Show notes
We have trouble believing you haven’t already heard of our guest this week, Susan Wiggs, but just in case—she’s the author of many many novels, a multiple #1 New York Times bestseller and an overall amazing storyteller. Her current novel, The Lost and Found Bookshop, is on sale now and her most recent bestseller, The Oysterville Sewing Circle, is just out in paperback.We talk crafting a story, starting from the emotional journey versus the physical plot, building a character, choosing a setting and our collective addiction to writing books, and Susan reveals that she does indeed read fiction while she’s writing fiction—and it’s a good thing, too, because her reading list is long indeed. Links from the PodWriting the Blockbuster Novel by Albert ZuckermanThis American Life, Promised Land (the “I Wish” song episode)#AmReading (all Susan, and you’ll see why)Aging in Place by Aaron D MurphyBeing Mortal by Atul GawandeOn Ocean Boulevard by Mary Alice MonroeHouse Lessons by Erica BauermeisterUntamed by Glennon DoyleThe Splendid and the Vile by Erik LarsonSabrina and Corina by Kali Fajardo-AnstineThe Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins ReidThanks to everyone who supports the podcast financially. To join that team, click the button below:But it’s all good. The pod is free as it always has and always will be. This shownotes email is free, too, so please—forward it to a friend, and if you haven’t already, join our email list and be on top of it every time there’s a new episode.Find more about Jess here, Sarina here and about KJ here.KJ Dell'Antonia 0:00 Hey, fellow writers this week we've got an outright amazing conversation with Susan Wiggs. Many, many times bestselling author of many, many novels, who really knows how to construct a story. And when getting the work done doesn't just take talent and dedication, but an understanding of the craft of creating a story. If you'd like to work with someone who understands that craft, head over to Author Accelerator and look into finding the right book coach for your work, or if craft is your jam, learn more about becoming a book coach yourself at authoraccelerator.com. Is it recording? Jess Lahey 0:36 Now it's recording.KJ Dell'Antonia 0:39 This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone and try to remember what I'm supposed to be doing. Jess Lahey 0:43 Alright, let's start over. KJ Dell'Antonia 0:44 Awkward pause. I'm gonna rustle some papers. Okay, now one, two, three. Hey, I'm KJ Dell'Antonia. And this is #AmWriting. #AmWriting is the podcast, the weekly podcast, about writing all things, fiction, nonfiction, short things, long things, pitches, proposals, everything you have to write before anybody lets you write anything. And in short, this is the podcast about sitting down and getting that work done.Sarina Bowen 1:16 And this is Sarina Bowen. I'm the author of 35 romance novels. You can always find more about me at sarinabowen.com.KJ Dell'Antonia 1:26 And I am KJ Dell'Antonia, the author of the novel The Chicken Sisters, and also the book How to Be a Happier Parent, former editor of the New York Times' Motherlode blog, and still sometimes a contributor there. And we are so excited to welcome our guest this week. This is the first guest we've ever had that has rivaled Sarina in prolificness. We're so excited to welcome Susan Wiggs. She is the author of (I think I counted 37 but as soon as I let her talk, I'm gonna check) novels, multiple number one New York Times' bestseller and an overall amazing storyteller. When you pick up a Susan Wiggs book, you know that you're getting a fully built world and a story that's going to grab you and hold you tight and that you're going to be sorry when it lets you go. Her current novel is The Lost and Found Bookstore. And she's also got another novel just out in paperback - The Oysterville Sewing Circle. That one's just out right now. Am I right?Susan Wiggs 2:29 That's correct. It's just out in a paperback, the book club edition just came out.KJ Dell'Antonia 2:35 Ooh, cool. I love the whole book club edition and this edition.Susan Wiggs 2:41 I just love book clubs in general. So yeah, thank you so much for having me. This is such a thrill to talk to somebody who's not a fictional character.KJ Dell'Antonia 2:51 Yeah, we don't do much of that right now either. They're either fictional characters or they live in our house, that's all we got. So yeah, we are really excited - so, how many books is it before I even get started? Susan Wiggs 3:02 Oh, I knew you're gonna ask me that. And you know what? To be honest, I don't have a count. But I can tell you my first book was published in 1987. Huntington Zebra books, and I've published a book or two every year since. And so I've stopped doing the math. I just write my next book.KJ Dell'Antonia 3:27 But we will ask, you just because our listeners always want to know. How did you get started? Tell us how that first 1987 book happened, travel back in time with us.Susan Wiggs 3:40 You know what, you always remember your first time and I'll just leave it at that. I'll leave that to your imagination. But honestly, I was a young teacher just out of graduate school. I got myself through graduate school by reading really big, thick, romance novels, you know, the real bodice rippers all through the 80's. And so yeah, I had such a taste for them, and such an affection for them and a love for the form that I just wrote one. And I had no idea what I was doing. I wrote it on a typewriter. I didn't know about any writer's associations. I knew Writer's Digest, I was a subscriber to Writer's Digest, I always knew that I wanted to write and so I wrote a book called Texas Wildflower and I wrote it on a typewriter. It was this huge, unwieldy pile of pages. I was very proud of it, but I didn't know what to do with it. And so somehow, I wormed my way onto an editor's desk at Kensington Books, which had and probably still prints Zebra, Pinnacle, various ones like that and they're still up and going, and the editor's name was Wendy McCurdy, and she's still in the business. I believe she may be back at Kensington now. Anyway, she was delightful. You know, very young, probably as young as I was at the time, editor who called me up in the middle of a very busy life. I had a toddler, and dogs, and a house, and a teaching job. And I was very overwhelmed. And she called me in the middle of all that and said, 'We like your book, and we want to publish it.' And I was just floored. Yes, I was stunned. I didn't have an agent. And so I just said, 'Yes, where do I sign?' And so it's interesting that we would be talking about this right now because one of the things that I did because I didn't have a literary agent, I didn't really know how to negotiate any sort of contract. And one of the biggest blunders that I made that is turning out to be kind of a very funny and happy accident was I gave them the copyright back then. And I think now copyrights revert to the author if the book is out of print and unavailable for, I believe, three to five years. And I think I signed my name to something to say it was out of print and unavailable, but they had 16 years to reprint it. And in those 16 years, my books became rather popular. And so they never wanted to revert the rights to me because I would always say the book's not out, it's very old, don't you want to revert the rights to me? Because that way, the author controls his rights and creative control over that property and you know, you can resell it and things like that, but no, they kept hanging on to it. And so I'm sitting here, it is 2020 and I'm looking at a royalty check dated May 26, 2020 for that book, for Texas Wildflower that was first published in April 1987. Because they keep reissuing it, they still have it in print, they reissued it numerous times in different packaging. And as my books have evolved, the very original cover (you can probably find it on my website susanwiggs.com) was a very, very in your face bodice ripper cover. I just loved it, I thought was really cool. But as my books have become more mainstream and evolved into general fiction, or mainstream fiction, the covers look very upmarket now and rather sophisticated. It's basically the same book - at one point I did go in and do some light editorial work, and, you know, cringing the whole time because obviously after you know, 50 something books, I'm not that same writer that wrote Texas Wildflower - and so I had some rookie moments in that book, many of them, and yet readers still, they're drawn to something about that book. So, you know, it's still in print. So thank you, Kensington Books for keeping me alive on your list.KJ Dell'Antonia 5:40 That's a great story. And I love that it is still out there. And the cover thing is really funny because we have talked to a lot of authors and we've seen that same evolution many times. And I know Sarina and I are both really fascinated by cover art and why publishers and authors pick one style over the other and the new trend towards the sort of drawings instead of actual pictures of people.Susan Wiggs 8:48 All authors are obsessed with cover art. You know, even before I was published, I was designing the cover in my head, and I'm terrible at it, but I'm always gratified when I see the way that my books go out into the market because usually it's spot on, there have been some turkeys in my repertoire - no fault of mine or the publisher, sometimes they just don't turn out well, but the new book, The Lost and Found Bookshop, did you guys get a copy of it? Or the advanced reading copies? KJ Dell'Antonia 9:23 Yes, and I really, really love it. But do you know what, my copy doesn't have a cover. So I haven't seen it.Sarina Bowen 9:32 It's beautiful, though. I love the cover. Susan Wiggs 9:35 Well, the journey - that cover went through so many iterations. And the reason is that they try to build and this is a really great thing about publishers, if they're committed to an author, they really try to build you as a brand. And so you don't want each cover to be so unique that it doesn't even look like it could be by the same author. And so I had a rather good hit with The Oysterville Sewing Circle last year, and one of the big pieces and one reason that that book really struck a chord was it had an incredibly striking cover. It was like stark white with this blood red spool of thread on the front with a sharp pin sticking through it. And they wanted to build on that. But I wrote about a bookshop, so there's no sharp needles or anything. And so we really struggled with what this new book should look like so that it kind of accesses the spirit of the previous book, but also is inviting and beautiful enough to attract new readers as well. So I hope this cover does it. It hasn't hit the shelves yet, so I guess we'll see.Sarina Bowen 10:43 It's very beautiful.KJ Dell'Antonia 10:45 Yeah, I agree. And I can see how it looks with The Oysterville Sewing Circle, I've just pulled it up. Sarina Bowen 10:52 It's a lovely analogy to that other book but I also noticed that your that Oysterville has a new cover, too. Which is also very beautiful, and sometimes publishers do that. If they don't like a cover, but sometimes they do it just to catch the eye of people who didn't grab it the first time.Susan Wiggs 11:12 Yes, there's been three iterations of the Oysterville cover. The first one with a big spool of thread was the hardcover. And then there was a mass market paperback that came out in January. And because of the timer in the pandemic time, it was widely available only in essential markets like Walmart, the places that could stay open during the pandemic. And so it sold like wildfire. In March, it was the number four New York Times' paperback. And so there was this little paperback edition of it and then they decided for this summer to do a premium paperback, they're called trade size paperback, and it's a bigger edition and they add extra content in the back. I think there's a reading group guide, and article, and a recipe, and some other materials back there to give reading groups something to chew on. And then they decided, let's use a new image on this cover and the one that they did on that edition was actually a rejected hardcover look, you know, they they tried several looks, and they knew it was a pretty look, but they wanted to go out in trade paperback with that one. So no effort is ever wasted. That's what I am finding out. Yeah, my agent calls it four bites at the apple because the fourth bite is the audio book. And audio books are quite a big category these days and there was a slump during pandemic but as things are opening and people are going back to work and commuting again, there's an upturn in audio sales.Sarina Bowen 12:12 Mm hmm. Yes, I definitely felt that audio slump in April.KJ Dell'Antonia 13:04 I want to say, You have so many books under your belt and you were talking about how that first one is very, very different from the writer that you are now and we wanted to talk about how you go about now, structuring a new story. Because your stories are so - I've only read your later stuff, so I didn't read the earlier stuff. Your stories now are so tight, and they really don't have a lot of extraneous stuff, and I really would love to hear where you start from and I guess we'll start with that. Where do you start when you're looking to start a new book?Susan Wiggs 13:54 That's one of those things that probably didn't change a lot from the very beginning. What inspires us, you know, something has to grab you, and it's almost visceral. And for example, in The Lost and Found Bookshop, it was a very stark moment that I had. I was speaking with some elderly people that lived at my mother's assisted living place, and I'm in charge of my mom's elder care, she now lives with me. And so I do a lot of speaking with groups like that. And one question that I love to ask older people is, what if you got to have a do over, you know, what if you got to make a different decision in your life? And so, somebody said something like, 'I would have been a meteorologist, but women weren't allowed to do that back then.' And I thought, wow, you know, I want to write about somebody who does get that opportunity. You know, she does get to walk away from her very steady, predictable, corporate job and life. Unfortunately, what drives her to that point is very tragic, but she does get there. And suddenly she gets to make a new blueprint for her life. And so I was very inspired by that. And I realized that with every book, even from that very, very first one, it's a moment of profound change in a character's life, whether it's a decision that she has to make or some situation that's forced on her. And so I'm most fascinated by that. And it's always, you know, my characters, there's a lot of variety. They come from all walks of life, but she's usually the smartest person in the book, but she doesn't know it. That's the one thing I would say they have in common, but from there, the process has become not a routine for me, but definitely a journey that has familiar signposts, you know, I have to know my character and I get to know her in ways that come to me subconsciously or I consciously research her world. I build her world around her, what did she do? W…
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