Speaker 0 00:00:00 <silence> Hello and welcome to Small Publishing in a Big Universe. I am your host, LA Jacob. This month's interview is with author Randy Dawn, coming from our sponsors This month from Water Dragon Publishing, the repossessed Ghost by Brian Bull and Flames of Attrition by Vanessa McLaurin. Ray For Dragon Gems, we have the summer 2023 anthology from Paper Angel Press, dodging Prayers and Bullets by Karen Beatty, the Double Crossing by Sylvia Patience and the Weaver's Daughter, a new edition by Sylvia. Patience
Speaker 1 00:01:13 Past
Speaker 0 00:01:14 The Long Days with Short tails from the Dragon Gems Summer 2023 anthology. This third collection of speculative fiction from many talented new authors is available this month. And for a limited time, get the digital editions of Dragon Gems Winter 2023 and Dragon Gems Spring 2023 for only 99 cents each. Or visit the Water Dragon Publishing Square storefront for special deals on printed editions. The Dragon Gems Summer 2023 edition is available this month from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Cobo Smashwords, and other online booksellers or support your local independent bookstores by ordering it through bookshop.org. For more information, visit their
[email protected]. Hi, and welcome again to Small Publishing in a Big Universe. I am your host La Jacob. And with me today I have Randy Dawn, an author, and she's going to be discussing a book that she has had out for about a year now. Tune in tomorrow. Welcome to the podcast, Randy.
Speaker 2 00:02:35 Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 0 00:02:38 What is Tune In Tomorrow about?
Speaker 2 00:02:40 So Tune in Tomorrow is about a reality TV show that's run by mythical creatures for mythical creatures, but stars, humans. And yes, it is meant to be funny. It just won an independent book humor award. So objectively it seems to be funny. In my real life, I am a an entertainment journalist and so I've written a lot about TV and film and I tried to put a lot of that in the background, how the sausage gets made and everything. So I cannot confirm or deny if any characters in this book are based on real people that I have met. But you can decide that for yourself. That is what Tune In Tomorrow is about. That's
Speaker 0 00:03:14 Awesome. Why did you write this book?
Speaker 2 00:03:16 There's never just one thing that goes into a book, but basically I have an agent and I had given her two different books, which were much more serious and they hadn't quite gotten to publication. And she said, you know, why don't you try something a little different? So I was like, okay, well what can I do that's a little different? Well, I had been working on this other thing, which might have become a game. There's a company called Choice of Games, which is a text-based online game and they wanted ideas. So I had come up with this idea of young actress joins a soap opera, finds more drama behind the scenes than in front of the scenes, very classic sort of story. And then I wanted to marry that with an all about Eve's scenario where you have the aging diva who's very threatened by the young perky newcomer.
Speaker 2 00:03:56 I know the basic threads here. So I was working on that as a game that didn't pan out. That was a little too hard for me. It's okay to admit when you've broken your brain, but I still had the story and I thought, well, I'm gonna do something different. What if I took this story and put it in a fantastical universe where it wasn't just humans making shows for humans, but fawns and wear panthers and palm barrows and centaurs? What kind of TV would they watch? And I thought, well, when we watch fantasy, we wanna watch about castles and magic and strange creatures and things we're not familiar with. And I thought, well, that would be very boring for fantastical creatures. They'd wanna know about the dull and boring stuff in our lives, adultery or embezzlement, or how do you write a check? Or what is this a car crash mean?
Speaker 2 00:04:44 And I thought those are the things that really show up in soap operas and also reality TV shows. But it was a way to flip the idea and make it fresh, hopefully and original. And then that's kind of really how it came to be. This is one of the fastest books I ever wrote out. I already had kind of an outline because I had been structuring it for the game. It was just about adding in new things. And then I'm a huge fan of puns and plays on words and jokes like that. So this really just opened it up for me to be free to do those kind of things. And they're all over the book.
Speaker 0 00:05:16 So it wasn't just a revenge book.
Speaker 2 00:05:19 I won't say revenge. What I will say is that it is nice to be able to step away from things that maybe were challenging to you or people that you maybe you didn't always like being around and put them in the book in various ways. The fact is that some of the characters are mildly inspired by people who I actually really like, who are super nice people, but they're the ones who came to my mind for for the Dangerous Divo or the Lario on set. And I'm like, I get to take them because I'm a writer and I can do that. But there's one character who has a very tiny part and she may or may not have been a supervisor of mine, and I would've liked to put a little bit more of her in there. I think that there's always a little bit of that going on where you get to pick and choose from your own life. But there is a section where we go to the corporate headquarters that would run this show and it's run by these fairies. They're the ones who are in charge of it. It's the Sealy court network, and we see that they're kind of obnoxious and very full of themselves and very perfect, and that's very boring. So we see how they think they're operating the shows. But our executive producer who's kind of one of our heroes is trying to make his own show. So there's a little bit of corporate uh, stuff going on in there too.
Speaker 0 00:06:26 What is your work schedule like when you are writing?
Speaker 2 00:06:29 I'm very lucky I'm at this desk and whether I'm writing fiction or freelance, I get to do it from right here. So that's really cool. But it doesn't always occupy eight hours of my day. So for me, a work schedule for writing, I know there are people who are like, you must sit down and do three hours a day or two hours a day. You have to put some words down every day. But to me, the concept of writing is something that involves more than just putting words on a page or typing. I think we all can recognize the idea of I'm gonna stare out this window for 20 minutes while I let the story play around in my head and then I'll come back and maybe put some words down. That's how it is for me. I write in my head, I kind of have a movie in my head and what you're seeing on the page largely is me transcribing this movie that's been going on in my head.
Speaker 2 00:07:12 So I feel like I can be writing by walking around the block, by going to a museum and getting inspiration from art. That helps me a lot. It doesn't have to be words on a page, I think everybody has their own way of doing it, but I'm not one of these people who writes, oh, I put down a thousand words today. Because to me it's about quality, not quantity. I wanna know that there are words that are actually going to make it later on. So my work schedule is just keeping focused on the writing, however it ends up getting done. Because the way I look at it is you have to sort of poke that muse in your head. If you let the muse go to sleep, it can take a while to wake her back up again. But once you have her up, put her on that treadmill, make her do something one way or the other every day, even if it's not Words on a page. That's kind of my work schedule.
Speaker 0 00:07:59 You said with this book you pretty much outlined it already. Do you normally outline or pre outline of some sort or do you actually just sit down and say whatever happens happens?
Speaker 2 00:08:10 Honestly, this really was the first time I properly outlined something. I think that the word outline confused me for a lot of years. I always thought you had to do it as if you were in English class. Roman numeral number one words, letter A. And I think I tried to do that a few times and I said, this is just like killing the spirit of the book. I can't outline this is no good. What worked for me ultimately for this book was having to sort of go chapter one, this is what's gonna happen in that chapter, chapter two. This is what's gonna happen in that chapter. What was helpful for me is it became like a ladder when I was actually writing the book because I would say, oh, I, I'm I'm, I appear to be at the end of chapter one. I don't have to put all of this other stuff in it.
Speaker 2 00:08:47 'cause I've already mapped out that this stuff is coming later. So I didn't drive myself crazy with an outline, but this is the first time I did that. I'm writing a follow-up right now and I didn't really do an outline. I just kind of went with the direction I wanted to go in. And there is joy in that too because the story can surprise you. I enjoy the surprises if a story isn't going in a direction that I want it to. Sitting down and writing out each chapter I think is really very helpful. So I'm a little of both. I love the idea that everybody has their own way of doing it, that you can listen to what everybody's rules are, but then you have to figure out how those rules work or don't work for you and you keep what works and you throw out the rest.
Speaker 0 00:09:26 Do you presently have a passion project other than the follow up
Speaker 2 00:09:30 At any given time? I have a bunch of books that are somewhere in progress. During the pandemic, I actually wrote a full novel that is not in this universe, which does not have magic per se in it. But when Tune in Tomorrow got picked up for publication, I kinda had to shift gears and do all the edits and do all the publicity for that. So I left that book in this sort of developmental stage. So that is sitting there. I have other books that didn't end up getting acquired, but I think are still in good positions to be published at some point. But in the long term, I have this passion project that is actually more of a memoir, but I wanna make it a memoir that's also heavily fictionalized, which talks a little bit about, before I wrote about television and film, I did a lot of music journalism and I love musicians and I love writing about musicians and I wanna talk about sort of some of the behind the scenes stuff that I encountered while I was doing that. So I have that big overall picture, but I also have to be very emotionally honest in it too. So I'm gonna wait for another book or two to come out before I can really settle in to feel comfortable and tackle that.
Speaker 0 00:10:30 When you said Tune in for Tomorrow was acquired, is it a, a large publisher or a small publisher?
Speaker 2 00:10:35 They're a large-ish independent publisher that's based in Oxford, in England. Rebellion is this company that does a lot of games related things, and then they have an imprint for a science fiction fantasy called Solaris. They've won like a British Fantasy Award for best small independent press. So I always find it kind of a a hard question to answer because it's not one of the Big four or the Big five and it's not necessarily a name that's hugely recognized in the us but they are a decent size independent publisher in the,
Speaker 0 00:11:03 In the past. Have you self-published or published with smaller publishers or not published at all and just wanted to go for the,
Speaker 2 00:11:12 So I've had a lot of short stories in independently or small press published anthologies. Those are not books that I personally published, so it's hard to say that way. This is my debut novel period in any, in any size press one way or the other. But I also have a nonfiction book called, uh, the Law and Order s v u, unofficial Companion, which came out in 2009 when we had no idea that this show would still be on the air this many years later. But that came out through Ben Bella Press. So I had other books that have come out in other places. I co-edited a book for fantastic books called Across the Universe Tales of Alternative Beatles. And every single story that we compiled was a different take on, oh, what if the Beatles were the A team, or what if the Beatles were wizards and, and that was a lot of fun.
Speaker 2 00:11:58 So I've done a lot of work in a lot of small presses and independent presses. I did self-publish just to try it out on Amazon, a 60 page book of some short stories that had already been published. So I've tried a little bit of things. My agent was very insistent that we try to go for the gusto and try to get my book traditionally published one way or the other rather than going for really small presses. And I'm still wavering as to whether that's how I wanna stay because I got so many books and I wanna get 'em out and this process is so slow. Tune in tomorrow got, we signed the contract in July of 2021 and it came out in August of 2022. It was a little over a year. I totally understand why it had to go like that, but now I'm like, I have another book. Will you please look at my book? And it's, it's just so slow to get anybody to jump on that sort of,
Speaker 0 00:12:49 You're still on the fence though of whether or not you prefer the amount of control that you have under self-publishing.
Speaker 2 00:12:56 Well, there's a lot of factors that go in here. I think the main thing that anybody who gets published traditionally, you get an agent, they find an independent or a big five publisher and they put you out. The main thing you get from that is legitimacy and prestige. People look at the book and they say, oh, this doesn't look like something that Amazon just sort of coughed out. It looks good, it's presented well. It's associated with a company that other people have heard of before. And so yeah, you get certain things from that side. If you are say, I just got outta my M F A program, I am 23 and I got many books to tell. I think that that helps. It helps if you sort of push yourself toward a more traditional area because you have decades and decades to figure this out and get to a higher level.
Speaker 2 00:13:39 But in terms of being able to sell books and really get the books that you want out there, I'm not in my twenties, I'm not in my thirties and I'm not in my forties. So this is my first novel. I'm an older author who finally got something out that they wanted to get out. Well, I sometimes, and I've said this to people, I'm gonna die before I get all my books out if I wait for the traditional way every single time. But it's a bit like aim high and then if that doesn't work out, at least you can sort of work with smaller presses with people who'll let you be a little more hands-on. But the thing that sticks with me that my agent kept saying was, look, people are gonna look at how your last book sold before they give you your next deal.
Speaker 2 00:14:16 So if you go and put something out on a very small press and you sell 25 copies, or you sell and even a hundred copies, and then you have another book, oh, this is the big one, this can really go to a bigger press. The next press may wanna look at what you've previously done and how that's sold. It's not fair if you self-published it for them to then suggest that that it maybe went gangbusters. But that is apparently a line that they look for is how many books did your last book sell so that we can get a sense of how many books you're likely to sell at this next one. That factor was a big thing for me. So this way I figure if I can get a couple of books out traditionally and then I still have all these books that I wanna put out out, I'll be like, great, I will have built my audience. I'll have this legitimacy. I'll have a couple of books that really look super professional and then I can just be like, and here's the rest of the stuff. You like this stuff. You're gonna like this stuff.
Speaker 0 00:15:01 Do you find that you read and write in the same genre? And if not, what genres do you read and what genres do you write?
Speaker 2 00:15:09 I have found that I get the most joy out of writing in fantasy humor, sometimes some horror as well. I read a lot of those books, but I'm kind of omnivorous. I will read a contemporary book, I'll read a mystery book, I'll read a thriller, I'll read a horror book. I have so many different books and genres. To me, it's all about, is this a good story? The thing that turns me off is where story takes a backseat to style. I think I've described this to other people as belly button staring stories where it's just, oh, I have lint in my belly button. Look at my lint. It means things, metaphor, metaphor and that stuff is what often makes the New York Times bestseller list. That is not really what I'm here for. I want great story, well told, not well told eh on the story. I do not need to read another book about a middle aged guy with angst in New England or something. I will say that I tend to like stories that have a larger ensemble cast where you have multiple stories that are all woven together in a clever way, and then they all either affect one another at the end or they, they mean something together at the end. You're not just reading a bunch of individual people who have no connection to one that is often a favorite of mine. Big epic stories like that.
Speaker 0 00:16:19 Where can people contact you?
Speaker 2 00:16:21 My name is Randy Dawn, r a n d e e D A W n. And I'm randy dawn.com. And that has a link to my newsletter. It has a link to where you can get all the books where you can see my latest articles. That's the best way to reach me. If there's a place on social media that's for Randy Dawn, you can, that's probably me also 'cause I'm Randy Dawn on Instagram and Randy Dawn on Twitter as well. You can usually find me there. And then I have author Randy Dawn on Facebook. Once you got the name down, you can find me almost anywhere you need to and there's a whole contact form that you can reach out and send me thoughts. I love hearing when people have read the book, it has affected them in one way or the other. That is really amazing. So yeah, please reach out and I'm happy to chat.
Speaker 0 00:17:01 Thank you very much for your time.
Speaker 2 00:17:03 You're welcome. And thank you for having me.
Speaker 0 00:17:12 Do you think ghosts haunt only houses as a repo man? Mel just pulled off the smoothest ache of his life. Kate, a college student was undecided on which major to pursue. All of their plans went out the window the night Mel found Kate in the back of a 74 Nova. When Mel becomes a suspect in Kate's murder, he must leave his life behind and make a new start in Sacramento, California where he and Kay meet other people with supernatural gifts. But not everything is sunshine and roses. In California, awakening to power comes at a cost and all ghosts eventually become monsters. Can Mel trust these new friends in Sacramento? Can he help Kate find some peace without landing himself in jail? The fateful night, Mel slipped behind the wheel of an old Chevy. It wasn't just the car that became repossessed. The repossessed ghost by Brian CE Bull is available this month from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Cobo smash words and other online booksellers or support your local independent bookstore by ordering it through bookshop.org. For more information, visit their
[email protected].
Speaker 0 00:18:35 Thanks again to our guest. We plan on publishing new episodes every second Wednesday of the month. Watch for new episodes around that time. Theme music is provided by Melody Loops. Other music is found for free on the web. If you want to know more about small publishing in a big universe, visit our
[email protected]. Tweet or X US at SP podcast and like us on Facebook at SP podcast. This podcast was recorded and edited by yours Truly, LA Jacob Executive producer is Steven Ecky. Transcription services provided by Sleepy Fox Studio. This month's episode was sponsored by Paper Angel Press and Water Dragon Publishing. You can hear our podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Amazon Music, and most of your other favorite podcast services.
