May 23, 2024
Mark interviews Greta Boris and Megan Haskell of The Author Wheel.
Prior to the interview Mark shares a brief personal update and a word from this episode's sponsor.
Prior to the interview, Mark reads comments from recent episodes, shares a personal update, and a word about this episode’s sponsor.
This episode is sponsored by ScribeCount (affiliate link). Spend less time logging in to multiple platforms and crunching numbers, and more time writing and marketing your books thanks to ScribeCount’s handy all-in-one interface.
In the interview Mark, Greta, and Megan talk about:
- How Megan started writing as a creative outlet when she was working for a major accounting firm
- The writing done on the train on the way in to work in Los Angeles and the blogs she had written
- Continuing writing after having her daughter in 2012 and then publishing her first book before her second child was born
- Greta's magazine background (her father was an editor and publisher of some major magazines back in the day)
- The writing she did for a number of magazines over the years and the various genres and topics she took on
- Being inspired by interviewing a bunch of fiction authors, including Joanna Penn
- How Greta got her first publisher doing a Twitter pitch
- Twitter pitches being really good for writing log lines
- Megan and Greta's "meet cute" at the Southern California Writer's Conference in 2014
- Pitching a course to that conference at a later date so they could attend it again without having to pay which got turned into a book (Publish: Take Charge of Your Author Career)
- How they started The Author Wheel courses, podcast, and other resources
- The metaphors for The Author Wheel
- The way they try to break topics down into the smallest bits possible to simplify people
- Why it's helpful to recognize that authors are all at different places and there are so many different paths and choices an author can make
- Their course Trope Stacking and Other Genre Magic which is a companion to a quick-guide Understanding Your Genre
- Greta's pioneering with writing a book she felt was a "Cozy Horror" novel
- Strategies for mixing and layering in genres that are complimentary to one another while creating something unique
- How writing to an outline made Megan feel like her creativity was being stifled
- The way that Megan and Greta collaborate in their writing, the podcast, the social media, and the courses
- And more . . .
After the interview Mark reflects on the idea of the "Twitter pitch" and the benefit of having to craft writing that has tight restrictions as well as the importance of understanding that there's no one-size-fits-all solution, and that there's no single right way for authors to do things.
Links of Interest:
- The Author Wheel
- Megan Haskell's Website
- Greta Boris's Website
- Mark's Interview on The Author Wheel Podcast: Overcoming Self-Doubt and Mastering Book Marketing with Mark Leslie Lefebvre
- ScribeCount (Mark's Affiliate Link)
- DropCap Marketplace
- Use coupon STARK20 to get 20% off
- Cruising Writers
- Buy Mark a Coffee
- Patreon for Stark Reflections
- An Author's Guide to Working With Bookstores and Libraries
- The Relaxed Author
- Publishing Pitfalls for Authors
- An Author's Guide to Working with Libraries & Bookstores
- Wide for the Win
- Mark's Canadian Werewolf Books
- The Canadian Mounted: A Trivia Guide to Planes, Trains and Automobiles
- Yippee Ki-Yay Motherf*cker: A Trivia Guide to Die Hard
Greta Boris is a USA Today Bestselling mystery and thriller author. Megan Haskell is an award-winning fantasy adventure author. Together, they founded The Author Wheel, publishers of books, courses, and a podcast to help writers overcome roadblocks and keep their stories rolling.
The introductory, end, and bumper music for this podcast (“Laser Groove”) was composed and produced by Kevin MacLeod of www.incompetech.com and is Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0