Hi Lauren. Welcome to What Your next podcast.

Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to chat today.

So excited to chat with you. Tell us a little bit about yourself.

So I am a romance author and I counted earlier today and I am approaching 30 books published because

gosh.

I'm a hybrid author. I self-publish and I publish with small presses and I have a few books with a big five publishers. I spend a lot of my times in worlds that I make up myself.

Oh my gosh. So talk to us about your journey. How did you get started, talk to us about that journey because

Sure.

with hybrid, it's interesting 'cause it's like you're managing multiple places. You're down your indie, which is basically you're the publisher. Small presses is also, you're maybe having some more hands on and then the big five,

yeah. So I've always loved reading. I always loved creating stories in my mind, and you can actually be a storyteller in a lot of different ways. You can be an author, but you could also be, a movie maker or a. Song lyricist or something. But I realized that the way that I wanted to make stories was writing books. 'cause that's just what I love to consume. So in college I actually studied professional writing, but I did find that on the creative side of professional writing, a lot of academia at the time, it may be different nowadays they were veering towards literary fiction, which for me. Wasn't fun to write. I'm sure there's a lot of authors out there who, that is their jam. They love literary fiction, but I found like I was forcing myself to write that and I wasn't enjoying writing time. But once I got my degree. And then I went on to get a master's in library science. And I worked in libraries for a few years and I eventually got into reading romance 'cause I was reading kind of like fantasy with romantic elements in it. But I got into actual romance and once I started trying to write that. It flowed so much easier. And I was like, oh, okay. This is what writing is supposed to be like if you enjoy your story. I mean, there's still definitely days where I, it's a struggle or I'm really working at it, but that's also rewarding in a way. So I, but yeah it's really nice to write something that you enjoy and. Once I figured that out, then I knew that I wanted to be a published author. I think that's something with, new authors, a lot of times we're asked, or in interviews, people ask me what one piece of advice could you give a new writer? I think a really important thing is to establish early on what your goal is with your writing. 'cause some people just wanna do it as a hobby and that's fantastic. And if you only wanna do it as a hobby, then you shouldn't put. Like too much pressure on yourself. You shouldn't take the joy away from it. But I knew that I wanted to be a published author and if any way possible, fully support myself with that because. That's all I wanted to do. I just wanted to write books all day. I did not wanna go into an office to work as a librarian. I did enjoy those jobs, but it just wasn't bringing me the same amount of joy that writing did. So when I started looking into publishing, there was actually a decent amount of authors who were doing very well, self-publishing. This was back in 2000 16, 17, 18 times. And so I. I'm a big proponent of diversifying your income. And so I was like I am really interested in getting a publishing deal with a large publisher, but I also don't wanna slow down my publishing in order to go through what can be a very long querying process for representation. So I was like I have lots of ideas. Why don't I. Self-publish some so I can kind of keep this momentum going. And then as I better myself as a writer and I get deeper into my writing career, then I can kind of suss out what stories I want to keep in my self-publishing lane and which ones I think might appeal to a more kind of traditional publishing crowd. And. It took me a few years but luckily it all worked out. And so right now I am a full-time author. I've got self-published books and I've got traditionally published books and, there's no end in sight, which is how I want it to be.

Oh my gosh. I love this journey. I love the idea of you gotta diversify your streams. You cannot just rely on it. And that you saw it as this is what I want you to do. Here's where I want it to go. And I'm not gonna be attached to just one way. 'cause I think a lot of times when we think about writing as a publishing career is oh, I just get a book deal. It becomes a bestseller and that's it. But the reality is that it doesn't always work that way. It's we're few and far between who get that

Yeah. And even when you do get a big deal, it's not like they give you just a giant chunk of money that you can live off for the rest of your life.

That's the other part, is like you, first of all, in advance doesn't mean you're gonna get royalties right away.

Yeah.

advance. And the advance is not paid. When you say earning like a nice deal, I don't, and the

yeah.

is like 50,000. You get it in installments.

Yeah. And that doesn't include healthcare.

No. No, there's no so it's, I think that's where the beauty of it. I am glad that you're talking about the business of writing and how to make this career, because I think it's it's not just one book. You kind of have to produce multiple books and you have to test out, and you have to market them because just the market, traditional Polish can market your book, but you also have to market your book too.

Yeah. Honestly, if I could go back to younger Lauren who was in college, I would tell her get a minor in business. Because it would be so helpful to I mean, I have an accountant that helps me with my finances, and before I got that accountant, I would panic every tax time. 'Cause it's so intimidating, I didn't understand it. And I was like I'll just sit down and I'll figure it out one day and then I would cry,

Yeah, I

so.

the quarterly taxes, like you have to pay taxes. It's self employed. I have been in that place of and I have an accountant. My brother's, my accountant, God bless, I

Oh gosh. Yeah, to have an accountant in the family.

He went to school. Thanks to me. So for a couple years I was actually a 10 99 employee on my job. And so I had to basically figure out how to actually pay my health insurance, pay my taxes, and it was like, basically and then pay that check. 'cause you

Yeah.

I don't wanna go to jail. I think

No.

biggest fear, just, I don't wanna go to jail. So I tried to take care of things and then you have to diversify the income streams. 'cause you can't just rely on one thing. 'cause one track may not come and then you're like, okay, I have bills to pay

Yeah, and that's like even with the big publishers. You never know, like they're all kind of imprints of a large publisher. You never know when there's gonna be this gigantic major merger

Yes.

companies, and maybe they, even if your imprint is very successful, if they fold it into something else. So it's just nothing is necessarily guaranteed. For me, it is very comforting to have revenue coming in from multiple streams.

So let's talk about the writing and how do you juggle? Because being a full-time writer doesn't mean that you're writing all day. You're also doing administrative stuff. You're marketing, you're. Being the jack of all trades unless you have support, but even managing the support. So you still have to do that. So how do you juggle not just writing for both, like being hybrid because you also have the self-publishing, machine that you need to keep feeding and then writing for a big five or a small press where you have an editor, but you have like actually. Things that they have to meet the goals, the deadlines that they're imposed by corporate,

Yeah.

job. The other the ND is the self-publishing is you're entrepreneur, you're the CEO,

Yeah. Yeah. I think it was in 2001 or 2002, I realized that I was getting very jumbled up in my projects, what I should be working on. I felt like I needed to be working on three books a week, just getting things done. And I realized I was gonna burn myself out if I didn't find some type of organization. So. If anyone wants to, they can look up a Gantt chart, G-A-N-T-T. And it's actually, it's not a writer specific tool, it's just a certain way to organize large projects especially if you're working on multiple things at a time. I had a colleague had used it when I was working a library and we were doing a large research project. And so she had brought it to a meeting and we had used it to organize our project, and I was like, I think that I can utilize this to organize all my writing projects. That has been very helpful for me. So now I actually, in October time, I will do a rough map of my next year where I will map out week by week what book I expect that I'll be working on and what I will be doing for that book. Will I be writing it? Will I be editing it? Will I be sending it to an editor And so that way I'm a very. When it comes to what I need to do, I need to have it like visualized in front of me. I'm big on daily to-do lists and having a calendar, and so I map it out that way and so I can see what, when my deadlines are, and I can work backwards from those, figuring out what I need to be doing when, that has been a lifesaver. I've been using that for years now. I even presented about using that at like the Georgia Romance Writers Conference and I was like, I don't know if anyone's nerdy like me about charts, but I really like Gantt charts for mapping out multiple long-term projects over the course of a year. So that really helps me. The publishers that I work with, they know that I help self-publish projects. And so another great thing about having this chart is that there is, at least I have found some discussion with an editor at a big publisher about deadlines. They don't necessarily, or they haven't for me said, this is when it's due. No conversation about it. When you're working on the contract, I say to them, Hey, I have looked at my. Schedule and I think that this would be a reasonable turn in date for the draft. Does that work for you all? And so far they have said yes because I think that the dates I have given them have been reasonable. And then and I always give myself some buffer space 'cause you never know what's gonna go on. But yeah, I think that it's really helpful. And that's another thing that. Hass been great about self-publishing before going into traditional publishing is that I have a really good sense of, in general how long it takes me to write a book so I can negotiate deadlines based off of, you know what? I know I am capable of, I think some other people who, if this is just their first or second book they're like I think I can write a book in this time. But then you get all these obstacles that pop up. 'cause I actually when I first went full time as an author, I was like, oh, I only need two weeks to edit a draft of a book. No, I need four weeks. And I found that out. And I also thought. Oh, I'm gonna be writing in the morning and then doing business in the afternoon. No, I found I can't concentrate on writing unless I empty out my email inbox. So I do business in the morning and writing in the afternoon. So that's kind of that there's a learning curve, but once you figure it out I have found that editors publishers will work with you as long as you're giving them reasonable dates.

Yeah, I think it helps you. One is because you have been doing this for a while, so

Mm-hmm.

your process, you understand what your needs are, and then the other part is coming with reasonable expectations, buying yourself time. I think a lot of times we take it for granted, like this is a day and now a lot. Of times I've learned you kinda have to negotiate

Yeah.

Do this in my day job a lot of times where it's this is an important thing. I was like, well, let me look at my bandwidth, let me look at the specific, and usually I buy myself time. Would I actually need all the time? Probably not, but I give myself the time to have the breathing room to do it right, as

Yeah.

You can negotiate, you can speak

Mm-hmm.

as women we tend to be like no, it's. Given to us, this is what we have to do. And the reality is no we are, we can be empowered to speak up and say well, this is what works for me. It's a reasonable time based on the specific needs and this is how we can work it out and negotiate it from the beginning and have those open communications as opposed to be surprised

Yeah, and honestly, they would rather you be honest in the beginning because yeah, if you're like a week out from a deadline and you tell them I need. Two more weeks that sets everyone's schedule off and your book could get pushed out a year because they just can't fit it in the production schedule anymore. So yeah, it's much better to ask for the time upfront if you can.

All right, so thank you for talking to us about the business of writing and like the specifics. I think a lot of our readers might have questions about it

Mm-hmm.

about what does it look like? I wanna write all day. And it's actually, it's a business and there's specifics, but let's talk about Love in Plane Sight, which is your latest release. It's a romcom with traditional five book. It's actually basically learning how to fly a plane, literally. And having and getting horny.

Yes. Yeah. Horny in the cockpit. Oh, no.

Yes. to the elevator pitch and why should readers pick it up?

Sure. Yeah. The inspiration of this book, I've wanted to write a pilot romance for a while because my dad is a pilot. He does it as a hobbyist he got his pilot's license the day he met my mom. So there's a little bit of romance. And I, and there's always or what I find when I'm writing a book is I'll take a little nugget of truth for my life and then I'll build an entire story off of it. And so it's not my life, but there's a dash of inspiration from experiences that either I or people around me have had, but I've grown up going to. Small airports all the time with him. 'cause he always wants, he's kids, do you wanna go flying with me? And of course like his heart is broken that none of us actually wanted to get licenses. I'm like, I'll I let you teach me how to drive stick shift. But I'm a little in the air is a little much for me, but I would love it if. Some readers came away from this book wanting to get their pilot's license because I know that it brings my dad so much joy and he had a fun time helping me with all the logistics of this book. And so that's been great. I've got a very supportive family. They know I write sm content. I'm like, dad there's on page erotic scenes in this book. And he's okay. For the people who have read PSI Hate You, which is my other book with Berkeley before this one, this book is not as emotional as that one. I do like to preface that. Again, as I've said, I've, written close to 30 books now, and they vary in the amount of. Times that you will cry during them. So I would say that this is a lighter book, but there's still that tension of will they, won't they? It is a single POV and so you're all getting it from Beth. Perspective. And she is, down in her luck, she's got a lot of debt, but she just has this dream of getting her license and her half brother who has had a much more financially stable life. And as a golden retriever guy, a lot of people love Sean, her half brother. He's just like a very sunshine person. He's oh, well you should go flying with my best friend George. And she's George, the guy who hates me. And so. Yeah she thinks her B Brother's best friend hates her. He's a very kind of stoic, doesn't say much kind of guy, but of course you, as the reader start picking up on the little like hints of, oh, I think maybe he just likes her so much that he, his brain is exploding every time he's near her. And then that makes it hard to talk. So, and I. Right. Your, and a Cessna cockpit is very small. I mean, your shoulders are brushing, your thighs are against each other. She focuses on his thighs a lot. He's got good thigh game. So it's a lot of, but there's also found family aspects. I really wanted to show just this variety of people in your life that you could have supporting you and yeah, I think it is a really it's a fun time. There are emotional moments, but it gives you those, like all the feels. There is a grumpy dog that is based off of my dog. So if you like a dog that hates everyone except for his people that's in there, so.

I love this. I love the opening scene because we are in an emergency landing, and George saves a day and he doesn't want to be known that he saved a day.

Oh yeah. He's a very humble person and yeah, that he goes into the diner where she works and it's you're a hero, and he's no, could I please just have a sandwich? And you just don't talk about it.

yes. It's I don't wanna talk about it. And, he also has financial instability.

Mm-hmm.

money. Like he's the ideal hero. He is yeah, I don't want to take credit for any of this stuff. It's just, it just happened. I just saved a day.

it's normal. Every I'm sure a bunch of you have landed a plane in an emergency situation.

yes. And I can give you pilot lessons. Like it's not a big deal. And I am bathing, like, how much do I pay you? And he's it's okay.

Yeah. Money is a big deal for people who don't have it. That's the thing a lot of people are like, money can't buy happiness. And I'm like, well, it can take away some stress.

Yes,

So,

it can give you access. It can you take stress from like actually figuring out, do I eat right now or do I pay my house or

exactly.

insurance. Which is bad issues, do I save a life or do I actually you someone dies

Yeah, so she has all these she builds up every time that money needs to be exchanged. It's a big deal for her.

Yeah.

And George is the mailman character. For those who don't know he takes the intensity of the money exchange out of it. But not in a way that feels, I would say dismissive.

Yeah.

He's just no money doesn't have to be an exchange in this situation. You don't have to stress about it. And he's not money doesn't matter, but he's also like it, you don't need to pay me. I don't need you to pay me.

I know because it's to, I think it's and it's our hard working I don't know, the idea of being, this. I think that's experience of with her trauma, her childhood trauma, that she's coming in. It's like feeling left out and her secret. And I think in some ways it's it colors her decisions and how she interacts with her brother, her. With George and the financial impact that it does, and how she actually makes decisions based on that.

Yeah. And she's very much a people pleaser person.

Yeah.

So like some of the decisions that she makes in this book are gonna be frustrating for readers. I fully understand that. But I think that they match well with her personality. She just, she wants to keep the people around her happy. And she doesn't necessarily always make the best decisions, but that is her goal at the end. And it's a good goal. So you're like, oh, Beth, stop it. Don't do that. And she's no, it makes sense. And you're like, it doesn't really.

Yes, which is what makes the story a story. You can't just have a conflict free.

Yeah.

life. I love it in real life, but when you're reading, you need a little bit of conflict, you need a

Mm-hmm.

you need a little bit emotional, like you have to have bad decisions. People making bad decisions for you to actually understand,

Yeah.

grow

Yeah. Or else the book would be like, 20 pages

Yes.

and then they were all perfect and none of them needed therapy.

Yes, so this is low in plain side. It's available in December and it's available on audio. I share with Lauren that I listened to the audio. Karisa Vacker narrates it and she does an excellent job narrating it

time that she does a man voice, I'm like, Ooh, my goodness, Carissa.

Yes. So if Carissa is one of your favorite narrators as she is for me, just gonna be like, this is an auto buy, but you can also get an ebook or print and it's available all, all the different bookstores and stuff like that. Lauren, tell us would you, do you have any books to recommend our listeners civic app?

Yes, definitely. I mean, where I am in the world, which is North Carolina it's, we're getting the fall season. It's getting chilly outside. And so I'm a mood reader and I find that when it gets cooler outside, I'm definitely looking for cozy books. And so a few recent reads I had that just gave me the perfect cozy vibes were a witches guide to magical in keeping. Oh my goodness. Such a good book. Even if you're not a big magic reader. It is a very approachable magic book. It's set in modern day uk. The audio book is fantastic. The narrator is so great. And it just, the setting is amazing. It's got a really good found family. It's quirky, but it's also emotional. I was like tearing up during parts of it. So highly recommend. It's the follow up to a very secret society of Irregular Witches, which is also an amazing book. Another cozy book that I recently read was drawn Together by Juliana Smith. That one is just, very cute. That's a contemporary romance. It is what I love that she did. It's a single POV, but at the end of each chapter, you get a little bit of a dip into the mailman character's head in such a good, tantalizing way. That is a closed door romance. So if I do write open door romances, but if you prefer to read romances that fade to black, that's a great option. And then I was feeling very nostalgic lately and I take my dog on a walk through this park and they recently put up a little free library and I was about to fill it with romance. Books, but then I realized it's across the little pathway from a playground and I was like, oh, this little free library should probably be filled with kids' books or maybe fade to black. I just, I don't wanna put a s muddy book and then a kid pick it up and be like, Ooh, what's this? But anyway, I was thinking I'm definitely planning on going to, and it's empty now, except for random business books. Sorry, this is like a frustrating tangent. I'm going on.

too, and it's, right now it's millennial. S like chick from the S and I'm like, yeah, but no one is picking them up, so we

Yeah.

it,

yeah, so I was just thinking, I was like what like kids books ya books would I love to fill this little free library with? And I just went back to the book that made me fall in love with reading or the author who made me fall in love with reading is Tamara Pierce or Tamura Pierce. I always read their names. I don't know how to pronounce them, but if you want a magical, just an amazing. Fantasy, romantic. I didn't even, they weren't categorized as romantic because they were written a few decades ago and they, romantic wasn't a thing at the time, but they are, I would say some of her books do fall under the romantic category, but they're both, they're like ya, but they're good for adults. But just anything by Tamara Pierce Alana the First Adventure is probably a great place to start, but just, I think they hold up. So if you're looking. For a fantasy adventure, definitely Alana, the first adventure. And if you're looking to give books to young adults in your life any of her books, they're still around. They're still great. Go for it.

I love this. And a good tip if you have a little elaborate, not just for you, for listeners, is B, go find the book Outlets and sales every so often. They have a 5 99, 3, 9, 9 sale,

Yes.

you can stock up on books. Like they have a lot of new releases, but they have old back list titles and you can just go shopping, go buy quite a few books and just stock up your little food library if you wanna be a steward and you are like, Hey, I wanna promote literacy and here's some

Yeah, Maybe it's like the librarian in me, but I'm like, I want to fill this with books. I just want to, I'm like, I wish I had more money to buy books to give to people.

Yeah. Like I don't want business books,

Yeah.

like reading books and like fun books, like

This is supposed to be joyous.

Yes. Yes. So, Lauren, tell us, we can find out online.

I would say probably the best place to find me would be on Instagram Lauren Connolly Romance is my hashtag there. I'm also on TikTok under Lauren Connolly Romance. Those are the two platforms that I most often. Post about what's coming up. I've got multiple events that are gonna be coming up for Love and Plain Sight. It's coming out in December, which bookstores get really busy with holiday stuff in December. So I'm actually gonna be touring a few bookstores in January. So for readers who are in kind of the. North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Atlanta area. I'll be going down, I'll be going to around to a different indie bookstore in a few of those places. So I'd love to see people and say hi and make sure I'm not speaking to an empty room.

I love this and I love that. As in January. 'cause it's like we're just we need something else to look

Right. Yeah. Start the year off. Loving books.

Yes. That's so awesome. Thank you Lauren for being in the show.

Thank you so much for having me.

Thanks for listening to the What three next. For more book lists, cozy reads and library tips, visit the what three Next block.com. Your next great read might be waiting there.