Curious what this is? You can listen to a free sample episode here.
The One-Drink Book Club is an informal, (almost) weekly series in which fellow author Emma Lee Jayne joins me and our other creative friends to talk about the life, business, and art of writing and making books … for the duration of one Friday-afternoon drink.
Here’s what we talked about in this episode:
Emma’s not getting enough done in her quest to change tenses on her re-acquired Harlequin books. I could relate, having just launched my bookstore at JohnnyBTruantBooks.com: Every task requires 10 prerequisites tasks.
Bill asked what happens when we write ourselves into a corner. At first, Emma and I seemed to offer opposite answers (she backtracks; I plunge ahead), but then we differentiated between problems to creatively solve vs. stories that just get stupid.
Emma told a story about getting inspiration from a children’s book at the dentist’s office about a duck and an alligator. This is how she resolved a problem in her vampire book. Yes, you read that right.
We talked about how soon to reveal big secrets: meter the reveals out, or save them for the end? I saw a lot of danger (and a lot of insecurity, on the writer’s part) by doing the latter. Emma agreed: It’s best to make readers feel SMART by finding those things along the way.
Emma posited that once a book is out, it belongs as much or more to the readers as it does to the author, giving JK Rowling and Veronica Ross as examples. SPOILERS FOR THE DIVERGENT SERIES ON THIS ONE!
This discussion continued until a question about who’s right if an author does something unpopular … capped by Emma’s assertion that stories exist already, and the author is discovering them instead of creating them. This is something that I and Stephen King agree on: us being old buddies and all.
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