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Book Shop Chats:
Welcome to Book Shop Chats, your go to podcast for indie authors and learning insight into what it takes to write a book (HINT: You can do it too!!)
Join authors as they share their personal journeys, successes, and challenges, providing you with unique insights into the writing process. The discussions explore into various aspects of storytelling, from character development to plot structuring, ensuring you have a well-rounded understanding of the craft.
Whether you're just starting out or have published multiple works, this podcast is your companion in the pursuit of storytelling excellence. Tune in, gather inspiration, and let your passion for writing flourish alongside a community that celebrates the art of the written word.
Book Shop Chats:
How Hockey Practice Became the Birthplace of a Greek Mythology Novel with Lore Wren
Lori Wren shares how a trip to Pompeii inspired her mythological retelling "Meddromeda," which she wrote primarily in her phone's notes app during her children's hockey practices.
• Reimagining Medusa's story from a more compassionate perspective, showing humanity before monstrosity
• Navigating the self-publishing process as a newcomer to the industry
• Building unexpected international connections with readers who resonated with the story
• The importance of community support from other authors
If you are a writer or author in need of a developmental editor, reach out to Victoria Jane Editorial. Everything is linked in the show notes, and it would be an absolute honour to get eyes on your novel.
Book Blurb:
The myth of Medromeda explores the life of Medusa before she became the feared monster that turns men to stone. Amidst the confines of her imposed darkness, light is revealed in the most unexpected ways, proving that seeing the world though another’s eyes can change the heart of man, and maybe, even the gods.
On the sleepy island of Seriphos, a young Medusa saves a wounded crow with the heroic help of Perseus. The three form an inseparable bond. On the neighboring island of Patmos, Princess Andromeda lives a lonely, conflicted life that values power over love.
About the Author : Lore Wren, grew up in contrasting worlds. Her childhood was spent following her maverick father on adventures around the world. Her mother kept her and her siblings grounded by spending long summer nights chasing fireflies at her family’s farm in Nebraska. It was here she learned that the simple things in life mattered most.
Growing up observing life on private planes and corn fields gave her a sea of characters and stories. With her father’s risk-taking spirit and her mother’s unyielding love, she explored life searching for what connects us. Her professional career has been spent behind the scenes at an opera company, doing celebrity interviews for a magazine, creating a public sculpture, and raising money for the arts and education.
LINKS:
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About Victoria:
Hey there, I’m Victoria! As a writer and developmental editor, I specialize in helping busy writers bring their publishing dreams to life without the overwhelm. Editing doesn’t have to feel like pulling teeth—it's the magic that transforms your story from “meh” to masterpiece!
Here’s how I can help:
📖 FREE Manuscript Prep Workbook: Take the stress out of editing with simple steps to organize your revisions.
Grab it HERE
📝 Developmental Editing: Get expert feedback that elevates your manuscript, strengthens your story, and polishes your characters.
✍️ 1:1 writing support : Revitalize your creativity, map out your novel, and unleash your authentic voice.
Your story deserves to shine, and I’m here to make it happen. Let’s turn your writing dreams into a reality!
📱 IG: @editsbyvictoria
🌐 Website: https://www.victoriajaneeditorial.com/links
Oh hey, it's Victoria from Victoria Jane Editorial and your host of Bookshop Chats. This podcast is all about authors, writing and the magic that goes into storytelling. We cover all of the things that go into writing a book, from the creative process, from taking your idea to a first draft, creating and cultivating community within the author space, marketing all of the fun things. If you are a reader, a wannabe writer or an author, you will find tips and tricks that suit whatever level you are at. So I hope that you enjoy and you are unfortunately, or fortunately, going to find many more books to add to your TBR, so I will invite you to sit back and listen to the episode.
Speaker 2:Welcome back to Bookshop Chats. In today's episode I am chatting with Lori. Lori, welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much, Victoria. I'm so happy to be here.
Speaker 2:Me too, I'm pumped for this. I feel like you've got some good energy. This is going to be a fun chat, so we were chatting a little bit before we hit record and we're both kind of rocking mom life and writing books, and your book came out earlier this year, so I would love to hear all about it.
Speaker 3:It did. So I was traveling with my daughter a year ago, in July, so a year and a half ago and I was visiting Italy with a friend that lived there and I was. We were visiting Pompeii and I just started thinking about ancient history and love stories and there was a statue of this couple that had died together in the ruins of love stories. And there was a um, a statue of this couple that had um, died together in the ruins of Pompeii. And they were, they were embracing each other. And I'm like, oh my gosh, what a, what a cool thing that you, you know, they knew they're going to die and they held each other in this embrace and and died together.
Speaker 3:And I just thinking about that, and I was thinking about all the different stories from the past of people who had been wronged, and I started thinking about Medusa and I'm like, you know she, she got wronged pretty, pretty hard. You know she only, she only was punished because she was raped by Poseidon. And so I just started thinking about the humanity of, you know, wronged, wronged females. I guess I would say so I just started writing. I was there, you know, I had time, I was on vacation, I was there for a while. So at night I just opened up my phone notes and started writing some notes about Medusa and Perseus and Andromeda and all these. You know Greek mythology. I'm in Italy, but I'm thinking about Greek mythology in Italy. That's kind of how it got started and I just started making notes and then when I got home I just started writing more and I'm like, wow, I have a story. I think I'll keep going. How am I going to do this? And I just kept going and going and at the end I had a book.
Speaker 2:Amazing. I would love to hear what's the title of this book.
Speaker 3:My book is called Meddromeda, so it's a Medusa and Andromeda, so it's Meddromeda and it's the myth before the monster, so that's kind of how I would describe it. It's a myth inspired myth, the myth before the monster, and it really shows the um, the humanity and the compassion of medusa before she was changed into a monster. And I have a really it's very, very specific to people who love mythology. It's a very niche market for what I wrote, but if you love mythology, you will love my twist on this story.
Speaker 2:That's so cool. I love that. I just I'm so fascinated by all of these like wild stories that authors come up with and how you know different they are, or if it is something that's, like you know, popular, the twist that they put in it that makes it unique to them is just so cool. I love that.
Speaker 3:It is cool. And I think when you, I didn't have a full story in my head when I started writing. I was just writing notes and something clicked. I'm like, wow, what if this and this happened? And I couldn't ever figure out how to tie it together and I just kept going and going and going. I'm like, well, it'll come, it'll come. And then one day one day is just, you know, light bulb moments, magic happens. You see something that inspires you and it takes a twist that you didn't even know you were going to take. And I think that's that's when you know you're really tapped into that creative process, when you can just lose yourself for hours thinking about it or writing it. You and I also feel like when you're, when you are creating something, you're constantly in that mode, even when you're not doing it. You know, even if you're driving around or shopping, you're always constantly being fed something that works for what you're trying to create. It's a mix, no like, it's another dimension, you know another sense it's a mix.
Speaker 3:It's another dimension, another sense. It's like another sense opens up. You're like, wow, I feel really open, I feel really creative. I liked that feeling. That's kind of a little high you get. You're like, wow, I'm in the zone I can do this, that's so cool, that's amazing.
Speaker 3:I kept waiting to get into that zone and it just happened. I was thrilled that I finished it. It was a goal to finish it in a year and I finished it just under a year and we chatted a little bit before, but I wrote the majority of it in the notes section on my phone which was just the only time I had.
Speaker 3:I have children and I was sitting at hockey practice for 15 hours a week and I've talked to everyone in this building 8,000 times over the past six years. I know everything about them. I'm like what, what could I possibly do? And I started walking and then, while I was walking, I just kept thinking more than like, I'm just going to sit down and write, I'm here three hours, I'm going to walk an hour and then write two hours and it just worked. It's crazy. I couldn't believe it. So I'm still shocked. Still shocked that I that I finished it.
Speaker 2:That's such a win. I feel like, and I think, too, we often underestimate, like what you can accomplish in those pockets of time that you know. Otherwise you'd, like you said, you'd be like making conversation with people, which is it's, there's a time and a place for that. But I feel like sometimes you're like I just want to get this, this out of me, like I feel like I have to to create this, this story. So that's I feel like a huge reminder for people, because so many people I've connected with and myself I'm like I'm busy, we have lives, we have children and they're always doing all of the things. I swear, the older they, they get, the busier it gets it does.
Speaker 3:It does Absolutely. And also there's a lot of times when you talk to authors or, in my experience, when I've talked to them like they have a process. You know, I wake up at six and I have a cup of coffee and I write for two hours and then I will go for a walk. I'm like no, my process is going to be different every single day. You don't have to follow a specific format. There's no magic way to create something and if you really want to do it, you're going to find a way to do it. I'm sure I drove my family crazy when I'd come home and retype what I put in my phone into a computer and didn't want anyone to talk to me for a while and stayed up way too late and, you know, was disheveled in the morning. But that's how I got it done.
Speaker 2:A hundred percent Right, like you got to do what you got to do. And I feel like, when you're in that zone, like that's just it's not, it's not an overwhelming tap, like it just is something that you're like I just need to do this.
Speaker 3:Right, yeah, absolutely it's. It's a force bigger than you.
Speaker 2:Huge A hundred percent. So I'd love to hear a little bit more about your experience with like how writing came into your life, cause I always find that fascinating where people like picked up their, their like call to write.
Speaker 3:Well, when I was a child, my grandmother wrote a book about a Native American love story. It was a short, like a poetic book, and I remember her just having papers scattered on the dining room table and constantly working on this and she finished it and she went on this and she finished it and she went on you know tours and talked about the history of of the Native American population in Nebraska and I I remember that distinctly being a big part of my childhood and always having papers, always creating something, always trying to do, make do something better than you did the day before. Right, challenge yourself, like and she's in a small town in Nebraska, 150 people. I assure you no one else in that town had ever written a book, you know, and I just thought she was so cool. You know, I'm like that's so cool.
Speaker 3:And then I won a poem contest in junior high and I was really proud of this, this, but I didn't really think I was a writer, right, I'm like, well, that was fun. And then, um, I just kind of always wrote in different aspects of my job. I am a fundraiser by profession and education and I wrote grants and I wrote speeches and I wrote, you know, newsletters, all these things. Like, well, I'm a writer, but I didn't think I was an author, right, right and it's. And it was a mind switch. Even after I wrote Medromeda I'm like I wrote, I wrote a book, I'm a writer. And then I think I just like something just switched to me. I did my first book signing. I'm like, wow, I'm, I'm an author, this is cool, this is fun. I like this part. And?
Speaker 3:And writing is such a, you know, introverted thing to do when you're when you're doing it, and then afterwards you have to be completely extroverted to do all the other things. And when you've been so self containedcontained, it was hard to make that shift. I would say there was a period of time I'm like, well, you mean, I got to do more work. Now I didn't realize that that's the first book I've written. I didn't realize that the real work is after you write the book. It's a lot of work. And it's a lot of work and it's a big learning curve if you're not in that world. So, um, so you have to be up for the challenge, I would say, because the challenge is is way beyond writing the book, right 100.
Speaker 2:I feel like that's the so common with so many authors, right like the. The vast majority, I will say, that I spoke like have spoken to, are typically more introverted. There have been a handful that have been like I love that, like chatting with people, like I love people, it is my jam, it's my favorite, like wow, like you are killing it, like that's amazing. So I would yeah, I would love to hear a little bit more about that. Like transition from from obviously writing the book and now you're sharing it with the world.
Speaker 3:But clearly I didn't know what I was doing. I had to figure it out and I spent a lot of time on Reddit and I got an Instagram account all these things that I really I really didn't do and I learned from asking other authors, really just and again, that's still kind of introverted, you're, you're, you know messaging people on Instagram and finding these groups and just kind of gathering information, and I was helped by so many other authors. I'm so appreciative of that. The community online is very supportive and I didn't expect that and and I you know, when I try to do it on my own, I was running up against a lot of different scammer kind of things I felt like, and I was savvy enough to know not to give people money to do this. But I ended up being helped by someone that helped format the book and get it on the right. Like I didn't know you had to be on IngramSpark to be nationally, internationally distributed and different things like this. So I did. I did enough homework to know enough how to get it out there. Then again, you get it printed.
Speaker 3:Then what do you do? I mean, that was a whole, you know, three months of learning how to do. I want to self-publish or do I want to go traditional? And I just wanted to prove I could write this book and get it out. So I decided to self-publish. I had a goal of a year. It wasn't going to happen if I tried to go traditional publishing. So you know, after that, then I you have to market it. This is like what am I doing. But I will say, it's just like anything. The more time you put into it, the more time, the more things you get out of it. You know, if you take a couple weeks off, you're behind the curve. So it is just being consistent and not being afraid to ask for help, and that's, that's a big, that's a big thing. But I do.
Speaker 3:I did love the book signing. I had a blast, blast at that. I thought that was so much fun. I do love doing the podcast. The problem is asking people to promote me. Right, like please, would you, please, would you, please? I mean I'll show up, I'll be great. But it is like, oh, here's my, here's my book. Would you sell it at your store? It is very awkward for me to do that part. Um, I'm really more like the wind beneath other people's wings. Right, we're moms. We're always used to helping other people and and in my job, I give out scholarships to students, so I'm always the person helping the person that needs is. That was. That's probably the hardest part is for me to ask for me.
Speaker 2:Yeah but that's it, that's that's.
Speaker 3:It forces me out of my comfort zone.
Speaker 2:It's a good thing right, yeah, that's so good. And I feel like you bring up a lot of great points of just this like figuring it out right, like I think a lot of people like when I first went into this whole like writing thing or decided to write a book, like five, five years ago, it felt very overwhelmed, overwhelming of like I don't know anything. And now obviously there's so many amazing like resources and there's great things that you can just, like you said, figure it out without needing to. I think a lot of people are like, oh, I could never write a book because it's it's too hard or I don't know what I'm doing. But I mean, if you just Google it, I'm going to assume you will find information that you're looking for.
Speaker 3:But there's so many options and I feel like that's probably what's changed the most in the industry from. You know, if I would have started five years ago or 10 years ago. There's so many ways to do it and that's. You just have to pick one and go right, and if it doesn't work, pick another one. That's that's. To me, the hardest is just sifting through the amount of information that is there, and they all work. They just work a little bit differently. So that's. That's kind of oops. I had a sorry. You're gonna have to edit that. I had a blip go through my phone. I need to plug it in.
Speaker 2:Oh good, I can easily cut this out, don't worry about that.
Speaker 3:Don't you worry, let me see if it is actually. Hopefully it's still Okay. But yeah, and I'm still figuring that out, I'm still absolutely figuring that out and the other, really, I'm still absolutely figuring that out and the other, really, I think, just overwhelmingly positive, unexpected thing that happened after putting the book out, there was were people that liked it and got it, like got what I was trying to do, and you don't know, I didn't expect any response. Honestly, I'm like I want to write this book. It's a great story, it's a fairy tale, it's happy.
Speaker 3:Who's going to get it? Because it is a little bit niche, right. But then when you find those people who really get it, it's like, wow, that's so cool. I have, I have a friend in Jamaica now I have a friend in Norway and these, these women just really like what I did and that feels so good to have a camaraderie with someone you you would never have met otherwise, a camaraderie with someone you you would never have met otherwise, like I. Just that's so cool. And they're like look, we do calls now. I'm like I met you on Instagram because I posted my book and somehow you found it and you bought it and you read it. Oh wow, this is fun. That's so cool.
Speaker 2:I like that part too yeah, it's so, that's so true. And I feel like often, if there's a story coming from you or you're writing this book that you really wanted to read, there's like there's a reason and there's going to people going to be people that connect with that as well, because, like, you're not going to be the only one. That's like I really wanted to read this or I really like I had a thought about like this, or I didn't think to explore this particular sort of like moment, to explore this particular sort of like moment. That's what I find is that, like often I'll see these little tiny moments that seem really insignificant, but then I'm like, oh, there's like a story here, there's something here yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 3:Or or even like some people who connect with a line that you wrote, that when you wrote it you weren't really thinking of it being impactful. You love that line, oh, that's, that's so cool, Like just those little tiny wins, right, and they add up over time and you know I'm beginning this journey and I will do it again, even though it sucked the life out of me there for a year. But I now the next one won't be so difficult because I've learned so much. But it is just a very unique community and if anyone's out there thinking about writing, just write the book. You can do it. You can have, you can find the time and you can do it.
Speaker 2:I love that and I feel like that kind of like segues into the question that I ask all of my authors is what would be one piece of advice you'd give to someone who was just starting out their writing journey?
Speaker 3:You can absolutely do it. You can find the time. Your story's worth being told. Someone will want to hear it. There's an audience for everything and it's a great way to leave a legacy for your family or your friends or just for yourself in general. It's it's the best feeling to have a printed book arrive at your house and open it up and be like I created this, I made this. It's a really amazing feeling. Even if no one reads it, it's a great feeling. You should just do it for yourself. Absolutely do it for yourself, because not many people do it Like people start, not many people finish and just be one of the ones that do it and I think you'd be happy.
Speaker 2:I love that. That's so true. I feel like that's often the first book, like the first draft that you ever write is it's often for you. And then to have that book finished and you're like I, it, I, I wholly echo that. I'm like this is just proving to myself that I can do it. And then you know, you hope that people connect with it. But even if they don't, at least I like my book and I'll read it.
Speaker 3:I like, yeah, I love my book and I love that I figured out the process, how to do it, and it's challenging. It's good for you to be challenged and learn new things. Like, absolutely, the things I learned from doing this exceed what I would have learned if I wouldn't have done it by far and yeah, I couldn't. It's an amazing feeling. It absolutely is. I am proud of myself and I am proud of anyone who does this and wants to do it, because it is takes your whole person to do. It takes every, every bit of you to to get it done, and that that's not very often in life do you have time to really have an experience that does that.
Speaker 2:I love that that's so good. And finally, where can people connect with you and get their hands on your book?
Speaker 3:Sure. Well, I am on Instagram mostly. My pen name is Lore Wren, l-o-r-e, w-r-e-n. It's Instagram's at Lore Wren and I have a website, laurarwrencom, and my book is all over Amazon, barnes, noble, walmart, kobu, all over so you can pick it up there.
Speaker 2:Amazing. I love that Everything will be linked to the show notes so it will be super easy for people to click through and find it. But it was lovely chatting with you. I learned a lot and a super cool story which I, again, I don't often hear uh, like mythology, I haven't. I haven't chatted with that many authors that kind of like dabble in that sort of genre.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it was great. Pick it up, you'll love it. I love speaking with you, victoria. Thank you for having me on today.
Speaker 1:Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. I would love if you would leave a review and also, if you love the author that we chatted with, go find them on social media and hype them up, comment on their stuff, share their work. Even if you can't buy the book, these kinds of things are great ways of supporting indie authors and getting their book in front of new readers. And if you are a writer or author in need of a developmental editor, please reach out. I would love to chat. Everything is linked in the show notes and it would be an absolute honor to be able to get eyes on your novel. So thanks again and listen to the next episode.
