12. Interview with Author Felicity George: Traditionally Publishing a Romance Series

In this episode of Show Don’t Tell Writing, Suzy interviews Felicity George, author of the Gentlemen of London series. Felicity shares her journey from writing her first practice novel to landing a five-book deal with Hachette's Orion imprint. They discuss the intricacies of Regency Romance, the importance of genre expectations, and the process of traditional publishing. Felicity also provides valuable insights into writing fast, leveraging writer communities, and how writing to market has shaped her opportunities thus far.

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Transcript

0:49

Welcome to Show Don't Tell Writing with me, Suzy Vadori, where I teach you the tried and true secrets to writing fiction and nonfiction that will wow your readers, broken down step by step. This show explores writing techniques and shows you a glimpse behind the scenes of successful writing careers and coaches writers live on their pages so you can learn and transform your own storytelling. Whether you're just starting out crafting, editing, or currently rewriting your first book or maybe even your 10th, this show will help you unlock the writing skills you didn't know you needed but you definitely do. I'm looking forward to helping you get your amazing ideas for from your mind onto the page in an exciting way for both you and your readers, so that you can achieve your wildest writing dreams while having fun doing it. Let's dive in. Say hello to my guest, Felicity. Felicity, you're currently vacationing, calling in from North Carolina, correct? Yes, I am, but I'm from Toronto. So Felicity George, I'm so excited to be speaking with you, Felicity, today. So excited to be speaking with you, Suzy. Yay! Felicity has actually been part of this inspired writing community since the very beginning. Did you know that? You were part of it since the very beginning. She'd been working on a novel and joined my first ever boot camp, and she kind of was at an impasse with that passion project, so she wrote what she called a practice novel. During that bootcamp, during our eight weeks together, that is not typical by the way. I'm not advertising that everybody can do that. Felicity is one of the fastest writers I've ever met. But she worked on that and that led to her becoming agented and signing a five book deal with Hachette's Orion Imprint. I've asked her to celebrate the launch of this podcast with you because she's been so generous in giving back to this community. And she was once right in those shoes where you are and I'm so excited for you guys to hear her story. So, Felicity George is a teacher and a novelist from Toronto, Canada, a devotee of romance and historical fiction. Felicity adores a happily ever after. She's the author of A Lady's Risk, A Courtesan's Worth, A Debutante's Desire, Tongue Twisters, right? Which together form the Regency Romance series, Gentlemen of London, published by Orion Fiction, Hachette, UK. Her fourth novel, In Pursuit of a Duchess, oh I didn't know the title, A Regency Romance Murder Mystery, also published by Orion, will be available in April 2025, right? That is correct, yes. So let's see, how's it all going? It's going well. It's very, very busy. And on top of that, you know, I have a job and a real life and family and all those other things. But it's always fun. It's always fun. But you have to make the time, right? You do. You are one of the most disciplined writers that I have ever met, to be honest. You, you just get it done. First of all, congratulations on this latest release. When this book, I've got it here with me. Because when this book first came out, I ran to grab the audio book because I had read an earlier draft but I hadn't seen the finished copy and then Felicity actually sent me this copy in the mail, so thank you. You're welcome. And then a few weeks ago The paperback's not quite out in North America yet. So you have an early copy. It is out of me. I have an early. Oh, okay. I have an early copy. So, so a few weeks ago, a fellow book coach posted in one of our group chats that she was reading the series and she loved it. And she had no idea that, you know, I'd worked with you or anything else. And she said, fun fact, I'm reading this amazing book, book three in Felicity George's series. And I just opened it up and it is dedicated to our own Suzy Vadori. And I haven't looked. Yeah. And I looked, I didn't know. And so, thank you. I was like, oh my gosh. You really wrote that? I didn't know you didn't know. Yeah. I just ran to, well, I should have, you should read all the stuff, right? But I didn't because I read the audio book and I'd read the thing and then I just flipped ahead, right? And so this book is actually dedicated to myself and for Jess Bull and also in memory of Annie. So I wanted to ask you, how has community in general, yes, the Inspired Writing community and your writing group with Jess and all of that, how did community play a part in your journey? Oh, it's critical. Like, it's so important to have, even if it's just a small group of writing buddies or critique partners. It's. It's essential. You really cannot write alone, they say. It takes a village to do a lot of things and definitely people, if you look at the back of novels, often authors will say, It took a, it took a village to write this. It's so true. There's a team behind every novel. In fact, if you look at the back of the Debutante's Desire, one of the things that I love that Orion does is they list the kind of credits for the book. And it's full of people who played a part in that book, from designing the cover, to editing, to marketing. So, of course, that's on the publication end. But the writing itself is, it's simply essential to have some trusted, um, people that's been a wonderful thing about being part of your community, Suzy. That's where I met a lot of those people. I also met a lot of people at the Twitter writing, in the Twitter writing community, but I will say Twitter writing community is not quite what it used to be. And I'm not as often on social medias, but I hear maybe Blue Sky and Instagram and there's some other socials that have a good writing community. Yeah, we're kind of waiting for that next one to emerge. I'm still on X. I mean, I have 30, 000 followers there, so it's like, I hate to walk away from it. But I just found even yesterday when I was trying to tag all of the guests today. To do a post. I'm like, Ooh, people aren't there anymore. Right? Like it's starting to be, but it used to be the place where writers would gather. And it still has a lot of that, especially for newer writers. There are a lot of resources. There are a lot of agents are still there. A lot of editors are still there. They are trying to find that next place to go where we could all be together. It's worth having an account there, but what you do Suzy through your Facebook group is it's. Wonderful, because you've really sort of gathered everyone together already and taken a lot of the work out of trying to search for that community. Yeah, and I just love, yeah, the Facebook group, I like to call us, I don't know, I started using it and now it's like a thing and I'm like, I say that we're the most positive community, like writers community on the internet. And I, I really believe that that's true because you're never going to get, you know, when I first started, like, I also have a free Facebook group that's up all the time, the Inspired Writing Facebook group. But yeah, I also have that that's up all the time. And when we first, I was really scared to launch it because I was worried about that negativity that sometimes comes from some of the groups and people slamming newer writers and things like that. And. I have got to tell you, we've maybe deleted three posts in the four years that we've had it, like, because it just doesn't happen. So, yes, yes, you guys are members of that. Okay, so, can you tell us a little bit about the series and this latest release, A Debutante's Desire? What's it about? So, it's a Regency Romance series. I will admit, the latest release is my favorite. It is a series in that the characters are interconnected to a degree. They appear in different books. Bye. In each book stands alone, Debutante's Desire, I, it's a romance, but it has a mystery subplot, and I really enjoyed writing that, which is why I decided to step away from my series and write a complete standalone fourth novel next, which is a romance murder mystery. So that's been quite exciting for me. But other than that, it's, uh, it's just a fantastic Regency romance. If you love historical romance, it will be right up your alley. It's very much, I'm, I'm a believer in genre expectations. It's rich into genre expectations. It's going to give you all the feels and a super happy, happily ever after at the end, as it should be in romance. Absolutely. And you talk about genre expectations. So for those who are new here, some genres like romance have reader expectations that are really difficult to break. And if you do break them, then you might be disappointing them. You shouldn't call it a romance basically, because they're going to slap you because they wanted what they want, right? What are some of those genre expectations? Could you just share with us what that sounds like? Like what, what, what do you mean by that? Yeah, so romance is a very commercial fiction. I love commercial fiction. Uh, I love literary fiction too, but commercial fiction is a big selling, it's a big seller and people go to commercial fiction, whether it's cozy mystery, murder mystery types or thriller or romance or any number of other ones, they go to it with certain expectations of what the book will deliver. We do the same things with movies as well, because they're also genres. We go to a horror movie expecting a certain kind of thrill. We go to a rom com expecting laughs and happiness. So it's the same with books. Um, the genre expectations for romance is that you will typically, Hmm, how shall I say this? You'll have at least two protagonists. It is possible to have a romance with three people. There are, of course, there's lots of flexibility there. But you will have at least two protagonists. And you will sometimes have a dual point of view and you always, always, always have a happily ever after at the end of it. If you want to write a love story with a tragic ending, that is certainly fine. It's simply not romance genre. You could call it women's fiction and make it sad, right? You could call it, yeah, you could call it all kinds of different things, but you certainly can't call it romance. And I just want to be very clear that there is nothing in the world wrong with a love story with a tragic ending, or with a less than perfect ending, less than happily ever after, but it's not romance genre. Yeah, exactly. And what happens then is you've almost got to call it romance. You have a contract with your reader. Yeah. The same thing kind of happens in many genres, but romance and mystery in particular have very tight rules and reader expectations around that and plot like beats that you need to hit. And so when Felicity actually mapped this one out, she used a combination of The inside outline, which is what I teach and is by Jenny Nash, but you also use Save the Cat to make sure that you had all of those beats. Can you tell us about how you mapped this, this one out and what you did? Yeah, so I always use Save the Cat. I think if you're going to write genre fiction, it's an excellent place to start. And it also, it's a great book. It's Save the Cat Writes a Novel. That's a great book because it gives several different genres in it, not just romance. So Save the Cat, if any of you are familiar with it, is I'm trying to think how to say it. It's a story structure. That's the word I'm looking for. Story structure that's used in many, many, many movies. Once you learn it, you can recognize the beats as they happen. I can always pause a movie now at midpoint and know that I'm at midpoint because midpoint always has a false climax that either has a false high or false low, and you have certain things that happen at the beginning, including You're inciting incident and you're break into two when your protagonist enters a new world, either figuratively or literally or both. You have a midpoint that has a very specific beat and then you go to the second half. of Act 2. It is a three act structure. Second half of Act 2, we have what the bad guys close in. That's where your poor hero is being tested again and again and again. They're going to have a dark night at the soul at the end of that, where it seems that all hope is lost. before gathering the troop and going into the five point finale. That's all in the book and it's just fantastic. Almost every movie follows that and most, most genre fiction books follow the same story structure. Absolutely, absolutely. Okay, so let's back up a bit because we're here to talk about your journey. And how you got to where you are today, right? And you didn't actually set out to write a romance initially, you were writing women's fiction or historical fiction, right? So can you talk a little bit about historical fiction and why that was your love and how you came about writing Regency romance and how that all happened? Yeah, so it kind of comes down to my decision to try to achieve traditional publication. And that was a personal choice. It was something that was a goal for myself. I wanted to see if I could do it. I wrote one novel, very much my passion project, as you say, Suzy, and I realized it didn't fit into a market niche, and the difficulty when you're looking for traditional publication is that you really do need to fit into a market niche, and some people can feel that that really restricts their creativity. Those are always personal decisions to make. I decided that I would go ahead and let my creative Creativity flow within a very structured format and trying to fit into a market niche. I know a lot about the Regency period. I am Regency re enactor. I love 18th, love long 18th century as it's called. I'm a, I read a lot of historical fiction. Since my historical fiction was set in the 1790s, it really wasn't a big jump for me to move into writing a Regency romance that was set in 1810. All my series is set between 1810 and 1820, so that's why I decided to choose that period when I decided to jump into genre romance in order to achieve traditional publication. And can you tell us a little bit about, you said it's called reenactment or Regency reenactment. I want to hear about that because in our conversation with Jenny Nash, also, um, during this, this podcast series, we talked about bringing what you love and what's interesting and what's unique to your writing. And so yes, you're writing genre romance and following a structure and yet you're bringing you something that you're actually really. interested and knowledgeable about that that nobody else could do. Can you tell us a bit about this reenactment? Because I see the Facebook posts, I see the photos, it's amazing. Go check out Felicity's profile if you want to see. Yes, so I do think it's very important to, um, play in your writing or to feel like you're playing or feel as if you enjoy being in your world for whatever reason. So, I don't know, Regency, reenacting, or any kind of social history is very much my happy place. It always has been. Drama is another one of my happy places. I teach drama, theater. They all sort of fit together when it comes to reenacting because in reenacting, You dress up in historical clothing and you sort of become a living museum. I do it a lot within the Ontario forts, the Georgian forts. That will have living history days, but I also do it just for fun. There's a large group of Ontario reenactors. We all get dressed up and we have balls and parties and it's wonderful. We get together. We do dances at the time we eat. like recipes, the historical recipes for our dinner. Some people will play the footman. It's just, it's great fun for me. It's a me thing, but it's great fun. So when I write my books, I can really tap into this. I can also tap into my theater background and, and bring that out in my novels. And, and that's a great deal of fun. I think that's important for anybody. Writing something that you enjoy is important. Yeah, definitely. And I think there's been such a resurgence. I mean, you've been doing it longer than this, but there's such a resurgence and interest in the Regency period with Bridgerton and some of the other books and movies or miniseries that are coming out. And so do you find that it's increased in popularity since you started? Oh, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. And probably that's, uh, there's maybe a little bit too much of it now. And that's where I'm going to mention another thing about traditional publication. Without exception, there is always an element of luck to getting an agent and getting a publishing deal. Some of it will have to do with timing, being in the right place at the right time, and I do think That I kind of lucked out on that. I had started my historical fiction that was set in the 1790s well before Bridgerton came out. So it wasn't even on my radar that there might be a television show that was a Regency romance, much less that it would be very, very popular. When I finished my historical romance, my passion project, Bridgerton had just come out, and when I was looking for beta readers, people asked me over and over again, Is it like Bridgerton? Is it like Bridgerton? And I was like, Oh no, I'm really sorry, it's not. It's not a romance. It's not going to give you the same feels. It's more or less set in the same time period, but it's, it's not really the same. But so many people said to me, Is it like Bridgerton? That was one of the reasons I thought, Huh, it seems that people are wanting something like Bridgerton. They enjoyed it. It was early days of the pandemic. That was a big deal. When people, um, were all housebound, and that, when that show came out. As Stevie said, I, I write quickly. I certainly wrote my first, my, I guess my second novel, but technically my first published novel. I certainly wrote that very, very, very fast. And I had it ready to query. A couple months after, like, very much still in the height of Bridgerton. Yeah. And that was a coincidence, really, I suppose, sort of. It was definitely a timing thing. And so it got snapped up pretty quickly. I didn't query for very long at all. And I didn't query to very many people. Yeah, so I do, I do think there's an element of luck, although I don't think it's dependent on luck alone. And I could talk about that. If, if you wanted to, but yeah, definitely here to talk about, you know, a lot of, a lot of the writers here want to know how that process goes and you know, there's lots of different choices out there. And if I remember correctly, when you had finished that practice, not you're calling it still. Right. And, and you were like, well, I'll query it for a bit, but this one I could maybe self publish or I could do something. And I was like, no, it's actually. Excellent. You've got a really good shot. Like go for it. And you queried at the same time as you were submitting direct. Do you want to talk a little bit about that? Because there was an open call that you answered, right? Yeah. So I was querying to agents at the same time that I submitted directly to one publisher, which was. It was in Hachette and it was one publisher that accepted queries from unagented people, but everything ended up happening in the same week. And it happened around, um, Pitmab, which used to be a Twitter event in which you could pitch a book. Everything happened to me. I feel like it was within a couple of days and I got two offers. It was so exciting. Of representation and the author from Orion all at the same time. I actually consulted with you, CZ, at the time, whether I should take an interest or if I shouldn't. We were texting, it was like late at night, and I was like texting back, and you were like, okay, just because you were dealing with the UK. Now this is coming in, and this is coming in. It was super exciting, and you were really smart about it, and you ended up, you know, with exactly what you wanted at the time, right? Exactly, yes. Yeah. It was super exciting. Yeah. So, so it can happen like that. So when we're talking about, just going to back up a little bit for the newer writers or for listening to the podcast, querying is about the letter that you send to gain interest from an agent and you need an agent in general to publish with a large traditional publisher. There are different times. When publishers or smaller publishers will accept unagented, but this agent is usually the gatekeeper and you need to get the agent first before you can try to traditionally publish what, what Felicity is talking about is the fact that sometimes, especially if they're looking for something like, okay, there's this huge trend in Regency romance. We're just going to open it up and cut the, not to cut the agents out, but like. Yeah. We're going to open it up and you can go direct. So that does happen and watch for that. And that's called on occasion. It does happen sometimes, but it's very rare. And so you did the research and you found that there was this one spot that you could send it. And that's what ended up happening. And then you were able to choose your agent and do all of that at the same time. And then your agent ended up representing you for that deal in the end. Yes. Which I was really glad of, especially with five books. In that deal. Yeah. Exactly. Somebody in my court. Exactly. And somebody that's going to help you. I mean, the agent is amazing because they will help you with lots of things in your career. And I'm sure you have an amazing agent and I'm sure that she helps you, you know, talk about this big shift from romance to not a big shift, but is a shift from romance to murder mystery. Right. Oh, the murder mystery is still a romance. It's primarily a romance. It has a murder mystery subplot, but yeah. Yeah, absolutely. But all of those shifts are things that you could talk about with your publisher, with your party groups, with your agent, with all of that and, and work on that. Okay. Awesome. I can go back to that point that I was, uh, saying about luck and it's not entirely luck. But when it comes to careering, you need. What I didn't fully understand is what agents mean when they talk about a hook. I didn't fully understand that. I think I understand it a lot better now. It so happened that I had a hook, but I used to think, and some of you may be way beyond this point and already understand this, but are there any of you who don't quite? Hopefully this will be helpful. I used to think a hook was something exciting that happened in the first pages of a book that hooked a reader. That is sort of true. People say that, yeah, but, but not what you're talking about. That's not quite what you need for a query. So, most agents, not all agents, in fact, my agent is an exception. She told me once that she loves to read the pages first. But most agents will actually start with the query letter, which means you need to hook in the letter. And the hook that they're talking about in those letters is, as best I can understand, it's the marketing hook for your book. So, Where does it fit in? People want to read books. that they have some kind of connection to. So even if you're reading literary fiction, you might choose, let's say, oh, I don't know. Let's say you read The Gentleman of Moscow or something like that. Fantastic historical fiction, pretty literary. Or you might have read, um, All the Light We Cannot See or They Cannot See, something like that. Very popular literary fiction. Hooks would be books that come after that. You might be inclined to read other books that take place in France during World War II or, or that take place in Russia right after the revolution of, of 1917, I think. So those would be hooks. Those would be things that would hook you as a reader before you even open up the first page. Agents are looking for a little bit broader hook than that. They're looking for that thing. Which for me was Bridgerton, which says we already have a waiting audience for this book. So when I queried a novel that was like Bridgerton, people were saying, Oh yeah, we already have millions of people who are watching Bridgerton who will want books like this in the upcoming months because they have to wait a year or two or however for the next, long for the next season to come out. So a hook is something like, That and that's what you need to have in your query letter. You need to show your agent where your market where the market is currently already there for your book and your book will fit into these people's interest. But just wanted to add that bit. Um, yeah, no. So that's. When I say there's an element of luck, there is, but also one of the most critical parts is getting that hook right in your query letter. Then they'll look at your, at your chapters and actually, you know, read your, read your chapters. Yeah, absolutely. And Alyssa's asking in the comments, is that where comp titles come in? It is. I don't know if you want to talk about comp titles for a moment, because did you actually use Bridgerton as a comp? I bet, I bet you didn't. Well, I didn't per se, not exactly like that. My comp was actually very, very simple. People say use a comp that has been published within the last two to five years. And as a general rule, I do think that that's really good. One exception. is Jane Austen. Jane Austen died 200 years ago, but it does not matter because she has so many followers. And so all the entire genre of Regency fiction comes from Jane Austen fans, that they are actually still in the millions. That's why you have so many. Festivals around Jane Austen, you have so many movies that come out, uh, television shows, spinoffs, fan fiction, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And the entire genre of Regency fiction as well, including Bridgerton. So my comp was actually, I wish I could remember the exact sentence for you, but it was something like a Regency romance reminiscent of Jane Austen, but with the steaminess of Julia Quinn, I think is what I said. It was very simple. I think that sounds. Yeah, and it worked. I remember my, uh, commissioning editor saying, Ah, I loved this comp! Again, it was in the right time and place to have that. I would comp differently if I were querying my first Regency romance right now. I wouldn't lean on Bridgerton because At this point, Bridgerton or Julia Quinn has been used, who is the writer of Bridgerton, in case people don't realize that, of the novels. At this point, people will have used that for, for several years. Yeah, so I, I just, there's some chatter about comps in the, in the, in the comments. And I just want to back up a moment for those of you who are not in the throes of querying. There's people going, Oh, I'm pulling out my hair, trying to find the comps. And what comps are is a comparable, right? So there's comparable books. And so you want to tell them what they're Right. So where are the fans? Basically, this is like readers of this kind of book will also like my book. So for those of you who are pulling out your hair, trying to figure this out, what Felicity did and what I usually teach is, is that you don't want to find a book, it's really hard to find a book exactly like yours. We talked about this all the time and you know, everybody's book is completely different. And so you can't see it's exactly like this. Right? So instead, pick a few things like what are the, what are the hooks? What are the important pieces that you need that agent to know, right? It's steamy, right? So that piece you can take from one book and yet it has the historical pieces of the Jane Austen era, right? So those two things, it's steamy and it's historical. Those are the features. That's where it fits in. The problem with using a comparable, like my book is exactly like Bridgerton. Is you look like an amateur, right? And that's what, there's this thing that happens when a book is too big. It's like comparing to, I wrote the next Harry Potter or I wrote the next. If you aim too high, then agents will just dismiss it. It's unfortunate, but they will, even if it's true. They just think it's lazy, right? Cause you haven't done enough. I usually teach that you can, you don't have. Access to the actual sales data that agents have access to and publishers have access to, but you can look on Goodreads and Amazon and see how many reviews it is. And depending on where, depending on what genre it is, pick something in the middle, right? Something with 20 reviews. If you find a book, people come to me all the time and say, Suzy, I found a comparable. That's exactly like my book. And they're really excited. And it's like something that was self published in Iowa and has five reviews on it. What you're doing if you use that as your comparable is you're telling the agent your book won't sell, right? You're telling them that you're writing exactly like something that didn't sell. That's not a good selling point. And if you pick something like Bridgerton or Harry Potter or something, that's like an amazing blockbuster. It just feels like you didn't do your homework, right? So it's got to be somewhere in between. So hopefully those tips help. Does that make sense? Yeah. And I also tell people when they ask me, don't shy away from using really popular television shows or movies as well. It doesn't have to be a book. All the time we watch something on TV and think, gosh, I wish I had a book like that. And agents know that. Yeah. And you picked Jane Austen, which is not a book, right? It's an author. Yeah, but I'm just saying it's a body of work. It's, yeah, that's right. Yes. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. Since I picked Julia Quinn as well, I didn't pick a specific book. Yeah. So there is a bit of Locke involved in the traditional publishing sort of Writing to market and if you could write a book in eight weeks, then maybe you can, you know, chase a trend, but most of us can't. So we, we, we sort of need to think longer term and not chase those trends, but the book that you actually produced was smart and really well written. So that's what helped it stand out, right? Like, it still has to be a good book. It's not like anybody could have written it or AI could have written it for you, right? Um, so what do you think? Do you, do you agree that that's what set it apart? I think the actual, That is very important. Don't get me wrong. You need to know, show more that you know what you're doing. I think then, in terms of, like, beautiful sentences don't matter in a manuscript. Should it be clean? Yeah, it should be clean. Like, not full of typos or, or, or grammar, um, mistakes. Definitely have a brief reader. Have a look at it. If you can afford it, definitely a book coaching or, or a structural edit prior to querying is fantastic. That's not within everybody's grasp. So critique part partners and report it. All of those things need to happen. But at the end of the day, I think what sets the book apart is do you have a hook? Do you have something that there's a market out there who's going to be ready for your book? And, and do you hit The points that people are looking for in the writing, like do you hit the structure points, whatever structure you've chosen or genre or together genre and structure, are you hitting that deep that shows people that you know what you're doing in terms of the actual manuscript once it's chosen by a commissioning editor, then it's going to go through several edits. So anywhere from between one, two to seven different structural edits, and depending on how much support you get, you'll definitely have a copy edit, but definitely have a proofread. You might also have multiple copy edits, and you might have a line re, uh, line editor and, and several things. So some books are in edits for two years. Other ones, it depends. Like mine don't, don't get that much, but again, that's the kind of book that I write. Yeah, so writing is important, but good writing is not, do you know where to put your semicolons, or are you using the very best verb possible in this sentence? It's more things like knowing your points, and knowing things like to do remove filter, if Suzy has talked to you guys about that. Do remove as much filter as you possibly can, make your writing as exciting as possible, worry less about. making it perfect in the sense of writing. Storytelling perfection, not writing perfection, if that makes sense. There's a difference between storytelling and writing. And we're here in celebration of my podcast, as you know, on my favorite topic, show don't tell writing, but how does showing in, especially in romance, in historical fiction, how does incorporating that into your storytelling How has that changed your writing and how do you think it affects your readers or how do you use it? Yeah, so, you know, I have my book right now. My fourth book is in its final structural edit, and it's only at this point that I'm really going through ruthlessly and removing all the filter. So, you know, to this point we've just been working on story and characterization and things like that. So show, don't tell is, it's. It's making your writing more lively, more visceral. It's visceral, like showing the, yes, it's showing what your character is feeling in a way that your audience can understand, like her skin crawled versus she was terrified. Those are, those are show versus tell details. So what is filter? Sorry, I've seen a couple of people ask this. Filter is words like felt, saw. realized, she realized there was a monster in the corner and she was terrified would be an excellent example of filter. Filter isn't telling. Or she felt terrible, whatever. That would be an excellent example of something that's very much telling with a lot of filter in it. Um, so you want to describe that monster in the corner, we don't need to know that she saw it there because the moment you describe the monster in the corner, we know that we're seeing it through her eyes because we're in her head. And you don't need to say she felt terrible, you need to say what her visceral reaction was, the sweat on her forehead, the lump in her throat, the shaking of her body, things like that. Absolutely. And filter words is one of the lessons that I teach in the bootcamp, but I'll just go through it really quickly because you did describe it. But for those who are new to the words of filters, they're phrases that we add in that aren't needed. And they place that filter between your point of view character and the reader. And it reminds us that somebody is narrating the story. What we really want to do is dive into that character's body and get that visceral experience that Felicity's talking about. And have them really be in that character's point of view. And so filter, like you mentioned, a filter would be like, she, she realized that there was a table in the middle of the room, if you're in their point of the view, just say the table was in the middle of the room and you don't need to add all of that extra. And so whether or not even she, she placed her bag or she hasn't like placed her heavy bag on the well worn notched wood at the table, you know, whatever you can get that's visual details that really place you in that spot. Go ahead, Suzy. Yeah. No, you're absolutely right. And I love that you shared that because. You basically shared that in your drafts, you don't worry about it, right? Your first drafts are not going to be perfect. And then you go through and methodically kill those little phrases. And that's what I teach people how to do is not to write it perfectly. The first time they're going to creep in, but then there's a list of words, search and destroy and get rid of them. It can actually tighten up your word count. Many, many new words. With have word count bloat, right? It happens. And one of the ways that you can actually go through and tighten up your manuscript without changing anything about what happens is to delete these phrases, which are three or four or five words, right? And it can, it can actually give you thousands back depending on how much you use them. I am cutting words. Every word I cut at this point is just glee. You get to a point in editing, this is, who said this phrase? You know it. Where, where it's not about what you can add. The point when your novel is finished is when everything that can be taken away has been taken away. I'm not yet at that point, but I'm getting there. Unfortunately, I still have copy edits. To make sure that everything that you've added, I mean, we're making up really boring examples here, but they're good because it's exactly what we're saying. When you're making it up, it's going to be boring. The first time there was a table. And then Phyllis is like, come on, Suzy, you can do great. Um, have the character interact with the table because everything that you include, you want it to do more work. And what that does is if everything that you do include in your scenes does triple, quadruple duty, right? Double at least. You're showing us, this is part of Show Don't Tell, you're showing us something about your character, something about your setting. You're not just describing something in a boring way. You're showing us something. You need less words and your reader will be so immersed and so challenged to figure all that out and to piece it all together. It's going to feel like brilliant writing. So yeah, so thank you for those gems and, and sharing with us what you, what you work on on those revisions, right? When I first, when I created my first novel and I created a lady's risk, I was so careful to remove every single word of filter I could find. And then I went into structural edits and I had to change whole chapters. So that's. At this point, I know, like, the fine tune editing. I don't even wait. I don't even do it until I've been through my structural. I would have been embarrassed with my first novel for my editor to have seen it in the condition I give her novels now. But I know that she's gonna, like, rip apart bits and pieces that she's gonna want me to change, and whole chapters might go, or whole sections will be rearranged. And how do you feel about that? How do you feel about that? You know, in choosing which publishing route to go, if you're going this traditional route, you need to know that you're going to have to take feedback. Right. It's, it's part of the process. How do you feel? How did you feel at the beginning when you got feedback like that? And how do you feel now about it? Do you just take it as, you know, I, I take feedback. Well, in fact, I don't like it when somebody like, I don't love it when my editor. She's very sweet. All editors are. They'll be very sweet about saying, Oh, this is so good. And they'll give you a nice happy sandwich where you have compliments. And then in the middle, you'll have all the things you need to work on. And then you end with compliments. And I'm one of these people that I'm like, I don't even want the compliments. Don't even put them in there. Just tell me what needs to be changed because I believe edits are where the book comes to life. But that being said, you don't have to have an editor to query a first novel. Those other things I talked about. Do you know your structure? Do you have a market for it? If you're going traditional, I really want to be clear on that. Of course, you can have more leeway if you're not, if that's not in your interest. But if you're going traditional, It's follow a plot structure, choose a genre, I would suggest, and have a market. Know that there's somewhere out there, there are people who are just itching to get their hands on your book. And those are the most important things. Editing is expensive. And one of the great things about going a traditional route is that you do have that that comes. Well, I guess, I mean, you pay for it in that you don't get whatever royalty percentage you would get if you're self publishing. But, you know. Yeah, definitely. And you have that whole team of pros at your disposal. But you do have that team of pros. Absolutely. Yes. Absolutely. So you came into this journey hoping for traditional publishing. You were like, this is what I'm doing. I'm going to go for it. Has it been what you expected to go with a traditional publisher? Um, well, you learn so much on the journey. I learn and I learn. I didn't, there was so much. I didn't know when I started off, um, that I do know now I could probably speak for hours about it. Um, so has it been what I expected? No, not in that Oh, like, I think I just had this, like, dewy eyed version of what it was to have a book traditionally published. And traditionally published, obviously that means your book goes to bookstores, and obviously it means certain things about marketing. Those things are not necessarily true at all. This is my third book out now, or debutante is, and that's, it's the first book that's had bookstore release. It's North American bookstore release comes on, I think, September 4th. Third or something like that, uh, in the UK, it was out. You have the same publication date as Sherry Jo September 3rd. Oh! Must be a good date. I think it's September 5th. Yeah. Yeah, there are a lot of things that I didn't know that I do know now. And the other thing is that, you know, once you get on a contract, it's like any other job, you know, you have to deliver. And there was a period, especially with second books, and this happens to a lot of people, um, second books are known for their sophomore album syndrome. Where you realize you're not just writing for fun anymore, you're not writing on your own timeline. There are expectations of when your book will be in, there are expectations of what you're writing, there are expectations of word count. You need to stick to someone else's timelines, and you need to deliver what they're expecting. And so then there's definitely a period of adjustment where you have to be like, oh, this is, this is a job. This used to be purely fun. And now this feels like work. Yeah. And what was the moment where you knew that writing this book and doing this was actually going to change your whole journey, right? Like a lot of things in your life have shifted because you are now a writer. Yeah. Right. And so when, what was the moment where you were like, okay, this is real. This is happening. Was there a moment? I might still not be there. Yeah. Okay. So I will say it's an uphill climb. It's an uphill climb. I am a romance writer who has written, who has published three books. That's nothing. That's nothing to romance writers. A lot of, A lot of romance writers who were really selling, they had published 50, 70, 150 books. That's very specific to romance. Romance readers are one of the, kind of one of the biggest markets, if not the biggest market of readers. And they read a lot and they read fast. They read a book in a day and they are readers who might read 300 books in a year. It's a huge market and they will go for writers. Who have lots of books because they tend to find a writer they love and then read everything that person has written whole backless with three books out there. I'm still nothing, nothing, nothing. You're not nothing. Tell her in the comments what we think of her success. Yeah. No, I do, I do. It's, it's hard, right? Like, it, it's, it's, it's like you're still experiencing that imposter syndrome of like, have I made it yet? Am I there yet? Oh, no. Oh, I haven't made it yet. Right., yeah, I got it. I haven't made it yet another book and I don't always know if I have 50 books send me, but I know I'm in here right now doing what I'm doing and it's definitely been a journey that has taught me a ton and I have a lot of satisfaction from knowing this was always a life dream. And that I, I went for it, you know, I went for it and, and I achieved it. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. So before we shift to a quick Q and A, what's your best writing advice for all those on the call that are working on a book right now and hoping to be, you know, in your shoes or in their own shoes, in their own journey, their own shoes, their own journey, share your work. Don't be frightened of sharing your work. You've got to share your work. It's terrifying at first, but don't leave it close to your heart. And then second, but related to that, I would say, hear what people have to say, even if it hurts. And the first few times it's going to hurt because there's always going to be criticism. Nobody writes a perfect novel the first time. Nobody writes a perfect anything the first time. And. Share with people who read your genre or have that interest, and if they lose interest in your book, it's not them, it is in fact your writing. And I hate to say that, that was so hard for me to learn, but just know that If you're beta readers, don't return it! That's your answer. Yeah. That is your answer. Yes, people are busy, but also when you have a good book in your hand that you can't put down, you, you forget about the other things you have to do in your life. We all do that. Or a great television show on that you just have to binge watch all eight hours of the moment it comes out on Netflix. So, share your work and, and, and listen to, listen to the feedback. Yeah. It gets easier. It gets so much easier. Amazing. I'm just going to ask, we've got about eight minutes, I'm going to ask you a couple of questions. Okay. So this is from an anonymous, somebody didn't use their name, but that's okay. In terms of a series, how do you make a subplot or an important thread that you don't want to be resolved in that first novel, but rather in the sequel or closer to the end of series? So can you leave a thread open and not resolve it in that book one? Big question. Well, if you're trying to achieve traditional publication, I'm going to answer with that sort of filter on. Please, uh, I would suggest not. Making sure that your novel stands alone as is. The way I queried my first novel was, this is a stand alone novel with series potential. I had a five part series planned for that, that, for my five book contract, and I do have an open thread, and Debutante's Desire. Nobody will ever see that it's there. But had I taken that series through all five books, rather than deciding to veer away from the series, Because there are pros and cons to writing a series, and I wanted to explore, I want to explore pure standalones while I'm still under that contract. If, if I had completed all five books, that thread would have been finished with book five. But the way I've written it, it's not an obvious thread, and nobody's going to know that it's missing. So I hope that that helps. I wouldn't query a novel with an obviously open ended ending that has to have a sequel as your first novel. I would leave it a possibility, but publishers love it when they can Publish something standalone, even if they take you on for two books, they may decide after your first book is out there, if it's not selling the way they hoped it was, they may decide to ask you to write something else for the second book. So for a brand new debut author, I would not suggest something that has to have a sequel. Yeah. Hope that helps. And, you know, if you, if you're doing that kind of open ended, that can work really well in a self published, I'll just answer it on that side because you can do it much more quickly and you can control that. You can put book two out six weeks after book one and get that momentum going. In the traditional world, typically you're looking at at least nine months on a very quick scale or 18 months, right? Like, but I'm saying even, even like crazy prolific, like fast things. It's. It's not fast. So to make your readers wait, you're going to lose them. Okay. So I also have another anonymous. Could you please explain what a Regency romance is? I didn't know that they were subgenres. So like maybe just talk about the fact that there's subgenres of romance for a moment, because there are, there's a lot of different. Oh, there's so many subgenres of romance. You have queer romance. You have historical romance with all different time periods. You have paranormal romance. You have, Romanticy, which is romance and fantasy put together. You might have monster romance with witches or minotaurs or aliens. Ice, uh, Ice Planet Barbarians is an excellent example of a fantastically successful self published author who writes monster romance. So within historical fiction, Monster room. Oh, I love it. I'm there for all of it. Honestly, I just love room and it's like in, um, in cozy mystery, there's a subgenre where the cat is the sleuth, right? Like a cat mystery. That's an actual subgenre. There's, there's all these neat little pockets. And if you are interested in that, there are readers waiting. That's the cool thing about writing to those subgenres is there's reader groups waiting. Right? Mm hmm. Mm hmm. One of the sort of, most of you probably haven't heard of her, but one of the sort of mothers of historical romance is a British writer who started writing in the 1920s called Georgette Hare, and she, even before Barbara Cartland, even before other super famous romance writers, Georgette Hare wrote her books to mimic Jane Austen, except for one thing. She didn't have sex, like open door sex scenes, but she, they were kind of a mimic of Jane Austen, but a little bit more swashbuckly. So imagine Jane Austen put together with sort of golden age of Hollywood type movies and you can imagine. Just listing comps like they're water. Right? Like just like. Yeah. I love that. So. From her, probably, she was definitely one of the mothers of sort of historical romance, and that's why probably Regency romance is the largest, probably the largest category of historical romance. But there's also medieval romance, there's Scottish Highlander romance, historical romance, there's Victorian historical romance, there's Tons of different subgenres of historical romance. Awesome. Yeah. You could probably go on all day. All day. Um, but, but we'd probably still miss some. I want to just ask one more question. So John asked, given that the plot remains the same in a cozy mystery, would having the setting based in the U. S. give a book a marketing advantage over say having it set in Canada? I'm asking you this and they wanted it to be specifically you because he's asking it of you because it's important right and your books are clearly not set in Canada or the US. I know. Oh boy. The Canadian author. It's set in England. For those of you Regency, for those of you who are familiar are I have a contemporary romance that I'm sort of playing around with. Um, but I have a British agent, so my contemporary romance features one Canadian and a British person because I write to a British audience. Yes. So unless you're gonna get a Canadian agent and they're not very many of them, some kind of a us. Hook is good. That being said, Americans in general do love to read about Canadians. In fact, I know romance so well, so I'll give this example. There's a current trend right now of a Canadian hero with an American heroine in contemporary romance. So a pairing of those two. And those books are sometimes set in the U. S. They're often set in Canada. But again, there's like the American element to it, too, so that the American readers, typically a woman reader in this case, would have something to hook onto. So it's not completely outside of their experience. So you might have a Canadian sleuth. In the U. S. you might have an American sleuth trying to make it work in Canada. You said, he said murder. He said mystery, right? He said, yeah, he said cozy. He said cozy. Cozy. Yeah. So, um, it helps a little bit. You might have something cross border a little bit. I don't think you have to go all out and must set your book in the U. S. with an American sleuth. But if you're trying to sell to an American agent, have something that American audiences can identify with. Elena said it's all those ice hockey romances and I, I really identify hard with that. They're not all though. I read one that wasn't a sports romance. It was fantastic. I've watched, uh, I've watched a few Hallmark movies with my kids. We watched a lot of them during the pandemic and they'd be like, You know, I had like simpler names in the Dark Knight of the Soul. Oh, it's the big misunderstanding. Like they were like picking up the plot points and, and it just drives me nuts because hockey in particular, they try to throw into a book and it doesn't make sense. Somebody, okay, this is for the Canadians out there. The guy kept saying he wasn't getting enough rink time. And for those, Felicity's laughing. So for those who've got kids in hockey or have been exposed to the sport, that doesn't make any sense. So it means that you're benched. He was meaning to say that he wasn't getting any ice time. I'm not getting enough ice time is what you say. You don't say I get enough rank time. So it's like one of those things where I think maybe was right and then an editor came along and said, let's change this and didn't really understand the game. So that's my ice hockey story. Okay. So I also wanted to say on a Canadian standpoint. Um, if you're setting a book in a country that isn't the largest market in the world, make sure it's for a purpose and make sure that you're bringing us there. Like in Regency Romance, it's there because it's like the Regency era, right? This is everywhere here in North America was sort of just a blink of the eye. At that time, or at least, you know, the, my house didn't exist, those types of things. But in England, that historical period was very vivid. And I'm just thinking of Carly Fortune who writes books, the romance, women's fiction romance set in Canada, and they're really cool. Her latest one is actually set in PEI. Um, and I had the chance to meet her last month. So there are people that are doing it and her books are extremely successful, but it has to serve the story. There has to be a reason. So choose wisely. Right. Choose wisely and um, as a general rule, if you're going traditional publishing, don't break too many rules when you're, when you're creating a debut novel. Rule breaking can come later. If you want to and that's a whole other topic, right? Yeah, amazing. Thank you so much. I know that how busy you are and under deadline and you made the time to come and be with us today. Thank you so much. Felicity for coming on today. So anytime and we're cheering you on and thank you. Yeah, go pick this up. We'll drop some links. We didn't have all the books here today because as she mentioned, um, they're not all in North America distributed easily right now yet, right? Are they coming? That one is currently on a North American 99 cent deal on Kindle, Nook, and oh, Kobo, all of them. Um, so it's a great deal. And it's currently a Barnes Noble bestseller. A warning for those of you who are new to romance. It is a spicy book. So I'm just going to put that warning out there. Don't come back to me and be like, Oh, okay. But yes, um, pick it up. Let us know what you think. And Felicity, where can we find you? Can Rita find you in books, Twitter? Um, you can find me on Twitter, you can find me on Instagram when I am in editing caves. I'm not on as often that is currently the case, but definitely if you'd like to follow me, I am most often on X and I think I am f George Romance, I think is what I am. Thank you. Thanks for tuning in to show on Tell Writing with me, Suzy Vadori. Now we continue to bring you the straight goods for that book you're writing. planning to write, please consider subscribing to this podcast and leaving a review on apple podcast, spotify, or wherever you're listening. Also visit suzyvadory. com forward slash newsletter to hop on my weekly inspired writing newsletter list to stay inspired and be the first to know about upcoming training and learning. Events and writing courses in my community. If you're feeling brave, check the show notes and send us a page of your writing that isn't quite where you want it to be yet for our show. Don't Tell Page review episodes. Remember, drop book, your writing is gonna open doors you haven't even thought of yet, and I can't wait to help you make it the absolute best to convene. You're feeling called to write that book. Keep going and I'll be right here cheering you on. See you again next week.