Christina Kann  00:24
Welcome to How Do I Book? by Wildling Press. We like to chat about book writing, book publishing, book marketing, and, of course, book reading. We're trying to help new and experienced authors develop their craft, widen their perspectives, and learn to get a little wild every once in a while. I'm Christina.

Grace Ball  00:41
I'm Grace.

Christina Kann  00:43
We are so excited because we have a very special guest with us today: Lucy Holland, author of Sistersong and the Worldmaker trilogy, host of Breaking the Glass Slipper, an intersectional feminist podcast celebrating women in genre fiction, and a pretty freakin cool person. Lucy, welcome to the show.

Lucy Holland  01:03
Thank you! That makes me seem cooler than I actually am. I'm really happy to be here.

Christina Kann  01:09
I just read facts. That's exactly how cool you are.

Lucy Holland  01:13
Well, thank you. It's really nice to be here, too.

Christina Kann  01:16
We are so excited to have you here. Before we move any further, please tell the listeners your pronouns.

Lucy Holland  01:22
She or her.

Christina Kann  01:24
Awesome. Thank you so much. We invited you on this podcast because last year, Grace and I both read Sistersong. Not to fan girl too hard, but I read 100 books last year, and it was my favorite book of the year.

Lucy Holland  01:43
Oh, wow. Okay! Thank you very much.

Christina Kann  01:49
I'll just let you tell the listeners a little bit about Sistersong, in case they haven't read it.

Lucy Holland  01:55
Sistersong is a reimagining of an old English murder ballad called "The Twa Sisters." It is also called "Bonny Swans," "Binnorie"; it has many names. It is basically the story of sibling rivalry. Two sisters fight over a man in the ballad. The older one kills the younger one, and the younger one gets made into a harp. It's usually a harp; sometimes she turns into a swan. But the version of the ballad that I heard first was when the sister gets made into a harp. That intrigued me so much that I wanted to do a retelling of it. So my retelling is set in sixth-century Britain. It restores and resituates the history of the stories of women in the period. At the same time as retelling the ballad, I thought it would be a really great opportunity to look at women in the period, and also marginalized identities in the period as well.

Christina Kann  02:56
It does such a wonderful job of all of those things. We read it with a book club that we're both a part of, and someone did share that legend. I'm the person where, when I'm reading, I can really turn off my critical brain. I'm just like, "Wow, what a cool story!" But other people were like, "This seems like it's based on something." But they were sure to say, "Don't read this if you don't want any spoilers." Reading the myth and then reading your story was a really cool thing.

Grace Ball  03:24
Yeah, I went into it in a similar way as you did, Christina. I'd never heard the myth or the ballad or anything. So I was along for the ride. Let me tell you, I had no idea what was coming.

Christina Kann  03:35
And what a ride it truly is. Yeah, it can be a bit of a shock if you're not expecting the -- the "thing." Read the book to learn more about what we're talking about.

Grace Ball  03:55
Lucy, you mentioned that you'd heard the ballad and the myth, but what actually inspired you about the ballad so much that you wanted to write this book?

Lucy Holland  04:06
I heard the ballad first by Loreena McKennitt, who is one of my favorite artists singers.

Christina Kann  04:13
Oh my gosh. I know her!

Lucy Holland  04:19
Wow, fangirl moment!

Christina Kann  04:23
Oh my god. Yes. I've watched her live concerts or whatever, her concerts on streaming. I love that so much.

Lucy Holland  04:32
I love meeting Loreena fans as well.

Christina Kann  04:34
She has Celtic Women energy, you know, like, very ethereal and timeless. I don't know. You'll just have to check it out for yourself.

Lucy Holland  04:50
I love Loreena's music and her version of "The Twa Sisters," which is called "The Bonny Swans." It's my favorite rendition of the ballad, and I've listened to quite a lot of them. There are many, many good versions out there. But Loreena's remains my favorite. I first heard it about, gosh, getting on for 10 years ago now. My colleague at work brought Loreena in one day and played it to me. From the first moment I heard it, I was intrigued by the weirdness of the story. The sibling rivalry is not weird; we see this quite a lot, especially jealous women. We often see tensions between siblings in ballads, but not at this extra level, which is this girl being dismembered and then made into a musical instrument. In the ballad, I just thought that was such a weird image, and also a powerful image, this heart that is made of bone that sings the story of what happened to her and condemns her sister. I just thought that was so so weird. But at the same time, because it is, after all, just a ballad, we don't really get a good idea of who these women were. We have no idea what really motivated them. They've become very stereotypical. On one hand, we have the evil older sister who is jealous and lustful and scheming. And on the other hand, we have the younger, chaste, virginal, innocent victim. And these two very different roles, our women often have to play them. We see them a lot in traditional folk ballads and throughout stories. It's why it's one of the reasons why I feel like women's stories are important, because we just don't get to hear them actually speak authentically. They all too often fall into these very broad, very tropey, very stereotypical roles. So I wanted to get behind the ballad and find out what really happened.

Christina Kann  07:01
And you did a wonderful job! Teading this, I felt so much for Riva the whole time. I didn't necessarily support her actions, her positions, but I really understood where she was coming from. And Sinne as well. It is pronounced like that? "Sinnuh"?

Lucy Holland  07:17
I mean, you can pronounce it however. I just made it up. It was the one name in the book that I literally made up.

Christina Kann  07:28
Sistersong has three siblings in it. Is the eldest sibling part of the original ballad?

Lucy Holland  07:38
In lots of versions of the ballad, there are two sisters. And it is called "The Twa Sisters," two sisters. Loreena's version was, I think, adapted from James Child, who was a folklorist in the Victorian age. He collected about 10 or 11 variations of the same ballad. But a couple of those variations have a third sibling in there. This third sibling is mentioned in the first verse, and then totally disappears from the rest of the story. This was another one of the reasons why I wanted to retell or reimagine the ballad: I was so intrigued as to why there was a third sibling, and they just didn't do anything, and they didn't feature in the story. That was fascinating. I will talk about this a bit later, but it was the idea of erasure, and how some people are erased from history, and why are they erased from history? What was it about their identities that the dominant narrative has overridden? So that is a really big part of Sistersong as well.

Christina Kann  08:46
How did you conduct your research? I know that you said you read like, a million different versions of this ballad, but what other kind of worldbuilding research did you do for this?

Lucy Holland  08:56
My first idea was to write it as a secondary-world fantasy novel, which is where I came from, because I've also written epic fantasy. And then I felt like I wanted to grow a bit as a writer, and I also thought it might be really interesting to choose a real time period in which to set the story. But I obviously hadn't decided which one that would be. I don't even know how it happened. I just got really interested in very early medieval Britain. The great thing about this time period is that there's not a lot of information about it, which can be a boon because it means you can slot your story in there.

Christina Kann  09:45
Right, it's hard for historians, but it's good for writers.

Lucy Holland  09:49
Exactly. Once I'd settled on the period, I started doing research. The internet is an amazing, amazing resource, particularly things like local archaeology sites by amateur archaeologists. Sistersong is set right here where I live in Sidmouth in Devon. So it's set really right here, and in Dunbriga, which is the main settlement in Sistersong, where all the siblings live. That was inspired by, about a mile and a half from my house, up on Peak Hill, they discovered the remains of the Neolithic settlement. On top of the Neolithic settlement were sub-Roman remains, which date exactly to the time when Sistersong is set. So conceivably, there could have been a Dumnoni settlement up there. The Dumnoni tribe controlled this area of Devon in the sixth century AD, and they were kind of itinerant; they moved their capital around the area, and this conceivably could have been one of the places that they had their capital. So I was really interested.

Christina Kann  10:59
That's so cool! And you can just walk there easily in like under an hour. Oh, my God, that is so cool. I have chills right now.

Grace Ball  11:12
That's awesome.

Lucy Holland  11:13
So that was part of my research. I went up there and stood on the hill. And there's nothing there. It's just a hill. And there's a bit of information. But I had a look at the cliffs. You're right on the cliffs. On one side, you're looking out across the ocean. And the other side, it's forest and fields. And I just went up there, I came back down, and I did some stream-of-consciousness writing to try and get the feel of what this location was like at the edge of the world, because that's kind of what it feels like for the characters.

Christina Kann  11:45
Oh my god. Wow. So cool.

Grace Ball  11:49
So you're obviously very versed in the fantasy genre. So what's the importance of the fantasy elements in Sistersong?

Lucy Holland  12:00
The magic in the book is chiefly the means of articulating one of the central narrative tensions, which is the conflict between Christianity and the established paganism of the native Britons. That came slightly later in the novel process, and it really came from me reading about Gildas. Gildas is pretty much one of the only contemporary sources we have from this period. His treatise on the ruin and conquest of Britain is not so much a history as a rant. He's very angry, angry man, and he rants a lot about the state of Britain, how the Saxons are the natives' punishment for not being very pious and not embracing Christianity as they should. He had a very big rant about Constantine, one of the British kings, as well as another four British kings. In fact, he devotes one entire half of this tract to insulting them and calling them all sorts of names. I thought he would make a great character because of that.

Christina Kann  13:24
He probably didn't realize how much he was discrediting himself by being so violently opinionated.

Lucy Holland  13:31
So opinionated! I'm sorry, Gildas, you're 1500 years dead, but you're a character now. The other part of the magic was also a vehicle to illustrate the bond between the king and the land, which is another really big theme in Sistersong. Obviously, it showed the disastrous consequences of forsaking the bond we have with the land. A reader pointed out to me later -- and this shows how everything is subconscious -- they were like, "Oh, it's more relevant than ever," because we live in the era of climate change, where humans are basically shitting all over the world in which we live, which nourishes us. This is more relevant than ever, that we recover what was lost. I feel like it's very important to remember that we are the world and the world is us; we come from the world, and we come from the Earth, and to the Earth we return, and that kind of cyclical nature.

Paganism includes the idea of living as one with the seasons -- like the sun, the moon, the stars, the earth itself. These elements were so important to the native Britons, early practitioners of paganism, across a whole region. That was really, really intriguing for me to dig into too, and that again feeds into the encroaching Christianity and how that was not always a good thing. People who preached Christianity thought they were saving the natives. And native Britons were like, "Well, hang on a second! We've already got our own beliefs." And they possibly didn't sit very well together.

Christina Kann  15:24
That kind of answered our next question about how you balance fantasy with historical facts. It seems like a lot of the fantasy came from things that were inspired or directly connected to historical facts. Do you have anything else to add to that?

Lucy Holland  15:38
The facts are so scarce or contradictory. As I mentioned before, it's a really interesting period to set a story in. This carries over with the rest of my work that I'm still doing with this time period. I'm really interested in the line where history becomes myth, and you can't begin to distinguish between the two of them. A perfect example of this is the Arthurian legend. This time period is basically squarely in Arthur's time. I was quite careful not to belabor anything, because the Arthurian myth is so powerful, if you let it into your story, it can overtake what you want to say. So I was quite careful not to make too many references to that. But the Legend of Arthur is so powerful that multiple nations have adopted it as part of their country's cultural narrative. That began with Geoffrey of Monmouth in this country, and but it's amazing how powerful it became.

This is a little like mini anecdote. I went to Glastonbury Abbey a few months ago to do some research. The history of the abbey is really interesting. At one point in the 12th century, I think, there was a big disaster, some of the abbey crumbled, and they ran out of money. And amazingly, soon after that, the monks were digging in the gardens, and they unearthed these amazing skeletons. And the skeleton was a grant of a grand man and a beautiful -- well, as much as a skeleton can be beautiful -- and delicate skeleton lying beside him. They decided that these were obviously the bones of Arthur and Guinevere themselves, lying in Glastonbury all this time, amazingly! These people have no proof that they actually lived. They're mostly just a folk story. But it was such a big deal that the bones were removed, and they were reburied in this lavish ceremony that Edward I came and attended in the beginning of like the 1300s or so. Obviously the abbey needed money, and lots of people came and donated money. The fact is that the Arthurian legend is not history, it's not fact. But it's so strong and so powerful. People want to believe it. It's part of the fabric of Britain now.

Christina Kann  18:19
I think most cultures have those stories that are not proven or patently false. I'm thinking about here in America, some of the super false historical narratives we get taught in elementary school.

Grace Ball  18:34
Yeah, absolutely. Getting to the actual characters in the book, how did you conceptualize the three siblings? How are their similarities and differences important?

Lucy Holland  18:49
With Riva and Sinna, who are the sisters -- the two sisters of the ballad title -- I began by using their basic characters, just how are they described in the ballad, identified those traits, and then explored why each sister might have those traits. This is all part of trying to make them less stereotypical. You know, there's always two -- or in this case, three -- sides to every story. For example, the bitterness in Riva; she is described as bitter in some of the ballads, she's jealous. There's obviously a darkness in her, and I wanted to think about that and how it could be more nuanced. And Riva had a really tough hand. She had a terrible accident when she was young. It's left her with disabilities, and she's shunned in some respects by the people around her. They don't like how she looks, how her injuries have made her look. They've made her feel like she's not ascribing to the perfection that a young princess has to ascribe to. I thought that there's got to be a reason for this seed of this jealousy. Where did it come from? And with her, I thought, it's got to come from somewhere.

Christina Kann  20:32
Very real trauma.

Lucy Holland  20:34
I mean, it's physical trauma, and then it's mental trauma and emotional trauma from having to live in a society with such strict gender roles and assumptions about how women should look and what women should do. And then on the other side, we have the innocence of Sinna, who is the younger sister, who is always described as the wronged character, the victim. She didn't do anything wrong, her only crime is to be beautiful, all of this stuff. For me, that ended up becoming the immaturity of a slightly spoiled child, who was the youngest, she'd been given everything she always wanted. She didn't have Riva's problems and her difficulties. She chafes against -- like all the siblings do -- they chafe against the rules of their society and the bones of the cage that they're locked in.

Christina Kann  21:31
So to speak.

Lucy Holland  21:35
Yeah, so that's where I began with that, trying to dig down past, "You're lustful and jealous; you're chaste and innocent." I wanted to find out what traits those actually were, where they came from. For Keyne -- or Constantin --

Christina Kann  22:04
We've been ducking around his character because I don't want to spoil anything, but he makes it pretty clear on like, page three that he is trans. There's not really ever any question about it. So it's not really a spoiler.

Lucy Holland  22:19
No, no. And Sistersong was published in the UK in April 2021. My God, almost two years ago.

Christina Kann  22:29
Congrats!

Lucy Holland  22:30
I just don't know where the time has gone. Yeah, I'm just gonna call him Constantine. Hey, spoiler, Constantine is his name by the end of the story. Constantin is a little bit more complicated, because this is the person who was missing from the ballad. And it's a difficult one, because a lot of people say that he is the main character of Sistersong.

Christina Kann  23:09
I totally agree.

Lucy Holland  23:10
Yeah, I would agree as well. But the irony is that he's still invisible in the ballad, because the ballad is a binary song. It's actually a horrible song that I do recreate in Sistersong. It is a horrible song. And it doesn't tell the truth. It's literally just about a murder. It's not fair. It doesn't portray either of the women in truthful, or at least in three dimensional, terms.

I wanted to echo the fact that Constantin is not part of that. He belongs to a better world, a world that is forward thinking, forward looking, that is embracing every different identity. It's not prescribing to people all the roles that we should play when we're just children. It was a journey of discovery, because I'm cisgender. I don't share Constantine's life experience. So it was a journey getting to know him and figuring out how I could tell his story. I did my own bits of research for that. I have a couple of friends who were very, very helpful early on in the book, and he was so kind to share their insights. My sensitivity reader, she's wonderful. She's a transgender historian. I learned an absolute ton. Some of the transgender history in the book wouldn't be the same without her insights. So I was so lucky to find her and so so happy that she agreed to sensitivity read for me.

But yeah, I suppose, obviously, Constantine was my favorite character to write, because it's wonderful, right? It's wonderful writing any sort of human being who discovers themselves and blossoms and fights and achieves what we all deserve, which is to be ourselves and to be recognized as who we are and lauded and respected for who we are. So that was very close to my heart. It was really wonderful to go along the journey with him.

Christina Kann  25:28
During his story, particularly in the third act, I was just weeping. I was nannying when I was reading it, and I was like, "I hope they don't come home and find me just like blathering on their couch." Because it's hard to explain to people who don't read, "Sorry, this book is just really affecting me right now."

Lucy Holland  25:50
Thank you. The extra theme running through the whole book is that it's the power of stories. The fact that we like to tell stories, and stories have a life of their own. They outlive us by thousands of years, and they always will. But, you know, their stories have power. And it depends who's telling the story, as to what survives throughout the years. It's really important to reclaim our stories. It's important for women to reclaim their stories. It's important for marginalized people to say, "We lived in this time period. We have always been here." Kameron Hurley's essay "We Have Always Fought," I love it. I love "We Have Always Fought," this idea that women have always been warriors. We've been here. It's only the dominant narrative has overridden the roles and the very existence of people who've always existed. So that idea of reclaiming stories, reclaiming identities, reclaiming the truth of ourselves in the world is at the heart of Sistersong.

Christina Kann  27:08
Amazing. So is Constantine your favorite of the three siblings in this book?

Lucy Holland  27:15
I mean, it would be a lie to say no. He's definitely my favorite. But because I feel like she she's probably the least liked of the siblings, I always like to give a shoutout for Riva, because she is dealt a really tough hand. And like Constantine, she really struggles with being different in a very unaccepting and intolerant world. And she chooses to defy tradition. She trusts her instincts. And even though everyone tells her that those instincts are monstrous, she sees it through. She sees her choices through to the end, and that takes integrity. And it takes self belief. So I feel like giving her a bit of a shoutout.

Grace Ball  28:09
Honorable mention.

Christina Kann  28:11
She follows through on her choices way farther than I would ever have a dreamed. That was very shocking. No spoilers, but the end of her story really shocked me, which is cool. I love when a book just really catches me by surprise.

Grace Ball  28:31
So on the flip side of your favorite characters, which character did you hate the most?

Lucy Holland  28:39
It would be easy to say Gildas, but I think he's a love-to-hate character. I so enjoyed writing him. I loved coming up with the image of him gliding around as a kind of carrion bird. I thought he was actually really enjoyable to develop as a character because he's so he's such a great antagonist and a great foil to Myrdhin. They kind of play off one against the other.

Grace Ball  29:16
I liked that dynamic a lot.

Lucy Holland  29:18
They were great rivals across the board. I don't know. I actually think the most horrible characters are like the kings and lords who are just so intolerant. Even when Constantine is standing in front of them saying, "I am king. It's my right. I am your lord. I'm going to give my all to preserve our people's lives and our traditions," they're still going, "This is wrong. You're a woman," and trotting out that level of ignorance is in a way more dangerous than Gildas's active defiance. In a way is a defiant ignorance. "No, this is the way it's always been, and I'm continued going to continue to behave like you don't exist and you haven't changed anything." Unfortunately, it's that kind of character that we see a lot in the people around us. It's a really horrible thing to say, but you know, they're out there. They're exemplified by those lords who cling to what they know.

Christina Kann  30:41
Yeah, I think for similar reasons, I also had a really hard time with the mom. The unwillingness. You're making changes in the wrong direction with this Christianity thing, girl. Come on.

Lucy Holland  30:58
She's not a lovable mom. Definitely not a lovable mom.

Christina Kann  31:04
Yeah, she's cold. And that one scene with Constantine and the clothes was awful.

Lucy Holland  31:10
Yeah, that was not a nice scene to write.

Christina Kann  31:13
I'm sure.

Lucy Holland  31:15
That was really an unpleasant scene. I think I actually ended up toning it down slightly. I think the first version was just a bit worse. It was physically painful for me to write this. I think I made her a bit more sympathetic as well, in the sense that she knows she's done wrong. She knows what she's done is wrong, and I'm not sure if she was quite so sympathetic before then. But I thought it was important to know that she has this internal struggle, that there is a voice in her saying, "I don't think what you're doing is a good thing." That was important to have, because I think every character has to have a little degree of sympathy and also a bit of nuance. But ultimately, she is a headstrong person who sticks to her beliefs to the detriment of those around her.

Christina Kann  32:14
Yeah, absolutely. You touched on this earlier, but I definitely want to drive this home considering that this is Women's History Month. Why is writing history from women's perspectives important?

Lucy Holland  32:26
I mentioned the need to challenge the dominant narrative already is really important. We're going through this amazing, like, a renaissance. It's this wonderful movement with reclamation of women's voices in established epics, stories, we think we know. I know everyone's doing Greek myth at the moment, and actually, it's almost too much.

Christina Kann  32:56
Um, yes. We've read Ariadne, Circe. I know there's more than just those two, but those are the two that come to mind.

Lucy Holland  33:06
Yeah, there's like a dozen Persephone retellings, Medusa.

Christina Kann  33:10
People are very into the Persephone/Hades as like a sexy thing right now. There's a lot of it, but I'm still down.

Lucy Holland  33:20
I'm a massive Hadestown fan. So yeah, I'm really into that. But yeah, women's stories. Yeah, it's great. This is happening. It's really, really wonderful to see. And I think it's very important to say, "Hang on a second. Women are present in all of these stories." Like Penelope, Odysseus's wife, is obviously a named part. But in the original Odyssey, what does she do, but remain as a shadow figure far away? And when we do get to meet her, she's not had the best of times. She's never given any kind of chance to say what's actually been happening from her point of view.

Christina Kann  34:04
If you think about the strength she must have had all that time, not knowing anything about her husband. And the tapestry! Isn't it that she unravels every night to try and keep the suitors at bay?

Lucy Holland  34:18
It's like Scheherazade in One Thousand and One Nights.

Christina Kann  34:24
It's like exactly like One Thousand and One Nights!

Lucy Holland  34:26
Yeah, she's obviously very clever. She's come up with this plan, but it's awful because it's also a plan born of desperation, because her husband's off somewhere and might never return. I love that we're getting these stories. I love that these these women are like, "Hang on a second. We've always been here." It's not only important, but it's also extremely entertaining and vital. I just love reading their stories. It's not just like, "This is something that must be done so we can have a broad understanding of women's stories." They are exciting stories. I want to see women on the page; I want to see mothers especially on the page. Mothers have always been a group of people who are unfairly dismissed in so many great mythological tales. Grendel's mother from Beowulf is a wonderful character, but does she have any time to shine? She almost defeats Beowulf himself, and this is the great undefeatable warrior. And in the end, she's just slaughtered, so it's kind of frustrating. But here was a great character; you could have done so much more with her.

Grace Ball  35:51
Do you have any advice for people who are interested in writing historical fiction?

Lucy Holland  35:58
I suppose I'd say read some historical fiction.

Grace Ball  36:02
That's a great start.

Christina Kann  36:03
That is a very good start.

Lucy Holland  36:04
I don't actually read that much historical fiction. I know it's bad. I should read more historical fiction. I tend to read a lot of speculative fiction, because it's my genre. Breaking the Glass Slipper is mostly focused on women in speculative fiction. It's interesting, because I'm trying to develop a workshop at the moment that looks at cross genre writing, specifically historical fiction and fantasy, and how to weave these two genres together, and how they complement each other. So it's difficult to talk about advice for specifically historical fiction.

I think the exciting stuff that I've watched and things that have excited me is like looking into my local area. Wikipedia gives quite a broad sweep of what's been going on, but you don't really get the interesting details that you get on a local historical level, things like visiting the Abbey and hearing the stories about Gweneviere and Arthur; finding out that Peak Hill, a mile from my house, had a settlement there. You can't, say, type in "sub-Roman Britain" and Google will say, "Oh, there was a sub-Roman British settlement in Devon!" You just can't find out that sort of stuff on these broad Google searches. Rather than starting from a very broad place, how about you start from a very narrow place and expand outward? Because I learned a lot about the Saxon invasion just from focusing on how Devon changed how Dumnonia, this area where I live right now, how it evolved from the departure of the Romans, through to the invasion of the Saxons, and that really turbulent liminal period. It was vying for power; it was also the birth of the country. But all of that came from a very local angle. What was happening right here, where I live on this soil? What impressions have those kind of cataclysmic events left behind? I feel like that's a nice way to get into it.

Christina Kann  36:27
Yeah, that's awesome. Probably makes the story you're telling so much more important to you because it hits close to home. It super literally does. I guess that's where the expression comes from. Is there anything else you'd like to say about Sistersong or about women's history in fiction in general?

Lucy Holland  39:08
I feel like I've talked for ages. I feel like I've covered quite a lot of what I wanted to say. It is a serious book, I suppose it is a serious book. But I also hope that it's -- I hate to use the word "entertaining," but it also is a fun story to read. It's got characters you come to care about and maybe leads some people to have a Wikipedia page open at the same time and learn a little bit about history as you go along. That's the best thing, when you open a book and you're like, "Oh my god, this is made me interested to find out what else was going on at the time because I didn't know anything!" That's a wonderful thing when you can enjoy a book but it also makes you think about like the wider concerns.

Grace Ball  40:00
A bit of a selfish question. Are you working on any other book projects right now that we can be looking out for? Because we definitely are.

Lucy Holland  40:12
The next book is waiting to be edited. Actually, it's taken me two years to write it. It's been through a rewrite. And I'm now waiting on the verdict. So let's hope it's -- fingers crossed -- a bit more book-shaped than it was the first time. Don't ever say you can write a book in seven months. Especially when you only have a 50-word concept. You haven't sat down and asked yourself, what do you really want to do with that concept?

Christina Kann  40:51
Writing a book idea and writing a book could not be more different things.

Lucy Holland  40:55
Yeah. It's very different. And it's been the most challenging thing I've ever written. Sistersong benefited from a lot of fallow time, because I couldn't write Sistersong when I first had the idea for Sistersong. I was working on my trilogy.

Christina Kann  41:12
Oh wow!

Lucy Holland  41:15
Yeah, it sat on the back burner for four years or so, and I never forgot about it. But I think that time allowed me to mature as a writer, so by the time I started writing Sistersong, I had the skills to write it, which I wouldn't have had before.

Christina Kann  41:32
Oh, my god, that's so cool.

Lucy Holland  41:34
It is really interesting, especially in the context of my struggles with writing a loose followup. It's had no time. You know, the thing about publishing and the capitalist world in which we live: you feel like, "I've got to be relevant, I've got to keep writing fast, I've got to produce another book." But art doesn't really work like that. And ideas don't work like that. And a lot of thet really good stuff comes from just lying fallow in the back of your mind for an interminable amount of time -- not necessarily very long, but longer than I thought I could write the book in. But it's okay!

Grace Ball  42:22
You just take your time. We'll be here. Okay?

Lucy Holland  42:26
It's coming out next year. It should be here around spring, this time next year, in the US as well as in the UK. I think they're going to be out at the same time. It's called Song of the Huntress. You can read about it on Goodreads. That's the most up-to-date place. I've seen the UK cover. It's amazing. I can't share it yet because it's not finished. They're still tweaking, but it's an amazing, amazing cover. And it retells the story of the Wild Hunt which is a motif that lots of people have probably heard of. The story is just really really fascinating. Actually, because you've read Sistersong, you'll know that Constantine tells the story of Herla and the Wild Hunt in as a mini story.

Christina Kann  43:16
Oh my God. Constantine knew what was gonna happen next all along.

Grace Ball  43:22
We should have known

Lucy Holland  43:24
Actually, that was what gave me the idea. I was retelling the story as Constantin was telling it, and I was like, "This would make a great novel. Maybe I should do this next!"

Christina Kann  43:34
Thanks for the idea, Constantine! Right, I've read a couple of different books about that. It never goes well.

Lucy Holland  43:35
I did do it next. But my my King Herla is not an old British king. My King Herla -- she's actually a woman, for starters. She's an Iceni war chief fighting against the Romans. She's the lover of Boudicca. Yeah, she makes a pact with the king of the other world, which you should never do! You should never make pacts with the fae! It does not go well. You get cursed, and you become the Wild Hunt, and you have to ride eternally reaping souls.

Grace Ball  44:17
Tale as old as time.

Lucy Holland  44:18
So if you don't want to become an immortal reaper, don't do that. Yeah, I love the story of Herla. I love the story of the Wild Hunt, the incarnation of the Wild Hunt, and all of the mythology that goes along with it. And I also wanted to write another historical novel, so this one is even more historical than Sistersong. I think if I redid it -- I wouldn't want to -- but I would want more history. There's few things, a few mistakes I made. I'm a bit better informed now about the period and how things worked. And this this book is set in around 705 AD, so about 175, 180 years after Sistersong, but it's in the same world. If you've read Sistersong, there'll be some Easter eggs in there. The biggest easter egg is that one of the main characters is the direct descendant of Riva.

Christina Kann  45:25
Ah, that's very exciting.

Grace Ball  45:27
I'm really excited.

Christina Kann  45:28
I can't wait to read that. That's amazing. Awesome. Are you reading anything yourself lately that you're excited about?

Lucy Holland  45:35
I am reading this book! *shows in Zoom* It's Sam Shannon's book. It's the prequel to The Priory of the Orange Tree.

Christina Kann  45:51
The cover has a similar tone.

Lucy Holland  45:56
Have you seen how long it is?

Grace Ball  45:57
Wow. That's a chonk.

Christina Kann  45:59
That's like Order of the Phoenix. That's a chunky one.

Lucy Holland  46:03
It's so impossible to read when you're lying in bed.

Grace Ball  46:10
Danger zone.

Christina Kann  46:11
Drop it on your face. Knock yourself unconscious.

Lucy Holland  46:15
It's really good. I'm really enjoying it. I'm interviewing Samantha Shannon, the author, in a week's time in Cornwall. I think she is in the US at the moment doing her US leg of the tour for the book, but I'm gonna meet up with her in Cornwall, so I get to talk to her about it. It's really good. It's really good.

Christina Kann  46:36
I'm excited for you. Because, you know, it's fun to meet the authors you love.

Grace Ball  46:41
Yeah. We're doing it! It's happening right now.

Lucy Holland  46:43
That's very sweet.

Christina Kann  46:46
Lucy, where can people find you on the internet if they want to connect with you?

Lucy Holland  46:50
I am on Instagram mostly. That's my platform of choice. I am on Twitter as well, which is now less my platform of choice. I'm the same handle. I'm @silvanhistorian. "Sylvan" with an I, not a Y, because some other person stole the Y. So I'm @silvanhistorian everywhere. I have a Patreon if you like my work so much that you'd like to pay me some money to carry on writing every month. I post extra stuff about the books and behind the scenes things and research. So if you're into that, then check out my Patreon.

Christina Kann  47:39
Lucy, thank you so much for taking the time to chat with us today. It's been a delightful conversation.

Lucy Holland  47:47
Oh, it's been so fun. I don't get to talk about Sistersong as much as I did a year ago, so it's lovely to carry on revisiting the book.

Christina Kann  47:56
I just love that throughout this conversation, we've been able to really feel your passion, and that's really awesome, having read it and felt the passion through the words and you obviously put so much of yourself into it. Thank you for writing it.

Grace Ball  48:09
Yeah.

Lucy Holland  48:10
Thank you for reading it!

Christina Kann  48:14
And that's how you book.

Listen to Breaking the Glass Slipper.
Check out Lucy Holland's website.
Subscribe to Lucy Holland's Patreon.

March 8 is National Proofreading Day!

​Edit, proofread, revise, beta read—there are so many different terms for the act of reviewing a manuscript, and they’re all connected in some way. But proofreading is the easiest to define, and it’s the one thing people should do out in the real world, in emails and other correspondences, rather than just within the realm of their manuscript. So what is proofreading? And why is it so important?

​A proofread is a cursory review of any written document in which the reviewer is looking for any glaring errors, like spelling, grammar, and mechanical issues.

A proofread does not involve comments about plot, character, or theme (that’s developmental editing or beta reading).

A proofread does not involve recommendations for smoother, clearer language, tone, voice, or concision (that’s line editing).

A proofread is merely meant to correct small and objective errors like misspelled words, dropped commas, incorrectly formatted ellipses . . . and so on.

No matter when or what kind of proofreading you’re doing, it’s almost always the final step.

When you’re building a book, the proofread occurs last, after all the other editorial steps mentioned above. After the developmental edit, after the rounds of line and copy editing, after the book is “done”—that’s the right time to conduct a proofread. The point of the proofread is to catch lingering glaring errors, so you wouldn’t want to keep messing with the manuscript after. In the odd case that bigger work does need to be done on a manuscript after its proofread, it’s a good idea to get a second proofread.

A proofread might also be conducted on your book after the printer’s proof has been printed. A printer’s proof is one single copy of your book that the printer provides so you can ensure the book looks the same in real life as you thought it would based on the computer files. Because this is a new way of looking at your book, a proofread is advised. There may be some errors in your book that didn’t stand out on the computer, but in print they may be more obvious.

​It’s a good idea to let a fresh set of eyes proofread your book. If you’ve been working with one editor through the developmental, line, and copy edits, you won’t want that same editor proofreading your book. Why? If the editor has already missed this error once or more, the odds are good that they’ll miss it again on the proofread.

Often, your publisher will ask a new editor, one you haven’t worked closely with, ideally one who has never read your manuscript before, to proofread it. If they’ve never read your manuscript before, they have no expectations of it, and therefore they’ll be able to catch glaring errors more readily.

​This is really important! Proofreading isn’t just for writers. When you write an email to a friend or a coworker, when you draft language for your kid’s school bake sale flier, when you write a report—when you write anything, ever, that matters at all—you should proofread your own work.

This isn’t hard or time-consuming! All this means is that you should read through what you’ve just written before smashing that “send” button. What if you typed something wrong? What if the computer flagged a misspelled word for you to review? What if you phrased something super weird, and simply reading it back could help you realize there’s a much clearer way to say it?

Proofread your own work, always. You owe it to the other people around you to make your correspondence easy to digest, and you owe it to yourself to come across as smart and thorough.

​Happy 2023, y’all! With the start of a new year come all the resolutions—personal, professional, and, of course, literary.

Tons of readers all over the world set annual reading goals for themselves with each new year. This means that around New Years, they choose an ideal number of books they’d like to read in the following year. Some readers take their goals quite seriously, while others might forget their goals right away—and plenty of readers don’t track their reading goals at all.

Why do people go different routes? What’s the big deal with reading goals?

​There are a couple different ways to track your reading goal, independently or through a program, in writing or digitally.

Lots of readers use apps to track their reading. Storygraph and Goodreads both ask readers at the beginning of each year if they’d like to set a reading goal, and then readers can keep track of their books read compared to how much they still need to read to stay on target. These apps also keep track of when you read a book and what you thought of it as well.

Some readers may choose to keep track of their own reading goals. You could start a spreadsheet in Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets to keep count of the books you’ve read so far this year. Others might prefer to keep a handwritten account of their reading in a journal and tally their books on the inside cover.

​Setting a reading goal for yourself is a great way to make reading a priority. If you want to make sure you’re reading consistently throughout the year, having a goal you’re trying to hit can keep that momentum going. It’s harder to let yourself fall into a reading slump or drift your attention to Netflix or doomscrolling if you’re always keeping that reading goal in mind.

​You should not set a reading goal for yourself if you’re going to use that to guilt or shame yourself. Reading should be a fun, relaxing activity that makes your brain work juuuuust a little bit. It should not feel like a burden or a punishment! If you’re setting this goal to trap yourself rather than inspire yourself—don’t. Be gentle with yourself, and only read when and if you actually want to.

​A good compromise if you want to set a reading goal but be careful not to trap yourself is to set realistic, attainable goals. If you read 5 books last year and it felt hard, you’d be setting yourself up for failure if you vow to read 50 books next year. A realistic goal can feel like an attainable challenge, and you’ll be more inspired to dive in.

If you set a reading goal last year, use that as a guide for setting your reading goal for this year. If your goal last year was 30 books and it felt really easy and you still had time to read more at the end of the year, maybe try doubling your goal and go for 60 books this year. If your goal last year was 52 books and you only read 12, and you’d still like to try to read more books, go for a small increase and aim for 15 books next year. If your goal last year was 100 and you hit it with a week or two to spare and it felt challenging and great, set the same goal for next year, or stretch it slightly to 105.

If you set your goal too small and you find yourself nearing that magic number in May, you can always update your goal later! It’s better to start with a small goal, blow it out of the water, and get to set a stretch goal than it is to set your goal too high and never really feel like you can get there.

This is up to you. You don’t have to jump on the trendy bandwagon and set a reading goal just because the readers around you are. Ask yourself why you’re considering setting a reading goal for yourself and why you read, and be real with yourself about what you can do.

At the end of the day (often literally), reading shouldn’t be a chore. It should be a pleasure.

​written by Christina Kann

​​There’s a 99.9% chance you’ve seen one while driving or walking around. A precious little house on a stick with a door you can open and BOOM—inside, it’s full of books. What a beautiful world we live in. But do you know what these tiny book havens are, or where they come from?

These boxes of bookish goodness are called Little Free Libraries. Most of them are registered with the Little Free Library 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization; you can tell which are registered by the plaques they bear featuring their ID number. But even those that aren’t registered are still lovingly referred to as Little Free Libraries, because we are not here to gatekeep book access.

The very first official Little Free Library was created in Hudson, Wisconsin, in 2009. A very cool dude named Todd Bol built a miniature model of a one-room schoolhouse and then filled it with books to honor his mother, who was a teacher and a lifelong booklover, and mounted it on a post in his front yard. His friends and family loved it so much that he happily made more to share with them.

The next step for Little Free Library was Rick Brooks, who was an outreach program manager at the University of Wisconsin. Together, Bol and Brooks decided to make Little Free Libraries their next endeavor. Andrew Carnegie once committed to creating 2,508 libraries; to honor him, Bol and Brooks committed to creating 2,508 Little Free Libraries by the end of 2013, a deadline they beat by a year and a half in August 2012. In 2015, they were awarded the Library of Congress Literacy Award. In 2020, they were awarded the World Literacy Award from the World Literacy Foundation.

Todd Bol tragically passed away in 2018 from pancreatic cancer. According to the organization’s site, “He remained dedicated to Little Free Library’s mission in his last days, saying, ‘I really believe in a Little Free Library on every block and a book in every hand. I believe people can fix their neighborhoods, fix their communities, develop systems of sharing, learn from each other, and see that they have a better place on this planet to live.’”

This year, 2022, Little Free Library hit the 150,000 library mark, which is truly incredible. And this number doesn’t even include the unregistered libraries!

​Today, Little Free Libraries are about two things: community and book access. The main point of Little Free Libraries is to provide books freely to communities, especially those communities where getting books can be a challenge, particularly for children. According to the LFL website, 2 out of 3 children living in low-income communities own zero books. Little Free Libraries are a great way to change that. Anyone can start a Little Free Library anywhere (on their own property, anyway). But on top of that, LFL has their Impact Library Program, an initiative that strives to install and maintain Little Free Libraries in book deserts in the US and Canada.

Anyone who owns land that the public might walk past can start a Little Free Library! A LFL does have to be on your personal property, and it has to be somewhere people can easily access it from public property. This is why most of the LFLs you see will be in someone’s front yard or by a business’s front door, right up against the sidewalk.

Little Free Library owners are called “stewards.” This language, rather than calling them “owners,” is meant to indicate the long-term commitment of opening a LFL. You can’t just install one and then never think of it again. LFL stewards are librarians, caretakers. It’s their job to make sure the LFL stays safe and clean and full of books!

The funnest way (in some people’s opinion) to find a LFL is to drive or walk around and happen upon one. This is part of the charm of the LFLs—they pop up when you’re not expecting them.

But if you’re a planner, there is a way to seek out LFLs near you. Little Free Library has an amazing app that features a map where you can find all the registered LFLs near you! As a reminder, there are plenty of unregistered LFLs as well, so this map is not comprehensive, but it’s a great place to start if you’re unsure where your local LFLs are, or if you’re traveling and seeking out new LFLs as you’re sightseeing.

​There are some small house-looking constructions, especially in cities and low-income areas, that don’t have books inside, but instead have food and other necessities. These are community food pantries run by amazing people to support their local communities. If you open up a LFL and find canned goods and other food items inside, be glad you’re in such an amazing community, and move on in your search.

Sometimes, you might open up a LFL to find that it’s totally empty. No books, no nothing. This usually happens when a LFL steward has moved away from their home that had the LFL, moved from the business where they built the LFL, or for some other reason isn’t able to care for the library. The best thing you can do if you find an empty LFL is to fill it! Go home, grab some books you no longer need, hop in your car, and go fill that bad boy up. You might even consider bringing wipes or other materials to clean the library up a bit and make it appealing to the community!

The best way to support your local Little Free Library is to take a book, leave a book. When you have a book you don’t need or want anymore, take it to your local LFL, and perhaps peek inside to see if there’s anything of interest to you in there. The more that books are coming and going from these LFLs, the more people will want to visit again and again to see what’s new. Some LFLs even have social media accounts where you can follow to support them. You can make a post when you visit to share that LFL with your networks. 

Little Free Libraries are amazing little oases of books that came from a wonderful initiative to make books more accessible to children who need them. We’re lucky that we all get to participate in taking a book, leaving a book, reading a book, and sharing a book. So if you’re wondering how to spend your afternoon, download the LFL app, see where the libraries are near you, and set out on a bookish adventure!

written by Christina Kann

Based on "​Linguistic Facts of Life" from Rosina Lippi-Green's English with an Accent

Language is constantly changing in so many ways. Slang comes and goes; industry jargon has to be expanded to accommodate new industry. Society is always shifting, and language must change with it. Can you imagine trying to have a conversation about your computer issues in Latin? You'd be hard pressed to convey the problem clearly and directly. Don't resist this change; instead, celebrate and embrace it!

​From your perspective, you speak "normally" or maybe even "correctly." But from someone else's perspective in another location or culture, they are speaking "normally." Far in the northern United States, people speak differently from how they speak down south. Beyond that, certain age, gender, interest, ethnic (etc.) groups speak differently. Some individuals even speak differently in different situations (codeswitching). All of these different methods of speaking--these different dialects--are equally valid in linguistic terms. They all have grammatical systems (even if those systems don't match what you were taught in school), and they are all shared among a community. It's wrong to judge someone based on how they speak because it's wrong to consider one dialect as subordinate to another.

​Grammatical and communicative effectiveness are distinct and separate issues.
In school, you (hopefully) learn some grammar to hone your writing skills. What you may not have learned is that the grammar of how you speak is completely different, and oftentimes spoken grammar is more creative with greater opportunity for variation. A great example of this is a classic from some African-American Vernacular English varieties: "Let me aks you a question." You may have learned the correct spelling "ask" for this word. It's important in writing to have this coded system of spelling to avoid large-scale miscommunications in industry, etc. But if someone were to say this sentence to you, you'd understand what they meant. That's all you need for "communicative effectiveness"-- to be understood.
TL;DR: It's not cool to be pedantic about how people speak if you understand them.

Language is a biological imperative; all humans seek it, and if they're not provided it, they make it up. Writing is a learned skill. Why does this matter? While the brain is hardwired for language (like it's hardwired for eating), it is not hardwired for writing (like how it's not hardwired for algebra). Some people will be naturally skilled at writing and pick it up easily, but some other people might struggle with it their entire lives. Some people may even have a learning, physical, or other disability that prevents them from writing in some way or another. Try not to put too much pressure on yourself or anyone else about your writing skills. Furthermore, don't apply the same rules you've learned for writing to the spoken word. They're not the same at all! If you listen closely, there are a ton of tiny differences and some pretty major differences between the two.

Variation in language is the norm, not the exception. When a language stops changing, it dies. Remember Latin. Remember its fate, now relegated to high school classrooms as reluctant children prepare for their SATs. Celebrate language's change around you, and be part of its journey!

by Christina Kann

​You’ve likely heard about the divisiveness of the font Comic Sans. The font is not inherently bad; in fact, it’s friendly and inviting. However, the font is widely regarded as a joke, and yet it remains available to users of many word processors more than 25 years after its invention. How did Comic Sans come to be? How did it turn into such a joke? And why is it still available for anyone to use?

Let’s go back in time a bit to the early days of the internet. In the mid-1990s, Microsoft was only just starting to place personal computers in people’s homes. These days, a three-year-old can pick up any smart phone and perform a number of tasks. Back in the 90s, most professionals did not know how to use a computer.

To teach private users how to interact with a computer interface, Microsoft developed Microsoft Bob. Microsoft Bob was a program that visually resembled a standard upper-middle-class home office. The idea was that connecting computer functions to the image of an office would help people to conceptualize what their computer was capable of. Characters in Microsoft Bob communicated with the user through speech bubbles, and that speech was originally set in Times New Roman.

The problem was that Microsoft Bob . . . sucked. It was clunky and unhelpful. Even Melinda Gates has referred to it as a failure. 

What does this have to do with Comic Sans? Comic Sans was developed by Vincent Connare specifically for use in Microsoft Bob. He felt that Times New Roman was too stiff and formal for what was supposed to be a learning program. It was meant to emulate chunky, childish comic book fonts, and its purpose was to set first-time computer users at ease. The problem was that Comic Sans was not complete before the first iteration of Microsoft Bob rolled out, Microsoft Bob was a failure that did not last long, and Comic Sans probably should have been thrown directly in the garbage at this point.

But it wasn’t.

Connare said in an interview with Ilene Strizver of fonts.com, “When I designed Comic Sans, there was no expectation of including the font in applications other than those intended for children.” Microsoft first used Comic Sans in text bubbles in Microsoft 3D Movie Maker, which was indeed designed for children. Eventually, however, Comic Sans was added to the 1995 Windows as a system font option.

Soon, graphic designers and computer users alike quickly grew tired of seeing Comic Sans everywhere, particularly in serious correspondence, where the silly font was inappropriate. In 1999, two graphic designers launched a website called Ban Comic Sans in response to being pressed to use Comic Sans for a museum exhibit design.

As the internet was popularized and meme culture grew, the joke of Comic Sans grew with it. One of the most popular Comic Sans memes is the original doge meme, a series of images of grinning Husky dogs captioned with silly messages written using questionable grammar and spelling—and using Comic Sans.

In 2011, Microsoft released Comic Sans Pro, which included features like italics, small caps, and more. This was released on April Fools’ Day, furthering the narrative that Comic Sans is a joke.

Fonts carry vibes; there’s no getting around that. Even the most common, neutral fonts, like Times New Roman or Arial, say that the writer is straightforward, professional, and/or no-nonsense. Using audacious fonts like Chiller or Blackadder for anything real, anything substantial, says the writer is immature and not taking their project seriously. That’s the reality of fonts.

Microsoft Word can carry hundreds of different fonts, but most of the time, a regular user simply doesn’t need these. The many thousands of fonts that exist on the internet are for graphic designers to choose with much discerning. Regular people may not know what fonts look ridiculous in what circumstances, but a designer is trained to use different fonts to carefully curate a book’s (or graphic’s) aesthetic.

The problem with Comic Sans is not that it exists. Wingdingz exists for some reason, so there are more baffling fonts out there. The problem with the font is that it seems like many people have no idea what kind of impression it sends, and they use it so liberally. The average internet user will see Comic Sans so much more frequently than Chiller or Blackadder.

The font is specifically designed to be animated, juvenile, and silly. It kind of replicates a child’s handwriting, if they were particularly uniform and neat. Yet there are many people out there who use Comic Sans in baffling situations, like when sending an office memo or creating a resume. Comic Sans is sort of the polar opposite of professionalism, representing immaturity, movement, and failure.

When scientists at CERN discovered the Higgs Boson, Fabiola Gianotti presented her results using Comic Sans. A Dutch World War II memorial was unveiled in 2012 featuring the names of Jewish, Allied, and German military deaths, all written in Comic Sans. During the UK’s great Brexit debate, the conservative party tweeted a message encouraging the parties to come together, which had been styled in Comic Sans. These are some great examples of times in which Comic Sans should not have even been considered for one moment, as its use greatly diminished the weight of what was being said.

Especially for authors who are just getting their writing careers started, nothing is more important than being professional. Publishers, editors, and even readers want to be assured that you know what you’re doing, that you’re professional, that you take your work seriously.

Particularly because typography is such an integral part of publishing a book, it’s even more important for an author to demonstrate that they have an understanding of parts of a book, including typefaces. The use of Comic Sans says, “Don’t take me seriously, and my book won’t be serious either.”

Comic Sans is good for casual communication that is not serious, not professional, and not important. If you’re in a situation where font just straight-up does not matter, fine. Use Comic Sans. But be aware that you may be judged for it nonetheless.

There is also anecdotal evidence that Comic Sans is easier than other fonts for dyslexic people to read, though there have been no studies to support this with concrete data. However, it’s common for readers with dyslexia to prefer sans serif fonts, and the weighted sides of Comic Sans may indeed make text easier to read.

There is also anecdotal evidence that Comic Sans helps writers to get rid of writer’s block, as the casual and even silly appearance of the font takes some pressure off that a writer may be feeling when writing in Times New Roman, the preferred font of publishers. 

This is not to say that Comic Sans is good for nothing. We are just here to beg people to stop using the font seriously, professionally, and opt for sharper options. If you’re not keen on the standard Times New Roman or Arial, try a similar variant like Garamond or Calibri. We’re happy to advise!

Sources:
https://uxdesign.cc/the-ugly-history-of-comic-sans-bd5d07f8ce81
https://www.fonts.com/content/learning/fyti/typefaces/story-of-comic-sans
https://www.howtogeek.com/707340/the-origin-of-comic-sans-why-do-so-many-people-hate-it/

written by Christina Kann

​A lot of new authors, when asked for their Facebook link, send us a link to their personal Facebook profile. What we’re looking for, and what we encourage all of our authors to develop, is a professional Facebook page. Pay careful attention to the language here -- for the purposes of this blog post, we will refer to personal Facebook profiles as “profiles” and professional Facebook pages (also known as “business pages”) as “pages.”

​Sure, you already have a personal Facebook profile, so why add something else onto your plate? The answer to this question is that profiles and pages are not the same. They do not serve the same purpose, and you cannot simply trade out one for another. Let’s take a closer look at the differences between the two.

A personal Facebook profile is a great place to let your own personal audience, your friends and family, know that you have a book coming out. If you’re on Facebook personally, we certainly recommend making use of this audience. But profiles are not appropriate for professional, public author use.

For starters, unless your personal profile is “public,” your fans won’t be able to find you! The purpose of developing a Facebook presence as an author is so you can connect with fans and keep them updated about news and events. Even if your profile is “public” and fans can find you, you don’t want this kind of connection with strangers. When you accept a friend request on your personal profile, you become friends with that person in return. That means you’ll see their photos and updates in your feed, even if you have no idea who they are. They’ll also be able to see personal information that you have listed on your profile, like where you went to high school and who you’re dating -- details you may not want all your fans to know!

If you have a professional Facebook page, fans can “follow” you -- meaning, they will see the updates you post on your page, but nothing you post on your profile. You will also not see any of their updates unless they directly interact with one of your posts. This is a much more appropriate creator-fan relationship. Fans aren’t your friends, lovely though they may be, and having this boundary will benefit your personal life and your professional life at the same time.

You also cannot use your personal profile when collaborating with event venues, reviewers, or your publisher. For example, if we were to post on Facebook about one of our books, we couldn’t tag that author’s personal profile in our public post, because we are running a business page. If you were doing a book signing at Barnes and Noble, they could not tag you in their social media marketing efforts for that event. If a reviewer reviewed your book, they could not tag you in that review. It could lead to you missing some updates or even missing out on fans who would have followed you, if only they could!

Worse, someone might choose not to collaborate with you if you’re not on social media. If a reviewer posts their reviews primarily on Facebook, and you are not on Facebook, what good does that do either of you? Even if they read the book and publish the review, they’re not getting anything out of that exchange, because they aren’t getting exposed to your audience; you’re only getting exposed to their audience. That’s not a fair trade, and lots of reviewers would pass on that sort of one-sided transaction.

Furthermore, if people are searching on Facebook for “fantasy authors” or authors of your genre, you will not show up in their search if you’re only using a personal Facebook profile. In order for Facebook to categorize you in this way, you need to create a professional page and select the correct category for yourself -- in this instance, “author.”

Another benefit to having a professional Facebook page you use publicly for author purposes is that you’ll look like you know what you’re doing. If someone asks for your Facebook page in a professional setting and you send them your personal profile link, it will look like you don’t understand how Facebook works, and that would affect that person’s perception of you and your capabilities as an author. Every creator these days needs to be dedicated to learning about social media -- always learning, no matter how much you know now, because social media is always changing.

The bottom line is, your fans will expect to be able to find you in certain places. Just like they’ll expect your book to be available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble, they’ll expect you to have a website. They’ll expect you to be on Facebook, and possibly even Twitter or Instagram. If they can’t find you in these places, you will likely lose out on that connection, which could mean losing out on future sales or collaborations. Do yourself and your book a favor, and set up your professional Facebook page now.

by Christina Kann

Whether you call it a domain name, a URL, or a web address—you know, something like www.whateverforever.com (incidentally a silly clothing line)—choosing one is almost as hard as choosing your child’s name. Your domain name is so important and will be used in so many places that it’s crucial to think carefully before committing. Moving your website from a domain you weren’t set on to a new one is a pretty involved process, so it’s better to just pick the right one in the first place!

Here are some things to consider:

• Originality: Your domain name should be unique enough that it can’t be confused with anything else. For example, if your name is Amy Everhart, and there’s another author in your genre named Amy Everhardt who has the domain name www.amyeverhardt.com (broken, made-up link), you might want to consider choosing a domain name that’s more than just your name.
• Ease of communication: Your domain name shouldn’t be too long or complex. It should be easy to write, read, and say aloud. The harder you make this domain name to say, read, write, the harder it will be for people to share it -- including you. You want people to be able to hear it once and understand, maybe even remember it later.
• Timelessness: Your domain name should work for you for years to come. For example, if you’re about to publish your first book, Love Under a Tree (I know, I’m great at making up fake book names), you don’t want your domain name to be www.loveunderatree.com (also a dead link). What if you write a second book? You’ll have to buy a new domain name and move the website over! It’s better to use your own name or something else that will last the entirety of your author career.

With all of this in mind, it’s time to name your website! Here are a couple of different approaches an author might take when naming their website:

• Author name: This is the most common approach for authors, as it leaves the most room for flexibility. Heck, if you decide to become an actress or a yogi or whatever else, you could in theory also use this website under your name for those purposes. The best route is to use your name exactly as it appears on your book cover. For example, if you use your middle initial on your book cover, use it on your website too. You wouldn’t try www.johntolkien.com (incidentally a broken link that is most likely owned by the Tolkien estate so no one else abuses it). You’d, naturally, try www.jrrtolkien.com first. If you have a common name or there’s someone else out there rockin’ your name for professional purposes, you could throw an “author” at the end of it and be www.johntolkienauthor.com (you know . . . to distinguish yourself from all the other Tolkeins).
• Business name: Some authors might be writing for business purposes or about a subject that closely ties in with their business. If you run a home organization business called Happy Healthy Home and you’ve written this book Each and Every Corner: Home Organization for Lazy People (or whatever), it makes sense to tie your business and this book together under the website www.happyhealthyhome.com (incidentally also a broken link). On the other hand, you might already have a website for your business! If that’s the case, consider simply adding a new page for your book information. After all, your target audience for the business and the book are the same.
• Book name: In some cases, it might be a good idea to use your book title in your domain name -- or, more accurately, a series name. If you’re planning on writing 30 kids’ books all about Plucky the Peacock learning life lessons, sure. Name your website www.pluckythepeacock.com (it’s broken; they’re all broken). This is almost exclusively appropriate for children’s book authors.

As you can see, there are a lot of elements to consider when naming your website. If you’re unsure where to begin, reach out to get our professional opinion. And don’t forget: we can even design your website for you as well!
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by Christina Kann

​You’ve written a book, you’ve agonized over edits, you’ve painstakingly written your query letter, and now—you wait. This part sucks. We get it. As Tom Petty once said, “The waiting is the hardest part.” We hope it will make you feel a little bit better to know what’s going on behind the scenes while you’re at home biting your nails.

​When you submit your manuscript through our website, it goes through our submission intake process. Your manuscript submission is received through our website form, and then the submissions editor puts your manuscript in the reader queue. You will not hear from our submissions editor unless they have a question about your submission.

​We receive hundreds of submissions per year, and we want to make sure we give every one its due consideration. This can take some time, since we accept unsolicited submissions, or submissions without an agent. We love having this open-door policy, but it does mean that our slush pile gets big! Your submission may be hanging out in the queue for a few weeks while it waits its turn.

When it’s time, the submissions editor will send your manuscript to a reader. This reader will be trained in manuscript critique and editing so they can see both the potential of your book as well as the work it needs. This reader will also specialize in your manuscript’s genre! We wouldn’t want a children’s book editor trying to evaluate the merits of a dense, adult science fiction epic.

Your reader will review your entire manuscript, or if it’s quite long, key selections. They will then consider the craftspersonship of your manuscript, its marketability, your previous works, and other variables to make their official recommendation for your manuscript. But your submission’s fate doesn’t lie in the hands of one subjective reader; next it goes to the team.

​The entire acquisitions team will review your manuscript, your other submission materials, and the reader’s recommendation independently, and then they’ll come together to make a group decision that will work best for you, your manuscript, and the team.

Once the whole team has agreed, one of our acquisitions editors will reach out to you with our decision. This may be a traditional offer, an Emerging Authors invitation, a self-publishing offer, or an outright rejection in some rare cases.

It’s up to you what to do next!

We are so grateful for the submissions we receive, and we’re lucky to be able to review every single one, whether the author is represented by an agent or not. We understand that waiting for a publisher’s decision can be agonizing, so hopefully, understanding all that goes into this process will help encourage your patience. We can’t wait to check out your manuscript!

by Christina Kann

​Our entire editorial team had the exact same experience with style guides before entering the publishing industry: we used style guides to format citations for papers in college, and nothing more. If you’re like us, then perhaps you, too, had no idea that a style guide was intended for anything else.

In fact, style guides are massive, complex, and crucially important -- and we barely ever use them for citations anymore (lookin’ at you, nonfiction!). A style guide is a rulebook for writing that outlines grammar prescriptions and recommendations that can also give advice for troubleshooting unusual issues.

Style guides are used to ensure that every publication coming from the same place uses the same grammar system. For example, essentially all fiction books that are published in American English these days are edited using the Chicago Manual of Style (CMS), which the University of Chicago Press has been publishing since 1906. (Students sometimes use Chicago/Turabian, which is a streamlined version of CMS for academics.)

You may recognize some of the hallmarks of CMS, like a preference for the Oxford (or serial) comma. As editors, we rely on CMS to tell us where commas go (spoiler alert: it’s complicated!) and how to format ellipses. . . . It also tells us what order parts of the book go in. For example, CMS prefers that the dedication page of a book goes in the front, while the acknowledgments page should go in the back. CMS also defers all spelling questions to Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary in particular!

Some other style guides may be familiar to you, like the Modern Language Association (MLA) style guide or the AP (Associated Press) style guide. Many companies and other organizations also develop their own style guides. These corporate style guides can come in handy when a company like Medium, for example, utilizes hundreds of writers from all around the world but still wants all those articles to be grammatically consistent.

That’s the key word here: consistent. The entire purpose of style guides is to ensure that a book’s grammar is consistent throughout; that an author’s books are consistent from one to the next; that a publisher’s book list is edited to a consistent standard; that books across the country are grammatically consistent so readers have an easier time hopping from one to the next. Having a codified system that any editor can turn to, via print style guide or online, is how we achieve this glorious consistency.

All this is to say: Your editor is not making up their grammatical recommendations. If you have a really nice editor (say, any editor at Wildling Press), they may take the time to explain some of their corrections to you using CMS as their guide. However, just like any other industry, these rules are complex and layered, stacking on top of each other to create a full spectrum of meaning and clarity. It’s not always easy for an editor to explain why they’ve made a certain correction. But more often than not, there is a grammatical rule (or several!) from CMS behind their correction.

Studying the CMS is a great step to take to become a better writer. We once had someone tell us, “I’m not familiar with CMS, but I could read it in a day or two.” Well, they certainly missed the point! Reading the style guide from cover to cover might not do you much good -- unless you have a really excellent memory for that sort of thing. Instead, try evaluating the choices you are making when writing, and then asking yourself, “Why am I making this choice? Is this the right choice?” Before you slap that comma there, try looking it up! Does a comma actually belong there? (As we mentioned, commas are really objectively unreasonably complicated.)

Here’s the good news: if working with a style guide is hard for you, you can rely on your editor to show you the way. Just be sure to remember that their corrections come from a good place: the Chicago Manual of Style!

by Christina Kann