349. Keeping the Audience in Mind Always: An Interview with Melonie Johnson

[music]

Sarah Wendell: Hi there, Happy Friday, and welcome to episode number 349 of Smart Podcast, Trashy Books. I’m Sarah Wendell, and today I am talking with Melonie Johnson, who I first met nearly ten years ago, before she knew what RWA was. Now she has been a chapter president, she’s organized conferences, and she is releasing three books back to back as a debut author! Her first book, Getting Hot with the Scot, released this week. Congrats, Melonie! We talk about a lot of things. I think the most important piece of advice that she discusses is how to keep the audience in mind always.

I do want to mention that she talks a little bit about the death of her father six years ago and how her first book is dedicated to him. It’s not explicit or anything like that, but it is a bit of an emotional moment, so I wanted to give you a heads-up in the intro.

And if you are looking for more information, you can find Melonie Johnson on her website, on Twitter, and on Instagram, and of course I will have links to all of these things, plus the books, in the podcast show notes at smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast.

This episode is being brought to you by In a Badger Way by Shelly Laurenston. You know I love this series, right? New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Shelly Laurenston is back with the second in her unforgettable series about three outrageously snarky honey badger sisters who don’t give a shit. They are fearless, they are flawless, and they are fierce. Find out what happens when panda shifter Shen Li is tasked with bodyguard duty to the petite and brilliant Stevie as she attempts to go undercover to take down a scientist experimenting on shifters. She clearly doesn’t understand the danger they are in or she’d stop trying to squeeze him at every opportunity. If only she wasn’t so adorable about it! This mission will clearly not go according to plan. In a Badger Way by Shelly Laurenston is on sale now wherever books are sold and at kensingtonbooks.com.

And you know I read and reviewed this book, and I really enjoyed it, but I am squarely in the Shelly Laurenston demographic.

Every episode of this here podcast that you are listening to with your marvelous ears receives a transcript, and it is handcrafted by garlicknitter. Thank you, garlicknitter! [My pleasure! – gk] And this transcript is this week brought to you by Radish. You can discover a world where storytelling is reimagined with Radish, an app with thousands of romance stories from bestselling authors like Lisa Renee Jones, Kelley Armstrong, Julie Kenner, and Sylvia Day, in bite-size chapters, perfect to read on your morning commute, lunch break, or before bed. Enjoy epic romances full of everything from billionaire bosses and tattooed bad boys to sexy vampires and paranormal shifters. You can join live chat rooms and interact with authors and fellow readers who love the same stories you do, and you can explore a fresh collection of original stories written by some of daytime TV’s top Emmy-winning writers, bingeable and fast-paced stories that you won’t find anywhere else. For example, you can dive into Gita’s outrageous dating life as she joins a shifter-only dating app. Her super-sexy date Reece Darby turns out to be a human, and their crazy sexual chemistry makes it hard to believe he’s not into shifters. Radish has it all. You can download the app in the Google Play Store or the Apple Store for free and begin your adventure on Radish today.

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I have compliments! This is so fun!

To Casey B.: When your family tree is fully drawn, the branches of the tree all spell out FREAKING AWESOME, and somehow the leaves are all pointing at your name. Interesting.

And to Lana – I hope I’m saying it right; maybe it’s Lana? If it is, I apologize. Lana or Lana, either way: After much online and offline debate, grammarians and linguists have decided that the plural of you is an outstanding of Lanas.

If you would like a compliment of your own, that is one of the reward tiers at Patreon, patreon.com/SmartBitches. I have a lot of fun, and they are definitely handcrafted and heartfelt by yours truly!

Speaking of podcasting things, do you want to see us record an episode live? This is a lot of fun. If you are attending Book Lovers Con in New Orleans, Amanda, Elyse, and I will be there – please stop us and say hi if you see us around – and Thursday, May 16, 3:30 p.m. local time at the Hyatt Regency New Orleans, we’ll be recording a live show. We’re going to play Cards Against Romance Tropes; we might do trivia; there’s going to be silliness; we’ll probably try to bring wine, because that’s how these things go. We’ll be in Imperial 5C, so come on down. It is free for attendees of Book Lovers Con, but I am asking for RSVPs just so we make sure we have enough chairs. You can find the link in the show notes at smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast or in the Events section at Smart Bitches, Trashy Books.

I will have mu-, information – I will have music and information – also information about the music that you are listening to beneath my words. Did you know that’s called the bed? I didn’t know that. The music underneath is called the bed; I learned that recently. Anyway, there’s music – I’m playing it right now? I’m going to tell you what it is at the end of the episode, plus I always end with a really, really bad joke, and I tell you what’s coming up on the website, so if you listen to the outro, you get a really terrible joke with which you can torture your friends, because I am a giving person, and so is Kit, who is emailing me amazing jokes this week.

I will have links to all of the books that we talk about and the different RWA chapters we mention. There’s a lot of discussion about books, about writing, about the process of becoming a writer, but also just the process of continuing to stick with something when it’s something you really want to do. Creative outlets have a lot of power.

So let’s get started with this interview, eh? On with the podcast with this week’s guest Melonie Johnson.

[music]

Melonie Johnson: I’m Melonie Johnson, and I write contemporary romance. I have a series coming out soon from St. Martin’s Press, fun, flirty romances that are all about strong female friendships and girls going after their goals, and also a little bit of wish fulfillment and finding, finding your Happy Ever After.

Sarah: I’m in favor of all of these things. Like, all of them. I have not seen a three-in-a-row release schedule in a while, and you have back-to-back releases, is that right?

Melonie: Yes. Back to back to back: so April 30th, May 28th, and June 25th.

Sarah: That is so exciting. Are you about ready to fall over?

Melonie: No, I feel like, I love lists, but I’m starting to hate lists.

[Laughter]

Sarah: I know this problem.

Melonie: ‘Cause I just feel like, I just, everything is a, there’s, I mean, lists are great to, like, the mind, the brain dump, get ‘em, get it down, but I feel like –

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Melonie: – I’m just going from one list to the next, because there’s, there’s a lot to do. But at the same time, I feel like everything that I’m doing can kind of be built one on top of the other because this triple release is happening; hopefully all the work I’m doing as book one releases kind of feeds right into book two and right into book three. Yeah.

Sarah: And it’s, it’s a lot to do one at the end of, of a month, and then the following month, and then the month after that.

Melonie: I think, I think there – yes. I think that, again, I, like, I’m hoping it all will build one thing on top of the other, but it does feel like right now all I’m doing is focusing on the various pieces that go into the books coming out right now, and there’s, you know, I have other things I want to write, and right now, instead of writing the next, the next book, I’m writing, you know, articles and blog post interview questions and –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Melonie: Which is all great. I mean –

Sarah: Yep.

Melonie: – and as my publicist sends me things, I’m like, yep, keep, keep it coming; I’m happy to do it. You know, because, as a debut, I’m building, you know, this is the time to build that stuff, but it is a lot, you’re right. And I’m also recording the audiobooks for my series, and so I’ve been in the studio quite a bit getting those done.

Sarah: Now, these were, were all three of these Golden Heart books? I know you were a finalist twice.

Melonie: Yeah, so I, in 2016 I was a Golden Heart finalist with what was originally called, I believe it was originally called Sometimes You Need a Sexy Scot, and it was a finalist in the contemporary romance category, and it was exciting, and I got to go to San Diego, and that was the last year that they did the ceremony together with the RITAs and the Golden Hearts, in 2016, so that was kind of cool to, to do that –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Melonie: – especially because I got to sit with Laura Kinsale at my table.

Sarah: Oh my gosh! Oh my God!

Melonie: [Laughs] That was pretty cool. So it was worth it just for that. And then I signed with my agent that same summer; I signed with the Knight Agency, and it wasn’t because of the Golden Heart, but the Golden Heart certainly helped speed the process along. And then after having worked on some revisions with my agent and have, and, and kind of making a stronger book, we hadn’t gone on sub yet by the end of it, ‘cause we signed in that summer, and when the Golden Heart entries were closing for the final the next year we hadn’t gone on sub yet, so I entered again, the same book but revised, and finalled again, and I’m so glad I did, because the 2017 class, the rebels – I mean, I love my 2016 class, but the 2017 class, we really connected in, in an amazing way, and we, we talk every day, all of us, on Google Hangouts. We are constantly connected and chatting and checking in with each other, so it’s a support system that is invaluable, that I would never have had without finalling a second time.

Sarah: You know, it’s funny, there’s, it used to be ages – I mean, we met ages and ages ago.

Melonie: I know; I was kind of, I’m like, oh, I’ve known Sarah like five years, and then when I’m doing the math –

Sarah: No.

Melonie: – I’m like, no, I’ve, I’ve known you longer. Like, I’ve known you before the birth of my, of, of my second child, who just is going to turn ten next month.

Sarah: Yeah! I, my older, I was sitting next to my older son in the car, and I was like, my website and you were born in the same year, and now you are taller than me. Wow, that’s amazing.

Melonie: Yeah!

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Melonie: And it’s ‘cause I – yeah, and it, because it was, I was a romance reader first and found, you know, the Smart Bitches website as a romance reader and just loved it and loved, you know, hanging out there.

Sarah: Thank you! That is such the nicest thing to hear.

Melonie: Yeah.

Sarah: I love that. Thank you.

Melonie: [Laughs] And I think I may have told you this story, but when you were here, I think it was 2010 for Spring Fling –

Sarah: Yep.

Melonie: – I did not even know what RWA was. I happened to see that you were going to be in town and sent you a note, because that’s kind of like the kind of person I am. I will, I don’t know, like, hey, hey! You want to get together? I see you’re in town, and, you know, you said, sure! So that was really cool. So we got together, and it was, it was really cool for me because you were like, yeah, here’s all these great books, and you gave me the Julia Quinn books, so you introduced me to the Bridgerton series; I had not read it before.

Sarah: Oh, that’s, that’s expensive of me; I’m sorry.

[Laughter]

Melonie: No, I, I read through, I think quite a few of them were out by that point, so I spent, like, the summer just zipping right through them, and then the other thing, you know, you told me was, I asked, oh, so why are you in town? What’s this conference about? And you said, oh, it’s ro-, you know, Romance Writers of America, and I honestly thought it was like the Red Hat Society. I thought –

Sarah: [Laughs] Nope!

Melonie: I thought it was the, yeah, I thought it was the thing where the ladies wear their red hats and get together, and I did not know what it was, and you said, no, no, it’s this great, you know, organization for romance writers, and I had just started dabbling in writing. I did a NaNo – National Novel Writing Month – that past fall with some other mom friends who, we were all desperate to, to use our brain in some other capacity? [Laughs] So that was kind of what started it was, was you telling me about that, and someone else I met when I dropped you back off at the conference, Erica O’Rourke, who was a Golden Heart finalist herself that year, oddly enough, we found each other. I used to teach theater –

Sarah: Right.

Melonie: – and I owned a children’s theater company that I ran through park districts, and so when I dropped you off, you know, I met this, Erica had come up to you and said, you know, can we get a picture, and I took the picture, and I emailed to, it to her, and so we had contacted that way, and then so the next week I go in and teach my class, and who is sitting in the hallway but Erica?

[Laughter]

Melonie: Her daughter was taking dance lessons in the same building, and so she invited me to Chicago North, and I said, yeah, yeah, sure, that sounds great! And then, you know, promptly pushed it aside, but every week I would be there to teach, and every week she would be there in the hallway waiting for her daughter’s dance class, and she would ask me every week, and it was amazing, ‘cause she was, you know, so excited about encouraging me to write and to be a part, part of this group, I finally, she finally broke me down and I went!

[Laughter]

Melonie: And then became president of the chapter, like, not even two years later.

Sarah: Yeah, exactly! You’re –

Melonie: Yeah, when I’m, when I’m in, I go all in.

Sarah: Yeah, you, you go, you go in and you go hard.

Melonie: [Laughs] Yeah! So yeah, so thank you for that, for introducing me to RWA and to Julia Bridger-, Julia Quinn and the Bridgertons and all of that. It’s all you, Sarah! I, if –

Sarah: Nah!

Melonie: – dedicate it to you!

Sarah: No, I can’t take that much credit. I do love how, you know, there’s, there’s so many different paths to getting published now: you can self-publish, you can do a mix of both, you can do a bunch of anthologies and then go out on your own, you can – or you can do what for so many years was the most obvious and often the only path to publication, where you join RWA and you enter the Golden Heart, and then you move on to the RITA, and you, you’re one of the most recent people I can remember who’s done that path.

Melonie: Yeah! I, yeah, if, yeah, if you want to talk about what are the, what is the traditional process, you know, I started writing, I did NaNo, joined RWA, and I, I wasn’t in a rush. I took my time. I wanted to learn the craft, and I was an English teacher. I taught high school English, I mean, so I’m not, like, saying that all high school English teachers know their shit, but you know, we, we, we do have to teach high school kids how to write a sentence and, and encourage them to have a love of literature, so, so I had those basic building blocks, but there’s a, there’s, there’s a difference to teaching and to, to teaching how to write and to writing yourself, so I spent, I took my time. I, like I said, I wasn’t in a hurry.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Melonie: I kind of got a feel for what I wanted to do. And it’s not to say there aren’t other people out there who are doing the same things and taking the same steps, and I really do feel I was lucky. I feel like there are a lot of little things that were right place, right time kind of moments for me, and you just never know what your right place, right time is going to be, so I like to say to people that I was, I was lucky, but I was also ready when luck struck.

Sarah: So what brought you into the books that you are releasing and releasing and then releasing again? What –

Melonie: [Laughs]

Sarah: – what was your entry point into this story? One of the things I love about the first book is that it’s not only a sort of a, a fling romance, but it’s a travel romance, where you have characters who are on vacation and traveling around Europe together.

Melonie: Yeah. So I love some good armchair tourism. I love getting to explore other places –

Sarah: [Laughs] Me too.

Melonie: – while reading a book. Susanna Kearsley, whenever I read one of her books, I get, I get so invested in just the little bits that she’ll talk about the, the characters at restaurants or at their bread and, bed and breakfast or hotel, and there’s these little details that I just want to curl up inside and be a part of and want to go to those places, and so, yeah, so, so armchair tourism and exploring other places and just kind of getting out of your comfort zone and doing something different kind of opens you up to new things, so that was, that was all part of it. Honestly, so I started writing these books in late 2015 – yes, no, well, much earlier than that, actually. When I started writing the first book was in 2013, and that was the same year my father passed away –

Sarah: I’m sorry.

Melonie: – and actually, his, the anniversary of his death is tomorrow, so –

Sarah: Oh, I’m so sorry!

Melonie: Well, it, well, I mean, the first book is actually dedicated to my father.

Sarah: I was going to say, I noticed that you dedicated it to him.

Melonie: Yeah, so six years tomorrow. It was very sudden, unexpected, and very hard. So when it happened, I had just started writing the series, I had just had that idea, and actually, when I got the phone call that he was being rushed to the hospital, and it was obviously a very garbled phone call, I didn’t really get the details –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Melonie: – and didn’t know exactly what was happening. I was at my friend’s house and doing, we were writing. We were at one of our writing days, and so I was working on this book, just kind of getting the feel for it, and so I really had, after that happened, I set it aside for probably over a year. I didn’t really write for over a year.

Sarah: Yeah.

Melonie: And then, you know, the, the characters started talking to me again. The girlfriends – there’s five friends, and they just started having these fun little conversations, and they were planning their trip. There, there’s five friends, and they each pick a country to go to, and they were just kind of in my head, kind of, well, I want to go, you know, to France. Well, the, the, the heroine, she wants to go to France. She wants to go to Paris, the City of Love, ‘cause she is determined to have herself, you know, a foreign fling, to have some fun while she’s on vacation.

Sarah: Right. I love how authors can talk about how, well, then the characters started talking to me, and I’m like, yes, of course they did, and to an outsider that sounds very concerning.

Melonie: [Laughs] I know! And I, it’s so weird, because they really do feel like real friends to me at this point, and so, honestly, they were, in a, in a way, my friends who brought me back to writing, ‘cause I, I wanted to tell their stories!

Sarah: Aw!

Melonie: And, and I had, they had, they had so much time in my head that they feel one hundred percent real, to the point that – and this is kind of embarrassing or awkward; I’m not sure what the right word is, but – so when I had my call with my agent and she, you know, we were talking about the series, and she said, you know, selling five books – ‘cause there’s five friends – she’s like, selling, trying to get out there as a debut and sell five books is really hard. I think you should make it three. And I said, no. I said, absolutely –

[Laughter]

Melonie: And this is before she signed me, so I was – [laughs]. I said, I can’t do that. I can’t – these are real people to me. I can’t just say, sorry, no, you guys. You guys are gone. I said, they’re an integral part of their friendships, these five girls, and how they work together. It’s, I, I can’t do that; I’m sorry. And when, later, she didn’t tell me this right away, but later she said to me, you know, the way you fought for your characters is one of the reasons why I wanted to sign you.

Sarah: No kidding!

Melonie: So I thought that was amazing, because I thought, oh my God, I’m shooting myself in the foot right now. [Laughs] But –

Sarah: Yeah?

Melonie: – this woman – [laughs]. But I, I couldn’t, I couldn’t back down on that. And you, and as you go through the publishing process, there are a lot of things you do have to back down on. You do have to learn how to compromise; you do have to learn that it is not just an art, it’s a business; but as far as that was concerned, I wasn’t giving up on those five girls. And it turn, it worked in my favor, because when my editor had her call with me, I had originally, you know, they had the five books; they had, like, the five, the overview of the five books and the order that they would come in; and she said, how do you feel about moving the books around? And I said, books one and two have to happen back to back, but after that I can play. And she said, well, that’s great –

Sarah: Yeah.

Melonie: – ‘cause I really want what would have been my book five as the third book, ‘cause it was a three-book deal, and I said, no problem. So the set, and, ‘cause she loved the third book as a second-chance trope, and she really, really liked that angle. She really loved the second-chance storyline, so if I had cut that friend, that, I might not have gotten that deal! [Laughs] So.

Sarah: Right, yeah.

Melonie: So –

Sarah: So you have to, you have to do this sort of balance of trusting your instincts and trusting the story that you’ve been imagining, but also thinking of it strategically when it comes to getting it into readers’ hands.

Melonie: Right, right. And so that was one thing, you know, going into it knowing that it would just be the first three books, the first three friends, and then hoping that people are engaged enough and love the girls enough that they want to see the rest, and so far things have seemed pretty positive. There does seem to be quite a bit of interest in hearing the other girls’ two stories, so who’s, who knows. If – and, and like you said, there’s so many paths now that if, for whatever reason, it’s not in the cards for me to publish books four and five with my publisher, I have plenty of other options, so they will get their happy endings!

Sarah: Right. ‘Cause they’ve been hanging out in your head, and you need to write them down.

Melonie: Yes, definitely! I know how their, their happy endings are going to – although I say I know, but they always surprise me, so.

Sarah: I think that’s one of the things that people who don’t understand the genre miss, is that we all go into a book knowing the end. Like, we know they’re going to end up together. There are so many ways in which that could happen. There are so many possibilities as to how they’re going to get from page one to the scene at the end –

Melonie: Yes!

Sarah: – and even if you, like me – I believe Kat from Book Thingo calls it being a fairy killer, that when you spoil the ending a fairy dies? I will sometimes peek at the end and be like, all right, what, where, where are we going? Just to surprise myself how they get there, even though I know going in that that’s, that’s what’s going to happen. I know when I start a murder mystery, whoever is murdered, they’re going to figure out who did it. I mean, it’s not like everyone’s going to be like, you know what? We don’t care.

Melonie: Right.

Sarah: We’re just going to go home. Dead people! Who cares? No, that doesn’t happen! [Laughs]

Melonie: Yeah. Romance gets the bash for being formulaic, but I think all genre has, there’s, there is a formula to it that, that’s what makes it part of a specific genre, so –

Sarah: Absolutely!

Melonie: It’s how we get there, how the author gets you there. It’s, it’s, you know, the road to a happy ending is, you know, you know you’re going to arrive there, but it’s how, it’s, it’s the, the curves along the way that we’re there for.

Sarah: Absolutely. And you also have this, this possibility when you’re writing – I know I went through this experience – that you think you kind of know where you’re going, and then you start writing and it’s like, oh, you people say different things than I expected.

Melonie: Oh my goodness –

Sarah: Okay.

Melonie: – yes. [Laughs]

Sarah: I, I, I agree to keep writing if you guys keep talking. And I’m very much a dialogue writer. I end up writing dialogue and then be like, thinking, like, rereading it and thinking, these two people are talking into a completely blank white space. It’s like a really high art commercial shoot where I just have these two people yammering and absolutely nothing around them! Just talking!

Melonie: Well, that’s, I mean, and I think everyone comes at it from a different place. Like, I’m also very strong dialogue writing, and I think part of it is my theater background –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Melonie: – that dialogue and characters are my way into a story, but I, like, I definitely, there are people who, they need to get that plot set first, you know, and the, the action and what happens is what, is what pulls them in when they’re starting to write, and for others it could be the setting. So yeah, but definitely, I agree. I, I do, will often have these conversations, and then like, oh, wait a minute, they have to be having this conversation somewhere! [Laughs]

Sarah: Right. They need to be somewhere that I can, you know, move them to another location. This can’t just be – oh God, what are those things called when you have a theater production where it’s just two people in chairs reading a play?

Melonie: I think it’s just called a reading.

Sarah: It’s just a reading, right? Yeah, I’ve, I was a speech and drama major, and I know that there are a couple of plays where it’s staged as a reading.

Melonie: Yes.

Sarah: I think one of them is Eleemosynary, which is, I was stage crew for that, and it’s just tables and a chair of people reading – it’s a reading play – but it’s still, like, there’s still context. There’s still a visual, with, with – [laughs] – I just have a reading romance. You need a little bit more in the, in the background.

Melonie: Yeah. And, and, like you said, people, people who aren’t authors, who aren’t writing, if you talk about your characters talking to you or your characters fighting you –

Sarah: Yes!

Melonie: – they’re like, what, what, what? They think that there’s room for concern. No, it’s just, I think that, I will have a plot that I think I want to happen a certain way, and it, and when I’m stuck and can’t move forward, it usually turns out that I’m trying to make one of the characters do something that they really wouldn’t do and don’t want to do, and I’m like, no, you have to do this, because the plot says so! They’re like, I don’t want to do it! So usually the best way to get unstuck is to then scrap that idea and to let them do what they want to do.

Sarah: I have found also that switching point of view is what I need to do.

Melonie: You know what? That’s funny you mentioned that, because I have a, ‘cause at my Golden Heart groups, you know, we’re always talking to each other, giving each other writing advice, and one of the girls was just stuck. Stuck, stuck, stuck on this scene, she couldn’t move forward, and my first suggestion was, have you tried flipping the POV, and she’s like, yes! And that’s actually an acting trick.

Sarah: Really! I didn’t know that!

Melonie: Yeah, I, so, ‘cause I was a theater major as well. It’s amazing how many writers I meet are either lawyers or theater majors. [Laughs] Often in scenes, if you’re, if you’re having trouble getting into your character or finding your way into your character, flipping it and having – like, if you’re reading one part, read the other? That helps you see the character from a different perspective and kind of can help you figure things out!

Sarah: So I know, you mentioned that you were an English teacher, you’ve been a drama teacher, you started a children’s theater, and you’ve tutored. How are those things influential in your writing? Like, what has drama specifically brought to your writing that you find to be a, a strength in how you, how you process your stories?

Melonie: Well, I think we talked about a few things already. You know, the fact that dialogue is very strong for me, and I, I very much think that comes from a theater background where you work mostly in dialogue. You have a script, and it’s –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Melonie: – so much of it is, is the characters talking and how you have to kind of find the layers of the story within the words being said. So, so the dialogue aspect of it and understanding just the ebb and flow of a story when you’re working in a, a play when you’re on a production and you’re, you’re acting in a play and being a part of that ebb and flow and developing a character, I think all of those things definitely play into, into my writing, and they show up on the page too. Book two, the second book in my series, the heroine is, in many aspects, you know, I, you, you put pieces of yourself, whether on purpose or not, I think pieces of yourself will show up in, in all of your characters. Bonnie, the heroine of book two, has definitely got a pretty big chunk of me. She’s, you know, a theater, an English professor, and, you know, she talks about a play that she directed which is one hundred percent a play that I directed. [Laughs]

Sarah: You, you do have to write what you know.

Melonie: I just borrowed from real life, yeah. So there was an –

Sarah: Yeah.

Melonie: – an adaptation of Midsummer Night’s Dream that I did set in the Prohibition era in Chicago, and I just stole that and put that right into the book.

Sarah: I should think that working from the directorial perspective of a play that you’ve experienced would make it a little bit easier.

Melonie: Yeah, ‘cause, ‘cause, again, there’s different, definitely different hats. Like, being an actress versus being a director, when you have to look at the entire scope of the play, and you’re thinking so much more as a director, you’re thinking so much more about how all the pieces fit, which, now that I think about it –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Melonie: – probably plays more into my writing than I ever thought about. ‘Cause I did direct high school theater for ten years. That was a lot of time figuring out how to get those pieces all in the right place. [Laughs]

Sarah: You’re also looking at the overarching story –

Melonie: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – where you want, where you want the characters to be at the end, and where you want the audience to be at the end.

Melonie: Yes. That, that’s actually a really great point, the audience aspect of it, because as an author, you know, thinking about your reader, like, where do you want your reader to be at the end of this? And obviously, we want them –

Sarah: Yes, and –

Melonie: – happy sighing with, with the Happily Ever After. [Laughs] But that, right, the, but that the road you want to take them on.

Sarah: And the, and the ways in which you want to engage the audience’s empathy or sympathy without doing it so overtly that it’s obvious?

Melonie: Yeah, it’s a tricky thing, and I feel like part of why I’m glad –

Sarah: It is.

Melonie: – that these three books are releasing back to back to back is because I was able to write them without any invasion of the outside world, if that makes sense. Like, there’s not –

Sarah: No, it makes total sense! This was just you writing for you.

Melonie: But the only, the only other voice besides my own was my editor’s. You know, that was the only other input, so there was, there was nobody’s opinions of my characters or of my worldbuilding that influenced how these stories were written in any way, and that was kind of –

Sarah: Right.

Melonie: – a gift that you don’t always get.

Sarah: That is a gift! You mentioned earlier that when you started writing it was you and some friends, and you were looking for a creative outlet, a creative project for yourselves. What did having writing as a creative outlet do for you as you were working on these stories in that really, that, that gift of bubble where you were just writing for yourself with a goal of finishing and with a goal of maybe publishing, but it was still just you? What did the, what did that experience give you?

Melonie: Oh wow. We, we’d had book clubs, and so you, so you read a book, and you get to, get together and talk about the book and drink lots of wine. [Laughs]

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Melonie: And so, so we had, you know, the, the groups that I was a part of, like, the mom groups, you know, or the play groups, whatever, we had those, those book clubs, and then, you know, at some point in one of the book clubs we started talking about, well, you know, if I was writing this I would do this, or I wish the writer had done this, and then we said, well, how many of us are interested in writing? And it kind of flowed into, well, let’s try NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month, and then it was like starting that book turned the muse back on for me. It was like a, a light switch was flipped, you know, where I was like, the first, that, the first book I wrote, that NaNo book, is actually a paranormal. [Laughs] Like, I like to say it’s Ghost Whisperer meets X-Files, and it’s under the bed right now, but it’s not going away. I’m going to bring that baby back some time.

But, but, but it was just, it was for fun, like you said, writing for me, so I could just write whatever I felt like and write for me and write for fun, and when the book was finished and I found RWA through you and all those things, and I was finding out that paranormal was maybe not – you know, they always say, oh, paranormal is dead, or historical romance is dead, but they’re not. Everyone is still reading them, but you hear these things, and so I set that book aside and said, okay, this was like a practice run; this was me getting my, my feet wet again, and then I started to think about, well, what else do I want to try? And that’s when I had the, the vision of the Highlander and the castle, and I thought, oh, it’s another paranormal, but then it wasn’t. [Laughs]

But to answer your question is that, yeah, it was a, the light flipped on inside of me, that connection to the muse again, and to be in a space mentally and emotionally outside of myself in some ways, exploring a world that wasn’t –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Melonie: – my own, in the sense that it wasn’t the day-to-day stuff, you know, of, of work and kids and house and all that stuff, so it was a, it was an escape, and I think it’s, the same can be said for our readers. I would like to think that they can pick up a book and escape for a little while, and that’s why –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Melonie: – when I started picking, when I got back to the book and started writing again, all I knew was it, I wanted it to be funny. I wanted it to be light and funny, because I was coming off a very dark year, and then in 2016, you know, things start, something happened –

Sarah: That was certainly a light and bubbly year, absolutely. Very, very –

Melonie: [Laughs]

Sarah: – very light, somewhat fluffy. Not at all soul-grinding or terrible.

Melonie: Yeah. So I, it was everything, for over the past couple of years I’ve just like, I just need a place where I can just, just laugh and have fun –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Melonie: The idea of five girlfriends who are just going out and being silly and enjoying themselves, but also, you know, going after their goals and getting what they want, damn it! – [laughs] –

Sarah: Yeah, absolutely!

Melonie: – was some wish fulfillment too, so right. So just, just, like, whatever is going on in your life, however dark or depressing or, you know, is, is happening in the world that you’re living in, that you can pick up a book and escape for a bit is, is, is what I’m hoping people get when they read, and that’s what I get when I write. Unless I’m on deadline, and then it’s misery and suffering.

Sarah: I’ve often found that if I give my brain a space to be creative and to play, the rest of my day is happier.

Melonie: Yeah! It’s like, it’s like exercise. Honestly, it’s like if you just can give yourself that bit of time, it is –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Melonie: – everything is, everything is better. And then when you don’t, when you don’t work out or when you don’t write or when you don’t do the thing that fulfills you and fills your well in that way, ugh! [Laughs]

Sarah: Yep. So with the books that you’ve written, you are also narrating your own audiobooks.

Melonie: I am!

Sarah: I know you do audiobook narration. What has that experience been like? How are you, how are you doing the narration project?

Melonie: Okay, so this is another angle of where my theater background definitely came into play, and RWA, so, was oddly a piece of it too. So Chicago North will do monthly critiques where people bring their work to read and read it out loud, and then we critique it in a, in a group format, and then once a year we also do this thing called Hot Night, where everyone brings a sex scene to read, and we, we critique it. And so on Hot Night there were a few people who were a little nervous about reading their sex scenes out loud, and me being me said, I’ll read it for you!

[Laughter]

Melonie: I had no problem, so I, I read several other people’s sex scenes out loud for them, and afterward someone came up to me and they’re like, you are really good at this! You should narrate books!

Sarah: Aw!

Melonie: And I was like, aw, that’s so sweet!

[Laughter]

Melonie: And didn’t really think much else about it, until, I forget when it was, but I heard about ACX, the Audiobook Creation Exchange –

Sarah: Right.

Melonie: – and you can, it was, it’s very much a, a door for indie authors and indie producers, narrators, to work together, so I said, what the heck? So I took a sample of one of my friends’ novels, with her permission, and recorded it and put it up. There’s like, you can put up a list of producers for hire, so authors can listen to samples –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Melonie: – and if they liked your work can reach out to you. So I put that up, and I pretty much forgot about it. Like, I didn’t really think much of it, and it was almost a year later that I had someone reach out and said, I listened to your sample; I think you’re going to be perfect for my book. Would you like to do it? And I said –

Sarah: Aw!

Melonie: – oh, sure, why not? So I did that one.

Sarah: Where did you do the recording? Did you have a studio in your house?

Melonie: [Laughs] Yeah. So I did basically what you did: I did a do-it-yourself kind of scenario –

Sarah: Yeah.

Melonie: – where I bought – my husband was a podcaster at this point for several years, so he had some knowledge of microphones and things like that? So he helped me pick out a mic and helped me set up Audacity, which is a free software, editing software program. I learned the basics of how to record myself and edit myself and just kind of dove in! Like I said, when I do something, I go all in? So I said, all right, I’m going to do this!

[Laughter]

Melonie: And after the first audiobook went up for sale, it kind of bumps your, you put a sample of it online, and so it bumps you to the top for a few seconds when it’s first on sale, and another author happened to see that and listened to my sample, and then she contacted me, would I, could I, could I read her book? And so it kind of was organic and very slow, one project at a time. I did it, I really treated it more like a hobby, kind of learning, and each, with each book I did I learned some techniques of, of how to do it better and built my own little – I don’t have a, I don’t have a recording studio; I have, like, a mini sound studio that’s like a, a Rubbermaid container with foam.

[Laughter]

Sarah: Yep!

Melonie: But it works! It actually works really well, and when we went to go sign the book deal with St. Martin’s, I asked my agent, I said, the only thing I want to keep are audio rights, and at this point they’re like, no. No audio, no deal. And there was, I was just at a conference a couple weeks ago, and there was a panel of editors, and that was one of the conversations they were having was at this point, most of the big five, it’s, they will, retaining audio rights is, is pretty much automatic. They expect to retain the audio rights –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Melonie: – because audiobooks are one of the biggest growing components in publishing right now. So –

Sarah: Oh yeah, absolutely.

Melonie: So I said, okay, okay, obviously I’m not going to walk away from this deal – [laughs] – so what I would like then is to be considered for the audio narration, or at least have say over, some say over approving who are the narrators, and we got that built into my contract. So I pretty much assumed that what would happen is they would give me a cursory glance and be like, yeah, whatever, and then tell me who they’d like to hire, and at least then I could approve the voices that would be narrating for my books. But what, what ended up happening was, the producer from St. Martin’s, from Macmillan emailed me and said, hey, I listened to your samples that are online, and I think you could do it. Do you want to do it? And I was, I was like –

Sarah: Ohhh, yay!

Melonie: – oh! Hold on! [Laughs] The, the idea of doing it and then doing it are two –

Sarah: Oh, it’s two different things!

Melonie: It’s like naming your kids. Like, when you’re talking about baby names and –

Sarah: Naming is hard!

Melonie: – you have a ton of, yeah, sure, name their kid this! But when you have to name your own kid? It’s like, I found it paralyzing. Like, it’s a whole different story. So narrating other people’s work, that was one thing, but then narrating my own work? Oh my God. Plus, brilliant person that I am, I have a lot of accents in these books – [laughs] – and so my biggest fear, and I told the producer this, I said, you know, let me read you, let me record some samples for you, especially of the accents, accents –

Sarah: Right, ‘cause you have characters who are Scottish –

Melonie: Yeah.

Sarah: – and characters who are American from parts of the States. Yeah!

Melonie: Let, let me see if we, if this, we can do this, and he said, yeah –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Melonie: – I agree; I think that that’s important, and so, so we did, and I recorded it, and he said, yeah, I think we should do it! So I told him I wasn’t comfortable recording at home in my little mini studio, especially because I wouldn’t be doing the editing, they would be doing all the editing, and as I’m recording it would be very difficult for me to mark on the script every time I screwed up, which is what an editor –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Melonie: – which is a producer needs to see so they can fix it. So –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Melonie: – we ended up finding an excellent studio right here in my area in Chicago that I’m actually, I’m not even, like, ten minutes from this guy, and he’s amazing. He’s like, he, he has this really cool studio in his basement of all places, but it’s –

Sarah: Ooh!

Melonie: – he’s, he’s a musician, so he has, like, a full band studio, as well as the smaller sound booth studio, and we’ve just become a really good team, and so books one and two, and I go into the studio to record book three in a couple weeks. And I wrote –

Sarah: Congratulations!

Melonie: Yeah! It’s been, I was, it was nerve-racking, and I’m still terrified. I do not think I will listen to the finished product.

[Laughter]

Sarah: Have you noticed things about your writing as you’ve been reading it out loud?

Melonie: Ho my God, yeah. So I have to –

[Laughter]

Sarah: So yes.

Melonie: I actually teach a workshop on how narrating your book or reading your book out loud can help you write a better book.

Sarah: Part of my editing process is to read aloud –

Melonie: Yeah.

Sarah: – my reviews and posts to myself.

Melonie: Right, and there’s, like, so many, like, small-scale and big-scale ways that reading your book out loud –

Sarah: Oh God.

Melonie: – will help your book. It will help you become a better writer, will help your book become a better book, and let’s just say, I need to take my advice more often.

[Laughter]

Melonie: But it was, it was, it was, yeah, it was, it was interesting for me to do it, and all of my voice and diction lessons definitely came into play. I feel I did okay, and I will not be listening to the finished product.

Sarah: [Laughs] Yeah, I can understand not being able to listen. I have to edit my own audio doing the podcast, and, and alone, this bad experience alone makes me aware of my own vocal tics, which are normal, everyone has them, but I listen to myself out loud for hours every week, and it’s not an enjoyable experience sometimes! [Laughs]

Melonie: Right, right, it’s – I’ve obviously gotten used to listening to my voice from editing and –

Sarah: Yes. Listening to your writing, though, is a whole other thing.

Melonie: Right. Well, this, well, this is right, ‘cause it’s not just, you’re not just listening to, to my voice narrating these books: you’re listening to my voice narrating my books. [Laughs]

Sarah: Yes, that’s an entirely different thing, and it’s hard! It’s very hard!

Melonie: Yeah. And, and that was the first time I had to work in a studio with another human being around? So it was me in the studio and the guy at his sound board, and let’s just say the first sexytimes – [laughs] – I had to read was, you know, it took me, ‘cause I had to go into it, and I think that’s where my acting paid off, where I looked at it as I’m performing a role, and I will not make eye contact with this guy while I am reading this particular scene. He was a hundred percent professional, I felt I was overall professional, and we, we got through it, and then now we’re, it’s no problem. It’s, you know, everything is, it’s just all part of the job.

Sarah: So what books are you reading that you want to tell people about?

Melonie: Oh my goodness. So, as a Golden Heart finalist, I have so many great writer friends who are putting out great books, and I’m trying to read all of those at once, which is impossible. I’m, I’m still catching up reading Alexis Daria’s series, the Dance Off books; and still catching up with Scarlett Peckham’s The Secrets of Charlotte Street series, which are historical, very Gothic, dark, delicious romances; but I’m currently, at the moment, reading one of my fellow debut authors’ books. It’s Appetites & Vices by Felicia Grossman? And it’s a historical romance, but it’s set in America, and I’m finding a lot more historical romances that are coming, that are here in America, which is, I think, pretty cool. And the cool thing with this one is the heroine is Jewish, and I like that as well. I like seeing that aspect in a historical romance and, and how that’s playing out.

So I’m reading Appetites & Vices, and I’m always listening to audiobooks. That’s pretty much how I get most of my reading time, and I just finished At the Stroke of Midnight by Tara Sivec, and then I just started the audiobook, Emma Chase’s, I think it’s the fourth book in the, her royal, the, Royally Matched I think is the series? And it’s the, the story of Queen Lenora; like, so it goes back in time, so it’s, I think the book starts in the 1950s when she becomes queen.

There’s two other books that, like, I put to the top of my TBR when they come out. There’s, like, Talia Hibbert has a book coming out with a ginger hero, and the heroine has some issues dealing with, like, consistent pain, and so I, that just, I saw the cover for that, and it was so cute! that I, I definitely put that on my TBR pile. And then another one is Well Met by Jen DeLuca, who is a fellow 2019 debut, and that book is set at a Renaissance Faire. [Laughs]

Sarah: Yes.

Melonie: Which sounds just so much fun.

Sarah: Is there anything else you want to make sure that you mention or talk about?

Melonie: That’s, like, that’s a very open question. I’m just, like, excited about, about the series coming out, and, and it’s been, it’s been an exciting ride, and I feel like, I feel like I’m coming full circle, being here talking to you right now about this after, you know –

[Laughter]

Melonie: – that, that moment almost ten years ago – oh my goodness! – when you told me that RWA –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Melonie: – is not ladies wearing red hats, but the Romance Writers of America.

Sarah: Well, congratulations on everything that has happened since then.

Melonie: Thanks so much! Yeah, hopefully, you know, this is the start of all kinds of exciting things!

[music]

Sarah: And that brings us to the end of this week’s episode. Thank you to Melonie Johnson, and congratulations again, for hanging out with me and talking about your new books. If you would like to find out more, I will have links to all of them in the show notes, but of course you can go to Melonie’s website at meloniejohnson – that’s Melonie with an O, M-E-L-O-N-I-E – meloniejohnson.com, and she’s on Twitter and Instagram @MelonieJohnson.

If you would like to talk to me, please do! You can email me at sbjpodcast@gmail.com. You can call and leave me a message at 1-201-371-3272. You can leave me a terrible joke; I love those.

And I have a special message to Casey B., who messaged me to say how much she loves the podcast. Thank you! The world is a better place because you are in it too.

Seriously, hearing from you guys just is, completely makes my day, so thank you.

This podcast episode is brought to you by In a Badger Way by Shelly Laurenston. New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Shelly Laurenston is back with the second in her unforgettable series about three outrageously snarky honey badger sisters who don’t give a shit. They are fearless, they are flawless, and they are fierce. Find out what happens when panda shifter Shen Li – who I loved, by the way – is tasked with bodyguard duty to the petite and brilliant Stevie as she attempts to go undercover to take down a scientist experimenting on shifters. She clearly doesn’t understand the danger they are in or she would stop trying to squeeze him at every opportunity. If only she weren’t so adorable about it. Either way, this mission will clearly not go according to plan. In a Badger Way by Shelly Laurenston is on sale now wherever books are sold and at kensingtonbooks.com.

Every episode receives a transcript hand compiled by garlicknitter. Thank you, garlicknitter! This week’s transcript is brought to you by Radish. Discover a world where storytelling is reimagined with Radish, an app with thousands of romance stories from bestselling authors like Lisa Renee Jones, Kelley Armstrong, Julie Kenner, and Sylvia Day, all in bite-size chapters, perfect to read on your morning commute, your lunch break, or before bed. You can enjoy epic romances full of everything from billionaire bosses and tattooed bad boys to sexy vampires and paranormal shifters. You can join virginal college student Ali Calloway in Fraternity Madam when she becomes an overnight success running an escort service with the fraternity boys next door. You can join live chat rooms, interact with authors and fellow readers who love the same stories you do, and you can explore a fresh collection of original stories written by some of daytime TV’s top Emmy-winning writers that are bingeable and fast-paced, stories that you won’t find anywhere else. Radish has it all. You can download the app in Google Play or the Apple Store for free and begin your adventure on Radish today.

We have a podcast Patreon. It is patreon.com/SmartBitches. I am deeply, deeply grateful for all of your support, and I am equally thankful for every new pledge I get, and every month when new people join the community, it is really exciting. I hope that if the podcast is beneficial or meaningful or helpful to you, you would have a look at our Patreon: patreon.com/SmartBitches. Thank you in advance, and thank you for everyone who has joined the community already.

We have a live show. I’m going to tell you about it again. You ready? Here we go: Book Lovers Con, New Orleans, Thursday, May 16, 3:30 p.m. local time, Hyatt Regency New Orleans, Imperial 5C. Come on down! It is free for attendees of Book Lovers Con. Just let us know if you’re coming; there’s a link in the show notes. We love doing the live shows, and we hope that you will join us for this one.

Yay, music! Time to talk about the music! Told you I was gonna. Now I’m going to do it now.

I’m a little punchy. I think it’s the allergy medicine. I, I don’t know what happened. It rained, we were supposed to get rid of all the pollen, and now I feel like crap, so either I’m getting a cold or it’s allergies, but either way, I hope you’re enjoying slightly allergy-medicine Sarah.

The music you are listening to is from Caravan Palace. This track is called “Newbop.” I figured that was an appropriate selection for a debut author interview, right? This is from their two-album set that includes Caravan Palace and Panic. It is fabulous music to listen to while you’re working or cleaning the house, which I have done, both, and you can find out more about Caravan Palace at their website and on their Facebook page. I have links to all of those things in the show notes.

Coming up on Smart Bitches this week: If you missed our announcement last weekend, we are looking for new reviewers, and if you are interested, there is a ton of information and an application form at smartbitchestrashybooks.com. I hope if you are interested you will apply!

Coming up this week, Elyse has a knitting column for all of you yarn-obsessed folks out there. We have some reviews of new books, and holy smokes, there are so many new books that people are excited about this week, so as a result we have so many reviews to talk about ‘em! We have a review for a romance that Amanda absolutely adored in every possible way, and a Guest Squee that is equally lovely. Plus, we have Library Coolness, Books on Sale every day, and Help a Bitch Out, so I envy a bite you – I invite you – you, yes, you – I’m inviting you right now to come join us and hang out. It’s always great when you do.

And now it is time. It is time! Drum roll! [Drum roll on desk] It is time! for the terrible joke. I love this part. So Kit, Kit is on the job, sending me terrible jokes that I love so much, and I like this one a lot. You ready?

What did the mama cow say to the baby cow?

Give up? What did the mama cow say to the baby cow?

It’s pasture bedtime.

[Laughs] So if you would like a little bonus joy, there is a subreddit of happy cows. I think it’s happycowgifs; I’m actually looking it up right this second. I’m pretty sure it’s happycowgifs. Yes! Happycowgifs or jifs, depending on how you say it. If you like to look at cows who are being happy, you will like this subreddit, but remember, it is pasture bedtime! [Laughs more] Thank you, Kit! These jokes are amazing.

On behalf of everyone here, including all of my animals that are sitting here and wondering what is wrong with me, we wish you the very best of reading. Have a wonderful weekend, and we will see you here next week.

[boppin’ music]