This week’s guest is Susan Carew (Take the Plunge, indie published, March 2023). Susan, who now resides in Ireland and previously lived for eight years in Spain, took up novel writing during the pandemic, following weekly instructional posts over Instagram by the best-selling author Marian Keyes. An open-water swimmer, Susan decided to create a protagonist with that same interest and has now penned two of a 3-book series. We discuss the pluses and minuses of indie publishing, how she crashed an agent-only section at the London Book Fair, and the differences and similarities in the European publishing industry vs. the United States.

Susan lives in the south of Ireland with her husband and their dog, Ruby. When not writing she enjoys going walking on the beautiful local trails. She also belongs to a choir and is getting used to singing in the Irish language!

In a former life she was a bank clerk, an English language teacher, teacher-trainer and an English language examiner, the latter of which enabled her to travel the world.

Susan has always enjoyed writing in the form of letters and keeping a diary. It was a lifelong assumption of hers that she would write a novel, but it wasn’t until 2021 that she did so. To her delight she found she loved the process and now writes full time. Take the Plunge, her debut novel, is part of a series entitled Beyond the Waves. Her second book Beyond the Buoy, is due for release in autumn of 2024.

To learn more, click here.

This week’s guest is Heidi McIntyre (Sea Magic, indie published, February 2023). Heidi’s family background with antique shops provided the impetus for her series about a dealer with paranormal powers who undercovers a series of mysteries related to found objects in her small New England town. After trying her hand at a romance, Heidi realized her emphasis on relationships meant she was a women’s fiction writer and she embraced the genre as a fit. Likewise, as a decades-long marketing consultant, she knew she wanted the control indie publishing would give her and that’s proven to be a fit as well, as she’s delved into promo stacking, A-B comparison ads, and Amazon algorithm testing to such an extent that she now offers her book marketing expertise to others in the writing community.

Always an avid reader, Heidi was inspired to write by her college professor who convinced her to switch majors to English. From then on, she harbored a secret wish to write a novel one day. Heidi spent most of her marketing career as a consultant specializing in fresh produce where she worked with a variety of growers, commodity boards, and associations. She currently enjoys working with authors as a Book Marketing Coach.

Sea Magic is her debut novel and the first of the Hidden Gems series, which was also a finalist in the 2022 Page Turner Awards. Originally from New Jersey, Heidi lives in Oviedo, Florida with her husband, Tim, and their dogs Pumpkin and Lizzie. She loves coffee, chocolate, yoga and visiting historical places.

To learn more about Heidi, click here.

Our guest this week is Kimberly Young (In the Event of Death, Post Hill Press, February 2024). Tune in for a lively discussion about how Kimberly discovered her book idea of an event planner who morphs her wedding planning business into one for end of life memorials when the 2008 recession hits. We discuss the stable of talented women professionals who aided her in bringing her book into being, from mentors at the Stanford Novel Writing program, to a dream agent she got from a referral to a social media consultant who she praises for making her book a success. Unlike some guests, Kimberly credits social media, and specifically Instagram, for her healthy sales figures.

Born in the Midwest and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, Kimberly Young received her BA from Dartmouth College and an MA from Stanford University, where she was a Wallace Stegner Creative Writing Fellow. She began her career as an advertising copywriter and marketing consultant and worked with clients ranging from startups to Apple. When she isn’t writing, she fundraises for organizations focused on conservation and reproductive rights. In the Event of Death is her debut novel, set in the suburbs of Silicon Valley. Kim and her husband have three grown children and split their time between California and the mountains of Idaho. She is currently underway on her second novel.

To learn more about Kimberly, click here.