In this week’s episode, Crys and JP talk about JP’s newly published serial fiction and all the feels that come along with it!
Question of the week: If you have released a book, how did you feel afterward? And if you haven’t, when do you hope to? Share your answer here!
Don’t miss our weekly check in on Patreon (it’s public!) where we talk about what we’re currently learning, any thoughts we missed in last week’s episode, and our plans for this week!
Show Notes
NRDS: National Recently Deceased Services on Vella
NRDS: National Recently Deceased Services on Fictionate
The Author Success Mastermind Podcast
Brian McDonald: You Are a Storyteller podcast
Take Off Your Pants by Libbie Hawker
Transcription
Crys: Hello friends and welcome to the Write Away Podcast. I’m your host, Crys Cain, here with…
JP: JP Rindfleisch.
Crys: As always. And today is September 30th as we are recording. We are in separate places once again. As they say it, we’re finally in our own homes. But I’m not, I’m in someone else’s home, as I do. And I realized last night as I was prepping for this episode that we have not actually had a catch up in a minute because we had two lovely episodes with special guests. I meant to say our two episodes with our lovely special guests, but I haven’t quite finished this coffee, so.
JP: I haven’t had coffee yet. It’s fine. Everything’s fine.
Crys: I am in Kentucky now and I was planning tomorrow on driving up to New York and spending two weeks there. But I found out that a family member has COVID, had COVID, they tested negative on Wednesday. But because smalls is unvaccinated and I have a couple more writer’s conferences I don’t feel safe going up there. And so we’re still hoping that we get to visit them.
I actually had to buy the at-home COVID tests down in Tennessee and mail them up to them because they are out of them in New York. They sell out the day they get them. So hopefully they do not catch COVID, the other family members, because they are not in the best of health. In general, like I hope no one catches COVID, but especially them. And so I’m doing my best to not think about it.
JP: That is wise.
Crys: And then the Career Author definitely gave me that that energy boost I needed to get back to work mode. And I have lots of ideas that I’ve been trying to gather and put into information.
And the sad news is that we sat down and figured out what Smalls and schools needed to look like and realize we just don’t have enough time to drive down to Costa Rica and get him into a school in a timely manner. I guess we don’t really know how the Costa Rican school system actually works. I know that they started early registration this month, or just like in the last week or so. Their school year starts on the first week of February. We’ve got to get down there and figure that out, which means that I will be selling Vancy and sending her to a new home.
JP: That’s very sad, but great memories.
Crys: Indeed. And hopefully I will earn back basically what I paid on her, and then it will just have been either breakeven or less than a rental would have cost for the whole summer.
JP: Yeah. Let me tell you, campervans are a hot topic.
Crys: And she’s not my last, that’s for sure.
I want a skoolie next, but we’ll see what works out in the whole scheme of things. How about you?
JP: Man, what has not happened? Yeah, so let’s see, we haven’t caught up since the conference. A lot of crazy stuff happened at the conference in a good way, not like a weird way. Let’s not be weird about this.
So yeah, a lot of really good positive things happened, a lot of things that I firmly believe get me closer to reducing hours, if not leaving, the day job. Which is great because I really need that time because I really want that time to do other projects. And I have too many and I want to do them. So when I get that opportunity, I can’t wait.
I’m leaving that super vague at the moment just because I am. But it has to do with like the editor’s conference and just various things along those lines, so the editor’s certification that we have next month.
Yeah, so all of that was great. And then I bought a van because why not? I was sitting at a coffee shop with Zach and my partner and we were just talking and I was like, oh, the dream would be to have a van. And he’s I think I have a friend who is selling a van. And then within an hour, he’s I have a friend who is selling a van and it’s this much. And I was like, that’s very affordable. And then you convinced me and we bought the van.
Crys: Yeah. We went and saw it because it was literally around the corner from Zach’s house. And it was in such good shape and it’s such a good price. It was just redonkulous not to get it as a starter van.
JP: Yeah. And already my partner, Josh, has just gone crazy. He’s like cleaning the whole thing. It didn’t really need that much cleaning, but he’s doing his deep clean thing.
Crys: This is getting to know Hank the Tank.
JP: Hank the Tank, the beautiful, wonderful device. And yeah, we’re getting like solar panels for the roof, all this fun stuff, so that we can be pseudo off grid if and when we need to.
And wonderful Kevin Tumlinson told us what he uses for internet because I could basically work the day job on the road in the interim. So we copied him, which of course you would. Why wouldn’t you?
Crys: And he’s been at this a minute, he’s worked through some of the stumbles.
JP: Yeah, 100%. I was like, oh, you use this? We’re just going to copy you. Like we don’t need to stumble around at that.
Crys: Absolutely. There’s another big thing that’s happening today.
JP: Yes there is.
Crys: How’s it feel to be a published author, JP?
JP: It’s a good feeling. It’s weird nerves, but good feeling.
Crys: So JP has been working with the delightful Jeff Elkins for, it feels like an eternity, but in a good way.
JP: Yeah, I would say so. So we’ve been working for three or four months, I can’t remember exactly when we started. But basically when Christine and I started The Serial Fiction Show I picked a handful of authors that I was like, they are US based and they probably would do a serial. And it turned out Jeff wasn’t and he’s like, you want to do one together?
And I was like, oh no, what did I do? But of course, I’m not gonna say no. Why would you say no to that? So yeah, then we started working on a project and now we release the first six episodes today.
Crys: All right. So give the pitch. Do you have it down?
JP: No. Give me one second.
All right. So the story is basically if you take The Office, Brooklyn Nine Nine, and Ghostbusters and mash them together. It is a small-town agency, a government agency, coming into a small town for the first time. A bunch of ghosts are around. It’s called NRDS, which is the National Recently Deceased Services. They work through spirit cases, but they’re also struggling with small town politics of politicians wanting them out. And also a ton of paperwork, because what is a government agency without a ton of paperwork?
Crys: And how many episodes did you guys complete before you started launching?
JP: We have 12 completed and we’re polishing up the 13th one. And I have 24 plotted out.
Crys: And it looked like you dropped a pile of them, or a handful of them, today.
JP: Yeah. Six of them. And then we’ll be doing one episode a week.
Crys: Nice. So you’ve got the three free Vella episodes. Do you get three free on Fictionate as well?
JP: I believe you can set it up that way. We did. So I was looking at Christine because she was using Fictionate for a while. So I was like, oh, whatever she’s using works. So three free to mimic Vella and then that way we can reach out to international.
Crys: And Christine is Christine Daigle if we have not said her last name. Do you feel like a changed man? It’s like your birthday. Do you feel older?
JP: I don’t know what I feel.
I’m excited because I’ve had the short stories published with J, but this one is different. It’s a little bit more control over it, and I get a little bit more visibility on the reads and more interaction. Because like we all knew, I knew going into writing the short stories that anthologies aren’t big major sellers. And so it’s fun going into this space and reaching out to a certain audience and seeing what happens.
Now, this is the first day we released it. Maybe nothing will happen. But I really like the story. I think it’s a really fun, funny story as well. And so I think we’ll at least get some people that’ll be like, yeah, we like this.
Crys: When I released my first story, I expected nothing from it because I was just doing it on my own and I literally did not tell a single other human about it because I wasn’t planning on pushing it until I got three books out. And I lucked out and it took off relatively successfully just because of covers and keywords. So, those are important, people. But they will not save your butt in a crowded market.
And it took me forever though to be able to say, I’m a writer. Even though I had completed something, I had published something, I’d completed several somethings and publish things. And it took a long time for that to feel real.
JP: Yeah. Yeah. I still, in my mind, I feel like there’s a scale and I’m at that very beginning of the scale. And I’m like, when do I actually say I’m a writer? I even said that weird. Why did I say that weird? I don’t know. But I have these people that I want to emulate and they’re way up on the scale. And I’m over here just like trudging along like, I’m coming, just wait for me.
Crys: Did you feel prepared? You guys have been working on this for a while. You’ve been running marketing stuff by some of us. You worked on the cover for a while. You did the cover yourself, which I love. How prepared did you feel for it to launch today?
JP: Very prepared. This is the fun thing about a serial though, is a serial is way different than a novel.
Because like Abe and my project, like we want at least the three books polished before we publish the first one. So that is just an insurmountable amount of work without getting that feedback. And that’s the part that is very different from serials. We’ve written episode 12, we have 24 plotted out the first season. We’re probably talking like 60 plus episodes.
So it’s almost like sending out unfinished work, but that’s the whole point of a serial is to ideally get feedback. What things are going well, what do people really like? And that was the vibe that we really wanted.
So in terms of do I feel ready? Yes, because I’m just like, I have plotted out to 24, I want to know what do people want to know. Because in the outline, I’m starting to get really heavy into the overarching plot. And I really like it, but I want to know who are some of the people’s favorite characters and all that stuff.
Crys: Yeah. I haven’t even read it yet, but yesterday I was like, JP, I want this to happen, as I asked him about the story.
JP: Maybe let’s see.
Crys: I won’t know until I read it.
JP: Yeah. So it’s been fun.
Crys: I’m sorry, my brain just shut off. Where shall we riff off now?
JP: So you mentioned when you first published, you didn’t talk about it until you had at least the first three. Why?
Crys: That was the intention because I’d been following self-publishing long enough to see a lot of authors. I think our friend Michele and I cannot remember her last name…
JP: Do you mean Michele Berger?
Crys: Our friend Michele Berger has referred to herself as indie adjacent because she is an academic and she has had some things independently published, she’s been traditionally published academically, and she hasn’t jumped in whole in anything. She’s got her foot in a bunch of different puddles. I don’t know where this analogy is going. But she uses the phrase indie adjacent.
I liked that because I was very indie adjacent until I published my first story. And I’d seen enough authors throw so much money at a first book that honestly most of the time wasn’t that good because it was a first book. And then like just be devastated. And then they’d say, oh, it wasn’t until book three, book four, further on down the line, that the series started to be profitable. And a lot of that is social proof. If you’re writing in a series, readers want to know that you’re going to finish the series.
Also, when you have a longer story, whether that’s in serial form or in big fat form, and you’re in KU, you get paid more.
So I don’t want to throw any kind of money at it until I have that lineup. But I simply lucked out. I wrote a story that was entertaining enough, sure. I had a great cover for the market, absolutely. I knew my keywords, yes. But I did not know that the niche that I published in was really hungry and that was my luck factor.
JP: Yeah. That definitely changes things. And especially when you’re just like, I just want to talk about this. And then it’s, oh no, I have to talk about this now.
Crys: And even then I didn’t have to talk about it.
But I did everything wrong. I didn’t have a mailing list linked in the back of the book. I had the wrong title on the cover. There are so many things. We didn’t research our pen name before we chose it. There was already somebody with that pen name. We threw an initial on it to differentiate it.
It was wild how many things I did wrong because I didn’t expect it to sell. And I very quickly fixed all those.
JP: Yeah. So Jeff and I, because Vella only allows one name, we did a author name, a pen name that is neither of our names. And we just point people to the socials at the end of each episode.
And we want that social aspect to it. So we want people to follow those social media links. And we’re very open that it’s two of us. It’s not one name is one person, whatever. But, yeah, we probably should have a mailing list too. Oops. But I think the big thing about this is, this is fun for both of us because, I don’t know how to explain that. Of course this is a project, of course we want to make money off of it, that would be great. But also we are just having a ton of fun doing it. So whatever, I don’t know, maybe that’s weird about it.
Crys: That’s honestly kind of one of the places that I want to get to in my stability in time.
And I was listening to the Brian McDonald conversation on You Are A Storyteller on what they call a professional versus an amateur. And we’d had this conversation at The Career Author Summit, and also on The Author Success Mastermind podcast about what makes a professional or what makes a career author.
And I vehemently disagree with McDonald on his definition of a professional, because he says he used to say a professional was just somebody who got paid for work they do, which is how I define a professional. Now he has all of these kind of quality qualifications and I’m like, no, that’s different. That’s a master and a master doesn’t have to make money and doesn’t have to be a professional.
And in other episodes he also says that a professional, he may have phrased it in different words, but I believe he says a professional is someone who makes work that means something. Which again, I’m disagreeing with as professional. I would say that’s mastery.
And I want to ride that line of writing something that means something and is also so joyful. There are writers out there who angst and labor and are very unhappy trying to write something that means something. I think it can be very joyful to write something that means something and that’s where I want to be. And also not have to worry specifically about the income that’s coming in so I can do all that without regard to super-intense market concerns.
JP: Yeah. Definitely. I think the reason why we’re both having fun with this is we both know that this format could be lucrative for some people, but I think we’re both realistic in the fact that this is not our golden cow. This is not our thing that we want to earn money. This is not the thing that’s going to drag us out of our day jobs. And I think knowing that all firsthand and just knowing that we’re putting something out there that we both had a really good fun time on, and that it has like this deeper message that we both really like on it, that has been an experience.
And then when we talk about the project with Abe and I, that project I would love for it to help pull Abe and I out of the day job. I really like the story, I really love the story, I love where it’s going, but that is more of the flagship or something. It’s something along those lines that I have a heavier weight on. And even if I have these expectations, I can still expect the fact that it may not go as well once it’s thrown out in the world. But that has a heavier weight than this one.
Crys: Yeah. I had three thoughts at once, which means that I have zero thoughts now.
Do you think that the bundled version of the serial will be out before yours and Abe’s first book?
JP: Oh, sassy. Let’s see. Timeline wise, I don’t think so. It could be close to be honest. It’s a race now. So with Abe and I’s book, he is drafting before I am editing book three and we have been on a bit of a pause while we’ve been working on the Witches of Salem stories, because those interlock with our series because it touches onto it.
So we’ve used that opportunity to have just more story in our world. And there’s a little bit of lore that we’ve been drafting for book four through those short stories. So it’s been a pause, but a productive one.
So who knows? Again, like I thought it would release earlier this year and then I thought it was going to release last month. But at this point, I would rather have it be a product that we are more satisfied with than something that we’re racing to get to the finish line. And it’s not going to take us forever.
Crys: And you’re not churning over the same things.
JP: One hundred percent. We’ve created a production schedule, and we know what steps we need to take to do them.
Now, if I was editing book three and we’re talking about it’s today’s date and I’ve been editing it since, I don’t know when, and I haven’t been doing anything else in between, we would be like on a call, what are you doing? Why are you taking so long? Because we have these expectations. If I am editing, period, I’m not doing these short stories or whatever, it should take me roughly this long. And if it’s not, we’re talking about it because we’re not going to sit there and take 10 years to edit something.
Crys: Yeah. I think the obvious question for our listeners are: if you have released a book, how did you feel afterward? And if you haven’t, when do you hope to?
JP: Yeah. And then send us links. Why not?
Crys: Yeah, absolutely. Put links in the comments.
All right. So we will be recording our Patreon episode, our book club conversation, this upcoming Tuesday, I believe.
Yes, this upcoming Tuesday. So if you would like to join in on our conversation of Take Off Your Pants by Libbie Hawker on plotting, you can check out Patreon and see the details on that.
It’s a lot crazier than what comes out in the edited episode. So the behind the scenes look, I don’t know if it’s worth it, but it’s definitely unique.
JP: It’s a fun time.
Crys: Thanks so much for joining us this week and hope to see you next week.
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