From Rachael Herron’s book launch, an awesome conversation between her and Sara Shepard (Pretty Little Liars) about what it’s like to launch a book in the middle of a pandemic!
Transcript:
Edward Giordano: [00:00:00] Hey everyone! I’m Ed, Rachael’s assistant. As you know, she’s off busy moving to New Zealand and we wanted to get this great recording from the Hush Little Baby launch at Murder by the Book out into the podcast world. This is an awesome conversation between Pretty Little Liars’ author, Sarah Shepherd, and Rachael about Rachael’s new book and both of their writing processes. Special thanks to John at Murder by the Book in Houston for letting us use this audio who also hosts many other great author events on their Facebook and YouTube page. Thanks for listening and enjoy the show!
John McDougall: [00:00:38] Hi, everybody! Thanks for joining us this evening. This is John. I am the event coordinator at Murder by the Book here in Houston, and I’m so excited for tonight’s event. But before we get started, I just wanted to give everybody a couple of general announcements about what’s going on in the store. So if you have not come to visit us in a while, we have been open since October for in-store browsing, so you can come visit us. We’re still limited to six people in the store at a time, just because it’s a small space. I’m sure, in the next couple of weeks, we will probably adjust that a little bit with the new CDC regulations. But even with those, we’re still asking everybody to please wear a mask when you come in. As many of you know, with us being in Houston, so close to the medical center, we do have a lot of immuno-compromised people that come in that are getting treatment at MD Anderson and we just want to make sure that everybody feels comfortable in the space. So we hope that you will continue to mask up when you come to visit us, but please come visit us. We know that not everybody is getting out and about just yet. So if you were still doing curbside pickup, if you want to do that, just give us a call when you pull up. We used to have a table where we would set your books outside. We’re not putting the table out anymore mostly because we’re lazy booksellers in generally forget that the table is outside. So inevitably we would set the alarm, walk out the door to lock up and realize there was a table in there and try to scramble to get it in before the alarm went off. So just give us a call when you pull up and we’re happy to run books out to the parking lot for you.
John McDougall: [00:01:54] We’ve got lots of great stuff coming up. So if you have not checked out murderbooks.com lately, we’ve got a bunch of virtual events, we had done over 200 of these with over 350 authors since the pandemic started. So those are all up for watching on our Facebook and our YouTube channel. Next Monday, we’re going to be doing another a Gore and Pulse Event. Next Thursday, we’re super excited, we’re going to be chatting with May Cobb about her new book, The Hunting Wives, which comes out Tuesday and then another great Texas author, Amy Gentry, is going to be in conversation with her. So we hope that you guys will check that out. Also when you’re perusing the website, make sure you check out the signed book and signed personalized pages cause we’ve been getting, we just confirmed a lot of really cool sign stuff. And also, a general disclaimer, we haven’t had any issues in a couple of days, but sometimes when we do our virtual events, especially on Facebook, we will get some spammers pop up and post links asking you to click away from the event to go somewhere else, to put in your credit card info to watch the event, you don’t have to do that. The event is free to watch. You’re watching it already. So you don’t have to click away to get somebody, your credit card info to watch something that is out already. If any of those pop up, I will block them as I see them. But sometimes I just wanna make sure you guys don’t click on them before I can get to them.
John McDougall: [00:03:05] As I said, I’m so excited for tonight’s event. R.H. Herron, Rachael Herron, is one of my favorite people in the world, as we were talking before. She has come and stayed at my house when she was in town. I visited her out in San Francisco with her wife and everybody that lives out there. So I’m so excited that we’re doing this. If you guys have not read Hush Little Baby yet, you are in for a ride. It is a nail biter. It’s twisty. It’s so fantastic. And we’re super excited to have Sarah Shepherd to be chatting with us this evening. So I’m going to bring them out. I’m going to start with Rachael. How are you tonight, Rachael?
Rachael Herron: [00:03:35] I’m so thrilled to see you. I would really, really like to give you a hug, but this will do. Are you in the downstairs bedroom where I sleep?
John McDougall: [00:03:43] No, I am actually, I’m in our, in the library and the computer room that we just repainted and just got new bookcases. So it’s all like,
Rachael Herron: [00:03:50] It looks beautiful by the way.
John McDougall: [00:03:51] Thank you. Pro tip, don’t remodel a room in your house when you’re serving on jury duty in the middle of a pandemic, because it’s exhausting. Like, don’t do it.
Rachael Herron: [00:04:00] I cannot even imagine! Good for you. Well, it looks great.
John McDougall: [00:04:02] Thanks. Congratulations on the new book, Hush Little Baby. It just came out yesterday. So for anybody who is watching, if you pre-order from, or if you order the book from us, Rachael will send you a signed book like. So when you order, when I send you your order confirmation, I will send you her email address so she can get in touch with you, and if you want to personalize, let her know. But so if anybody is tuning in and doesn’t know Rachael AKA, R.H. Herron, she received her MFA in writing from Mills College, Oakland. She is the author of the thriller’s Stolen Things and this new one, Hush Little Baby, as well as the best-selling author of more than two dozen books under a different name. She lives and teaches in California. And as I said, we’re super excited to have Sarah Shepherd with us this evening. I’m going to bring her out. How are you tonight, Sarah?
Sara Shepard: [00:04:46] Hi! I’m good! How are you?
John McDougall: [00:04:48] Thanks so much for being here with us.
Sara Shepard: [00:04:51] I’m so happy to be here.
John McDougall: [00:04:53] So, Sarah Shepherd is the number one New York times bestselling author of the Pretty Little Liars series, the Lion Game series, the Heiress, the Eliza’s, the Perfectionist series, and Reputation, which is her most recent. We have copies of both authors’ books in store. So if you want to order those, you can do that at murderbooks.com. I’m going to drop a link in the comments in just a second, so you can get more information about them. And I’m going to turn this over to Sarah in just a second. But before I do, if you guys have any questions while she and Rachael are talking, please, please, please post those in the comments on Facebook and YouTube. I will be collecting those while I’m listening to them chat. And I will pop back in and just a little bit to relay those. So Sarah, I’m going to turn it over to you. You guys have fun and I will see you in just a little bit.
Rachael Herron: [00:05:36] Thank you, John.
Sara Shepard: [00:05:37] All right, thank you! Hi! How are you?
Rachael Herron: [00:05:41] Hi, Sara! It’s so nice to meet you in person. We were kind of saying a little bit backstage that we have a mutual bestie.
Sara Shepard: [00:05:48] We do.
Rachael Herron: [00:05:50] Cari Luna, who is an amazing writer and wrote the Revolution of Every Day. And, she said she’s here tonight. So shout out to Cari.
Sara Shepard: [00:05:56] Hi, Cari!
Rachael Herron: [00:05:58] But because of that, you and I go back like maybe almost 20 years.
Sara Shepard: [00:06:03] Yeah. So I, it’s so funny because when I got the request to be on, in this event, which I was really excited about, I was like, I know that name! Why do I know the name R.H. Herron? And I think, I mean, I know the other name that you published under, but I really knew you from the days of blogging and we both used to be really into knitting. You probably were a more talented knitter than I was. I just made stuff but I feel like you’ve designed patterns and like.
Rachael Herron: [00:06:41] I have like designed four patterns and they were so broken. They were,
Sara Shepard: [00:06:45] Really?
Rachael Herron: [00:06:46] They were not good at all.
[Read more…] about Ep. 250: Rachael Herron and Sara Shepard in Conversation – How To Launch a Book in Strange Times