Welcome And Meet Laura

SPEAKER_00 0:04

The most valuable asset of any independent author is their library, the public library system. You go in and you offer to talk to groups. And in this day and age, you can do it now through Skype. What they'll do is they'll put you, these people will come and meet in a room, and you'll appear on a screen up on the wall.

SPEAKER_01 0:36

Hi friends, this is Read and Write with Natasha Podcast. My name is Natasha Tines, and I'm an author and a journalist. In this channel, I talk about the writing life, review books, and interview authors. Hope you enjoy the journey. Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of Read and Write with Natasha. I have today with me is a veteran author, an editor, and also a storyteller. Her name is Laura Van Wormer, who's a best-selling author who has written 14 novels since her debut Riverside Drive in 1988. Her work spans mainstream fiction and mystery, and she's best known for the Alexandra Chronicles and the Sally Harrington mysteries. Before becoming a novelist, Laura worked as an editor at Doubleday and Company, then supported herself as a writer while finishing her first novel, now in its eighth edition. She later co-founded Author and Company, an electronic publishing and marketing firm where she serves as CEO. All right, Laura, so nice to meet you. I am humbled by all of your knowledge and your experience. Don't face.

SPEAKER_00 2:02

Here I am. No.

The Crash That Changed Everything

SPEAKER_01 2:05

You look great. Thank you. So thank you. Thank you, Laura. And I think the first thing I want to ask you about is your new form that you kind of created of storytelling, which is fiction podcast storytelling. Yes. And this is the first time I actually hear about it. And the first time I interview someone who's doing it. Well, that's because I invented it. Laura, Laura, if if you can just dive in and tell me a bit about what you're doing.

SPEAKER_00 2:35

Very quickly, what happened was I was driving to the airport to go see Betty White in LA. This was in 2015. And this drunk driver was going the wrong way through a throughway tunnel, and he hit me head on. This is my ventilator voice. I woke up like a month later in a million pieces. And it took a long time to get back physically. I mean, like my face, everything's different. Literally, I was Humpty Dumpty in Yale, New Haven Hospital put me back together again. But I had trouble writing after that because of all the brain stuff that went on. But I went to my high school reunion, my 50th reunion, and nobody could hear me. And I was so frustrated because back in the day in high school, as I shared with you, and I think you did it too, I would stop parties. You know, I'd have a few beers at a keg party, and I wanted everybody to listen to what I had just written. And I'd make them listen to me, read this stuff all the time. And so at the reunion, I thought it'd be funny if I could get up and start reading a story to them, but nobody could hear me to begin with because of the new voice. So when I came home, my other half said, Why don't you write them a story and do it as a podcast? And you have a microphone and everybody can hear you. So I started a story, and at first it was for my high school uh classmates, and then suddenly we're like, Who's in Ireland listening to this? Who is that in Sweden? Who is that in Alaska and Indiana? I don't know anybody in Indiana. You know, all these people started tuning in. Yeah. And what it is, I could do this. I could, it's like a soap opera. It's a narrative soap opera, but literally every week I get on, and for half an hour to 45 minutes, I tell this story about kids starting high school in 1971. And that's when we all started high school in my class. So I started doing this, and I getting more and more people listening. And so then, being the storyteller I am, like chapters, I did a cliffhanger ending to every episode, right? And suddenly I'm in my fourth, is the 11th, 12th, 13th, 14th episode, and I'm starting to get email and people reaching out on social media. And they're all loving it. Not because of they went to high school in 1971. Everybody's fascinated about what was high school like before cell phones. We're talking about a period where nobody knew where their kids were and they didn't really care. This was a suburban town that was sort of a new invention in America anyway. President Nixon's the president. He's starting public television and public radio, which they're dismantling now, I understand, in Washington, but most people don't understand. President Nixon started the Environmental Protection Agency. So anyway, every episode, I'm following along with what was really going on in September 1971 when this story begins. And people are responding to it because it's like a history piece. They're so fascinated. I mean, young people say, so that's why mom and dad are the way they are. You know, why are they so socially liberal if they graduated from high school in 1974? And I'm like, well, because we were the first generation of women who were told they could do whatever they wanted, because the women's movement had started. Before that, the men worked, the women stayed at home. Yeah. Right? There was no such thing as abuse, children's abuse, rape, incest. There was no such thing as a gay person in 1971 in high school. I mean, it was just we were brought up to believe that everyone in America is created equal, period. And so, in a lot of ways, we were no longer baby boomers. We were like the liberation generation. You know, we knew about the pill, we knew about birth control, you know, and it's just a very interesting time. And apparently nobody ever talks about it. But so I've got a bunch of people, I do have a bunch of seniors who are listening because it is kind of funny. And anybody who's depressed or upset seems to love the class of 74 because it takes their mind off their problems. You know, because you go, it's like a soap opera, Natasha. You know, what else you know? I know this people who read and read my novels are trying to get out of their own heads. They don't want to know what's going on. These are people, you know, who read all the time anyway to leave where they were, right? I mean, why do we write, Natasha?

SPEAKER_01 7:58

Yeah. So how many episodes do you have so far? All right.

Turning 1971 Into A Soap Opera

SPEAKER_00 8:03

I just decided I called season one because I still I had not intended on creating a whole series, but then it just created itself, you know, which is how first novels are written, you know, they just write themselves. And so I I took a sabbatical and said, okay, I've got 25 episodes. It's like 17 and a half hours of recording and 800 pages of script. I mean, it's it really grew to quite to be something. So I stopped and I said, okay, I've got to get organized. If I do Susan 2, which I am on Valentine's Day, we start up again. But this time I'm going, it'll be on purpose. You know, I'll have a structure and I can really make sure it's tip top, you know. But it is pretty good the way it is now, I gotta tell you.

SPEAKER_01 8:57

So you write the script. And I read it, I just I write it and I read just like So why can't you turn the script into a book since you already have the script?

SPEAKER_00 9:06

Well, I could. That's yeah, it it can be a novel. That's what everybody keeps saying to me, like Laura. Oh, good, we can one of the things that happened, Natasha, when my accident happened, I was right in the middle of we were repackaging my old backlist. We were repackaging 12 novels with new covers, and I was supposed to write an introduction to each novel and you know about the period and all this other stuff. And then the accident happened, and I just haven't been able to face it. You know, they keep saying, Laura, you gotta come back and do this. And I will, but it's painful because I'm not who I used to be. You know, I it it but this series is making me better, so maybe I'll actually finish it. Yeah, so I can do I can do a lot of stuff with this. The problem is I get sort of you know, I love to read, but when I was recovering from this accident, I discovered podcasts because I could listen to them at night. And I could put in my uh little earphones so I didn't wake up my spouse, right? And wherever I was, and uh that intimacy, that one-on-one that podcasting does, like you have it with your guests. I mean, there there's something so intensely personal about it, and the world we live in, nobody is personal anymore, nobody's meeting in person, nobody's doing anything, you know, it's just a different world. But that one-on-one connection through sound when people are feeling like they wish they could turn their heads off, it's a very special thing. And I I don't think people really realize how wonderful. Imagine if you were writing your novel and you were one day you said, Okay, I'm lonely. I'm going down the stairs and I'm gonna read this chapter to my readers and see what they think.

SPEAKER_01 11:20

How many people are listening? Do you do you have like the numbers if you if you're comfortable sharing?

SPEAKER_00 11:25

Oh well, I'm not all that comfortable sharing because it goes up into that's why I'm starting to promote it. I haven't done a thing to promote it, it was just all word of mouth, and then suddenly I went from you know a hundred listeners who were like classmates from Darien High School, you know, to a thousand the next day. And now we're up in the middle of the year. But that's good. Yeah, that's pretty good. That's pretty what's the name of the podcast? The class of 74. And it's okay thus far, it's all word of mouth. And so my appearing on this show is I'm that's another reason why I had to stop season one and figure out, do I want to do this? And I do because I love it. And then I have this Patreon club, the detention club, and people pay to belong to it. And I'm like, cool. You know, and all they want to know is, well, can we see your notes from the research that you do for every episode? Can we see what the first bottle of clamato looked like, or you know, what a bottle stopper was because there weren't twist-off caps yet in the all that stuff. So suddenly I'm a historian, Natasha. Now I'm putting in all my research notes. You know, when you're writing a novel, you're scribbling stuff, you look up this, you look up that. And in the one of the early episodes of Class of 74, Chrissy Evert makes her first appearance at Forest Hills, the U.S. Open, the tennis tournament. And she's 16 years old, and she beats the fourth seed person in the tournament. And suddenly the world is turned on its head. Well, you could go to the Patreon page for cla uh class of 74 and watch the match, right?

SPEAKER_01 13:19

So what do you give, like I tried, honestly, I tried Patreon for my for my podcast. I know no one signed up. Well, no. So what what do you give them? What do you give them? How do you prompt them to do that?

Scripts Seasons And Cliffhangers

SPEAKER_00 13:32

I did well, first of all, I called it the detention club, which everybody loved. So, of course, they wanted to be there because I think all my listeners were in detention. Okay. I almost called it the nicest people in America Club, because I do find that people who listen into my show are I just identify with them completely, and they identify with me and my sense of humor. So for five bucks a month, they just come in, they see the notes behind each episode, and they get to see the videos and all this other stuff. But in the new season, they get episodes ad-free because I'm we're taking on ads for the right now. Season one is ad-free. So if anybody wants to listen, ad-free, do it now, because I think it's February 1st. We start running ads in the old season two, and then I have ads in the upcoming season. So five dollars a month to get ad-free episodes, you get all my research notes, like the museum, you get the clubhouse to get to know the nicest people in America, which they are. And then also after each episode, we're gonna do a live QA with me. We'll start at YouTube, but eventually, I don't know, somehow I've got to do it with Zoom or something. That so people can tell me what did they like, what didn't they like? You know, kind of let them help shape the narrative going forward. Not that I'll listen. Who are your sponsors? Oh, we're a paper company.

SPEAKER_01 15:12

Did they approach you or did did you approach?

SPEAKER_00 15:14

No, I approached them. Are you kidding? Yeah. I'm not shy. Okay. But I have to explain to them why they want to talk to my listeners. And so if you show them that, yeah, the the audience does tend to be older when they're listening like every day, right when it's released, because they have more time. The people who listen to my show are very smart. That's the one thing. And they also seem to be rather well-heeled, meaning they're educated, they have money, but they're environmentally conscious kind of thing, like that whole Nixon starting the Environmental Protection Agency set off a flu of stuff. So I shared some of these feedback from the audience, and I said, All right, this is your opportunity to explain how you're protecting the environment.

SPEAKER_01 16:08

Okay. So how long did it take you to record season one? So you so you said you started 2015?

SPEAKER_00 16:15

2015, the last week of April, I did the first one, and then, oh, and I had to learn how to podcast, Natasha. Yeah. Fortunately, the audio part, because it's audio only, yeah. I know how to edit analog audio because that's what we did in college. Yeah. Back in the early 70s, right? So I know how to do that, but I had to learn everything. Because I was just doing it myself to entertain my classmates. And that's been an adventure. So with Patreon and everything, maybe I'm going to save up to get a producer. I did have a volunteer producer who didn't work out. You know, there's no one like yourself to count on, you know. I'm sure you found that out as a writer. Whatever you can do on your own is good. And so I have to promote, and your audience, you know, all those writers out there, you know about promotion and self-promotion. And when I started that company they were talking about, Author and Company, that was back in 2012. The authors had not a clue about social media then, or their backlist, or what ebooks were. They didn't know any of that. And so the company was really a think tank. We had all these techno guys out in Denver, and it was all very terrific until I got hit by that drunk driver. But I knew what was coming, all the self-publishing, and I thought we can teach writers how to do this, and let's do it now, because their backlists are gold and they're just sitting there, not in print. And it was before Spark was at Ingram, because you could do a Spark is the creator account. You can have it Ingram. And Ingram is a an international distribution.

SPEAKER_01 18:12

Yeah, Ingram Spark. Yeah, I've I know them scores, yeah.

Patreon Perks Ads And Sponsors

SPEAKER_00 19:04

And why would you want that? Because if you want to do you make your book available in every bookstore in America, England, and Australia, or any English language market, that's the place to do it. But that requires, you know, some money about getting your books set, your ebooks, setting the files and all of that. So people, you know, tend to go to Amazon or a couple will go to Barnes Noble to do the Nook Press. Everybody's doing it different ways. But I did see this coming, and I should be doing it to my own backlist right now. But I'll help you you and your authors as well. Natasha, I gotta tell you though, I am so impressed with the machine that you've built on your podcast, your follow-up things, the emails, the books, audio, but you know, it's it's beautifully done. All you need is time.

SPEAKER_01 20:01

Yeah. Well, yeah, now with AI, like most of the interaction is automated. Like, for example, the my video editing, I use AI now. The follow-up, like scheduling, it's all AI, you know, all of all of that is is AI. It's really compressing time, and it makes can you come over and help me? Sure. I'm in DC, so it's pretty close. It's not too far. But it's really impressive. And I I thank you. I appreciate you. It took a couple like at least three years to learn all of that. So now you make me feel better. Yeah, yeah. It was and then you have to keep up with all the technology that's constantly changing. I just came back from a podcasting conference last week in Florida, and oh, that was a hardship. It was funny.

SPEAKER_00 20:54

We're expecting a foot of snow in Connecticut this weekend, and I'm like, Yeah, same here.

SPEAKER_01 20:59

I've got cheap, yeah. Well, and you're in Maryland, right? Yeah, yeah, outside of DC, like 12 miles outside of DC. It's cold and miserable. It's cold and miserable.

SPEAKER_00 21:11

But listeners of the class of 74 know we've got a character whose father just had a heart attack at the Capitol building.

SPEAKER_01 21:19

Uh, I wonder why.

SPEAKER_00 21:21

It's just like, but well, that's what her mother says. Her mother's on the phone from Washington. She says, apparently congressmen are having heart attacks left and right from President Nixon's price controls. Anyway, I digress.

SPEAKER_01 21:36

Yeah, no, no, but uh so Laura, I'm curious too, like you kind of seen it all, right? You started in publishing maybe in the 80s or like 90s.

SPEAKER_00 21:48

Oh, I graduate from college in 78. Okay. And I joined Doubleday. I thought I was gonna go work at All My Children, ABC, and and type soap opera scripts because that's what girls did. You started typing when you got out of college. And I got a job, I went for an interview at Doubleday for the secretary to the editor-in-chief, and Jackie O'Nassis walked through the waiting room while I was waiting for my interview. And I asked the receptionist, I said, Does she work here? And she says, Oh, yes, Mrs. O'Nassis is an editor. And I thought, wow, that's cool. I want to work here. And that's I took the job at Doubleday just because the former first lady worked there and she was so cool. I mean, Jackie O was the biggest thing in the world, Natasha. Ask your mother, she'll tell you. Yes. And but at that time, we had there was everybody from Stephen King, Victoria. Holt, well, you've heard of Stephen King, right? Yeah. We were publisher. Yeah. I mean, every best-selling writer in America was at Doubleday at one point or another. So that was an education, and I worked my way up to becoming an editor. So I started on the other side. Huh. Learning.

SPEAKER_01 23:08

So you've seen it all when it comes to the publishing, right? Yes. So now things have shifted dramatically with self-publishing and AI were and podcasting. It started before that, though.

SPEAKER_00 23:24

When did it start? About book publishing. People don't quite understand. When I started in publishing in 78, there were 22 different publishers, which now are Random House.

SPEAKER_01 23:39

Five. Oh yeah.

Learning Podcasting Plus Using AI

SPEAKER_00 23:41

No, no, no, no. You've got to understand. Random House was a company. Doubleday was a company. These were separate entities around the city. They weren't 27? Yeah. Doubleday published 600 titles a year when I started. Now it's like a little imprint of Random House, and they published maybe 30 titles a year. But what was happening is foreign companies were buying American publishing houses because they wanted their content. They wanted their backlist. They wanted to own, control all those stories. So very quietly, Bertelsmann in Germany, Mr. Bertelsmann, the first one, he was a prisoner of war in Arizona. He fell in love with American culture while he was here. So he and his family, they ended up buying all of it. I mean, RCA records, he bought everything. I mean, Random House is not, I mean, you could say, yes, it's an American company, but it's not. It's controlled in Germany. Okay? They knew what technology was coming. The Penguin, Viking Penguin, GP Putnams and Sun, those were all separate houses. Well, that's all owned by Pearson, which is an English company. They're not American. The individual houses are still here, but the corporate owners are overseas. St. Martin's, McMillan, all of those got let's see, what is it part of now? I don't know It's a German company. I can't remember, but you have to forgive me. But all of the American houses are not even American anymore. I didn't know that. Right. So there's a lot going on behind the scenes that when authors say, God, this is so different. I mean, are they just publishing books like cereal boxes that you just have to be a bestseller or they don't publish you? In the old days, you nurtured authors along, you know. Ann Tyler's first bestseller was like her 12th novel with Kanoff, which was a division of Random House. They don't give you time to build authors anymore. You gotta go into a publisher with your own promotion kit already established. That's not an American thing. I know it feels like it. It is a very German thing, I think, that Yavel, we're all gonna have it all very, you know, like a machine, like a factory, like a war machine. We're gonna churn out this product that we're gonna tell people what they want to read, right?

SPEAKER_01 26:34

Interesting. So, but self-publishing now. So people are tired of that. Like they're tired of the control, they're tired that they don't spend any time on marketing. So are the readers. Correct. So, how do you view the rise of self-publishing, especially with Amazon KDP? Many people are skeptics of self-publishing. Oh, well, you do you have typos, whatever, but that's that can be easily like rectified, you know, like we can hire an editor and cover, like these books here, mine are self-published.

SPEAKER_00 27:08

They're they're buying into the myth, okay? They're still thinking that to divide the ebook rights, like serial rights that the publishers should have on your backlist, take 50% of the of the royalties on your ebooks, right?

SPEAKER_01 27:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:27

Well, it's like for me, why would I want that? I I'd rather have all of it. Correct. Right? It's it's how can I say since America was founded, anything America has created has been grabbed and embraced by the world, and there's a reason. Like jazz was invented in America. That was our first product of creativity that we exported to the world. You know? We're breaking free first, the Americans. That's what you're doing. This is a very American thing. You want to be heard. That's what podcasting is about. We don't want people to tell us what to read. I mean, it's okay to get a good deal and stuff, but we like to find our own writers now, too, because often the readers know better than the houses because that houses don't even understand what's new. They don't get it. Like, well, this doesn't sound like every other book. Well, hallelujah.

unknown 28:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:35

Um, we're gonna do a let's say an on-air uh case study. Okay. I'm coming to you for consulting. I hired you as a consultant. Yes. And I tell you, Laura, I have a manuscript, it's ready. What shall I do? Shall I go with a publisher or shall I go self-publish? What will you tell me now?

SPEAKER_00 28:54

Well, the first thing you'd have to do if you're gonna go to the publishers is to get a good literary agent. Okay. And I highly recommend getting a literary agent who used to be with one of these big houses. Okay. There's a lot of them out there. You know, the former publishers of Random House and Knopp and HarperCollins, they're all out there. Because another thing that these conglomerates do is they they want to buy these houses, fire the most expensive staff, and hire cheaper people to replace them. So all the people with the experience are agents now.

SPEAKER_01 29:38

Interesting.

SPEAKER_00 29:39

Okay. Yeah. And they know a lot about self-publishing. And, you know, some people balk and say, gosh, 15% of everything I make, and then you gotta stop and think, oh, right, the more I make, the more they make, right?

SPEAKER_01 29:55

But why do I need an agent if I'm self-publishing? I don't need an agent.

SPEAKER_00 29:59

No, no, you don't.

SPEAKER_01 30:00

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 30:01

But that's a decision that you have to make because you haven't bought into the myth of being taken out to lunch at the four seasons in New York. You know, all the glamour stuff, right?

SPEAKER_01 30:11

But that glamour is done, right? It is.

SPEAKER_00 30:14

It is, it is uh it's a myth.

SPEAKER_01 30:17

It's a myth. And the idea is, and even if you, Laura, want to let's say you're starting from scratch now. Okay. No one. What would you do?

SPEAKER_00 30:27

Okay, I'll tell you what I would do. The first thing is the most valuable asset of any independent author is their library, the public library system. Okay, do you hear me? Yeah, why? You go in and you offer to talk to groups. And in this day and age, you can do it now through Skype. What they'll do is they'll put you, these people will come and meet in a room and you'll appear on a screen up on the wall and talk to them one-on-one, doing a talk about being an author in your book. And they'll let you sell books there too. A lot of people, if you're willing to go in person to libraries and do readings, you know, you okay. Now I'm getting all excited, so I get all tripping all over myself. Talk to your local librarian, your librarian, and ask, do you need, would you like some programming? Would you like me to speak to a group of people? You know, like, and she'll say, Oh, or he'll say, Oh my God, we've got all these seniors and stuff. They have nothing to do and they're bored, and they read everything in the library. And please come in and talk to them. So go in and talk to them, and all of a sudden you've got 30 new readers of yours. And you can you bring a neighborhood kid with you, and they take the money and you sell your book there.

How Publishing Consolidation Shifted Power

SPEAKER_01 31:58

So you're talking about marketing now. What is one reader at a time? What is the best what is the now the best marketing tactic that you you're saying the word of mouth, it's still like book clubs and yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:12

Word of mouth is still word of mouth. So librarians are your best friend, they hand sell books. They tell people ask them, I want something to read. I want, I've read all this stuff over here, and they say, Ah, I have a new person for you, Natasha. Come read this. She spoke here last month, and here's a copy of her book, The Library Bought a Copy, because they will, and then they give it to somebody to read, right? So that's one thing. We they don't even have the BEA anymore, the book Expo America, where all the publishers in the world met somewhere in the United States, and all the librarians came, all the publishers came, all the big authors. We would do these autographing sessions and all this stuff that nobody does anymore. So how do you replace that? That was all the hands-on. You were giving them early bound galleys of books, you know, to read, so then they could word of mouth give it out to to suggest to other people to read. So book clubs, offer to speak to book clubs.

SPEAKER_01 33:32

Yeah. And how do you how do you feel now about the advent of AI? And there are like some people who are completely against it.

SPEAKER_00 33:41

Natasha doesn't want to listen to this. All right. Natasha, you're gonna have to put yourself out there, dear. Okay. One-on-one. I know you hate it. All authors do. You know, we don't sit in our rooms writing by ourselves because we like dealing with people necessarily. But just start with your local librarian, please, and ask about the Maryland system of public libraries. I'm asking you. I'm begging you, Natasha.

SPEAKER_01 34:07

Yeah, I I I talked with them a few times, so I've I've been in touch with the I want you to go make friends with one. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 34:15

And they can really help you learn the system because all the library, each state has a system of connecting all the libraries.

SPEAKER_01 34:24

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:25

And that's what we want. You want to hook in there, you want to offer to tour to appear at libraries, doing it could be anything about how to start writing. You can promote your writing class that you teach. You teach it.

SPEAKER_01 34:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:39

And how to get published. Do it in person too, but you can do it online too. I'm just saying, AI is great. AI is what readers are resisting against. This is, I don't want to say, Ya vol, it's the Germans again. Mind you, I have listeners in Germany, so it's nothing against you, but it's that mechanized. Well, now, may I ask you, what is your heritage?

SPEAKER_01 35:08

I was born in Jordan in the Middle East.

SPEAKER_00 35:11

Wow. Okay. So you're a but also your age, you're a product of high tech. Because I was gonna say, if you were Indian, you were just born in the middle of the movement, too. It that's so cool. I would really play that up with the libraries, by the way. I would, because they like education. Yeah, they like diversity. Go talk about being a child in Jordan. You'll have every library in the state wanting you. Now I'm curious, but AI is what people are resisting. That's not what they want. You know what they want? They want Natasha. They want a connection with your heart, your feeling. They want you to make them feel something other than despair and how screwed up this world is. They want you to take them into your imagination and get out of here for a while. And AI can't do it. Yeah. AI can help you get organized, smooth things out, and that's great. Virtual assistance is fabulous. That's where it's everybody's best friend to do those menial tasks that nobody wants to do. You know, think of it as slave labor. Well, nobody wants to know the slave. Everybody wants to know who owns the slave.

SPEAKER_01 36:35

Okay. So we're we're kind of running out of time here. And I want to when so now it's okay. When is the next season coming out of your podcast?

SPEAKER_00 36:44

February 14th, Valentine's Day. We're gonna start.

SPEAKER_01 36:48

Ah, that's soon. Have you already recorded it or you're in the process?

Self Publishing Decisions And Library Marketing

SPEAKER_00 36:52

I'm supposed to be writing it right now, but I'm doing Natasha's show. Oh, that's right. Writers understand your engagement with other people uses up emotional energy. The reason why Natasha was pulling back at the idea of having to talk to all these librarians is because you either put your emotional energy into your writing or you give it away.

SPEAKER_01 37:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:18

The worst enemy of novelists is the phone and people. Because you've got to keep them away from you while you're writing.

SPEAKER_01 37:29

Correct. Correct.

SPEAKER_00 37:30

Because whatever you're feeling while you're writing is what the reader's gonna feel when they're reading. And AI doesn't feel correct, it mimics. And so that's where writers get into trouble if they think that they can write stuff for them. They can write some nonfiction stuff, maybe, but not you know, you want them to be your office slave and do everything you don't want to do. Yeah, but not the creative part. That's what the American creative movement is about. And we're breaking free, and AI is going to break us free of the corporate machine. That's what they don't get. That's what's happening.

SPEAKER_01 38:15

That's very true. So, how can people get in touch with you, listen to your podcast if you wanna like drop in all your links here so that people can reach out to you? Because I think it's a fascinating idea what you're doing. It's it's one of a kind.

SPEAKER_00 38:29

Yeah. The class, it's the class of 74, and it's everywhere. It's on, you know, I I liked people to go to Apple Podcasts because they keep better track there of statistics and stuff. And if it posts comments, it's a good place to be. But Spotify's great, and even my little Podbean and YouTube, and it we're everywhere. And there is the class of 74, class of 74 podcast.com. And then you just type in Laura Van Warmer on the internet and you'll see all kinds of stuff, you know, from Amazon and I have a website and all that. But the class of 74 is what I'm pushing because I want you guys to cheer up. I want us to create something new, and we'll get AI to help us. And Natasha, we're gonna develop not your podcast, but your novels. We need to get you a Patreon page for the writer, the creator. That's who people want to connect with, I'm telling you.

SPEAKER_01 39:33

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 39:35

And the heart of your podcast is you. Yeah, that's true. This world is a lonely world out there. Yeah. And that's why people love to read. And that's why they love to connect. And podcasting is the closest thing to listening and connecting with someone you know and trust. That's very true.

SPEAKER_01 39:56

Trust is a big thing, yeah, especially in the age of AI. So, Laura, this has been wonderful and inspiring. And this it was actually very educational. I didn't know anything about what happened with the big publishing house and there, how they oh, nobody does.

SPEAKER_00 40:13

They don't want you to know.

Where To Listen Final Takeaways

SPEAKER_01 40:14

Nobody does, they don't want you to know. So this was really fascinating. And for anyone who's listening or watching, please make sure to connect with Laura. Her podcast is called The Class of 74. I have her website, and yeah, you can ask me questions, you know. You can just exactly um, and she's a wealth of knowledge. Any questions you want, you know, about the publishing industry, all of that. Please feel free. We're lucky to have Laura with us here. And I'll come back if you need me. Please, definitely. I mean, I have a lot of ideas how we can work together.

SPEAKER_00 40:50

I think you and I need to talk, right?

SPEAKER_01 40:52

We need to talk up. We'll talk, we'll talk that offline. We'll talk.

unknown 40:56

Right.

SPEAKER_01 40:56

Laura, thank you very much. And for anyone who's listening or watching, thank you for joining us for another episode of Read and Write with Natasha, and until we meet again. Thank you for tuning in to Read and Write with Natasha. I'm your host, Natasha Tines. If today's episode inspired you in any way, please take the time to review the podcast. Remember to subscribe and share this podcast with fellow book lovers. Until next time, happy reading, happy writing!