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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:
Author Khushi T Saha on Breaking Cultural Barriers in Romance
Khushi T Saha joins Victoria to discuss her steamy romance novel "Free Fall" and her journey writing authentic stories that explore the South Asian-American experience.
• Writing romance with South Asian representation that explores identity and finding love
• Balancing between two cultures and navigating different expectations for women and men
• The challenges of writing from a male perspective for the first time
• How a vivid dream during a personal crisis sparked her writing career
• The reality of marketing as an indie author while balancing other responsibilities
• The freedom of self-publishing to tell authentic cultural stories
• The importance of refreshing your backlist with new covers or relaunches
• Finding balance between social media marketing and creative writing time
• The value of in-person events and author collaborations
About the author:
Bringing you interracial romances with tons of heat, passion, and a healthy infusion of love ... unapologetically Aunty unapproved and HEA an ALWAYS!
I'm a notorious daydreamer. Ask anyone close to me and they’ll tell you I'm a positive mushy person, too. Enter in ‘writing romance novels’: what began as self-care to overcome personal trauma, ended up evolving into something much more fulfilling. Bringing stories of angst, personal growth, and passion (the steamier the better!) with some snarky humor to romantics all around has become a hunger I can’t seem to satiate. In fact, once I'm done with a story, there’s already another one brewing. I'm also first-generation Bangladeshi—born and raised in the US—so my connection to the motherland is fierce, with sprinklings of a sense of loss in there. I include South Asian nuances/representation in my writing because I want experiences like my own to be seen (that of straddling two very strong cultures and finding one's identity).
When I'm not writing, I manage my local craft business and teach, garden in the spring and summer months, run around with my boys and puppy, and spend time with my hubby and family. I'm also obsessed with murder mystery shows and podcasts.
LINKS
website: www.ktsromance.com
purchase my most recent release, Free Fall:
https://books2read.com/Free-Fall-kts
purchase signed paperbacks & receive character art + swag
https://www.etsy.com/shop/KTSRomance
connect with me:
https://www.instagram.com/ktsromanceauthor
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100076841631484
https://www.tiktok.com/@ktsromance
sign up for my newsletter:
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 monthly support Writer's Haven: Revitalize your creativity, map out your novel, and unleash your authentic voice.
Your story deserves to shine, and I’m here to ma
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. Welcome back to Bookshop Chats. In today's episode, I am chatting with Krishi T Saha. Welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much, Victoria. I'm happy to be here.
Speaker 1:I am so excited to chat with you and hear all about your book. I was reading the notes that you had sent in and I'm very, very excited to hear about your story, so I'm just going to give you the floor and let you share all that. You can, you know, tease it, but you know you don't want to give it away, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so my most recent release came out in May, last May, called Free Fall, and it is a super steamy romance contemporary novel with South Asian representation. I write about the South Asian experience growing up in the West, mainly in America, since that is my experience and what it was like finding your identity, finding love through finding yourself. It's a lot of you know, self-awareness and figuring out your path in life and a lot of the characters I draw from personal experience as well as other people and family members and just people in my community who've gone through something similar and I want to, I wouldn't say, expose that, but I want to just share some of those experiences about what we in the South Asian culture and South Asian Americans go through kind of on a daily basis. You know, every day you're're, you know, wondering if you fit in, or what do I need to do to be heard, or you know things like that how do I? The fitting in part is the biggest part 100%, 100%.
Speaker 1:That sounds so interesting. I feel like too, especially um, like being a first generation, um like kid coming into, like new country, like all of that stuff is so like. It's almost like you are dancing in two different worlds.
Speaker 2:You are and I'm, I was, I was born in America, but you know, you're still part of the community and you're straddling to very strong cultures where one has a complete different idea of what a female should be doing and the other I mean things are changing now, but growing up it was, you know, they wanted us to do everything still be a good student, maybe be a doctor, but also, why aren't you married yet? Why don't you have kids yet? That kind of thing. And I know that a lot of other cultures face the same challenges or old fashioned way of thinking. So I think that my writing not only you know shares my experiences and the South Asian American experience, which you know can relate to other cultures as well. I love that.
Speaker 1:That's so awesome.
Speaker 2:So with Free Fall, this is what my sixth book out and it was very difficult to write because I all of my South Asian characters are the female main character and this was the first time that I decided to jump in and write from a male perspective. And yes, yeah, the challenges, um, that they face, that I feel like men and boys face in South Asian culture, can be similar. You know, be, be a good kid, support your parents, listen to your parents, listen to your elders. But there's also another side to that where you know, be financially stable, be able to take care of your family, get married, you know, have the babies also, but they're also given a little bit of leeway. At least that was from my experience growing up, like the boy some of the boys I grew up with, they could be hoodlums and get away with it no one's just they're just the girls had to be, you know, more demure and you know I'll show that side to them.
Speaker 2:So it was, it was a challenge and it's funny. Um, one of my sisters is a huge, uh, supporter of my writing and she's always, you know, you know, saying you captured that perfectly. That's exactly what it was like. She started reading this one and she was like I can't read it. She, she was like I just don't think I'm gonna like him and my actually my editor in the very beginning was like I think you should make him a little bit more likable. So there was some, some stuff I had to change in there. But he is a grumpy person along with being very arrogant, which is the arrogance is something I noticed a lot with my male cousins. Still, when I see them to this day, we're grown up and I still feel like a little kid around them, like a little girl, because they're, you know, they grew up in back in South Asia and India and Bangladesh, and so they have a different mindset of how they see me. So, anyway, that is what that's about. It is free, fall is a grumpy, sunshine. Slight age gap. She is of Russian descent, so you'll get some of that in there. She trained to be a ballerina. You'll get some of that in there. She trained to be a ballerina you'll get some of that in there.
Speaker 2:He's an attorney being challenged by his family to get married and work with a matchmaker and he checks out astrology. He's just trying to figure it all out, trying to make it fit into his little box and his checklist, like he's trying to check, you know, items off his list, and he realizes when he meets her through um, through friends, and she needs some free legal advice, that he has this attraction that he can't, you know, put away and starts to investigate that. So obviously they have a happily ever after. But there's a lot of stuff that goes in there in terms of you know what he faces, what his parents think, what everybody thinks about him dating a white woman and how she's not good enough, so yeah that's super fascinating.
Speaker 1:I feel like that's such a cool thing because, like you, don't often get the romance from the male character's perspective, so I feel like that must have been such a challenge as a writer.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I do write dual POV so you're always going to get each character's point of view. But, yes, from it took a lot out of me to write this one um, and it's pretty thick. It is a thick book but I've had, um, some of my uh, regular readers come back to me and say you did a great job. I know, you know they read my newsletter and they're like we know how much you struggled and you captured it. You did it. So I, you know, I'm glad about that. It took, you know, I was going through a personal there's a death in the family at the time that I was trying to release it. So there was a lot going on, yeah, so after releasing it in May, I needed to take a big fat break.
Speaker 1:That's super important. I feel like, yes, that's something that is not often talked about. I think, in in writing and creativity and all of that, it's just really you do need that space, um, and it's okay to have that. I think sometimes we can forget that that's where the magic happens again. You need that you need life.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, and I know there are people. I was just reading in a Facebook group recently where somebody said that they were turning books out like I don't know't know 20 in a year and, granted, it's like they're also novellas and yeah, but how even that? I'm, I'm in the midst of finishing. I'm like finishing the editing on a novella and that took me some time to do. But I mean, I also have another, I also have another job, I have a family to take care of, that kind of. But who knows what their situation is like, but I just. That is impressive.
Speaker 1:A hundred percent. I'd love to hear how you found the writing, or maybe like how writing found you. I always find that really fascinating to hear other authors and how they like, decided that I'm going to actually write a book.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, in fourth grade no, I'm kidding, I do remember a really, really good experience in fourth grade and my sister is the same age as me we're twins and she. I can't remember my story, but I remember her story, which was we had to write like these plays, and it was like the magic berry or was it the magic pencil. One story was mine, one story was yours, but that's something that always sticks out. I never thought I would be a writer. I mean, I wrote in a journal growing up I think a lot of angsty teens did and I kind of lost sight of that as I got into college and it was just like that's just not for me. I'm not a writer.
Speaker 2:But recently, right before I guess it was around COVID time I went through a personal, major personal issue and I had been going getting through that. I had a really vivid dream and I woke up and I was like I need to write this down, because this happens periodically to me. A lot Like my dreams are so vivid that even in the morning I'll tell my husband sometimes he's like you remember all that, what you know. So this one, just it had a storyline. It had, it had a plot point that was happening. It was in the midst of and it the issue had already happened. Then it was like the two characters, the man and a woman, were facing each other and you know, trying to find a way to make it work again, and and I thought, wow, this could be. I don't know if it could be something, but I'm just going to write it down and it started to become and it was related to my personal issue that was happening not a marriage issue, but something else. And so I just started writing daily. Writing daily, you know, after the kids were in bed and I'd be on my laptop and I run another business, and my husband was like that's a lot of writing that you're doing. I was like, yeah, you know, just putting a business plan together. You know, I didn't want to tell him when I was doing it was mine.
Speaker 2:So, um, it became a story and, um, and I wasn't sure what to do with it, I started looking up how to self-publish because I didn't want to go through a publisher. I was like I don't want to. You know, do that whole rigmarole. This is something, a story I just want to get out there. People stumble upon it and find it. They find it and it's great. It's a good story for women like me, my family, friends that I grew up with and other friends that I have made throughout the years, other, even other well, now even other brown authors, but other parents in the community who are in interracial relationships.
Speaker 2:So, um, I found um an editor, and I always get lost where I found her because she's not with them anymore. Um, it was one of those bigger sites that you can find all the creatives on there, like somebody to do your cover, somebody do your copy, editing, your editing, all that jazz. And was it upworks? It might have been upworks, um, and she was the first one I reached out to because I'd gotten a lot of big list of people and I she just seemed, you know, she was like the first one on my list and we just hit it off really well and I sent her a sample and she was like there's one on my list and we just hit it off really well and I sent her a sample and she was like there's definitely something here and the fact that it's coming from a South Asian perspective is pretty amazing. That is becoming such a topic and in like just the social conversation. So I'd love to work with you. If you want to continue pursuing this and finishing it with you, if you want to continue pursuing this and finishing it. But she was like you have a lot of issues in terms of how it's set up, because it was just like blah. It was like you know, verbal diet or written diarrhea that I sent to her, and so she's like you're gonna have to take some time to edit it in that sense. So I ended up hiring her and she's been great. I still work with her.
Speaker 2:Her name is Jessica of Silver Linings, edits, and she's amazing. I mean, she's she's a mother as well and gets that. You get caught up in life and it's like take the time. But but if she hasn't heard from you in a while and she knows there's a project on the horizon she's taps into you. She's like, hey, everything, everything, okay, you don't have to get back to me, just wanted to see for moving forward with you, know. So she's not. She doesn't stress you out, she doesn't um, push you in the in the bad way. She's just like, hey, where are we with this? So I've been working with her since then and that was like in 2021. So 2021. Yeah so, and then my first one came out in 2022.
Speaker 2:And that was the first in a series. And then I worked on the second one that came out a few months later and I worked on an epilogue. So it just kind of, you know, went from there. So that was my writing journey. Just to circle back, I didn't think I would do it, um, I didn't think I had more stories in there after after that, but, um, I people were like this is great, you think you're gonna write this person's story, this friend's story, or that friend's like people in you know the, the entire, uh, universe that I was writing, there were so many different characters that people are like are you gonna write? You know the best friend and it's like oh, I guess I could like what's his story? Why is he like that? So that's kind of how it started and I think that that is how it will continue. Is just always somebody that happened to be either in that previous story or was mentioned in that previous story will become a character in another story.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, I love that. That's so cool and I think that's such a great yeah. Just I feel like such an important reminder of it doesn't like you can start whenever, and I think sometimes we can get hung up at least for me, I know of like oh, I don't have a degree in creative writing or I don't, I'm not the best speller, I don't know how to like you like structure a story, all of these things that and then the story just kind of comes to you and you're like okay, now what do I do with it? So I love that you found that person that is going to like help you extract the magic from it.
Speaker 1:So I think that's such a key piece in the writing journey is finding the right editor, the right like community that can help you with that, so that you don't yeah, you're, you're not crushed Cause I feel like when you're a baby writer, it's the story's not bad, like it just takes time to flesh it out and really like find your voice. So I think that's such a great yeah, reminder of like you can do it. Even when you're like a busy mom or you have business like all of that stuff. It can be easy to think, oh, I'm too late. Um, I definitely know I've had that story, I'm like starting writing in my late 30s and all of that sort of stuff.
Speaker 2:So I think it's uh, yeah, it's a great reminder that yeah, the story comes to you when it comes to you exactly, and you just have to get it out there.
Speaker 1:One word I love that, I love, yeah, I find that so. Yeah, it's so fascinating and I think it's such a great reminder that, yeah, it's really I feel like trusting yourself to tell the story. I think it's what it comes down to.
Speaker 2:You know, I still have periods of self-doubt, like was this experience? Are other South Asian American women going to relate to this experience? Was it just me? But everybody's experience, though similar, will be different on how they experienced it. Does that make sense? So, you know, I may have experienced some sort of microaggression, but nobody else did. But then again, I grew up in middle America, whereas she may have grown up in Queens. You know, so it's going to be. You know, similar but different, and that's what the beauty of it is.
Speaker 1:A hundred percent and I think just bringing. I feel like that's one really powerful thing about self-publishing is that we're bringing a voice to people that previously are not represented in traditionally published. I feel like it's starting to get better, but it's still like that lived experience is a really. I always find that really fascinating to like see what that's like, and then obviously not my experience, but living in a community that is very much um, like there's a very large like South Asian community where I live as well, so seeing kind of things play out and how, like you know, families are structured and cultures and with friends and stuff like that, so it's, yeah, it's to have someone's perspective and to tell a story and get to see the like, the actual inner workings and experiences, I feel like is always amazing, and I think it's so great that you have that opportunity. Yeah, cause it just reminds us that we're not so alone, I think.
Speaker 1:I think that's a really important thing and I feel like that's really what storytelling is all about is just reminding us that it's just yeah, not just us, and I think it's great for just opening people's eyes and seeing, oh, wow, like I didn't know, maybe I was doing that, um, uh to. You know your unconscious biases and all of that sort of stuff, so I think that's a really great um message too. That kind of came through. I love that. I yeah, I yeah, I just just like writing is so exciting, I feel like I get, so I get, so I nerd out over all of this stuff, um, so now obviously we've got the books out, um, and I always like to ask authors about the marketing part, um, which is often not our favorite. Um, yes, so I would love to hear how you make that kind of work for you in your life.
Speaker 2:Well, right now I feel like I'm just a marketer, to be honest with you. But I also, you know, I'm working with a PR company over in India re-releasing a duet series of mine. So I, you know, I've got new paperbacks and we're, you know, getting a whole new small book. So I feel like that's all I'm doing. But in the beginning I didn't do any marketing and the response was zero. So marketing is necessary, any form. So I just I kind of just put the. When I finished, I put the book out there because I was like I just somebody, people will read it, people will read it and people will read it, but you have to get, get it out there in front of people's faces. So I reluctantly, started an Instagram page for my author authoring business. I started a Facebook page. I looked into starting a newsletter, maybe a year late, a year or two later. I didn't start a newsletter until maybe two years ago, I think, which was, you know, around the same time that everything else started and I just kind of got sucked into it, started TikTok not as active on TikTok, um, but you just you have to. And so I like started pushing um my first book as I was writing the second and working just with different Facebook groups who would offer me, uh, the, to get my you know stuff out there for free, you know, on free days or just some other smaller PR companies who really want to help indie authors, and they don't charge me. So that was how I started getting the ball rolling, started meeting new people and I ended up hiring a PA and this person was the one who put my newsletter together for me, would tell me about different things happening that I you know different promos that could help me get on the book funnel. You know just, and I still use book funnel, like I'm pretty good mailing list now, but I'm still on there. You're still finding new readers and want to get your stuff out there and want to get your stuff out there.
Speaker 2:So it is hard because I'm a writer who I leave everything to the last minute. Okay, that's how I've always been my entire life. And so when I say it's coming out in early summer, you know then it'll be like May and I'm like I better get it started. You know it's not that bad. But when you're doing that, you know it helps to know to like, have some lines or you know you want to be able to tease your book and and I it's like I don't give myself enough time to do that Because I just I can't, like I just don't have the time and the day, to the luxury to sit down and all I'm doing is writing and somebody else will take care of it. So I do things a little backwards, but that is just how I see it.
Speaker 2:Like the fact that I'm re releasing something that came out two years ago, you know, the fact that I marketed my first book after the fact you know, people know who I am. Now I have a small following, but it took some time. So I think everybody's journey is different and what you can and can't do is going to be different, because I am now friends with a lot of other South Asian indie authors who are amazing, but they are always marketing and writing and I'm like, oh my gosh, I know I just can't. And I've come to the point where I'm like I can't. Awesome, I'm glad that you did that.
Speaker 2:Let's partner up on something when May comes, and it's like Asian Awareness Month, like let's feed off of each other. So I get a halo effect, but I just I don't have that much. My cup is empty, like it needs. I need time to refill it. So I think constantly marketing yourself is what you're supposed to do and what you're told to do, and what some authors, a lot of authors, do, and but you hear about them burning out on social media and saying I took a whole month off, um, but I don't. I, I'm not even, I'm not even at that level what they're doing and I'm already like I can't do this so I'm just doing what I can do, and social social media has always been the bane of my existence.
Speaker 2:I had to start one for my other business too, and that's more relaxed in my speed. Um, this one is like post every day, and when you have something releasing, post two to three times a day and it's it's hard, it's hard to come up with new content. You have to figure out a strategy to recycle content at a certain time. Um, so yeah, but I mean I I'll say I don't have, um, a hard strategy. I'm kind of still like throwing stuff out to see what sticks, and even doing that sometimes I don't even pay attention. I'm just like let me just get the picture out there and that's that. Put some hashtags and call it a day. You know, I don't know what worked, I'm just going to do this again and that's like, and a lot of times I think just people following you on books to grammars, just it just reminds them that's, that's really what they're taking from it.
Speaker 1:So, A hundred percent. I think that's such a it is a great reminder of like you, really you have to do what works for you and you have to find your group and I think that, honestly, is what works on social media. Like I find I'm like I'm going to do what I want to do and those are often the posts that do the best ones.
Speaker 2:Like. I just do like.
Speaker 1:I don't. I'm not really one like some of the trends. I'm like, oh, if I find it funny and like like I just do, like I don't. I'm not really one like some of the trends. I'm like, oh, if I find it funny and like like I'm really like pulled into it or whatever. Like I like the. You're so funny, like whatever that one was thanks like and then dark.
Speaker 2:I did do that one.
Speaker 1:I like that one and I thought it was hilarious um, because some of the people like put really like random things and I find it entertaining, um, but yeah, just really what? Like what works for me that's? I'm realizing that that then I have more fun with it, I think, and make it less stressful and just sort of, you know, show up as myself and not, because then it does, like you said, it burns you out, then you you're not writing, then the creativity is just not there. Um, because I do feel like there's a lot of pressure to like constantly be posting and obviously it is important to get your name out there because there are, like it is, a very saturated market, um, but I think, like you, like you said, like working like with other, like other authors, like different ways that you can kind of piggyback off of that. Some authors that I've chatted with as well really like in-person events too. So getting like kind of offline newsletters like all of that stuff's amazing as well, because I have started in-person events too started last August, and it's good.
Speaker 2:I think it's good too. It's just it feels different. It feels a little more authentic in that you can have that person-to-person conversation and you can you know you can somebody's passing by your table and doesn't intend to stop and you're like, hey, I write this and you know there's 50% chance they're gonna be like, okay, well, I read that. What's that about, you know? So you're, it is like a cold sell, but it's nice. I mean like it's a different way of selling yourself in person.
Speaker 1:I think that, yeah, it's, it's a cool way just to connect with people. I feel like um, and I, I mean, I'm the type of person that really does thrive off of those conversations. So, even if they don't buy the book or whatever, like you never know right, Like you never know who they've got a friend, yeah, that would read that or or just that sort of thing, cause it can be easy to be frustrated.
Speaker 1:I feel like, especially with like, especially being an indie author of just like, oh, like it's not reaching people or people aren't liking it, like all of that sort of stuff. So really trying to reframe it in a way that like okay, well, you know, maybe it's not reaching everybody, but also remembering, like in your experience you are kind of like you're playing the long game and you are going back to stuff that you've already put out and and you get to like show people that. So that's a cool thing that I feel like a lot of um, like we kind of forget that, that we have that hard to do so, I think that's really amazing.
Speaker 2:I'm lucky because, I mean, I, back in the day this was like a year, maybe a decade ago I worked in marketing and I worked in product development and we would relaunch stuff all the time with new packaging and just a new you know, similar branding, but something that was new because that's what people needed to see. Like we, we, we get that way too. We get bored easily, a lot more easily now than we ever did. So I think that authors need to remember that. Your backlist, refresh it, I don't know. I mean, if you can like, you don't even need to change the cover. Maybe you just relaunch it, bring some kind of newness back to it.
Speaker 2:So, but what I did was I decided to go with, like, silhouette cover, since the whole cartoon thing is in right now, the drawings, which I love and hate at the same time. Um, but what I've done with mine and I think you've seen what free fall looked like, where it's just silhouettes that's kind of what I the direction I want to go with mine. So that's kind of what I'm doing now with this duet, the unravel duet. Book one is out there now, being, you know, book tour if you will, and book two will have a cover reveal next month.
Speaker 1:So very exciting. They're pretty covers, they really are.
Speaker 2:Yes covers, I think.
Speaker 1:I love it. I do. I am such a sucker for, yeah, the covers. I know that they say don't judge a book by its cover, but that's a lie, because everybody's going to do it.
Speaker 1:What are you talking about? Right Like? It's just so silly, exactly Right. And it's hard, like, just because there are so many right Like, you think of all of the yeah, you go into a bookstore and there's like thousands of titles and I'm like I would buy them all if I had unlimited money, but it's hard. It's hard to do that. So, yeah, I think that's such a great reminders that you do have, especially if you are self-publishing. You have that power to go back and, yeah, rework, it-release it, change it if you want to, but, like you said, you don't have to. And it's, I think, too, even remembering like what's trending right like. That's another thing. If, like, you know what? Maybe something that you wrote five years ago wasn't super popular but now suddenly everybody's like oh, my god, we're obsessed with this. Right, please really like share it so people know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for sure, I love that I love that.
Speaker 1:Well, I would love to hear, um, what would be one piece of advice that you would have for somebody who is just starting out their writing journey?
Speaker 2:um, I think, uh, don't be scared to share your story, um, but that's that's. Also comes with a second piece. That depends on if you're self-publishing or planning to go the traditional route. I want to self-publish and it'd be great if a traditional house was like hey, let's work together. But I know that that would be a lot of work and a lot of giving up my creative storytelling ability because some things are not marketable.
Speaker 2:There are ugly things that I write about and I've had readers, you know, in review say I didn't really like that, you know, she really pointed out the biases there and it's like but that's what really happened, you know. So you're going to find it'll be difficult to pass all of your ideas, I believe, with a traditional writer and I hear you know other authors who are with traditional publishing houses tell me, you know, yeah, I had to really cut it down or take that out or whatever, and that's sad to me. So I think you have to find what's the most authentic to yourself in order to write the best story that you can write and what you, you know, the, the ideas that you want to get out. Because if you want to go with a traditional public publishing house awesome, but keep that in mind.
Speaker 2:Self-publishing you can write what you want, but keep in mind that you will be wearing 100 hats. Yeah, your budget is negative, zero, so you know. So just that is. It's like sacrifice of creativity, or you know. You just have to think about the pros and cons and I don't think that there is a bad decision. It's whatever. However, that author, that writer, that individual, how that person feels the most comfortable going about it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's such a great reminder, right, yeah, I'm all about the authenticity.
Speaker 2:It's like right, true to yourself, don't. I know something might be on trend right now, but for me it's like I have no experience with the omniverse. Okay, I mean, I wouldn't even know how to tackle I don't even read that. I don't know how to tackle that. I know I can make a ton of money doing it, but I mean that's not my experience, so that's not authentic to me. So that's you know. That's my piece of advice is be authentic to yourself.
Speaker 1:I love that. I think that's so true and really it it. Yeah, it comes down to just trusting yourself to tell that story. And, yeah, trusting the story, right Cause I feel like each story probably will ask different things and some of them may be like try querying and see if that's it. But it also, just because you know you try that route and it doesn't work out doesn't mean your story is bad, right, like you said it's not necessarily marketable or you know, it's just tapping on things that you know people are they don't like but maybe they need to hear or whatever.
Speaker 1:So I think that's such a great reminder. I love that.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, awesome, that's yeah, that's, that's amazing. Well, I'd love for you to share how people can get in touch with you and find your books.
Speaker 2:Well, you can always visit my website, which is wwwktsromancecom. I'm very active on Instagram at KTS Romance Author and all of my eBooks are on Kindle. We support indie authors. We really need you. You can buy the paperbacks on Amazon, but I've been directing people to my Etsy shop, which is on my website. Okay, I apologize, I cannot remember it off the top of my head. Or, barnes Noble does have some of my paperbacks as well online.
Speaker 1:Amazing, awesome. Well, everything will be linked in the show notes, so it'll be super easy for me to click, for people to click through and me also to click through and find it, and I love that you have options right, because I know Amazon is a hot topic.
Speaker 1:I'm like I want to support the indie authors but, yeah, it's that balance. So, if there's, I love that there are options now for people to, yeah, buy direct from the author, but I also recognize that that can sometimes be a costly thing. If you are, you have the product right. So I think that's a great reminder of like, yes, amazon, we don't love it, but also you are supporting indie authors through Kindle Unlimited, and sometimes that's really the only place that you can find them, unfortunately.
Speaker 2:So I think, it is.
Speaker 1:it is what it is, and if that means that it's supporting you guys too, I will. I will do it Well, thank you.
Speaker 2:Amazing. Well, I love chatting with you today.
Speaker 1:I feel like I learned a lot, which I always do, and I love hearing stories, and yours sounds so fascinating.
Speaker 2:Thank you, it's great to be here, victoria.
Speaker 1:Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. I would love if you would leave a review and also if you loved 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 kind 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.
