S2 Ep.19 Writing Since Childhood

Writer from a Young Age - Transcript

[KARLI] Hello, Jamie.

[JAMIE] Hi, Karli.

[KARLI] Ooo, you look nice.

[JAMIE] [chuckles] We look the same. We're both wearing heather green hoodies. And we look like we just woke up.

[KARLI] Well, that’s, that's why you look nice. We look nice.

[JAMIE] Twinning.

[KARLI] Hashtag twins.

[JAMIE] You could be DeVito today if you want. [chuckles] I was DeVito last time.

[KARLI] Yeah, let's share. We gotta, we gotta swap back and forth on on who's the Arnold and who's the Danny. My coffee's still brewing.

[JAMIE] You haven't had coffee? What's wrong with you?

[KARLI] So I actually think it's done now. So I'm gonna just ehh...

[JAMIE] Okay, yeah.

[KARLI] Energy juice!

[INTRODUCTION MUSIC PLAYS]

[JAMIE] Welcome to The Act Break, where we're talking about all things story.

[KARLI] Take a break from your creative endeavors and hang out with us.

[JAMIE] Have a little simulated human interaction.

[KARLI] Because internet friends totally count.

[INTRO MUSIC FADES]

[JAMIE] This my favorite part of this made up job. [Penny laughs]

[KARLI] Yeah. We made this up—I mean, we didn't make up podcasting—but we were like, hey, let's do this—

[JAMIE] I invented podcasting. [Penny laughs]

[KARLI] Make this up so we can meet people. Yay. So today we have the very exciting opportunity to talk with a longtime internet friend. And we are so very, very excited and honored to have Penny Kearney join us today.

[JAMIE] Penny, it's so nice to meet you. [chuckles]

[KARLI] Welcome!

[PENNY] Nice to meet you, too. [chuckles]

[JAMIE] I'm Jamie.

[KARLI] I'm Karli.

[PENNY] I'm Penny.

[KARLI] So nice to actually like, talk to you in real time. So how are you this morning?

[PENNY] I'm awake. For the moment. [laughs] Thanks to coffee. Yeah, coffee, and, you know, and impending Zoom meetings.

[JAMIE] Yeah, we can I think we're all on the same page there. Thank you for being here.

[PENNY] Oh, yeah, definitely.

[KARLI] Thank you so much for being willing to come and answer questions.

[PENNY] I got the, I got the email. And I was like, wow, they want me on their podcast, but there's so much cooler than me. [all laugh] That's so cool. I'm so honored. They think I'm cool too.

[KARLI] Heck yeah, we do.

[JAMIE] We're here to pull the wool off your eyes. [Penny laughs] We have so delicately placed over the people who see us on the internet.

[PENNY] The truth is out.

[KARLI] Yeah, when people actually get to see behind the scenes of how we make the podcast, and it is a hot mess. [Penny laughs] Jamie is just good at her job of editing.

[PENNY] Like every creative job. It's all secretly in the editing. [laughs]

[KARLI] Right?

[JAMIE] You can make anything look like anything's happening.

[PENNY] Exactly.

[JAMIE] If you watch any reality or competition show. You have to know that you're like nothing ever is like—

[PENNY] Did it actually come down to the wire? Or did they just edit it and add you know, dramatic music? [Jamie laughs]

[JAMIE] Exactly. What are the odds that comes down to the wire every single time?

[PENNY] Everybody down to the wire? Are you sure?

[KARLI] Okay, Penny, would you do us the favor of telling us a little bit about yourself? How you got into writing? And what kind of started your journey?

[PENNY] Oh, wow. Um, yeah, let's see how far back to I go. [Penny and Karli chuckle]

[KARLI] So I was born. And... [laughs]

[PENNY] Yeah, pretty much. [chuckles] My mother always reminds me of when I was three years old. And I told her a story about how I had been eaten by a bear. And, and she sort of looked at me and it's like, oh, well, then how are you, you know, right here. And I thought about it from it. I said, well, I went back in and I got born again. And she said, that did not happen. [all laugh] No, no, no.

[JAMIE] She immediately found a plot hole. [all laugh]

[PENNY] First plot hole right there. I didn't think that through.

[KARLI] I didn't think that was great. Your mom really helped you sort through your Oh, yeah. Sounds like a great mom.

[PENNY] Yes, she still does this.

[KARLI] That's great. We always have to have the people who are willing to like help us out with stuff like that.

[PENNY] Oh, yes. If you guys have seen The Incredibles and Edna Mode hits, what's her name the mom character, over the head with a newspaper telling her you know, pull yourself together and then go out and do the thing. That's a real friend right there.

[KARLI] Yes.

[JAMIE] Yeah.

[PENNY] That is a real friend. Yes. My mother will do that for me. [laughs] She's always ready with the newspaper.

[JAMIE] So when do you feel like you started seriously pursuing writing?

[PENNY] I started actually writing things down when I was 10. And I found that was more efficient than telling my siblings, you know, endless stories and then never remembering them. But I think when I was 14 or 15, we got a curriculum called the One Year Adventure Novel, the high school curriculum, so and homeschool, and it's basically write a novel in a school year. And it was like the coolest thing that I had ever seen. I've been writing things but there are scribbles and you know, nothing had ever been actually finished. So I wrote a full length novel when I was 14,15 years old. and got a better understanding of story structure. And from there, I was pretty dedicated to writing novels for quite a while. And so...

[KARLI] Has it been consistent for you since then? Or did you like to have a little bit of time where you were doing other things? And then you came back to it more recently?

[PENNY] No, I was I was pretty consistent with my writing as, at any point that I could. There was sort of a joke in the house that I'd never asked to play video games, I would ask if I could go on Microsoft Word, because we had like one computer that was in the middle of the living room. [Karli chuckles] And you know, I had to go make sure nobody else had it for whatever school or something else they were doing. And I would ask, can I go on Microsoft Word and work on my story?

[KARLI] That's awesome.

[JAMIE] So much of this is already relatable. One, okay, so we have another homeschool baby.

[PENNY] Yeah. [laughs]

[JAMIE] Two, I remember when we got our first computer. Because you know, we're all that age where we've come into the digital age. It was like a big deal. And you get a computer and it's dial up. And you have to like ask permission.

[PENNY] Oh, my gosh, yes.

[KARLI] And you all sit down and watch the internet load? Because you're like, oh, my gosh, this is the internet.

[JAMIE] And then you fight over with your siblings, because you both want to be on MS Paint.

[PENNY] [all laugh] Oh, my gosh, yeah.

[KARLI] [laughing] I forgot about paint!

[PENNY] I totally forgot about paint. That is so true.

[KARLI] Yep.

[JAMIE] So Penny, do you have just like a backlog of trunked novels?

[PENNY] Oh my goodness.

[JAMIE] From your growing and development phase?

[PENNY] [laughs] So many.

[KARLI] That's so great, though, because you have been writing consistently...

[PENNY] Oh, yeah.

[KARLI] For so long, you've learned—you've found your voice.

[PENNY] Yeah, I had to learn to appreciate that. Because I have a hard time finishing things, I get bored really easily. So I have so many started stories, you know, short stories, or scripts or novels or whatever. And I just never went back and either finished them or edited them. So I have some that are like completed first drafts. But they were never ever touched again. [chuckles] And for a very long time, I didn't really consider how valuable it was that I just kept writing. And I thought, you know, unless I finish something, it doesn't really count. So I viewed my years of consistently writing as not quite a failure, but pretty close. When I got older, I had to learn that it was actually just good that I had written something and just kept writing.

[JAMIE] Yeah, the practice and the consistency has its own value.

[PENNY] Mhmm.

[KARLI] Absolutely.

[JAMIE] Like you said, learning all those stories structure thing. Yeah. And a lot of writing is something that you can only learn through repetition and time.

[PENNY] So annoying. [all laugh] I just want to be good at it now.

[KARLI] Right?

[JAMIE] I feel like no writer's a good writer on a first draft. [chuckles]

[PENNY] No.

[JAMIE] It's all about the editing.

[PENNY] And every draft is different.

[KARLI] Yes.

[PENNY] Oh, yes. As we established, it's all the editing. That's the secret. That's the secret to good writing is editing.

[KARLI] It's the secret sauce. That's fantastic. So it's been really fun to watch you drafting 'cause I feel like I you started following you before you were actually publishing things. So it's been really cool to see you keep showing up and you keep bringing the words. So do you have any current projects that you're working on right now that you want to talk about?

[PENNY] I always want to talk about stories. [chuckles]

[KARLI] Great.

[PENNY] It's actually really difficult because some parts of this project that I'm working on are still a little bit secret, but I can talk about my favorite parts. My dad was in the Air Force for my whole childhood. So we moved every two years, you know, just all over the world, England, Germany. And when I was around 13, and 14, I think, we moved to Korea, which I didn't even know existed [chuckles] until my mom said, "Hey, we're going to Korea." I was like, what's that? I thought we were going to Texas and like nope, we're going the opposite side of the world.

[JAMIE] To be fair, usually in the military, if you're moving, it's to Texas. [all chuckle]

[PENNY] This is true. Yeah, it turned out to be one of the coolest experiences of my entire life. I absolutely fell in love with Korea. I think partly because it was just so different from anything, you know, just culturally and the landscape and the lang—just everything was was all new and exciting. We got to live on the economy. So not on the, on the military base. Like in the middle of a bunch of rice paddies and just down the farm road from a temple.

[KARLI] That's so cool.

[PENNY] Right in the middle of Korea.

[JAMIE] Really immersive.

[PENNY] Yes. And it was so cool. It's such an impression on me. And my my first novel that I wrote with the one year adventure novel was an Asian fantasy story because it just, it stuck with me it became part of me and after I finished publishing The Hollow Star and I was trying to decide, okay, what should I do next? I was working on a princess in the tower, a dragon slayer type story, and I just kept feeling the pull to "I just really want to go back to an Asian fantasy story." And then this opportunity came along and I decided okay, we're gonna do that. Which is the nice thing about being someone who, quote unquote, gets bored easily. The positive side of that is that I am very flexible. So I can just kind of decide. I was totally going to write this. But now I'm completely switching gears. And I'm going to write this instead. Because that's just the opportunity that's, that's here right now. So I was able to just switch over and it's been so much fun. I've—it's a little bit longer than The Hollow Star, which isn't too hard, because The Hollow Star isn't isn't really that long.

[KARLI] But I found The Hollow Star to be a really nice length. I really enjoyed it. It was—

[PENNY] Oh, yay.

[KARLI] It was beautiful, by the way, beautifully written.

[PENNY] Thank you.

[JAMIE] I think we just mentioned that on another episode, where it's like, not everything has to be 100,000 words to be a good story.

[KARLI] Yeah.

[PENNY] Yes. Yeah, I definitely learned a lot about short fiction writing The Hollow Star. I've been afraid of short fiction for so long, because I talk a lot. [chuckles] And I write a lot and I overwrite everything. I learned. I grew so much as a writer just with that story.

[KARLI] There's so much satisfaction in the completing of something like that. I feel that. I do that, too. I overwrite and so short fiction is definitely been a good learning experience for me.

[PENNY] Yeah, it really teaches you how to be concise and focus on structure and... the second novel that I wrote was like 97,000s, you know, high fantasy super developed everything. [laugh] I went from that to Melody, which was the mermaid one.

[KARLI] I beta read for you.

[PENNY] Yes, I can, ahh, I can never remember who it was who did that.

[KARLI] Yes. [both laugh]

[PENNY] I'm so sorry.

[KARLI] No that's fine. That was a while ago. And I find the beta reading process to be pretty overwhelming. So it's okay if you purged that. [laughs]

[PENNY] Yeah, just a little. So that one was, like 70,000. And then I went and wrote like an 11,000 little novelette. It was, it was definitely an experience. And it was a very positive experience for me as, as a writer, so definitely recommend anyone who's listening, go write some short fiction. [chuckles] It's so good for you.

[KARLI] What sorts of things do you enjoy reading? And do you tend to write similar things that you read? Like, is it a lot of fantasy or...

[PENNY] I do read a lot of fantasy. I'll read like older mystery stories like Agatha Christie, or you know, Sherlock Holmes, that kind of thing. Most recent books. I'm mostly just interested in the fantasy ones. I haven't actually read a lot of Asian fantasy. So I should probably do that. [laughs]

[KARLI] A little bit of research.

[PENNY] A little bit. See most of it is just from you know, when I lived in Korea, so...

[KARLI] Your inspiration from your experience, yeah.

[JAMIE] But it can be super helpful to like, to know your comps in that field. And...

[PENNY] Yeah, exactly. Comp titles.

[JAMIE] If you like this book, you might like my book kind of thing.

[PENNY] Yes. If you like Avatar The Last Airbender, probably like not quite as cartoon kid. But similar. Mostly because of the world building.

[JAMIE] The fact that that's cartoon is the the kid-est thing about it, even though it's, it is suitable for all ages. It just funny because me and my husband literally finished watching it for like the sixth time.

[PENNY] Oh my gosh, yes. [chuckles]

[JAMIE] Like two days ago. And now we're reading the entire comic book series that's in between that and Korra.

[PENNY] Oh, cool. I didn't know there was a comic book.

[JAMIE] It's really good too.

[PENNY] That's awesome. Kindred spirits.

[JAMIE] I'm so deep into Avatar. It's ridiculous.

[PENNY] Awesome. Yeah. I'm always a little bit worried if I say it's like Last Airbender, people are gonna think, oh, it's like really kid-ish and stuff. But most of the people I've said, it's like Avatar, they will go oh, my goodness, I love Avatar.

[KARLI] Find your people. That's just, that's your target audience, people who like that. And if they like it, then they know.

[JAMIE] Yeah, I understand why it comes off as, quote unquote, kid-ish because it is a cartoon that was originally made for children.

[PENNY] Right. Yeah.

[JAMIE] The animation is a younger animation, but story arc and character development—

[PENNY] So good!

[JAMIE] And even subject matter and moral obligation is such a huge part of that story. So I'm like, don't worry, don't worry about it.

[PENNY] [laughs] Okay, cool.

[KARLI] Jamie's been trying to get me to watch Avatar for years. I will. I will. [Penny laughs] I have nothing against it. I just haven't gotten to it yet.

[JAMIE] My trick is I just have to wait till her kid is old enough to be into it. And then I gotta hook him into it. And then she'll have to watch it by proxy.

[PENNY] Yeah, exactly. We've watched it twice now with our kids. And it's been kind of fun because our oldest daughter is six and so she's able to kind of understand what's going on a little bit better than the first time she watched it. And so she's like, super into it and really worried about the characters and everything. It was almost like watching it again for the first time. It was so much fun.

[JAMIE] Yeah, by the last book, it's a serious issue. And so it's like they do have to be, depending on your child, I would say between six and ten to comprehend.

[PENNY] Yeah.

[JAMIE] The level and the seriousness of like by the end of the story. It's a very gradual build, we'll wrap up the Airbender talk. When it was originally airing. It was a lot like growing up with Harry Potter, like you grow up as the books come out, but now that you can binge it...

[KARLI] It's a different experience.

[JAMIE] It's a different experience for younger children. Yes. Anyway.

[KARLI] So the Avatar the Last Airbender talk with Penny Kearney. [Penny laughs] There we go.

[JAMIE] We could just do a whole Airbender episode.

[PENNY] We could!

[JAMIE] I'll get you. I'll get Josiah.

[KARLI] And I'll just sit in the background and you guys just go for it.

[PENNY] Make, you know, appropriate noises. Oh, that's so interesting. Hmmm.

[KARLI] Yeah wow. [all make intrigued noises] So I feel like now might be a good time to ask you a few questions about self publishing. We're always so interested to hear about people's experiences with it. I really wanted to get you on because they feel like you've had a sprinkling of different sorts of things. I know that at one time, and I don't know if you still do, had published to Wattpad. I am curious how you got to the point to start with self publishing.

[PENNY] Yeah, I've published on Wattpad. And I self-published through Kindle Direct on Amazon. And I published in an anthology, which is also on Amazon. I think it's on Amazon plus.

[KARLI] So which stories did you publish to those sites?

[PENNY] The Hollow Star is published on Amazon as its own book, the one that you see all over my Instagram feed. [chuckles] And the first version of it, the first published version of it, is also in an anthology Beyond the Beast, which was published through a like a small, boutique, indie publishing company that unfortunately, isn't really around anymore, called Wonder Heart Books. The anthology is still available on on Amazon, but I think the company kind of quietly went away, unfortunately.

[KARLI] And then Wattpad, was that Melody?

[PENNY] Yes, I have the first few chapters of Melody on Wattpad. I really enjoy Wattpad I think the serial nature that you can achieve with Wattpad is really fun. And I have always wanted to do like a TV show style story, you know, where you release an episode every every week or so. So I plan to go back to that at some point whenever the whenever the opportunity arises. But the first few chapters of Melody are on there.

[KARLI] And Melody is your Little Mermaid retelling?

[PENNY] Yep, Little Mermaid and Cinderella all mashed together. Since I was mixing the Little Mermaid and Cinderella I read the original Hans Christian Andersen Little Mermaid, which is tragic and beautiful and...

[KARLI] So dark. [laughs]

[PENNY] So dark [Penny and Karli laugh] and like spiritual and stuff.

[JAMIE] [chuckles] Which we just talked about.

[KARLI] We had a magic episode and we talked a little bit about how dark fairy tales are like, they're in their original form. We're like, Oh my God. [laughs]

[PENNY] Yeah, my sister Rose is just fairy tale crazy. And yeah, she can tell you, like the stepsisters cutting off their feet so they can fit into the shoe and stuff like that. [laughs] Like okay. So yeah, I was gonna put a little bit more of a tragic spin on Melody, just based off of reading the Hans Christian Andersen and I was going to take out the quintessential Cinderella ballroom scene and switch it around for something slightly darker from The Little Mermaid. And I told my sister Rose that and she told me, there was no way I was allowed to take out the ball scene. [Penny and Karli laugh] It had to happen exactly like in Cinderella, or else.

[KARLI] Or else. You're like, hey, this is mine.

[PENNY] I tried that. It didn't work. [laughs]

[JAMIE] Yeah, you could do whatever you want. But I will say that, that it's one of those things where it's like, well, if you tell people Cinderella, they will expect a ball.

[KARLI] True story.

[PENNY] I know. There has to be a prince charming. There has to be a ball or there's going to be riots. And you know...

[JAMIE] You're not making good on the promise.

[PENNY] Yeah.

[KARLI] Heads will roll.

[PENNY] Yeah, mine mostly. [Penny and Karli laugh]

[JAMIE] So you've had quite a few different experiences as far as putting your work out there. Why is it that you chose to do self publishing? Like for The Hollow Star? Did you ever consider like any other avenues? Or did you always know that you were going to self-publish?

[PENNY] I thought about traditional publishing. But I like to do things my own way. [chuckles] It was a good experience to publish with Wonder Heart in the anthology, because that was with someone else being in charge of here's the plan, you know, here's the deadline. It was good to do that one time. It kind of reinforced in me that yeah, I'd like to self publish because I don't know. I'm, I'm the oldest of nine. I like to be in charge I guess. [laughs] I'm not very good at being told what to do.

[KARLI] So it sounds like you're grateful for the experience.

[PENNY] Yeah.

[KARLI] You're like thank you so much, and this was great. But also in moving forward, I know that I want to do.

[PENNY] Yeah. Which was good because If I didn't have to sign, you know, some big contract with a big company or anything and then really be locked in. It was, it was nice to do it on kind of a smaller, slightly more more casual scale. And know for sure, like, yeah, next time, I'm definitely doing it at my own pace. And I have always wanted to be a wife and a mom. I mean, I've been writing for so long, I could have gone to college for a creative writing degree, I could have tried to get an agent and go like the career writer, path, author path, traveling all over for book tours and stuff. But I wanted to be I want to be a wife and a mom. And thankfully, self publishing at this point, technology at this point has made it so I can still write and publish books on my own schedule, and not have to worry about am I taking too much time away from the kids and feeling like I'm missing out on stuff. That was another reason I really wanted to self-publish was to just totally be in charge of what do I want to prioritize? And if I'm in a season where I need to just drop something, and focus on family, whatever, because I mean, especially being in the military, there's seasons where it just everything is absolutely crazy. [chuckles]

[JAMIE] Yeah, exactly.

[PENNY] Some things just need to go on the back burner.

[JAMIE] There's nothing like being told you're going to move in a month and a half.

[PENNY] Yeah, good times. [laughs]

[JAMIE] You're like, cool, cool, cool. If you have any other type of career, and you're not a full time spouse and parent, that can be real tricky, real fast.

[PENNY] Yeah, for sure. And I've seen that happen to people around me.

[JAMIE] You don't always have a lot of notice with what's going on, and having that flexibility. So you've enjoyed self-publishing and your plan is in the future, that's what you continue to do.

[PENNY] Yeah, definitely.

[KARLI] There is so much flexibility with that. So I can totally see where that is very appealing to you.

[JAMIE] So writing The Hollow Star, beta reading, editing, from the point where you felt like it was finished; how long did your self publishing experience from like, the time you were like, alright, I'm ready to it being available for others to read.

[PENNY] Are you including the anthology? Or do you mean like when I published it myself?

[JAMIE] When you published it yourself.

[PENNY] I knew that I wanted to publish it myself after I wrote it. So I knew that as soon as the rights reverted back to me, which was going to be a year from when it was published in the anthology a year from then. So then I was planning already, the next year, when the rights come back to me, I'm gonna self publish this, but like, I didn't touch it or anything.

[JAMIE] Because it was published in the anthology, it was already like, formatted.

[PENNY] Nope, I redid everything. [laughs]

[JAMIE] Did you do that in that year period of time?

[PENNY] No, I didn't.

[JAMIE] So you waited until it was completely reverted to you and then you started your self-publishing—okay. So from that point of that year, how long did it take you—

[KARLI] After that?

[PENNY] I want to say it was, I feel like it was around six months, maybe a tiny bit longer.

[JAMIE] Okay.

[PENNY] Yeah, it was, it wasn't super long. But I was starting with the story that I didn't have to do from scratch. All I did was self-edit. So I didn't have to send it off to an editor.

[PENNY] Yeah, 'cause it's, writing a book and polishing a book, are like a completely different beast and animal to publishing a book.

[KARLI] Yeah.

[JAMIE] Lots of people publish books that don't write books.

[PENNY] Yes.

[JAMIE] They are two different things entirely.

[PENNY] Yeah. They really are. It's like switching to the other side of your brain, you know.

[PENNY] Different skill sets.

[KARLI] Yeah, you have to wear multiple hats when you self-publish, from what I have seen and heard other people's say.

[PENNY] Yes.

[KARLI] But it sounds like that is appealing to you for a lot of reasons.

[PENNY] Oh, yes.

[KARLI] I'm glad that you found that for yourself.

[PENNY] Yes, self-publishing fits what it is that I want to do. I could just write and post on Wattpad. One of the struggles with Wattpad is I don't know where the Wattpad crew is. As far as I can tell, there's not a huge Wattpad readership on Bookstagram, or Writergram. So as far as marketing goes, I actually enjoy marketing. So I don't mind doing it. I just don't know where to find them. So I'd have to explore the Wattpad arena a little bit more to figure out how do I actually get eyes on the story?

[JAMIE] Is there ways to monetize Wattpad? Or is that all free?

[PENNY] I think so? I think you can monetize.

[JAMIE] Interesting.

[PENNY] I know, there's some stories that you have to read using tokens. So like as a reader, you can go and you can read a bunch of free ones. And then some of them you have to purchase tokens in order to like, unlock the rest of the chapters or something like that.

[KARLI] Interesting.

[JAMIE] That's a whole other beast.

[PENNY] So I would have to learn it really well. I would be willing to if I got to that, you know season of writing but right now I just really like having a physical book in my hand. [chuckles] So you know...

[KARLI] Oh, absolutely.

[PENNY] Like, look, I wrote this! Here, do you want one? [laughs]

[KARLI] Well, I totally get that, I got The Hollow Star physical copy because it's like, I could have gotten it on Kindle, but it's just like, it’s, it's a book. It's a physical book. It's just nice to hold it in your hand.

[PENNY] It really is.

[KARLI] Did you have a Two Cent Recommendation that you wanted to share with us?

[PENNY] Has Save the Cat! Writes a Novel been recommended?

[KARLI] Not in this portion. So you go right ahead.

[KARLI] Okay, Save the Cat! Writes a Novel is the book that I use for figuring out my story structure. I've read a few writing, you know, how to write better books. But I have a struggle getting through nonfiction. And this one was amazing, it was really well laid out. So that helped me a lot. And I've periodically read through the whole thing, because you can read through just the first section on the different story beats, and then you don't have to read like the entire thing. You can just go pick. It has the different genres in there too, which is super insightful. But you don't have to read every single one, you can just read the one that applies to you. So it's actually not a very long read unless you want to read the whole thing. And I find that super nifty. So a plug-in for that one.

[JAMIE] I haven't read Save the Cat! Writes a Novel, I read Save the Cat! The original for screenplays, which my brain converts.

[PENNY] Right.

[JAMIE] And that is the only writing book that I use consistently or ever reference back to. Thank you for the recommendation.

[KARLI] Yeah, that's a great one for the three act structure. And the novel version helped me because my brain cannot convert from screenplay to novel. So I found it very helpful as well. Thank you so much for sharing that.

[PENNY] Sure thing.

[KARLI] Thank you so much for joining us and chatting with us. It was really great to get a chance to get to know you. You can find penny on Instagram @pennykearneybooks. And you can find The Hollow Star on Amazon and it's good. You should read it.

[PENNY] Thank you.

[KARLI] It's beautiful.

[JAMIE] Thank you so much for being here.

[PENNY] Yeah, thanks for having me. It's been a blast. If you know, just come on and talk to a bunch of writers like that's a no brainer. I like talking to writers so...

[JAMIE] Boom.

[PENNY] Yeah. [chuckles]

[KARLI] You can find us on Instagram, Twitter, we have a website. All the links are in the liner notes of the episode.

[JAMIE] Find us at The Act Break. Pretty much anything that you write The Act Break, Google finally takes you to us.

[KARLI] Yay!

[JAMIE] We've arrived. [all chuckle]

[KARLI] Thank you so much.

[JAMIE] Talk to you later, internet friends.

[PENNY] Bye!

[KARLI] Bye!