Welcome to your next step of the Self Publishing Mountain.

I'm Matilda Swift, author of Quintessentially British Cozy Mysteries.

And I'm Samantha Cummings, author of Young Adult Books about Magic, Myths and Monsters.

I've written the books, changed their covers, tweaked their blurbs, tried tools from a dozen ad courses, and I'm still not seeing success.

Now we're working together to plot and plan our way from barely making ends meet to pulling in a living wage.

Join us on our journey where we'll be mastering the pen to snag that paycheck.

Hello and welcome to Pen to Paycheck Authors podcast.

I'm Samantha Cummings here with my co-host Matilda Swift, and we're here to write our way to financial success.

We're two indie authors with over a dozen books between us, and still a long way to go towards the quick-to-day job dream.

If that sounds familiar, listen along for our Mastery Through Missteps journey.

Each week we cover a topic to help along the way, and this week's topic is personal narratives.

But before we delve into that, let's do our friends and whinges of the week.

Very dramatic introduction.

And I am going to go more dramatic, because I am just, like, winning at life to new and extreme levels.

Before we started talking, I was humming to myself, semi-charm kind of life.

And as soon as I mentioned my wins to you, you're like, yes, start singing that as well.

Uh, I, everything is, everything's coming at me.

Um, just I feel like I had the best weekend, we had our mastermind day, and then we had our extra story supper, which was fantastic, a sort of traveling discussion for writers that's around the world.

Um, and that was just really good.

That just felt like interesting conversation.

And, yeah, just great ideas.

And I felt really alive and interested and interesting, which is just such a nice way to feel.

And then I, on a whim, decided like I should start applying for book clubs again the other day.

And I got an email today like, oh, you got your book club.

I was like, well, haven't done it for ages, haven't done it for maybe six, nine months.

And I put it in for US only.

It's a Kindle book.

It's like been in a year ago, 99 cents.

They were like, yeah, straight away.

It's like, oh, okay, what can't I do?

And all the stuff that we are going to talk about today, we have just started implementing, and it feels like it's going so well.

I feel like I need to start making some big asks of the universe, because it's just whatever I want I'm getting.

Obviously, I'm jingling myself now, so I'm just going to knock on a little bit of wood.

My ads are going well.

I feel like I'm coming up, get everything ready for that.

I feel like I'm feeling confident about social media.

Just going great.

And I just had a cat on my lap, so what could be better?

That is really is winning.

I have had a great weekend.

Last week was like kind of went in a blur, so I don't really remember what happened last week per se.

But over the weekend, I have been both relaxing and working in equal measure.

So I started off on Saturday morning with a two-hour massage and facial at the same time.

And it was the best experience of my life.

It was so good.

And I felt like I really deserved it.

What I didn't deserve was the continuous like needing of the muscles in my shoulders that kept crunching every time she tried to stop them from crunching.

And then I was just silently praying for them to stop.

Because if they stopped, she would, you know, leave me alone.

But you needed it.

I really, really needed it.

But yeah, it was so good.

And I started the weekend relaxed.

And then just delved right into contacting book reviewers, which is what I've been doing recently, is trying to get in touch with book reviewers and having people sign up to receive free books.

And that's been going really well.

So I was like kind of geared up on that.

And then we had our mastermind yesterday, which was, as usual, an intense day that we started with sushi, as we always do, and a little bit of saki.

And I had had a massage and had an hour of being a little terrible.

Yeah.

And then we went to our local sushi place and they love us there.

They think we're so cool.

And we're just, we are celebrities in there.

And yeah, like had a really great mastermind.

It felt really productive and energetic.

And then we went to the kind of like supper thing, the supper club thing that we went to, which was, I was kind of like nervous in a way, because I'm not, I'm not not good at meeting people.

Like I'm actually a very good people person.

But inside I'm like, oh, what if I'm super boring or people think I'm really dumb?

Which is just like, so like, I'm neither of those things.

I know.

It's just like, my first thing is like, oh no, people are going to think that I'm like, I shouldn't be there.

Even though I don't believe it.

But anyway, I, yeah, I wasn't, didn't know what to expect.

But it was so good.

It was so much fun.

And we just talked a lot.

And today I am so tired.

I'm so tired.

So this episode might be rambly just from the pure fact that my brain is not working.

Apologies.

I'm going to be trying to string sentences together.

I feel like it is processing more things talked about because I think a lot of stuff that we talked about bizarrely, in fact, our Mastermind Day was almost exactly the same topic as just happened to come up at the Story Supper.

And so it just feels like we've had a very long day, intense conversation session on something that is kind of very big and both like directly related to business and the current work we're doing now, we're going to talk about the day basically, and also just enormous mindset stuff.

So yeah, it felt like almost like a business slash therapy slash like friendship and everything day all at once.

So it felt like it felt like a week, but it was just one day.

So yeah, so we are talking about the same topic today.

We are talking about personal narratives.

Question is for you today.

What are they and how do they fit into North Korea?

Okay, can I vocalize this?

So personal narratives, the way that I think about it is just what readers know you for.

So it's the identity that you put forwards on the internet.

We've talked about this in various ways in the past.

Like it's kind of tied to branding, but it's not.

So the way that I think is is branding is kind of like how things look, but the narrative is the content that you kind of fill that with.

So like your personality.

I personally want people to immediately know that a post that they come across of mine on socials and stuff or an email that they read, I want them to know what it's going to look like and recognize it immediately.

And I want them to know like the content is what they're going to want to see because they know and trust me as as this person, as the person I present myself as, which is, you know, the young adult writer of the century.

Just throw myself out there.

So that's how I see it.

Is that along the same lines as you?

I think what got us first talking about it is the thing that I keep coming back to.

So in our mastermind days, we often look at like other authors that we've kind of come across.

I'm going to sneeze, I'm so sorry.

That is the intensity of this topic.

We often talk about other authors that we've kind of come across or we're seeing on social media, people doing interesting things.

And I think we had a few months in a row where we talked about people who were had a really strong personal narrative, and it was quite singular.

And it was not a narrative that either of us wanted, and people had kind of different ones, but people who were doing well on TikTok, often what works on TikTok is a kind of underdog story of like, no one believed in me, four million publishers rejected me, and yet I finally got a book deal and I'm publishing my book, everyone support me.

And that doesn't feel like anything that is authentic to what I want to say.

And so we're trying to figure out like, it does feel very satisfying when you watch those videos and you can see how someone's got an incredibly crystal clear story.

And they have found the people who support that and they can get big support behind their idea and behind their narrative.

And that is not the entirety of the person, that person is just presenting one part of themselves, but they're saying, this is the kind of forward point of what I'm presenting.

And I will tell you other things about myself, but like, this is the thing I'm going to keep repeating, I'm going to keep telling you, and you will know this story about me.

And so we were kind of trying to figure out, is there a version of that we could do for ourselves?

And also, we talked a few weeks ago about how I feel, I feel like it's difficult to be authentic in the Cozy Mysteries space, because I feel like I'm being a kind of polite reserved version of myself, which it doesn't feel authentic.

And it doesn't feel like there's kind of anything interesting or memorable about it.

So we were coming from, or at least definitely I was coming from a place of like, there's something I'm missing.

And how could we figure out like, what's the narrative to kind of fill in with that?

And interestingly, actually, spoiler alert, we came to the end of it.

And actually, I don't think I have come to a particularly different narrative to what we've been talking about.

It's just the way in which I kind of understand it and perceive it now.

So it's useful, I think, to talk about what we did yesterday, to kind of think about our personal narratives.

Um, and one, yeah, so we started to have everyone hopefully seen this is very of the moment, if everyone has seen those like, AI action figures of, you know, a character from a story or book, people have made those or a people have had themselves.

So they make like AI that does like a little action figure that's got the figure themselves and then like two look compartments or one compartment for their accessories.

And so Sam and I drew them of each other.

Some of our drawings were better than the others, let's name our names.

I don't think, I don't think we both agree, mine was not better than yours.

It was just equally bad.

I feel like you're not doing your best.

No, I wasn't, I was being silly.

And I was doing my best.

I was just trying to make myself laugh, which I did a lot.

So they have different levels of art skills and that's fine.

And it was so, it was such a good idea to say like, okay, if you had to be an action figure and you could have like a handful of accessories, what would there be in your pack?

And I think you could do it for yourself, but actually it was really useful to do it for each other because we obviously know each other well.

And we also know each other as authors, as a kind of a brand idea.

So we could talk about that.

So we drew it for each other.

I'm gonna hold my drawing up to the camera of the one that Sam drew of me, just for anyone watching.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Yeah, let's see a drawing.

It's meant to be me.

There are aspects of it that are reminiscent of me.

But it's me with like a book dress.

I've got earrings.

I've got roller skates on.

And then the accessories are a cat, a cup of tea, some cake, and like a really cute little cottage.

And it's interesting in that like, on paper, if you describe that, that sounds really boring.

And also it's like things that I really know about myself.

And it was things that when we talked about it before making these pictures, I was like, Oh, it feels like that's my whole thing.

And like just just tea and cakes and cats doesn't feel like enough.

Actually, that is the first step really helped just articulate it.

And I was like, Oh, you know what, people would pick that up.

It will be that toy up like that is the accessory I'm looking for.

That's a toy I want is like, super cute little tea cup, really love little cakes.

But it's on roller skates, which, you know, it's a little bit fun and quirky.

I was like, Okay, that is step one.

Do you want to talk about the beautiful picture that I drew of you?

I would love to hold this picture up so that people watching this get to see this as well.

So this is my picture.

I'm drawn in a pink pen.

So I'll explain it the way that it was explained to me.

The pink pen can be ignored apart from the hair, which is supposed to be pink, but nothing else should be.

So in my picture, I actually feel bad because I got way more.

I really simplify, Jules, and you've gone to town with this.

So there are-

I have a more expensive toy company than you.

Very expensive.

Yeah.

There are trees behind me.

I'm wearing a cozy jumper.

I've got a crystal necklace on.

I've got a coffee in one hand.

I can't remember what the other thing was in my other hand.

It looks like a rugby ball.

Oh, is that the lead?

Okay.

So it's the lead.

Is it a rugby ball?

I don't know.

Am I missing rugby talk?

Should that be on rugby talk?

So it's got a picture of my dog.

There's a tarot card on the floor.

There's a grave behind me, which sounds weird, but I'm obsessed with graveyards.

And then my little accessories are like fruit and veg, some croissants, some coffee, and an imaginary boyfriend, and a bookshelf.

So it's like, these are all things that kind of...

And post-its.

Oh, and sorry, and post-its on here as well, yes.

Lots of post-its, imaginary boyfriend, and books.

So it's like, it's so many things.

But like you said, I feel like this is, these are all things that I post about already.

These are all the things that I know about myself and all the things that I think that people already know me for, because it's my identity.

But it kind of made me realize that, like I have a lot of things that I tell about myself, I think, like, like this is a lot of things about me.

And I kind of like spread all this information out on the internet and think that that's doing a good job.

You're like, it's, it's like, what happened to having coffee today?

And that's, that's what definitely felt really useful about kind of having these drawn.

It's like, this should be, this is the thing.

I only come with these accessories.

These are my accessories.

Yeah.

So yeah, I kind of like post about them every now and again and have this, this thing where I think, well, if I post once about it, everybody will have seen it and they'll have internalized it.

But I know like it's about repetition and that's how you sell a narrative is that you keep, you keep saying it over and over again until you're kind of like in people's minds and living inside their heads without them realizing, which is obviously exactly what I want.

So it was a really like, it was a really fun way to look at it.

And then we also wrote lists for each other of like particular things that we know about each other, that we associate with one another, which we, like we did a big list of like 20 things and then we grouped those things into a smaller list to try and help us come up with like very crystallized, distinct parts of our narrative that we could use.

So like for the list that you wrote for me, it was things like, I'm obsessed with a graveyard house, I have an allotment, I love coffee, I have an imaginary boyfriend, I have a dog, I love Buffy and like vampire diaries, I've got loads of post-its, so it's all these things.

But they all kind of distilled into like, I'm a very like earthy, I would say like hippie witchy person, because that's me.

I have like little ones that have things to do with my relationship, so my dog and my imaginary boyfriend, which is just what we're going to call him from now on.

And this is just purely for the fact that he's not on socials, and Matilda has never met him, so she deems him imaginary, which is fine.

There's no trace of him in anything that you do.

No, and occasionally you'll be like, oh, we didn't count today, I'm going to meet him after this when we have our days.

But you put in DVDs, you could have all...

These days I know, I'm sat with loads of DVDs behind me, but these are all of his DVDs.

Not that you would ever know that.

And the other thing is exploring and discovering writing.

So I do like to really talk about things that inspire me to write and stuff like that.

So just by doing this, it seems like such a simple task.

If you think about doing it for yourself, like, oh, draw a picture of myself, then write all the things that I like.

Like, obviously, I already know those things.

But when you look at it, like once you've written it down and drawn the picture, then you look at it, you're like, oh, yeah, I actually, I can see the clear path now.

I can see like, I can circle.

And this is kind of what we did is we then kind of circled three things that we thought were like our most, like our best versions of our, of our narrative and our identity, like, or the things that we could use to tell our narratives.

And yeah, it's like, I've been, I've been mulling over and feeling like I know the story that I want to tell people.

And I feel like I know how I'm going to tell it.

And obviously this will evolve over time.

But before I kind of like talk about like, what I'm gonna do, do you have anything you'd like to chip in with?

Yeah.

So I do think it's such a simple idea.

And it has felt really transformative that it'd be useful to maybe talk a bit about other places we kind of other touchstones we were looking at when we were discussing this, because we, we both have quite similar tastes in in like people on social media.

And so we'll often send each other links.

So we both follow a creator called Lily Lutay, who is not her name, it's the account's name, who is a great example of someone who you follow for their narrative and nothing else, because she has a cooking account.

And she often cooks, like elaborate, very meaty meals, and both Sam and I are vegetarian, and Sam's a vegan.

And it's like, in no world, and also I don't cook, in no world am I ever going to cook these things.

But it's the way that she has made such a personal and you feel good watching it, because you know who she is and what she's doing.

And the cooking is an incidental.

And it's not one of those videos where she's cooking in the background and talking about other things.

She's only cooking.

So she's making something, but she is very charming.

And in the background of her cooking videos, it's like a kind of slightly messy, but in a wholesome way farmhouse.

She has an unbelievably attractive, but not like overly attractive, you know, he's like, he's attractive as a person husband.

It's the way he looks at her.

He's obsessed with her.

Yeah.

And she's got like lovely little barefoot kids running around, but she doesn't seem like she's like one dimensional.

She's like sassy and funny, you know.

She feels like I would like crawl over glass to be her best friend.

She just seems so, like she would make everyone better.

She really pops like off the screen, I hate to say like, it sounds so cliche, but like, I really feel like she is a three-dimensional character.

Like, I feel like it's not just a random person I'm scrolling past.

It's like seeing a real person.

Yeah, very simple.

So that's pretty much all we ever see of her.

Occasionally they'll do videos outside, but they just live on a lake house.

You know, they live by the lake and they show a few videos of that.

Her husband predictably is like a woodworker, and you see him like lathering some things.

Basically, she's just living at one com.

And none of these things are things that I like.

I don't follow any other creators who are like homesteading, you know, marriage and kids people.

It's about her as a person and the way in which she is authentic.

But obviously, like I know that I don't know the whole her.

And she provides a feeling that I like.

So this is not like I want to be that person I want to, I'm not trying to do that in my videos.

But I'm saying like, it's very interesting to look at her and see how she has built a narrative in a very simple way.

And her narrative, and she sometimes talks about other things in other videos, she'll have a few series of things where like, she only relatively recently met her husband.

I think in the pandemic, I had to have like a lot of bad dates.

And then it was just like a real well-worn love story.

And she also talks about like overcoming body confidence issues.

But mostly it's just her cooking.

And she's lovely when she cooks.

And she enjoys spending time.

It's like you go on to a friend's house and they're cooking or just sat there watching.

It's very endearing.

And she was a really good example of like, her narrative is so clear, and it makes you know, like and trust her.

And she recently published a cookbook.

And both Sam and I were like, oh, I should probably buy the cookbook.

No, I don't ever want to buy a cookbook.

I will probably buy it.

But because, this is the point.

It's because I really like her.

And I feel like by me buying her book, I'm like supporting her.

That's like, and I buy into it.

Like I love it.

I feel like I want to be a part of that.

I want her to be like making money, and I want to give that money to her.

Yeah, I also feel that way.

And it's interesting like that's obviously in no way does that come across that she is, she has done it for this reason.

Like she really loves cooking and she cooks for her family.

And I would cook that way if her husband looked at me like that, I would start cooking.

I'd be, I'd go try to live.

Yeah, he's very endearing.

Yeah.

So she's, she was a really good person who we looked at and we were like, oh, she gets so much out of having a narrative in that like every video, she never has to sit and think, I'm assuming, like, oh, what am I going to post today?

What am I going to talk about?

Like nothing.

She just has this one aspect of her life that she really has honed.

And that's what she presents.

And I'm sure there's other parts to her life.

And she sometimes, you know, will drop little like bits in, but you're never coming there expecting it.

But I'm sure there's days when everything's awful.

And she just like shouts at the kids and her husband forgets to say nice things about her cooking.

Or they have a really big argument.

And there was a while where he wasn't in videos and people were like really concerned they got divorced.

People were up in arms about it.

And she's like, no, he's just gone away to work.

But people are like, it's like Taylor and Travis, like people are dependent upon this relationship succeeding.

And that that I think is such a good way of thinking about the narrative is that she doesn't share her whole life with you.

But she has simplified what she shares in such a way that it makes it easy for her.

And that has what felt really good about narrative for me is like, really thinking because I just previously I thought, you know, and this picture that you drew of my quote, unquote action figure, that looks like a really boring person.

Like that person.

I mean, I mean that.

I didn't want it to be here.

I don't I don't think you mean it meanly.

And like, because that's also how I felt when I was thinking about posting is like, the person loves like, tea and cake.

And that that feels like if you describe it that way, that's really boring.

Because like, who to me, who doesn't love tea and cake?

And like, who doesn't love roller skating and like kind of hanging out with friends and, and having cats is like, I think it's it.

You don't notice yourself enough to articulate it.

But like, I don't just like tea.

I love tea.

Like, I have a lot of teas, and I really enjoy tea.

And I don't just like eating cake.

I really like baking local recipes and finding unusual recipes to try.

And, you know, I don't just have cats.

I have the world's best cats and they're named after detectives.

So it's like, it's, if those are my accessories, like there are people who would love that toy.

People who think that is exactly what I'm looking for.

It's just like the Iliute.

You're like a Slovenian family.

Yeah, exactly.

Who doesn't love Slovenian families?

Like, all she does is cook.

And people, I'm sure, don't love that.

There are people who wouldn't be interested in that.

But the people who love it, love it because she's being a thousand percent herself.

And I, we decided we're going to post consistently for 60 days, doing a 60-year challenge.

Post consistently in this narrative and really just drill down to this.

And today's posting just felt like an absolute dream.

Felt so easy because I knew all I had to do was tick off things from that narrative and post in that.

And the people who are interested will find that.

Yes.

And that seems so obvious, but it really has helped kind of get over a mental hurdle.

I am, I actually worried a bit today.

I thought, oh, I'm adding more stuff to my like posting schedule because at the moment I've got like, I post, I try and post once on Instagram a day, I've got three TikTok accounts that I post to like multiple times a day.

And then I was adding three more posts to Instagram.

And I was thinking like, oh no, like I think I'm going to burn out.

But then I posted like my first couple in the morning.

And it was like, it clicked.

It felt so easy that the actual, the rest of my day of like doing my posts and stuff actually felt easier because I, this like three, like three posts that I'm doing, like thinking about first in the morning and stuff.

And like, because they're so structured, made everything else feel more structured as well, because it's just distilled like the idea of what I'm doing.

Like the narrative trickled through to everything else, which is nice.

Yeah, I think one of the things that's really helped it feel simple is we have looked as well at the concept of social objects, which I can't for life remember who it originally comes from, but it's talked about a lot by Mark Schafer, who wrote the book that I talked about last week, Audacious, and he also has a podcast, which has got a really generic name that I've forgotten, and I will put it in the pod to show notes.

It's marketing something.

But I'll put a note about Audacious and his marketing podcast.

Hang on, let me just write that down.

So he talks about it a lot about social objects because he maybe discovered the concept really relatively recently.

So he's kind of like excited by it and talking about it a lot.

And once I'd heard about it, I was like, oh, that really matched up with the idea of narrative and really helped me see, and I can see it now elsewhere.

So a social object is a physical thing, or ideally something tangible in some way, that you associate it with some sort of like person thought feeling.

And it's like you connect that in a way to, I do like a personal narrative.

So the story that Mark Shaffer talks about in his podcast is like a restaurant that he visited, or it might be a story here from someone else, but a restaurant that he visited that's got like a 20-foot rabbit in it.

And I'm absolutely misremembering this, by the way.

It's not a rabbit.

I can't remember what it is, but I'll listen to the podcast, read the book.

It's interesting.

But it's a 20-foot something weird in the middle of the restaurant.

And the restaurant owner is like, I do no marketing.

People come and they take a picture with rabbit, and that's my marketing.

They post it online.

They say, I think it's like a pizza restaurant.

It might be a cow.

Isn't the cow slash rabbit funny and cute?

Here I am with a picture of it.

And that's a social object.

And whenever people see a picture of it, they think of the pizza place.

Whenever people maybe see other giant animals, they think of the pizza place.

And so you're trying to associate a really specific thing with, like, that's your narrative kind of totem.

And it got me thinking about the person who I think is really good at that is Tanya Campers, who if you follow her on social media, she often posts about, like, she's going to Dunkin Donuts and she gets a coffee from there.

And she always wears a very similar shade of lipstick.

And she's got a ginger cat.

And she posts very regularly about a small subset of things.

You know, she writes her camper-themed mystery series.

And she goes off in a camper, goes on holiday all the time in a camper.

And people send her pictures of campers constantly.

If you see a camper, that's who you think of.

I was at a ball a couple of Christmases ago, and they had on the tree a little camper...

Decoration, yeah.

I thought of Tony Capers.

And I was like, yeah, of course.

So that's a social object.

So I think actually, as well as this idea of, or sort of get to the idea of like, what are your accessories with your toy?

Is like, try and make them even more specific and make them a social object.

And so I think I still want to workshop mine and figure out like how I can make them more distinct and unique.

But I thought of like three social objects that match with my concepts for my narrative.

And one is like a kind of category, and it's like bookish, cozy jewelry, because I just really have a lot of it.

So today at lunch, my kind of chore of the day was to go and find it all and put it in one place.

So and this is not necessarily my bookish stuff today, but it's very cozy.

So maybe cozy jewelry.

But I've got like coffee mug earrings, and a magnifying glass necklace.

I also have more than one typewriter necklace.

I have teacup earrings.

I have gigantic pencil earrings.

I've got, I think, two sets of different book earrings.

I've got many book necklaces.

And like if I just wear that all the time, people will see another example of like teacup earrings or book earrings and think of me.

And that is a very easy subject.

And you know, I will give me a chance to buy some more of it because I love love bookish jewelry.

Another one is tea, which again, it's maybe too generic because a lot of people drink tea, but kind of get more specific about it.

But it's like, but I do love tea.

I literally currently have teacup nails on.

My nails have got teacups on.

I said I do have teacup earrings.

I have a whole teacup.

I probably have more tea in my house than any other like type of food.

And I've just ordered a cup to drink tea out of that is a Jessica Fletcher Murder She Wrote, where she's like thinking, who's dead?

It's like, yeah, that is what I wrote.

And then the other one is my cats, who have got detective names.

They are very cute.

And they're kind of distinctive.

And I want to see if I can make one of them at least wear a detective outfit.

And maybe a fool's errand.

Not sure they are real clothes, clothes wearers, but they might be fine with it.

You never know, I'd be fine with a hat.

So that's where I'm starting my social objects.

And again, I think to some people might sound a bit forced, a bit like, oh, you're trying to make this thing your brand.

But what I'm actually trying to do is take things that I already know about myself and be them out loud.

And be like, if you like these things, you will like me.

Yeah.

So when you were talking before, I jotted down an idea.

And we kind of talked about this yesterday.

But when you were talking about, well, this is what we talked about the whole time, is like something that seems slightly boring, but is just like instantly recognizable.

It's like just a person or something.

As I wrote down Lofi Girl.

So Lofi Girl is a YouTube channel that is constantly streaming Lofi music.

And the creator of this channel created this cartoon character, Lofi Girl, and she is a student.

She sits in her bedroom.

She has a cat and you just see her studying or on her computer.

This is just like a looped animation.

And you just see her studying.

And the videos are 99% always the same.

There's slight variations.

But if you click on a Lofi Girl video, you know what you're going to get.

You're going to get Lofi relaxing music, and you're going to get basically the same video, but slightly tweaked, but you know what to expect.

And you know it's going to be cozy, and it's going to make you feel a particular way.

You're going to get the thing that you want to get from it.

And I also feel like it also has this kind of strange voyeurism kind of aspect, where you're peering into someone's life, and just seeing them all the time doing the same thing, kind of Truman Showy.

And I like that.

I like the idea of being like, I have this thing about, I love looking at live webcams, and just seeing like, I know it's so weird.

It's just like a really weird thing that I like.

I was telling other people about this recently.

I like looking through the windows when I walk past.

The curtains are open.

Yeah, if you leave your curtains open.

Yeah.

So like, yeah, say like looking at like a live webcam, it's not a rude one.

I mean like a train station or...

I'm just thinking you're looking at cam girls.

Yeah, not cam girls.

Like I like to nip into the Namibia desert and watch the animals at the watching hole.

You know, it's like, it's nice stuff.

But the same thing, like looking through someone's living room window, like the scene is going to be the same, the furniture is always in the same place.

But like, it's like a glimpse into someone's life.

And I wonder if also like having a narrative and key social objects actually makes that easier for people.

Because I know if I see a Lili Ute video, it's never going to be about her breaking up with her husband.

Yes.

It's never going to be like emotional instructive.

I know what emotion I'm getting from it.

And I, a second I see her, I associate emotion with that.

And I feel comfortable.

Yeah, and you recognize, go on.

As you're just like drilling down to a narrative and like key social objects, make someone more enthusiastic to engage you repeatedly because they know what they're getting.

Yeah.

So you know what her kitchen looks like.

Like you know where the camera is going to be.

And if she hasn't got her kitchen aid in front of her, you know she's going to pull it into frame and she's going to start baking.

She's going to turn it on and not work.

It doesn't work properly.

She's going to turn it on and flour will go everywhere.

So you kind of like, you know and love like the repetition.

I don't find it boring or stale in any way.

I like, I find comfort in it being the same.

So even though it might feel like what we're saying is like, super boring, like you're just going to do the same thing over and over.

It's like, yes, because that in itself is like you're opening the door to a friend and saying, hi friend, like this is the place that you know, and like, and you feel comfortable in.

Like I don't take my friends into my bedroom, they just go into the living room.

So like, it's fine just showing them one room of the house.

They were a bit of a weird analogy.

But it makes people feel like they've got a connection to you.

And again, we're trying to build that like no like trust as a way to, you know, this is Mark Schafer's big thing, is like trying to make the sort of marketing that makes you human and makes it clear you're not AI and that people will make a connection with you.

And the same reason that you and I will both will probably at some point buy Lilia Tay's book.

It's like that that emotional bond.

Because I think I think I've lost my initial train of thought, but I wanted to come back to this point that I we talked about maybe yesterday.

Once you get above a certain level of writing quality, there's no differentiation really.

And I think it's especially true.

Or at least, I feel like it's true, very true in Cozy Mysteries, is like, there's a certain level of writing quality above which improvement doesn't matter.

You could be the best writer in the world, and people will start picking out your book because they don't have an emotional bond with you.

The people who are at the top of Cozy Mysteries, people have an emotional connection with those authors.

It is not related to the quality of their books.

Once they've passed a certain level, it doesn't matter anymore.

And so I think that that is maybe something I'm missing to get to the next level.

I think I have like, I'm trying to be really more person than my new writers recently.

I want to be more human, and having a narrative and like a predefined set of social objects makes it feel safer for me to be like more out loud about myself, because I know this is the part of myself I'm showing, and I'm showing it in like a fun interactive way that people will feel safe to engage with me in, and there's no danger that I am going to overstep any mark that like I will feel uncomfortable, they will feel uncomfortable.

Now I know what my action figure is.

I'm going to be the action figure, like, and love it.

Yeah, yeah.

The, the like things that I've picked for my, like my little tinker, I was gonna say tinker tailors, that's like, that's a different thing.

My, yeah, my little like action figure additions.

I can't think of any words today.

My brain is just gone.

Social objects.

Yeah, thank you.

Social objects.

I know.

My brain is just like white noise.

I am, I don't know if anybody knows this, but I was like, if you, if you know me even a little bit, you'll know that I'm addicted to coffee.

I love coffee to the point where I have every way of making coffee apart from a Turkish coffee pot.

So I have, if you-

It's maybe a birthday.

Yeah, I know.

But yeah, I'm getting a new coffee machine anyways.

Yeah, I have all the coffee machines.

I have all the ways to make coffee.

I love coffee.

It's like my job on this earth to make as many people addicted to drinking espressos as I am.

And I do a very good job of it.

So one of the things that I often post about on socials, like on my stories is coffee, but I never really use it in a way that is helping like talk about me.

It's just kind of like a nice picture of a nice coffee.

So I really want to lean into that and make it a bit more of a feature.

And to do that, I have ordered a very exciting mug, which will be instantly recognizable.

And it's very like specific to a genre slash TV show that people who like this particular thing will instantly recognize and be triggered to like stop and say, oh my God, that's so cool.

Like I know that people are going to say that.

And that has overlapped with your like writing genre.

Yeah.

And yeah.

And my marketing things as well.

Like I kind of like rely on this a lot for my marketing as one of my comps.

So I'm excited to like lean more into that and show my like wacky caffeine addicted side because I feel like you said like you post about coffee.

So I was like, I don't think you do.

I feel like I post about coffee all the time.

I definitely talk about it.

You're not making a narrative about it.

You're not, you're never talking about it.

Like, it's in the background, you know, it's like a Saturday had going out for coffee.

It's like, I would not, outside of knowing you personally, have thought in your post that like, that is your thing.

Yes, exactly.

So I'm going to make it my thing.

How many coffee making things you have?

Yeah, it's, I'm not even, I'm not embarrassed.

I love it.

And I enjoy each one differently for different reasons.

And I'll have like different coffee on Christmas.

I'll make coffee a different way on Christmas day than I will on other days.

It's insane.

And yeah, I plan on trying to like, you were saying about trying to be more personal in your emails.

I've definitely leaned away from that for a while because I was trying to find like my brand and my brand is, I feel like I understand my brand now that I can put myself back into it.

Like I took myself out to try to try and figure out stuff, but I'm going to try and put myself back in.

Like coffee is like one of the big things that I really want to let people know.

Like I am a caffeine addicted insane person.

And that's okay.

I can start a support group if people need one.

The other, one of the other things that I have on my list is crystals slash tarot cards.

So I am big into the witchy woo woo stuff.

I love burning sage and lighting candles.

And I love doing tarot cards.

And I have like lots of crystals, but I also have like, like jewelry that has got crystals, so like crystals on necklaces, I've got crystals on rings.

And I, and I want to make that more of a thing because I feel like that's also a good part of my personality that's very kind of ties in with the books I write because it's like all magic-y stuff.

Particularly, I know the tarot stuff does really well on socials.

And people have in the past expressed a wish for me to do more tarot posting because they really like it.

And as soon as people said that to me, it was like the start of this year, I did some tarot stuff and a lot of people said, oh, you should do more of this.

So I didn't do any.

It's like, don't you tell me what to do?

Take it back.

People who love tarot would love your books.

Like there's such a crossover.

Yeah, there is such a big crossover.

Yeah, I'm really looking forward to doing that.

I'm kind of leaning into doing a tarot, like a card pull every morning, because I want to do it for myself anyway.

So that'll be a fun thing to share.

And people like that.

I did that this morning and people really liked it.

The third thing on my list was Post-its, as we all know.

Surely we all know by now.

I invented Post-its.

I invented Post-its.

We both invented Post-its.

I think with the amount of Post-its that I'm looking at right now, it's obvious who loves Post-its more.

Though we can't see the Post-its on screen, so I'm just saying, I've looked at your boyfriend.

I've never seen these so-called Post-its.

Yeah, it's invisible Post-its.

I couldn't even count them.

I used all the different colors and all the different shapes, and it doesn't mean anything.

I don't use a particular color or shapes for different things.

It's just how I feel on the day.

I have Post-its lining my computer.

I have them on the wall.

I've got them on the pinboard that I've got over here.

I have them scattered on the desk.

It's like really bad.

And I feel like that's a very fun way to show my personality because it's very scattered and quite creative.

It really shows my process and I find it-

It's so visual.

It's very visual and that is definitely me.

It's like I'm a very visual person.

I find in myself, my messiness, my own messiness, endearing.

I like it about myself.

I know no one else does.

I can categorically say at work, my boss hates it.

He's just like looks at my desk like why?

Why is your desk like this?

But he also puts his things on my desk so that his desk looks neat and mine doesn't.

But yeah, I just, I'm a very messy person, but I think it just shows how creative I am.

That's what I tell myself.

And that is what I will tell people on social media.

Like be messy like me.

This is the fun way to live.

Yeah, so I feel like I feel very personally connected to, like these objects haven't been picked at random.

These objects are like, we kind of helped each other pick them.

They feel very, at the moment, very helpful to help with the narrative and keep us dialed in on it.

So it's like, you can't really stray too far from it because we've picked these specific things.

And like, maybe they'll change.

Maybe we'll find better things, but for the next 60 days, this is it.

This is what you're getting from us.

Yeah, so we're trying to post on social media three times a day within our narrative with social objects.

And I know that feels really social media focused and specific at anyone who's thinking, oh, I don't really have a social media focus in my writing business.

That feels sort of incidental.

I also think social media is a matter part for what I'm doing.

But it kind of comes together with everything else.

So about like the way you want to talk about yourself in your author bio, in your newsletter, the way that you're presenting your books even like, I feel more confident me out to present my books that are about, you know, a book town where someone runs a tea room, like because I'm the person who loves bookish story and is obsessed by tea.

And even if you know, I said last week like I really want to part of my audacity is like claim expertise and something.

Definitely part of what's felt like I'm holding myself back from maybe making a narrative or have in the past is that like, these things are ordinary.

Who doesn't love tea?

Like I'm in England, everyone loves tea.

But I think actually, everyone in my family loves tea, like a lot.

And my aunt really loves tea.

And maybe not everyone loves tea the way that I love tea.

And especially in the audience in the American, tea is like a special, exciting thing.

And I was looking at kind of other things that I could do around this narrative.

And things I want to do is have like, I want to be more of a resource generally to my readers and be able to give them more content.

So things like having like an afternoon tea checklist.

And that requires me to be someone who is like an expert in tea and to feel it myself, right?

I am a person's expert in tea.

I could tell you, I go for afternoon tea with alarming regularity.

I could tell you the best teas to have on afternoon tea and how to...

El Grey.

No, but fine.

Yeah.

It's a good next step up fancy option.

I do like an El Grey, but I like a Lapsan because I like a little...

I do love a smoky tea, but this is like we're going to just completely devolve into tea talk.

I love a smoky tea, but not with an afternoon tea.

Sorry.

Yeah, I'm working with...

It doesn't go with champagne.

It's my choice.

I think it does.

And I...

because I always have champagne.

I think it makes you feel like...

Yeah.

But I think it makes it feel like wild at the same time as being refined.

I get it because also it's very...

It's also very like specific that everyone else at the table would be like, oh, that's a weird tea to choose.

You just like to be...

you're a pick me.

You're a pick me tea girl.

Yeah.

I like to have the most interesting tea.

Yeah.

I want to have the best cocktail, the one that looks the best.

Yeah.

Anyway.

This is very you.

I know.

I feel like I want to just really lean into that.

And there's those things that you think are just ordinary.

Everyone's like that.

Who wouldn't want to have the most interesting cocktail at the table?

That's obviously, that's how you win cocktails and the same with tea.

Of course, you want to have the most interesting tea.

Everyone's like, oh, what's that smell?

It's my tea.

I've just realised, the person that I am in that situation is, I love a cocktail, but I also like to be the person who drinks the strongest drink, so I would order a whiskey.

Neat.

After the neat whiskey.

Which is like, that's basically my, I drink black, I just drink espresso and I drink neat whiskey.

That's that I am pick me whiskey.

I know.

Oh, well, I'm fine with it.

I think the thing is actually, you don't want these things to be too neat.

You want them to be things actually a large portion of people can relate to.

So even people aren't obsessed by tea, you know, everyone has some liking of tea or coffee.

They've got like a beverage they feel very passionate about.

So if I'm very passionate about tea, people have got their own, like some people are obsessed like different types of coke, and I don't like any coke.

And so everyone's got like a relatable thing like that.

And so the more specific you are, like Lili Ute is very specific and like in love with cooking.

I love that for her, even though I'm never gonna make anything she ever makes.

Yeah.

And it's just like seeing someone passionate about what they like is good.

And it's actually maybe better if it's not so niche, because I'm sure there are people out there, you know, there's like the train guy, right?

There's like Francis who loves trains and has, you know, has the overhead camera on his head and he goes and watches trains and it's really exciting to see his videos.

But like, there's a limit to how many I want to watch, because I don't actually like trains.

I love trains.

Like they're fine, but like I don't like them as much as Francis does, and he's obsessed with them.

What you mean is you've never tuned in to the livestream of Crew Station in the middle of the night?

Oh my goodness, this is the worst thing I've ever learned about you.

Because I have.

Of course you have.

Oh, yeah, this is a real revelation about me today.

Don't share this.

This is not for your personal narrative.

This is too much.

Yes, this is podcast only.

Yeah, this is like secret podcast talk.

I won't put this on socials.

No, but I think it's almost better that your social objects and your narrative revolve around relatively everyday things, but that you have got a slightly more than average love of.

And then you, people would say that's such a new thing.

When it's like, it's an ordinary thing.

Like, you know, if I'm being fussy about a cocktail or a cup of tea, or, you know, baking something, you're like, Oh, that's such a Matilda Swift thing.

Great.

It's not unique in the world.

If they knew more people, they might think that's someone else, but they don't know that they're people.

So it's me.

And it feels really nice to be able to kind of comfortably narrow down to like relatively, I don't have to be the world's best at something.

I don't have to be unique and interesting.

I just have to be more myself and be that like, consistently and confidently, which feels great.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And again, like I think it feels really simple, but I would strongly recommend, I think you had a great suggestion to make those little action figure drawings, ideally get someone else to draw one of you and be like, what would you narrow me down to?

It's a little bit, you know, seeing something that you maybe don't want to see about yourself.

You narrow me down to these like three to five very basic things.

Okay.

Yeah, it felt like I was being very boring.

But to me, they are like, they're almost like larger than life things about you.

Even though like having cats and stuff doesn't seem like exciting or like, like loads of baking stuff.

But to me, like those things are like, like in my head is just exactly like the coziest, cutest, like charmingest little countryside living that you could be.

Like I said, like the house that I drew.

And that's so ordinary to me.

But yeah, but yeah, yeah, like the holiday.

Yeah, yeah, you can't see it.

Having someone else see it is great.

Yeah, yeah, you can't see these things about yourself.

Like when you drew like me walking through a graveyard, and I always think like people probably don't want to see that about me.

Because to me growing up, like me and my family all love a graveyard.

We all love to walk through a graveyard.

My sister specifically, I know, like my sister specifically goes to look for people.

This is really weird.

People who died in the war, she likes to go and find their graves.

Okay.

I don't know why.

Like this is like a weird thing in my family.

We've always liked graveyards.

So I've never really thought that it was that weird.

I thought like everyone must like it.

But yeah, apparently now it's just us.

We did something similar.

I've go to the graveyard near my grandparents where there was like a witch, like a very large tomb that famous had a witch in that people had like, be careful with that witch.

Good for her.

I like a whimsical graveyard.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I love finding the best stones and the best.

I do admit I'm looking for good names for characters.

Yeah, I love a good name.

But I always like, I like making a tragic back story, you know, and like, one person in a marriage died very young, and then the other person lived a long time.

But maybe there's an extra name on there, but oh, that's her and her two husbands.

I love a good imaginary backstory to these people.

And I love to imagine that they're still there watching me walk through.

Well, so I think I think everyone likes graveyard to like, to an extent.

So I don't think it's a really creepy thing that you should shy away from.

I think you should lean into it.

And yeah, because also, if you're a Cozy Mystery writer, maybe less so, or a Romance writer, even less so.

But like, it fits with your genre, so you should be really in.

Yeah, I should be going to the graveyard every day, which is fine, because my actual end goal is to live in a graveyard, not in the ground, in a house.

There were two options near me, strangely.

So yeah, fingers crossed.

Yeah, I think it'll happen.

Right.

Do we have anything else to say on this topic?

I think I've exhausted myself with it.

Me too.

Me too.

I think it's like a relatively short and simple topic, but I think useful to do.

So hopefully you're listening to us talk about how we did it is good.

And I would strongly recommend people do it.

Yeah, 100%.

So next week, we are talking about hooks.

I had actually forgotten about this until I read this.

Do you have any thoughts on that already?

No, I think it's sort of related to this.

So I think we kind of came up with this topic at the same time, we're thinking about narratives.

And it's just about ways in which to I can't remember if we're talking about like, present yourself or present your books.

But I think we just I think it's that we need to have another look at it because I feel like we've looked at it a while ago.

Yeah, we looked at things like X meets Y.

And we've looked at, you know, what's the kind of cool parts of your book, but I think we could do the session on hooks.

I'm like, what works?

What doesn't work?

I still feel like I need to figure out what is a hook, quote unquote hook for a fundamentally non hooky thing.

Yes.

Because like, what does hook mean when you're not trying to make people feel anxious or it's like panicked or excited?

What's the hook then?

It's curiosity.

I think maybe a bit of curiosity is quite a good one.

Maybe, but I feel like a hook feels so extreme.

And so I think we need to figure out like how to make them engaging without like someone's going to die.

Yeah.

So hopefully I will ponder that this week.

And have good revelations by next week.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I'm looking forward to thinking about that.

Okay.

So that wraps up today's episode.

Don't forget to like, subscribe, share it with your closest friends.

We're always looking for reviews because it really helps push us out to other people.

Yeah.

Share us with anyone you want.

You can join us on Discord.

It's a very cool place.

Everyone's in there.

If you're not there, then you are missing out.

Mimo, if you will.

I can't remember what the actual term is these days.

What do you call it?

No, I don't call it anything.

You just come on to Discord.

People are calling on them than we are being right now.

Yeah, I'm so not cool.

We also have Ko-fi, or Kofi, however you want to pronounce it.

So if you are listening to this and you think, oh, maybe I should pay those girls some money to carry on doing this for the rest of their lives, you can go on and either pay us a one-off amount and just donate to the cause, or you can sign up for a subscription and help us pay for things like hosting and maybe new microphones in the future, or maybe just buying us a cup of tea slash coffee.

That would be great.

Yes, thank you very much, and we will talk to you next week.

Goodbye.

Goodbye.

You've been listening to Pen to Paycheck Authors.

Stay tuned for our next episode, and don't forget to subscribe to learn how to write your way to financial success.

Samantha Cummings

S02E14: What We Do That AI Can't

S02E15: What Hooks MY Readers

S02E13: What Audacious Authors Do