[00:00:00.650] - Sunyi Hi, I'm Sunyi Dean. [00:00:03.690] - Scott And I'm Scott Drakeford, and this is. [00:00:06.630] - Sunyi The publishing Rodeo Podcast. In 2022, we both launched debut novels in the same genre with the same publisher in the same year. But despite having very similar starts, our books and subsequently each of our careers, went in very different directions. [00:00:21.970] - Scott That pattern repeats itself throughout the industry, over and over. Why do some books succeed while others seem to be dead on arrival? [00:00:30.650] - Sunyi In this podcast, we aim to answer those questions and many more, along with how to build and maintain an author career. [00:00:38.490] - Scott Everyone signing a contract deserves to know what they're really signing up for. In an industry that loves its secrets, we'll be sharing real details from real people. We'll cover the gamut of life as a big five published author, from agents to publishing contracts, finances and more. [00:00:59.650] - Sunyi We're getting to some of the questions because we've had a bunch of questions pile up and I thought we'd deal with basically the more personal questions because those aren't a good fit for episodes with guests. And one of them was it was more of a comment than a question, shall we say someone saying that basically that they would love to hear some of the positive parts of publishing, like meeting, connecting with your readers, if there are any, and that there's a lot of joy. It'd be nice to have a balance because it's starting to feel like if you're not making high royalties or a huge advance, there's no hope for what? No, I think we're going to say the same thing. Which is? That depends what you're hoping for. If you want to hit the New York Times bestseller list and make a shitload of money, but you got a small advance from a small press, then yeah, there's no hope. That's not going to happen unless the next 50 Shades are grey. But if that's what you're banking on, go buy a lottery ticket. But if you're talking about hope in the context of, can you have a good publishing experience regardless of your advanced size of publisher, then yeah, people do, yes. [00:02:05.510] - Scott And I mean, if your expectations are low, you're going to have a better time, right. And understanding what you're getting into when you sign the contract makes a difference. So if you're one of those people that writes because they love to write, and you're just going to write things the same way, no matter whether they sell one copy or a million, then yeah, great, submit it. And if it gets published, who gives a shit whether it sells? If you're independently wealthy and you don't care about a paycheck, then great. I guess publishing is for you. But if you have aspirations to make money in this business, you're probably going to have a bad time at one point or another, right, because this business is run in such a way as to keep publishers in power always. There is no author, with perhaps the exception of a bare handful like the Sandersons and the GRRMs of the world, there is no author that a publisher can't survive without. Right. And they will tank you if they have to, and they will cut you off if they have to, and you get a three book deal, and that's pretty common. [00:03:24.600] - Scott After that, zero things are guaranteed whether you sell or you don't. And your performance of your contract that determines your next contract size is mostly out of your hands. So, yes, there are good things. The good things I've taken out of publishing and we mentioned this in the first episode, right? Is basically the friends I've met. So SUNY meeting her has been a huge deal for me in writing and just my personal life. Right, yeah. No, for real. Okay. And the friends we've made in our little discord group and the friends I've made outside of that, even other writers, some reviewers, people I've connected with that I just wouldn't have been able to connect with if I hadn't put time and effort into my own writing and into the writing eco sphere. Right. So there are good things. And I've made, I think, tours paid me, like, 16 grand of my 30 grand to date. So if I didn't have any aspirations and I kept my day job and I just wanted to do this as my hobby on the side anyway, regardless, then, yeah, that'd be great. That'd be an extra 16 grand in my pocket. [00:04:41.450] - Scott But coming from where I come from, and this is where maybe I'll make it awkward on the other side, I was making an order of magnitude more than my entire contract amount in a single year in my career. [00:05:02.090] - Sunyi Yeah. [00:05:02.510] - Scott Right. And did I leave that career just to write? No. But was it part of it? And did I put unfounded hope in publishing, at least eventually being able to replace some portion of that and some meaningful portion of that? Yes, I did. And I hoped to be a big name in the industry, mostly because, well, one, the validation feels great that you're good enough at something that people want to consume it, but two, because I want to make a living. That's not a weird thing for people in any industry to want to not only make a living, but make as much money as possible. And this industry is so tightly controlled by old school companies that do not really give a shit about whether you can make a living at writing. [00:05:58.150] - Sunyi Yeah. And that also answers part of the question of do you have goals or aspirations? Which is one of the ones at the bottom. [00:06:05.510] - Scott I want it all. But go ahead, Sony, I want to hear yours. [00:06:08.970] - Sunyi No, my answer is the same as yours. My aspirations are that I want everything I can get. I want everything the world doesn't owe me, and I won't cry if I don't get it, but that's what I want. And it was a different experience. My experience felt like I didn't have a job to give up because I was unemployed. I didn't have a future to weigh because there wasn't one. So writing filled that vacuum that was already there. And publishing it was a straightforward thing for me. So that was a huge positive. And if it doesn't pan out, it's like, well, the worst that happens now is like, the next book tanks. I never get any other deal. Nothing ever works out. But it's given me enough that it's like it's dug us out of poverty. It's given me a house, a car, driving lessons, a new laptop. Fine. I'll walk away from that. [00:06:58.380] - Scott Amazing. [00:07:00.470] - Sunyi And I guess linked to that, I was going to ask this person's follow up question, which this is actually my question, which is, what was your best moment in your debut year, if there were any? [00:07:15.050] - Scott You go first. [00:07:19.870] - Sunyi Okay. My answer is not going to be what you expect. There are probably two. I guess the first really stand up moment I think of debut year for me was when RJ. Barker complimented my partner's enormous vegetable online. Now, listen, I'm going to put this in the show notes now. We grew this carrot in the garden, and it was literally the size of my calf, like, from knee to ankle, right? And I put it on Twitter, and I think he just commented underneath, and he was like, that's a serious vegetable, Sonya. And I was like, yes, but it's because why is he commenting on it? He's following me on Twitter. Why is RJ. Barker following me on Twitter? Because 1000 years ago, he had the same acquiring editor as me. And Lindsay picked him up when he was at Orbit. And he happens to live in the same city as me, which is wild. And we're randomly in the same writer group that we've never met, like, there in person. And it was this moment that crystallised. It was like, I'm online and I'm like, talking to author people. Like, I'm an author person, and I'm going to have author friends now and have, like, an author life, and that's fucking cool. [00:08:37.340] - Sunyi And like, 95% of my friends are authors, and that's fucking cool. And I think it was just that moment. It's like, yeah, I can just talk to authors who I used to be scared of. I would have been scared of talking to you, like, five years ago. If you'd been published, it is like, you forget about it. And I'm reminded of it periodically when I meet people sometimes like, oh, my God, you wrote a book. It's like, yeah, me and everyone doing Nanorimo. But, you know, so it was just like that moment. It was like, yes, I can speak to other authors. Like, it's no big deal. And we can all joke about my partner's Enormous Vegetable on Twitter. I guess the other moment was when the book reviewer, who I'd followed for years and years in my 20s, who wrote amazing thousands of Words reviews that inspired me to write because I wanted to write a book so good that someone would write a 2000 word review about it. I sent him a copy of my book and he agreed to review it. I don't even know, maybe he felt pressured to be nice about it or whatever, but he read it and that was cool and he posted about it and that was cool and it felt like my life had come full circle. [00:09:51.110] - Sunyi So there you go. Those are my positive moments from debut year because all the other stuff, like no shade on people hitting bestselle list and stuff, I didn't do that. And I don't consider those my achievements. I did the same thing we all do, which is I wrote the book I handed in the fact that it sold well had nothing to do with me in the same way that if it sold badly, that had nothing to do with me. [00:10:13.400] - Scott I get what you mean. I get what you mean. Yeah, I totally get that. But the best things about debut year for me were undoubtedly connecting with you and then with Richard and Clay and the rest of our awesome group I go back to and I'll give an example of why. So beyond just having friends who understand what you're going through, which is a big deal in this industry, because it is a very lonely pursuit, right? And the information on the industry and what's normal, what's not, what can be done, what helps, et cetera, I felt like I was going insane before I found you because nobody else, even in private most of the time, they won't talk about the bad stuff, right? Even when I saw bad stuff happening to people, they didn't want to talk about it because nobody wants to be seen as the whiner, nobody wants to piss off the people who are cutting cheques, et cetera. But I mean, I've never had and maybe this is my own fault, but I've never had a group of writers who are so engaged with helping each other. And two of our friends, Wayne and Shay, recently beta read for me on book two of the Age of Ire series and that experience was awesome. [00:11:39.630] - Scott I posted a chapter of another book I'm working on in our group and you and Richard and several JT and others chimed in with like, oh, I think this would work better here. Oh, this would work better here. And just with getting critiques just on one little scene, one little tiny scene, really, that I had written was pretty illustrative of why that group has been such a big deal to me and why I appreciate it so much, because I definitely don't take that for granted. That's something that's really hard to find. And at risk of sounding like a total dick finding people at the same point, or ish of the journey in publishing as you and who have put as much time and effort and stress into getting better at writing itself and getting better at writing good books. It's a big deal. So that was a huge has been and still is a huge high point. I'd say probably getting a review back from Beth Tabler tabler. I can't remember how you say her last name. [00:12:48.820] - Sunyi I say tabler. [00:12:50.170] - Scott I'm so sorry. Beth. Beth Tabler. Tabler. Whatever your last name is, you're freaking awesome. I've gotten a lot of very kind reviews from different reviewers, but she was the first one who picked it up right around Launch and was like, holy shit, this is awesome. Scott, thanks for writing this. And I absolutely loved it, and I thought it was pretty similar to XYZ other books that I've loved, which happens to be books that I loved. So that was my first, like, okay, it's not all just getting kicked repeatedly. Yeah, it's not all just getting kicked in the nuts. There are people who apparently go out of their way to be nice and find books, even if it's not shoved in their face. And so that was a huge high point. The last one from this year was getting this royalty statement and seeing about double the number I expected on that statement. And that kind of breathed new life into me in terms of science fiction and fantasy writing and my career in general. Because, to be honest with you, I had kind of resigned myself to, well, I'll get this trilogy out as best I can, but as far as I'm concerned, my SFF career was pretty much dead in the water. [00:14:14.290] - Scott I'm kind of aiming at diversifying the genres I'm writing in because of that, and it's not like, so much bigger than I dared hope. And it might just be enough to get me somewhere with book two and book three and with other fantasy and science fiction books that I want to write in the future. So there you go. It's not all not all bad. Just mostly. [00:14:45.210] - Sunyi Straight off the back of that question, we had basically two different people who were wondering if we felt it's worth it to have gone the trad route. And for you specifically, if you'd consider Indie or a different publisher in future, because I think a lot of people are kind of struggling, like, is it worth it? Are they disillusioned with it? Well, one of them was for Scott specifically, is it something you'd consider and just in general, if we both felt it was worth it, which we've answered. [00:15:20.640] - Scott On and off, yeah. Do you want to go ahead? Because mine will be maybe a bit longer winded, but I can if you want. [00:15:28.470] - Sunyi I think I don't really have a choice. I am so not cut out for Indie, and I have this argument to death with indies where they say, oh, but this, oh, but that. And it's like, just please stop tell it. Like the the worst one is when I was really, really skinned and people would tell me, no, no, it just costs you know, you only have to pay this much for editing and this much for that. And it's like, then you have to have this awkward conversation. You say, I can't afford even a fraction of that. So indie for me was always kind of inaccessible in terms of time scales. When I take so long to write books, I write niche genres, which, believe it or not, like, writing cross genre does better in tread, I think. And especially if you're doing standalones, you need the marketing push to actually find the audience. Whereas Indy doesn't really like cross genre very much. It doesn't seem to do very well. That was the received wisdom of the groups I've been. So I don't think India is a good choice for me, but I just don't want to do it. [00:16:25.470] - Sunyi It's like if your dream is to be a pilot and someone keeps saying to you, how do you feel about being a sailor? And it's like, well, it's not a fucking plane. It's different. It's a different path. And I don't know, I know enough about myself to know that I don't function well in that environment. [00:16:44.990] - Scott So we talked to Michael and Robin and their keys to success were basically treating Trad publishing as if it were self publishing, but with distribution. Right? And I think that's really smart because you can't necessarily count on getting all the preferential treatment that a relatively few amount of even traditionally published authors get. But at the same time, they thought it was worth it. [00:17:10.190] - Scott Yeah. Oh, absolutely. They thought it was worth it. And they were making shit tonne of money before going trap. Right? And I similarly, from a business perspective, you look at publishing and look at the state of books and the barrier to entry in becoming an author is so low, especially with Amazon, right? And that works for people and that's great. That works for authors, that works for readers. And there are so many really good indie books. And so I really hope it's clear that I'm not trying to say that there's a quality differential there, it's just that there are so many. And the things you have to do in indie to gather attention for even a good book are just my nightmare. I just don't want to do that shit. I don't really like posting on social media, even as myself, let alone posting my own accolades or my own book or whatever, my own thoughts and quotes from my book. Honestly, if I start posting quotes from my own, especially fiction book, send help because that's just not me. [00:18:29.010] - Sunyi And Amazon makes it so hard. [00:18:32.790] - Scott Maybe I'll get there someday. Maybe I'll acclimate myself to more self promo, but it just is uncomfortable for me. And like you said, what it takes to succeed. There is not only some expenditure, a shit tonne of time promoting yourself. And that's the thing, I don't mind promoting something I've done. I don't even mind promoting my book, and I should do a lot more of that, but I hate promoting myself and it just feels weird. But it takes even more luck in Indie than it does in Trad these days, right? So it's not like us talking about the bad things. Honestly, in Trad Publishing is an endorsement of Indie. Even though I think hybrid is the way to go, right? I think the smartest people in the business are doing some version of hybrid. Smartest one, obviously, is Sanderson because he made like 42 million Kickstarting his own books. But like the Sullivans who we've got an episode releasing with here soon, et cetera, they're doing a great job, right? And the ones that I don't want to say luck into, but luck into finding a following in Indie, that's great. And if you can find that on your own, awesome. [00:20:01.680] - Scott If you feel confident in that, go for it. There's no reason to bother with Trad if you feel like you can sell your book to a certain audience yourself, and you're ultra confident in that. But there are so many distribution channels and sales channels that are currently controlled by Trad Publishing, whether it's via investment, whether it's via relationships or street cred. Because street cred still does exist, right? Like most people, well, a lot of people read Kindle Unlimited and Indie published stuff all the time, but a lot of people still wander into bookshops, buy their books there, they still pay attention to publisher newsletters, et cetera. So, yeah, long story short, I would still do Trad. I just wish I had been smarter about it is basically the point of this podcast. [00:20:54.850] - Sunyi Yeah, I mean, even when a publisher does minimum, their minimum is in some ways more than you'd think because it's so baked in the distribution is baked in the fact that your tours this season's, Fantasy Hardback will be enough for some people that have just bought it on that. So it is a whole thing and you can argue that they should try harder in certain things, but I'm going to cut that bit because it made no sense. But yeah. [00:21:25.530] - Scott There is a baseline good that comes from publishing Trad, especially Big Five Trad, even if your expectations are not met. [00:21:35.500] - Sunyi And in terms of what you can do for yourself, I think I will leave that to the various episodes. We were talking to like three different publicity people because I think, to be. [00:21:44.790] - Scott Honest, I don't know, if I knew, I would have done it. [00:21:48.530] - Sunyi Yeah, there were things I tried to do, I tried to engage with people one on one, but fundamentally, I really found social media hard. I couldn't hack it on TikTok I had to leave. I keep my distance on Instagram. I have everything publishing related muted on Twitter. Like, I can't hack social media, so don't ask me what you do on social media to promote yourselves, because I don't know. But there are people who do and there are things that work, so we'll talk to them eventually. Someone asked a question about basically, does commerciality affect your books and contract? [00:22:28.590] - Scott You've talked about this theory of having a book that's high concept, right? Do you want to talk about that or do you want me to give the bastardised version? [00:22:44.370] - Sunyi In what sense can you specify? [00:22:47.430] - Scott Well, that's really funny because I had to ask you because you had talked about a book being high concept and. [00:22:51.940] - Sunyi I was like, okay, yeah. High concept is a term which originated from film and it means the opposite of what it sounds. But basically, high concept means that a high number of people can understand it and it's a cool idea that can be summarised in a sentence, basically. So the classic example I would give is that Hunger Games is high concept because you would say it's children fighting for food in a dystopian world. I'm sorry, I've not read the book. I'm just trying to remember. Whereas Old Man of the Sea is not high concept because it's about an old man going fishing and nobody likes him and he's by himself. And literally the book relies on execution because the concept is not you wouldn't pitch that to someone. [00:23:44.630] - Scott Yeah. In Practise, the way my brain interprets it at least, is a good high concept book or story, whatever, is really easy to write a good elevator pitch for, right? [00:23:59.180] - Sunyi Yeah. [00:23:59.470] - Scott So, book eaters, not only is that a good high concept, but you can get the gist of your world in just the title, right? Book eaters, you know what the book is about. I did not realise the extent to which modern publishing depends on having something like that to push a book. And I believe that's why we see so many retellings being picked up or so many books being sold as retellings, even if they're not actually a retelling. Because in today's environment of publishers basically only knowing how to send out a pamphlet and a book to booksellers and post some grabby shit online trip lists. [00:24:48.470] - Sunyi Yeah. [00:24:49.180] - Scott Triplets. And I think there was a question on the list of stuff we were meaning to get to later of like, what would you do different? And this is a big one, I wouldn't write my book differently because my book is an exploration of love between siblings and very tech heavy on purpose, for better or worse. It has some things that meant a lot to me and I wrote the book and the story that I wanted to write and that's that. But I would have been more involved and pushed much harder to get the COVID copy, the online copy down to a much better high concept ish elevator pitch, and maybe I should still push for that and see if I can edit what's online. But yeah, anyway, I've been thinking a lot about that, because I do think that that theory holds weight. Holds water, has weight. [00:25:49.110] - Sunyi It does, yeah. And I think I know I get sort of accused I'm sort of known for being a little bit obsessed with query letters, but I did really find that studying query letters taught me how publishers look at books. And when I cracked query letters you know, when you get those montage scenes in action films where the person learning a martial art or something has to do something that seems really stupid, and then at the end of it, it unlocks the skill for them, like a mulan. Where her instructor is like, go climb that pillar with weights attached to your arms. And she's like, what the fuck? But then when she finally is able to do it, she becomes like a really pro soldier. And that's what query letters were for me. They seem like they're unrelated to publishing. And when I finally cracked them, I was like, this is the key that shows me how publishing sees novels, how it breaks them down into tropes, into sellable portions, into consumable products. And once you see it, it's kind of like The Matrix. All you can see is numbers everywhere. Which is kind of bad. [00:26:52.470] - Sunyi Yeah. Oh, I was going to briefly mention auctions because someone asked about auctions. I don't know if that's worth going. [00:26:59.450] - Scott Into that's in the forbidden episode. Right, yeah. [00:27:05.270] - Sunyi I mean, I can talk a little bit about the harbour side, but in broad terms, there's different kinds of auctions. Your agent will talk you through what's best. And generally they go from, like, it's all about controlling the information. So, like, the first round of I had an auction on the UK side, the first round that my agent was like, didn't tell the publishers involved who had bid what. And then the second round, the publishers got to know what the others had bid so they could see if they could change it. And there's different it really varies depending what you're doing. But we'll talk about that more Nick Binger thing, because everything about his books went to auction, the film rights, the books themselves, blah, blah, blah. [00:27:42.130] - Scott Wonder what that's like. [00:27:46.290] - Sunyi I think he had quite a long road, but, yeah, we can hate him a little bit. We'll hate love him. It's fine, he's a nice guy. I'm going to cut this. [00:27:55.590] - Scott Hate the game. [00:27:57.210] - Sunyi Yes. [00:27:58.060] - Scott Don't hate the player. Hate the game. [00:28:00.190] - Sunyi Yeah, no, he'll talk about that more. And I'm probably going to cut all this because this is waffle, actually. Anyway. [00:28:08.730] - Scott All right, no worries. [00:28:11.870] - Sunyi Yeah. So, small presses. We're going to speak to Nadia Fifi in a couple of weeks about that. But the the short version is, I personally would self pub over a small press, just because I have so many friends who have signed a small presses that were well meaning. But basically a lot of small presses fold or there are a lot of considerations or they don't have distribution or the things that I want from a publisher. For me, if a publisher doesn't have distribution, I'm not interested. But that equation is different for every person. If you publish poetry, you're with a small press or you're self pubbing and that's it. This is getting so rambly. I've had too much rum or something. [00:28:51.230] - Scott No, you're fine. I'm just looking through the questions. Now, the other questions that maybe we didn't hit are like agent, yeah, we can talk about that later. What are you writing? Or are the two of you writing your next novels under contract and what that's like? [00:29:14.770] - Sunyi Yeah, that probably is a personal question. [00:29:18.850] - Scott Yeah, if you want to talk about. [00:29:21.510] - Sunyi It, where's that gone? Yeah, so we're trying to stick to the more personal questions, I guess, rather than the general ones, which we can inflict on other people. So one person has written in to ask if we're writing our next novels under contract and how we find that process and if having a contract has changed our approach to the process. Yes, it is a short answer for me. This feeds into another question someone else asked. What if you have a multi book deal and and the publisher don't like the second book? And and the answer to that is, Houston, we have a problem. All of these things depend on your relationship with your editor, your agent, what they don't like, how bad it is. Is it they don't like your book because it's too gay or something? Right? And then that's like that's a big problem, isn't it? Or is it they don't like your book because the pacing is slow. That's maybe less of a problem. I turned in a bunch of ideas for my book too, which is my second standalone on contractor. My editors were not keen for a variety of reasons. [00:30:29.040] - Sunyi They wanted something that was standalone but different to book eaters but not too different, but also similar to book eaters but not too similar. And cross genre, but not actually a different genre. And commercial, but not too it's just like a mess of things. And it was doing my head in. And the short version of that is I spent over a year drafting outlines, sending them to my editor, saying, what do you think of this? What do you think of that? That process will not work for everyone. I was happy to do that because I found an interesting challenge and I understand the concept of building brand and why it mattered. But I was struggling with the pressure and what my editors wanted or thought they wanted, what the publisher wanted or thought they wanted. [00:31:12.470] - Scott Well, that goes back in a big way to trusting. Your editor, right. And having a really good relationship with your editor and knowing that, hey, this person has a really good track record. And they've steered me right before. Right? [00:31:26.570] - Sunyi Yeah. And basically she was saying, I want you to write something completely new that you've not thought of before, completely different from things you've tried before and really push yourself. And that was really difficult. But we did eventually settle on Idea and she's seen at least one draught and that idea is cemented stone. So it did work in the end, but yeah, it was different and it was difficult. Second book syndrome was very much a thing. You are so aware of commercial pressure, you're so aware of the spectre of living up to your own sales. Basically, everyone's telling you, write a book that is going to be a bestseller when you don't even know if your first one will be a bestseller yet. Does that sound horrible to say? [00:32:09.160] - Scott No, not at all. That is a very real pressure. Right? [00:32:14.650] - Sunyi First world problems. But yeah, it was a thing. I wouldn't complain about it, but if someone's asking, it's like, what was like, well, that's what it was like. I don't recommend it, but it was better than not writing. So it's not like I was definitely grateful, but go for your answer. Feel free. [00:32:30.220] - Scott Yeah. [00:32:30.910] - Sunyi You're taking really long. Sorry. [00:32:32.590] - Scott No, you're totally fine. And for the record, I sympathise because you do have a lot of pressure on you doubly so because you're on a big contract, you have high expectations from your editor and because you're on a contract of standalone. So it's not like you just get to continue the story you already built. You're having to come up with an entirely new story, new book, everything's different. Right. And still hit on that same level. And look at not to psych you out, but look at even like the biggest authors, very often they have one series or even one book that does extremely well and that's not a guarantee that the other ones do. And there are authors out there like the Kristen Hannah's and whoever else that write just bestseller after bestseller and they're not necessarily related and whatever else, the Bernard Cornwells of the world. But I will say this, having read your book that you just turned in, and I know it's changing significantly in edits, but God, it's so good and people are going to love it. Thanks. Yeah. For me, it's a very different situation and in fact, it's probably the exact opposite of that. [00:33:54.380] - Scott Right. So my expectations and my own hopes and dreams went from sky high to about as low, close to zero as you can get, right. With how Launch went and what I thought my sales were, et cetera, and even still, like 6000 books moved is great, but it's still not moving any needles in my life. Right. So for me, I already had book two written thank God. And I've just been going back and forth with Edits and this is in between a whole bunch of life stuff like moving across the country and other stuff I have going on in my life. I'm a full time dad and got a lot of stuff, a home school dad and have a lot of other stuff going on. Yeah. So I'm writing book two, I guess now editing and finishing. Edits on book two under contract. I love it. It's a continuation of the same series. So it's a direct continuation of Rise of the Mages and it goes into well, where Rise of the Mages was very focused on a short time frame, almost an action adventure thriller in a fantasy setting. Right. Book Two is much more of a conquest story, so for anybody that knows and enjoys Bernard Cornwell, which I'm not sure there's a lot of overlap between Fantasy and Bernard Cornwell, but it's the Last Kingdom series. [00:35:11.960] - Scott If you've seen the Netflix show, which is fantastic, by the way, but the books are still better even though the show is great. It's very much in the style of that because it's morphed into a conquest story. So I absolutely love it. But yeah, overall I'm writing with less pressure, fewer expectations than ever. I'm just going to write the book that I want to see even more than I did with Book One. Right. Because I think I acquiesced to more things than I would now with Book One and we'll see how it goes. I don't know. I'm hoping it'll be out sooner rather than later, though. [00:35:49.360] - Sunyi Yeah, that's totally fair. So I got temporarily distracted because I'd signed up our podcast for Possible advertisement and had this ping from like a talking Jesus doll. [00:36:04.850] - Scott Extremely on brand for us. [00:36:08.050] - Sunyi And I was like, okay, well, are. [00:36:12.650] - Scott We going to keep this? Should I mention a thing? I actually want to be on the pod. I want to keep this, by the way, this whole thing. [00:36:18.380] - Sunyi Okay. [00:36:21.530] - Scott That is hilarious. And I think we should accept because I've been pretty open with this, but I'm an ex Mormon, grew up very Mormon. When I was 19, my family shipped me off to Brazil for two years to baptise other people into Mormonism. And I married. [00:36:43.830] - Sunyi Just like the musical. [00:36:45.270] - Scott Yeah, I've heard. I haven't even seen the musical because I don't yeah, I've heard it's great. But at the same time, even if it's fantastic and funny, I would probably just be filled with rage the whole time. But anyway, my wife and I completely left Mormonism, which is a big no no in Mormonism. And I'm now very I'd call it agnostic, but I'm pretty vocal about not being on board with Mormonism in particular. But Christianity generally not my thing either. So I absolutely think we should accept a Jesus doll as our sponsor. But that leads into the other thing I'm working on and planning to work on in the near future besides book two and then book three being that writing is the only thing I've taken on other than being a homeschool dad, which is that Mormonism book. I don't know what you'd call it, but a historical narrative of the real founding of Mormonism because the real story is out there but it's spread between maybe even hundreds of different sources on what the founding of Mormonism actually looked like versus the very sanitised fictional version that the Mormon church puts out to their people. [00:38:03.520] - Scott So that's my other project that will be upcoming and I have no plans. Haven't sold it. [00:38:08.510] - Sunyi Yeah, I'm all tied up with Tor and I have novels lined up for them and a novella I want to put out, but I guess I don't know. Everyone tells you to get multiple income streams with publishing. That is a lot easier to do if you are able to lock into a lead title position because stuff crops up. I can't talk about any of that, but like foreign rights and film rights become a thing and translations and all that stuff. [00:38:36.600] - Scott Yeah. [00:38:37.830] - Sunyi Nick will be able to tell you about all his foreign rights that went to auction and we'll stare at him in stony silence. [00:38:46.010] - Scott I'll just let you talk to him while I weep in the background. Okay. Is that it? Do we want to call it at 2 hours this time? [00:39:01.450] - Sunyi Yeah, we'll call it. Yeah. Sorry it took so long. 20 minutes. That was me putting my son to bed. [00:39:07.370] - Scott What are you apologising for? This is both of us and this is fantastic. [00:39:11.820] - Sunyi Yeah, it'll cut down, I'm sure. [00:39:16.080] - Sunyi You've been listening to the publishing Radio podcast with Sunyi Dean and Scott Drakeford. Tune in next time for more in depth discussion on everything publishing industry. See you later.