The Dullahan, The headless horseman of the Irish and Celtic mythology is well known as being a harbinger of death. But unlike the Banshee, the Dullahan doesn't pursue specific families, when the Dullahan appeared someone was meant to die. Also known as the driver of the Coiste bodhar (death coach)
Every once in a while I get a sales statement that reminds me that people are reading and buying my book and I want to say THANK YOU, it is so cool to have readers and supporters. I hope y'all love it.
Thanks for the tag @kaleidoscope1967eyes! This was a very fun thing to do over my tea this morning 🤗😘💛
Three Ships:
Luke x Mara (of course)
Jane x Lisbon (choice no doubt influenced by “what I’m watching” answer)
Mulder x Scully
First Ship:
Last Song: (an answer I know my tagger will enjoy!):
Last Movie: Omg for real I watched this last night and then found one of the bad guys has a website and I sent him fanmail.
Currently Reading: I swear to god someday I will finish Fairy Tale by Stephen King but I’m going to say MY book because I found two typos in the published copy dammit and now I have to reread the whole thing to make sure there aren’t more so the layout people can fix them. Sigh.
Currently Watching:
The Mentalist. This is a rewatch (I’ve seen it all before) and this show is 300% a guilty pleasure. My husband is always around (but not watching exactly) when I’m binging it and he’s experiencing it by proximity osmosis. He also ships Lisbon and Jane so he’s in for a treat 🥰
Thank you again for the tag @kaleidoscope1967eyes! A nice start to my Sunday! 🤗🥰
Not to give away too much before our forthcoming interview, however, I wanted to express how much I am enjoying Death Coach.
The approach of both revealing the perpetrator + the use of multiple POV are huge draws for me. I love different character perspectives not only in the same story, but juxtaposed in the same chapter!
That’s all you get for now, but it brings to mind that I need to start taking notes 🧐
Thank you so much for this note @beebee-76! I'm looking forward to our interview, but it's awesome to hear you are enjoying @deathcoach! It's pretty rare that I write dual POVs, much less multiple, but it had to work for this story, so 🥳🥂!
I think I actually only wrote dual POV in Infectious, now that I think about it, fic-wise. But Death Coach definitely is its own animal, and I'm psyched it's inspiring questions (and notes!).
What was the process of getting yourself published? Did you get an agent or did you shop it yourself? Who edited it your or someone else? How long did it take from beginning to end? Was your story originally a fan fic? Who is your publisher / what printing house / company took you on? Thanks!
Thank you so much for these questions @twinsoulvisionary! There is a lot here so I will try to keep it brief and helpful!
I’ll go a little out of order so it makes more sense! Follow me below the cut!
Death Coach was written because I have two people in my life, one a published romance novelist and the other a family member, who had read lots of my fanfic and said I should write something original. So I took a few days to come up with an idea for something I thought I would care about enough to write an original novel about it.
The idea was simple “Detective gets involved with serial killer he’s hunting.” That was it. 😈
As to the question of if it was originally a fanfic, it was written explicitly to NOT be a fanfic, explicity to be something I could sell. However it’s no secret to anyone who knows me that Detective Walker is a thinly-veiled Luke Skywalker avatar, and Terana is at least physically very much like Mara Jade. There are tons of Easter Eggs in my novel for Star Wars fans, and I don’t want to drop them all here, but absolutely you will find other Star Wars-inspired characters in the book.
About the timeline:
Death Coach was finished in Dec 2018 and published in Dec 2022, so four years later. How about that? I’m just so happy it’s done! *checks box*
How long did it take to write?
Everyone writes at a different pace, but when I’m writing and have time to do it, I am super fast. I think Death Coach was written (first draft complete of 80k) in about 3 weeks. The first two days after I started it, I was already 20k into the book. I edit as I go—one of my habits with this book, so I didn’t lose any threads, was to reread what I’d written at least every other day. I could fix things, tweak, and proofread as I read. I think especially if you are writing a story where there are aspects of mystery or clues needing to be dropped, it’s a good habit to reread your draft often before you continue.
So I was on fire and the story wrote itself (as my stories often do).
I edited it myself (I consider myself an excellent editor, no false modesty here) but my sister, who is also a great proofreader, double-checked (and did find things I’d missed).
For getting published, it was a long and rocky road. I sent the book to many agents and publishers at the same time. I made a packet, query letter, checked all the boxes.
I did get a few offers fairly quickly, but they always seemed unappealing. For example, one publisher came back and said they loved the story but since their readership was primarily into dominant males, they suggested flipping the characters or making Terana more sub and Walker more domineering. That (if you’ve read the book you’ll understand) is a completely different novel, and not a story that interested me. One asked for more queer sexual content. One wanted more explicit childhood trauma for the serial killer. Another wrote back and offered me $1000 advance with a cap on royalties of $1,000. Since I am doing this as a hobby, it wasn’t so much about the money, but that seemed low to me and why would I want to cap royalties?
The most encouraging responses were actually from agents or publishers who were like “we can’t sell this right now but we like your style, send us something else/send us a different book.” Well, this was THE book I wrote and I wasn’t going to write another one until I’d published this one…but that was still nice to hear. Lots of positivity but no takers.
One of the funniest responses I got was from an agent who was super excited about the premise and emailed me about how much he was looking forward to reading it and then emailed me a couple days later and was like “Uh…this is X rated. I thought it would be a nice book.” I was laughing like uh…ok so a NICE book about a serial killer? Did he even read the synopsis? Anyway, clearly too prudish to enjoy the smutastic Death Coach.
About a year after I wrote it, one of my friends who had been published under contract with Harlequin for years switched to self-publishing, and made about twice as much as she had under contract (she was making about $14k a book). She suggested I do it, but I didn’t have the time or energy (as I mentioned, writing is a hobby for me and not a life goal or anything). She also had the benefit of a following, a known name in the romance business, something I do not.
I am under no illusions about the limited demographic for Death Coach—it’s gritty and graphic in both violent death and sex. People who are reading Mills & Boon don’t want to read about cunts and sex in the dirt, and people who are reading hard crime aren’t expecting lots of explicit fucking breaking up their action. But I thought maybe I would go after self-publishing when I had time and see if the book found an audience.
So fast-forward several years (!) and this past August I had some time to explore options. My friend who has self-published used Ingram Spark, who have global distribution and don’t try to keep any rights over your product. I worked with her to setup the title on her account, so I didn’t have to start from scratch (but I think it’s pretty easy if you want to set up your own—although if you are getting the impression I am lazy about it, you are right).
One benefit of Ingram is the option to refuse returns, because sometimes authors actually OWE money when royalties go into the negative due to returns. So I used SpiroBooks.com for my layout, got the ISBNs myself, had the super-talented @jadedjo do my cover art, and voila, here we are.
I think it’s important to stress again that I do this as a HOBBY. If I was interested in being a professional author who does it as a career, there were a lot of things I would do differently, including joining professional associations, spending more time and effort on finding an agent, and writing books that are commercial and similar to what is selling (or what the publishers told me they were looking for). Along the path, I had several opportunities to compromise and sell the book to other entities, but what was important to me was the fact this was written, I liked it as it was, and I had no real reason or motivation to change the story or rewrite, etc.
My goal in publishing this was to see if people liked it, and maybe make a series out of it if it was profitable. I do love Detective Walker and wouldn’t mind seeing what erotic adventures he has in the future, but I also am happy writing fanfic and working the dayjob. So we’ll see how it shakes out and if I should continue 🥰
I should mention that I’m overwhelmed and touched by the immense support the book has here on tumblr and in fandom spaces with my friends. I love everyone who bought it (I think I don’t get sales stats until next month) and thank each of you for giving such a hard-to-categorize novel an audience.
I hope that answered all your questions @twinsoulvisionary! Thank you so much for the ask and interest, and I wish you luck in your own writing and publishing endeavors!!! 😘 Feel free to ask other stuff, you or anyone else with a question!
