Sarah Williams's Blog: Write with Love , page 10

A cup of Chai with Josephine Moon

Josephine Moon has four novels published internationally, something that surprises and delights her in equal measures. She is still getting used to this success, probably because it took so long to get here. Join us for an entertaining chat.

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Transcript:

Sarah:               Welcome to Write with Love. I’m Sarah Williams, best-selling author, speaker, and creative entrepreneur. Each week, I chat to passionate and inspiring authors about their journey in creative writing. Some are traditionally published. Some do it themselves. Everyone’s journey is different, and everyone has something interesting to say. We all love love and love what we do. Today’s show is brought to you by our amazing fans and supporters on Patreon. If you’d like to help support the show and get some awesome bonus episodes, go to patreon.com/sarahwilliamsauthor to learn more. Now, here’s today’s show.

Sarah:               Good day. I’m Sarah Williams, romance author and independent publisher at Serenade Publishing. Today I’m chatting to the author of Three Gold Coins, Josephine Moon. Thanks for coming on the show, Josephine.

Josephine:       Thanks so much for having me.

Sarah:               Excellent. I’m really excited about your new novel, Three Gold Coins. It’s just been released. So far it’s getting some really great reviews. Tell us about how you got started and your writing journey so far.

Josephine:       I think I was always a writer. I think like all writers I became a writer because I was a reader first. I think as many female writers, say, [inaudible 00:01:30] was the one that kept me awake at night devouring all of her books. I suddenly wrote my first book at age nine, called Starlight the Brumby, because I was obsessed with the Silver Brumby series at that point. I acted the whole thing out in the backyard and then wrote it down. My dad took it to work, and his secretary typed it up and everything, which was pretty cool.

Josephine:       I did what I thought was sensible and studied journalism at school. I went on to teach. I think it was my first teaching, so it was 1999, I went to a workshop with Queensland Writers Center. I just had this light bulb moment of going, “This is it. This is absolutely what I want to do. I want to be a career author.” From then on, I started writing about a writing body very quickly. We wrote short stories and met every month and critiqued each other’s stories. I did that for years, really.

Josephine:       Eventually, I wrote ten manuscripts in 12 years. The tenth one was The Tea Chest, which finally got picked up. I think, for me, I was writing across a whole heap of genres. I didn’t really know where I fit on the shelf. I finally worked that out and wrote The Tea Chest, and that worked for me. Yeah, it was a lot of rejections, a lot of tears, but we got there.

Sarah:               Excellent. Your books to date. You’re got The Tea Chest was first. What came next?

Josephine:       The Chocolate Promise and The Beekeeper’s Secret, and now Three Gold Coins.

Sarah:               Brilliant. They’re based in Australia or have a little bit of Australian women?

Josephine:       They all some element of Australia. The Tea Chest is set across Brisbane and London. The Chocolate Promise is set in Evandale and Tasmania and some in Paris and Provence. The Beekeeper’s Secret is set entirely on the Sunshine Coast, a little bit in Brisbane. That was absolutely a love story to the Sunshine Coast, that book, because it had been my dream … I’m a Brisbane, but I wanted to live up here my whole life and finally got here and was just loving the Sunshine Coast lifestyle. It was definitely a love letter to the Hinterland. Three Gold Coins is set between Brisbane and Tuscany.

Sarah:               Excellent. That sounds brilliant. I’m in Maleny, in the Sunshine Coast Hinterland. You’re in Noosa hinterland. We’re close, but haven’t met in person yet.

Josephine:       I’m heading up there next week on holidays next week actually.

Sarah:               Brilliant. Come say hi. Tea and chocolate, you’ve got a bit of a sweetness for those. Any particular brands that you love?

Josephine:       Do you know, for tea, I’m a big chai fan. I just love my chai. If anyone has read The Tea Chest, I talk a lot about chai in The Tea Chest, or my character Kate does. Because chai is do different everywhere you go. Chai just means tea blend, so it can mean anything really. I do love discovering new chais. I do have a absolutely favorite one at the moment, but of course its name has just popped out of my hand. It’s done up in the Hinterland, near you guys. It’s the …

Sarah:               The [Maudville 00:04:44] one?

Josephine:       It’s a chai … They soak it in honey. It’s all fresh spices and then they dry it in honey. When you put it in, it just, ah, it’s divine.

Sarah:               Excellent.

Josephine:       I’ll have to [inaudible 00:04:55] the brand for you. I’m drinking it now actually.

Sarah:               Excellent. We will link to that in the notes. Excellent. I was looking over your website and I saw that you do some charity work with Story Dogs. Tell us about that.

Josephine:       Story Dogs is an organization I came across years ago when I’d heard about reading dogs in America. Volunteers take dogs into school and they read with kids in school. I looked for one in Australia and came out with Story Dogs. At the time, I was thinking about volunteering with my dog Daisy, who’s a golden retriever, who we just lost about six weeks ago. I thought, “She’s never going to pass the behavior test. She’s so unruly and such a clown,” so I didn’t do it. My son started prep this year. For some reason, I thought about Story Dogs again. I went and had a look. You can sponsor them, so I sponsor a dog on the Sunshine Coast. All the money is pooled across Australia so they can send people wherever they need to go, but I had a representative in the Sunshine Coast. I’m really proud of that. Anything … I was a teacher. I love animals. I’m a writer. It just sort of ticks all my love boxes, really.

Sarah:               You literally take a dog into school?

Josephine:       I don’t. I sponsor somebody. I sponsor Story Dogs to have a volunteer go in. They do. They go into year two classes in their learning to read phase. Kids read to the dogs. It just helps them build confidence in their reading.

Sarah:               That’s a really unique idea. I haven’t heard of that.

Josephine:       Yeah. It’s beautiful.

Sarah:               That’s so cool. Obviously you have a love of animals. You mentioned the Silver Brumby in your story before. Talk to us about your horses and animals and that sort of thing.

Josephine:       I’ve been a tragic animal lover since I was very tiny. We have at the moment, I think, 20 animals. We’ve got horses, goats, chickens, cats, dogs, and fish. I was resisting the fish, but my son begged [inaudible 00:07:05] night before he started prep. We were like, “Oh, man, we can’t say no now.” Yeah, of course you can. Now we have fish, as well. They’re a big, big part of our … They’re our family. Fairy children.

Sarah:               You founded a horse rescue charity a few years ago?

Josephine:       Yeah, I did. I went spontaneously to a [dogger 00:07:31] sale, which are horse sales where primarily horses have been discarded, and what they call the dogger, the man who buys them [inaudible 00:07:40], is there to buy them. You can bid against the dogger. I spontaneously rescued four horses. I already had three of my own, so I don’t know what I was going to do with them. I just was struck. I’d accidentally bought Lincoln, this black horse. I couldn’t see him over the crowd, and I thought I was bidding on a pony next to him. I actually bought him. When I finally got to see him, sort of an hour later, because I had to move on with the crowd, I just stopped dead. I couldn’t believe it. He was so thin. I’ve never seen a horse in that condition before. He was so frightened. I went in the yard with him. He just dropped his head and he just rested his head on my chest. I was just like, “Oh, man, that’s it. I’m sunk for good.”

Josephine:       It was one of those things where once you’ve seen what you’ve seen, you can’t unsee it. I just sort of had to take some action. I did that basically four times in three years. Now, I have a paddock full of horses. Just looking for retirement.

Sarah:               Exactly. Brilliant. We’ve had Vanessa Carnevale on the show before and talking about one of her retreats that she did in Italy. I hear that you were actually one of those participants.

Josephine:       I was there! That’s absolutely where Three Gold Coins came from. I’d been working on a manuscript that wasn’t working for me. I went there kind of in the hope that I would break through something and fix this manuscript. Instead I decided to toss the whole lot and start again. My first day in Rome, I had seen this elderly man in the street, this sort of cobblestone street, around the Trevi Fountain. I was really struck by him. What are you doing here? He was really frail and struggling. I just was so captured. I took a photo of him and put it away.

Josephine:       A week or so later, we were [inaudible 00:09:31] on Vanessa’s retreat under the trees in the Tuscan Valley, just looking at all this unbelievable scenery around us. The group was there, and I was struggling with the book. Vanessa said, “Why don’t you give yourself permission to just let it go for a few days, to see what else comes up?” My sister, who’d been with me, said, “The man, the old man in Rome.” I was like, “Yeah.” Everyone went, “Oh, the old man.” That’s kind of where it started, was with this image I had of this elderly man in Rome. It went on from there.

Josephine:       I just soaked up everything I could as fast as I could in the time I had left and somehow got it all into the book. It was beautiful.

Sarah:               How long did it take you to write Three Gold Coins then?

Josephine:       It was a big book. Writers often say that books are like children and that they’re all different. Some of them are really great. Some of them are really difficult. Three Gold Coins was really difficult. It was my most challenging book. If I count where I’d started, with the 50,000 words that I threw away, then it was two years.

Sarah:               Wow, two years.

Josephine:       And three completely separate versions of it, as well.

Sarah:               Wow.

Josephine:       I really had enough there to have written three totally different books.

Sarah:               Yeah, excellent. That’s certainly a labor of love for three years.

Josephine:       Yeah. I really had that one, got [inaudible 00:10:56] one.

Sarah:               Do you have any advice to new writers? Obviously perseverance being one of them.

Josephine:       Perseverance is one. Find yourself a good writing buddy, absolutely. I always like to say … People often say write what you know. I think that’s a great place to start, though I prefer the next level on, which is write what you want to know. I think that sense of curiosity gives you that forward momentum, rather than a backwards stagnant moment of I already know this. It’s sort of that really fresh, you’re looking at it with really fresh eyes, so your writing takes on that freshness as well.

Sarah:               Yeah, absolutely. You mentioned the Queensland Writers Center earlier. Do you do any workshops with them still? Do you recommend them?

Josephine:       Absolutely! I don’t attend any of them anymore, but I went to so many QWC workshops over my writing apprenticeship. I did everything. I went to playwriting and I went to poetry writing. I went to absolutely everything that was on offer because it was all skill building. I always took away something new. They’re just great. They’re really the perfect place to go.

Sarah:               Yeah, yeah. We can definitely recommend. I think every state in Australia has writers centers, like Queensland. I know South Australia, Victoria for sure. New South Wales I’m sure do. Yeah, they can be a really great place for those aspiring authors. I do talk a lot about Romance Writers of Australia because it’s one I’m very passionate about, but I love Queensland Writers Center as well. Now I’m close, I can go to more lectures. It’s great.

Josephine:       They do a lot online now, too.

Sarah:               Yeah, yeah. They always pack up their schedule. It’s really great. You’re on your book tour at the moment. How is that going? Have you had any funny incidents occur?

Josephine:       The book has only been out not even a week or it might be a week today. I haven’t been that many places yet. I’m trying to get round to book stores and libraries and see as many people as I can. I was going to go down to Booktopia a couple of weeks ago and do a whole big signing down there so that they had signed copies, but had a bit of a crisis midair there. I had an ovarian cyst just burst mid-flight and passed out and vomited all over Sydney. It was really a big drama. I didn’t make it to Booktopia. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to sign my books. It was really sad and I caused a lot of problems for people on the plane. Pretty sad.

Josephine:       Yes, that hasn’t happened to me before. That’s new. That’s a new tour experience.

Sarah:               You can read more about that on your blog.

Josephine:       [inaudible 00:13:39] that goes better than that, yeah. Hopefully, that’s the bad luck out of the way. I hope there’s all good luck for now.

Sarah:               That’s it. That’s an experience you can write about.

Josephine:       Exactly. That’s the great thing about being a writer is nothing goes wasted. Even your worst days can be useful somewhere down the track. It’s all compost for later.

Sarah:               Absolutely. You’re doing some book signings in the Sunshine Coast.

Josephine:       Yes.

Sarah:               And in Brisbane, as well?

Josephine:       And in Brisbane. I’m brewing something for Sydney, possibly Melbourne as well.

Sarah:               Excellent. What are you working on now, Josephine?

Josephine:       I’m working on my fifth book, which is set in Melbourne actually. I would like to go back down to Melbourne do a bit more research before I finish my next draft. Always a great excuse, because I love Melbourne and it’s beautiful. That’s fun at the moment. It’s going well. It’s a good book baby. Unlike Three Gold Coins, which was a terrible book baby, this one is being really good and really cooperative. [inaudible 00:14:43] that, but I don’t know I could have handled another one as bad as the last one.

Sarah:               Any little insider information you can give us on this or is it a bit hush hush?

Josephine:       The plot is definitely hush hush at the moment. Mostly because I’m such a messy writer, that things start in one place and end up in a totally different place. I’d hate to lead anyone down the garden path there. My food theme, because all my books have food themes running through them, my food theme is on coffee.

Sarah:               Coffee.

Josephine:       Melbourne obviously is a great place to go for that.

Sarah:               Exactly. I was just going to say, yeah, to be. Brilliant. That is so exciting. I do love coffee. I’m looking forward to that one. Fantastic journey so far, Josephine. That is so exciting. I should definitely recommend that everyone get Three Gold Coins and, of course, all your back list. Where can we find you online to find out where we can buy all your books?

Josephine:       My website is josephinemoon.com. You can find me on Facebook and Twitter. I’m a pretty bad Twitter person, I have to say. I’m sort of not great with that one. Instagram, I’m also on Instagram and I love Instagram. There’s a lot of photos of food and animals that end up on Instagram. Facebook, lots of my event information and that sort of thing all goes through Facebook as well. I have a newsletter you can sign up to. I always put recipes in there and competitions, as well. Lots of ways to find me.

Sarah:               That is fantastic. Thank you so much for your time today, Josephine. That was great.

Josephine:       All right. Thanks so much for having me.

Sarah:               Thanks for joining me today. I hope you enjoyed the show. Jump onto my website, sarahwilliamsauthor.com, and join my mailing list to receive a free preview of my books and lots of inspiration. If you like the show and want it to continue, you can become a sponsor for just a couple of dollars a month. Go to patreon.com/sarahwilliamsauthor to find out more. Remember to follow me on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Don’t forget to subscribe to my YouTube channel and leave a review of the podcast. I’ll be back next week with another loved up episode. Bye.

 

Clean indie reads with S M Spencer

SM Spencer writes clean, contemporary small town romance and young-adult (YA) paranormal romance.

Jump onto my website: http://www.sarahwilliamsauthor.com and join my mailing list to receive a free preview of my book and lots of other inspiration.

If you like what you see you can become a patron for just a couple of dollars a month. Go to http://www.patreon.com/Sarahwilliamsauthor

Transcript:

Sarah Williams:            Welcome to Write with Love. I’m Sarah Williams, bestselling author, speaker, and creative entrepreneur. Each week I chat to passionate and inspiring authors about their journey in creative writing. Some internationally published, some do it themselves. Everyone’s journey is different and everyone has something interesting to say. We all love love and love what we do.

Sarah Williams:            Today’s show is brought to you by our amazing fans and supporters on Patreon. If you’d like to help support the show and get some awesome bonus episodes, go to patreon.com/SarahWilliamsAuthor to learn more.

Sarah Williams:            Now here’s today’s show.

Sarah Williams:            Good day, I’m Sarah Williams, romance author and independent publisher at Serenade Publishing. Today I’m talking to Sandy Spencer who writes as S.M. Spencer. Thanks for joining me Sandy.

Sandy Spencer:             Thank you for having me Sarah.

Sarah Williams:            It’s not a drama. Can you just tell us a little bit about your journey to publication so far?

Sandy Spencer:             Okay. Well, I suppose I wanted to be an author since I was a small child. My mother was a librarian, so the house was always full of books and she encouraged us to read from a very young age, and I think what really did it for me was reading Daphne du Maurier. And one of her books, Frenchman’s Creek, I think I must have re-written that book … re-written the ending to that book several times and it stayed with me, cause I would have read that book over forty years ago, and I can still remember the emotions that that book brought up in me. And I always wanted to do that for someone else, I wanted to be able to create something that could do that. But when I first went to university, after about twelve months I realized that this little english major that was 19 years old and hadn’t lived anywhere and hadn’t done anything, wasn’t really gonna make a terribly good author. So I decided to change my major and I studied business instead, business and accounting.

Sandy Spencer:             And so, I sort of put all those dreams of writing on hold for quite a few years while I did a job that paid well but didn’t really satisfy my creative instincts. But the good thing that it did was it got me to Australia, because the company I was working for transferred me over here for three months and at the end of the three months I was like, “Wow, can I go back?”

Sandy Spencer:             So I was very fortunate to able to come back to Australia, and after again working for, sort of, 20-odd years, I ended up working in Melbourne in Franklin Street, which was very close to the Queen Victoria Markets and Flagstaff Gardens. And Flagstaff Gardens was the original Burial Hill in Melbourne, and Queen Victoria Market, the car park, was the large graveyard. And there’s still some 9000 bodies under that carpark at the Queen Victoria Market that were never exhumed.

Sandy Spencer:             So here I found myself working in this area that was just brimming with ghostly possibilities. And so, I started writing a book about ghosts and vampires, vampires were very popular at the time, Twilight was, sort of, at its peak. And so, I wrote a vampire and ghosts story, trilogy, and absolutely loved it, sent it off to a few agents and a couple of publishers and got a lot of “Thank you very much for your submission, but it’s not right for us at the moment, you kind of missed the whole vampire time-frame.”

Sandy Spencer:             So I just, sort of, put it aside and in the meantime I ended up retiring and started playing Bridge, and met a gentleman who had self-published and we started talking. And he encouraged me to just do it. And so, I just did it, and then, after having published that, I gained confidence that I could do it and …

Sandy Spencer:             I was [inaudible 00:04:32] from a five-year-old, and I was not a city person, so coming to Australia was like heaven for me. And I started dreaming about, you know, what it would be like to live in one of those small towns in, sort of, that Golden Triangle area, which is, sort of, Bendigo, Ballarat. And I actually bought a small property in Trentham that I owned for a few years and, sort of … it was miner’s cottage and I had dreams of going up there and becoming this little author, sitting in my little miner’s cottage and working in this small town. Never happened. I ended up … We got married and we’ve moved to six acres South of Melbourne.

Sandy Spencer:             But those feelings in that small town were still in me, and so I thought “I’m gonna write a story that’s, kind of …” you know, I can draw so much inspiration from my own life. Here was this woman who wants to live in the country and she takes her horse and goes off and buys a little house and she’s gonna be a writer.

Sandy Spencer:             And so, that was the beginning of my Copperhead Creek series, and because I’d self-published the vampire ones, I thought well … I sent it off to one woman and it wasn’t right for her and then I just thought “Nah.” I’m just too impatient to send it around, and I just thought “I’m just gonna do it,” and I did it. And that was my journey to publication.

Sarah Williams:            Excellent.

Sandy Spencer:             And my … With a big house, and can I see my books at the airport? No-

Sarah Williams:            Not yet.

Sandy Spencer:             … but I have a lot of fun with it.

Sarah Williams:            That’s fantastic. So you’ve got your vampires and you’ve got your rural romance, so that must be an interesting crossover. Do people ever get a little bit confused between it?

Sandy Spencer:             It’s reasonably easy to tell, but … Yeah, they’re very different stories, yeah.

Sarah Williams:            Yeah. Excellent.

Sandy Spencer:             One’s very much a young adult, the vampires is very much … is a nine-year-old girl, so …

Sarah Williams:            Yeah. Oh that’s awesome. So how many-

Sandy Spencer:             And all my writing is … It’s …

Sarah Williams:            Go on.

Sandy Spencer:             Oh, sorry, all my writing is quite clean, I try to avoid any language that people would find offensive, and even though they are adults and they have adult situations, it takes place behind closed doors. So, if somebody has read the vampire books and then reads my other books and they’re a young teenager, it’s not gonna matter.

Sarah Williams:            Yeah. Excellent. That’s brilliant.

Sarah Williams:            So, I love how you were saying that moving out to the country and becoming a writer, I’m reading that book at the moment and I’m loving it, it’s gorgeous. I love Tom, he’s beautiful.

Sandy Spencer:             Thank you.

Sarah Williams:            And yeah, so that’s an interesting thing, I guess a lot of, particularly us writers, we all aspire … Oh, it would be so nice to move to the country and be able to write full time and fall in love with this gorgeous, tall guy, and have horses and … Oh, I love it, I’m just really going “I want this life.”

Sarah Williams:            So why do you think you’re writing Australian? Have you ever thought about writing an American cowboy story? Or is it … it’s really more an Australian passion.

Sandy Spencer:             Well, I’ve lived here now for 33 years, so … Yeah, I thought about writing a book based in San Francisco, because I was gonna write a fourth book to my vampire series, but I don’t feel like I know San Francisco well enough anymore to do that, to write a contemporary book set there. And I sort of feel the same about most parts of America, I’ve traveled more in Australia than I have in the U.S., I’ve never been to Texas, I’ve never been to Oklahoma. It would be really hard for me to get my head around those areas, and this is easier for me because it’s what I’m surrounded by, it’s where I live. I actually live on six acres, I have three horses, and even though it’s not rural, it’s sort of a small town feel, so it’s sort of what I’m living and breathing.

Sarah Williams:            Yeah. Okay, yeah, that’s gorgeous. Actually, I do know there is an Australian romance author who lives in the city and she writes country rural romance like us, she said she’s learnt everything she writes about, through YouTube. That was quite funny actually.

Sarah Williams:            So you sell your books through Amazon, through the Kindle Unlimited program. How is that going for you?

Sandy Spencer:             I like it, it enables me to run a promotion for each book once every three months. So, I have a choice between either having it free for up to five days, or I can do a countdown deal, which … I’ve only done one once, so I’m not entirely sure how it creeps up, but it starts at 99 cents and then it creeps back up to the full price. I’ve only done that once and I’ve chosen for the others to always go with just having it free for a few days in the hopes that I might attract some new readers that then read that book and go “Ah, I might get the rest of the series.”

Sarah Williams:            Yeah.

Sandy Spencer:             So that’s working.

Sarah Williams:            Yeah, that’s excellent. That’s cool. And do you think you’ll go wide at some point in the future, or are you pretty happy with Amazon?

Sandy Spencer:             I probably will at some stage. I think I’m a little bit chicken, just because I feel comfortable with what I’ve been doing and so, that’s a change and it’s like “Whoa,” it’s sort of, I’m comfortable where I am. But I know that the illusive BookBub is very difficult to get and you have a much greater chance of getting it if you are wide, than if you are simply with Amazon. So yeah, I think I’m gonna have to go wide if I want to expand my readership.

Sarah Williams:            Yeah, yeah.

Sandy Spencer:             And I need a website.

Sarah Williams:            Yes, you do need a website. You’re on social media, but no website. It’s crazy.

Sarah Williams:            Excellent. Yeah, do you think, though, using Kindle Unlimited helps with getting your American market? I know there’s a lot of us here in Australia, myself included, we do quite well getting the Australian market, but it can be a bit trickier trying to break into the American market. So, a couple of questions on that, do you think it helps you getting the American market, being on Kindle Unlimited, and how do you write in terms of your spelling? Is it American spelling or is it Australian spelling?

Sandy Spencer:             With the Kindle Unlimited I get a huge number of downloads … I get a huge number of pages read with the Kindle Unlimited, and most of that is in the U.S. So, I don’t know how many books have actually sold in the U.S. versus the Kindle Unlimited pages read. So I’d say it is a big help, being on Kindle Unlimited, because I think it’s only 9.99 a month for them, and so if you get somebody that’s reading a lot, you know, they can go through hundreds of books in a month or whatever. And so it’s a very economical way for them to read, so that has helped a lot.

Sandy Spencer:             Sorry, I forgot the second half of the question.

Sarah Williams:            Sorry, I shouldn’t have asked two questions at once.

Sandy Spencer:             I forgot the second half of the question.

Sarah Williams:            Do you run your books with an American spell check or Australian? So, mum or mom?

Sandy Spencer:             Oh. Yeah, no, I use Australian spelling and I use the Australian single quotes for dialogue.

Sarah Williams:            Yeah.

Sandy Spencer:             What I do try to do, except it’s very difficult for me to remember, cause I’ve lived here for 32 years now, but I do try to use words … If I think that one word might work better. Like, for instance, a kitchen bench versus a kitchen counter. Australians would talk about a kitchen bench, Americans would talk about a kitchen counter. So where there’s a word that I think is gonna be confusing, I try not to use it, I try to restructure my sentences, but I do use Australian spelling and I’m not afraid to throw Australian slang in there and give the characters realistic dialogue.

Sarah Williams:            Yeah. Oh, that’s fantastic. Brilliant, so what are you working on at the moment?

Sandy Spencer:             I’m … In my series, in the Copperhead Creek series, there is a policeman, he’s sergeant Rob Anderson who’s the town cop. And so, the next book I’m writing, at the moment, is a murder mystery. And so he becomes the main character rather than just a small, minor character, and it’s a murder mystery. So if I do well with it, if I’m happy with it, I may continue that as a series, and if not, then that would become the last book of the current series.

Sarah Williams:            Oh, excellent.

Sandy Spencer:             If I don’t think that I can keep going with it, if I …

Sarah Williams:            Yeah, yeah. And more vampires in your future?

Sandy Spencer:             Well it’s interesting, a friend of mine the other day said “When are you gonna write book four?” So, maybe. I could continue that story, I don’t know.

Sarah Williams:            Yeah, vampires never really get old.

Sandy Spencer:             I’ve always been fascinated with the occult. The …

Sarah Williams:            No, that’s fantastic-

Sandy Spencer:             Well I went to Port Arthur a week ago and saw all the ruins, and a friend of mine lent me her little device, it’s like an electromagnetic thing, to look for ghosts. And so I walked around [inaudible 00:15:26] knock around in rooms and made sure nobody was watching and I did my little thing. Didn’t find any, unfortunately.

Sarah Williams:            I did the night tour there one night and, oh my God, that is the scariest thing I’ve ever done in my life, so never again.

Sandy Spencer:             Port Arthur?

Sarah Williams:            Yeah. Very scary place.

Sandy Spencer:             You did the night one at Port Arthur?

Sarah Williams:            Yeah.

Sandy Spencer:             Oh, I didn’t do that, no. That would be a little bit scary.

Sarah Williams:            Very scary. Very, very. They take you into the morgue and you can smell … Oh, I forget what it’s called, but that stuff that they use with embalming, it’s quite a … [inaudible 00:16:13]

Sandy Spencer:             Oh, formaldehyde.

Sarah Williams:            Formaldehyde, that’s what it’s called, yeah. It’s really strong in there and … Yeah. No. I love reading about it but I don’t wanna do that again.

Sarah Williams:            Well thank you so much Sandy, I really enjoyed talking to you today. Where can we find you online, even though you don’t have a website?

Sandy Spencer:             Well, I have a Facebook author page and I’m on Goodreads and I have my Amazon author page. And I’m on Twitter, so … I promise I will do a website in the not too distant future.

Sarah Williams:            Excellent, we might do a workshop and it’s “How to do Sandy’s website.”

Sarah Williams:            That’s wonderful, thank you so much for talking to me today Sandy.

Sarah Williams:            Thanks for joining me today, I hope you enjoyed the show. Jump onto my website, sarahwilliamsauthor.com and join my mailing list to receive a free preview of my books and lots of inspiration.

Sarah Williams:            If you like the show and want it to continue, you can become a sponsor for just a couple of dollars a month. Go to patreon.com/SarahWilliamsAuthor to find out more. And remember to follow me on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Don’t forget to subscribe to my YouTube channel and leave a review of the Podcast.

Sarah Williams:            I’ll be back next week with another loved up episode. Bye!

Daniel de Lorne gets to the heart of gay romance

This is Episode 15 of Write with Love.

Paranormal romance author Daniel de Lorne openly discusses his experiences writing male male or gay romance in a female dominated genre. His books Beckoning Blood and Burning Blood are published by Escape publishing and prove that readers still like Vampire heros.

Jump onto my website: http://www.sarahwilliamsauthor.com and join my mailing list to receive a free preview of my book and lots of other inspiration.

If you like what you see you can become a patron for just a couple of dollars a month. Go to http://www.patreon.com/Sarahwilliamsauthor

Transcript:

Romance in New Zealand with Cheryl Phipps

This is Episode 14 of Write with Love.

Today we head back to New Zealand and chat to Cheryl Phipps, USA Today Bestselling author. From wealthy Alpha heros to boy next door romance Cheryl writes contemporary stories to fit everyone’s taste. She has even put her hand to a non-fiction collaboration with her fellow SPA Girls podcast co-hosts and has recently released a womens fiction novel.

Jump onto my website: sarahwilliamsauthor.com and join my mailing list to receive a free preview of my book and lots of other inspiration.

If you like what you see you can become a patron for just a couple of dollars a month. Go to http://www.patreon.com/Sarahwilliamsauthor

Sexy series with Joanne Dannon

This is Episode 13 of Write with Love.

Joanne Dannon has written 13 contemporary romances including a sexy Alex Jackson series, Christmas stories and box sets with other authors. She’s an Indie Author who project manages every aspect of her life!

Join my mailing list to receive a free preview of my book and lots of other inspiration.

If you like what you see you can become a patron for just a couple of dollars a month. Go to http://www.patreon.com/Sarahwilliamsauthor

Love in Montana with Leeanna Morgan

This is Episode 12 of Write with Love.

Leeanna Morgan is making a six figure salary as an Indie Author. Based in New Zealand’s north Island, she writes contemporary cowboy romance. In todays’s chat I get the scoop on selling to the American market.

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If you like what you see you can become a patron for just a couple of dollars a month. Go to http://www.patreon.com/Sarahwilliamsauthor

Master Mentor Valerie Parv

This is Episode 2 of Write with Love!

This interview was filmed live in October 2017 in Townsville. I got to interview Master Mentor, Valerie Parv who is the only Australian author to have received the Order of Australia and has spent 41 years in the industry.
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If you like what you see you can become a patron for just a couple of dollars a month. Go to http://www.patreon.com/Sarahwilliamsauthor

Ruby award winner Madeline Ash

This is Episode 8 of Write with Love and with Valentines Day coming up this week. I’d like to introduce you to 2017 Ruby award winner, Madeline Ash. Self-confessed introvert, Madeline writes sensitive, sexy contemporary romance.

Join my mailing list to receive a free preview of my book and lots of other inspiration.

If you like what you see you can become a patron for just a couple of dollars a month.http://Go to patreon.com/Sarahwilliamsauthor

Anna Hackett talks romance, action and aliens

This is Episode 10 of Write with Love.

Are you a fan of Lara Croft? How about Indiana Jones or Alien? Anna Hackett is putting the ‘act’ into action romance!

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Clare Connelly turns up the heat!

This is Episode 9 of Write with Love.

Today we turn up the heat with Clare Connelly, indie and traditionally published author of steamy romance, who only takes 2 weeks to write a first draft!

Jump onto my website: sarahwilliamsauthor.com and join my mailing list to receive a free preview of my book and lots of other inspiration.

If you like what you see you can become a patron for just a couple of dollars a month. Go to patreon.com/Sarahwilliamsauthor