Audio file Feb 15-2.mp3 Transcript Don Welcome back to the Grendhill Chronicles podcast. As ever, I am your host, Don Bishop. This episode is, as I mentioned last time, is from a conversation on January 9th, 2023, and it was divided into 2 parts, whereas last episode was more of what's. Been going on in our personal lives just skimming off the top a little bit and today is kind of what's been developing on the writing and hopefully business side of things as you'll hear in the episode. So enjoy and we'll see you at the other end. This is still the the newsletter for the Green Hill Chronicles and the Green Hill Chronicles podcast, so let's talk about that side of things. But wait, sorry, there's a segue between our personal lives. So we we we attended the conference in November. In the middle of all this chaos, uh we had signed up for a conference in February. We had signed up and we decided. Not to change our plans to go ahead and keep keep those plans. And we went to Las Vegas to attend. Laila He didn't mention why we might have been. Just the little, the little. Don Yeah, so I mean. OK. So there is there's a Facebook group that I discovered a couple of years ago. It's a pretty big group called 20 books to 50K. The notion is, you know, one of the founding members of the group. Had it was an independent author and he. Looked at his royalties and on a particular day he made like $7.00. He started doing some math. He's like, obviously I'm not going to make. I'm not going to make a livable wage off of $7.00 a day. But he did some math and he's like, OK, if I? Had twenty of these. Then I could make 50. $1000 a year, which is. Modest, but it's livable in much of the country. So this Facebook group is dedicated to making. Indie authoring livable. It's all about how to how to do the craft of of making your book, putting it all together and and marketing it, and strategies to to make it work. So we went to their conference. This Facebook group has a conference. And we went to that conference in Las Vegas in November. And it was great. I I came away fired up and and feeling optimistic and. Full of even more ideas. What do you think? Because I'm talking too much. Laila I feel like. I throw you off when I talk, so I I hesitate to say anything. Don Throw me off, baby. Laila I was just going to say or I was thinking that the one of the main things that I came away with was. How? You don't have to. Polish the thing so much. Like, just make a thing. And then you worry about. It because you know, like when you're writing, you're always. Trying to hone everything along the way you want it to be beautiful and and soulful. And all of these things. Yeah. And so. I I think like you have to. Kind of. Not think about it so much and just just put it out and make something. Just crank it out and then that's the first thing. And and I was really surprised that a lot of people seem to to think. Yeah, no, I don't worry about it too much and I'll just send it to the editor. And I was like, oh, oh, always worried. I needed to have. It more polished more. You know, just I didn't. I thought the editor was just a backup for things that I didn't catch. That's kind. Of how I. Thought of it before. But now I understand it's more of a. Well, it's. Kind of a partnership. Don And some of these cats. So I have a musician background, so I can call people cats. Laila I wish you. Don Some of these cats. Like there's there's one guy in particular. I remember reading his his post a year or two ago, and he was talking about how he does his his business. Now he makes a a pretty good living as an independent author, and he he cranks. His books out. Like he'll he'll spend a week or two writing a book. Like Friday afternoon, says the end. Sends it to his editor. And the following week, he starts writing another book. Meanwhile, the first book gets edited. And so like he has this like rotation, where each book takes a few weeks to produce, but he only spends a week or or two. I don't remember. He only spends one cycle per book writing it. And he he pays somebody to edit it, he pays somebody to do the cover. All that. Laila Obviously you want it to be cohesive and. Have a good storyline and it's not like you. Want to just put out whatever. Don But I'm actually. I'm actually applying these principles to this very update right now to the newsletter Slash podcasts, so we have we have notes here on. The computer screen. UM. I'm just trying to get it out there and make sure it happens because if every. If every podcast episode were perfectly polished, there would be no podcast episodes, so this episode is happening. And and I think we've, I think let's talk about what we plan for the future as far as stories and as as far as. Production and I think some some caps are out of the bags as far as like we went to this conference, what is what is our dream and I've I've mentioned it before like I would like to but no like now I I feel like I see the path I feel like now I see the path and I want to. Make it as an indie author and and. People say the. Self published terminology is outdated and not quite relevant anymore because you. The way publishing works is different now there are anyway, that's a whole different discussion, but there are services in place now that are ready to to. Like you, you write the book. OK, then we'll list it. On on either Amazon or Kobo or whatever. That they'll even get it in libraries like you can. You can get it listed for libraries to be able to order it so that this infrastructure is in place now. And it's not so much like you. You pay a vanity press and they give you they deliver 5000 books to your garage, and now you have. Laila And then you have. To pedal them everywhere. Don Yeah, it's not. It's not like that anymore. So I feel like there is a way and we can see the way and I want to make. It happen timeline. I don't know before we talk. More about the. The hopeful business, let's talk about. Stories is. Laila Can I say something? I'm sorry I keep yawning. Don It's late at night. Laila It's late if this is the only way. Don We put kids to bed. It's it's after midnight. Wow. Laila And I've been sick for like a month and 1/2 I'm actually doing. Pretty well. Right now because anyway. Don So This Is Us making it happen, you know. UM. Laila Been sleeping. Don So for stories. If there's a guy out there who can crank out a book in a week. I can probably do one in 12 weeks, so I'm going to try to write a book per quarter this year. And so with with Grant Hill, with the Grant Hill chronicles. I have written about 34,000 words of it so far. And one of the things at the conference I learned about Kendall Vela. Which is a platform for serial content. And you know, I kind of look where I. Am with Grant Hill. I would like to take advantage of Kindle Bella. For Kindle Bella, it has to be new content, though never available somewhere for for free prior to that. So I think I'm going to take what I have so far of the Grant Hill chronicles and. Kind of the the the point where it where I am right now, cuts off pretty well call that a novella. So there's there's the introductory novella and I could go ahead and and. Publish that now I suppose, and I mean begin the process. It definitely is editing. It needs a lot of rewriting, but that's that's part of the process. It needs the developmental editing process to happen to it. I guess not really. It's not really ready for that. I need to do my own reworking before anyway, so I definitely need to rework some things. But uh yeah, that's going to be like the Grant Hill Chronicles intro, novella and then book 1. I I want to have. Word it out hashed out. By the end of March. Laila I have to say something. I don't want it to seem like I'm like, whatever, Don. I don't know what your story is doing. You know, it's just, I've been. I haven't been able to be much of a participant in his writing process because I've been. We've moved so many times like since the spring of 20. What 2019? We've moved. I think this is our 6th move. Don Spring of 2019. OK, so there's one. And then there's, uh, I went to training and then I went. Across the country and then I flew back and brought you out across the country. Laila Oh well, you had other moves. Don And then you moved a mile. Laila But I mean like family moves. Don And then we moved. Back over here, into the Airbnb, and then we moved back into our house and then we moved here. Laila And there's when Rose, when moved, lived with you for a month. Don So if you really want. To get technical 8. Laila Does that count Rose's move out? Don Well, was was with. Yeah, it that that was in there with me. Laila So 8. Don Eight times in in. Laila Well, and if you want to mention, I mean, the Utah trip was kind of a mini move like for me. Don Less than three in 3 1/2 years. Laila It was such an ordeal. Don Yeah. Yeah, so. Laila So anyway, I've spent all my time just trying to keep the home fires burning, so don't think that I am. Disinterested. Or unsub. I'm trying to be supportive as I can with the infrastructure of day-to-day living, so when I'm like, I don't know, Don to look at. There's nothing I don't care. Don And it's it's not that I'm just leaving her all alone either. It's just I, I mean, I I do feel a greater burden to to financially provide and. And that's why I see myself looking at the the stories a lot more. Lately, as I have been starting to see the way on how to. To make it financially successful, but you know I want to support her in taking care of the kids at home and and keeping this house at home because we want her to right too. We've discussed one or two of of Lilah's story ideas, whereas I have lots and I like I'll I'll drive to work and back and and just listen to podcasts and get ideas. And so when I get to work or when I get home, I'll have a new idea. And it's not every day, you know, maybe. Every couple of months on average, but I had two or three ideas this week, so it happens. Laila Well, and I'm interested more in pursuing maybe like a music, the music side of things as as as part of our. Don I haven't talked to you about that. I I totally want music in the enterprise like. The Grind Hill chronicles. Laila I think because that's where my strength is, I feel. Don I want to write music not so like the intro music that you hear at the beginning of the of the podcast I made that I made that in in. 2002. But as I write the books. And eventually when we create the audiobook, I want music in there like custom music that we write not just for Grant Hill so so I don't know just by means of update because this is not just an incremental update because it's been nearly a year since I. Said anything on the podcast? But I might have mentioned one or two of these before, so obviously there's the Grant Hill Chronicles. I have a a middle grade. Urban fantasy that I'm working on, there's there's an adult urban fantasy I don't. I'm I'm not doing any explicit content. I just mean that. The characters and the target audience happen to be adults, but there's urban fantasy, OK, there's a a sci-fi there's. There's a sci-fi romance that I'm. Working on also. And that brings us to another point. And OK, we we also want to touch non fiction. And so I mentioned that I want to have Grant Hill 1 written by the end of March. You're not going to be able to read it. In April? No, because actually I want to. I want to write this other sci-fi. And hash it out before I come back to Grant Hill. And then I'm really going to work on getting Grant Hill put out there, but we want to delve into a little bit of nonfiction also, specifically in children's books. So we want to produce some children's books and I I believe that's probably the first thing you'll see published. From us, it's going to be some children's books. Laila OK. Don's the one with the schedule, so. I mean, we've definitely talked. About topics and things, and in fact we. This is about. A little over a. Year ago that we. Touched on some of the ideas that we're going to. Be starting out with. So I'm excited. Don Me too. Laila And it's fun because we're going to be able to involve the kids too. So I think that'll be that would be nice. Don I also want. To produce these updates at least monthly and sorry quarterly. Gotta set the bar realistic. No, no, I did. Laila You have said you. Don I did said I did say monthly, so yeah. I'm going to try to push out an update monthly. Uh, it's not going to be as long as this one every time because this is covering a lot. Or maybe it will be this long. Maybe I'll find more stuff to talk about. People tend to do that. So as you as you can hear, we're. Broadening the scope. Of writing, I'm broadening the scope of the Grant Hill Chronicles podcast also. So as I broaden the scope of Grant Hill, I'm I'm looking at using the Grant Hill Chronicles podcast. As kind of this is where we started, this is where you and I started. And so I'm I'm. We're going to do some rebooting in the podcast. Where I I still do want to provide. Narrated story in the podcast I believe it will start over from the beginning after I do some rewriting. But so let's let's get into some of these. Why's and and hows? So there's there's story, creation progress, and there's also. Building a business progress and part of building a business is interacting with. With fans, hopefully. With all of our fan out there as the, if you ever listen to Car Talk, they would joke about all of their listener and they would make it singular as it as a joke. And then they say thanks Mom for listening and. Laila But for us it's true. Hopefully not for long. Don Yeah, hopefully both of our listeners are listening today and they'll tell their. Friends, no. So like. Building relationship with you guys is important because if we don't have any supporters, it's not going to work. Also we need a name and we've been talking a lot about about what to name our business because we're going to actually have a business entity. We haven't talked about all the details yet. We haven't had a chance to but I'm thinking. We'll probably when we. When we write checks or accept payment, that's going to be through the to and from the business name that we create and. We will write checks for ourselves and when those checks to ourselves get big enough, then we'll be able to say goodbye, day job and hello, indie author career. So this business entity needs a name and last year, maybe even the year prior, I think was last year I came up with the name. Thorn, Syndicate publishing. Laila That's last year. Don And I was thinking I I was playing with the idea of the the Grand Hill universe having different. Different kinds of stories within this same universe, like I told. Bedtime story to my kids about these people that live in giant trees like a single tree is their village, and they harvest the fruit from that tree and they climb down to the ground all the way down to the ground to travel to to the next tree over to do trade for a different kind of fruit. And I pictured, you know, some kind of juvenile romance in this setting, and it's a it's a different kind of story, might attract different readers. So I thought. Different author or maybe supposedly and so I was thinking I was. I was toying with things like the chronology or society's supposed supposed entity within the Grant Hill universe that is making records of things that go on. And one of these. Is who writes Grand Hill. The Green Hill chronicles, and one of these is the one who writes this this bedtime story. So I was toying with some name that would signify a group. Of collaborative or cooperative people. So there is society syndicate. I already owned the the the website Thorn dot Link, so Thorn Syndicate Publishing seemed to make sense. It's a little long though. And I'm I'm thinking maybe just Grant Hill media. Grind hill. Not expressing the entire scope of the effort, of course. Again, being the Genesis being. Our starting platform. Laila We did was there, so that's business name, did you? What did you want to mention about the structure? Don Well, I I I did. Mention structure a little bit. I mean, just where we we create the the business entity. That way we can we can do accounting more cleanly so the businesses finances are not the same as our finances. They'll be very closely tied together, but we'll we'll set up a bank account for the business and. I want to. Buy some software and some subscriptions for some of these tools that exist for independent authors, I want to use some of. These things that are out there. But to tabulate all these and then when we get, yeah. Laila That's business costs. Don And then when we get to next year to to do. To file as self-employed and pay self-employment tax and then do all these receipts looking through our bank account to keep keep track, not just separate bank account etc. And I was trying to keep this to 15 minutes. We're at 38 minutes. Almost right now on the recording, it will be a little bit shorter once it's edited, but. I don't know what else we want to talk about. Laila I don't know. My brain is kind of fried. Don I'm sure we're we're forgetting things, but feel free to ask US questions. Laila Do you think we could? I was just thinking that the idea behind. Having this this syndicate. Was not just for the various stories, but also so that the various. Family members could participate and have their own entry into. The the effort. So I like that. Don Oh and. I guess we don't need. To talk about pseudonyms, pen names. Laila That is one thing we've been talking about, but we don't have anything to announce yet. Speaker It is. Don No, I mean we've we've been throwing around some. Ideas but the. The thing with pen names it's it's. It's not just to protect your identity, and it's not just to. So you can get taken seriously. Maybe writing fantasy as a woman or writing romance as a man. If I did that, you know, like, it's not just about. It's not just about appearances. It's it's also. To avoid confusing readers and algorithms, I was listening to the Creative Pen podcast. She's a she's an independent author and she has her podcast. She talks about the business of of writing and she does interviews, and there was a gentleman on her show in. The middle of 2020 because I'm, you know, I'm catching up and that's I just started listening a few weeks ago, but. I don't remember his name, but he wrote. A historical fantasy and historical fiction. Historical fiction. And he saw on Amazon he looked at the listing for his book and down lower you see, like, people who bought this also bought. So he he saw in his also bought. Some nonfiction works, and he knew that people looking at those books might see his book. And not be interested. And so he's like, Oh dear, cause he had also written some nonfiction. So then he went and created a pen name. So that. His, his. Of his fans wanting his nonfiction. Don't get disinterested because they're looking for the nonfiction they find the fiction and they're like, oh, well, forget him. Also, Amazon's algorithms, we'll see something like that and they'll they'll be like, oh, you. Know this this book. Isn't doing well, and so there's kind of very in favor. Of other books that we'll do. Laila So how does that actually work so? It's not doing well because it's not a feeding in the genre. Don Because it's yeah, because it's miss genre by the algorithm, even though it it's marked as historical fantasy, it's it's miss genre by the algorithm. It's miss grouped, it's on the wrong bookstore. And so people coming to this shelf looking for that find this and they don't want it. And so it needs to. It needs to be properly shelved. So if I'm writing fantasy, I could probably write fantasy and sci-fi under the same pen name. But then children's books. A little bit different. And and if I ever wrote a romance a little bit different, should probably use different pen names for these different genres. Yeah, hopefully next month, progress will be like I am X 1000 number of words into Grind Hill one and it's going to be exciting. Laila I'm not a great host. Don Let me tell you what we'll see. Laila And hopefully I'll be more awake. I've been sleeping a lot lately because of. Don Me too. Laila This like this. Don UM. But yeah, I guess we'll we'll wrap it up if you read. This in an e-mail or if if I post it on the website and you read it there. Be sure to look us up on Patreon. Be sure to look us up on YouTube. Look us up in your favorite podcatchers if, if you're reading this, or anyway. You search Grind Hill and you'll find us. I've I invented that word. Over a decade ago and I pretty much own it now, we don't have a presence on TikTok, yet I I do intend to create one. But. We'll get there. Look us up and search for Grant Hill. You'll find. And logging off we'll. See you later. Thank you for joining us on the podcast today. As always, look us up on social media. You can search Grant Hill or send us an e-mail at questions at Thorn dot link. And I have to interrupt myself there. So I recorded this intro and outro a day or two or three after Lila and I had this extended conversation that. Had a couple of different topics covered and so I split into two episodes, but before I log off, I want to give you some updates that have happened since we recorded these two episodes on January 9th. It is tonight, February 14th. It's a little late. Yeah, we had. Five guys for dinner and had some. Some red velvet cake. Uh, minus the red because it was homemade and we didn't need. That anyway so. Things that have happened since then and. If you've been following. Me on Twitter or Instagram or Facebook, you'll know a few of these things, but you won't know everything. Since we recorded these two episodes. We filed Thorne Syndicate Publishing, LLC. It exists as a legally existing business entity as an LLC, and we filed a fictitious name, also known as a A doing business as or DBA Grand Hill Media. So we kind of went with both phone city publishing. And Grand Hill Media and the way we're looking at it is Thorndike Publishing, obviously, is the legal name of our business, but that's where we're housing and nonfiction. That's where we're going to house children's books when we produce. Whereas Greenhill Media is going to house, obviously the Greenhill Chronicles as well as other fantasy and science fiction that I will write. So yes. The the business exists and along with that we also opened a bank account and placed a small financial investment in our new company and that way we can spend out of the business bank account for business related expenses and that will be a lot tidier when it. When tax time, tax time comes next year. And along with that. We registered for 20 books Vegas. We would love to go in person. We're just not sure if that's in the cards for this year. So we we registered for 20 books, Vegas again at at least to attend remotely and. That got paid. Out of our business account and also our web hosting came due again for payment and that paid out of the business account. I have also written what I consider to be a good chunk of gohas that is a superhero. Story based on. A a a group of individuals with what? One might consider to be useless superpower. And it's supposed. To be a a humorous angle on that and you know for all of you writing veterans out there, OK, I haven't written that much, but in a few weeks, I got 12,000 words out. And then I got sick. I was. Sick for the last week and 1/2. If you follow my Facebook. Channel the uh the Grant Hill Media Facebook page. Then you saw my live video last Saturday and I I thought I might be getting over the illness at that time. And no, I wasn't. I spent most of the day on Sunday in bed. Uh, it was pretty rough. And I'm feeling pretty well now anyway. So one final update that I want to include here is that I've pretty much settled on my pen name for writing fiction. And it's not 100%. But it's pretty much there and so I will call myself solely pedron those the the the first name and the the surname are entirely made-up, although it just so happens that sold me is a surname in Italian. And pedron is. UM. I think it's some some form of Arabic where it exists as part of the language. Or maybe that was just pedram anyway so, but slowly, pedron does have a first name as well, with the starting with the letter T, so that's T solmi pedron. And like I said, it's not 100% because I'm still tossing around. What that uh, what that T stands for? I know all the letters in it. I'm just playing it with it as anagrams. Uh, you know, I'm switching the letters around and and seeing what it spells and seeing what I might settle on now. Going forward. I would love someday to publish the podcast more frequently than once a month. But for the time being, this is where we are. Last month I was riled up and I was excited because I had recorded these two episodes in one go. I edited them together mostly. And I wanted to roll this episode out. And, you know, my my sister sent me a text and and said, hey, I just watched your podcast. When's the next one coming out? And I was like. UM. And I explained OK. Probably middle of next month. I'm not going to do more frequently that until we have. A few you know up our sleeve. Ready to. To go. And I'm glad that we didn't jump because life got crazy and I got sick. And I I would not have been able to keep it up. And I would. Have felt bad, so it's better just to stick stick to something reasonable. Now talking about if if you follow us on, on Facebook or on Twitter or Instagram. We do have. A YouTube channel also statistically, I believe chances are you're probably watching this on YouTube. Uh, I don't have my podcast download statistics available to me. I'm I'm working on on getting that, but the YouTube version of the last episode had last time I checked 57 views, which is pretty good cause. You know that's that's probably my sister watching it 57 times because I don't. I don't have that many. So jump on YouTube and search for Green Hill Cron or just Grind Hill search for Green Hill and you'll find the Green Hill chronicles. YouTube Channel please follow because right now I have 19 subscribers and I was trying to go live on YouTube the other day and I could not because that requires one to have at least 50 subscribers. So jump on YouTube and hit subscribe that will enable us to. To do little live updates like I wanted to do the other. Day I I went ahead. And uploaded a video instead. But uh. Signing off. Thank you for joining us on the podcast today. As always, look us up on social media. You can search Grant Hill or send us an e-mail at questions at Thorn dot link. We'll talk to you next time.