Welcome And Guest Introduction

SPEAKER_00 0:04

But I am not confident enough to say that. I will keep going. The people who have read the book do seem to love it. Um, and they and they want it to go on. I have people who are just like, more Lily, more Lily, and and everybody has chosen their favorite characters, and they that's the messages I get back were are from people saying, I want more Miss Delphine, I want more Joe Turner, and and so it feels like people are connecting with the characters.

SPEAKER_01 0:38

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 lives, review books, and interview authors. Hope you enjoy the journal. Hi everyone, and welcome to another episode of Read and Write with Natasha. I have with me today author Carla Vergot, who's a former special education teacher, turned author. She's known for her engaging series Lily Barlow, which blends romance, comedy, and mystery. She began writing the series in 2016 during a sabbatical from teaching, and the experience was so transformative that she decided to pursue writing full-time. Carla enjoys connecting with her readers through her active Facebook group, Carla Vergot's Backporch, and her website, CarlaVergot.com. All right, Carla. So nice to meet you and thank you for joining me today. Thank you, Natasha. I'm happy to be here.

Leaving Teaching And Taking The Leap

SPEAKER_01 1:47

So, of course, the first question I'm gonna ask is what made you quit teaching and go full-time? I mean, many authors, first of all, do not have the courage to do that and they they think they cannot afford it. So, how did you pull the plug and decided to do this full-time?

SPEAKER_00 2:05

I I'm gonna give you a tiny bit of history. When I I went to college and my degree was in language arts, writing and editing. So, from that point in my life, I was preparing to write a book. It it took a very long time. There were a lot of left turns, and it was always on the back of my mind. I just couldn't make the time to do it. I I probably had the time, I just didn't make the time to do it. When I put in for my sabbatical, finally, and I will say special education, public education, education, teachers have all my respect because it is very hard to teach these days. I was at a low point in my career, I was feeling very kind of defeated, and I felt like this is probably a great time for me to take a break from teaching, make a decision about where I want to go in teaching, and and while I'm taking the sabbatical, write the story. Okay. Um we were in a position to to do that. My husband said that we could, you know, manage on his on his paycheck. And so that's kind of that's kind

Cancer Scare And Writing As Escape

SPEAKER_00 3:09

of what we did. As soon as I put in the paperwork for the sabbatical, he was diagnosed with cancer. Oh, sorry to hear you. So I think uh the Lord works in very mysterious ways, and I needed to be on that sabbatical during his treatment. Uh, it was very dark in the beginning, and they didn't they gave him three to six months to live. It was uh determined to be an aggressive form of cancer. What happened to it is inexplicable. It was then determined to be a very treatable and curable form of lymphoma, and he's cancer free today. Oh, wow. But it was I was touch and go. And the the sabbatical gave me the opportunity to be with him during his treatment because I had taken the sabbatical to write the book. I really threw myself into writing it more as an escape for myself while we were doing all this other stuff. So I tell people all the time that's how the book became as funny as it is. It's just it became lighter and lighter and even silly because I needed that. Everything in my world at that time was very dark. So he came through cancer. I finished the book, and I had enjoyed the experience of writing the book so much that I wanted to resign from teaching and continue writing. And I'll be honest with you, I couldn't have done it if I didn't have his paycheck supporting the household. I just there, it's very difficult to earn a living as an author. It's it's incredibly, it's an incredibly expensive thing to get into. I think you probably know with podcasting, there's a lot of your own resources that go into it. Um, I do a lot of promotion on my end just to expose people to the story. So I travel to bookstores for signings, but if they're out of town, that's you know, that's the expense of travel, that's hotel accommodations, it's meals out, you know, all of that stuff adds up. All of the subscriptions that you end up using podcasts, pod, pod match, like that's one of the subscriptions that I use. So it's difficult to earn a living as a writer. Yeah. I I I and had that situation not presented itself, I probably wouldn't have stopped to write the first book. And our family's ability to manage our expenses with one income allows me to continue writing. That that's I'm I'm not selling at this point enough books to pay a salary to me because I'm still trying to pay back the money that I've sunk into this fashion project. Eventually, I would love for that to be the case. I'd love to, you know, earn even a modest living on as a writer, but we'll see. There's a lot of competition

Series Vision And Full Time Reality

SPEAKER_00 5:51

on there.

SPEAKER_01 5:51

So when you first started the book, did you have in mind that's gonna be a series, or did you start with like a standalone book?

SPEAKER_00 5:58

I had in mind a very aggressive series because I love Janet Ivanovich, who writes the Stephanie Plum series, and I forget which number she's on, but it's in the 20s. And so I felt like, oh, I can, you know, she's a great role model. I'll I'll do that. I'll write a lot of books. And as it turns out, I'm not that good of a writer. So I'm sure you are. I have I'm three books in, I'm working on book four right now, and I'm thinking, am I ever gonna get to 20 in this series? I don't know. I don't know if I will or not. My story is a little bit different than hers, and I'm not sure it's it's designed for 20, a series of 20, but we'll see.

SPEAKER_01 6:41

So, how was your day like as a full-time author? Do you have a schedule? Do you write, you know, as you go? How how you know, I'm just curious.

SPEAKER_00 6:50

The bulk of my time is in promoting the series. So, for instance, it's Thursday this week, and I spent a ton of time reaching out to bookstores trying to coordinate signings for Independent Bookstore Day on April 26th. I have been invited to sign books with Nora Roberts. Oh, wow. Yeah, at her bookstore in Boonesboro, Maryland on May 15th. I'm in Maryland.

SPEAKER_01 7:18

Are you in Maryland? No, where are you? In Rockville, Montgomery County. We're not that far away. Where where are you?

SPEAKER_00 7:28

I'm in Haymarket, Virginia. Ah, okay. You should have coffee sometime. Definitely. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Her bookstore is in Boonesboro and it's lovely. It's a lovely bookstore, and twice a year or so she has Girls Night Out. And because she's so loved by so many readers, uh, people will travel from across the country to these events.

SPEAKER_01 7:51

And so if if you can send me the invite, I'll try to come and support you if if I can. Okay, all right.

SPEAKER_00 7:58

Thank you. Oh, thank you. All right. That to your to your question is it's a lot, it takes a lot of time to reach out and set these things up and and follow up. I'm I'm one tiny little goldfish in a big ocean of of writers. And so when I reach out to a Barnes and Noble, you know how many, how many books they stock on their shelves. It's thousands of writers. And so I'm one. And you know, I have to I have to do the work on my end to keep reaching out. And oh, remember I talked to you last week. And can is there any time for me to do a signing? I'll be in your area. And so there's there's just a ton of time spent working the back channels like that. The the the other promotion that I do, and I love this more, is the time I spend on Facebook in my Facebook group, Carla Bernard's back porch. I I love the connections, the community that I've built is is very supportive, uh, very lovely, very happy. This the world that we're in sometimes gets to be super hectic and critical, but we don't bring any of that onto the back porch. It's just, you know, happiness and love and an easy-going group of people who probably have very different opinions about things, but when we come together, we support each other. And and so I spend a lot of time in that group and post about once a day, but then I follow up throughout the day if people make comments or or reach out or send me notes. We have a writing competition going on right now. But it's a funny story. So every once in a while I see a photograph that's so compelling. I will put it up on the back porch and I'll ask the members, leave your comment about this picture, just make a little short comment and leave a detail, and I'll take all those details and I'll write a story about it. So I do this a couple times a year. This time I posted the photograph and I said, leave your comments and let's have a competition. Let's let y'all write the story. And we have eight submissions so far, it's very exciting. Oh wow. The writer has to use there's two categories. You use all of the comments that were left, and I don't know, it's maybe 20, 25, or you use most of the comments that were left, and it's two different categories. And so we have four and four so far. I'm really looking forward to reading the work of the people in the back porch. I'm excited because some of the folks aren't even don't even consider themselves writers. They just decided to throw in and and do this. And I'm really that makes me happy that I've spent time building a community where people feel safe enough to just try it.

Building A Real Reader Community

SPEAKER_01 10:31

I'm curious about this, the community. How did you actually build it? I've been trying to build a community for for a while and I tried different platforms. I'm still struggling to get the engagement. So, what is your secret?

SPEAKER_00 10:43

To be honest, it was a terrible struggle for me as well. Okay. Um, I worked with one publisher for a couple of years who published books one and two, but then unfortunately went out of business. And so I had to find another publisher to re-release. But in the beginning, that publisher had said, you need a you need a presence on social media. And at that time, it was really Facebook was the the most logical one. This was 2016. So I started, and the the recommendation that I got was you need to kind of brand the look of your posts. So they should all be in blue and yellow, which are the two colors of book one. This kind of blue and yellow, and you should always have the cover of the book on the post. And and so I not knowing anything about marketing or social media, I did that. I I was focusing on pretty much the books until one of the members came up and said, I'm leaving this page because all you ever do is post the same thing over and over. And it was a wake-up call for me, like, wow, that is definitely not what people want. So I I spent some time with some folks in social media who are smarter than me, and we kind of worked up instead of a page, she invited me to start a group, which is interactive. And I think it's really a key to it is finding a way to truly connect with the people that are in your group. And so instead of growing that number into the thousands, I think I probably have 800, 850, something like that members. And if we're being real about it, 50 or so are active. Like they do something once a week, some of them do every day, some of them read other people's comments and comments on those. Like some of the group members are super engaged. But the key I found out was I I sort of use the principle of thirds. I put a third of the posts about the book, character development, how this character got a name, uh, you know, any anything like that. A third of the posts are about me as a writer, what's coming up, what events are on the calendar, what is my process, those, those sorts of things. And the last third is about me as a person, which I think is probably the more entertaining part for people on the stories, things my husband did that made me laugh, the dogs, you know, any any kind of thing that makes me a real person in the group. It makes us more like friends instead of just you're a group of people two-dimensionally watching me uh promote my books. It's it's way more interactive than that. I know people's life stories, I know when they're having, you know, their their kids are getting married, or somebody graduated, or somebody started school. Like it's it's it's much more in-depth, I think. And and when you can grow a group like that, I think it's it's magic because they want to support you, they want to throw in with you. And I've got folks, I'm I'm working real hard now to get pre-orders for book three, which comes out May 6th. But if I can get 300 pre-orders through BarnesandNoble.com, then they will carry the books in the store, which is any Barnes and Noble can order them in. That's fine. And many, and not many, but a couple of them have because I've had signings there. But this would be all of the Barnes and Nobles carrying my books. And so that is a pretty big leap for a small author like me. I've really been pushing pre-order, BarnesandNoble.com, pre-order. And I've got friends on the back porch who are getting their friends to pre-order so that we can meet this goal. And that's really exciting to have that amount of energy surrounding you and and to really enjoy the people that are in the group. I think that when it's a group and it becomes interactive, it's not just people speeding through and say, oh yeah, like, like, like. I mean, they are involved, they want to they want to be a part of the short story contest. They want celebrate the things that we're celebrating. That, you know. So that's that's how I've done it. And I don't know if I would say that I'm the best at it, but but it's working so far. And the the knowledge that it grows glacially is important. It's like if I add one or two people a month, that's a lot. And and just know that it'll it'll grow at the rate that it's supposed to grow. And the key is to make people feel at home and make them feel welcome.

SPEAKER_01 15:41

So, how did you find these people? How did or how did they find you? And how did you recruit? How did you recruit them?

SPEAKER_00 15:49

The first people that you recruit always are your friends and family, right? Yeah. You strong arm them into like you better become a group of my group. So I certainly have some of those. I have cousins and siblings, and like the family and the friends are are there for sure. As time grew, when I started, I've got some. I I they're the people that that saw the book. Um, and I'm not even sure how they saw it originally, when it was an arc, when it was published with the first publisher. So that goes back a ways. And they have a little band of them have stuck with me since that time, have gone through all the iterations of of my social media. They they I've I've branched out a little bit now. I've I'm on Instagram. I just started TikTok. I don't find it to be especially easy, but book talk is, you know, one of the places. And so I've I've just started an account there. And these people, that little knot of people, kind of have been big, big supporters. So you've got friends and family, you've got the the ones that found you early on, kind of discovered you. And then from there, it it's a matter of every time I, and I I didn't bring any to to show you, but every time I'm out and about, I have bookmarks. I carry a bag that has the cover of the book on it. And if anybody makes a comment about, oh, your purse, it's so interesting. I whip out that bookmark and I say, Hey, my social media is on the back. I'd love for you to reach out to us and and join the group. It is, it's one person at a time, really. And you know, you give a hundred of those out how many are actually going to find you, less than 10. But but it is slow. And and then I I noticed that the people that are in the group currently are are inviting their friends and the people that they think will like the book and will enjoy the community. And so it starts to kind of become organic, it it grows on its own. But I do take every opportunity to think of each person I pass on the street as a potential reader and a potential member of the back porch. And that's that's just I am constantly promoting it on that level.

Marketing That Moves Books

SPEAKER_01 18:12

So, in terms of marketing, do you think that's what works the best for you? The group?

SPEAKER_00 18:17

Yeah, I think so. I don't, I think, I'm not sure, but the the authors that I know are all required to to kind of do their own marketing. I know plenty of self-published authors who obviously are in charge of their own marketing. I'm working through a publisher, Morgan James, and I'm I'm really in charge of my my own marketing. I am my own marketing department. I think back in the old days, people would be signed by a big house and the house would sort of take over how that author was marketed. I don't know that that really plays well today. I think that a lot of the responsibility of doing that falls on the author. And so we're all trying to do it. We're all trying to find the best formula for it. I I do enjoy signings. I do enjoy connecting with people and telling them the about the book in person, having a conversation. I had a great conversation. There was a local bookstore called The Open Book in Warrenton, Virginia. And last night or the night before, they had a a book club mingle. So all of the members of all of their book clubs came together and just had a little social, which was a lot of fun. I went and just mingled and I met some people who I had an opportunity to talk to about the series. One person bought a book. I mean, it it's it's that level of meaning people, I think that gets you to that tipping point. I can't remember the author that wrote the book, The Tipping Point. Malcolm Galdwell. Yes. Yes. I think that is an important thing to always be looking for is how am I gonna make that tipping point happen? And for me, the the most obvious way is really connecting individually with people and helping them to invite their communities to read the book, either through the book clubs or through their friends and family, or hey, Mother's Day is coming up. Why don't you give this to your mama for Mother's Day? But marketing is tough, it is the hardest part of being an author.

SPEAKER_01 20:26

I know. What other marketing stuff have you been doing? Because you said you spend like most of your time promoting most of my time.

SPEAKER_00 20:32

Most of my time I spend marketing. I got to social media. TikTok has really taken me, taken a lot of time just because I don't understand it. When I'm I'm I'm sort of Facebook is really easy for me now. It's Instagram is easier for me, but TikTok is new and I I sort of don't understand it. So it's been taking quite a bit of time. And of course, I I joined it right at the time when it was going to be shut down and like all that was going on. So I am spending time trying to understand how to weave little little video clips together to make a little video and stuff like that. That's taking a lot of time. What other marketing? Let me let me think for a second. What other marketing things uh am I working on? A lot of romance bookstores are opening up. I'm learning. Now that seems to be a thing now that that carries solely romance.

SPEAKER_01 21:29

Oh, really? I didn't know that.

SPEAKER_00 21:31

Okay. My my book is romance, comedy, and mystery, but romance is the first one. So I've been reaching out to these stores and they're independent bookstores. I can't I can't stress enough to authors uh, in my opinion, the importance of reaching out to indie bookstores and and not just sending, you know, a form letter, but going to the store, introducing yourself. Talking to the manager or the or the owner, buying a book from them, asking them how you can support them, like really bringing bringing a cup of coffee to the owner. I think that when you connect on that level, that's really when one bookstore owner said, I hand sell your books, meaning that when somebody comes in and he thinks that person is a candidate, he'll just go to the shelf and get my book and say, Hey, have you read this author? It's right up the alley. You're gonna enjoy this part of the story. So I think that making those connections, making time to visit independent bookstores is huge. I have I'm attending a new bookstore on Independent Bookstore Day. They've invited me to do a signing there. It's called Birch Tree Bookstore in Leesburg, Virginia. Super excited. I haven't been yet. Um I hear great things about them and I'm fairly local to them. So this will be an exciting time. But again, it's it's cultivating first those relationships and then maintaining them. I have friends at Fred and June's bookstore in Mooresville, North Carolina, and I'm heading down there next week to Charlotte. But I will make a side trip to Mooresville to pop into Fred and Junes and just say, hey, they were so gracious to me. They hosted signing for me, they supported me at the library in in town. And I just, you know, I just want them to remember that I love them. So making those connections with independent bookstores is is huge, in my opinion. It's very important.

Podcasts Publishers And Editing Choices

SPEAKER_01 23:36

Yeah. What about podcasting? Have has it been like successful or like how did you get? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:44

You know, it's new for me. It's kind of, I'm I'm certainly not well-versed enough to even understand how the hosts work it. And so, as I told you before we got started, uh, finding podcasts that would be willing to talk to me was just a bear in the beginning until I found PodMatch. And then suddenly it opened up a lot of doors for me because it it really does, it really does, you you can't just blast yourself out there. You've got to really be specific of who you're approaching and is this the kind of podcast that even is interested in talking to you about this. I I've also learned that in addition to podcasts about writing or reading or books, there are other things that I can talk about. I can talk about health. We had we had the health scare in my family. I can talk about diet. I can, you know, I can talk about teaching as I was a special ed teacher. And so it doesn't always have to be about the book. I found out, and I'm trying to branch out a little bit in in different directions just for diversity. Most podcasts are very gracious, and they all mention I'm the author of this book. And so it it still does give me a little bit of recognition in terms of of my body of work. So that's useful as well. But I I think that they don't all have to be about the book. I can I can have conversations about other things as well.

SPEAKER_01 25:14

And how did you find your publisher, Morgan James? You said I did. Uh I this is you're probably the third or fourth authors. It was published by them who came on my podcast.

SPEAKER_00 25:26

Interesting. Yeah. Very cool. I think some of us are using Podmatch uh more regularly now. So maybe, yeah. I don't know. Yeah, it's like I think 40 authors. That is interesting. I'm very happy with Morgan James. So when my first publisher went out of business, I it it tragic is not the word, but but the the trauma of that is pretty significant in that I was working on the third book in my series, and books one and two were no longer available. So it is like the the gut punch of that really was devastating. And I I did not know what to do. It was hard for me to be creative and produce book three because I was so panicked about nobody's gonna buy it because you have to read them in order and happen. And so actually, a friend of mine who knew of Morgan James connected me with them and it was a good fit. I turned out. I did have to make an adjustment. Morgan James has a profanity guideline, and my books, as it turned out, had a lot of profanity in them. Yeah, I didn't bring the sample, I usually bring the one that's got all the sticky notes because I didn't think it had that many curse words. So I reread it myself and I tagged the page, and it was hundreds, probably of. Yeah. So I I made the decision that I wanted to work with Morgan James, and I was gonna look at how I could edit the work and change the profanity. Of course, as a writer, don't censor me on this side, but publish my book on this side, you know, which one is more important? And I really needed to be published. So I took a hard look at the story and decided that I could eliminate probably 50% of the curse words without even changing the meaning of the sentence. That I it was just it was just a habit more than anything else.

SPEAKER_01 27:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:28

And so that I did. And then I had to look more carefully. There was another 25%. I could just kind of rearrange it a little bit. And then the last 25%, I actually had to work really hard to get the sentiment that I was trying to achieve through the one word. And I tell people all the time, it's a better story. It's the work is better because I put that energy into it to do it. I'm much happier with it now. And going forward, I'm I'm just aware of it. So now I it's it doesn't even creep in at this point. But one and two, I did have to really purge, spend time purging. But yeah, I I was introduced to Morgan James through another friend.

SPEAKER_01 28:12

So you're gonna publish the third book in the series in May, correct?

SPEAKER_00 28:16

Yes, it comes out May 6th.

SPEAKER_01 28:18

And so if your role model is what's her name, Janet Janet Ivanovich. Yeah, and she published 20 books in one series.

SPEAKER_00 28:27

More more than I think she's is that where you're going with the same characters, the same I I would love to be brassy enough to say that I am that good of a writer that I could pull that off, but I am not confident enough to say that. I will keep going. The people who have read the book do seem to love it and they and they want it to go on. I have people who are just like, more Lily, more Lily, and and everybody has chosen their favorite characters, and they that's the messages I get back were are from people saying, I want more Miss Delphine, I want more Joe Turner, and and so it feels like people are connecting with the characters, and it feels like they could move the story forward for a couple more books for sure. I'm in book four right now, and I because book three was during that period of unknown, the great, the great landscape of what's happening to the series, I ended up kind of writing in a lot of question marks that had to be answered in book four. And as I'm trying to answer or like put these things, make them full circle, I'm making even more problems for myself. So there may have to be a book five, just because I'm I'm creating it. I want I want people to be satisfied at the end of the series and say, yeah, everything was explained. As long as I'm able to say that, you know, nothing was left to wonder. That's my goal is that everybody's satisfied with they might not like how it ended up, whichever particular part, but it did end up and they got a resolution to it, and they feel comfortable with that. So probably a five. I am kind of tinkering with another book idea in the back of my mind, but I'm not the kind of person that can read more than one book at a time, and I don't think I could work on writing more than one book at a time. So I'll probably need to finish Lily before I before I

Writing Routine Advice And Wrap Up

SPEAKER_00 30:31

work on that one.

SPEAKER_01 30:31

How many hours do you spend a day writing if you write daily? I don't, I don't write daily.

SPEAKER_00 30:36

Oh gosh, daily. My the the chunks of time, I and I don't even I do kind of plan, but I it's never hard and fast if something happens and oh the pharmacy medication is in and it's gonna gotta pick it up today, and this is my writing day. I put that aside and I go to the pharmacy and get the medication. That's that's what I do. The the part of me working from home and working on this job also means that I'm also managing like those kinds of tasks. And so I'm it's important to me that our family runs smoothly and and I handle those kinds of tasks. It's only the two of us. We don't have any kids. So it's not like I'm running to soccer games and things like that. Just the basic two-person household. But I do that and I do the cooking and the take care of the dogs, dogs go to the vet, those kinds of things. So I don't have a daily schedule where I write. I know that's super successful for some people. I do like to look at the week and make sure that there's time in there to get to it, to get to writing. But this week, last week, there's been very little writing. In fact, the the one thing that I've done for the project is I've reread from chapter one through I've written five chapters, I've reread it. It's about 15,000 words, something like that, just to kind of recap it and be sure where I am, what I'm doing, that it's not loosey-goosey, that it's making sense. The other thing that I do when I write is I use these kind of wonky little phrases that the main character says all the time. And each one is different, and I keep a list of what she says so I don't repeat it. Now, when I started this book, sometimes I just throw myself into it and I'm writing, writing, writing, and I don't, I just, I just let it fly. But five chapters later, I'm like, oh my gosh, I did not record any of those things on my list, and I'm really devoted to the idea that she's not gonna repeat herself. So while I was doing that, I I went back through and I picked out all the phrases and put them on my list. So those those kinds of things are little administrative pieces. Last week I had to put in the application for the copyright of book two. It's been out for how many years? It was first published in 2019 and I did not submit the copyright for that. So just the little the administrative pieces of of that kind of creep in and take over writing time. But if I can write five hours a week, I think that's a strong week. If I can write more than that, that's awesome.

SPEAKER_01 33:20

So before we conclude, what advice do you give to aspiring writers? What would you tell them?

SPEAKER_00 33:26

The first thing, the very first thing, is you got to start the story. You have to start it. I should have started my story 30 years ago. That's what I intended to do, and I put it off, and I put it off. Now, granted, it would have been a different story. I think as I aged and changed myself, the voice of this character changed, and that's fine, and this is who she was supposed to be. But the fear of starting the project sometimes is so overwhelming that you never start the project. So it doesn't even have to be your greatest work, it just has to be your first work to start. I think book two for me is better than book one because 84,000 words later, I've I practiced and and I'm a better writer. So the practice part of it is essential. A lot of uh writers I hear say you have to be an avid reader if you're gonna be a good writer. And I don't I don't believe that. I think that when you are a reader, it helps you understand how to use language and how to manipulate it for your own purposes. And that's great, and that's important. I'm a very slow reader. I I turn through five or six books a year. I mean, I don't, I am not a fast reader at all. So I don't think that's required to be an effective writer, uh, but practicing the craft is definitely and and just my last little note is the the critique partner. If you're out there and you want to write and you don't have one, that is huge. I recommend everybody finding a critique partner because that's the person who's gonna hold you accountable as you go forward. Who's your critique partner? I have two, actually. The first one that I worked with when my husband was sick, Lisa, she was working from home at the time. She's also an author, and she set up an on a desk for me in her office at home. And I would go to her when you talk about writing. I was writing eight hours a day, four days a week at that time. And we would just go and spend, I would spend the day. I would be on my desk, she's on her desk. And it's so incredible the power of it because she knows my story, she understands the voice of my story, she knows me as an author, and I would say, I can't, I can't work this scene out, I can't, this doesn't make sense, and we would sit and talk through it, which is how a lot of problems in book one were resolved. Book two, I didn't have a critique partner. Book three, I have my critique partner, Leah, who is working on her first novel. And it's amazing. We meet on Fridays, we don't live in the same town, and so we have a standing appointment on Fridays. I we call, we go over what she's doing, you know, we we connect first because we love each other as friends, but then we go over what she's doing, we go over what I'm doing. If either one of us is having a problem with the story, we focus on that. I told her this because it's her first one. I told her that my job is not to make her write something that I want to read. It's my job is to react to her writing as a reader would. And and if I see something like, whoa, I didn't this doesn't feel authentic to me, or this doesn't you left me hanging here or whatever, I just point those things out, and then it's her job as the professional to to fix it or decide that she wants to keep it the way it is. So do you pay them or is it like just a friendship? I don't know if anybody does do that. I do not. It's a it's a mutual relationship and you're available to each other. As I said, the first person I worked with was a close friend of mine for years before we started our critique partner relationship. And and that was very helpful because we knew each other so well. And I knew the kinds of stories that she was writing, and she knew the kind that I was writing. She's the one I give her credit. When I started, I was writing the story at two things. I was writing in first person from the main character's perspective, and I was writing it in the present tense. And she fought me on the first person, but I stuck to my guns. But to this day, I thank her for helping me understand that I should not be writing this story in the first person. To this day, I thank her for that. It's written, it's written, I'm sorry, in present tense. It's written in in past tense, as most stories are. So the first person point of view, but in past tense. And I'm so grateful that I had a critique partner who was aware of that and could say, This is gonna be hard for your reader to read because you're making it hard for your reader to read. So the answer is no, I don't, I haven't paid critique partners. I think when you go to that kind of relationship, it's more of a an editor type of relationship where you pay the person. So I I recommend finding a writing club, a writing workshop. You know, there's that group, meetup, meetup.com where you can who's writing around me, what clubs are writing, and start there meeting people who are also writing and see if there's anybody who fits with you. You gotta you gotta sort of interview them. They have to be the right, it has to be the right fit. You don't have to be writing the same genre, but you have to respect that person as a writer because they're gonna be guiding you. So if you don't think they're a good writer, then some of that may leak into what you're doing. So you really have to be sure that you're comfortable with your critique partner. But yeah.

SPEAKER_01 38:54

Well, this this has been uh wonderful, Carla. I wish you the best of luck. And for anyone who's listening or watching, where can they find your books?

SPEAKER_00 39:02

They're distributed through Ingram, so any bookstore can order them in. Any independent, I I love it when people say they went to their independent bookstore and they ordered it in. Uh, that makes me so happy because you're you're supporting a small author and a small business at the same time. You can also get them through BarnesandNoble.com. And as I said, I'm I'm hopeful that people will pre-order books three at BarnesandNoble.com because that's a big stepping stone for me.

SPEAKER_01 39:28

Great. Well, this has been a wonderful call, and I wish you the best of luck. And for anyone who is listening or watching, thank you for joining us for another episode of Read and Write with Natasha, and until we meet again. Thank you. Take care. Thank you for tuning in to Read and Write with Natasha. I'm your host, Natasha Times. 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.