. Lisa <laugh>. That is wonderful. That adds a wonderful layer of depth and caring to this story.
Speaker 3 00:14:23 Thank you
Speaker 2 00:14:24 <laugh>. You got me tearing up now. It's not fair <laugh>. So is there anything else you want to make sure that people hear about? Well,
Speaker 3 00:14:32 I hope that this change of writing or this break in writing instead of using the magic stuff, I hope that this gets me a whole bunch of other types of readers that would like that kind of thing. And if they do, and if this book does really take off, then I'm, I will have to write about cancer.
Speaker 2 00:14:54 Well, we'll expect a character driven story with, uh, complex freeform, uh, dynamics and a lot of plot twists. So it won't be your grandma's cancer story.
Speaker 3 00:15:08 No, no. It'll be more fun,
Speaker 2 00:15:11 But work for you I'm sure. How can readers connect with you and with your writing? There's Okay, you have your blog.
Speaker 3 00:15:19 So I have a blog grimalkin.com, that's also my website where I have all my, you can contact me that way. You can sign up for my mailing list in that way, which I will not bombard you with a, unfortunately, I don't write that many newsletters. I write 'em maybe once a month and months every two months, <laugh>, because I'm also doing podcast and that I try and get out every month. It's
Speaker 2 00:15:48 Not this pod podcast. Okay,
Speaker 3 00:15:50 Not this
Speaker 2 00:15:51 Podcast. Your podcast
Speaker 3 00:15:51 Podcast called Dark Mystic Quill. It's available on iTunes and everywhere else. So I do that podcast, I do this podcast, small publishing in a big universe, and you can contact me either in Twitter, at war writer on Facebook, at either Lisa Jacob or La Jacob because I post in both places. The Lisa Jacob is more for my, you see pictures of my cats, the La Jacob is more for the books and my career and my work and all of that. And to get ahold of me, you can email me at War writer at Gmail.
Speaker 2 00:16:31 That's very generous. If anyone complains that they can't find you, then they're having a,
Speaker 3 00:16:36 And again, I'm on City of Heroes like almost all the time.
Speaker 2 00:16:40 <laugh>. That's just wonder. Okay. Well this has been Vanessa McLaren Ray talking with Lisa Jacob about her look Carnival Farm and her experience in small publishing. And this has been a wonderful time
Speaker 1 00:17:04 Travel to a vast world of airborne ships and floating islands. The crew of the Raging Storm led by Captain Cordelia protects the floating KA islands from strange creatures and criminals. When Cordelia is poisoned, she must find the cure. Before time runs out, her only hope is to join an alliance with a mysterious doctor, one who has carried a grudge against her father for years. Not only will Cordelia have to race against time, but she will have to face the demons that keep invading her mind. Sky Chase book, one of the Flight of Ships from Lauren Masuda, is available now in hardcover trade paperback and digital editions. For more information, visit water dragon publishing.com/sky chase.
Speaker 1 00:18:07 Thanks again to our guest host, Vanessa McLaren Ray for interviewing me. Lisa Jacob, author of Carnival Farm. Next time we will have Jen Broda audio book producer about what it takes to put together audio books. We plan on publishing new episodes every second Wednesday of the month, so watch out for episodes around that time. Music is provided by Melody Loops. If you want to know more about Smug Publishing in a big universe, visit our website at S P B u-podcast.com. Tweet us at S P B U dash podcast and like us on Facebook at S P B U Podcast. This podcast was recorded and edited by yours truly, LA Jacob. This month's episode was sponsored by Paper Angel Press and its imprints Water Dragon Publishing and Unruly Voices. You can hear our podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Amazon Music. Thank you very much for listening and talk to you soon.
Speaker 1 00:19:12 Okay, now that we've gotten to the end of the podcast, I can give you the big secret gift that you can give to any author and best of all, it's free. Leave a review. That's it. You can leave a review on Amazon for a book that you didn't even buy on Amazon. You can leave a review even if you haven't finished it. You can leave a review on Good Reads, Amazon, your own blog, or your YouTube channel. Authors love reviews. It gives us feedback and strokes our ego. If they're good reviews, the best gift you can give an author is to leave a review. Go do it now. Thank you.
