Our Brand New Podcast! (No joke)

Episode 01 - Fools & Sages

Transcript and links:

Good morning, good afternoon, good evening – wherever you are in the world. Welcome to the brand new Blood-Red Pencil podcast. If you’re not going to launch something new in January, then what better time to start than a month that’s… NOT January.

I’m Elle Carter Neal, the (sort-of) techie, behind-the-scenes, admin person here at the Blood-Red Pencil, and now behind the mic as the host of this podcast. I’m in Australia, while the rest of our team currently operate from the US. Please leave us a comment and let us know where in the world YOU are joining us from. We love to connect with you.

Our theme for April is Fools and Sages, and, while we do enjoy entertaining you with a little foolishness, we hope that, after 14 years of blogging at the Blood-Red Pencil, what we have to offer is a whole lot of writing and editing wisdom.

The wisest piece of advice anyone could give or follow is simply “Be kind”. Be kind, be generous, take care of your fellow humans. So, up first, we’re sharing the Authors for Ukraine Auction. Polly Iyer and Ann Parker from our team are contributing contributed books to this auction. The auction has now ended. Grab the links from Polly's blog post (or from the show notes below) and bid if you’re in the US or Canada. If you’re resident elsewhere in the world, you are welcome to donate to the fundraiser instead.

On a lighter note, Diana Hurwitz shares Rookie Mistakes when it comes to submitting manuscripts to publishers - that post is live now. Look out for that post on the 7th.  Find out exactly how Diana decorated the submission of her first novel, and what her recent client decided to do that reminded Diana of this story.

And speaking of clients and non-clients, looking back three years ago, our late colleague Pat Smith shared a couple of mind-boggling stories of individuals who, under normal circumstances, would not make it through a traditional publishing process. Pat wrote that “The story of how a certain book got bought is a tale in itself, but to the best of Pat’s understanding it involved a lot of chicanery, an “auction” for a hot literary property that never actually took place, an agent who conducted this fictional auction fired by the author and then rehired, and a general hoodwinking of the publishing company across the board. Game, set, match. Book sold. / However. Publishing is a small, insular world, and the story of this whole sorry episode was circulated. In the future, if this author and his writing committee ever manage to produce another book, he will have to self-publish it.” Pat’s words of wisdom? Be a decent human being. Employ good manners and simple common courtesy, listen thoughtfully to suggestions. Be polite.

Sounds like a life philosophy that a some other individuals and entities – authors or not – could stand to incorporate into their dealings with fellow human beings.

If you’ve just joined us and missed some of our posts from the first quarter of 2022, here’s a look back at what we wrote about:

In January, Brynette Turner joined us for a couple of months to share her journey with Amazon’s Kindle Vella publishing platform. Taking inspiration from Brynette, our founder Dani Greer began to experiment with Kindle Vella and has not only published several chapters of three different stories, but also renewed her enthusiasm for her writing after a number of years of disillusionment. The myriad possibilities of serial fiction in this format have also intrigued Linda Lane, who is keen to join Brynette and Dani on Kindle Vella, or possibly even looking at other serialisation avenues. After two years of pandemic-induced stagnation, it’s great to see the sparks of creativity in our office again. Maryann Miller shared tips for creating more creativity, while, in March, Polly Iyer and Dani Greer both wrote eloquently about the weighty distractions of various world situations over the past six or seven years and how this affects an author’s ability to put meaningful words on a page. As Polly says, “Our written stories seem petty and insignificant in the light of what others are experiencing right now. But those few moments we can write a chapter or two allow us to block out all the world’s problems that have become our problems. It doesn’t last long, but even that brief respite helps.” Dani says that, when 2017 rolled around, she couldn’t bring herself to write anymore, until she started thinking about how the country could heal some of its divisiveness. She began with writing letters to the editor. Then blog posts. And then started thinking about fiction and stories that might help her cope... and maybe also help others. Dani thought back to the 43 JD Robb books she’d binged earlier in that year, and how they saved her soul and sanity. And that was when she realised, as Polly mentioned in her post, that fiction does have a valuable role to play in bringing respite to both authors and readers.

Ann Parker, meanwhile, launched her latest Silver Rush historical mystery in February. The Secret in the Wall is the eighth book in her series. Maryann Miller wrote about romance and sex for older characters.

Guest blogger Allison Maruska also joined us for a post and shared an amazing amount of insight and strategy on putting together a stall to sell your books, in person – imagine that, again! – at book fairs and markets. Even if you’re not ready to venture out just yet, this post is well worth saving to refer to when you are.

The links for all the posts mentioned today are in the show notes, along with the transcript of today’s episode. Thank you for joining me. I’m Elle Carter Neal, and I’ll be back in May with more editing wisdom from the Blood-Red Pencil.

Elle Carter Neal is the author of the middle grade fantasy The Convoluted Key (first in the Draconian Rules series), the picture book I Own All the Blue, and teen science-fantasy novel Madison Lane and the Wand of Rasputin (first in the Grounded series). She is the editor of Angela Brazil's 1910 book The Nicest Girl in the School. Elle is based in Melbourne, Australia. Find her at ElleCarterNeal.com.

Photo by Amanda Meryle Photography