Ep. 230: Erika Robuck on the Magic of YouTube Research

Erika Robuck is the national bestselling author of Hemingway’s Girl, Call Me Zelda, Fallen Beauty, The House of Hawthorne, and Receive Me Falling. She is a contributor to the anthology Grand Central: Postwar Stories of Love and Reunion, and to the Writer’s Digest Essay Collection, Author in Progress. She writes satire (#Hockeystrong) as E. Robuck.

Her latest novel, The Invisible Woman, is about real-life superwoman of WWII, OSS/SOE agent Virginia Hall. 

In 2014, Robuck was named Annapolis’ Author of the Year, and she resides there with her husband, three sons, and a spunky miniature schnauzer.

How Do You Write Podcast: Explore the processes of working writers with bestselling author Rachael Herron. Want tips on how to write the book you long to finish? Here you’ll gain insight from other writers on how to get in the chair, tricks to stay in it, and inspiration to get your own words flowing. 

Join Rachael’s Slack channel, Onward Writers!

Transcript:

Rachael Herron: [00:00:00] Welcome to “How do you Write?” I’m your host, Rachael Herron. On this podcast, I talk to authors about how they write, what their process is and how their lives fit together. I’ll keep each episode short so you can get back to writing.

[00:00:16] Well, Hello writers! Welcome to episode #230 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron. So pleased that you are with me today, as I talked to Erika Robuck on the magic of doing research, including some of the more virtual research, like research on YouTube, for example. We had a great chat and I know that you are going to enjoy listening to her, impart some wisdom on us. So before we get to that, what’s going on around here? Moving, moving is going on around here. We are deep in the middle of it. I’m pretty much done with my office. And my office holds everything that I own except for my desk. I’m still sitting at my desk. I have this gorgeous antique roll top desk. Seriously, if any of you in the Bay area, want to roll top desk, hit me up. I’m going to put it on Craigslist soon, but it’s got, it’s must have 25 or 30 little drawers and there’s things in all the drawers. So I need to go through and make myself a desk kit. It’s going to be one box of stuff that I’ll put in the shipping container, the shipping box that we’re shipping to ourselves. So I’ll get that in four or five months after we move and that’ll hold mostly post-its. You know that. I’m not throwing out my post-its. I know I can get them in New Zealand, but I already have them, so I’m shipping them. But then when I’m really excited about is to make a little container of desk now, the things that I use on a daily basis, the things that I reach for which include post-its and pencils and my tarot cards, and you know, my glasses wipes, those kinds of things. I’m going to have to bring, of course my podcasting mic, but then after I get rid of all of the other stuff that I can sell the desk, and that’s really the last big piece of furniture in this room, apart from a very small sofa, which, honestly, just going to get tossed at the end because I’ve been using it for so long and we have pets and it’s scratched up. 

[00:02:22] So other than that, I’m pretty much packed. That is not to say the house is in any way packed. We have both been focusing on our own offices since in our offices, we keep our clothes, we keep all of our things are, our bedroom is just for sleeping. There’s really not much in there, but the rest of the house has things like, you know, the kayaks in the, in that one closet. And, so that’s- oh, the kitchen! Oh my God, the kitchen. That’s going to be fun. But right now, outside, I hope you don’t hear it, but we have somebody fixing stuff up and power washing. We’re going to get house painted outside and in it’s just all really sinking in we’re spending real money now to get things done. So now, it’s just been terrifying. I know I keep talking about how terrifying and scary this is. But it is, it really is. It’s also exhilarating and exciting, and I can’t wait to make this move to New Zealand, but one of my students shared this with us last week and the phrase is just “Do It Scared.” And I have that on a post-it on my desk right now. Where am I going to put my post-its? I don’t know, but Do It Scared is my motto right now. We do it. We do it scared. We do this with our books, with our writing. We don’t know what we’re doing. We don’t know how to do it. We don’t know if we will ever succeed. We don’t know if we’re good enough. In fact, we think we’re not, and we do it anyway. We do it with this pit of fear in the bottom place of our soul. And we show up and we take the steps to get these things done. 

[00:04:04] Yeah, writers are brave. Writers are courageous. We have to be, we have to be hopeful and courageous to, in order to do this really wild thing that nobody else wants to do. So if you’re feeling scared about what you’re doing with your writing, good. That means you’re exactly in the right place. There’s this beautiful David Bowie quote that I slaughter every time I try it, I should just memorize it. But he basically says, “Write when you feel like your feet can’t touch the bottom of the swimming pool, that’s when you’re in the right place.” I feel that so often in my own writing, and I know you probably do too, and I definitely feel like that in my life right now. So that’s going on. I had some health stuff crop up over the week that kind of knocked me out for a few days that sucked, but I’m up in better now and I’m still doing fine on the health stuff, no diagnosis. And I believe I’m not going to have a diagnosis. I believe whatever sickness I had for those almost three months, I don’t think they’re ever going to figure it out. And I’m becoming okay with that. The more exploratory tests they do unable to find things really the happier I am. It’s frustrating, but it’s really also very, very awesome. But last week, I did get the shot. I got the vaccine, I got the one dose Johnson & Johnson. My hyperactive immune system really kicked up a storm and I got real sick. And also that was, you know, thank you, immune system, making those antibodies. Yeah, because of one of my medical conditions, I was on the list to get it and I got it. Lala does not have it yet. My wife does not have it. She’ll hopefully get it within the next month or two. And, but it does feel nice to have, it’s anticlimactic. I just want everybody to have it, but that’s all. I just want everybody to have the vaccine and that will be really, really great but that’s, that’s coming.

[00:06:00] What else is going on? I’m gearing up for the launch of Hush Little Baby. I got some artistic assets as they call them today. And they’re just really cute images that you can put on Instagram or Pinterest or whatever of your book. And the nice thing is when you’re with a traditional publisher, if you decide to go that route, that’s one of those things they do for you. They give you the artistic assets and thank God for that, because I like to use Canva for the stuff that I do, myself, my self-published books. But it’s nice to have somebody else send that to you. So they’re doing things like giveaways and so that is starting. I’m trying to be present for that, trying to show up at the desk, even though life is literally in disarray, in several different arenas. I still got to show up at the desk and write. I still have to show up to the desk and think about marketing. I still have to show up. I get to show up at the desk and teach that’s, I love doing that. Life just doesn’t stop spinning because we get busy, we just get busier and that is fine. Do it scared. Do it scared. I’m trying to go a little bit easy on myself. I hope that you are exploring some of that too. I’m thinking a lot about the seasons of writing, and I have more than a few students right now in my classes who are really hitting a wall.

[00:07:25] And I think it has to do, I’m guessing this is my guess. I think it has something to do with his year of the pandemic, it’s really slapping us all in the face that we’ve lost an entire year to this in so many ways. And the smallest thing we could lose from this is a year. So many of us have lost so much more than just a year. And this particular stress as is just accumulated to the point where, for a lot of people, it is hard to write right now. And I want to remind you that there are seasons, there are seasons of writing. I love to teach these 90 day classes because 90 days is a great season. You can go hard, you can work hard. You can bond with this community and work your ass off and have something to show for it at the end, you can’t do 90 days to blast through everything. Every 90 days you have to recuperate. Winter Will Come, my last Patreon essay that I wrote was about the book wintering, which I highly recommend and about my type of wintering and how we have to remember that tree’s like really- a really good hardworking tree outside. I may have said this on the podcast, I apologize if I have, but are very hardworking tree. Your favorite tree out on the sidewalk. If it is a tree that normally loses its leaves in the fall, it doesn’t get to decide just to try really hard and work harder and produce the leaves all through the winter. It doesn’t get that choice. It has to winter. We all have to winter at some points. And right now, even though we’re going into spring in this hemisphere, I feel people are wintering, are needing to winter. If you have been working your ass off, it might be time for a goddamn break. It is what I’m telling you my friends, it’s different than not wanting to write, not wanting to write, hating, writing, hating what you’re writing. That’s just- that’s any day of any season, but hitting a wall and needing to take care of yourself more than needing to get to the page, that’s normal. That’s part of the writer’s life. So if you’re there, you’re not doing it wrong. You’re living this part of the writer’s life and wintering is included in that you must winter sometimes. So, take heart. Take care of yourself. Write when you can and when you do, come find me on the internet and tell me about it. I really love hearing about your writing. Okay. My friends enjoy this interview. I know you will, and we will talk soon. 

[00:10:12] Do you wonder why you’re not getting your creative work done? Do you make a plan to write and then fail to follow through? Again? Well, my sweet friend, maybe you’d get a lot out of my Patreon. Each month, I write an essay on living your creative life as a creative person, which is way different than living as a person who’ve been just Netflix 20 hours a week and I have lived both of those ways, so I know. You can get each essay and access to the whole back catalog of them for just a dollar a month. Which is an amount that really truly helps support me at this here writing desk. If you pledge the $3 level, you’ll get motivating texts for me that you can respond to. And if you pledge at the $5 a month level, you get to ask me questions about your creative life, that I’ll answer in the mini episodes. So basically I’m your mini coach. Go to patreon.com/Rachael (R A C H A E L) to get these perks and more and thank you so much.

Rachael Herron: [00:11:12] Okay. Well, I could not be more pleased to welcome to the show, Erica Robuck. Hello, Erica!

Erika Robuck: [00:11:17] Hello. I’m so happy to be here. 

Rachael Herron: [00:11:19] I’m so happy to have you. I am not done with your book yet, but I have not been able to put it down since I picked it up yesterday. So it is just so fantastic! And I can’t wait to talk to you about it. Let me give you a little intro, Erica Robuck is the national best-selling author of Hemingway’s Girl, Call Me Zelda, Fallen Beauty, The House of Hawthorne, and Receive Me Falling. She is a contributor to the anthology Grand Central: Postwar Stories of Love and Reunion, and to the Writer’s Digest Essay Collection, Author in Progress. She writes satire, hashtag #Hockeystrong as E. Robuck. Her latest novel, The Invisible Woman, the one I’m reading is about real-life superwoman of WWII, OSS/SOE agent Virginia Hall. In 2014, Robuck was named Annapolis’ Author of the Year and she resides there with her husband, three sons and a spunky miniature schnauzer. So I’m just so glad to have you on the show. One of my favorite genres to read are these historical novels that are based in truth. And just before we get into writing, which is what this podcast is all about. How did you find out about her? How did you fall in love with her?

Erika Robuck: [00:12:30] Well, I was going through trying to find people that were from Maryland, who were important to me. And I’ve written books about women in the shadows of men. So I’ve written Mrs. Fitzgerald, and an editor had said to me, find a woman who’s special in her own right. Who’s not in a man’s shadow, but remarkable. And around that time, I found Virginia Hall from Baltimore. I live in Maryland, who grew up where I did. And I don’t, I didn’t know how I’d never heard of her before, because her story is so extraordinary. If I’d made it up, you just wouldn’t believe it. 

Rachael Herron: [00:13:04] Yes. 

Erika Robuck: [00:13:06] So the day that I found her, I just, I’m so thankful that I did. 

Rachael Herron: [00:13:08] And she just like took over your life and your imagination and 

Erika Robuck: [00:13:11] Absolutely

Rachael Herron: [00:13:13] You write her with such beauty that she is just so three-dimensional and I could just feel everything that she’s feeling. And I appreciate that from you. Can you tell us a little bit, so you’re wildly prolific, obviously, what is your writing process like? What, how do you get it done? 

Erika Robuck: [00:13:28] Yeah, my now and my son is a little older, I try to work while they’re either in virtual school or online or at school. They’re in a hybrid situation right now. So I pretty much work 9 to 1 every day is my writing time. And then I come out of the office blinking and see to food and exercise and domestic activities and interacting with children. But that’s the time I try to carve out every morning and it’s really important that I keep that. So that’s Monday through Friday. And then, you know, I have like a whole setup. I have classical music. I have a candle; this whole desk is kind of like an altar. So you know, I have my, I hypnotize myself and then I set my alarm so I do remember to go pick people up from school because I definitely missed that before, when you’re in the past, it’s hard to come out, back to the present. 

Rachael Herron: [00:14:17] Yes. I use my echo device for that. You know, people feel different ways about having those in their house. And I don’t like to have it in my house, but my wife insisted on it, but now I use it for everything for, and especially for writing, I set it to set the alarm because you don’t have to think very hard. You just say it and then she’ll yell at you when you need to go run the errand that you have to do. 

Erika Robuck: [00:14:36] Yeah. I do have, on my little, on my watch here, it buzzes and won’t let you stop. So 

Rachael Herron: [00:14:40] Otherwise I don’t know how we would get anything done. Yeah, exactly. What is your biggest challenge when it comes to writing? 

Erika Robuck: [00:14:47] Well, when I’m in the drafting process, I really have to crawl into the skin of the characters. And, you know, as a writer, when that process is very different from revising or editing. 

Rachael Herron: [00:14:57] Yes

Erika Robuck: [00:14:58] And it’s hard for me to go into that world, to go into world war II, occupied France, Virginia Hall, and then to come out and to go to the carpool line and interact with human beings in the grocery store. So that’s the biggest challenge for me is in the drafting phase when it’s almost I wouldn’t don’t say method acting, but you know, you’re just not in your own head as much as in someone else’s. So that’s a real challenge to balance that.  

Rachael Herron: [00:15:24] I like that you called it method acting. We really do kind of do that when we get very deep into it. And I’ve, you know, when you’re moving through your office like trying to act things out and how does your body move and would her arm actually reach that far? And your character has a prosthetic leg and, oh! that’s fantastic. What is your biggest joy when it comes to writing?

Erika Robuck: [00:15:45] My biggest joy is definitely- I call it the fifth day. So four days are a total slog and I’m agonizing or every word and I’m interrupted a thousand times by myself and everything. But on the fifth day, you know, I go into the zone. So yeah, five hours pass, I do- I like to pick people up. I don’t know what happened. It barely needs to be edited. So I’m always the writer high on the fifth day is what I’m always chasing, but you have to do the really bad four days before that to get to the fifth day.

Rachael Herron: [00:16:15] I absolutely love that. And I think that my personal schedule is something very similar to yours and it reminds me, my mom always said, and I have no idea if this has any basis, in fact at all. But she always has said that there’s a big wave and then six smaller ones. And the seventh wave is always a big one. And when we were like avoiding things on the beach, we would run around the rock right after the big waves. Cause we’d have six waves to do it. And it kind of sounds the same as yours.

Erika Robuck: [00:16:37] Absolutely. That’s exactly what it’s like. 

Rachael Herron: [00:16:39] Yeah. And I wish I could get, I wish we could program in to have that fifth day more regularly, but what I like talking about this is because there are so many people who will be listening, who are like, it’s supposed to be easy every day. How would you, what would you tell them about that?

Erika Robuck: [00:16:55] I would say, you know, just they’ll button chair advice that you have to, you can’t wait for the muse. You have to be in the place where it can find you, you can’t just wait for it to find, you know, chase you down. It’s not going to do that and it’s a little bit, I don’t know, it’s almost like finding a radio frequency. And, you know, I think about Virginia Hall and trying to find the frequency and contact London. It takes a lot of misses and a lot of static, but then you find it so you can have that day of transmission and, you know, my best writing days, I don’t feel like I’m writing at all. I’m just, I just feel like I’m channeling. So, but to do that, you have to really practice finding the channel. 

Rachael Herron: [00:17:35] I really love that analogy too. And it’s so beautifully with Virginia. Can you share a craft tip of any sort with us? 

Erika Robuck: [00:17:43] I was thinking a lot about that today and for those who don’t have resources to travel, my, and also now we’re so, so many of us can’t travel. My greatest resource is video and using a YouTube. This is strange. I have a NordicTrack treadmill that lets me go to the Pyrenees so I can walk the trails close to where she walked. 

Rachael Herron: [00:18:05] Wow. 

Erika Robuck: [00:18:06] I can walk through Lyon. I can go to Le Chambon Lyon and because I have access to this technology. So for me, for writers, if you can access YouTube videos about settings, character, if there’s, if you’re lucky enough to have a character who’s on tape, access all of that, because it really animates everything for me, it helps me a lot. And if I don’t have it, so I don’t have any video of Virginia Hall, but I imagine who I would want to play her in the movie. So for me, it would be Catrona Ball from Outlander who plays players. And if I just watch her do a couple of scenes, maybe during the WWII time period, it helps put me in the zone a little bit easier.

Rachael Herron: [00:18:46] I absolutely love the idea of being able to walk through that scenery with the NordicTrack. How very, very, very, very cool is that to put yourself there that way. Oh my goodness. I wanted to, I wanted to go somewhere down a track, but I’m having a hard time focusing today because I’m excited about everything, including your book. What thing in your life affects your writing in a surprising way?

Erika Robuck: [00:19:12] I’m so surprised by how well, my family, first of all, and sometimes I’m intentional about it and sometimes I’m not, but for example, my sons, I got all three of their names into Hemingway’s girl for characters as a little wink to them. And then my youngest son, when he was little, he used to always say, remember, remember? And he said it so often. That I put that in one of the characters’ child’s mouth. So I would never forget how he would always wanted me to remember things. So that was in Fallen Beauty. So usually 

Rachael Herron: [00:19:40] It’s so beautiful. 

Erika Robuck: [00:19:41] I kind of just trying to put little winks in there and get them into the fiction. 

Rachael Herron: [00:19:46] I love that

Erika Robuck: [00:19:47] The other ones I don’t plan, I have kind of a devotion to different saints and sometimes they show up in the writing and I don’t plan on them. So I have a great interest in Padre Pio, he had the stigmata, he had by location, all these strange mystical things. And he showed up and call me Zelda without my plan. And I ended up talking to my editor and she’s like, no, it works. You have to leave it there. But it’s strange how these little things assert themselves. And that’s the fun of writing historical fiction because it’s not biography. I don’t have to be perfectly faithful to the letter. I do have a little bit of space, not a lot, but a little bit, so 

Rachael Herron: [00:20:26] And it sounds like you get to follow your passion and follow your interest when that pops up. Yeah. I do remember what I was going to ask you about. In terms of research since these are based in the French countryside and very, very clearly based there, what kind of research did you have to do or have you done, or can you just do it from the Nordic track? Or have you been there?

Erika Robuck: [00:20:45] No, it’s a little bit of everything. And because she was a spy, she didn’t want to be found. She said it very clearly in interviews later in her life, people would try to hunt her down. She would say no. And she was operative in the CIA until her mandatory retirement at the age of 

Rachael Herron: [00:21:00] Holy cow. 

Erika Robuck: [00:20:45] Yeah. So she really wanting to remain in the shadows, but now here we are. So they declassified her files, the national archives. So I was able to go to college park and go through all of those was amazing. I applied to be a researcher at the CIA and they let me come in there. I got to see her distinguished service cross, her passport, a wireless transplant. You know, 

Rachael Herron: [00:21:23] That gives me goosebumps, to see and touch those things even though, even if you were wearing gloves, you got to, you got to be there with them,

Erika Robuck: [00:21:28] I could be there and then there’s a lot of a spy craft fiction. There’s a lot of books about women at that time and the SOE and the OSS. I found a French language book about one of the McKee who worked directly with her, who actually had a contentious relationship with her. So it was really interesting to see that and helpful, but the best thing was meeting with her niece. She has, her niece lives in Baltimore. And so Lorna and I met for lunch three or four times, and she let me see all of these family photos and family documents and she was so generous with her time. 

Rachael Herron: [00:22:02] How does she feel about seeing her aunt portrayed in these ways? Did she love it? 

Erika Robuck: [00:22:08] She loved it. And I’m sure, you know too with the phenomenon, the collective unconscious, when something comes up, it comes up. And so Virginia Hall, Lorna has said to me, nobody knew about my aunt and all of a sudden I was getting calls from writers, biographers, filmmakers. And sure enough, the film We’ll Call This By just came out. There’s a woman who know importance the biography. There’s a movie based on that coming out. There’s my book there, there’s just all of a sudden it’s like our stars rising, so

Rachael Herron: [00:22:39] Which is so cool that people will really, really know her and be able to follow her with your words. That is so exciting. Do you miss her? Now that you’re not writing her?

Erika Robuck: [00:22:49] Absolutely. And I, and she hasn’t left me yet. So my follow-up book, I’ve got two books right now with Berkeley and the first one was The Invisible Woman. And then early next year we’ll have the follow-up, which, which is as yet untitled, but it’s another SOE female. And then another American woman who helped smuggle pilots out of France. Virginia Hall showed up in the draft. Of course she did. She muscled her way into the SOE offices, and you don’t plan on it. And one of the men said, Oh, she’s not very approachable. And it just made me laugh because it- I didn’t plan on her being there, but she’s like, Oh, I will be there.

Rachael Herron: [00:23:26] I’m thinking that sometimes when, you know, Virginia walks on for you or when the saints walk on, that might be one of your fifth days when you’re just receiving. 

Erika Robuck: [00:23:34] Absolutely right. Absolutely. And I said, I’d said to my editor and my agent, I was like, look, who showed up in the new book. And they all thought it was funny, you know? So all these beautiful

Rachael Herron: [00:23:43] Beautiful. Oh, that’s the magic of being a writer. Okay, speaking of awesome books, what is the best book you’ve read recently and why did you love it? 

Erika Robuck: [00:23:53] I’ve been an evangelist Ford Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell. Have you heard it?

Rachael Herron: [00:23:57] Never heard of it. No, Hamnett, H A M N E T? All one word? 

Erika Robuck: [00:24:01] Hamnett. Yes. Who is Shakespeare’s son who died of the plague. 

Rachael Herron: [00:24:05] Oh I didn’t know that.

Erika Robuck: [00:24:06] Whom he based Hamlet off of, and the name Hamnet and Hamlet are kind of interchangeable in the documents of the boys’ life. 

Rachael Herron: [00:24:13] Wow 

Erika Robuck: [00:24:15] It is phenomenal. I don’t, I can’t even describe it. I was so greedy for it. I couldn’t put it down. I devoured it. And then as a writer, I’m so jealous. How did I not, how can I not write like this? How did I not think of this? So it’s just, it’s so good. And I think it won every award last year, so

Rachael Herron: [00:24:33] I haven’t even heard of it. It must be off in my own cloud somewhere, but yeah, 

Erika Robuck: [00:24:36] it’s, you don’t have to care about Shakespeare or historical fiction. It’s just a phenomenal book. 

Rachael Herron: [00:24:41] I love both deeply, so I am very excited. That’s going to go to the top of my list after I finish yours. So thank you. Okay. Now, so let’s talk about you and this book. Can you give us kind of the pitch, the logline for this book for people who haven’t heard of it? 

Erika Robuck: [00:24:57] Well, I just do it as simply as possible. She’s the real life, superwoman of WWII, who helped to you know, best the Nazis liberate mountain villages and arm and train thousands of guerrilla fighters. With a prosthetic leg, she called Cuthbert by the way. So are you really, you just it’s silly every time my editor would say, did she really do that? And then I would say yes, 

Rachael Herron: [00:25:18] I kept thinking that as I, as I’ve been reading through, like, is that something that she made up because the writer’s brain asks that, but apparently a lot of it is real. So her, will you tell us a little bit about her personality though? I think that’s why I’m enjoying her so much is she is not a, by any means cardboard cutout of a strong woman.

Erika Robuck: [00:25:38] Yeah. And I’m so glad to hear you say that because wrestling with her has been one of the big challenges of this book in particular

Rachael Herron: [00:25:45] I can imagine. 

Erika Robuck: [00:25:46] Yeah. And I kept getting feedback from beta readers and she was like, Oh, she’s just not likable. 

Rachael Herron: [00:25:51] I loved her instantly. So I don’t know how you pulled that up because I can see the unlikeability, but I loved her instantly.

Erika Robuck: [00:25:59] Well, that’s how I felt about her, but it was really a problem for a lot of people because she is, she’s prickly needs. 

Rachael Herron: [00:26:05] Yes

Erika Robuck: [00:26:06] Her niece described her as intimidating and scary, smart. There’s nobody who ever called Virginia Hall likable, but because she’s the protagonist of a novel, we have to root for her. We have to sympathize with her. And my editor brilliantly said, let’s see Virginia before the war losses, before she shot off her foot. Before the survivor guilt, post-traumatic stress. Let’s see, young Virginia. And so we brought in the prologue where she goes to study in Paris and she falls in love with Paris. It’s her first time out in the world. And she thought she’s going to take the world by storm. She’s going to travel and she speaks all these languages. And so we see her very young and starry-eyed. And then in chapter one, I just write into the fire. It’s second mission. First mission. All of that network has been decimated. People are dead and she is a cold shell of her former self. So I want the reader to say what happened and you will find out

Rachael Herron: [00:26:58] That is exactly what you did. And I had actually forgotten about that prologue because it had just. I just filed it away in my head. And I’m always talking to students about that whole save the cat idea that we have to give the reader, just that subconscious nod, that this is a good human being that you will not regret spending your time with. And you did that the way her father lifts her up on the shoulder and shows was it wasn’t it like Paris at Dawn? He shows her parents at Dawn. 

Erika Robuck: [00:27:25] Yeah. And then she helps her friend at the party talks with Brendan, make sure she’s safely home. So you said for people, she takes care of people. So 

Rachael Herron: [00:27:34] You saved the cat with that moment. And that is, I know that that’s why I saw her as unlikable as this woman, the shell of woman. And also love her. 

Erika Robuck: [00:27:41] Good. I’m glad it worked because that wasn’t an error until very late in the writing. It just, we had to get it in there and what it ended up doing, it also was bookends the epilogue very nicely with a major plot point

Rachael Herron: [00:27:55] Don’t tell me I’m not there yet. 

Erika Robuck: [00:27:56] Yeah I won’t and I think they helped bring completion and round out her character. So it actually worked out really well, but that my editor had that idea and it was brilliant because I just. I didn’t want to make her something she wasn’t. But I needed the reader to root for her. So,

Rachael Herron: [00:28:12] And it is literally a psychological trick that we play on the reader to get them to come along with us. And it works beautifully. And I didn’t see, I, it worked on me and I’m always looking for those kinds of things

 Erika Robuck: [00:28:22] Oh good. Good.

Rachael Herron: [00:28:23] Fantastic. Where can we find the book and where can we find you?

Erika Robuck: [00:28:26] We can find wherever books are sold. I signed about a jillion copies for Bethany Beach Books, which is an independent bookseller in Delaware, they ship anywhere and I also have signed copies for a likely story in Sykesville, Foxtail Bookshop, Warwick’s in California, if you read on a Kindle, it’s available for e-book and also it’s at Costco

Rachael Herron: [00:28:49] Oh, congratulations! I have never gotten Costco placement. I’ve gotten Target, but never Costco. That’s it. Okay. 

Erika Robuck: [00:28:55] It was my first Costco. I was thrilled, thrilled 

Rachael Herron: [00:28:58] That is a bucket list. 

Erika Robuck: [00:28:59] Yes. 

Rachael Herron: [00:29:01] Oh my goodness. Okay. Well, I will go and check that out at my local Costco too, but I have the Kindle version and you are @erikarobuck.com, is that correct?

Erika Robuck: [00:29:08] Yes, and I’m usually at my favorite social media. I love Instagram. I like the pretty pictures and the book tableau of coffee with books, you know, that’s where I feel happiest, so

Rachael Herron: [00:29:19] That, I agree with you. I have gotten rid of almost all of their social media except for Instagram, where I still am. 

Erika Robuck: [00:29:23] There you go

Rachael Herron: [00:29:24] Thank you so much for chatting with me. It has been a delight. 

Erika Robuck: [00:29:27] Thank you. It was great talking to you. 

Rachael Herron: [00:29:30] All right. Well, good luck and may it fly from the shelves. 

Erika Robuck: [00:29:32] Oh, thank you. And good luck to you too.

Rachael Herron: [00:29:34] Thanks. Bye Erika!

Erika Robuck: [00:29:35] Take care. 

Thanks so much for joining me on this episode of “How do you Write?” You can reach me on Twitter, twitter.com/RachaelHerron, or at my website, www.rachaelherron.com, you can also support me on Patreon and get essays on living your creative life for as little as a buck an essay at www.patreon.com/rachael spelled R, A, C, H, A, E, L and do sign up for my free weekly newsletter of encouragement to writers rachaelherron.com/write/

Now, go to your desk and create your own process and get to writing my friends.